Marco Islas Blog

Christine 0.7.0 Beta1 released

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 31 May 2010 16:08:56 -0500

Just to let you know that Christine 0.7.0 Beta 1 has been released. This release include several improvements over Christine 0.6.1 and fixes some problems with the win32 build. The full you can read the full changelog Here.

You can download christine from Here

Remember, this is a beta, and many bugs are still there, tests and bug reports are very very appreciated

Update:

Win32 binaries are available Here
Ubuntu package is almost done, you can use this ppa

Christine webservices

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:28:55 -0500

christine webservices from Marco Antonio on Vimeo.

This is christine running with the new webservice plugin :-). This plugin still need some test, and haz just a couple of services like set_location, play and stop. This will let you control Christine or get some information from other programs.

Christine 0.6.1

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:01:02 -0600

I just want to let you know that Christine 0.6.1 is in the net now You can download the sources from here:

Binary Packages

Ubuntu: https://launchpad.net/~markuz/+archive/ppa (if you already set the ppa in your apt sources list then wait for the update soon :-))
Windows: http://sourceforge.net/projects/christine/files/christine/0.6.1/Christine-0.6.1.exe

Christine shot for today

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 11:54:26 -0600

christine shot for today

Originally uploaded by markuz

This is how christine looks like today!

Killing in the name of

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:49:44 -0600

Killing in the name of

Originally uploaded by markuz

Funny title don't you think?

Christine update for December 01

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:29:36 -0600

Tonight I have been working on Christine, in the GUI, IMO a media player that work fine should also look good and sometimes GTK just don't fit on that, why? it is because GTK is a general purpose graphical toolkit and everything is general, I wish GTK has some more widget options (like more buttons that fit a specific function, like those small rounded with a simple question sign help buttons)

Fortunately, you can write your own widgets and make them look as you want. Tonight I have been working on Christine's new buttons, just for the Previous, Play/Pause, Next. Creating custom buttons is not a complicated task, just subclass gtk.Button and connect your button "expose-event" signal to a custom function, remember at the end of this function return "True" in order to stop the signal emition. If you don't do this the gtk.Button will do its task and will redraw the button.

As usual, you can check out the source code from the svn

Christine 0.6.0-pre1: first win32 build

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:10:06 -0600

This night I have been working on the Win32 build of christine. It seems to be working fine. This version is just a test, for those that wanted to use christine on Microsoft Windows.

Altough that I have made some tests on a clean Windows XP installation cannot guarantee that the Win32 will work on your computer.

Anyway, if you are brave enough, download the win32 binary and report any bug you found on it.

If you want to compile it, you will need this:

Python 2.6 (I built Christine with it, but python >= 2.5 should work too)
Gstreamer Winbuild (http://www.gstreamer-winbuild.ylatuya.es/doku.php)
Microsoft Visual C++
py2exe (http://py2exe.org/)

The build script is in win32resources/christine_setup.py, just copy it to the source root and run python christine_setup.py -q py2exe to build it.

You can download the win32 binary from here: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/christine/christine/0.6.0-pre1/Christine-0.06.00-pre1.exe

I forgot to mention that you have to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 redistributable in order to work.

Trying to compile christine on Windows

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:45:23 -0500

Trying to

Originally uploaded by markuz

Last night I was trying to compile christine on windows using cygwin, I didn't made it but I think I know why, I will try to make it work this tonight.

Christine playing videos

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:31:00 -0500

Christine playing videos

Originally uploaded by markuz

I was playing with gstreamer video sinks, I found that using cacasink and aasink you can play videos in ascii mode ;-) funny even when (for me) has no good use.

Christine small mode

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:22:52 -0500

Christine small mode

Originally uploaded by markuz

This is Christine in small mode (Ctrl+d).

Developing Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:49:48 -0500

Christine

Originally uploaded by markuz

Working on Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:47:48 -0500

Christine

Originally uploaded by markuz

Tonight I have been working on the display widget. That part of christine that displays the title and lenght of the song you are playing. I have set up a background to make it look less simple.
I also put the control buttons, the volume control and the search entry (which is hided in this screenshot) in a toolbar.
What do you think about this small changes?

Christine 0.5.1 released!

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:41:09 -0500

Christine is a small and functional media player written in Python using PyGtk as GUI toolkit and Gstreamer as backend.
It supports all the media files that your gstreamer installation can support, being MP3, OGG, AVI, MPG. It saves the URIs and Meta tags in a database and let you browse them quickly.
Christine also provides early support for Radio Stations and have its own DBus interface which let you control christine with your media keyboard buttons as they are configured on GNOME.
The early access to Plugins will let you tweet the music you are listening to, put it on your pidgin status and use notifications while you change your current song.

Bug fix release

Several bugs have been fixed, you can find the bug list and release notes here

Download

Download Sources

Working on christine 0.5

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 22:15:29 -0500

Working on christine 0.5.0

Originally uploaded by markuz

I have been working today on Christine 0.5 fixing bugs to release 0.5.1 and then start working on new features.

Christine 0.5.0

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:49:23 -0500

Christine 0.5.0

Originally uploaded by markuz

This is how Christine 0.5.0 looks like in my computer. I need to refine some things, but I need a little more time, sometimes I wish I didn't have to sleep.

Christine 0.5.0 released!

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 01:34:34 -0500

What's new

Faster: Christine improves the startup and search methods to be faster than 0.4.0.
Drag and Drop import: You can import a folder by Dragging it from Nautilus and dropping into Christine.
Library list flick: In Christine 0.4, when the list is too big and you are at the end, it flicks while you scroll over it. Christine 0.5.0 improves that, with smooth scroll.
Config directory change Apply the freedesktop's standard for config directory http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/ar01s03.html
Double function in Previous button When you are using Christine and click in the previous button, Christine will restart the current item, if you hit the previous button again it will get you to the previous item.
Import files are something non-blocking You can use Christine while you are importing files.

Download

Download Sources

Binary Packages

update: Added the Fedora package link.

Holy Shit!

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 01:03:55 -0500

I used Christine in an usual way. I use to play the items in the main list as the items there are in my hard drive. Today I was switching between playlists and some of them have more or less 14000 items. I don't know why but christine grows a lot more than I expect.

Christine on Fedora

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:15:55 -0500

Nushio is building Christine packages for Fedora. He already build Christine 0.4.0 for Fedora 11 x86 and packages for the other architectures are coming.
You can get the package from here:

http://nushio.fedorapeople.org/christine/

Christine Drag & Drop

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:08:28 -0500

This is a video just to show that the upcoming Christine 0.5.0 will have a drag and drop import :-)

Christine on Gentoo

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 06:35:54 -0500

If you are using Gentoo, now you can use the ebuild to have christine running on your system, more on:

http://packages.gentoo.org/

Thanks to Samuli Suominen who is taking care :-)

Help Christine: Translate

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 15:16:55 -0500

If you talk mote than one language, please consider helping Christine translating it., you'll need a launchapd account, then go to this url and help us :-):

https://translations.launchpad.net/christine/0.5.0

July 19

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 13:12:14 -0500

I have been working a bit on Christine (today I sleep at 5 in the morning), the work I'm doing is not to introduce new stuff on Christine but to improve what we already have. I have been doing a rewrite of some parts and removing old, unused and useless code.
I have created a set of tasks in Christine's milestone for the next release, if you have contributed to Christine, it's time to make a check of your code and do a little clean up if needed, speed improvements and memory leaks are welcome too. I hope to make a new release on July 29 (my birthday), so, I have a lot work to do. The god news (for the project) is that Cristina (my wife) is not here with me, she is with my parents in Puebla, and I have more time with the computer than the usual.
I'm missing Cristina, maybe I'm too used to have her near me, I need her and my lovely daughter Sofia, fortunately, on 26 I will arrive to Puebla and spend a nice week with them :-D.

Christine PPA

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:14:29 -0500

For those using Ubuntu, you can use this ppa to install christine from the package manager:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/markuz/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/markuz/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Christine 0.4.0 screenshot

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 01:34:22 -0500

Christine with visualization enabled.

Christine 0.4.0 released!

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 24 May 2009 14:02:16 -0500

Christine is a small and functional media player written in Python using PyGtk as GUI toolkit and Gstreamer as backend.
It supports all the media files that your gstreamer installation can support, being MP3, OGG, AVI, MPG. It saves the URIs and Meta tags in a database and let you browse them quickly.
Christine also provides early support for Radio Stations and have its own DBus interface which let you control christine with your media
buttons as they are configured on GNOME.
The early access to Plugins will let you tweet the music you are listening to, put it on your pidgin status and use notifications while
you change your current song.
Changes since 0.3.1

Christine plugins are now python packages allowing developers to create them in multiple modules.
More methods in the DBus module.
Sources List and Queue List are showed in the same place hiding the other while the selected list is showed.
Hide de side bar by pressing F9 also, you an enable/disable it on the View Menu.

Availability

Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:18:55 -0500

This is one of the few things I change on christine, the side bar, now, it will display what you want to view, the sources list or the queue list because there is not enough space for both list.
Youtube seems to have problems with my video, anyway, maybe you want to download it in ogg format: Download, or watch it on Vimeo

Help testing christine SVN code

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:19:35 -0500

The last days I have been working on christine, and this are the things I have been working on:

Christine Plugins as packages in libchristine/Plugins
Use the traductions from rosseta ( I have to update the roseta template for the newest version).
I fix a compilation issue I had on Ubuntu, and I require your help here, can you try to compile christine on your system?.
I setup the Sources List and the Queue list in a much easier way to see/read, hiding one or the other as you require.

I hope you have the time to test this and help me to release christine 0.4 within the next two weeks.
You can get the code from the SVN, you don't have to install christine to test the code, just after the "make" use "make run" to run christine from the sources directory.
If you found bugs, you can always create a new ticket in our new ticket system

Christine for 2009-04-26

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 03:40:39 -0500

Tonight I have been working on christine, first, I move the plugins, now, instead of being a simple module, they need to be a package, doing this will let us to develop bigger plugins and make use of their directory (package) to store whatever the plugin need to. I also work a bit on the subtitles part, letting the user choose his favourite font on the preferences dialog. Also, you can change the encoding. At last, I added five functions to christineDBus package: get_tags, add_to_queue, get_playlists, get_tracks_on_playlist, get_radios

But, I haven't just worked on this, did I mention that now christine uses Trac?, well yes, we now use Trac in http://www.christine-project.org for ticket management, Roadmap, wiki and source code browsing.

Christine on Foresight

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 23:04:24 -0500

As usual Zodman, had made the build of christine for Foresight Linux

sudo conary update christine=_at_fl:2-qa

Replacing "_at_" by an arroba.

