Given the posts on diverse planets, this seems to be a common nerd disorder...

Your Social Dysfunction: Happy You're a happy person - you have a good amount of self-esteem, and are socially healthy. While this isn't a social dysfunction per se, you're definitely not normal. Consider yourself lucky: you walk that fine line between 'normal' and being outright narcissistic. You're rare - which is something else to be happy about.

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Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren't, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results.

Another quiz meme: You scored as Mathematics. You should be a Math major! Like Pythagoras, you are analytical, rational, and when are always ready to tackle the problem head-on!

Mathematics		100%
English		100%
Engineering		92%
Journalism		92%
Philosophy		67%
Theater		58%
Linguistics		58%
Psychology		42%
Dance		33%
Sociology		33%
Chemistry		25%
Art		25%
Anthropology		17%
Biology		0%

... there. There's a particularly nasty project at work that has been stressing me over the last few days/weeks/months which has now almost, but not quite, reached a successful conclusion. It required some financial creativity to get it there, though. But that's a piece of the past now—I managed to reduce it to a technical problem; now I only need to fix those, and I'm done. I wish tomorrow was over already. But, well. I'm very close. In other news, something exciting is happening for the m68k port. But more on that later.

I was invited MOSS, Medical Free/Open Source Software Council, on last weekend. My speech was about the risk management of Debian. I believe we should more consider risks of FLOSS (at least as same as we choose proprietary commercial software) when we use FLOSS on business scene.

vorlon announced 'Bits from the release team: the plans for etch'. Yay, let's try to keep a promise about schedule :) Another good news is aba becomes Relase Manager (although he has already worked as same as release manager :) ) My personal TODO for Etch is to find and solve problems around a transition from EUC-JP to UTF-8 on Japanese environment. Most parts are done by Debian people and other distro such as FedoraCore, but I'd like to clarify problems again and try to solve them. Yesterday I changed my LANG to ja_JP.UTF-8.

• I needed to convert filenames written in EUC-JP to UTF-8.
• Programs using GTK+2 and Qt work well.
• GTK+1 applications (such as xmms) have Mojibake. I took beep-media-player instead of xmms. :)
• Some of double width characters (box, arrow, and so on) of EUC-JP are displayed as single narrow width on X terminal (mlterm, gnome-terminal, and konsole). I found I can avoid this on mlterm by enabling 'Enable variable width'.
• zsh couldn't allow to input and complement UTF-8 characters. zsh-beta allows partially.

Can we just stop this nonsense about Judges enforcing the law but not “making” it? And that there is such a thing as a non-ideological Supreme Court justice? Many people have articulated the problem better than I possibly could. But it boils down to this: “the law” is not deterministic. It is, as a practical matter, impossible to enact statutory language that is sufficiently specific to cover every situation that will appear before a court. The reason cases end up in litigation is, quite often, because the law is not clear on what the result should be. Law is not like source code that can be compiled into an object file and then fed arbitrary input to generate a certain predictable result. The real world is complex. Conditions arise over time that the legislators enacting the statute (or the framers drafting the constitution) could not have foreseen. Even if you believe Judges should exercise “restraint,” in many cases it is impossible to determine, objectively, what outcome represents the more “restrained” position. (I think Alito admitted an analogous issue today when he said that conservatives can be as much “activists” as liberals). People should agree or disagree with Judge Alito’s judicial approach, but it’s absurd to suggest that he doesn’t have an ideology, or that he could sit on the Supreme Court and just apply the law “as it is written” without having to make interpretive leaps. Those leaps will almost always involve issues on which reasonable people can differ — otherwise the case would never have reached the Supreme Court. That is, in fact, the whole point of the Supreme Court.

MD, the only problem with the "not udev's fault" theory is that the kernel in question is not very modular: usb-storge is built in, and udev manage doesn't load any modules at startup.. I don't know yet if it's an udev issue or a kernel bug triggered by udev. That's why my original entry said "I don't know whether it would be udev's or the kernel's bug". Doesn't sound like a scapegoat to me.

The good:

• Organized a hotel for my sister to stay in next week when she comes to visit me.
• Managed to have one of my security bugs result in the first DSA of the year.
• “Used my own initiative” to get a CVE ID for Ulf - who got the second DSA of the year.
• Am once again capable of doing pull-ups with one arm.
• Saw doctors, and should be back at work soon.
• Almost solved the mystery of why the Elves had to leave Middle-Earth.
• Started working on an open photo-publishing system, primarily for my own use, but may well end up being open to the world. (Depends on my motivation and bandwidth costs.)

The bad:

• Forgot that smstools is in both Sarge + Woody.
• Forgot to go shopping for washing powder; and have few clean clothes left to wear.
  • Actually I have lots of clothes, many clean, but nothing both sexy and clean.
• Got the whole half-beard thing happening - due to lack of razors.
• Haven’t got a 2006 calandar yet. (physical/paper)

The response I received for my post from last night was remarkable. Thank you, all I’m not going to respond individually, and I’m probably going to drop off the net for a day or two altogether, since I just discovered I have a cold, and I most definitely need to rest.

J5,
Nice entry, but this sentence no verb, let alone three.

Recommend 'securify, flexify, manageify'.

As I’ve blogged earlier, I uploaded the updated Debian packages for robotour and animal last night on mentors.debian.net, and am now looking for sponsors. I also noticed that Clint has some packages for sale; I’ll take dbacl and bricolage And my fellow MOTU Stephan also has njam from Ubuntu up for adoption, and I’m taking it into Sid, not simply because I feel its my duty being a Ubuntu MOTU to give back to Debian, but because I am an existing Debian maintainer who wants to contribute more to Debian in that capacity. Some of those newly-adopted packages would have to wait, however, until I get back. I’ll be leaving for Manila this Thursday to take my UPOU midterms, as well as to get some things from my old house in Makati. I might be seeing Jerome, Clair, JM, Sacha, and the other PLUG folks at their induction. Among other things, some of my IE-using friends noticed some breakage with my blog layout (sigh). I’ll try to fix this later… Update : Anibal Avelar seems to be the DD for njam already, but I couldn’t see the package in the package pool or in the static packages page, despite being said so in the developer QA page (even the QA page for njam itself doesn’t exist). \sh, it seems that the game is still afoot! Update 2 : Ken Bloom comments that Anibal’s package is in the NEW queue.

Well, I’m not yet thirty. But it started a bit more than a year ago, when I was turning 27, with a hellishly vivid feeling of mortality. (No, not morbid thoughts, exactly. Feelings of mortality. I’m told that’s normal when one is approaching thirties.) Today, I’ve been crying a lot, you could say regretting past mistakes, but more regretting my current inability to move past them. Professionally, I don’t have that much complaints. It could be better, but it could be a lot worse too. My demons have always laid on my personal side. In the past 14 years, I’ve made choices. They haven’t always been informed choices, they have sometimes, quite often in fact, been reactions against my own perceptions of my own past actions. I suppose the gist is that I am terribly lonely. I have a couple of people I call friends. My relationship with my parents is in order. But… When I was younger, I had eyes for women. I was friends with many women. I’m not positive, but there were several, along the years, who probably were even interested. But it never clicked. Perhaps I was just then making eyes at someone much further away and I didn’t see the one sitting beside me. Perhaps, had I, or she, not moved out of town, things might have been different. There was one that I probably almost stalked. I’m not proud of that, and in fact, the shame of that memory is probably one of the things that is holding me back now. In some cases, clearly one-sided ones, my inability to reign emotions properly caused quite a few awkward situations. I remember them, too, with shame. So I’ve learned to grow a thick shell around myself. It helps in dealing with professionals in the proper manner, regardless of their plumbing. It is ia useful skill. But I notice that the thick shell repels those who clearly would like to know me better (there have been a few; I’m not saying it would’ve ever gone beyond friendship, but even that is out of the question when I’m unable to relate). And when I finally figure out how to get out of that damned shell, they’re long gone. In some cases, well enough gone that I don’t even know their names. In others, it’s just the window of opportunity that has gone. But it’s enough. And it doesn’t help that I have this huge barrel around me which I don’t seem to be able to rid myself of.
And so, I come back to this day. I read Weber & Ringo’s We Few (note that it’s book 4 in a series). Maybe I’m just a sucker for martial romances, I don’t know, but they often affect me. But none has affected me this much before. I’ve been hurting like hell after I finished that book. The ending is so beautiful that it seems to have opened some old wounds, and I’ve been crying. And I curse my shell, the one that is so useful at the office, the one I took several years to build around me just so that I could do my job properly. I don’t know. Writing this has helped a little. But I’m afraid I’m going to regret posting this in the morning. (And I wonder how this keeping awake is going to wreck havoc with my teaching tomorrow afternoon.)

