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Författare: Daniel Holm

Det är med delade känslor…

…som jag idag fyller 25 år.

Dels är jag stolt, för jag känner mig faktiskt allt mer mogen; jag känner mig mer som hemma i mig själv och även i det hos mig som kanske inte alls är särskilt ”vuxet” enligt samhällets normer, men som jag ändå värdesätter och troligtvis, och förhoppningsvis, aldrig kommer att växa ifrån. Att jag blir äldre och inte längre är en naiv tonåring – aldrig hade jag velat vara så ung igen. Nu är jag en smått naiv 25-åring istället.

Dels för att min värld inte är som jag trodde att den skulle vara vid det här laget. Min värld tog nyligen ett stort kliv tillbaka då jag efter tre och ett halvt år, boende och levat med, en underbar kvinna, blivit singel igen. Jag hade ett liv, som inte alls var som det är idag; och det på en sekunds förändring. Jag ska inte gå in på detaljerna, men det var ett gemensamt beslut och vår kärlek och kommunikation är bestående. Sedan finns det också att jag förlorade min älskade mormor i vintras, och att gå miste om en människa som funnits där hela ens liv var en väldigt ny upplevelse. Jag har gått vidare, för jag vet att det var hennes tid: att hon var trött och gammal. Självklart saknar jag henne, och kommer göra det i resten av mitt liv.

Det är inte så underligt att man tänker dessa tankar runt ens födelsedag. Denna dag var stor som barn, och jag tänker aldrig någonsin lämna och dölja det barnet som fortfarande finns inom mig. Att förneka sig själv det är att dö lite och att aldrig någonsin växa upp. Detta med barns födelsedagar, där hela släkten var på besök och man åt tårta och fikade. Det dröjer sig kvar som ibland det vackraste minnen man har och jag vill uppleva det på varje födelsedag. Jag vill ha alla där: såväl vänner som familj och släkt. Nu har jag två mindre i mitt liv och jag känner inte för att fira något om jag inte hade fått ha det som förr med kaffe och tårta med guldiga tårtspadar på ett gammal ekbord.

Jag trodde att jag skulle leva med min älskade vid det här laget. Men ca tre månader innan så var det över. Ja, jag är sorgsen. Varför skulle jag inte det? Nu lever jag ihop med en god vän i en mijö som inte riktigt är min då allt finns kvar i min förra värld. Mycket är nytt – allt inte av godo.

Jag saknar min familj. Minns min första födelsedag borta. Jag fyllde 16 år och hade nyligen flyttat hemifrån för att börja gymnasiet. Det var tomt i min etta och jag kände mig ensam. Ett samtal väckte mig och sjungande röster fyllde min morgon med ljus. Jag känner mig inte ensam nu, även om jag både saknar mormor och min fd. Men jag saknar även resten av familjen och min släkt. Jag kommer att få se dem igen, det jag menar är bara att detta inte är den 25-årsdag som jag kanske tänkt mig den. Sittande och kodande på en hemsida och en musik-applikation till något jag älskar: öppenhet. Det är inte alls dumt. Och min 25-årsdag har precis fötts.

Jag vet bara inte vad jag vill göra av den heller. Det är en dag som jag känner mig delad inför. Jag vill allt och absolut ingenting. Tur att man fyller fler gånger.

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Music App update – Sep 8th. 100th rev and v 0.6!

Happy 100th revision! For me this is truly a milestone. I mean, 100 revisions since Music was just a basic UI concept. Now look at it. It plays music, sorts tracks by artist, album, has playlist support, shows cover art, seeks and starts to look pretty darn good.

We celebrate by giving you Music 0.6!

