New Toy
Time to take photography to the next level. I bought a digital SLR camera, the Rebel XT by Canon. My hopes are to reignite the spark that once existed when I was into film photography on my trusty old Praktica LLC. Only this time, I can know if I do something right or wrong instantly.

The camera itself isn't Canon's top-of-the-line model, but most of what matters is similar enough or the same when compared to their professional offerings. I don't expect to be using this more than once or twice a week, so I do not need bullet-proof construction. Furthermore, I keep getting told that it is the lens that really matters.

The lens that came with the unit is quite acceptable for initial adventures. The plan is to treat myself to a more expensive piece of glass a few months down the road. The immediate plan is to invest in an adaptor that will let me mount the old M42 lenses from the Praktica onto the Canon EF body. The lenses will force the camera into completely manual mode, but that's the point. They are good lenses, and it will force me back to basics.

I look forward to many years of quality captured frames of still life.

Boston GNOME Summit 2006
This past weekend was the Boston GNOME Summit, which I've made a habit of going to. I left work on Friday with the intention of getting there earlier than last year. Unfortunately, I ran into an hour-long line at the border, then managed to pass the same upstate New York spot twice traveling in the same direction, somehow, about 45 minutes later. Suffice it to say, I got there later than last time. Still, the drive was very nice, with a full moon lighting up the whole scenery around me.

At the conference itself, I went to a discussion whenever one was available. Whereas last year was all about optimization, this year there was a lot of focus on designing new technologies and the direction GNOME should take. I contributed to the talks as much as I could, but many of the subjects were about things I am not familiar with. A testament to all of the interesting directions the project is taking to stay fresh.

This year's hack was something that turned out fairly successful, judging by the reaction it got in the show-and-tell at the closing session. I made a quick little script that acts as a Nautilus thumbnailer for Windows EXE files. So, when a folder with Windows binaries is opened, their icon shows up using the same functionality as image files. The current implementation is a complete hack; it doesn't even choose the optimal icon resource. But I plan on extending icoutils to make a proper version more efficient.

I'd like to thank all of the locals for their great hospitality. I had a really good time hanging out with the RedHat and Novell folks. You learn so much by meeting people in real life compared to the internet. My back even made it into Jakub Steiner's flickr collection: