Quarterly report: Q2 – Q3 2009
September 30th, 2009Late and irrelevant blog post as usual. But still have that urge to blog. Some things are just not meant for 140 characters. 
KDE … I’ve been mostly quiet on the KDE development side. The only patch I made the whole period was to add a label at the top of Konsole tabs in Konversation, similar to the topic label at the top of chat windows. The label’s text syncs with your Konsole profile’s settings for window titles. Of course there’s a handy button beside it that lets you conveniently call the profile management dialog right then and there.
School … Most of my time has been spent (besides procrastinating and playing caregiver/nurse) with school work. Or rather, cramming/rushing school work. This semester I’ve been blessed/cursed with two subjects that are completely new to me: “Data Communications and Networking” and “Database Management Systems”. Let me just say, in all honesty and humility, that I suck at networking. At least as it was presented in our textbook. It was very low-level, theory-laded, and computation-centric, almost engineering-like. I guess that’s “computer science” (or computer math?). On the other hand, I was really into DBMS. Probably because it’s more practical to me, being used almost anywhere, but specially for the Web. Fundamentals of Database Systems by Elmasri and Navathe has so far been a good read.
Events … In contrast to my inactivity, the past months have been buzzing with activity. July saw the first ever joint GNOME and KDE annual conferences in sunny(?) Gran Canaria. Of course, I wasn’t there 
The videos this year were so superbly done, so make sure to grab your favorite talks if you still haven’t. Then, KDE released 4.3.0, showing off the maturity of the KDE Desktop and the Development Platform. The good news is that it doesn’t stop there. 4.4 is just a few months away!
Gadget lust … Nokia/Qt has also been quite busy, with one announcement/release/blog post after another. Most controversial probably are Pyside, the LGPL Python bindings for Qt, and a slightly vague post about a new multimedia framework in the works for Qt. But probably most talked about and most hyped is the much anticipated (but probably belated) announcement of the N900 and Maemo 5. No, it’s not yet the much dreamed of (by Qt/KDE fans at least) Qt-based Maemo and is not yet the “finished” device in Nokia’s long-term strategy, but it still has me drooling over it. Sure it has some hardware and software bad points (still not Qt , but it will at least let me enjoy the best of both (of my) worlds, allowing me to finally have one device in my pocket instead of two. But damn it’s really expensive! Let’s see how it pans out in the coming weeks when it’s actually released.
The future … The next quarter will be fun-filled, starting off with two “meets”. Maemo Summit is the more “grassroots” gathering for Nokia Internet Tablet and Maemo communities (compared to Nokia World where the N900 was demoed, which was more “suit”-ish). I’m excited about it because of potential news and discussion about the N900 and the future of Maemo (which will be Qt-based . But I’m equally hyped about the Developer Sprint happening on that same weekend(!), this time about the Future of KDE Game Development. Being a wannabe/frustrated game developer/designer, of course I find this something to look forward too.
Exciting times ahead. Unfortunately, I don’t know I’ll be around to enjoy and participate, even virtually. I’ve decided to take a self-prescribed/imposed sabbatical, for personal reasons (mostly to preserve my sanity and, consequently, my life). But with all this buzz going on, how can anyone stay away and still stay sane?
Just some small updates, while I'm trying to get off my ass and migrate the site completely to Textpattern.
January 10th, 2010 at 8:18 am
A goos and rather interesting post about the most interesting Operational system at present to my mind!Maemo platform is the only reason I’ve recently bought my new Nokia N900!
Thanks for publishing!