John Goerzen: The Best Place of Ever
Jacob and Oliver have enjoyed our recent train trip, and our stay, from Kansas to New York City for Debconf. All told, that s a 40-hour trip, including the layover in Chicago.
When we got on the train, in the middle of the night as usual, Jacob couldn t stop chattering about how great , fun , and exciting it is. He told us about all the lots of great things on the train, the fact that we were on a night train , and generally couldn t stop chattering. For an hour. At 3:30AM.
This was a typical sight from Jacob:
It wasn t as relaxing as usual for Terah and me. Oliver is at the grabbing everything in sight stage. Which worked fine when Jacob was at the age, but with Jacob also along it was a bit more difficult to manage. I suspect that our next trip, when Oliver is a few months older, will go easier.
A highlight for both boys, as usual, is the dining car. Oliver loves anything related to eating solid food it s still novel to him and Jacob loves anything relating to trains. What could go wrong? (Parents will probably identify the capability for two hyper-excited young boys to have plenty of things go wrong at a table in a restaurant here fortunately we didn t have anything go terribly wrong.)
Oliver turned out to find the things outside the window to require intense concentration intense enough to stick out his tongue while he worked it all out.
And Jacob, of course, wanted to get the wrapper off his straw by himself. Which he can do, but takes a minute.
They also enjoyed the lounge car.
We were in a sleeper room on both trains. That was nice, and when we needed to go explore , we could. Jacob s favorite part of the trip was when I folded down the upper bunk during the day for him to play. I pointed out that it was like a train treehouse. His face sure lit up. He loved that he had his own window up there to look out of. He climbed up the ladder, and after awhile of playing, said, Dad, would you like to play with me up here? Of course I would it always makes me happy when he asks if I want to play with him.
As I was playing with him, I asked him if he was having fun in his train treehouse. He gave me a sweet smile, and said, Dad, this is the best place of ever!
In Chicago, Jacob and I went outside and walked around. He enjoyed walking across the bridges over the canal by Union Station. I checked some work email when we got back, tried but failed to reach some local hams with my handheld, and then we got on the train for New York.
The boys loved it too, and Jacob was very ready to be in New York when we got there. We got out at Penn Station which was, I think, pretty much what my mind had imagined of an underground station robbed of its former glory (especially having been in that part of Chicago Union Station). We found the connection to the 2 train uptown, bought some MetroCards for the subway, and got on. Jacob was very interested in the subway. He sat very, very still I thought he was scared but on asking him some questions, realized that he was just very interested and engrossed in it all.
I had been trying out my HF antenna for my amateur radio setup a few days ago, and by some coincidence, kept making contact with people that grew up in New York. A guy from Fargo, ND a native of Brooklyn told me to make sure to get pretzels from a hot sauce vendor, Pastrami on rye or corned beef on rye from a Jewish deli (because they have the best meat), pizza from guys wearing red and white shirts, and don t be afraid of rats on the subway tracks, and that our boys will love to feed leftover bits of pretzels to pigeons and squirrels. He got so excited about NYC that he went on and on, saying, Man, you re making me hungry now.
During times I m not at sessions at Debconf, we ve found some time to do some things as a family. We went to Grand Central Terminal, just to see it it is indeed still Grand. I knew there was a Jewish deli there, so I thought hey try out his advice. It was closed, and when I realized it was Saturday, I realized why. Oops. We hopped on another train to Brooklyn and checked out the New York Transit Museum, which is great and has a lot of exhibits about the history of the city s subway and bus systems. It s housed in a former subway station, and they have a lot of old subway cars down there dating back to 1905 most of which are open to go inside of.
It s been nice to meet people at Debconf that I have only known via email or IRC. The organizers of this conference have done a fabulous job. I have every expectation that this will turn out to be the best conference I ve been to in at least 12 years this is my first Debconf. It doesn t skimp on the technical details, people are friendly, and there is a sense of common purpose. But just as important, while there is a set schedule, there is an easy way to add other ad-hoc sessions to the conference schedule. People can get together a group interested in a topic, and schedule an event about it for the next day very easily. I m quite impressed by that, and am looking forward to the virtualization discussion that grew out of a question to the mailing list.
