initial upload of photos complete.
i will add commentary to them over the next few days / weeks, but at least they are up there now ...
Monday, August 30, 2004
home again, home again, jiggedy jigg
so i'm sitting in my living room typing on my systems in the quiet dawn of a monday morning. soon i'll be in the office. i wish i were still in Germany, but life's like that a lot isn't it?
the trip home was uneventful, which is a good thing when dealing with international flights. thanks go to Danimo for driving me to the Frankfurt airport from Ludwigsburg. you da man, daniel! =)
one thing i did learn on that trip was that McDonalds in .de has a much better veggie burger patty than the crap they sell here in Canada.
my last day in Germany was pretty interesting. interviewed by the people making that KDE documentary, fireworks at the Residenz Schloss that blew my mind, one more evening to enjoy Jenny's company, a quick trip to Stuttgart and several clubs there, eating in a Subway sandwich shop in Stuttgart where two Americans were working, barely making it home due to exhaustion, packing, leaving, flying .......
it seems like a whirlwind. i'm motivated to work on KDE like i haven't been in a long time. meeting up with everyone swept aside a veil of seclusion i hadn't really realized had encloaked me. i'm already really missing Germany, all the amazingly tallented, bright, funny and generally GREAT KDE folk and the new non-KDE people i met there. hell, i even miss the Blaur Engel. but that's how i know it was such a great experience; if it weren't i wouldn't care that i had to leave.
and even though i ran myself ragged there in just about every way possible, i feel relaxed, alive and energized. i have much work to do, ranging from NX to getting the HIG written with our new and improved usability community to getting KDE America and other bits and nobbins of KDE logistics rolling.
thank you to everyone who came to LuBu, to Scott for openning the doors of Hotel Wheeler for me a few days earlier and for all our users and corporate partners who make KDE that much more rewarding.
cue the music, baby ...
the trip home was uneventful, which is a good thing when dealing with international flights. thanks go to Danimo for driving me to the Frankfurt airport from Ludwigsburg. you da man, daniel! =)
one thing i did learn on that trip was that McDonalds in .de has a much better veggie burger patty than the crap they sell here in Canada.
my last day in Germany was pretty interesting. interviewed by the people making that KDE documentary, fireworks at the Residenz Schloss that blew my mind, one more evening to enjoy Jenny's company, a quick trip to Stuttgart and several clubs there, eating in a Subway sandwich shop in Stuttgart where two Americans were working, barely making it home due to exhaustion, packing, leaving, flying .......
it seems like a whirlwind. i'm motivated to work on KDE like i haven't been in a long time. meeting up with everyone swept aside a veil of seclusion i hadn't really realized had encloaked me. i'm already really missing Germany, all the amazingly tallented, bright, funny and generally GREAT KDE folk and the new non-KDE people i met there. hell, i even miss the Blaur Engel. but that's how i know it was such a great experience; if it weren't i wouldn't care that i had to leave.
and even though i ran myself ragged there in just about every way possible, i feel relaxed, alive and energized. i have much work to do, ranging from NX to getting the HIG written with our new and improved usability community to getting KDE America and other bits and nobbins of KDE logistics rolling.
thank you to everyone who came to LuBu, to Scott for openning the doors of Hotel Wheeler for me a few days earlier and for all our users and corporate partners who make KDE that much more rewarding.
cue the music, baby ...
Saturday, August 28, 2004
i can sum up yesterday in four words
google, google, google and jenny
i could go on about shopping cart races in the middle of the night, how to pick out fellow n. americans at dance clubs, extreme sleeping, how to write Makefile.am's that work, the travails of dating when you don't speak the other person's native language and how not fun it is to sit in a beautiful place with a pretty woman only to get drilled in German As A Second Language lessons. but i won't.
instead, i'll try and figure out what i'm supposed to being doing at 18:00 tonight. it supposedly includes meeting up in the little house at the place. and yes, i'm not sure which place or what little house. nothing like a little vagueness to ensure it doesn't work out, eh? then again, i think it's bit early to be meeting her mother anyways.
i could go on about shopping cart races in the middle of the night, how to pick out fellow n. americans at dance clubs, extreme sleeping, how to write Makefile.am's that work, the travails of dating when you don't speak the other person's native language and how not fun it is to sit in a beautiful place with a pretty woman only to get drilled in German As A Second Language lessons. but i won't.
instead, i'll try and figure out what i'm supposed to being doing at 18:00 tonight. it supposedly includes meeting up in the little house at the place. and yes, i'm not sure which place or what little house. nothing like a little vagueness to ensure it doesn't work out, eh? then again, i think it's bit early to be meeting her mother anyways.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
NX, khelpcenter, kiosktool, food
today i attended the NX session which was rather productive. we discussed integrating it with KDE, Qt and extending NX into the directions it needs to go to make it more easily integratable with toolkits and desktop environments. cool stuff. there were people from Trolltech, IT consultancy companies, FreeNX, our userbase and KDE promo there.
we did a quick UI hack session on khelpcenter (though Lauri is still trying to get Cornelius and i in the same place at the same time...) and am about to start a review of kiosktool. had an interesting discourse over lunch with Jan and Lauri regarding making help content more readily available by providing passive context-sensitive presentation of the documentation as users actually use the software.
today's buzzword: self-revealing software.
i finally got to eat at around 16:00. i was rather hungry. to say the least.
we did a quick UI hack session on khelpcenter (though Lauri is still trying to get Cornelius and i in the same place at the same time...) and am about to start a review of kiosktool. had an interesting discourse over lunch with Jan and Lauri regarding making help content more readily available by providing passive context-sensitive presentation of the documentation as users actually use the software.
today's buzzword: self-revealing software.
i finally got to eat at around 16:00. i was rather hungry. to say the least.
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
the night of 3 dinners
there are very few rational concerns being voiced about our plans to write a new set of guidelines, so that's a good sign.
today's BOF discussion regarding usability review and fixes processes was very good. we saw an alpha version of the new XML-based system on usability.org which looks extremeley promising. i can't wait to give it a go!
Mirko Boehm went home today, which is too bad. his presence will be missed, at least by me. he's a great guy... we went out for post-dinner drinks last night where he taught me some strange and largely useless German words, such as how to say "road rash" and "ass brake" (a skiing move, apparently?). we also taught the bartender how to make mudslides, which may be one of the best drinks in the world. if they take off here in Ludwigsburg in the next few months, let it be known that it was the crazy antics of Mirko and Aaron that made it so ;-)
usually i eat one or two meals a day. ask my office-mates about that. it's something of a running joke that i'm rarely seen eating. well, today was something of a shift in that regard: i ate no less than three dinners. well.... i ate one full sized meal and then two progressively smaller meals. i had a decent dinner of tomato soup (which has a lot more texture here than in Canada, i might add... mmmm...) and some pasta that they claimed was in a gorgonzola sauze (i'm not sure i believe them) with Tom Chance who is aKademy's official propaganda minister. er... Information Minister. yeah, that's it ;-)
on the way back i ran into a herd of KDE people and decided to go for dinner with them. they were looking for a good Italian place, so i took them to a place some of us had eaten at some days ago that was, unlike the place i had just eaten at, quite superb. so the visitor led the nationals around town. how odd. though i almost took a right instead of a left at the very end. open source directions? anyways... we ate in a downstairs room. the food and conversation was great, the ambience amazing: a curved ceiling room done all in brickwork. i like to think that it's a very old cellar that had been renovated with the least amount of changes possible to produce an authentic and historic place to eat. but then i'm also a romantic.. so...
on the way back from THAT dinner, i ran into Waldo Bastian and a KDE user who is attending the conference. he has now decided to join the documentation team! awesome! they were on their way to dinner at a Greek restaurant so ...... i joined them. ;-)
to be fair my last two "meals" consisted of a drink and a salad each, so... hardly a gorging. but way more than usual. now i have to type twice as much to burn my intake of calories ;-)
today's BOF discussion regarding usability review and fixes processes was very good. we saw an alpha version of the new XML-based system on usability.org which looks extremeley promising. i can't wait to give it a go!
