Ramblings » GNOME http://www.flamingspork.com/blog Ramblings which occasionally resemble reality. This is the blog of Stewart Smith. Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:21:29 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 No, I haven’t forgotten digital (darktable for the epic win) http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2010/06/30/no-i-havent-forgotten-digital-darktable-for-the-epic-win/ http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2010/06/30/no-i-havent-forgotten-digital-darktable-for-the-epic-win/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 14:49:47 +0000 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/?p=2053 This was my first real play with darktable. It’s a fairly new “virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers” but if you are into photography and into freedom, you need to RUN (not walk) to the install page now.

My first real use of it was for a simple image that I took from my hotel room when I was in Hong Kong last week. I whacked the fisheye on the D200, walked up to the window (and then into it, because that’s what you do when looking through a fisheye) and snapped the street scene below as the sun was going away.

Hotel Window (Hong Kong)

I’d welcome feedback… but I kinda like the results, especially for a shot that wasn’t thought about much at all (it was intended as a just recording my surroundings shot).

The second shot I had a decent go at was one I snapped while out grabbing some beers with some of the Rackspace guys (Hi Tim and Eddie!) in Hong Kong. Darktable let me develop the RAW image from my D200 and get exactly the image I was looking for…. well, at least to my ability so far. Very, very impressed.

Hong Kong streetlife

Being a photographer and using Ubuntu/GNOME has never been so exciting. Any inclination I had of setting up a different OS for that “real” photo stuff is completely gone.

(Incidently, I will be talking about darktable at LUV in July)

]]> http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2010/06/30/no-i-havent-forgotten-digital-darktable-for-the-epic-win/feed/ 3 Problems with Tracker (and why I’m back to Beagle) http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/10/18/problems-with-tracker-and-why-im-back-to-beagle/ http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/10/18/problems-with-tracker-and-why-im-back-to-beagle/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:46:09 +0000 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/10/18/problems-with-tracker-and-why-im-back-to-beagle/
  • If you have more than 8192 directories, it can’t monitor them (max inotify limit)
  • No search results
  • access(), stat() and then lstat() called on *every* file that it’s going to index… this takes a long time.
  • Did I mention that search doesn’t actually give you any results?
  • Even when you run strings on the database and then search for something there, you don’t get any results
  • Even when you search for the name of an application, you get no results.
    • ]]>     http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/10/18/problems-with-tracker-and-why-im-back-to-beagle/feed/ 5     Everything that’s wrong (and right) with Ubuntu Gutsy http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/10/18/everything-thats-wrong-and-right-with-ubuntu-gutsy/ http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/10/18/everything-thats-wrong-and-right-with-ubuntu-gutsy/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2007 04:55:26 +0000 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/10/18/everything-thats-wrong-and-right-with-ubuntu-gutsy/ So, I’ve upgraded two boxes: my laptop and my mail server.

    Wrong:

    • courier-imap-ssl broke. My cell phone could no longer pull mail.
      I got something like in the log:
      imapd-ssl: couriertls: connect: error:1408F10B:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_RECORD:wrong version number
      The fix for this is to change the TLS_PROTOCOL option in /etc/courier/imapd-ssl to SSL23 (an option not listed in the “possible verions” list in the config file). So mail now works.
    • Evolution now seems to put a blank line at the top of emails when replying (before quoting the message). GRRRRRRR…
    • The Window Manager (metacity) has changed how it arranges new windows. Instead of cascading them down, so if you’re opening a bunch you can easily switch between them, it now puts them right on top of each other GGRRRRRR.
    • It set up my Xorg to *not* to X monitor hotpluggy goodness. I’ve managed
    • Login seems to take a fair bit longer than before
    • Tracker
      • trackerd will index while on battery power… GRRR
      • trackerd will hog disk and CPU
      • I haven’t been able to get any results out of tracker.
      • There is no tracker-status or something to check that it hasn’t just stopped working
      • Tracker will use up all your remaining disk space… (I initially only had a few GB free.. and trackerd filled it up)
      • I haven’t actually had a query work at all. i.e. it seems to be useless. I just get a “trackerd exited with status 0″.
    • There is no “remember passphrase” button in Evolution for GPG signing anymore. I think this is now set in the global preferences… but the behaviour change is annoying.
    • The pidgin icon is different than the gaim icon in the Notification Area… this is annoying as I can never find it anymore
    • The Window List applet changed behaviour to now *not* group windows together at all… making having lots of windows open (as I often do) completely unmanagable as opposed to (previously) just annoying.

    The Awesome:

    • X monitor hotpluggy goodness (known to others as xrandr 1.2). VGA out works with the free radeon driver now! *YAY*. (I can rearrange screens using xrandr… awesome)
    • Pidgin is quite nice… the likelyhood of reply plugin is neat. More compact IM windows (also cool).
    • Syncing between Pidgin and Evolution with contacts seems to work okay now.
    • Suspend and resume still works
    • New version of f-spot – goodness!
    • New OpenOffice.org (2.3)  sucks less.
    • emacs22 (shiny)
    • New WINE does real neat stuff (such as have menu items for browse C drive, remove software)
    • Evolution doesn’t seem to leak memory as much anymore. Only 316MB RSS at the moment!
    • Lots of neat Liferea bug fixes – much nicer! (read items in the planet.linux.org.au feed stay marked read now!)
    ]]>     http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/10/18/everything-thats-wrong-and-right-with-ubuntu-gutsy/feed/ 5     Backup solution for mum… http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/08/02/backup-solution-for-mum/ http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/08/02/backup-solution-for-mum/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2007 00:54:48 +0000 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/08/02/backup-solution-for-mum/ Dear Lazyweb,

    I really want a GNOME application with a big button that says “backup” and proceeds to ask for a series of DVDs, on which it writes out everything on the hard disk (/ and /home) which can then (relatively easily) be used to restore the system.

