Moved on again

I have totally forgotten to mention that I have moved my blog again, Same content (plus newer stuff of course) but now I reside at tanghus.net

Google Translator discontinued

Google is shutting down their Translate API come December and they have already started to require a REFERER in the request. I would have to make quite a lot of changes to make it work just for the rest of November, so the Google Translator Plasmoid is officially discontinued.

https://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.html

Currency Converter 0.6 released

It took me almost a full year but here’s the 0.6 release of my Currency Converter Plasmoid.

Most noticeably is the use of Plasma::PopupApplet which let you dock the Plasmoid in the Panel. The (almost) full list of changes can be seen in the Changelog.

Download at Google Code or KDE-Look.org or get it via "Add Widgets" from the Plasma Desktop.

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Are you experienced?

Well I’m not, but I’m having a lot of fun 🙂

My first two Plasmoids are very simple but gave me a brief look into the possibilities of the Plasma Workspace, and I had to ask a lot of newbie questions on plasma-devel which is a very responsive mailing list. I cannot remember any of my questions that have gone unanswered and most of them with very good solutions and/or answers.

My latest endeavor is a bit more challenging. Plasma doesn’t have a simple ListView so you’ll have to use a Plasma.ScrollWidget and implement the methods yourself. For me that was somewhat annoying primarily because I’m still fighting a stale battle with the Qt layouts 🙂

Now I have to figure out how I’m gonna the cache Last.fm feed and all the pics that I’m downloading. For 3 reasons, the most important is of course performance, followed by the fact that the tests I’ve run on my crappy HW results in X pixmaps getting corrupted [*], and lastly that it’s a part of the Last.fm ToS…

For now I use job = KIO.get(KUrl(url), KIO.NoReload, KIO.HideProgressInfo) and connect to job‘s signals to get the the feed and to download the thumbnail pics of the events I use KIO.file_copy(from, to). This basically works but how can I get the HTTP Headers? I need to know if I should reuse the data I already have or if I should download it again.

Regarding the actual caching I was considering using a combination of:

KStandardDirs::addResourceDir()

KIconLoader::KIconLoader(const QString &appname = QString(), KStandardDirs *dirs = 0, QObject *parent = 0)

KIcon (const QString &iconName, KIconLoader *iconLoader)

But I’m uncertain how to use them.

Comments are very welcome as I’m a bit stuck here.

[*] I have no idea what I’m talking about here, but I get black icons after running X number of tests

And are no screen shots in this post as the work has mostly been "under the hood".

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I need a new name!

… for a new Plasma Widget that is 😉

I’ve just started implementing a mashup that lists music events going on your own location (from Last.fm) and adds links to Google Maps, Social Services etc.

But the beast needs a name as I think “Last.fm Events” is a tad too generic. It has to be a name that gives the user an idea of what the widget does, so it shouldn’t be too imaginatively – like say Plasma, Akonadi, Funambol etc. 😉 No offense intended 🙂

BTW a name is also needed because I need to register at Last.fm to get an API key and I have to inform them about the applications name. It’s a bit premature for something that hasn’t been released even at Alpha level but that is in their ToS…

There’s still a long way to go but here are some screenies as an appetizer for what can be expected:

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Google Translator 0.6 released

Now there’s a shiny, new Google Translator Plasmoid version 0.6.

Well maybe that’s a bit exaggerated because the User Interface hasn’t changed a bit, but there’s a lot of new stuff going on under the hood that will also soon benefit the Currency Converter Plasmoid.

Head on to Google Code or KDE-Look for downloads or get it via "Add Widgets" from the Plasma Desktop.

Changes can be found in the Changelog.

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Kernel hell

Ever since I finally installed Kubuntu 10.4 Lucid Lynx I have had kernel crashes at least once a day, sometimes up to ten times a day. It’s very frustrating and effectively breaks your workflow to put it mildly. I could easily come up with other, more harsh ways to describe the situation 😉

I have tried a variety of different kernels:

• 2.6.35-020635rc1-generic
• 2.6.34-020634-generic
• 2.6.32-23-generic
• 2.6.32-22-generic
• 2.6.32-22-generic
• 2.6.32-21-generic

Some I can (sometimes) boot and let me work for 0-20 hours, others never reaches the login screen or goes into an infinite reboot loop.

If anyone experience the same or similar the relevant bug report is at https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/585734 and it doesn’t look promising. So now I have come to the conclusion that I need to install a pre-Lucid kernel and see if I can get it running. It will probably degrade X performance (if it even runs) and crash other applications but I’d rather live with that than having to reboot all the time.

Is it at all a viable solution to install a pre-Lucid kernel and if so how should it be done. What about graphic drivers (aren’t they somehow partly kernel modules now?).

Google Translator 0.5 released

Updated my Google Translator Plasmoid to version 0.5 with the biggest news being auto-detection of languages.

Head on to Google Code or KDE-Look for downloads or get it via "Add Widgets" from the Plasma Desktop.

Changes can be found in the Changelog.

Google Translator 0.4.3 released

Updated my Google Translator Plasmoid to version 0.4.3.

Head on to Google Code or KDE-Look for downloads or get it via "Add Widgets" from the Plasma Desktop.

Changes can be found in the Changelog.

Google Translator 0.4.2 released

Finally I got to update my Google Translator Plasmoid to version 0.4.2.

Changes since I last updated this blog includes:

• 0.4.2
  Much improved error handling when no network connection using Solid. The Plasmoid is now disabled until a connection is established instead of just giving up and dying 😉
  The Plasmoid is now installed under the "Language" section.
• 0.4.1
  Improved KIO handling to be able to handle longer text while at the same time limit text to 1200 characters to avoid errors on too long queries.
• 0.4
  Added a "Swap languages" button.
  TransferJobs are no longer shown in KDE Notifier.
• 0.3.2
  Languages weren’t sorted after change to KLocale.
• 0.3.1
  Quick fix for layout error when adding Plasmoid.
• 0.3
  Use KLocale for getting languages. This cuts down on code lines and it will i18n the language names. Also I don’t have to keep up with the number of Google translations. It’s now a race between Google and KDE 😉
  Act on no network connection.
  Added nice little Google attribution logo 🙂