Search Results: "spa"

2 June 2006

Gerfried Fuchs: Back in the worng timezone

After two weeks and a bit it finally happened: I hit austria again. But, first things first. I guess everyone noticed by now that at the start the network wasn't our best strengths. I helped as much as possible, collected network cable back from one path to lay it out at a different one just to find that the about 200 m were a bit too short (or rather, me was lying the cable with too much safety). Though, it was too long anyway to be relyable, to it was cut in the middle and a small access point was put in. Later it had to be replaced because we were running a bit short of specific power supplies. But it wasn't too bad, waiting for some more rj45 plugs and other things even allowed Ganneff to spend some time in the pool and relax a bit. And given that there seem to have been a few (vegetarian) people less than registered for sponsored meals allowed stockholm and Vagrant to get extra dishes to get fed. People during the debcamp mostly enjoyed themself, mao was played, fights for the gay vegetarian sign, tetrinetx on homer when only local network was available, and I managed to translate the new wesnoth tutorial into german. It wasn't clear by then that the new release will be delayed due to other problems until after the debconf, but in my opinion the tutorial is one of the most important parts of any games because it explains the basics, so I wanted to be sure that there won't be another release without a fully translated one. About enjoying oneself: I tried out the skirts I brought with me and considered them absolutely comfortable. You'll find me more with one, especially when it gets warmer. It helped me to be more "myself". Also I enjoyed the weird looks and repeated questions about my shoes — although it was often that I was walking barefooted; but that got a bit of a pain, especially after noon when you were able to boil eggs on the stones. And given that I forgot myself when I switched from blue/red shoes to red/blue ones you don't have to send in your guesses when it was done because I can't tell who would be the winner anyway. ;) The end of the week came, the Debian Day was here. Closer to its happening more and more people arrived and it was becoming more crowded in the hacklab. The network became more and more stable, the video streaming setup got finalized, and everything looked alright. Some of the mexico city people stayed for the night and enjoyed the friendly atmosphere (and a beer or two ;)). The debconf started for real, the talks started, people were busy all around, zack added me to the alioth pkg-vim project to continue helping with the hijacked debian specific syntax files. Haven't done much yet beside a checkout, still pondering where I can bug around most ;) I was looking forward to bubulle's BoF about the i18n infrastructure. It was really inspiring, and I collected some ideas for what the tool-to-be-created should support. The second BoF later the week just showed that others were mostly thinking along the same lines, so I hadn't much to add. Still I am looking forward to join the effort to make it happen — I was playing with the idea about such a tool for ages now, and I guess this is what it will make it happen, finally. Christian is so much more able to get people interested and together for making it happen than me... :/ There were some more talks I could mention, like Enrico's talk about Advanced tools for wasting time (yes, I have submitted my gnu.cow file in the meantime), or Erin's and aj's Debian's Debugging Debacle: the Debrief (in which I finally got around to fix a RC bug incidentally), and the talk by bubulle and jfs about State of the art for Debian i18n/l10n of course, which features some of the conclusions of the two part BoF. Some of the evening featured interesting things too, like a cheese BoF, the everywhere featured formal dinner with its mariachis, the waterfall and the blackout; special effects you wouldn't be able to plan as well as they happened — though Martin Ferrarri had a small accident with it when water rushed down onto his plate and spilled the sauce over his white shirt and the table. And then there was the hard liquour BoF where I quit after the eggnogg. The week passed, I got my hair dyed and rid of my beard right in time for the group photo. Thank you nattie, a thousands time, it went better than I expected! Really like it. I didn't attend the fun photo in the pool the next day, was a bit late after the talk, didn't had my bathing slip with me, was worried about my newly dyed hairs and was nervous... because a person I was looking forward to meet again was late. But gladly only late, so I got rid of my nervousness and enjoyed the last official talk (formerly mentioned i18n talk) of the week, and explained to some attendee that even in languages like French, German and English (yes, no mistake) there are still areas we have to struggle with all of this, like when keeping things up to date and the likes. It was the last evening in Oaxtepec for me because I refused to leave by bus at 4 in the morning, rather wanted to spend the night in Mexico City to at least be able to have seen a tiny bit of it and eat something my tummy enjoys completely. :) I guess I don't need to point at sandino's gallery about that evening anymore, thanks to Gunnar. And yes, I'm mentally disturbed, but that shouldn't be anything new to people who know me for a while, or is it? ;) This night was too long (less than 4 hours of sleep is even for debconf not much), so I rather went to bed early after a small walk (just 2 blocks or such) in the city and a nice dinner with friends who are missing the nice time too and was wearing too big sort-of shoes. Went to the airport in the morning by taxi whose driver gladly was able to speak english. Met zack and Martin Ferrari again there, and some other people with whom I was taking the same plane with. They were hacking along on the airport, found the open wifi, using power supplies from different spots. Bubulle already wrote about the two loud guys, gladly I wasn't too close to them, and plugged myself into the music and movie channels from the plane. The showed Last Holiday (which I really liked, although in the ending I started to cry — mostly because I started to realize what I was leaving...) and two spanish movies of which I don't remember the titles. People started to hack away in the temporarily set up hacklab and we started to wonder how much power they might have, though they cheated: They used two battery packs... In Madrid some more people parted and we were down to 5 people. I bought totally overpriced playingcards so we could play Mao, had a short nice session and spread the word. We did hack the baby room power supply and hacked along a bit more, and then Peter and me were off heading to vienna, finally. All in all I really enjoyed it. Although there were its down times, sunburned, my butt hurting a bit because in the end I did jump from the 10m platform into the pool, it still was a really nice event and even though I guess many people tried to enjoy themselfes quite some things were acomplished. If not really codewise, then at least social-wise, which will benefit quite well in the future, I'm sure. Hope to see you all next year, wherever that might be.

