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Below are the 14 most recent journal entries recorded in the "blauzahl" journal:
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12:16 pm
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Phonon Bugday
Woke up to find the Phonon BugDay is going well. They're halfway through, but could still use some help with the second half! Also needed: someone with an external usb sound device and someone using KDE on MS-Windows. Join in, #kde-bugs on irc.freenode.net!
Tags: bugday, bugsquad, kde, phonon
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05:52 am
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BugSquad helpers rock! BugDay redux and thanks; countdown to gcds....
Another BugDay done... Something I shouldn't forget to post is the list of cool people who joined us:
siyuan *
dtritscher
freinhard *
Edulix (developer on hand, but he triaged too :)
xxtjaxx *
anselmolsm *
aalpert *
MJD *
Dario_Andres
myself
I put a little * next to all the new people. Check out how many that was! Very dedicated too, most came back later in the weekend. Thanks everyone! Thanks also to old-timers on the list, and to Pino, who helped run/train.
Now I'm just panicking: I leave for GCDS in under 24 hours! Ack! (Then the cat and cat sitter get to take over, happy cat...)
Tags: bugday, bugsquad, kde, konqueror, panic
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07:47 pm
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Psst. BugDay Saturday!
Don't forget. ;)
Due to the thing called "time zones", for me it'll start Friday night. So if you're in the Americas, feel free to pop in then. Have to find some food first. ;)
Tags: bugday, kde
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05:37 am
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BugDay this Sat
As was mentioned in that one dot article, there's a BugDay this Sat. I think we decided to do Konqueror again, as we haven't for a while. I took a survey, and what I thought was true, really was true. People very quickly moved from doing bug triage to further contributions. So it really is a way to meet and join the community and learn about how kde works. You don't have to know programming, or anything really. I found someone at a local uni who thought they couldn't do any free software work because they'd only had two years of C++...!!! Please, this is not true! That person has done C++ longer than I have! You are most certainly qualified to sort through bugs if you have had that many CS classes. :D In fact, all you really need is an eye to detail, a certain tendency for pedanticism, and the ability to not make people unhappy when you close their bugs (ok, that one is an art; but you can always ask for help and backup!), oh, and the ability to drink our kool-aid. Blah blah want to help kde and give something back, we actually seem to believe it, as silly as it might sound. Besides, you get to laugh at some really wacky bugs people have filed. So there's entertainment value! (Did I convince you to help us yet? How about that Konqueror is relatively easy to triage compared to some of the other softwares? Does that work?) See you Sat on #kde-bugs! (And of course, you don't have to wait that long. Drop by now. ;)
Oh, and I did actually buy my tickets for gran canaria, so you'll see me there. BugSquad is going to have some sort of bof. Bug us on irc if you have opinions on what time/day. Or just write something on the wiki and we can have edit wars. :D :D :D
We'll also have some kind of development/planning session/sprint/igloo for DrKonqi, so keep an eye out for that.
I've been compulsively reading stuff about the Iran elections and protests. I hope people we know there are ok.
Oh, and for various reasons I've been not reading my email lately. You can kill me in person at gran canaria. ;)
Tags: bugday, bugsquad, kde
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05:07 pm
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Yay BugSquad birthday! We're one year old today!
Well, Monday, actually. But today we happen to be off on #kde-bugs and having fun triaging. Our stats from Saturday:
We've gone through 150 bugs or so
lyteyn is one of our brand new people, and several other newbies have poked in and helped or asked for help
We have 8 people who have signed in.
So happy birthday us! We're still going on for Sunday, so drop by.And have some virtual cake.
EDIT: make that 9 people. Ruchir just appeared. Rumor has it "Beer_" will be back too... So maybe ten. Not a bad number, but we can always +1. So come join us and make history. If you've used KMail, you can come help. Maybe we can beat our record. :D
Oh, and we're looking for people with:
a) a lotus notes server
b) cram-md5 authentication on a pop server
c) a home folder on a network share and a dimap account
d) japanese input methods
e) S/MIME
f) a lotus domino server (imap)
g) an IMAP server on which calendars/todos can be stored (courier or cyrus?)
If you have one of these, we have a bug for you! (Yes, so far, just one (each). It will be quick and easy for you. ;)
Tags: anniversary, bugday, bugsquad, kde, kmail
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01:29 pm
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Tired of Useless bug reports? Dario to the rescue! && Bugday April 4-5 2009
You may have noticed a "Dario Andres" at the top of the bug-closer list for the last... well, a while now. I think he got tired of all the useless plasma backtraces, because he and George Kiagiadakis have been cooking up a rewrite of the crash dialog you get everytime something goes *boom*.
