Making progress

Triathlon progress? Training is going well. Today was not a glorious day however, as temperatures neared 100 F with plenty of humidity, and that pesky part *about a car hitting me* while I was cycling.

I applaud the driver though, as they cut off all my escape routes/evasive options and *then* plowed into me. James Bond wouldn't have lasted for half a movie against a ring of inobservant soccer moms. Miniraker? The Burb is Not Enough? Live and Let Shop? GoldenTan?

House remodel progress? Bathroom was retiled this weekend. Went a week without a functional shower. I ended up showering late, late every night at the health club. Hey, what type of people do you meet in a health club shower late, late at night? I think you already know.

KDE coding progress? People deserve a healthy dose of high-fives with the Coverity work. To go from an "enthusiast desktop" (choose your own historical date for this milestone) to a "world-class desktop" (choose your own arbitrary definition) means going from "scratching an itch" to "putting in hours doing not-so-fun work." Don't underestimate what such accomplishments mean symbolically - no different than a kernel exploit being patched within hours. Of course, don't underestimate the rising expectations with such a track record.

KDE Multimedia meeting progress? As you'd expect with so many KDE promo people involved, the coverage was almost in real-time. Apart from a KuglerKam, I don't know what else could have been done. Great, great work in preparation, execution, and communication.

Ade: "How do you feel about the execution of the KDE-NL team?"
Me: "I'm all for it!"

Oxygen progress? If my girlfriend caught me looking at other women like I look at Oxygen icons, I'd be in a world of hurt. The eventual unveiling of Oxygen is like the world's slowest striptease. I think I just heard someone yell, "Show us your mimetypes!"

We are really lucky to have these artists in our community. Not only has their Oxygen color palette influenced my wardrobe, but their images have embedded optical illusions in them. Can an MC Escher konqueror throbber be far off?

What, me worry?

With the span of time between 3.5 and 4.0, I was concerned about KDE's interim visibility and crazy phrases like "market mindshare."

Just looking at the Dot today is a perfect example of the KDE community in action.

Every week, we have Danny Allen reminding us that although developers may be sometimes be quiet, there is a whirlwind of activity in svn. We have great KDE representation at events like FISL and LinuxTag and better yet, reports back on that activity for everyone. We have Carsten reminding and educating us about the great 3.X applications on a consitent basis. We have LSB, FSFE progress and printing summits and usability meetings. We have Google's SoC starting up shortly. We're building and improving relationships with great organizations like Canonical. We're starting to learn more about KDE 4 technologies publically like Phonon. We have great releases like KOffice and ODF support going on.

And although not as public, we're also adding great new candidates to the eV. And soon enough we'll be planning and discussing aKademy. And 3.5.3 is coming down the shoot.

Events and activities are so much better when shared. It makes promotional life so much easier. We don't have to sell the activity and progress in the community as much when it's clearly selling itself. You know people want to get involved when not only are they joining mailing lists and IRC channels, but I've got people emailing me directly asking how they can get involved.

Keep the good news coming!