With Xorg 6.9, we've split xterm out from the main xorg package and have packaged it directly in its own source package taken from Thomas Dickey's site. He's been the maintainer of xterm for years now, and X.Org has just been pulling his stuff directly for their tree, so this way we skip the middleman. Thomas is also very notably a contributor and regular fixture on Debian lists, which is really cool.

David Mart nez Moreno did the grunt work a while back of making the individual xterm package, and he uploaded a version or two to experimental while 6.9 was sitting there. Now that 6.9 is in unstable (the next revision will hopefully be coming when I wake up tomorrow, btw) we needed the separate xterm package to join it. So today I did a little bit of work updating David's package to Thomas' most recent xterm version (208) and uploaded it to unstable, where it's already built on most arches.

This is the first bit of modularization you'll see, and I'm going to start uploading the more mundane bits of 7.0 to experimental this weekend if all goes well. The main requirement for getting 7.0 in to Debian is to have mesa updated. The package is ready for an NMU, and today I uploaded an NMU of libdrm to update it to the latest version. Once this package is accepted in to the archive, I can update mesa. From there on out, all the pieces will be in place to allow uploads of the modular tree to Debian as needed. Of course, these will go to experimental first until I'm confident in them, but my goal is still to ship them with Etch. Eugene Konev has started doing q&a; on the modular library packages, which will hopefully save us time and pain.

So that's where things stand with us. Once the major bugs are out of the way with 6.9, I'll be going full speed ahead for 7.0.

I'm back from a short vacation without Internet access and thus working hard on catching up with reading emails, RSS feeds etc. etc. Most notable finding so far (which is on my "read ASAP" list): Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists. (via Boing Boing)

Just as a heads-up, gabe.fd.o, its primary MX, is now running postgrey. Some mails may take a while to get through as MXes back off too quickly, so don't be alarmed. If your mailer throws messages away after getting a 451, that's its fault. Remain seated. Please do not panic.

A couple of people have commented to me on the lack of explicit reference to web services or e-business technologies in the XTech call for participation. It's worth explaining why this is so. On web services: I consider the low-level specs here (SOAP, REST, WSDL) now to fall under "core technologies" track, and the higher level stuff (WS-*) to be often vacuous spec-mongering. Also, over the years, the quality of web service proposals submitted to the conference has been notably poor compared to all the other topics. A lot of this was to do with the hype web services received. On e-business, some useful submissions have been forthcoming, but never more than a few. My suspicion is that the OASIS stream of events is more interesting for most people in this space--I'd love to hear otherwise. I do view e-business presentations as on-topic, but I would like to find those that genuinely present something worthwhile. While many people often say they'd like to see more case studies, turnout for these is always low at the conference itself, so I've shied away from them somewhat. The thing with case studies is that they're necessarily related to a domain, and it's easy to for attendees to assume there's not transferable experience to be heard. I guess I don't believe either that all the problems in the e-business space are unique to that area. Identity, federated service location, transactions are all topics that deserve a broad audience. However, I acknowledge that I do not work daily in the e-business sphere and I would dearly love to hear somebody who does do a presentation on why there's really some solid things going on there now. Exchange of best practices is more necessary than ever. More reason not to hive off e-business from the other matters in the conference. For a similar reason I've mixed semantic web topics throughout the tracks as well. If anyone working in e-business didn't get useful knowledge out of XTech, I'd be astounded. Likewise, those working in e-business have plenty useful to say to the rest of the conference.

• only 4 days left to submit a proposal for XTech 2006 (Amsterdam, May 16-19) -- do it now

Matt: Please don't forget you are talking about the language with the "there should be only one way to do it" motto, where you have to "program the way Guido indented it". I also feel much more at home where I can play with the way my program works and looks like. I like whitespace to be irrelevant - Yes, Python is a nice beast alltogether, but you cannot expect much space for personal preferences once you understand how it was designed. And yes, as a Perl guy I often hate the style some of the modules I maintain are written in, but then again... It's the most comfortable style for the main upstream author, the person who will do most work with the beast!
...But anyway... Emacs knows best. I just press tab and it works magically, either becoming a set of spaces or becoming a proper tab. And as long as other people understand what I wrote (which can become messy if some lines have supposedly eight-spaces-tabs and some are made up just of eight spaces), and specially the compiler doesn't barf at me, I'm OK with it.
Using a decent editor helps you a lot when writing Python, YAML or such things..

