More work on GNOME:UNSTABLE this morning, resulting in fewer packages now failing to build. This, my friends, is a good thing.

Lunch at our functional local, the Cadland which was lovely.

Wrangling with the iPod and Banshee this afternoon. This is truly weird - it works fine on my laptop but on Amanda's desktop, it fails to transcode from Ogg to MP3. We have (apparently) matching GStreamer installs and yet, no joy. Oh, lazy web: before I report this as an apparent bug, if you can help me solve it, please get in touch.

Related to the iPod issue is a new LifeDrive issue. A while ago, I formatted the drive in it using the LD's own facility for doing so. Since then, hald won't mount it automatically when it's in Drive Mode. It detects that it is a drive and creates a device node (normally /dev/sdb1) but then doesn't actually mount it. This seems to be because the LD now misreports details of the drive. Specifically, the hal value fsusage is empty, when it should be filesystem. Because the device is created, I can then format it from within Linux and when I then enter Drive Mode again, it's detected and mounted. Hooray! But no! The problem is that if I do that, I then can't see it on the LD. Again, any help would be gratefully received (and yes, I've done a Factory reset).

Man, Banshee rocks my socks in a box by the docks.

Amanda bought herself an iPod today (Nano, 4G) and to configure it in the Less Free OS^TM is a right pain - plug it in, wait for ages while it gets detected and some software installed then ...

...

... yes, you guessed it - reboot! Even in XP! Then you've got to install iTunes etc etc etc ...

So, openSUSE 10.2. Plug it in. Banshee gets started with it there, ready to go. Drag tracks to it and synchronise. In terms of time, by this point I hadn't even rebooted in Windoze. All our music's encoded in Ogg Vorbis. This isn't a problem for Banshee though, oh no! It merrily converts them all before copying.

Expect to see the iTunes Music Store plugin for Banshee in my home repo and then in GNOME:Community soon.

Stanislav and I have been blitzing GNOME:UNSTABLE today and we're getting closer to having a full package set building with /usr as prefix and /etc as sysconfdir.

One source of annoyance to me is that the Qt4 bindings for poppler currently won't build on x86_64 because of hard-coded paths in configure. Reckon I'm going to have to patch it to use pkg-config correctly.

Found in a drawer today while looking for something completely different ...

Left: Red Hat Linux 4.0; Right: SuSE Linux 6.3

Red Hat 4.0 is, I think, the oldest version of Linux for which I own media. SuSE 6.3 (correct capitalisation for that version) was the first version of [open]SUSE I used. I was given that set of media when I went for my interview there around Christmas 1999.

Now, to see if I can find some really old Slackware media to trump them, I know I have a floppy disk box somewhere...

Well, this is a screencast of me using Beryl on openSUSE Factory with some effects enabled. Let me talk you through them ...

This is creating and closing a window with the Fire/Burn effect.

This is minimising and unminimising a window using the Magic Lamp effect.

This is fading and unfading a window using an effect, the name of which escapes me.

Here's the instructions on how to get and use Beryl. I'm using it with the NVIDIA drivers and starting automatically. You don't need to add beryl to the startup programs - beryl-manager takes care of that for you.

Stopping the screencast recording now so I can save it and reference it below before submitting.

See the movie here (Ogg Theora, 1280x800, 1.8M)

Well, like Justin, I'm going to try to get back into the habit of blogging more regularly. I've got really bad at keeping this up to date, so a new leaf needs to be turned over. The ironic thing is that quite often something will be in the news and I'll plan to post something about it (rare for me not to have an opinion after all) and then not get around to it.

Well, no more! This is a promise to vent my spleen and voice my opinion on the issues of the day. Should I fail to do so, well, you can have your money back(!)

A day spent mostly watching Christmas present DVDs. Watched Groundhog Day this afternoon. Incredibly, I'd never seen it before. For that reason, Amanda bought it for me - loved it! Bill Murray was just sublime, as always. Andie MacDowell gave what I consider to be her best performance (don't even mention that British movie) in spite of having more accent changes than costume changes. Five stars.

This evening, we watched season one and some of season two of Seinfeld. What more needs to be said - the sharpest sitcom ever to grace the small screen. The beautiful thing about this program is that, being a fan from the UK, and, having been a fan from the outset, one is able to quote or paraphrase the programme in every-day life and the vast majority of people will simply assume you're being very witty indeed.

In between, we watched some of the 2006 World Series of Poker on Bravo 2 - the $10,000 pot-limit Omaha championship won by Lee Watkinson.

Well it may be Christmas Day (and indeed, it is) but I've done a bit of openSUSE work anyway:

• Updated the laptop to the latest Factory, all went smoothly.
• I've not mentioned it here, but my home repo contains a testing package called gaim-unstable - you can probably guess what it is. Well, today I added a patch to allow GNOME Keyring support which was the one piece of functionality missing from the 1.5.0 packages. If you're brave, please give it a test.

From the currently growing Ogley clan, to all readers of my blog, a very happy Incarnation-tide.

R.I.P. James Brown.

Rowan seeks to keep Israel-Palestine high on the agenda.

Well, my openSUSE 10.2 box arrived, and I've installed it on Amanda's machine. Have to say it's a very easy install. The one annoyance I had was that, because I was doing a DVD install, I was unable to add network based add-on products (such as Build Service repos). This was basically down to the network interface not being brought up because of it not being a network install. I'll be mentioning this on the Factory list of course. It does mean that you have to finish the install and then log in before being able to add the NVIDIA drivers. That said, the %post scriptlet in them might have broken when installing without the xorg.conf in place.