Christine Spang: Ubuntu 6.06!

I hate to fangirl, but… Zomg, the Ubuntu Dapper Drake LiveCD even detects my usb wireless card flawlessly. All I had to do was enter my WEP key. The rest of it seemed really polished as well. Granted, I only looked around for ~15 minutes, but it was pretty darn cool. I’m considering taking Ubuntu for a spin on the new laptop I’ll be buying sometime this summer–but who knows. I don’t do installations or check out LiveCDs that often, so it’s exciting to find stuff that works beautifully when I do.

Michael Janssen: Been a long time coming.

Life has taken a turn for the busy lately, which means of course that this space loses a lot of content. Things have slowed down a bit now. Things which were taking up my time before were being basically one of the only technical staff for ICRA2006 (with one other who helped enormously), a new job at Honeywell Labs, and actually getting some research done on my thesis.

ICRA2006 was basically amazing and horrible at the same time. The amazing parts: meeitng people who are famous (a.k.a. "respected in their field"), eating a ton of fancy food on the dime of the conference, being at the first conference of my academic career. The horrible: working 18 hour days, being the go-to guy for practically everything, painful feet from walking most of those 18 hours. All in all, the amazing outways the horrible by a long shot. I also couldn't make it to DebConf6 because of it, and it was in a country that I might have actually made it to this time. Next year I guess.

The new job at Honeywell is going decently. We have a target in July which is probably going to have me pulling long hours. The best thing about the new job is of course pay-related though - I am going to be consumer-debt free by the end of this year. I hope that I can finish the nameless financial web application before my finances improve enough that I don't need it anymore.

I have narrowed in on my thesis more, which is an improvement at least. Now I need to actually write papers and do research while avoiding too many duties in other areas. I've got a couple of blog postings in the queue which should show up soon, and hopefully I will re-enable myself on Planet Debian.

I also bought a present for our apartment, and she hasn't guessed exactly what it is yet. This is me taunting Di a little. :-)

31 May 2006

Simon Law: Debconf 6, Day 9


Sheep in the streets
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
By Monday morning, it was my turn to get up ludicrously early. I managed to catch a hot shower, which was very welcome. You see, they turned off the hot water late at night, and didn't turn it on early in the morning. So if you kept hacker hours, you'd get a cold shower before going to bed. I bid goodbye to my sleeping companions as I rolled my suitcase out of the room and checked out at the Reception desk. I sat on my suitcase with laptop in hand, as we waited for the others to show up. We were carpooling to town in some taxis, as I had an awful bus experience coming in to Oaxtepec. It was in this hour that I taught myself how to blend exposures in the Gimp. There was a lot of fiddling with alpha channels and masks, until I hit upon exactly the right solution. By the time I was done, a rather large group of people had gathered about me. It was about then that four taxis pulled up and we threw all our luggage into little hatchbacks. Then Nattie, Ben, and I squeezed inside and we were off! Instead of choosing the toll highway, our driver decided to take the country roads. This was not such a poor idea, since we got a good look at the countryside. I had never seen fields of cactus before, but I suppose that makes sense. After all, it is edible and requires very little irrigation.