Yesterday I needed to get a simple task done: scan a piece of paper so that I could email it to someone. Simple enough, as there is a scanner available for use in the grad lab. When I arrived, the lights were turned off and the lab vacant. Walking up to the machine with the scanner attached, I was surprised to see that the screen was locked. This annoys me to no end, and got me thinking about the thought processes of people when they choose open resources. Economics tells us that scarce resources are more valuable. The problem with this is the hoarding of resources - obviously the person who locked the computer was not using the unique resource attached to it, but if economics guided his decision would this be the correct answer? I would like to think not - it is far more valuable to use identical resources which were available (other M$ computers) while leaving that resource available for use by others. This seems to reverse the normal economic idea - you should use the resource which is the most abundant which suits your needs, allowing the scarce resources available to be used by others. Sidenote As it turns out, the user of this locked computer had left the computer locked for a considerable length of time. I left at 9, returned at 11, and returned again at 1 and there was no sign that it had even been used. I got tired of waiting and rebooted the computer, which I justified by the fact that you're not supposed to lock computers for long times in the grad lab. This particular student I do know, and he has taken some of the exaggerations about grad school a little too far - I'm pretty sure he sleeps in the building most nights, which just shouldn't be done IMHO.

The most evil thing in existance today is Thunderbird's option to flag emails as "to do". It prevents things from getting done.

Happy new year One of my Christmas presents was a brand spanking new USB key. For quite a while I’d been planning to put my SSH / GPG keys off onto something like this for some extra security. I’ll write up the exact steps of how I achieved my setup in the sometime next week, but it was all fairly easy. As part of the transition I followed Adrian von Bidder’s guide to multiple subkeys such that I have now a signing key (0×4054AB08) which I keep separately from the private key material of my primary key. My new key fingerprint is below

pub 1024D/59B2D9A0 2005-02-03
Key fingerprint = 6583 A11F 1428 FCDD 65FC C7B5 E0CD 3CDC 59B2 D9A0
uid Matthew G L Brown (Default Key)
uid Matt Brown (Debian Packages)
uid Matt Brown (WLUG Key)
uid Matt Brown (CRCnet Key)
uid [jpeg image of size 4390]
uid Matt Brown (MediaLab Key)
sub 1024g/DF8A0504 2005-02-03
sub 1024D/4054AB08 2006-01-04 [expires: 2008-01-04]

I’ve uploaded the new key to the keyservers, or you can grab it from my key information page. All in all I’m quite liking the new setup, plug usb key in, password dialog pops up for SSH key, enter password, password dialog pops up for GPG signing key, enter password. I then have both keys stored in the relevant agents easily accessible for signing email / logging into machines. Meanwhile my GPG private key is sitting securely somewhere else. I plan to sign all outgoing email from now on. Next step is to investigate libpam-ssh for local authentication so that I don’t have to type 3 passwords whenever I login. Moving House
We’re moving house tommorrow, this means that my DSL connection will be down for a few days while Telecom and my ISP get everything sorted out. Hopefully it will go smoothly and I’ll be back online sometime mid next week.

A friend o’ ne’er do wells,
Got flashbacks to a time in the car;
This master of izzard shells,
Was headed for dinner, huzzah! In a car with those friends did he sit,
Seeking something to consume.
Through the streets of San Fran’ do they flit,
Hunting the sacred legume. But out the car leapt the driver,
And sprints to a restaurant he spies,
Like something out of survivor,
This teamwork, from lord of the flies. For a passenger took up the wheel,
Drove round the corner and carefully parked.
The ending we’re about to reveal,
It simply cannot be left unremarked. The story continues to run,
But the details have to be missed.
Suffice to say, when the regrouping was done,
There was but one tiny twist: They continued their searching for food,
Leaving the rendezvous quiet and still.
Surely they must be unglued,
Walking away from the Earthly Grill? All in all it comes to one fact,
After making that claim on your blog.
Your challenge you’ll have to retract,
Coz to this lyrical prince, you’re a frog.

