Today, I launched a proposal for a string freeze in Debian Installer. A string freeze is a formal agreement among developers to avoid changing localizable material without concertation. This is a commitment towards translators to guarantee them that, while they're doing an effort to complete their work, this effort won't be broken by a developer adding of modifying translatable material. This can be seen as a first step towards the preparation of a release of D-I. Indeed, the only release we did for Squeeze (D-I alpha1 release) had no formal translation update round. We currently have 45 languages that are considered to be "in good shape" (even if not all complete) and very likely to remain activated in Squeeze. However, 20 (TWENTY) languages are in danger of being deactivated because of low activity. To avoid this, I will once again take my superhero suit, add some leather to it, take a whip and start nagging translators, doing noise and, in short, annoying the entire world (including blogging too often), in order to shake people enough so that we reduce this number to zero. Be prepared. Interesting links:

• Localization statistics for D-I and related packages (the most important part is "level 1"): http://d-i.debian.org/l10n-stats/;
• Documentation for Debian Installer internationalization and localization: http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/doc/i18n/;
• Information about supported languages: http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/doc/i18n/languages.html.

What happened in my running life since my last update? In short, I achieved two races I was planning to do. I ran my first trail on May 16th, Le Trail des Cerfs ("deer trail"). The experience of trail running is awesome. Runners are very friendly and all of them are nature lovers. So, the feeling is completely different from mass macadam races (those are also a must-do, still!). I had a great time running that trail (which ended up to be exactly the distance of an half marathon). I completed it in less than 1h50, which is good, as the positive slope was about 300 meters, with sometimes very though rampswhere walking was nearly mandatory. At this occasion, during the "after", I discovered some members of an online community of runners, named Kikourou ("Who is running where?"), and I'm now a member of this online community (yet another one...). That makes the promise of lots of beers after races...:-) Today, I completed my "Maureparathon", a full marathon ran alone on small roads and bicycle lanes in my home city, and was happy to break my personal best by 6 minutes, down to 3h43'14". Yay. For sure, still very far from SuperNo l (3:03:56 in Mainz), but he's younger..:) As I planned, I'll be running the Sur les Traces du Loup ("The Wolf Track"?) 33km trail in La Ville aux Clercs, 2 hours away from our place. Elizabeth is very happy to come with me in a 2-day trip in Chateaudun neighbourhood. Renaissance castle visit mandatory for the following Sunday...:-) Nice planning, eh? And, guess what? I'm already trying to spot some local 10km races while being in New York. I would find it an interesting experience to run with local runners. Just like free software...and beer...and cheese, running is much better when shared.

During the week-end, samba 3.5.3 hit the archive. It is still in experimental (and will remain there as Squeeze will be released with 3.4.* as finally decided during SambaXP). For lenny users, I also build backported packages. They are not on backports.org as the policy for these "as official as possible" backports is to have the same version than testing. So, they are provided "as is", for i386 and amd64, on the pkg-samba team's unofficial repository. The Release file on that repository is signed by my GPG key. Please note that these backports also need talloc from backports.org so you need to add entries for backports.org in your sources.list files to be able to use them. Since I last blogged about samba packages, the 3.4.8 version was also released. It entered testing without any problem and I also uploaded a backported version to backports.org. Finally, on May 5th, new versions of the 3.2.5 packages of lenny were updated to 2:3.2.5-4lenny11, currently in stable-proposed-updates. So, they will be part of the next point release of lenny. They fix two important bugs (#575951 for interdomain trust with w2k8 servers, and #538819 for memory leaks in some situations).

