While most graphical programs programs will inform the user about events like new mail and incoming IM messages with nice popup messages using a notification mechanism like libnotify. Terminal programs usually only provide the possibility to beep once something happens. I think most people would call system bells annoying and just turn them off by running $ xset b off or disabling them somewhere in their desktop’s configuration. Well, I really want to get notified when I’m getting pinged on IRC or when I receive new mail, so I was looking for a smarter (and especially less noisy) way to do this.

Dennis Ritchie, one of the greatest computer scientists passed away. Thanks for giving us C and Unix, the base of my daily work and fun. He will be missed.

I’m pleased to announce the birth of Python bindings to Intel’s Mx toolkit (and also the death of my former Nbtk bindings). Some days ago Thomas Wood announced version 0.2.0 of the Mx toolkit, a widget toolkit based on the fantastic Clutter library. As a successor of the experimental Nbtk toolkit, Mx is meant to reach a stable API at some point and will be included in the upcoming Moblin 2.