 

Changelog:

  • HUD support (Daniel Holm)

  • New app icon (Sam Hewitt)

  • New album view (Victor Thompson)

  • New artist view (Victor Thompson)

  • New first page with last played and genres (Victor Thompson)

  • New Add to playlist page (Daniel Holm)

  • Playlists now shows number of tracks (Daniel Holm)

  • Currently played track is highlighted all over the app. (Andrew Hayzen)

  • Animation when jump to next track. (Andrew Hayzen)

  • Clicking on a track bring the user to the queue. (Victor Thompson)

  • Merged together Queue with Now Playing, which has become the central part of the app (Andrew Hayzen)

  • Swipe to delete (Andrew Hayzen)

  • Adding apparmor manifest for when running confined. (Sergio Schvezov)

  • Updated Autopilot to (Victor Thompson):

    • Test Next song.

    • Test Use Oggs.

 

Bugs fixed:

  • Fix when adding item to queue from album page that album data does not
    appear in the play queue. (Andrew Hayzen)

  • Playlist Null property (Andrew Hayzen)

  • Play Queue cache (Andrew Hayzen)

  • Add to queue album page (Andrew Hayzen)

  • Fix location of added music content (Victor Thompson)

  • Debian fix common folder (Andrew Hayzen)

 

New Queue - Now Playing

Victor has made a lot of progress with integrating the new Mediascanner (which will be system wide in Ubuntu) into Music. Packages for using it – together with Grilo QML bindings – are landing in the Core Apps PPA. This is one of the most heavy (important) things that will have to be done by the time of 1.0 release.

The UI/UX is undergoing a real facelift to look like Lisette Ledgers design: http://design.canonical.com/2013/08/music-app-focus-on-the-content/

The focus is on the content with the Queue now playing a central role. The new design are coming a long nicely with both large and small fixes coming in continuously.

The main theme of the discussion me, Victor and Andrew right now is the Toolbar and the expanded listitems, which will make a lot of change.

We are also awaiting the API to make the app stay awake (keep playing music) after screen off.

So there you have it. The changes to and the release of Music 0.6.

There’s still a lot that needs to be done for 1.0 in October, but we’ll get there.

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Quiz App Update, 24th aug.

Hi all,
Back from a lot of work and studying for an exam. Back to my app submissions to the Ubuntu App Showdown.
The Quiz app, which I’ve written about earlier, is coming along nicely. Yesterday and today, I’ve been working on rebuilding some of the backend. Previously Quiz was only able to add a question, with an answer, and then list all of the questions, and if you wanted to answer a question you had to write it down. Then I added four buttons, one which contained the correct answer – no need to type it yourself.
Now, I removed those old buttons, updated the tables for the questions database so that you can add alternatives to your question, and each of them (max four, min two) gets an old button automagically since I’ve rebuild the backend to use ListModels instead of manually doing it. Each alternative is saved in an array, foreach.append to ListModel = done!
Result is found in the images above. I just need to deactivate all of the buttons when one alternative is pressed, instead of just the one that got pressed. Also the alternatives will be in a random order later on.
Later on I will create a way for the app to download new questions from a server, and also bundle the app with some inital questions. Untill then you have to add your own.

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First Ubuntu App Showdown submission: Quiz

Quiz is a quiz game, simply. But not really as simple as a simple quiz game.The idea is quite large, which actually makes me wounder if I should just make it simple now, and to make it bigger later on.

The idea is that you can use Quiz for two main reasons:

1. To learn: You can add any kind of question you like, and then use it to learn my answering your own questions. I’m currently reading a book about pretty much everything, and I add thinks like years, scientists, definitions and elements.

2. Game: Challenge your friends either by your own quiz, or by already submitted. That brings be to the much bigger thing: infrastructure. I will have to write a web back-end for users to authenticate and submit questions – and most importantly: make it safe.

So this first update is just to bring you up to speed: You can add your own questions, and you can answer them.

Next step will be to add a function do add alternative answers and returning these as buttons for the users, instead of a text field, which will have to be answered exactly.

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Music App update – July 15th.

It’s been a while since the last update, but there haven’t been any real news or updates – until now(!).

