Status update, 19/05/2022

I had some ambitious travel plans last month – ambitious by 2020’s standards, anyway – and somehow they came off without any major issues or contagions. In Cologne I was amazed to go to Freedom Sounds festival and witness the return of the Singers ATX alongside host of other ska legends. And then my first ever trip to Italy where I attended Linux App Summit. It was a treat to be around people who are as enthusiastic as I am about the rather niche topic of Linux desktop apps… but hopefully it’s a topic which is becoming less niche.

While safely back home I then managed to contract COVID-19, so this status update is going to be fairly short.

Things I spent time on that may be of interest to someone, include

• a minimal “GUI toolkit” for the monome grid, written partly as another Rust exercise, and partly to make experimental beats. Fun to write. A lot of this was developed offline while travelling, and I discovered Rust’s cargo doc feature which is an incredible tool for the disconnected hacker. Code dump here.
• related to the above, packaging the user space driver for the monome grid as a systemd portable service.
• updating Fedora on my partners laptop. This particular laptop was lacking a Wifi driver but that is now solved in Fedora 36. I can provide yet another datapoint that the GNOME 42 screenshot experience creates joy and happiness.
• watching the various new synthesizers unveiled the Superbooth 2022 event.
• a single experimental beat, plus some production on a new song due in a few months