Popocatepetl
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
We drove along the winding roads and passed through town after town. In one, we had to stop momentarily. That's because a herder was driving his flock of sheep through town. We saw them turn a corner, and then our car was surrounded by a sea of bleating wooly sheep. Then, as quickly as they appeared, they were gone. As we neared Mexico City, we noticed a rather large mountain in the distance. A mountain that spewed smoke. Our driver informed us that it's Popocatepetl, a local active volcano. He pulled over by the side of the road and let Nattie hop out to take photographs. The taxi behind us pulled over as well, and they spent a few minutes snapping shots. I noted that where we had stopped was rather hazy, so I just snapped a few photographs when it appeared in my window. I lucked out, I suppose. You could tell when we approached the city, as the traffic got heavier and things got louder. I awoke from my brief nap to see us pull through a toll-booth and on to a six-lane highway. We managed to get to the international gates at the aeroport, have our luggage unloaded, and paid our driver for his troubles. Then we checked in. My luggage tested positive for explosives about four times. The security guard for Mexicana kept swabbing away with test strips, each time coming up with a different result. Eventually, he printed up a chart, stared at the squiggly lines, and let me put it on the conveyor belt. Then, I met up with Nattie and Ben, and we also bumped into Peter.

Over New York
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
We bought some postcards and sat in a restaurant. There, we ate overpriced American food and wrote back home. Or rather, Nattie and Ben wrote charming postcards and I dashed off twenty-three hastily worded missives. Then, we hugged goodbye and it was time for me to board my flight. Ben graciously offered to post my mail, because I had run out of time. Liftoff was quite exciting. The wind was gusting so as we took off, I got to see the engine shake furiously in its housing. And we did a little hop as we pulled off the ground. A little girl, sitting behind me, shrieked in distress when we did that. I really don't blame her. Landing in Montr al was a lot safer. Even though we had to go through layers and layers of clouds to do it. It was sort of depressing, actually, flying from gorgeous blue skies into a city covered by grey. But I had brought the sunshine back with me!

Jaldhar Vyas: jaldhar.vyas@linspire.com

I'm in San Diego at the moment. As of today I shall be contracting for Linspire building packages for their Debian derived Linux distribution and doing some KDE development.

Jeff Bailey: Montr al goes non-smoking

This lovely city is about to get nicer for me. Montr al is going non-smoking in all indoor enclosed public spaces. The law takes effect in about 40 minutes.

It's tempting to go play pool at midnight, but:

1) I'm sure it'll take a week or two for the residue smoke to actually clear out of the pool hall.
2) I'm *tired*

But there needs to be a game sometime soon... I'm thinking next Tuesday, 11pm, Berri and Mont-Royal, right above the Jean Coutu.

John Goerzen: Midnight Musings on a Dark Train

I stepped out the front door Monday morning at 2AM. Our house was a bit warm and stuffy, and I expected a nice, cool breeze. But instead I got a blast of... slightly warmer and stuffier air. Summer must be here.

Terah and I were setting out on a train trip. The train east out of Newton, KS leaves at 3:01AM. We got our bags loaded and set off to the station.

Not long after we got on the train and to our room, the train started moving. Terah fell asleep right away. It's hard for me to fall asleep so quickly the first night of a train trip. The excitement of the upcoming trip keeps me awake. Plus, once I wake up, I usually stay awake. Even if the alarm woke me up at 1:20AM.

This time, I lay awake remembering my ancestors, who migrated from Russia to Kansas in 1874. Some of our trip will follow the same route that they took 132 years ago.

In the train, you hear what sounds like a distant train whistle fairly frequently. It's from the locomotive on our train, but sounds distant because the passenger cars keep the noise out.

We slowed a bit, went around a gentle curve, and the whistle sounded again. Off to one side of the train were the lights of a small town. It's Peabody, KS -- where my ancestors arrived in the middle of the night back in 1874. They were excited to finally be at the end of their journey -- which had taken months and spanned oceans and railroads on two continents. So excited, in fact, that they set off to find their new land in the middle of the night rather than wait for dawn. But how did they cover those 15 miles at night? Did they rent horses and wagons from someone? I couldn't remember, trying to sleep here in the middle of the night.

I'm still awake. I come to a pause in my thoughts and notice the train's horn again. Somewhere ahead, there is a dirt road crossing the tracks. Nobody is there, but the train is sounding its horn to keep them away anyway.

I think back to 1874 in Russia. Not everybody in the Mennonite settlements there left. Those that were too old, too weak, or that couldn't make the trip for whatever reason stayed behind. For most, when they left Russia, they were saying goodbye to their families for the last time. They would never have the opportunity to see them again.

Then their trip began. Through rickety Russian railroads, to long days at sea, then through New York, and on the railroad again, stopping some points along the way. They'd never seen what would be their new home. And there was no going back if it wasn't to their liking. I can only imagine how hard that must have been for this group of German-speaking immigrants from Russia. And how anxious and exciting it would be to finally get off the station and head to their new home.

