Author name: chipx86

Calum’s blog post showing a bunch of talking heads on his panel is pretty cool. I have the presence part of this already done in Galago’s gnome-presence-applet. It doesn’t display a talking head, but it displays service indicators and first/last names. It wouldn’t be hard to make it optionally display an avatar instead. The messaging wouldn’t be there until a future release of Galago, though.

A Galago release is imminent now. Just a few things left to do.

There’s nothing better than finally fixing a bug that has been a problem for over three months. Well, except finding a number of other bugs that would end up being hard to find down the road, and fixing them. Galago-daemon is now far stabler, and I would trust it to have my children, er, maintain my presence, or something. Yeah. Anyhow, one major step closer to a release. There’s just one important thing left, which is username normalization.

Also, it seems IBM has shipped my new ThinkPad. Hurray! Can’t wait. Except I have to. So, perhaps sleep is in order, since I’m starting to become delusional. I will be pissed if it turns out I dreamt fixing those bugs. 🙂

So Sunday was the VMware picnic, which turned out to be a blast. Mainly because my little sister was there, along with my mom and one of my brothers. Although at first shy and a bit nervous, as my sister Jenna said, she soon warmed up and started participating in the events. The bounce house was of course one of her favorites, although she was quite thrilled to get a hole in one in the little golf game booth and to get two balls in a row in the ball toss game. She picked out her prizes and proudly showed me what she had won. Unfortunately, it seems her bag got switched with someone else’s during the day, and she lost her prizes.

Jenna didn’t want the day to end, but we eventually dragged her back to the car (not kicking and screaming, though, as she’s pretty good about that). Soon it was time for them to head back home, which is always a sad moment, but it was a fun visit. Jenna called just a short while ago and told me how much fun she had. Apparently, she wouldn’t stop talking about it at daycare today.

Oh, and she drew me a picture as a present. Such a cutie. I’m going to have to get pictures of the fair put up, and scan in her drawing at some point.

I don’t blog as often as I should anymore. So, here’s another general update on stuff.

I released 0.4 of the Desktop Notifications Spec tonight. No, people, it does not allow XML + CSS or XSLT or XEMBED or sound or anything else. It does support enough to be useful, without going overboard. I think it’s getting to be a very good spec, and I’m about ready to call it done, after a few more (sane) discussions.

Galago .NET bindings are coming along nicely. Galago# itself works rather well, and I’m working on GalagoGtk# now. The one problem is that Gtk# supports Gtk 2.2, not 2.4, and I have some 2.4-only widgets in libgalago-gtk. So, I’m going to have to provide 2.2 alternatives. *sigh* Once that’s all done, GalagoGtk# should be ready as well, and the Beagle and Tomboy guys can have some fun with them.

I must say, Tomboy is very cool. It Just Works (TM) and I’m already finding it very handy. Kudos, guys! Now if only I could auto-link #123456 to Bugzilla entries at work. Hmm…

Oops, somehow I managed to leave my keys on the table this morning when I headed to work. I didn’t realize this until I was at my door, just an hour ago. I went to the nearby Albertsons and picked up an eye glass repair kit to try to pick the lock, but it seems I’m a bit rusty… Luckily, on the way to the office (in search of a number to call), I ran into one of the maintenance guys here that I know, and got a spare key to use. So I’m back home! Must not do that again.

Mike Hearn and I just announced the first officially public draft of the Desktop Notifications Specification we’ve been working on. It has a few rough edges, but is there for the most part. The specification was announced on the freedesktop.org xdg-list. We’re looking for feedback and some implementations. Currently, we have a few projects who have announced their intention to use the specification, hopefully with more coming in the future.

The protocol for the desktop notifications uses D-BUS. It’s meant to be desktop-neutral, and does not define presentation. An initial GNOME notification server is undergoing development, as well as a reference implementation library. These are not yet available, however, as Mike is without an Internet connection and has not been able to submit his latest changes. These will be updated as soon as possible.