Not much blogging this week as I have been so busy. We have also been up to visit my parents and introduce them to Banger.

This week I also started hacking on an audio blogging tool that uses GStreamer:

In the next issue of Linux User and Developer I wrote the cover feature. My first cover feature. 🙂
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Today I finished off an initial implementation of the render box patch for Pitivi and then mailed it to Edward. There are still some bugs and issues with it, but Edward is being gracious enough to look over things as I learn all of this new technology. I am increasingly impressed with GStreamer, and I demoed it to a bunch of guys at work today. As an example, stringing together test pipelines is pretty simple with gst-launch. Try this (change the location attribute to a video on your system):

gst-launch-0.8 filesrc location=systm--0001--warspyingbox--large.theora.ogg ! decodebin ! ffmpegcolorspace ! shagadelicTV ! ffmpegcolorspace ! xvimagesink

Here you are running the video through an effect plug-in called shagadelicTV. Awesome stuff. Writing Python programs is pretty simple too. I wrote a simple script to play an Ogg Vorbis file with:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
import gst

def main(args):
    "simple test"

    bin = gst.parse_launch('filesrc name=source ! ' +
                           'oggdemux name=demuxer ! ' +
                           'vorbisdec name=decoder ! ' +
                           'audioconvert ! osssink')

    filesrc = bin.get_by_name('source')
    filesrc.set_property('location', '/home/jono/jonobacon-freesoftwaresong.ogg')
    demuxer = bin.get_by_name('demuxer')

    bin.set_state(gst.STATE_PLAYING);

    try:
        while bin.iterate():
            pass
    except KeyBoardInterrupt:
        pass
if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.exit(main(sys.argv))

You can play a movie with a similar chunk of code:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
import gst

def main(args):
    "simple test"

    bin = gst.parse_launch('filesrc name=source ! ' +
                           'decodebin ! ' +
                           'ffmpegcolorspace ! ' +
                           'xvimagesink')

    filesrc = bin.get_by_name('source')
    filesrc.set_property('location', '/home/jono/videos/WobblyWindows.ogg')
    demuxer = bin.get_by_name('demuxer')

    bin.set_state(gst.STATE_PLAYING);

    try:
        while bin.iterate():
            pass
    except KeyBoardInterrupt:
        pass
if __name__ == '__main__':
    sys.exit(main(sys.argv))

Good stuff. In other news, Season 2 Episode 17 of LUGRadio is out, and I also bought myself a new double bass drum pedal. 🙂

Did a bit of hacking this weekend on Pitivi. I first submitted a patch that makes Pitivi start maximised, and then then I started work on re-engineering the render box. Much of it works at the moment, and here is the interface so far (not HIGified yet):

And the other tab in which you can have the file automatically uploaded to a server when it is rendered:

Today I also bought the Python Cookbook. Seems pretty cool.
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So, in summary, GUADEC was awesome. You all knew that. I knew that. There were some incredible talks, and some of the good stuff was in this blog entry. After I posted that entry, I went to some pretty fascinating talks. Damian Sandras gave a great talk about GnomeMeeting and its SIP and Asterisk support, there was superb talk by a chap at Dreamworks who showed how Linux and GNOME is used throughout their process.

Now, I know you are all suckers for pictures, so lets have a look at the movers and shakers who I bumped into with a camera. This stack of photos is in no particular order, and there were many great people who I met and didn’t catch on camera.