Christine using Trac

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:55:34 -0500

I have requested trac for christine. There you can submit tickets, view the Roadmap and Browse the source.
I want to create a "Planet" for the news of christine, hope in this week I have the time to work on this and start working on the 0.4 release.

Christine: rola_christine.py

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:29:19 -0500

Similar to what Gnuget do with rola-banshee.py I did the same but for christine:

#! /usr/bin/env python

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

#Author: Marco Islas 

#Correo: markuz@islascruz.org

#Based on rola-banshee.py http://gnuget.org/blog/view/203/rola-banshee-py

version = "1.0"

__module_name__ = "rola_christine.py"

__module_version__ = version

__module_description = 'Shows the track in christine (requires christine from SVN)'

import dbus

import xchat

from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop

class RolaChristine:

        def __init__(self):

                mainloop = DBusGMainLoop()

                self.dbus_session = dbus.SessionBus(mainloop = mainloop)

                self.christine = self.dbus_session.get_object('org.christine',

                                '/org/christine')

                xchat.prnt("rola-christine.py Version %s loaded!" %version)

                xchat.prnt("/rola-christine")

        def rola(self,word,word_eol,userdata):

                tags = self.christine.now_playing()

                title = '%s'%tags.get('title','')

                if not title:

                        xchat.command('Nada a mostrar..')

                        return xchat.EAT_XCHAT

                artist = "%s"%tags.get('artist','')

                if artist:

                        artist = "%s -"%artist

                xchat.command("me esta escuchando: %s %s" %(artist,title))

                return xchat.EAT_XCHAT

control = RolaChristine()

xchat.hook_command("rola-christine",control.rola)

This make me check my code, and the script above works only with christine on the svn. This code was done on the afternoon and may get broken at some place, but is nice if you want to play.

Christine 0.3.0

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 04:10:30 -0500

=========================
Christine 0.3.0 released!
=========================
Christine is a small and functional media player written in Python using PyGtk as GUI toolkit and Gstreamer as backend.
It supports all the media files that your gstreamer installation can support, being MP3, OGG, AVI, MPG. It saves the URIs and Meta tags in a database and let you browse them quickly.
Christine also provides early support for Radio Stations and have its own DBus interface which let you control christine with your media keyboard buttons as they are configured on GNOME.
The early access to Plugins will let you tweet the music you are listening to, put it on your pidgin status and use notifications while you change your current song.

Changes

DBus support.
- Functions:
  - Play
  - Pause
  - Prev
  - Next
- Signals
  - NewLocation
Plugins
- New Plugins
  - Gnome Media Keys support
  - Album Cover
  - Early acces to getInfo
  - GnomeDBus
- Improved pidgin configuration dialog
Player
- Support for subtitles
- Better handle of xvimagesink
Misc
- Faster import
- 3rd party module that contains libraries developed by others
- Improved sources UI
Bugfixes:
- Visualization doesn't work with xvimagesink
- Cannot delete a file from the main library

As usual, you can get it from sourceforge.net:

Christine: Internet Radio stations on christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:17:13 -0500

EDGE Rocks on christine

Originally uploaded by markuz

Last night I worked out the christine radio support, now christine have the radio stations you have added in the sources list for quick access to them.
As you can see in this shot, the music library also have been stored in a "music" node (the node name will change) there you have your playlists ordered.
I was planing to do something like this with artists/albums but, is a tremendous problem because many songs have different spelled album/artist, ej. Korn, KoRn that can be easily fixed, but some others like "La procesion" and "La proseción" that refers to the same album but with a very very different name.
This code is already in SVN, you can get it from there and test it.

Christine and DBus part II

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:33:26 -0600

If you are following christine commits then you notice that I have been working a bit on dbus, first because I want co control christine with my keyboard buttons (previous, next, play, stop).
I also create some functions to allow a small program use this functions (you can see all this in libchristine/christine_dbus/ package).
Now, I feel the need to create dbus functions for everything.. but it's not possible, so, please, give me a clue about what you want to see in the dbus package.
I'm about to create several signals, but again, I need your help to create a good enough signal stack.

Christine: subtitles.

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:10:40 -0600

I was working tonight in subtitles, and fixing a couple of issues in christine :-)

ximagesink

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:37:52 -0600

Tonight I have been working on some issues with christine and ximagesink, for those that cannot use xvimagesink like me, then you can now use ximagesink, which uses a little bit more cpu than xvimagesink, but at least works with compiz and the ati cards.

As usual, this changes are already in christine svn.

Install christine on foresight

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:35:09 -0600

If you are using foresight and want to install christine you can use this command.

sudo conary update christine=@fl:2-qa

Thanks to Zodman for the info

Album cover.

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 11:12:29 -0600

Tonight I worked on the last.fm plugin, this time, to fetch the album cover of the current song's album. Check the video.

Christine and album covers from Marco Antonio on Vimeo.

Christine, DBus and Cairo

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:35:26 -0600

I have been working tonight trying to create a small notification window for christine, besides we have the PyNotify plugin, I feel this need to try something more. Then I use this great how to create glass like windows and create this:

Christine, dbus and Cairo from Marco Antonio on Vimeo.

In the video you'll see the notification window displaying the button I'm pressing in my keyboard to control christine without having christine on focus. The code is already in svn if you want to try.

More about Christine and dbus

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:01:00 -0600

I have been playing in the night and I have added support on christine to use dbus and GNOME services to react when you press the Prev, Next, Play and Stop GNOME media buttons.

Christine and Dbus Part. II from Marco Antonio on Vimeo.

Christine and DBus

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:11:55 -0600

I've started coding the DBus interface for christine, is quite simple to use dbus in your scripts, I have just created a few methods just to test the dbus module and it worked just fine. Going to create the other methods, wich should be quite simple, since I have been working in some sort of 'all in one' module.
The video looks pretty nice on vimeo, I have seen videos with this service and I like a lot the quality, youtube is nice but not the best to show your screencasts, flickr video just allow me 90 seconds of video. I will upload some more videos on my vimeo account :-). Btw.. if you use vimeo and christine, upload your screencast and join the group

Christine 0.2.1

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:32:15 -0600

Just a few days since the release of christine 0.2.0 and now we have another new release. This time is a bug fix release.
As usual you may download from sourceforge.net, this are the links:

Christine 0.2.0

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 01:37:22 -0600

Im proud to announce the release of Christine 0.2.0. I have been working with it for several weeks and after fixing some bugs reported I feel it quite stable to be used for everyone.
What's the new?

This version makes use of the sqlite3 python module to store info in a SQLite 3 database file.
The item lists have been reworked and now they are faster than ever.
We have early support for plugins :-)
Re worked TreeModel wich makes christine load faster
gconf dependency is removed.
Notify bubbles and TrayIcon are now plugins easy to be enabled/disabled.
Plugin for Pidgin.
Plugin for twitter (for those that want to tweet their songs)

Where can I have it?

christine-0.2.0.tar.bz2
christine-0.2.0.tar.gz
christine_0.2.0_i386.deb (Ubuntu intrepid)

Thank you to everyone who contribuite with this release, bug submitters, patch submitters, packagers and users.

Christine 0.2.0 alpha

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 22:39:52 -0600

7 months ago I make the 0.1.6 release of Christine media player. The project continues working on my free time and the free time of some friends. I'd like to work more on it but I just don't have all that time, and wait until everything gets perfect will take a lot. So I'm giving to the christine users the 0.2.0 alpha version. I have been using this "version" a couple weeks ago and seems to be working fine, but I'd like you to check it and report everything you find wrong in it. There are source packages in bz2 and gz and a .deb package for Ubuntu Intrepid.
This release include the SQite3 as data storage engine, the drop of gconf dependency, early support for plugins and more optimizations that make christine load and work faster.
C'mon, go and Get it!.

Call for testers and translators

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:30:11 -0600

Hi, this is a call for contributors for the new christine release, the christine development team have been working on improving christine, and think it is time to make a new release, but before, we want you to test it and report every single fail you detect. We also make use of launchpad's translation page.
You can find the code Here, the page for tracking bugs is Here, and the translations are Here.

Christine with visualizations

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 01:23:14 -0600

Christine with visualizations

Originally uploaded by markuz

This is christine using gstreamer's goom plugin :-)

2008 10 08

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 02:03:00 -0500

So, it is time to post again.. this time is to post about christine. Christine as many of you know is a small project of mine, it must be an easy to use and small (and cute) media player, It start as some gstreamer play and then it becomes the music player I use for my every day, no longer rhythmbox nor banshee, wich are fine, but, not for me.
The project is slow, mostly because I code on it when I need something else or just want to fix something that don't like me. Why? because I get almost no feedback. So, if you use christine or, you want to see this project to grow up, please, test it and fill bugs or request features so we can work on it or maybe you want to cooperate with this project in another way, like writing documents, doing artwork or something like that.
The last two weeks GaRaGeD have been working on christine too, on the Pidgin "plugin" which is a nice plugin and I have been doing my work too. This makes me fell good, when you are not the only one in the project it feels better, when you can discuss some point to other project mates and know what would be the better for the average user.

Well, I'm working on the plugin interface and in the last.fm plugin for christine, I already have the authorization part, and then create the configuration dialog for the plugin, this requires me to get familiar with last.fm but, if you already use last.fm and want some feature that you already have in another player, please comment here or on the feature request tracker for the christine project.
On the paid work side, I have been working a lot with Gtk, and reading about the Human Interface Guidelines, have you noted that the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines are quite similar to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines. Well, I hope this helps me to create more intuitive and very usable gtk interfaces.
On the personal side. Cristina and I are really happy, last friday we went to the gynecologist and we see our baby, he is three months right and everything looks right. I have nothing more to say, Im happy!
Just to close this post, if you use mac or compiz, how does looks likeyour desktop right now using the Exposé or the Scale plugin on compiz

Tweeting the song from christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:03:49 -0500

Tweeting the song from christine, originally uploaded by markuz.

Inspired by GaRaGeD's pidgin "plugin" (christine still doesn't have a plugin API), I wrote my "plugin" to tweet the song on being played on christine.

2008 09 26 desktop

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:28:01 -0500

2008 09 26 desktop, originally uploaded by markuz.

