I've chosen debian because it fulfills an ideal. For me Debian is about to build an Universal OS , and when decisions has to be taken, it's based:

• on the technical quality for the technical ones,
• the consensus of the community for the others.

To live decently, I do work also in a start-up company that also happen to write closed-source software. That gives me enough money to eat and live well, and beeing able to dedicate my free time on Debian and free software. That means I've done the choice on purpose not to mix my paid work with Debian, because I don't want to balance the decisions I take in Debian I against my well-beeing. That said, I'm completely OK with people having paid works intimately related to their DD work. And if their work is intimately related to etch beeing released in time, then well, I wish them a lot of courrage. I wouldn't have the guts. I'm OK with this because we are talking about people that are not able to impose decisions to me that I judge irealist or bad. And still, I can dismiss such decision thanks to the CTTE if needed. Though, when it comes to delegates, it's a full different story, because I do have to interact with those guys in my allday Debian work, and that undoing their decisions needs a GR as per constitution. It's way less easy than going in front of the CTTE. And if Delegates are paid whichever the entity that pays them is, they will have to balance technical choices against beeing able to eat tonight (or reimburse their house, or ). Obviously, one will say that it's OK here, it's not a salary, and that the currently discussed^[1] contract is not about doing the RM releasing Debian in time, but helping toward that goal, or trying to release in time not sacrificing the release quality. I answer bullshit! to that. Our RM have at least I happen to hope so more higher standards than that. If they accept that mission it's to see it completed. I'm already fearing for them getting down if they can't achieve that.
I also know that at least one of the dunc-tank board member^[2] would like to see a structure able to fund DD's to work on Debian, and be able to live from that. I'm sorry, but that's an option I don't want the project to take. And if dunc-tank is a prelude to that, so please don't even think of starting it. When there is money in the game, the donator,employer,boss, and the guy accepting that money have at least a moral contract if not a legally binding one of results. And I see no investor that would happen to be interessed into a contract where the due in line is undefined. Thinking otherwise looks like complete naivety to me. So either it won't work, either people will have to take into account other parameters than technical quality when the will have to make choices. I see in my paid work what such things mean, and I do consider me lucky, I'm in a company where people do know what quality means. Though the company also has to live, and that sometimes makes us take choices that I don't like at all. I never want have to even consider such choices in Debian. I'm sorry, but putting such considerations in the project is jeopardizing what the project means and represent to me. The sole structure that would maybe fit would be some bounty board, with the following things done:

• any person (at least for DD's) can come with his project, with absolutely no censorship;
• the proposer that comes with his idea chooses the price for it, with again no censorship;
• anyone is free to do the job for free, obsoleting the bounty^[3], so that a bounty cannot become blocking.

And even with that some kind of checking that the job has been done correctly has to be done somewhere, and I don't see clearly who could do that, but I suppose that's doable to find some fair reviewers plus the donator(s) for that.
That said dunc-tank does not meet any of the previous requirements, is driven by delegates, and works around the thorny problem of finding a consensus among the DD's in the worst possible way. Those are the reasons^[4] why I think dunc-tank is a bad idea.
And to the people offended that I seconded the recall, this is about the fact that I found the way dunc-tank has been imposed to us after having asked for our opinion, and heard the acute opposition of some of us hideous, and about the fact that beeing the DPL, or even a delegate and in dunc-tank at the same time is a conflict of interests. It's not a matter of beeing pro or against dunc-tank, matter against which there is no course of action for me anyway, as it has been on purpose and artificially kept outside of Debian.

Tomorrow I fly to Boston for the Summit and the embedded GNOME hackfest. Packing clothes took about five minutes: pants, socks, tees, jumpers. Packing the electronic toys was a bit more complicated...

• ThinkPad X60 plus charger
• Canon EOS plus charger
• Canon IXUS plus charger (for Vicky)
• Nokia 770 plus charger
• Zaurus SL-C1000 plus charger and wifi card
• USB card reader
• My Nokia phone charger
• Vicky's phone charger

Please can people start using the same chargers? I'm impressed that the Zaurus charger is actually a PSP charger, but I'm not happing having to take two Nokia chargers and two Canon chargers.

