Sometimes Love Just isn't Enough
Sometimes you have to kick the crap out of someone before they
really undersand the kind of love that you have for them. Really.
Man, but what have I been doing recently? I feel so
disconnected from the rest of the mozilla folks. Maybe it's
because I've been hacking on code instead of hanging out on
#mozilla with all the cool folks, making
fun of our product.
I have been making tons of progress with Xft and
it's dogfood
for me, at least on this as-yet-unreleased version of Red Hat
Linux. Of course, the political battle to get it into the tree
will be fun it watch, and there are lots of people on the bug, so
it should be quite a sight.
I want to start making daily builds of this code, but I would
rather wait until xft is in the tree before trying to make builds
out of it. It's just a huge patch that it's painful to keep in an
rpm or something like it without it breaking nearly every day.
Once that's in the tree I can point both barrels at getting gtk2
+ moz in working order and out the door. There isn't a lot
left to do there - at least of the major infastrcture bits. I'm
sure there's lots and lots of bugfixing that needs to happen, but
that will start to fall out as people start using daily builds.
The
first release of Phoenix is out
and I have to say, I'm impressed. Hyatt seems
to be ruling the UI with an iron fist, as a true philosopher king
should. More power to him. The best thing that we can do to make
that successful is to keep the crap that was in
Mozilla-the-browser out of Phoenix and stick to the minimalist
theme that has made Apple the company it is today. Hey, wait.
Uhh. Maybe not.
If they manage to stick to the idea of making it simple for most
folks, and extensible for the folks who are drunk with the power
of their browser, I think that they will only make Mozilla more
successful. Personally, I think the minimalist meme running
through the GNOME community and Mozilla's is the result of the
excess of the previous couple of years and the realization that
making something just work and is easy to use is just as important
as the features that you include. I like it. Eventually my mom
will be able to use this software, and then I can retire from
public service.
On a More Personal Note
I went to Algonquin park and did a few days of canoeing with my
brother and a few other friends a couple of weeks ago. It was
quite nice, if a bit warm. I guess that compared to the
extraordinary cold of the first year that we experienced, it was
welcome, even if my lily white skin did get a little pink on the
last day.
Shona and I have been spending a little money recently. This week
we should get a DirecTV system that includes Tivo. I'm seriously
tempted to add a 120GB IDE drive to the sucker so I can basically
tape a week's worth of shows and not even think about it. Then I
remember that the point of getting this was to improve the quality
of my TV viewing experience, being able to skip over commercials
and actually reduce the amount of TV that I watch. Then I
think again and realize that I'm completely lying to myself and
I'm going to end up watching more TV, not less, and I should get
the hell off my high horse and just buy a drive and an aftermarket
mounting bracket. (Did you know they sell those?) (I also hear
there are 200GB IDE drives around, if they are a bit expensive.
Unreal.)
Shona and I have also been trying to actually give some money to
charity. We're going to try to give to a different charity each
month. I feel guilty every time I buy something like a Tivo
system when there's better things I could be doing with my money.
I mean, real good in the world, not just making the shareholders
and officers of Sony Corp a little bit richer.
I spent Sunday evening playing cards with Joe, Jacob and Phil and
a fun time was had by all, even if Jacob refused to learn
how to play Euchre.
Obviously we need to either find a new fourth or we need to put
Jacob on The Rack and make him learn it.
Survey Says?
NURR.
