Why is there no apparent way to close this notification?

Gnome 3, you mostly work. The one thing I  can't stand though is this notification you continually give me:

It's whenever my USB HDD is detected - which seems to be somewhat randomly. I don't really care if it's connected or not, but why don't you go away when I want you to?

I never want to eject. I rarely want to Open with Files. Instead, I want the notification to vanish.

Where's the control for that? There isn't one. Instead, I have to "Open with Files". Every. Login.

The notification doesn't vanish either - it stays on screen for as long as it likes.

Any folks who can help me trawl gnome's bugzilla for existing issues like this, please do comment.

I have got:

• https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=668771
• https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=638291

...but those don't have much momentum

XBMC vs Boxee vs file browsers

I ditched Boxee the other day. I was sick of it eating far too many resources, never quite keeping up with my mouse, fighting me with strange user interface metaphors; ignoring some files it would never recognize and providing me with not much enjoyment.

I installed XMBC and got rid of boxee. That was before I realized how good I had it: Boxee's scraper doesn't work off regexp and demand you do crazy things to your filesystem.

What I am struggling to understand is why I can't simply have a damned metadata layer and scraper for my desktop which plugs easily into the file browser.

All that both Boxee and XBMC are really doing is scrape, fetch, and organise. XBMC does it better with a few widgets like "recently discovered espisodes"; but even then; how hard is it?

I advocate the semantic web stack just because this is the very problem those tools should be able to solve in a trivial fashion; but I don't understand why this has not been achieved by anyone else in the last decade.

It's not like web scraping is mind bogglingly hard, nor matching little bits of string against certain sources. Musicbrainz solved the problem for mp3s some time ago: if the same can't be done for video content, I would be surprised. Additionally, it's not like relational databases are a new thing: they have been around for a bit, and that's all you really need: schema, inserts, and the web scraper organising it all.

So it really, really pains me when the Boxee/XBMC/Gnome world can't get it right. Why does Gnome/Gnautilus still treat media basically like this:

Whilst your original design might have been GUI filesystem explorer, what I actually want from you is GUI-like-XBMC-Metadata-displayer.

GEdit usability nitpicks

I like ubuntu/gnome's gedit for simple jobs when I'm not in the mood to wrestle vim.

Here's my pet peeves from a usability point of view

gedit 2.24.2 annoys me with:
1. Find and Replace across multiple documents should exist. Editplus does this with an 'all open documents' tickbox
2. If I open a filename which doesn't exist; don't show me an error. Create a new document, and when I save, create the file.
3. Give me a 'always reload when changed on disk' preference. I'm sick of clicking the buttons.

TortoiseSVN for Ubuntu

Update: Rabbit VCS is the answer!

I discovered Nautilus scripts just today. I was a little exasperated, because I haven't yet found a good enough TortoiseSVN for Ubuntu.

I set off to learn about Zenity, and in the end came up with two alright scripts for svn commit, and svn update.

Unfortunately after fighting awk for too long, I found nautilus-script-collection-svn (apt-get install is your friend).

Now I'm stuck: I like my svn commit script, as it's much closer to TortoiseSVN (Enter message, select files to commit), and all I can do is whinge - I can't provide a more useful thing to the world.

Sigh.

Gripes about Gnome

I want to upload a file to flickr. My father has, for some strange reason, sent me huge files. I'm in Ubuntu right now.

1. I go to gmail, and download the photos.


2. Firefox prompts me to open or save. I open it with Eye of GNOME 2.18.1


3. I can... zoom and unzoom. Hurray. This isn't what I want. How do I edit? Right click? The file menu? No, there's no way I can go from viewing to editing. This has been fixed in 2.19.1


4. I minimize all of the windows (I still have to configure my preferences to let me windows key + d), and right click on the file. Open with, GIMP image editor


5. I sort of fuddle my way through GIMP. I want to crop the image. I find it under the tools menu, after accidentally drawing black lines all over my photo. Why is the default tool a pen, not a selector?


6. I hit ctrl shift x. This, in paint.NET, is the 'crop it' shortcut - it feels very natural. Instead, the GIMP asks me "Enter a name for this buffer", and name my 'cut'. WTF? If this is common enough to warrant a shortcut, why isn't it common enough to warrant some explanation or intuitive design!


7. I try the help menus in GIMP to find a version number, while writing this. Apparently, I don't have gimp-help installed, so I can just get fucked. Thank you, default installation option. apt-get fixes it, but I'm still cranky.


8. Do I even want to know what script-fu and python-fu are? No.


9. I manage to do my cropping, and choose to save it. It started life as a JPG, I cut, I started a new image, I pasted. Surely, it would default to choosing a JPG? No. I try the file type picker, and hit the save button again. I've picked jpg. There's an annoying rendering bug in my way, too. I realise, after a moment, that all I've done is select a filetype filter, not what kind of image I'm trying to save. WTF.


10. Finally, I get it - I must type the file extension, and save.


11. I go back to flickr, and fight a file upload dialog. I have "type a location" on by default, but I look at the highlighted files. I try to type a filename, and it doesn't find it. I hit the down arrow, and manage to gain focus, after which I can type a filename. I can't do any of my windows tricks of wildcard matching - *.jpg for instance would be 8000 times more useful than the file type picker, which, in this particular dialog, shows me an option of "All files" and... "All Files". Why even let it render as a button I can click if all it's doing is showing me "All files".


12. I try to type *.jpg, of course, and hit enter, only to have it try to upload /home/clockwerx/*.jpg


13. I give up and try to use the mouse


14. Success! I have made an upload. In 14 steps.

Ubuntu is fighting me.

Rrr.

It's not Ubuntu, per se, but gnome.

Here's what I want to do.

• Add Songbird as a menu item


• Make a new menu, called 'fucking awesome things which are handy I do not wish to place on my toolbar thing'


• Make a shortcut key that doesn't hate me

Is it easy using the gnome menu editor? NO!
Windows: you grab the icon you want, drag it to a toolbar, and drop it. If you want to put it into your start menu, you hover over the button and the menu appears.

Instead I must do battle.

• Applications menu


• Pick up the songbird icon


• OH SHIT, THE MENU HAS GONE. I JUST WANTED TO PUT IT IN "Sound & Video"


• How do I cancel the drag drop action? ESC! ESC!!

Lazyweb, file the bugs in the right places to make this not a pain in the ass.