It was also neat to meet people that sort of knew our family from my blog posts. I had no idea that there were all that many people that actually read these things ;-)
The Debconf kick-off was great. As I was walking across the campus of Columbia towards it, it was a nice temperature, with some light rain, and I heard bagpipes in the distance. Beautiful. And when I left after the evening sessions, I still heard bagpipes. So I went to check it out, and ran into Gabriella Coleman, one of the Debconf organizers and the person that gave the talk I just left on the way, with the same idea. The Columbia campus is beautiful and historic, and it is an excellent venue for the conference.
New York is a great city and I m sure we ll be back. It is great to walk out of the hotel in the morning, buy a fresh peach or two from the street vendor 20 feet away, and then go buy a roll or two ($0.75 each) from the bakery down the street. I have been so missing rolls like that since we got back from Germany in March. These weren t quite like the German bakeries, but the closest I ve had to it.
It is interesting to note how differently people from different places look at things. Terah has told several people how we live 6 miles from a town with 500 people in it, and people that stop to think about it realize how different it is from New York. It was a surprise to me to hear that some New Yorkers think of Columbia as country . It is beautifully landscaped, and feels different than the rest of the city.
The numbers I ve seen suggest that a typical fall weekday has more people on the Columbia campus than in the entire county where we live. And that county is twice the size of New York City.
That s not to say that there s anything wrong with New Yorkers thinking of it as country, any more than there is of me thinking of a town with 15,000 people as a pretty big town. It s a different perspective, and I enjoy different perspectives which is another thing I like about Debconf. There are so many people from all over the world there that different perspectives are inevitable.
It wasn t as relaxing as usual for Terah and me. Oliver is at the grabbing everything in sight stage. Which worked fine when Jacob was at the age, but with Jacob also along it was a bit more difficult to manage. I suspect that our next trip, when Oliver is a few months older, will go easier.
A highlight for both boys, as usual, is the dining car. Oliver loves anything related to eating solid food it s still novel to him and Jacob loves anything relating to trains. What could go wrong? (Parents will probably identify the capability for two hyper-excited young boys to have plenty of things go wrong at a table in a restaurant here fortunately we didn t have anything go terribly wrong.)
Oliver turned out to find the things outside the window to require intense concentration intense enough to stick out his tongue while he worked it all out.
And Jacob, of course, wanted to get the wrapper off his straw by himself. Which he can do, but takes a minute.
They also enjoyed the lounge car.
We were in a sleeper room on both trains. That was nice, and when we needed to go explore , we could. Jacob s favorite part of the trip was when I folded down the upper bunk during the day for him to play. I pointed out that it was like a train treehouse. His face sure lit up. He loved that he had his own window up there to look out of. He climbed up the ladder, and after awhile of playing, said, Dad, would you like to play with me up here? Of course I would it always makes me happy when he asks if I want to play with him.
As I was playing with him, I asked him if he was having fun in his train treehouse. He gave me a sweet smile, and said, Dad, this is the best place of ever!
In Chicago, Jacob and I went outside and walked around. He enjoyed walking across the bridges over the canal by Union Station. I checked some work email when we got back, tried but failed to reach some local hams with my handheld, and then we got on the train for New York.
The boys loved it too, and Jacob was very ready to be in New York when we got there. We got out at Penn Station which was, I think, pretty much what my mind had imagined of an underground station robbed of its former glory (especially having been in that part of Chicago Union Station). We found the connection to the 2 train uptown, bought some MetroCards for the subway, and got on. Jacob was very interested in the subway. He sat very, very still I thought he was scared but on asking him some questions, realized that he was just very interested and engrossed in it all.
I had been trying out my HF antenna for my amateur radio setup a few days ago, and by some coincidence, kept making contact with people that grew up in New York. A guy from Fargo, ND a native of Brooklyn told me to make sure to get pretzels from a hot sauce vendor, Pastrami on rye or corned beef on rye from a Jewish deli (because they have the best meat), pizza from guys wearing red and white shirts, and don t be afraid of rats on the subway tracks, and that our boys will love to feed leftover bits of pretzels to pigeons and squirrels. He got so excited about NYC that he went on and on, saying, Man, you re making me hungry now.
