Reporters Sans Frontiers (AKA RSF AKA Reporters Without Borders) has an interesting document about blogging [1]. They are specifically focussed on blogging as a way of reporting news. Their definition of a blog states that it is “a personal website” (there are many corporate blogs run by teams) and that it contains “mostly news” (most blogs that I read contain mostly technial information about computers and any “news” is mostly about the author). They also describe a blog as being set up with an “interactive tool” - most blogs are written using web-based tools, but some are written with plain text and a compilation system. Some of their technical information is simply wrong. For example they say that RSS “alerts users whenever their favourite blogs are updated” (this can be done through RPC notification which then requires RSS to pull the data - but a user will almost always have a tool polling their favourite RSS feeds). Their section listing the various options for blogging platforms mentions LiveJournal, Blogger, and MSNSpaces but doesn’t mention Wordpress.com which seems to be a serious omission (although it does mention civiblog.org which is a useful hosting resource for grassroots political campaigning). But these are minor problems, they are reporters primarily not programmers. Their document gets interesting when it gives links to pages about blogging ethics. One page that was not directly linked (presumably because it mainly concerns non-journalistic blogging) is Rebecca Blood’s document about blogging ethics [2]. She gives a brief coverage to conflicts of interest and gives most space to the topic of maintaining a record of changes. One thing I have been considering is having a separate instance of Wordpress for documents that change [3]. This way regular blog posts (such as this one) can be relied on to preserve a list of changes (any change other than correcting a typo will be documented) so if you link to a post you can rely on the original intent being preserved. But for posts which have ongoing value as live documents they will be kept current without a significant change-log. Items that go into the main blog would include commentary on news and predictions, and the document blog would contain technical information about Linux, the science-fiction stories that I will eventually write, etc. When I wrote my previous blog post about this issue I was mainly considering technical issues, but when considering the ethical issues it becomes clear that I need a separate blog (or other CMS) for such things. The site etbe.coker.com.au needs to be a reliable record of what I wrote while another site such as docs.coker.com.au could contain live documents with no such record. The essential factor here is the ability of the user to know what type of document they are seeing. Another really interesting point that Rebecca makes is in regard to known bad sources. Sometimes a known bad source can produce worthy data and is worth referencing, but you have to note the context (which among other things means that if the worthy data gets any reasonable number of hits it may get replaced by something entirely different). If a blogger cites a reference on a known bad site and explains the reason for the reference (and the fact that the nature of the site is known) then the reader reaction will be quite different to just a reference with no explanation. As a contrast to Rebecca Blood’s document the cyberjournalist.net code of ethics [4] covers the traditional issues of journalistic integrity, “public interest” etc. One interesting issue that they raise (but apparently don’t address) is the definition of “private people“. While it is generally agreed that movie stars and similar people deserve less protection as they have chosen to be in the public eye the situation regarding bloggers is less clear. Is a blogger with a high ranking on technorati.com in a similar position to a Hollywood star when it comes to privacy? A claim is sometimes made that blogs are unreliable because they can change (based on the actions of some bloggers who change posts with no notification and turn sections of the blogsphere into a swamp). Magazines and newspapers are held as an example of unchanging content and people who publish online magazines sometimes express horror at the idea of changing a past issue. The fact is that newspapers and magazines never changed past issues because it is impossible to recall hundreds of thousands of printed documents that are distributed around a country or the world. When it’s possible to fix old issues (as it is online) then the requirement is to document the changes not keep bad versions. It probably would be a useful feature for a blogging package to have the ability to display (and link to) old versions of a page. This would allow the users to easily see the changes and anyone who references a post can reference a particular version of it. In some situations it may make sense to use a Wiki server instead of a Blog server for some data to preserve the change history. Maybe I should consider a wiki in which only I have write access for my documents repository. No-one seems to cover the issue of how to deal with fiction. Obviously for a blog such as 365tomorrows.com (a science-fiction blog) it’s assumed that all content is fictional unless stated otherwise. The problem comes when someone includes fiction amongst the non-fiction content of a blog. I recently unsubscribed from a blog feed when the author revealed that what appeared to have been a diary entry was actually a fiction story (and a poor one at that). If your blog has mostly non-fiction then any fiction must be clearly marked, probably including the word “fiction” in the title and the permalink would be required to avoid all potential of confusion. For my documents CMS/blog I am considering having a category of “fiction” and to use the category name in the permalink address of each post. Of course science-fiction is sometimes obvious as fiction, but to avoid problems with fiction that is set in current times I think it’s best to clearly mark all such posts. The old-fashioned media seems to have dealt with this, tabloid womens magazines (which almost everyone reads occasionally as they are often the only reading materiel in a waiting room) traditionally have a fiction story in every issue which is clearly marked. Another type of blogging is corporate blogging. I wonder whether that needs to be covered separately in an ethics code. One thing that the three documents about ethics have in common (as a side-note in each) is the fact that the personal reputation of the writer depends on their ethics. If you are known for writing truthfully and fairly then people will treat your posts more seriously than that of writers who lie or act unfairly. There are direct personal benefits in acting ethically. The RSF document claims that the sole purpose of ethics standards is to instill trust in the readership which directly benefits the writer - not for any abstract reasons. Whenever ethics is mentioned in terms of writing there is always someone who claims that it can’t be enforced, well many people in your audience will figure out whether you are acting ethically and decide whether they want to continue reading your materiel. I wonder whether Planet installations should have ethics codes and remove blogs that violate them. In conclusion I think that a complete code of ethics for blogging needs to have some IF clauses to cover the different types of blog. I may have to write my own. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

