Planet GNOME-NL

digiplace.nl: Ubuntu 12.04 Alpha 2 is verschenen

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:02:00 +0000

Vandaag is de 2e Alpha release verschenen van Ubuntu 12.04 “Precise Pangolin”. Volgens de release notes werkt deze alpha ondermeer met de 3.2.0-12.21 Ubuntu kernel, een nieuw upstart en een sterk verbeterde versie van Unity. De officiële release datum staat gepland voor 26 april. De 1e beta verschijnt op 1 maart. Je kan een alpha 2 versie van Ubuntu 12.04 hier downloaden.

Ruben Vermeersch: Awesome details

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:14:23 +0000

I like small details in software. Here’s a nice one I spotted the other day:

The Amazon Kindle app for iPad changes its background depending on the hour of the day. It even has some very nice effects, for instance, when switching to the night view, a falling star flies by.

Small details and nice polish shows your users that you care. Don’t be happy when it works, go the extra mile.

Pascal de Bruijn (pmjdebruijn): Color Management (On Linux)

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:34:07 +0000

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what color management is, what it is supposed to do, and most particularly how to use it on Linux. While most information below is generically applicable, in cases where I have to be specific I’ll focus on Ubuntu/GNOME/Unity.

The first thing to get out of the way is the simply question what color manament is supposed to do for you. Color management is used to get consistent and reliable results from device to device to device. So if I take an image with my color managed camera, and display it on my color managed display and print it with my color managed printer it should look nearly the same everywhere. This means it doesn’t per-se make your image look better (whatever that may mean for you). Also what color management can’t do for you is make crappy equipment better than it is. Any color management solution always has to work within the bounds of the equipment it is managing. Of course any color management solution tries to compensate for a device’s limits as best it can, but there are inherent limits. When these limits are hit, colors aren’t accurately reproduced anymore.

Now we need to get some terminology straight. Calibration is modifying a device’s characteristics to match a specification (for example changing brightness of a display). Characterization is recording the devices behavior for correction in software. These terms are often incorrectly used interchangeably (even by me, excuse me when I do). The end result of characterization is a (standard) ICC color profile.

While pretty much any device can be color managed , I’ll focus on displays for the rest of this article.

Now to color manage a display you need a device that can “read” (characterize) your displays characteristics. To characterize your display there are two types of devices you can use: colorimeters and spectrophotometers. Colorimeters are the most common device to characterize displays, as they are fairly affordable (100-200 EUR range). Colorimeters do have their limits, they are in essence just a very special purpose digital camera with only a handful of pixels. While I personally never had any issues, I’ve read about older colorimeters having trouble with new kinds of display technology like LED backlit displays, and some entry level colorimeters may not work as well with professional wide gamut displays (more on that later). The other option is a spectrophotometer, these devices are rather pricy, entry level spectrophotometers like the ColorMunki Photo, are priced slightly below 400EUR (if you see any device priced significantly lower, it’s likely that the device is not a true spectrophotometer). Spectrophotometers actually read a full spectrum of the light they receive, which means it produces a lot more detailed information. This means spectrophotometers are unlikely to be fooled by new technologies. Most spectrophotometers also include a reference light source, which means they can illuminate (for example) paper, so they can be used to profile printers (combined with ink & paper) as well.

