key-mapping on RHEL5

multimedia keys[1] do not work on RHEL5, which was missing keymap quirk[2] patch done by rhughes. backporting was fun, while it lasted, now my life feel hollower than ever.

[1] http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=45032
[2] http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/quirk/quirk-keymap-index.html

Evolution account editor accepts white space in host name as valid

Evolution will accept whitespace in hostname, and when one checks for email - failure ! and a rather tricky one to spot.

This has been fixed now, thanks for input from Alan Matsuoka.

reference : gnome bug 533465 – Evolution account editor accepts white space in host name as valid

The Tower of KFC

The Tower of KFC
Originally uploaded by sankarshan

My Desk

xchat-gnome : sound notification

Upon quiting totem i heard a ping. This is from xchat-gnome ( from sound-notification plugin ). Seems that gnome_sound_play is being used to play the sound, which defaults to esd backend !!!

gnome_sound_play ("../../data/message.wav");

ESD has been superceeded by pulseaudio in most major distribution. I would prefer if we moved to a gstreamer based backend. I did end up re-writting the code to use gstreamer. The ping still did not work when i was playing music via totem.

Digging this further up, it turns out GStreamer support multiple profile for "audiosinks" and gstreamer-properties can only configure the default "audiosink". Grrrrr ! Ended up configuring all "audiosink" to "pulseaudio".

Abra ca daba ! magic with gstreamer. Ping now works as expected and on time.

reference bug : gnome bug #401829 – gstreamer-properties change all types of sinks (musicaudiosink) when changing audiosink

xchat-gnome : unchecking "Mark as away" does not work

Ticking away worked like a charm on xchat-gnome, but unticking does not do any magic.

This Turns out to be a bug fixed upstream ( gnome #462031 ). "grepping" the code reveals a rather trivial fix, and on further lookup a part of Fedora9 build. I ended up filing a bug-report ( fedora #430883 ).

A package was released with the stated fix, which crashes xchat-gnome when one tries to set/unset away.

$ xchat-gnome
(xchat-gnome:9519): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid uninstantiatable type
`(null)' in cast to `GtkToggleButton'
(xchat-gnome:9519): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_toggle_button_get_active: assertion `GTK_IS_TOGGLE_BUTTON (toggle_button)' failed

On lookup, turn out to be issue with variable naming. Baaad mojo.

gboolean away = gtk_toggle_button_get_active (GTK_TOGGLE_BUTTON(away));

Went head, cleaned up the patch and submitted the same. Now, i live in Peace.



Nibbana

Journey to bombay for a friend's wedding

Sunday's itinerary

Runa, Ritesh and Saurabh
Originally uploaded by sankarshan

Woke up at 6:00hrs.
Cooking up vegetable soup ( cabbages, carrots, spring onions, baby corns, peas, pepper and salt )
Hit shower by 6:15hrs
Runa texts me, will be starting for bombay late
Sleep off by 7:00hrs
Wake up call at 7:30hrs
On road, and having (second) breakfast by 10:00hrs
Reached venue by 10:30hrs
Rituals and more followed.
Food at 13:30hrs ( 8 rasmali, 15 odd puris )
Hit Kandavali to meet up with Jatin ( who will be married today )
Had second round of food by 15:00hrs ( 15 odd chapatis )
Heading back to Pune by 17:00hrs
Sleep, wakeup, sleep, food, sleep, sleep
At home by 22:00hrs, Sleep.


Me here, with Mr. Bathe (right) and Runa (left). A

Shady smile

Shady smile
Originally uploaded by sankarshan

In search of shade, and on call