Cleaning Off Some Blood

My regular readers (why are you looking at me like that) will recall that about four months ago I tried out KDE4.  To sum that up very, very briefly: I hated it.  A couple weeks ago though, KDE4.2 entered the testing branch of Gentoo, and what I'd seen elsewhere in the internet suggested that people who were nothuge fans of previous iterations should try it again.  As this is in testing/unstable branch for Gentoo, I'm dealing with a final release version from upstream, so just in terms of stability I knew it was pretty likely to come out ahead, but how usable is it?  Well, let's compare and contrast with last time.

The only thing I was particularly happy with last time was the move to a 3D composited desktop like OSX's, Windows Aero, and Compiz.  Well, now more than just being 3D compositied, it has basically every useful effect from them too, and now has my favorite implementation of a few of them.  In OSX, you can trigger some of the effects like Exposé and showing the desktop by hitting the corners of the screen.  Compiz-Fusion had a similar effect, but it was slightly more finnicky.  KDE4 is more stable than both of them, by requiring you to push against the corner rather than just getting near it.  Sure it's slightly more effort, but it removes false positives in the process.  All the rest of the features are basically clones of Compiz ones, with a few trivial omissions; there isn't an alternate window switcher key command set for using multiple effects active at once, and the features that map desktops to polyhedrons are slow, but worthless anyway.  Additionally, I can't seem to drag windows across borders to other desktops, but it's still easy to get them over there via the context menu.

When I was complaining about keyboard shortcuts last time, I primarily was referring to mapping Meta+Space to launch KRunner, as it's much better than Katapult (though worse than Gnome-Do, which looks like ass in KDE4 sadly, though under KDE3.5 it's glorious) and that sort of functionality was welcomed.  Well, I'm happy to report that it works exactly as expected now.

My next complaints were directed at Phonon and Amarok2.  I can't really speak to Phonon this time since I don't have any audio notifications running for any apps, and I'm not running Amarok2.  Sadly, the majority of my complaints with Amarok2 were intended features of it, or else low priority omissions, so there isn't much reason to try it again.  It's probably never going to be the music player I want, though it may become a music player I can live with eventually, in case the 1.x series dies out too badly.

I had two specific complaints with KTorrent: lack of RSS plugin and the UPnP plugin blocking all other UPnP use.  Both of these are remedied with the current release, though the RSS plugin is not as good as I'd hope.  It fetches fine, but I can't override how often (the one stream I use a lot of often runs out of new spots faster than it defines the update, so letting it auto update at its own pace misses things), and the filters are still appallingly bad.  The regexp support is simply broken, as valid regexp completely fail to match things they really should.  This isn't exactly a regression though, as the KDE3 branch was no better about this.  I can live without automated downloading, I just wish I didn't have to.

Akregator is a bit of an interesting experience.  The issue I had last time was back again, but I'm no longer convinced it was a broken app so much as it was ridiculously buggy rendering.  You see, I did eventually find a handle that allowed the resizing of the Articles pane, it was just closed all the way.  Maybe it was there last time too and I just missed it.  I can't tell, and don't feel like installing an old version just to find out.  This is definitely a bug, but it's hard to tell exactly how big of one so I'll just leave it at the fact that it works now, and is slightly more readable due to using Qt4 widgets and color themes throughout, and after my last foray I actually switched my KDE3 apps over to it with mixed success.

I wouldn't suggest everything is perfect though.  K3b is still a non-starter, but it's not in testing in portage yet either, so I don't have to care.  Plasmoids are now called widgets, and most of the old issues apply, though there are sort of replacements.  OSX widgets still fail miserably with the Alpha channel for whatever reason (why even bother with the feature if it's this bad?) but there is a servicable if finnicky weather widget that's supplying me with outdoor data without going outdoors.  Also, I do definitely still need kdelibs-3.5.10 around for Amarok and a couple other old apps, as well as Qt 3.3.8b since Qt4-Qt3support still does not allow use of Qt3 itself, as that's not its goal.  Apps like Konversation still seem to not even be attempting to update and with K3b and Amarok still in KDE3 varieties there's not a whole lot of option but to keep around the old subsystems.

In order to keep the article in the same path as last time I wound up skipping over a rather obnoxious little bug that I hit immediately upon launching X for the first time after the update, and one that would probably be a bit of a game ender for people who aren't used to weirdness; upon finishing the load process, there was nothing but a wallpaper on the screen.  My first guess was that the desktop program didn't actually load, but it turns out that they just spawned it with no panels whatsoever, so adding a panel and adding a task manager, clock, and system tray to that quickly made the place livable.  It's just a little scary to see nothing after launching, even if there isn't really anything wrong.

So, the upgrade to KDE4 is not going perfectly for me, but it's good enough.  Not relying on compiz to make my system not ugly as sin is a blessing all on its own since its development has stagnated and my build was glitchy at best.  I prefer the look of Oxygen widgets to Plastik, but there was probably an easier way to get nicer widgets for my apps than this if that mattered too much.  The positives, all in all, outweigh the negatives for me, so I'll stick around as everything starts coming together completely.  If I'm perfectly honest, this should have been KDE4.0, as 4.0 was intentionally beta and 4.1 simply wasn't very good, but the real deal is finally here, and it's good... -ish.

Tales of Abject Failure - Part 2

My last post was optimistic.  We were assured that the people in charge for CableCARD scheduling would contact us within 24-48 hours of the last call, which was a couple hours before the post went out.  Around 18:30 yesterday, which is around the 49.5 hour mark, we called up again to see what was up.  To the credit of the girl from Wednesday (she doesn't deserve a lot after suggesting that CableCARDs are basically garbage, suggesting that we'd be better off sticking with the box I'd returned hours before), she did in fact email the relevant people and logged the whole thing in the notes for our account.  Tonight's gentleman saw very explicitly that we were supposed to be contacted within 48 hours and that it had already been more than that.

Don't get me wrong here, I knew this was Comcast.  I was not expecting installation within this window.  I wasn't even expecting an appointment within this window.  Returning a phone call within two business days to say anything does not seem to be too much to ask, especially since we didn't demand the window in some sort of huff.  This is just common courtesy to your paying customers.

