Older blog entries for calum (starting at number 22)

Paddy's Day in Dublin

Sunny, windy, expensive, streets too crowded to see or do much. And he was Welsh anyway. At least we got a day off though...

Wireless GUIs

Been working on a draft UI spec for some wireless enhancements to JDS. Barely has the electronic ink dried than Mark has implemented and committed some of it-- what a guy :)

Apparently our household has acquired an EyeToy. I may never be allowed near PES3 again...

Finally joined the wireless age today... albeit in the least impressive way possible. I now have a bluetooth V90 modem so I don't have to trail a cable roud my flat any more :) The Windows driver software for my USB dongle was a pain to configure, though... hope it proves easier on Linux, but somehow I doubt it...

Wow. I haven't written anything here since September :/

Work continues apace on the Java Desktop System... we seem to be working on about 96 different releases at once, and consequently spending lots of time porting features between them when it would be more fun to develop new ones... but hey, it seems to be working so far. Right now I'm putting together a bunch of recommendations from our most recent usability study, which will hopefully make it into the version after next.

Had a brief chat the other day with Seth about moving the HIG to a GNOME-friendly 6-month release cycle... sounds like a good idea to me, although as always I dunno when I'm ever likely to have time to work on it :/

Sounds like we'll will be sending a fair old crowd to GUADEC again this year as well, which is cool... and I think I've managed to get out of doing a talk this year, which is even cooler :)

10 Sep 2003 (updated 10 Sep 2003 at 15:12 UTC) »

Hrpmh, moving house. Don't you just hate it?

Oh, and just to comment on Seth's recent HIG clarification, it's probably fair to say that right now I do bugfixes and general maintenance to the HIG on Sun time, and write any new bits on my own time :)

4 Feb 2003 (updated 4 Feb 2003 at 01:24 UTC) »
Isn't Sky News marvellous?
  • Seven people die in a fancy aeroplane doing something they knew was really dangerous to start with: 48 hours' continuous news coverage, and still going strong.
  • Thirty innocent people die when a bomb goes off in a bank in Nigeria: 10 seconds of coverage, squeezed in before the adverts.
6 Sep 2002 (updated 8 Jul 2003 at 11:34 UTC) »

Not a lot to report work-wise so far this month, just the usual fun and games in the lead up to a code freeze. Testing, bug reports, all the stuff you always think your test team is supposed to be doing rather than your designers and engineers.

There are piles of French and Germans and Americans and Scandanavians and English and Russians at Sun who are always hanging around in the corridors together and having a bit of a laugh. And the women do much the same thing because that's just what women tend to to. It's the same when you wander out of the office for lunch... the walls and benches are lined with all manner of Europeans nattering away in their own fair tongues...

...but where am I supposed to go when I need to speak to someone who knows the subtle difference between mockit and clarty, and understands that a choob isn't for keeping your Smarties in and a stoater isn't a cat who's advanced from catching mice? :o)

Oh, didn't post at all in June or July, did I...

  • June: had my 31st birthday, watched the World Cup
  • July: er... nothing, really

Just back from a three-day break-ette on Guernsey, but back into the swing of things now. Oh, and the wee banana boat made it through its NCT this afternoon, so that's me unleashed on Ireland's roads for another two years, provided Mr.McNealy keeps funding my board and lodgings...

Well, made it back from CHI2002 in Minneapolis safely last week. It's fair to say it's a rather different kettle of fish from GUADEC... although we had a speaker to far outweigh the juggling bloke in Seville-- Stelarc, who suspends himself naked from hooks through his flesh for hours on end, and sticks electrodes on himself that are wired to the internet so other people can move him via his website. Right.

While I was away, Motherwell FC were put into administration... not quite sure what I'd do with my Saturday afternoons if they went out of business, I've been watching or listening to all their games for the past 25 years. Hopefully tonight's fund-raising friendly against Italian Serie A side Chievo Verona will raise a few quid for the coffers...

17 Apr 2002 (updated 17 Apr 2002 at 12:38 UTC) »

I'm getting seriously sick of airports... the Iberia Airlines debacle on the way back from GUAD3C notwithstanding, I'm just back from England yesterday, and at 8am on Saturday morning I'm off to the States again (to help run a workshop at CHI2002) for the second time in six weeks!

GUAD3C was kind of a laugh I guess-- Spanish beer at least has that non-hangover-inducing quality that the Germans excel at! Somehow I didn't come away with the impression that everybody was quite as enthusiastic as last year though... probably because last year we were all looking forward to an all-new shiny GNOME 2.0, whereas this year we were all looking forward to... GNOME 2.0.1.

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