About my life

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 02:30:19 -0500

Another post on the blog. I know, I haven't post too regularly these days, this is because I have a lot of work, and my spare time is used to be with cristina and our growing still-in-the-belly baby.
Well, I think you just don't care abot my life, is quite boring for everyone that is not me. Why? just because this is not the blog of some kind of nerdy hacker that do lot of shiny new and amazing stuff, nor the guy that post every single fart that Apple, ubuntu nor Microsoft does.
So, what is about this blog? I think is a way to flush my mind. I wish I have all the time to write more posts, Several times I had Ideas to be written in the blog, but they didn't come to the blog because (again) there is no time.
Anyway, three paragraphs are enough for my complaints. So, what have I done since my last Post? (the christine love, the picture is not..a post) Well, let me see... let me see... Lot of work. I have been working on this project on ICTC, a desktop application using Python and PyGtk.
User interface design is a quite interesting challenge, and more if you need to design input forms, make them look good, being user friendly (mmm, user friendly... If user friendly means scratching the testicles {or your favorite scratch part of the body} of the users. This application in some forms, need to be fully functional without mouse and use only the key pad, which makes the challenge more interesting. Writing a form that makes input validation, key-press-event handling for every widget, looks good, be ultra-easy to use is... is sometimes castrating... (the more if the client want the application in this color: #FF00FF.)
Obviously I don't have to see the application in that color, but I also have to write a color chooser for this application, if I don't, then the client is going to ask me to change the colors after 15 days using the program or when it get almost blind.
Well. This is most of the work I have done, I'm trying to learn how to use django. I love python, and I want to use django (or another python based framework) to write web applications in the future. I have write some applications but nothing really functional by now. One of the first and small projects I want to do is a web page for christine.
And talking about christine, I'm still working on the new version. I'm refactoring modules. And by now is quite usefull. Just commit this night fixes for the bug #2122313 but I need people to test it to check it is working fine. I have also fixed the open remote dialog that wasn't working since I reallocate this methods.
Well, I thinks is enough for today. See you latter.
Update I forgot, If you like the season 1 of The Big Bang Theory you can the download links from Here, those rar files don't have the subtitles, I will post them there too. I have been watching this tv serie and I love it.

Giving love to christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:52:54 -0500

Giving love to christine, originally uploaded by markuz.

This is my desktop testing some changes I have done to christine in this night. Most of them code cleaning and some harmless optimizations.

Update: I have made a screencast, you can download it

here

Update: Maybe you want to see the full resolution video

Christine folder import

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:27:34 -0500

christine, originally uploaded by markuz.

This is christine (trunk) importing a whole folder, about 1321 songs in just 1:07 mins.

Christine in ohloh

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:21:03 -0500

Christine in ohloh, originally uploaded by markuz.

I just want to let you know the christine page in Ohloh:

http://www.ohloh.net/projects/christine

Christine using 6Mb

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:00:26 -0500

screenshot3.png, originally uploaded by markuz.

This is a screenshot quite surprising for me, this is the gnome-system-monitor saying that christine uses just 6Mb of my RAM. I was looking for memory leaks in one of the applications that I'm currently developing in ICT Consulting, and I found that the memory used by one program, that memory that just belongs to the program is the Writeable memory and that is the memory you should be aware.
I have to say, christine was doing nothing, Just launch it and listen some music, then for one reason that I don't remember, just set it to pause and I get over another task, now, looking at the process table, christine is using more thatn 6 Mb.
btw.. Im using Christine 0.1.6.

Christine kicking the Compiz nuts.

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:12:06 -0500

Christine kicking the Compiz nuts., originally uploaded by markuz.

Importing several directories at the time...

Christine in launchpad

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:56:51 -0500

As the title says: Christine is now in lauchpad, the code in sourceforge.net si no longer maintained, the reason: I cannot commit my changes to the svn repo, then, I cannot share the newest code.
Christine is now a registered project in Launchpad, well, christine has been a in launchpad for a while but never really use it. So, I will use the launchpad christine account. The bug tracker, the code (and all the good things that launchpad offers) will be hosted here.
As part of the change, christine no longer use Subversion, instead, will use Bazaar, you can get the code using this:
bzr branch lp:christine

Christine love in the night

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 01:57:45 -0500

Christine love in the night, originally uploaded by markuz.

1:47 in the morning. Im still giving some love to christine, that personal proyect that I used to code frequently. Now, it takes some days before I can toch it.
I'm working on the sqlite3 storage layer, This should help me with a more unified data between multiple "sources" that should be renamed as playlists. This will be usefull for many other features, I'm thinkin in some kind of browser.
Anyway, I'm still in the process. I'd like to share the code I have, but SourceForge.net's SVN service is bothering me with a 403 (Forbidden) error that don't let me commit my changes. Now I'm seriously change the project host. What do you recommend?

Christine importing a folder.

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:19:17 -0500

Christine importing a folder., originally uploaded by markuz.

I had worked on christine weeks ago, this week I had no time to give it some love. I have been using this "development" version (I think every version of christine is a development version) for a while.
Christine is faster at the load time, starting in just 4 seconds with at least 1500 items in the list, and the search and sort is quite fast too. But working with something like 6889 items in another 'source' I had make it a bit slow.
I think this is because christine use 3 models in the main list. Yes, three models. One is the main model, the one that holds all the library data. then the filter model and then the sort model. I'll try to make a model that implements in some way the filter and sort to reduce the work.
I notice that when you use a filter or even worse a filter and sort model ever time you select or move your cursor, or do anything with a row this process has to be done for every model you have. I mean, in christine you have to do it three times because of the three models. I think this sucks.
Well, I hope to have the time to write a bit on christine in this week.

What have I done in the last month ??

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:16:51 -0500

Well, as many of you know, this site, islascruz.org was "down", and I put down between quotes because wasn't really down, but, almost everybody uses islascruz.org and not islascruz.com, and that's ok. Anyway, islascruz.org is back again and I hope it never fails again.

Now, What have I done in the last month?, well, not blogging :-P. I have been using twitter but I had this need to post on my own site.

I had worked on christine, making it a little more usable, now,it loads in my computer in just a couple of seconds with a track list that is about 2600 rows, It uses a little less memory and I'm trying to make it better. But I'm working in some projects in the work (the paid work) and the idea to be working 8 hours in the office and get to the house to keep working isn't a very nice idea.

Cristina and I get to the movies, we watch The Happening. Many people didn't like it, and I think this is because there is too much talk, too much death and almost no action. But the point in the movie is the message, we are hurting the planet, and we shouldn't. So, after the blablabla and the blood I like it, just by the message. We also watch Indiana Jones, and to be honest, I like it, but is not by far the most awesome movie I have seen.

As part of the "Leave the stress" activities cristina and I are doing, we are doing scented candles. We enjoy doing it, but the hard issue is cleaning the mess we do.

Well, I think I'm gonna leave this post here, my life is not that intersting. You should read somebody else personal posts..

About my life in the last month

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:08:05 -0500

I have't post a lot in the last month, with was a very work loaded month. Most of it because we where polishing the software we are going to show in the Expo that will start tomorrow. Anyway, this post is not about that, at least not everything.

As I have already said, I have been working a lot in the office, and get back to the house tired, I didn't want to use the computer in the house, so christine development was stoped in this time, but will start again, in the hope to have more time. The work I already have of christine in the svn drops the gnome-python* dependencies by dropping gconf out of christine. It has the first implementation of the model I had worked on a few weeks ago wich will improve christine startup. I'm planning to rewrite the player module to make it the cleaner way.
I have been usign twitter for a while, is nice to see what your buddys are doing accros the day, but I'm not that kind of twitter user that post everything: 'Im posting that Im posting on twitter', my twitter name is markuzmx.
Cristina And I are happy here in salamanca, most of the free time we use to get out of the house, watching movies, going to the museums or just walking and talking. Yesterday cristina tatooed her arm, a small butterfly next to his hand.
I knew the new. Monster Java flavour
Went to see Narnia, and Indiana Jones.
Upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 an found some glitches with Compiz wich I don't like, and One of them is the fact I can't use Button3 to show the main menu, The compiz Config Manager doesn't have that option, just the keyboard one, wich is.... annoying.
I'm tired, I wish I have a couple of free days...

Testing the new christineConf module

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 03 May 2008 23:38:30 -0500

Testing the new christineConf module, originally uploaded by markuz.

I have been working in the configuration module for christine, something similar to gconf, but just for christine. Why? well, many people complains because christine needs the gnome-extras package, where gconf is, and to be honest, christine didn't use all the gconf power, so, there isn't a big reaons to keep gconf on christine.
This isn't the only thing I have been working on. I'm trying to improve many things for the next release. Most of the work wil be in the list, zodman gives me some nice ideas, and I will try to implement them.
Anyway, you are also invited to work with me in the christine development. You can join the maling list for the next release.

Christine 0.1.6

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:45:20 -0500

CLick to enlarge

This is the new release of Christine Media Player. This release include:

Some bugfixes
Reworked code in Sources list
Reworked display.
Improved import code (no more freeze while looking for the media files)
Multiple Sources list.
Translate Christine and Report a bug menuitems

You can download it from sourceforge:

Christine in up-to-down

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:11:20 -0500

This is nothing but just an announce that get in my mail today: Christine is available via up to down a site for program search.
Well, christine has been added to it:

Christine for conary

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:04:21 -0500

El buen Zodman ha empaquetado Christine para Conary. Si usas Foresight Linux tal vez esto te interese.

Algo de amor para cristine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 21:43:11 -0500

Bien, hoy ha sido un pequenio dia para dar amor a christine, Hoy he tenido un poco de tiempo libre para 'descansar', Ayer cristina y yo nos fuimos a conocer Guanajuato, pronto pondre las fotos y la rese??????�a.
Hoy, despues de hacer los quehaceres de la casa me sente un rato a cubrir una necesidad en especial que he tenido en Christine. Bien, pues resulta que a cristina le gusta mucho la musica en espa??????�ol, en particular la movida, mientras que a mi me gusta mas la musica en ingl??????�s, El problema es que la gran mayoria de la musica en espa??????�ol la he copiado de varios lugares y no la tengo en mi directorio de musica tipico, y tampoco lo tengo dentro de mi lista de canciones normal. Que pasa cuando cristina quiere escuchar su musica, tengo que entrar en ~/.christine y copiar el archivo music a algun otro, despues copiar el archivo de musica de cristina a music, y lo mismo cuando quiero poner mi lista de canciones. Un poco engorroso, aunque no lo hago muy seguido. Hoy he hecho un peque??????�o cambio a christine de forma que es posible selecionar la lista de canciones. Por hoy, en este lado es suficiente, aun le falta pulir, pero lo hace con mas tiempo y despues.
Tambien estuve trabajando un poco para corregir unos pequenios problemas con los menus, que no se muestran traducidos, esto debido a que en los archivos de descripcion de glade las etiquetas no tienen la propiedad translatable (en los menues). Tambien he agregado al SVN los archivos de traduccion creados en Launchpad. En fin, estos cambios ya estan disponibles en el SVN de christine.