• [1] http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/handbook_bloggers_cyberdissidents-GB.pdf


• [2] http://rebeccablood.net/handbook/excerpts/weblog_ethics.html


• [3] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2007/09/30/blogging-and-documents/


• [4] http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php

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You know the problem? Something happens, and all your systems go down—scheduled or otherwise. When you boot them up, one box is faster than the other; and as a result, some network mounts don't really work correctly. While this doesn't really happen at work, I've seen it after a power failure at home. I thought this was a feature that Windows had but Linux doesn't. I really should've known better...

wouter@country:~$ mount
/dev/hda5 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)

(...)

binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
automount(pid15173) on /autofs type autofs (rw,fd=5,pgrp=15173,minproto=2,maxproto=4)
wouter@country:~$ ls /mnt/stuff

(lots of private data snipped...)

wouter@country:~$ mount
/dev/hda5 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro,commit=0)
tmpfs on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)

(...)

binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
automount(pid15173) on /autofs type autofs (rw,fd=5,pgrp=15173,minproto=2,maxproto=4)
goa:/stuff on /autofs/stuff type nfs (rw,addr=192.168.119.23)

And after I wait a minute, that last line is gone. Automounters are cool. And not too hard to set up, either, if only a bit confusing at first. My /etc/auto.master contains the following (not counting commented-out examples):

/autofs	/etc/auto.autofs --timeout=60

I then need to have a directory /autofs, on which the automounter mounts a special filesystem if it's started; this is the "automount" in the above mount output. The autofs needs a second automounter map, which looks like this in my case:

cdrom	-fstype=iso9660,ro,nosuid,nodev	:/dev/cdrom
stuff	-fstype=nfs			goa:/stuff
camerab	-fstype=vfat,ro,umask=133,dmask=22 :/dev/disk/by-id/usb-GENERIC_USB_Storage-SDC_200606191719424ND-0:1-part1
floppy	-fstype=auto			:/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Y-E_DATA_USB_Floppy_Drive

Occasionally, yes, from the above lines it can be inferred that this indeed also works for my USB floppy drive, my multicardreader, and my CD-ROM drive. Finally, I need a symlink into the automount filesystem, like so:

wouter@country:~$ ls -l /mnt/stuff
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2007-10-23 19:21 /mnt/stuff -> /autofs/stuff

et voila: if I now try to access anything below /autofs/stuff, the automounter kicks in, transparently mounts the filesystem, and without any further delay or ado, I can get at my files. Well—unless the server is down, that is.

Belatedly, as promised, here are the questions from the floor at last week's half-year meeting of the Co-operative Group Kennet and Avon area. All errors and omissions are mine, of course.

How do we defend against demutualisation and private equity attacks?

Our rules are now written so that demutualisation would require assets to be transferred to other co-operatives. Please comment on other ways to the current constitutional review consultation.

How can ordinary members get informed and involved in running the group?

Get items into network, call the regional office.

The consitutional review should give more power to meetings and make it easier for motions and binding promises.

will forward this to the review.

Why did the group secretary suddenly leave?

The job had changed post-merger, with different responsibilities.

How can we stop the payments to voluntarily-retiring directors?

The area has made its point. The chief executive of CooperativesUK will look into this and there was a congress motion to look into this issue.

There's been no mortgage advisor in one local bank branch for months. Is this indicative of the bank's attitude to mortgages?

