hesa's Weblog » Free Software

Thunderbird: where’s the fullscreen mode?

sandklef — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:46:39 +0000

On the computer I am currently using the resolution is 1024×600. The width is ok, but the height really requires applications to “behave”. I am using GNOME (since early 2000 something) and Thunderbird. I dare not switch to other softwares since I fear the wrath of Andreas Nilsson (GNOME, Mozilla).

Anyhow, since GNOME is stealing a lot of pixels from me (panels) and Thunderbird does a good job at stealing pixels too I could really do with a full screen mode.

So please Thunderbird developers, Andreas in particular, gimme a full screen mode for Thunderbird.

GNU Xnee 3.11 (‘Jansch’) released

sandklef — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 22:46:10 +0000

We are pleased to announce the availability of GNU Xnee 3.11

GNU Xnee is a suite of programs that can record, replay and distribute
user actions under the X11 environment. Think of it as a robot that can
imitate the job you just did. GNU Xnee can be used to:
    Automate tests
    Demonstrate programs
    Distribute actions
    Record and replay 'macro'
    Retype the content of a file

Getting the Software
====================

   ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xnee/xnee-3.11.tar.gz
   ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xnee/xnee-3.11.tar.gz.sig

or one of the mirror sites as found in:

   http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html

Checksums
===========

  md5sum:
     f2c15ebdda44480ac59c0048a2809f09  xnee-3.11.tar.gz

  cksum:
     1228726175 1788094 xnee-3.11.tar.gz

New in this release
===================

   * Fixed bugs:

     Savannah:
       #30137: gnee crashes on Ubuntu 10.04

     Recording in X.org > 1.11 does not work 

     Fedora / Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 757733

     Mem error when distributing to multiple displays

... and the name 'Jansch'? It's a tribute to Bert Jansch, who died 5 October 2011.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Jansch

Palindrome date today, 2011-11-02

sandklef — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:33:54 +0000

Today we celebrate the fact that we have a palindrome date. If we write the date as YYYY-MM-DD we get 2011-11-02 which is a palindrome.

Another palindrome date, which we only get by cheating by writing the date as YY-MM-DD, we get 11-11-11 (Nov 11, 2011). This date is IMO not a real palindrome day, but really cool. So cool we used it for FSCONS

FSCONS is here soon and the schedule is up

sandklef — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:15:01 +0000

I, and many others, are working hard with FSCONS 2011. Me and some others have been working with FSCONS since 2007. It’s now time for the fifth incarnation of FSCONS. Actually it’s only about 10 days away, depending on when you consider the conference to start. We have some potential start dates:

Nov 10 – Richard Stallman speaks at Runan in Gothenburg

Nov 11 – FSCONS workshops, FSFE Fellowship meeting, FSCONS social event in the evening

Nov 12 – FSCONS presentations, Nordic Free Software Award

Nov 13 – FSCONS presentations

For me FSCONS starts on Friday Nov 11., for no really valid reason. The reason is the cool date: 11-11-11, fact is that the coolness of the date was the primary reason to go for this weekend.

Get on with it Henrik!

Sorry, it’s hard to focus with all the amount of work.

As for every year, I can really recommend FSCONS. This year I am really happy to see more software related presentations than ever. The schedule is up:

http://my.fscons.org/schedule/

To register for FSCONS: http://fscons.org/registration

Nov 11 – FSCONS workshops, social event in the evening

Richard Stallman speaks at Chalmers, Sweden, Nov 10

sandklef — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:50:10 +0000

Apart from being one of the keynote speakers at FSCONS, Richard ‘rms’ Stallman will also speak at Chalmers University of Technology

Thursday 10th of November, 2011

17.00 – 19.00

~~18:00 - 20:30~~

Runan (Chalmers), Gothenburg, Sweden

For more information: http://fscons.org/rms

Nomination period for Nordic Free Software Award closes Oct 22

sandklef — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 13:57:17 +0000

The nomination period for Nordic Free Software Award closes on October 22.

About
The Nordic Free Software Award is given to people, projects or organisations in the Nordic countries that have made a prominent contribution to the advancement of Free Software. The award will be announced during FSCONS 2011 in Gothenburg.