Of course, the people involved with this whole business only work M-F 8-17, so there was no chance of anything happening tonight, meaning the weekend is lost too.  The CSR tonight sent yet another email to the people responsible for CableCARDs mentioning specifically that they missed the window they were supposed to  meet, but this time he claims to have sent it to their supervisors too.  No idea whether that will help or just irritate them, but we'll see.

Sadly, tonight was the season finale for Psych, which I had to watch in SD despite paying for HD service.  I know, it's not exactly world ending, but come on guys, this entire process is vastly more painful than it should be, so any inconvenience as a result of their stupid policies designed solely to nickel and dime is too much.  Nothing needs to be recorded over the weekend, and the box is set up like a VCR to record the Monday evening shows in HD.  There's obviously no chance of installation before then.  Odds are, the next post in the series will be after the first truck roll, which will end in still more abject failure, but at least it will be failure post-college try.  FiOS cannot get in this area of town fast enough.

Tales of Abject Failure - Part 1

HDTV is nice. HD DVRs are nice things to have. Cable company provided DVRs, however, are the unholy spawn of Satan himself, and that's when they're working. Some time ago, our 56" DLP was finally given the loving embrace of HD cable content via one of these things. Immediately, I hated the interface on the bugger, and the horrible workarounds required to get the box working as well as it should. Namely, in this case, I had to run the video over component directly to the TV, and set up overrides in the hidden service menu to make sure SD content was not upscaled in order to use my TV's regular aspect correction tools, instead of directly into my AVR which has a higher quality scaler than my TV or the DVR itself, because it can't do any aspect correction despite clearly having its own scaler.

This is crap, and I hate it.

That was all back when the damn thing was working. That box decided one night during House to reboot about 5 times during the first 40 minutes of the show. Obviously, this is sub-optimal, so we called for service. Initially, they gave no guarantees about when they would be able to fix their faulty equipment, suggesting that it might take over a week to get someone out here, but some mild complaining later yielded a service appointment by Wednesday (House airs Mondays this year, in case you are not aware). The technician, upon arriving, was carrying a new box, which suggested he had no interest in diagnosing problems and wanted to jump straight to replacing it. He noted a high current running through the cable itself, which is odd, and promised to look into it before leaving. If he did, he never reported his results, because shortly after walking out to do that, he got into his van and drove off. There were unwatched shows on the first box, but what the hell the internet can fix those problems (though with the bandwidth capping it gets a little hairy). At least we had a working DVR now, right?

The answer to that question depends on what you consider a working DVR. I could watch any digital and/or high def channels with the box, which is exactly what you expect. Pausing live broadcasts however, was problematic, as resuming typically inserted 10-15 second pauses at various times followed by jumping ahead. After a few such pauses, the screen would turn black and all transport controls (fast forward, pause, rewind, stop, play) would return an error on the screen that those only work while viewing a video. Well shit. Changing channels or forcing to LiveTV "fixed" that, so it was not a stream breakdown. Scheduled recordings followed the same pattern of recording fine, but not playing back at all. I'm pretty sure playing back recorded content is the major point of having a DVR in the first place, so I was not particularly amused by this.

It's around this point that I realized TiVo's service, if paid for yearly or 3-years in advance, is cheaper than Comcast's total charge for the DVR. The interface is less irritating, there are more features (though we lose access to Comcast's own anemic VOD service), and the hardware is much less likely to fail spectacularly. Of course, the catch is that you need a CableCARD to access everything, but how hard can that be to get?

For those not in the know, CableCARD is a standard device to let unofficial boxes decode cable signals, unscrambling like a cable box but without the box. If you've ever seen an expansion card for a laptop (PCMCIA form factor) you know exactly what they look like. The TiVo has slots up front behind a little door that you just slide one of these cards into, and you're more than half way there. The remaining part of the process is calling a phone number and giving them the serial number of the card, and occasionally a number that is displayed on your screen shortly after the device recognizes that a card is put in. That is it for the home-side installation process of CableCARDs. I am not in any way exaggerating the ease of installation here. Well let's check Comcast's FAQ on the subject. Confusingly, they have two different spots where they talk about the devices, one for just general use and one for TiVos on the series 3 platform. Let's look at what they say, starting with the general one:

Can I install a CableCARD myself or does a technician need to come to my home?

At this time, professional installation by a Comcast technician is required.

Well okay, though I'm not sure what about the process honestly requires some sort of professional. Now for the TiVo specific answer:

Can I install the CableCARD into my TiVo Series 3 HD by myself?

To ensure that your installation is performed accurately, a technician is required to install and activate the CableCARDs. Please call 1-800-COMCAST (2662278) to set up an installation appointment.

Oh. Okay. To ensure that it's performed accurately. I may only have implied it thus far, but I now own a TiVo, I didn't wait to cut through this stupid red tape or try and get a third box before purchasing the object. Before you even get to the installation instructions in the package, you come across a sheet that you are supposed to give to your CableCARD installer. Typically they will claim that they do not need such a thing, but the general experience of the internet is that their complaints are pure hubris and not indicative of their capability in the least. That I now understand how easy it is too is just a side effect of learning that even TiVo themselves do not trust these idiots to slide a card in properly and call a phone number without shitting their pants or licking nearby windows. They even have a hotline for installers to call in case they fail miserably.

Well, that's the official Comcast policy there, but it doesn't take a whole lot of searching the internet to find people who were able to pick up the cards in their local offices, so I attempted exactly this today, while dumping their pile of worthless slag on them to get it off our bill. They told me that they really did not have any there, that they were all with the technicians. Well, that's one way to ensure that you need a tech to install something this braindead simple to install, since you need the tech to even touch the hardware in the first place. Fine. Well, they also claimed to have a wait list for whatever reason, despite the entire lack of actual shortage for these things. A second phone call (the first one basically just gave us the company line and mentioned the wait list the first time) including complaints of the lunacy of how difficult it is to get these damn things, and a drop of the F-bomb got them scrambling about a bit to see about getting this shit done for real. We should be getting contacted within 48 hours about this.