Mirko Boehm went home today, which is too bad. his presence will be missed, at least by me. he's a great guy... we went out for post-dinner drinks last night where he taught me some strange and largely useless German words, such as how to say "road rash" and "ass brake" (a skiing move, apparently?). we also taught the bartender how to make mudslides, which may be one of the best drinks in the world. if they take off here in Ludwigsburg in the next few months, let it be known that it was the crazy antics of Mirko and Aaron that made it so ;-)
usually i eat one or two meals a day. ask my office-mates about that. it's something of a running joke that i'm rarely seen eating. well, today was something of a shift in that regard: i ate no less than three dinners. well.... i ate one full sized meal and then two progressively smaller meals. i had a decent dinner of tomato soup (which has a lot more texture here than in Canada, i might add... mmmm...) and some pasta that they claimed was in a gorgonzola sauze (i'm not sure i believe them) with Tom Chance who is aKademy's official propaganda minister. er... Information Minister. yeah, that's it ;-)
on the way back i ran into a herd of KDE people and decided to go for dinner with them. they were looking for a good Italian place, so i took them to a place some of us had eaten at some days ago that was, unlike the place i had just eaten at, quite superb. so the visitor led the nationals around town. how odd. though i almost took a right instead of a left at the very end. open source directions? anyways... we ate in a downstairs room. the food and conversation was great, the ambience amazing: a curved ceiling room done all in brickwork. i like to think that it's a very old cellar that had been renovated with the least amount of changes possible to produce an authentic and historic place to eat. but then i'm also a romantic.. so...
on the way back from THAT dinner, i ran into Waldo Bastian and a KDE user who is attending the conference. he has now decided to join the documentation team! awesome! they were on their way to dinner at a Greek restaurant so ...... i joined them. ;-)
to be fair my last two "meals" consisted of a drink and a salad each, so... hardly a gorging. but way more than usual. now i have to type twice as much to burn my intake of calories ;-)
woah, doggy
we're nearing the end of the aKademy usability track here and it's been a whirlwind of activity. the new KDE guidelines proposal was an exciting thing to generate over the last day and half. it will provide some fundamentally important coherency and principles we need.
Jan, one of the usability experts attending aKademy, said something very interesting: the usability industry is generally wrong when they say developers aren't interested in usability. the experience with kdepim via openusability.org was overwhelmingly positive for everyone. the usability experts are used to loooooong devel cycles within which very few of their recommendations get attention paid to them. with the shorter release cycles in open source and the more direct connect to the developers means a much more efficient process. they predict that open source software will actually become MORE usable than closed source software given time. and it's more rewarding for the usability experts since they get to have a greater influence over what actually occurs in cooperation with the developers. huzzah!
the University of London is interested in our processes, and having people like Jan and Ellen around is a very promising development as it means we have commercial and academic professionals joining our cause. sweet.
btw, i've discovered that "huzzah" doesn't translate very well when pronounced with a german accent. while it sounds exclamatory with an english accent it sounds much less exciting in some of the other accents around europe. so... here's a bit of an explanation of "huzzah" for those who are curious about it: it's a meaningless english "word" that is used to express success in a positive and semi-excited fashion, primarily in a comic way. it isn't widely used, but you will see it on shows such as Futurama. i usually accompany an exitted "huzzAH!" with a broad smile and arms raised in the air. boy, that sounds silly even to me.
Jan, one of the usability experts attending aKademy, said something very interesting: the usability industry is generally wrong when they say developers aren't interested in usability. the experience with kdepim via openusability.org was overwhelmingly positive for everyone. the usability experts are used to loooooong devel cycles within which very few of their recommendations get attention paid to them. with the shorter release cycles in open source and the more direct connect to the developers means a much more efficient process. they predict that open source software will actually become MORE usable than closed source software given time. and it's more rewarding for the usability experts since they get to have a greater influence over what actually occurs in cooperation with the developers. huzzah!
the University of London is interested in our processes, and having people like Jan and Ellen around is a very promising development as it means we have commercial and academic professionals joining our cause. sweet.
btw, i've discovered that "huzzah" doesn't translate very well when pronounced with a german accent. while it sounds exclamatory with an english accent it sounds much less exciting in some of the other accents around europe. so... here's a bit of an explanation of "huzzah" for those who are curious about it: it's a meaningless english "word" that is used to express success in a positive and semi-excited fashion, primarily in a comic way. it isn't widely used, but you will see it on shows such as Futurama. i usually accompany an exitted "huzzAH!" with a broad smile and arms raised in the air. boy, that sounds silly even to me.
Monday, August 23, 2004
tuesday evening
loooong day. lots of meetings, hot weather, a bit of coding, finishing up my slides for tomorrow. need sleep. zzZZZzzz
aKademy: day 3
stayed at aKademy until 8am this morning... ate breakfast with the other hackers back at the youth hostel at 9am and then went to sleep for a few hours... made it back in time for a bit of hacking and then the key signing... finally, i'm part of the kde key ring!
i have meetings this evening lined up with both Lauri Watts and Ian Geiseri regarding various KDE issues... but i'm particularly excited to have just now met Jan and Ellen of relevantive for the first time. the Nazgul of Usability are congregating. Ziggy from Novell will finish off the circle and tomorrow the fun begins. huzzah!
i'm particularly looking for a nice, cool drink right now as it is amazingly hot. probably doesn't help that i'm wearing a long sleeved shirt.
i have meetings this evening lined up with both Lauri Watts and Ian Geiseri regarding various KDE issues... but i'm particularly excited to have just now met Jan and Ellen of relevantive for the first time. the Nazgul of Usability are congregating. Ziggy from Novell will finish off the circle and tomorrow the fun begins. huzzah!
i'm particularly looking for a nice, cool drink right now as it is amazingly hot. probably doesn't help that i'm wearing a long sleeved shirt.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
speedbumps, devel presentations and pow-wowing
ossi is choking on an apple strudel next to me, but that's ok because, as usual, he's smiling and laughing all the same. the laptop situation here has not been good, though. i didn't want to lug my stupidly heavy and too-slow-for-development laptop around and didn't actually reserve one of the laptops for use while here. there were enough to go around, but the laptop assigned to me had to stay in the organization room until the sign out contracts were ready (which finally happened). in that time, the laptop has been moved (to where was a mystery; it was much like an easter egg hunt), unplugged from the network several times and even rebooted (while i had compiles going) so they could image another laptop from this one. it's been very frustrating as i've been attending tutorials and eating meals in between compiles and i haven't been able to sit here and babysit the machine, but i think things are sorted out now. *knock on wood*
in other news, dot.kde.org is down. again. blah. =(
the devel presentations were quite good this afternoon. the Qt4 Model/View talk was particularly tantalizing and productive. there will be convenience classes so we will have the simplicity of our current tree views and list boxes in Qt4, but the power of M/V for the (common) non-trivial use cases. there was quite a bit of post-presentation discussion between KDE developers and the Trolltech guys about the fine points of this new fundamental paradigm in Qt.
i sat down with tackat, Frank, Ken and Lauri and had a really cool discussion about what's going on in their respective worlds. coordination between the art, usability and documentation worlds in KDE?! what next? world peace? ;-) i'd wager that there are going to be some SERIOUSLY cool announcements this week given what we talked about.
eventually we had one brit, one aussie, one new zealander, one american and one canadian around the table. tackat remarked how it was interesting to hear all these English variants/accents at once around the table. =)
we're all back inside now, though, and as soon as kdebase finished compiling here i'm going to get working on systray layouting. i'll probably head upstairs and join the other lunatics^Hhackers there.
in other news, dot.kde.org is down. again. blah. =(
the devel presentations were quite good this afternoon. the Qt4 Model/View talk was particularly tantalizing and productive. there will be convenience classes so we will have the simplicity of our current tree views and list boxes in Qt4, but the power of M/V for the (common) non-trivial use cases. there was quite a bit of post-presentation discussion between KDE developers and the Trolltech guys about the fine points of this new fundamental paradigm in Qt.
i sat down with tackat, Frank, Ken and Lauri and had a really cool discussion about what's going on in their respective worlds. coordination between the art, usability and documentation worlds in KDE?! what next? world peace? ;-) i'd wager that there are going to be some SERIOUSLY cool announcements this week given what we talked about.
eventually we had one brit, one aussie, one new zealander, one american and one canadian around the table. tackat remarked how it was interesting to hear all these English variants/accents at once around the table. =)
we're all back inside now, though, and as soon as kdebase finished compiling here i'm going to get working on systray layouting. i'll probably head upstairs and join the other lunatics^Hhackers there.
