jorge's stompbox

Launchpad plugin for GNOME Do

I was at lunch the other day and Ken Simon, a sysadmin at Oakland University. He was mentioning how the students were on spring break and he needed a quick and dirty project to work on.

So I told him that he could probably implement the blueprint I had written a month or so ago for a Launchpad plugin for GNOME Do. I wrote the spec because as I use Do more and more I tend to want everything I work in to just be in Do because it's a fast way to work.

As Ken explains, a few hours later he had something working. Behold:

Do is one of those applications that you need to see to really "get it". So I've put together a screencast of Ken's Launchpad Plugin for GNOME Do (Ogg Video) so you can check out how it works.

We will be merging this plugin into the official plugins branch, but in the meantime you can grab the code here. If you don't want to build from source, snag the .dll from here and copy it into ~/.local/share/gnome-do/plugins then restart GNOME Do. You need the version of GNOME Do from the official Personal Package Archive.

Also, GNOME Do now has learning enabled in trunk. This means that as you use Do, over time it learns what things you tend to use the most. So if you keep using "Launchpad -> 123456 -> Bug Number" then the Bug Number item will start to drift to the top of the list. If your friend is a translator and keeps doing "Launchpad -> Russian -> Release Translations" then the translation item will start to move to the top of his list. As you can imagine, after Do learns the way you work, you become real fast at getting to where you want to be.

Thanks to Ken Simon for implementing this, and David Siegel for answering his questions on the list. I am finding myself more efficient with this plugin and the learning feature. Enjoy!

Tasky!

The dynamic duo of Calvin Gaisford and Boyd Timothy have unleashed Tasky onto the world, which they worked on during Novell's Hack Week.

Tasky is a simple TODO app for the Linux desktop, though I think the real awesome bit is the integration with Remember The Milk, an online task list. I really like RTM's features, especially the Firefox plugin for Gmail, which is really fantastic. The reason I like tasky is that I can have a desktop application that talks to RTM which I can "Always on Top" on my second monitor and have it in my face all the time.

Like any new project, it is very young and missing features, but if you use RTM and check out Tasky, you will quickly realize the potential here for a great tool. For example, someone has already written a backend for Evolution tasks. I threw up some ideas for future work here.

Join the tasky google group for discussion; get the code here, and feel free to jump in.

Edit: Misspelled Calvin's name, fixed. I guess I owe him a beer for that one.

FOSDEM 2008, Part 2: The LoCo Strikes Back

Spent some time checking out the Ubuntu booth at FOSDEM, run by the folks from the Ubuntu Belgian Team:

Thanks to the many folks (some not in the picture) who helped man the booth and answer user questions. Having run many booths myself I know it can be tiring even after a few hours, let alone two whole days. They also put together an awesome little poster for their upcoming release party:

Of course they will make the source available so that other locos can reuse the layout for making their own release party invitations. I will blog as soon as someone sends it to me.

FOSDEM 2008

Jonathan Riddell put on a packaging talk for FOSDEM 2008:

The talk was well attended and there were some questions. Unfortunately the session was only 45 minutes, so he couldn't delve into too much detail.

Jonathan has made his slides available. As always, feel free to refer to the Packaging Guide for more detailed information and run your own Packaging Jam.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

I'd like to extend thanks to the many people out there who maintain the Ubuntu wiki and forum threads; all of you excellent documentation folks. I was easily able to look at a grid of compatible webcams and make a purchasing decision. Of course a thanks also go out to the folks who actually wrote the driver. :)

I bought a Logitech Quickcam STX and it worked right out of the box. Ekiga worked (once I set it to VL2). Cheese worked with zero configuration , what an excellent application by the way; green hulk angry!

... and Skype (an unfortunate non-free necessity) just worked; spent some time hanging out with Ubuntu Studio's _MMA_:

The nice thing I liked about this camera is that it Just Worked. It came with a CD, but I didn't need it, i just plugged it in. Awesome.

On the other side of the coin, I went to micro center yesterday and got a cheap USB stick. The box said nothing about the bundled U3 software that was installed on the key, otherwise I would have known better. The only way to remove it is with a windows-only tool. The weird part is that the the software actually makes the usb stick harder to use, even in Windows. It's like someone somewhere said "Let's not only invest money in this software, but let's make it harder for people to use as well, that way we all win!". I would have paid money to be at that meeting.

It's either ironic (or sad) that these days the simplest devices are restricted with worthless crap, while the seemingly more complicated devices are Just Working(tm) these days. Well, except for home NAS stuff, heh.

So, the Logitech Quickcam STX gets a thumbs up, most USB sticks these days get a thumbs down.

At the pub by 4pm.

Finally got my puppet book. Got through the intro (I'll be reading it during my flight to FOSDEM), but I was surprised at how thin the book is. A sysadmin book less than 800 pages? Ridiculous. Puppet has been brought up on the Ars Technica forums over the last few months, so I started a thread.

Note: I think the book being so thin is a feature - a testament to a well-designed tool. :)

I master magics, five!

Here comes that important number 5.

EDIT: Pedro Villavicencio will be holding a bug triage session today on IRC today for those of you who want to learn how to triage from one of our best - check the schedule for the time.

Digg It!

Quickie Monday

It's time for some quickies:

• Paul Frields points out this interview with James Turbnull, author of the new Pulling Strings with Puppet book. Just ordered my copy. :)
• Luke Kanies, author of puppet, did a talk at LCA about it, follow his link for the video of the talk.
• David Siegel posted some nice screenshots of Jason Smith's theme work on GNOME Do.
• Signed up for bass lessons with a proper instructor. I forgot how to read music so this is a good way to get back on the horse. He started me off with Mel Bay's Electric Bass Method; which is the same book I used like 15 years ago. Weird.
• Picked up Rodrigo y Gabriela, because they are awesome.
• Handy logs of Ubuntu Developer Week.

Nice hackerthreads ....

Finally I have a GNOME shirt. Buy one.

The number five ...

Daniel Holbach thinks that the number 5 will become significant next week. Discuss.