Njaard 

arkimedes:~# apt-get install dbus-qt-1-dev (stuff skipped) The following NEW packages will be installed: dbus-qt-1-dev dbus-qt-1c2 hicolor-icon-theme kdelibs-bin kdelibs-data kdelibs4c2 libarts1c2 libaspell15 libfam0 libjasper-1.701-1 libnetpbm10 libopenexr2c2 menu-xdg netpbm 0 upgraded, 14 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded. Need to get 19.9MB/21.0MB of archives. After unpacking 69.5MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Ok, I have to investigate. Why does DBUS's Qt bindings want to link to all of Qt? Read More

Next week, on Wednesday the 18th of May, I will be overseeing a KDE Flamewar (and talking about how to tweak KDE) for the Nottingham Linux Users Group. Come one, come all! Read More

My flight back to California is on the second of June, from Heathrow. I leave San Francisco back to England on the 14th (arriving on the 15th) of September. That gives me three and a half months of attempting to avoid saying things like "That's five dollars and 50 pence." Read More

12°C today, and this marks the beginning of the long downward spiral into summer. English summers are awful, the raindrops form out of the air all around you. The drops hit you and you wake up hours later dazed and with concussion. Read More

Apparently, I am a DYO--Dark Dry Offbeat. This makes me a Neurotic. I believe it. The complete analysis was head-on, in my opinion, but that might just be the result of Confirmation bias (the tendency to see accuracy in astrology, for example). Read More

Lots of programs in and out of KDE suffer from a condition that I call software arrogance. Consistently, I find such applications completely unusable and thus refuse to use them. Software arrogance is when a program feels it is more important than its user's document. How is it that a program is written such that the user may feel that the importance of the application is greater than of eir document? First of all, the document has what is seemingly a minor role in comparison to its container. This is obviously apparent in MDI (window-in-window) applications like KDevelop in which you can minimise source windows. What? Why would you want to minimize the source code window but still have visible all the tools for editing the source code? It is reasonable to want to show two at a time, and to hide one while looking at another. Then lots of horrible user interface restrictions become apparent as a result of the two documents becoming inseparable from the other. You can't move one of the documents to another virtual desktop, the taskbar becomes meaningless, and, like KDevelop and Microsoft's Visual Studio, your application uses valuable real estate like Starbucks. Now, some of you may say that you like this window-in-a-window thing because logically, when you use KDevelop, you aren't editing just a source file, but you're editing your entire project, and each window of source code you're editing is fundamentally linked in that regards. So, I ask, what really is the document? Is the document the project, or is it the source window? Hopefully, at this point in my rant, you'll agree that both are the document. However, KDevelop (and for that matter, Kate) don't treat the project as the document, they just treat the source code as the document, and then add a few tools to manage the project (almost like an afterthought). Take a look at this screenshot of Kate, and let's look over some of the silly things in it. Read More

How was I living without snow all this time? This stuff is amazing! The essence of beauty. Truly the best things in life are all around us, why do so many dislike such a lovely gift from nature? Read More

By now there's quite the debate (aseigo, tsdgeos) regarding the implementation of DRM in KPDF. Rather then getting a Blogger account (ahem), I'll post here, where I already have an account. Read More

Filed against every single major web browser is the bug of "unicode blindness injection" security vulnerability. In short, Unicode letters can look the same as their ascii-equivalents, but lead to a different URL (thereby permitting man-in-the-middle attacks). My solution consists of verifying that unicode glyphs look different from ascii glyphs (yes, I like the word "glyph"). In my example screenshot, words in parentheses are entirely ascii, those preceding them have a "wrong letter:" Read More

Last night I saw Nightwish and Tristania in Birmingham. Nightwish was absolutely spectacular and put on a great show! Tristania, the band I actually want to see was actually a disappointment. They seemed to forget how to play some of their older songs. They definitely are better mastered. Read More

Finally. Now I can see Tristania. charles@pythagoras noatun $ cvs diff -N 2> /dev/null | wc -l 4763