Nominate
Send an email to award [AT] fscons.org (moderated mailing list) with the following information:

* Name of nominee
* Bio of nominee
* Website
* Contact info
* Motivation

Previous Award winners
* 2010 Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson (more info)
* 2009 Simon Josefsson and Daniel Stenberg (more info)
* 2008 Mats Östling (more info)
* 2007 SkoleLinux (more info)

http://fscons.org/nordic-free-software-award

Nomination period open for Nordic Free Software Award

sandklef — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 09:58:22 +0000

Nominate
Send an email to award [AT] fscons.org (moderated mailing list) with the following information:

* Name of nominee
* Bio of nominee
* Website
* Contact info
* Motivation

The nomination period ends October 22

Join the award committee
Send an email to award [AT] fscons.org (moderated mailing list) with the following information:

* Your name
* Your email
* Motivation why you want to join the award committee

List of nominated 2011
Will be presented in October

Previous Award winners
* 2010 Bjarni Rúnar Einarsson (more info)
* 2009 Simon Josefsson and Daniel Stenberg (more info)
* 2008 Mats Östling (more info)
* 2007 SkoleLinux (more info)

GNU Xnee 3.10 (‘Heron’) released

sandklef — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 14:11:22 +0000

We are pleased to announce the availability of GNU Xnee 3.10

GNU Xnee is a suite of programs that can record, replay and distribute
user actions under the X11 environment. Think of it as a robot that can
imitate the job you just did. GNU Xnee can be used to:
    Automate tests
    Demonstrate programs
    Distribute actions
    Record and replay 'macro'
    Retype the content of a file

Getting the Software

  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xnee/xnee-3.10.tar.gz
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/xnee/xnee-3.10.tar.gz.sig

or one of the mirror sites as found in:

   http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html

Checksums

  md5sum:
	193feae64496d8c83ba32ce3994123da  xnee-3.10.tar.gz

  cksum:
	2336257076 1783909 xnee-3.10.tar.gz

New in this release

   The timing algorithm for replay synchronisation has been
   rewritten. This should improve the timing accuracy for application
   such as drawing programs where the time spent in one position is
   affecting the thickness of a dot being painted.

   * Fixed bugs:

     Savannah:
        #33237, Xnee fails to record on RedHat
        #33667, Seg fault (on Ubuntu 11.04)
        #32385: CNEE replay precision
        #32767: Button key to stop recoring
        #32762: no sync option faulty

... and the name 'heron'?
It's a tribute to the artist: Gil Scott-Heron - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Scott_Heron - who recently passed away (May 2011)

Thesis; HW simulators with Erlang

sandklef — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 11:33:05 +0000

Finally read a thesis done by some students that took some of “my” courses in the past, Rickard Olsson and Reza Javaheri. I have previously seen the results from their thesis work so the time it took to read the paer is not due to lack of interest, rather a sign of lack of time.

The thesis is call “Embedded Erlang Simulation”. It contains some interesting views on simulation that I support (it should be possible to simulate almost everything). Due to timing constraints of the thesis and also to fit the “customer’s”, and possibly also their own personal interest they focused on Erlang. This is not in any way a critique of mine, but rather a wish for future research.

In short the thesis is about creating simulators for device drivers and a work flow for developing under Erlang Embedded.I recommend reading it.

This area in computer science is interesting and I am somewhat surprised that so few people in the industry projects I’ve been involved in neglect the possibilities given by a good simulated environment.

GNU Xnee does to some extent a similar thing as they are trying to do. And hey, Xnee is mentioned in the paper.

The software is available, under Apache 2.0, at github: https://github.com/EmbeddedErlang/Embedded-Erlang-Simulation

A pdf versison is available here

OS and IDE stats from Embedded project at Chalmers / Gothenburg University

sandklef — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:11:55 +0000

As most of the previous years we’ve collected some facts on software tool usage from the students during the oral exam of the project Industrial IT and Embedded Systems at Chalmers University of Technology and Gothenburg University.

Question 1. What was your primary IDE/Editor when developing code?

Gedit	22
Emacs and clones	21
Qt Creator	6
Rest	12

Question 2. What was your primary OS when developing code?

Ubuntu	42
Windows	9
Mac	7
Fedora	2

Question 3. What was your primary OS when not developing (write documents)?

Ubuntu	13
Windows	39
Mac	8
Fedora	2