Today is the day against DRM. Thousands of people around the world are spreading the word about Digital Restriction Management technologies. The interesting thing about the people building DRM systems is that they're doing evil. They may not think they're doing evil, after all they're generally good people, doing their jobs, feeding their families, and protecting their interests. It's not a big evil, but it is a subtle one. And that's why you shouldn't support them. For decades, the music industry has been making money by selling records and tapes. This was a good business, because it was difficult to produce records, and it was difficult to get tapes into the hands of consumers. They made quite a tidy sum over production and distribution of art, which is a pretty decent living. But then came the Internet. And the Internet got big. Big enough that you're reading what I'm writing, even though we come from completely different backgrounds and are probably miles apart. The interesting thing about the Internet is that copying a song and sending it to someone else costs almost nothing. Zip, zero, zilch. Now traditional media distribution houses are upset. The service they performed was valuable and the goods they sold were scarce. Nowadays, neither or those are true. People can record music in their garages, edit it on their computers, and publish it online. The digital medium has turned art from a scarce resource into an abundance. So what do companies do? They feel that they have to protect their existing business models so they try to push through legislation that would make it illegal to provide abundance. That's like arresting farmers for plant seeds they've harvested from their own wheat. But this is wrong. People are now using the Internet to make and distribute art like we've never seen before. The proliferation of new songs, new pictures, new videos is just enormous. The creative community has exploded through sharing, some of it illegal, and we can all see what a vibe this has caused. DRM is meant to put a stop to that. It's designed to have two components: one is the technology that monitors and restricts what you can do with the art that you've bought, the second is the legislation that makes it illegal to circumvent this technology. So only criminals will be able to give music to their friends. But criminals will do that anyway, laws won't prevent DVD duplication in Asia. They will, however, stop you from listening to music in ways some corporation doesn't want you to. What can you do about it? Make it known that you're against DRM. Make it known that you're against proprietary systems that stifle the creative spirit. And only purchase open systems. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but also because they won't hold you hostage.

I personally continue to work on Debian how I can but the Dunk Tank think made me thoght about the priorities that some people are putting in few (better, one) position only of project. I disagree completely how is this working and see, not too few people, reducing their work on Debian. Some are clearly not caused by this annoyance but others not. Why does our FTP Masters and NEW queue processing people are not included on that list of people that are receiving money to work? Debian Security team? Debian Installer team? Those teams has the same importance of RM team. Can we release without a propor security or lacking a Debian Installer? Of even, can we release without a good libc or a stable and well maintained GCC compiler? That “Dunk Tank” or, in my understanding, “How we workaround a project concensuos” thing, is wrong. Obs.: you don’t need to agree with me and that is my point of view.

There was no real known reason why our essay for the course History of Computing was overdue, but Bas and I finally managed to finish it yesterday. Almost two years we have been postponing writing it, slowly collecting and reading more material, but after a few weekends of hard work, it is done: John Vincent Atanasoff: The Inventor of the Digital Computer (copyrighted under CC SharedAlike 2.5) The essay tries to acknowledge Atanasoff’s accomplishments, the ABC, and ideas that we still find in our computers today (binary system, regenerative memory, separation of calculation and memory and calculation by electronics and logic). Without these ideas and the derivations that found its way into the ENIAC, the world would’ve been a different place for sure. I was surprised by the increased amount of work it requires to write a work covering a historical topic. For each sentence you write down, you either have to do a lot of research, you have to make sure it is objective or if it is not objective you have to find a source backing up what you are stating. This way, writing 1,5 pages on an average Saturday is a lot, comparing to writing a report about some practical assignment, which is fairly easy and straightforward. Even more so since our topic is surrounded by controversy.

Strange comments from Release Manager Andreas Barth predicting that this resolution would mean:

'The debian-installer has to be changed prior to release of Etch. This change alone would delay by at least 6 months, according to Joey's estimations.'