No, it's disappointing. Please send details to the area secretary.

Please can we use geographic numbers instead of the expensive 0845 for the membership enquiries?

Will forward and ask for a geographic number.

Is the constitutional review being rushed?

It's streamlined because the merger gives a pressing need, but we want member input.

Can we or do we promote credit unions in-store?

Yes, we can and do promote them to members already. Can set aside some space in-store if needed.

Does the co-operative travel insurance discriminate against over 75s?

will forward the answer when we have it.

The top management post-merger are all from United: is this a take-over?

no, 2 executives had clear intentions to retire already and the lower levels are more mixed.

Which? gave the co-operative food a D for organic produce: why and what will we do about it?

Report from today's Guardian not yet seen. Expect to respond in next few days. The report may have compared convenience stores with larger stores.

Will ex-United travel agents become the co-operative travel stores?

Yes. There's a big big change coming, to be more of a community travel agent, restructured, with more phone and internet options.

Is the energy-saving policy to include refrigeration, lighting and IT?

This is a top goal, to improve refrigeration and lighting control. It saves the earth and saves money. Nearly all electricity is already "greener" electricity.

Do we own the freehold on the land previously occupied by a store at Shirehampton?

Yes. Only a non-food retailer will be allowed in.

Why do elected representatives have to retire at 70 if still capable?

Please submit comments on it to the constitutional review?

Why was there no transport from Weston-super-Mare?

Will check the office records for requests.

Anyone see these themes appear at other meetings? Any comments on these themes?

apt-xapian-index: adding simple result filters to the query I've recently posted an introduction of apt-xapian-index and an example of how to query it. Today I'll show how to add simple Debtags-based result filters to a query. I'll expand axi-query-simple.py with a --type comman line option that allows to filter for package type. As a starter I'll implement filtering for "game", "gui", "cmdline" or "editor". If you feel like reimplementing my examples in another language, let me know and I'll include it to the post. The filters are implemented using Xapian queries. Xapian allows to build queries as well as combine existing queries using a large amount of operators. This allows us to create a little database of ready made queries: It's now trivial to lookup a query and AND it to the main query: That's it. Simple, trivial feature to add to a search, but very useful and simple to use. You can use the wsvn interface to get to the full source code and the module it uses. Try running it as:

axi-query-pkgtype.py --type=gui image editor
axi-query-pkgtype.py --type=cmdline image editor
axi-query-pkgtype.py --type=game image editor

you will see that the results change radically. What are the games that match "image editor", you would ask?

74% xjig - An X11 jigsaw puzzle
69% wmpuzzle - WindowMaker dock app 4x4 puzzle
66% xflip - programs to mirror-image or melt your display

Jigsaws, of course :) The code is now colourised thanks to Simon Ward who pointed me at the syntax plugin for ikiwiki. Next in the series: suggesting new terms for improving the query.

I just came across this photo (which, by the way, is in public domain):



P.D. sorry about the size, but bigger looks better :)

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short package update Didn't find the time to blog lately, so here's the very short summary of (hopefully) all news regarding the more important packages I take care of: gimp-plugin-registry / gimp-refocus gimp-plugin-registry is at version 0.4.2-1 now, including several updates and new plugins since my last blog entry. Also I've moved the refocus plugin into gimp-plugin-registry - now gimp-refocus is only a transitional package, which will install gimp-plugin-registry. gimp-refocus will be removed from Debian before Lenny will be frozen. As it was not shipped with Etch there's no need keep the transitional package in the release. gpsd Successfully hijacked gpsd, the new upload fixed a lot of bugs, including one old RC bug which was the reason why gpsd was removed form testing. If you're using gpsd please check the packages in unstable - comments appreciated. If you've used libgps form the gpsd package before, you'll have to look into the libgps-dev and libgps16 packages now. Bugs against packages using the library were filed in time. Also I plan to get a beta version of 2.35 into experimental during the next weeks, which will come with a more or less completely rewritten NMEA layer and a lot of fixes and improvements. radiance Finally integrated in Debian! Development of radiance started in 1985 and is still actively developed, but nobody every thought about including it in Debian. I'll blog about radiance later, in the meantime please read this wikipedia article. viking Today the latest version 0.9.3 was uploaded to unstable. Most important addition: Realtime GPS tracking, using gpsd. If you're interested in OpenStreetMap, geocaching or any other fun with GPS devices, take a look into viking.

So Rapha l, what about castrating non-responsive developers? We could probably solve the dilemma by then.

