Search Results: "Martin"

14 March 2007

Martin Michlmayr: Debian

The aim of Debian is to integrate software produced by other projects to create a complete operating system based on free software. In recent years, the project has faced increasingly delayed and unpredictable releases. Most notably, the release process of Debian 3.1 was characterized by major delays. Initially announced for December 1, 2003, the software was finally released in June 2005: a delay of one and a half years. Since then, the project has made a number of improvements to its release process.
VersionDateMonths
1.11996-06-17
1.21996-12-126
1.31997-06-026
2.01998-07-2414
2.11999-03-097
2.22000-08-1417
3.02002-07-1923
3.12005-06-0635
Past Problems Solutions Outstanding problems

13 March 2007

Martin F. Krafft: High Fidelity

Last night I saw Babel by Alejandro Gonz lez I rritu, who as also made Amores Perros and 21 grams, both movies I adore. I did not write about the movie Babel in the way I used to write about movies somehow related, and I guess I am geek enough to have asked myself why. The question was just answered tonight by the (semi-)random (there is no random) choice of High Fidelity as the movie of choice for this night of a rather disappointing day (turned down on an apartment I wanted; lost cellphone). In no way does this imply negative cricitism about Babel, but it also wasn't a movie that blew me away like John Cusack's masterpiece (again, not to discredit Stephen Frears, the director). And the reason why I am so enthusiastic about that flick? Apart from Cusack's brilliant acting? It's because I can relate to Rob Gordon, whom Cusack plays. Not because I am his age or doing the stuff he does or fighting the battles he fights, but because I think exactly the same things about live, or love, or all these other petty concerns, and I admire the way Nick Hornby (the novel author), D.V. DeVincentis (the screenplay writer), and Cusack (the communicator) bring them across. But I am not in a what-does-it-all-mean phase, yet. And I do want to make a mixed tape.

Martin Michlmayr: Quality Improvement in Free Software: Release Management

As I'm nearing the completion of my PhD, I'm starting to write about the findings from my research. The aim of my PhD is to investigate quality improvement in free software projects. After some exploratory studies about quality in free software, I decided to focus on release management as one problematic area in which improvement is possible. My approach is to study the development process of projects and to investigate ways how these processes can be improved. The hope is that such improvements will lead to increased levels of quality in the software produced by free software projects. With regard to release management, I'm focusing especially on large and complex projects, in which hundreds of volunteers need to be coordinated during release preparations. I've been looking particularly at time based release management since my exploratory studies have shown that there is significant interest in this release management strategy. The main question of my research is how and why time based release management works for large free software projects. In my first series of postings, I will introduce the seven free software projects I have studied in depth during my research. For each project, I will briefly summarize what problems the project faced in the past, what changes they have implemented to address these problems, and what outstanding problems they still have.

12 March 2007

Martin Michlmayr: debian-installer rc2 for NSLU2 available

Frans Pop uploaded debian-installer a few days ago in preparation for RC2. RC2 will be released in a few days after some more testing and the creation of CD images. Since the NSLU2 doesn't need CD images and I've tested the installer already, I've made NSLU2 images of RC2 available. Special thanks go to Gordon Farquharson who has done tremendous amounts of testing in the last few weeks and months. Since RC1, the following changes have been implemented: Installation instructions are available.

11 March 2007

Martin F. Krafft: Proximity, a state of trance, and going over the limit

I really enjoy living so close by the airport, especially given the amount I have to travel. It's usually sufficient for me to leave my flat 60 minutes prior to departure time of any flight, and that has saved me from a bit of stress in the past. Today, on this incredibly fine Sunday, Zurich under a bright blue sky and the air at a comfortable 10-12 C, I decided to take a run down my current favourite route: from Auzelg down (up?) the Glatt river towards the airport. It's about a half hour run for the 5km between my flat and the fence separating bystanders from the runways. Usually I then turn around, possibly via a detour, to return home after 10-15km. Today I felt incredibly energetic (much of it was related to Amorphis, who were rocking my headphones), so I kept going, and before I knew it, I had decided I was going to run once around the airport. It turns out that the perimeter is larger in distance than getting there and back on foot. According to the Gmaps Pedometer, where I plotted my route, it's about 15km around the airport, and it was 26km full "door to door." But by then, my mind was set, and my enthusiasm completely overshadowed navigating through parking lots and roads and towns and over at least 5km of asphalt, which I hate. I ended up getting myself lost a bit due to lack of a watch and stupidly assuming that since I can't tell what time it is, the sun must be standing still. Eventually, though, I found someone to ask for directions and found my way back to the Glatt river. The rest of the way, knowing exactly what lay ahead and feeling my muscles scream and protesting, I managed to enter a state of trance in which my feet would not touch the ground anymore, in which I'd just fly over the path while feeling an incredible, overwhelming urge to go even faster. My mind ignored my body and kept going. What a great feeling! I got back to my flat exactly 3 hours after I embarked on the "little jog" feeling exhausted as I haven't felt in many years, but also very proud: this was the first time for me to break the 20km of continous running (I did not stop for a minute once). And now, even after a long and very hot bath and half an hour of stretching, I get to feel the consequences of going over the limit. Don't ask me to move for the rest of this day. NP: Amorphis / Am Universum