It's sweet to watch BugSquad members get more involved with KDE, and that's what happened with both of these people. Speaking of BugSquad, it just so happens that our one-year anniversary is April 6th. So we're celebrating by having a BugDay. :D We're starting Saturday and will be going Sunday too. I bet people will be around to do the standard mop-up on Monday too. So come join #kde-bugs and say you want to help. We're doing it on KMail, and feel free to stop by early. You don't need any programming knowledge, you just have to be perhaps annoyingly pedantic. ;) We'll teach you everything else you need to know, and then, who knows what you'll be doing for KDE next? :) I tried counting up everyone who has ever signed in for an official bugday: 93 is what I got. I was a little surprised, to say the least. Everyone should feel free to come back. :) I'll have to run more statistics....
Anyway, my little ad done, let's look at some screenshots. Incidentally, if you want to try it out, the code is under /branches/work/drkonqi-newdialog. Now, I've seen a zillion UI mockups for this, but this is out of what is currently in SVN. Some of the hardest part is the non-technical issues:
* How easy do you want to make it for people to report bugs? We want to discourage bug reports that are completely useless, but "useless" can vary a bit by project. If your app never crashes, knowing that someone just crashed it is useful information, although you can debate how useful the information is depending on how much they can tell you. If they can give you steps to reproduce it, then you can always go and generate a backtrace yourself though, so we take that into account. If your app gives you tons and tons of crash reports, and all of them are things you know about and just fixed yesterday, but you can't close any of the reports because they all have the accursed ?? of no debug symbols, then you really don't want to see them. Finding the right balance is the fun part...
* How can you teach a user a little bit about how to file a good bug report? It would be great if it were self-documenting, or at least very intuitive and friendly to do. UI here is very important, see what you make of what there is right now:
We'll skip the "advanced" tab and pretend to be a newbie here. Note the "note:", if this box terrifies them, we want to let them know that they can close it and not worry that their system will be attacked by gremlins. I'm not sure that I'm happy with the X icon, but... You can directly restart your app from here, which is nice.
Is this screen superfluous? If so, how do you combine it with the next?
Here we get to the first of the logic bits. The stars show how good a backtrace is. If it isn't, then we want to send them off to get debug symbols if they want to, and then come back and hit that reload button. No screenshot of that atm, but it exists. EDIT: I'm compiled with full debug, so yes, I hit full stars. If I weren't, then I get other options.
Here we hit UI/string issues. What is the shortest, easiest way to explain this? Also, note those checkboxes.
Now I didn't check any boxes in the above. Since I'm not willing to help developers, I get an automatic "this crash isn't worth reporting". But here you see more logic going in for an attempt to tell users if their report might be useful. Does this seem clear to you?
It goes on, but you get the idea. And I'm not posting all possible combinations to hit various screens. ;) Check it out and see what you think.
And drop by this weekend for our triage party. ;)
Tags: anniversary, bugday, bugsquad, drkonqi, kde, ui
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11:45 am
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CampKDE: the last day, or A Cautionary Tale about Security and Toiletries
Sadly, all good things must come to an end. CampKDE being one of them. So I tossed myself out of bed early in the morning, survived yet another crazy Jamaica drive, and found myself chilling at the airport, as I was the last in my group to leave. Oh, but first I had to check-in...
One of the things I'd bought at the Appleton Rum factory (see the unwritten Day 6 post) was a small <3 ounces bottle of rum. "Cool! I can be sure this doesn't get broken/stolen/etc in my checked luggage!" They'd also given us a cute sample of the "overproof" (good for colds!).
So I checked my one suitcase (Will it make it? It did.) and headed through Immigrations and then security. FAIL. Security confiscated both bottles of rum, because while they were under 3 ounces, they weren't "toiletries". Security obviously hadn't been on the Appleton rum tour, or they'd know it was a toiletry and that you could sniff it, or apply it to your face. (Where's a link to those photos?) They wouldn't let me go back to check them into my luggage, as I'd already gone through Immigrations. Hmmm.... I'm not sure how legit that was, but I was very glad I'd actually bought the larger bottle of "overproof", because it is indeed good for colds, and I very much have the CampKDE Cough now.
But, this entry actually was an excuse to entice you to come join the KOffice Krush Day going on right now on #kde-bugs (freenode)! It's in full swing so come join us! A free swig of Appleton Overproof to all participants (must collect in person, sorrel juice not provided (can you get that in this country?)).
