PackageKit is DBUS packaging abstraction layer that makes use of a cross-distro, cross-architecture API to manage your system’s packages. In other words, it is a way for updating and administering software on a GNU/Linux system without worrying about the distro or underlying package management system. Having gone from concept to release in inly 6 weeks of intensive collaborative work, version 0.1.0 already sports backends for conary, yum, apt, box, and alpm as well as comprehensive documentation and some translations (Vladimir Melo and I managed to get the Brazilian Portuguese translation done just in time!

It is with a heavy heart that I announce the tragic news of the death of Raphael Higino Silva. For those who don’t know who he is, suffice to say that he had been a very active member of the GNOME Brazilian translation team for some time now! It is weird for me to refer to him in the past tense… The news came to me via an email that was sent to the Brazilian mailing list just a few minutes ago by a close friend of the family.

Over the weekend we had a Fall Festival in our neighborhood, with tons of food, drinks, and games for the kids. We stayed for about 2 hours and just as I was about to leave, Yv (my oldest daughter) decided she wanted to paint a pumpkin before heading back home. So we stayed a bit longer and that is when the DJ (yes, there was a DJ as well) announced there would be a pumpkin painting contest for the kids.

As pointed out by Jonathan Carter, the first issue of Python Magazine has been published and can be freely downloaded. I took a fairly quick glimpse at the articles and was very pleased with the amount of (sample) code included! I would definitely pay for its subscription and have added it to my (short) list of things I’d like to have (but cannot afford to at the moment). My other item in this list?

Interesting how it is relatively easy to follow what someone is reading, listening, going/seeing, all via RSS. If you have a Mugshot account and their client installed, then it is even easier to follow this information. I’ve learned of different bands/music thanks to these feeds. I only use a couple of these “social networking” sites, so you could only imagine how much more information is available out there.

GNOME 2.20 just came out of the oven and is as crispy as you’d expect it to be after a couple of months of development! This is the second release I take part of (not as a developer but as a translator), and want to take the opportunity to thank all of those who participated in this effort! I want to specially thank (and give a shout out to) the entire GNOME i18n team!

In an attempt to integrate BillReminder to the GNOME clock, I set out to learn about the evolution-python lib. After messing around for a bit, it became obvious to me that every event added to the generic .evolution/tasks/local/system/calendar.ics file gets automatically synched with GNOME clock. The thing is, I want to create my own separate calendar file, so to not get it mixed with the generic one. The code below does just that, but… it doesn’t show up in GNOME clock!