During times I m not at sessions at Debconf, we ve found some time to do some things as a family. We went to Grand Central Terminal, just to see it it is indeed still Grand. I knew there was a Jewish deli there, so I thought hey try out his advice. It was closed, and when I realized it was Saturday, I realized why. Oops. We hopped on another train to Brooklyn and checked out the New York Transit Museum, which is great and has a lot of exhibits about the history of the city s subway and bus systems. It s housed in a former subway station, and they have a lot of old subway cars down there dating back to 1905 most of which are open to go inside of.
It s been nice to meet people at Debconf that I have only known via email or IRC. The organizers of this conference have done a fabulous job. I have every expectation that this will turn out to be the best conference I ve been to in at least 12 years this is my first Debconf. It doesn t skimp on the technical details, people are friendly, and there is a sense of common purpose. But just as important, while there is a set schedule, there is an easy way to add other ad-hoc sessions to the conference schedule. People can get together a group interested in a topic, and schedule an event about it for the next day very easily. I m quite impressed by that, and am looking forward to the virtualization discussion that grew out of a question to the mailing list.
It was also neat to meet people that sort of knew our family from my blog posts. I had no idea that there were all that many people that actually read these things ;-)
The Debconf kick-off was great. As I was walking across the campus of Columbia towards it, it was a nice temperature, with some light rain, and I heard bagpipes in the distance. Beautiful. And when I left after the evening sessions, I still heard bagpipes. So I went to check it out, and ran into Gabriella Coleman, one of the Debconf organizers and the person that gave the talk I just left on the way, with the same idea. The Columbia campus is beautiful and historic, and it is an excellent venue for the conference.
New York is a great city and I m sure we ll be back. It is great to walk out of the hotel in the morning, buy a fresh peach or two from the street vendor 20 feet away, and then go buy a roll or two ($0.75 each) from the bakery down the street. I have been so missing rolls like that since we got back from Germany in March. These weren t quite like the German bakeries, but the closest I ve had to it.
It is interesting to note how differently people from different places look at things. Terah has told several people how we live 6 miles from a town with 500 people in it, and people that stop to think about it realize how different it is from New York. It was a surprise to me to hear that some New Yorkers think of Columbia as country . It is beautifully landscaped, and feels different than the rest of the city.
The numbers I ve seen suggest that a typical fall weekday has more people on the Columbia campus than in the entire county where we live. And that county is twice the size of New York City.
That s not to say that there s anything wrong with New Yorkers thinking of it as country, any more than there is of me thinking of a town with 15,000 people as a pretty big town. It s a different perspective, and I enjoy different perspectives which is another thing I like about Debconf. There are so many people from all over the world there that different perspectives are inevitable.
After I finished an re-read my epic post describing my first day and a half at Debconf10 I suddenly realised that if I continue to describe the rest of 13 days here in such style and verbosity this would become a book, a boring one at that, so I decided to limit myself to 2 posts for Debcamp and then a post a day for the Debconf.
But about the first half of the Debcamp week there are things that are as usual and there are things that are not.
Let s start with the usual bits: more people arriving every day, evening parties are getting more and more fun and wild (or so people say) and the Internet and power at the hacklabs magically becomes more and more reliable day by day, the cabling mess grows organically trying to spread out evenly and not overload any individual socket, extension cords with non-local plugs appear and spread the load some more, people stress out, volunteer, crash out and repeat. All in all nothing can stop the freight train of few hundred Debian developers determined to have fun. With out own DFSG-free definition of fun. (But this year we appear to be running very close to the edge on volunteers if we run out of those, there will be a train-wreck, so please volunteer!)
Now off to the unusual stuff.
The City is well it is cool and very, very impressive. It is not terribly different to me at least I am used to such structure of the city: grid based layout of the downtown city (with some parks) and then branching out to separate, but different across-the-river districts and then sprawling out to slightly chaotic suburbs. Riga is very much like New York in the design. The difference is that New York is 10-20 times larger: the areas are 10 times larger, the buildings are 3-4 times higher on average, the streets are 2-3 times wider and yet have more traffic and there are far, far more shops, shows and restaurants. Also there is the subway. It is a great thing in that it hides the size of the city take a bus downtown once, to find out what I mean it takes ages to drive the distance that takes 20 minutes on the subway. I like this city, I am getting a feeling, that I could live here without much problem for me. So far I ve only had this feeling in Riga and Berlin.
