I’ve recently made the jump to the latest ‘n greatest desktop, GNOME 2.22. Altogether I’m quite happy with the software. Not so happy with all the Gentoo bugs. But that’s another story.

One of my favorite bugs is the crashes that Xorg keeps causing, which has made my computing experience similarly enjoyable to Windows 95 where the computer is no longer logical, and likes to crash in a multitude of ways with no warning.

However onto the subject: Evolution’s new crash detection feature. I won’t debate the merit of this feature. Just the dialog box that I had to squint at over morning tea for a whole minute before I understood what the hell it’s prompting me for:

I get what this feature exists for. They’re worried that certain types of emails are crashing Evolution upon viewing, so we have a feature to disable the preview pane in the rare case that this is the issue. I suppose. I’ve personally never once had this issue. But what the hell. I’ll play along.

I’m annoyed by this dialog. When my software makes me think, it makes me unhappy. I don’t like to think:

• I don’t use the preview pane. Why am I seeing this dialog? There’s nothing to disable!
• “…appears to have exited unexpectedly…” — how the hell else would Evolution’s data files be in a state indicating crash? Be assertive in your dialog messages, as your users appreciate it! This should read “Evolution exited unexpectedly the last time it was run.”
• The text seems to indicate that “all preview panes will be hidden.” This tells me that the software will do what it says. But what options am I given? An Ignore and a Recover option. At this point in reading the dialog, I wasn’t expecting to be asked a question. I can make some assumptions about what these buttons do…but…what? I had to ponder about what button to push for a whole (admittedly sleepy) minute.

Bug 530345 filed. Hopefully not too grumpy in my bug report, I really do want this to get fixed. But it made me think so early in the morning so I’m allowed to be grumpy, right?

So I got out on Sunday this weekend as well, and rode from High Wycombe to Aylesbury.  It was a good ride!  Proper English weather (rained like piss all day.)

Took a few pictures as well.

Quite nice that most of the National Rail lines here don’t care at all if you bring a bike aboard.  It makes it so easy to get out of London and enjoy!

This past Saturday we went on a bit of a hike around Surrey.  It was quite fun!  We had a small crew from work and a few friends from outside work.  Hop on a train from Victoria station to Holmwood, Dorking and walk to Gomshall, Surrey, and train back from there.  ’twas a mighty good time.  I’ve drawn a quick map of the area (apologies, but I’ve become completely obsessed with drawing maps of where I’ve been!)

Check out a few photos, if ya like.

This hike is out of an excellent book, Time Out Country Walks near London, which I strongly recommend for anyone living in or around London!

Fortunately for me I’m completely nuts!

So I’ve been in London (yes the actual City of London) for the past week and a half for work, and part of my adventure was to bring my bicycle with in order to try to ride around London and not get run over by any buses. The weather finally held (and I got my courage up) so I went for a ride. Needless to say, I didn’t die (else this bit of writing would be quite magical, no?)

It’s a bit different riding here. Shit, I’d take downtown Chicago at rush hour any day for a leisurely ride compared to here! Here I am, riding on the opposite sided of the road (which means that right turns are the difficult ones, not left turns!), none of the roads run in a straight line and always seem to be taking me away from the direction I’d like to be going, the roads are narrow and all under some sort of construction, the cabs are equally as crazy as Chicago cabs, and oh yeah — the cyclists here are completely insane as well…it makes for one heck of a ride!

However most importantly, I didn’t get eaten by a big red London bus.  Hooray!

I took a few pictures off Blackfriar’s bridge before the sun went down. Mostly just to prove that I was here. Hopefully I’ll be able to get out more now that the weather isn’t total crap.

Cycling in London == scary. However I did find some interesting resources on TFL for cyclists, and I’ve sent off for some maps. We’ll see how good they are!

If you’re a driver in London and were out today, thank you for not hitting me :)