So now we’ll need to explain some more concepts. So first I’ll tell you how silly talking about (for example) RGB 245/0/0 really is. Imagine owning a car, and you’re stuck with an empty tank. So using your last few drop of petrol you go to a petrol station. Say you live in Europe, and you say to the attendant, I’ll have 40, so the attendant fills up your car with 40 Liters of petrol. If someone living in the US says the same thing to an attendant at a US petrol station, they’ll get 40 Gallons of petrol. So, you’d say, well I did tell you properly, it’s RGB… But RGB really doesn’t mean anything at all. Since RGB just tells you, you are defining colors in three components: red, blue and green. It doesn’t say anything about what the reddest red is, the greenest green is and let not forgot about the bluest blue. To define this, the concept of colorspaces was created, a colorspace defines the range of colors a device can reproduce, this is also called a device’s gamut. RGB colorspaces are defined in CIE XYZ colorspace. They do this, because XYZ colorspace encompasses all colors the average human eye can see. All RGB colorspaces are a defined as a subset of XYZ colorspace. More importantly in the late nineties two of the most important colorspaces were defined: sRGB (by Microsoft and HP), and AdobeRGB (by, erhm… well… Adobe). sRGB was more or less defined as the average common denominator of most affordable displays. These days anything not explicitly defined a in different colorspace is assumed to be in sRGB. On the other hand, AdobeRGB was defined to encompass much more colors, with it’s main goal of covering most colors professional printing solutions could cover.

Next to defining RGB to be in a colorspace, there is still the issue that the human eye does not experience light in a linear fashion, so we need gamma encoding to make images not look like a murky mess. These days gamma 2.2 is universally accepted as a standard for displays. There are some caveats though. I own a cheap netbook, and it’s display for example seems to have a native display gamma of about 1.8, which means it lacks contrast.

And then there is the issue of whitepoints, since there is no such thing a “just” white. For most purposes, a white point of 6500K (this is at least true for both sRGB and AdobeRGB) is good as a standard neutral white. Higher temperatures in Kelvin make a display look blue (common with laptop displays), and lower temperatures in Kelvin more a display look more yellow.

And last there is the question of luminance, which is a snazzy term for brightness. If you work isn’t color critical, just put your display to a comfortable level (usually not too bright), if your work is color critical, it’s common to calibrate your display to 120cd/m2.

That said, there are some common issues to address. As I said the result of characterization is an ICC profile. ICC profiles usually have the file extension of .icc or on Windows .icm. Depending on the software which generated the profile, profiles can either be version 2 or version 4. And at least on Linux (but also true for older proprietary software), many programs may not properly apply version 4 profiles, so it’s best to stick with version 2 profiles for the time being. Luckily ArgyllCMS, the premier open profiling suite generates version 2 profiles by default.

Also, you need to be aware that most web browers aren’t color management aware (Safari & Firefox are the exception when properly configured). The W3C specified that “the web” should be in sRGB. This basically means that you should only upload sRGB images to websites, if you upload images that are not sRGB, they may not look as intended to your potential viewers (depending on which browser they use). The common problem is that people upload AdobeRGB images to the web, and they get complaints that the images look desaturated (since the web browser is assuming them to be sRGB, even though they are not).

Now back to display profiling, there are several ways to accomplish this on Linux. I’ve talked in the past about manually doing this with ArgyllCMS, which is a suite of commandline tools. There are however some front-ends available. The two most important ones are dispcalGUI and GNOME Color Manager. Both tools have their own target audience, dispcalGUI caters to advanced users who really know color management inside out. While GNOME Color Manager caters to entry level users, and tries to make everything as easy as possible. To be blunt, if everything in this article isn’t really obvious to you, your best bet is probably GNOME Color Manager. GNOME Color Manager generally provides sane defaults, and guides you through the process using a Wizard *cough* Druid (or whats-it-called?)…

Next some information on the general anatomy of display profiles. Display profiles in particular have three important components. There is the VCGT, the TRCs and the XYZ matrix. The first bit, the VCGT, also often called the VideoLUT, is a lookup table which is designed to correct your display’s whitepoint and potential aberrations between the R, G and B channels. The VCGT is loaded into your X11 driver, and only works if your driver is in 24 bit mode. When the VCGT is being loaded into X11 (usually in the login manager or just after logging in) you should see the colors of the display shift a bit. The VCGT is the only bit of the profile which is beneficial to all applications (as it’s applied by X11), the other two parts have to be actively applied by the application (if properly configured, more on that later). So next we have the TRCs which basically models your display’s gamma curve. And last the XYZ matrix determines what maximum red, blue and green are for your particular display. It’s possible to have an XYZLUT instead to get more detailed correction, however I’d never recommend this, as not all applications properly apply an XYZLUT.

