Somehow, even though I'd know about it for the longest time, I had never get around to reading George R.R. Martins A Song of Ice and Fire series until I heard about the Game of Thrones HBO series. Then I thought I had better hurry up and read the books as TV adaptations tend to be inferior. (I must say HBO did a pretty good job though.) I was instantly hooked and finished all four books in a week. Today the long-awaited fifth installment called A Dance with Dragons and I immediately got myself a copy. (Nowadays I mostly do my recreational reading with the Kindle app on my Android smartphone.) As before, I'm spellbound. I'm already about 25% through it and loving it. What I love about Martin is that he really gets how traditional, "pagan", "feudal" societies work. Take religion for instance. A lot of Sci-Fi/Fantasy authors if they deal with the subject at all usually give a cartoon version of polytheism that owes more to Christian canards and Dungeons & Dragons than any existing human religion. But in Westeros, one can be simultaneously devout, amoral, superstitious, and cynical in a way that makes a lot of sense to me as a Hindu. Or class. Being a peasant in Martins' world is horrible. Your life is completely at the mercy of Lords and Ladies and can end in an instant. But the upper class despite its wealth and power is trapped in its own way too. They must constantly protect their status from jealous competitors and a reversal of political or military fortune can destroy an ancient noble family just as suddenly as a bad harvest can destroy a family of farmers. Like the other books in the series, this one has a huge cast of characters whose stories weave in and out with each chapter told mainly from one characters viewpoint. This is a tactic which I for one found helpful to keep my attention from flagging but it means you can't really enjoy it unless you've read the previous volumes in order first. I definitely think it's worth the effort though.

Martin Borgert uses my gtk-vector-screenshot application to take screenshots of a web page opened in the browser, in his case, epiphany. I find this a very good idea and was surprised to hear that it works flawlessly: The rendered web page not only shows up, it even shows up as vector graphic with fully selectable text. It s also neat that a HTML5 video appears. One feature that is hard to replicate with regular screenshots is taking a shot of a window that is larger than the current screen. This PDF file (of which the image on the left is a thumbnail preview) contains a whole web page that would not fit on my screen. To achieve that you need a window manager that allows resizing windows beyond the size of your screen (e.g. xmonad). Then just keep resizing and moving the window until the scroll bar disappears and take the shot. BTW, gtk-vector-screenshot is available in Debian unstable.
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So, I haven t read the planets in a couple of days but I m going to guess that, like twitter, a lot of people are going to be raving about Google+. For those of you who haven t heard about Google+, it s a new Social Networking site from Google and it brings a new take to the world of social networking. In real life, we communicate differently to the different people in our social contexts. For example, most people will converse differently to their work colleagues than they will to their family. They ll converse differently with their drinking buddies than they will with their Family. There are things that you want only certain people to know, and there are aspects of your personality that you only want to show to certain people. I think giving an example here might be better. This is an example of a friend of mine, who we ll call Fred. Fred is a teacher. Fred also likes to go out of a weekend and party till dawn, while consuming lots of tequila. I, as Fred s friend, am on a night out of drunken debauchery, and I ve my camera with me, and decide to post lots of pictures online of the night s revelry. The next day, one of Fred s colleagues logs into a Social Networking site, and sees said pictures in Fred s profile. Now things aren t looking so bright for Fred. He no longer gives across that professional image that he should do at work. Some may say that this is Fred s fault for going out and doing these things, but everyone s entitled to a personal life, right? At the moment, on Fred s social networking site, it s an all or nothing option. If he allows you access to his profile, he allows you access to see anything and everything that might show up on there. (It s a bit more complicated than this, but let s keep it simple for now). Every time Fred has someone add him as a contact he has to make that decision Do I want this person to be able to see everything I may or may not get up to . Put simply, how many of you have refused someone to add you on the Social Networking site du jour because what you show on their may be harmful to you, or give over an impression that isn t what you want to give across. Enter Circles. Circles brings to the social networking scene the way we interact with people in real life. We show a different aspect of our personality to different people we interact with. I m a bit of an organisational freak, and I know that there are different groups of people that either for the fact of portraying a persona, or not annoying everyone else, I might want to push in different ways. For example, I might want to send out a BBQ at my house, bring lots of alcohol message to all my friends, but don t really want my co-workers coming along and making it so I have to be on my best behaviour. Below is a screenshot of my (current) circles. As you can see I have a fair few, and only a relative few people. Now, let s say that I wanted to send out that BBQ message As you can see I ve the option to send this to the 5 people that are in my Friends group (it s currently mostly geeks on there there are only a few of my real life friends on there so far!) Now with only a few clicks, I ve managed to send out a message to just those few people that I want to Over the next few days, I ll write a bit more about Google+, but I thought I d start with an introduction into the Circles feature. I ll be giving a bit of feedback about what I like, what I dislike, and also making a few suggestions for what I d like to see happen in the future (and probably use the word siloing a fair bit!) For now, toodles.

When traveling I usually try local brands of beer. This became some sort of hobby, and usually gives me a good possibility to get in contact with the locals. For DebConf11 so far I have been suggested to try Tuzlanski (Tuzla) and Nektar (Banja Luka). Any other suggestions what should be tried?

