Alex Hixon’s Blog

Just touched down in Melbourne, and have checked into the hotel.
Internet’s pretty expensive, so I guess I’ll have to limit myself to freeloading off the internet at the conference. Hopefully might be able to do some hacking offline.

On a related note, I think Silvia Pfeiffer was on my plane. Hello there if you were! =)

Edit: John kindly pointed out Silvia had been in Melbourne for the last week or so. For some reason my retarded brain wrote Silvia’s name instead of Mary Gardiner. Obviously, I need to get my head checked.

Pushed out a new release of r5u870 last night. Woohoo! Few cool changes in this release:

• Includes recode-fw.scm. Very useful tool to extract the firmware blobs from your device driver, if your device isn’t supported. Instructions on how to use are on the wiki.
• Giant code merge from new modular usbcam library, posted by Sam to LKML back in May 2007.
• Support for the 05ca 183b, 05ca 1837 and 05ca 1839 UVC cameras! Sweetness! The HP Pavilion’s 1812 camera is currently experimental, though, I’d love folks to give it a go.
• Updated ChangeLog entries! What, you mean I wasted half an hour of my life?!

If you notice any bugs, don’t be afraid to email me (check the wiki for FAQs first, though). For those who already emailed me about stuff from previous releases, please upgrade, give it a go, and then email me back your status. I haven’t forgotten, I’ve just been very busy.

In other news, I’ve also managed to get the equalizer code for Banshee merged into trunk, so I’m pretty stoked about that. Style changes and all that have been sorted. Works lovely with both the older-gen equalizer element, and the current one in CVS. The element is currently in gst-plugins-bad, though, it’s moving to -good before the next release.

The new Banshee’s going to be sweet, I tell you!

Also managed to code up a pretty cool IRC log search script for Bongo. You can check (Jonny: not Czech it out here. Looks a bit ugly, yes, but it sure does the job damn fine.

Well, I think that’s enough for now. Microsoft are at our LUG meeting this afternoon for a Q&A session. Hopefully we get some nice flames going, though, the committee has asked us not to. Though, cmon, we’re a loud bunch - someone can’t resist, I’m sure!

Gah, and I have to pack tomorrow, too. I hate packing.

I will be traveling away to the null void for about a week until the 9th of January. You probably won’t be able to contact me during this time, since I won’t have ‘net access or anything; if you email me, it’ll stay in the backlog of mail and spam until I get back. Or, if you have my number, you could call me.

TTFN.

Possibly a sign of things to come: mediati.org (all but SVN), ayhja.com and few other domains with client hosting were down, needed to login to Plesk to manually restart the VPS. Apparently had been like that the majority of the day.
Great. Just great.

Dear Sydney Buses,

You suck.

1. Having about four buses come all at the same time is not cool. Also, at least have the buses spread the load of passengers, instead of having everyone hopping onto the first bus, with the remaining three completely empty.
2. Drivers who don’t know where the bus stops are isn’t cool either, especially if they’re the second-most used on that route.
3. Is it hard to provide more buses to services which are obviously overcrowded? Closing an eye to the situation isn’t going to help.
4. Can’t you fucking respond to ‘good morning’? If I can be bothered to say it when I’m half-awake, you better be able to at least say something. This doesn’t apply to all bus drivers - there are some real champs out there - but most of them are just plain dickheads. In addition to being rude, some can’t even drive (including instances where drivers will drive into trees and smash the side mirror off, requiring passengers to get off the bus - it’s illegal to drive without a side-view mirror).

Also, to those who think that travel passes permit ‘free’ travel, it’s not free. It’s subsidised travel. Not free.

I honestly believe CityRail is doing a better job with their trains. I mean, morning peak hour is absolutely ridiculous, more so than buses, but the rest of the time they’re generally equal or better. At least you can get a damn seat and they come on time. Though, I do live pretty close to the city, so I’m not sure if it’d be the same if I were travelling from Hornsby or Granville.

State-government-provided transport in Sydney is an utter disgrace. Especially you, Sydney Buses. Actually, to be honest, infrastructure in Sydney is generally poor(er) of that of other states/cities. I refrains from inserting political views about the current (Mr. Iemma’s) state government.

Kind regards,
Alex Hixon

Rock always wins.

Why has nobody told me about this movie?

It’s probably the coolest thing on the planet! Daft Punk’s best album IMHO (Discovery; however, Homework is still up there) as the soundtrack for a beautiful retro-looking anime. No speech, just awesome music and limited sound effects. Go on, watch it!

to me.