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@andriesss IMAP implements searching on the server AFAIK. Although it is probably not uncommen for clients to do it local anyway.

Sunday, December 04 2005

Last month of the year

Well the last month of the year is starting, and i've been entering backlogged money transfers into my accounting program grisbi Incidentally November was the first month i actually din't end up losing money at the end of the month. Living on yourself is pretty expensive. The leak in my house still hasn't been fixed, but that's partially my fault for not going after it enough.

I was at the LinuxWorlExpo even had a talk there about the current state of the GNOME desktop. Sadly though i was stuck in traffic and din't make it in time for my own speech. *sigh*
The rest of the day was a success though, lots of people where interested in the GNOME desktop, perhaps because of my no-show at the talk. Also a few projects whom where looking for some GNOME knowledge.

The HCC convention was something i was going to attend, however because of a little misfortune i couldn't get out of my province. Well thinking about my financial status, it might have been for the best.

At work where going into a faster gear, with multiple projects running side to side with quite important deadlines that need to be met, and a new TLD(Top Level Domain) that's going live Tuesday at 0:00.
This really adds to some general fatigue in weekdays i hardly even have the puff to do anything besides checking some mail to see if there is something that's uber important, otherwise i'll just reboot my PC and start playing some Civilization 4. To bad it doesn't run under Cedega yet or have a native linux client, since i'm sure that quite a few linux users have a secret civ addiction.

I also have to rewrite a few pieces of my site, since there is no real support for multiple years yet. Been playing around with mod_python to see if that's any fun to work with, but i'm too much of a noob at that language yet, although it will be a good way to learn it.

Sunday, October 23 2005

Long time no blog

Well it's been quite some time, but i have good excuses. My house is still leaking (after it being repaired like 3 times already) However i don't really have the money at the moment to hire a real company to do it, which is another problem. i seem to be spending more money then i'm making which isn't very health. i'm not broke just yet, but going from 5000 to 800 in only 4 moths is pretty bad i think. Even when this includes some expensive but needed purchases for my house.

The GNOME-NL live cd however now finally starts to come together, it just needs one small fix for it to be ready, running ubuntu breezy and thus gnome 2.12 with all the new apps.

On the side of my presentation however things are going slowly, i know what i want to say there, however putting it on paper in a understandable form is another matter all together, i'm not worried though i just have to spend some more time on it, Also i had this cool idea of using a video of GNOME as the "presentation" instead of powerpoint or impress, mainly because i find traditional presentations boring, and also because i think a video of gnome will have a secondary effect of showing people how GNOME actually looks and works.
I wanted to use Istanbul to record it, but when i do that the video shows my mouse having a yellow cube around it. for the rest it worked quite wonderfully.

Monday, August 15 2005

Almost done now

Its all going fast now. My bed & sofa should both arrive this month and when there in my house i will be moving in. Also i finally found out where the leak was in my house. (everytime it rained i got leakage) I Also ordered a xs4all account for my internet.

Next to that i also made a little calculation for the production of live-cds (it can be found on the mailing list) basicly producing them ourselves is WAY cheaper. So we should probebly set something up to facilitate a massive burn fest close before the HCC.

Friday, July 08 2005

Bunch of excuses

I haven`t been around lately, and this is actually for good reason, while a few weeks ago i was almost done with my new house, now with the heavy rain in the Netherlands i`ve found that my roof is leaking. And not only that, I discovered this because my entire kitchen was flooded and even worse the wood on the floor was ruined. So currently i busy with getting together a new floor for my kitchen. Also KPN (the dutch phone company) has still not correctly installed my phone line. (although i now have a 1,5 cm shielded extra thick phone line running straight to my apartment door (talk about bandwidth) :P) so i also don`t have any internet there. I`m also guessing i'l be busy for a few weeks longer, although i planning to keep next weekend free to do some gnome-nl stuff. (like putting a bit more pressure on the guy who should be making a gnome-nl live-cd but is now playing Guild Wars. (although i`m a bit guilty of that also))

Friday, June 17 2005

Xfake and luminocity

I have a bit of a interest in SEO (Search engine optimization), so i tend to watch my statistics a lot, a thing i have been noticing is that a lot of people are finding my site on the keywords "Xfake and luminocity" while entertaining it isn't really all that useful since i have very little info about it on my site.

