A rogue http_proxy in my environment before I started X was what was preventing me from logging into Drivel yesterday. I'm not sure if that's a bug or not (I think Drivel should be getting proxy preferences from GNOME only).

On the subject of bugs (and playing with the GIMP) it seems I made it onto the top 15 for the first time ever:

Top 15 people who resolved the most bugs in the last 7 days

UCC
The UCC 30th birthday dinner is closer then I realise. I need to do something about that so that it can be huge. I should start spamming lists of people around Australia and the world. If you are a member or ex-member of the UCC, who hasn't been around in a while, or you know any members of ex-members of the UCC (they have been found in places like Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Berkley), drop me a line (or comment in this blog) so that I can get in contact with them.

I should get more things done today while I'm home with the flu.

I think one of the biggest barriers to getting things done in the UCC is the lack of strong leadership. I don't mean to put down the last two presidents, they have both been great people, very skilled, knowledgable and friendly, but they have not been strong leaders. This means that often the committee can flouder without drive and motivation. I personally find I work much better when there is a leader setting the pace, in fact I can get a phenominal amount of work done very quickly under these sorts of conditions. Unfortunately, I don't see a strong leader stepping up anywhere in the near future, so I'm afraid the club is going to continue to do nothing exciting over the next couple of years. Perhaps computers are too mainstream nowadays for us to be really relevant? Still, people always manage to surprise me.

Drivel
Oh, I committed the Rhythmbox interface to drivel, since it needs serious testing (ie. not on my laptop). While I've never had this looked over by the Rhythmbox guys, if you are looking to do a bonobo interface to Rhythmbox have a look at this example code (lots of words make this appear in Google right?): source, automake, additions to autoconf.

other bits and pieces
I really like Jakub's new device icons (with these USB ones) although both Grahame and I thought the memory media icons should have a similar look and feel to the others. I was thinking perhaps something like this:

Removable Secure Digital Device
It seems to fit the basic idea of the improved icons. I can't wait to combine all of this with HAL and gnome-vfs, so I can just browse my camera for photos in Nautilus using libgphoto2.

I can't get the iSight to work in Linux. The first problem I'm experiencing is that my laptop doesn't have powered firewire. I tried to use a firewire hub, an iBook and my laptop to get it to run. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to work. The iBook may have been messing me up. I've since had an idea to use that same hub along with an iPod firewire power supply (used for recharging iPods via firewire). Who knows what I could do with that level of firewire-video based lovin'?

Pingu
I discovered they are releasing Pingu DVDs in the UK. They may be region 2, but I have to get my hands on them: Pingu Forever, Bouncy Fun, A Very Special Wedding.