Amarok 2.8 "Return To The Origin" Released

After few months of development, finally Amarok 2.8 has been officially released. It also marks the comeback of their founder, Mark Kretschmann to the team after going hiatus for some time.

What are the highlights?

• A fancy audio analyzer visualization applet
• Smooth fade-out when pausing music
• Many UI improvements and visual tweaks including better support for alternate color themes
• Significantly enhanced MusicBrainz tagger
• Power management awareness with a pair of new configuration options
• Performance optimizations and responsiveness tuning all over Amarok

This release also features the first code contributions by our current Google Summer of Code students: please welcome Anmol Ahuja, Konrad Zemek and Tatjana Gornak. Our release manager Matěj Laitl takes part in GSoC as well.

Here are the detailed changelog:

Features

• Tracks from Recently Played List widget can now directly be added to the playlist. (BR 279263, BR 296090)
• Before 2.8 Beta:
• Ctrl+C copies the currently playing artist & title to the clipboard. (BR 228872) Patch by fleissig fleissig.
• Volume fade-out is now also available for pause.
• The Files browser now has a Refresh button. (BR 213666)
• The active playlist item is animated with a soft glow effect.
• Added an audio analyzer visualization applet.
• Added a function for resetting the GUI layout back to default state. (BR 300753)
• Pressing enter when searching collections now adds found tracks to the playlist and clears the search bar, this is a very convenient way to populate your playlist.
• Allow to transcode only certain (different format, playability) tracks when transferring them to a collection; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 312407)
• On-Screen-Display fades in/out smoothly.
• Added support for .asx playlists; patch by Tatjana Gornak. (BR 170207)
• Add Radio GFM radio streams to Cool Stream Script. (BR 317978)
• Added options to pause playback on system suspend and to inhibit automatic suspend if playing a track (enabled by default); patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 259862) (BR 222571)
• Playlist files are now read asynchronously when possible; patch and great deal of refactoring by Tatjana Gornak. (BR 291934)
• Added support to filter tracks to scrobble to Last.fm by label. Patch by Vedant Agarwala. (BR 140198)
• Added transcoding support for Opus codec if ffmpeg is compiled with support for the libopus library, patch by Martin Brodbeck.
• Added keyboard shortcuts for small 2 s seeks (Ctrl + Left/Right) and long 1 minute seeks (Shift + Left/Right) in addition to standard 10 s seeks. Durations are now configurable in amarokrc, see Amarok Handbook. Patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 177258)
• Added support for files in Opus codec if Amarok is compiled against recent enough TagLib (post 1.8), patch by Martin Brodbeck. (BR 312905)
• Added Ctrl+H shortcut to randomize playlist, patch by Harsh Gupta. (BR 208061)

Changes

• The Jamendo service now uses a higher quality MP3 format instead of Ogg Vorbis.
• Added an option whether adding tracks to playlist should start playing. (BR 322428)
• Amarok now depends on Qt 4.8.3.
• Amarok now uses FindFFMpeg.cmake from kdelibs
• Before 2.8 Beta:
• Removed LikeBack (a development feature in debug builds). (BR 312498) (BR 252323)
• Collection Browser: Artist level was renamed to Track Artist and replaced by Album Artist by default. Various Artists item is no longer shown under Track Artist level.
• Removed the splash screen.
• Playlist-related actions were harmonized, double-clicking or pressing enter will append tracks to playlist, using any "play media" action or middle-clicking will prepend tracks to queue and immediately start playing. (BR 145468, BR 145490, BR 194549)
• When a new collection plugin is enabled, its collections appear immediately without a need for restart.
• Update the MusicBrainz tagger to MusicBrainz web service 2, make it show some more good suggestions for tagging, and add some options to help choosing the best results.
• Add note about generating .mood files into Moodbar Options; patch by Harsh Gupta with tweaks by Matěj Laitl. (BR 289483)
• Amarok now depends on Qt 4.8.2.
• Add prepareToQuit() signal to Amarok.Window script bindings; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 241066)
• Data CDs are now recognized in Amarok; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 316128)
• On-Screen-Display now uses the system font instead of hardcoded sans-serif. (BR 248707)
• Fancy behavior of some context menus showing different actions when Shift key is held has been reverted. All entries are now shown all the time.
• The dynamic playlist behavior has changed. It will no longer generate "pretty good" playlists that do not fulfill the given biases. Instead it might add no song at all if given impossible-to-fulfill conditions.
• The "tracks have been hidden in the playlist" warning when filtering the playlist is now displayed inside the playlist. (BR 260352)
• Update tag widget for Layout edit, filter edit, organize collection and guess tag dialog.
• When fadeout and/or Replay Gain isn't possible, gray-out related UI elements in order not to fool users.