9 March 2007

Martin F. Krafft: Online meeting coordinator

About a year ago, I sought an online meeting coordinator, and got ready to implement such a tool, when my dear friend Isabel pointed me to Doodle. Just now I had the first chance to try it out and it looks like it does most of what one would need. It does not handle priorities but otherwise looks pretty useful. Give it a spin. As soon as I organised my first meeting with Doodle, I'll donate. Thanks, Michael! NP: OSI / Office of Strategic Influence

8 March 2007

Martin Michlmayr: Lemote's Fulong Miniature Computer

Lemote's Fulong Yesterday I received a Fulong Miniature Computer from China. This device is produced by Lemote and is based on the Loongson chip, a MIPS-like CPU developed in China and previously known as the Godson. The Fulong mini-PC has a Loongson 2E CPU running at 666 Mhz, 256 MB RAM and a 2.5" 40 GB hard drive. There are the usual I/O ports, such as USB, PS/2, Ethernet, audio, VGA and TV out. The Fulong mini-PC ships with a customized version of Debian. I'm really excited about the Loongson because it promises to make MIPS available on the desktop. In fact, the folks at Lemote already have a laptop based on the same motherboard used in the Fulong mini-PC. Lemote is also trying to establish a community around the Loongson. They have given 400 devices to partners and 600 to Loongson fans and developers in China. It seems that the community is quite active, but it's hard to tell because I don't read Chinese. Fortunately, there is a blog where regular updates about Loongson are posted. For now, I have taken some pictures of the Fulong, but in the coming months I look forward to integrating Loongson support into Debian.

Martin F. Krafft: The Cooper Temple Clause

I went out again to the Abart music club (warning: flash content) last night to see The Cooper Temple Clause. They have a new album out, which I haven't heard, but I own and really like their first two records, which is why I decided to go. Hanspeter and I entered the venue to find it filled with loads of people about half our age, mainly of the female gender, and judging from the mood of the music spun by the pre-DJ, we concluded that it's all going to stink and be incredibly soft girly-rock. We prepared for the worst and couldn't quite get the hang of the supporting band, Flink from Lucerne, who had some interesting ideas but generally sang too much and seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of development of musical themes. When they went off, we dived outside to evade the hot and humid air from all the teenies steaming up the place, came back, couldn't decide where to stand, and finally ended up in what would proof to be the best position in the venue, at least if you want to be optimistic about it. We were far enough from the stage to actually hear the singing (as opposed to standing directly at the stage during the Amplifier concert, where we could only barely make out the words), and there was a drift of a breeze whifting away the estrogen mist. And then main act, The Cooper Temple Clause, came on and really impressed me from the start. Hanspeter took a little while to get used to and appreciate the fact that it would be three people singing interchangeably (just as all front musicians kept changing instruments), but I was blown away from the start. Ben, the main singer's voice is amazing in that he can really just scream across all octaves and put a load of emotion into his music. Dan's voice appealed to me less, but it was totally overshadowed by his amazing guitar and bass performance, which built up to a peak in the second half of the show. Tom, who DJ'd and took control over the electronics, started screaming into the microphone more and more as the show went on, and with screaming I don't mean uncontrolled vocal chord noise, but rather perfect control of the pitch and a smooth blend with the rest of the band. Really well done, guys. I am still unsure whether to buy your new record, but I'll definitely be listening to your old ones more often in the near future. And props also to the Abart location, which rose to a top position in my list of best venues in Zurich after only my second visit. NP: Disturbed / The Sickness

3 March 2007

Russell Coker: the word "beamer"

Martin F. Krafft blogs about looking for advice on buying a "beamer". He describes the word as meaning a projector in Germany (it also means the same in the Netherlands).