a whole new respect for font handling
i attended Lars Knoll's presentation on Unicode font layout handling this morning and was amazed by the intricacies involved in managing the visual representations of many of the world's more complex written language forms. as if dealing with scripts whose glyphs change radically based on their context (syllables, previous lines, etc) wasn't enough, the Trolls are doing this in a cross platform nature (Linux, UNIX, Windows). it was good to hear that Qt and Pango are sharing the OpenType layout code, as that sort of combined effort in these sorts of tricky, hard and high knowledge areas enables us to be more consistent and develop faster. i'd like to see this as part of the FD.o base at some point, and perhaps try and convince OpenOffice to use it as well (they apparently use IBM's UCI).
in KDE4 we really need to pay attention to using what Qt provides in this respect. konsole and kate are two good examples of problem areas. i'm glad we have people like David handling this in KOffice.
speaking of David, looks like we will get together this week to work on (finally) implementing trash:/. woot!
in KDE4 we really need to pay attention to using what Qt provides in this respect. konsole and kate are two good examples of problem areas. i'm glad we have people like David handling this in KOffice.
speaking of David, looks like we will get together this week to work on (finally) implementing trash:/. woot!
sleeeeeep
so i got an amazingly great sleep last night. went to the wine fest, ended up going dancing at an upscale club with a group of six women who were celebrating the upcoming marriage of one of their friends. she was wearing a white t-shirt and getting people to sign it and leave a kiss mark using lipstick. suffice it to say that i have pictures of several KDE developers with lipstick on. hahaha.. we left the club at ~03:00 and when i got back to the hostel i had a shower and crashed out until 11:00... i'm looking forward to today's talks, should be good.
FD.o redux
"Working on 'standards' needed to be compatible with something I'm just not interested in at all is quite another thing."
so you don't want to be compatible with any Linux OSes? you don't want to be compatible with the UNIX OSes that are tracking Linux through compatibility layers? this isn't about being compatible with GNOME, that's just a very happy (for our users) side effect. this is about being compatible with a platform that stays more or less stable for defined periods of time so that we can start reliably integrating KDE with the OS, so that 3rd party developers can reliably use software facilities that they need .... these are worthy goals, IMHO.
"I do care about having to remove the dcop interfaces to Krita, about having to add new bindings for something else, about fixing .desktop files, about having to redesign Krita's native file format to be OASIS compliant"
there's nothing that says we will have to remove DCOP interfaces, even if we end up using DBUS in the future. as for fixing our .desktop files and file formats, that should serve as a lesson: if we create published standards early on we avoid duplicating work. even then, one will rarely get things "right" the first time and the specs take into consideration real world issues that previous methods did not. this is not work for work's sake, any more than bug fixing is.
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Freedesktop.org
"But as long as the freedesktop.org people basically say ‘We’re setting the standards. We’re not terribly interested in what you’re doing, but you’re welcome to come and help us.’, then I’m not much inclined to accept their invitation." - Boudewijn Rempt
Fortunately, this is not the invitation. The invitation is more like this:
the Open Source desktop world needs to limit the unnecessary chaos on our platform. this means setting standards and agreeing on common technologies. we can't wait for those who aren't interested in doing this, and we can't force people to change their mind and start devoting resources towards this worthy goal. so we have decided where this work will be done (Freedesktop.org) and the shape of that place is determined by those who show up. all are invited; those who accept that invitation will have the most say in the decision making process.
just like KDE itself. all are invited, those who show up define KDE.
we happen to have some of the top talent in the Open Source world working in and around KDE, and they are cool people as well. let's tap our strengths and make Freedesktop.org reflect our needs.
aKademy Day 2: Freedesktop.org
Daniel Stone's presentation on Freedesktop.org and the technologies being brought together there was really good. i'm glad he was able to make it and present it as there were several interesting points that i was unaware of personally and would have missed had i done it, as the schedule was claiming ;-)
the discussion afterwards was quite lively and ended up being largely a call to arms / participation to the KDE development community to ensure that we are involved as much as possible to ensure that FD.o reflects our needs and as matures as rapidly as possible within the realm of reason.
remember: we are competing primarily with companies who have unified (and rather secretive) groups doing exactly what FD.o does for us. we need to have a similar body on the Open Source / Free Software side of the fence so as to compete effectively with them, and FD.o is our best hope in this regard.
in other news, software patents still suck. ;-)
the discussion afterwards was quite lively and ended up being largely a call to arms / participation to the KDE development community to ensure that we are involved as much as possible to ensure that FD.o reflects our needs and as matures as rapidly as possible within the realm of reason.
remember: we are competing primarily with companies who have unified (and rather secretive) groups doing exactly what FD.o does for us. we need to have a similar body on the Open Source / Free Software side of the fence so as to compete effectively with them, and FD.o is our best hope in this regard.
in other news, software patents still suck. ;-)
aKademy Day 2: afternoon
Kurt Pfeifle's NX presentation was great.
as was Ian Geiser's KJSEmbed talk.
elsewhere, Lawrence Lessig is apparently "in a magic place without phones or email". Crazy.
and i'm trying to avoid getting into an argument with Frans Englich over his copying the usability guidelines into usability.kde.org recently. i really want him to just wait until the usability people arrive on Monday when we can all (including him if he gets on IRC) can discuss how best to do this. we don't need confusion in the process, we need clarity and unity in effort out of respect for the developers and our usability processes. waiting 2 days isn't going to change anything.
as was Ian Geiser's KJSEmbed talk.
elsewhere, Lawrence Lessig is apparently "in a magic place without phones or email". Crazy.
and i'm trying to avoid getting into an argument with Frans Englich over his copying the usability guidelines into usability.kde.org recently. i really want him to just wait until the usability people arrive on Monday when we can all (including him if he gets on IRC) can discuss how best to do this. we don't need confusion in the process, we need clarity and unity in effort out of respect for the developers and our usability processes. waiting 2 days isn't going to change anything.
aKademy: Day 2, more
just met Janina Sajka of the American Association of the Blind and the person responsible for keeping the Free Standards Group accessability work group on track and progressing. she does a marvelous job of that and is a real inspiration to work with. fortunately for accessability in KDE, she's a big supporter of Free Software and is now working with Trolltech and the Schmidt brothers on accessability for Qt and KDE within the FSG work group. beautiful.
speaking of Trolltech, Eric Eng's keynote today was enjoyable. lots of interesting information regarding the use of Qt (1,500 ISVs are using Qt for Linux-targetting closed source apps!) and how Trolltech perceives the Open Source world and in particular KDE (hint: it's overwhelmingly positive).
time to go rustle up some lunch. or work through my 661 emails. or both. bah.
which reminds me: software patents are bad. and i have to contact Lawrence Lessig about writing us up a position piece.
speaking of Trolltech, Eric Eng's keynote today was enjoyable. lots of interesting information regarding the use of Qt (1,500 ISVs are using Qt for Linux-targetting closed source apps!) and how Trolltech perceives the Open Source world and in particular KDE (hint: it's overwhelmingly positive).
time to go rustle up some lunch. or work through my 661 emails. or both. bah.
which reminds me: software patents are bad. and i have to contact Lawrence Lessig about writing us up a position piece.
aKademy: Day 2
after getting up for whatever reason at a rather ungodly hour (08:00) the hostel crew caught the bus into town with a much fanfare and discussion. Scott Wheeler showed up last night and i understand Zack and him went out after getting some hacking in. there are times i wish i could be in more than one place at once, really.
like for today's presentations. it's really hard to pick which presentation to go to. Scott's presentation on metadata based indexing (though it covered a lot more than just that) was very interesting, even if his laptop let him down this morning.
we really, really need to stop throwing away so much (implicit) data when the user is interacting with their files in our applications. identity, context, implied linkage, source of origin, recency and repetition etc... all are very useful bits of information that we just let slip our fingers when we use our computers. these can help form a basis of meaningful metadata that will prove invaluable for indexing and relevancy ranking.
it looks like my laptop access issues are more or less over for the time being. just a borrow and it doesn't have a CVS checkout on it yet, but.... all in good time, right? =)
like for today's presentations. it's really hard to pick which presentation to go to. Scott's presentation on metadata based indexing (though it covered a lot more than just that) was very interesting, even if his laptop let him down this morning.
we really, really need to stop throwing away so much (implicit) data when the user is interacting with their files in our applications. identity, context, implied linkage, source of origin, recency and repetition etc... all are very useful bits of information that we just let slip our fingers when we use our computers. these can help form a basis of meaningful metadata that will prove invaluable for indexing and relevancy ranking.
it looks like my laptop access issues are more or less over for the time being. just a borrow and it doesn't have a CVS checkout on it yet, but.... all in good time, right? =)
aKademy: Day 1 Evening
after the e.V. meeting yesterday about a dozen or so of us went for dinner at a nice Italian restaurant. we sat out on the platz and ate in the beautiful evening air. i split a bottle of chardonnay with Lars Knoll of Trolltech and then went to a wine fest that's (conveniently) right around the corner from the Filakademie where the conference is being held.
