Hruške, jabuke, jablane, čežane.

Every now and then I like to tinker a bit more with KDE than just using it. So I set on a course of creating a simple plasma widget (also called plasmoid). I must admit, I’m not really a seasoned Qt (or KDE) developer.

So I figured — take a look at some of the examples and tutorials on KDE techbase and I’ll be running my very own proud plasmoid in no time, right? Err.. was I wrong or what.

I tried to create a simple plasmoid for my shiny KDE 4 desktop. Ok, copy paste the example from the KDE site and voila, a widget with “Hello world” text pops up. Next I looked up to microblog plasmoid, that provides a twitter/identi.ca microblogging widget. It’s a simple applet, but still has a fair amount of useful knowledge in it, eg. how to use dataengines, how to render plasmoid and how the code fits together in general. Data engines are API endpoints, that provide your plasmoid with data such as time in different timezones, twitter timelines for users, etc. They are designed to decouple presentation layer (your applet) from data layer (the data engines), which makes sense. They also provide a way to make use of technically superior methods than those used in SuperKaramba (you can also read that as “polling as little as possible”).

Well, it turns out that doing that from Python is currently not possible from KDE 4.2, at least not without reimplementing a great deal of already implemented code. But that was not my main issue. I was a bit irritated at the lack of documentation. Python bindings are sadly not regarded as important as other and are usually feature-wise behind the C++ and JavaScript. Also, there were quite a few missing spots in my knowledge about plasmoids. I was missing a bit more noobish introduction to plasmoids, that would explain what types of plasmoids there are, what one can do and what Plasma API expects from a plasmoid (eg. the API requirements). Many plasmoids are PopupApplets, but Python examples don’t mention those — clearly because they can’t even work yet in KDE 4.2, as I’ve just figured. Also, it took me way too much time to realize that, a newbie overview over the Plasma API would of solved that in no time.

All in all, KDE 4.2 is “already” quite usable, and KDE 4.3 will probably be a lot more, given the fact that Twitter microblog plasmoid shouldn’t leak memory anymore. Other than that — it’s a shame that KDE overhyped the KDE 4.0 release so that everyone was dissapointed afterwards. Also, I’m very sad to see the commit-digest.org having fairly little bug fixes compared to features. That’s also the pest that’s hurting KDE the most as far as I am concerned — releasing undertested code on their users.

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Zagon računalnika z omrežja je en meni ljubših načinov za obujanje sistema. CDji so mi bili že od začetka sumljivi. Nezanesljivi, krhki, dojemljivi za mehanske poškodbe, razmeroma veliki in štorasti. CDji malega formata (8cm al kolko so) pa niso priporočljivi za prenosnike, ki nimajo pladnja. Ali pa neuporabni za večino netbookov, ki itak nimajo CD enote.

No, danes sem končno uspel v svojo virtualno linux boot instanco vpeljat še Knoppix, tako da se mi lahko zdaj prek mreže zbudi tudi Knoppix, ne samo Debian installer.

Včeraj me je par twitov bivšega ministra Žige Turka spodbodlo, da sem si vzel čas in pogledal kaj so imeli naši vrli politiki povedati v Trenjih. Sama oddaja ni nič posebnega, pač tako kot vsa trenja z Urošem Slakom – strel mimo. Vseeno pa sem pogledal celo oddajo, da lahko zdaj v miru pokomentiram utrinke.

V debati oz. pregovarjanju se še najbolje znajdeta Kacin in Peterle, ostali pa bolj mešajo zrak. No, kako dobro pove še Žagar, ampak preveč potiho in ne artikulira ravno dovolj razločno, tako da si ne more obetati blaznega uspeha.

Definitivno pa prvo mesto na WTF lestvici pripada Zoranu Thalerju. V debati jasno pokaže, da je zamudil nekaj desetletij politike na Slovenski sceni. Sicer ni bilo nekega blaznega napredka, ampak definitivno ni na tekočem z vsemi aferami, ki so se v tem času obrnile. Ustreli kar nekaj kozlov, huda je primerjava “levice” in “desnice”, kjer desnico označi kot tisto, ki zamoči, levica pa potem popravlja. Za primer da 8-letno vladavino Busha, ki je izčrpal državo, in Obamo, ki sedaj rešuje podjetja s podržavljanjem. Rešuje? S podržavljanjem? Jao.

No, vrhunec Trenj pa je definitivno izjava:

Streznitev ni potrebna, ker Borut Pahor nikoli ne spije kaplje alkohola. – Zoran Thaler (okoli 46:00)

V ozadju pa se zasliši smeh ostalih kandidatov.

No, sicer pa oddaja ne ponuja neke blazne dodane vrednosti, prej nasprotno. Mogoče si zasluži ogleda zgolj zaradi zanimive mimike Zorana Thalerja, ki daje videt, da že dolgo dolgo ni bil v politiki in se ne zna pogovarjati neagresivno. Zaradi mimike in nastopa – pa tudi zaradi pričeske – me na čase spominja na Jokerja, ki ga je odigral preminuli Ledger, s kulminacijo v zgornji izjavi o Borutu Pahorju pa bi ga verjetno lahko prekašal samo še Erjavec, če bi v tistem momentu rekel “Why so serious?”.

Žal so se kandidati za Evropske volitve po zaslugi rumenosti oddaje še vedno pogovarjali o aferah tu, večinoma obtoževali kdo je bolj kriv, si lastili zasluge za vse dobro kar so postorili za našo državo v preteklem času, predvsem Vajgl, Zver in Thaler.