The resolution does not specify how it should be implemented technically. I'm pretty sure other options (such as dropping some hardware support from the official release) have been mentioned and there are probably suggestions that I'm unaware of. If the release managers choose to delay the release until debian-installer is changed, then that is their choice.

'Even fonts and videos would fall into the category where we would need source - but what is the source of a font? or a video stream? (and yes, fonts are "works that are executed by other means", i.e. displayed on the screen) That is a great new place for lots of new discussions that don't really help our users, but will definitly waste lots of time.'

The source of a font is what you used to make that font. Similarly for other work. It's pretty obvious in most cases. As far as I understand the concept of streaming video, we don't have it in the release, so that one seems a strange argument to me.

'We would be in a very bad situation e.g. with the debian-keyring (and all other sort of crypthographic stuff) - I definitly don't plan to distribute the sources for my public key (as the sources can also be used to generate the private key).'

I think this is the only interesting point: but is the debian-keyring made up of programs, rather than data that is input to a program? Do the private keys contain instructions which are executed by GnuPG? If not, note that source provision is only "strongly recommended" not required and there is a pretty strong reason for it not to be included in this small case.

'In summary, this proposal would delay the release of Etch by at least 6 months, probably even one year. Of course, any of the pending GRs can still overrule the result of this GR, but - that is not something we should be proud about, or even plan.'

In summary, I think we should remember that predictions can be wrong as well as right, even from a release manager, whether or not they are being paid for their time by an external organisation. Of course, the release manager could try to make those predictions true, but that would be pretty cynical. Vote to reaffirm DFSG 2! Update: shortly after publication of the above, someone at TU Wien wrote "yay for debian-legal fuckheads". Good argument(!) I can see why you are at university(!) Also, Andreas Barth's last blog post keeps changing the date, so it sits in the top place on planet for ages. I didn't think it was so weak as to need that sort of help. This update suggests it might be a software bug, though. Update 2: Hoho, guess I found part of the problem!

Martin "Joey" Schulze is interpreting my decision to spend some less time on Debian as being due to dunc-tank. He's wrong. Joey, you're spreading false rumors. You could easily have checked the facts with me, but you chose not to. That is malicious. Kindly do not ever use my name to further your hate campaigns, thank you. I'm reducing time spent on Debian rather than reducing time spent on other things so I could still do Debian things. One of the reasons for this is that it seems to me that a number of very vocal people in the project have collectively gone insane over the past few months. As an example, proposing a GR as a reaction to dunc-tank was so much out of proportion that I can't understand how those who supported are capable of acting in a constructive manner at all. Either that or they seriously need a life. I have some years ago developed an aversion to conflict. Rather than butting my head with insane people, I'll withdraw from mailing lists and reduce my participation in the project to maintaining the package that I care most about. That's right, Joey, dunc-tank didn't drive me to this. You did. I don't know if dunc-tank is a good thing or not, in the long run. I think it's a worthwhile experiment, and its future should be decided when the experiment has been done. Another reason to reduce time spent on Debian is that I'm looking into starting a business. That can be quite time consuming.

Slashdot had a post this evening about the update to the O'Reilly IPv6 book.

I took a scan of the comments, and got the usual bits - why would someone bother? What's the killer app? We're not running out of oil^Waddresses! While I don't claim to be an expert on the topic, where I have used IPv6 succesfully is on my home network. Where NAT is really annoying for geeks is that our ISPs give us one IP address, make it move around occasionally, and tell us we can't run servers on it. Add an IPv6 tunnel to this, and it doesn't really matter what my ISP thinks. My machines remain trivially addressable. Scanning the address space to try and hammer on the boxes is a non-trivial task and by-and-large, Windows zombies aren't usually talking on IPv6.

This isn't a permanent nirvana, but if general attitudes about v6 are the same as the drones on /., then my little workaround hack will persist for a while.

I've been quiet recently. I spent a week with the cold, then a week being stressed. I'm hoping this week is uneventful. One thing I've been meaning to post about for the past month or so are some positive supplier experiences I've had. Like most people I'm quick to whine when things go wrong and I've had a few things I didn't expect to go smoothly be fine. First up, eBuyer. I mentioned in my initramfs post that I had a disk that had been damaged in transit (according to the manufacturer's diagnostic tool). I wasn't looking forward to trying to return this, as I feared eBuyer would try to weasel out of the RMA. However it all went smoothly. Took them a couple of days to issue the RMA authorisation number, but after that I sent it off including the receipt for the posting and they sent me an email to confirm when they had it and when they sent me out the new one. And credited the postage back to my credit card. I was gobsmacked. I've been using them as a cheap box shifter for a few years and always assumed that the instant I had any problems it would all be pain, but no. It wasn't the quickest of processes, but it did all proceed without me having to chase anyone. Next, Scan. I've hated them for years. Pre 2000 I vowed I'd never use them again for reasons I can't remember. In 2000 I capitulated and ordered a Scan 2000 DVD player from them (which is still going strong). However despite being stiffed £10 for next day delivery it didn't turn up, nor the next day and eventually I had to ring them and find they'd failed to authorise my card and hadn't bothered to contact me. I vowed I'd uphold my pledge never to use them and until recently had done so. And then I needed some 1U heatsinks in a hurry and the initial supplier I'd found were being slow about getting stock. Scan had enough in stock so I decided to risk it. And they turned up next day, with several text messages keeping me informed about progress. I'm won't be using them in general, but I might try them again at some point. Finally, regular readers (all 4 of you) will remember the pain I suffered at the hands of Xinit. Black Cat needed some new dedicated servers and I was having problems finding what I wanted (Xeon LVs for low power usage goodness). Neil had some good things to say about Sentral Systems (well, actually Flexiserv who morphed into Sentral) so I figured I may as well drop them an email. I wasn't really expecting much, so when they got back and said they thought they could do exactly what I wanted within a week I was sceptical. Especially as that was a complete server whereas even looking for the bare chips I was getting quoted lead times of at least 4 weeks. To be honest they didn't manage it in a week - it was more like a week and a half (I think the order was confirmed on a Nonday and delivered Wednesday week later). Damn fine. Plus they kept me informed throughout the process and the one time I considered ringing them to ask what the status was they sent me an email within an hour of me thinking it anyway. The servers are nice and nippy too. :)

When release draws near, more and more difficult decisions arise. Like: should I still upgrade the package to a newer upstream version? Enigma is a great puzzle game, very similar to Oxyd. Back when still using my trusty old Atari ST, I was a fan of oxyd. Debian unstable currenlty has Enigma 0.92, the latest released version. Experimental contains recent SVN snapshots of the game. Version 0.92 was released in 2005, and there have been huge improvements to Enigma in the mean time, including a new level form (XML-based, while the levels used to be lua scripts), a reorganization of the levels into level packs with increasing difficulty, tons of new levels and graphics for 1024x768. While the new versions are running quite stable, and a new release is expected for end of the year, it will probably be not on time for etch. So should I upload a SVN checkout to unstable (and eventuall etch) - I didn't receive bug reports for the experimental version so far, and enigma has shown before to be of high code quality - or stay with the latest released version? "Life" would be easier if enigma released a new version just in time for etch. ;-) Just kidding. I'd certainly prefer the new version; and while there are some known issues with it (a conflict between C++ exception handling and lua when nesting), these might as well apply to the current version. (For example, the screensaver tends to turn on while playing enigma, but upstream said this is actually a SDL issue, and it should apply to both versions) Maybe some people can test the enigma package from experimental and send me feedback reports. But don't blame me if you lose valueable hours of sleeping time by playing enigma. It can be quite addictive.

The horror of providing full SELinux support out of the box are install scripts. Installing files of a package is rather easy. Install them, relabel them. This can be added to the package manager. (And I believe dpkg already does that). However, package install scripts are becoming more and more complex, and they aren't SELinux aware. And there is a lot of stuff that can go wrong here. For example, a package might want to generate a configuration file for the service you just installed. If this configuration file is to have the same context as the directory containing the configuration file, there won't be a problem - but if it's to have a different context, the generated file will be incorrectly labeled. I see two basic solutions to this:

• require by policy all package install scripts to register all files they created (and the registration application could then take care of the appropriate file labeling) - but this will take a long time to be adopted by all packages
• monitor package install scripts for file creation, and relabel them automatically. However, many install scripts will also start the service the package contains; monitoring shouldn't extend to them, so I doubt this will actually work, and still problems might arise to delays in relabeling

Any other smart solution for these problems? Sometimes I wish we could do without turing-complete postinst scripts...

