Older blog entries for AlanHorkan (starting at number 144)

14 Dec 2004 (updated 29 Sep 2006 at 13:36 UTC) »
The GNU Image Manipulation Program, a.k.a The GIMP
If I were a wiser man and wanted an easier life I would not get myself involved in dicussions like these (and again about the name). I've recently noticed an increase in the number of people complaining about the name of the GIMP and for the first time someone was bothered enough by the name to file a bug report requesting the name of the GIMP should be changed.
Despite knowing from the start that it was a losing arguement and was likely to be contentious I wanted to know once and for all why the name was so important and why patches that made it easier for others to change the name for themselves would not even be accepted. Note that I am not trying to get the project itself to change name as this would be far too complicated and require changing all sorts of code and documentation and the website, and I knew it was extremely unlikely this would ever happen. All I was asking was why patches that would allow users to reconfigure the name more easily would not be accepted. Sven Neumann was kind enough to clearly explain how the brand was important and how they wanted to keep it strong and that even making it easier to change the name would might hurt the strength of the brand. It was also made clear that they did not wish to encourage commercial development of the GNU Image manipulation program.
The dicussion also taught me a new meaning of the word gimp, as I never knew it was used to describe a type of "narrow flat braid or rounded cord".
All things considered it went fairly well - for a discussion that no one really wanted to have - but I'm glad I brought it up and that we now have clear and definitive answers for the next time anyone asks about changing the name of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (i.e. it is never going to happen and if you want to change it you absolutely will need to fork or at least maintain your own patches).
Ha ha ha ha ha! Hilarious.
Microsoft normally makes me cry out of frustration but this makes me laugh.
11 Dec 2004 (updated 1 Dec 2005 at 19:14 UTC) »

Over the past few weeks I've done quite a few things but not written about them here.

I went to hear Senator John McCain speak at Trinity College Dublin as a guest of the University Philosophical Society. I rejoined the University Trampolining Club. I met beautiful people and made friends with strangers. I went ice-skating. I watched the Duellists, the Wraith, and probably a few other films I cannot recall right now. I'm also helping choose the Splash screen for version 2.2 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

Grand Old Party
Last year Republican and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich came and spoke to the University Philosophical Society (the Phil for short). Mr. Gingrich was a consumate politician, well spoken and very slick and able to quickly respond to any comments off the cuff.
The crowd was much bigger for Senator John Mc. Cain easily filling the Ed Burke lecture theatre (the largest in Trinity) but unfortunately his prewritten introductory speech was fairly dry, I don't imagine he had the opportunity to rehearse it much. Although not entirely his fault I admit I was falling asleep during this part of his address (I had run straight from a Trampolining session and hadn't eaten in hours) but things got much better when it came to questions and answers from an interviewer and the audience. I'd have to say I think Newt Gingrich was a slightly better speaker but what struck me as remarkable about John Mc Cain was that unlike most politicians he was hardly evasive at all and actually answered the questions asked (wherease Mr Gingrich was very evasive).
This was particulary note-worthy because just the previous week our own Taoiseach Bertie Ahern* had spoken at the Phil but shamefully absconded without allowing any opportunity for questions and answers. Protests had been considered but the more pragmatic approach of actively engaging in dicussion was chosen instead so quite a few people were furious to be so rudely ignored and the event exploited as a photo opportunity. While most guests are in a hurry to dodge questions McCain actually requested that the questions and answer session continue and go over time.
Aside from being refreshingly forthright about his opinions Senator McCain also managed to be funny and although I believe he was reusing an old joke (from the Tonight Show with Jay Leno I was told) they were at least new to us.

As a prisoner of war I was kept in the dark and fed on scraps. Why would I want to do that again?
the response of Senator John McCain when asked if he would ever consider becoming Vice President.
Mr. Colm Green listed some of the slanders that the Bush campaign team had thrown at Senator McCain during the 2000 presidentail race and asked which of these insults was it that convinced him to help campaign for Bush in 2004? Always the pragmatic polician Senator McCain didn't provide the Bush baiting the audience had been hoping for. He replied that he thought the candidates were very similar and that his voting record shows he agrees with Bush more often than he agrees with Kerry and that he considered Bush was the better candidate. He also made it clear that despite his disagreements that he did agree with Bush on many issues and that he would be doing his constituents a disservice if he were to still hold a grudge about the 2000 presidential campaign.
Senator McCain was asked what he might have done differently after September 11th and he made very diplomatic comments about not second guessing things with perfect hindsight and pointed to the success in Afghanistan but of the things he said the one that I found most interesting was his desire to encourage people in to voluntary public service and he suggested that he would have pushed for people to sign up to the Peace Core and to fight terrorism from the bottom up by making the world a better place. I feel I should mention that someone in the audience made a specific point about explaining how the Irish people had gone from having the deepest sympathies for Americans after September 11 to thousands of normal ordinary people protesting on the streets against George W. Bush and there was not anti-Americanism so much as their protest was against George W. Bush (a point of view which I am pretty sure almost half of American voters understand).
The evening was sponsored by Diagio (makers of Guinness) and there was a grand old party** after the meeting. There was a selection of free drinks available and all kinds of snack laid out on the table, even a cheese plate and crackers! This was by far the most up-market reception I had ever seen at the Phil. The free Guiness was good so I can only assume it was that last pint of Budweiser that finished off the end of the evening that required I make a call to God on the big white porcelain phone.
The Trinty News covered the visit of John McCain to Trinity