Well... a week ago I thought, that when I would be back, I would write an other personal blog entry. After I already told you, that I was quite nervy meeting her parents, I could tell you now, that everything went quite well, and that we had quite some fun. But getting back, I was confronted with a not so nice thing, which tainted my mood a bit. So no details, just a complaint. Well, but one step at a time. First a small explanation: I help a bit organizing the DebConf-6. I'm member of the "review committee" whose job was to discuss the proposals we got in answer to our Call for Papers. After that we accepted and rejected different proposals, and didn't get any feedback at all. Well, we did that short before Christmas and then half of us went to holidays. I was one of them, and managed to check my emails from time to time, without receiving any comments about the decisions we made. Therefore I thought everything was quite well, until I retourned. Then I got back, connected to my irc client (where I was logged in all the time, but was marked as away), and saw a small note in my awaylog, asking me for some rational about something mentioned a few lines earlier. I didn't know about what - I just log someone mentioning my name or some keywords (e.g. packages I maintain or am interested in). Sounded somehow important, so I asked back what the questions was. Soon I got informed, that there were complains about a talk proposal we rejected. After a bit confusion (according to my memory and some note we indeed accepted the talk), we found out, that we did a small mistake in the database, so the submitter of that specific proposal got the wrong mail telling him the proposal was rejected. Not a big problem; we could still mark it as accepted and send them the information the other accepted proposal got. So at this point you might wonder, what the big fuss is all about. Well, first of all: The complains about the rejected proposal reached us by luck. Luckily I was in the channel, where the rejection was discussed. Luckily I was connected at that time. Luckily my irssi didn't crashed. Luckily I checked my awaylog carefully. Luckily I was informed about the whole matter. Luckily we could solve the problem. After nearly two weeks I thought everything was fine (and therefore did nothing), it took just two or three hours to solve the problem (most of the time was spent to carefully formulate a difficult mail in a foreign language). Not a big problem at all - although you might wonder why they raised their concerns in a complete other channel on an other network, instead of simply asking us. What I really dislike is the form they used to raise their complains. When they complained they asked if the DebConf was bought by Sun or the committee on crack and similar things. I'm sure they didn't really meant it that way, but after losing a couple of good friends to drugs telling me, I am on crack (or any other drug) is one of the biggest insults you can give me! Wondering if I (or a volunteer project I'm working for) got bribed by a company isn't much nicer. So let me say this: Yes, we rejected proposals. Yes, we rejected even some proposals we found good in some way or an other. Neither have we been on crack nor have we been bribed! We rejected some proposals because they didn't fit to DebConf, were a rerun or had big overlaps with other proposals we accepted. We rejected some round tables, because the one proposing it didn't provided us with useful information: Whom to invite and what to ask. Sometimes we had mixed feelings about proposals; we usually then accepted them if we knew the one who made the proposal is a good speaker, we rejected some where we knew the proposal come from a bad / disorganized / boring speaker. We did that in a public discussion and answered questions by non committee members when they were raised. I really don't think we did anything wrong, beside the small mistake when we rejected a proposal which was accepted, and I think we got a nice mixture for the main track with some really good talks! As said: Telling me I'm on crack is a big insult. Nevertheless I tried to stay calm, tried my best to solve that matter, and later wrote a mail, apologizing for the mistake. Part of that mail was that we didn't liked their way of raising their complains (showing that I knew what they said about us). I expected at least an answer, thanking us for solving the problem, perhaps even a small apology about the insults. But till now - two days later - I didn't received anything, not even a small "thanks" via irc :( Now I just could forget the whole story. But then I saw it again: Someone wondering about the committees decision in the same channel, instead of just asking us! Damn! If you want to know why we rejected your proposal, just ask! Stop griping in unrelated channels. That's just a wast of other peoples time, resulting in nothing but damage to to the DebConf. Update: Small correction: We got some feedback. Liw raised some concerns. His mail was answered 8 minutes after we received it by a committee member. Since he didn't answered I guess he is satisfied by the answer or at least doesn't feel very strong about that point.