I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but now I'll try to summarize the story of a great surprise and a big moment for me. All this started when my wife Elizabeth and my son Jean-Baptiste wanted to do something special for my 50th birthday. So, it indeed all started months ago, probably early March or something (I don't yet have all the details). Jean-Baptiste described this well on the web site, so I won't go again into details, but basically, this was about getting birthday wishes from my "free software family" in, as you might guess, as many languages as possible. Elizabeth brought the original idea and JB helped her by setting up the website and collecting e-mail addresses of people I usually work with: he grabbed addresses from PO files on Debian website, plus some in his own set of GPG signatures and here we go. And then he started poking dozens of you folks in order to get your wishes for this birthday. Gradually, contributions accumulated on the website, with many challenges for them: be sure to get as many people as possible, poking and re-poking all those FLOSS people who keep forgetting things... It seems that poking people is something that's probably in the Perrier's genes! And they were doing all this without me noticing. As usually in Debian, releasing on time is a no-no. So, it quickly turned out that having everything ready by April 2nd wouldn't be possible. So, their new goal was offering this to me on Pentecost Sunday, which was yesterday. And...here comes the gift. Aha, this looks like a photo album. Could it be a "50 years of Christian" album? But, EH, why is that pic of me, with the red Debconf5 tee-shirt (that features a world map) and a "bubulle" sign, in front of the book? But, EH EH EH, what the .... are doing these word by H0lger, then Fil, then Joey doing on the following pages? And only then, OMG, I discover the real gift they prepared. 106, often bilingual, wishes from 110 people (some were couples!). 18 postcards (one made of wood). 45 languages. One postcard with wishes from nearly every distro representatives at LinuxTag 2011. Dozens of photos from my friends all around the world. All this in a wonderful album. I can't tell what I said. Anyway, JB was shooting a video, so...we'll see. OK, I didn't cry...but it wasn't that far and emotion was really really intense. Guys, ladies, gentlemen, friends....it took me a while to realize what you contributed to. It took me the entire afternoon to realize the investment put by Elizabeth and JB (and JB's sisters support) into this. Yes, as many of you wrote, I have an awesome family and they really know how to share their love. I also have an awesome virtual family all around the world. Your words are wholeheartedly appreciated and some were indeed much much much appreciated. Of course, I'll have the book in Banja Luka so that you can see the result. I know (because JB and Elizabeth told me) that many of you were really awaiting to see how it would be received (yes, that includes you, in Germany, who I visited in early May!!!). Again, thank you so much for this incredible gift. Thank you Holger Levsen, Phil Hands, Joey Hess, Lior Kaplan, Martin Michlmayr, Alberto Gonzalez Iniesta, Kenshi "best friend" Muto, Praveen Arimbrathodiyil, Felipe Augusto van de Wiel, Ana Carolina Comandulli (5 postcards!), Stefano Zacchiroli (1st contribution received by JB, of course), Gunnar Wolf, Enriiiiiico Zini, Clytie Siddall, Frans Pop (by way of Clytie), Tenzin Dendup, Otavio Salvador, Neil McGovern, Konstantinos Margaritis, Luk Claes, Jonas Smedegaard, Pema Geyleg, Meike "sp tzle queen" Reichle, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Torsten Werner, "nette BSD" folks, CentOS Ralph and Brian, Fedora people, SUSE's Jan, Ubuntu's Lucia Tamara, Skolelinux' Paul, Rapha l Hertzog, Lars Wirzenius, Andrew McMillan (revenge in September!), Yasa Giridhar Appaji Nag (now I know my name in Telugu), Amaya Rodrigo, St phane Glondu, Martin Krafft, Jon "maddog" Hall (and God save the queen), Eddy Petri or, Daniel Nylander, Aiet Kolkhi, Andreas "die Katze geht in die K che, wunderbar" Tille, Paul "lets bend the elbow" Wise, Jordi "half-marathon in Banja Luka" Mallach, Steve "as ever-young as I am" Langasek, Obey Arthur Liu, YAMANE Hideki, Jaldhar H. Vyas, Vikram Vincent, Margarita "Bronx cross-country queen" Manterola, Patty Langasek, Aigars Mahinovs (finding a pic *with* you on it is tricky!), Thepittak Karoonboonyanan, Javier "nobody expects the Spanish inquisition" Fern ndez-Sanguino, Varun Hiremath, Moray Allan, David Moreno Garza, Ralf "marathon-man" Treinen, Arief S Fitrianto, Penny Leach, Adam D. Barrat, Wolfgang Martin Borgert, Christine "the mentee overtakes the mentor" Spang, Arjuna Rao Chevala, Gerfried "my best contradictor" Fuchs, Stefano Canepa, Samuel Thibault, Eloy "first samba maintainer" Par s, Josip Rodin, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Steve McIntyre, Guntupalli Karunakar, Jano Gulja , Karolina Kali , Ben Hutchings, Matej Kova i , Khoem Sokhem, Lisandro "I have the longest name in this list" Dami n Nicanor P rez-Meyer, Amanpreet Singh Alam, H ctor Or n, Hans Nordhaugn, Ivan Mas r, Dr. Tirumurti Vasudevan, John "yes, Kansas is as flat as you can imagine" Goerzen, Jean-Baptiste "Piwet" Perrier, Elizabeth "I love you" Perrier, Peter Eisentraut, Jesus "enemy by nature" Climent, Peter Palfrader, Vasudev Kamath, Miroslav "Chicky" Ku e, Mart n Ferrari, Ollivier Robert, Jure uhalev, Yunqiang Su, Jonathan McDowell, Sampada Nakhare, Nayan Nakhare, Dirk "rendez-vous for Chicago marathon" Eddelbuettel, Elian Myftiu, Tim Retout, Giuseppe Sacco, Changwoo Ryu, Pedro Ribeoro, Miguel "oh no, not him again" Figueiredo, Ana Guerrero, Aur lien Jarno, Kumar Appaiah, Arangel Angov, Faidon Liambotis, Mehdi Dogguy, Andrew Lee, Russ Allbery, Bj rn Steensrud, Mathieu Parent, Davide Viti, Steinar H. Gunderson, Kurt Gramlich, Vanja Cvelbar, Adam Conrad, Armi Be irovi , Nattie Mayer-Hutchings, Joerg "dis shuld be REJECTed" Jaspert and Luca Capello. Let's say it gain:

• Danke
• Thank you
• (RTL or not?) / toda
• Gracias
• / arigat
• / n ndi
• Obrigado
• Grazie
• C m n
• Kadin chey la
• / Efharisto
• Dank je wel
• Tak
• D ngge
• Merci
• Kiitos
• Tika hoki
• / dhanyavaadhamulu
• Thank you and God save the Queen
• Mul umesc
• Tack
• / didi madloba
• Gr cies
• Dakujem
• / Aabhar
• / Dhanyavadagalu
• Paldies
• / kop khun krap
• Terima kasih
• Hvala (hr)
• / Dhanyavad
• / Hvala (sr)
• Hvala (sl)
• / Akun
• / Sukriya
• Takk
• / Nandri
• Maki biyen jianbakik
• D kuji
• / Xiexie
• / Aabhari aahe
• Faleminderit
• / Kam sah ham ni da
• / Blagodaram
• / Xiexie
• Hvala (bs)

Martin Pitt announced packages of PostgreSQL 9.1 Beta 2 in his blog. Following this, I am hereby announcing the availability of pgadmin3 version 1.14.0 Beta 1 which amongst other things has added support for PG 9.1. You can find it in Debian experimental and backports for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, 10.10 and 11.04 in my pgadmin3 backports for stable Ubuntu releases PPA. Enjoy!