I was one of the plain clothes who went into the Apple Store first of all. As suggested, I started on the upper floor, but I found the staff:customer ratio too unfavourable. It seems that the top floor has a lot of the expensive hard-to-secure products, so there's a lot of staff and some visible security. I had a chat with a few people, but I wandered back downstairs long before Simon's fairly visible leafletting tour was shown the door. While downstairs, I noticed the huge till queue, which was attractive for three reasons: it had no security (I guess shoplifters rarely queue for the till), most of them are standing around waiting for something to read and they are almost certainly Apple customers, so who better to inform? [...cut from feed version...] Then, I got a bit bored and started putting the leaflets into Apple's product leaflet dispensers (in front of Apple's - no leaflets were removed), which soon got me rumbled. I left and spent the next two hours helping the pavement teams, which other people have described well. I was mostly working out towards the street corners, or walking up and down with the flow of pedestrians. I tried a few of the different posters, to see how well they worked:

1. The iTunes hand-tied poster worked well a bit further away from the store, catching crowds who were walking towards it. I suspect some people who took the leaflet after seeing this poster were loyal Apple-fans who thought it was an Apple promotional offer. It did get some very strange looks, especially from women - maybe they thought it was an ad for iPod-themed bondage;
2. The simple DefectiveByDesign.org worked well when people had seen the HazMat crew, along with the question "Do you want to know what the yellow suits are about?" Unfortunately, some people thought we were protesting about the exploding laptops problem. Do MacBooks and PowerMacs explode too?
3. "Eliminate DRM" got some takers for the "What's DRM?" question, but I didn't find it worked as well as the other two.

Some passers-by asked me questions: [...cut from feed version...] We handed out 3200 leaflets in about 150 minutes, which I think is pretty good going. Sometimes, it seemed nearly everyone passing through took a leaflet. Given that distribution rate, I was surprised how few ended up on the floor or in the bins at each street corner: the leafletters weren't too aggressive and I think that helped to get leaflets to people who would read them, although I think some were discouraged at how slowly they seemed to be handing out leaflets. It was also good to meet a few people from around the country, although I fear I'll forget which name links to which face soon. I had to rush off before talking to too many people (the joys of cheap transport tickets) but there were still some interesting chats.

