Monument

Cholera

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:07:51 GMT

The scene: A work break room. MARNANEL is getting a cup of coffee from the machine, and CLEANING PERSON is squirting disinfectant into the sink.

MARNANEL: Thank you.

CLEANING PERSON: ...For what?

MARNANEL: For cleaning the sink.

CLEANING PERSON: Cleaning the sink? (She wrinkles her nose in confusion.) You're saying "thank you" for me doing this?

MARNANEL: Yeah, so we don't all die of cholera. Because I don't LIKE dying of cholera.

CLEANING PERSON: ...Cholera?

MARNANEL: And other waterborne diseases! People died of them ALL THE TIME before we started disinfecting sinks and so on. So I'm glad you're cleaning the sink, because it's a horrible way to die.

CLEANING PERSON: It is?

MARNANEL: Yeah! Bloody diarrhoea! Vomiting! And then you die painfully.

CLEANING PERSON: *stares*

MARNANEL: *decides this would be a good place to end the conversation*

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CSS on window borders experimental layout language

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:47:20 GMT

I'm happy to announce the first experimental version of Metacity with support for CSS window borders ("Cowbell"). This work was largely supported by Collabora Ltd.

You can:

download the tarball;

read the documentation (it's not as boring as you might imagine);

review the source history.

This diagram should explain everything, perhaps.

I would especially like to hear from:

theme artists, to let me know whether it's adequately powerful;

anyone else interested in hacking on this with me;

the GTK client-side decoration people, so that we can harmonise the way we represent things;

people who know a lot about CSS and can offer insights into the suitability of the way we represent things;

people who know a lot about the Dublin Core and can offer insights into whether our metadata system uses it appropriately;

maintainers of other window managers (especially Mutter), so we can talk about including CSS support in other window managers;

everyone else, to suggest which of the directions for future development are most interesting.

I think it may perhaps be helpful to set up a Cowbell mailing list, so that we can compare notes on implementations. For example, I haven't written down anywhere how to place an image to the right of the title, which is commonly needed (you use border-image).

Photo © Craft*ology, cc-by-nc.

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Cowbell, Shavian and a sonnet

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:49:38 GMT

I haven't posted for a while. Here are four things:

Collabora have been supporting the CSS-on-window-borders project recently by letting me work on it during work hours. Here is a status update.

Recent updates to shavian.org.uk include a gentle Shavian tutorial and translations of all the recent XKCDs into Shavian.

Many years ago, I wrote a sonnet for use on a server's custom 404 page:
So many years have passed since first you sought
the lands beyond the edges of the sky,
so many moons reflected in your eye,
(familiar newness, fear of leaving port),
since first you sought, and failed, and learned to fall,
(first hope, then cynicism, silent dread,
the countless stars, still counting overhead
the seconds to your final voyage of all…)
and last, in glory gold and red around
your greatest search, your final quest to know!
yet… ashes drift, the embers cease to glow,
and darkened life in frozen death is drowned;
and ashes on the swell are seen no more.
The silence surges. Error 404.

It's been spreading itself around, mostly without my permission, so I'm releasing it under a Creative Commons licence. Fly free, little sonnet! Please feel free to copy it onto your own sites, and if you would, let me know you've done so.

I need to write more of the Maemo tutorials. They will be coming soon. Sorry; things have been busy.

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Ladies and gentlemen, this IS Maemo number five

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:00:44 GMT

I can finally tell you what I've spent the last year working on, and why I've been commuting back and forth to Helsinki. It's a phone that runs Linux (a Debian-based distro called Maemo), and its name is the N900. I've been playing with it for months and I love it. Not only is it a phone and a Linux box in your pocket, it also runs robotfindskitten.

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