Post-summit

So I had a good time at the Gnome Summit this year. I got up the courage to get on stage and show off PenguinTV, and despite wacky vga-output problems I was able to demonstrate the UI and functionality. It got a good reception, and a lot of people came up to me afterward with ideas for extended functionality, including support for stealing streaming real-audio sources, integration with Banshee, and integration with GStreamer. I also got my first patch by email, which is great. The idea that someone went through my messy code and learned enough to work with it (without complaint) seems a little unreal.

This positive feedback has motivated me to keep pushing penguintv toward 1.0, including setting up a CVS repository on sourceforge and getting any final bugs fixed. After 1.0 I’ll work on code cleanup and start looking at C# and Banshee. Fun times ahead!

linux tip: Wireless internet disconnects a lot

Problem: Downloading bittorrents over wireless cards causes frequent connection drops, requiring removal and reinsertion of the driver module to restore the connection. Specifically, I have an Intel wireless card and I use the ipw2200 driver.

Solution:
The GNOME applet that detects the wireless signal is the cause of the problem. Remove the applet from the panel and the card should stay connected. There are still connection drops from time to time, but not nearly as often