Bugfixes

• Don't reload Wikipedia applet content if artist/album have not changed. Patch by Frank Meerkoetter. (BR 112044)
• Jamendo service: Albums are now downloaded directly instead of going via BitTorrent. This is far more reliable and also supports on-the-fly transcoding. (BR 299434)
• Work-around Solid UDisks2 backend bug that caused USB Mass Storage devices and iPods not being recognized when connected before Amarok was started. Also fixes a bug where blank devices would appear in Play Media dialog. (BR 322980)
• Definitely fix a bug where storing Last.fm credentials in plain-text isn't offered when KWallet is disabled. (BR 315306)
• Radio streams from scripted services are now instantly playable. (BR 320718)
• Recently Played List widget now keeps its own time for tracks instead of relying on the Last Played statistic. (BR 302485)
• Prevent hitting an assertion failure if just removed track from the Local Collection is edited. (BR 322474)
• Fixed a regression introduced in 2.8 Beta where tracks in the Local Collection were sometimes forgotten and then found again. (BR 322603)
• Fixed invalid SQL queries when you have files or folders with an apostrophe in your collection. (BR 322415)
• Fixed organizing/copying/moving tracks to Local Collection on Windows. (BR 279560, BR 302251)
• Various usability improvements for the applet toolbar. (BR 197948)
• Removed broken Apply button in applets' settings dialog. (BR 322015)
• Fix incorrect colors in Context View toolbar when switching themes. (BR 301305)
• Many fixes for various bugs with switching desktop color themes at runtime, including OSD, spectrum analyzer, collection browser.
• Avoid updating the MPRIS2 Metadata between tracks. (BR 321602)
• Before 2.8 Beta:
• When you remove whole directories from the Local Collection and have Watch Folders for Changes enabled, the tracks now disappear from Collection Browser. (BR 311078)
• Fix dynamic playlist bug: When "Automatically scroll playlist to current track" was enabled, Amarok would keep scrolling to the bottom. (BR 284214)
• Fix a problem where ghost tracks would remain in the Local Collection until the database is wiped. (BR 319084)
• Added missing CMake check for QtWebKit. (BR 321598)
• Definitely fix a bug where Local Collection wouldn't update in browser. (BR 262504)
• Fix crashed caused by race conditions at the end of the track scanning. (BR 319835)
• Fix crash when disabling the Free Music Charts script. (BR 321329)
• Albums having same name but different album artist won't be mixed together on the playlist if sorting by album is enabled.
• Fix crash on startup with KDE 4.11. Patch by Hrvoje Senjan. (BR 320855)
• Fix tracks not able to be dragged around when playlist is shuffled. (BR 320129)
• Prevent Last.fm scrobbles not being submitted until restart due to change in liblastfm 1.0.7. (BR 320219)
• Resume Playback on Start will correctly restore paused state, instead of always starting in playing state. (BR 313330)
• Optimize removal of tens of thousands of tracks from playlist. (BR 316242)