* Taoiseach is an Irish word literally meaning leader, and the political office is equivalent to Prime Minister.
** I shouldn't need to explain this reference, but in case anyone is in any doubt I am well aware what it means.

Trampolining
Trampolining is a lot of fun and harder than it looks. It also happens to be one of the few activities that fits in with my timetable. When I'm not feeling sore and a little overstreched in muscles I hardly knew I had, I am feeling a lot healthier as a result of the extra exercise and I have gotten to know a good crowd of new people (although some of them worry me, like Karl the Christmas Decoration Kleptomaniac). As the group now has three Alans there is a threat of my getting a dubious nickname.
The group went ice skating last night, as the temporary ice rink was nearby to where I live I went along to watch. As I had thought the tickets were all prebooked I didn't expect to get the chance to go skating (and I'm permanently penniless at the moment anyway). In a wonderful gesture of Christmas spirit a women who had hurt her back and was unable to go skating with the rest of her office party very generously gave me her ticket and I was out in the ice like a flash.


Thursday was the Phil Christmas party and Kathleen twisted my arm and convinced me to enjoy the free booze and chocolate biscuits. There were lots of young and beautiful people there, with all the new fresh faces I was momentarily reminded of my age and the realisation how Trinity was in many ways completely different from when I started but in others still very much the same.

7 Dec 2004 (updated 22 Apr 2005 at 17:45 UTC) »
Ants and Bees
Normally I loathe acronyms because so often they are completely unnecessary and merely allow the author to be a little bit lazier and make things more difficult for their audience to understand. Scientists and Engineers have a habit of using complicated techinical words to make themselves seem smarter and to exclude otherwise intelligent people when in fact their inability to explain the more complex words in simpler ways shows their lack of intelligence. Computer Science is something that is "easy when you know how" but has a very steep learning curve until you eventually do figure things out, so it is particularly annoying when people needlessly complicate subjects with pointless acronyms and horde some piece of knownledge because they got there first. Sometimes I have cringed with embarassment at the tragic comedy of lecturers going on at great length to do little more than expand acronyms and explain moderately complicated English words.
Despite all that there are times when acronyms can be used effectively. Terms like Laser, Radar and Scuba are all fairly easily pronouncable and have come to stand on their own so much so that people are hard pressed to explain what they stand for (and even in the case of Scuba, Aqua Lung is a far more expressive term).
The reason I mention this is that in the Sunday newspapers I read about a survey by Novell about managing business security. They describe two signficant categories of people who are the cause of many security problems and they manage to do so using memorable acronyms that both describe the behaviours of these groups and serve as a memorable metaphor at the same time. One group was described as Apathetic Non-Techinical Staff (ANTS), the other group (with a slightly more contrived acronym) was described as Busy Empolyees Endangering Security (BEES). Having seen those attitudes before I was well impressed that someone was able to sum up the problem in so clear and succint a way. Whoever at Novell that wrote the report did an excellent job and that is a very significant amount of writing skill and serious thought to be putting into that kind of work.

This Slashdot discussion about literacy in coporate America furthers the point that time saved by sloppy writing is far outweighed by the how it wastes other peoples time.

Odds are I've made many grammar, spelling and punctuation errors in this message. That's Moens Law of Corrections for you.

Budget Day
Wednesday was Budget day (in Ireland, and Britian had theirs this week too) and it seems the Budget is available in OpenOffice.org Write format.
Almost makes me want to read it.
2 Dec 2004 (updated 1 Dec 2005 at 19:16 UTC) »
Christmas Songs
As Christmas time approaches my heart goes out to all those involved in the retail trade who have endless loops of Christmas music inflicted on them by thoughtless employers. Although there are some excellent Christmas songs they are outweighed by the many truly terrible Christmas songs and even the best songs very quickly become annoying. The following are a short list of Five of the best and Five of the worst Christmas songs, listed roughly in order of excellence and crapulence respectively.