Of course, this CSR drone let slip the standard complaint that CableCARDs don't really work. This is sort of true, but only due to massive statistics altering caused by further intentional stupidity. Comcast techs have a habit of installing a card, and if it doesn't work they don't throw it out or destroy it, they just return it to the pile. Typically, if your card is not new directly from the packaging, it will not work because it has already been proven not to work or they wouldn't even have it on hand. This is common sense stuff here, but Comcast does not work on such principles. Whenever they finally get out here I'll update as to whether they continued their failures.

On the plus side, I get all local HD on my TiVo without the card, though no guide data for those channels. Also, until the CableCARD comes and starts doing QAM mapping of digital channels, NBC is channel 4 and NBCHD is 4-1, which is much easier to remember than 160. All of the HD channels are on subchannel -1 of their SD equivalent, which is pretty sweet. The lack of guide data for these channels means I can't program recordings in a sane manner, but the TiVo software is too nice to let you flounder there; you can set up recordings like on a VCR giving it the time and channel. Sure if something happens to the broadcast time it will record anyway, but it's better than nothing. Hell, it's even better than the Comcast Motorola box that would record but not play. Also, the TiVo does aspect correction itself, so it is hooked up to my AVR via HDMI directly, no more splitting the inputs and just generally complicating my setup. I've read enough online to know that part 2 isn't likely to be a happy ending so look forward to that.

New Comics: 12/24/08

DC
Batman #683 Regular Alex Ross Cover $2.54
Reign In Hell #6 $2.98

Marvel
Daredevil Vol 2 #114 Regular Marko Djurdjevic Cover $2.54
Immortal Iron Fist #21 $2.54
New Avengers #48 (Dark Reign Tie-In) $2.54
Nova Vol 4 #20 Regular Mike Deodato Jr Cover $2.54
Runaways Vol 3 #5 $2.54
Skaar Son Of Hulk #6 Regular Ron Garney Cover $2.54
Thor Vol 3 #12 $2.54
Wolverine First Class #10 $2.54

Spider-Man Noir #1 wasn't in the shop yesterday that I noticed, probably grab it next week then.

Pull Review: 12/17/08

This was a hell of a week to get back into this habit due to sheer bulk.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #20 - Shockingly high quality book of the week right here, not because it was excellent but because it was acceptable.  This is only shocking of course if you realize it was written by Jeph Loeb, the master of payoff after payoff after payoff.  Well, the dialogue isn't quite up to par here, but the majority of the story is a semi-flashback dream in a very cute cartoon style.  The upshot of most of it being a dream is that nothing of note happens, so there's nothing to pay off really.  It's a reasonably enjoyable, fun little story that serves essentially no purpose other than Joss letting Jeph write an issue.  On the other hand, that means it's utterly disposable and skippable.  Not Recommended for non-completionists.  (If I'm honest, the biggest reason I bothered to buy it is that my mother reads the Buffyverse comics too)

Angel: After the Fall #15 - Not quite as disposable as the Buffy issue.  Not at all honestly, as most of the plot threads from the very beginning of the run get tied up.  I'm still not a fan of the art, as there were a number of spots where I had to make educated guesses as to the identity of the characters rather than actually being able to tell.  As a fan of the series, I was astonished by my reaction to the ending, though considering this is a Joss Whedon work I won't suggest that it surprised me.  Recommended for any of you who were keeping up.  Don't jump ship is what I'm saying I suppose.

Uncanny X-Men #505 - This seems an unpopular opinion for whatever reason, but I rather like the Dodsons' art.  It seems to draw some unfair comparisons to Frank Cho's bootylicious funtime art, which could explain it, but honestly the things that infuriate me about Cho don't typically apply here.  I don't think anybody wishes the other regular penciller for the series was on though, so there's that.  As much as I like Ed Brubaker, this issue just cements in my mind that he was not a good fit here, and I'm honestly glad to see him go.  It'll give him more time for things he's better with, and there's no lack of those works.  I can't say I'm that interested in Piotr's story here as it seems a bit unlikely as an outlet for his grief, but the rest is pretty spot on.  Emma's story here definitely helps out with the Dark Reign one shot from last week, as her inclusion with the Illuminaughty (it's a Fraction book, I'll coopt his word) feels better after this issue.  Recommended.

X-Men Legacy #219 - I dropped the book during Original Sin as I prefered a gap in collection to picking up bits of Daniel Way's Wolverine Origins, but fortunately it doesn't seem to matter yet.  Unfortunately, this issue wasn't particularly good.  A reunion with Juggernaut after the accident was inevitable at some point, but for a series that essentially set out to be making Charles into less of an asshole, this is making him into a bit of an asshole.  It also retconned Juggernaut back to his earlier status quo, which may or may not be a good thing.  I honestly never read any of the reformed Cain books, but don't expect any more of them anytime soon.  Briones' art was servicable but uninspiring.  Not Recommended.

X-Factor #38 - I dropped this book for a while too, thanks to Larry Stroman 's approximation of "art," and I'm sad to say he was back for four pages (including a two page spread) in this issue.  Worse still, the rest of the issue is by Nelson (one name only) and he's not exactly my new favorite, but he's definitely far, far better.  Of course, someone should probably tell him how many fingers Longshot has if both the penciller and character are going to stick around long term (hint: it's not five per hand), and while we're at it the cover had Madrox with an unmarred face.  In terms of the plot, frankly it could probably have been done with another five pages or so in the last issue, and as such winds up feeling a bit superfluous.  Early indications are that the next issue is one of Peter David's best works ever, so I'm not about to jump ship, but this issue itself is Not Recommended.

Robin #181 - Anarky has got to be one of the wordiest damn villains in history, and it's not amusing enough to make up for it.  I don't really buy that Steph was told by Batman to become Zoom either, so that story continuing onward does nothing for me.  Freddie Williams's pencils are serviceable enough.  The series ends next issue, but this didn't really feel like it advanced a whole hell of a lot of the arc's plot threads.  With only one issue left I'm not jumping ship now, but it's Not Recommended to jump in now.