Today there where a lot that got merged into trunk, and therefore is coming to a PPA near you.

 

Changelog

  • Removed the ability to chose your own music directory. Instead using default: ~/Music (Victor Thompson)

  • For Ubuntu Hackfest, make Music scan ~/Music on each start up. (Victor Thompson)

  • Placeholder for cover art in Now Playing toolbar. (Victor Thompson)

  • Initial playlist support. (Daniel Holm)

    • Create/edit/remove playlist.

    • Add track to playlist.

    • Show playlists in Playlist tab.

  • Popover. (Daniel Holm)

    • Press and hold playlist to either edit or remove it.

    • Press and hold track to add to playlist or queue it.

  • Debug (Daniel Holm)

    • New function that’s makes it easy to shut debugging of for later.

  • Library. (Andrew Hayzen)

    • A limit has been introduced into the buffer to stop large memory allocations.

    • Performance tweaks so database is written in a single transaction.

  • Ability to seek on the Now Playing view. (Andrew Hayzen)

  • New icons. (Lucas Romero Di Benedetto)

    • Default album/cover art missing.

    • Last.fm

    • Playlist

    • Music Directory

 

Bugs resolved

  • Buttons in queue dialog being too far down.

  • Playlist dialog not showing up.

 

Hackfest

Last week Ubuntu Hackfest started off and day two treated the Music app.

I (Daniel) worked on the playlist support, which landed in trunk today. Although you aren’t yet able to actually play, or show any of the tracks in them, they work.

Andrew Hayzen helped a lot with the scanning of the music dir. He first proposed a branch that shortened the scanning process a LOT! Then he helped trying to resolve the UI lockup during scanning by introducing limit to the buffer.

 

Design meetings

During one of the past design meetings we decided to pretty much put the UI on hold, since we haven’t yet decided how the app will look like, exactly. However, we still do some change, like icons and annoying bugs, but there will be no large changes and I hope you all can bare with us until the UI is decided – and Lisette Slegers and Lucas have some really good ideas coming our way: It will be gorgeous!

 

Whats next?

Well, quite much.

  • Victor and I will take a look on how to switch from the current tracklist playing, to the chosen playlist.

  • I will move the remove the queue dialog and move the queue list to the Playlist tab.

  • I will continue to work on scrobble support, which is not yet done – and together with that, we will get a new way of downloading and using missing cover art.

  • Some nice new icons will land by Lucas.

  • Micah Losli is working on the bug that when shuffling is activated, wrong track info is showing for the currently playing track.

  • Probably much more, which I don’t yet know of.

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How to create a simple web app for Ubuntu Touch.

DEPRECATED – It is now far easier to create a web app using the Ubuntu SDK.

So I’ve started to create some really simple applications for Ubuntu Touch by using already existing web pages that are optimized for touch devices and smart phones, and then open them in the default web browser, but as separate windows.

This guide will go through creating a simple launcher and package it for your device.

What you need before we start is a working development and package environment, so read this:

  • Some knowledge of the terminal.

  • If you later want to upload to Launchpad for a PPA, read and follow this:

    • http://developer.ubuntu.com/packaging/html/getting-set-up.html

  • You then also need a PPA, of course. I’m using ppa:danielholm/touch-apps for this.

We are going to use a simple desktop file that launches and points a URL that Ubuntu Touch’s

browser opens as it’s own application. You get one of your favorite web sites as an app and you get HUD support for free.

Then we add the package stuff, and download an icon to use; build and then done!

And if you also upload your app to a PPA, others will enjoy it as well.

Later, I will stop using Debian packages for these kind of apps, since I figure that the new Click packages is being developed just to be used for applications like these.

Alright, so let’s get going. I’m going to use Wikipedia as an example for this.

If you already know the URL of the mobile adapted web site, use that.