Tags: bugday, campkde, customs, immigration, kde, krush, overproof
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02:46 am
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Very last minute KMail BugDay...
I guess people's Belgian hangovers are gone, since people got very suddenly bored and restless, and decided we HAD to have a BugDay. KMail being next on our hitlist, its a KMail BugDay. And following tradition, its on Sunday. If you can't make it, don't worry, I didn't even know about it. As always, feel free to drop in early and I'll be around to teach you exciting things about triaging. We even have a mailing list you should join, on which this kind of thing usually gets talked about.
Hopefully this won't get in the way of my BBQ plans too much. Well, I don't have any right now. But I should, right? Especially as I've spent way too much of this week playing with upgrading my system, thus X, thus my video drivers, thus watching everything break. So I get to tweak to see if I can generate some sort of more useful bug report... Unsurprisingly, as I was playing with video stuff, I played with composite. Its quite mesmerizing to turn on both KWin debug effects and then wobble some windows around. Actually, I can just sit there and watch the debug stuff. Maybe this should be a screensaver...
And I've had about 8 disconnects while I've sat here typing this. I've had the weirdest networking issues going on for a while here... Maybe this weekend I need to make an expedition to Fry's and buy a bunch of new cables. If I'm lucky, that will solve things. If I'm not, I'll be reading up on networking protocols. :P
EDIT: This doesn't work if I forget to tag it for syndication... Blah.
Tags: bugday, kde, kmail, no blue hair
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07:23 pm
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George attempts to collect blue hair samples for me
...and fails, as apparently he was then picked up and thrown immediately after. Hopefully he was not injured too badly, as he is in charge of setting up an aKademy BugDay on Wednesday for KMail. Perhaps this gave him practice, as his plan is to corner some developers to help, by dealing with "needs dev judgement" and policy issues on the spot as we go through bugs. People from around the world are welcome to join in. We haven't actually triaged kmail yet, so this might be a bit of a test run.
(That's Bram in the background, btw. And yes, I finally got my BugSquad group shot. But this one is more entertaining to post. Maybe George will get a fanclub too now. :)
Tags: akademy, blue hair, bugday, grundleborg, kde, kinky, kmail, seli, wrestling
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10:17 pm
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Kopete BugDay: ...sweet! Thanks and we love you all!
A proper report this time: Grundleborg and I, along with Matt Rogers, our wonderful onlooking Kopete developer coordinated a nice turnout of 13 other people (in no particular order): PhilRod, gaurav, hays, zarvox, knusperfrosch, plus first timers: kwilliam, mcirsta, Aikurn, fhp, CondorDes, konjani, Romanesen, RedLizard.
Look at that! Eight first timers! Wow! And it looks like we are between 40-60% through all the kopete bugs. (The number is unclear depending on people finishing their bugsets, and of course, people are /still/ going. :D )
Feel free to join in, we're triaging, which mostly means we look and see if a bug is still there and if we can reproduce it. The first link in the topic of #kde-bugs is fairly self-contained and explanatory.
At one point, we had an Amarok Bugday:
From Amarok, we had around Nightrose, Nikolaj, sebr, and Mamarok. Plus their SoCer, Ramblurr. Also joining: Grundleborg, Kage_Jittai*, Mdhowe*, Aides*, lemma, annma, progger1986*, Krop, Leuty*, Bram85. (That's five first timers! yay! I put little stars by their names. :)
While I'm at it, I'll further catch up in name listing: Konqueror BugDay 5: jtamate, sahaqiel, azuriel, dpalacio, Ramblurr, knusperfrosch, Krop, katastrophe, Frank78ac, FiNeX, gaurav, zarvox, hays
And I'm going to thank our incoming triagers. We've had a ton of bugs come in with the 4.1 beta release, and a few people went on a tear over the last month:
Our top 10 in order:
apaku, aseigo, krop, Pino, FiNeX, wstephenson, Mamarok, Ack Seli! Peter Penz, & Bram.
Resulting in 1980 bugs opened, 2151 bugs closed in the last 31 days and who knows how many verified, duplicated, commented on, analyzed, etc. We don't really bother to do statistics for that yet, so this isn't entirely accurate. And seriously, I think that apaku and aseigo were possessed by demons... Definitely apaku, he single-handedly removed KDevelop from the top 30 list of "most open bugs". Plasma has the unique distinction of having the most incoming opened/closed bugs. Note that Aaron is on that list, and probably shouldn't be wasting his development time dealing with bugs. So want to come help triage?
