"Absence," Akademy and Devices

So I apparently haven't blogged in a month. Sorry about that, it's not that I have nothing to say, just that I'm usually busy doing that I don't really take the time to talk about it. That said, I'll still keep this short as I myself like to read short blurbs from people who aren't well-known.

Akademy. Awesome. Of course I got to meet a good amount of the Amarok people I often talk to, which was the highlight of the trip for me really. It's one thing to discuss over IRC, and quite another to have breakfast together, chat about things non-Amarok as well as Amarok in person, and in general hang out. I also got to meet a lot of other people, like Will Stephenson who donated an MTP device for development (who I met while waiting in the waffles line) [p.s. thank you so much again for it].

Most exciting stuff non-Amarok: Gallium3D... just wow, that's all I can say. Step was pretty awesome too, though my physics is really bad. Marble is exciting stuff, but in Openstreetmap there remains much to be mapped so it may be a while before it becomes truly amazing. There's more, but these are the ones that stuck out most in my mind right now.

So, Media Device Status Report. As you can see, I haven't blogged so obviously nothing has happened. Lies. MTP playing off the device is now supported, a bunch of random bugs have been fixed, and an applet is under way to deal with configuration etc. of devices. Don't worry, this is only for connect/disconnect and options and whatnot, the configuration of devices will still be almost entirely automated. I'm trying to figure out a way to make it more obvious that for media devices you need only plug in your device essentially, for it to just work. I think that I'll try to push for the Media Devices applet to be one of the initial defaults loaded, and it'll show a text like "plug in media device to play from it" or something.

Why have I been so slow at coding? The truth is I've been held in Guantanamo for the last couple of weeks. And.... again, lies. No, between random life, then Akademy in Belgium (which I spent most of my time bugfixing and socializing), and now I'm in Japan where it's hard to stay on the computer too long, I haven't been that able to. But I'll be back in the USA Sept. 2, so starting then things should pick up a bit more hopefully.

On that note, cheers from Japan!