I didn't write much about running stuff since my update about Paris marathon. The main point was, in general, to gradually resume running activities, after the marathon peak. Which I actually didn't respect at all, as usual..:-)... I already wrote that my "training program" is mostly made of "run as you feel, with no strongly hardcoded program". So, the week-end after the marathon, I ran 11km on Saturday, followed by an half-marathon (alone) on Sunday which I completed in 1h53'31", very close to my 1h51'31" PB for a "half-marathon alone on trails" run. Definitely not what is generally recommended, but, eh, this is how I was feeling... Then, I could continue during the following weeks with my normal program made of 1 or 2 small runs (between 8 and 14km) at lunch time on weekdays, 1 small 10 or 11 km trail run (on this circuit or a longer variant), and a "long" run on Sunday mornings. The long run usually goes from 15km up to 25km. Now, 6 weeks after the marathon, I'll run a 20km trail named Le Trail des Cerfs ("deer trail"), that starts in my neighbourhood and goes through my beloved Rambouillet Forest. I could have chosen the 35K or even 50K race, but preferred being less ambitious with the distance and rather focus and ahieving what will be my first official trail race. I don't expect much differences with the weekly runs, indeed, as most of these are already done in trails, fields and woods with very few paved roads. My goal for this race is 1h45. Later on, I still have the plan to run a full marathon alone, probably on May 31st. This time, contrary to last year where I ran one by going through a very wide loop in Rambouillet Forest, I'll do 4 loops mostly in the city of Maurepas, on flat roads, with possible pit stops at my home (so, no camel back bag, but more focus on good performance). I plan to target 3h55 if the heat is not too high. Further plans are less precise. I'm not sure I'll be able to run the Sur les Traces du Loup trail in La Ville aux Clercs, 2 hours away from our place. That would mean arranging a small week-end there with Elizabeth. Still, that really looks like a great race, with a start at 18:00 to enjoy the end of the day during the longest days of the year. Also, the race and the barbecue that follows appear to be very friendly events in a small French village. On the other hand, the autumn marathon is decided. This will be the Seine et Eure Marathon, a "small (600 runners) marathon very close to our family house in the Seine valley. The race is one of the flatest marathons in France and has the reputation of leading to great times. That will be on October 17th. Target for me: 3h45 (unless I see changes happening util then).

SambaXP day 2 for me. More progress on samba packaging. Today, I completed the backport of samba 3.4.7 to backports.org. We already had that version but it was desynced with the version in testing (2:3.4.7~dfsg-2 in testing while we had -1 in backports.org). As the difference is noticeable (dropping the old smbfs package in favoir of cifs-utils, which I blogged about yesterday), I wanted to resync all this. So a new 2:3.4.7~dfsg-2~bpo50+1 package (what a funky numbering scheme, isn't it?) was just uploaded today in backports.org. The transition between smbfs and cifs-utils should be smooth (as soon as autobuilders complete the entire build which may be quite long, for samba). I also completed a full resync of packages we have in experimental. Here, we do provide the bleeding edge samba version, namely 3.5.2. It's very likely that we don't provide samba 3.5 in squeeze, the option being conservative and keeping up with the 3.4 branch. So, for our users wanting the last samba version, having it in experimental is interesting. Next step is building 3.5.2 backported packages. These will be provided "as is", for i386 and probably very soon amd64, on the pkg-samba team's unofficial repository. I'll be working on this tomorrow^Wtoday.

Readers of these blog posts know how I like to play stupid games with the BTS (bugs are what make software live, right?). Doing that, I just discovered that Ubuntu bug numbers are about to pass Debian bug numbers. At the moment, I write this blog entry, the highest bug in Launchpad, for Ubuntu, is #575161, while Debian's highest bug number is #580219. Roughly speaking, Ubuntu highest bug number should be higher than Debian's in about 2 weeks. Interesting.

Time for our bi-monthly post... Salvo Tomaselli reported the Debian bug #580000 on Sunday May 2nd, against the kopete package. Bug #570000 was reported as of February 15th 2010. We're now behind our "10,000 bugs in 2 months" pace by two weeks, so this confirms the slowdown in Debian's bug report rate. I hope this doesn't confirm also the slowdown in Debian's development rate.