This group of settlers made quite the impact on Kansas. They brought their "turkey red" winter wheat with them from Russia. This wheat turned Kansas into the world's leading wheat producer. And it helped rescue the ATSF railroad from the precarious financial situation it was in. That was a good move on the railroad's part -- they were the ones that sold land to the Mennonites in Kansas, recruited them to settle in the area, and even built them temporary housing for their first winter in Kansas.

And that's the same railroad we're taveling on now, as I hear the crescendo and then the WHOOSH of a passing train just a few inches from ours.

By now its 4AM. I think back to the train station in Newton, which we left behind just an hour ago. I remembered how earlier in the 20th century, after the Mennonites were well-established in Kansas, they would send off missionaries to other parts of the world -- China or India especially. Those that went off served two 7-year terms. They departed from the Newton train station, just like we had. They probably waited for the train to carry them away in the same room we did. But they knew they wouldn't see their friends, relatives, or home for 7 years.

When missionaries would leave, a large group of church members would accompany them to the station. As the train approached, the people there would start singing their favorite hymns -- a capella, in German. The sound filled the old station, and followed the departing family out onto the platform as they boarded their train. The people leaving weren't the only ones to miss their friends and relatives. Those staying behind would also go 7 years without being able to talk to the missionaries that were departing.

A light flickers by the window. Maybe a yard light, or a small town, or the back side of a warehouse somewhere. Off in the distance, the horn sounds at another crossing.

Time for some sleep.

30 May 2006

Simon Law: Debconf 6, Day 8


Tree climbing
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
I awoke to a very early alarum clock, which I shut off quickly. I dragged myself out of bed to see [info]ze_dinosaur off, but he was far more prepared than I was. I waved goodbye and then collapsed back into bed. Sunday morning was pretty difficult for me. In fact, I only got up in the afternoon. I ate some bananas and showed up to the HackLab where I socialized for a good while. Then we realized that lunch would be smart, so we went to the market. Instead of tortilla based food, we managed to get some stewed meat and deep-fried vegetables. That was rather tasty and I had to waddle back. I spent the rest of the day touching up photographs instead of going on the waterslides. I'm now wondering if that was wise. But at the time, it seemed like a lot of fun. What wasn't so wise was trying an iced treat when I didn't want one. I got some money out of an automated teller and saw a shop across the street that sold iced things. Well, I crossed into the shop and ordered one. They scooped out some ground ice, topped it with mango syrup, splashed it with lime juice, and topped it with salt and chili powder. Now that I think of it, it would be tasty and refreshing if you drank lots of water all day.

The end of the road
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Somewhere along the line, we got the idea that our last meal in town should be wonderful. So I rounded up a rather large group of people who wanted to go out for dinner, expressed that we'd be going all fancy, and generally herded them into the fanciest restaurant in town. Some people initially complained about the potential cost, but the convival atmosphere and cloth napkins overruled this. So did the tasty platters of beef. We were all quite happily stuffed. Afterwards, a few of us strolled through a park attached to a local historic site. There were plenty of benches to sit upon and we contemplated the night air. I'll have to say that Mexico's nights are a lot less chilly than Montr al's. But the resort had all the lights on, so you couldn't see any stars at all. By the time we had strolled back to the HackLab, people were disassembling the network. I lugged a big server into a van and brought a few more boxes of things there. After the heavy lifting, I took a few more photographs of people, wonderful people, before deciding to retire. But the camera never does capture the fleeting moments.

Adam Rosi-Kessel: Yahoo Qmail Daemon and Mailman

My server’s mailman (or postfix) installation is mysteriously rejecting mail from one Yahoo! mail user. I don’t get it: 
Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following
addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
:
72.1.169.10 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 : Recipient address rejected: undeliverable address:
unknown user: "[list name]"
Giving up on 72.1.169.10.
72.1.169.10 is, in fact, the IP address of my server. [list name] is (in the real version) the real live name of the list. The list seems to work for everyone else. And it’s certainly not true that I, or my server, doesn’t like this recipient (or sender). Aside from this anomalous behavior, it’s also funny that Yahoo! provides plain old unfiltered qmail bounce messages to its users. Wouldn’t you think a fully matured webmail service like Yahoo! would, by this point, have somewhat customized their mail error reporting messages? In fact, wouldn’t you think they would want to hide the fact that the use qmail at all, if only for security purposes? Couldn’t they hire an intern to write a few replacement error messages? Maybe I’m missing something. A propos, I discovered this nice piece from McSweeney’s, entitled YAHOO’S MAILER-DAEMON AUTOMATED REPLY FOR FAILED E-MAIL DELIVERY IS GETTING A LITTLE TOO INTIMATE. Update 5/30/06: Figured it out. Oddly, Yahoo! was looking up the CNAME DNS record for the domain name and replacing that in the mail header. While the original email went to e.g., listname@lists.mydomain.com, the message as delivered was addressed to listname@servername.mydomain.com. Because only lists.mydomain.com processed email for lists, the message bounced. The solution was to change lists.mydomain.com from being a CNAME entry to its own A entry with the IP address specified directly. That fixed the problem. I’ve never seen any other mail service work this way — gmail certainly doesn’t.