I spent practically all of today working on Noatun make-it-snow. My fun was cut short when I (re)encountered a rather serious akode bug. It's some sort of race condition related to creating a playobject, and then, uhm, trying to get it to play. Read More

Well, Konqueror (khtml) has been proven to have the fastest free HTML renderer available for Linux. So why is it that the people on slashdot refuse to not only mention it in the "article", but with the default settings and no user account, I can't even find a mention of it on the entire page (with the comments). Read More

My notebook was returned from the repair-shop on thursday. On Friday it locked up hard again. Exact same symptoms as before. I know I shouldn't let a mere computer get me down, but I depend on this thing for finishing university. I haven't the money with which to buy a new one. I don't know how long I can use borrowed hardware. Read More

I'm going to have this shot, and we will see how much sense I make at the end of this journal entry. Or for that matter, at the beginning. Mmmm... Anise. Anyway, continuing, in my two week long operation to track down the Jitter Bug, I got very close, but, alas, all I did was provide enough information for someone that actually knows (slightly more about) how khtml works. Do I get half credit for that? My next is something to do with RTL. I hope that Allen doesn't get to it first. Yes, you heard me Allen, that one's mine. I only claimed it because I have already seen how some of that part of khtml works. I'm also the one that made the test-case. Fixing khtml bugs consists of reading code for hours/days/weeks and after a while, changing a line or two, and wondering "what will this do?" -- really. Sometimes, if I feel really confident, I even think "maybe this will make a change to the better." Usually it doesn't but if you're lucky you might have learned a little about how khtml works. Who is to blame for the following code?: Read More

I returned from The Netherlands yesterday. Fun was had. First, I got myself an insane haircut. Then, I saw Sirenia (and also Tiamat, Pain, and Theatre of Tragedy). I sure do hope they come to England soon; it's difficult having to fly to the continent just to fulfill my obsession. Yes, I was in the front row. Read More

I've packed for my flight leaving tomorrow. Noatun 3 ("make-it-snow") made serious progress today. Photobook got its final TODO completed (just in time for the freeze). I fixed my first khtml bug. Read More

On Tuesday of next week, I'm off for the Netherlands! I hope I'll get to see some snow there. Last friday, the tickets for the Sirenia (I mean, Tiamat) gig showed up. Furthermore, I found the web site for PAIN, which doesn't really help as the links to the samples are all broken. Today, Stefan and I had a vast discussion (argument) over the design of Noatun 3 (which is currently being developed in the make-it-snow branch of cvs). I want the playlist to be directly manipulated when you go to another song or whatnot, Stefan seemed to disagree. Turns out we agreed almost entirely and so then I just had a few minor suggestions to make to his refactorings. I haven't been developing much KDE stuff at all recently, so upon completion of my current uni course work, my plan will be: Read More

I just bought my tickets for Sirenia (they're the supporting band of Tiamat which I only like moderately). 50 € for two tickets. Thiefs! In case you haven't heard, Sirenia is my band. Other people are allowed to listen to them, but, they are mine. Read More

A few weeks ago, my computer locked up. I'm a linux user, so this is unusual. I wasn't even doing something very intensive. I should have taken it as a signal of impending doom. A foreshadowing of the nightmare to come. It began to rain -- at least clouds in my mind started to. On this island, actual tangible rain is to be expected, but brainrain is still quite unheard of. My hopes, that little bit of optimism in me, left to a mere memory. Read More

I just committed my "Photo Book" part to cvs, it will be in KDE 3.4 unless I'm flamed. It's neat I think, and it probably fulfills a lot of wishes too. What the hell is going on here? I'm not supposed to be committing new features! Really now, KParts is an amazing (and complex) API. The kind of stuff you can do with it with just one-liners is incredible... the problem is finding the right one-liners. Read More

This is my first online journal ever. Some of you call them "blogs", but I don't, because the word is too silly sounding. I actually did some coding today: Image Galleries for Konqueror! (Also note the photographs of fellow developers in compromising positions). It's just far too easy to do stuff like this. KParts really are that amazing, and the really cool part is how we get stuff like network transparency for free! Due to my incredibly short attention span, we'll see how far I develop this before losing interest. Read More