kennywest

As all of you probably know, I have kids. 2 of them are currently able to crawl/walk around and unfortunately they don't have the correct understanding of the word no yet. Another problem is they seem to be very fond of technology, music, and they just love to fiddle with my ancient Kenwood KR-2200 receiver and peripherals. They also love to play with my regular sized speakers, I bought a long time ago for a cheap price at Aldi (Medion). Although these speakers were cheap, they sound great and I don't want the kids to break or damage these. So I removed the speakers and replaced them with very small sized speakers that are attached to my old portable radio cassette player (rx-ct800). As much as I used to love my rx-ct800, the little speakers sounded like crap attached to the KR-2200, so I needed a solution. I was thinking on buying some cheap JB Systems speakers, since I already own a set of cheap JB Systems TSX speakers. Unfortunately, these sound like crap too. So I decided ...

Just to let you know, that yours truly and some other Ubuntu enthusiasts will be hosting a booth at the Dipro fair on November 23rd in Ghent on behalf of the Ubuntu Community. I will bring candy :) Please visit the dipro website if you're not sure how to get there.

A few days ago I upgraded my Adium Instant Messenger client on Mac OS X to the latest version. While I was working yesterday, I was being pestered by girls who really wanted me to visit _their_ webcam the whole day :( I guess I am naive and thought only authorized buddies could sent messages to me. Apparently not. If you want the spam messages to stop, all you have to do is go to the Privacy Settings... in the Adium menu and select Allow only contacts on my contact list .

A few weeks ago, I received a mail with the following subject: Likely, you will be now surprised. Below is the complete content of this mail: Hi, how are you? Likely, you will be now surprised. I long thought before writing you the letter. This morning, I have received love the Internet dispatch, from the unknown person to me the addressee. In the given letter, it was spoken about love relations between people. In the list e-mail addressees, I have seen your address. I long thought before writing to you. I think, what you as search for serious relations? I consider, that the given chance for me unique, therefore I have decided to write to you. I wish to find the present love! I would like to begin our acquaintance, with the small story about me. My name is Anahit. Friends me name simply Anahit. To me of 28 years. I the quiet, young, purposeful girl. Friends say to me, that I cheerful. I love dialogue. I consider, that dialogue very important component in our life. I, as well as all wom...

Just a quick update on the Tuxdroid / Java story. I followed the wiki page describing the installation for the 2.0 beta software and launched the new control center (which is entirely written in java). The screenshot above shows this UI and it looks and works awesome. It has a lot more possibilities then the Python based 1.x UI and the attitunes stuff now really works. Attitunes are some kind of scenario's you can _play_, instructing the droid to do and say stuff. If you take a closer look to the screenshot, you can see the "Computer Alert 1 Nl" attitune highlighted. Pressing the play button executes the attitune and makes the droid speak and move. Using the UI you can also download, install and execute attitunes contributed by other people from the Tux Is Alive website. Anyway, I've checked out the code and I'm going to take a closer look at it.

Earlier this year I was visiting FOSDEM and together with a colleague I attended a talk about how to design a Linux robot companion. Although I studied electronics a long time ago, resistors, transistors and other electronic components have never really been my cup of tea. That's why I started to work as a Software Engineer, rather then a chip designer, but that's a whole different story. Anyway, the talk was not that difficult to follow, given my background. Even for people without a hardware background, I think, the talk was not that "nerdy". In the talk David presented a few Tuxdroids and told the story on how they designed it. The presentation was crystal clear for everyone, so the only question that popped from the audience was "Where the hell can we buy this thing?" (laughter all over the place). ThinkGeek was of course the place to be. At that time, we, Europeans, could buy stuff rather cheap on ThinkGeek, so a friend of mine decided to place a m...

Just a quick post to tell the small amount of people tracking this blog that Ubuntu 8.10 is coming. The first beta's are already released. Gentlemen (or women), start playing :)