Since the last two parts (TRC+XYZ) need to be applied by your color management aware applications, they need to be properly configured. To make this easier there is something called the XICC specification, which allows an “active” profile to loaded into X11 as well, this is very rudimentary though, as it just means the file is being loaded into the _ICC_PROFILE atom (which is basically like an environmental variable), so it can be easily picked up by color management aware applications. Applications most commonly use the LittleCMS library on Linux to apply the TRCs and the XYZ matrix.

GNOME Color Manager (via GNOME Settings Daemon) makes sure that a profile’s VCGT gets loaded into the X11 display driver, as well as setting the _ICC_PROFILE atom. You can check if the _ICC_PROFILE atom has been properly set using xprop:

# xprop -display :0.0 -len 14 -root _ICC_PROFILE

It’s known that proprietary (nVidia/ATi) drivers can cause problems, also dual head setups can complicate things.

Now, some applications do color management by default (assuming the _ICC_PROFILE atom has been properly set), this for example includes Eye of GNOME and Darktable. Other applications seem to ignore the _ICC_PROFILE atom by default, like Firefox and GIMP.

To check if a profile is being applied, you need to good test image to evaluate, I can highly recommend SmugMug’s Calibration Print for this. In GIMP’s particular case, load this image into GIMP, and go to Edit and Preferences. Go to the Color Management section. Then check the “Try to use the system monitor profile” box while looking at the image, in most cases you should see a change (if not use xprop to check the _ICC_PROFILE atom), and more importantly you should be able to distinguish the top gray patches from each other.

Last there is the issue of images that were adjusted on uncalibrated displays, which is true for probably 99% of all images on the web. If the author had a low contrast unmanaged display, it’s likely he might have increased contrast in a particular image. When you take a look at that image on your color managed display (with proper contrast), it may look too contrasty. And on the flipside, if the author had a high contrast unmanaged display, it’s likely he might have decreased contrast in a particular image. When you take a look at that image on your color managed display (with proper contrast), it may look devoid of contrast. So it’s not weird to have discrepancies between managed and unmanaged setups.

With the above text I hope to have shed some light on color management in general and some of the particular issues regarding it’s use on Linux.

digiplace.nl: Android 4.0.3 (ICS) op je HTC Sensation

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:11:58 +0000

(Dit artikel is een vervolg op het eerste artikel dat hier staat gepubliceerd. Uiteraard geldt ook hier dat het opvolgen van deze instructies volledig voor eigen risico is). Deze handelingen werden uitgevoerd op een Ubuntu desktop computer. Handleidingen voor onder Windows zijn hier te vinden.

Android 4.0 (ICS) op je Android telefoon.

Na het succesvol uitvoeren van de zgn. Recovery S-Off en het installeren van een Recovery tool op mijn HTC Sensation was ik tevreden over de gebruikte custom Roms. Er worden regelmatig nieuwe versies aangeboden via bijvoorbeeld dit overzicht: http://www.htcsensationroms.com/

De laatste tijd duiken daar ook Roms op voor Android 4.0.3 Die zijn zowel te verkrijgen met óf zonder HTC Sense 3.6.

Helaas kan je niet zonder meer dezelfde werkwijze als voorheen gebruiken. Er zijn nu eerst extra stappen noodzakelijk om die Android 4.0.3 Roms te installeren. Als je dat niet (goed) doet loop je een serieuze kans om je telefoon te “bricken”.

Er zijn twee extra stappen te ondernemen:

Installeren van een nieuwe Recovery image én het zgn. Super CID maken van je telefoon.

CID staat overigens voor “Carrier IDentification. Deze identificatie bepaald welke software geïnstalleerd kan worden op je telefoon. De Super CID heeft als voordeel dat je telefoon iedere Rom, ongeacht de gebruikte (providers) firmware zal accepteren.

