Tag Archives: Munich

Stick a fork in it …

General,

After more work and more stress than you'd think would be necessary, gtkmm 2.4 has reached 2.4.0 and API/ABI-stability. And we wrap most of the rest of the GNOME Platform and bits of the Desktop.

This time, maintainership has been more of a shared effort. Martin Schulze is responsible for libsigc++ 2.0 and Christophe de Vienne is the libxml++ maintainer. Bowie Owens takes care of orbitcpp and the libbonobo*mm stuff, but that isn't likely to hit API-stability any time soon, and nobody seems to miss it. Bryan Forbes also deserves special mention because he has put a lot of time and effort into the whole project, fixing lots of important stuff that wouldn't have got done otherwise.

The whole GNOME Platform Bindings 2.6.0 release should be out today or tomorrow. We're just waiting for a couple of modules to be released.

Munich blogs

Googling gave me a Munich Blog U-Bahn Map (that's me up by Josephsplatz) and an aggregator site. They live among us.

Non-english languages can create non-english cultural situations. Outside, in the real world, you have to choose the right form for the right person at the right time, and they'll be offended if you use the wrong one. I have at most a 50% chance of not offending someone.

But in every German workplace the people use either Du (informal) or Sie (formal), though some perverse places do still use both depending on hierarchy/status. I don't think it's that the people are either particularly friendly or standoffish, it's just that choosing one form for everyone removes the stress of choosing the form every time. And then, being impolite is re-defined as using the wrong form, even if the wrong form is the polite Sie form.

There's some blog entries about that here. At the end, someone talks about a company where the people address each other as “he”. That makes me smile, because I think life should be more like quirky short stories.

Back to Bayern!

General

After a lot of wandering around Munich, looking at a lot of random places, I finally found an apartment – on Schellingstrasse in Schwabing. It's not the Glockenbachviertel, but oh well. It is, however, the classic clean white, geometrically-perfect, empty, german apartment. Now I need to try not to throw too much money away at IKEA.

I already ordered DSL so the year of internet-deprivation should be over next week.

libsigc++ 2 and gtkmm

I just released versions of gtkmm and co that use libsigc++ 2. Everything seems to work, and the syntax is incrementally better – no more numbers such as Slot0<>, Slot1<>, etc. Martin Schulze has done a wonderful job maintaining libsigc++ 2 and put a lot of effort into getting it and gtkmm ready in time. I critize everything and everyone but I can't find a single fault with what he's done. That doesn't feel right.

Bindings API freeze has been delayed by 2 weeks due to the GNOME schedule slip of 2 weeks. So, that gives everyone one more last chance to get changes in and test stuff properly. That's actually the ideal way to do API freeze sometimes – keep saying it's the last chance and keep sounding like you mean it. However, schedule slip is exceptional and I wouldn't bet on it ever happening again.

Location

Uncategorized

Yesterday I left my perfect little Häuschen and I'll be in a Pension when I get back to Linz. I'm in Nuernberg all this week, then I plan to walk around the alps for a week or so – Probably the Dachstein, and probably nothing too serious because the weather is becoming dangerous.

BookCrossing

I find bookcrossing fascinating. Anything that connects cyberspace to the real world starts to look like a phenomenon. I hope that the recent word-of-mouth and activity is the start of a great success. I love to look at the lists of locations for cities that I know. For instance, Munich, Linz, Nuernberg, London. There are people out there, acting dangerously like individuals.

GNOME release team

GNOME 2.4 is in the last stages now, as stable as you'd expect an incremental time-based release to be. jfleck is working on the release notes again, so we can make a suitable hooha about the final release.

There's a hard code freeze (not for translation and documentation) that prevents any nasty instability creeping in when we don't have time to fix it. At this point we always get lots of freeze-break-requests. Most of them get approved and that's OK because the point is to force people to think very carefully, slow down, prioritize, and work with the relevant groups. We just check that they've considered what they should consider and talk to whoever they should talk to. Our response rate seems a bit better this time but I do always worry that, because we use a private mailing list, people don't see the queue of requests. They might think that they are just being ignored and they can't see how the process is working for other people.