Batman and the Outsiders #14 - Ugh.  The art is pretty striking in the first few pages as it's all done very well in a widescreen style with some stark shadows and the integration of the credits into the pages like on ASS, but really the shadows were just hiding the overly hatched mess that all the later faces would turn out to be.  Moreover, the major story itself is utterly idiotic and hinges on you having read the terrible Batgirl miniseries penned by the man that made Cass radioactive in the first place.  Dick is an utter idiot here, Cass snipes a bit too much, and frankly the only redeeming factor is Riddler being his own egotistical ass self.  Not Recommended.

Supergirl #36 - Kara flies off in half cocked rage once again, but unlike the beginning of the series she has a damn good reason.    The last issue of Supergirl in New Krypton was a bit irrelevant to the overall narrative, acting more like a tie-in than chapter of the story, but don't be fooled this time.  We pick up right where the last issue left off with Metallo and Reactron's rampage, and things reach their expected end, rather than a 'comic book' conclusion.  We get some more time with Nightwing and Flamebird, and separately some time with Superwoman, but not enough to confirm who anyone is.  I think we can safely rule Alura, the enormous bitch, out of the running as Superwoman, but stranger things have happened.  Jamal Igle's pencils are good as usual, though his  rendering of Kara's costume doesn't quite mesh with the last issue.  All in all, an enjoyable reading experience.  Recommended.

Mighty Avengers #20 - The book was split  among three pencillers and inkers, but only two significant sections, which didn't really serve the issue particularly well.  The flashback being in a different style from what came later I'll accept, but the rest of the story is a mixture for no good reason.  After the flashback, nobody is wearing a costume, and there are more than a couple of blonde women, which makes it very difficult to tell the characters apart, and neither of the present day artists were helping that any.  Bendis definitely went out on a very strong issue himself though, as everyone is well handled in an extremely troubling situation.  It's not hard to understand Hank's reaction throughout the book, given the world he returned to and what he missed.  This is a changing of the guard of sorts, more setting you up for Bendis' new book than the continuing adventures of the current one, but you can hardly blame him for that.  All in all, Highly Recommended.

Invincible Iron Man #8 - The first arc of this book largely made me hate Marvel for being close enough to canning The Order that Fraction felt he should do so himself on his own terms, as it was an extension of that arc without any of the new characters, but since last issue it's taken a turn for the better.  A ludicrously stupid and common myth about the brain aside, this book delivers some good writing and promises a hell of an upcoming story.  Too bad Salvadore Larroca is such an irritating artist to match up with it.  Individual panels are pretty decent, but hair styles and facial features change too much from panel to panel, including Pepper's hair getting pulled back and then let down with her glasses disappearing and reappearing on the same page while lying down.  At least the characters don't all look blatantly like real actors this time.  Either way, it's not bad art per se, just somewhat distracting from an otherwise excellent book.  Highly Recommended.

Amazing Spider-Man #581 - I never read Death of a Goblin, so I'm not personally bothered by the Brand New Day retcon of it, and in this issue we finally get an answer as to how it happened.  The answer, as it happens, is stunningly plausible for a Dan Slott book, and it deals with the consequences rather realistically.  Peter was out of costume the whole time too, as a nice change of pace.  I'm still in a bit of shock about this since I reacted (not on this blog) with such bile to OMN/BND, but this book is Recommended.

Thor God-Size - The issue opens with a condensed retelling of Walter Simonson's Thor #362 (reprinted in back), and then continues into a modern day extension of it.  The writing is pretty much what we've come to expect from Fraction's modern myth style of Thor writing, which is to say pretty good.  The art is fantastic throughout, mostly in a painted style but with a section by the Allreds that is not unwelcome.  It doesn't really fit in with the current JMS run in any particular way, but since when was mythology required to fit together in tight continuity.  Highly Recommended.

Dark Reign: New Nation - Did you read Secret Invasion #8 through to the back cover?  Congratulations, you've read most of the first three stories here!  There are a couple more pages each, though odds are they'll all be in the respective #1s for their ongoings anyway.  Even worse, Marvel deigned to charge $4 for this book.  This is actually more offensive than the 16pp story/16pp script abominations Ellis was shitting out and they were charging $4 for, since it's basically an advertisement for their new books on top of at least nine pages of it being in a book that nobody who cared enough to pick this up didn't already read.  Stay The Fuck Away, And Screw You Marvel.

X-Men: Kingbreaker #1 - I forgot almost everything about how Emperor Vulcan ended, but this reminded me pretty darn quickly without beating me over the head with a thinly veiled recap dialogue.  I'm not entirely sure why Earth based heroes that aren't already there are going to be involved with the overall War of Kings story, but the issues Vulcan is causing the rest of the universe are pretty well defined.  I look forward to Gabe getting his comeuppance, which is probably the most anyone can ask for from the beginning of a story.  Mildly Recommended.

New Comics: 12/17/08

Dark Horse

• Buffy The Vampire Slayer Vol 2 #20 (Season 8) Jo Chen Cover $2.54

DC

• Batman And The Outsiders Vol 2 #14 $2.54
  
• Robin Vol 4 #181 $2.54
  
• Supergirl Vol 5 #36 Regular Joshua Middleton Cover (New Krypton Part 8) $2.54

IDW Publishing

• Angel After The Fall #15 Regular Cover $3.39

Marvel

• Amazing Spider-Man Vol 2 #581 Regular Barry Kitson Cover $2.54
  
• Dark Reign New Nation (Secret Invasion Dark Reign Tie-In) $3.39
  
• Invincible Iron Man #8 Regular Salvador Larroca Cover (Secret Invasion Dark Reign Tie-In) $2.54
  
• Mighty Avengers #20 (Secret Invasion Tie-In) $2.54
  
• Samurai Legend #4 $5.09
  
• Spider-Man Noir #1 $3.39
  
• Thor God-Sized #1 $3.39
  
• Uncanny X-Men #505 Regular Terry Dodson Cover (X-Men Manifest Destiny Tie-In) $2.54
  
• X-Factor Vol 3 #38 $2.54
  
• X-Men Kingbreaker #1 (War Of Kings Tie-In) $3.39
  
• X-Men Legacy #219 $2.54
  

Maybe this will get me to actually get back to reviewing the shit once it's in my hands.  I've fallen behind on Samurai, and I'm unfortunately pretty sure Loeb is writing this issue of Buffy, but there's still a bunch of good stuff I'm looking forward to in here.  I wasn't a huge fan of Emperor Vulcan, but I like X-Force and plan to read War of Kings due to the DnA showrunning, so this is probably still a decent grab, but we'll see.  Mighty is probably coming off the list after this since it seems to be a romp through alternate universes penned by Dan Slott that I honestly couldn't care less about, but we'll see how that goes.  Probably for the best if it does since Dark Avengers is going to be more vital/better anyway, and both New and Dark are going to $4/issue.