Anyway, once I'd finished installing, adding the extra repos was a breeze. I installed Pascal's Smart packages. These already include a bunch of repos which I wanted, including PackMan. Having done that, I added the NVIDIA repo along with GNOME:Community and my home repo (Hint: just add the .repo file as a URL in Smart).

I also created a new user on the machine to see the default GNOME look and it's really smart and professional. openSUSE 10.2's a fantastic distro, the small annoyance allowed, if you've been waiting to take the plunge, now's the time to go for it.

Why do some people seem to think that in quite serious fog (obviously not a pea-soup situation, but still fairly thick) that side lights are all they need to turn on on their cars?

You have fog lights for a reason! Idiots!

Oh, and don't even get me started on the pillocks who didn't even have side lights on...

A successful night saw me win the 4-way tournament tonight. Commiserations to Chris, Mark and Amanda, but kudos for four games very well played, especially from the absolute beginner.

Tonight the unofficial college champion, tomorrow the world?!

• Sounds like Amanda's baby shower last night was a lot of fun - lots of useful (and cute) stuff for the baby too. Ante-natal class this morning was okay although the midwife was rather annoying. Her grammar was appalling (for example, writing What causes mothers to stop on the flip-chart as a question - note the lack of query mark!)
• Poker tonight.
• Tomboy in GNOME:Community has been updated to version 0.5.2 and there's a package of the latest Beagle in my home repo.

Well, it's going to be a busy week leading up to Christmas... Tomorrow my mother and auntie are visiting us during the day and then it's Amanda's baby shower c/o Focus in the evening. Tuesday we have an ante-natal class in the morning, then in the evening it's poker (£5 no-limit Texas Hold'em tournament). Thursday we're looking at a possible curacy (although I'm not disclosing where).

Going to be knackered by the time it's the weekend again.

So said Jo Moore, special adviser to Stephen Byers, then Transport Secretary, of 11 September 2001.

So, it would seem, thought the government of 14 December 2006. Lord Stevens had made it known well in advance that that would be the date he would publish his report into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. It was therefore known what would be the focus of interest of much of the tabloid press^[1] (and, since the Express seems to still have a Diana story on its front page every other day, that didn't take a lot of working out).

So, with all that in mind is it a coincidence that also on that day, Tony Blair was interviewed by Scotland Yard over the loans-for-honours scandal and the Serious Fraud Office dropped an inquiry into BAe Systems and the alleged corruption involved in their dealings with Saudi Arabia^[2]? It is hard to attribute these things to mere coincidence. It is doubly hard to do so with a government as duplicitous as the current Labour one. The spirit of Jo Moore still walks the corridors of power, even if she herself does not.

^[1]In The Independent, it only made page eight, mercifully.
^[2] Apparently, this country is more interested in supplying arms to a repressive government such as that of Saudi Arabia than it is in fighting corruption in its own largest companies. Makes one proud to be British, doesn't it?

Tonight is the college Christmas Bash (photos in the gallery soon after). It's a black tie affair and, when the photos are up, you can see my interpretation of black tie.

Had the final Hebrew session of term this afternoon and I think most of us left feeling pretty good about the progress we've made over the last ten weeks (of which we've only had sessions in eight due to other modules). Picked up the timetable for next term.

Amanda's having a baby shower next week, organised by some of Focus (the college spouses' group). Not sure which night it will be yet but hoping to organise a poker game for whichever night it may be.

• Shopping.
• Some trivial work on GNOME:STABLE - gnome-commander should build on 10.1 now. Another step towards a complete build on 10.1, but there are large hurdles to get over for some of the remaining packages.
• Chris and Bernie initiated a catch-up of our year at college (most of whom finished in the summer), so sent them all an update of where we are.

Because the name of the distribution has changed, starting with 10.2, to openSUSE (instead of SUSE), the path to the GNOME:Community repo for Factory is changing (as soon as the packages are built). Please update any references to http://software.opensuse.org/download/GNOME:/Community/SUSE_Factory or http://repos.opensuse.org/GNOME:/Community/SUSE_Factory to be http://repos.opensuse.org/GNOME:/Community/openSUSE_Factory

Miguel: You say that the guy from MIT had a date and then go on to say he reminded you of Comic Book Guy - surely the two are completely incompatible or, as he might put it, unrealistic!

• Very full day at college - five hours on Developing Preaching followed by placement group.
• Watched Liverpool lose 3-2 to Galatasary.
• Did some work on GNOME:STABLE
• GNOME:Community and my home repository now include openSUSE 10.2 repositories as well as 9.3/10.0/10.1 and Factory

• Friday was Amanda's last day at work - yay!
• Have added irrepressible.info to my site - this posts information that is censored somewhere in the world on the site which has a two-fold effect:
  1. It helps (in a small way) circumvent the censorship of countries that crack down on freedom of speech on the internet such as China, Vietnam, Iran, etc, etc
  2. It draws other people's attention to the fight for freedom of the speech on the internet, and provides a handy link to irrepressible.info, which is an Amnesty International initiative.
• GNOME:STABLE is coming together for 10.1 nicely, the gimp-unstable package in GNOME:Community has been updated to the latest version. Coming soon: a new abiword-unstable tree - haven't had one since SUSE 9.3.

Today is World Aids Day. This is why my site is red today.

Over 25 million people have already died from Aids. A further 40 million men, women and children are living with HIV^[1].

You can help stop Aids

^[1] Source: The Independent