/debian permanent link Comments: 0 Flattr this

Hot on the heels of the Announcement of the second 9.1 Beta release there are now packages for it in Debian experimental and backports for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, 10.10. and 11.04 in my PostgreSQL backports for stable Ubuntu releases PPA. Warning for upgrades from Beta 1: The on-disk database format changed since Beta-1. So if you already have the beta-1 packages installed, you need to pg_dumpall your 9.1 clusters (if you still need them), and pg_dropcluster all 9.1 clusters before the upgrade. I added a check to the pre-install script to make the postgresql-9.1 package fail early to upgrade if you still have existing 9.1 clusters to avoid data loss.

I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but now I'll try to summarize the story of a great surprise and a big moment for me. All this started when my wife Elizabeth and my son Jean-Baptiste wanted to do something special for my 50th birthday. So, it indeed all started months ago, probably early March or something (I don't yet have all the details). Jean-Baptiste described this well on the web site, so I won't go again into details, but basically, this was about getting birthday wishes from my "free software family" in, as you might guess, as many languages as possible. Elizabeth brought the original idea and JB helped her by setting up the website and collecting e-mail addresses of people I usually work with: he grabbed addresses from PO files on Debian website, plus some in his own set of GPG signatures and here we go. And then he started poking dozens of you folks in order to get your wishes for this birthday. Gradually, contributions accumulated on the website, with many challenges for them: be sure to get as many people as possible, poking and re-poking all those FLOSS people who keep forgetting things... It seems that poking people is something that's probably in the Perrier's genes! And they were doing all this without me noticing. As usually in Debian, releasing on time is a no-no. So, it quickly turned out that having everything ready by April 2nd wouldn't be possible. So, their new goal was offering this to me on Pentecost Sunday, which was yesterday. And...here comes the gift. Aha, this looks like a photo album. Could it be a "50 years of Christian" album? But, EH, why is that pic of me, with the red Debconf5 tee-shirt (that features a world map) and a "bubulle" sign, in front of the book? But, EH EH EH, what the .... are doing these word by H0lger, then Fil, then Joey doing on the following pages? And only then, OMG, I discover the real gift they prepared. 106, often bilingual, wishes from 110 people (some were couples!). 18 postcards (one made of wood). 45 languages. One postcard with wishes from nearly every distro representatives at LinuxTag 2011. Dozens of photos from my friends all around the world. All this in a wonderful album. I can't tell what I said. Anyway, JB was shooting a video, so...we'll see. OK, I didn't cry...but it wasn't that far and emotion was really really intense. Guys, ladies, gentlemen, friends....it took me a while to realize what you contributed to. It took me the entire afternoon to realize the investment put by Elizabeth and JB (and JB's sisters support) into this. Yes, as many of you wrote, I have an awesome family and they really know how to share their love. I also have an awesome virtual family all around the world. Your words are wholeheartedly appreciated and some were indeed much much much appreciated. Of course, I'll have the book in Banja Luka so that you can see the result. I know (because JB and Elizabeth told me) that many of you were really awaiting to see how it would be received (yes, that includes you, in Germany, who I visited in early May!!!). Again, thank you so much for this incredible gift. Thank you Holger Levsen, Phil Hands, Joey Hess, Lior Kaplan, Martin Michlmayr, Alberto Gonzalez Iniesta, Kenshi "best friend" Muto, Praveen Arimbrathodiyil, Felipe Augusto van de Wiel, Ana Carolina Comandulli (5 postcards!), Stefano Zacchiroli (1st contribution received by JB, of course), Gunnar Wolf, Enriiiiiico Zini, Clytie Siddall, Frans Pop (by way of Clytie), Tenzin Dendup, Otavio Salvador, Neil McGovern, Konstantinos Margaritis, Luk Claes, Jonas Smedegaard, Pema Geyleg, Meike "sp tzle queen" Reichle, Alexander Reichle-Schmehl, Torsten Werner, "nette BSD" folks, CentOS Ralph and Brian, Fedora people, SUSE's Jan, Ubuntu's Lucia Tamara, Skolelinux' Paul, Rapha l Hertzog, Lars Wirzenius, Andrew McMillan (revenge in September!), Yasa Giridhar Appaji Nag (now I know my name in Telugu), Amaya Rodrigo, St phane Glondu, Martin Krafft, Jon "maddog" Hall (and God save the queen), Eddy Petri or, Daniel Nylander, Aiet Kolkhi, Andreas "die Katze geht in die K che, wunderbar" Tille, Paul "lets bend the elbow" Wise, Jordi "half-marathon in Banja Luka" Mallach, Steve "as ever-young as I am" Langasek, Obey Arthur Liu, YAMANE Hideki, Jaldhar H. Vyas, Vikram Vincent, Margarita "Bronx cross-country queen" Manterola, Patty Langasek, Aigars Mahinovs (finding a pic *with* you on it is tricky!), Thepittak Karoonboonyanan, Javier "nobody expects the Spanish inquisition" Fern ndez-Sanguino, Varun Hiremath, Moray Allan, David Moreno Garza, Ralf "marathon-man" Treinen, Arief S Fitrianto, Penny Leach, Adam D. Barrat, Wolfgang Martin Borgert, Christine "the mentee overtakes the mentor" Spang, Arjuna Rao Chevala, Gerfried "my best contradictor" Fuchs, Stefano Canepa, Samuel Thibault, Eloy "first samba maintainer" Par s, Josip Rodin, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Steve McIntyre, Guntupalli Karunakar, Jano Gulja , Karolina Kali , Ben Hutchings, Matej Kova i , Khoem Sokhem, Lisandro "I have the longest name in this list" Dami n Nicanor P rez-Meyer, Amanpreet Singh Alam, H ctor Or n, Hans Nordhaugn, Ivan Mas r, Dr. Tirumurti Vasudevan, John "yes, Kansas is as flat as you can imagine" Goerzen, Jean-Baptiste "Piwet" Perrier, Elizabeth "I love you" Perrier, Peter Eisentraut, Jesus "enemy by nature" Climent, Peter Palfrader, Vasudev Kamath, Miroslav "Chicky" Ku e, Mart n Ferrari, Ollivier Robert, Jure uhalev, Yunqiang Su, Jonathan McDowell, Sampada Nakhare, Nayan Nakhare, Dirk "rendez-vous for Chicago marathon" Eddelbuettel, Elian Myftiu, Tim Retout, Giuseppe Sacco, Changwoo Ryu, Pedro Ribeoro, Miguel "oh no, not him again" Figueiredo, Ana Guerrero, Aur lien Jarno, Kumar Appaiah, Arangel Angov, Faidon Liambotis, Mehdi Dogguy, Andrew Lee, Russ Allbery, Bj rn Steensrud, Mathieu Parent, Davide Viti, Steinar H. Gunderson, Kurt Gramlich, Vanja Cvelbar, Adam Conrad, Armi Be irovi , Nattie Mayer-Hutchings, Joerg "dis shuld be REJECTed" Jaspert and Luca Capello. Let's say it gain:

• Danke
• Thank you
• (RTL or not?) / toda
• Gracias
• / arigat
• / n ndi
• Obrigado
• Grazie
• C m n
• Kadin chey la
• / Efharisto
• Dank je wel
• Tak
• D ngge
• Merci
• Kiitos
• Tika hoki
• / dhanyavaadhamulu
• Thank you and God save the Queen
• Mul umesc
• Tack
• / didi madloba
• Gr cies
• Dakujem
• / Aabhar li> / Dhanyavadagalu
• Paldies
• / kop khun krap
• Terima kasih
• Hvala (hr)
• / Dhanyavad
• / Hvala (sr)
• Hvala (sl)
• / Akun
• / Sukriya
• Takk
• / Nandri
• Maki biyen jianbakik
• D kuji
• / Xiexie
• / Aabhari aahe
• Faleminderit
• / Kam sah ham ni da
• / Blagodaram
• / Xiexie
• Hvala (bs)

See comments at the end about this 3rd version This is time again for yet another bubulle game: counting the number of developers per country. I already published such analysis in 2010 and 2009. So, here we are with the June 2011 version, sorted by the ratio of *active* developers per million population for each country.

Act: number of active developers
Dev: total number of developers
A/M: number of active devels per million pop.
D/M: number of devels per million pop.
2009: rank in 2009
2010: rank in 2010
June 2011: rank now

Code	Name	Population	Act Dev	Dev	Act/Million	Dev/Million	2009	2010	June 2011
fi	Finland	5374781	21	31	3,91	5,77	1	1	1
ch	Switzerland	7866500	21	26	2,67	3,31	2	2	2
mq	Martinique	397730	1	1	2,51	2,51			3
no	Norway	4964500	12	15	2,42	3,02	5	4	4
nz	New Zealand	4393500	10	15	2,28	3,41	4	3	5
ie	Ireland	4470700	10	13	2,24	2,91	13	9	6
se	Sweden	9354462	19	35	2,03	3,74	3	6	7
lu	Luxemburg	511840	1	1	1,95	1,95	8	5	8
de	Germany	81802000	155	221	1,89	2,7	7	7	9
at	Austria	8404252	15	25	1,78	2,97	6	8	10
fr	France	63136180	91	119	1,44	1,88	12	12	11
au	Australia	22632213	31	57	1,37	2,52	9	10	12
be	Belgium	11007020	15	17	1,36	1,54	10	11	13
uk	United-Kingdom	62008048	67	106	1,08	1,71	14	14	14
nl	Netherlands	16674600	18	37	1,08	2,22	11	13	15
dk	Denmark	5564219	6	10	1,08	1,8	17	17	16
ca	Canada	34480000	27	57	0,78	1,65	15	15	17
hr	Croatia	4429078	3	3	0,68	0,68	20	18	18
es	Spain	46030109	31	51	0,67	1,11	16	16	19
lt	Lithuania	3225346	2	2	0,62	0,62	28	19	20
cz	Czech Rep	10540748	6	6	0,57	0,57	21	20	21
it	Italy	60605053	33	47	0,54	0,78	23	22	22
bg	Bulgaria	7351254	4	4	0,54	0,54	25	23	23
il	Israel	7602400	4	6	0,53	0,79	24	24	24
us	USA	308745538	162	364	0,52	1,18	19	21	25
hu	Hungary	9979000	5	11	0,5	1,1	18	25	26
lv	Latvia	2245357	1	1	0,45	0,45	26	26	27
uy	Uruguay	3494382	1	2	0,29	0,57	22	27	28
jp	Japan	127960000	33	46	0,26	0,36	30	28	29
pl	Poland	38186860	9	13	0,24	0,34	29	29	30
cr	Costa Rica	4253897	1	1	0,24	0,24	31	30	31
pt	Portugal	10647763	2	4	0,19	0,38	27	32	32
sk	Slovakia	5429763	1	1	0,18	0,18	32	31	33
gr	Greece	11305118	2	3	0,18	0,27	33	38	34
ar	Argentina	40091359	7	9	0,17	0,22	34	33	35
sv	El Salvador	6134000	1	1	0,16	0,16			36
tw	Taiwan	23061689	3	3	0,13	0,13	37	34	37
br	Brazil	190732694	20	21	0,1	0,11	36	35	38
by	Belarus	9648533	1	1	0,1	0,1	35	36	39
mg	Madagascar	20653556	2	2	0,1	0,1	44	37	40
cu	Cuba	11239363	1	1	0,09	0,09		38	41
kr	South Korea	48758000	4	6	0,08	0,12	39	39	42
ec	Ecuador	14790608	1	1	0,07	0,07		40	43
cl	Chile	17224200	1	2	0,06	0,12	42	41	44
ro	Romania	21466174	1	2	0,05	0,09	45	43	45
co	Colombia	45925397	2	3	0,04	0,07	41	44	46
ru	Russia	142905200	6	7	0,04	0,05	43	42	47
za	South Africa	49991300	2	9	0,04	0,18	38	48	48
my	Malaysia	27565821	1	1	0,04	0,04			49
ve	Venezuela	29105632	1	1	0,03	0,03	40	45	50
pe	Peru	29496000	1	1	0,03	0,03	46	46	51
tr	Turkey	73722988	2	2	0,03	0,03	47	47	52
mx	Mexico	112322757	2	2	0,02	0,02	49	49	53
th	Thailand	63878267	1	2	0,02	0,03	50	50	54
eg	Egypt	80085862	1	3	0,01	0,04	51	51	55
in	India	1210193422	8	8	0,01	0,01	52	52	56
cn	China	1339724852	7	11	0,01	0,01	53	53	57
ua	Ukraine	45888000	0	0	0	0	48	53	58
			896	1450	61,79%

