Month: January 2008

KDE 4.0 @ Chaos Radio Express

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Last Friday, before the KDE 4.0 release event, Tim Pritlove, host of the Chaos Radio Express Podcast (Subscribe) asked me if we could do an episode on KDE 4.0, as he was staying in Bonn. The result is a one hour show called Chaos Radio Express 68. It is a bit more technical than the one conducted earlier with Sebas, but also more chaotic, due to its spontaneous nature (We recorded it one hour before the first guests kicked in to celebrate and watch the video stream from Moutain View). It also references the episode on usability and interaction design with Peter Sikking and Ellen.

Unfortunately for all international readers of this blog, Chaos Radio is a podcast in German language, but luckily there is also Chaos Radio Express International (Subscribe), which provides a broad variety of topics (albeit no show on KDE yet).

Report: Release-Party in Bonn

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Cocktail “KDE 4.0 Blue Lagoon”

Ingredients:

2cl Vodka
1-2cl Blue Curacao
2cl Cream
10cl Pinapple Juice
4cl Cream of Coconut
1-2 Ice Cubes

Howto:

Shake well. Decorate glass with a an orance slice. Before slicing the orange, cut and peel vertical stripes off the orange. This creates a nice gear look. Serve with a black straw.

For the non-alcoholic version, use blue curacao sirup and more juice instead of blue curacao and vodka. If you try a bit, you can create a color gradient with the coconut cream, which creates the lagoon effect.

To sum it up: it was an awesome party. We had a decently filled location, which surprised me because this particular party was announced less than one week in advance.

Starting at about 19:00 o’clock local time we saw a great show: Aaron giving an awesome keynote, Benjamin presenting KDE 4.0 apps on the Mac and Holger showing off KDE 4.0 on Windows in the typical understatement way of people from northern Germany :-). Thanks to Google for recording, Franz for organizing the streaming, and Dirk for getting a server capable of actually delivering the stream.


Keynote from the Bonn perspective: Aaaron rocking the show

To me that keynote (which we will hopefully soon be seeing on Youtube), was en par with the ones the Steve’s of this IT world deliver, just a lot warmer and more honest. Yet Aaron managed to present the incredible achievement that is KDE 4.0 in an amazing way.

After the keynote finished, the attendees had time to test KDE 4.0 and discuss various issues. As a special plus for those attending our party, we offered a special “KDE 4.0 Blue Lagoon Cocktail”, which was very well received. (recipe on the right, sorry for the crappy pic). Thanks go to Peter for organizing beer, Natascha for doing an excellent job as a bar tender, the Netzladen for hosting and to AurISP and PBR Systems for providing a projector for everyone to follow the keynote.

Oh, and Qt is (also) GPLv3 now. Yay!

KDE 4.0 Release Party in Bonn

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After Harri started the series of announcements for locations of the KDE 4.0 release party, it’s now up to me:
We’ll have a party on Friday, January 18st, 19 hours. We are partying at the premises of the Bonner Netzladen e.V., a very renown hacker space. We plan to have a live stream from Mountain View and will provide guests with Club Mate, Kölsch and a special surprise drink! Of course, we’ll bring a KDE 4.0 test setup for everyone to play around with.

So if you are from the Cologne/Bonn area (or just closer to Bonn than to any other location, or just like us best…), come and join us. To allow for better planning, please add yourself to the respective Wiki page.

The IRC Admin-Bastards Beg Your Pardon

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For all of you idling in #kde4-devel while celebrating the release: we closed down the channel in order to remerge it with #kde-devel, now that KDE 4.0 is out. So that is the reason why you got kicked by either me or dfaure :-). The channel is now a redirect if you try to join. If you feel insulted by the sudden kick: Sorry (well, from me, not sure how David feels about it ;-)).

But don’t worry, we rented a real party channel over at #kde4-release-party!

KDE 4.0.0 – The Start of Something Amazing

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KDE 4.0 release bannerSo it’s been done: KDE 4.0.0 has just been released. This is not only the end of a long development effort, involving a lot of new ideas and even more sweat and tears in getting a .0 release out. It also marks the beginning of a new age in free desktop computing, new ideas and new technologies, some of which are still emerging and will find their way in later KDE 4 releases.

I was especially impressed with the page of the KDE Games folks, which makes you want KDE 4.0.0 just for the sake of playing some of the games they wrote and polished. A special hats off goes to the new KBattleship maintainer. The new version rocks. In related news, make sure to check the page of the KDE Education project.

So what does the future hold for KDE 4? Obviously, there will be lots of plasma applets and a lot of ported and new applications. Developing for KDE already is and will continously become a lot easier, especially due to the advanced scripting capabilities. To keep the learning curve low, we will do a developer tutorial sprint on TechBase once the dust of the release announcement has settled. And the best thing is: You can make a difference. No matter if you like coding, translations, doing arts or do something we don’t have a position for yet: Get involved and become a part of something amazing.

PS: If you want to celebrate the new release in parallel to the Mountain View event next friday and live in the Cologne/Bonn area, drop me a mail.

2007 & New Years Resolutions

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Due to some rather strange pains in my back (probably muscle-related, I hope the doc will find out tomorrow), I am somewhat chained to my bed. With my action radius being limited significantly, I am doing what seems popular: I decided to give an update about my personal situation. To sum up 2007, it was a fairly nice but also stressful year, with a lot of changes in my private life, both positive and rather sad (which don’t belong here, drop me a mail if you care).

It also saw the release of the english, slightly updated version of my book on Qt 4 and held an awesome study-related internship at the coolest toolkit-vendor ever. I hope this explains why I remained so silent on the blog and (even worse) on the KDE commit list. I kept active in the background however, keeping TechBase running along with Dominik and setting up other MediaWiki-based websites for KDE.

As for 2008, there is a lot of things I want to do. I won’t bother you with all of them, just the very basic ones:

  • Finish studies (finally :))
  • Get more involved in KDE development again
  • Enjoy real-life even more than last year*

So, to all my friends, readers and KDE-enthusiasts i wish

A happy new 2008!

*(well actually, that looks like bad resolution at first sight, since 1 and 2 conflict with 3, but after all it’s all about the right balance, right?)