For example, Wikipedia has: http://m.wikipedia.com

1. Download the archive, which contains a template and packaging files: http://ubuntuone.com/4cP0vdGTMd8LsWjru4cTya
If you already know that you don’t want to create a package and upload to an PPA, use the .desktop template: http://ubuntuone.com/2EeECluBvimv1KkcDCDoQv

2. Edit wikipedia.desktop and change the values of ”Name”, ”Icon”, and the URL in ”Command”.
Name: The one that will show in Unity. I’ll use “Wikipedia”
Icon: Path of the icon you want to use.
Command: Replace only the URL. The browser handles the rest.

3. Save it, and change the filename to your new app’s name. I’ll use wikipedia.desktop
(be sure that this file is executable! (chmod +x))

4. Open the Debian directory and open postinst. This file will be run after initial install of the package files, and will here be used to download the icon that will be used. I’m using it this way so that I can redistribute the launcher without any copyright infringement. You simple take the URL of an icon/image you want to use, and replace the one in the file. Then change the filename that the downloaded file is saved as, as well as the app directory. I’ll use the Wikipedia icon from Play Store: https://lh6.ggpht.com/-Eq7SGa8CVtZCQPXmnux59sebPPU04j1gak4ppkMVboUMQ_ucceGCHrC1wtqfqyByg=w78-h78

5. Each of these files has to be edited (in debian/). Replace all Wikipedia stuff with your own app name and info.

  • changelog

  • control

  • copyright

  • install

6. When all the files [that needs to] has been edited, it’s time to imitate some version control in your working dir, using bzr:

$ bzr init

7. Then add the files in the dir:

$ bzr add

8. Lastly create a commit with a appropriate message:

$ bzr commit -m ”Initial commit.”

9. Time to get building! In your working dir, run:

$ bzr builddeb -S

This creates the needed files to upload and create packages in the PPA, which we’ll upload:
(this is to my PPA. You have to use your own)

dput ppa:danielholm/touch-apps wikipedia_0.1_source.changes

10. After a while you package will be ready to apt-get (after you’ve added your PPA, of course).

Enjoy your app, and to please share it.

I set up a recipe to build my packages automagically (yes, magic) every night – if there is a change – in launchpad. If you use this, you don’t have to upload your own packages, and you just need to upload your code to Launchpad.

Since my apps aren’t from anywhere else, I removed the upstream version in my recipe, and replaced it with my own version number, in this case “0.1”. There’s probably a better way of doing that, but I leave that for others to resolve.

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Web apps for Ubuntu Touch.

I got my Galaxy Nexus last week and immediately installed Ubuntu Touch on it, and have run it ever since. I really like the way to jump between applications in the UI, but don’t really like having many tabs running on a smart phone/tab – also I don’t want to input the site I want to check out every time I know what I want to do. Therefore I started to create apps for Ubuntu Touch just like the one for Twitter and Facebook: a simple launcher that opens a new browser window with a set URL.

I started two night ago with testing and yesterday I started to setup and build packages for all of them (moved to let Launchpad to the building now, instead). Today I’ve added a few more.

I started out with the ones I need personally:

  • Swedbank (Swedish bank)

  • Ping Pong (app for Swedish Universities)

  • Wikipedia

  • Västtrafik (Public transit where I live)

  • tv.nu (Whats on TV right now – Swedish channels)

  • IMDb

  • SR (Swedish Radio)

  • SJ (Train)

  • Wunderlist (todo service)

Might be more… they’re building.

They’re all in by PPA: https://launchpad.net/~danielholm/+archive/touch-apps

You can find the code here: https://code.launchpad.net/~danielholm

In the coming days I will post a simple guide the describes how you can do this too – it’s really simple. The only thing that’s hard, really, is the packaging stuff and setting up your environment, which isn’t that hard either.

 

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Music App update – June 19th.

This is the first update of the Music app in the Ubuntu Core apps project – the official Music application of Ubuntu Touch.

At the time it’s been me (Daniel Holm) and Victor Thompson that’s been developing the application for a couple of weeks now.

