wingologA mostly dorky weblog by Andy Wingo2008-11-25T22:03:08Ztekutihttps://wingolog.org/feed/atomAndy Wingohttps://wingolog.org/another (turkey) bites the dusthttps://wingolog.org/2008/11/25/another-turkey-bites-the-dust2008-11-25T22:03:08Z2008-11-25T22:03:08Z

recent past

Miyamoto sensei came to town to last weekend to teach an aikido seminar, as he has for the past four years or so. I found a nice article on him chez Takezo, which captures much of the spirit of such events, in text and video.

Between sessions on Saturday, I zipped by the Boquería to pick up the 5.6-kilo turkey. Hoo boy. We cooked and ate it on Sunday, which was a most delightful dress rehearsal. I made a stuffing with leeks, almonds, and figs -- and eggplant instead of old bread. It turned out great, much better than I thought it would. Who knew?

Though, what the hell is up with my friends? I told people that food would be ready between 3 and 4, and the first people (out of 15) show up at 4:30. Being in Spain only explains so much.

near future

Tomorrow I catch a plane to the states for the real deal -- my first Thanksgiving in the states since 2001. Yay for winter cooking, in which every pot contributes to the condensation on the inside of the windows.

(Not that I'm going to turn this thing into a confession booth, but I do admit a bit of ill feeling towards eating animals. But turkey smells so magical...)

Andy Wingohttps://wingolog.org/yuletide noteshttps://wingolog.org/2007/12/23/yuletide-notes2007-12-23T19:41:30Z2007-12-23T19:41:30Z

notes from the gaining daylight

It is alternately Christmas Eve's Eve, or the day of the Barça--Real Madrid game, depending on your religion.

My neighborhood had its yearly festival earlier this month, oddly scheduled in the winter. There was a correfoc:

more...

In other December news, I did end up cooking thanksgiving, with a turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, a dozen guests, day-after gumbo, etc. Sixth in a row outside the US -- perhaps next year I can get someone else to cook it for me.

And, in the vein of home cooking, I fly home to North Carolina tomorrow, if the plane gods permit.

photo gallery hacking

My web photo gallery software, Original, tries to present a taggy interface to your photos (example). The tag cloud is really interesting when it's small, because each new addition of photos makes a notable impact on the shape of the tag cloud. However after you have about a thousand photos or so, it's more difficult to see your new photos, and how they relate to older ones.

Since about version 0.4.0 or so, the excellent F-Spot marks photos that you import as being in a "roll" -- each import makes a new roll. This is pretty interesting information, allowing a more chronological presentation of photos.

Rolls also take burden off of the tagging interface -- without some kind of chronological discretization, tags get misused for navigation. The gallery index used to show the large tag cloud just so photos with lesser-used tags can be found. Now, with rolls available, one can search for photos via the two axes of time and tag, as well as get more targeted tag listings.

The one problem now is all of the photos that you have in your f-spot library that were imported before roll information began to be recorded. I wrote an f-spot extension to handle this case, which is currently still sitting around in bugzilla. If you trust me, you can install it by copying the built DLL into your ~/.gnome2/f-spot/addins/ directory. You use it by selecting a set of photos, right clicking on them, and selecting "Assign to new roll" or whatever it says. Good luck, and bugs to that bugzilla report.

Andy Wingohttps://wingolog.org/radical adultshttps://wingolog.org/2006/12/15/radical-adults2006-12-16T02:35:43Z2006-12-16T02:35:43Z

Greetings gentle reader, I offer these poorly connected vignettes for your eyes' consumption.

hku

My friend Colin just came out with a new album, Soukha. He gave me that link a couple weeks ago, but I still haven't been able to listen to it on the web site because I don't have a Flash player. Today I realized that I have his mp3's from somewhere else, put them on, and was more than duly impressed. Hotness! People should tell him how awesome he is. I think stylistically it's closest to Gotan Project. Very diggable.

parenthetical

I released a new version of guile-gnome-platform today, the first in over a year and a half. Release notes to the mailing list. Feels pretty good to get that one out the door.