• Fix `amarok --queue` which didn't actually queue the tracks. (BR 317385)
• Fix suboptimal initial MusicBrainz tag dialog size by remembering it. (BR 269454)
• Fix file-browser becoming empty when a file was moved to trash. (BR 317944)
• Fix `amarok --play file.mp3` option didn't actually start playback.
• Reason why a particular track is not playable is now shown in playlist tooltip; patch by Anmol Ahuja. (BR 313649)
• Pre-apmlifier in equalizer is now only enabled if it is actually supported; patch by Harsh Gupta. (BR 301311)
• Fix Amarok crashed while doing "Organize Files" (BR 317980)
• Fix Amarok erroneously merges two albums. (BR 216759, BR 272802)
• Fix Crash on very long artist names. (BR 276894)
• Fix Move tracks to rubbish and the current track cover changes to the deleted cover. (BR 306735)
• Fix theoretical configwidget leak in services. (BR 301352)
• Fix "Local collection" text label is truncated with large font. (BR 282561)
• Fix crash by putting a broadcast in the playlist. (BR 313718)
• Fix Keyboard navigates context menu in collection will move two items. (BR 307794)
• Fix add track to playlist by double click on arrow in the collection. (BR 279513)
• Fix VFAT safe names missing a couple of idiosyncrasies. (BR 312574)
• Clarify message when Last.fm streams are not available. (BR 315771)
• Fix crash when Dynamic Playlist based on last.fm is aborted. (BR 314243)
• Fix Group by directory doesn't work in main playlist. (BR 265415)
• Don't remove common labels when editing the tags of multiple tracks. (BR 316043)
• Fix vertical positioning of On-Screen-Display. (BR 269788)
• Fix OSD sometimes misplaces the font and the font's shadow. (BR 257643)
• Prevent inability to save Last.fm password in corner cases. (BR 315306)
• Fix "Copy to Collection" window doesn't fit on small screens. (BR 283361)
• Fix crash when quitting Amarok with Statistics Synchronization open. (BR 315525)
• Fix items moving around when expanded in collection browser. (BR 305602)
• Fix Organize collection folder deletion going 'too far'. (BR 314348)
• Fix %albumartist% placeholder translates to some strange unicode symbol. (BR 314351)
• Fix bumpy fade-out when first used. (BR 312062)
• Fix crash when switching/removing organize collection presets. (BR 314344)
• Fix crash on start if a playlist source is unavailable. (BR 313460)
• Fix Copy/Move to collection picks up wrong destination path and fails silently. (BR 314460)
• Cleanup TrackOrganizer. (BR 305291)
• Fix Editing Playist Layout Editor. (BR 250594)
• Fix Display glitch for rating in verbose playlist. (BR 300118)
• Refactoring Ampache service, fix Albums with multiple disks not listed correctly. (BR 249857)
• Fix playlist sorting by type. (BR 249338)
• Fix subtle bugs when a long fade-out is initiated near the song end.
• Don't try to fade-out with phonon backends that don't support it. (vlc)
• Fix Can't edit & save an existing equalizer preset. (BR 241874)
• Clean up Equalizer Dialog. (BR 274972)

