Time to resume Open Source work. But I have also higher priority stuff like preparing my move to Montréal. It appear that moving 30m^3 from Lille to Montréal will cost a mere 5000 EUR. This will happen in only 6 month or so as Stéphanie will stay in France longer (I'll go there first).

My blog is finally XHTML valid and CSS valid. I had to hack the PHP code. Perhaps should I partly rewrite this to be more modular and easier to modify.

Canada

Looks like I'll be going to Canada after GUADEC. Simply because otherwise it will be a little bit too pricey (think 900 EUR for a round-trip to Paris-CDG) to go to GUADEC. More time to sort out all my stuff. But I'm really getting impatient.

AbiWord

Started backporting to the STABLE tree (2.0.x branch) all the patches lying around that have been committed to the HEAD CVS (2.1.x branch). I has been a long time since I hadn't any.

Advogato

Advogato is still down. That sucks. I have been told that the server had disk problems. :-(

GUADEC

Booked the hotel for GUADEC. Will be at Hotel Norge, with Stéphanie. I need to find an hotel in Oslo for Saturday night (We plan to take train on Sunday evening to Kristiansand).

I need to write my talk and slides. Anyone could make dual screen work under Linux on a PowerBook G3 Firewire ? I have m3mirror that seems to work (I can shutdown the lcd), but apparently, I can't get the VGA output to display something. Looks like I miss some XFree configuration bits. Google was not helpful either. Otherwise I still have plan B: borrow a laptop with AbiWord like I did last time.

AbiWord

Not much work, just a few backport, and unbreak the STABLE tree (silly me, I'm guilty). There is a huge regression in the MacOS X version: typing has become slower compared to 2.1.1. I must investigate.

GNOME

I upgraded partially GNOME with the new Debian/unstable packages. I still miss a few because if packages missing in the powerpc distribution. Anyway visible changes includes new mouse cursors (white). I don't know which package upgraded this.

I have been having strange problems recently with metacity window manager. Sometime it just falls into an infinite loop, blocking everything in X. A ssh to the laptop and a kill -HUP just solve the problem, but this is really annoying. I wonder why. Perhaps shall I restart my session since the I haven't for 2 or 3 weeks dispite the various upgrades.

Nothing much this week-end.

AbiWord

Backported a few new bugfixes from Martin this morning to STABLE tree.

Niti

dcoombs: nice car. I think I'm too tall to be able to use it :-)

Airlines are weird. A single ticket to Montréal cost TWICE the price than a return ticket for the same day with a return for 9/11 (don't be mistaken, this will be my 5th mariage anniversary) not that I really want to return. I don't get it. Anyway, this was with Air France, and far from being the least expensive.

Back from a "night photography" session, still waiting fro Stéphanie to come back home (working late, testing car headlightning at night). I can't make a gallery right know because I take pictures on slide film. I need to have them processed to scan them. And I already have 14 rolls to process (vacations pictures).

I need to buy a new digital camera. I'm think of a Minolta Dimage Xt (or whatever the current model is) because it is really tiny and still has a really viewer (LCD back screen are not really suited as a view finder, because it generate more motion blur than traditionnal view finders). My old Kodak DC-240 is so aged that I no longer use it (it killed me 6 AA NiMh batteries, brand new). I don't know if I'll buy it before or after going to Montréal.

jdub: I think this dilbert is also for pphaneuf well known to follow the "no pants day". I myself always wear pants, even in summer. Perhaps French summer isn't hot enough.

AbiWord

AbiWord 2.1.3 has been released. It looks like I'm the designated idiot to release the MacOS X tarball and build. Anyway I'm responsible of it, and shame on me, it did not really evolve. I have 2 major bugs to fix, and lot of cosmetics. Not couting all the stuff I want to finish, and the rewrite of all the dialogs code, but that won't be for 2.2. I need to find a real solution for MacOS X development when in Canada, since I won't bring with me the iMac without my wife (it is hers after all). I think I'll just buy a Firewire disk to plug to the laptop and use that as a MacOS X system.

libhal

I upgraded my kernel to 2.6.6 to be able to use libhal, etc. in order to start eventually adding libhal support to libgphoto2

Getting hot, hot, hot. 30C here in Lille.

AbiWord

Committed a huge patch to rewrite the \shppict and \object keywords in RTF, to also fix bug 6140. I still need to add more stuff to this part to handle text boxes correctly.

I found a huge performance regression beetween AbiWord 2.1.1 and 2.1.2 on MacOS X (someone reported it in bugzilla). I really need to look for this bug. I'll check the diff beetween the 2 tarballs, but I'm afraid the problem might not be in Cocoa code, but in the cross-platform part.

gPhoto

It has been a long time since I hadn't really hacked a gPhoto, a really longtime. Today I started implement my secret idea to allow supporting USB Mass Storage digital camera devices. This includes adding support for libhal. I had to write some Perl code to parse the XML file that I use to maintain my Digital Camera Support for UNIX, Linux and BSD page. This add 162 cameras to the supported list in libgphoto2. Generic USB Mass Storage devices now gets auto-detected by gphoto2. I'm currently only testing with a USB flash memory because I don't have a compatible camera (Kodak DC240 has its own driver). Next step is to add mount-point specification, either by getting it from command line or from the optional libhal support.