So for all the people whom stumble on my site looking for it, please go to seths place because he bloged on it quite a bit, and the live.gnome.org page about it. There's all the info that you need.

And yes i know this will even rank me higher on those keywords but now at least there are some useful links about it.

Saturday, June 11 2005

Contributing to GNOME and the marketing team.

For a few years now i've been planning to start contributing to the code base of GNOME, but because of lack of knowledge, time and patience this mostly stayed in the planning/starting and failing department. Then gnome-nl came along and i had a new way of contributing, locally in the Netherlands or better said the dutch speaking parts of western Europe plus "friesland".

Recently because of the GUADEC i got some good tips on how to set up shop to actually try and fix bugs and the likes in the code base via GARNOME, although because of my new house this is mostly just getting everything ready and worked out for when i have some time to spare. A few months back i also joined the GNOME marketing team, simply because i thought i should get some info on how to properly market it and what the global GNOME thought about marketing.

Now since a few weeks i've actually noticed that i like the marketing bit more then the bug fixing bit. Since i keep putting that on a back burner while i've already written a few half documents with plans and ideas on how to stream line the marketing effort locally as well globally (not yet released though). So i think my point of contribution to GNOME will probably take a turn for the strange, especially for me since i always disliked marketing types. We had a little phrase for those types of peoples, roughly translated to "A dick in a suit with a Alpha" (please note that in dutch the words dick and suit rhyme. also a Alpha is a type of car, and for dutch people the phrase is "Een pik in een pak met een Alpha") No i never wanted to be that guy in a suit with a big car and a smooth talk. I wanted to be the long haired hippie with the coffee stain on his sweater. It seems however that i'm becoming the dick in a suit pretty fast, and i don't know if that's all that bad really. I've also seem to be added as a marketing team member, now all i need is some knowledge of marketing, since i lack any real education in that field, so if anyone knows some good books about marketing please mail them to me

Saturday, June 04 2005

gnome launch box

I found this really cool app on the gnome live power user tools page. the app is like a super fast search thingy to start applications or documents or find someone in your address book whom you want to mail. It's called launch-box.

I use ubuntu so installing it was done in only a few seconds. But for such a application to be useful you really need to bind it to a shortcut key. However i don't think GNOME lets you do that yet in a easy gnome way, but it is possible.

You just open gconf-editor and search for Metacity (/apps/metacity/) there you have a few subs, the ones you need are "keybinding_commands" and "global_keybindings". In "keybinding_commands" choose a "command_X" to put the command in.
Then in "global_keybindings" find the "run_command_X" (where X is the chosen number) and input your keybinding as value. I use Super_L since that key din't have any previous use anyway.

Wednesday, June 01 2005

GUADEC And my new house

Lots to talk about, lots of exciting stuff is happening and has happened.

I went to GUADEC this weekend with Vicent, Reinout and Olav. It totally rocked and really got me motivated to finally start to actually contribute to gnome in terms of fixing bugs and such. Also got some good info about how to avoid the whole gnome-common/autogen/stuff-around-actually-working-with-the-code by using garnome or jhbuild also saw some great stuff about eclipse will certainly be installing that soon and start working on something as soon as i got my house a bit ready.

The weather was a bit too hot for most people (including me) but the whole place was stacked with those water vending machines so it was pretty easy to get some fresh cool water.

I also finally bought the house i have been talking about, here some images to get a picture of the place


This place will become my bedroom, it's actually a bit too big but since i can't really move walls around it can't be helped.

This is the attic, and it comes with a cool PLC like device that controls all the lights in my apartment. It also has a RS232 interface so i can hook it up to a computer.