• Christian Perrier have reported about the localization status in the debian-installer, 26 languages are in danger of being deactivated. if you are a native speaker of one of them, you can join and help!
• The old (and no longer updated) archive snapshot http://snapshot.debian.net has been revamped as an official Debian service at http://snapshot.debian.org/.
  More information in the press release.
• You are still on time of submitting your event proposal for DebConf 10. Deadline is May 1st, 2010, 23h59 UTC
  Daniel Kahn Gillmor have blogged about the changes introduced this year.
• If you are a long time Debian contributor who never have attended to DebConf and you are interested, you no longer have an excuse, read about the special funding for DebConf Newbies.
  Joey Hess and Stefano Zacchiroli have blogged about this.
• Guido G nther wrote a summary about the 3rd Debian Groupware Meeting.
• Debian got 9 students accepted for this edition of the Google Summer of Code. Welcome to the project!
  Read a brief summary about their projects.
• And finally, a bit late, but still important, congratulations Stefano!

Some of you probably met Knut Yrvin, one of the leaders of Skolelinux/DebianEdu. But have you met him doing this?

I just published the following in debian-i18n. If you read this on Planet Debian, please followup on debian-i18n. The situation for D-I translations is currently the following. It is not that brilliant, I have to say. And I limit details to "level 1". In very short: 33 languages are in good shape. *26 languages are in danger of being deactivated* More details The safe side 16 languages are complete:

ar bg cs de es fr ga it ja lt nb pt ru sk th vi

14 languages were complete before changes to sublevel 5 and only have 5 fuzzy strings to very seldomly used packages:

ast bn el eo et eu fi gu mr pl sl sq sv tr zh_TW

3 languages have a few strings to update in sublevels 1 to 3 but have active translators who will probably easy cope with them:

be nl zh_CN

The unsafe side 12 languages had random updates since lenny but not on a regular basis. These languages are at risk of being deactivated for Squeeze if they are not complete for sublevels 1 and 2:

da gl ko pa ro he hi hu ka pt_BR ml tl

8 languages were complete in lenny but had no update since then. These languages are at risk of being deactivated for Squeeze if they are not complete for sublevels 1 and 2: bs ca dz hr id km lv mk ne nn ta wo Other languages are in various situations. Those marked "(P)" are not activated and have nearly no chance to be activated for Squeeze, the exception being Sinhala (si) which is making great progress. The 6 active languages listed below are at risk of being deactivated:

089%  uk     1
087%  ku     1
086%  am     1
083%  kk
083%  si (P) 2
072%  sr     1
069%  cy     1
064%  is (P) 1
043%  ms (P) 1
034%  kn (P) 1
025%  br (P) 1
015%  se     1
014%  mg (P)
014%  te (P) 2
012%  fa (P) 1
009%  xh (P) 1
008%  ur (P) 1
002%  hy (P) 1
000%  lo (P)

Squeeze release plans have not been made yet but I would say this is time to become aware of the situation and start hunting for translators for "endangered" languages.

Only for running junkies: my route at Paris marathon. I use this occasion to congratulate Christelle Daunay, who broke the French national record for women for the second year in a row, bringing it to 2h24'22", a world-class performance, after finishing 3rd in the so famous New York City marathon.

Upload accepted by organisers. Upload time has been 3h49'29" (my watch says 27", eh!). That was a good one, really (actually, I can compare to only 3 as it was my fourth marathon after Paris and Cologne 2009, plus the unofficial Rambouillet Forest marathon I ran alone 6 weeks after Paris 2009). For marathoners around, here are the chronometric data. Please note that GPS watches tend to overestimate the distance, mostly because of the jerky way one runs in mass events, as well as geometric considerations related to the imprecision of GPS (imprecision may be lateral and thus the line recorded by the watch is often less straight than the real one). For instance, according to my watch, Paris marathon was 42.63km long, so an overestimate by nearly 500meters. As a consequence, the recorded speed of 5'23"/km should be corrected to 5'25". So, times below should be increased by 2 seconds.