Amatriciana Sauce

Strangely enough, earlier this week I made dinner of my own volition.  Not only that, but I made it from these things you'd actually call "ingredients" rather than taking something out of a package and heating it.  It's ludicrously easy to make, so anyone interested can follow the recipe I used, available here.  A word of caution to the obscenely stupid out there: a clove of garlic is one of the small bits inside the skin.  It is not the word for the whole damn thing.  In case you're wondering, I fell into that obscenely stupid category.  Peeling garlic is a pain in the ass, and having to do less than one whole bulb makes this pretty quick.  I'm going to have to make it again sometime, and this time avoid being an utter windowlicker to see what it's actually supposed to taste like, as the garlic drowned out the pancetta a bit.  It's recommended anyway.

Life on the Bleeding Edge

Background:

If you're a technologically inclined person like me, you've probably heard of linux, the free open source operating system.  You may even have run it once or twice on the side, just to see what the fuss is about.  I did so a few years back, and wound up building a box almost specifically for linux use.  That box is dead but its legacy lives on in the box I'm typing this from.

The specific distribution I settled on was Gentoo, at the time an upstart little distro that had the gall to require you to compile your packages for the mad optimizations.  It still gets flak for that, and rightly so in some cases.  Where this comes in handy though, is with up-to-date packages.  Unlike some distros, it's extremely easy to get packages ready for mass consumption, since you offload the building process on the users.  That as an aside I can make sure I'm not running a package built for only the capabilities of a 386 on my Core 2 Duo is just gravy here (if I was running 64 bit the difference between the standard Debian packages and my own would be much, much lower to the point of not mattering).  However, sometimes letting the Gentoo devs test packages before giving access to this source isn't fast enough.  For the mildly adventurous, there's the unstable branch, which you can hit on a per-package basis, or for the whole system.  Then there's the truly insane, where you get direct access to the developer repositories via source control (typically subversion or git these days).

Guess which category I fall into.

I've used wildly pre-alpha window managers before (compiz, beryl, and compiz-fusion), and vacillate between the newest and newest with compatable ABI (svn for ffmpeg breaks other packages at the moment, though it works on its own), but I've finally met my match.  The offending package here, astonishingly, is KDE 4.  To be fair, it was a subversion build of KDE rather than the current stable, but that didn't particularly matter as KDE being stable was a little horribly relative.

The Good:

KDE 4 finally dumps Qt 3 for Qt 4 as the main windowing toolkit.  This is mostly an under-the-hood thing, but I'm a programmer so I appreciate it.  Also, there are some nicer Qt 4 themes (both widget and window decoration) than are available in the older toolkit.  It's worth noting that Qt 4 is actually three years old now, and is only just becoming the standard.  The new window manager does 3D compositing, like OSX has for a couple major revisions, Windows Vista's Aero engine, and the three I previously mentioned.  If you have a modern 3D card, this basically means you'll have much better performance for basically every program window related function, as well as support for some useless but neat eye candy.  KDE 3.5.10 has no such thing, but dumping compiz-fusion in place of KDE's own KWin allows you to pretend it does.

The Bad:

Everything else.  No, seriously, it was an awful experience for a number of reasons.  For the unaware, the KDE suite includes far more than a default install of Windows from official Microsoft media (if your disc came from your computer manufacturer, it probably comes with things not originally intended to be there).  Most of those other things, however, don't work well yet.  Mapping keyboard shortcuts, for example, is an exercise in frustration.  KDE versions before 4 used an audio manager called aRts to do sound mixing, though most people these days make sure it is either never installed or at the very least never run.  The kernel level sound system allows you to perform the same function, but in a much less irritating way as it doesn't block out everything but KDE apps.  I'd list aRts' demise under the previous category, but sadly its replacement isn't good enough to make me cheer for it.  Worse still, you can't do a damn thing about it now.  Phonon is theoretically less intrusive than aRts was, as you can theoretically make it work with ALSA (the kernel drivers), but it takes a bizarre level of work that just raw ALSA users never had to touch.  Also, this impacts every sound playing application in the suite, like the music player Amarok.  An equalizer is something you expect in all modern music players, whether you use it or not (I do occasionally), but Amarok 2 stripped it because they're not compatible with Phonon.

Amarok is actually a whole can of worms in and of itself.  On the back end, Amarok 1 uses a database for its music library.  By default, it uses SQLite, a mature product designed to give you a database without a server, which makes it easy on regular users.  Odds are, you've used an application that uses SQLite and not even known it.  Any Mac user who has used Mail.app has, for example.  The user could, however, decide to use an actual standalone database server if he wants.  As someone who has done his share of web development, I have mysql running anyway, so using it instead of SQLite (good for most uses, can get slow for particularly large databases, like mine) was a no brainer.  Amarok 2 removes both of these, instead requiring MySQL embedded, which performs like SQLite but requires MySQL be installed (another virtue of SQLite is that you can just link the source into your program directly rather than requiring it installed separately), and is less free in terms of license.  If it performed as well I might not care, but it's definitely slower than my older version.  Worse, it seems prone to explosion with albums by more than one artist, as there are a number of bugs in the Various Artists handling, ranging from the inability to remove albums from that listing to creating pointless duplicate entries that also cannot be removed.  The scripting API from Amarok 1 has been completely removed, so there is no period of backward compatibility whatsoever.  If you cared about any scripts (I personally  use weekalarm and amarokpidgin regularly) you'd better hope that you didn't care much as they don't work and there's no alternative written in the new style yet, and the documentation for writing new scripts isn't even good enough to expect either available anytime soon.  Also, if you've used Amarok 1 and really enjoy the context tab, you're in luck!  The majority of the program's UI is now devoted to that data.  If, like me, you never used it, you now are stuck looking at it anyway, while the playlist is crammed off to the right side and collapsed significantly, and you can't do anything about it because the developers don't want you to.  A final insult here comes from the controls; the previous and next buttons (and functions via dbus) will actually start the player, rather than merely move around the playlist.  The play function will occasionally not work if the the playlist pointer isn't active (highlighting a track doesn't help this directly), and when it does work at all most of the time it starts playing the NEXT track.  If you want to play the first track in a playlist, typically you'll need to right click its entry in the now smaller and further away listing, and push play there, as the much larger button will sometimes skip it just because.  Some other more minor features have either changed or been removed, but since some are planned to return (not in time for 2.0 final admittedly), and because this is already too long, I won't get into them.