This will be my living room at some time or another, because the apartment was actually build as a multiple bedroom setup there is a sink in every room, which isn't very practical but can be removed.
You can find bigger versions in my ART section

Thursday, May 26 2005

NLUUG spring conference

I was at the NLUUG conference yesterday promoting and informing about gnome together with Ronald. The location and set up was quite similar as with the novell conference a few months ago. I think it went really well, the 20 to 25 ubuntu warty cd's i brought all where gone at the end of the day, and also the flyers with information about gnome where gone too. the ppc version of ubuntu was harder to get rid of, although they also where mostly gone at the end of the day, although i suspect some people din't really notice that it was ppc and also dint ask us about it.

A few problems that we got questions about where as following;

• We got quite a few questions about accessibility in gnome, but apart from the themes for the visually disabled, the assistive technology support menu and the fact that Ronald knew that gtk in a way forces developers to think about accessibility because it is required by the interface with gtk objects. (at least thats what i picked up about it with half a ear) A bit bummer however was when the accessibility project page was showed. The first thing one will notice is that the "latest" news is from 26 of june 2004. Which especially in computer terms is off course old news.
• We also got a few questions about gnome in solaris, and how to update that version. which to be frank i don't know a damn thing about. But we exchanged cards with the company that asked about it, and will have a little look around to see who or what company knows a bit more about that.

A very big plus at the conference was that Ronald had a "Alpha" version of gstreamer/totem running that had some cool new features we could demo. Which turned out to generate quite a crowed when he gave a demo of it. So for the next conference/event where going to be, we certainly should bring some cool tech demo. I was thinking luminocity perhaps, since it is quite easy to build and because of the xfake trick that makes sure that when it all chrashes you only have to start up a the Xfake again and luminocity and your off again. And whe can simply tell people what Seth bloged.

Also Ronald, me the kde-nl people and probably a lot more got asked to go work for Yacht. So if your into IT and have knowledge of UNIX/LINUX and are in need of a job, you might want to look there.

I also will rewrite this blog post when i get home from work to include some proper grammer and spelling :)

Saturday, May 21 2005

Buying a house is bad for your mental well being

It all sounded so wonderful and so easy. About a half year ago, "i just needed to put my little scribble on a contract and in a few months the house would be mine". I just needed to get a mortgage and that would be that, no worries and no problems.

And it was all done, at least for a few months it was. Then the mortgagor decided that they din't like the contract and all hell broke loose. Notaries telling me on the left that there's nothing wrong with the contract and my mortgagor on the right telling me that they don't care if it's legal or not they just wont accept it. Evidently this stressed out our assigned notary because he decided to take a unannounced vacation.
Well happily 2 months later and 2.5 weeks before the transfer of the house, (where i need to have a mortgage or pay a 10% total cost penalty) it all got straightened out. A new contract was made and everyone was happy.

And what a joyous week that was, because then the life insurance company decided they needed me to take a medical test and a small blood test, which is perfectly normal, yet not perfectly normal 12 days before the transfer especially not when they have had my request for at least 3 MONTHS. (image this having to go from a doctor, to a doctor at a company whom decides if i can get a insurance, who notifies the mortgagor that it's all right, who then can give me the mortgage. I suspect normally this would take at least a month, perhaps two. Yet now this has to be accomplished in less then 12 days, including weekends and a bit of GUEDAC.

So therefore i can conclude, that if you haven't bought a house, you don't know the meaning of the word stress.

Monday, May 02 2005

Business cards

After much talking, designing, sweating and frustration where almost done with the business cards for gnome-nl. A few final modifications have been made, the results is a very `GNOME` card. The front-side is designed by uws, it is very clear, holds all the needed information and looks very professional.

The backside of the card will hold a full visual that will be different for every batch of cards per person. This will give the cards a very personal touch and a playful style that is certainly present within the gnome community. Some final decisions around what kind of images will be used and some legal stuff is still being done, but this won't pose a significant problem i think. It's simply just wrapping it all up. So here i present a sneak preview of the current final design of the gnome-nl business card.



Don't worry about any missing info on the card, that will all be dynamically generated on demand with the hurryjane.com system. Whom also are sponsoring us these cards at no cost. (YaY)

Tuesday, April 26 2005

The planet is safe.