At this stage, it seems to be the translators who are most active. I'm really impressed at the firm, considered way that menthos has been dealing with the string freeze-break requests. The GNOME internationalization/translation project is a great example of how a large group of people can build something together because they have the benefit of working withing a clear structure that functions only according to their needs.

I'm officially stepping down from the release team after 2.4. My reasons are

  • I try to do the stuff, or push for the stuff, that doesn't get done otherwise, and that's stressful.
  • Between my recent paid-work overtime, vagrant lifestyle, and connection problems, I can not give the time that I would like.
  • Hopefully I've documented us a bit more and made the process a little clearer, so I don't need to stick around to do more of that. An important part of that was making it very clear how people can get involved.
  • I strongly believe that people should not stay in positions of power for too long. We don't have much real power, but I have been able to make a fuss without people telling me to hush, a privilege that few of us deserve more than others. I hope that the release team membership continues to balance between continuity and flux, so it has the benefit of fresh ideas, attitudes, and perspectives while energising contributors and spreading the time-based release-process religion.

I will be missing out on the exciting GNOME 2.5/2.6 phase, which would have given ample opportunity for abuse of power:

  • You should see a questionnaire to the lists soon which will form the basis of some rough aims/roadplan for 2.6 and 2.8. It's like a higher-level How-To-Help lists of things to do.

  • GTK+ 2.4 will make a big difference, allowing us to make sense of the GNOME API that's been a bit confused recently. Some of that will probably wait for GNOME 2.8, but hopefully it will start in 2.4. I want to say “This is how it's done.” , rather than “Some people do this, some people do this.”. It should also make HIGification much easier, and of course it'll have the file selector dialog that Joe Slashdot has been going on hunger strike for.
  • The new modules that didn't make it into GNOME 2.4 (e.g. the media player and the keyboard switcher) should be ready for 2.6 and probably 1 or 2 more, so this could really be the GNOME that starts to look frighteningly complete.

But instead I can get back to the pleasant job of wrapping the new GTK+ 2.4 API in gtkmm and sharing in the resultant glory. Hopefully I'll do some actual hacking on GNOME itself.</a></a>

Going to Linz, Austria

General

I’ve been back in Munich for the weekend, but I’m about to leave again for Linz, Austria for another week of training – on a proprietary C++ GUI toolkit for mobile phones. It looks like I will continue to work in Linz afterwards, but it might yet be Frankfurt. Linz seems pleasant and it could be nice to be there during the summer.

I used the connection-less time to fix the memory management in mysqlcppapi, something that I’ve been meaning to do for the last year. I also updated Glom to use the latest version, and fixed a few more regressions left over from the port to gtkmm2. This also showed a libxml++ problem so I fixed that and released a new version.

Matthew Tuck provided some fixes for some remaining “Save Changes?” problems in Bakery caused by the GUI-abstraction change. It’s nice to see these fixes automatically available to all applications built on Bakery.

Returned from a week in Munich

General

I just returned from a week in Munich, with a brief yet intense visit to the Austrian alps. Now I feel alive again.

And I’ve booked my one-way ticket back – 2 weeks from now. There’s still a few details to work out, such as finding a new contract. But that looks more likely there than in London. And I’d prefer to be there while I’m looking. Luckily, a friend has a place to rent, so that’s part of the problem solved. It’s good to make the decision finally. I’m even getting more serious about perfecting my language skills, aiming to read some German literature in the original. I think I can make this work. It’s a risk, but one worth exploring.

A gnome hacker friend recommended me for a very interesting open-source job in Barcelona. I had to reject it in the end partly because of some ethical worries, but felt annoyed by my own principles. The gtkmm mailing list also started getting emails from people working at defence companies, and I am still not sure whether it’s right to answer them. For now I will as long as it’s clearly helpful to others too.

More real-world friends seem to be reading this diary now. That’s so much more efficient than a regular relationship.

I’m about to buy a Dell Inspiron 4150 to run Linux. Tell me now if that’s a bad idea. Maybe now I’ll be able to get my life under the baggage weight limit.

Taking the train through France

General

I’m taking the train through France on my way back to the UK, in Brittany at the moment. I should be in London tomorrow
but my PC will arrive a week later. Leaving Munich was hard,
but I guess I`d better get on with it.