I've been a bit busy lately, so I've only now skimmed through my linux-aus backlog, as well has had time to put some thoughts together on the whole AUUG/LA thing. I will point out that I had a similar rant back in July last year, and a lot of what I said then still holds true. So one of the problems is we seem to have too many organisations. OSIA, AUUG, LA, SAGE-AU, ACS, to name a few. They've all got a bit of overlap. They've all got different names (well duh) that imply different things. So AUUG, as the Australian Unix Users Group, is losing is relevance. So much so, that the "About AUUG" page doesn't even discuss what the hell the acronym stands for. Somewhere along the line, they've adopting the tag line of "the Organisation for Unix, Linux and Open Source professionals". So they're clearing still trying to remain a "professional" body. As is SAGE-AU. Clearly with a name like the System Administrator's Guild of Australia, it's obvious what demographic this organisation is for. Now of course a lot this organisation's members are going to be administering Linux. You could also argue they're using it as well. SAGE-AU is operating-system agnostic though, and doesn't really get all community about the operating systems its members administer. Which leads us to Linux Australia. An organisation that (at least in my opinion) that is more about the community around the operating system than anything else. And in this case, by operating system, I'm talking about a lot more than just the kernel. OSIA, on the other hand, is an organisation I haven't heard a lot about, and know even less about. The name though, pretty clearly suggests what they're on about. If OSIA didn't look like it was more about corporate members than individuals, I'd be saying that this is where a large chunk of AUUG members should go, if AUUG were to fold. It does leave a certain demographic out in the cold: ISVs that make closed-source software for Unix and Linux. Since, for example, CheckPoint seem to be sponsoring the AUUG conference, they obviously feel that they have some sort of affinity with the organisation. Finally, there's ACS. Another organisation I don't know a lot about. I would think that maybe this could be another potential destination for AUUG members if it were to fold. Back to Linux Australia, and whether that name is the best thing for the organisation. I personally think it is not. Linux Australia is way more about F/LOSS evangelisation and the community that exists around that, than anything else. To a lesser degree, it tries to act as the "mother LUG" of all the Linux User Groups around the country, but given the loose structure of the LUGs, this is more of an assumed position than anything else. So what to call LA instead? Steal AUUG's tag line? "The Australian Linux and Open Source Community Group (ALOSCG)"? "The Australian Linux and Free Software Community Organisation (ALFSCO)"? Hmm, the second one could be mutated in "Alfresco". Cute. Funnily enough, the same arguments apply to renaming linux.conf.au, however I'm not in favour of that. I agree with what Maddog said on the linux-aus list, about it being easier for sponsors to identify with something more specific like "Linux" than something more amorphous like "Free and Open Source software". I also think linux.conf.au has a pretty strong brand associated with it. Finally, I want to bang the drum for organisational change. There was some discussion about membership tiers. I think this is a good idea. I think having paid members (and some member services) would be good. It would provide Linux Australia with an additional revenue stream, and it would allow it to provide something to its members. If there was a membership structure like "student" (which would be free), "associate" (paid, but cheap) and "professional" (paid, but slightly more expensive), you could allow all categories to vote, but give the paid members some additional services like a sticky email address, dynamic DNS hostname, maybe if LA got direct sponsors, the sponsor organisations could provide discounts to members like what SAGE-AU does. I also think that if LA were to employ a full or part-time administrative person (like SAGE-AU did until recently) would also be beneficial. This person could do heaps of administrative stuff and coordination for the organisation, as well as be a resource for the linux.conf.au organisers, and be cheaper than having to pay an Executive President or something like that. it would allow for the organisation to go to the next level, and be a little less amorphous and have a tangible existence.

Less than one year ago, I had had enough. At over 135 Kg, not having done any kind of excercise or diet for too many years, I was on a very sorry shape - and although thankfully I have never had any important illness, I don't want to bet my life on luck alone. So, by November (to be exact, on the same week Nadezhda and I had our wedding), I joined my University's obesity, overweight and sedentarism program - Of course, ready to admit defeat.
Over the last year, however, my life has changed completely - Many of you have congratulated me in person or electronically. Thank you very much. It has surely been a tough job - And I intend to follow on it!
As of my last measurement, I was weighing 100.2 Kg, finally under the obesity treshold for -probably- the first time since high school. I am having my excercise hour every morning - and, unbelievably, I enjoy it. And yes, many among you have witnessed me and Nadezhda jogging, talking about our training, or whatnot.
I remember probably in May or June 2005, chatting with Jordi, I was trying to talk him into travelling for Debconf5 to Finland. He was unsure, as he wanted to train for a triathlon - And, half-joking but half-serious, I questioned whether he would rank sports even close to Debian work. Surprise, surprise: He did. Of course, he later decided to go to Debconf, but anyway :)
...Ok, this post is all in the past. What now about me? Why am I writing what you all already know? Simple: I found myself in a race condition. Yesterday, September 30, Nadezhda and I took part of the annual UNAM nocturnal race. How was it? Delicious. 8Km, starting next to UNAM's 1968 Olympics Stadium, going up towards the San Jer nimo exit, then back down across Insurgentes, past the swimming pool, the Architecture faculty and IIMAS, then up by Engineering, Accounting and Social Work. Under Insurgentes again, up past the Biomedical, Ecology and Biology institutes, next to the Botanical garden, then by the sports fields where we work out every day, and down to the stadium - To finish with a very emotive, really inspiring, really great last run inside the 1968 Olympics Stadium. I made a 53 minutes time, averaging 156 heartbeats per minute (quite high but not completely off for me). Of course, we got our souvenir T-shirts, and... Man, sign me up for the next one! :D