To complement my survival gear I bought a bike last Saturday. I have already noticed it gives me more freedom than just using public transport here and I just can not live without cycling. In the heart of Edinburgh, in the catacombs of the Waverly station one can find the Bike Station. This is a place kept by volunteers that takes in and recycles bikes, patches them up and resells them again. On certain days you can also take your bike there and use their tools and assistance to fix it. I find this and the way they are promoting cycling in the area a great initiative (and believe me, it is really necessary)! So I bought the cheapest second-hand bike they had: a 15-gear mountain bike without any features. This is of course because I will only be here for two months and it works just fine. There is a route from the city centre almost straight to the campus alongside the Union Canal (10km long route). It brings you through different kinds of nature but also different looking parts of Edinburgh. Half-way on the trip back I cycled over the Slateford Aqueduct which is really narrow. It’s almost impossible for two people with bikes to pass one and another when going in opposite directions. Besides that, the aqueduct is quite long, high and gives a nice view over Slateford. On Sunday I took the scenic route from the campus to Balerno and then to the city centre. There I tried to reach Arthur’s Seat in Hollyrood Park, but I took a wrong turn and had no energy to go all the way down and up again. So I turned around and cycled back using the Union Canal route. All and all it was a nice trip, about 40km long and I still can feel my bottom and muscles after 6 weeks of no cycling at all. Pictures of this trip are available on my Edinburgh album (photo 101 until 121). Technical On a more technical note, we have been moving from CVS to Subversion at work. This is nice because it allows us to do a good repository restructuring. Also did it give me the opportunity to try out SVK, which I’ve found to work well. It allows me to stay in the familiar CVS/Subversion world while not having to dive into whole new systems or command interfaces for which, at the moment, I do not have the time nor feel the need. I hope I can help Florian Ragwitz with svk-buildpackage, because I now still need a Subversion check-out next to my SVK local branch just to build packages. By means of this combination I’ve just been able to build and upload 5 new Ruby libraries (under Debian/Ruby Extras’ team maintenance): libbreakpoint-ruby, libcairo-ruby, libcmd-ruby (oops, it seems I’ve forgotten to file the ITP?), libdaemonize-ruby and libsvg-ruby.

By request: Here's a list of people who've confirmed they're going to give a talk in the Debian Devroom at the next FOSDEM. This list isn't final yet (there are some more people who've asked for a time slot but did not confirm yet; and I didn't assign slots yet, either) but it might be interesting for those who are coming to have a preview of the subjects that will be available. Well then.

Lars Wirzenius: Nobody expects the Finnish Inquisition: Confessions of a package torturer

Piuparts tests that .deb packages can be installed, upgraded, and removed without problems. Lars uses it to torture all the packages he can get his hands on. This talk will explain how to use it on your packages before uploading them, and thus improving their quality and not having them suffer in Lars's hands.