Un mes desde mi ultimo post

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:45:49 -0500

Si, un mes desde mi ultimo post, que he hecho desde entonces ??
Bueno, la respuesta es sencilla: Trabajo.
Ahora hay tres estaciones trabajando con el software que Aldo y yo hemos desarrollado aqui en ICT Consulting para los dispensarios Supramax Evo 4. Lo que significa chamba, chamba y mas chamba, lo bueno es que es con Python, asi que no es tan doloroso como se ve.
Casi no he tenido tiempo de nada, y el poco tiempo que tengo lo aprovecho para estar con cristina, con quien me la paso la verdad muy bien.
He tenido muchas cosas de que postear, pero no he tenido el tiempo, pronto preparare uno que otro artitulo mas tecnico que solo postear que es lo que he hecho o por que no he podido postear. Pero lo que si me da gusto es ver que al menos otras personas han estado haciendo lo suyo con christine, puesto que ya hay mas traducciones disponibles. y que pronto seran integradas al svn. Solo tengo que terminar de corregir algunas cositas en christine. Sobre lo cual tambien espero tener un poco de tiempo en los siguientes dias.

Translation status

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:57:22 -0600

It's nice to see that since yesterday to today there are already three new languages in the christine translations.

Wanna help? Translate christine HERE!

christine 0.1.5

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 15:34:41 -0600

I have finally found a small time in my life to give a little love to christine and I'm not so proud (because of the delay) of the fifth revision of the fifth revision of the 0.1 version.
This fixes some bugs that I have found since the 0.1.4 but to be honest, I don't remember them. You can download the source packages from Here. There is also an Ubuntu Gutsy Package there.

Speed up gtk.ListStore

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:24:50 -0600

Alguien sabe de algun algoritmo o forma para acelerar la insersion de elementos en un ListStore?. He estado haciendo pruebas con Christine sobre una lista de ~14000 canciones y mi pobre maquinita tarda entre 20 y 24 segundos para llenar el ListStore.
Se, que podria mostrar Christine y dejar que una llamada con idle_add haga la chamba, es decir, christine se mostraria en menos de 1 segundo, pero el idle_add me retrasa mas la carga de la lista a unos 2 minutos.
Alguien con algun comentario, enlace o similar, seria mas que apreciado.

Christine 0.1.3

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:47:12 -0600

El software mas usado es sin duda el que mas bugs tiene. Al menos eso se supone, pues al software que mas se usa mas bugs se le han de encontrar. Christine 0.1.3 es la nueva version de christine con bugfixes. De los cuales solo yo he probado, y de la cual me gustaria mucho que todos los amables lectores linuxeros de este blog le dieran prueba y reportaran todos los bugs en el tracker.
Que hay de nuevo en christine, nada, la verdad no he cambiado nada, salvo el hecho de que carga un poco mas rapido. De ahi en fuera, es la misma cosa con intentos mios de corregir unos bugs.
Por que me he tardado tanto? pues porque Christine sigue siendo un desarrollo que hago en mi tiempo libre, que muy seguido se ve afectado por trabajo y otras cosas que me han llamado la atencion. De cualquier manera, Christine ahi esta, y es lo que uso dia a dia para escuchar musica.
Asi que denle bajin las Fuentes o al paquetin para Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon

Christine Wallpaper

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 13:59:37 -0600

Para todos aquellos que usen Christine :-)

Christine 0.1.1

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 14:10:38 -0500

El equipo de desarrollo de Christine se complace en presentarles la nueva version de Christine, 0.1.1, Esta version es una version corregida de Christine 0.1, es decir, no implementa cosas nuevas, solo mejora lo que ya estaba.
Pueden descargar las fuentes de Christine 0.1.1 Aqui, y revisar las notas de liberacion Aqui.
Gracias a todos los que han cooperado con el desarrollo de Christine.

Christine 0.1

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 13:29:01 -0500

Bien, hoy es mi cumplea??????�os, gracias a todos los que no me han felicidado hasta ahora, y gracias a todos los que ya me felicitaron.
He liberado la primera version de Christine, tal vez no es tan estable como yo quisiera, pero tengo planes par a christine que no van con el codigo que tengo ahorita, asi que lo mejor ser??????? liberar esto y empezar a codear en lo siguiente. Si encuentran bugs ya saben Donde reportarlos.
Que cambio con respecto de la 0.1rc2?. Bien corregi varias cosas, y mejor??????� un poco algunas otras. Las correcciones no las recuerdo ahorita porque por lo general se almacenan en mi memoria temporal. Y las mejoras, pues mejore un poco lo del soporte para estaciones de radio y playlist m3u y el display que ahora usa los colores del theme.
Puedes descargar christine 0.1 Aqui.

Christine -deb

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:11:54 -0500

Pcero se han iniciado en el mundo de la empaquetada para debian, y ha creado un paquete de Christine para ubuntu Feisty Fawn. Este paquete tiene los cambios hecho al dia 26 de Julio.

Christine for birthday!

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 12:56:34 -0500

Bien, no es mi cumplea??????�os,pero lo va a ser en unos dias, Esta semana he estado trabajando en christine un poquito, el domingo y lunes en algunas partes experimtentales de christine, implementando csoas como Piratearle Metodos a un objeto para hacer empapelados y crear un ambiente de desarrollo mas sencillo. Todo esto es en lo que se esta trabajando y formar??????? parte de christine.
Otras cosas en las que he trabajado es en bugfixes para la version 0.1 y peque??????�as mejoras (que he de agregar lo otro). Lo mejor es que ahora christine tiene un mejor soporte para archivos m3u y pls y que tiene un "display" que ahora se dibuja con los colores del theme.

Christine 0.1rc2.deb

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:01:43 -0500

nibblesmx ha creado un paquetin para Ubuntu Feisty de Christine 0.1.rc2. Puedes obtenerlo aqui

Christine 0.1rc2

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:56:30 -0500

Otro release candidate para la 0.1 :-) esta vez el release candidate 2, se han corregido unos errores menores y un peque??????�o bug que provocaba que la funcion de busqueda no hiciera nada despues de importar algun archivo.
christine-0.1rc2.tar.bz2

Christine 0.1rc1

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 16:26:59 -0500

Ok, I think christine is getting closer to 0.1, wich will be the fist stable. It complies with my goals: being a media player small and fat free. Everything seems to be fine in my machine, from code in the svn and the code in the tar.bz created by make.
Anyway, I need you to test it before I upload it to sourceforge.net servers.
get it at: http://islascruz.org/html/data/files/christine-0.1rc.tar.bz2
And what's the new in christine 0.1 againts 0.0.3??

Faster, I mean, really faster import.
Very simple radio station support.
Drag'n'Drop queue add.
lots of bugs fixed.

Go, test it and report your bugs :-)

Christine for 2007-27-05

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 27 May 2007 18:43:24 -0500

I have just commited a libchristine/Library.py revision where there is no scroll down while you are adding files to the main library. This causes too much CPU waste and avoiding this results on a faster import. Anyway, there is the progressbar.
Oviedo thinks that is better to destroy the progress dialog once the import has finished, I think its a nice idea, so I also implement it today.

Christine + Mutagen

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 17 May 2007 21:15:10 -0500

nibblesmx have been hacking on the way to import files faster in Christine. I have reached a way to import all my files (2239) in about 6 or 7 minutes, this is inserting them in a gtk.ListStore and extract the tags using gstreamer.
Nibblesmx have reached the way to extract tags of this files in just 3 minutes (or less), but that's just extracting the tags, anyway, I think it's still faster while insert the files in a gtk.ListStore. The good thing about this is that, it seems to work in nibblesmx machine (and in mine), no crash (at least not now).
How does he do it?. Using mutagen to extract the tags instead gstreamer.
Thanks nibblesmx, there is still some work to do, but now it is less.

Importing files in christine.

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 16 May 2007 11:24:16 -0500

Today I have work in the import stuff in christine, since we start working on it we have several issues, some crashes of freezes. Most of them in some other computers. In my computer there where just some freezes that get solved just in time, i mean, I have to be wait a bit and chritine updates itself.
In the first aproach I try to use gobject.timeout_add to iterate over the files to import, that wasn't the right approach, because, the time between insert and insert where fixed, 0.6 secs, no matter if you have a 4 CuadCore CPU's it will take the same time in my machine. And in some old machines, this just crash. And it crash because in that machines we have to wait a bit more before insert another file to be parsed.
The other (the right)) approach was using signals. The main library was emitting signals when it was ready to accept another file to be inserted, but there where something that just crashes my app, I try to use this with threads, timer from gobject and nothing. At this time, it just don't crash, but it just freeze.
Answer.... Use this:

while gtk.events_pending():

                 gtk.main_iteration_do(False)

Just, let GTK to update the interface before doing anything else. :-). Now it 's sweet and it takes 5 to 6 minutes to import my ~2500 files, takes more importing mp3 than ogg, but that's a gstreamer issue.

Update1 For some weird reasons this seems not working in some computers. It doesn't run well in nibblesmx machine, even that I guess it's faster than mine and uses a OS that is compiled for i686 instead i486 (wich makes no big difference). The sema with n0sferatu, but I think that is the gstreamer version that they have or something like that, because both of them use Ubuntu... Some ubuntu user to thest the code of christine?.

Re enabling christine site

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 15 May 2007 21:23:33 -0500

Today I have the time to re enable the christine site Christine-Project.org. I also fix a small bug in christine that avoid the tags update and song name display while playing songs.

Happy Sunday for Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 22:04:13 -0500

Today Finish the Christine Bug Squash I'm Happy because we (nibblesmx and I) fixed some bugs, 5 bug reports where fixed and closed while some others are still open waiting for some user testing (even that they where fixed and in my machine it works fine).
Tanks to Pcero and Jose Oviedo, for their bug reports.
Things that I like more about Christine is:

Support for radio stations. (via Open Remote) Now you can just copy the Url of the .pls or m3u file and christine will play it.
Improved the Visualization mode. Now it works on the radio stations too. And if you aren't playin Christine and activate it, when you hit the play button it will work (no wait until next song or deactivate and reactivate).
Improved the time for importing I have been working with signals, and at least in my machine it runs smooth, Importing my 1865 songs in just 2 or 3 minutes (hey, fetching all that data isn't easy in GStreamer, and I know there are some other libraries, but we have to be able to fecth this data (tags) with all Media Files supported by GStreamer not only mp3 and vorbis ogg)

Some things still need some work:

Some keyboard bindings are broken.
The player display (where videos and visualization shows up) steals events if it is in focus.
There are a bunch of features that I'd like to include in next release.

Christine bug squash

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 10:36:49 -0500

Se llevar??????? a cabo un bug squash de christine este fin de semana, buscando la liberaci???????n de la primera estable. Si usas christine y quieres cooperar, reporta tu bug en el Bug Tracker. Los bugs permanecer???????n abiertos hasta el fin de semana, en donde les daremos mate.