    I figure this would work for mum.

    The old “drag and drop onto a blank DVD” doesn’t really work:

    • things get bigger than 1 DVD (e.g. Photos)
    • Important things like mail and bookmarks are hidden away in special dot folders (begging the question “so how do I back up my email?”)

    Even a GUI around xfsdump that split the dump file into DVD sized chunks would be great…

    ]]>     http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/08/02/backup-solution-for-mum/feed/ 1     Evolution import VCF possibly the slowest thing in the world… http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/07/07/evolution-import-vcf-possibly-the-slowest-thing-in-the-world/ http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/07/07/evolution-import-vcf-possibly-the-slowest-thing-in-the-world/#comments Sat, 07 Jul 2007 07:21:48 +0000 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/07/07/evolution-import-vcf-possibly-the-slowest-thing-in-the-world/ Waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. It’s only a few hundred cards in there…. urrggh.

    ]]>     http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/07/07/evolution-import-vcf-possibly-the-slowest-thing-in-the-world/feed/ 0     I heart recordMyDesktop http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/04/13/i-heart-recordmydesktop/ http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/04/13/i-heart-recordmydesktop/#comments Fri, 13 Apr 2007 05:38:25 +0000 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/04/13/i-heart-recordmydesktop/ So, I wanted to get some feedback before I presented my sessions at the upcoming MySQL Conference (be there, it’ll be cool). I thought… hrrm.. distributed company… I can’t just ask a couple of people to listen to me in the conference room as we don’t really have one (apart from IRC).

    So… I thought.. hrrm… didn’t i see something about screencasting on the program for linux.con f.au ? Well, the answer was yes – Screencasting HOWTO. Started watching – I then proceeded to try the list of screencasting software.

    Istanbul didn’t work – I got images and audio, but only when there was a change to what was being displayed… so a static slide with me talking, didn’t work. Same with a similar python script.

    I then grabbed recordMyDesktop and it worked. ./configure; make; ./src/recordMyDesktop  …. and ctrl-c when done.. encodes to Ogg Theora and *WORKS*

    Brilliant.

    I then got to convince some coworkers to spend time listening to me speak about stuff they may already know to test it before the conf.

    ]]>     http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/04/13/i-heart-recordmydesktop/feed/ 1     I heart Gnome SSH Tunnel Manager http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/03/13/i-heart-gnome-ssh-tunnel-manager/ http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/03/13/i-heart-gnome-ssh-tunnel-manager/#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2007 11:05:55 +0000 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/03/13/i-heart-gnome-ssh-tunnel-manager/ Jonas just switched me on to Gnome SSH Tunnel Manager – a simple GNOME app that stores a list of SSH tunnels you want and can automatically start and stop them.

    Totally useful for those who travel (hrrm.. fair few MySQLers there) and/or always have SSH tunnels to places (hrrm… MySQLers there too).

    There’s a debian package up there (and you can build one easily) but it’s not yet in the Ubuntu archive… maybe for the next release. But works fine on edgy for me!

    ]]>     http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/03/13/i-heart-gnome-ssh-tunnel-manager/feed/ 2     Pleading for a better mail suite…. http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/03/09/pleading-for-a-better-mail-suite/ http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/03/09/pleading-for-a-better-mail-suite/#comments Fri, 09 Mar 2007 08:39:37 +0000 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/03/09/pleading-for-a-better-mail-suite/ or really just all the Evolution bugs that I consistently hit to be fixed.

    Why it needs hundreds of megabytes of memory just to list a single mail folder? What could it possibly be doing, loading the entire mailbox into memory? ick..

    currently, after a crash “checking folder consistency” for at leat 10 minutes now… and aparrently i haev 13000 unread messages in INBOX. Bull. About 250 more likely. This will probably be some arse load of crack i’ll have to remove the cache files, restart evo 10 times and sacrifice  a goat to the gods of crackful annoying-apps.

    ]]>     http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/03/09/pleading-for-a-better-mail-suite/feed/ 0     interesting rhythmbox bug… http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/01/31/interesting-rhythmbox-bug/ http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/01/31/interesting-rhythmbox-bug/#comments Wed, 31 Jan 2007 04:36:09 +0000 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/01/31/interesting-rhythmbox-bug/ It continued to play Tool, but wouldn’t let me pause (or, indeed, call up the window from the systray icon).

    Gotta love the taste in music at least.

    ]]>     http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2007/01/31/interesting-rhythmbox-bug/feed/ 0     wishlist: Face Recognition and f-spot http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2006/10/16/wishlist-face-recognition-and-f-spot/ http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2006/10/16/wishlist-face-recognition-and-f-spot/#comments Mon, 16 Oct 2006 13:55:15 +0000 Stewart Smith http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2006/10/16/wishlist-face-recognition-and-f-spot/ It’d be really neat if f-spot could use face recognition and self-tag photos with who’s in them. It’s a real pain going through all my photos and adequately tagging them.

    ]]>     http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2006/10/16/wishlist-face-recognition-and-f-spot/feed/ 0