First Abroad Trip With Alysia

I just arrived back from my first abroad trip with Alysia and my wife. I was afraid about her since she is still seven months old and i never take a baby abroad. We didn't go too far from Indonesia. We just went to Singapore, 2 hours flight from Jogja so it's relatively close and luckily she didn't complained at all during her flight. That relieved me.

In overall, there's no major problems during our trip. The worst condition was that Alysia got a flu due to her cousin who got flu before her and she played with her for the whole trip. That's why she got infected as well.

It's been a good trip, even though we couldn't maximize the trip since there was one baby, 1 pre-kindergarden kid and 1 junior high school kid coming along with us. Some of the schedule got a little messed up, but that's mainly our fault for not arranging the trip better since we brought our kids along with us.

Firefox 23 Final

Firefox 23 Final has been placed on Mozila's FTP Server, but no announcement has been made for now. Probably they are waiting for the binaries to propagate to several server before they will make the announcement.

What's new on this release? Well, it's not that exciting as Firefox 22, but still there are some room for improvements. Here they are:

• Mixed content blocking enabled to protects users from man-in-the-middle attacks and eavesdroppers on HTTPS pages (learn more)
• Improved about:memory's functional UI
• Enabled DXVA2 on Windows Vista+ to accelerate H.264 video decoding
• Updated Firefox Logo
• "Load images automatically", "Enable JavaScript", and Always show the tab bar" checkboxes removed from preferences and reset to defaults
• Simplified interface for notifications of plugin installation
• Users can now switch to a new search provider across the entire browser
• CSP policies using the standard syntax and semantics will now be enforced
• Implemented a global browser console
• Social share functionality
• HTML5 <input type="range"> form control implemented
• Write more accessible pages on touch interfaces with new ARIA role for key buttons
• Added unprefixed requestAnimationFrame
• New feature in toolbox: Network Monitor
• Dropped blink effect from text-decoration: blink; and completely removed <blink> element

I think the biggest change are the new Mixed content blocking feature and also the Network Monitor. They protect the user and also help developers to have a better understanding about the network activity on a site.

Leason Learned

Last year, i taught network administration course for the first time and i admit there was a some problems during the course since i had a new method of teaching this course compared to previous lecturer. I learned from last year and prepared for the same course this year and this time, i'm fully prepared for the course.

Last year, i gave the students a clean installation of Slackware-Current image for VMWare, but it wasn't a full installation, so on some topics, i had to pause a bit and install the necessary packages before continuing. This time, i will use a clean and full installation of Slackware 14.0 for this course. I really hoped that Slackware 14.1 will come out before this course starts and i can use it, but unfortunately that won't happen for this course. Probably i can ask the students to perform an upgrade to Slackware 14.1 when the course is over :)

This year, i also prepared a special VM of Slackware 14.0 on a public server, thanks to Proxmox which is already installed and fully working. The difference is that this VM will be able to access the Internet, so they can perform a lot of experiments on this machine. I have also prepared a snapshot for this image, so i can roll it back to the original state suppose the students broke the machine.

Thanks to last year's students who gave me a valuable feedback about the course.

Vacation is Almost Over

It's already two months since May and that means my vacation is almost over and new semester on the edge, starting next month (August 26). While it's should be vacation, but i'm not really in vacation since i have been appointed as a coordinator for this year's YKFS service learning program. It really consume most of my time during the program.

After YKFS was completed early this month, my next task is focusing on the procurement and also preparing for next semester. We had lots of meeting in the office and so far so good. Everything is under control.

Next week, we will have one full week of holiday due to Eid al-Fitr, starting on Monday (August 5) until Friday (August 9), but i will extend my vacation until August 14 since i have already planned for this trip long before the announcement. With only two days left before a long holiday, i should start preparing for the trip and this year, i have a new member joining our trip: Alysia, my baby girl. It would be a challenge for me as i have to prioritize her over anything else. I had to make sure her need has been fulfilled first before ours :)

Playing With Proxmox

In the last two days, i have been playing with a new toy called Proxmox. It's a Debian-based Linux distribution used to provide virtual environment. I wanted to test this product so that i can use it to help students for their final project when they need additional resources.

So far, i have a fully working Proxmox 3.0 and also i have successfully installed a Slackware64-14.0 as the first VM client and it's working well. I had a problem of configuring it so that the client is able to access the Internet, but it has been sorted few hours ago. I might be able to use this VM client as my new build machine in the future.

It's a free product and easy to use. The default installation will take all of your hard disk, so make sure you have no data inside it, since it doesn't ask for manual or custom partition layout.

Just in case you have trouble, don't forget to check their Wiki page

Android 4.3 Released

Google announced the availability of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean to public and it has powered the new Nexus 7 tablet and soon other devices as well (Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ devices across the world).