The week-end is over. This is my last last week-end in Lille (I may return in December for THE move, but nothing planned yet). I'll be flying to Montréal on July 3rd. Finally. I'm really getting impatient. Before, there is GUADEC, where I'll give my talk scheduled on Tuesday morning. I'll be able to attend dcoombs talk about WvSync.

AbiWord

Macintouch has a report about MS-Word alternative on MacOS X. They forgot to mention AbiWord so I mailed them about that. I need to start doing marketing on the project.

(update) They did publish my e-mail. I'm taking some risks since 2.1.2 and 2.1.3 sucks on MacOS X due to some regression.

Life

Last week-end was my last week-end in France before long. I went to my mom's house to store a few thing I don't throw away and that I won't bring in The Move. At the same time, I cleaned up all the junk I left in my bedroom before leaving, including 6 years of class notes (high-school and University). Looks like I throwed away 6 years of my life. Nothing really significant in fact, because in the last 14 years I didn't look for them, but a couple of things like my old Casio scientific calculator I miss of binary and hex calculation. I now have it back.

I also when to Ludo's place to bring him some really old BeOS stuff I had here, like old prototype motherboards, old documentation that I got from another veteran before he left for California. I made Ludo really happy (see pictures) because he has the full hardware documentation of the Hobbit BeBox.

Ludo browsing the Be documentation I brought him

The Hobbit BeBox with documentation.

For those who don't know, I was by the end of 1995, one of the first European BeOS developers. I was not involved in open source like I'm currently am, but I did some stuff that went open source, including BePDF a port of xpdf (in fact I got the starting code from another friend that had no time to complete the hack and enhanced it a lot). Then I started coding on Linux AbiWord that I tried on BeOS first.

Ludo also got a Macintosh Portable, the 14 lbs luggageable computer. A collector.

Montréal

I still have to check with the airline, but it looks like they carry bicycles for free. So I'll bring mine as it seems to be a good way to go to work in summer in Montréal. And I need to do sports.

Guadec

I need to write my slides. I bought an Airport card to have Wifi with my PowerBook. So I can use it from Guadec. I don't have a Wifi router here, so to test it, I'll need to bring it downtown to check. And I need to write my slides. I have everything in my head, but I'd better start now.

saul: you might want to have a look at AbiWord. Fast, light, and runs on Linux and Windows. GPL off course. As for IM, I myself use gaim. These are GNOME applications. If you like KDE, there is Kopete. But I haven't tried it.

Friendship

Friendship is something very important. Sometime things don't go the way we want. My best friend (perhaps should I add former) for example. We met in high school (1992). He was one of the best men at my own wedding (almost five years ago). Last christmas he called me to tell me that he got married 3 monthes ago. What ? He forgot to tell me something so important ? I can't believe. I don't even remember what was the output of the excuse mill, but I think that he said something like "this happened so quickly." or "you were too far away". I think I got really mad after him. Really. Every friend I discussed with told me that he wasn't really a friend after all...

Recently we got back in touch. All began with an e-mail I sent him about stuff I still have and should send back to him before I leave the country. Since we have been chatting on a regular basis (I haven't had the time to visit him, and won't have before the move). I think I begin to forgive him; anyone can make mistake, this one is not that severe. And we don't have so much good friends in our life to neglect even one. Time passes.

I think getting nostalgic. Perhaps because of all this cleaning up (actually I'm unpacking boxes packed a few years back, just to throw away old junk) that reminds me to much souvenirs. Not bad souvenirs, just memories.

Oh and I have to tell to another friend that I'm leaving. Damn. His phone number is in my cell phone, that my wife borrowed for 3 days to call me while being away, and I don't have his e-mail (strange isn't it ?). I'll call him later.

French Music

I went today shopping to get music including French. Summer sales provide us with a large stock of CDs at less than 9 EUR. I bought: AQME (French Metal), Eiffel, Luke, Mickey 3D, Gemma Hayes and Therion (German metal).

kjrose: I'll bring you French music. Not the kind you described. The kind I like.

GUADEC

I think I'm now ready. Almost everything packed for GUADEC. I'll meet dcoombs tomorrow in Oslo, and Sunday evening I'll meet Peter and wlach in Kristiansand.

Train at 8:49, flight at 12:36 from CDG to OSL.

GUADEC

I'm live from GUADEC, over the air. My Airport card works as is with Debian. Met a lot of people, including dcoombs, wlach and pcolijn from Niti, uwog and msevior from AbiWord, fcrozat, dodji and other French GNOMErs. We also met a lot of other nice people.

My talk about Digital Photography in GNOME is in a couple of hours.

Before going to GUADEC we went thru Oslo. I posted a short gallery of pictures taken with my digital camera (a real oldy).

Photo

Unfortunately I dropped my camera in the hotel room. It got hurted as the flash seems to have trouble popping up. Fortunately it does not look that bad as I seldom use it, and never in a mode it pops up automatically. I'll see after processing the films if it is really OK. Fingers crossed.

email: hub@figuiere.net