Five of the Best Christmas Songs

  • Fairytale of New York by The Pogues, Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl
  • Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade
  • I wish it could be Christmas everyday by Roy Wood with Wizzard
    I'm sure some people would list this one among the worst Christmas songs but despite being overplayed sometimes it is a good song and I like it.
  • Stop the Cavalry by Jona Lewie
    (Irish musician Mundy recently did a nice cover version I quite like for a local radio station).
  • Santa Claus song by Kevin Bloody Wilson

Five of the Worst Christmas Songs

  • Jingle Bell Rock by Destinys Child
    Tragically the made a whole album of horriffic hip-hop interpretations of Christmas Songs

  • Fairytale of New York by Ronan Keating
    The bland and irritatting Ronan Keating spews out a bland and irratatting homogenised version of this classic. The most tragic thing about it that this version often gets played instead of the original by some whom prefer its inoffensive blandness.

  • Last Chrismas by Wham
    Once should be enough.

    (Okay, so the list doesn't currently include Five of each but as the Christmas season is only just started I am sure I'll hear a few more soon and finish the list. Feel free to send suggestions of the worst Christmas songs to horkana at tcd dot ie).

    Not Hot
    Some joker put a picture of Bertie Ahern (our Taoiseach, the Irish equivalent to Prime Minister) on Hot or Not. For a change he is not wearing an anorak and doesn't look all that bad but bizarrely he managed to get rated 7.2 out 10. Please help give him the really low score he richly deserves.

  • Gnome Games
    Made a massive and highly technical 6 letter patch to Gnome Games! Wow, I'm so l33t!!!
    The game Five or More, (glines, a colour lines game) has a preview widget labelled "Next Balls" which traditionaly made sense but not anymore since a set of various shapes was added to make the game usable for users with colour vision problems. I changed the label to "Next". It is trivial but gotta start somewhere. Gnome Games 2.9.2.1 includes the change.
    Dia is for drawing Diagrams
    It is a bad sign if you ever feel the need to read the user manual of a program but I decided I really should take a look at it and try to bring it more up to date. When I noticed the incorrectly spelled pnumatic (sic) I decided it had to be done and I got stuck in, making the changes I that had been at the back of my mind for a long time. During the last fortnight I put several sessions of a few hours work each time into reading and rereading the documentation and went about gradually rephrasing, refining and adding to various sections. As I went along it became increasing apparent to me that there was potentailly a massive amount of room for improvement but suprisingly this didn't bother me and I was very satisfied by the improvements I was able to make the problems I was able to fix.
    Writing documentation helped me see more things in Dia that need improving. It forced me to learn how to use functionality I had never properly looked into and it helped me discover new functionality I never even realised existed. Having used Dia for more than a few years, I was surprised how much functionality was buried in the context menu of the Diagram Tree, there are all sorts of functions for sorting the object list and hiding (and showing) objects of specific types. I will have to give more thought as to how Dia can be improved and how more of this functionality can be brought forward and made more easily discoverable.
    Here's hoping I can get Dia to build and learn more about GTK so I can start making some of the changes I really want, there are so many ideas that it should be relatively easy to borrow from applictions like the Gimp and Inkscape, and more than a few long standing bug reports that could do with some attention.
    The important point is the sense of satisfaction I got from working on Dia that I have not felt in a long time.
    Dia Hompage at Gnome.org
    Advogato Project Page for Dia
    Jury Service
    Today, for the first time I found myself in the Central Criminal Court, located at the historical Four Courts building by the Liffey. Despite or perhaps because of being a beautiful historical building it was small and unpleasantly cramped and the 100 or so potential jurors all with our green letters in hand were very likely breaking several fire safety regulations. The trials being dealt with were murder trials which didn't fill me with enthusiasm. There were five trials on the court docket, two of which required juries and one of which required the judge to issue a bench warrant for the arrest of the absent defendant. I was interested how much emphasis the judge placed on making it clear that the accussed was to answer the alleged crimes.
    Before the first jury was selected the Judge remarked that it was an unusual case in that it would be extremely short, only one day, tomorrow Tuesday (and he made it absolutely clear that he had a flight on Wednesday morning so there was absolutely no way the trial would run over). The Judge also stressed the importance of jurors informing the court if there was anything that might prevent them from serving before they were sworn in. I was among the twenty picked out of the hat for this jury and found myself sitting in jury box. It was kind of unnerving but as the jury only required 14 people and only one or two jurors were declined I was soon back in the crowd waiting for the second jury to be chosen.
    The second case consisted of several counts of attempted murder and violence and was expected to take as much as three weeks, starting the following Thursday. Many people were quick to make their excuses, some of them particularly vauge but given the large crowd to choose from the Judge kept his life simple and let off anyone who asked. About 50 people later they eventually had their fourteen jurors and much to our surprise we thanked for our service and told we would not be required to return every morning for the rest of the week, as had been expected.

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