The last five days I've spent at the combined Debian Edu, FAI and CDD meeting in M rida in Extremadura, together with 17 others. The Debian Edu / Skolelinux crowd was the biggest, followed by FAI, followed by CDD people, though many were part of more than one project. "As usual" it was great to meet many known faces and some unknown ones and to be able to discuss stuff in RL.

Besides various small different things, I worked on the Debian Edu etch r1 release, our lenny roadmap (see the bottom of our roadmap page which also covers etch r1) and the (technical side of the) german translation of the Debian Edu documentation. Non edu related the new setupharddisk2 for FAI took most of my brain activity. And I've signed all keys allready :-)

We stayed at a very nice hotel in the even much nicer city of Merida, which features a lot of roman ruins and history. For example, we walked over the biggest roman bridge in the world! The only thing that was bigger was the amount of good food we were forced to eat every day... Incredible. This was my second visit to Merida and this time I finally managed to visit the amphitheatre (with seats for 15000 people) and the Roman theatre. (Unfortunatly the english page about Emerita Augusta is a stub.) If you happen to come around that area make sure to spend some time sight seeing, it is really worth it! People living in Merida literally fear to rebuild their houses, because as soon as they start to dig, they find something historical and have to turn their property into a museum :-)

In case you have not seen it yet, you should watch this small movie from euro news about the free software efforts in Extremadura. Insightful and very good promotion, also to show around.

Many thanks to C sar, Jos Luis and the Junta de Extremdura for hosting such a great meeting! You rock!

On a unrelated note, spam has gone crazy yesterday while traveling back, 15000 mails were not catched by my so far well working setup. ARG. I still used to have a catchall setting, which was useful to give out addresses like $company@mydomain, but now I will explicitly list those addresses and disable catchall. And luckily for you I will not blog about every spam mail I got... :) Generally I dont consider spam (the source of) evil, it's money: as long as money rules the world, there will be spam. So since it's a social problem, it is hardly solvable by technology. (That is, as long as you want to receive mails from strangers, which I do.) IMO what's worse than spammers are autoresponders to spam. Most of those 15000 mails were auto-replies to spam. OMFSM.

I have just had a lot of trouble with Thumbnails on one of my blogs. It turned out that I had to install the package php5-gd and restart Apache before thumbnails would even be generated. The package php5-gd (or php4-gd) is “suggested” by the Debian Wordpress package and it’s not a dependency, so the result of apt-get install wordpress will be that thumbnails won’t work. I’ve filed Debian bug report 447492 [1] requesting that php5-gd be a dependency. Another slightly controversial issue is the fact that the MySQL server is not a dependency. I believe that it’s correct to suggest MySQL as the database server is commonly run on a different host and Wordpress will clearly inform you if it can’t access the database. An alternate way of solving this bug report would be to have Wordpress give a warning such as “Thumbnails disabled due to lack of php-gd support” which would allow users to make requests of their sys-admins that can be easily granted.

• [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=447492

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That does not mean I'm dead yet, of course - It just means I've been too tied up with real life. Yes, I do feel to be close-to-MIA in Debian as in most other projects I work in out of personal interest... It's that bureaucratic point in year where we have to get all of the paperwork sorted out in order to enjoy another year working in the University. And, of course, it's a huge PITA - but all in all, it's worth it.That point by itself is not the only reason why I was drawn away from my usual posting, mind you - My blog was broken for some time because of a b0rken table in MySQL... And it has been at least three weeks since I noticed, but I only got around to fix it today. And, BTW, how come did I fixed it? Because I'm working on a migration tool. Migration? What? Why?Back in 2004, when I started this blog, I chose JAWS as the software to run it on. It was started by a group of good friends of mine, and they keep developing it. It is a very nice piece of work... But I've had several problems with it (and yes, I have not bothered to submit bug reports - shame on me. Anyway, I think they are related to how I made some mistakes while upgrading), and I do miss some bits of functionality... So, yes, I'm migrating away to Drupal. After all, I'll be setting up several sub-sites at my real-life work with Drupal, so I'd better get familiar with it... And, of course, as migrating a three-year-old blog is not easy (and even less migrating four sites I have lying around), so today I've been working on a nice migration script covering the components I use (blog, comments and photos). I expect it to be ready for prime-time after one more session (which I don't know when will happen). Anyway, Jaws guys: You do rock. Thanks a lot for all the fish!