• km 0: I'm in the 4h target sas. Thankfully, I arrived early so I can go to the front line of it, so I'll start about 100m behind a 3h45 pacemaker.
• km 1: 5:12 (Champs-Elys es)
• km 2: 5:24 (Champs-Elys es, Concorde)
• km 3: 5:06 (Rue de Rivoli...not as jammed as I though, hence the time)
• km 4: 5:11 (Rue de Rivoli, Chatelet)
• km 5: 5:07 (Rue de Rivoli, Hotel de Ville. Sadly, I lost my water bottle even though it is meant to be very secure in the trail belt I use. Too bad for the energetic drinks. I won't be in full autonomy as I expected: I hate the mess around Food/Drinks stands)
• km 6: 5:30 (Bastille: slowdown at the beginning of Fbg St-Antoine, but no real jamm like last year)
• km 7: 5:02 (Rue du Faubourg St-Antoine)
• km 8: 5:18 (Rue de Reuilly)
• km 9: 5:10 (Avenue Daumesnil: great time despite the difficult turns at place F lix Ebou ....and the climbing to Porte Dor e. Here I reach the 3h45 pacemaker and pass him to avoid the jam around him)
• km 10: 5:20 (time to slow down a bit as my current time is slightly frightening: I'm around a 3h43 pace. Also, avenue Daumesnil to Vincennes castle is going up!). km 10 is reached in 53:26 according to official recordings, so 5'20". Not that bad.
• km 11: 5:07 (Chateau de Vincennes. I fail to really slowdown....which is probably the bad decision I'll regret later on)
• km 12: 5:12 (Parc Floral. The pace maker stopped for peeing. I'm away ahead of him, dammit)
• km 13: 5:13 (Route de la Pyramide. Good constant pace. Too fast, still)
• km 14: 5:02 (Hippodrome de Vincennes. Dammit, will I ever slow down?)
• km 15: 5:41 (Hippodrome, again. I had to pee..:-)...The pacemaker passes me again and is now running 100m ahead of me...and gazillion of other runners)
• km 16: 5:22 (Avenue de Gravelle. The hardest part of the half-marathon, but this time we're going *down* and this is a good moment to relax. Finally, I'm now using the right pace)
• km 17: 4:58 (Avenue de Gravelle again. The time seems too fast but this is really an easy part and despite the high pace, I'm relaxing. Nothing is hurting as of now. The pacemaker is now only 30m ahead of me)
• km 18: 5:10 (approaching Porte de Charenton and its pavement I dislike a lot....so I'm enjoying the good macadam for now....pacemaker 10m ahead)
• km 19: 5:13 (Porte de Charenton done. Great ambiance, one of the best all along the road, with Paris firemen animating the neighbourhood. Very motivating.....and I now that next kilometer will be goind down!)
• km 20: 5:05 (Rue de Charenton. Another hard point of the half-marathon, but here we're going down....then up! Still I'm feeling very good)
• km 21: 5:24 (Avenue Daumesnil. I'm about 300m behind the half-marathon mark when my watch beeps for km21. Now I came back to my planned pace....il tait temps!)
• Half-marathon official mark is reached in 1h51'25". Prior to my two official half-marathons this winter, this was my personal best on that distance! 5'17"/km, that's however faster than what I planned. That would make 3h42'50". Now I really suspect that I'll regret it!
• km 22: 5:10 (Reaching Bastille. Still (too) fast. I try to calculate how I'll meet Zack and Ralf)
• km 23: 5:20 (reaching the Seine river banks. Crowded place and not much room left laterally by spectators. Elizabeth was there but she didn't manage to see me as she was thinking I was way behind: the SMS service that sends the time at km20 is based....on official time and no real time! I passed the 3h45 flag by 100m and am now seeing another 3h45 flag 100m ahead of me. I'm definitely too fast)
• km 24: 5:20 (Quai Marie. I saw Zack and Ralf and could have a hi-five with them. Ralf should have a pic. I wasn't able to talk to them as I don't like ppl who suddenly stop to hug friends...but Ralf organized things very well and was very precise in his indications)
• km 25: 5:39 (Down to Seine bank expressway. The food/drink before km25 wasn't good and I slowed down to eat one of my gels too...not the first one. Legs begin to hurt and I now feel that I'll have hard times in expressway tunnels)
• km 26: 5:03 (very long tunnel on the expressway. One of the hardest points in the road. It's hot and noisy inside and the moral is not very high. Also, I know there's a steep climbing at the exit. The watch time is probably wrong)