Voor je gaat starten ga je eerst op je toestel bladeren naar instellingen, applicaties, Ontwikkeling en plaatst een vinkje bij USB-foutopsporing. Daarna ga je terug en naar het onderdeel Energie en verwijderd het vinkje bij Snel opstarten.

Nieuwe recovery installeren

Op dit moment heb je Recovery – v.5.0.08 nodig. Die is verpakt in een bestand met de naam PG58IMG.zip is o.a. hier te vinden. Zorg ervoor dat dit bestand wordt verplaatst naar je SD card van je telefoon. Zet daarna je telefoon uit. Start vervolgens je telefoon op door de volumeknop naar beneden te drukken en tegelijkertijd de powerknop in te drukken.

Soms werkt dat niet, dat is mede afhankelijk van welke custom rom je op dat moment draait. Soms kan je kiezen voor telefoon herstarten en dan wordt er een keuzemenu gegeven om naar Recovery te booten. En je kan altijd nog een app installeren “Quick boot” of gebruik maken van de adb setup (die volgt hierna).

Als je dan in bootmenu bent aangekomen doe je een volume UP en krijg je vanzelf de vraag “Do you want to start the update”. Die update duurt even en als alles klaar is kan je de telefoon herstarten en daarna (niet vergeten) het PG58IMG.ZIP bestand van je sdcard verwijderen.

Maak je toestel geschikt voor SUPER CID

Download adb tools voor Linux. Pak ze uit en plaats ze in een map “adb” in je eigen Home map. Open vervolgens een terminal en ga naar die map toe (cd adb).

Sluit je telefoon aan via usb aan je computer. Laat gewoon in “opladen” modus taan.

Tik in:

./adb devices

Dat commando moet een terugkoppeling geven van jouw telefoon met daarin o.a. het serienummer.

Als dat niet gebeurd doe je het volgende:

sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/99-android.rules

tik je wachtwoord in en plaats de volgende opdrachtregel in het tekstbestand in:

SUBSYSTEM==”usb”, SYSFS{idVendor}==”0bb4″, MODE=”0666″

en sluit daarna dit bestand af. Start daarna je computer opnieuw op en voer opnieuw het commando ./adb devices uit.

Als het dan wel netjes meldt kan je verder.

Tik vervolgens in:

./ adb reboot-bootloader

Daarmee wordt je telefoon opnieuw opgestart en start op in de bootloader van je telefoon. Op het scherm staat een rood blokje met daarin vermeld “fastboot USB”

If it doesn’t you can Manually put the phone in the bootloader/hboot mode
Navigate to fastboot by pressing volume down and pressing power button to select (power off > vol down + power on)
It will take you to the fastboot bootloader screen on your phone
Connect your phone via USB
Your Screen should now read fastboot USB

Tik in je terminal vervolgens de volgende opdrachten in:

./fastboot oem writecid 11111111
./fastboot reboot-bootloader (wacht tot het is rebooted)
./fastboot getvar cid (moet bevestigen dat het gaat om 11111111
./fastboot reboot

En daarmee ben je klaar. Vanaf dat moment kan je elke custom ROM installeren op de gebruikelijke manier (zie ook het 1e artikel). De Recovery tool is nu grafisch en touch ondersteund.

Welke Custom ROM?

Goede vraag, lastig antwoord. De ontwikkelingen gaan soms dagelijks door. Ik heb zelf goede ervaringen met

Elegancia ICS Rom Series

InsertCoin ICS

Maar dat zijn dan wel ROMS met HTC Sense 3.6. Dat is prima natuurlijk. Toch vind ik het ook leuk om ANdroid zo puur mogelijk te krijgen. Dat gaat erg goed met behulp van deze ROM:

Virtuous Inquisition v3.0.0 :: AOSP-Experience Senseless ICS (4.0.3)

Ik had wel problemen met het toetsenbord (priegelig en geen ondersteuning Nederlandse taal). Maar in Market kan je Go Keyboard vinden en daarmee werd ook de juiste taalmodule aangeboden.