Today was the 31th annual Frank Lloyd Wright Race in Oak Park, next door to where I live. This is a really nice small race I've run in 2006, 2004 and 2003. Conditions today were almost ideal -- we're having unseasonally warm weather, and it was sunny and in the high 60s without any noticeable winds around the start time making it feel like a nice late summer morning, rather than the middle of fall. I wasn't aiming for something really fast as I am still in training for a longer race and had done some reasonably fast one-mile laps yesterday morning leaving me not exactly well rested. But for once, I actually managed to run a steady pace, and then ended up within seconds of last year's PR for the distance at 41:15 for a pace of around 6:39, so I'm quite pleased.

I see from the BBC and /. that ESA has made its choices in Cosmic Vision 2015-2025. It appears that Darwin did not make the cut. Istead, PLATO and SPICA seem to be holding the banner for exoplanetary exploration. Can someone closer to the decision-making process comment? What does this mean for NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder? There were considerations of merging Darwin and TPF; does the project live as TPF, or was the task of imaging an exoplanet left to JWST ? Tags astronomy, darwin, exoplanets

To stop myself from endlessly wasting time browsing computer hardware I have actually bought a new computer.

• Giga-byte GA-G33M-S2H mainboard. (G33 chipset with DVI on board. Thanks Björn for the pointer!)
• Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66 GHz, 4MB 2nd level cache)
• 2 GB RAM
• some other stuff, including an absurdely large heatsink. (Thermaltake SI-128 SE). Unless you are using a huge case you must mount this heatsink on the mainboard before installing it in the case. Otherwise you'll need to rip out all cables and start from scratch as I did. ;-)

Contrary to my initial plans I have gone for G33 instead of G965, since according to all benchmarks I could find the latter is not a lot faster (just a little bit, both are dog slow compared to almost any separate card). This allowed me to use a board with DVI on board and use one of the cheaper E6x50 CPUs (FSB 1333). I am still running mainly etch, just with a newer kernel from backports.org and Holger's Xorg backport. Everything sees to work.

I have just read an interesting post speculating about the possibility of open source hardware [1]. To some extent things have been following a trend in that direction. Back in the bad old days every computer manufacturer wanted to totally control their market segment and prevent anyone else from “stealing their business”. Anti-competitive practices were standard in the computer industry, when you bought a mainframe you were effectively making a commitment to buy all peripherals and parts from the same company. The problems were alleviated by government action, but the real change came from the popularity of PC clones. White-box clones where every part came from a different company truly opened up the hardware development, and it wasn’t all good. When running a simple single-tasking OS such as MS-DOS the problems were largely hidden. But when running a reliable multi-tasking OS such as Linux hardware problems became apparent. The PCI bus (which autoconfigured most things) reduced the scope of the problem but there are still ways that white-box machines can fail you. Now when I get a white-box machine I give it away to members of my local LUG. My time is too valuable to waste on debugging white-box hardware, I would rather stick to machines from IBM and HP which tend to just work. Nowadays I buy only name-brand machines, all the parts were designed and tested to work together - this doesn’t guarantee that the machine will be reliable but it does significantly improve the probability. Fortunately modern hardware is much faster than I require for the work I do, so buying second-hand name-brand machines (for less money than a new white-box machine) is a viable option. The PCI bus [2] standard from Intel can be compared to some of the “Open Source” licenses from companies where anyone can use the software but only one company can really be involved in developing it. One significant impediment to open hardware development is the proprietary nature of CPU manufacture. Currently there are only a few companies that have the ability to fabricate high-end CPUs so projects such as OpenRISC [3] which develop free CPU designs will be limited to having their CPUs implemented with older technology (which means lower clock speeds). However this doesn’t mean that they aren’t useful, tailoring factors such as the number of registers, the bus width of the CPU, and the cache size to match the target application has the potential to offset the performance loss from a lower clock speed. But this doesn’t mean that an OpenRISC or similar open core would be ideal for your typical desktop machine. If companies such as Intel and AMD were compelled to fabricate any competing CPU design at a reasonable cost (legislation in this regard is a possibility as the two companies collectively dominate the world computer industry and it would be easy for them to form a cartel) then designs such as OpenRISC could be used to implement new CPUs for general purpose servers. Another issue is the quality of support for some optional extra features which are essential for some operations. For example Linux software RAID is quite good for what it does (basic mirroring, striping, RAID-5 and RAID-6), but it doesn’t compare well with some hardware RAID implementations (which actually are implemented in software with a CPU on the RAID controller). For example with a HP hardware RAID device you can start with two disks in a RAID-1 and then add a third disk to make it a RAID-5 (I’ve done it). Adding further disks to make it a larger RAID-5 is possible too. Linux software RAID does not support such things (and I’m not aware of any free software RAID implementation which does). It would certainly be possible to write such code but no-one has done so - and HP seem happy to make heaps of money selling their servers with the RAID features as a selling point. Finally there’s the issue of demand. When hardware without free software support (such as some video cards which need binary-only drivers for best performance) is discussed there is always a significant group of people who want it. The binary-only drivers in question are of low quality, often don’t support the latest kernels, and have such a history of causing crashes that kernel developers won’t accept bug reports from people who use them, but still people use them. In the short-term at least I expect that an open hardware design would deliver less performance and in spite of the fact that it would have the potential to offer better reliability the majority of the market would not accept it. The production volume of electronics gear is the major factor determining the price so it would cost more. I think that both IBM and HP provide hardware that is open enough for my requirements, they both have engineers working on their Linux support and the interfaces are well enough documented that we generally don’t have any problems with them. Both Intel and AMD and the major system vendors are all working on making things more open, so I expect some small bug significant improvements in the near future.

