In the last days I uploaded several (new) packages to backports.org:
I bought my current cell phone in mid January 2008, which means I have had it for ~830 days.
I tend not to lose sight of the few things I keep on me at all times - Keys, wallet and cell phone. In this 830 day period, I doubt I have forgotten my phone for more than three days. Ok, lets just add some extra five days, for times I have travelled without the phone charger, resulting in me not having a phone available. So, eight days out of 830 gives us that the probability for me accidentally not having access to my phone for a whole day is close to 0.01, or 1% P(stupid) 0.01.
I am not a heavy phone user. Far from it, I tend not to like using the phone. My calls are always kept to the minimum necessary, and I would not be surprised if I used my phone typically less than twice per week. However, there is a recurring event that makes my phone ring more often during certain very well defined periods of the year, with 1/365 probability. So, lets call this P(birthday) 0.00273.
Yesterday I spent the day with some good, very long time friends. We did the April Ciclot n - I biked for 42 very nice kilometers, they did 36 (as we met 8Km away from my home ;-) )... but yes, after a while, I left my phone at my friends' table.
So I guess today the phone will ring way more insistently than usual. At a table far away from home. With a probability of P(stupid birthday) 2.73 10 .
So I'm facing the enjoyment of a very improbable day!
Dear Gerhard,
one week after you have left us after your long fight and we payed one s last respects to you today, you hopefully may find your peace!
Thanks for all the things you have done for your family.
Debian Developer www.debian.org Member of the Linux Foundation www.linux.com Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe www.fsfe.org
Yesterday, my co-worker notified my about a promotion of 3DSupply and I recognized, that they have new design and you have also the choise to select from various models and colors for your shirts. I like the new site much more than the old.
Starting about a year ago, I started following the release of videos from TED events. If one looked interesting, I would download the video to watch later. In this way, I accumulated a substantial collection of talks which I never managed to watch.
I spent a Saturday evening working my way through the list. These are my favorites out of this batch.
| 2005/06 | 2006/07 | 2007/08 | 2008/09 | 2009/10 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| number of (partial) days | 25 | 17 | 29 | 37 | 30 |
| Dam ls | 10 | 10 | 5 | 10 | 16 |
| Diedamskopf | 15 | 4 | 24 | 23 | 13 |
| Warth/Schr cken | 0 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 1 |
| total meters of altitude | 124634 | 74096 | 219936 | 226774 | 202089 |
| highscore | 10247m | 8321m | 12108m | 11272m | 11888m |
| # of runs | 309 | 189 | 503 | 551 | 462 |
While I normaly don t care much about Ubuntu, I m subscribed to lauchpad.net for the packages I m involved within Debian. In the last days, I replaced my Nokia E90 with a Nokia N97 mini. As I m using my mobile from time to time to hook up to the internet when traveling, I thought I just need to replace the MAC in my /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf and that s it. As always Murphy striked back. After debugging for hours I realized the DUN channel seems depending on the model.
You can discover your DUN channel something like:
# hcitool scan
Scanning
3C:F7:2A:1A:4D:2A Cycophone
# sdptool browse 3C:F7:2A:1A:4D:2A \
grep -9 Service Name: Dial-Up Networking \
tail -10 grep Channel
Channel: 22
So your /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf should now look like:
rfcomm0
bind yes;
device 3C:F7:2A:1A:4D:2A;
channel 22;
comment Cycophone ;
I hope you all have already seen at least parts of our preparation for a Mini DebConf in Berlin this year. There are various posts on planet, some mails on -project and -events-eu and as I saw just today even identi.ca is not spared. If you haven t heard of it, this is your chance.
Every year the LinuxTag (Linux day) is a four-day event in Berlin, Germany, likely comparable to other OpenSource events. It provides talks, discussion and a lot of booths of various Free Software projects. This year s LinuxTag will be on June 9th till 12th. Since it s held on a
huge fairground, we were able to get quite some piece of it for our own use. We will have two areas, one for talks, the other as a hack lab and use right the middle of the LinuxTag for the Mini DebConf: June 10th and 11th with the hack lab open all through the night of course.