A coworker and I were discussing whether we should eventually switch our company servers to Etch or Dapper. As Andreas Barth recently sent out a release announcement with a schedule prediction and goal list, I pointed him to it, and then followed up w/ my own predictions. Looking through the goals, it looks as though the easy stuff has been taken care of while the difficult things remain. This is not to discount the work done by the gcc and X people; I don’t mean technically difficult, I mean the things that have traditionally been difficult for Debian to accomplish. It’s more a question of manpower and motivation; there are plenty of people who want the latest software in Debian, and those people can also complete such work, so it tends to get done fairly quickly. On the other hand, the remaining things in the TODO list are the sorts of things that are not very much fun, or can only be done by a select few people. Point-by-point:
- amd64 as an official arch (and the mirror split as a pre-condition
for that)
Infrastructure work is not particularly fun, and can only be done by a few people. It tends to take a while, as we’ve seen in the past with things like the security queues, which blocked the release of Sarge for a decent amount of time. - sorting out docs-in-main vs. the DFSG
- sorting out non-free firmware
These two will not be fun, and will first require actual decisions about what should be done in each case, followed by actions that a lot of people will object to (that is, the stripping out of documentation from various packages, and the removal of functionality from various kernel drivers; hell, enough people complained when we removed tg3 firmware, imagine how many will complain when a couple hundred kernel drivers get their firmware removed?). The actual work here will require people dedicated to actually seeing a release put out, and will probably result in much unrest. I can’t imagine it will actually go smoothly. I guess we’ll see what happens. With a year to go still, there are a number of ways it could go.
(15:23:24) Andres Salomon: if etch actually releases on that day, i will shit myself
(15:23:40) Wes Chow: should we shake on it?
(15:24:02) Wes Chow: I think you should announce that on the debian dev list and see who takes you up on the offer
(15:24:13) Wes Chow: maybe people will actually push for a timely release just to see that happen!
(15:24:25) Wes Chow: and then you soiling yourself would be in the name of free software


Despite all the political correctness of this day and age, blond jokes still crack me up. Here’s a good one. Remarkably, this one seems to translate to Finnish just fine. It’s not a new joke, so many of you have probably already heard it, but, still … Reminds me, actually, of the magnificient Zangelding.

Sometimes following up on a bug takes you a lot further than you expected. Debian bug #337041 looked like it was going to be fairly straightforward once I upgraded coreutils to figure out what the new IUTF8 flag actually did, since the SSH2 protocol already supports transferring termios flags around. Unfortunately, since IUTF8 is relatively new, it doesn't have a number assigned in the draft connection protocol. Moreover, that Internet-Draft is in the last stages before becoming an RFC and can't be modified any more, and it doesn't include any facility for private-use extensions. D'oh. To add further complication, since IUTF8 is Linux-specific, it's not hard to imagine that some other OS might introduce something with the same name but subtly different semantics, and so the SSH protocols can't just defer to POSIX for the definition but instead have to spell out exactly what they mean. As a result of all of this, it looks like the best way to make progress might be for me to write an I-D myself that creates a channel extension to set or clear IUTF8, and attempt to enlist support from some upstream implementors. I didn't expect bug triage to lead me into the Internet standardisation process quite so quickly!

My vet has written two books on cats, is nominated for Intervet's Vet of the year and is also a very interesting person to talk with: Santiago G. Caraballo.

Ugly pics of scars and post-surgery cats to be uploaded later.

I just read my logcheck email, and one box scared me:

Jan  1 00:59:59 dumbledore kernel: Clock: inserting leap second 23:59:60 UTC
Jan  2 00:59:59 dumbledore kernel: Clock: inserting leap second 23:59:60 UTC

It had two leap seconds. None today though... All the others, running the same software, had only one leap second, on 1.1.

I just came back from the vet. I left Vi and Emacs there and will pick them up after work, as today they will be spayed and neutered (450 EUR total). I am all shaky inside.
My little cats! (Well, not so little, as Emacs started acting like if she was in heat only a few hours before I had to take a plane for my Holidays, so I guess she is not so little anymore, nor is Vi, who seemed completely fascinated by her new behavior. Anyway, my vet knew this would happen one month in advance, when we were arranging an appointment for the surgery that will be performed today).

Good luck, my babies!

Now here’s the thing I’m supposed to write It took me quite some time since I was too busy sleeping Looking back at 2005:

• January :

• I started this blog (on the 22nd)
• Submitted my UPOU application

February :

• I got into using planner-el
• Tried my hand at managing GtkLP for Debian in Subversion
• Got to know more about BitTorrent as well
• Got a Gmail account
• Successfully set up Linux-2.6 on St. John’s Debian Woody box malinao
• Got to know Clair via this very blog

March :

• I met Ubuntu Warty, Clair, and Mario too after my UPOU admission exam
• Moved to Emacs 22
• Delved into Lisp while coding an MP3 playback script on Warty
• more PlannerWiki goodness

April :

• More Lisp programming
• Video card replacement
• Attending my first PLUG Technical Seminar