Al met al een geslaagde operatie. De nieuwste Android met gezichtsherkenning, uitstekende spraak herkenning, energiezuiniger dan veel andere ROMS en het ziet er uitstekend uit.

Vincent van Adrighem (adrighem): Zarafa is de rising star

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Het Duitse TecChannel houdt een lijstje bij van de populaire groupware-pakketten. Zarafa staat daar nu op de tweede plaats. Joepie!

digiplace.nl: Toegang naar XS4ALL Webdisk

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 21:23:39 +0000

Onlangs werd bij xs4all de beschikbare webruimte vergroot naar maar liefst 10 GB. Zoveel ruimte vraagt natuurlijk ook om een toepassing. Je kan bijvoorbeeld besluiten om daar ook je bestanden of backups op te plaatsen.

WebDAV

Gelukkig wordt er bij xs4all daarvoor een speciale toepassing voor aangeboden. Die toepassing wordt Webdisk genoemd en dat is feitelijk een zgn. WebDAV uitbreiding van het http protocol. Dankzij dit protocol kan je de beschikbare ruimte toewijzen aan je computer waardoor het lijkt dat die ruimte gewoon bij jouw computer hoort.

Je kan op verschillende manieren die ruimte aan je computer koppelen. Zelf gebruik ik het door een verbinding te maken onder Nautilus. Als de verbinding dan eenmaal tot stand is gekomen leg ik dat vast in een bladwijzer.

Je opent daarvoor Nautilus. Met CTRL+L open je de locatiebalk. Tik daarin:

davs://jouwgebruikersnaam@webdisk.xs4all.nl/jouwgebruikersnaam
vervolgens geef je het wachtwoord op van xs4all en de verbinding is gelegd. Die leg je vast in een bladwijzer.

De verbinding is veilig én snel!

Pascal de Bruijn (pmjdebruijn): My Notebook Display Is Too Bluish

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 18:59:22 +0000

I’ve been posting a fair amount of photography, imaging and color management lately. While colorimetry can be a good solution to display issues, but a lot of people don’t want to take it that far.

So say you’ve just gotten a new notebook, and like many notebooks the display looks a tad blueish, and you don’t want to invest in a full blown color management solution. There is a fairly simple way to address this issue at least to an extent, and it’s called xgamma (please note that xgamma might not work if your X11 setup is in 16bit mode, which is very unlikely on a modern system).

Now before making any changes it’s a good idea to get a good image to evaluate any changes with. I can highly recommend the Smugmug Calibration Print. So open the calibration print in your favorite image viewer, and do:

# xgamma -rgamma 1.0 -ggamma 1.0 -bgamma 0.9

You should see your display shift in color. Lots of notebook display also tend to lack contrast, so in theory you can use xgamma to compensate for that too:

# xgamma -rgamma 0.9 -ggamma 0.9 -bgamma 0.8

Again check the calibration print again, make sure you can clearly distinguish all the grey patches at the top of the image.

Now when you reboot your machine these settings will be lost. The best way I’ve found to automatically apply these settings seem to be via what’s called XDG Autostart, it’s basically a set of .desktop files that are run during session startup. Most big desktop environments (GNOME/XFCE/KDE) support these.

So, put the following into /etc/xdg/autostart/xgamma.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Set display gamma corrections
GenericName=Set display gamma corrections
Comment=Applies display gamma corrections at session startup
Exec=xgamma -rgamma 0.9 -ggamma 0.9 -bgamma 0.8
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=

Now reboot, and see your gamma settings being applied at during each new X11 login.

Please beware that the above correction are ballpark corrections, for real accuracy you really need to do proper color management.

Ruben Vermeersch: Mono at FOSDEM 2012: Schedule announced!

