Got a G1, Yay Linux!

So I caved and got a G1. I may write an in-depth review after I've had it longer, or I may not, but here are the highlights:

Rock

• I can has source!
• No need to print from Google Maps when I leave the house.
  
• Better reception in my house with T-Mobile than I had with AT&T.
• ConnectBot SSH client works great with my screen+irssi setup.
• Used ShopSavvy at Sports Authority yesterday to convince Ellery it was worth getting her a shiny new pair of rollerblades. Hold phone up to barcode, see local and online price comparisons.
• Used Shazam to find out what's playing on the radio. Hold phone up to speaker, wait a few seconds, prompted with all the info you could desire, including a link to download via phone at Amazon MP3 store.
• Unlock screen shows when my alarm is set to go off.
• Keyboard surprisingly comfortable to use.
• Camera image quality decent.
  
• Easier than I thought to patch HAL (or just edit .is_audio_player) so that G1 Just Works in Banshee:
  

Click for larger view, obligatory F-Spot Awesomeness

Suck

• My thumbs are a bit fat to use on the touch screen (I have somewhat-deformed wide thumbs). So, no one-handed use.
  
• No visual voice mail.
• When interacting with a phone service, like voicemail, and you are prompted to enter digits, I go into freak-out mode, because I look at the screen and it is blank, so I have to unlock, then find the dialer so I can hit a number, which can be kind of tricky depending on how the call started. I can probably flip out the keyboard and use that, but as I said, I'm in a panic.
• Not sure how to carry this thing. It comes with a sleeve/pouch/thingy, and for now I put it in there and then in my pocket, but now it takes two hands and an extra few seconds to answer my phone. What do people do? I'm used to having a crappy phone that can live in the same pocket as keys and other dangerous items!
• Camera slow, worthless in low-light situations.
  

Really looking forward to Tomdroid!

Tomboy Planning Meeting Tomorrow

In case anybody's interested, we're having our planning meeting for this development cycle in #tomboy tomorrow...

Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 1930 UTC
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=10&day=23&year=2008&hour=12&min=30&sec=0&p1=224

That's 12:30 PM PDT, 8:30 PM BST, etc etc.

Everybody is welcome!  We've started a wiki page to gather ideas before
holding the meeting, so check it out here, and add your name if you're
attending, along with any ideas you might have:

http://live.gnome.org/Tomboy/DevMeetingZeroPointFourteen

Topics to dicuss:
* Features for this cycle
* Cross-platform updates
* Plans for bug/patch days to clean up bugzilla

My personal goals for this cycle:
* Solid Windows binaries with every 0.13.x release
* Experimental Mac binaries with every 0.13.x release
* Power through bugzilla, with a major focus on memory/performance
issues and other long-standing embarrassing bugs (like note renaming
problems).
* Better community management on my part, frequent bug/patch days, not
letting patches rot in bugzilla.  Basically, enabling our awesome
contributors instead of frustrating them!

Tomboy Preview for Windows and Mac

Please To Try

At the end of August, I told you about my little project to bring Tomboy to Windows users. Well, last week I finally merged that code into trunk. And then Friday, the excellent Mono team released a Mono 2.0 installer for OS X, and I found that my Windows build of Tomboy finally worked pretty well on the Mac, too. Of course, some platform integration there would be nice...





Click for full-screen shots. Notice that I added a menu for tracking open note windows, and attached the classic recent notes menu to the dock icon. This is not the most elegant solution, but I wanted Mac users to play around with it and share their own opinions. I'm very open to changes here. :-)

I didn't have any plans this weekend, so I present to you "preview builds" of Tomboy 0.13.0 for Windows and Mac OS X. I'm distributing them with the disclaimer that they are not widely tested, though in my own testing I have found no bugs that would make me worry about loss of data. Just consider yourself warned, and please back up your notes.

If you find any bugs, or have ideas for better platform integration, or find issues with install, please please PLEASE file bugs!

Click to file a bug for Tomboy on Windows!

Click to file a bug for Tomboy on Mac OS X!

Mac Instructions

1. Install Mono 2.0 for Mac OS X.
2. Download and mount the Tomboy disk image.
   
3. Drag Tomboy to Applications, run!
4. (optional) Copy your notes to ~/.config/tomboy

Mac Known Issues

• Shortcut keys all use Control instead of Command.
• The Bugzilla add-in doesn't work.
• In the note window toolbar, notebook names can be ellipsized oddly.
• Hand cursor doesn't show when hovering over links, but they're still clickable.
• No keybindings support.
• No i18n support.

Windows Instructions

1. Install Medsphere's GTK# SDK installer (the runtime installer should work, but in my testing it did not install a particular registry key needed for Tomboy to recognize its presence).
2. If you are running Windows Vista, you may need to follow additional instructions to work around an installer bug.
3. Restart your computer.
   
4. Download the Tomboy installer.
   
5. Double-click to install!
6. (optional) Copy your notes to %appdata%\tomboy

Windows Known Issues

• Menu rendering issues.
• Two console windows appear briefly when Tomboy starts (fixed in Mono.Addins SVN).
• No drag and drop from other apps into Tomboy (appears to be unimplemented in GTK+ for Windows).
• If you try to run Tomboy twice, it should show the Search window instead of launching again, but sometimes it will not show the Search window until you have interacted with Tomboy in some other way (by hovering over a window or clicking the tray icon, for example).
• No i18n support.

Big Thanks

This was actually a pretty easy job, thanks to these folks:

• Eoin Hennessey, who pioneered a lot of this work in his banshee-osx git branch, which he and Aaron are merging into Banshee trunk this week. Among other things, he created Mono bindings for Imendio's excellent ige-mac-integration library, and scripts for building app bundles.
• Andrew Jorgensen, Thomas Wiest, Marc Christensen, and Geoff Norton of the Mono team. These guys have been rocking hard on Mono's Mac story, and it shows. Thanks especially for getting me a build of MonoDevelop in time for my Saturday hack fest!
• Aaron Bockover, who keeps threatening to do a Mac release before me.
• Brad Taylor and his old Medsphere cronies, who whipped gtk-sharp on Windows into shape.
• All GTK+ developers and porters, especially those at Imendio!
• The entire Tomboy community, especially Dmitry Kostenko, Doug Johnston, and Samuel Vandamme for their patches to help make Tomboy on Windows a reality. You guys are awesome!