• km 27: 5:55 (Concorde. I told you! Despite the imprecision of time, I know I'm slowing down. The pace maker is now 50m ahead of me again as he passed me in the tunnel. Also, this is a difficult part as it features other expressway tunnels where we go down then up)
• km 28: 4:50 (Grand Palais. Energy seems to be coming back though I really fear that won't last for very long. Pace maker is closer, though. For Dirk: this is the traditional place where the Chicago Marathon, Paris sister marathon is advertizing on the metro bridge)
• km 29: 5:19 (Tour Eiffel. I always fear this part as it is likely that the many tourists who cross the Seine river to go to Eiffel Tower have to croos the street we're running on. Anyway, it's still going well, but the 30km wall is approaching)
• km 30: 5:25 (Maison de Radio-France. Hmm, I'm not feeling very well but apparently I could keep the pace. The pace maker is about 50m ahead of me). I'm reaching km 30 in 2h39'47" for a 5'19" pace.
• km 31: 5:34 (Rue Mirabeau. I'm fearing the rue Molitor slow climbing. 11km left, it's time to use my trick: imagining that I'm running my usual Saturday tour in Maurepas Forest.....so let's say, I'm leaving home and forget that it's about 2h45 that I'm running already)
• km 32: 5:23 (rue Molitor and Porte d'Auteuil. After all, that street isn't climbing that much! Still, I'm now fearing the loops in Bois de Boulogne where there are less spectators and encouragements)
• km 33: 5:37 (Stade Jean-Bouin. Uh oh, now I feel that I'm slowing down *and* can't go faster. First signs of possible cramps. It's time to motivate myself to continue drinking enough as there are still 9km to run)
• km 34: 5:28 (Avenue de la Porte d'Auteuil. That completes the first and smallest loop in Bois de Boulogne...but the longest one is to come, plus the (last) climbing on the Avenue des Fortifications. "My" pace maker is now way ahead of me and I can't see home anymore. I'm on my own with a few other thousand of people around. What's good is that I'm still running faster than most of them (people really overestimate their targets!)
• km 35: 5:56 (Avenue des Fortifications. OUCH. The turn at Porte d'Auteuil followed by the small climbing was hard. Now I know that I'll have hard times in the next kilometers)
• km 36: 5:35 (going around Hippodrome d'Auteuil . Let's go for the most demotivating part of the road: the one where we go the *opposite* way of our destination! And we still have 6 kilometers to run. This is the place where, last years, we were seeing people who were 3 kilometers ahead of us. Not this time as the loop in Bois de Boulogne changed)
• km 37: 5:34 (Bois de Boulogne alleys. I'm happy because, despite of the very hard legs, I'm keeping a pace below enough of the 4h pace....and, even though 3h45 is out of question, I have hopes for 3h50...which was my target)
• km 38: 5:41 (Begin of the very long All e de la Reine Marguerite, for 1.5km. My only thought is now to avoid going under the 5:41 pace)
• km 39: 5:35 (interesting to see this now as I perfectly remember that my moral wasn't very high at that time...but I apparently managed to keep that constant pace)
• km 40: 5:41 (All e de Longchamp: the one where we see Porte Maillot tower very far away and another very long alley, for 1km. But, hey, this is the magical 40km mark! Moral is climbing up. If I manage to not get cramps until km 41, that will be fine!)
• km 41: 6:10 (the hardest kilometer of this run, very obviously. I had to stop to get water and running again is now really difficult. People around are also slowing down a lot as the weather, even if not very hot, is sunny and around the 18 C mark....after a cold winter....thankfully I had worse in Thailand so I don't suffer that much)
• km 42: 6:02 (Porte Dauphine is approaching, it now feels like home, people are excited and spectators are back and very noisy...it's now OK)
• km 42.195: 5:22 (my watch counted more than 500meters over 42km, remember....crossing Porte Dauphine is magic, the noise is incredible and I can....nearly...fly. So, trying to sprint enough to be sure reaching the 3h50 mark)