May :

• The usual summer routine: teach swimming and maths

June :

• Back to school
• Tried blogging under Emacs PlannerMode, in which I have inadvertently spammed Planet Debian and Pinoy Tech Scene, earning the ire of Mako
• Attended the first meeting for Software Freedom Day with Sacha, Clair, and Rick. Also met Jerome for the first time

July :

• Sacha (left for Toronto on the 15th)
• Went back to WordPress

August :

• ITA on ecb
• Preparing the LinuxWorld conference
• Trying out Arch
• Released a new GtkLP for Debian

September :

• New ecb package (which to this day hasn’t been uploaded yet, looking for sponsors

• Software Freedom Day on the 10th!!! Met Donnie too
• LinuxWorld at Dusit!!!
• MidTerms!!!
• Started contributing to Ubuntu

October :

• Finals!!! (yeah, just after midterms
• NatSci finals in Naga City, looking for Linux users too
• Became a Ubuntu Member

November :

• Became a MOTU

December :

• Glimmer of hope
• Another GtkLP release
• Lost cellphone
• Meeting Ealden for the first time at the Ubuntu-PH EyeBall
• Thankful for $DEITY letting me live another year

Things to I want to do this 2006:

• More Debian and Ubuntu work
• Learn some more programming languages
• Try other VCSs/RCSs
• Really finish school
• Catch up with my RL

Things to look out for:

• Ubuntu AsiaBusinessTour/Philippines
• PLUG’s very own hacker conference/camp
• Bicol Open Source Forum (and perhaps Bicol’s very own LUG

Rock on, 2006!

So I've been in the US for just over six weeks now, and I thought I'd reflect on the trials and tribulations of bootstrapping oneself in a foreign country. The Social Security Number is the primary key from hell I already had a fair idea of the importance of obtaining a Social Security Number (SSN). So much so, that after dumping our luggage at our temporary accommodation, the Social Security Administration office was the first place Michael and I went to, so we could lodge applications. We subsequently learned from another Australian who was about two weeks ahead of us, that you're apparently supposed to wait ten working days before lodging the application, to allow your immigration records to percolate through the bureaucracy that is the US Government. Our applications were duly accepted without any mention of waiting a bit, but we were sent away with a letter and a tracking number, saying that the SSA had to verify our existence with Immigration (this is despite the fact that we're standing in front of them with a passport with an I-94 stapled in it) and that it would take up to four weeks. So it's been six weeks, and still no sign of an SSN. Enquiries with the office are met with the same response - waiting on information back from Immigration. Apparently it can take up to three months. It's a real shame you can't start the application process when your visa is granted or something, as in order to apply, you need to quote your "alien registration number" (I still chuckle at how the US Government refers to me as an "alien" in all their paperwork), which is the number on your I-94, which you only get when you enter the country. So, whilst the SSN application remains pending, I cannot be paid, I cannot have my health insurance paperwork lodged by my employer, and whilst I'll be covered for health insurance retrospectively, I'm not technically covered right now, if I were to require medical treatment. Going back to how the SSN is the primary key of All Things... Next step is to open a bank account. We chose Citibank, because I've been told it's slightly easier to import money back into Australia with them. Fortunately we were able to open an account sans SSN, but it's called an "NRA account" (NRA standing for Non-resident Alien). We were told that we were only eligible for an ATM card until I had an SSN, yet they mailed me out a debit card about a week after we opened the account, and happily ordered one for Sarah, and a cheque book when we asked after opening the