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:00:19 +0000

The schedule for the Mono devroom at FOSDEM 2012 has been finalized:

(11:00 – 11:45) Enough Debian packaging knowledge to hurt yourselves slightly less than you do already (Jo Shields)
(12:00 – 13:00) Mono – State of the Union (Miguel De Icaza)
(13:00 – 14:00) *** Lunch break ***
(14:00 – 14:30) Gluon (Federico Di Gregorio)
(14:40 – 15:25) Banshee: Past, Present, Future and the Crazy stuff (Bertrand Lorentz & Olivier Dufour)
(15:40 – 16:25) IronPython: Bringing the dynamic world to the CLR (Carlos Alberto Cortez Guevara)
(16:40 – 17:30) MonoGame (Dominique Louis, Dean Ellis & Kenneth Pouncy)
(17:45 – 18:15) XWT (Lluis Sanchez)
(18:30 – 19:00) MonoMac (Miguel De Icaza)

Full details (with talk abstracts) should be available on the FOSDEM website. As always, if you want to see a talk, show up early, once the room is full, you’re out of luck!

Date to put in your agenda: Feb 4, 2012.

Martijn Koedam (qball): Ubuntu annoyances

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:33:08 +0000

I have been having a lot of annoying with the latest ubuntu… Help is welcome:

A list of some of the annoyances:

Printing to print-server that requires samba authentication. This worked fine in 11.04 and 10.04.. In 11.10 it never authenticated. In the end I had to use a custom backend that uses smbclient directly. It shows the same auth. popup, but printing works.
Nautilus keeps drawing my background.. Even if I disable it in dconf-editor. Very very annoying.
gajim does not start with python error about keychain..
Strange lockups off the laptop on shutdown.
Printing directly to color laserjet fails. It keeps telling me printer is busy, works fine with same settings from 11.04.
if I disable wifi and turn it on again (using HW switch) I have to type: nmcli nm wifi off and nmcli wifi on a to get it working again.
lightdm shutdown button does exactly nothing.. always have to switch to terminal to shutdown.
etc.

It is that we use ‘ubuntu’ as sort of ‘default’ at work, but I am considering switching to something else..

With the last several releases things I use for work got worse and worse every release. It became harder and harder to use openbox+tint2 as desktop, etc.

Vincent van Adrighem (adrighem): the pirate bay

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:00:00 +0000

The Dutch Copyright protection organization BREIN has obtained a verdict that forces two major ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay domains and gives them the right to submit future domains/IP addresses to be blocked in the future without court order. This makes me think...who is responsible for these things? Who should be responsible? An analogy make my ramblings more clear.

Martijn Koedam (qball): IfThenElse: Added some documentation.

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:58:17 +0000

It is only a beginning, but it can be found here: http://api.sarine.nl/ifthenelse/ifthenelse/IfThenElse.html.
If you have requests let me know. (on github)

Olav Vitters (bkor): Mutter and GNOME shell 3.3.3

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:44:23 +0000

Mutter 3.3.3 and GNOME shell 3.3.3 as seen on Mageia Cauldron:

Martijn Koedam (qball): IfThenElse: A new file format

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 12:54:32 +0000

Because of some complains I got about the file format (xml, hard to handwrite) and the extra dependency on GTK it added, I wrote my own TinyBuilder that parses ini style files.

So an example in the current version would be:

^?View Code INI

[OutputWatch]
type=OutputWatch
kill_child = true
cmd=dbus-monitor interface=org.gnome.ScreenSaver
fire_regex=.*member=ActiveChanged.*
action=CheckScreenSaver
 
[CheckScreenSaver]
type=ExternalToolCheck
cmd=gnome-screensaver-command -q
output-compare=The screensaver is inactive
compare-old-state=true
then-action=EnableGajim
else-action=WorkHourCheck1
 
[WorkHourCheck1]
type=TimeCheck
hour=8
minute=30
then-action=WorkHourCheck2
else-action=DisableGajim
 
[WorkHourCheck2]
type=TimeCheck
hour=17
minute=30
then-action=DisableGajim
else-action=AwayGajim
 