KTorrent's new release fares better, but not much.  Two extremely useful plugins were butchered: RSS and UPnP.  The RSS Plugin simply doesn't exist anymore, though it may return.  If akregator were more up to snuff (I'm getting ahead of myself) I'd give that a pass, but as it stands that's quite irritating.  Also, the UPnP plugin still exists, but it doesn't work properly; it is for whatever reason causing issues with all libupnp applications, so things like MediaTomb (not KDE and therefore working properly) fail to run while that plugin is active.  The KDE3 version has no such issue despite providing the same functionality.

Akregator is a special sort of mess, as the svn build I was using did not allow you to read articles in the default mode.  Imagine the value of an rss reader that fetches feeds and tells you when you have new articles waiting, but refuses to show them to you.  The mode I eventually stumbled on essentially renders the rss with an XSLT sheet applied to a set of the feeds, but does not let you pick which articles to read directly.  As a result, you must mark the entire feed read at once, since it's showing you all of the articles and therefore marking none specifically.  Adding torrent site rss feeds to this almost replicated the functionality of the ktorrent plugin, though the torrents could not be passed directly to ktorrent, but first had to be handed to Opera (my browser of choice).  Also, obviously the auto-download features weren't going to work.

The Ugly:

K3b.  The KDE4 subversion version of this (it's a CD/DVD burning front end, if you're unfamiliar) simply does not work.  The lead developer claimed yesterday on a bug report that it's pre-alpha, though I'm wondering why such things are in this sort of repository at all given that.  Typically these are for very early testing of usable applications rather than useless builds.  The most bizarre part of this though, is that the GUI seems to work perfectly fine, it's only the burning features that fail miserably, but the burning is not handled by k3b itself.  It basically passes off your file list and options to command line programs like growisofs.

Plasma's Plasmoids deserve a special bit of derision too.  Plasmoids are basically like OSX dashboard widgets, which KDE used to use via the application SuperKaramba.  There is a KDE4 version of SuperKaramba which is basically an interpreter so you can theoretically use old themes with Plasma.  It doesn't work reliably in that fashion, and the two I use (one is a system monitor, the other is a weather montior) don't work with it.  A few others I tried did, but there's no indication why mine were different here.  I mentioned OSX dashboard widgets specifically for a reason though; Plasma is supposed to be able to render them as plasmoids.  To some extent it does.  That extent, however, is not even remotely usable.  The alpha channel simply doesn't work, so each of them has a large solid color box in the background.  Also, the few I tried (all weather type) didn't even fetch data or let me pick my locale, so they weren't even functionally ugly.

If there's one thing KDE 4 had going for it, it was that KDE3 apps can run inside of it.  Unfortunately, this creates a bunch of mostly useless overhead as you need the KDE3 versions of every support library to do this, but worse Qt 4's Qt3 support does not let Qt 3 apps use the widgets of your current style.  This means you're able to use versions of the KDE apps that actually work, but only if you're willing to make your whole system disjoint and ugly.  Worse still, you lose the ability to change the KDE 3 apps' style/colors to even come close to what you're using for the Qt 4 apps.

Conclusion:

Needless to say, I dumped the overlay I was using from my system, but sadly much of KDE 4 (version 4.1.2) has made its way into the "unstable" branch of Gentoo.  This of course suggests that much of it is considered quite usable by the developers, and reasonably safe in a Gentoo system itself, as only full releases ever get unmasked at all.  This also means that I'm currently building a large number of these applications, because it's easier than manually masking all of them to keep them out, and much easier than adding the unstable keyword to every package I currently have built for the unstable branch (removing the keyword from a global context would keep KDE 4.1.2 from building, but require basically everything else to be downgraded).  Fortunately, they run side-by-side, but most of these things are a nuisance at best, so it's a bit of a waste of time, bandwidth, and harddrive space.  Best advice here is stay the hell away from KDE 4.  The best things about it can be replicated in KDE 3.5 without much difficulty, and the worst things require you to have most of KDE 3.5 around anyway.  Don't bother.

Pull Review 3/12/2008

Astounding Wolfman #5 - This was a much more mixed bag than I expected. The series has been running at a breakneck pace since the beginning. Kirkman explains in the letters of this issue that it was designed as such to soften the blow of the bi-monthly shipping schedule, though I feel it has the opposite effect. It certainly makes it feel like things are happening every issue, and therefore a year's worth of issues will have accomplished more than, say, Ultimate Spider-Man where you need the next issue as soon as possible to recompress the story into a useful chunk. However, it also means you're flipping through the pages absurdly fast and the end creeps up on you, leaving you with another two months until you can see what happens next. This issue takes that and makes things worse by devoting a number of pages to exposition. Don't get me wrong, I was wondering about the mystery cleared up within as well, but it cut down on the amount of plot movement, or even character building that we had available, and there simply isn't enough. Jason Howard's art, however, is still fantastic, so it's a joy to look over the panels even when nothing is happening, to say nothing of when there's actual action. Apparently 1-4 are going to be the first trade, so if you're not on board yet look that over, and see if you can handle that much story over an eight month span. If you can, this is Recommended. If not, wait for the trade.

Mighty Avengers #10 - This was a very fun book this month, if a bit fillery. Tony and Victor got sucked back in time last issue, and as a result so did the comic itself. The coloring, the tiny blurbs advertising old comics, the "CONTINUED AFTER NEXT PAGE" blurbs before ads, even the style of the narrator, they're all perfect little throw-backs to sell the overall effect. The banter between Tony and Victor is similarly perfect, and Bagley's art is quite nice. It's definitely worth a look. Recommended.