account. About the only thing it seems we can't do at the moment is transfer money back to Australia. No big deal, it's all coming the other way until I can get paid... Driver's licence requires an SSN ideally, so that's out of the question for the time being... Electricity, telephone and cable were all able to be provisioned with an SSN, although I think for credit-rating purposes, again, it is the primary key. We had to pay a deposit for the electricity, which is fair enough. The lady I spoke to on the phone when I got it connected said that they just treated us aliens like teenagers straight out of home with no credit history. I don't have a problem with that. It's just a shame that you can't import your credit history. Getting a cell phone account appears to be nigh on impossible with an SSN though. It was a battle just to get a prepaid SIM card for Sarah's phone, and this makes a great story of how much hoop-jumping is required. We walked up to a Cingular stand in a shopping mall to see what we could and couldn't do. I explained our situation (lack of SSN, lack of credit history, etc etc) to the sales droid, and he assured us it wasn't a problem to get a prepaid SIM card. He proceeded to take about 30 minutes to organise the SIM card. I watched as he entered a dummy SSN into the computer, and used his own driver's licence number. He was clearly battling the computer system to be able to do it. When we got home, and Sarah called up to try and put some credit on the phone with our Australian Visa card, she was told they only accepted credit cards with a US billing address. (So much for Visa being accepted worldwide). So we headed off again to Safeway to purchase a prepaid Mastercard. Funnily enough, when Sarah called up to activate that, she was initially asked for an SSN, so we almost had a dependency loop that we couldn't break, just to get a US cell phone. Fortunately they could cope with no SSN, so she successfully ended up with a prepaid Mastercard, with a US billing address, so she could put credit on her prepaid SIM. From what I can work out, a lot of the places that do request the SSN seem to using the last four digits as an authenticator, much like everyone just uses name and date of birth back in Australia, so I'm guessing for these organisations, I could probably just quote any old number that fit the pattern and they'd be happy. Just so long as they don't go trying to run a credit check against it... Foreign credit cards As I said earlier, a credit card with a non-US billing address is fine for most face-to-face purchases, but an amazing array of mostly telephone transactions will not accept them. Most notable was trying to add credit to a calling card for making international telephone calls. Couldn't be done. So it meant I had to forego any discounts or bonuses for topping up, and buy a whole new calling card. Car insurance and registration I'm not sure how this is going to go yet. Our Prius is supposed to be available around the 18th of January. I'm hoping I'll have my SSN by then, otherwise we'll have to import a heap of money to pay for it. I'm sure you can get insurance and own a car without an SSN, because you hear of people who do driving holidays across the US, buying a car on one coast, driving it cross-country, and then selling it. It might be more expensive, and I again, you can't import your driving/insurance history, so you have to start off at the bottom of the ladder again... In summary, I think you need to have relatively deep pockets to bootstrap yourself over here. You need to be able to function without getting paid for up to two or three months, and you need to understand that credit-wise and insurance-wise, you're going to be back at square-one again, irrespective of how good you might have been in your home country. The sooner you come to terms with these, and appreciate that you are moving to a foreign country, the sooner you can get on with enjoying the experience.