For a moment there it looked like things were about to get
better. I had a speaker-phone interview for a contract but
quickly realised that they expected me to do it in fluent
german and they only cared about crufty MFC Windows coding.
Probably the worst interview I`ve ever done – a definite no
sale. Apparently one
of my references said I spoke german fluently. That was nice
but not actually helpful. Gotta get back on track.

Uraeus published his interview
with me. I didn`t say anything much new, but it was nice to
have the opportunity to give a gtkmm status
update to the wider community.

Back from my quick tour of eastern europe

General,

I’m back from my quick tour of eastern europe, Munich to Dresden to Berlin to Wroclaw to Krakow to Budapest to Prague
to Munich in less time than it takes to see anything much.
I’m back in
Munich for a couple of days to sort out the bureocracy of
moving. I managed to meet danielk and
frehberg in Berlin and
cactus in Budapest. I spend lots of time
talking and working with Daniel online but I hadn’t actually
met him before. I’m still surprised by his youth – he
clearly has a great future ahead of him if the German
educational system doesn’t waste too much of his time. It
was also cool to see Cactus in his own environment. I
noticed that all 3 of us have no real idea what direction
our lives should take and we’re not really enthused at the
paths that we’re on, but we do all believe in
GNOME and gtkmm. What this means,
I don’t know.

I’m working with only internet cafe access now, but I’m
glad to see that the gtkmm mailing list is
lively
without me.

I cancelled my diving trip to Croatia because I got
hit by the annual hayfever lack of breath (or I might be
allergic to all of Poland, it’s possible), so I should now
be in London before the end of the month. I have some
bearable 9-5 work lined up – details to be announced.

My time in Munich seems to be over.

General

My time in Munich seems to be over. I’ve been burning money while I look for a contract here or somewhere else
nice in Europe, but things just aren’t working out. Last
year there was too much contractor work and now there’s
hardly any. My appartment’s lease is up so that’s made the
decision for me. I’m making plans to go back to Britain,
where there should be more work. This was my worst-case
scenario, but I have to do it because every safety net and
bridge not burned and contact kept has fallen through. I’m
even thinking that I’ll have to get a regular 9-5 job, but
I’m going to look for contracts in the UK first.

I’ll drive back
leisurely through France at the end of May, if they haven’t
closed the borders by then. But first I’ll
take a quick look at eastern europe, visiting
cactus in Budapest along the way. Then I go
to Croatia for a few days diving. Then I’ll take a rental
car north to the coast, where we’ll swap everything to my
friend Glenn’s car, buy some cheap booze and head back over
the channel. I’m going to stay at Glenn’s place in Bedford
for a while. If you know Bedford, or any generic English
town, and if you have any idea what Munich is like, then
you’ll know that I don’t look forward to the change of
lifestyle.

Losing the appartment also means that I lose my
incredibly fast T-DSL connection, so I’m trying to get as
much architectural gnomemm stuff done as
possible. I expect to be
barely online for a few weeks at least, but hopefully I will
have left a foundation for others to build on until I’m
back.

I’m enjoying the overall unixyness of my new contract

General

I’m enjoying the overall unixyness of my new contract, though I’m really beginning to hate having to use the
eccentric Sniff+ to generate all of our makefiles. This is
just silly, but in the isolated world of this development
department this is actually more standard than the gnu auto*
tools. In particular it has a real problem coping with QT’s
moc prepocessor, handily proving my point that non-standard
stuff messes other stuff up, particularly other non-standard
stuff.

I’m surprised to discover that QT/KDE doesn’t have any
Document/View framework. They do strongly advise the use of
this pattern, but you’re supposed to do all the work
yourself. I didn’t look at QT/KDE when I built
Bakery, because I didn’t want it to influence
my design or code. Now I find that, instead of building
equivalent functionality, I actually built better
functionality.

In real life, the climbing is going well and I’m getting
some ability back. I’ve been experimenting with using a
mailing list to organise a group of climbers in Munich,
hoping that it’ll work for real life just like it does for
open source projects. It seems to be working so far.