http://mark.doffman.com Mark Doffmans web log Sun, 03 Aug 2008 09:14:44 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Help needed There was some discussion this week on desktop-devel about turning 'Assistive technologies' on by default in Gnome. See Willie Walkers original e-mail.  Rob Taylor and I had discussed this previously, and at the time I didn't have much of an opinion either way. After reading Willie's e-mail though I ... http://mark.doffman.com/index.php/2008/08/03/a-week-in-the-life-of-a-braindead-hacker/ I had the pleasure of attending my first GUADEC last week. I doubt I'll have a more enjoyable, tiring, embarrassing, or geek-filled time for the rest of the year. I started the week locked up in my hotel room. Rob Taylor, John Carr and I were desperately trying to finish a ... http://mark.doffman.com/index.php/2008/07/16/memories-of-guadec-istanbul/ During work on client bindings for AT-SPI this week python managed to surprise me in a couple of ways. Lambda doesn't work as I think it should. lambda x: del(x) results in a syntax error. This is clearly stated in the python language reference: lambda_form ::= "lambda" [parameter_list]: expression The del statement ... http://mark.doffman.com/index.php/2008/05/21/python-tidbits/ Hopefully everyone already knows that Debian & Ubuntu have let us all down over the past two years by shipping a woefully insecure OpenSSL package. Personally its destroyed a-lot of faith that I had in the Ubuntu operating system. Most of us, who arn't deeply involved in our OS, have to ... http://mark.doffman.com/index.php/2008/05/17/who-does-what-about-the-debian-debacle/ Work is starting on the port of the AT-SPI framework to D-Bus. Codethink are, graciously, being funded by Nokia to undertake the work. Mike Gorse is working on the project full time, as part of his work for Novell. Mike has got alot done and there are some initial D-Bus specifications, ... http://mark.doffman.com/index.php/2008/04/29/d-bus-at-spi-is-well-underway/ history|awk '{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}'|sort -rn|head 118 ls 104 vim 72 cd 67 make 14 rm 12 ./test-directory 11 git 10 ./mjpass 9 gvfs-mount 9 cp http://mark.doffman.com/index.php/2008/04/12/all-the-cool-kids/ It seems that the posts by Mikkel and Daniel were April fools jokes. My sense of humor was broken by about midday so I missed the gag. Next year I will avoid the internet all together on the 1st of April. http://mark.doffman.com/index.php/2008/04/04/my-broken-sense-of-humor/ A few years ago I had an unpleasant experience with the police over here in the UK. My mum was contacted about a car accident that had taken place in the car park of a fabric store. She had no idea what had taken place, apparently a car had been ... http://mark.doffman.com/index.php/2008/04/01/attacking-those-who-dont-expect-it/ Its a mess I've been worried recently about how secure I am online. There has been a huge amount of news coverage over here in the UK about personal digital security. As someone who works as a software engineer, I always feel slightly smug when such stories are reported. I really ... http://mark.doffman.com/index.php/2008/01/28/digital-spring-clean/ I've taken part in a couple of phone calls this week, a quick conversation with Michael Meeks and a conference call with the open a11y group. Both about AT-SPI D-bus. There was a week of silence after my initial e-mail to lots of accessibility lists, and after that something ... http://mark.doffman.com/index.php/2007/12/19/a-week-of-head-scratching-and-ranting/