On the other hand this is USA. I ve so far only encountered one bad thing about it, but it is a pretty big one food. Basically all food that I ve tried so far in the USA has been crap. It was tasty salt, sugars and fat took care on my brain thinking it s food, but underneath that it was pretty crap: there was no texture, no content, no soul. The John Jay cafeteria where we are eating lunch and dinner is better than the most other options, because it is an all-you-can-eat buffet where you can choose your poison and it was also the place where I had the best piece of food in USA so far a slice of pepperoni pizza, that had a bit of taste behind the fat. Also, surprisingly, the fast food options (McDonalds, Burger King, ) are better than the equivalents in Europe, far better. In fact the fast food is cheap and in some cases tastes better than regular food, so there is no wonder why people might prefer it in some situations. So it is easy to see how people just accept shoving bland fast food or bland all-you-can-eat food into their mouths and not think much about it and thus become fat and put undue stress on their health. I expect the average weight of Debian developers to increase by 5 kg by the end of the conference. If you want to prove me wrong, running with bubulle would help you a lot with that.
Events downtown. New York is a huge city with a lot of events going on every day, so everyone should be able to find something of interest for them. For me it was the free tickets for tapeings of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I got into both of those and for me The Colbert Report was by far the better experience. For one you can not get into Daily Show without a ticket (some tickets show up on the web site on the morning of the shoot around 11am), while 18 people from the stand-by list at Colbert Report got in. At The Daily Show you stand in a live line with ticket holders in one line and stand-by line separate. If you have tickets and arrive around 3pm you should be fine any later than that and you risk to be standing outside even with a ticket. You find that out around 4.30pm when they hand out physical tickets you have one, you get in. If not you might rush over to Colbert Report where a more humane system is used a staffer takes down your name and email on a numbered list and then you can walk around until 5.30pm then they let the ticket holders in and after that call the names of stand-by people that get in. The Colbert Report studio is brighter, more colourful and closer to the action, also it is very rare that cameras block the view from the audience (which is common on The Daily Show). It might have also been my luck when I got on the most boring The Daily Show episode I can remember, ever. The best joke was a woman asking John is she could get a ticket for her friend in August. The warm-up act and crowd control at The Colbert Report was also way better: Colbert staff was hyper, security was ever-present, warm-up was funnier and very engaging (he grilled me for several minutes and I replied making the audience laugh very hard explaining that Latvia was like India of Eastern Europe in regards to IT exports) and Colbert himself was very gracious talking to us out-of-character before the show for a good 10 minutes.
Location, location, location. The talk rooms and event rooms and hacklabs are spread out across multiple buildings and there is a lot of other activities going on in those buildings besides Debconf, so moving between place might be confusing for the first day or two. Also the rooms are quite dark that might cause a noise problem for me and the video team as we ll have to up the sensitivity settings on our gear. The video team is working on fixing that by throwing a bit more light on to the speakers. Elevators are wicked fast, but can also be confusing, because the ground floor is on a different number for different buildings it can be G, 1 or even 4. Usually on campus there is a star next to the level with the exit.
The dorms. I am in the Carman building and it looks like its interior has not been updated since it was built large ceramic bricks with very visible gaps (for the interior walls), raise-to-open windows, huge aircon fans that take up the whole bottom of the window, plumbing from the 60ies (at least). The security is weird on one hand you have to give your room card to the guard when entering the building, but on the other hand the room cleaning crew can simply forget to close your door after they are done. Like this Thursday I returned to the dorm just before lunch only to find the door of my room open. No one was around and nothing was missing, but it s still worrying.
In any case I am steadily uploading photos from Debconf 10 to 
As I did since 2007, I will be attending Debconf again this year. I have been quite busy recently, and am lagging behind in some of my Debian work, so I plan to use Debconf to get stuff done, not just socialize and attend talks.
Here is my TODO list, basically by order of willingness to do the work . It s probably too much for 9 days, so don t hesitate to talk to me if you want to help with some items.