Matthias Ettrich led the way with Eva, Dirk and myself in tow. i managed to order wine for us using a new one of my halting, imperfect German phrases. there was a band playing Western music, mostly rock from the 60s and 70s. i started dancing and the rain started. perhaps it was a sign. ;-) in any case, my KDE cohorts started leaving the winefest leaving just Matthias and myself, but eventually even he left. so, i did what came naturally and started making friends with those around me. ended up having a great evening of wine, dance and language-challenged conversation with a rather nice kindergarten teacher named Jenny who lives here in Ludwigsburg. if things work out, we may go see the castle later in the week.
i've been taking pictures, but i'll have to upload them later. and no, my presentation slides for Tuesday still aren't done.
Matthias Ettrich led the way with Eva, Dirk and myself in tow. i managed to order wine for us using a new one of my halting, imperfect German phrases. there was a band playing Western music, mostly rock from the 60s and 70s. i started dancing and the rain started. perhaps it was a sign. ;-) in any case, my KDE cohorts started leaving the winefest leaving just Matthias and myself, but eventually even he left. so, i did what came naturally and started making friends with those around me. ended up having a great evening of wine, dance and language-challenged conversation with a rather nice kindergarten teacher named Jenny who lives here in Ludwigsburg. if things work out, we may go see the castle later in the week.
i've been taking pictures, but i'll have to upload them later. and no, my presentation slides for Tuesday still aren't done.
Friday, August 20, 2004
KDE Dev Meeting
just got out of the very long KDE e.V. meeting where we discussed pressing issues regarding the logistics and methodologies affecting the mechanics of the project. it started at 10:00 and just finished now at 18:30. look at me use the 24 hour clock style of time!
i'm also picking up little bits of German phraseology. i can order things off menus in restaurants, for instance. i've also learned the fine art of (not) tipping properly in Germany. it's very different to Canada, where the servers get paid horribly and basically starve if you don't tip rather generously.
cigarettes are easy to come by with the dispensers on most streets and they are about half the price they are in Canada. this is not good to my attempted recovery from smoking. bah. on a more positive note, i'm slowly getting the hang of proper name pronunciation here. the 'r's are hard and will take quite a bit more effort, but i'm better than when i arrived. =)
got in last night at 02:00 (yep, that's 2 am) with Zack after drinking and discussing the finer points of sofwtare development motivation and other important things with KDE people, such as Till Adams and Kurt Pfeifle. was up at 9am for a shower, and i was the last one up in my room at the hostel, which i share with 3 other KDE devs. apparently not all programmers get up at comfortably late hours. i miss Scott, in that regard. =)
lunch was had with Zack, where i tried to explain the concept of gnocchi to him. he thought i said
"tomato" every time i said "potato", so he figured i was describing somethign ketchup-like and rather surprised when the (rather wonderful) little potato dumplings arrived in pesto sauce. not sure what's up for dinner tonight, but the user conference starts tomorrow. and i'll have more ready access to a laptop starting this evening so i can start blogging like a maniac again. and finish my presentation. and get some hacking done.
there is some cool stuff going to happen here, as the hacking marathon hasn't even started and already code is being written and amazingly interesting topics are being discussed. i've met so many of the people i've worked with and respect within the project, including people from Trolltech and SUSE.
apparently SUSE/Novell is sending a usability person to take part in the usability discussions. together with some people coming from private companies and universities specializing in usability around Europe this is going to be an amazing session for usability.
i haven't felt this excited and energized about things in a long time. life is good. but software patents suck. don't ever forget that. also don't forget that the next most handsome person in KDE after moi is Zack.
i'm also picking up little bits of German phraseology. i can order things off menus in restaurants, for instance. i've also learned the fine art of (not) tipping properly in Germany. it's very different to Canada, where the servers get paid horribly and basically starve if you don't tip rather generously.
cigarettes are easy to come by with the dispensers on most streets and they are about half the price they are in Canada. this is not good to my attempted recovery from smoking. bah. on a more positive note, i'm slowly getting the hang of proper name pronunciation here. the 'r's are hard and will take quite a bit more effort, but i'm better than when i arrived. =)
got in last night at 02:00 (yep, that's 2 am) with Zack after drinking and discussing the finer points of sofwtare development motivation and other important things with KDE people, such as Till Adams and Kurt Pfeifle. was up at 9am for a shower, and i was the last one up in my room at the hostel, which i share with 3 other KDE devs. apparently not all programmers get up at comfortably late hours. i miss Scott, in that regard. =)
lunch was had with Zack, where i tried to explain the concept of gnocchi to him. he thought i said
"tomato" every time i said "potato", so he figured i was describing somethign ketchup-like and rather surprised when the (rather wonderful) little potato dumplings arrived in pesto sauce. not sure what's up for dinner tonight, but the user conference starts tomorrow. and i'll have more ready access to a laptop starting this evening so i can start blogging like a maniac again. and finish my presentation. and get some hacking done.
there is some cool stuff going to happen here, as the hacking marathon hasn't even started and already code is being written and amazingly interesting topics are being discussed. i've met so many of the people i've worked with and respect within the project, including people from Trolltech and SUSE.
apparently SUSE/Novell is sending a usability person to take part in the usability discussions. together with some people coming from private companies and universities specializing in usability around Europe this is going to be an amazing session for usability.
i haven't felt this excited and energized about things in a long time. life is good. but software patents suck. don't ever forget that. also don't forget that the next most handsome person in KDE after moi is Zack.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Ludwigsberg
danimo woke me up at 11am with the doorbell. neither Scott or i were up at that time, as we had stayed up quite late (me until 5am, Scott until sometime later). at least he didn't show up at 9am like he threatened to.
the drive with danimo was not nearly as exciting as i had been promised. on the plus side, we arived in one piece, with a minimum of course correcting u-turns. we saw the Concorde and Tupolov at an air museum and a nuclear power plant in passing on the way here.
upon arrival it became apparent that things aren't exactly organized yet, but i've already met several KDE devs including Kurt Pfeifle, Mirko Boehm, Ian Geiser and Zack as the first arrivals hang out in a room at the filmakademie. oh my... Ian and Zack are insane crazy, or crazy insane. Either way, they are nuts. this conference is going to be ...... interesting.
on the plus side, my presentation stuff is nearly done. just need to finish the slides now =)
the drive with danimo was not nearly as exciting as i had been promised. on the plus side, we arived in one piece, with a minimum of course correcting u-turns. we saw the Concorde and Tupolov at an air museum and a nuclear power plant in passing on the way here.
upon arrival it became apparent that things aren't exactly organized yet, but i've already met several KDE devs including Kurt Pfeifle, Mirko Boehm, Ian Geiser and Zack as the first arrivals hang out in a room at the filmakademie. oh my... Ian and Zack are insane crazy, or crazy insane. Either way, they are nuts. this conference is going to be ...... interesting.
on the plus side, my presentation stuff is nearly done. just need to finish the slides now =)
Ca - na - da, eh?
Hi Anne-Marie! I'm looking forward to meeting you and many others in the KDE project, and am loving Germany! But... um... I'm from Canada, not the US. And yes, there's a difference. Or so I like to think.
My name is Aaron, and I am Canadian! (Our beer commercials rock.)