Green Arrow and Black Canary #6 - Let's start with the good: Cliff Chiang is a fantastic artist, and there are very few books I would not like to see him work on. Sadly, he's leaving this one after this issue, and didn't do the last one, but the five he gave us were gorgeous. Also, Winick really seems to get these characters. He's not so hot with most of the rest of the DCU he's played with on occasion, but GA and company he's got down pretty well. Now for the bad: the plot. We start mid-investigation with no real indication of how we got there, even after the fact. Worse, from the introduction, the plot takes a turn for the incomprehensibly stupid. Seriously, I don't know what the fuck anyone involved with this book was thinking. If you love Ollie and company this is Mildly Recommended, but if you're not already highly invested, stay the hell away.

Annihilation: Conquest #5 - The series is wrapping up and we're finally getting some answers, not only about how this all came about (and this would feel less weird if Cho didn't spend months crafting each ass drawn in Mighty Avengers during his run), but about what the hell he's doing. It definitely makes a certain amount of sense too, everything is properly connected in good ways. Also, things finally go well for Star-Lord and his buddies just long enough for them to get a whole lot worse, which is par for the course really. Wraith isn't given an opportunity to speak, and Phyla has very little, so the anchors that were dragging down the event are lightened significantly, though they'll obviously be around for the finale. I'm definitely more interested in that than I was in this beforehand, but overall the series is not living up to its predecessor. Grab the trade if you liked the first event, otherwise don't even bother.

Booster Gold #7 - I find it so hard to believe that the man who is writing this wrote Infinite Crisis. This is good in pretty much all the ways that was terrible. Michael and Ted back together is a glorious thing, even though we all know it will never last. Their banter is fantastic, and the plot is full of callbacks to old events that mire the story in the need to understand them, but rather just bring a smile to the face of anyone who knows what's being mentioned. I can say this firmly because I didn't know what the hell they were talking about for most of it, and was not mired in that lack of knowledge. Finally too we're getting some answers about who's behind all of the events of the book thus far. Jurgens' art reminds me of some terrible comics, but not because it's bad but rather because so many of his old ones were. It's pretty passable, if nothing particularly special. Highly recommended.

Fantastic Four #555 - I really wanted to like this book. I liked Ultimates 1, and I like the idea of the Fantastic Four more than some of the execution thereof, but this just isn't working out that well. It's basically all focused on the main of the three stories introduced last issue, which is good because I didn't find myself caring about the other two. The one that does show up again is somehow less interesting now, to the point that I really would rather Johnny not show up again, possibly ever. Also, don't judge this book by its cover, as it's misleading in ways I can barely describe. Sixties level misleading. Hitch's art is mostly pretty good sure, though I'd swear I saw some of Land's favorite faces in there at times. That is most definitely not a compliment. Well, the ending of this issue promises some actual action in our future, which may be exactly what Millar needs to make the book interesting. God knows something has to. Not Recommended.

Serenity: Better Days #1 - Speaking of books I really wanted to like... I'm an unabashed Firefly fan, and I quite liked the movie despite some of the... issues that many people had. Well this is set between the TV series and that movie, undoing all of the changes to move forward. Nevermind that the entire gap was bridged by the last miniseries so this is doing screwy things with continuity, if the story is good you can forgive it. Well sort of, it's much harder to forgive this sort of thing outside of big two comics than it is in them, as Marvel and DC love to play fast and loose with continuity in ways no television show ever really does. This gives us the full cast anyway. Well sort of, several of the characters barely show up, and characterization seems to be set back a bit on a couple that do. The start of the issue is a bit more hard sci-fi than I'm really comfortable with, considering how hard they tried to be a space western in the series. The end though, is quite interesting, if only because it's something that absolutely has never happened to the crew before. Conrad's pencils are good enough to let you pick out the characters by appearance properly. No real complaints about it, unlike the other of Joss' properties come to comics which are sort of okay at best or messy and terrible likenesses at worst. I'm in it for the duration, but mostly because I'm horribly hooked on the series, not so much on this issue's merits. Recommended for Browncoats, neophytes buy the TV series instead.

Nova #11 - Richard's on the Technarchy homeworld and.... things don't go so well. At least not for the character, they go great for the reader. This continues to be very well written and well illustrated, significantly better than Abnett and Lanning's other book. We get the return of an old character that I totally called months ago, though people called me crazy for even thinking of it. Of course I was wrong then, but the reasoning was sound enough that him arriving here still makes sense. Given the revelations of the book, of course, I'm wondering where they plan on taking this, especially with getting Richard less infected. It's damn good though, so it's worth the ride to find out. Highly Recommended.

X-Factor #29 - Remind me to grab the trades for the first few arcs of this book; I've made a huge mistake. The book is very good, dealing well with the human concerns spinning out of Messiah CompleX, and the character breakdowns that were inevitable. I've been reading only since the aforementioned crossover, but I already love the team that's made up entirely of people I never paid the slightest bit of attention to. That's all on the writing, which is a good thing in my book. The art works well too, showcasing the dreary city with the right level of realism. Looks like this is the beginning of the next arc rather than more denouement, though it's going to begin in earnest next month. I already know I'll be there for it. Recommended.

Last Defenders #1 - Didn't intend to grab this, but then I saw Giffen's name on the cover and caved. Sure he's not doing the script, but the man responsible for a large portion of the best Deadpool stories is, and with Giffen doing his thing on breakdowns and co-plotting. This simply could not be a bad thing, and it wasn't. My home state got itself a super-team, and it's quite a doozy. This isn't quite as over-the-top wacky as the last Defenders mini, though it definitely has its moments of hilarity. Art's good and cartoony to compliment the lack of seriousness, which is appreciated. Herein lies the single best or worst (depending on your point of view) team battle cry ever put to paper as well. Recommended for those of you who like the funny in your funnybooks.

