After a very tasty breakfast of gorditas in the market, I sat through talks all of Thursday morning, which were all quite good. They were visionary talks, talks about where Debian was going to go, and what we can do to get it there. After a brief lunch, we returned for the talk of debugging debian-installer. I've been lugging around my laptop, jamaica, through the entire conference. It's an old A20m, which means that it's a rather bulky looking thing, that is quite heavy. What makes it noticable is that it's been epoxied together, after having been dropped one too many times. People marvel that GNOME runs reasonably on it. Anyway, during the talks, my wireless card decided it didn't want to work any more. Pulling it out and letting it cool down seemed to get it responsible again. Strange. After the afternoon talk on how to find security problems within Debian, I went back to the hotel to change. You see, we were going to a Formal Dinner. I had not packed for a formal dinner, thinking that all functions would be casual at the very most. Still, I pulled out a pair of pressed slacks, an ironed shirt and a colourful tie. When I left my room, it became apparent that Formal actually meant "clothes without any holes". We all packed into the coach buses from yesterday and drove into town. This was actually quite difficult for the drivers, because the streets were very narrow and the buses were incapable of turning around corners. I think it took us fifteen minutes to park, which mostly consisted of doing a 30-point turn. We disembarked and walked into a large building. Two of the walls were made of stone, the rest were made of stucco. There was a small stage presiding over a floor full of fold-up tables which were arranged in a Debianesque spiral. I decided that I was going to be at the nexus of activity, so I sat down at the central table and reserved a seat for AJ. As people seated themselves and started talking, there was a sudden commotion. Holger was running towards AJ with a plastic crown, deposited it unceremoniously on his head, and continued sprinting past. This drew applause and photographs, along some cheering of "Long Live the DPL!" AJ looked decidedly uncomfortable. It's probably for the best that Debian isn't a monarchy. Our evening got more and more interesting. A mariachi band came in the door and started playing. Soon after they started singing, rain began to fall. This made lovely sounds on the tin roof above, which made me a little sleepy. Right about now, a brawl sprang up near the front door. There was some shoving involved and quite a bit of yelling. Soon, the combatants were separated and some of them left the building in anger. All this time, the musicians were playing louder and louder. As the music crescendoed, the rain fell harder and the wind blew stronger, until we had to close up the shutters to keep the water from blowing in. And the band kept trying to play over the rain. Then, slowly, the roof began to spring leaks. We were lining up for food then, and by the time I got to the buffet table, water was pouring into the trays. I managed to get something reasonably dry and scurried back to my seat. Which was wet. After I got some food inside of me, I experience the final act that capped our evening. We were chatting a bit about the strange weather we were having indoors when suddenly, water started cascading down one of the walls. It made a tremendous roar and the floor of the building quickly flooded. As I was photographing the events, the lights suddenly went out with a pop. We were plunged into darkness. I made my way back to my seat and someone eventually found the fusebox. The lights were restored, one by one, and it was soon time to leave. I don't know how the organizers of next year's Debconf are going to be able to top this: ceremony, live music, fisticuffs over a woman, an indoor waterfall, and drama. This was a night we're all going to remember.

I have been selected as a Chubb Foundation Scholar with a $6,000/year four year scholarship. Score! For the interested, Chubb was the company my grandfather worked for, and the scholarship is open to employee families only.

I finaly sent the report of course I forgot some details but you can found them on a mail from Mark

Mark Wielaard posted this yesterday: Escaping the Java Trap
A practical road map to the Free Software and Open Source alternatives

For the last couple of years the community has been working to
ensure that developers can create applications using the java
programming language without having to depend on proprietary
software. Today, the free (as in libre) implementations are
already very capable and support a vast amount of functionality
that developers expect from a java-like environment. Important
large applications like JOnAS, OpenOffice.org 2, Eclipse 3 and
Tomcat 5 are known to work. This document provides a road map of
the various projects; how they work together, where they are,
where they’re going, and how we make sure that they work well
and are compatible.

http://developer.classpath.org/support/ Thanks Mark, very useful informations.

