Often times you want to keep a file in sync, much like .mac, between computers. Or maybe you just need to make sure your files are backed up to the web. Enter a product called Dropbox.
Apr 182009
Apr 182009
Last year I created a tool one weekend that could randomly choose a wallpaper from a source, download it (if required) and display it as the gnome background.
It worked great for Hardy, but broke horribly for Intrepid. I was updating gconf with the correct details and making sure the backgrounds selection was all handled correctly. I was doing things the right way. But gconf can no longer be modified from a user’s crontab and my program died.
I was not prepared to create a crontab like daemon just for the task of changing the desktop wallpaper, it falls foul of the DRYs (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle. We shouldn’t need to replicate functionally when a perfectly good system infrastructural component will do it and save the user running resources (especially when my replacement for crontab would have been written in python).
So, I’ve managed to get around the problem by doing it the wrong way, instead of updating gconf the program will now just replace a backgrounds file in .gnome2/ settings folder and make sure that an entry exists in your appearance options. So long as that entry is selected, your background will be random.
Do report bugs in the launchpad project if you try it out and find some. I’d like to get this into the main repositories at some point.
Apr 182009
One of the ideas I’m researching is the idea that users can receive support from either paid or volunteer sources from a dedicated application. This project is on launchpad was created and developed using the jabber xmpp protocol in python and allows support requests to create tickets, manage support requests, have more than one person join and help someone and even ssh access via reverse tunneling (this isn’t really a feature for the community, it’s more of a feature for potential support businesses to use). Continue reading »