Tags: bugday, bugsquad, kde, kopete, triage
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02:39 am
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And the winner is.... Kopete!
For our next BugDay, we're doing Kopete. So put all of your accounts and passwords together, and come join us. I bet we can knock it down a few places in the rankings. Again, you don't have to know anything about programming to do our work, although if you do, and are curious in working on kopete, this would be a great way to start learning the codebase. And I know they'd love more developers.
Meanwhile, konq is below 2400 open bugs! I think it was over 2800 when we started. And lots of modules are suddenly green, which is great! Especially if they stay that way... And how did Seli get to be #7? Probably because people are getting heavily into their SoC stuff, or decided to go walk their dog or something. So come be our newest member of bugsquad! Join #kde-bugs and soon you can see your name in the commit-digest and Seli's hair turn blue. (And Ossi's hair, let us not forget him. But Seli first...)
If you want to do some advanced triaging, kmail, kdelibs, and kio all need some love. Big thanks to Will Stephenson for writing our newest techbase page on triaging systemsettings bugs.
p.s. If you need poetry, maybe this will do. It might be about hair, I'm not sure.
Tags: blond hair, blue hair, bugday, bugsquad, kde, ossi, seli
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09:30 pm
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BugDay4 redux; super quick note because zzzzzz
I don't know if it was Seli's challenge or what, but we had double the turnout we've had before. At least 12 completely new people! So somebody must read this?
I'm also hoping that my Silly Seli challenge isn't actually a bad idea, as I hear certain other software projects greatly increased their incoming bug reports after overzealous closing. And I really don't want developers to hit me. So those of you who have or are about to get your bugzilla perms, tread carefully. Remember, our goal really isn't to outcompete each other in closing bugs, it's to make KDE better.
Having said that, Seli with blue hair would be nice. But getting twenty people to consistently do triage isn't going to be easy. Or is it? How do we get there? I really irc way too much, and tend to forget that we have this thing called a mailing list. So it's time to talk about long-range planning. And that's probably the place to do it. BugDays are great for training people, but then what?
p.s. Thanks for helping out everyone, and new people do drop back by irc to help cleanup. After string freeze and sleep though, please?
Current Mood: zzzz
Tags: bugday, bugsquad, kde, seli
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12:47 pm
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BugDays: Why Konqueror?
I was asked a good question last night, "Why does BugSquad keep doing Konqueror?" There's a few answers to that. For one, it's an easy place to start. You don't need to know much about how KDE is supposed to work. Also, the old documentation did a nice job of talking about triaging Konq, so that made it easy to go and update it. But the best reason is that if you look at the bugzilla stats, you'll see that Konqueror is at the top of the "open bugs" list, with 2677 open bugs. Kmail is next with 1471 open bugs, and then things drop dramatically: kio has 641. If you look to the side of those statistics, you'll also see that Konqueror is very "green" right now. That's cheating a bit, since I'm including past bug days here. If you use the default query of 7 days, we aren't as green as I'd like to be. That's why you should come join us now, though. ;)
Oh, and can I mention that our sysadmin team is wonderful? They make bugzilla go!
Tags: bugday, kde
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06:24 pm
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Another BugDay
So I should probably say something about it: We're doing another BugDay this weekend to see how many of the old Konqueror bugs (unsorted "general") we can finish off. Whoever FiNeX* is, he's been tearing through bugs lately, but I don't think he'll have closed everything by then, so come join in and get your name in the top 20 of the daily Bugzilla stats!
But wait, there's more! The following week we're doing a Krush day on the kdepim apps, so come help us find bugs in them! You really need a copy of trunk for this, which you can get by following the instructions on techbase. If you have problems, you can drop by #kde-devel for help, and then walk over to #kde-bugs to join us.
#kde-bugs:
We tend to be more active in Europe and PST evenings. Feel free to drop by anytime and we'll point you to the documentation and give you a feel for what you're doing. If you're trained ahead of time, I can do more bugs. :D
So I'm looking at our page for this weekend, and I see that four people have already started. You can be one of them!
* p.s. If you've done a BugDay before, or are one of the ongoing triagers, or want to join, can you give me a name I can use in our publicity stuffs? I'm going to feel very silly crediting something like c00lchix2....
** p.p.s Entirely unrelated, and I think this only applies to Americans, but if you used a credit card or debit card internationally in the past decade or so, there's a class action lawsuit which you have 17 days to join. At the very least, you get $25. Something about them overcharging you.
Tags: bugday, kde
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blauzahl's journal