I've been messing with Empathy recently while setting up a Jabber server, and I thought I'd try out telepathy-butterfly (the Telepathy MSN connection manager). The packages in unstable/experimental kind-of worked, but there were some distinct features missing. Upstream's devel branches of the three main components (telepathy-butterfly, pymsn and telepathy-python) contained most of the functionality I was after. It seems the last release (which is packaged) is rather old.

I created some packages of these snapshots. Add the following lines to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://jonnylamb.com/debian/telepathy-butterfly ./

And execute:

sudo apt-get install python-telepathy python-msn telepathy-butterfly

So, I've been getting into this photography lark recently, and today I tried out a panoramic shot for the first time. I used hugin to stitch the photos together, and quickly found that more control points = better stitching. This is my first attempt and have learnt that taking the photos at 4pm in a really windy day, is not a great idea. Although I am really pleased about the stitching, the differing colours of photos makes it obvious where the stitches have taken place. The wind blowing the trees also didn't help.

So, tomorrow I'm going to attempt to have another go in perhaps a few other places at 12pm, or whenever the Sun is directly above, and hopefully I can patch together a seamless shot. Fingers crossed.

Update: The photo uploaded to flickr is a little small and horrible. Here is a link to a 1.3MB JPEG file of the same thing. The original is 10MB or so, but I don't think I'll put that on the web as it isn't actually any good as a panoramic shot -- I'm just really pleased the stitching is good!

Looking at these instructions for SynCE just sickens me. I really want to strongly suggest one doesn't follow the instructions, but not only does it look as if I'm too late, it also highlights how horrible the SynCE documentation is. Currently the new docs are stored in a less-than-finished docbook file in Subversion: http://synce.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/synce/trunk/synce-docs/. If you're good with Docbook and want to help, email me.

On other SynCE notes, the new site is ready, but the docs are preventing me using the site.

Debian BBQ tomorrow. Lack of laptop means lack of general communication.

Bongo has just made it into Debian Experimental, as shown on its packages.debian.org page.

This is good because it's made it through the NEW queue, and so any subsequent version will be uploaded into Debian a lot quicker. To install this straight from Debian, add this to your /etc/apt/sources.list: (Note: You must be running the unstable distribution)

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian experimental main
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian experimental main

The version in the archive is 0.2.0-3. This has not been put into my repository on my site yet. Here is the changelog entry:

bongoproject (0.2.0-3) experimental; urgency=low

  * Initial release into Debian (Closes: #419476)
  * Changed ${Source-Version} to ${binary:Version} and made deps binNMU
    compatible.
  * Wrapped deps and build-deps.
  * Added debug package bongoproject-dbg.
  * Added python dependency to bongoproject-tools.
  * Updated short descriptions.
  * Updated copyright file.
  * Added README.Package file to explain some of the library importing
    stuff.
  * Added patch remove-bongo-external.diff to remove the dependency on
    bongo.external python libraries.
  * Added python-vobject, python-simplejson and python-dateutil to
    python-bongoproject Depends.
  * Added python-simpletal to bongoproject-web Depends.
  * Updated copyright to use new FSF address.

 -- Jonny Lamb   Mon, 30 Jul 2007 22:08:57 +0100

Hopefully in the near future I should create some packages for Ubuntu and Debian (etch) for 0.2.0-3, although as you can see from the changelog entry, there's no real feature difference. Also should get my git repository for package management up soon, when I get my new server. Bear with me.

P.S. If you are reading this in a feed reader, or through the planet, then visit my site and check out my new theme. It's nice.

I haven't blogged in a little while, so I thought I'd break the trend.

Recently I started adding CalDAV support into Bongo. This is actually progressing very well. I'm working on the sundial branch in Subversion. If you want to try it out, then you can checkout using:

svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/bongo/branches/sundial/

And then install how one normally would from source. To try out the CalDAV support, you must be running standalone -- Apache will simply not work at the moment. Point your client at:

http://server:port/dav/username/calendar/

You should be asked for username and password, but the auth system is a little broken at the moment. It is next on my list of things to do with Sundial, and hopefully I'll commit a fix for that tonight, but I might not have time..

Remember that this is three or four days old and not only will it have bugs, but if you glance at the code, there are many TODOs floating around, so this is very alpha quality software. With respect to CalDAV client support, I've done most of the testing on Mozilla Sunbird and in my opinion that has the best CalDAV support, but Evolution should work (it did last night)! Come find me on IRC if you have any questions.

Everyone seems to be blogging about it, so I thought I'd join the crowd.

I've already been to some talks on Hildon, Xul, Telepathy, memory usage, accessibility and collaborative document editing. There has been a mixed amount of interestingness throughout the talks, but generally it's great!

Tomorrow starts the core schedule and there are some great talks planned, including lots of Maemo/embedded ones.

And just when he thought he was in the clear...

Last weekend was Lugradio Live. It wasn't exactly the greatest of events ever, but was satisfactory! The Debian stand was a little quiet as we had nothing to sell, and we only had a laptop and TFT on the table. I don't think many knew what we were exhibiting. Although, I doubt LRL is really the place for a Debian stand.

However, the main purpose of my presence was to meet up with fellow Bongoers. It was an interesting time and was nice to meet the others. Alex has written a report about it.

To prove that I was there, I've found a photo on flickr. Although, even before I could blog about the event, this photo has been vandalised.

GUADEC starts on Sunday. Should be good! I've noticed a number of interesting talks there, mainly about Hildon/Maemo.

New Debian and Ubuntu packages for the 0.2.0 release. Here is the changelog entry:

bongoproject (0.2.0-2) experimental; urgency=low

  * Added ldap-utils to bongoproject depends.
  * Updated description in init script.
  * Added slapd to bongoproject depends.
  * Corrected s/Pache/Apache/ typo in README.Debian.
  * Corrected s/varius/various/ typo in bongoproject-data long description.
  * Added spamassassin and clamav-daemon to bongoproject recommends.
  * Corrected s/STANDALONE_OPTS/RUN_STANDALONE_OPTS/ in init script, and
    also its reference in README.Debian.
  * Correct reference to /etc/default/bongo in README.Debian.
  * Changed small path issue to make it more flexible with locales.
  * Created bongoproject-tools package which contains the CLI apps.
  * Added patch sqlite-3.3.17.diff to enable Bongo to work with SQLite >=
    3.3.17. This was fixed in r92 upstream.
  * Added patch smtpd-rset.diff to enable proper behaviour of RSET command
    in SMTPD. This was fixed in r94 upstream.
  * Added patch hawkeye-apache.diff to enable Hawkeye to work with Apache2. This
    was fixed in r123 upstream.
  * Added patch apache-config.diff to enable the output of a nice working
    Apache2 config file.
  * Added the Apache2 config file to bongoproject-web.examples.
  * Updated instructions in README.Debian.

 -- Jonny Lamb   Fri, 06 Jul 2007 12:29:41 +0100

Details on their installation can be found on either the Installation/Debian or Installation/Ubuntu pages of the wiki.

Right, exams are now over so I have more time to concentrate on other things.

I have a list of things I'd like to do over the summer. I won't go into them as I don't want to be tied to anything in particular, but it includes numerous Bongo enhancements, other SynCE stuff, finally some maemo developing, and also some Debian-specific stuff.

I'll blog about any specific developments in the future though.