I don't get sick very often, so I'm not a big consumer of off-the-shelf drugs. I had noticed that Panadol equivalents (i.e. pain killers containing paracetamol) didn't seem to exist in the US, until Sarah said that Tylenol's active ingredient (acetaminophen) was what they call paracetamol in the US. Sure enough, Wikipedia confirmed this. It's funny how the same thing can have different names depending on what country you're in. Paracetamol is certainly a damn sight easier to pronounce than acetaminophen.

I've finally got around to making a 0.1 release of Postr, my Flickr uploading tool. It has a few nice features:

• Supports drag and drop, of both files and raw image data (upload straight from the GNOME screenshot tool without saving to a file)
• Set title, description and tags across a selection of multiple images
• Supports new-style Yahoo! accounts
• Displays the remaining upload quota for heavy/non-pro users

I'm making a 0.1 release now as I've been working on a new Flickr library using Python and Twisted for asynchronous operation, and want to get a 0.1 release out before I rewrite everything. You can follow the development in the Bazaar branch, or get the Postr 0.1 tarball. Obligatory screenshot:

Its the close of September. And just a week ago I turned 16: in hex, that is. Although I do distinctly remember how I wished coming back to being a 16-decimal-year-old then… So, how does it feel being one? I’ve barely begun to feel it. There has been a lot of distractions to keep me from contemplating too much about $age:

• School: Its almost out. Today we’re supposed to have our finals, but due to the wake of the super-typhoon that hit Manila a couple of days ago, the admins moved the exams to next Saturday. Yay!!!
• Work: Since the beginning of September, I have taken up work as a guest Software Engineer for Orange & Bronze Software Labs. Their mightly SABDFL, Calen Legaspi, has been working me up to join his company since he first heard of me last June (I think,) thanks to Charo and Ealden who at the time were regulars at #ubuntu-ph. Last August, I got a call from Dean, and getting me interested in doing a C++ project for the company. Well, needless to say, after learning lots about Perl and software development in general playing Sendpage on the SoC, I decided to jump in for a 3-month stint: now that my first month’s up, and we’re in a bit of a jam thanks to some force majeure, I hope we do kick out something by the first week of October (and have an Oktoberfest even…)
• Play: Also at the start of the month did I get my very own laptop, thanks to Google from my SoC work: an MSI MegaBook S262, which looks so much like a MacBook, but really much powerful than what Apple’s offering: Core Duo processor, 1 GB DDR2, 80GB PATA, SuperMulti DVD, WiFi and LAN, all of which work wonderfully in Kubuntu and Sarge. And the hardware’s mighty upgradeable, too… Now, I am finding myself mall-hoping Metro Manila in hopes of finding decent free WiFi, hehe…
• Politics: There’s some mighty talk going on in the PLUG mailing list about the FOSS bill proposed by a allegedly-communist party in the House of Representatives. While I think its quite laudable to have Free Software finally getting some real legislative attention, my apprehensions about the trustworthiness of the current administration is getting the better of me. That, as well as my fears about the pushing party’s own agenda about the matter, have been keeping me on a rather cautionary stance, since being a FOSS developer myself, a lot of what the current draft presents will directly affect how FOSS will grow here in the Philippines. Hopefully, once this passes, the FOSS bill ought to be a stimulator for Philippine growth, and not become just another fancy way for congressmen to get more pork…

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Moving back to Manila again has its own issues; I still have to look for a better place to stay (not that I’m complaining about my Tita’s place in Malate, but hey, we’re already overcrowded… I suppose I’ll get my own flat once I think I can stay out beyond the 3 months,) and I have to get better internet connectivity (all the better for my chroots to keep updated, and finally get back on the Debian/Ubuntu packaging scene.) I also have to find some time to get a passport, a haircut, some nice pair of sneakers, and a Wii. I’ve yet to know what this being 0×16 business is all about, but this I have to say: Thanks $DEITY for all the fish.