• [1] http://www.raiden.net/?cat=2&aid=315


• [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Component_Interconnect


• [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenRISC

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By request of Russell Coker (he wanted to download the scripts) I just created an open repository.

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I must admit I wanted to create it since before (I prefer to develop using a VCS) but because of the lack of time I just had forgotten :D.

Anyways, the repository is available at https://neo.yahostme.com/svn/DeBaBaReTools/ with read-only access.

This will be the home of DeBaBaReTools until the Alioth admins create the project account.

The main reason why I want it to be hosted there is because Alioth already provides the facilities for Debian and Debian-related projects.

Notes about the code: I'm currently redesigning it so it works on any computes. The original scripts were designed to do very basic tasks and were meant only to run for my repository so they might not work out of the box (they are actually broken right now :S).

Sometime in August, I said I would watch the Inbox Zero talk later on that day. Well, I finally did today. And I'm ready to mass-murder my (now not so) fat inbox folder and start from scratch, and becoming a good boy. In fact, I've been on probation for a few weeks. While I wasn't watching the talk (which is pretty insightful and fun, and useful if you also have these horrid mail handling problems) I did roll up my sleeves a few times and worked on reducing the problem. After a few rounds of fighting, things were looking slightly better. I deleted TONS of spam which still was sitting in there. I deleted entire threads of list mail which for some reason wasn't being filtered properly. I archived a lot of random, misc email. I even replied to some job offers, for a change. I fixed my .procmailrc a little to get rid of lots of useless stuff that appears in my mail. It got better, but not entirely better. I went from the 6600~ which was probably the figure when I said Enough! to around 2580. It's still a lot, and I can still get rid of a lot more with easy pattern searches in mutt. The good news is that, for the first time in ages, the number of emails in the mailbox has stayed stable for more than a month. I tell you: I'm proud! So Merlin gets asked in the talk what to do when you've been a naughty boy for a long time, and you've ended up with this HUGE mailbox you can't handle anymore. His answer was what some people suggested in blog comments: put it aside, start from zero. Merlin calls it mail-DMZ, and that's probably what I'll do in a few hours, admittedly with a sentiment of guilt deep in my chest. And from that point, I'll have my mailbox be a TODO list. Delete. Defer. Delegate. Respond. Do. Simple! Other Planet Debian participants like joeyh commented that something that really helps is reducing the number of times you poll for email. For me, that means

set daemon      1800            # Pool every 30 minutes

when it was 5 minutes before. I hope I won't find myself issuing awaken commands often... I remember when, more than five years ago, having more than 100 mails made me feel bad and go cleanup. After some vacation, it went up to 150. Then Christmas came along, 300, until I found myself nearing 7000 last summer. Before moving my junk to a demilitarised mailbox, I'm having some fun replying to some email. The first one in my mailbox is from a member of a Catalan "Mallach" family.

From: Conchita Broquetas <familia_mallach_broquetas@yahoo.es>
Subject: Hola!
To: jordi@sindominio.net
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 16:55:17 +0200 (CEST)

who discovered there was a "Jordi Mallach" other than his brother in the Internet. Apparently we had an exchange on where our families came from (Mallach is all but a common surname... anywhere, and my family has always wondered where it came from). So that's more than 6 years ago. I think I'd love to get a reply to some email sent by me years ago which has been sitting for years in a mailbox, because "I need to reply to this sometime". I think the Mallach-Broquetas are getting one tonight. If you think I'm dumping random thoughts on a vim buffer, it's probably due to me feeling sad today. Sorry, but I feel like typing, and I don't have a typewriter with me. Speaking of sad, nothing beats the next email which sat for some dramatic 6 months in my messy inbox until I found out in the worst of the possible scenarios. Let's go back to late February, 2004, when I had no job, and I didn't have a clue on what to do with my life.