Martin Zobel-Helas: Debian-Volatile - behind the scenes

This talk will give an overview of how packages are handled for Debian-volatile; what changes are allowed, how security is handled.

Martin F. Krafft: Improving workflow in Debian through process integration

This talk will be about the same subject as Martin's doctorate thesis. The abstract for that is:
This research paper/project details the technical challenges the Debian project faces as it continues its tremendous growth in size and popularity. It describes a research endeavour designed to increase the use of version control within the project for improved coordination of globally distributed teams of volunteers working on the software packages that make up the system. The research primarily focuses on the integration and consolidation of the involved processes. With tools already available for some parts of these processes as well as the coordination of teams, the goal is not to reinvent the wheel, but rather to reuse and improve these tools, to better integrate them, and to make them more accessible by providing abstraction wrappers with interfaces intuitive to Debian developers. It is further the intent for these tools to be optional and fully compatible to existing practices, thus not forcing developers to adapt. The research starts with process analysis and studies of the work habits on the side of the developers, and targets the final output of tools, which implement improved workflow in Debian package management through meaningful integration of existing (and proven) methods

Enrico Zini: Debtags, and what you can do with it today

This talk will introduce the Debtags project, what it has accomplished so far and the wonderful advanced tools that are now available, using debtags, to make sense of the huge package archive.

Bill Allombert: Inside the Debian menu system

The debian menu system transparently keeps the menus in sync with the list of installed applications; so transparently, in fact, that a lot of developers do not know how the system really works. This talk will detail the various components of the system, what the technical challenges are and how they are solved.

Frans J. Pop: Debian Installer internals

An introduction to the inner workings of Debian Installer. Starting with what happens when the installer boots, the talk will go on to discuss how the dynamic menu structure allows the installer to be adapted for different architectures and installation methods. Other subjects will include the special nature of udebs, the contents of a D-I initrd, how cdebconf knits everything together and allows the use of different frontends, preseeding and the use of hooks. If time allows, a short introduction into the build system and CD building may be provided. Some knowledge of Debian package management (like priorities and dependencies) is assumed in this talk.

Aurelien Jarno: The Debian GNU/kFreeBSD port

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a port of Debian using the FreeBSD kernel and a GNU libc library. It is currently the most advanced non-Linux port in terms of packages ported.
This talk gives an overview of GNU/kFreeBSD, and a quick comparison between the FreeBSD and the Linux kernel, to give users the necessary information to let them find how the FreeBSD kernel could fill their needs. It then describes the status of the port and the choices made concerning the architecture of the port (libc, threading library, etc.). It will continue by giving the various ways to try out this port and to give help, giving pointers to useful documentation and some useful hints.
Best portability practices are also covered, for both the Debian packaging and the upstream code. It will be based on real examples of non-portable code, and will show the best way to change it into portable code.

Summing the times that people gave me, I'll have anywhere between 5h25 and 6h00 of talks already, and two more people who've shown real interest in doing something in the Debian devroom (but who haven't sent me the information I ask for to be able to confirm their talk; please do so!). I'll probably get 9 hours in all (10 if I squeeze a little bit; but then I might have some issues with the key signing party, which I'm also co-organizing), so there is still some time left for interested parties. However, if you're interested in giving a talk, you shouldn't wait too long anymore!

There has been a lot of news about the two cent U.S. postage increase that goes into effect today, but little explanation of why the increase is required. Some reports mention that the increase is needed for a $3 billion “escrow fund,” but do not explain what the escrow fund is for. In case anyone is wondering, Congress required the Postal Service to create the escrow fund to prepay retiree health benefits and fund the military portion of retirement benefits for postal workers who had served in the military. (At least according to postalwatch.org. Who knew there was a postalwatch.org?). I realize this is fairly off topic for my blog, but I was wondering about the explanation, so maybe one or two of my readers were as well. If you’re looking for a more topical connection, perhaps we can blame the postal increase on the War in Iraq.