As a conclusion, even though I can improve the pace and avoid going too fast in the first 25km, I'm very happy as I avoided nearly collapsing as I did last year (with sometimes over 7'00/km and a few walks). Going back home was OK and I had no cramps and I still haven't any. This is also what one gets when preparing well. My only regret is that I didn't run over 30km since, indeed, Cologne Marathon! That made the difference in the last 12 kilometers, obviously. Having spent the winter on many half-marathons (either alone, or a few officials) clearly improved my "performance" up to 25km. For the next marathon (a marathoner always thinks about the next one), I need to have 1 or 2 long trainings a few weeks before. Now, I have to find out which one will be the next one... and I wish good luck to my friend No l K the, who is preparing the Mainz marathon for May 9th as well as Dirk who's certainly preparing another one. Guys, rendez-vous is of course for Debconf10 in NYC. We won't run a marathon for sur, but how about an half one? :-)

...you want to run many. Everybody told me so. Which is why I was warned when I ran my first one year ago in Paris, I knew I would run other. So, on Sunday will be my fourth one and my second Paris Marathon. So, after 4h10mins in Paris (april 2009), 4h12 in Rambouillet Forest (all alone in full autonomy mode) and 4h00'49" in Cologne, my target this time is 3h50. Weather is announced to be perfect, my physical condition is AFAIK good, the motivation is very high....my only fear is that I registred in the "4h target" group (because, back in November, I wasn't expecting the results I got in February/March in half-marathons). As many people overestimate their target, I expect to be passing hundreds of runners during the first 5 kilometers, which is not the best way to start....but, hey, Paris streets are wide enough (except Place de la Bastille, my nightmare....I hope organizers solved the jam problem there). Of course, I kinda hope seeing fellow Paris DD's waving giant Debian swirls, including our wanabee-DPL.....but let's stop dreaming. And running in a sunny day all across Paris and along river Seine, will be great again even without Zack. I'll also be missing Ralf and No l who ran it last year: Ralf is unfortunately suffering from knee problems and No l is preparing for Mainz marathon (target: 3h??). Anyway, more news on Sunday afternoon....and let's enjoy a full rest tomorrow!

...would you be so kind to tell me where is the bloody fix for "my" bug in this mess? Hopefully my samba co-maintainer will bring the right fix as he's been involved in solving the issue in Ubuntu..and is by definition more familiar with the LP infrastructure than me. But, sure, that one made me mumble quite a bit this morning...

Then read this and spot your common mistakes..:-) That post was courtesy of the Smith Project that just hit its 3rd birthday on Thursday. Free (virtual) camembert to people who spot the right number of English errors in this very post, of course.

...where I get paged, SMS'ed, /msg'ed, facebooked, cheek kissed and non-cheek kissed (once), as well as piweted (but that's specific to $ family ). Ah, and I have to bring croissants at work this morning. Tradition. Eh. In short, I'm turning 31 today. Easy one....this year..:-)

