https://www.bennee.com/~alex/2009-12-07T13:51:00+00:00the wanderings of a supposed digital native2009-12-07T13:51:00+00:002009-12-07T13:51:00+00:00alextag:www.bennee.com,2009-12-07:/~alex/blog/2009/12/07/post-travel-slump/

<p>I got back from my Hungarian adventures at a slightly more reasonable time than Wednesday mornings departure. Never the less I find travel still zaps the energy out of me. On Friday night I managed to eat dinner before crawling upstairs and passing out.</p> <p>Saturday has been <a class="reference external" href="http://www.whereislittlebear.com/uncategorized/bunch-of-krull/">ably documented elsewhere …</a></p>

<p>I got back from my Hungarian adventures at a slightly more reasonable time than Wednesday mornings departure. Never the less I find travel still zaps the energy out of me. On Friday night I managed to eat dinner before crawling upstairs and passing out.</p> <p>Saturday has been <a class="reference external" href="http://www.whereislittlebear.com/uncategorized/bunch-of-krull/">ably documented elsewhere</a> and basically involved a large amount of DVD watching. I was twiddling with my nascent <a class="reference external" href="http://www.android.com/">Android</a> application in the background but until I can make sense out of JDB and it's associated emacs GUD bindings it's going to be slow progress. Once I've figured out how to make breakpoints actually work as well as show position in the Android base code hopefully things will progress faster.</p> <p>Sunday involved much de-construction as we took down the metal fencing at the back of the property. We are planning on replacing the boundary with more aesthetically pleasing (and fruitful) bushes. Once that was done I was minded to have a final push at <a class="reference external" href="http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/9677?project=1&amp;only_watched=1">getting my playlist patch</a> into Rockbox. I also did my bit testing another outside contributors <a class="reference external" href="http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/10832?project=1&amp;only_watched=1">better solution</a> to my stale hacky <a class="reference external" href="http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/10160?project=1&amp;only_watched=1">m4a mdat patch</a>. I can appreciate Juliusz' frustrations with getting things into <a class="reference external" href="http://www.rockbox.org/">Rockbox</a>. It's a great project and it's amazing we have truly free firmware we can install on a variety of bits of hardware. However it's by far and away one of the hardest communities I've had to deal with as a casual contributor. I don't know if the project suffers as a result, it's one of those hard to quantify things. I suspect the bar is pretty high anyway as the embedded nature probably rules out a lot of people used to desktop development unless they are really keen to dig into and learn the code.</p> 2009-01-02T14:33:00+00:002009-01-02T14:33:00+00:00alextag:www.bennee.com,2009-01-02:/~alex/blog/2009/01/02/codec-fixing/

<p>Rockbox happily made it through the New Years Eve gathering without frustrating anyone with its occasional rough edges. However I am having problems with .m4a files (unlocked iTunes files) causing Rockbox to <a class="reference external" href="http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/9745">throw a strop</a>. Unfortunately debugging is made harder by the inability to attach the very much copyrighted tracks …</p>

<p>Rockbox happily made it through the New Years Eve gathering without frustrating anyone with its occasional rough edges. However I am having problems with .m4a files (unlocked iTunes files) causing Rockbox to <a class="reference external" href="http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/9745">throw a strop</a>. Unfortunately debugging is made harder by the inability to attach the very much copyrighted tracks to the bug report. I don't know how much love the m4a playback routines have seen. I assume most right thinking developers mainly run Oggs and Mp3's which of course work without any problems.</p> <p>My hunt for un-encumbered test media continues.</p>