From: Mark Shuttleworth <mark@hbd.com>
Subject: New project to discuss
To: Jordi Mallach <jordi@debian.org>
Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 18:33:51 +0000
[...]
I'm hiring a team of debian developers to work full time on a new
distribution based on Debian. We're making internationalisation a prime
focus, together with Python and regular release management. I've discussed
it with a number of Debian leaders and they're all very positive about it.
[...]

I'm not sure if I totally missed it as it came in, or I skimmed through it and thought WTF?! Dude on crack or I just forgot I need to reply to this email , but I'd swear it was the former. Not long after, no-name-yet.com popped up, the rumours started spreading around Debian channels. Luckily, I got a job at LliureX two months later, where I worked during the following 2 years, but that's another story. I guess it was July or so when Ubuntu was made public, and Mark and his secret team organised a conference (blog entries [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]), just before the Warty release, and I was invited to it, for the same reasons I got that email. During that conference, probably because Mark sent me some email and I applied a filter to get to it, I found the lost email, and felt like digging a hole to hide for a LONG while. I couldn't believe the incredible opportunity I had missed. I went to Mark and said "hey, you're not going to believe this", and he did look quite surprised about someone being such an idiot. I wonder if I should reply to his email today...

Yesterday I was going through the plugins and widgets, if there are any updates or such. I realized again, that updating of plugins (and maybe searching for the relocated download source) makes me mad. Also testing and switching back is annoying much.
So I decided to package plugins and widgets I use. Since some plugins and widgets are not maintained long enought for any debian release cycle or getting obsolet with new wordpress releases, I decided to maintain the packages outside of the debian project. Anyways … some people are also scared about the security situation of wordpress. I guess this isn’t much better for wordpress extensions. Next pity, some extensions or any equivalents aren’t available for wordpress 2.3 (yet). If you run multiple blogs via the stock debian package and wan’t to make use of the new wordpress version in any of your sites, you have update all at once … which maybe not a way you want to go. I decided to repackage wordpress 2.3.0 as wordpress23, which allows you to install wordpress (<<2.3.0) and wordpress23 at same time. If you want to use debian plugin, widget or theme packages or use these from your normal wordpress installation (/usr/share/wordpress) with wordpress23, you need to symlink the dirs. For example:

# mv /usr/share/wordpress23/wp-content/plugins/ /usr/share/wordpress23/wp-content/plugins.orig
# mv /usr/share/wordpress23/wp-content/themes/ /usr/share/wordpress23/wp-content/themes.orig
# ln -s /usr/share/wordpress23/wp-content/plugins /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/plugins
# ln -s /usr/share/wordpress23/wp-content/themes /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/themes Remember that package updates of wordpress or wordpress23 may overwrite parts of /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/[plugins themes] in such situation. BE CAREFULL! You can get the stuff via apt-line:

deb ftp://ftp.cyconet.org/debian wordpress main non-free contrib Or directly from: http://ftp.cyconet.org/debian/archive/wordpress/ The actual package list is: wordpress-plugin-af-extended-live-archive
wordpress-plugin-ald-spa
wordpress-plugin-all-in-one-seo-pack
wordpress-plugin-exec-php
wordpress-plugin-google-sitemap-generator
wordpress-plugin-landingsites
wordpress-plugin-lightbox-2
wordpress-plugin-now-reading
wordpress-plugin-page-links-to
wordpress-plugin-photopress
wordpress-plugin-related-posts
wordpress-plugin-rolemanager
wordpress-plugin-sideblog
wordpress-plugin-spam-karma
wordpress-plugin-stats
wordpress-plugin-ubernyms
wordpress-plugin-utw
wordpress-plugin-utwgooglesitemaps
wordpress-plugins
wordpress-widget-category-cloud
wordpress-widget-samsarin-php
wordpress-widget-utw-cloud
wordpress-widgets
wordpress23 If you want a plugin or widget included and it makes sence to do so, drop me a mail, where to grab. Be aware that UTW isn’t supported since wordpress 2.3 anymore. A tag system was included into wordpress and you need to search replacements for all the nice UTW extension! Stay tuned! Debian, opensource, Packaging, planet, plugins, wordpress