Finding sponsors was the hardest deal in the beginning and we re not done with it yet. We got enough money, though, to make the decision and we still hope to get everything covered. Luckily we also have hardware sponsors and help on various issues we would not be able to deal with on our own. What s still missing, is you! :)
The schedule for the talks is almost full, yet the hack lab could need more man power. Our idea is since we will be in freeze by then, right? to do a BSP incl. help for newbies. That means we will not only try to help users, we also would like to teach how to squash bugs and thus attract possible maintainers and other contributors. All that of course only works if we are enough people there.
Now I understand this might seem to be only attractive to german developers as most of the talks will be held in german. But I strongly believe we can deal with it if you don t speak german. :) And at least on the first day of the event, you can meet our new DPL zack who will have the pleasure to provide the opening talk. Yay!
Having said all this, you are more than invited to attend and help. Find more info (and a way to offer help) in the debconf wiki and enjoy more press announcements within the next few weeks.
http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Miniconf-LT-Berlin/2010
On OFTC:
/join #debian-miniconf-berlin
I hope you all have already seen at least parts of our preparation for a Mini DebConf in Berlin this year. There are various posts on planet, some mails on -project and -events-eu and as I saw just today even identi.ca is not spared. If you haven t heard of it, this is your chance.
Every year the LinuxTag (Linux day) is a four-day event in Berlin, Germany, likely comparable to other OpenSource events. It provides talks, discussion and a lot of booths of various Free Software projects. This year s LinuxTag will be on June 9th till 12th. Since it s held on a
huge fairground, we were able to get quite some piece of it for our own use. We will have two areas, one for talks, the other as a hack lab and use right the middle of the LinuxTag for the Mini DebConf: June 10th and 11th with the hack lab open all through the night of course.
Finding sponsors was the hardest deal in the beginning and we re not done with it yet. We got enough money, though, to make the decision and we still hope to get everything covered. Luckily we also have hardware sponsors and help on various issues we would not be able to deal with on our own. What s still missing, is you! :)
The schedule for the talks is almost full, yet the hack lab could need more man power. Our idea is since we will be in freeze by then, right? to do a BSP incl. help for newbies. That means we will not only try to help users, we also would like to teach how to squash bugs and thus attract possible maintainers and other contributors. All that of course only works if we are enough people there.
Now I understand this might seem to be only attractive to german developers as most of the talks will be held in german. But I strongly believe we can deal with it if you don t speak german. :) And at least on the first day of the event, you can meet our new DPL zack who will have the pleasure to provide the opening talk. Yay!
Having said all this, you are more than invited to attend and help. Find more info (and a way to offer help) in the debconf wiki and enjoy more press announcements within the next few weeks.
http://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/Miniconf-LT-Berlin/2010
On OFTC:
/join #debian-miniconf-berlin
/join #debian-miniconf-berlinHelp is still needed with video and audio stuff. If you think you know how to move a camera, or you can even work a sound mixer, get in touch with us. We need a few volunteers to cover the whole two days. Also, more generally help is needed in order to have people to talk to at all times both for speakers and visitors. No special knowledge is necessary although it might prove handy to know what Debian actually is. :) Interested? As a visitor or helper? Anyways, get in touch with us and it s going to be awesome! </commercial>
The 05/2010 issue of the German Linux-Magazin contains an article of mine about DocBook, Subversion and zpub. I was quite surprised to find it there I submitted it in January and did not receive any feedback. But of course it is a nice surprise to find out it was accepted!
The article, the zpub website and zpub itself is only available in German so far, but there is an English blog post describing zpub.
A while ago now, Sarah commented that one night when she's woken up in the
middle of the night, that she'd observed me stop breathing for a while in my
sleep. She wanted me to go see the sleep doctors that she'd seen (she was
diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea a couple of years ago).
So I eventually packed myself off to the Stanford
Sleep Disorders Clinic, which is at Stanford's shiny new outpatient
centre in Redwood City.
They took a look at me, and declared I had a crowded mouth, and a narrow
airway, and asked me to do a sleep study.
I did the sleep study in the middle of January. That was "interesting". I
had a ton of wires glued to me, and needless to say, I didn't sleep
particularly well, but apparently I slept enough for them to be able to
diagnose me.
A couple of weeks later, I got a letter with the results. I had a Respiratory
Disturbance Index of 16.6. The letter from the clinic defined RDI as
including "events of 10 seconds or more with cessation of airflow or
discernable reduction in airflow associated with arousal or oxygen
desaturation of 3% or more".
I had one obstructive sleep apnea event, and 119 obstructive hypopnea events
during the sleep study. At one point my O2 saturation dropped to
89%, but it was very briefly. The overall average was 96%.
A month ago I did another sleep study, this time while I was hooked up to a
CPAP machine, and they fiddled with the pressure. I was fairly exhausted
that night, and slept like a log.
Based on the results of the second sleep study, I've been prescribed an auto
PAP machine with a pressure ranging between 13 to 15 cm of water pressure
(whatever that means).
I got the machine, a ResMed
S8 AutoSet II a week ago last Friday. It's slightly more advanced than
the CPAP
machine that Sarah uses, in that it'll adjust its pressure within the
range it is set to, as it deems necessary throughout the night. It also
backs off the pressure when you exhale, like Sarah's does.
I'm not particularly thrilled to be sleeping with this thing on my face. The
first night I used it, I slept fine. Something like from 10:30pm until 6am.
Subsequently, I keep waking up at precisely 3:30am for some reason, and
it's hard to get back to sleep with it on, so I take it off. A few nights,
some sort of mask leakage alarm has gone off at some random point in the
night. I haven't been in any state to try and diagnose what's going on when
that happens, so I just take off the mask and turn the whole thing off.
I was curious as to whether I'd notice some sort of life-changing difference
between using it and not using it, like Sarah does, but so far, I can't say
I've noticed any discernable difference. I also haven't gone a night without
using it yet.
Getting a properly fitting mask was a bit of a challenge. I spent ages at
the durable medical equipment supplier trying on different sorts of masks.
The one I've currently got still leaves a bit of a red mark across the
bridge of my nose. I can take it back in the first 30 days, and get
refitted, so I might still be doing that.
A special report on America's economy: Time to rebalance I've been thinking about that for a while too, especially after the dollar's recent weakness, although it has been strengthening some, lately, apparently due to the state of Greece's finances... I think that the computing industry is, in general, well poised to take advantage of that. For instance, what could be easier to export than computing power or "Software as a Service"? All it takes is a few minutes for someone in Europe to sign up to a US-based service with a credit card. For instance, compare Linode's prices and good service with most of their European competitors (gandi.net for instance, who are good people, and you have to love that they put "no bullshit" right on their front page). Not that they don't have good service in Europe, but it's very difficult to compete on price with the dollar being significantly cheaper. With the dollar where it is right now, gandi is almost, but not quite, competitive with Linode. If you don't include taxes. If the dollar weakens again, though, things could easily tilt far in Linode's favor. Besides a weak dollar, I think it will be important for companies in a position to do so in the US to focus on "the rest of the world". The US is a big, populous country where it's very easy to forget about far-off lands. Compare my home town of Eugene, Oregon to where I live in Padova. Google Maps says that it takes 7+ hours to drive to Vancouver, Canada (which, to tell the truth, isn't all that foreign in that they speak English with an accent much closer to mine than say, Alabama or Maine). Going south, Google says it's 15+ hours just to San Diego, although I think that's optimistic myself, given traffic in California. From Padova, I can be in France in 5 hours, according to Google, 3 hours to Switzerland, 4 to Innsbruck, in Austria, less than 3 hours to the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, and around 3 hours to Croatia, too. And if you wanted to throw in another country, the Republic of San Marino is also less than 3 hours away, according to Google's driving time estimates. You could probably live your entire life in a