And what about Java Server Faces (JSF) in Debian? We already have Struts and it seems JSF could replace it. While googling around, I found a lot of websites, tutorials, plugins and so. It seems the JSF community is growing and the API seems powerful. I already work with Struts, maybe I have to have a look at this promising technology too. If we put JSF to Debian, maybe we should start with release 1.1 because of the lack of free J2SE50 at the moment (even if ecj, classpath-generic-branche, jamvm are very promising). We’ll need (list of dependencies):

• Tomcat 5.5.x
• J2SE1.4 — ok — (we already have free ones )
• Ant 1.6.5 — ok –
• Junit 3.8.1 — ok –
• Cactus 1.4.1 (JSF 1.1) for the Servlet 2.3 API
• HtmlUnit 1.4
• Tag Library Documentation Generator 1.3 (only needed if you plan to generate the TLD documentation)

The third point of the Debian Social Contract says that we won’t hide the problems. In GNU Classpath we are now 94% of the JDK 1.4 compatibility (see the Japitool daily report), but as discussed at the Oldenburg DevJam, we must admit that there are methods that just do nothing. Being API compatible is great, but in the past, there were stubs methods (no one deos it for more than a year or two). From CVS tonight:

(sid)arnaud@oz:~/gnu/classpath$ find -name '*.java'   
    xargs egrep '(TODO FIXME (not Not) (I i)mplemented XXX UnsupportedOperationException)'   wc -l
2617

We need to tag all these FIXEME and TODO comments and process it with gjdoc and an XSLT stylesheet so we can easily see were we have to put our efforts.

Sun is worried about compatibility in a world where Java is open source. I can’t say I blame them, and I say this as someone who spends a majority of his time thinking about compatibility in the Linux world, where we’ve managed to hold it together but still have a lot of work to do to match the relative consistency of the Microsoft alternatives (Windows and .NET, among others). After all, a platform is useless if there’s not a single, standard way for developers to target it. Question is: Does open source inherently lead to compatibility problems? Hardly. How many incompatible versions of, say, Apache are there? Or the Ps of the LAMP stack (Perl, PHP, Python)? Or MySQL? GNOME? KDE? BIND? CUPS? The only reason “Linux” and compatibility often come up in the same breath is because the term is used to describe so many different things. Yes, “Linux” has compatibility issues if you’re comparing Red Hat, SUSE, and Debian, but the actual “Linux” used by each of these “Linuxes” (that is, the Linux kernel) have few if any compatibility issues. It’s more the bits around the edges, like slightly different versions of core components with slightly different ABIs or APIs, not to mention the independently developed subsystems for configuration etc., that lead to the compatibility issues. If anything, the fact that the various Linux distributions share so many of the same open source components makes them far more compatible than the various implementations of UNIX ever were. James Gosling, the father of Java, highlights JavaScript as an example of the situation they’re trying to avoid in a recent podcast with Dan Farber. Today, he explains, there are dozens of AJAX toolkits, and the main reason for this is the need to paper over incompatibilities between the various JavaScript implementations. He’s absolutely right. If anything, though, the JavaScript situation is a good example of what might have been if we knew as much about the power of open source in setting standards in the 1990s as we know today. There are numerous JavaScript implementations today because there wasn’t a de facto standard implementation developers could just use when they needed one way back when (like there was with Apache etc. and wasn’t with some of the problematic “Linux” technologies like configuration management). What if there had been an open source JavaScript all along that became a de facto standard like Apache did? Would the AJAX world look any different today? Ironically, then, Java looks a whole lot more fragmented on its current trajectory as the various open source efforts (Apache Harmony, GCJ, GNU Classpath, etc.)—which exist only because the de facto standard implementation isn’t open source—mature and are more tightly integrated into the Linux distributions. So, what lessons does Linux have to offer Sun as it contemplates the future of Java and, more to the point, how to open source it? First of all, far from being a surefire path to turning Java into a veritable tower of babel, open source could actually help promote compatibility in the Java world. For one thing, if Sun’s Java implementation was open source, history shows there would be no need for another implementation. Case in point: Remember the other Harmony project? Secondly, what’s in a name? Absolutely everything. It’s entirely possible to open source Java without diluting the Java brand and the compatibility guarantees that brand promises. Most famously, this strategy has worked very well for Red Hat—Red Hat’s platform is open source, so you can fork it, but you can’t call the result “Red Hat”, which preserves the compatibility guarantee a successful platform requires. It’s not too late, but we’re rapidly approaching a time when it will be. For one thing, the open source implementations are getting better, and once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s damned near impossible to get it back in (see, again, JavaScript). As I said the other day, “open source Java” isn’t so much about licensing as it is about ubiquity, though licensing can get in the way of ubiquity. We’re almost there. Let’s take the final step we need to take to make Linux/Java as well integrated as Windows/.NET.