Two recent print-media articles begging to be linked: First, the Autumn of the Multitaskers in this month’s Atlantic. Despite the age-of-Internet theme, the full article is only available to subscribers. The thesis is one I’ve seen before (e.g., in GTD). Namely: although we might feel like we’re accomplishing more when multitasking, we actually end up less productive, and eventually we’ll lose our minds if we continue to overload our sense. The writer takes the idea further than I’ve seen before, incorporating several astonishing indicators from the zeitgeist, including this NSFW quote from Jennifer Connelly that I won’t reprint, and several foreign policy and domestic political examples of how multitasking is failing our culture and our country. There is a generational divide at work here. Most in previous generations (say, people over 40) didn’t come online until the Internet was nearly full-blown with spam, entertainment news, popups, advertising, streaming stock quotes, rich media services, IM, Facebook, Flash, etc.. These people generally deal poorly with information and sensory overflow because they had no incremental introduction. The younger generations (people under 25) don’t remember the world before the Internet and multipurpose portable devices, and thus think it entirely normal to watch TV, surf the web with a few open windows, talk on the phone (perhaps VoIP), and IM at the same time. At least. And they’re bored if they don’t have at least have three or four tasks going simultaneously. This isn’t to say that these gen-Yers are actually doing a good job at it — I find myself often answering computer-related questions from my younger siblings because they can’t actually read a focused page or two of dense text on the computer (e.g., a readme file) in one sitting — but rather that they don’t experience the flow as psychologically overwhelming. That leaves my (in between) generation, generally people born in the 1970’s. Those of us who grew up with early low-bandwidth wide area networks — I started on BITNET, USENET, and BBS’s in the early- to mid-1980’s — have better mechanisms for coping and prioritizing. Perhaps because our multitasking options were relatively limited, we haven’t leaped on the bandwagon to the same extent as others. I personally don’t mind two simultaneous tasks — e.g., perusing RSS headlines and listening to MP3s — but more than that doesn’t interest me. (I don’t count it as “multitasking” in the same sense where one of the tasks is just waiting, e.g., for code to compile or a large upgrade to download). Please feel free to destroy my broad generalizations here in the comments. While we’re on the subject of multitasking, I fall into the “subtle exception” category described in Getting Things Done:

The Multitasking Exception There’s a subtle exception to the one-item-at-a-time rule. Some personality types really need to shift their focus away from some task for at least a minute in order to make a decision about it. When I see this going on with someone, I let him take two or sometimes three things out at once as he’s processing. It’s then easier and faster for him to make a choice about the action required.

I find this trick particularly helpful in getting unstuck. Frequently, when drafting briefs, I’ve rewritten a sentence eight or nine times and it still doesn’t seem to get across the necessary idea efficiently and without making the reader do any hard work. Switching to another (usually simpler) task, if only for one or two minutes, is often enough to come back and do it right in one swoop. In this situation (and probably only in this situation), multitasking actually saves me time. Second, the Well Tempered Web (by Alex Ross, music critic with a blog) in this week’s New Yorker. This one is more naturally available in complete form online. Ross manages to weave together Wagner, Snakes on a Plane, the Long Tail, and Rick Rubin. Worth reading. (And while you’re at it, check out Adam Gopnik’s piece on abridgments, which unfortunately is not available online.) Lest you all think all I read is the New Yorker and the Atlantic: it’s not true. I’m just not at liberty to disclose my other sources at this time.

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Some day, this thing stopped to work for me. I was not aware of doing anything what could break it, even any related package was not updated. Time went on and I still did not find time to learn how to debug this udev/hal/dbus/gnome-volume-manager machinery. Today, after some googling I found short debugging guide on Ubuntu wiki, which quickly revealed me that "volume.ignore set to true on /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/volume_uuid_4717_5407, not mounting". Well I didn't configure anything to be ignored, so let's dig deeper in this. As I had no idea where this thing could be set, I again started to google and /etc/hal and /usr/share/hal seem to be the right place where to start grep. Nothing related in /etc, but too much entries in /usr. However most of them were selective for some special USB disks or partitions. But there was one which did this unconditionally - it was file /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/gparted-disable-automount.fdi, what crap from gparted. Now I remember that I used this for formatting and partitioning something on USB and after doing all job, it crashed. So it left this piece of HAL hack inside /usr/share/hal and it was cause of anything not mounting. Seems to be worth of reporting as a bug... Wait a moment, it's already known and some patch for it exists. Hopefully we will see this soon in unstable.