Old Stuff

Augmented Reality

- Misc Computers and Tech - 5 Comments

An article appeared on Digg.com yesterday talking about a possible leak about the Nintendo Revolution/Wii. It referred to a video that was linked to in the comments. This video gave a demonstration of Augmented Reality, and while this technology is only rumored to be in the Revolution, it’s still fascinating to watch.

Augmented Reality basically allows for real-time merging of a live video stream and 3D graphics in such a way that the 3D objects can in a sense react to changes in the real world. Virtual tanks running around a real table and bumping into things, for instance, or holding a weapon in your hand and walking around with it. Now if only they had a good way of projecting this out into the real world without bulky, expensive equipment.

It will be very interesting to see if any of these rumors about Augmented Reality integration in the Revolution are true. E3 is coming up, so we’ll finally know what Nintendo is actually up to. Hopefully it will live up to expectations.

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New libnotify, notification-daemon and notify-python releases

- Galago, GNOME, libnotify / notification-daemon, Linux Desktop - 2 Comments

I’m very tired, so I’ll keep this brief.

I just put out libnotify 0.4.0, notification-daemon 0.3.5, and notify-python 0.1.0 releases. Most of the really annoying bugs people have reported have been fixed. More information is available on the news post.

I made a decision that will be unpopular to some, and I expect some disagreement on it. notification-daemon 0.3.5 does not ship with the Bubble theme. A large number of the problems people have reported to me on IRC and in e-mail centered around this theme, and until I have the time to give it the attention it needs, I’m removing it from the default install. It’s still in SVN and the tarball, and development will resume on it at a later date. However, I want to give people the best out-of-the-box experience as possible, and the Bubble theme currently makes that hard. If people want to chip in and help, you’re more than welcome.

Aside from that, it’s a very good release and I highly recommend people update. As always, please make sure to report bugs.

I have a couple of neat things I plan to work on. One is a little event notifier for scheduled events on online calendars (30Boxes.com to start). This will be using the new libnotify Python bindings. If it proves useful, I hope to add Google Calendar support as well. I’ll make some sort of announcement once I get a prototype working.

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Galago 0.5.0! Can I sleep now?

- Galago - Leave a Comment

I finally, after a long 8 months of development, put out Galago 0.5.0. The list of changes are huge, but I feel it’s a pretty solid release. I’ve been wanting to get this release out for a while now, but I kept finding one more thing to fix. I finally bit the bullet and prepared the release. Oh, and this one includes Python bindings!

I have a news post at the Galago site talking a bit about the release and linking to release notes.

I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I’m going to sleep well tonight.

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VMware Server beta 2

- VMware - 1 Comment

We just announced VMware Server beta 2 today, which is without a doubt a vast improvement over beta 1. Aside from over 60 critical bug fixes and over 150 non-critical fixes, we’ve also added support for using the Server remote console to connect to GSX 3 hosts.

However, I should point out that those using GSX 3’s remote console to connect to an ESX machine won’t be able to use Server for this purpose. I’m looking into a possible co-install solution, but another option is to run the GSX 3 remote console inside a VM, such as our Browser Appliance VM.

I’ve personally done a lot of work on Server, and am quite proud of it. This should be a good release, definitely better than beta 1. We’re working hard on the next release, though I can’t say when it will be out.

In other VMware news, I just found out today that we launched the VMware Company Store. Though I wish they had mugs, at least now I can get some presents for my grandparents who I know have been wanting some VMware things to collect (they’re so proud of me! Awww.)

And I might as well take this opportunity to mention that our Virtual Appliance Challenge is still going, and we’re hoping to get some good entries. Though I don’t know what level of quality existing entries have reached, there are some appliances I’d personally like to see for my own use:

  • A development environment appliance for GNOME or for the Nokia 770.
  • A project site appliance containing Trac or Bugzilla, Apache, MediaWiki and WordPress, all set up with some kind of a common theme framework (so that I can modify one set of files and each will update).
  • A well-done kids appliance that I could give to my sister, containing a very simplified and kid-friendly UI, Tux Paint, Tux Typing, a locked down and controlled copy of Gaim (so that she could talk to me), a stripped-down word processor, and other games and educational software. Cute screensavers, wallpaper, sounds, etc. The nice thing here is that it could be snapshotted and then if the kid messes it up, the VM could simply be reverted.

For those who are wondering (I know many people do), an “appliance VM” just means a virtual machine with a specific purpose, rather than a generic “This has a GNOME desktop in it!” VM. Anyhow, that’s enough of that for now. Back to working on the next Server release.

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libsexy 0.1.8 released

- libsexy - Leave a Comment

It didn’t take long, but we found some regressions in the 0.1.7 release. Some C99isms slipped in to libsexy, and the Python bindings broke. These problems have been fixed and a 0.1.8 release has been made.

Another bug that has been reported to me is that ever since we moved to dynamically loading libenchant, spell checking has been broken for those who haven’t installed libenchant devel packages. We now check for the proper non-devel library first, fixing this issue.

As always, the new files are available on the libsexy site.

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libsexy 0.1.7 released

- libsexy - 1 Comment

I just put out a release of libsexy v0.1.7. It contains a number of fixes to SexySpellEntry, so if you’re doing any work with that or using it in software such as xchat-gnome, you’ll want to upgrade. Full release notes are available. Python and gtkmm bindings are also available at the libsexy site.