After terrorizing planet.nl.gnome.org for a day with my old posts, i finally figured out why planetplanet did not understand my rss feed. Simple but stupid, they apparently take the link attribute of a rss feed as a unique key for items. But don't check if the key actually IS unique. And since my home brew blog software does not really support links at the moment. (basically it just dumps all the items on my blog page, and dividing it up was on a todo list :) )

So now after finishing that todo list for my page, the planet is safe once again.

(yes, this entire post was actually just written to get to say that)

Saturday, April 23 2005

planet.nl.gnome.org

Argh. I've been wrestling the rss for two days now, and every rss feed validator says it valid. Yet planet.nl.gnome.org still doesn't include me.

On a other note, i've pre-booked my hotel for GUADEC yesterday. I'm not sure if i will be going by car or by train to Stuttgart but i'm already sure that i will be sleeping comfortably.

Monday, April 18 2005

Python

Well since i tried Perl i thought i might as well try python too. I haven't written much in python yet (apart from the odd x-chat python plug-in/module/whatchamacallit) but i was rather pleased about it, to accomplish the same effect as in my little dabbling with Perl i firstly had to write less lines of code, and it also came a bit more natural. Although i'm still freaked out about the "no-brackets just use tab" way of making statement blocks.

Thursday, April 14 2005

POOP

Not much to note besides that i'm dabbling a bit with POOP. I've written some Perl before but mostly just basic scripts for backup purposes or to simply do some file renaming on lots of files. But Perl Object Oriented Programming seems at first to be a bit awkward, but i'm sure that if i play with it a bit more it will all start making sense.

The thing that bothers me most about it right now is that i'm left too do lots of stuff that other languages mostly do themselves. At least that's what i think right now, i'm a bit too tired too really read the technical stuff, so i'm basically just dabbling with it trying to make it find files and /grep/ them. More finger practice and amusement then anything else.

Wednesday, April 13 2005

this site, gnome-nl and stress

I've been trying to update my code for this site and especially this blog, but the more i try to push myself to do it, the more i start to dislike php programming, after 8 hours+ of php programming enough is enough for one human being or something. So i'm actually looking if perhaps i just need to pick another language to program in like Perl or python or something, because i think it's basically just the fact that i'm so busy with php all day that i'm really starting to grow a disliking for all it's quirks.

On a unrelated note, i'm witnessing a quite interesting phenomenon on the gnome-nl front. I think i'll call it `the indecisiveness of a specific mass of people`
When you have a relate small group of people, say 3 or 5 or something, decisions can quickly be made. With a large group of people say 50 or so, decisions are also made, although a bit slower simply because automatically trough group mechanics someone will be cornered to make a decision. But now in gnome-nl with about 15 people being active, we apparently are on the border of those two. Too many people to decide anything quick, but too little to get anyone cornered enough to make a final decision. Either that or it has something to do with the recent blog post of john fleck about a bicycle shed.

And on the "YaY i'm buying a house"-front things are looking even grimmer, for some reason the people whom i want to give me a mortgage((hypotheek(dutch)) don't agree with the notary(notaris(dutch)) about what is possible in my buying contract(koop contract). The effect being that it does not really mater who is right and who is wrong, but i'm not getting the money. So now i have to have the contract rewritten and the seller basicly has two choices. Either get 10% of the buying sum because i can't get my mortgage or sign another contract and sell the house to me. *sigh* Normally i'm quite unaffected by stress, but now i'm quite literally about to snap. Just too much money at stake that i don't own.

Sunday, April 03 2005

Gnome-nl progress

Yesterday we had the first official gnome-nl meeting about what should actually happen. A few good idea's came from that, like making a dutch version of the current gnome live CD other things that where discussed where collaborations with kde-nl and doing some networking, with dutch based companies as well as on the upcoming GUADEC.

However while the part of the meeting that i actually witnessed was great, the part where i was still trying to get there was a living nightmare. I drove around Utrecht for at least 2 and a half hours trying to reach Ronald's place, i saw some very interesting parts of Utrecht and i actually had a flat tire somewhere along the way also. *sigh* Getting there was definitely not the fun part.

This also showed me that i really need one of those navigation computers for in the car.

Friday, March 18 2005

Handheld support

I'm the proud owner of a Sharp Zaurus c860, installed with the cacko rom. So of course my site should support handheld devices.