I listen my music with Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 10:05:13 -0500

Since almost a year ago, I'm listening my music with the player that I have been building. Yeap, sure, ain't need a flashing-all-in-one player (those that even serve coffe), so, my needs are almost fill.
Talking about christine, I have fixed some minor bugs yesterday, and Also "automatize" the Radio experiment. Here comes the user feedback. Pcero, is a hard user of somafm and other radio stations, while people use to have Gigabytes of music, he just play it from the radio on internet (and uses all that Gb for movies or something like that). Pcero have been asking for the internet radio support, and after my "experiment" he start using christine for that. Pcero is a bit annoying, because he criticizes everything!, but in some way, that's good, user feedback is good.

Christine code clean bugfix

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 07:57:31 -0500

I took a break from my "paid" work yesterday and I start hacking Christine again. Trying to make it run again in my system, I found lots of bugs, most of them for non declared variables or misspelled names, some other where making use of the wrong widget. Anyway, it seems to be running right, well. not that right, but at least it play music and video again :-P. I think that code clean will be finished soon.

I also integrate a "--devel" option in christine, that let you work with christine from the source code directory. I mean, checkout the christine code, then run autogen.sh, run configure, make, and then just run christine like this: "./christine --devel" from the top of the source directory. Useful for people (coff coff developers coff coff) that want to try, not to install.
As always, my invitation to Check it out, test it, and fill our Bug tracker

A nice experiment...

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:49:42 -0500

Go to somafm.com then, get a playlist (.pls) from one of their 11 stations.
Open it with gedit or your favorite text editor.
Copy one of the file paths described in "file?=http://blablablabla"
In christine select Media->Open remote
In the next dialog just put this file from the "http://".
You are done!

Maybe gnomevfssrc will give an error if there are too many links, but
I'm listening soma since a while and it runs smooth :-).
We need to do this automaticly ;-)

[playlist]

numberofentries=2

File1=http://160.79.128.242:8032 <=======This

Title1=(#1) SomaFM: Groove Salad (128k mp3): A nicely chilled plate of ambient beats and grooves.

Length1=-1

File2=http://64.236.34.97:80/stream/1018 <===== Or this

Title2=(#2) SomaFM: Groove Salad (128k mp3): A nicely chilled plate of ambient beats and grooves.

Length2=-1

Version=2

Christine for today!!

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 19:11:43 -0500

Major changes in christine for today:

Package lib_christine have been changed to libchristine.
Most of the bugs generated by the code clean are solved.
and....

http://www.christine-project.org/

Christine moves..

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:49:36 -0600

Oks, this have been happening in the christine world.

demrit have been working in the code clean and he is doing a very great job.
He also create some clases like Singleton and Validator, and improve some others.
Christine has been moved from cvs to svn.
There are some ideas about the Plugins stuff, we are still researching.
We are three developers now (demrit, nibblesmx and me, although only demrit have been working in this week).
SVN code is broken by now but it will be fixed when the code clean gets done.

Productive day for christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 20:28:09 -0600

After a week without touching the code of Christine I touch it a bit.

Fixed a bug that crash christine in the first launch, while it tryes to use some files in the home directory ($HOME/.christine/...) that don't exits... This bug was solved, but...I reenable it while I was moving the code... sorry. Anyway, it is solved by now.
Fixed a problem with the "readline" headers in ubuntu systems. First... As default ubuntu don't install this header, that headers may be founded in libreadline5-dev. Anyway, if you don't want o install them you may use the "--without-readline" argument in the configure script.
nibblesmx change the behavior of the tray icon... now it hides/shows the main window :-).

Well, that's for today...

Improved C launcher

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 07:56:22 -0600

Finally, a short words about Christine.
When I create the Christine launcher embedding Python into a C binary, I thought that the PyInitialize function creates the global environment and pases the arguments to the python script executed by PyRun_SimpleString(). Bud it doesn't. So, I have to use PyRun_String and create a Python list with the arguments and then, assign them to the sys.argv property in order to be used by the Python christine code.
Thanks to Zodman and nibblesmx who help me with this C hell.

Video de Christine en atsion

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 18:49:03 -0600

El buen Mauricio grab??????? unas partes de la platica de GStreamer que di con Gunnar, y entre ellos pues apareci??????? como ejemplo de uso Christine.

Estoy subiendo otro, donde se ve bien a christine en accion :-) pero esta conexion de infinitum no ayuda en mucho..
Por cierto... para quien preguntaba cuantas lineas componen a Christine: son 3439 segun "wc" sin contar los descriptores de interface creados con glade :-), ni los Makefile.am regados en los directorios.
Update: Un descripcion un poco mejor (y en atsion) de christine, hasta hoy termine de subirlo... les digo, Infinitum no ayuda de mucho..

God Bless the Free Software

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:14:43 -0600

Jejeje, Just yesterday was the release of Christine 0.0.3, Honestly wishing that somebody crash in the compiling or somewhere else. That happend, Toni, who makes packages for SuSE tries to compile Christine 0.0.3 with no luck, he hack the christine package and send me the right way to do it. Thanks a lot!, christine have now 4 bugfixes today, one of them would never let compile christine in Python 2.5 environments.
Anyway, I try to fix the code, and upload new packages, wishing they work now, and then allow me to launch christine 0.0.4 in the next weeks.
Btw, SuSE Linux users, check this
Is there any Ubuntu user trying to run Christine 0.0.3 ?.
Fun!

christine with the C launcher

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 21:10:01 -0600

Christine have at the time I'm writing this a C written launcher. But Why?. Ok, this is Why: Its cooler to see christine in the process table than python christine.py. And when you want to kill christine you don't have to look into the python processes the PID of the python process running christine, just "killall christine" or something, those Deskbar Applet users will thank this :-)
It works to me, and I will apreciate if you check it, mainly for the compiling issues in the makefiles. Code is available in the CVS.

Lazy days and Plugins

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 19:44:05 -0600

Lazy days:
I have been so lazy this days, this is something that I believe is temporal, just like one of those days that I may spend coding all the fucking day. And I know what to do, I know what needs to be done, and I would like to do it, but im so lazy.
And that's why christine is taking to long in get mature. I spit some lines in the day but not a real work. I just didn't really feel so inspired.
But.. There is something...
Plugins:
I have, in this few inspirations, work over the plugins stuff, Its still very very early but, I'm trying to make a god environment to become christine into a plugable application. At this time I'm just creating the public interface, but also converting the "show properties" action (menu: edit/show properties) that show the tags of the selected item in the library, to a plugin. So, isn't by now a lib_christine package module. Ok, here is the shot:

Somebody with plugins implementation knownledge and good will to work over this stuff, give me an email :-).

Hablando del uso de se�?�?�?±ales.

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 21:24:23 -0600

Estoy implementando eso que puse en el post anteterior en christine, si te descargas el codigo del CVS de christine te dar???????s cuenta que aun utiliza gobject a la hora de importar los elementos, y he aqui la razon.
Este aparato funciona bien, con pocas canciones, digamos unas 15 canciones me las importa en un chingadazo, digamos 1 segundo tirandole a 2 lo que con gobject tardaria unos 5 segundos cuando mucho, y se ve la barrita de progreso en chinga con 1/15, 2/15, 3/15 conforme se van importando con etiquetas y todo (recuerda que no se avisa que se cargue otro archivo hasta que se han encontrado las etiquetas), el problema es que cuando quiero cargar unos 175 archivos esta madre lo hace tan en chinga que por quien sabe que puta razon me satura el pinche playbin (discoverer.. recuerda, es un playbin a fin de cuentas) y me comete una falla de segmento debido de meterle tan rapido elementos al playbin.
Ya intente utilizar gobject para retrazar la inserci???????n por unos cuantos milisegundos sin llegar a afectar tanto (unos 200 milisegundos serian suficientes), he tratado de usar threads y nomas no se que tranza.
Alguien tiene una idea? alguien que tambien est??????� trabajando co gstreamer?

Working in the plugins stuff.

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 20:35:43 -0600

After all the {christmas,new year,family} partys I have re-started on the work about christine, I am working again in the plugins, just because I want christine to be small, but, I wont say no to the features that everybody wants, so, they may be implemented in a plugin.
The plugins interface is still a mockup, and have to define public methods and properties available in the plugins to change the christine look and feel. At the moment, just let me show you how it looks like.

I have also embed the lists queue and sources (and many others that may be) in the notebook.

Controlling Your Environment Makes You Happy

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:30:18 -0600

Gracias a MaoP por apuntarme a este enlace en donde el autor hace un __buen__ comentario sobre el dise??????�o de interfaces.

A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would.

Estoy de acuerdo con eso, aunque la forma en la que esta persona lo explica... mmm.. no tanto.
Joel Spolsky en este capitulo menciona que el amigo inform???????tico (windowsero por tradicion y que se cree la gran piola porque hizo macros en word) de una ni??????�a (mac-quera porque le gusta lo bonito de la carcasa) se pone a mentotearle la madre a los de apple (en sentido figurado) porque no pudo hacer las cosas igual que en Windows. Veamos por que (miren que les estoy ahorrando una explicacion sobre el trabajo en una panaderia que tuvo este wey).
Resulta que el amigo inform???????tico esta acostumbrado a usar Alt+F4 para cerrar sus ventanas, cuando en Mac, segun Joel (no me consta, nunca he tenido/usado una Mac) sirve para subir el volumen. El tipo queria redimensionar una ventana agarrandola por la orilla y moviendo el puntero, en mac esto no sirve y te mueve la ventana. El tipo esta acostumbrado a cerrar todo tipo de cuadro de dialogo con solo precionar la barra espaciadora, algo que hace por reflejos mas que por razon, y cuando quizo hacer eso en Mac, nomas no pudo.
Bien, en esto se apoya Joel para decir que uno se siente bien cuando el usuario espera tener el control de las cosas, como el amigo inform???????tico no pudo hacer eso que hace en Windows pues se fue mentando madres, Ok, puede ser, pero con todo respeto, que usuario tan pendejo, si de antemano sabes que es Mac y no "Windows" debes saber que algo ha de cambiar, digo, no es lo mismo usar un Tsuru y un Cadillac.
Lo digo porque, si bien estoy de acuerdo en que el usuario debe tener el control de lo que usa, no deberia tener un falso control de lo que usa. No porque en Mac las ventanas se cierren o redimensionen diferente que en windows quiere decir que la interface de usuario sea una porqueria, tal vez la chica macquera queria que asi fueran las cosas y ella si tenia el poder, el control de su ambiente de trabajo ????????a ver cambiele eso en Windows?.
Y si a esas nos ponemos Windows, en mi humilde opinion no sirve, ????????porque tengo que hacer doble click en la barra de titulo para maximizar? cuando puedo presionar Ctrl+F10, y Ctrl+F5 para des-maximizar. ????????Por que debo tomar una orilla de la ventana para redimencionarla? si con Ctrl+Alt+Boton3 puedo redimencionar y sin tener que afinar mi punteria para agarrar bien la esquina/borde. ????????Por que debo tomar la barra de titulo para mover mi aplicacion? Cuando con Alt+Boton1 puedo hacerlo desde cualquier lugar de mi aplicaci???????n. Y vean que estos valores son programables en Metacity, asi que Yo si controlo mi ambiente.