Actually I was at the 
This evening I was mulling over a recurring desire for a simple, scalable, and robust replication filesystem. These days there are several out there, including 
While I have made good progress on many of my 
. It has been many years since I ve flown a regular (non-budget) airline and now first time ever in the business class! We got regular class meals, but at least we got to sit in the big chairs with lots of leg room. It was great! I bought a paper book (from Charles Stross) to read during the flight, because that is the only thing you can do during take-off and landing and I had some stuff to listen to in my iPhone. I tried sleeping and I think I managed to kill a couple hours that way too. It sure helped combat jet lag later on.
When I arrived, I had my immigration and customs forms filled out. Latvia is on the USA Visa Waiver program, so I just had to fill out a form online prior to the trip to get a permission to enter USA. I only had one printout of the Waiver confirmation page and my airline took that before giving me a boarding pass, so I had no paper copy to give to the guy at the USA border, but he did not even ask for it he only took the two forms I filled out, scanned my passport, took my fingerprints (all fingers) and a photo. Then he gave me back the customs for (stamped) and I could go get my luggage. After that it was just a matter of walking trough customs and giving the customs official the pre-filled and stamped customs form. I was not stopped further.
The AirTrain was a bit confusing you just get on the AirTrain and go where you need to go, you actually pay at the place where AirTrain connects to metro, so when you are coming from the airport you are actually paying ($5) when you are exiting the AirTrain system. There are plenty of AirTrain people that will give you an AirTrain ticked for $5 cash right there or you can use a machine to get it (where you can also pay with a card). The machines also take AmEx, but you must know the PIN code, if your don t know the PIN of you AmEx card (like I don t know the PIN of my corporate AmEx) you can only buy MetroCards at news stands, but there you will not find the unlimited ride tickets only 5 or 10 ride tickets are available.
Next I screwed up a bit and thus got a bit lost in the New York metro system. The Wikitravel recommends to take the AirTrain to Jamaica station and from there take J or Z line into the city for the best views. I went to Jamaica and got into the first metro train that came on to the platform. Unfortunately, that was the E line train and it does not cross with J or Z lines after that, so I was stuck. To complicate the situation E line is under repair, so after a few stops the trains diverted to the F line and I had to scramble to figure out where to get out to get to the 1 line where Columbia University is. I ended up spending more than an hour in the metro, but I got there in the end.
So I emerge from the 116th street metro station directly in front of the campus entrance gate and it starts raining. A thunderstorm swept across New York as soon as I stepped outside the metro station, so I took shelter a the side of the building. It kept raining. After a few minutes decided that I don t want to wait any more, so I put all my electronics into my backpack and went towards the dorm where my room was. The rain was warm, people around me were playing and running around in the wet grass, it was fun.
The guard showed me where to go to check in. It was really simple sign here, here is you magnetic stripe key, have fun. And the room was just as spartan bed, desk, chair, closet, bathroom and a large fan under the window. The first night I did not know that I could actually turn that fan down, so I slept to the sound of full fan blasting, much like on the airplane. The dorm looks ancient it looks like it was build in the 60s and never changed since then. I mean, I ve lived in worse places, but people would at least change wall sockets or faucets or ceiling paint every other decade or so. The newest things here were the magnetic locks on the doors and a TV and a mini fridge in the hallway.
After dropping my things I went off to the Mudd building across the campus to check in with people in the hacklab. It was just starting to take shape, but many great and familiar people were already there. It was like walking into a family home same warm welcome smiles and that great feel of belonging to the group.
After I quick chat I went off downtown. The plan was that I left my old Canon 400D camera back at home and that I would buy a new Canon 550D here in New York on arrival. Unfortunately I underestimated the travel time on subway and by the time I got back downtown most shops where already closed. I got to checking out a Best Buy and was told there that they don t have 550D in stock. Next morning I went for a full scale search B&H Photo Video store, J&R Express, another BestBuy none of them had the Canon 550D (aka T2i) in stock in a body-only configuration. BestBuy had a few sets with the kit lens, but I did not want paying 100$ extra for something I already have. The last option was Adorama and I got lucky I nabbed the last 550D they had and it was body-only.
Now I was back, with a camera in my hands and the Debconf10 could really begin!
If 
I just did some work on two NBD features: authentication and named
exports.