First up we have Roberto. This guy hacks on some bits Nautilus. Here he is at the airport

Now we have Christian Schaller; a tremendously cool guy who works at Fluendo:

He will be at LUGRadio Live on Sat 25th June 2005, so be there. 🙂

Here is Matthew Garrett – a guy who I have spoken to online occasionally, but never met. In him is a kindred spirit in some areas in life. He will also to be at LUGRadio Live:

James Bowes, GNOME Love dude. Funny, funny guy:

Conrad Parker; a guy on the Annodex team. Annodex is awesome, and Conrad is a dude:

Ross Burton. Another Brit I have been meaning to meet for a while. This is my perspective of the photo, and you can go and check out Ross’s:

Here we have Jeff Waugh (jdub). Jeff has got more than the average persons share of energy. In fact, I know a few lazy gits who must have had their energy stolen by jdub. Good to finally meet him:

The next attraction at the GUADEC freak show is Mr Sneak Peek himself, Davyd Madeley:

Now we have Bastian Nocera. I think he may have genuinely considered the suggestion to change the name of Totem to Scrotum:

It was great to finally meet David Zeuthen. I first spoke to david online when I wrote this. He is an awesome guy:

I also met Sebastien Tricaud who is the lead author on GScore. A fellow fan of Children Of Bodom, Sebastien was great fun at the GUADEC party:

Another cool guy to meet was Edward Hervey, creator of PiTiVi.

I was really inspired by PiTiVi when I saw it, and today I wrote my first patch for it. It is now committed to the CVS. 🙂

Another cool guy who I have previously spoken to was Matthew Allum from OpenedHand. Again, great to meet him and have a natter:

While at GUADEC I discovered a great feature on my camera in which you can take two pictures and they they are composed into the same photograph. I discovered that if you place people in a certain position, you get some incredible results:

Possibly the best one:

This is another awesome one, starring Kay Sievers from HAL hacking fame and some unknown person’s posterior:

There are stacks more shots available, just go and click here!

Not any time for a blog update, so a quick mention that Pitivi rocks. I spent some time today working with Edward to debug some problems with it. He ported it from C in a few months to demo at GUADEC and it is based on the awesome GStreamer framework. Oh, and its written in Python. 🙂

Here it is in action:

Full GUADEC report and pictures coming tomorrow. 🙂

GUADEC rocks a big ‘un:

• As Paul and I belted across Schiphol airport to catch our connecting flight to Stuttgart, we found jdub and Roberto who were on the same flight.
• Saw a fascinating presentation about Pitivi yesterday. Pitivi is a project to create a non-linear video editor that is based on GStreamer. This is cool because (a) it is written in Python so I can potentially hack on it, and (b) the GStreamer framework is a solid architecture that can be built on. As such, Pitivi gets all the GStreamer goodness thrown in for free such as support for different file types, and a simple programming interface that abstracts away all complex codec related stuff. I am hoping to write some patches when I get my head around the code.
• Seth gave a superb talk about perspectives on usability. He raised some important points, and all of this seems to line-up with the direction of GNOME 3.0.
• Sat behind Jon Trowbridge who was hacking on Beagle. This seemed cool to me. 🙂
• Last night we went out with James Bowes, Scott James Remnant, Luis Villa, Christian Schaller, Matthew Garrett and others. We all drunk lots of beer and we all felt sick today.
• Today Mark Shuttleworth gave his talk. It was a really interesting perspective on Open Source and I hooked up with him afterwards to discuss a few things.
• David Reveman gave a demo of Xgl and the audience with stunned. He demoed the virtual desktops switching on a cube, and also showed desktop zooming. Amazing stuff. I asked when this will be in CVS and he assured the demos should be in there this week.
• Saw a demo of Glom, and this looks pretty awesome. The aim of the project is to create an easy to use database tool, akin to access. This is really important for users who want really need a simple database to track details and don’t want to hook into PHP/MySQL. I will be checking this out when I get back.
• Jeff Waugh is talking about GNOME 3.0 right now, and I am looking forward to seeing how discussions of this progress.
• Nat is pushing the GNOME Usability Hackfest – should be interesting to see how many fixes are made.
• Tonight is the GUADEC party… 😉

Gotta love Ubuntu on the OQO:

We just need to get the wireless card working.

Here we are at GUADEC in Stuttgart. Stuttgart seems a pretty interesting place, and I am now sat in a Python presentation that is discussing Gazpacho and SimpleGladeApp.