Since the time when I lived in the Netherlands I have been using the word in English, most people immediately understand what it means, and I believe it's a better option than the word "projector". The only possible confusion in this regard is the term Beamer is slang for a BMW car. But it's pretty rare to talk about cars and computer display methods in the same sentence so this shouldn't be a problem.

2 March 2007

Martin F. Krafft: Looking for a home cinema projector

Dear Lazyweb: yesterday a good friend of mine invited me to dinner and asked me to prepare the asparagus, because she didn't know how to do it. Funny that, for neither did I. So we get online, but after the first few pages, I swore and killed the browser window, and instead turned to the #debian.de IRC channel, where I was promptly helped. The asparagus turned out to be really good, and I really didn't expect otherwise. So I went on to rave about what a great community Debian is, with the result that today she calls me up and ask me to query "my community" for advice on what projector to get. She wants a home cinema type thing to be mounted on the ceiling (so it needs a remote control), she'd be willing to spend around 600 for it, and she'd prefer if exchange bulbs didn't come in at half the price of the projector itself. Does anyone have recommendations for specific models, brands, or other stuff to look out for before we go shopping for one? Please let me know! Don't let me down on this one. :) Thanks, Lazyweb! It goes without saying that I shall update this post with relevant information. NP: Sina / Bescht of Sina Update: I previously used the word "beamer", which is used only in Germany to describe video projectors, despite it being an English word.

27 February 2007

Martin F. Krafft: Printing on translucent materials

Dear Lazyweb: I am on the look for a print shop that can print on translucent material in such a way that the colour can't be rubbed off. It also must not cost an arm and a leg. Can anyone recommend such a company, preferably in Switzerland or Germany, but that's not a requirement? Thanks! NP: Opeth / Morningrise Update: I am not looking for transparencies, nor do I want to print myself. I want thicker material that has a milky appearance to be used for flyers and business cards.

26 February 2007

Martin F. Krafft: After the Wedding

Following Adam's Apples, I went to see yet another Danish film in my favourite theatre tonight: After the Wedding (warning: flash content) by Susanne Bier and Anders Thomas Jensen (who wrote the apple tree story), starring once again Mads Mikkelsen. I will only say three things about this movie, because the plot has so many surprises that I wouldn't want to spoil it for you; that was the first thing. While on the subject of the plot, I have to say that it's a great story, which never felt forced or unreal in any way, maybe apart from two cheesy scenes towards the end. And finally: it's been a while since I went to a movie that would stimulate my lachrymal glands in a noticeable way; this one did. Highly recommended. NP: Rocket Scientists / Oblivion Days

Martin F. Krafft: Nothing is as good as proper beer

Unlike pixie, I actually do not like Belgian beer at all, and definitely not after the past weekend of drinking the charts up and down whenever not at (and I guess even during) FOSDEM 2007. I really just prefer plain, crisp beer without added flavours or abusively high alcohol levels. My journalist self already had a go at writing up the event, and the other parts of me don't feel like writing a short story, so here are the important facts:
  • The Reve d'Asie restaurant is definitely worth a stop if you're into Thai and Vietnamese food.
  • If you are looking for a cute bar without too much background noise, try the L'Imaige de Notre Dame.
  • Our hotel was great: clean, affordable, within crawling distance from most anywhere, and with a decent breakfast. I won't write about it here or else it'll be run over next year. If you buy me a (real) beer, I might disclose information face to face.
  • FOSDEM was once again a very well-organised conference with a lot of interesting subjects and a busy hallway track. I would hope to reconvene in a bit of a larger venue next year though.
  • I cancelled the first of two talks I had proposed the day before due to a communications problem which had me find out that my paper was accepted only a week before the conference not enough to do the research I proposed. Since the research is at best tangential to my other research work, I had simply forgot about that part of FOSDEM during my recent stay in Limerick.
  • My other talk was about netconf and I think it was received well. It was definitely good to sit down and order the thoughts I had been cooking up for over than a year into a coherent collection of slides. If you are interested in this subject, please join the mailing list and contribute to the wiki page.
I am looking forward to next year, and another set of talks so interesting that I don't actually have to leave the Debian DevRoom at all. And I might bring my own beer next time. NP: Rocket Scientists / Oblivion Days