My name is Aaron, and I am Canadian! (Our beer commercials rock.)
mumble, mumble, mumble
i'm reasonably happy with the photos i've taken over the last few days. i'll wait until i get back home to do them up into a proper (web) photo album. i've got better things to do with my time here.
like talk with Scott late into the night about society, politics and technology. not necessarily in that order and usually as separate concepts. we again discussed search technology tonight, this time primarily in the context of authorship, collaberation, document creation, information indexing, identity and more. seems we have a lot of similar ideas about the evolution of collaberative creativity and of ways to bring such things in meaningful ways to the desktop.
a search-centric kcontrol is another thing that we've discussed. i think this will be an interesting topic of discussion at aKademy. in its current incarnation, kcontrol can only be made so useful and usable. our demands upon it go beyond what a hierarchical representation can service and makes the concept of "panels" far too coarse of an atomic unit. searching can allow quicker navigation and a smaller atomic unit. how that searching is presented will be a matter for great discussion and research. not only will we need to provide a textual methodology for searching but i believe we will likely also need to provide a visual, exploratory, learnable navigation system. or maybe not. we'll see =)
the indian food tonight has not been agreeing with my lower intestine. it tasted good, though. and boy does 10 euro buy you a lot of indian food delivered to your door here.
i was proud of my new conversational German word today, tschüss. it's nice to have a happy word to use in parting, especially when it results in a happy word back in reply. i'm easily satisfied, really.
i also enjoyed watching young couples kiss, kids chase pigeons and people laughing and wandering around a platz in Heidelberg while i drank beer. first a pils, then a hefeweizen. mmmmmmmm.... beer.
today's buzzwords: data homogenization; active data; temporally aware editting; collaberative authorship; creative processes. you heard them here for the ... uh ... Nth time.
like talk with Scott late into the night about society, politics and technology. not necessarily in that order and usually as separate concepts. we again discussed search technology tonight, this time primarily in the context of authorship, collaberation, document creation, information indexing, identity and more. seems we have a lot of similar ideas about the evolution of collaberative creativity and of ways to bring such things in meaningful ways to the desktop.
a search-centric kcontrol is another thing that we've discussed. i think this will be an interesting topic of discussion at aKademy. in its current incarnation, kcontrol can only be made so useful and usable. our demands upon it go beyond what a hierarchical representation can service and makes the concept of "panels" far too coarse of an atomic unit. searching can allow quicker navigation and a smaller atomic unit. how that searching is presented will be a matter for great discussion and research. not only will we need to provide a textual methodology for searching but i believe we will likely also need to provide a visual, exploratory, learnable navigation system. or maybe not. we'll see =)
the indian food tonight has not been agreeing with my lower intestine. it tasted good, though. and boy does 10 euro buy you a lot of indian food delivered to your door here.
i was proud of my new conversational German word today, tschüss. it's nice to have a happy word to use in parting, especially when it results in a happy word back in reply. i'm easily satisfied, really.
i also enjoyed watching young couples kiss, kids chase pigeons and people laughing and wandering around a platz in Heidelberg while i drank beer. first a pils, then a hefeweizen. mmmmmmmm.... beer.
today's buzzwords: data homogenization; active data; temporally aware editting; collaberative authorship; creative processes. you heard them here for the ... uh ... Nth time.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Aaaaah! Schloss
i was informed that "schloss" means "castle". that makes my last blog's title pretty stupid. "castle castle". way to go, aaron. good for a chuckle, anyways. ;-)
and what is this, am i the only one blogging these days on planetkde.org?
i haven't gone out today yet. vegetating. and getting hungry. i'll have to venture out shortly. and phone home this evening to see who turned off my computers at home. grrrrrrr.
and what is this, am i the only one blogging these days on planetkde.org?
i haven't gone out today yet. vegetating. and getting hungry. i'll have to venture out shortly. and phone home this evening to see who turned off my computers at home. grrrrrrr.
Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Schloss Castle
today consisted of waking up at the ungodly early hour of 8am., having a shower and reading email and the news for 2 hours. caught the bus to "downtown" Heidelberg and walked from there along the Neckar river to the Schloss Castle. i spent 5 hours at the castle, including eating lunch there. took over 180 pictures which are slowly uploading to a server back in Kanuckistan over Scott's over-saturated DSL line. i've been keeping a file that tells what's in each picture so that even i can't forget.
the castle was interesting on various levels. the obvious is that it's a landmark and it's cool to be know you've been at a landmark. yadda yadda yadda. but it's amazing how large it is on the one hand with its massive walls and art and yet how small it is in the actual space it seems to contain indoors. the scale of the walls, the art the gardens awed me. and then the feeling of great history, old lives and ancient stories right beneath my feet, my fingers.... when you come from a place where the old buildings are post 1900 and being torn down as fast as possible to make way for condos, stepping into a set of buildings that were ruins in the 19th century is a unique and wonderful experience.
the art that was inspired by the castle was also quite interesting. i enjoyed wandering through the little gallery they have.
i haven't felt this whole in a long, long time. this morning i found myself wondering if i should be relaxing or exploring. as if those are things to be achieved. i didn't used to be like that. so fuck it, said i, and i went out and just lived a day. it was beautiful. it even rained just a wee sprinkle for me. though i understand that's not unusual for this neck of the woods.
speaking of "neck of the woods", i find i have to be very careful when i speak English to the people here. apparently my language is laced with all sorts of colloquialisms and odd words, which makes it difficult for people to understand. or maybe it's my thick Canadian accent ;-)
in any case, i've been listening and reading and picking up words here and there. i find the 'r's to be remarkably difficult to say correctly, but i think this is a language one might be basically conversant in rather quickly if immersed in it.
i'm looking forward to dinner tonight. probably with Scott. who knows who else will show up. who knows where the conversation will go. and that's a good thing.
the castle was interesting on various levels. the obvious is that it's a landmark and it's cool to be know you've been at a landmark. yadda yadda yadda. but it's amazing how large it is on the one hand with its massive walls and art and yet how small it is in the actual space it seems to contain indoors. the scale of the walls, the art the gardens awed me. and then the feeling of great history, old lives and ancient stories right beneath my feet, my fingers.... when you come from a place where the old buildings are post 1900 and being torn down as fast as possible to make way for condos, stepping into a set of buildings that were ruins in the 19th century is a unique and wonderful experience.
the art that was inspired by the castle was also quite interesting. i enjoyed wandering through the little gallery they have.
i haven't felt this whole in a long, long time. this morning i found myself wondering if i should be relaxing or exploring. as if those are things to be achieved. i didn't used to be like that. so fuck it, said i, and i went out and just lived a day. it was beautiful. it even rained just a wee sprinkle for me. though i understand that's not unusual for this neck of the woods.
speaking of "neck of the woods", i find i have to be very careful when i speak English to the people here. apparently my language is laced with all sorts of colloquialisms and odd words, which makes it difficult for people to understand. or maybe it's my thick Canadian accent ;-)
in any case, i've been listening and reading and picking up words here and there. i find the 'r's to be remarkably difficult to say correctly, but i think this is a language one might be basically conversant in rather quickly if immersed in it.
i'm looking forward to dinner tonight. probably with Scott. who knows who else will show up. who knows where the conversation will go. and that's a good thing.
R&R in Heidelberg
working on a German keyboard set to US layout makes the key lables less than useful. good thing i touch-type. at least the space bar on this puppy works ;-)
so this is day three of my escape from the place most likely to be identified as my home. Germany is turning out to be familiar yet slightly different in just about every way possible for me. it's been a long time since i last felt such a cultural shift in my surroundings. leaves one to contemplate things with less assumption. i can feel my mind being cleared of the dross of my daily life, the energy seeping back into my bones as i stumble out of the haze of the last six months.
had a long discussion last night with Scott Wheeler about a number of KDE related issues, ranging from searching in the age of modern computing to usability as a positive and useful force within open source development. many interesting things,
indeed.
i've also discovered that i don't know how to pronounce many people's names properly in the KDE project. i'm sure there will be funny moments for me at aKademy due to this, despite Scott's patient and wonderful tutollage in the matter.
i still have to do up some slides for my usability talk. i have two days before my death-ride-of-fun with Danimo, so... lots of time ;-) today i think i'll explore the historic area of H-berg.
so this is day three of my escape from the place most likely to be identified as my home. Germany is turning out to be familiar yet slightly different in just about every way possible for me. it's been a long time since i last felt such a cultural shift in my surroundings. leaves one to contemplate things with less assumption. i can feel my mind being cleared of the dross of my daily life, the energy seeping back into my bones as i stumble out of the haze of the last six months.
had a long discussion last night with Scott Wheeler about a number of KDE related issues, ranging from searching in the age of modern computing to usability as a positive and useful force within open source development. many interesting things,
indeed.
i've also discovered that i don't know how to pronounce many people's names properly in the KDE project. i'm sure there will be funny moments for me at aKademy due to this, despite Scott's patient and wonderful tutollage in the matter.
i still have to do up some slides for my usability talk. i have two days before my death-ride-of-fun with Danimo, so... lots of time ;-) today i think i'll explore the historic area of H-berg.