A few interesting facts:

• There are active DDs in 57 countries
• Martinique pops up at rank 3. As this French overseas "d partement" has its own ISO code, it is counted here separately from France, though Martinique inhabitants are French citizens. That's of course a though case but I consider that David did choose to use "MQ" in his record, which means this is important for him. Let's respect that wish.
• Norway is now ahead of New Zealand. One more DD since last count
• Sweden is ahead of Luxembourg. Two more DDs since last count
• France takes over Australia and Belgium. *seven* more DDs since last count!
• UK is ahead of Netherlands now. Three more DDs since last count.
• Denmark passes Canada and Spain (50% more DDs for DK), while Croatia passes Spain (because Spain lost 3 DDs).
• USA continues to go down (by 3 this time). We're constantly losing developers over there (-3 in one year).
• And we have a new country in this list as Malaysia now has a Debian developer. Along with Martinique (ahem), this makes two new "countries" in this list. No country disappeared.
• For the first time in 12 years, DebConf will be in a country (Bosnia and Herzegovina) that has NO Debian developer. This has to change.
• We have 23 more active Debian developers and 40 more developers overall.

v2 comment: This is the second version of this blog post. I have been pointed that the population I was using for "Ireland" is indeed the population of the entire island, so Republic of Ireland (Eire) plus Northern Ireland (Ulster). We may guess that people listing "IE" as their country are citizens of the Republic of Ireland, so the population to use is that of this part of the island. As a consequence, Ireland is bumped up to 6th rank instead of 9th. v3 comment: Doh. Since I'm doing this survey, I was always adding people using "sv" as country to Sweden. This is a quite common mistake and it was happening in the past. But now, there is only ONE developer who uses "sv" as country, this is Rene Mayorga and he definitely lives in El Salvador, not Sweden. As a consequence, Sweden lost one developer (but keeps its rank) and El Salvador now appears at rank 36. It is not a "new" country as Rene is DD for quite some time.

I am going to DebCamp11 and DebConf11. I hope I can do some productive work with the website team, as well for the DSA team. Maybe I can find someone for a little skill-exchange regarding pylons.

See comment at the end about this 2nd version This is time again for yet another bubulle game: counting the number of developers per country. I already published such analysis in 2010 and 2009. So, here we are with the June 2011 version, sorted by the ratio of *active* developers per million population for each country.

Act: number of active developers
Dev: total number of developers
A/M: number of active devels per million pop.
D/M: number of devels per million pop.
2009: rank in 2009
2010: rank in 2010
June 2011: rank now