Annabelle Tully: FOSDEM

So its post-FOSDEM already… Time flies when you’re having fun.
I arrived Brussels at around 10AM friday, met Tulitar, who was just as clueless as me regarding where the hell we were going. We ended up meeting a nice group of people on the train who incidently neither knew where they were going, but were following someone who did. We eventually got off at the right place and met Dave, who also had no clue where the hostel was.
After being slightly lost and meeting some other Debian people, we finally got in at the hostel where we had to lock baggage in the basement as we could not check in before three. Tired as hell, we left out and met Jeroen and a few other people and headed for the chocolate museum. Belgian chocolate is /awesome/. They had solid dark chocolate sculptures and even chocolate CLOTHING.
After the chocolate museum, everyone left back for the hostel and passed out, except me, who was still eager for more city exploring and/or beer. I met up with Martin and left to get some asian foods before the famous beer gathering. I’m convinced we tried every beer on every page of every beer charter of every pub we visited. Belgian beer is by far the best I’ve ever had. ‘Duvel’ is one of my top favourites.
During the beer gathering we thought it’d be a really good idea to discretely throw coasters at the people sitting below, us hiding at the top of the pub. Ended not as discretely as it started, hundreds of coasters flying throughout the room. Pure entertainment gold, but seemed to piss off the organizers and bar-people, and Martin was noble enough to take the blame even if I blatantly started it all with my childish ways.
The next day was started with getting lost AGAIN, because I could in no way remember where the hostel was. Interesting start of the day. I think I’ve lost count on the amount of times I’ve gotten lost in Brussels at this point. On our way to the FOSDEM venues we also found an entire area of brussels where they just don’t sell sandwiches. The day ended with much delicious Belgian beer consumage.
All in all it was fun and interesting. I also discovered that they are way more lenient with airport security in Belgium. I had tons of liquids and creams in my bag, and they didn’t comment it at all OR put it in little plastic bags. Despite me happily not feeling like a terrorist, the flight back sucked. It was an hour delayed, and when I landed there was even more snow in Norway than there originally was when I left. Missing the green grass of Belgium.
Now please, people, upload pictures from FOSDEM and give me the URL! :-)

23 February 2007

Martin F. Krafft: The Inet

The folks of I, Cringely published some thoughts by a guy called David Harrison, who proposes to replace the ICANN-dominated DNS infrastructure with a new kind, which is backed by new technology and stricter rules from the start. I would really like to see the "Independent Network" ("Inet") be run by the open-source community. And I think we should get started soon. If there are people knowledgeable of whois databases and the DNS protocol, let's get in touch. If you're going to be at FOSDEM 2007, let's do it live!

22 February 2007

Martin F. Krafft: Amplifier

I went out to see Amplifier from Manchester, who were supported by Cloudride, a very promising gig from Basel, Switzerland. Both bands put together an excellent show, seriously excellent, and they were having a real fun time as well, it felt. If you have a chance, I suggest you attend one of their forthcoming concerts if you're into loud and groovy rock with progressive beats. Thanks guys, it's been a blast. Good stuff! NP: Amplifier / Amplifier

21 February 2007

Martin F. Krafft: Leaving Limerick

I have returned home after five weeks of Ph.D. research in Limerick. I've come a bit further on the way towards my thesis but still have not reached the critical mass moment when my inertia makes me go on and on until the work is done. But in all fairness, I've made a good deal of progress and now should have all I need to work on this in my spare time at home too. I also had a fabulous time outside of the office, being immersed into a wonderful circle of lads and ladies from the very start. I would not be able to capture all the fun in writing about it, so I won't and instead resort to looking forward to my return for a two-day workshop in a little less than three weeks, and another longer stay in April/May. This time, I won't lure my bike along. It was a good idea, but there was too much rain and mud to really enjoy it. Even though transport to and from Limerick (which isn't exactly well-connected to the rest of the world in terms of transport) was mostly painless (thanks to people like Ewan, who'd take me along to Dublin and drop me in front of my hotel), it's probably more trouble than worth especially since I doubt I could get bored around "109/110 Elm Park" (which is where I lived). Daren, Mel, Claire, Jonathan, Cliona, Cathal, Sarah, Caitriona, Lisa, James, Jerry, Karen, Jurij, Gary, Eoin, and everyone else whose name I didn't manage to store (forgive me), I miss y'all already NP: Amorphis / Elegy