Some new features on this release:

• OpenGL ES 3.0 — Game developers can now take advantage of OpenGL ES 3.0 and EGL extensions as standard features of Android, with access from either framework or native APIs.
• Bluetooth Smart — Now your apps can communicate with the many types of low-power Bluetooth Smart devices and sensors available today, to provide new features for fitness, medical, location, proximity, and more.
• Restricted profiles — Tablet owners can create restricted profiles to limit access to apps, for family, friends, kiosks, and more. Your app can offer various types of restrictions to let tablet owners control its capabilities in each profile.
• New media capabilities — A modular DRM framework enables media application developers to more easily integrate DRM into their own streaming protocols such as MPEG DASH. Apps can also access a built-in VP8 encoder from framework or native APIs for high-quality video capture.
• Notification access — Your apps can now access and interact with the stream of status bar notifications as they are posted. You can display them in any way you want, including routing them to nearby Bluetooth devices, and you can update and dismiss notifications as needed.
• Improved profiling tools — New tags in the Systrace tool and on-screen GPU profiling give you new ways to build great performance into your app.

More detailed information about this new version can be seen at their platform highlights, API Overview, and DevBytes Videos. Google also released Android NDK (r9) and also Android Support Library (r18).

You can get started developing and testing on Android 4.3 right away, in Android Studio or in ADT/Ant. You can download the Android 4.3 Platform (API level 18), as well as the SDK Tools, Platform Tools, and Support Library from the Android SDK Manager. 

Apache OpenOffice 4.0: New Release, New Logo, New Features

Apache OpenOffice 4.0 is finally released after so long of development took place between 3.4.1 and 4.0. It has new logo as a result of  many design iterations, collaboration among talented designers and a contest where 40 logos were rated by over 50,000 users.

It also has LOTS of new features such as :

• New sidebars (contribution from IBM Symphony)
• Interoperability Improvements to MSO Documents
• DrawObject Improvements
• Picture Crop mode
• New Charts and Functions
• More Language Supports

See the rest of the features on their Release Notes.

Go get them on their Download Page

LibreOffice 4.1 is Close to Final

LibreOffice 4.1 is getting closer to the final version as they are now in RC3. If there are no showstoppers, this RC3 will be used as the base for the final version. The upcoming 4.1 will be the sixth major release in two and a half years, and comes with a nice set of new features.

Since this will be a major release from 4.0, the features are huge and here's some of the highlights:

1. Rotates image on Writer
2. Embed font in your documents (Writer/Calc/Impress)
3. More charts option in Calc
4. New Formula in Calc
5. Photo Album in Impress
6. Query Properties Dialog in Base
7. New Elements docking windows in Math
8. Export charts to SVG, PDF
9. More migration from Java to Python in Core modules
10. Support for legacy Mac word-processing documents
11. Many improvements to Microsoft OOXML Import and Export filters as well as for the Microsoft Office binary file formats and the RTF format 
12. Completed the port to gnumake
13. Support for PowerPC and older Mac OS SDK has been dropped
14. More Java and UNO API has been deprecated or removed
15. Performance improvements on all components

YKFS V is Over

International Service Learning - YKFS V is finally over after the HK team depart to Jakarta and then followed to Hong Kong at around midnight. It's been a great work for the past 3 weeks in Banjaroya Village and the strong bond between both students will be reminded even though they are separated.

We have prepared this program for some time along with the HK coordinator and staffs via email. There has been a lot of changes since last year, but we hope that the changes are for the best interest for both parties and it seems the changes i proposed does work as intended and gives us more advantages rather than disadvantages.

I must admit that it wasn't the best service we can do, but i have done my best to make sure they are enjoying the trip in the village and also having the best farewell party in the end of this program.

