• Up early; down to breakfast.
• Went to a Unity Design Feedback session in which I lamented aloud the lack of sloppy focus support. Others raised points both positive and negative about the design and we got some clues about how some of the current issues will be resolved in this cycle. (notes)
• Next up was a session on debugging suspend and hibernate support. The presenter had some interesting ideas about how to get debug information from the kernel when it freezes before things like video are brought up. The basic idea was using either the PC speaker or a keyboard LED to encode the state of the system. This would be recorded using a camera or audio recorder and sent to the developers, who would have the tools to extract the data. (blueprint, notes)
• I then went to a session on dual-monitor support. The general idea of this was that the current way of setting up multiple monitors is crap and that it can be done much more intelligently. (blueprint, notes)
• Last up before lunch was a session about porting Gwibber to GTK3. I’m a huge fan of Gwibber in general, but it takes up far too many resources in its current state. Happy to hear they’re moving all the logic into the back end and rewriting a very simple client in Vala. (blueprint, notes)
• After lunch I went back to my room to relax a bit. Tried to call Emily but I guess my timing was not as good as I had thought.
• Next was a session on Ubuntu’s distributed development processes. (blueprint, notes)
• After that I went to a riveting session on postinst scripts for kernel packages and how to align them better with upstream initramfs-tools. (blueprint, notes)
• Last session of the day was a Q&A with Mark Shuttleworth about governance in the Ubuntu community. He answered questions about how decisions like those around Unity and Banshee were made and how processes like those could be improved. (notes)
• After dropping my bag in my room I met up with a large group heading to the Invisible Exhibition. Some members of the Hungarian Ubuntu Local Community team were gracious enough to guide us through the extensive public transit system to the exhibition and arrange for English-speaking guides for us. The exhibition itself consisted of several environments which we had to navigate and interact with in total darkness, simulating the everyday life of a blind person. There was a cabin, a forest, a busy street, a statue garden, an apartment, and a bar. In each place we tried to find our way around using only touch and hearing, helping each other as best we could. The statue garden had replicas of famous statues which we had to try to identify just by touching them. In the bar we were given the chance to buy a drink. Not being familiar at all with the coin of the realm made this a challenging and entertaining endeavor. Surprisingly enough I only messed up the value of one coin and I was able to enjoy a beer in total darkness.
• When we had re-acclimated ourselves to the light we took a streetcar back toward the hotel and ended up at a little Italian restaurant where we had pizza (again!) and talked a while before heading back.

11 May 2011 (UDS-O Day 3) by ssweeny.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.