Monday, August 16, 2004
Heidelberg
i arrived in Frankfurt yesterday by plane, after which i jumped on a train to Heidelberg. amazingly, i didn't get lost. not even once, not even close to it, not even though i'm especially good at ending up somewhere i don't mean to even in the city i live in. apparently the Germans have figured out the way to utilize signage for people like me.
on the opposite end of the spectrum from signage mastery comes their dancing, uhm, ability. now, i'm sure there are some wildly talented German dancers, but they just chose not to show up last night at the place we went, Cave 54. the Cave is a very cool joint, the oldest jazz club in Germany, and earns its name from its downstairs main area. it's one of those places that i'd never have "just found" by stumbling around the city: it's a little hole-in-the-wall down a sidestreet until you descend the tiny death trap of a spiral staircase into the cave itself. actually, the spiral staircase isn't all that much of a deathtrap, since i managed to carry many beer down it through the evening. they have a bar downstairs, but the beer we wanted was upstairs, so...
i'm staying with Scott Wheeler, who was responsible for last night's excellent choice of entertainment. he's as cool in person as he is online, that much i have to say. i explored a little bit of Heidelberg today, but took it easy (including a looong afternoon nap =), as the last 3 days were pretty hectic and left me pretty low on the energy reserves. that and my right foot still hurts from my soccer injury of Saturday afternoon. i think Scott appreciated me showing him my purple big toe this morning. ;-)
anyways... i have now met 2 kde developers in the flesh. i've also been on irc already. sad. i'm keeping a rather detailed log of my journies in a little spiral bound book which someone will no doubt hawk on eBay when i die as "genuine A. Seigo memorabilia". i'm hoping it will fetch as much as 3 or 4 dollars, even.
and speaking of dieing, Danimo has offered to drive me to Ludwigsberg on Thursday. however, i've come to understand that i should take safety devices, such as a helmet, with me due to his driving tendencies. i was nearly completely reassured, however, when he said he usually stays on the road. usually. this will be a fun ride. i hope he has a fast car. if we're going to get creative with the definition of the road, we'd better do it at high speed too.
on the opposite end of the spectrum from signage mastery comes their dancing, uhm, ability. now, i'm sure there are some wildly talented German dancers, but they just chose not to show up last night at the place we went, Cave 54. the Cave is a very cool joint, the oldest jazz club in Germany, and earns its name from its downstairs main area. it's one of those places that i'd never have "just found" by stumbling around the city: it's a little hole-in-the-wall down a sidestreet until you descend the tiny death trap of a spiral staircase into the cave itself. actually, the spiral staircase isn't all that much of a deathtrap, since i managed to carry many beer down it through the evening. they have a bar downstairs, but the beer we wanted was upstairs, so...
i'm staying with Scott Wheeler, who was responsible for last night's excellent choice of entertainment. he's as cool in person as he is online, that much i have to say. i explored a little bit of Heidelberg today, but took it easy (including a looong afternoon nap =), as the last 3 days were pretty hectic and left me pretty low on the energy reserves. that and my right foot still hurts from my soccer injury of Saturday afternoon. i think Scott appreciated me showing him my purple big toe this morning. ;-)
anyways... i have now met 2 kde developers in the flesh. i've also been on irc already. sad. i'm keeping a rather detailed log of my journies in a little spiral bound book which someone will no doubt hawk on eBay when i die as "genuine A. Seigo memorabilia". i'm hoping it will fetch as much as 3 or 4 dollars, even.
and speaking of dieing, Danimo has offered to drive me to Ludwigsberg on Thursday. however, i've come to understand that i should take safety devices, such as a helmet, with me due to his driving tendencies. i was nearly completely reassured, however, when he said he usually stays on the road. usually. this will be a fun ride. i hope he has a fast car. if we're going to get creative with the definition of the road, we'd better do it at high speed too.
Thursday, August 12, 2004
beauty is skin deep, but damn is it nice
replying to an earlier blog about kontact, Boudewijn noted that his workmates:
first off, i completely agree based on what shipped with KDE 3.2. it was an early draft of a final product, something the developers themselves stressed. the fact it was already useful in this state is cool, but it's a lot firmer and better integrated in 3.3.
all the same, it brings up an interesting topic for discussion. people in the company i work for part of the week also noted that kontact "looked weird" though no one could really put their finger on WHAT it was. i'm going to proffer a guess:
things don't always line up perfectly, both between the button panel and the main app area or between the different apps. the toolbar buttons and the button panel don't line up. the button bar is very plain with an old-school sunken button look to show selection.
these aren't things that the developers probably should really be concerned about, though. aestheticians would probably be better candidates for smoothing out the UI. i wonder if there are day spas for software? i know there are a few KDE apps that could use a trip to one .... =-)
contend that a) it looks weird and b) it's not really an integrated application, but separate apps loosely bound in a flaky shell
first off, i completely agree based on what shipped with KDE 3.2. it was an early draft of a final product, something the developers themselves stressed. the fact it was already useful in this state is cool, but it's a lot firmer and better integrated in 3.3.
all the same, it brings up an interesting topic for discussion. people in the company i work for part of the week also noted that kontact "looked weird" though no one could really put their finger on WHAT it was. i'm going to proffer a guess:
pixels. stray pixels, to be exact.
things don't always line up perfectly, both between the button panel and the main app area or between the different apps. the toolbar buttons and the button panel don't line up. the button bar is very plain with an old-school sunken button look to show selection.
these aren't things that the developers probably should really be concerned about, though. aestheticians would probably be better candidates for smoothing out the UI. i wonder if there are day spas for software? i know there are a few KDE apps that could use a trip to one .... =-)
i'll be meeting Scott Wheeler in a few short days for the first time In The Flesh(tm). however, i find my self asking: just what will he really look like? regardless, i hear Hotel Wheeler is the place to stay when in Heidelberg. who am i to argue?
in other news, Boudewijn Rempt
blogged:
i wonder what qualifies as "advanced" applications for Boudewijn. he notes that GIMP and Sodipodi stand alone right now, and he's right that KDE doesn't have a great selection of high-end image manip apps. (though i'm sure his work on Krita will fix that someday soon =) kolourpaint is very nice, but yeah, it isn't GIMP. however, i can't help but think of K3B (THE OSS burner app), Apollon, Kexi, Quanta, KDevelop, Kontact ... well, you get the picture. i could continue on and on with ease but i doubt that's necessary. peruse Appsy if you need more inspiration.
i found his statement that "people flock to Evolution" to be odd in the context as well. Kontact is there, so it doesn't support the "dearth of advanced apps" argument. popularity is one thing, "dearth" speaks to existence (or lack thereof). library churn has little to nothing to do with popularity. and as for popularity, i've discovered by scrounging through Western Canadian LUG lists in the past that Evolution is not even in the top 3 of mail clients used by those posting (which should represent a mix of newbie and advanced users). KMail is used more often, actually. as is Mozilla Mail. this isn't representative of the world at large of course, but it shows how locality can affect perspective.
in any case, i DO agree with his statement that library churn is a bad thing. KDE3 has had a decently long life at this point, and it was a nice extension rather than rewrite of KDE2's API. which is probably why we DO have so many advanced apps around (despite Boudewijn's pouting ;). still, we can and should do even better in this regard. it's a ballance we must strike between improved design and capabilities and respect for our application developer's time.
in other news, Boudewijn Rempt
blogged:
I recently came across an old article by Benjamin Meyer titled A Tribute to KDE. In it (no, dash it, it’s in something else I read today which I cannot find now), he notes the dearth of advanced applications using KDE. And even two years later, that is still quite true.
i wonder what qualifies as "advanced" applications for Boudewijn. he notes that GIMP and Sodipodi stand alone right now, and he's right that KDE doesn't have a great selection of high-end image manip apps. (though i'm sure his work on Krita will fix that someday soon =) kolourpaint is very nice, but yeah, it isn't GIMP. however, i can't help but think of K3B (THE OSS burner app), Apollon, Kexi, Quanta, KDevelop, Kontact ... well, you get the picture. i could continue on and on with ease but i doubt that's necessary. peruse Appsy if you need more inspiration.
i found his statement that "people flock to Evolution" to be odd in the context as well. Kontact is there, so it doesn't support the "dearth of advanced apps" argument. popularity is one thing, "dearth" speaks to existence (or lack thereof). library churn has little to nothing to do with popularity. and as for popularity, i've discovered by scrounging through Western Canadian LUG lists in the past that Evolution is not even in the top 3 of mail clients used by those posting (which should represent a mix of newbie and advanced users). KMail is used more often, actually. as is Mozilla Mail. this isn't representative of the world at large of course, but it shows how locality can affect perspective.
in any case, i DO agree with his statement that library churn is a bad thing. KDE3 has had a decently long life at this point, and it was a nice extension rather than rewrite of KDE2's API. which is probably why we DO have so many advanced apps around (despite Boudewijn's pouting ;). still, we can and should do even better in this regard. it's a ballance we must strike between improved design and capabilities and respect for our application developer's time.
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
aKademy: T -3; clients, OSS competitive attitudes
getting things in line for my trip.. just a couple more days!
dealt with a client who was trying not to pay for work done. they were operating from an old-school business mentality that just riles me to no end. after an hour or so of negotiations i managed to get what i want (namely, my money) and everyone is happy. why do people have to be so damn difficult over such silly things? bah.
in that same vein, i just read an interview with Ben Collins-Sussman from the Subversion project in which he was asked to comment on why some OSS projects slag their competition while their competition is generally amicable and pleasant (in this case SVN and Arch, but Python and Perl were also used an example) and i really think Ben hit the nail on the head:
"Here's my analysis: basic human nature.
If there are 2 products to fill a niche, and one of them is more popular, the less popular one will always being trying to "tear down" the other.
The more popular product dosen't fling mud, because, well, it feels secure in its popularity.
But I suppose there's a cultural aspect too. In the case of svn vs. arch, we see a debate older than me. Is version control about managing trees, or about managing patches? Subversion chose a side, but doesn't believe it's the only side. Honestly, Tom Lord, great guy as he is, is completely convinced that patch-management is the only answer to the problem. And so his position spreads through the arch community. It becomes a sort of evangelism: "we must make everyone see the truth!" Whereas the svn guys don't think there's a single correct approach to version control. We have nothing to preach. "
nicely said, Ben!
dealt with a client who was trying not to pay for work done. they were operating from an old-school business mentality that just riles me to no end. after an hour or so of negotiations i managed to get what i want (namely, my money) and everyone is happy. why do people have to be so damn difficult over such silly things? bah.
in that same vein, i just read an interview with Ben Collins-Sussman from the Subversion project in which he was asked to comment on why some OSS projects slag their competition while their competition is generally amicable and pleasant (in this case SVN and Arch, but Python and Perl were also used an example) and i really think Ben hit the nail on the head:
"Here's my analysis: basic human nature.
If there are 2 products to fill a niche, and one of them is more popular, the less popular one will always being trying to "tear down" the other.
The more popular product dosen't fling mud, because, well, it feels secure in its popularity.
But I suppose there's a cultural aspect too. In the case of svn vs. arch, we see a debate older than me. Is version control about managing trees, or about managing patches? Subversion chose a side, but doesn't believe it's the only side. Honestly, Tom Lord, great guy as he is, is completely convinced that patch-management is the only answer to the problem. And so his position spreads through the arch community. It becomes a sort of evangelism: "we must make everyone see the truth!" Whereas the svn guys don't think there's a single correct approach to version control. We have nothing to preach. "
nicely said, Ben!
Monday, August 09, 2004
aKademy: T -7
some big targets for me, as most probably know, are usability processes and UI guidelines in KDE as well as NX integration. the other item that has a very high priority for me is a new system tray spec. in timely fashion, the topic came up on the FreeDesktop.org platform list. i think that if i can find one or two other hackers who are also interested in fixing this once and for all we can get it done in a single day of hacking. it isn't complex, it's just been an elusive animal for whatever reason.
preserving backwards compat will be another issue, but that's probably just a matter of keeping the old standard as a separate code path in the system tray applet. screw backwards compat on the app side. onward and upward!
so, with those three things as primary aims i should be kept busy.
preserving backwards compat will be another issue, but that's probably just a matter of keeping the old standard as a separate code path in the system tray applet. screw backwards compat on the app side. onward and upward!
so, with those three things as primary aims i should be kept busy.
Saturday, August 07, 2004
aKademy: T -8
8 more days before i leave for Germany, and i'm putting together a presentation on usability whilst thinking about some of the challenges ahead.
we have developers who need an effective and clearly defined way to interface with usability, both on their own as they develop as well as through consultation. developers can likely, with reference guides and greater awareness of the issues, take care of the "microusability" issues themselves: widget choices, dialog layouts, etc. our current User Interface Guidelines are a great start to this, and with further development can become a comprehensive set of ansewrs.
the larger, broader issues that require testing and further expertise can be achieved through cooperative consultation with usability experts. this is more research than development, but is what can help define visions to knit together the desktop to expose in a natural and powerful way the amazing capabilities that have lie latent in the codebase. but this needs some sort of structure so that when a developer asks, "So... HOW do I engage this process?" the answer is a URL to clear and concise documentation. we also need a process to foster, document and realize the consultations as they occur, keeping in mind we have a global team.
besides developers, we also have usability enthusiasts: people who are learning about usability and would like to engage in the process of improving KDE's overall sleekness. there is a lot of horsepower to be tapped here, and i think we've only seen the smallest inkling of what's possible with the kde-usability list, which has resulted in a good amount of final product. but here too, it is often that the question of "How do I get involved? What next? What now?" is asked.
and finally, there are the usability experts. people who are starting to emerge from the industry who are wish to be involved. but the commercial usability practice and the Open Source development model are, to most, mystifyingly incompatible. try as they might, the two have yet to be brought together successfully. so usability thus far has been "bolted on the side" through a series of short sighted, near-term-gain-producing efforts that ape the traditional usability process but get it almost completely backwards due to the Open Source engine that it rides. but these people are the exact ones who the developers need to consult with. addendum-style novella-length missives that are then debated on the developer lists are inefficient and impractical.
at aKademy we will be discussing how to bring these various worlds together. how to form a usability process that works alongside Open Source development; how to document that process; how to be inclusive of all participants rather than build walls of expertise and initiative; how to bring one of the final missing pieces of the software development process to Open Source.
you know, nothing big.
oh, and we'll probably drink beer, too.
we have developers who need an effective and clearly defined way to interface with usability, both on their own as they develop as well as through consultation. developers can likely, with reference guides and greater awareness of the issues, take care of the "microusability" issues themselves: widget choices, dialog layouts, etc. our current User Interface Guidelines are a great start to this, and with further development can become a comprehensive set of ansewrs.
the larger, broader issues that require testing and further expertise can be achieved through cooperative consultation with usability experts. this is more research than development, but is what can help define visions to knit together the desktop to expose in a natural and powerful way the amazing capabilities that have lie latent in the codebase. but this needs some sort of structure so that when a developer asks, "So... HOW do I engage this process?" the answer is a URL to clear and concise documentation. we also need a process to foster, document and realize the consultations as they occur, keeping in mind we have a global team.
besides developers, we also have usability enthusiasts: people who are learning about usability and would like to engage in the process of improving KDE's overall sleekness. there is a lot of horsepower to be tapped here, and i think we've only seen the smallest inkling of what's possible with the kde-usability list, which has resulted in a good amount of final product. but here too, it is often that the question of "How do I get involved? What next? What now?" is asked.
and finally, there are the usability experts. people who are starting to emerge from the industry who are wish to be involved. but the commercial usability practice and the Open Source development model are, to most, mystifyingly incompatible. try as they might, the two have yet to be brought together successfully. so usability thus far has been "bolted on the side" through a series of short sighted, near-term-gain-producing efforts that ape the traditional usability process but get it almost completely backwards due to the Open Source engine that it rides. but these people are the exact ones who the developers need to consult with. addendum-style novella-length missives that are then debated on the developer lists are inefficient and impractical.
at aKademy we will be discussing how to bring these various worlds together. how to form a usability process that works alongside Open Source development; how to document that process; how to be inclusive of all participants rather than build walls of expertise and initiative; how to bring one of the final missing pieces of the software development process to Open Source.
you know, nothing big.
oh, and we'll probably drink beer, too.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
aKademy: T -10
Airplane tickets? check.
