the phrygian cap

All the credit to Steve Losh


A novice was learning at the feet of Master Git. At the end of the lesson he looked through his notes and said, “Master, I have a few questions. May I ask them?”

Master Git nodded.

“How can I view a list of all tags?”

“git tag“, replied Master Git.

“How can I view a list of all remotes?”

“git remote -v“, replied Master Git.

“How can I view a list of all branches?”

“git branch -a“, replied Master Git.

“And how can I view the current branch?”

“git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD“, replied Master Git.

“How can I delete a remote?”

“git remote rm“, replied Master Git.

“And how can I delete a branch?”

“git branch -d“, replied Master Git.

The novice thought for a few moments, then asked: “Surely some of these could be made more consistent, so as to be easier to remember in the heat of coding?”

Master Git snapped his fingers. A hobgoblin entered the room and ate the novice alive. In the afterlife, the novice was enlightened.

snappy is an open source media player that gathers the power and flexibility of GStreamer inside the comfort of a minimalistic Clutter interface.

The snappy development team is proud to announce it's second release: 0.3
codename: "Rosebud", Citizen Kane



Some of the changes you will notice are:

• UI redesign with nicer icons and layout.
• Has a cool logo
• It is a GNOME Project
• Sample video player of the GStreamer SDK
• Drag and drop media files into snappy
• Support for subtitle streams
• Ported to GStreamer 1.0
• Launcher from the desktop
• Works in Windows, OS X and Android
• Multi-screen Desktop full-screening
• Support for media queues
• Code style fixes for readibility
• Option to run without a User Interface
• More bug fixes than we are proud of :P

Give it a spin and let us know how it can be even better for you.

download a tarball: bz2, gz or xz
clone the git repo
packages in distributions will be updated soon


Thanks to all who helped in snappy's 0.3 creation!


Disclaimer: No narwhals were harmed during the making of this release. One got homesick and an other disappeared for days in a The Wire marathon, but that's about it.

Independently of where you stand in the Vim versus Emacs infamous battle, it is hard to deny that Vim is an amazing text editor, but did you knew about Vim's peculiar license? Vim is charityware, with a GPL-compatible license. It's distributed freely, but they ask that if you find it useful you make a donation to help children in Uganda through the ICCF.



Bram Moolenaar, author and maintainer of Vim, helped establish a foundation called ICCF Holland that works to support a children's center in Uganda. He encourages users to consider making a donation to this foundation, which he serves as treasurer of and visits the site in Uganda nearly every year to monitor the center's progress.

You can become a registered user by sponsoring 10 euros or more, and you can vote for new features. Amazing.

Inside Vim try :help sponsor, and :help uganda, for more information.

Might the pixel be on it's way out and dead in 5 years? This project developing a vector based video codec predicts so. The project team consists of researches of the University, Root6 Technology, Smoke & Mirrors and Ovation Data Services.

The pixel isn't perfect. A grid simplification of the original image, at any scale bigger than it was intended the image looks blocky. To that add the aliasing problems regarding edges and lines that don't match the grid nicely, and even at the original size things can look chunky.

The transition from pixel based bitmaps to vector based images has been happening for a long time in the static image world. This team of researchers is saying this is also a better way to record moving images and that it will replace the pixel in five years.

The team developed something called a vector-based video codec that attempts to overcome the challenges of a typical vector display. A typical vector display features drawn lines and contoured colors on a screen (rather than the simple, geometrical map of pixels we're all accustomed to). But it has problems--notably, areas between colors can't be filled in well enough for a high-quality image to be displayed, the researchers say.

Professor Phil Willis, from the University's Department of Computer Science, said: "This is a significant breakthrough which will revolutionize the way visual media is produced."

Read more here.

Lyra Howell, a talented artistic friend, coined the word 'hipstercrite' during a recent conversation. I couldn't help laughing at the pure genius and wordsmith-juggling skill of her creation and now want it to become part of our urban lingo:

hip·ster·crite
/ˈhipstərkrit/

Noun
1. A person who hates on so-called hipsters while actually being a hipster himself and denies it.