[DisableGajim]
type=ExternalToolAction
cmd=gajim-remote change_status offline
 
[AwayGajim]
type=ExternalToolAction
cmd=gajim-remote change_status away "Leave a message after the beep" 
 
 
[EnableGajim]
type=ExternalToolAction
cmd=gajim-remote change_status online

Martijn Koedam (qball): IfThenElse: Looking for somebody to write a gui

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 19:51:29 +0000

I am looking for somebody that can write a small gui for IfThenElse.. Basically it should allow users to draw a flowchart, edit properties on nodes and generate parsable format data for me.
I looked at goocanvas, and it seems very suited for this. I don’t have time todo it myself (though I _realy_ want too), I have to much to code/maintain at the moment anyway.
So interrested in IfThenElse and wanting to learn/experienced in for example goocanvas, contact me: #gmpc @ irc.freenode.org or qball@gmpclient.org.

Martijn Koedam (qball): Putting IfThenElse to work

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:49:13 +0000

I blogged previous about IfThenElse.. It is a very simple tool, but combined with random other programs can become a fun and powerful tool:

The following script locks my screen, puts jabber status on away when I turn off the lights in the room. Unlocks the screen when turning the lights back on.. Also when I start vlc/totem/mplayer it will set my jabber status to away “watching a movie”.

This is all described in the following xml file:

^?View Code XML

<interface>
	<object class="IfThenElseTimerTrigger" id="lights_timer">
		<property name="timeout">5</property>
		<child>
			<object class="IfThenElseMultiAction" id="main_multiplier">
				<child>
					<object class="IfThenElseChain" id="lights_chain">
						<child type="if">
							<object class="IfThenElseExternalToolCheck" id="check_light">
								<property name="cmd">./Scripts/domotica_check_light.sh</property>
								<property name="true_status">1</property>
								<property name="false_status">0</property>
								<property name="compare_old_state">true</property>
							 </object>
						</child>
						<child type="then">
							<object class="IfThenElseMultiAction" id="multiplier">
								<child>
									<object class="IfThenElseExternalToolAction" id="lights_off_action">
										<property name="cmd">gnome-screensaver-command -a -l</property>
										<property name="kill_child">false</property>
									</object>
								</child>
								<child>
									<object class="IfThenElseExternalToolAction" id="lights_off_action2">
										<property name="cmd">mpc -h 192.150.0.106 stop</property>
										<property name="kill_child">false</property>
									</object>
								</child>
								<child>
									<object class="IfThenElseExternalToolAction" id="lights_off_action3">
										<property name="cmd">gajim-remote change_status away</property>
										<property name="kill_child">false</property>
									</object>
								</child>
							</object>
						</child>
						<child type="else">
							<object class="IfThenElseMultiAction" id="lights_on_action_multi">
								<child>
									<object class="IfThenElseExternalToolAction" id="lights_on_action">
										<property name="cmd">gnome-screensaver-command -d</property>
										<property name="kill_child">false</property>
									</object>
								</child>
								<child>
									<object class="IfThenElseExternalToolAction" id="lights_on_action2">
										<property name="cmd">gajim-remote change_status online</property>
										<property name="kill_child">false</property>
									</object>
								</child>
							</object>
						</child>
					</object>
				</child>
				<child>
					<object class="IfThenElseChain" id="movie_chain">
						<child type="if">
							<object class="IfThenElseExternalToolCheck" id="check_movie">
								<property name="cmd">./Scripts/check_movie.sh</property>
								<property name="true_status">1</property>
								<property name="false_status">0</property>
								<property name="compare_old_state">true</property>
							 </object>
						</child>
						<child type="then">
							<object class="IfThenElseExternalToolAction" id="movie_on_action">
								<property name="cmd">gajim-remote change_status away "watching movie"</property>
								<property name="kill_child">false</property>
							</object>
						</child>
						<child type="else">
							<object class="IfThenElseExternalToolAction" id="movie_off_action">
								<property name="cmd">gajim-remote change_status online</property>
								<property name="kill_child">false</property>
							</object>
						</child>
					</object>
				</child>
			</object>
		</child>
	</object>
</interface>

Martijn Koedam (qball): Waldo 2

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:57:32 +0000

Another run, as you can see it is developing differently here:

I always find it fun to watch how it develops.

