Stuff Michael Meeks is doing
|
|
This is my (in)activity log. You might like to visit
Collabora
Productivity a subsidiary of Collabora focusing on LibreOffice support and
services for whom I work.
Also if you have the time to read this sort of stuff you could enlighten
yourself by going to Unraveling Wittgenstein's net or if
you are feeling objectionable perhaps here.
Failing that, there are all manner of interesting things to read on
the LibreOffice Planet news
feed.
Older items:
2023: (
J
F
M
A
M
J
),
2022: (
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
),
2021,
2019,
2018,
2017,
2016,
2015,
2014,
2013,
2012,
2011,
2010,
2009,
2009,
2008,
2007,
2006,
2005,
2004,
2003,
2002,
2001,
2000,
1999,
legacy html
For anyone that doesn't know him - Caolán
has contributed amazing work
on the LibreOffice code-base for over two decades, latterly for RedHat. He has
pioneered work in many areas around LibreOffice:
- helping to found The Document Foundation, and contributing to its
growth and governance
- handling security for LibreOffice, managing CVEs and patch porting
- maintaining our static checking with Coverity and others
- getting fuzzing working, tending oss-fuzz, and incorporating a large
number of fixes to stop issues escaping in releases.
- tending our crash-testing of ~750k documents (~60Gb) of bug documents
which we continually run through (thanks to hardware sponsorship from
Adfinis) - maintaining the
great quality of our filters.
We expect Caolán will continue to spend time on these as part
of his role at Collabora; but of course this is only a subset of
the things he has contributed for RedHat some highlights being:
- re-working the entire LibreOffice UI to use auto-layout instead of
fixed-positions, it is hard to comprehend what a huge investment this
represents - with over a thousand glade dialog fragments, with over
half a million lines.
- adapting the UI toolkit to allow native gtk (& Javascript) widgets.
- maintaining our gtk backends to cope with the latest gtk churn^Wimprovements.
- various vital features such as printing comments in the margins in writer.
- getting almost every package in a RedHat distro to use the same Hunspell dictionaries.
- complex text rendering & layout, fixing innumerable bugs, improving the
user-experience and much more.
RedHat was instrumental in founding The Document Foundation, and has
invested far more than we had any right to expect through its team over
a long period; they deserve our thanks. I expect that LibreOffice will
still be available from flathub going
forward. However with RedHat now choosing to laser
focus its development investment into the open hybrid cloud,
it became clear that in order for us to continue to enjoy Caolán's
contribution - he would need a new home.
Happily - this circumstance is rather similar to the history of
Collabora
Productivity's founding with the direction changes at SUSE, and we could
act quickly. The paid and volunteer team around the code-base continues to grow.
However, it is is important that we retain skills, and continue to deepen the
talent pool around LibreOffice Technology and Collabora Online as circumstances
change.
The Collabora team is looking forward to working with Caolán to
continue his work in three areas: on the underlying LibreOffice
Technology, serving our customers as part of our
growing (we're
hiring) team, and of course to make Collabora Online even better
for our partners and customers. Welcome Caolán!
2023-05-14 Sunday
-
Up earlyish, pre-service practice with
Cedric, played - home for Pizza lunch. Caught up
the blog; listened to another Psalm 1 talk.
2023-05-13 Saturday
-
Slept in, out for a run with J; then shopping.
B&A over; took A. into town to sort out B's phone
malfuctioning: an under-used PAYG phone: phoning 150
and re-enabling the SIM: the solution, sadly the UI
has no hint for why its malfunctioning however.
-
Lunch, toured new bits in the home; David
over; bid 'bye to the inlaws; set too at sorting out
J's garden lean-too; and getting more out of the
garage.
2023-05-12 Friday
-
Up late; chat with Cor, Thorsten - packed, met up
with Thorsten and had a pleasant train ride together.
Epic queueing nightmare for security, another RyanAir
flight delayed by an hour; eventually got home to
Stansted and a train strike. J. picked me up and had a
very disrupted kid/taxi-service.
-
Flushed E-mail, chased documents, dinner with
the family, worked late.
2023-05-11 Thursday
-
Breakfast with Frank & Bjoern; off to
a rather encouraging partner meeting - lots of items
ironed out. Out for dinner in the evening, and up late
at a bar with Gotz, Niels & Mark.
2023-05-10 Wednesday
-
Up lateish; enjoyed the warm weather, and
remarkable set of people we have, toured various
activities; caught up with individuals; lunch
with Kendy. Bid a premature 'bye to many.
-
Taxi, flight to Hamburg - worked on
slides on the plane.
2023-05-09 Tuesday
-
Talk from Philippe & Guy, rap from Rachel,
mostly in-person mgmt meeting with the team; good to
see them and discuss where we're going in more depth.
-
Fine lunch; enjoyed booths run by other
Collaborans, caught up with some mail; more meetings in
the evening; dinner together. Individual chats until
late.
2023-05-08 Monday
-
Early taxi with Nick & Carolyn to Stansted;
met up with a growing group of Collaborans, worked on
the flight, prepping slides for the mgmt meeting.
-
Arrived in Faro, bus with an even bigger group
to the venue, enjoyed fine company, sea, food &
drink - after not seeing many people in person for so
long; really good to catch up again. Up late.
2023-05-07 Sunday
-
All Saints in the morning; family service,
making crowns for some reason. Took all but H. into
Cambridge, bed early.
2023-05-06 Saturday
-
Up late, got a bit of work in;
watched the conoration - pleased to
see things done properly in an orderly fashion; and
for the King to have impressed on them their role of
service to the real King, and the nation. Surprisingly
good, albeit lengthy.
2023-05-05 Friday
-
Customer call, team deadline chasing call, catch up
with Andras, lunch; out to Josh Bendall's funeral to play
violin with Mick on keyboard - a good funeral.
-
A chunk of contract reviews; N. cooked a fine dinner,
back to work until late.
2023-05-04 Thursday
-
Technical planning call, COOL community call, customer
deadline chasing team call, weekly sales call. Customer support
call with Aron. Bits of hacking & admin.
-
Bible study group in the evening. Reading up on Psalm 1
for the Church mens walking weekend.
2023-05-03 Wednesday
-
Mail chew, early partner call, chat with Thorsten.
Encouraging COOL-days marketing post-mortem, interview;
All Saints band practice with Beckie & Mary.
2023-05-02 Tuesday
-
Mail chew, morning planning call, lunch, picked up bits
and pieces from Screwfix. Team call, catch up call with Patrick,
sync with Gokay on cypress. Varnished new stairs in the evening.
2023-05-01 Monday
-
Up, off to see J's parents - worked in the
car a little.
-
Lunch with B&A, fixed a number of things
around the house for them - blocked drains again
interestingly; tough to solve. Poked at various
things in the garage; replaced light-bulbs. Chatted,
and did a puzzle while babes playing scrabble.
-
Chips on the way home, worked through mail.
My content in this blog and associated images / data under
images/
and data/
directories are (usually)
created by me and (unless obviously labelled otherwise) are licensed under
the public domain, and/or if that doesn't float your boat a CC0
license. I encourage linking back (of course) to help people decide for
themselves, in context, in the battle for ideas, and I love fixes /
improvements / corrections by private mail.
In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my
own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Collabora, SUSE,
Novell, The Document Foundation, Spaghetti Hurlers (International),
or anyone else.
It's also important to realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy.
Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences
or fun.
Michael Meeks (michael.meeks@collabora.com)