I secretly wait for any conversation where I can drop and share this new gem into the urban vernacular.

Apparently the word already exists in urban dictionary. Proving once again the rule that if it doesn't exist on the internet, it doesn't exist. Damn you internets full of hipstercrites, even the domain (which I wanted to buy) is gone.

Dennis Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language and co-creator of UNIX operating system, had been curating some old DECtapes, and he offered some of the artifacts. Unfortunately existing tapes lack interesting things like earliest Unix OS source, but some indicative fossils have been prepared for exhibition.

"As described in the C History paper, 1972-73 were the truly formative years in the development of the C language: this is when the transition from typeless B to weakly typed C took place, mediated by the (Neanderthal?) NB language, of which no source seems to survive. It was also the period in which Unix was rewritten in C.

In looking over this material, I have mixed emotions; so much of this stuff is immature and not well-done, and there is an element of embarrassment about displaying it. But at the same time it does capture two moments in a period of creativeness and may have some historical interest.

Two tapes are present here; the first is labeled "last1120c", the second "prestruct-c". I know from distant memory what these names mean: the first is a saved copy of the compiler preserved just as we were abandoning the PDP-11/20, which did not have multiply or divide instructions, but instead a separate, optional unit that did these operations (and also shifts) by storing the operands into memory locations. [...]

"prestruct-c" is a copy of the compiler just before I started changing it to use structures itself.

It's a bit hard to get really accurate dates for these compilers, except that they are certainly 1972-73. There are date bits on the tape image, but they suffer from a possible off-by-a-year error because we changed epochs more than once during this era, and also because the files may have been copied or fiddled after they were the source for the compiler in contemporaneous use.

The earlier compiler does not know about structures at all: the string "struct" does not appear anywhere. The second tape has a compiler that does implement structures in a way that begins to approach their current meaning. Their declaration syntax seems to use () instead of {}, but . and -> for specifying members of a structure itself and members of a pointed-to structure are both there."

mortdeus, from Hacker News, has mirrored these files into a github repo where you can view these files.

Read more at Dennis Ritchie's original article.

R. Eric Collins made this fascinating and alarming movie to visually demonstrate the dramatic decrease in Arctic sea ice happening right now.

"When I was born, in 1979, the minimum summer sea ice extent in the Arctic was about 17,000 cubic kilometers. In 2012, it was less than 5,000 cubic kilometers.

The red points show weekly estimates of sea ice volume in the Arctic through time, from 1979 to today. The scale is from 0 to 35,000 cubic kilometers. There is a seasonal expansion of the ice during winter and a shrinking during the summer. There is no evidence for a sea-ice free summer in the past 700,000 years of Earth history. The next one is predicted to take place in the next 5-30 years.

Sea ice volume estimates by PIOMAS show a long-term decline in sea ice volume in the Arctic. The summer sea ice minimum now contains only 20–30% of the ice volume observed in the last 1970′s.

This phenomenon has been termed the “Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral” and is directly related to anthropogenic greenhouse warming of the atmosphere.

It is possible that the Arctic has reached an irreversible “tipping point” from which it cannot recover the lost ice."


Read more and comment at the original source.

Since the first few days of the project; the idea for the snappy logo was a crocodile, one of those jokes made while having a few too many beers with other developers and just stuck.

Thanks to the awesome artwork of Troy Sobotka which was able to run with the simple idea of "make it a crocodile", snappy now has a very cool logo. snappy eats everything pouncing fast. Lame pun, I know.

The logo:


snappy. snap! snap!

Logo with project name:


Stay tuned for the announcement of the 0.3 release. Meanwhile, use the comments section to joke, mock or make even lammer puns about the crocodile.

Thanks Troy!

Let me start first by congratulating the organizers for the best planned Guadec in modern history. It was spectacular! Though some hipster old-schoolers disgree with me and say that Villanova was the most fun (or Vinylnova), I think they are confused by nostalgia, not being able to handle a little ocean breeze, and just general old age crankiness from not finding shorts that fit. Competitions aside, it is clear that Guadec+beach is the most epic of combos.



...but even the nicest of days with the best of people come to an end. Looking forward to seeing you all again.