So, Thailand Mini-DebCamp 2010 in Khon Kaen has already ended. It's another memorable event I've joined, and especially for this one, been in the organizing team. We owed many people for its success. I'd like to thank our guest DDs for their talks, many of which are improvised. Special thanks to Paul Wise and Yakiharu Yabuki for preparing the talks on Debian Social Contract and Debian packaging in one night, so our audiences can prepare themselves for the Bug Squashing Party in the next 3 consecutive days. Thanks Paul Wise, Andrew Lee, Yakiharu Yabuki, Daiki Ueno, Christian Perrier and our local participants for their efforts in tackling more than 50 bugs during the BSP, 30 of which have been closed and 14 with proposed patches. Thanks Christian Perrier for several talks in the last two days. We also had Andrew Lee's talk on Debian EzGo project, along with talks from our local distro developers (Linux SIS, Linux TLE) on what are being worked on and what can be pushed into Debian. And Neutron Soutmun had presented some future plan on the RahuNAS, a captive portal software based on Debian. A special agenda had been arranged to improve Debian mirroring in Thailand. Chatchai Jantaraprim, the ftp.th.debian.org maintainer, had shared us the backgrounds and motivations behind the official mirror setup for Thailand. Andrew Lee, the ftp.tw.debian.org maintainer, had introduced us to the Debian mirroring infrastructure, and encouraged the local mirror Debian mirror maintainers to do it Debian way. We had exchanged experiences and problems found among the current mirror sites, which can be much useful for their improvements, as well as cooperation in the future. Christian Perrier had also introduced us to the Debian translation workflow and how to coordinate translation via mailing list. This can be useful in the future for Thai if we can form a team, rather than a single-handed translation as present. Christian's talk on Debian contribution paths, along with their fresh hands-on experience in the BSP, had indeed motivated many local people to join Debian. I've been told by some people that they wanted to actually join Debian after this event, after just having a wish to do so for a long time. And Christian's yet another talk on key signing, with live demonstration, was really helpful for Thai audiences, as few of us were familiar with the concept and practice. Yes, taking care of PGP key does require special cares! Night chats and parties were also cool. We enjoyed the drinks (especially, Debian wine!), snacks, and chats together, and exchanged many stories. For me personally, it made me feel Debian as a live community, with people living in it. For the record, we even had a real bug squashing party, as fried bugs are among well-known Esaan dishes. And we had immediately got new voluntary vegetarians because of it! Hee hee.. Hello Christian, I witnessed it. ;-) And thumbs up to Yabuki for his bravery! Yes, it's a wonderful event for me indeed. Thanks Khon Kaen University (Kitt Tientanopajai et. al.) for hosting it. Thanks NECTEC Information and Mobile Applications Program and Science Park KKU for the financial support. Thanks NECTEC people for taking care of foreign participants in traveling between Bangkok and Khon Kaen. And thanks all participants for their contributions to make this event a great one! Picture credits: Supphachoke Suntiwichaya, DebConf Gallery