Un buen dise??????�o de inteface es el que te hace la vida mas facil, no el que te hace mas pendejo, y debe aceptar que no es universal, debe ser flexible y acoplarse al usuario.

Y no me vengan con mamadas que de la productividad y jaladas asi. Que yo puedo leer mis correos mas en chinga con Evolution aunque me haya costado 10 minutos en configurarlo que en "abrir el puto messenger, meter mi nombre de usuario y contrase??????�a, esperar a que se abra la puta ventana de MSN Hoy y hacer click en uno de los correos para ver si se abre" cada vez que enciendo la computadora (por cada correo, porque no nomas manejo una cuenta). Uno es tan productivo como uno quiere, si no se puede hacer de una manera se debe poder de otra, no sean borregos al matadero.

You know what you do...

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 19:08:02 -0600

Hay alguna forma de saber que formatos pueden ser reproducidos por gstreamer??. Bueno, pues yo no se como sacarle eso a gst. es algo complicado porque gst esta basado en plugins, cada plugin le agrega caracteristicas como por ejemplo, poder reproducir ogg, mp3 o videos en mpeg.
En un principio a gusto nomas puse unos cuantos formatos como wmv, avi, mpg mpeg, mp3 para poder importarlos, pero, me estaba saltando otros que igual y no conozco y que gst si puede reproducir. Luego se me ocurrio decir, chingue su madre, que se importe todo, me vale verga... y pues tampoco fue lo mejor, terminabas importando archivos de texto o los Thumb.db que te deja el puto Windows.
Asi que pa no estarme quebrando la puta cabeza puse una pesta??????�a en el cuadro de dialogo de christine, ahi los usuarios pueden agregar/quitar/modificar las extensiones de los archivos que desean que christine importe a la biblioteca, asi si terminan importando algo que no deberia ser importado es muy su pedo :-P. Tu sabes lo que haces.

What tha fuck?

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 18:02:12 -0600

Despu??????�s de encontrarme con que el tarball de christine-0.0.1 estaba mal subido o alguna otra cosa que paso, ya he remplazado el paquete con uno nuevo, volvi a crearlo, volvi a subirlo y ahorita despu??????�s de esperar un rato para que se regara entre los espejos ya est???????.
Pueden descargarlo de aqui

Christine Screenshot for 24-12-2006

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 19:05:33 -0600

Christine for Christmas

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 18:04:37 -0600

Estoy orgulloso de anunciar que Christine ha liberado su primera version inestable. La version 0.0.1, esta version aun en faces de desarrollo es completamente usable para los fines y objetivos que Christine define, ser un reproductor de audio y video bonito y chiquito para Gnome.
Christine depende de Gstreamer, Python, GTK 2.10 y sus bindings para Python. Si se desea se puede utilizar libnotify para ver esos popups apuntando a un icono en el area de notificaci???????n. configurable desde el area de notificaci???????n.
Christine aun esta en fases de desarrollo y aun le faltan cosas, aunque lo he estado utilizando desde hace ya un buen rato y parece que todo va bien.
Hago la invitacion a los pythoneros que vean esto y que se interesen en cooperar con un proyecto sencillo, aun chico y en crecimiento.
El paquete con el codigo fuente se puede conseguir en la p???????gina de descargas.
Feliz Navidad :-)
Update1:: Un peque??????�o error en la linea de comandos de gcc ha sido corregido y un nuevo paquetin te espera en la zona de descargas, gracias damog por apuntarlo. Cualquier error/bug favor de reportarlo al Bug Tracker. Gracias de nuevo y feliz navidad.

Bug Hunter

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 21:09:03 -0600

Uff, que dia!!, ayer estuv e hackiando en christine por ya no me acuerdo por que.. un errorcito que queria corregir, y que correg??????�, pero que ya no recuerdo cual era. A ultimas me salio un bugcito, propio de mi precipitacion al agregar una caracteristica y no hacer las pruebas adecuadas.
Entre las coas que hice para corregir ese errorcito original tuve que borrar mi actual lista de canciones, asi que intente regenerarla, vaya, volver a importar todo el desmadre, cuando me voy dando cuenta que a las 300 canciones el uso del CPU se me iba al 90%, yo nomas dije Verga!!:-O.
El problema es que tengo un metodo que me hace una busqueda dentro del modelo por algun archivo dado. Pues tambien se me ocurrio que cuando el elemento de busqueda sea igual a "" se hiciera saltara y seleccionara la cancion actual. Para poder hacer eso hay un metodo que se llaman jump_to y se le da el nombre actual, este hace la busquda usando el metodo de busqueda y luego utilizando el gtk.TreeIter almacenado en current_iter para poder crear un gtk.Path y saltar (y seleccionar) la fila.
Pues esta cosa se estaba repitiendo cada vez que se insertaba un elemento en el modelo y yo ni encuenta, pero por que se repetia si yo no estaba haciendo una busqueda, estaba insertando elementos en el modelo. Bien, la respuesta es esta, cuando uno usa un gtk.TreeModelFilter y se insertan elementos este ejecuta el metodo asignado en TreeModelFilter.set_visible_func() para monstrar/esconder el nuevo elemento, lastima que no hace esto en la nueva fila que se ha insertado, sino que recorre tooooooodo el puto modelo.
Obvio, para los 300 elementos insertados esta madre ya estaba pariendo chayote porque estaba dandole madres con gstreamer sacando las etiquetas de las canciones insertando elementos en el modelo y repasandolo 2 veces por segundo.
En fin... una mega mamada que yo no me di cuenta de esa hasta las ultimas, estuve dale y dale y dale, megaoptimice mi pinche codigo pensando que era un pedo al importar, me refiero al usar la funcion de importar, buscar el tiempo de la cancion y las etiquetas etc.., y no, fue una cosa casi casi ajena, de haber sabido.... Todo el puto dia rompiendole su madre a christine y con un puto comentario lo hubiera borrado.
Mierda.. me siento basurita, lo unico bueno de todo esto es que mejore christine en la busqueda de el puto bug ese.

Christine and the i18n job

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 16:51:16 -0600

He estado trabajando en la internacionalizaci???????n de christine, he subido algunos archivos .po al CVS y un peque??????�o script para sacar las cadenas traducibles de los descriptores de interface hechos con Glade-3 y los que se escriben directamente en el codigo, por ejemplo los titulos de las columnas.
Hablando de Glade, usando glade 2 puedes pedirle a glade que todas las cadenas traducibles te las guarde en un archivo de texto plano, estas cadenas puedes ser facilmente obtenidas con xgettext usando la codificacion de C. Pues vaya relajo, que con Glade-3 estos archivos ya no se obtienen asi nomas, para poder obtenerlos es necesario usar directamente xgettext y utilizar el parametro "--from-code=Glade". En fin, asi si se pudo.
Ahora tengo un peque??????�o problema, la ventana principal de chirstine, o sea, el mero mero reproductor no se traduce. Las cadenas traducidas estan instaladas, y para cargar los descriptores de interface utilizo un wrapper (clase glade_xml) que asigna el directorio de los "locales", y usa bindtextdomain, y textdomain. En todos los mendigos descriptores de interface funciona, menos en el de interface, los menus todos en ingles (menos los que usan elementos de stock), tooltips, etiquetas, etc.. todo en el idioma en el que lo puse en glade :-/ . Que ser??????? que esta fallando?
En fin, sigo trabajando sobre esta cosa...

Christine clibrary

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 15:04:45 -0600

Bien, desde ayer en la noche antes de dormir, me puse a codear un poco de la implementacion en C de un fragmento de la clase library del modulo de mismo nombre en Christine.
Debo decir que en Python, me sorprende que la velocidad pocas veces sea un problema :-), y que la diferencia de velocidad entre C y Python no es mucha, aun asi hice esta implementacion mas como prueba que como algo que es realmente necesario, es como un "pega y corre".
Christine normalmente toma poco menos de 2 segundos en crear todo, desde cargarse las interfaces, crear el modelo y lo mas pesado, llenar el modelo con las 1751 canciones que tengo, que bueno, no son muchas. La diferencia no es mucha, pero repito, no son tantas canciones y si alguien por ahi mete unos 5000 elementos no quiero que espere 10 segundos a que se cargue christine.
He aqui la prueba :-):

pgen_model

0

set: /apps/christine/control/CONTROL_STAT 1

Not to miniviewer

set: /apps/christine/ui/small_view False

set: /apps/christine/control/volume 0.5
real 0m1.327s <==Hecho con Python

user 0m1.057s

sys 0m0.084s

cgen_model

0

set: /apps/christine/control/CONTROL_STAT 1

Not to miniviewer

set: /apps/christine/ui/small_view False

set: /apps/christine/control/volume 0.5
real 0m0.990s <== Hecho con C

user 0m0.785s

sys 0m0.048s

No elimine el metodo en python, simplemente hice un empapelado y al utilizar "--clibrary" como argumento en la linea de comandos ejecuta el metodo en C (cgen_model) mientras que ejecutando christine directamente carga con el metodo hecho en Python (pgen_model). El parametro "-q" hace que Christine se muera (sys.exit()) al terminar de cargar todo, obviamente nomas ves que aparece la ventana un segundo y zas, ya se fue.
En fin, solo queria comentar esto :-). Igual y hace implementaciones en C de otros puntos criticos de Christine >:-)

Christine for 2006-12-12

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 18:20:03 -0600

Yer.. Otra vez posteo sobre el estado de Christine, es que me pega la webonera y luego no hago ni madres.. :-D pero que le vamos a hacer, esta cosa no se va a crear solita.
He estado trabajando en el display, que hasta hace unos dias solo servia para mostrar el porciento de la cancion en la barrita, ademas del tiempo y del nombre de la cancion, album y artista. Hoy ya funciona esa cosa para cambiar el tiempo dentro de la cancion. Sigo con que me falta pulirla, pero ahi va poquito a poquito, al menos ya funciona.
Estoy tratando de darle mas poder a la entrada de busqueda, estoy pensando usar palabras reservadas como ARTIST, ALBUM, NAME, GENRE, TYPE entre otros y usar los operadores OR y AND, esto para que la seleccion de canciones sera mucho mas flexible y poderosa, Ahorita se hace una busqueda por digamos "kid rock", y mostrara todas las canciones en las que el artista, album, cancion o genero sea igual a "kid rock".
El plus viene con lo que le estoy tratando de implementar a christine, las fuentes, es decir, las listas de reproduccion, las cuales podr???????n ser estaticas, o sea que el usuario le mete los archivos a manopla y estos no cambian. El otro tipo son dinamicas, es decir, estas se crearan en base al contenido de la biblioteca principal y de los parametros que el usuario pase como el genero, o que sean las mas recientes, o tal vez las mas tocadas, etc.
Damog mencion??????? en un post sobre hacer que christine maneje plugins, esto tambien lo tengo que hacer pronto, aunque estoy dise??????�ando la interface para los plugins :-).
Para los aventurados, aquellos que quiera cooperar, o bucear un poco, pueden darse una idea de como esta christine en el CVS

Christine con el display hecho en Cairo

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:08:06 -0600

En la ma??????�ana hablaba con Eric sobre el hecho de que estaba hace unos dias jugando con cairo y que pensaba incluir un display en Christine hecho con cairo, para quitarme de las etiquetas que se muestran y eliminar de paso el gtk.Scale que hasta hoy se usaba para ver el avance de la cancion.
Bien, pues ya hoy en la tarde me puse a jugar con este desmadre hoy otra vez, y por fin puli un poquito mas el widget ese y lo incruste en christine ;-). Aun me falta pulirlo mas, pero tenia que presumir un poco :-P.