So, really, here's now the full story of that 6th day of Debconf. It indeed began as early as usual, like 7:30 wake-up after being to bed at 02:30. It's amazing to see how I didn't yet burned out. I had to run a 2nd BOF about i18n infrastructure, which main point was indeed to begin summarizing all the ideas we exchanged during the first one, then later during the various private discussions. We had the very good suprise to finally see Javier Sola showing up at the meeting. For those who don't know about him, Javier is member and one of the heads of the Wordforge project, a project that attempts to simplify the process of localisation of Software and is developed with Free and Open Source software in mind. Wordforge is the project that now covers the development of Pootle and related tools such as the Translate Toolkit. Javier came especially for TWO days at Debconf, from Cambodia, where he lives, just to meet us. I tried, during this second BOF to summarize ideas we had already prepared, along with other people, the night before. It is really good to see people actually pusshing you up to achieve things you wouldn't have any idea being able to do when coming. Javier then improvised a general presentation of Wordforge, which has hopefully been taped along with the BOF so that interested people will be able to see it. I have to confess that I ended up this very long session (about 2h50) absolutely enthusiast about the idea of collaborating with Wordforge and this is the way to go if we want our i18n infrastructure. Just don't ask me why, I just know this...:-) The day then went at the speed of light. First, Javier (Fernandez Sanguino, that time) and I finally began to synchronize our thoughts for the talk of the next day. This quickly lead us to...the lunch time where we continued discussing together (not much occasions to talk with Javier during that Debconf even though we wrote a 25 pages paper together...). Too bad I missed the part about NM process by Christoph Berg which would have been deeply interesting to participate. Post lunch continued with still slides work with Javier, missing our fellow Josselin talking about shared libraries (I'm afraid I wouldn't have got a clue about this, but anyway....). My award for the "best Debconf6 talk" goes, this time, to Meike (who would have guessed?) for this so great talk about talks. And, no, you're not *that* jamming from one leg to another. The group photo and the keysigning are of course traditional events of a Debconf and both were one after the other...pretty tiring, but as usual good fun. I very slightly regretted that several of the usuall participants of the keysignings I've already been in weren't actually participating in that one. For sure, many of us have already exchanged keys but I see this also as a kind of "bienvenidos" to all participants in Latin America in this Debconf. For the same reason, I would also have, like Damog, been glad to see Anthony attend the Debian Latin America community BOF but I tend to believe that being in all the place people would like to see him and talk with everybody who wants to talk with him, is simply not humanly possible. Finally, after lunch, we i18n dudes continued with a huge discussion, again, to continue drawing ideas for that damn i18n infrastructure stuff. I ended up the "day" completely enthusiast (and, no, without any chemical help) and finishing my mail. Finally, at 02:00 the day finished liked a dream by a nice online chat with Elizabeth (my beloved wife, dudes) who was actually waking up to drive our daughter to the high school. To bed at 03:45...a bit crazy. I have a talk tomorrow...

I wanted to make sure the hackergotchi (small picture of my head that floats on the entry in planet debian) looks ok. Thanks to Wouter for his guide and others in #debian-devel for helping me make it. Edit: Looks like a typo in the config was making it 404. Will get someone to fix it. Edit2: Thanks gravity!

So, thanks to Wouter Verhelst, I am now syndicated on Planet Debian, a site that aggregates the blogs of various people involved in Debian. To those who don’t know me yet, I am an 18 year old high school student (for a couple more weeks anyway) in the United States. I go by ‘astronut’ on IRC, and have completed my part of NM and am now patiently waiting for FD/DAM approval. I maintain easyh10 (manages the databases on the iRiver H10 music player), dav-text (simple ncurses based text editor), graphmonkey (a somewhat pointless graphing calculator that somehow has at least a few users according to popcon) and recently adopted pork (console AIM client). I also am an active member on the Debian Cyrus Packaging team (Cyrus is a pop/imap/nntp server). Comments are currently enabled, but moderated on the blog. I may have to go to some kind of turing test based system if planet opens me up to a flood of spam. So… Hello, to the word of Debian!

Of course, the fact that he’s never let the fact that he’s not actually allowed into that lovely garden STOP HIM going into that garden is yet another matter altogether.

I went to my first BodyJam class yesterday. Like all Les Mills programs, the first time totally sucks because you haven't a clue what's going on and know that you look like an idiot surrounded by people who've been coming for a couple years. Then you remember that if any of them have time to notice you looking like an idiot, then they're not working hard enough and get back to learning the choreography. auzure_skies is a group fitness instructor, so I've done alot of these type of classes. BodyJam is a bit different than most in that the moves are pre-set, but *how* you move is not. If your spirit is taken over by Saturday Night Fever then your welcome to strut. If you're a standard aerobics baby, then there's no problem if you're just plodding through the moves.