Travellers cheques? check.
Passport? check.
Travelguides? check.
Excitement? check.
A really big honking list of usability issues to delve into? check.
Travellers cheques? check.
Passport? check.
Travelguides? check.
Excitement? check.
A really big honking list of usability issues to delve into? check.
Monday, August 02, 2004
And these people actually write code?
had a teleconference today in which a developer for a company who provides a company i consult for with a web app said we couldn't run their application on Linux because "it's a Windows-only application."
i replied, "uh, but it's just PHP and MySQL isn't it?"
to which the developer said, "Ummm... i suppose you could look at it that way too." he said his installer script was for windows only though; i suggested that i'd be able to handle copying the files by hand on Linux. he said we'd be the only company running it on Linux; i said that we wouldn't be the last, especially if they stopped telling people it was a "Windows only app". what a maroon.
of course, this is the same person responsible for a program that deletes customer contact information without confirmation or restoration capabilities by clicking on a "Delete" link that sits right next to the "Edit" link. *sigh*
i replied, "uh, but it's just PHP and MySQL isn't it?"
to which the developer said, "Ummm... i suppose you could look at it that way too." he said his installer script was for windows only though; i suggested that i'd be able to handle copying the files by hand on Linux. he said we'd be the only company running it on Linux; i said that we wouldn't be the last, especially if they stopped telling people it was a "Windows only app". what a maroon.
of course, this is the same person responsible for a program that deletes customer contact information without confirmation or restoration capabilities by clicking on a "Delete" link that sits right next to the "Edit" link. *sigh*
is it his unnaturely round, bald head? his kindergarten teacher wannabe parents? the disturbing pitch in his voice? that the narrator sounds a LOT like that woman from the Sunday Night Sex Show? i dunno, but Caillou gives me the creeps.
An Open Msg To Usability Experts Everywhere
I just finished reading OSS S.O.S. - How HCI Killed Open Source, and here's my thoughts on it:
usability is very much under-represented within open source development. however, it's not for the reasons that are often given by those peering in from the outside.
consider: if we didn't have any developers who knew anything about compilers, would we have any good open source compilers? probably not.
open source development is an exact reflection of the efforts that go into it. for example, internationalization and localization is a strong point of many Open Source projects because there is an international audience who got down to the business of translating and localizing. technical prowess is a strong point of many Open Source projects because there is a large group of technical programmers working on those projects.
so where are the usability people doing the same thing for usability? by and large, the answer is: absent.
some say that there is no interest in usability among open source projects; fallacy! more accurate is that there is a dearth of expert-level usability efforts relative to the amount of other aspects of development (art, i18n, coding, packaging, etc).
some say it's because open source developers don't understand usability. well, duh! how many developers of closed source software (which most open source developers also do) "understand usability"? if the answer was "lots", there wouldn't be a usability industry, would there? so again: where are the usability people?
some say open source requires usability people to write code. based on my personal experience, this is not true. what's lacking are definitive, accurate and useful (to developers) sustained sources of usability input with a direct focus on specific Open Source applications.
if we want Open Source to be "more usable" then people with knowledge and skill in usability issues need to step up.
btw, several of us looking to help grow this process will be at the KDE annual conference in Stuttgart in the second half of August. if you, as a usability professional, are interested in seeing what may be possible, please consider attending. http://conference2004.kde.org
usability is very much under-represented within open source development. however, it's not for the reasons that are often given by those peering in from the outside.
consider: if we didn't have any developers who knew anything about compilers, would we have any good open source compilers? probably not.
open source development is an exact reflection of the efforts that go into it. for example, internationalization and localization is a strong point of many Open Source projects because there is an international audience who got down to the business of translating and localizing. technical prowess is a strong point of many Open Source projects because there is a large group of technical programmers working on those projects.
so where are the usability people doing the same thing for usability? by and large, the answer is: absent.
some say that there is no interest in usability among open source projects; fallacy! more accurate is that there is a dearth of expert-level usability efforts relative to the amount of other aspects of development (art, i18n, coding, packaging, etc).
some say it's because open source developers don't understand usability. well, duh! how many developers of closed source software (which most open source developers also do) "understand usability"? if the answer was "lots", there wouldn't be a usability industry, would there? so again: where are the usability people?
some say open source requires usability people to write code. based on my personal experience, this is not true. what's lacking are definitive, accurate and useful (to developers) sustained sources of usability input with a direct focus on specific Open Source applications.
if we want Open Source to be "more usable" then people with knowledge and skill in usability issues need to step up.
btw, several of us looking to help grow this process will be at the KDE annual conference in Stuttgart in the second half of August. if you, as a usability professional, are interested in seeing what may be possible, please consider attending. http://conference2004.kde.org
Sunday, August 01, 2004
200 control panels
"It does not matter what KDE is doing. What matters is what those companies who cater to average user are doing. ... Whereas KDE continues to become more bloated with, by one count, over 200 configuration panels inside KControl"- Timothy Butler
put the random number generator down and back away from it, Timothy.
seriously, this was an article on the unfortunate situation of someone deciding to fork GNOME. now, i'm not happy to read of such things, because forks are rarely advantageous. i don't personally perceive the fork as posing a threat to the GNOME project at all as it is a strong group with good backing. all the same, a fork usually is a sign of problems with the people forking the project, with the project itself, or both. i have no idea which it is in this case, but something somewhere isn't healthy. i hope for the GNOME project's sake that it's the forkers that have the problems.
but why in God[dess]'s name did Tim feel the need to drag KDE into it in his article? look, let me offer some Clue On The Free: some prefer GNOME; many like KDE better; still others choose to use other Free software entirely. fortunately we can all choose what we use in this world of Freedom and, increasingly, those choices work extremely well together. cooperation is growing, mutual respect is heightening. please don't drag other projects such as KDE into the middle of the political morass that is inevitable when a major project is forked (successfully or not). it's not needed and it's not desired. KDE has nothing to do with the fork; KDE is not relevant in those discussions. by bringing it up in that context, you rekindle struggles we are trying to put behind us. you place KDE alongside people forking GNOME in a community where forking is a greatly troubling act of last resort. i don't want KDE, or any other project, associated with those kinds of things in any way, shape or form. nobody should.
when we make our own community more divisive and stressed by creating political tensions where none need exist we only help our competition, namely those who are backing proprietary desktop solutions. if you think KDE is GNOME's competition, or vice versa, you're missing the point of the Open Source desktop. like members on the same country's Olympic team, we use each other to improve the state of our art but when we go for the medals we are competing against the other teams, not each other. we do not need to feed the engines of misinformation by offering new grist for Microsoft and Apple to mill; we do not need to provide ready made, quotable stupidity for the fans of those platforms that try and cast us in an undesireable light, both technologically and culturally. i'm all for constructive criticism, but innacurate flame bait thrown on a political bonfire is right out.
we need to reflect the true state of solidarity and unity that exists between those who are responsible for the creation of that which our community is based upon, even when our projects go through rought times. we do not need misreprenstations, especially when they come from the unwitting pens of those trying to cover our community under the guise of informed journalism. in short: if you just want to make things complicated and political, go away. we have no use for you.
i was recently the center of a stupid political situation that grew out of valid and constructive criticism but which was received with contempt. these situations happen in part because some people continue to foster divisions which become the antithesis of useful discourse across projects. this discourse will only grow in importance as we try and work closer together.
Timothy: i have great respect for you as a person through our conversations via email over the years. please do not doubt that fact. but i think you stepped in it, and i hope you can realize that. not only were the KDE "facts" in your article innacurate, but much more importantly completely out of place in the context of the subject of your article. i'd welcome open conversation on the topic with you, but i'd be even more overjoyed to see a unity building piece with your by-line attached to it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