On a more humorous note, I’ve been told by a friend that he can no longer visit my blog due to mentions of libsexy causing his proxy to block my site. Anybody else having this issue? 🙂

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Tetringo 0.3.1 for the desktop and Nokia 770 released

- Tetringo - 5 Comments

I just released version 0.3.1 of Tetringo for the Linux desktop and for the Nokia 770. It’s still only single-player, but it works well and plays wonderfully on the Nokia 770. This is actually the second release of the night, and features an all-new shiny Quit button! And some rendering speed-ups and reduced file size.

This release is dedicated to Philip Langdale, who wanted a new game for his Nokia 770 that he could play this weekend. Enjoy 🙂

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Tetringo!

- Nokia 770, Tetringo - Leave a Comment

I’ve been playing a bit of Second Life lately. Second Life is an interesting free (for basic usage) fully-scriptable virtual world. One of the more popular games inside of Second Life is a 2D board game called Tringo. It’s a mix between Tetris and Bingo, where you compete with others for cash. The game consists of a 5×5 grid, and you have to make 2×2, 2×3, and 3×3 blocks with the pieces you get.

The game is fairly addicting, and my girlfriend and I have been wanting a way to practice while away from Second Life. So, I worked a bit on the bus and spent a couple of nights hacking on my new game Tetringo. It’s a clone of Tringo, playable on the Linux desktop, and designed so it will work on the Nokia 770 (once I finally do packages). Screenshot below.

Tetringo

For instructions, see the Tetringo page for more details.

It’s fun so far, but has some work I’d like to still do on it.. eventually. Multiplayer over a network and over Bluetooth is high on my list. I’ll probably get back to it after more productive software releases (leaftag, notification-daemon and Galago).

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Taggable Desktop

- GNOME, leaftag, Linux Desktop - 19 Comments


Luis: You wanted a taggable desktop? Oh, okay.

Announcing Leaftag, our desktop tagging framework. This is an evolution of the original prototype we created, originally named fstaglib (isn’t leaftag just so much better?).

The main part of Leaftag is a library called (oddly enough) libleaftag, which interfaces with the tag database. It’s GObject-based, and the API is quite small. It can tag anything with a URI.

There’s tagutils, a small app used for working with tags and files. It is able to tag and untag files, list all known tags, list all files with a specified tag, and manipulate tag properties (such as icons and descriptions). It also includes some symlinks that provide shortcuts to common tagutils functions (tag, untag, tagls, tags, and tagprop).

leaftag-python contains Python bindings for libleaftag. It simplifies the already simple libleaftag library.

And then there’s leaftag-gnome, which will contain all future GNOME support for tagging. Currently, it supports only a Deskbar handler. Future releases will hopefully include Nautilus search integration and property pages.

Now, it’s important to point out that the screenshots on my previous blog entry are of the old implementation, and have not been ported over to Leaftag yet. This is largely due to lack of time as of late (because of Galago and VMware Server work, on my part), but it’s also because we want to re-implement this correctly. In the meantime, we’re hoping additional apps will start supporting this.

This is the first public release of the Leaftag framework, so please report any bugs to us. In time, after a server migration, I plan to put together a dedicated Leaftag site and bug tracker.

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I present to you, VMware Server 1.0 beta 1

- VMware - 33 Comments

Wow, what a ride. We just put out this morning (or late last night, depending on time zone) beta 1 of our new VMware Server product. Now you know why I’ve been saying “I’m really busy, can we discuss this later?”

Yes, this is the one that you may have heard rumors about on CNET, Slashdot, etc., but those sites didn’t all have the facts right.

What VMware Server Is:

  • Free virtualization for servers.
  • A way to give people free virtualization with the hope that they’ll consider eventually moving up to ESX for the enterprise.
  • Based on VMware GSX.
  • The successor to GSX.
  • Capable of 64-bit guests, Virtual SMP, new guests like Ubuntu, auto-detect devices, etc.
  • Capable of opening Workstation 5.5 VMs.
  • Available for Linux and Windows hosts. It should be the same set that Workstation 5.5 works on.
  • Ported to GTK2 (using a slightly more evolved Workstation 5.5-based UI).
  • Beta!

What VMware Server Is Not:

  • A stripped down or crippled version of VMware GSX. Server has even more capabilities than GSX did.
  • A replacement for Workstation. VMware Server has no support for multiple snapshots or team functionality, and while Server is a server product, Workstation is a good desktop and development product.
  • A replacement for Player. Player is still high on our priority list, and we useful for the average person who just wants to run VMs.
  • A response to an apparent Xen or QEMU threat. While Xen has potential, it’s primarily just a hypervisor, and we’ve had one of those for ages. The interesting work is built on top of that (as XenSource, another proprietary software company, is doing).
  • A sign that VMware is doomed. I’ve heard this one a lot, and it just makes me chuckle. This should be taken as a sign that we’re doing pretty good. How many companies have the insight and abilities to give away their products for free and still make money?
  • A dead product before it begins. I don’t think there’s a worry about that. We’ve put a lot of effort into it so far, and are already hard at work on beta 2.
  • A money sink for us. We’ll be making money through optional support contracts.

I’m especially proud of this product. I’ve invested a lot of time into it, and so has everybody else involved. I’d like to thank everybody who has had to put up with me telling them I’m too busy for this or that lately 🙂 We’ll be working hard on getting this to a mature 1.0 state.

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