Martijn Koedam (qball): GMPC 11.8 Win32 Release

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 15:15:04 +0000

Thanks to Avuton, there is now a working windows 32 build of GMPC 11.8.

You can download it here:

Portable app: http://download.sarine.nl/Programs/gmpc/11.8.16/GmpcPortable_11.8.16_English.paf.exe

Installer: http://download.sarine.nl/Programs/gmpc/11.8.16/gmpc-11.8.16-win32.exe

Files: http://download.sarine.nl/Programs/gmpc/11.8.16/gmpc-11.8.16-win32.7z

Again, big thanks to avuton for building these.

Martijn Koedam (qball): EvO – Image vectorization using evolution

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:49:02 +0000

I promised to put this code online, so here it is. EvO. A small program that (with very crappy results) uses ‘genetic’ algorithm to vectorize images.

It is based on this blog post: http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-programming-evolution-of-mona-lisa/

I never finished it to produce nice results like the above blog post, but I had fun time writing it.

It is written in vala. Code can be found on github: https://github.com/DaveDavenport/Evo

An example (waldo): (see full gallery here)

../evo --help
Usage:
  evo [OPTION...] Evo

Help Options:
  -?, --help           Show help options

Application Options:
  -i, --input          Input file
  -j, --threads        Number of CPU threads to run
  -p, --population     Size of the popution (default 16)
  -n, --initial        Initial file
  -r, --render         Render file
  -w, --width          Output width
  -h, --height         Output height
  --output-png         Output png instead of svg

Martijn Koedam (qball): If Then Else

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:51:37 +0000

I wrote a small tool. in the past day. called IfThenElse (Yes needs a better name).
The idea is simple:
You have a trigger, for example a timeout.
So for example every 10 minutes check the network state.
When the network state is connected, Check every 2.5 minutes google reader for unread messages.
When there are unread messages show a status icon…

Or in image form (this is generated from a working example):

The whole thing is based on a one ‘main’ program that calls external scripts to function. The program itself is written in Vala, uses GtkBuilder to dynamically load ‘flows’ like the above one.

The main goal in the future is that I can do things like, pause the music when skype calls come in. Notify me every 10 minutes when there are items on my todo list. etc.

The program is not ready for use, but I am looking for some input/help.

In a list:

Current input format is a GtkBuilder file. This nicely ‘matches’ the structure of the above flow (it is just an xml file). But is not very user friendly to write.
So we either generate a gui to generate the chains? (should be easy, just allow user to draw a flowchart) or come up with a better file format.
Use Cases. This would help me decide what needs to be added. At the moment I have a timer trigger working, I can execute external programs for the check. Execute external programs as action or show an status icon..
Write examples helper scripts? (allow directly calling of python scripts? javascript? using libpeas?)

Please mail me (qball@gmpclient.org) or contact me on irc #gmpc @ irc.freenode.net.

Code can be found here: https://github.com/DaveDavenport/IfThenElse

Pascal de Bruijn (pmjdebruijn): Darktable Unity Progress

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:14:04 +0000

Usually I don’t do a lot of “real” coding for Darktable, but I had some time on my hands today, and I implemented basic Unity integration for Darktable. Since I wasn’t familiar with libunity, nor was I really familiar with the depths of Darktable code let alone CMake, the implementation took me about 2 hours.

That said, have a look at the results:

You should have seen a video here. That probably means your browser or aggregator probably doesn’t support HTML5 video. Please try to view the video on the original page or upgrade to a recent version of Firefox, Chromium or Opera.
You can also download the video for offline viewing if you prefer.

By the way, the bug I mentioned at the end of the video has been mitigated, which is a chic way of saying I kludged it so you won’t be bothered by it. But it’s not truely fixed.