I'm now on my way back from The first miniDebCamp and miniDebconf that happened from March 13th to March 19th in Khon Kaen, Thailand. This even was organized locally by a team of very motivated Thai Debian enthusiasts and contributors, such as Theppitak Karoonboonyanan (*the* Thai DD), Neutron Soutmun, Kitt Tientanopajai, and all those whose name I'm not remembering as of now (I hope they won't mind). The even had kinda the structure of DebConfs, with a few days of "Debcamp" to begin. See the full schedule. We were hosted in Khon Kaen University (KKU), one one the most famous universities in Thailand, a small "town in town" in a city with a few hundred thousand inhabitants (dunno exactly). Lodging was done in a hotel located inside the university. Interestingly, the hotel was also hosting youg students participating to "Summer Camps" (apparently training systems to get good school results) gving to all this a very young atmosphere. The hacking lab and talks location was a 30-seat room in the university library, and meals were brought in there very efficiently, with the very specific way that Thai people have to transport each and every kind of meal (in small plastic bags closed by rubber). I arrived only in the 3rd day because I had commitments at home that made it impossible to me to come for the first day. During these days, people have been very busy hacking and participating to the Bug Squashing Party. During that BSP, about 50 bugs have been touched, without about 15 or so closed. Other non Thai attendees were Andrew Lee from TW, Paul Wise from AU, Daiki Ueno and Yukiharu Yabuki from JP. Organizers were expecting some attendees from neighbouring countries such as Laos, Vietnam or Cambodia. Unfortunately, none of them could come, including Anousak Soupavanh, leader of Lao free software localization efforts, who I was very impatient to meet. Transport difficulties, or visa problems, do not make things easy in that part of the world. On Wednesday we had a "DayTrip" as it is common for such event. We went abotu 50 km away from Khon Kaen, to visit a nice place, close to a dam lake, and climbed a hill surrounded by a big temple and a giant Buddha statue. Then we had a wonderful lunch in a fish restaurant in the very specific Thai way to share stuff: everything is on the table and you pick your food here and there, at you rconvenience. Of course, local advice before trying apparently innocent food is always worth it because the fire might be hidden anywhere (for instance in that soja plate which I tried and that set my mouth as a burning hell for 20 minutes). The journey ended by a visit of a great temple in Khon Kaen and, very noticeably by a dinner in a very popular barbecue restaurant in "all you can eat" style for...100Bath (so, about 2.5 euros). Maybe only vegetarian people had more trouble enjoying the meal as it was mostly made of various meat (and sea food). The talk days were very intense, at least in my opinion. Probably because I ended up giving four talks, some of them completely improvised (about IP-over-DNS, which I was using at the hotel and about which many wanted to learn a little bit more, and GPG keysigning processes). It turned out that the GPG talk was well received and, discussing with Paul later on, we agreed that such a talk, mostly meant to explain the DOs and DON'Ts For good GPG keys signing, could be a good idea even for Debconfs. There were also a few talks about local initiatives and efforts to develop (and not only promote) free software. We have no recordings of these talks as we were infortunately missing some video recording installation (maybe next time, Thep) just like the miniConf that was happening in Panama at about the same time was having. Due to local regulation on the university network, we had some limitations with Internet access (some firewalling that for instance was preventing SIP to work properly, which made a video-conference with a japanese user group fail, unfurtunately). The event ended in a round table discussion about ideas to organize something bigger in the future. The local community in Thailand has apparently the energy, maybe ressources and local support to be able to organize a slightly bigger event as first try (somethign like an Asian DebConf or something similar, targeting mostly Asian contributors and about 50-100 people. Thailand seems to be a good target to host such event, with many things being relatively inexpensive (and not only beer!). And they even think about possibly hosting a Debconf at some time in the future (actually, Martin Krafft should also be credited for bringing this idea). That isn't as crazy as it seems and, provided that potential organizers start involving themselves in the current Debconfs, everything seems to be possible. After all, if we look back to 2005, only one person (hello, Safir) was seriously thinking that Debconf could really happen in Bosnia and Herzegovina, right? After this week (followed by 2.5 days of sightseeing in Bangkok for me, plus a small meeting today with local Thai Linux corporate users and IT company owners), I feel like the mood in Asia about Debian development is high and full of potential. The miniconf last year in Taiwan was already a good success, by establishing a good connection between people.....we need to keep that alive and, hopefully, there will be other miniconfs in this part of the world. And, well, if I can be there, I'll be there.

W00t. Again below 1h45 and beating my best time by more than 2 minutes. Paris half-marathon was great. Freaking cold (-3 C with a strong North-East wind) but great weather with the sun in a blue sky. I didn't see Ralf (and, Ralf, sorry but I was finally wearing an orange suite..:-)) nor Debian swirls....but, apparently, that wasn't missing for having a great race. Elisabeth cam along with me to Paris and I managed to see her (and she manage to spot me) twice: once in Bastille at km 10 and later on at Charenton at km 14 The interesting challenge now is what to set as goal for the marathon. Of course, I have to run below 4h (which I missed by 49 seconds in Cologne) but I apparently can do better. I think I'll be reasonable and set 3h50 and we'll see.

Tomorrow is the day for Paris half-marathon, the mass half-marathon that is traditionnally run 4-5 weeks before Paris marathon. This year, I'll run both, so tomorrow, I'll be running in Paris (and Bois de Vincennes) streets...along with 27,000 other people..., attempting to beat my 1h43'55" record set in my last (and as of now) only half-marathon, one month ago, in Bullion. That might be hard as running at one's own pace is easier in a run with 1,000 runners..:-) Ralf Treinen told me he might show up around km 7 (place de l'H tel de Ville). I should be around there around 11h50 as the start is at 10h and I should probably cross the start line at about 10h15, then run 5mins/km. So, if you're around eastern Paris and wake up "early" on Sundays, feel free to come and show me a nice Debian swirl so that I can run even faster (or less slow). I'll be wearing a black top with short sleeves and short running pants (not the easies to spot, I admit). Then try spotting Ralf and have a beer..:-).