Jeff Bailey: Got my dad on LJ

Heh, fun. I got my dad on LJ. Welcome, [info]ddbailey!

Glad I keep the smut elsewhere... ;)

Christine Spang: got UROP? (well, sort of)

It’s occurred to me that I haven’t ever actually blogged that yes, I accepted enrollment at MIT. Hence the preparing to move from Camillus, New York, a little suburb outside of Syracuse, to Cambridge, Massachusetts. (I.e. the Cambridge where you get to pick your email!) Not only that, but I have a job. A job at the MIT Media Lab, Tangible Media Group. They use Gentoo (on cygwin…), but I forgive them at least for now since it’s a heck of a lot more interesting a job than the crap retail jobs that my friends are queueing up for the summer. Though it means that I won’t be able to party with them for the last summer before university, since I won’t be home. Why I have the job is mostly Mako’s fault. So, I was staying at him and Mika’s place when I was down visiting MIT, and I met him outside the Media Lab the night I arrived since it’s right across the road from East Campus, where my undergrad student host lives. I got an awesome tour, got to check out the shiny toys, and got introduced to a few people. A day after I get home, I have forwarded email from Mako in my inbox from one of the people I was introduced to (another grad student at the Lab), who’s looking for people to hire this summer. Zing, nifty. The position’s basically a temporary UROP, hence the post title. A month and a bit later, I’ve paid my June rent for my sublet in Cambridge and am making lists of stuff to go shopping for. If you want to be helpful, tell me something you took to college and never used. Though keeping in mind that I’m in a small, rented house for 2.5 months until I move into my dorm in late August. Or, point me to quick and easy recipes. I’ve never really done a lot of cooking before, so I’ll be using the kamikaze “cook or don’t eat!” method here. I have 9 days of high school left until classes let out for exams, and I’m pumped. I’ll only have one final exam this year since the only classes I’m taking that have ‘em are Economics and AP Physics, but I managed to cut through the numerous layers of red tape necessary to get out of taking the New York State physics regents exam since it’s given on the very last day of testing, and I am leaving before then. (I’m heading down on June 19th; it was supposed to be the 22nd.) Seriously, red tape. Talk to guidance counselor, talk to academic dean, talk to guidance counselor again, talk to admissions officer from MIT whom I’m acquainted with, give guidance counselor his phone number so she can fulfill the school politics requirement of having official confirmation of okay-ness, get the go-ahead from guidance counselor afterward. The economics exam is on the first day of tests, w00t (June 12th, IIRC). Commencement is June 17th. Walk across the stage (I’m giving a speech!), then drive across the Northeast to the rest of life.

29 May 2006

Martin F. Krafft: Shell sucks

Shell programming must be the most depressive waste of time out there, and if only because things sometimes just don't work the way you'd expect from a scripting language. Take the following simple examples in bash (3): 
for i in 1 2 3; do
  echo $i
  exit 1
done
echo END
==> 1
echo -e "1\n2\n3"   while read i; do
  echo $i
  exit 1
done
echo END
==> 1
==> END
WTF? The result of the first -- the whole script exits entirely after the first iteration -- is what I expect. After all, I did not call break, but exit. The result of the second is totally unexpected. I understand that for and while each execute their iterations in a subshell, but why don't these behave in the same way? The fix here is a exit $? following the done keyword. Urks! Here's another one: the task is simply to output the number of 1's in the output (yeah, I realise grep -c can do this too): 
cnt=0
echo -e "2\n1\n3\n1"   while read i; do
    case $i in
      1) cnt=$((cnt + 1));;
    esac
  done
echo $cnt
==> 0
The reason? The while subshell receives a copy of the caller environment, so when it updates $cnt, it only updates a copy of the actual variable, leaving the original untouched. Similarly, a variable defined inside the subshell won't be available after the while loop is done. I cannot find a fix that's not bash specific. Of course, it works fine when I replace the while loop by a for loop: 
cnt=0
for i in 2 1 3 1; do
    case $i in
      1) cnt=$((cnt + 1));;
    esac
  done
echo $cnt
==> 2
Great, isn't it? And I am not surprised that zsh gets it right. Why would anyone actually want to use bash? Update: here's Joey's explanation for the behaviour, and Clint's account for why zsh does it right. I still can't figure out how to count the 1's. Update ^2: Axel Liljencrantz sent in this message. Update ^3: Alexander Sieck showed me that process substitution ("<(command)") instead of the pipe does work (for both cases): 
while read i; do
  echo $i
  exit 1
done < <(echo -e "1\n2\n3")
echo END
Of course that's nowhere near POSIX compliance... Update ^4: my solution, which allows for spaces in the lines: 
IFSOLD=$ IFS:- 
IFS='
' # yes, a newline
for i in $(the_command): do
  IFS=$IFSOLD
  ...
done
What a hack!

