Week-end hacks #2

More thumbnailer work, as it's something I can do 20 minutes of, and then go and do something else.

As my thumbnailers were starting to get samey (either the code would spit out PNG/JPEG data, or would create an actual GdkPixbuf), I've created a skeleton file that handles most of the dirty work. It's available on github.

I've also created a MOBI thumbnailer, that's integrated to gnome-epub-thumbnailer and in release 1.2.

GUADEC[1] Hardware giveaway

I'm cleaning up my hardware chest, and giving away some hardware to a good home. I intend on travelling with those that I found a new home for at GUADEC. All of them are in good working condition. If there is a charger or power supply, it will be a UK one.

Drop me a mail with your intended usage (preferably GNOME or kernel related), or need some more info about the devices.

Up for grabs

Palm Pilot Tungsten E2

The predecessor to all your new-fangled smartphones. This one could even do Bluetooth syncing using gnome-pilot, all those years ago. Might be nice as a remote control of some sort, or legacy support for Pilots.

D-Link DIR-615 Wi-Fi N router

Works with DD-WRT. Would be great to work with DD-WRT or associated on a way to configure those through a GNOME UI à-la Airport base stations.

HP iPaq 914

Euro plug. Apparently this can't run Linux... Yet!

DXR3 card

Offload your MPEG2 decoding to this PCI card.

iPod Touch 2G

Too old to run any recent iOS, but good enough to show off your web apps skills, or work on Notes sync with IMAP servers.

Broadcom Crystal HD mini-PCIE 70015 and 70012

2 video decoder cards usable with Linux. You'd need to port the GStreamer plugin to GStreamer 1.0 to get those (or one of those at least).

Plantronics and Motorola Bluetooth headsets

Not the newest devices, but they work.

Red Hat branded power adapter

USB to Nokia/Motorola with this retractable extension lead.

On their way to a good home [2]

Logitech MX 5000 pack and diNovo keyboard

Space-age mouse and keyboard set. Benjamin Tissoires will be getting the (now not so much space age as grubby and outdated) pack to hopefully implement HID++ 1.0 in the kernel.

The diNovo keyboard is a nice little Bluetooth keyboard for a media PC or the likes, even has the tiniest of trackpads.

Logitech 9000, PS3 Eye and Creative OV511-based webcams

Hans de Goede will get those to make them work out-of-the-box in Fedora, and upstream, trying to clean up some hacks he gave me for those a long time ago.

No-name USB GPS dongle and Tom-Tom Bluetooth GPS

For Zeeshan, just in case he gets bored implementing geoclue2.

Nokia N82 and Palm Centro

For Dan Williams. ModemManager's testing gear is growing.

Belkin G and Dell 1450 Wi-Fi USB dongles

Giovanni and Jasper will enjoy those Wi-Fi dongles that will create bugs in gnome-shell's network menu and the new aggregate menu.

[1]: Or near enough for some of the items :)

[2]: I made my pre-selection based on the possible uses for the hardware.

Did somebody say "FreeFA"?

Little birdy tells me that we're playing football again this year, so don't forget to sign up!

Week-end hacks

Last week, I picked up a Kobo Mini e-reader from my local FNAC store for (less than) 40€ and loaded it up with books from the latest Humble eBook Bundle. As generic document icons aren't really that great to recognise the books, I wrote a small thumbnailer for it, which is now available in GNOME git.

Some DRM-free e-books.

The release is available on the GNOME FTP site, and somebody packaging it up for Fedora would be greatly appreciated.

The other week-end hack was a way to run a program with user-defined DNS servers, rather than relying on the system's /etc/resolv.conf file. It only supports IPv4, but it was good enough to run a few command-line utilities with those specific DNS servers.