How can SourceForge think it’s acceptable to have such a slow and unreliable site? Everything, even mailing list posts, is stuffed full of adverts, and things like mailman have been ruined. Mail archives are just hideous and unusable, whereas mailman default is nice and fast. The forums don’t remind me of any other internet forums I have seen and as a result are really very hard to use.
Two good things I can think of though: the project websites feel fairly nippy, and viewing repositories is left to stock ViewVC, which is very fast and usable. However, the cons far outweigh the pros. I guess that’s why projects don’t consider SourceForge these days.
The Bongo polo shirts are currently on standby as a logo is required. As black was decided on as the colour of the polo, then the logo will need to work against a black background.
Basically, what I’m asking is that someone comes up with a logo based on the official one that works against a black background, as the official one currently will not. You know me with anything to do with design!
Remember, the more colour that isn’t transparent, the more stitches that will be required, and the more it may cost!
If you’d like more info, ping me on #bongo!
Update:
- I’m afraid I can’t open up your attachment
Any chance of sending it as jpg
Apparently people can’t even open PNGs these days. They seem to be fast at replying though, so should have a quote pretty soon.
Alex refused, so here you go. I give you Hawkeye
I would say that this home-screen looks nicer than anything in Dragonfly:
It’s not all about good looks too, there is some really quite complex functionality:
Jokes aside, nice one Alex!
Following from my previous blog post, my first worry has now been fixed!
However, there is a new one! Let’s see how this one progresses!
I was looking for a MediaWiki extension that could read RSS feeds and output them onto the page. The trouble was, the extensions I found either didn’t work, or were very uncustomisable. For example, for one that actually worked, adding this to the wiki page:
<feed>http://jonnylamb.com/feed/</feed>
forced this output on me:
<h3><a href="http://jonnylamb.com/2007/03/22/minimo-bongo/">Minimo Bongo</a></h3> <small>22 March 2007, by jonnylamb</small> <h3><a href="http://jonnylamb.com/2007/03/22/durham-visit/">Durham Visit</a></h3> <small>22 March 2007, by jonnylamb</small> <h3><a href="http://jonnylamb.com/2007/03/22/musically-active/">Musically Active</a></h3> <small>22 March 2007, by jonnylamb</small> <h3><a href="http://jonnylamb.com/2007/03/05/age/">++age</a></h3> <small>5 March 2007, by jonnylamb</small>
This is not ideal. Instead of looking further for a better extension, I wrote one. It is called SimpleFeed and it lives on the Extension:SimpleFeed page on mediawiki.org.
It is simple for two reasons:
- It uses the SimplePie feed parsing library
- It’s exactly that- simple.
Here is a quick tour on how to use it:
Once it is installed, one can choose the syntax each item is outputted in. For example:
<feed url="http://jonnylamb.com/feed/">
== [{PERMALINK} {TITLE}] ==
{DATE} by {AUTHOR}
{DESCRIPTION}
</feed>
For each item from the feed, the curly-bracketed words get replaced with their corresponding values. Note the use of wiki-markup as this is then parsed by the MediaWiki parser, producing something like this:
<a name="Minimo_Bongo"></a><h2> <span class="mw-headline"> <a href="http://jonnylamb.com/2007/03/22/minimo-bongo/" class="external text" title="http://jonnylamb.com/2007/03/22/minimo-bongo/" rel="nofollow">Minimo Bongo</a> </span></h2> <p>22 March 2007 by jonnylamb </p> <p>I shoved [...]
So of course there’s a whole load of MediaWiki stuff added which makes it integrate into the wiki much better, and the killer feature is the customisation possible!
There’s more information on its mediawiki.org page: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SimpleFeed.
I shoved Minimo on my Nokia N800 and got Bongo running on it. It is very very slow, and Bongo does look a little weird, but here are some screenshots:
Note the lack of scroll-bar meaning the lower section of the logon window is missing. This doesn’t matter as it is not needed at all.
This all looks nice apart from the weird drop-down box to select from Summary, Mail and Calendar. Still, it works.
Composing a new mail. Looks good.
Calendar month view. Looks good.
This is no great surprise that it worked as it’s the same Mozilla code, but cut-down. However, it’s nice to have access to Bongo on another portable device.
On Tuesday to Wednesday, I was in Durham. This was primarily for a departmental open day, but there was a chance to know the university and some people better.
I stayed in Grey college and it was nice. I met some nice people and am enthusiastic about going there. I was knackered when I got back though. Not really ready for school the next day, and I was truly rubbish and lazy at squash the following day! That’s about all there is to say here about it.
Last week was a little hectic musically. Friday, Saturday and Sunday all contained concerts. Details:
Friday
A program of Constant Lambert (Rio Grande), Percy Grainger (Tribute to Foster), Stamford and other choral works for the annual school choral concert in the cathedral. This was basically all sight-reading despite a tiring rehearsal the previous night. It went alright I thought, but the distance between instruments (orchestra, choir, piano, organ) was too much and sometimes slipped. I didn’t mind.
Saturday
The Huntingdonshire Philharmonic invited me back yet again to play with the choir. This is rather embarrassing because every time I get asked to play, I think to myself “I really should practise this time”- it never happens, and I feel quite guilty. There was a rehearsal in the afternoon, straight from school, and concert normal time. We played:
- Mendelssohn - ‘A Calm Sea & Prosperous Voyage’
- Handel - Excerpts from ‘Water Music’
- Vaughn Williams - A Sea Symphony
I was asked whether I could play in the next concert in May, and I wasn’t sure. I later found out that I was playing in a Ramsey Choral Society concert that exact day in May so couldn’t do the next Hunts Phil one. I didn’t mind too much until I just found out that they’ll be playing Beethoven’s Mass in C, and the Eroica. I am very, very annoyed now.
Sunday
This was the concert for the Chamber Orchestra of St. Ives (COSI). We aren’t a particularly well-known group but this time the program was a cracker. Again, a rehearsal in the afternoon and concert in the evening. We played:
- Beethoven - ‘Egmont’ Overture, Op. 84
- Mozart - Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, K. 466
- Haydn - Symphony No. 101 in D «Clock»
We’ve been rehearsal for this concert for a few months now and meet the second Thursday of every month. It’s nice.
Basically, the end of last week was very busy.
Oh, and I just realised that I’m on the second page of the school newsletter. Fun stuff.
So a few days ago I turned 18. This doesn’t mean too much, but I suppose now officially an adult. I’m finally getting a provisional driving license in preparation for lessons, looking at student bank accounts, and more fun stuff!
Bongo Update: It looks like the folks after the first batch of Bongo Polos have all submitted their interest. I’ll email my contact soon asking about prices, and stuff.
After talking about some Bongo-branded clothing on IRC a little while ago, I had a little chat to a friend who’s dad is the managing director of P&M Embroidery (they wouldn’t win any prizes for their website, but I hear they have had contracts with Nike and X-Box 360..). Anyway, I am likely (but not definitely) to be able to get a discount on a purchase with them, which is good!
What needs to be decided though is what people want? Personally, I like polo shirts, so I would like something like this (maybe not white). But I will be able to make some enquiries of cost and the procedure once we’ve decided…
I think the way forward will be to buy the actual clothing ourselves and give them to the embroider. For something embroidered roughly the same size of the Debian logo on the polo mentioned before, I was very roughly quoted at 50GBP for 20 shirts, which does sound extremely reasonable.
So if you have any input, discuss this either on IRC or on this mailing list post.