Enrico Zini: Debconf6 talks material now online

I've finally put online slides and notes for my debconf6 talks:
Many people had asked me the notes for the "Advanced ways of wasting time" talk: they're finally online, translated and with the links pointing to English Wikipedia pages. Sorry it took me so long.

28 May 2006

Meike Reichle: Lost my mobile phone

I case you wrote me a text message or called me on my mobile phone lately and never got a response, here's why: It's gone.
I lost it some when between arriving at FRA airport on Monday evening and looking for it before going to uni on Wednesday morning. I already checked with the German Rail's lost and found service which - unsurprisingly - was little helpful. Basically they now have all my personal info, a detailed description of my mobile phone (Siemens C55, blue, battery empty, sim card pin-protected, transparent sticky tape on back that holds the battery cover) and told me to call back later since they haven't found anything yet. I have not yet given up completely, but for the moment please don't try to call or text me on my mobile phone. Use my home number or (much better) Email. The phone was nothing special, but I am still pretty unhappy about its loss, since I don't have the money to get a new one (this one was a gift, yet another reason why losing it sucks bigtime!) and it holds a few numbers that I don't have anywhere else. Oh well, just not my week. At all.

27 May 2006

Aigars Mahinovs: Debconf6 day 5: Formal dinner.

May 18th. The fifth day of Debconf6 started for me with a very detailed overview of the debian installer. I have already been quite familiar with the system, but did not really know how to debug the debian-installer system, which was a good part of today's presentation. Many were still tired from yesterday's evening's "testing" of international hard liquors. (Or the pancake party?) At the lunch I discovered on my own skin how hard it was to announce something in the restaurant where we were having food - the room had very high ceiling with high an thick separation beams, so the acoustics of the place were just terrible. I had almost enough volume to fill the room, but after many reflections it was incomprehensible. I had to revert to walking around the tables to remind people about the group photo next day and about the place to meet for today's formal dinner. The rest of the day flew by fast and it was soon time for the dinner itself. People slowly gathered at a parking lot behind the hotels and idly chatted while waiting for the boarding call. After a while people stopped minding me and that resulted in several good portraits. We boarded the bus and went to the place of the formal dinner. The place was a large hall where local volunteers had placed the tables in the form of a swirl. That was a very nice touch. People wondered round and round 'till they choose a place they liked. AJ sat at the very inner end of the swirl and I somehow got to sit at his right hand. Not that it matters. At one moment some person took a crown of Ted's head and rushed to put it on AJ's had. Many photos were taken at that moment (most of them very blurry), but I feel this one to be a bit of an irony: CLUE hanging over Ted, but he doesn't quite get it. But enough about him - there was enough fun at the dinner to satisfy anyone. After a while of nice chatting time food started to appear. First the glasses came, then there were the huge 3l bottles of Cola. I managed to avoid the Mexican version of Cola before that, but now when I tried it Mexican Cola tasted very much like the Estonian version and slightly different from UK's or USA's versions. I guess the sugar type used and the water might be of the difference. Few attempts at simulating a spiral "Mexican" wave along the tables were conducted. Only when AJ personally controlled every part of the way by running along the length of the table, the wave succeeded. :) A Mexican band came in to lighten up the mood. They were met with a huge wave of applause and a burst of flashlights. The music was great - lively and exciting. Spanish speaking people knew most of the songs and sang along. But after a short while the music was started to being drowned out by the sound of a rain hitting the roof. Soon after the food was served I heard scream of surprise with a hint of fear. When I turned, I saw that one of the wall of the hall strangely turned into a waterfall - gush of water was streaming from the roof into the building. People looked at the water, took a bunch of pictures, made a few water related jokes, picked their bags up from the floor and ... continued with the fun. I must say that I was slightly scared, but although others might have been scared as well, most did not show it and the event just went on with a half of the hall having a couple centimeters of water. Water also dripped down on some parts of the tables, so people shifted from there to other places. Meanwhile, outside the rain became stronger, wind became faster, thunder became louder and came closer. The climax of the evening was the sudden loss of power. I was jsut standing on the stage when all the lights inside and outside went out at once. For a moment there was a bit of confusion and the evening became slightly scary in a single instant. Then people took out their mobile phones, PDA's and other devices and lighted the place up with the light from their screens. Some others had handlights, and others made slightly more light for a shorter moments by taking flash photographs, for example, of the ceiling. In a few minutes the