Coder's Log

So yet once again Mr python decide to tease me when i do `apt-get dist-upgrade`: Setting up python-lxml (2.0.5-1) ... /var/lib/dpkg/info/python-lxml.postinst: /usr/bin/pycentral: /usr/bin/python: bad interpreter: No such file or directory dpkg: error processing python-lxml (--configure): subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 126 ... Errors were encountered while processing: epiphany-extensions bzr gnome-media-common libgnome-media0 gnome-media pidgin python-lxml E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Meet my new personal hero, Jussi Kukkonen . The only o-hand employee in Finland who almost single-handedly created the Vala bindings of the whole GUPnP stack and ported all our test apps to Vala in a very short amount of time despite the fact that he was completely unfamiliar to Vala and GUPnP (and UPnP itself) when he started working on this task and the fact that the Vala documentation is hardly any complete (especially binding-generation).

When I told some people that I will write (which involves re-writing existing code first) the gupnp-media-server in Vala, their question was "Why Vala? Why not Python, Java or C#?". So here are the strong points of Vala, not all of which are found in these languages: Statically-typed Back in the days, when I was hacking on Gazpacho I found the lack of types on variables and function/method parameters really annoying in Python. This can become quite a pain when you are reading other's code and that is exactly what I was doing most of the time. The fact that Johan and Kalle wrote very nice and readable code, helped a lot though. No runtime dependency/overhead This might seem like a small point to many developers but as an embedded-systems developer, this is a big plus for me and I am sure to many (if not most) of the embedded-systems developers out there. Easy integration with C/GObject A big plus for all the GObject/C developers out there. Besides, there are situations

- Use libsoup 2.4. [Jorn Baayen, Zeeshan Ali Khattak] - Incremental browsing of containers. [Zeeshan Ali Khattak]

- Use libsoup 2.4. [Jorn Baayen] - Add DLNA support to DIDL writer. [Jorn Baayen] - Some small fixes. [Jorn Baayen]

Ever since Jorn and Matthew mentioned the idea of Vala bindings for GUPnP, I have been eager to learn Vala and so this weekend I finally got around to introduce myself to it. It's really cool. To express my admiration, I have already created a "Vala programming language fan club" group on facebook. :) A few minutes after I mentioned to Emmanuele on IRC about my intention of binding GUPnP for Vala, Ali Sabil had already done the basic work and we already have bindings that work for such basic example application at least: using GLib; using GUPnP; public class Browser: ControlPoint { public MainLoop main_loop { get; private set; } private void on_device_proxy_available(ControlPoint cp, DeviceProxy proxy) { stdout.printf("device %s found\n", proxy.get_friendly_name()); } private bool on_timeout () { this.main_loop.quit(); return false; } public Browser() {

I am finally moving in with my girlfriend, Ansku. It's been 1.5 years we have been together and now we are moving in. The place we are moving into is in Helsinki and very near to the Helsinki center. A nice apartment very near to the railway station of Huopalahti . The good thing about this train station is that a lot of trains go through it so if you miss a train, there is another one to catch after 5 minutes and the slowest train takes 15 minutes to reach the Helsinki center. We are supposed to move on 1st of june and some nice dedicated friends have already promised to help us carry stuff.