Por cierto, es Apocalyptica, no Apocolytica, alguien me paso esa rola y le pusieron mal las etiquetas.

Tareas en christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:52:56 -0600

Bien, en los ultimos dias he estado corrigiendo unos cuantos bugcitos y medio limpiando el codigo, mejorandolo un poquito y en gran medida probando christine.
Christine poco a poco, a paso lento (a veces muy lento) esta alcanzando su madurez. Aunque a veces no tengo tiempo suficiente como para dedicarle, me gusta el proyecto y en realidad quiero que crezca. Y una de las cosas que mas me intereza es que sea usado por los demas, tiene sentido que lo use, porque a fin de cuentas el proyecto comenz??????? por que queria que el reproductor hiciera lo que yo quiero que haga, en fin, y como no tengo todo el tiempo del mundo y aparentemente no hay mucha gente interezada en el proyecto, pues he decidido hacer unas peque??????�as tareas, para quien tenga ganas de programar un poco, para quien quiera probar sus habilidades con Python o para quien simplemente quiera jugar.
Las tareas son sencillas, y son las siguientes:

Salvo de la primera tarea, ser??????? necesario obtener el codigo fuente, que facilmente lo podr???????n cachar del CVS, informaci???????n sobre como obtener el codigo se encuentra en esta pagina: http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=167966
Hay un bugcito reportado en el bug tracker, quien quiera echarse un clavado y ayudarme a corregirlos aqui se los pongo.

No visualization if christine starts with no visualization

Si no sabes programar, pero quieres probarlo, adelante :-), por favor hazlo y reporta todos los bugs que encuentres en el tracker: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=167966&atid=845044.

Mas capturas de Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 21:36:40 -0600

Bien, ahora me compile libvisual y recompile el gstreamer-plugins-base para tener los visualizadores de libvisual. He aqui unas capturas:

Volviendo a Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:52:29 -0600

Bien, durante los ultimos meses casi no he trabajado con Christine, debido a que no he tenido tiempo, primero, me tengo que encargar del negocio, segundo he estado dandole a la tesis, sobre todo en buscar/leer informaci???????n, y en la ultima semana porque me fui a villahermosa y obviamente en ese tiempo ni toque la computadora con aires de programar algo, solo la use para descargar las fotos y escuchar un poco de musica (tampoco queria romper christine entonces).
Pero en esta semanita me he sentido con ganas de programar, y tomando en cuenta que estoy esperando la revision de la tesis para poder continuar, pues en este tiempecito me he dado a programar otra vez con christine.
No he hecho mucho, pero he logrado que importar archivos a la lista sea dos veces mas rapido, lo que en algunos equipos lentos podria tal vez (por limitantes de gstreamer) crear una falla de segmento y terminar la aplicaci???????n, pero para eso estoy pensando en habilitar un modo de "importado rapido", es decir, meter en la biblioteca todas las canciones/videos a importar de a putazo, con sus nombres feos de archivo (ej. cold_play_-_the_scientist) y despues en un proceso en segundo plano actualizar los datos con tiempo suficiente, digamos una cancion por segundo. Tomando en cuenta que el usuario pone la musica y se dedica a hacer otras cosas, pues eventualmente ver??????? que su biblioteca tiene todos los datos.
Tuve un problemita con el paquete de gstreamer que se incluye en DroplineGnome porque no me reproducia los videos en formato mpeg, y resulto ser porque no tenia libmpeg2 instalado, y por lo tanto al compilar gst-plugins-ugly (que incluyen el plugin mpeg2dec) no compilaba mpeg2dec. Pues hasta que se pudo.
Tambien he habilitado de nuevo el visualizador, que trabaja en mi maquina bastante bien, consume un poco de recursos (eleva el uso de mi cpu al ~33% por christine) pero funciona bien :-).

No soy el unico....

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 17:28:24 -0500

Pues parece que no soy el unico pendejo al que google se la hizo. en http://mijaws.com/ el Administrador indica que google tambien se la hizo bonita.

Ya que como veran este es un proyecto gratuito y no tiene costo alguno pero los servidores donde se hospedan si, ya se probo utilizando el metodo de Google Adsense pero al final dijeron que se habian dado clics ilegales en el sitio lo cual es una rotunda mentira les comprobe mostrandoles logs de las personas que visitaban el sitio a lo cual solamente contestaron que lo sentian mucho y que no la cuenta seria inabilitada, yo creo que era por que el monto llegaba casi a los 100 dolares o pos x razon.

Alguien mas por ahi??

Como loco..

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 12:57:55 -0500

En los ultimos dias he estado como loco programandoy probando algunas cosas que he estado haciendo, de momento he dejado de ladito el desarrollo de christine y gpkg, por el momento tengo que dedicarle un poco mas de tiempo a lo que me ha de dar de tragar, como bien me dijo el buen visor: Primero comer que ser cristiano en fin, prefiero dedicar un poco mas de tiempo las cosas que me van a redituar un poco de dinero y si tengo tiempo le dedico a christine y gpkg.
La tesis me tiene un poco atareado, con eso de que hay que cambiarle todo para que sea mas "entendible", menos t??????�cnica y que aun asi describa todo lo que yo necesito que describa, aunque encuentro esto bastante dificil, pues mi tesis trata sobre desarrollo de aplicaciones en Python utilizando Pygtk y Glade y hablar de un lenguaje de programacion y sus herramientas resulta ser por naturaleza bastante t??????�cnico. En fin... tengo que hacerla.
Por otro lado he estado trabajando en un peque??????�o proyecto, que si todo sale como yo espero en un par de semanas a mas tardar estar??????? montado y podr??????? por fin ver la luz. Esto me recuerda, que vaya como son las cosas. Hace un par semanas recordaba mi primer lenguaje de programacion: PHP, curiosamente este nuevo proyecto esta siendo desarrollado en PHP, y vaya que si despues de poco mas de 1 a??????�o no moverle a PHP se me estaban olvidando varias cosas, sobre todo por el modo de trabajo de Python. Por ejemplo, estoy acostumbrandome a que una cadena por si misma tenga sus metodos y no a llamar funciones para modificar la cadena.

$string  = "Hola#mundo";

$string1 = str_replace("#"," ",$string);

// retorna "Hola mundo"

$string2 = explode("#",string)

//retorna array("Hola","mundo");

string = "Hola#mundo"

string1 = string.replace("#"," ")

# retorna "Hola mundo"

string2 = string.split("#")

#retorna ["Hola","mundo"]

En fin, el chiste es que he estado haciendo consultas seguidas a php.net en busca de documentaci???????n, y aunque me parece definitivamente un poco mas dificil la programacion en PHP sobre todo por las vueltas que hay que dar, me recuerda buenos tiempos y me divierte.

Si... estoy enamorado de Christine...

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 10:35:19 -0500

Sip, aunque mi peque??????�a cria aun no es ni remotamente estable, es decir, es estable, pero no para el uso de todo mundo; cubre todas mis (escasas) necesidades como reproducir audio/video y tener un playlist ordenadito. Que aun tiene un buen de bugs si, los tiene y que para que se pudiera poner con sanson a las patadas con otros players como Rythmbox, Amarok o banshee esta muy, pero muuuy perro, si, esta perro.
Pero aun asi me gusta, y desde que se volvi??????? usable ya no uso pr???????cticamente ningun otro player, a menos que christine (por su backend con gstreamer) no pueda reproducir el archivo (tipicamente archivos de video), pero para todo mi audio uso christine.
Que bonito no?, hacer tus propias cosas y que te funcionen como tu gustas :-).

Christine full Screen mode

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:52:39 -0500

Asi es, ayer y hoy me dedique unos minutos a programar sobre Christine para ajustar lo del FullScreen Mode, y al momento lo tengo basico para video, aun echare ojo al Full Screen Mode para audio, pero aun no me decido si se mostrara la aplicacion con un simple window.fullscreen() o si mostrare algun tipo de visuallizador, que al momento de escribir esto suckea el visualizador en christine, asi que tengo algo mas en que trabajar. De momento ya esta el full Screen para video, ahi dejo el screenshot:

Tambien he cambiado algunos keybindings para hacer la aplicacion mucho mas simple. Si alguien quiere probarlo puede descargarse el codigo del CVS, necesitara Python, PyGTK y gst-python.

screenshot

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 15:36:17 -0500

Back to work....

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 11:48:23 -0500

After some weeks doing nothing I get back to work, or, should I have to say, my hobby?. Anyway, first, I was a bit tired of all that python code, i was brain tired, then my cousin Erika comes to take me out of that but after she leaves I didn't get back to work, well, I was working but in a project for a friend, not in my personal projects, not my "work".
Ffrom the last thursday to the sunday I was in "vacations" again, I can't say who came to see me, but that person makes me feel fine again, and "this person" makes me forget all about computers and internet and all that related stuff, then I have now this need to code, and implement some new ideas in my head.
I start writting for Christine instead Gpkg because christine is a very early stage and I like to make it reach a stable state to let it rest for some monts while I will code for gpkg.
So... I will be busy again, but happy, very very happy. :-).

Christine on August 2006

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:28:50 -0500

Even that in the las two weeks I hadn't work on christine I'd like to share this screenshot showing what Christine have by now. And.. if you are wondering. yes, I had nothing else more important to write in the blog that falls in the FLOSS category.

Click in the picture to see some nice comments.