That said... where in the world is Duckie?

Jeff and Seif don't know if somebody took him in the airport or if he is lost his way. Not as naive as them, I know the truth, I saw it in Duckie's eyes. Jeff finally found somebody that would help clean PiTiVi's bugs and he wasn't ready to let it go, but Duckie couldn't take PiTiVi's issues anymore. They could bring even the mightiest of men down, and Duckie kept looking at the destination boards with hopes of freedom, waiting for his chance. Luck was on his side that morning, since the guys attention slipped for a moment due to Guadec sleep deprivation and some Norwegian conspiracy, and he went for it.

Run free Duckie! Run free!



Perhaps this is just wishful thinking. We love you duckie.

I was reading the first book of The Losers, where in issue/chapter 2 Jensen is stealing some information from a hard drive in an insurance firm office:



and suddenly I notice...



bash, emacs, and bsd!
I have to admit a had a little nerdgasm.

By the way, I totally recommend this book. Consistently fun over the top action within an interesting caper story.

Good news!
snappy is now in GNOME, and by that I mean:

• Web page: projects.gnome.org/snappy
  
• Source code: git.gnome.org/snappy
  
• Mailing list: snappy-list@gnome.org
  
• Bugzilla: bugzilla.gnome.org
  
• Live: live.gnome.org

snappy is now officially a GNOME project!
You can play with it, discuss it and report bugs all inside the GNOME umbrella... please do, no excuses!

snappy is an open source media player that gathers the power and flexibility of gstreamer inside the comfort of a minimalistic clutter interface.

I'm currently dealing with a very obfuscated and over-engineered codebase, with layers upon layers upon layers. There is always a silver linning though and I finally got around to learning how to use etags in emacs. I can't believe I waited this long to learn this feature, specially since it is so easy.

etags lets you quickly locate a definition by its name anywhere in your code base.

1. First, you need to tag the code. Go to the base directory and run

$ etags `find . -name "*.c" -o -name "*.h"`

This will generate a 'TAGS' file.

2. Let emacs know about the tag file

M-x visit-tag-table [location of the TAGS file]

3. With the cursor on a function call do the following

M-. (which is ALT-.)

This will take you to the function definition anywhere in the entire directory structure

4. Now if you want to go back

M-* (which is ALT-SHIFT-*)


Cool, isn't it? It gets better!
That's not all you can do with the TAGS file. Imagine that you are dealing with very long function names or can't quite remember the exact name. No problem. Type the first few characters of the name, then press M-tab. Either the full function name will appear, or a window will pop up displaying a list of possible completions.

If you like this checkout smart-tab. It allows you to use the tab key to indent and tab complete function/variable names.

** Alternatively, you can use 'make tags' to generate the 'TAGS' file.

I like the *process*. I like writing software. I like trying to make things work better. In many ways, the end result is unimportant – it’s really just the excuse for the whole experience. It’s why I started Linux to begin with – sure, I kind of needed an OS, but I needed a *project* to work on more than I needed the OS.

In fact, to get a bit “meta” on this issue, what’s even more interesting than improving a piece of software, is to improve the *way* we write and improve software. Changing the process of making software has sometimes been some of the most painful parts of software development (because we so easily get used to certain models), but that has also often been the most rewarding parts. It is, after all, why “git” came to be, for example. And I think open source in general is obviously just another “process model” change that I think is very successful. [...]

It’s simply not the end that matters at all. It’s the means – the journey. The end result is almost meaningless. If you do things the right way, the end result *will* be fine too, but the real enjoyment is in the doing, not in the result.

Linus Torvalds

(source interview with TechCrunch)

Completely unscientific benchmark, just to get you salivating for GStreamer 1.0



X = time, Y = CPU%
gst 0.10 and 0.11 from git, vlc 1.1.12, vlc 2.0.1-0-gf432547, mplayer SVN-r33713-4.6.1
test file: video: H.264 - audio: MPEG-4 AAC

(benchmark created by Wim Taymans)

full size


Who said data is cold and impersonal? Who said report sheets are boring?