place like Eugene and never really deal much with foreigners, whereas here, nearby borders are both a historic and an ever-present fact. The outcome of this is that, to some degree, people in the US have traditionally focused their businesses "inwards" until they got to a certain size. Which is, of course, a natural thing to do when you have such a big, homogenous market to deal with before you even start thinking about foreign languages, different laws, exchange rates and all the hassle those things entail. However, if exchange rates hold steady or favor the US further, and internal spending remains weaker, it appears as if it may be sensible for companies to invest some time and energy to attract clients in "the rest of the world". "Cloud" (anyone got a better term? this one's awfully vague, but I want to encompass both "computing power" like Linode or Amazon's EC2, as well as "software as a service") companies likely will have a much easier time of things: for many services, it's easy to just keep running things in the US for a while, and worry about having physical or legal infrastructure abroad later. Your service might not be quite as snappy as it may be with a local server, but it'll do, if it performs a useful function. Compare that with a more traditional business where you might have to do something like open a factory abroad, or at the very least figure out the details of how to ship physical products abroad and sell them, and do so in a way that you're somewhat insured against the large array of things that could go wrong between sending your products on their merry way, and someone buying them in Oslo, Lisbon or Prague. Since this barrier to entry is lower, it makes more sense to climb over it earlier on. As an example, Linode recently did a deal to provide VPS services from a London data center, to make their service more attractive to European customers. However, they still don't appear have marketing materials translated into various languages, and presumably they don't have support staff capable of speaking languages like Chinese, German or Russian either (well, at least not in an official capacity). This isn't to pick on them; they may have considered those things and found them too much of an expense/distraction/hassle for the time being - they certainly know their business better than I do - and that they simply are content to make do with English. Other businesses, however, may decide that a local touch is important to attracting clients. What do you need to look at to make your service more attractive to people in other countries? In no particular order:
After being away from home for almost two weeks (and, due to unforseen circumstances, having the longest time away from my mailbox I can recall in almost 15 years), last Monday I met with Pooka and Caro, originally just for lunch, but it evolved into an evening-long work session on the SECO3 project (which I continued long into the night But I'm drifting into offtopicness).
Caro is now living again in Costa Rica, and to prove it, she brought us two delicious-smelling bags of coffee. Now, I know my cats like the smell of coffee, I know specially Santa loves to completely put her head inside my coffee cup and lick what's left of my espresso's foam
But this was really surprising. It was not until today, three days later, I had the heart of bringing my coffee to the office where I'll enjoy it.
It is so aromatic that Chupchic and Santa seemed to be taking turns to keep me from claiming the bag At all times, either (or both!) of them layed on top of my precious. It was not until today, when I gave them their breakfast, I was able to take the (still warm) bag of coffee and bring it to work.
Tesco Car Insurance (and most
likely their other financial products) operate a commercial email system which
is populated by anyone who submits their address to them as part of searching
for a car insurance quote.
That's not particularly unusual. Each mail that Tesco sends includes
unsubscribe instructions - standard industry practise. However Tesco's
instructions do not work. I have followed them at least three times since
January this year to no avail. Despite this I have continued to receive
unsolicitied commercial email (spam) from Tesco.
Tesco do not answer mail to their postmaster or abuse addresses, and do not
accept mail for those local parts at many of their domains (they use more than
one domain for their business: tescofinance.com, tesco.com, tescocompare.com,
contact.tescocompare.com, tescoinsurance.com).
I would advise that nobody ever submit their details to a Tesco-affiliated
company for these reasons. I have given up and blacklisted them on the mail
servers which I control.
Based on the unrelated experiences of a friend of mine, I would have strong
reservations regarding the quality of the services they offer, too - in
particular their home insurance products.
Next.