I started updating the GStreamer bindings as well. They are available from bzr only, at the moment, pending a release when things are working OK. Already caps and structures are fine, including all of the valued types like int ranges, fractions, fraction ranges, and fourcc's. Today I got miniobjects working, a new fundamental classed type. Now that Guile is fully multithreaded, except for GC, I have a fighting chance of getting callbacks from threads to work as they should. Then I release and the world of scheme+gstreamer hackers rejoices. (Currently when you drive through this world the sign reads "Population: 1".)

gnome foundation elections

The GNOME foundation board elections are upon us, and after renewing my membership I cast my ballot, for a mix of people. The candidates were pretty good this year. May the most voted for persons win?

winter

The cold snapped about a week ago. Brr!

thanksgiving

Thanksgiving came and went this year again, and two turkey carcasses were carried out my door. Things went pretty well, with about 35 people showing up in my flat, with a continuous eat-drink-eat-again cycle going on for about 10 hours. Good times! Also this was the first year that I wasn't scared of the turkey. On the flip side I see the tendons in my arm in a different light.

mallorca

Went to Mallorca a couple of weekends ago for an Aikido seminar with Yamada Sensei of New York. I'd have liked to have seen more of the island; as it was it was a loop of train-eat-drink-sleep. Also good times, that seems to be the theme of this burst-o-blog.

Upcoming: Christmas in Belfast/somewheres around there, a new year turning. GOOD TIMES

Andy Wingohttps://wingolog.org/autumn sweaterhttps://wingolog.org/2006/11/20/autumn-sweater2006-11-20T19:30:01Z2006-11-20T19:30:01Z

politics

Another hungover sunday, down to the street to buy a paper, sit in a cafe, watch people until the headache either goes away or sends me back to bed. Two years of this routine, on and off, and I think I from the papers I finally understand the political configuration in Catalunya.

It's considerably more complicated than the US, with six or or eight parties in parliament, depending on how you count. The basic divides are left vs right and nationalist versus spanish. No one has an absolute majority, meaning that to govern, groups have to make compromises and trades to form a numerical majority, which then becomes the government.

This year, the party with the most votes was a rightist nationalist party (CiU). Their goal was to return to the government at any cost. They could form a government with the socialists, a pseudo-spanish party affiliated with the ruling socialists in Madrid, but as far as I can see the socialists wanted to avoid any association, in the minds of the voters, with the right. This was especially important to them given the upcoming spanish parliamentary elections. The other option for the right nationalists was a coalition with the left nationalists, but there is so much bad blood there that the leftists just used the rightists to increase their desirability with the socialists.

In the end the arithmetic led Catalunya to the same situation as the before, with a left coalition between the socialists (PSC), the left nationalists (ERC), and the greens (EUA-ICV). The rightist spanish party affiliated with Madrid (PP) loves this situation, squeezing every internal disagreement in the ruling coalition into attack ads on the "inefficiency" of the government. Their motto in the last election was "Be decisive". But with only 11% of the vote, the PP isn't taken too seriously.

I have to say that I like the parliamentary model much better than the winner-take-all system in the US. I like the idea of compromise, and that smaller parties can exercise some degree of power in the government. The possibility that other parties can actually make it to parliament helps of course; back in 2000, the green candidate for president didn't even make it on the ballot in North Carolina.

turkey

Another year, another thanksgiving in "hostile territory". This year promises to be larger than the last -- I might end up doing two turkeys. The scare quotes mean it's a joke, dudes and ladies

hack

Not much to speak of -- the hacks of my last writing product on guile-lib were the work of a couple weeks' labor, fighting entropy. But for the moment, I've put it in a situation that's reasonably resistent to time's arrow. Time to move up the stack again.

aikido

Last weekend was most excellent, with an instructor coming from Tokyo's Hombu Dojo to give a course. For some reason Japanese instructors are called only by their last names. Miyamoto sensei is impressive in any case, and at 58 years old is really quite young to have a 7th degree black belt. He manages to be very technical yet humorous on the mat. Outside he dresses like a mafioso. Good times.

In two weeks there's another seminar coming up in Mallorca, with New York's Yamada sensei. I'm going to see about heading there, taking one of the boats that I see out of my window at work, sleeping on the floor in the school. It's a bit perverse that I find joint locks to be relaxing, but so it is.