Planet maemo: category "feed:f37232ce73d3b53f5ae8169b333a7127"

Creating a web application involves HTML, CSS, images and usually some type of dynamic scripting language. Occasionally, one person will fulfill all these roles, however once an application reaches a certain scale, the question arises of how best to divide these skills between the people involved in the project.
It is a fairly common workflow for the programmer to be given some mock ups from the designer or even some HTML/CSS and he/she is then tasked with implementing the site functionality. Another question then arises of how the designer can best structure this HTML/CSS for the workflow of the programmer.
Django has a philosophy of loose coupling between objects and this is applied equally to the HTML output. To achieve this Django uses the concept of template inheritance. Template inheritance allows you to build a base 'skeleton' template that contains all the common elements of the site and defines blocks that child templates can override. This means you can literally design an entire site by creating only one HTML file. For example look at the maemo site:

I spent some time today talking with Junichi Uekawa about how he runs Japanese TV on Debian (the same technology is used in Brazil for digital TV) and the solution seems to be some buggy driver on the MonsterTV HDTV card which we maybe can hack to make work.
 
I also talked some with Joachim Breitner about his work with Debian on the OpenMoko Neo phone. There is a repository which contains the packages until they are included in Debian proper, both for armel and desktop architectures. Add these apt lines:

deb http://pkg-fso.alioth.debian.org/debian unstable main
deb-src http://pkg-fso.alioth.debian.org/debian unstable main

A merge of this repository, Debian experimental and Debian unstable can be used for debootstrap as follows.

Please note that this is a hack and might not work properly

 cdebootstrap --allow-unauthenticated -d sid /mnt/target http://people.debian.org/~nomeata/pkg-fso

You may need to activate experimental in your sources.list

The packages in this repo include:

• zhone: The demo UI
• zhone-session: Init scripts to start zhone on system start.
• frameworkd: System daemon providing most phone features via dbus. 
  
• gsm0710muxd: GSM multiplexer daemon

I arrived at Manaus airport feeling pretty groggy after I fell asleep listening to some old Bossa Nova music on the radio. I was also *still* feeling the effects of some virus I picked up last week which was unfortunately just like Malaria (thankfully this time however without the hallucinations).

It came as no shock (to me at least) that a Brazilian has won the Maemo logo competition. What is really cool is that Glauber works with us in Manaus
Designers and programmers are now working closely together @ openbossa and it looks like this approach is starting to pay off here in Manaus. Well done, Glauber.

Also in Manaus we have been running some training courses recently at Fucapi, a sort of Educational Institute like a University. I was asked to run a Python course and as part of it I came across a python library called GASP (Graphics API for Students of Python). This *rocks* !. By the end of the lesson all the students (with little or no python experience) had created and customized a Pong game.

I could not believe how easy it was to explain the graphics API to them. It is a easy step from GASP to Pygame and to the creation of games for mobile devices.

So the seed has been planted and things grow rapidly here in the forest!

Thanks to an awesome travel deal I struck with Marcelo I am now for sure able to make it to Argentina. I am totally over excited about going to my third Debconf. I am also pleased to see that Nokia are Platinum sponsors this year

Debian Conference is the annual Debian developers meeting, an event filled with coding parties, discussions and workshops - all of them highly technical in nature
There is also the usual day trip and a chance to play the Assassins game apparently!

While I am there I hope to do some work on the Debian Eee Project stuff which is about making Debian work optimally on the Eee including support for the later 901 and other Intel Atom-based models (1000 and 1000H).

This is gonna rock...or rather tango so hard.

INdT need to hire professionals passionate by mobile, internet and technology, with excellent team work spirit.

Resumés shall be sent to the e-mail: rh_seleciona 'at' indt.org, with “DesLinux” in the subject field.

*DO NOT* send me CV's.

If you want information about what it is like working in Manaus or what to expect if you are selected (from a foreigners perspective) I will help with that, no problem.

Linux Developer

Academic Background:
Bachelor in Computer Science
Computer Engineering or
Data Processing

Language skills:
Intermediate English.

Solid knowledge in:
- GNU/Linux (Use and development)
- C/C++
- Python

I got totally into visualizing commit histories during the holidays of the Festa of São João in the North East of Brazil

I chose a cool free software project I am involved with and watched it evolving organically over time.

Here is the code swarm for the Autotest project. Autotest is a test framework written in python which I have started using to do some testing on mobile devices.

It starts off with just one or two developers 'mbligh' and 'apw' and over time the role of the central node is taken over by others notably 'showard', who wrote the Django frontend.
These patterns are also observed in other key open source projects like python and django where developers cluster around a central developer or team of developers whose quality attracts other developers and so the ball starts rolling

. It also shows the qualities needed in a lead developer i.e the ability to love your creation so much that you can let it go.
The fireworks on the project are really starting to pick up as we reach the explosions of the last month. Its one project to watch, that is for sure. :)

This information also appears on the Ubuntu Mobile Guide

Assuming you have a fairly recent drop of UME, new applications should:

1. install a .desktop file into /usr/share/applications
2. install an icon into /usr/share/icons/hicolor/<size>/<type> (e.g. /usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/myapp.png)

If 1 is done correctly, the app should show up in the UI.

If 1 and 2 are done, it will also have the right icon :)

OnlyShowIn

The  freedesktop.org has a standard

OnlyShowIn

for the application to appear in certain environments.

So you can also add

OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Mobile;

to the desktop file and the icon will appear on the desktop.

Also something to note:

For example, cheese does not have

OnlyShowIn

but it appears in hildon desktop...others also do not have

OnlyShowIn

and do not appear..it seems that there is some special
implementation for ubuntu mobile which is seen in the gconf keys:

/desktop/hildon/htmlhomeplugin/onlyshowin_filter

Check

OnlyShowIn

value in .desktop. If

_False_

then every .desktop is shown and

/onlyshowin_ignore

Always show these apps, even if they don't have

OnlyShowIn

Cheese is in this list hence it is always shown

Apparently this key should go away when *every* application is a good citizen and complies to the freedesktop.org standards.

I am here with the rest of the guys from Manaus at INdT

doing some crazily cool stuff with Canola and well, forging

ideas basically.

It is incredibly cool here if you are a nerd but its not

all work, right. Some of us

took off to Maragogi in the next state called Alagoas.

We ended up going diving

which was incredible as we saw so many fish

and very relaxing. A perfect weekend to recharge the

batteries ready for the next coding sprint.

I love Brazil!

After the GPS enabled web applicationI created seemed to work in theory it arrived the time to test it in practice.

I decided to GPS mark all of the floating bars along the

Tarumã Açu (which is the first 'tributary' after leaving Manaus).

This is probably not so useful really as floating bars, well, float around the river basically but it is like most enjoyable things in life: good while it lasts.

I rounded up the usual suspects

prepared the technology

and off we set in Clives' amazing GPS

enabled boat, plotting bars

as we went.

We had an encounter along the way with a huge peacock bass

which are great sport fish and fight like ninja's when you hook one.
Memories are unfortunately somewhat hazy after this so here are the waypoints in text and gdb formats.

Maguires Guesthouse and Amazon Trekkers if you are up for it