When we arrived yesterday we tried to hack some bits with the OQO. Luckily, we managed to get the track stick working and X now takes up the full screen. The next step is to fix the wireless card. This involves copying packages onto the OQO via the USB stick and then compiling some kernel source that Paul found from a a guy who works at OQO and hacks on a kernel for it.

Last night we drunk some sweet, sweet beer, and tonight we will drink more…

Went to the Microsoft press meeting today and it was interesting. I will write up more about this when I can grab some spare time.

Today I started the wheels moving on a new project I am founding that I hope will have a pretty big impact. I am still getting the variables right in my head at the moment, and when something is finalised I will let you all know what I am thinking. I want to get some things clear first before I blurt it out to the world though.
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Firstly, condolences to Aq and his family about the loss of Bert. He was a rarity in the cat world – a cool cat. I normally don’t like the arrogant vermin, but Bert was truly an exception to the rule.

My new snazzy drum kit arrived today and it is awesome. After Karate I spent some time setting it up and playing it and it really improves over the last one. It is going to make a great addition to the tunes. I also discovered an interesting use for one of the many, many pieces of packaging from the kit:

At the LUG meet the other day I had my laptop with me and demoed some bits and bobs I have been fiddling with such as Xgl, Luminocity, OpenOffice.org 2, Muine and others. The other thing I am tracking is Breezy, and it is not feeling too good:

Damn.

Tomorrow I head to London for a meeting with Microsoft about a deal they have brokered with a firm moving away from UNIX. I was invited down as a member of the Linux camp and I am interested in seeing how this event will be managed. I look forward to the Q+A.

Recently I have been writing an article about hardware hacking for Linux User & Developer, and there is some incredible work going on with console hacking. I interview Bunnie who hacked the XBox to get Linux running and also got himself in hot water with the DMCA by writing a book on reverse engineering that some people deemed could be illegal – I still have the book that he printed himself when I spoke with him a few years back. There is also some great work going on with hacking the Nintendo DS:

I also mention PepsiMan who did the DS hack in the piece and some of the amazing work of this software hacker. In addition to this, check out Gamecube Linux and the PSP Linux project.

Wow, some awesome stuff going on today. Firstly, prompted by this thread on PHPWM, I delved into Eclipse some more today with the help of Elliot. Wow, what a great IDE. The PHP plug-in for Eclipse is kind of deceiving and much of its functionality tends to remain quite hidden. I do however love how it can parse the code for errors, indent your code, auto-complete variables, read TODOs inside code and put them in the Eclipse task list and other features. There also appears to be a Subversion plug-in that I will have a fiddle with when I get the time. As the eye-candy whore I am, I am also pleased that all of this hooks into GTK+:

Earlier I read on Christian’s blog about some work that Fluendo have been doing with Nokia on a mystery project. This sparked my interest and I had a read through the mailing list discussion. Later in the day when I popped onto IRC, he was loitering in the #lugradio channel and filled me in on what the project is – luckily he could announce it to the world today, and you should go and check out this news story. Summed up, it is a device that includes a wireless card and uses GTK+, GStreamer, DBUS and GNOME-VFS technology on top of a Linux core. The other good news is that this should ship for around $99. Awesome. Christian says that this is going to be showcased at GUADEC – I look forward to that. 🙂

In other GNOME news, the mighty Ikke blogged about Project Topaz and the mock-ups that have been made. This is all great stuff, and hooks in with how I believe the GNOME desktop should move forward. This, in connection with Project Soylent and Galago is proving to be exciting work. It will be interesting to see how all this pans out.

Today I also bought a drum kit. A few months back I flogged my old kit to Lee and I planned on getting a new Roland kit. I finally got round to it and stumbled across a great deal. The specific kit I am getting is a Roland TD9KV-P. It should arrive tomorrow. I can’t wait! 🙂