emergency light went up and after 15 more minutes the main lamps started coming back on. For most people that was enough excitement for the night, so when the rain calmed down and Gunnar announced that first buses are ready go back to the hotel if some people want that, two buses were overfilled with people wanting to get back. Some stayed. More fresh food was cooked then, including some cooked cactus leaves and some grilled meat after which a desert followed with a rollcake that included a swirl of some red jam. Very Debianish :) After a quick local-optimal packing session the hall was left almost empty in a few minutes. The packing algorithm was interesting - one person was collecting all forks, other person was collecting all spoons, other people were only folding tables, while others were handling chairs. The work division was very effective and allowed people to share the work without any kind of central coordination. And we went back .. to work. On the way to the hotel I noticed pixie sitting in the walkway in a very careful was - it turns out she got one of the kittens to trust her and was holding it in her lap. It was sooooo cute. Kawai! Ted: Many questions were raised about Ted, the "fight" at the formal dinner and the following expulsion of Ted from the event and from the Debian project. An I have a unique perspective on that as I was sharing a room with Ted and talked to him and his friend John after the dinner, but before the expulsion notice. I barely noticed the, now widely speculated about, events at the dinner itself. I noticed that at one point in time the lump of people around the door became a bit bigger and that Ted and John were in the middle of it. I heard no screaming and saw no struggle or fighting and did not see anything strange regarding Ted except this and the other event described higher above. Ted was siting by his table with a woman that I for some time believed to be his wife because of the very caring way he was handling her. After considering that he was from Canada, I assumed (with a though of the twisted humor) that she might then be his Mexican lover (either paid or not), but I did not care enough to find out about it or to raise any conflict about it. I remember thinking that it would sound quite funny in context of his latest blog post about killing of prostitutes which might also be the reason why people where very ready to believe the joke that one of Ted's companions said of the woman being paid to come here with Ted "or maybe not". After the event I wane to sleep to be awaken around 5 in the morning by a discussion going on in my room about the dinner. I went into the discussion slightly irritated with a simple argument - inviting people to a party without an explicit permission of the organizer is a bad thing to do. That point sank in quickly and Ted soon was ready to apologize for that. After that a discussion about individual people and motivations went on for another hour. Ted's action were deeply rooted in the confusion of terms with "bravery" and "cowardice" versus "aggression" and "non-confrontational behavior". Ted's motivation was clearly based on avoiding anything that could be considered to be cowardly and putting emphasis on brave actions, however the most of the rest of Debian project is much more in line with the modern world and prefers non-confrontational behavior to any action causing trouble. Most of the time such behavior is essential for comfortable survival of any geek living in non-geek environment. The difference in values between Ted and the rest of our project was just too immense. When I was walking out of the room at around 7 in the morning next day my final sentence was "Ted, even if you spend rest of the Debconf apologizing and making friends, I do not see a future for you in this project." and the most important was that Ted and John seemed to agree with me on that. I soon found out that DAM's agreed with me too and took action just when I was talking to Ted expelling him from the project. He was also advised to leave the Debconf to avoid any further confrontation. It was harsh, but kind of expected for a long time. This event spoiled my mind for a few hours, but ... the Debconf must go on!

Simon Law: Debconf 6, Day 7


Funicular
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
After the morning talks were over, [info]ze_dinosaur and I decided that Saturday afternoon should be devoted to fun. We rounded up Jesus, Anabelle, Ben and Nattie. And then we set off for the water park. You see, we were actually staying at a huge playground, except we never saw very much of it. Determined to see more, we hike over to the Tower, found the funicular and took a trip down. As we passed over a small wood, I instantly regretted leaving my camera at the hotel. I suppose, however, that I'd regret it more if my camera had taken a swim. We arrived at the bottom and found a flock of geese. This is where I really wanted my camera, because the goslings were oh-so-adorable. Nattie got some photographs while the mother goose hissed furiously at her. We left, found the front gates of the water park, and were told that it was closed. Well, we were quite disappointed. The others went back to the resort, but Ben, Nattie, and I refused to have our afternoon ruined. Instead, we found a washroom, got changed and waded off to the sulphur pools. There's a large spring underneath a big glass dome, which happens to spew out some rather foul smelling water. Much like rotten eggs, really. There, it fed into a series of swimming pools in which vacationers soaked.