Martin F. Krafft: Why we have not yet released my Skycon presentation

On Sunday, I gave a talk at the 1st Skycon titled "Debian etch: does that itch scratch yet" (it's far less funny now than I thought it was when I came up with it). I think it was a well-received talk and from first feedback, it provided a doog overview of our situation with etch to those who don't follow the project very closely. I would especially like to thank Steve Langasek, Sam Hocevar, Frans Pop, Brian May, Anthony Towns, Theodore Ts'o, Thomas Viehmann. and the other folks of #debian-devel for their input during preparation. And a big shout to everyone who showed up to the talk itself, which included a bunch of the chaps who showed me a "craic" time during my five week stay in Limerick ("craic" is an Irish way to vent enthusiasm). As I've come to expect, my (not-so-)lovely IBM laptop hardlocked whenever I tried to switch on the external VGA port, be it via ACPI, /proc, or the BIOS, even after a reboot. I also could not get a Wifi association and did not have a USB key on me, so I started to get comfortable with the fact that I'd be doing the talk based off an older set of slides. Fortunately, just when I was about to start, I restored the ACPI registers to proper working order using a uswsusp suspend cycle (of all things; did you hear that, Matthew?), even though Cathal's USB stick and Dave's laptop came to my rescue. Thanks guys, even though I ended up using my own laptop, mostly because of Firefox's Autohide extension. The slides are online under the CC by-sa-nc 2.5 licence. The source is a reStructured Text document (and a bunch of images), which rst2s5 translated for use with the sweet S5 presentation system (S6? Haha). Last but not least, I would like to thank everyone at Skynet and especially Laura for organising this event. It was very fun and the selection of talks as well as the attendants ranked above the likes of such "important" events like LinuxTag. I hope there will be another Skycon next year! NP: Amorphis / Elegy Update: Thanks, h01ger for pointing out that Sun Java is not actually in main, but in non-free. Slides updated.

Martin F. Krafft: Beige

James:
"Beige is not a colour, beige it'll become all on its own" (source unknown)
I am sorry, though. NP: Barclay James Harvest / Gone to Earth

18 February 2007

Evan Prodromou: 29 Pluvi se CCXV

Impressive amount of snow today -- all the digging I did yesterday when we got home is pretty much moot at this point. Huge swirling snowflake clusters are coming down from the sky and have been since we got up this morning. It's awfully pretty. Amita June and I went out to Loblaw's in the old CPR Angus Shops to replenish our larder, which was pretty empty after our trip to NYC. We had a pretty easy time of it, although I thought I'd be smart and go through the self-service line with my huge cart, which took about 2-3 times longer than just having a professional or two deal with it. By the time we left, Amita was exhausted and she fell asleep in the car on the way home. tags:

Jodi Martin at the Lobby Lounge My friend Jodi Martin is playing at the Lobby Lounge at 4538 av Papineau tonight (Sunday 18th Feb) from 7:30PM to 11PM. Jodi is a South Australian a beautiful voice; she's just an awfully decent person. I'm going to be there, after Amita goes to sleep tonight. Jodi's also got a smouldering new pub photo here. I can't tell if she's gonna kiss you or punch you. I guess that's part of the magic. tags:

wikipatterns.com One of the more interesting people I met at RecentChangesCamp 2007 was Stewart Mader, wiki evangelist for Atlassian and creator of ikiw.org (great domain name). We spent a lot of time talking about using wiki in education. Stewart has just launched wikipatterns.com, a site that uses pattern language to describe wiki usage, wiki adoption, and wiki roles. Patterns and wiki have a long and illustrious history together, of course; Ward Cunningham's original wiki, the Portland Pattern Repository, was created to help software developers share design patterns. Many patterns about wiki were first identified on Ward's wiki itself, and others have been elaborated on MeatballWiki and CommunityWiki, but as far as I know no site dedicated specifically to Wiki patterns has happened before. wikipatterns.com has some that I've never seen identified before, like the Content Alert and Scaffolds. I'm interested to see how wikipatterns.com goes. I think it could be an extremely valuable resource. Currently a lot of the language is aimed towards company wikis, which is probably where a lot of Atlassian people's interest lies, but I'm more interested in creating big Open Content repositories based on the contributions of the entire Internet. It will be interesting to see how wiki patterns scale to fit both kinds of wikis. tags:

Next.

Previous.