Code	Name	Population	Act Dev	Dev	Act/Million	Dev/Million	2009	2010	June 2011
fi	Finland	5374781	21	31	3,91	5,77	1	1	1	1
ch	Switzerland	7866500	21	26	2,67	3,31	2	2	2	2
mq	Martinique	397730	1	1	2,51	2,51			3	3
no	Norway	4964500	12	15	2,42	3,02	5	4	4	4
nz	New Zealand	4393500	10	15	2,28	3,41	4	3	5	5
ie	Ireland	4470700	10	13	2,24	2,91	13	9	6	6
se	Sweden	9354462	20	36	2,14	3,85	3	6	7	7
lu	Luxemburg	511840	1	1	1,95	1,95	8	5	8	8
de	Germany	81802000	155	221	1,89	2,7	7	7	9	9
at	Austria	8404252	15	25	1,78	2,97	6	8	10	10
fr	France	63136180	91	119	1,44	1,88	12	12	11	11
au	Australia	22632213	31	57	1,37	2,52	9	10	12	12
be	Belgium	11007020	15	17	1,36	1,54	10	11	13	13
uk	United-Kingdom	62008048	67	106	1,08	1,71	14	14	14	14
nl	Netherlands	16674600	18	37	1,08	2,22	11	13	15	15
dk	Denmark	5564219	6	10	1,08	1,8	17	17	16	16
ca	Canada	34480000	27	57	0,78	1,65	15	15	17	17
hr	Croatia	4429078	3	3	0,68	0,68	20	18	18	18
es	Spain	46030109	31	51	0,67	1,11	16	16	19	19
lt	Lithuania	3225346	2	2	0,62	0,62	28	19	20	20
cz	Czech Rep	10540748	6	6	0,57	0,57	21	20	21	21
it	Italy	60605053	33	47	0,54	0,78	23	22	22	22
bg	Bulgaria	7351254	4	4	0,54	0,54	25	23	23	23
il	Israel	7602400	4	6	0,53	0,79	24	24	24	24
us	USA	308745538	162	364	0,52	1,18	19	21	25	25
hu	Hungary	9979000	5	11	0,5	1,1	18	25	26	26
lv	Latvia	2245357	1	1	0,45	0,45	26	26	27	27
uy	Uruguay	3494382	1	2	0,29	0,57	22	27	28	28
jp	Japan	127960000	33	46	0,26	0,36	30	28	29	29
pl	Poland	38186860	9	13	0,24	0,34	29	29	30	30
cr	Costa Rica	4253897	1	1	0,24	0,24	31	30	31	31
pt	Portugal	10647763	2	4	0,19	0,38	27	32	32	32
sk	Slovakia	5429763	1	1	0,18	0,18	32	31	33	33
gr	Greece	11305118	2	3	0,18	0,27	33	38	34	34
ar	Argentina	40091359	7	9	0,17	0,22	34	33	35	35
tw	Taiwan	23061689	3	3	0,13	0,13	37	34	36	36
br	Brazil	190732694	20	21	0,1	0,11	36	35	37	37
by	Belarus	9648533	1	1	0,1	0,1	35	36	38	38
mg	Madagascar	20653556	2	2	0,1	0,1	44	37	39	39
cu	Cuba	11239363	1	1	0,09	0,09		38	40	40
kr	South Korea	48758000	4	6	0,08	0,12	39	39	41	41
ec	Ecuador	14790608	1	1	0,07	0,07		40	42	42
cl	Chile	17224200	1	2	0,06	0,12	42	41	43	43
ro	Romania	21466174	1	2	0,05	0,09	45	43	44	44
co	Colombia	45925397	2	3	0,04	0,07	41	44	45	45
ru	Russia	142905200	6	7	0,04	0,05	43	42	46	46
za	South Africa	49991300	2	9	0,04	0,18	38	48	47	47
my	Malaysia	27565821	1	1	0,04	0,04			48	48
ve	Venezuela	29105632	1	1	0,03	0,03	40	45	49	49
pe	Peru	29496000	1	1	0,03	0,03	46	46	50	50
tr	Turkey	73722988	2	2	0,03	0,03	47	47	51	51
mx	Mexico	112322757	2	2	0,02	0,02	49	49	52	52
th	Thailand	63878267	1	2	0,02	0,03	50	50	53	53
eg	Egypt	80085862	1	3	0,01	0,04	51	51	54	54
in	India	1210193422	8	8	0,01	0,01	52	52	55	55
cn	China	1339724852	7	11	0,01	0,01	53	53	56	56
ua	Ukraine	45888000	0	0	0	0	48	53	57	57
			896	1450	61,79%

A few interesting facts:

• Martinique pops up at rank 3. As this French overseas "d partement" has its own ISO code, it is counted here separately from France, though Martinique inhabitants are French citizens. That's of course a though case but I consider that David did choose to use "MQ" in his record, which means this is important for him. Let's respect that wish.
• Norway is now ahead of New Zealand. One more DD since last count
• Sweden is ahead of Luxembourg. Two more DDs wince last count
• France takes over Australia and Belgium. *seven* more DDs since last count!
• UK is ahead of Netherlands now. Three more DDs since last count.
• Denmark passes Canada and Spain (50% more DDs for DK), while Croatia passes Spain (because Spain lost 3 DDs).
• USA continues to go down (by 3 this time). We're constantly losing developers over there (-3 in one year).
• And we have a new country in this list as Malaysia now has a Debian developer. Along with Martinique (ahem), this makes two new "countries" in this list. No country disappeared.
• For the first time in 12 years, DebConf will be in a country (Bosnia and Herzegovina) that has NO Debian developer. This has to change.
• We have 23 more active Debian developers and 40 more developers overall.

This is the second version of this blog post. I have been pointed that the population I was using for "Ireland" is indeed the population of the entire island, so Republic of Ireland (Eire) plus Northern Ireland (Ulster). We may guess that people listing "IE" as their country are citizens of the Republic of Ireland, so the population to use is that of this part of the island. As a consequence, Ireland is bumped up to 6th rank instead of 9th.

This is time again for yet another bubulle game: counting the number of developers per country. I already published such analysis in 2010 and 2009. So, here we are with the June 2011 version, sorted by the ratio of *active* developers per million population for each country.

Act: number of active developers
Dev: total number of developers
A/M: number of active devels per million pop.
D/M: number of devels per million pop.
2009: rank in 2009
2010: rank in 2010
June 2011: rank now