The first was written by Brad Allen back in 2008. I'd been thinking
about an authentication scheme back at DebConf 8, and discussed it on
the nbd-general mailinglist. Brad picked it up and ran with it, but it
never got finished. Basically, what I did today was forward-port the
code so that it would compile (and work) with today's version of the NBD
utilities.
I tested it and it works, but I'm not sure what to do with it. NBD is
not encrypted; so there's no protection against TCP hijacking or some
such. Oh well; I might still integrate it into nbd mainline.
The second feature is something way more interesting. It had been on
my long-term TODO list for quite a while, but I never sat down to
implement it. Until today, that is. This patch has been compile-tested,
but I haven't functionally tested it yet; I'll do that tomorrow.
The main reason it took so long to implement, was that initial NBD
handshake made that quite hard. Upon connecting, nbd-server as it
currently exists will open the file or block device that it needs to
export, and before nbd-client has sent anything sends
information on that export (its size, whether or not it is read-only,
etc) to the client. Unfortunately, this does mean that I cannot add new
features to nbd-server while retaining full backwards compatibility if
these features may involve changing what nbd-server sends during the
initial handshake, as is the case here. This could be worked around by
having the server first send information on a "default" export to the
client, and then variate that if the client informs the server that it
actually wants something else. But this would have been rather ugly,
since it means that errors in open() or stat() calls for the initial
"default" export would have to be non-fatal until the client actually
tries to read or write to or from the device, at which point they would
suddenly become fatal. This would open a can of worms near which I
didn't want to tread.
The way I fixed it in the end, however, is fairly simple. If names
are used to specify an export, nbd-server can live with just one port to
export all block devices that it supports, rather than needing many. As
such, I can "reserve" one port for the new-style named exports. On this
port, nbd-server would expect that clients send a name,
and would not function correctly with clients that don't understand
names. At the same time, nbd-server could still export the same block
devices on other ports as well, using the old-style protocol, for
clients that do not support named devices.
This would of course require that both the client and the server know
perfectly well what the port is, and that it does not change too easily.
As such, I've just put in a request for an assigned port number over at
IANA, so that I can be sure that the port will not change unexpectedly.
This also means I won't make a public release with this change until the
port number has been assigned, so that I don't need to support two
'default' nbd-server ports in the future (one "temporary" and one
IANA-assigned port).
For now, however, I think I'll go grab some food.
The web offers a compelling platform for developing modern applications. How can free software benefit more from web technology, and at the same time promote more software freedom on the web? What would the world be like if FLOSS web applications were as plentiful and successful as traditional FLOSS applications are today?
Web architecture
The web, as a collection of interlinked hypertext documents available on the Internet, has been well established for over a decade. However, the web as an application architecture is only just hitting its stride. With modern tools and frameworks, it s relatively straightforward to build rich applications with browser-oriented frontends and HTTP-accessible backends.
This architecture has its limitations, of course: browser compatibility nightmares, limited offline capabilities, network latency, performance challenges, server-side scalability, complicated multimedia story, and so on. Most of these are slowly but surely being addressed or ameliorated as web technology improves.
However, for a large class of applications, these limitations are easily outweighed by the advantages: cross-platform support, instantaneous upgrades, global availability, etc. The web enables developers to reach the largest audience of users with the most compelling functionality, and simplifies users lives by giving them immediate access to their digital lives from anywhere.
Some web advocates would go so far as to say that if an application can be built for the web, it should be built for the web because it will be more successful. It s no surprise that new web applications are being developed at a staggering rate, and I expect this trend to continue.
So what?
This trend represents a significant threat, and a corresponding opportunity, to free software. Relatively few web applications are free software, and relatively few free software applications are built for the web. Therefore, the momentum which is leading developers and users to the web is also leading them (further) away from free software.
Traditionally, pragmatists have adopted free software applications because they offered immediate gratification: it s much faster and easier to install a free software application than to buy a proprietary one. The SaaS model of web applications offers the same (and better) immediacy, so free software has lost some of its appeal among pragmatists, who instead turn to proprietary web applications. Why install and run a heavyweight client application when you can just click a link?
Many web applications perhaps even a majority are built using free software, but are not themselves free. A new generation of developers share an appreciation for free software tools and frameworks, but see little value in sharing their own software. To these developers, free software is something you use, not something you make.
Free software cannot afford to 
