This is the archive for July 2005. Recent posts can be found at the main blog page.

Improving Nautilus

Saturday, July 30, 2005 ★ 18:20 ★ Categories Gnome, Programming ★ Permanent url

The new Nautilus in GNOME 2.12 really rocks. Now it’s possible to expand folders inside a spatial Nautilus window.

Expanded folders

Expanded folders in spatial mode.

Keyboard navigation was a little bit broken, though. Type-ahead find swallowed the +, -, * and / keys, so that they couldn’t be used any longer for expanding and collapsing folders using the keyboard. I filed bug #312046 and fixed it:

Ignore +, * and / when doing type-ahead find, so that they always work.

Special-case the – sign, so that it only works if you previously typed another character.
Why? +, * and / are unlikely characters for a filename, whereas – is very common.

Update: Yay, the patch is committed!

I’ve also cooked up a trivial patch for bug #310546 that removes the dangerous ctrl-backspace keybinding. Accidentally removing a directory if you intended to browse to the parent directory is not funny.

So, that’s 2 patches. I’m not a C programmer and had never seen the nautilus source code, so I’m proud! Hooray for me!

Building GNOME 2.11

Wednesday, July 27, 2005 ★ 00:54 ★ Category Gnome ★ Permanent url

Last night I’ve compiled about half of what will become the GNOME 2.12 Desktop . Checking out the latest version from GNOME CVS, configuring, compiling and installing is made very easy with jhbuild.

Last time I did this was just before the release of 2.10, last March. I remember going through a lot of pain and bunches of build-errors, due to strange auto{conf,make} problems and conflicts with my existing Debian installation. This time almost everything builds smoothly, except for some broken PO files, which I removed from configure.in and didn’t care about.

I can’t wait for this release. Although it doesn’t have many new user-visible features, it’s once again a big step forward. For me, GNOME is already the best desktop one can wish for!

Berlin photos

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 ★ 00:33 ★ Categories Photography, Travelling ★ Permanent url

I’ve uploaded a selection of photos from my trip to Berlin.

Potsdamer Platz

Reichstag

Reichstag interior

More photos can be found in the Berlin photo album. I’d love your comments (by IM or email, address can be found at the about page).

Life is like the seasons

Thursday, July 21, 2005 ★ 01:57 ★ Category Films ★ Permanent url

Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom, better known as Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring made a come-back to my local cinema! Finally had a chance to see this famous Korean film.

The old monk sitting on a pile of wood. Picture courtesy of Sony Classics, ripped shamelessly.

The films shows the four parts of a traditional monk’s life. All parts of the film are shot at the same spot, but in different seasons; the result is a collection of astonishingly beautiful visuals.

Thievery Corporation

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 ★ 18:18 ★ Categories Music, Travelling ★ Permanent url

During our stay in Berlin, we visited a Thievery Corporation gig in Maria am Ostbahnhof, at that time known to us as “Maria am Ufer”. None of the ticket agencies sold tickets or were even able to tell us where to find the club, but after we found out the offical name had Ostbahnhof in it, we managed to get there.

Thievery Corporation

Chill music and nice dancing people surrounding us made us have a really good night.

My Summer of Love

Tuesday, July 19, 2005 ★ 16:33 ★ Category Films ★ Permanent url

My Summer of Love is not worth visiting. That’s about everything I have to say about it. The film is overdone, it’s easy to tell what will happen next, the humor isn’t funny and the story is just plain boring.

Sunbathing teenager girls, the most exciting part of the film.

I repeat: don’t waste your money on it.

Dobrý den!

Sunday, July 17, 2005 ★ 16:07 ★ Categories Photography, Travelling ★ Permanent url

After spending a week in Berlin we continued our trip in Prague, where we spent five days before returning home. The city of Prague is really beautiful. The architecture ranging from Baroque to Gothic makes the city a pleasure to walk through.

Sternberg Palace

I have no intention of sharing all my holiday adventures with the world, so I’ll share some photos instead. Oh, I admit that my holiday photos are a little bit unconventional.

View over the city from the Old Town Hall Tower

People at the Old Town Square as seen from the Old Town Hall Tower

Hmm, I had Beef Goulash for lunch.

More photos will follow after I’ve sorted them out. Update: the photo album is available.

Ich bin ein Berliner

Wednesday, July 6, 2005 ★ 14:19 ★ Category Travelling ★ Permanent url

I’ve been in Berlin for the last couple of days. The city is great and so was (right now it’s raining) the weather. We’ve visited lots of touristic places like the Potsdamer Platz, the Reichstag, the Brandenburger Tor and two impressive sites: the holocaust memorial and a memorial for killed fugitives from the DDR. Shot great pictures; will sort them out later and put them online. (Update: I’ve uploaded some photos.)

At the first day we saw a helicopter moving a couple of boxes to the top of a building. A lot of people were watching and so did we. We didn’t know what was in the boxes, so I asked a police officer. “What’s in the boxes?” I asked. The police officer looked weary at me: “No English…”. So I asked again: “Was ist in die Boxe?” It sounds almost the same, but this time the stupid police officer understood perfectly. People stubbornly refusing to speak English even if they understand perfectly well really get on my nerves.

Right now I’m waiting for My Summer of Love to begin in one of the English-spoken cinemas over here. (Update: I wrote a review)

Was it love?

Saturday, July 2, 2005 ★ 16:35 ★ Category Films ★ Permanent url

Le conseguenze dell’amore is a film that doesn’t fit in a genre. Drama, thriller, maffia, perhaps even comedy?

Paolo Sorrentino made a strange but impressing film about a slightly autistic man living in a hotel. Every week he delivers a suitcase full of money at the local bank. Until, well… all I can tell you is that the end of the film really, I mean really, surprised me. Now go and see this extraordinary film!

I don’t have much time to write, because I’m about to leave for Berlin and Prague.