Currently, Nautilus is hardcoded to draw the desktop icon’s captions in white with a black background. This works well for Latin scripts, but for CJK scripts where each character is pretty complex, the captions quickly become a jumble of black and white pixels. Hence the following patch against Nautilus 2.12. It adds a GConf key /apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_label_shadow, which when set to False prevents the shadows from being drawn. A nice side benefit is that Nautilus then checks the background colour, and draws captions in black if the background is light. Nice. Screenshots later; gotta run now.

--- ./libnautilus-private/nautilus-global-preferences.c.old 2005-11-19 10:58:42.000000000 +0800
+++ ./libnautilus-private/nautilus-global-preferences.c 2005-11-19 11:00:32.000000000 +0800
@@ -404,6 +404,10 @@
      PREFERENCE_STRING,
      NULL, default_font_callback, g_free
     ,
+          NAUTILUS_PREFERENCES_DESKTOP_LABEL_SHADOW,
+          PREFERENCE_BOOLEAN,
+          GINT_TO_POINTER (TRUE)
+         ,
    /* Icon View Default Preferences */
      NAUTILUS_PREFERENCES_ICON_VIEW_DEFAULT_SORT_ORDER,
--- ./libnautilus-private/nautilus-global-preferences.h.old 2005-11-19 10:58:47.000000000 +0800
+++ ./libnautilus-private/nautilus-global-preferences.h 2005-11-19 10:59:35.000000000 +0800
@@ -54,6 +54,7 @@
 #define NAUTILUS_PREFERENCES_SHOW_DESKTOP          "preferences/show_desktop"
 #define NAUTILUS_PREFERENCES_DESKTOP_IS_HOME_DIR                "preferences/desktop_is_home_dir"
 #define NAUTILUS_PREFERENCES_DESKTOP_FONT          "preferences/desktop_font"
+#define NAUTILUS_PREFERENCES_DESKTOP_LABEL_SHADOW               "preferences/desktop_label_shadow"
 /* Display  */
 #define NAUTILUS_PREFERENCES_SHOW_HIDDEN_FILES         "/desktop/gnome/file_views/show_hidden_files"
--- ./libnautilus-private/apps_nautilus_preferences.schemas.in.old  2005-11-19 11:04:30.000000000 +0800
+++ ./libnautilus-private/apps_nautilus_preferences.schemas.in  2005-11-19 11:06:17.000000000 +0800
@@ -321,6 +321,20 @@
     <schema>
+      <key>/schemas/apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_label_shadow</key>
+      <applyto>/apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_label_shadow</applyto>
+      <owner>nautilus</owner>
+      <type>bool</type>
+      <default>true</default>
+      <locale name="C">
+         <short>Desktop label shadow</short>
+    <long>
+     If set to true, then Nautilus will draw shadows for the desktop icon's captions.
+         </long>
+      </locale>
+    </schema>
+
+    <schema>
       <key>/schemas/apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_home_dir</key>
       <applyto>/apps/nautilus/preferences/desktop_is_home_dir</applyto>
       <owner>nautilus</owner>
--- ./src/file-manager/fm-desktop-icon-view.c.old   2005-11-19 10:53:43.000000000 +0800
+++ ./src/file-manager/fm-desktop-icon-view.c   2005-11-19 10:58:01.000000000 +0800
@@ -532,7 +532,7 @@
    fm_icon_view_filter_by_screen (FM_ICON_VIEW (desktop_icon_view), TRUE);
    icon_container = get_icon_container (desktop_icon_view);
-   nautilus_icon_container_set_use_drop_shadows (icon_container, TRUE);
+   nautilus_icon_container_set_use_drop_shadows (icon_container, eel_preferences_get_boolean (NAUTILUS_PREFERENCES_DESKTOP_LABEL_SHADOW));
    fm_icon_container_set_sort_desktop (FM_ICON_CONTAINER (icon_container), TRUE);
    /* Set up details */</schema>

2006, what a lovely year! Not. I heard its a custom, that at the start of the new year, one looks back at the past one. So I did, and wasn't impressed at all. Mind you, the same happens each and every year, so it is no suprise, really. For the past year, I have been rather inactive, I should have gone on an extensive vacation from Debian a long time ago, around May, when I quit my last job. I intend to rectify that as soon as I manage to dig up my GPG key. Most of my packages will get officially orphaned too, as I lack the time and motivation to work on them - no news here, either, as this is the case since early last year. Lets see what I did on the free software front in the past year or two... One of my most succesfull projects was CCZE, a log colouriser. Needles to say, the idea is not mine. The crap implementation, the most messy and bad code I've ever written, is mine, though. It hasn't seen an update since I don't know when. Nor will it in the foreseeable future. The only thing that could help the codebase, is a rewrite, which I had been planning since 2003, and not a bit of code was committed ever. In the meantime, new programs appear, whose logs could be colourised, new demands arrive, but the project has been dead for good. Once, Thy was the software I was most proud of. I really loved it, and spent most of my time hacking on it. Those times are past, new, similar software appeared, that surpassed my beloved HTTP daemon in nearly every respect. I don't believe thy has any place among todays similar projects. This, I truly regret, I had great fun developing Thy. But as everything, even good things must come to an end. Back when I worked for a company that was into this media streaming business, I contributed a few bits and pieces to GStreamer, but all the "grand ideas" I had, and wished to make reality, never happened. Looking further back, I can't notice any significant contribution I made.. except maybe one, a very small one.. Even nowadays, I can't stop feeling a little proud, when it crosses my mind. Some may know, most probably don't, I acted as an application manager for Debian, and for a little while, I like to think I wasn't that bad at that job. For a little while... Anyway, during this, I had the pleasure to work with Daniel Stone. Heh, those were good times! I hope, that what we've done there, was of at least a bit useful. Meh, enough of this. My projects failed, I didn't have the neccessary resources to make some of my dreams come true. All I need now, is a break, a break so I will not feel bad about things I do not have time for. I'll let them go, as I should have done ages ago, that's best both for them, and me. Until a time I feel I can contribute back something, for all I received from the free software community, I'll take a vacation. From time to time, I'll be hanging around on IRC, but my activity will be as low as it was during the past year. Good bye, and thanks for all the fish! P.S.: Yamm, my over-sized tamagotchi expressed interest in maintaining me in Debian. If, by any chance, he'd take over my computer, and expressed his wish to run for DPL-ship, please, by all means, stop him. Thank you.