Code	Name	Population	Act Dev	Dev	Act/Million	Dev/Million	2009	2010	June 2011
fi	Finland	5374781	21	31	3,91	5,77	1	1	1
ch	Switzerland	7866500	21	26	2,67	3,31	2	2	2
mq	Martinique	397730	1	1	2,51	2,51			3
no	Norway	4964500	12	15	2,42	3,02	5	4	4
nz	New Zealand	4393500	10	15	2,28	3,41	4	3	5
se	Sweden	9354462	20	36	2,14	3,85	3	6	6
lu	Luxemburg	511840	1	1	1,95	1,95	8	5	7
de	Germany	81802000	155	221	1,89	2,7	7	7	8
at	Austria	8404252	15	25	1,78	2,97	6	8	9
ie	Ireland	6197100	10	13	1,61	2,1	13	9	10
fr	France	63136180	91	119	1,44	1,88	12	12	11
au	Australia	22632213	31	57	1,37	2,52	9	10	12
be	Belgium	11007020	15	17	1,36	1,54	10	11	13
uk	United-Kingdom	62008048	67	106	1,08	1,71	14	14	14
nl	Netherlands	16674600	18	37	1,08	2,22	11	13	15
dk	Denmark	5564219	6	10	1,08	1,8	17	17	16
ca	Canada	34480000	27	57	0,78	1,65	15	15	17
hr	Croatia	4429078	3	3	0,68	0,68	20	18	18
es	Spain	46030109	31	51	0,67	1,11	16	16	19
lt	Lithuania	3225346	2	2	0,62	0,62	28	19	20
cz	Czech Rep	10540748	6	6	0,57	0,57	21	20	21
it	Italy	60605053	33	47	0,54	0,78	23	22	22
bg	Bulgaria	7351254	4	4	0,54	0,54	25	23	23
il	Israel	7602400	4	6	0,53	0,79	24	24	24
us	USA	308745538	162	364	0,52	1,18	19	21	25
hu	Hungary	9979000	5	11	0,5	1,1	18	25	26
lv	Latvia	2245357	1	1	0,45	0,45	26	26	27
uy	Uruguay	3494382	1	2	0,29	0,57	22	27	28
jp	Japan	127960000	33	46	0,26	0,36	30	28	29
pl	Poland	38186860	9	13	0,24	0,34	29	29	30
cr	Costa Rica	4253897	1	1	0,24	0,24	31	30	31
pt	Portugal	10647763	2	4	0,19	0,38	27	32	32
sk	Slovakia	5429763	1	1	0,18	0,18	32	31	33
gr	Greece	11305118	2	3	0,18	0,27	33	38	34
ar	Argentina	40091359	7	9	0,17	0,22	34	33	35
tw	Taiwan	23061689	3	3	0,13	0,13	37	34	36
br	Brazil	190732694	20	21	0,1	0,11	36	35	37
by	Belarus	9648533	1	1	0,1	0,1	35	36	38
mg	Madagascar	20653556	2	2	0,1	0,1	44	37	39
cu	Cuba	11239363	1	1	0,09	0,09		38	40
kr	South Korea	48758000	4	6	0,08	0,12	39	39	41
ec	Ecuador	14790608	1	1	0,07	0,07		40	42
cl	Chile	17224200	1	2	0,06	0,12	42	41	43
ro	Romania	21466174	1	2	0,05	0,09	45	43	44
co	Colombia	45925397	2	3	0,04	0,07	41	44	45
ru	Russia	142905200	6	7	0,04	0,05	43	42	46
za	South Africa	49991300	2	9	0,04	0,18	38	48	47
my	Malaysia	27565821	1	1	0,04	0,04			48
ve	Venezuela	29105632	1	1	0,03	0,03	40	45	49
pe	Peru	29496000	1	1	0,03	0,03	46	46	50
tr	Turkey	73722988	2	2	0,03	0,03	47	47	51
mx	Mexico	112322757	2	2	0,02	0,02	49	49	52
th	Thailand	63878267	1	2	0,02	0,03	50	50	53
eg	Egypt	80085862	1	3	0,01	0,04	51	51	54
in	India	1210193422	8	8	0,01	0,01	52	52	55
cn	China	1339724852	7	11	0,01	0,01	53	53	56
ua	Ukraine	45888000	0	0	0	0	48	53	57
			896	1450	61,79%

A few interesting facts:

• Martinique pops up at rank 3. As this French overseas "d partement" has its own ISO code, it is counted here separately from France, though Martinique inhabitants are French citizens. That's of course a though case but I consider that David did choose to use "MQ" in his record, which means this is important for him. Let's respect that wish.
• Norway is now ahead of New Zealand. One more DD since last count
• Sweden is ahead of Luxembourg. Two more DDs wince last count
• France takes over Australia and Belgium. *seven* more DDs since last count!
• UK is ahead of Netherlands now. Three more DDs since last count.
• Denmark passes Canada and Spain (50% more DDs for DK), while Croatia passes Spain (because Spain lost 3 DDs).
• USA continues to go down (by 3 this time). We're constantly losing developers over there (-3 in one year).
• And we have a new country in this list as Malaysia now has a Debian developer. Along with Martinique (ahem), this makes two new "countries" in this list. No country disappeared.
• For the first time in 12 years, DebConf will be in a country (Bosnia and Herzegovina) that has NO Debian developer. This has to change.
• We have 23 more active Debian developers and 40 more developers overall.

Today is World IPv6 Day. Please take a moment to test your connectivity, and if you are not IPv6-enabled yet, then send an e-mail to your provider or hoster and ask them for native IPv6 connectivity on your uplink. Do it even if you do not know what I am talking about or you don t care. The reason is quite simply that we re already too late and hence should act without further delay. If IPv6 network effects do not pick up and adoption rate increases, the big players will drive up the prices for everyone. Then you will find yourself locked in and paying. Or you simply won t be able to address individual computers anymore but always be forced to proxy via commercial providers and forced to say how high when they ask you to jump. Remember that they are commercial entities who might claim to act in the interest of their customers, but you are actually second to their profits. Here are some answers to frequently asked questions if you want to know more. PS: Google, having been so vocal about World IPv6 Day, I would have at least expected you to change your logo today! NP: Monkey3: 39 Laps

Jo bought me a voucher last Christmas to spend some time on a race track, driving an Aston Martin and a Lamborghini. Finally we got around to using it last week. Jo is just as much a petrol-head as me, so I surprised her by buying the same experience voucher for her - call it a wedding present. Good call - she didn't stop grinning all day, even on the long drive home! The Aston Martin was a DB9 Volante (i.e. the convertible). Lovely car, but a little softer than I'd expected (maybe due to it being the convertible). I preferred the Lamborghini Gallardo, pictured here in a nice subtle colour. *grin* The nice folks doing the official photos at the track also took some extra photos of us sitting in another supercar - an Audi R8 V10 convertible. We've got those photos coming on CD in the post, and I'll post one when they land.