Given the problems I'm having in my upper back, it'll probably be a couple weeks before I go back. I had a great time, but I'm a bit too sore this morning.

Amusing news yesterday, as it's revealed that Roger Knapman, the leader of UKIP (a single-issue party who dislikes the EU, and basically wants to reduce, or remove, immigration), hires Polish builders to work on his country mansion. The bonus punchline: the builders are hired through a Polish-registered company that specialises in hiring eastern Europeans to work in Britian, which is run by Mr Knapman's son.

Mr Knapman, an MEP and the UKIP's leader since 2002, recruited the workers through his son, whose company specialises in bringing foreign labour to Britain. The men have been at Mr Knapman's grade-II listed home in the village of Coryton, west Devon, for 11 months. They sleep dormitory-style in the attic. The company run by Mr Knapman's son claims that the imported labour costs up to 50 per cent less than British workers would. Mr Knapman, speaking to an undercover reporter from The Sunday Times, praised the men as "they work so much harder".

(from The Independent) NP: Boards of Pays-Bas, Poxfil

 858     2006/05/08 04:30 Bram Moolenaar        (7.9K)     Vim 7!
 429     2006/05/08 05:08 Julian Mehnle         (0.2K)     Bug#366396: vim: Vim 7 is out! Alright, that was fast... Stefano (who's currently sitting next to me) and James are already working on it.

Well, that’s it, folks. People who helped to make it happen are too numerous to mention here, but I would like to specially thank Joshua, Marc and Andres for guidance and mentoring, another Marc for being a great AM, and Joerg and James for doing awesome DAM work.

To all those who emailed, called, /queried me: Thanks. Your support is really appreciated.

To all those who shared similar experiences with me: thanks. It s good to feel understood, to feel that I am not the only one that gets torn apart for the loss of a small furry friend.

There was a huge blackout in Madrid yesterday. No subway, nice traffic jams, fights for taxis (I witnessed) and, of course, servers going down. Carlos took care of the remains of Emacs and yours faithfully in the midst of a wonderful Downtime: Lilo not booting, all is bad issue in his biggest customer. H ctor and Bego run upstairs (4 floors, that s true love), and comforted Vi and me. A very special, tall, blond, skinny, wonderful g ero spent most of the afternoon on the phone with me. Even Chicho, my ex, called and cried with me. Thank you all.

Emacs had a happy life, she was a spoiled cat, a very happy and very spoiled cat. She lead a (short) good life, a much better life than, sadly, too many humans. I am starting to accept her loss and feel some peace, after a dreadful night.

I called the vet today to find out how to ease the pain for Vi, the whole team was devastated with the news. Their advise was to get another furry feline friend for Vi as soon as possible, and even told me about a two months old that s up for adoption, but it s not the best moment right now. I ll be leaving for Mexico in a week, and I am not comfortable with the idea of leaving two furry strangers alone for two weeks. I already feel terrible about leaving Vi for so long, specially now, but H ctor and Bego will, again, take good care of him and spend plenty of time at my apartment to keep him company.



There s laundry hanging still out, and I can t get to open the fucking window.

Share your search 2.0, create and manage your social news to upload photos online! As pointed out by Benjamin Hill, dropping this list of web2.0 companies into a word frequency counting tool such as this gives the following interesting statistics:

226	SHARE
166	YOUR
97	SEARCH
71	2.0
50	CREATE
50	MANAGE
50	SOCIAL
49	NEWS
46	MASH-UP
44	TO
44	UPLOAD
42	PHOTOS
41	ON
41	ONLINE
40	FIND
36	BOOKMARKING
36	FOR
30	PUBLISH
29	STORE

That is what the web 2.0 is made out of, only one keyword missing here: hype.

Sound Juicer "The Winds Are Blowing Telling Me All I Hear" 2.15.1 is out. Tarballs are available on burtonini.com, or from the GNOME FTP servers. This is the first release in the 2.15.x development series and isn't that exciting, sorry:

• Only manipulate the track store if there is stuff in it (#333402)
• Fix progress bar calculation (#339062, John Thacker)
• Check for cdio >= 0.70 (#339303, John Laliberte)
• Use new intltool for po/LINGUAS magic (#339197)
• Use GString when creating the paths (#336725, James Livingston)
• Update the file/path pattern documentation (#337638)
• Update the about dialog (#328181, Brian Pepple)
• Save and restore playback volume (#334170, Marinus Schraal)
• Improve --help (#335016, Vincent Untz)
• Translate an untranslated string (#334509)

NP: Out Of Season, Beth Bibbons and Rustin Man