Victor has put in some really good work to populate the library of meta data of each track in the users music directory, and then show the results in the app. This had to be done, due to that it’s hard to extract meta data of each and every track on each start up. Instead the music directory is scanned on first run and each tracks meta data is saved in a database, which is used later to create each of the tabs now used:

  • Music – Contains each seperate track in music dir.
  • Artists – Not done yet, but will show each artist.
  • Albums – Shows coverart (those who have) of each album in music dir.
  • Playlist – not done yet. More on that later.

The function to populate the library was quite hard to do in a QML way. We made a move to Nemo.FolderListModel(), which Victor sumbitted some changes upstream to.
Victor also has worked out the shuffle function so that works. Also the Now Playing dialog together with the ability to swipe for next/previous track.

This past week I’ve been working on integrating some of Lucas’ ideas about the UI, together with integrating scrobble support and support for Playlists:

  • We now use tabs (might switch to a nother way later on)
  • Some inital code to support scrobble support to Last.fm (not yet complete, so it doesn’t yet scrobble).
  • Tab, functions and database for playlists. Will include import playlist files, that the user already has.

 

Lucas yesterday submitted a demo of his thoughts of how the Music app should work:

 

Music 0.3 just landed in trunk and the package should be in the Core Apps PPA later tonight. Altough Victor’s upstream changes has not yet landed in Nemo.FolderListModel(), which unfortunately makes it unable to run before you got the latest changes. But a PPA package for that is under way.

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My Music app on it's way to Core apps.

Great news! My Music App, which I showed the to the world a week or so, ago is now being developed together with Canonical and the Community to become one of the Core applications in Ubuntu Touch – the default music application!

I just had my first meeting with Michael Hall, Alan Pope and Victor Thompson, where we discussed how to proceed with the development.
The application will be based on my code, which is great. Also we will adopt the UI design from Lucas Romero Di Benedetto, which you can see above.

I’m so excited!

 

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"Kan du jobba för en kvinna?"

För snart två år sedan så gick jag in på en arbetsintervju för att bistå ett göteborgsplacerat företag med en flytt och diverse ihopkoppling av nätverk, datorer, m.m.
Intervjun gick utmärkt och jag fick senare jobbet och har fått mig en vän för livet då hon, chefen, som intervjuade mig har fått en särskild plats hos mig och är en fantastisk person. Men under intervjun ställer hon mig frågan: ”Kan du jobba för en kvinna?”

Jag hoppade näst intill till av chock. Jag förstod inte varför hon ställde mig frågan. Självklart kan jag jobba för en kvinna! För mig spelade det ingen roll om jag jobbar för en kvinna, vid en kvinna eller att en kvinna skulle jobba för mig. Det har ju ingenting med hennes biologiska kön att göra. Jag svarade att jag givetvis inte hade något problem med det. Hon förklarade hur hon på ett annat jobb hade haft problem med män som, av min tolkning, mobbade henne för hennes biologiska kön och hade utttryckt sig som att de försökte se vad hon gick för innan de tänkte ta något från henne.

Jag blir vansinnig.

Men då slog det mig hur, naivt, att bara för jag inte ser den skillnaden på män och kvinnor, så betyder inte det att andra gör det. Bara för att jag har insett hur könen är socialt konstruerade och hur jävla ojämlikt det kan är, så har inte andra det.

Situerad som en vit, ung man i Sverige, med en pågående hög utbildning, bra möjligheter till jobb, stor kunskap och som dessutom är frisk – och smal; jag är på toppen av världen och den grupp som är minst utsatt av alla. Detta ger mig ett ansvar att bekämpa utsatthet, istället för att spe på den. Jag vill jämna ut detta samhälle genom utbildning och politik. Det är mitt kall – mot ett hållbart samhälle.

Frågan är kanske mer: ”Kan jag jobba för ett patriarkat?

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