Guys, we have a problem. The name of that problem is NVidia and their Optimus technology. The idea of that tech is quite neat take a laptop, put two video cards in it, use the powerful card when you need 3D power, use the weak card when you need to conserve battery. The problem is that any laptop with this technology is currently an expensive paperweight on Linux (or rather it was so until a couple weeks ago, see below). And NVidia has no plans for fixing that. Let me explain the technicalities. In all modern laptops (such as the new and sexy Dell XPS 15z and many, many others) NVidia Optimus is implemented as follows there is an NVidia card and an Intel card, all display outputs are connected to the Intel card, when the user wants more 3D power, the NVidia card is powered on and it renders an image into a framebuffer in the video memory of the Intel card which is the responsible for actually outputing that framebuffer to a display. Currently in Linux if you are using NVidia drivers the Intel card is left uninitialised, your session starts up fine on the NVidia card, it outputs the resulting picture onto the video memory of the Intel card, but the Intel card is not configured in any way and so it does not do anything further with this picture and the display stays black. The alternative is to use Intel video card driver and then the NVidia card stays there in your laptop as dead weight. It does not even power down (out of the box) so you have all the power consumption and none of the functionality. There is some support from NVidia to using that card for CUDA computing purposes in such situation, but nothing else. After years of neglect and statements from NVidia that Optimus support in Linux is impossible and thus not even planned, one individual stepped up and made it work. Yes, the solution is hacky, yes it is a hassle to set up and make it work, but this is the first glimmer of hope for actually working Optimus on Linux. Over the last couple years the share of laptops with Optimus has greatly increased almost all laptops that have NVidia video cards have Optimus now. This Bumblebee project is currently our only real hope on making Linux work on these laptops. This project needs our support in a multitude of ways:
1) help test the actual project on different hardware;
2) look at the code and help improve on it, both the core code and system integration, simplify it so that everyone can install and use this;
3) figure out how we can integrate that support into distributions, so that it becomes possible to have working Linux out-of-the-box on Optimus hardware;
4) pressure NVidia more to provide official Optimus support on Linux (at least in always-on-NVidia mode, without breaking Bumblebee along the way). Martin has already showed the superiority of open source by implementing something that NVidia considered to be too hard to do, let s show the power of our community to push such solutions to production quality.

Two weeks ago, PostgreSQL announced the first beta version of the new major 9.1 version, with a lot of anticipated new features like synchronous replication or better support for multilingual databases. Please see the release announcement for details. Due to my recent moving and the Ubuntu Developer Summit it took me a bit to package them for Debian and Ubuntu, but here they are at last. I uploaded postgresql-9.1 to Debian experimental; currently they are sitting in the NEW queue, but I m sure our restless Debian archive admins will get to it in a few days. I also provided builds for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, 10.10. and 11.04 in my PostgreSQL backports for stable Ubuntu releases PPA. I provided full postgresql-common integration, i. e. you can use all the usual tools like pg_createcluster, pg_upgradecluster etc. to install 9.1 side by side with your 8.4/9.0 instances, attempt an upgrade of your existing instances to 9.1 without endangering the running clusters, etc. Fortunately this time there were no deprecated configuration options, so pg_upgradecluster does not actually have to touch your postgresql.conf for the 9.0 9.1 upgrade. They pass upstream s and postgresql-common s integration test suite, so should be reasonably working. But please let me know about everything that doesn t, so that we can get them in perfect shape in time for the final release. I anticipate that 9.1 will be the default (and only supported) version in the next Debian release (wheezy), and will most likely be the one shipped in the next Ubuntu LTS (in 12.04). It might be that the next Ubuntu release 11.10 will still ship with 9.0, but that pretty much depends on how many extensions get ported to 9.1 by feature freeze.

I started doing daily builds of the Debian Installer in February 2004. (Before me, Martin Sj gren did them for a while.) Seven years of building d-i every single day, twice a day in recent years, and also twice a day for armel. Well over ten thousand builds total. That would have been tedious, but thanks to cron it was instead seven years of keeping the machines running and upgraded, dealing with things when they broke, and getting highlighted on IRC whenever someone mentioned "people.debian.org/~joeyh/d-i". Still a bit tedious, but those bits were used to install a lot of machines. The rest of the d-i daily builds moved onto the autobuilders a while back, but I guess there was some reluctance to mess with my institution. I finally convinced them to take over my builds too. :) http://d-i.debian.org/daily-images/

I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. anonymous (often attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Seen many times today.

At some stage the seminal KDE vs Gnome paper vanished from its original home, and while it's still available in a few places (such as here) it set me thinking. What are the fundamental differences between Gnome and KDE development? There's lots of little differences (2006: Gnome parties on a beach. Akademy has melted ice cream in the rain) but they're both basically communities made up of people who are interested in developing a functional and interesting desktop experience. So why do the end results have so little in common?

Then I read this and something that had been floating around in my mind began to solidify. KDE assumes a platform and attempts to work around its shortcomings. Gnome helps define the platform and works on fixing its shortcomings.

It's pretty easy to see this across the platform. The developer of the Gnome Bluetooth support has multiple commits to the underlying Bluetooth stack, while nobody who's committed to bluedevil appears to. The main developer of the Gnome Networkmanager support is Networkmanager upstream, with the same applying to the Gnome power management infrastructure. And when Gnome developers find limitations in graphics drivers, those tend to be fixed in the graphics drivers rather than worked around in the UI code. KDE builds on top of what's already there, while Gnome is happy to flatten some mountains first.

I should emphasise that I'm not criticising KDE here[1]. These are both rational development models. One optimises for making things work and will compromise on functionality in order to be more portable to different underlying operating systems. The other optimises for additional functionality at the cost of being tied to a much smaller number of underlying operating systems that have to be completely up to date. But understanding that this distinction exists is key to understanding fundamental differences between the projects, and any argument about which is better or about how there should be more collaboration has to take these fundamentally different approaches into consideration. My personal belief is that a tightly integrated platform is going to produce a more compelling product in the long run than one built on top a series of abstraction layers, but we'll see what happens in the long run.

And then, of course, there's Unity and Canonical's gradual effort to turn Ubuntu into a platform distinct from either Gnome or KDE. But that's a separate post.

[1] Well, except for the melted ice cream at Akademy 2006. But I think that's fair.