Nicholas Felton (aka Feltron) is an information designer. Since 2005, he has tabulated thousands upon thousands of tiny measurements in his life and designed stunning graphs and maps and created concise infographics that detail that year’s activities. The results were originally intended for his friends and family, but the “personal annual reports” have found an audience with fellow designers and people that really geek out on seeing lots of data, beautifully presented.

In 2010, Nicholas Felton’s father passed away, and Felton decided to turn his annual report into a full biography of his father. He took 4,348 of his father’s personal records and created an intimate portrait of a man, using only the data he left behind.

When correctly displayed data can be beautiful and fascinating.


full size


[source: 99% invisible]

It is always fascinating when two brilliant minds meet...

Steve Jobs had managed to get Donald Knuth, the legendary Stanford professor of Computer Science, to give a lunchtime lecture to the Mac team. Knuth is the author of at least a dozen books, including the massive and somewhat impenetrable trilogy "The Art of Computer Programming."

When Knuth's arrival was announced. Steve bounced out of his chair, bounded over to the door and extended a welcoming hand.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Professor Knuth," Steve said. "I've read all of your books."

"You're full of shit," Knuth responded.

Are you a college student interested in open source software? what about multimedia? what are you up to this summer? Stop whatever you are doing, and do yourself a favor: apply to GStreamer's GSoC 2012

To find out more about the program visit the GSoC website and pay special attention to the FAQ and timeline.

If you want to take part in Google Summer of Code as a student now is the time to start working on your application. You can either come up with your own idea or get inspired by our ideas list.

GSoC is a great opportunity to join the community, learn a lot, get your name known. All while have a helping mentor during the process and getting paid. It has been said that getting into free software development has a hard barrier to entry, well GSoC is a great side entrance with somebody saving you a seat.



Now that is a cool way to spend the summer.



Edit: nekoyaho demanded I include this picture from last summer. Two PiTiVi/Gstreamer GSoC 2011 students, chatting with GStreamer GSoC 2010 student Thiblahute. Meanwhile having drinks in a Berlin "beach" during the Desktop Summit. Working hard guys. What are those? Margaritas?

I received a very cool thankful email from a snappy user today:

"After testing I quickly found out that Snappy is what I've been looking for ever since I started using Linux, 5-6 years ago.

In my work as an animator I've felt that there have always been a lack of a production quality video player. That is a player that lets me view my clips without getting in the way and gives me full control of playback.
For instance there haven't been a single player that could do frame stepping backwards, I've asked for this feature from all of the players but only got answers like impossible, too much work, why would anyone want that?, etc.
Now snappy is out with exactly that feature. And that is in version 0.2.
Snappy is also targeted towards us professionals. That is reassuring as focus will be on what important to us, playback of video, instead of eyecandy like a gazillion effects.
It fits perfectly in my production pipeline as a tool that does one thing, plays videos, and does it well.

Snappy has been a pleasure to know for the last couple of months.

Thank you!
-David"

... aaand that made my day! \o/
so no, Thank _You_ David

Just like most people on Planet GNOME,



I'm already in Berlin and hanging around, and let me say, the venue is awesome! So if you see me please say "Hi. Howdy do?", I might even have some Collabora schwag to give you. Functional and shiny.

There is no real benefit of using a designated hard drive partition for your swap. You can just use a file, with the benefit this swap space can be temporary or permanent. So if this is a new system or you just need a bit more swap memory for a while, it is very simple, this is what you do:

[1] su -
[2] dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap1 bs=1M count=1024
[3] mkswap /swap1
[4] chmod 600 /swap1
[5] swapon /swap1

bam! that's it. so here it what just happened...

[1] log in as root
[2] create a 1 GB swap file in /swap1
[3] set up a Linux swap area on the file /swap1
[4] set permissions so users can't try reading sensible data from the swap file
[5] start using the swap file

If you want this file to be used for swapping across reboots (permanently), then enter the following line in the /etc/fstab file:

/swap1   swap   swap   defaults   0   0

If you finished the memory intensive task and want the space used for swap back, then use the following command:

swapoff /swap1

Happy hacking! :)