Thank you to all HK staffs and students for this year's YKFS. Hopefully we can meet again next year in the next YKFS or we can visit HK someday in the future :)

YKFS V Is Almost Done

Lately i'm just simply to busy at work related to the service learning in which i was appointed as the main coordinator. I had to act as the finance officer as well, so it's quite tiring as i had to travel Jogja - Banjaroya several times a week, especially in the last few days since we are nearing the end and lots to be done here.

At this time, we are working on the banner and the final report which will be handed to the head of the regency on Wednesday. The deadline should be on last Friday, but somehow the students missed it and we had to work extra hard yesterday to collect them and revise it again and again. At the end, i didn't complete all of them and there are 2.5 reports left to be done. Hopefully it can be completed today and we can send it for production later.

Well, that's what keeping me busy these days along with managing all Slackware-related stuffs since -Current is now moving again with pretty big changes such as inclusion of KDE 4.10.5 and Linux Kernel 3.9.9 among other changes.

Happy Original Anniversary

Twelve years ago, i asked my friend (now become my wife) to become my girlfriend at the church and she replied YES. That was our first official journey to create a bond of love between us and it lasts for ten years before we got officially married last 2011.

Although we now have our new anniversary during our wedding, we still celebrate our first anniversary, because without the original anniversary, there won't be any wedding and there won't be Alysia who has now joined our family and she's now six months old.

Firefox 22 is Available

It may not be announced yet, but you can still get the binaries on their FTP Servers.

The release notes lists all changes implemented on this version:

• Windows: Firefox now follows display scaling options to render text larger on high-res displays

• WebRTC is now enabled by default!

• Mac OS X: Download progress in Dock application icon

• HTML5 audio/video playback rate can now be changed

• Social services management implemented in Add-ons Manager

• asm.js optimizations (OdinMonkey) enabled for major performance improvements

• Improved WebGL rendering performance through asynchronous canvas updates

• Plain text files displayed within Firefox will now word-wrap

• For user security, the |Components| object is no longer accessible from web content

• Improved memory usage and display time when rendering images

• Pointer Lock API can now be used outside of fullscreen

• CSS3 Flexbox implemented and enabled by default

• New Web Notifications API implemented

• Added clipboardData API for JavaScript access to a user's clipboard

• New built-in font inspector

• New HTML5 <data> and <time> elements

• Scrolling using some high-resolution-scroll aware touchpads feels slow (829952)

OWASP Top Ten Web Application Security Risk 2013

OWASP has released an update to their Top Ten of Web Application Security Risk. The previous version was released three years ago in 2010.

Injection is still considered as the top risk for any web applications. Broken Authentication and Session Management is now on second position, followed by XSS which goes down from second position. XSRF goes down to 8th position and Security Misconfiguration has gone up to 5th position.

Here are the complete list of Top Ten:

• A1 Injection
• A2 Broken Authentication and Session Management
• A3 Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
• A4 Insecure Direct Object References
• A5 Security Misconfiguration
• A6 Sensitive Data Exposure (2010-A7 Insecure Cryptographic Storage and 2010-A9 Insufficient Transport Layer Protection were merged to form 2013-A6)
• A7 Missing Function Level Access Control (renamed/broadened from 2010-A8 Failure to Restrict URL Access)
• A8 Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
• A9 Using Known Vulnerable Components (new but was part of 2010-A6 – Security Misconfiguration)
• A10 Unvalidated Redirects and Forwards

Get the PDF version

Community Service Learning Program

Tomorrow the students will start their community service learning program in Banjaroya, Kulon Progo for one month. This year, the service learning program in UKDW are split into two areas: Kulon Progo and Tobelo, Halmahera, North Sulawesi. The ANU students will go  to Tobelo, while the HK students will go to Kulon Progo.

I wish the best for them and hopefully everything works as intended and the students can learn something from the local people about local wisdoms.

I became the coordinator for this year's YKFS V (Yogyakarta Kampung Field School) program as the last year coordinator is now become the coordinator in Tobelo. This gives me a chance to get more experience managing a lot of people together to complete this program by next month.