Pull Review 3/05/2008

Buffy the Vampire Slayer #12 - Goddard begins a new mini-arc in the overarching Twilight story here, and he's reveling in the unlimited SFX budget of comics. I'm a little ashamed to admit I didn't recognize his name immediately as one of the series writers/producers, though I guessed that was the case given his handle on the characters, particularly their voice. Our new antagonists exhibit some interesting new abilities seen only once before, which should remind series fans of something. Sadly, this does run directly into another bit of last page blast-from-the-past revealing (you will have guessed it before you get there), but it promises to be interesting. The art... is the better of the two currently running Whedon TV continuations. It's generally easy to tell who is who, but it's far from fantastic. See Angel for what it could be, if you need reassurance that it could be worse. Also, if you've missed the world crapping on Buffy in hilarious ways, you're definitely in luck here. Of course, given the nature of this volume, you shouldn't even consider starting here, so all I can really say is Par for the course. Don't flee, but don't run out to grab this if you haven't been bothering.

Cable #1 - Seriously? Cable? I spent money on Cable. If you suggested that even a year ago I probably would have shot you, but here I am. And you know what, I'm happy with my purchase. Unless you're not reading X-books at all you probably know this is spun out of the end of Messiah CompleX, with Cable on the run with the first mutant born since M-Day in the future. There, you now know it either way. Anyway, we start already in the future, setting up the world a bit, and even giving basically the same brief recap I just did. We're moving pretty slow throughout, which could get annoying in the long run, but it mostly serves to establish Cable once again as a solo character (very little of Messiah CompleX was told from his perspective, so unless you read Cable & Deadpool he was either absent or a minor team player for ages), and lead up to the abrupt cliffhanger. This is one of Swierczynski's first comics, so it's possible the slow pace is a transitional issue more than a decompression one. Time will tell here, though he pulls off the workings of Nate's mind pretty well. I didn't have the ending spoiled for me via solicits, so I won't spoil it for any of you, but it certainly worked for me. What didn't work was the art. Most of it was beautiful, don't get me wrong, but it's all overlaid onto filtered photographs, which just feels lazy, and in some cases very jarring. Still, even just on the premise it's interesting enough to warrant a bit of a look, and with the ending I'll have to label it as Recommended. Seriously though, at least filter the photos better to make it less obvious.

Detective Comics #842 - Peter Milligan fills in for Paul Dini with another of this book's customary (of late) done-in-ones, spinning out of the event that brought him to the Bat-books most recently, Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul. Thankfully, this is written vastly better than his contribution to that abortive crossover. The vast majority of the writing here is Bruce's internal monologue, which is in character enough with recent representations, and Robin speaks little enough to avoid another horrible character assassination, in case nobody explained yet that he doesn't act the way he did during RORAG. There is, however, a bit of an irksome continuity gaffe, and I mean within the continuity of the issue here, not the DC universe at large. It's ultimately a forgettable story, but enjoyable for its duration. Dustin Ngyuen, however, can keep drawing Batman books as long as he'd like as far as I'm concerned, I love his vision of pretty much everything involved. Recommended.

Logan #1 - I admit it, I'm a Wolverine fan. Not enough to suffer through most of his solo run mind you. Certainly not enough to buy every book that plasters his face on the front to garner unwarranted sales either. This is different though, because it's Brian K. Vaughn writing. Brian K. Vaughn can essentially do no wrong in my book, and this is no exception. The story takes place in both the present and World War 2 eras, though we are only given a tease of the present day conflict. The past though, gives us a look at one of the many stories that make Logan the loner he is, all without the annoying over-the-top badassery so many writers fall back on with him. It's hard to deal with living forever, doubly so when you have to live with yourself for the amount of crap that's come your way, and the last page of the book promises a shitstorm of epic proportion. It's definitely nice to see Logan being the best at what he does without having to verbally remind everyone of it every thirty seconds to boot. Risso's art is fantastic, and I'm actually torn as to whether I should have grabbed the uncolored version to showcase it better, or stuck with what I got as it is well colored. You really can't go wrong either way though. Highly Recommended.

Uncanny X-Men #496 - Speaking of writers who can do no wrong, here's a book by Ed Brubaker. Sure his first arc was a bit of a mess, the second was kind of enjoyable if not the greatest. Then he got sidetracked by someone else's event, and was more than competent with it, but really it was Carey's show and he just kept the train rolling with quality. Now we're finally into a new arc and it's, frankly, fantastic. The book has split focus once again between Cyke and Emma going to their new base of operations to deal with the summer of love that exists for some reason, and Logan, Piotr, and Kurt in Siberia. All five of these characters are pitch perfect with their dialogue, and the stories are both very interesting. Of course, it would help if Giant-Size Astonishing had shipped, as this spoils the end (though everyone knew about that already) and further references a status quo that we haven't been introduced to yet. Hopefully that's out before 497 since it's going to be more important next issue, but I'm not about to let shipping issues get in the way of enjoying a fantastically written book. Also, Mike Choi's art continues to be utterly fantastic all around. Can't think of a single negative about the book that isn't based on someone else's book being absurdly late. Highly Recommended.

X-Force #2 - Speaking of books I'm shocked to be reading... this one is also pretty good, and utterly unlike its predecessor. Wolverine is not a leader, and nobody knows that more than him, including the fans that balked at the concept of Wolverine being a leader. I'm coming into the series relatively unfamiliar with X-23 outside of the high level concept. Well from here she feels a lot like Wolverine meets Cass Cain, which is a good thing. Also, Kyle and Yost were not kidding when they said despite the powerset similarities of these characters their personalities are very different. With more time to speak here, we're getting to see that more obviously, and it's appreciated. Also, to say the ending was unexpected would be the understatement of the year. I can't say I'm not extremely intrigued with where this is going, but if they get into a cycle of trying to one-up the shock factor issue by issue, it could get tiresome. Definitely not tired of it yet, and in fact can't wait for the next issue. The art is, well, most of it fits in with the Uncharted "Next Gen" mode. For the unfamiliar, it makes everything dark and brown. Of course, that was a joke about a number of early PS3 games, while this is intentional, and about the best possible aesthetic choice they could have made. The art is very dark and sometimes muddy, but attractive nevertheless, and the last thing this group needs is bright and crisp. God help me, I'm quite pleased with an X-Force book outside of the pre-X-Statix run. Recommended.