Joel has a cool interview with Martin Nordholts, one of the GIMP core developers, on his website. Martin is very careful to avoid saying anything that could be interpreted as a time frame, but high bit deptch and non destructive editing is in the pipeline.
Pascal has a new version of UFRaw with Lensfun for Ubuntu out. And he has changed the URL of his repository, update it if you have it in your sources.lst.
I am just going through my 5th Iritis in 2 years, now on the left eye. I can stand daylight again, so I am on my way out of it. But I want to limit my time in front of the LCD until all is clear again.I am now down from London Fog to Gym Shower. 
No promises when I’ll bring the next episode out – but there will be one.
As much as this illness has bothered me – without my first Iritis I wouldn’t have started this project. I did all the planning, first experiments and even the first Blog entry while I was recovering.
A big thank you to all who have helped with contributing work, ideas or money and all the best wishes for you all in the year 2009!
I am so sorry to read of your eye problem and I hope that 2009 will soon see you recover. Perhaps we shall be able to see and walk together in the near future. All the very best for 2009.
re: non-destructive editing(NDE)
Weird but…
Last week I had a *dream* about the NDE interface in gimp!
I saw another visual object to the right of the layer-mask, and that object expanded to a sequence of layer-like modification interfaces, each with it’s own layer mask, as well as the saved and re-editable modification specs (eg, curves, effects). I even imagined that the order of mods could be moved up/down.
It’s possible this imagery grew from a perusal of stuff on the gimp website, including the UI proposals/analysis/discussions.
That’s got to be one of the strangest dreams I ever had!
..jim
Rolf, best wishes for a speedy and uneventful recovery from the latest iritus episode.
Please don’t ever think you need to strain to satisfy your MTG audience, meet artificial deadlines, etc. Look after yourself first!
Sorry if this is a bit personal or emotional, but your video works have made me (probably many) feel some attachment to you. That’s pretty neat, actually.
..jim
Thanks for the good wishes, I am way better today than 2 days ago.
I feel this attachment too – it was very strange to talk to nobody in the beginning. But now it’s completely different.
Jim, you should post that dream to the interface planning site. Best ideas are born in dreams or under the shower.
Norman, don’t run too fast!