Interviewed at Zatune.es

April 18, 2008 – 8:54 pm

I’ve just been interviewed at a Spanish website which promotes open source software, zatune.es. The interview follows one of my pet projects, squash, and really stretched out my spanish skills :).

interview link (spanish)


nvidia performance problems (again)

April 14, 2008 – 10:48 am

It’s that never ending story once again. Upgrade the video card, suffer extreme performance loss in the desktop:

  1. swap nvidia 7900 card for 8600 (a meager upgrade, but still)
  2. notice the desktop has dramatically slowed down (expected)
  3. recompile the newest nvidia kernel drivers
  4. reboot, and to no avail, no performance increase
  5. repeat steps 3 and 4, each time tweaking something else. xorg.conf, ubuntu restricted drivers etc

DRI is enabled:
seb@hammerhead:~$ glxinfo | grep "direct"
direct rendering: Yes

I know glxgears is no good benchmark, but at least it provides a slight indication to the performance of the card. 5000 fps is a rubbish result. Also, I’d expect to be able to run the desktop with compositing without an problems - which I can’t.

Can anybody provide a fool proof method of fixing this? I’m reaching out for the sake of my sanity!


Amarok cover fetching

April 10, 2008 – 8:35 am

Hi all,
Just a quick message that I’m sure many of you have discovered already. Cover art retrieval from Amazon is now broken due to a change in API that Amazon has introduced in it’s web service.

We will release Amarok version 1.4.9 very soon which will re-enable cover art downloads.

Thanks for your patience.


Wordpress Comment Spam, Anyone?

March 25, 2008 – 9:57 pm

For those of you wondering where I’ve been, it’s Malaysia and Indonesia for the past two months (stories and photos). Not that anyone wants to hear about that, though!

Has anybody noticed a remarkable spike in wordpress comment spam in the last week? I’ve had to defer all comments for moderation due to the massive amounts of crap that’s coming through. More importantly, does anybody have any suggestion of a way to get around it?

Update: Just noticed that all my permanent pages and comment captcha is missing. This disturbs me greatly.


Bali and Lombok

March 6, 2008 – 1:41 pm

I’ve been getting up to a whole lot of everything and nothing at the same time, if that is even possible. Bali’s full on scene of Kuta was a little too much for me to handle (expensive prices, filthy beach and infuriating touts shouting ‘transport?’), so onto Lombok it was. Even the more relaxed locations of Bali, like the incredible temple perched on a cliff in Ulu Watu, the cultural centre in Ubud and the quiet resort beaches of the East coast couldn’t compare to the beauty and chilled out atmosphere in Lombok.

We cruised up through the West coast of Lombok, through the cheap resort town of Sengigi (a great town with a beautiful reef surf break and excellent food), until we arrived in the Gili Islands. Spent nearly a week diving, surfing and relaxing on the beach. Life couldn’t have gotten much better. Lots of fun people and plenty of things to do (I spent my days surfing between dives, and Jared spent them lying on the beach reading books). We enjoyed our stay so much that we even conveniently missed our boat back to the mainland and stayed another day. When my time in the Gilis was up, I headed down south to Kuta Lombok to check out the awesome surf breaks. Kuta Lombok was my favourite part of the island. Being totally remote, there are no ATMs and the internet connections aren’t even worth touching. The only way to get around is on a motorcycle and an attached surf rack. There weren’t many travellers and everyone was there to do one thing - surf! The beaches are some of the most beautiful, transparent blue and white sands with headlands of massive proportions and cliffs punctuating the horizon.

I’m also back in Bali for the Balinese New Year, Nyepi. Strange thing about this festival, is that there is no mention of it in any guidebook. I would also rate it as one of the most important, since the entire island is sent into a state of house arrest for 24 hours. There’s a big party the evening prior to purge all of the evil spirits from houses and souls, and then everyone stays inside because they are lurking around through the streets. So here’s a tip: if you ever get stuck in Bali on Nyepi, find a nice hotel with a pool and food for the entire day.