Since my site only needs a few changes to support smaller screen sizes. i only needed to modify 3 properties. (some width's) and with a little bit of nudging and pushing my site now supports all kinda of smaller screen devices :) You just gotta love CSS.

although i'm not sure if very narrow screens will display it correctly. But at least my PDA PMA does.

mmmm seeing the thumb of my zaurus i think i should modify my script for auto-generating thumbernails thought. It kinda stretches it a bit.

Wednesday, March 16 2005

Seeing double

Woohoo, finally got dual screen :) one CRT and one LCD. Still figuring out some things, but i'm already sure i'm going to love this. Worked dual screen before with one CRT and a laptop LCD. (using some program that works over a network connection connecting X servers, but it was too slow too be useful)

Too bad i have a ATI card though, doesn't work nice at all, no xinerama support as far as i've seen. (but i haven't really looked yet, just hooked up the second monitor and started editing the xorg.conf file until the damn thing worked :P

Saturday, March 12 2005

Being connected

Well this day started out nice. My computer crashed and apparently took out my NIC with it, the strange thing however, is what's wrong with it. It will send packages no problem, but it received nothing. Tested it in windows and linux and both showed the same symptoms, tried the network cable in my laptop and it worked perfectly. Tried pinging my loopback and also worked. So basically, it's not the software, it's not the network, and since loopback worked it's also not about 90% of the card. *sigh* but broken none the less.

Well it was a old card so i'm not really shedding any tears over it, the trouble was however that the only spare one i had was a old realtek i got with a cable modem subscription. (so it's cheap and thus crappy and very very old) first booted into linux with it, currently running Ubuntu linux hoary. But to no avail, it din't even register as a ethernet device for as far as i could tell. After that i booted into windowsXP, that promptly told me it found some new hardware, and that the hardware was a ethernet device. YaY
The only problem however was that it hadn't the foggiest idea to what kind of ethernet device it was, and to find out it wanted to connect to the internet. *sigh*

So now i'm currently working on my laptop also running Ubuntu hoary. And i'm actually quite pleased with how fast it works, since it's quite a old laptop. Also the fact that it produces little sound is quite a plus. The only problem with it however is that it's more like a very light weight and flat workstation. Since the battery is kinda deceased and it needs the power cable inserted into it at all times.

Thursday, March 10 2005

StratoS Online, online

Well it was about time for this thing to go online, not everything is done yet, more files and images will follow and i'll be working on the site from time to time. (pretty busy with work, buying a house, having a personal life, gnome-nl) Oh well can't have everything.

Basically i'm still editing the XML files by hand, and in some browsers this site will look like crap. But with a average of 80 visitors per month (of which 50% is probably myself) i'm not in a big hurry to fix things.

On another subjects. I'm buying a HOUSE!!, will be moving in in a few months, and i'm pretty excited about it.

I'll also start doing some more stuff for gnome-nl then just hang around on the gnome-nl channel on irc.gnome.nl probably going to manage a bit of promotion. But everything is still in the air thought.

On the work part i'm still having fun happily, although i had a rather rough week behind me, *sigh* currently working on a site where you can order cards and send them out to people or simply get them yourself. Big project and way too little time to finish it.
I'll post a like when it's done, because while at this moment i hate the website, it is actually a rather cool site.

Wednesday, February 09 2005

StratoS Online, Almost ready to go up

Have just finished writing the code for the files and art section of this site. Used the standard gnome icons for the files section, first wanted to do just a list of files, but this looks a bit better.

Friday, February 04 2005

StratoS Online, back to basic

Well here whe are, a totaly new design and code base for my site. This time i'm actually planning on keeping my site regularly up to date.

Instead of news i've chosen to use a Blog, basicly the only reason for this is that i will be posting a bit more. Another reason is that i've implemented a Blog interface into my site backend that enables me to blog via gnome-blog. Which is a standard desktop application for gnome.

Well Actualy that would be lying a bit I haven't actually build the thing yet, basicly now i'm simply editing by hand some XML file ;)

I Also have to do some thinking about how i'm going to implement the Files and Art sections.