Swimming
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
We waded in to the very cold water and swam a while for a bit. We got used to the smell and temperature, and started having a marvellous time. Then we saw the waterfall. A man was standing beneath a small torrent of water, that beat about his neck and back. In order to stand in place, he hung on to a knotted rope which was tied to the retaining wall. After watching him for a bit, we three decided to give it a go. Swimming up to the fall was the most difficult part, then it was quite relaxing to have water pouring over you like that. I need a bathtub and shower like this, when I build a house. Soon after, we went back to the resort where we dove in the pool and swam a bit. We managed to corrupt Tore's mind and scar him forever. Just then, we were kicked out by the lifeguards because it was 18:00. The air was still scalding and they closed the pool. What are these people thinking? I took a nice shower and then a nap in the front lobby. Since lots of people were leaving on Sunday morning, this was the last night for them to party. So lots of people got quite drunk, including one poor fellow who passed out on the grass. I found a towel for him, so he wasn't so cold. Then, I took plenty of pictures of people, while simultaneously convincing them to wear hats. No really! There are many benefits to hats. And people look great when they have a hat on. I highly encourage you to get one yourself. I stayed up very, very late. Until about 5:00. Then, Eric and I couldn't take it any more and we went to bed.

Simon Law: Debconf 6, Day 6


High jump
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
I missed most of Friday's talks due to some sleeping in. At conferences, I try really, really hard not to succumb to exhaustion, but all those late nights eventually take a toll on me. By the time I got up, people had already left, so I took a leisurely shower and padded off to the Tower. I caught Meike's talk on giving good presentations and wondered if I should do something similar at some other conference? After lunch, we gathered on the grass to take a group photograph. Aigars Mahinovs then climbed up the stairs to the top of the ten metre diving platform, and stared down at us with his borrowed lens. I attempted to convince people to participate in a group hug, but this was fairly difficult. If you look closely, you can see a small island of us. It actually took quite a few shots for Aigars to get a picture, but the results turned out quite well. At least for me. I was wearing a hat, you see, so I didn't have to squint. Rain started to fall again, so people rapidly ran for cover. I ducked into a covered walkway, where we were starting our GnuPG keysigning. I went through a lot of passports and met a lot of people. Venezuelans have the best passport photographs, bar none. And I got to see a non-national identity card. I have to get me one of those.

Hotel Zacatepec
Originally uploaded by sfllaw.
Dinner was held at a restaurant with live music, which we had to ask be turned down. That's because a bunch of us had gotten together for a brainstorming session. I think we came up with some useful things we could do, on both sides, to improve co-operation between Debian and Ubuntu. So I was pretty happy about that. Afterwards, the rain was coming down hard so we rushed back to the hotel room to change. I remember walking on to the HackLab veranda and seeing a bunch of people standing against the walls looking uncomfortable. Aha! It was good that I was wearing my dancing shoes, as we were obviously attending the second anuual Debconf ball. Wolfgang taught me the steps to Argentine tango, but I really couldn't find a partner. So I danced by myself, drawing glances from everyone, until I found some people to dance with. Sadly, many attendees were too shy, or claimed that they were clueless. Of course, I didn't know what I was doing, so they couldn't possibly do any worse. Perhaps next year, they can be convinced. It really is fun, you know.

26 May 2006

Margarita Manterola: Debconf6 and other stuff

Debconf6 is finally over, and thanks to Maulkin's nice picture, I've got a new hackergotchi and decided to reactivate my blog that had to be taken down due to spam problems It's not a secret that I'm not really happy about how many things went in Debconf6, but I am happy of having spent those days with so many nice Debian people. It would be great if we could gather more frequently, just to hang out for a while (and maybe play one or two games of Mao). Anyway, I'm still recovering from almost two weeks of hard-core stress, trying to keep up with everything. I'm still lagging with much of the work that I had originally intended to do during Debconf, and my backlog keeps growing. Hopefully, I'll be able to clear things up soon.

Adam Rosi-Kessel: Green Mountain Moonshine

Check out my brother Jonah’s band, Green Mountain Moonshine. They have the least annoying Myspace page I’ve ever seen. And the music is really pretty good.

Kai Hendry: No GPG thanks

I hope to see Debian move away from GPG authenticated uploads to where contributions are processed something like a Wiki. Depending on GPG and its daft Web of trust is silly.

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