Author archives: Mike

Been thinking a bit about how to handle multi-application environments, and one case that comes up immediately is the command shell (i.e. bash). With the overlay approach, we could start bash in an empty workspace, but then how do we get access to the files we want to manipulate?

We could alter bash to allow ...

Been trying to get csound built on my workstation since midnight or so. So far I've got the ebuild to the point of compiling everything, but I can't get it to properly install the _csnd library. The install.py file seems to assume the wrong file-name for the .so file, but I can't seem to get ...

We had a presentation down at Linux Caffe on the weekend regarding a number of Jack-based collaborative applications. Basically you can have 2 or more applications communicating audio across the Jack bus. This allows for some very elegant loose coupling of applications.

Where would we put those applications in a Bitfrost system? Would we allow ...

Seneca is currently in the midst of trying to get CSound's Python binding to build. She's going to try to have a presentation ready for Tuesday on how to use the library, particularly her experiences in trying to put together a Theremin-like control mechanism for the laptop.

Hit 8 hours billable again today (took 11.5 real hours), with an hour's presentation of the laptop to a gent from Bell. All in all this is shaping up to be a very good week in billables, even with Tuesday producing a mere 3 hours. Also got a contact from Amy at the caffe, a ...

Spent the day working on a new project (a provisioning server). It's amazing how much more productive head-down new-code development is compared with maintenance/debugging stuff. No little fits and starts, no breaks, just sit down and get up hours later with the work done. Even got almost 2 hours of work done during UU (very ...

Thinking of a mechanism whereby the kids could donate processor time to their friends (similar to donating memory to temporary storage, and normally linked with it). Use cases here are basically any processor-intensive easily parallellisable task; POVRay rendering, Video encoding, advanced simulations, etceteras.

Design can be fairly simple, a shared temporary storage directory and a ...

I haven't had much luck finding documentation on the dbus security model. In particular, how does one prevent one application from spoofing another application's "identity". That is, if I created an application that watched for new launches and managed to guess the activity ID of the launched application, registering a DBUS service for that activity ...

The HIG mentions that we'll want a view in the Journal that allows you to launch a given Journal entry (project environment) with a different application than the one that last edited it. I'm thinking we're going to want a way to do the same without needing a close-launch cycle.

For instance, you're working with ...

Something that's been rattling around in my mind for the past week is the need to integrate removable storage into the Bitfrost and Journal systems. Obviously we don't want to automatically include anything ever plugged into the system into the backup/Journal system, but if I share a file off my USB key or USB hard-drive ...