No PyXine in Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 21:42:42 -0500

After a long wait desition (20 seconds) I decide not to use PyXine with Christine, why?, because it will take me more time to create a common interface betwen cristine and Gstreamer and Pyxine and the more important one, PyXine is to old, is not stable and is most probably dead.
And I was thinking about including pyxine in christine because some videos and some audio files didn't play, but that was a problem with my own gstreamer copy. Now even using eSound (esd) cristine (and any other gst based application) takes less cpu time for me, so compile!.
I had nothing to write, ok, and Iam writting to make time before My Name is Earl begins :-P.

Todays christine journey

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 19:25:04 -0500

Today I feel inspired again, so I work with christine again. Today I fix some problems with gconf, I had not finished the preferences dialog, but it should work with hiding/showing columns. I also work with christine in the library and queue lists.
I had some problems playing some videos, more of them downloaded from google, I was very very anger because I didn't find out the problem, until today that build gstreamer and the whole plugins (base,good,ugly,bad) and gst-python, and Yupiii!!!, all my videos are now played with christine :-).
And looking to christine when is playing a video (and hiding the library and queue list) it looks very very clean.

Again, in the black spot is a video, GL stuff.

Hoo christine...

PyXine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 15:30:26 -0500

Some days ago, when I sid tha Christine will support video playback again I note that some videos didn't play and cause some errors most of them are from http://video.google.com/. I think it is a gstreamer plugin problem, anyway, it doesn't let me watch my videos and I have to launch Xine to see them.
Searching I found PyXine and "old" project that lets you use Xine as backend. The project seem to be sleeping since 2003, and I guess it will never awake again. but the code works and I will try to implement a player with pyxine for christine, then users can choose between gstreamer and xine.
But, Why Xine?, isn't gstreamer enough?, NO, Gstreamer is not enough, Xine is older, and is more stable, Gstreamer is growing and things will change, and xine plays most known audio an video format :-)

news flash

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:47:48 -0500

The last weekend the bricklayers put the ceilin to the house, and then my mom and dad cut their bananas and let them mature, I don't know why ain't take a picture of the green bananas, but two days ago I see it and they are really really good. So, we have bananas for breakfast, meat and dinner.

Then, the last thursday I went to the GYM, finally, after 6 months of no work out, I do it. And all my body hurts me but I will go today again :-), to be Mr. Markuz Muscle. :-P.
And talking about Christine, I had just make the autotools scripts for it, so now it can be installed, however, it doesn't mean that christine is reaching a stable version, there is still a long way to go.

Christine playing video

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 15:01:30 -0500

Ok, i had not work on the last week, first, I dont want to work, and second, I have to do my paper for my school, but today I feel inspired and the Python God comes to me and fix some things about christine.
First, the Import to Queue works, this is to import a file to the queue (next audio or video to be played) without importing it to the main playlist.
And second, Play video works again, I haven't work with this since christine was upgraded from gstreamer 0.8 to 0.10, and now it plays video again, but some issues will happen since I had just work on it today and some videos downloaded from video.google.com seems to doesn't work, I wonder that it is because gstreamer or the discoverer class wrote by me.
So this is a screenshot, and there is a video on video.google, but it still is unavailable for some google reasons.

Just imagine a video playing in the black square :-p.
And click on the image to see it bigger

christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 15:30:05 -0500

christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Tue, 30 May 2006 15:54:36 -0500

Click para ver en grande

Christine improvements

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Fri, 26 May 2006 14:24:17 -0500

En un post anterior mencionaba sobre las canas verdes que me estaba sacando Christine porque se me colgaba cuando utilizaba el discoverer para obtener los tags de los archivos a reproducir.... mmmm, ni modos, lo tuve que quitar y hacer mi propio discoverer:

class discoverer:

        def __init__(self):

                print "discoverer: new instance"

                self.discoverer = gst.element_factory_make("playbin")

                self.discoverer.set_property("audio-sink",gst.element_factory_make("esdsink"))

                self.discoverer.set_property("video-sink",gst.element_factory_make("xvimagesink"))

                self.discoverer.set_property("volume",0.0)

                self.bus = self.discoverer.get_bus()

        def set_location(self,file):

                self.tags = {}

                self.discoverer.set_property("uri","file://%s"%file)

                self.discoverer.set_state(gst.STATE_READY)

                self.discoverer.set_state(gst.STATE_PAUSED)

                self.discoverer.set_state(gst.STATE_PLAYING)

                self.discoverer.set_state(gst.STATE_PAUSED)

        def found_tags_cb(self,tags):

                if len(tags.keys()) > 0:

                        for i in tags.keys():

                                self.tags[i] = tags[i]

                #print self.tags

        def get_location(self):

                path = self.discoverer.get_property("uri")

                if path != None:

                        path = path[7:]

                return path

        def get_tag(self,key):

                try:

                        return self.tags[key]

                except:

                        return ""

Apenas lo hice hoy y aun me faltan algunas cosas como el determinar si el archivo es de audio o video, pero me funciona bien, y ya hoy pude importar mi colecci???????n de musica colocando los tags correctos en la lista:

Cabe mencionar que en esta clase, es necesario conectar el bus (self.discoverer.bus) con un manejador para que cuando se envie el mensaje gst.MESSAGE_TAG utilice el metodo parse_tag propio del mensaje y que estos tags sean enviados a discoverer.found_tags_cb.

def message_handler(self,a,b):

                d = self.discoverer

                t = b.type

                if t == gst.MESSAGE_TAG:

                    self.discoverer.found_tags_cb(b.parse_tag())

Christine y las canas verdes

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Wed, 24 May 2006 11:14:32 -0500

En la ultima semana no he trabajado mucho sobre Christine, me toy dando el respectivo break para no caer en esto :-P. Christine ahi va poco a poco, el problema es que no se por que mendiga razon se cuelga :-S.
Mientras jala con mp3 todo va perfecto, pero al aventarse a reproducir ogg, la cosa se puede colgar, por un error raro de no se que cosa.

Fatal Python error: GC object already tracked

Supongo que es al usar la clase gst.extend.discoverer.Discoverer, lo que hace esta clase es tomar como parametro de inicializaci???????n el archivo a leer, y le saca las entra??????�as (etiquetas, bitrate, etc.. ) aparte de definir si es un archivo de audio o de video. En fin... Si no fuera porque gstreamer tarda (en mi opinion) demasiado para obtener las etiquetas de un archivo (y se cuelga de vez en cuando), todo iria perfecto. :-/

Christine in Sourceforge.net && Infinitum

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 20 May 2006 12:24:44 -0500

As??????� es, hoy revise mi cuenta en Sourceforge.net y veo que Christine ya esta en Sourceforge.net :-). Hace como semana y media o dos que habia pedido ese nombre, lo tenia un proyecto de base de datos registrado hace un a??????�o pero que nunca mostr??????? ningun resultado.
En cuanto pueda subir??????� el codigo de Christine al CVS para quienes est??????�n interezados en el proyecto. :-)
Update:Ya he subido las fuentes al CVS, tambien se pueden ver por via web
Por otro lado, a mi rancho ya lleg??????? el servicio de infinitum, asi que el modem satelital tendr??????? unas buenas vacaciones mientras pienso que hago con el. La ventaja es que ya no me tendr??????� que limitar por las descargas y el ancho de banda de subida es mayor :-).

Work for the last week

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Thu, 11 May 2006 15:23:03 -0500

En la semana pasada no he hecho mucho, mas bien he estado de webon y dandome un peque??????�o break o mejor dicho, bajandole el ritmo al vicio.
En fin, entre lo poco que he hecho en esta semana esta el migrar Christine de gst-python 0.8 a gst-python 0.10, comenc??????� con ese porque era la version que tenia instalada cuando comenc??????� a desarrollarlo, y pues mejor me instal??????� gstreamer 0.10 y sus bindings porque se supone que est???????n mejor.
Un poco de trabajo me ha costado, pero ah??????� va, y de christine, pues aun me falta acomodar las cosas con Gconf, resanar detallitos y pulir c???????digo. Que espero poder hacer al menos lo ultimo antes de que los del equipo de SF.net me den el espacio del proyecto christine, ya lo ped??????� y ya esta concedido, aun falta terminar el proceso :-).

Christine again

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Mon, 01 May 2006 15:51:48 -0500

Ok, sigo jugando con GStreamer, y christine ya es "usable" (para mi), ya me sirve pa tocar mi musica, y meter elementos en cola, importar archivos y carpetas completas (incluyendo subdirectorios si se especifica). En el ultimo post mostre unas imagenes, pero aun no era tan usable, porque despues de un rato la interface se conjelaba y solo los elementos de control servian, por lo que un no lo podia agarrar pa poner mi musica eternamente :-P.
Ahora ya resolv??????� ese problema y le acomod??????� el visualizador, el chunche para que mientras toca aparezca algo en pantalla. el problema del visualizador es que consume muchos recursos (un 40% de mi cpu!!!), asi que por defecto lo tengo desactivado.
Como todo buen contribuidor al software libre, este chunche estar??????? disponible para descarga y desmenuzada bajo la GNU/GPL, pero eso ser??????? cuando ya tenga un poco mas de forma, limpie un poco y acondicione el c???????digo.
De momento dejo una foto:

Christine

markuz@islascruz.org (Marco Antonio Islas Cruz) — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 16:37:01 -0500

En las ultimas dos semanas he estado jugando un poco con GStreamer, Python y PyGTK. He estado desarrollando una peque??????�a aplicaci???????n que reproduzca sonido y video. Pero, por que reinventar la rueda?, bueno, he sido usuario de xmms por mucho tiempo, sobre todo por su sencillez, y porque lo que hace lo hace bien :-). Y de un tiempo para ac??????? he estado usando rhythmbox. Los dos son geniales, xmms es muy sencillito, y ligero, mientras que Rb me permite crear listas (estaticas y dinamicas) ademas de que usa gstreamer.
Las dos aplicaciones son buenas, pero RB no reproduce video (si si, ya s??????� que ah??????� esta xine y tambien Mplayer, Totem y otros) y los que lo hacen es en una aplicacion aparte, yo quiero tener una lista de reproduccion donde esten mis videos y mi musica, para no tener que abrir dos aplicaciones si quiero ver video primero y luego escuchar una canci???????n. Adem???????s ando de ocioso.
El chunce este ya me permite guardar una lista principal, meter elementos a una cola de reproduccion, hacer busqueda de canciones, toca en orden aleatorio y obviamente toca musica y reproduce video :-). Aun ta muy verde, pero pues en mis grandes tiempos de ocio le seguir??????� dando para que haga jutamente lo que yo quiero que haga :-).
Ah??????� quedan dos capturas de como lo veo ahorita:

Vista en miniatura

Vista normal

Reproduciendo video