Jacob and Oliver have enjoyed our recent train trip, and our stay, from Kansas to New York City for Debconf. All told, that s a 40-hour trip, including the layover in Chicago.
When we got on the train, in the middle of the night as usual, Jacob couldn t stop chattering about how great , fun , and exciting it is. He told us about all the lots of great things on the train, the fact that we were on a night train , and generally couldn t stop chattering. For an hour. At 3:30AM.
This was a typical sight from Jacob:
It wasn t as relaxing as usual for Terah and me. Oliver is at the grabbing everything in sight stage. Which worked fine when Jacob was at the age, but with Jacob also along it was a bit more difficult to manage. I suspect that our next trip, when Oliver is a few months older, will go easier.
A highlight for both boys, as usual, is the dining car. Oliver loves anything related to eating solid food it s still novel to him and Jacob loves anything relating to trains. What could go wrong? (Parents will probably identify the capability for two hyper-excited young boys to have plenty of things go wrong at a table in a restaurant here fortunately we didn t have anything go terribly wrong.)
Oliver turned out to find the things outside the window to require intense concentration intense enough to stick out his tongue while he worked it all out.
And Jacob, of course, wanted to get the wrapper off his straw by himself. Which he can do, but takes a minute.
They also enjoyed the lounge car.
We were in a sleeper room on both trains. That was nice, and when we needed to go explore , we could. Jacob s favorite part of the trip was when I folded down the upper bunk during the day for him to play. I pointed out that it was like a train treehouse. His face sure lit up. He loved that he had his own window up there to look out of. He climbed up the ladder, and after awhile of playing, said, Dad, would you like to play with me up here? Of course I would it always makes me happy when he asks if I want to play with him.
As I was playing with him, I asked him if he was having fun in his train treehouse. He gave me a sweet smile, and said, Dad, this is the best place of ever!
In Chicago, Jacob and I went outside and walked around. He enjoyed walking across the bridges over the canal by Union Station. I checked some work email when we got back, tried but failed to reach some local hams with my handheld, and then we got on the train for New York.
The boys loved it too, and Jacob was very ready to be in New York when we got there. We got out at Penn Station which was, I think, pretty much what my mind had imagined of an underground station robbed of its former glory (especially having been in that part of Chicago Union Station). We found the connection to the 2 train uptown, bought some MetroCards for the subway, and got on. Jacob was very interested in the subway. He sat very, very still I thought he was scared but on asking him some questions, realized that he was just very interested and engrossed in it all.
I had been trying out my HF antenna for my amateur radio setup a few days ago, and by some coincidence, kept making contact with people that grew up in New York. A guy from Fargo, ND a native of Brooklyn told me to make sure to get pretzels from a hot sauce vendor, Pastrami on rye or corned beef on rye from a Jewish deli (because they have the best meat), pizza from guys wearing red and white shirts, and don t be afraid of rats on the subway tracks, and that our boys will love to feed leftover bits of pretzels to pigeons and squirrels. He got so excited about NYC that he went on and on, saying, Man, you re making me hungry now.
During times I m not at sessions at Debconf, we ve found some time to do some things as a family. We went to Grand Central Terminal, just to see it it is indeed still Grand. I knew there was a Jewish deli there, so I thought hey try out his advice. It was closed, and when I realized it was Saturday, I realized why. Oops. We hopped on another train to Brooklyn and checked out the
New York Transit Museum, which is great and has a lot of exhibits about the history of the city s subway and bus systems. It s housed in a former subway station, and they have a lot of old subway cars down there dating back to 1905 most of which are open to go inside of.
It s been nice to meet people at Debconf that I have only known via email or IRC. The organizers of this conference have done a fabulous job. I have every expectation that this will turn out to be the best conference I ve been to in at least 12 years this is my first Debconf. It doesn t skimp on the technical details, people are friendly, and there is a sense of common purpose. But just as important, while there is a set schedule, there is an easy way to add other ad-hoc sessions to the conference schedule. People can get together a group interested in a topic, and schedule an event about it for the next day very easily. I m quite impressed by that, and am looking forward to the virtualization discussion that grew out of a question to the mailing list.
It was also neat to meet people that sort of knew our family from my blog posts. I had no idea that there were all that many people that actually read these things ;-)
The Debconf kick-off was great. As I was walking across the campus of Columbia towards it, it was a nice temperature, with some light rain, and I heard bagpipes in the distance. Beautiful. And when I left after the evening sessions, I still heard bagpipes. So I went to check it out, and ran into
Gabriella Coleman, one of the Debconf organizers and the person that gave the talk I just left on the way, with the same idea. The Columbia campus is beautiful and historic, and it is an excellent venue for the conference.
New York is a great city and I m sure we ll be back. It is great to walk out of the hotel in the morning, buy a fresh peach or two from the street vendor 20 feet away, and then go buy a roll or two ($0.75 each) from the bakery down the street. I have been so missing rolls like that since we got back from Germany in March. These weren t quite like the German bakeries, but the closest I ve had to it.
It is interesting to note how differently people from different places look at things. Terah has told several people how we live 6 miles from a town with 500 people in it, and people that stop to think about it realize how different it is from New York. It was a surprise to me to hear that some New Yorkers think of Columbia as country . It is beautifully landscaped, and feels different than the rest of the city.
The numbers I ve seen suggest that a typical fall weekday has more people on the Columbia campus than in the entire county where we live. And that county is twice the size of New York City.
That s not to say that there s anything wrong with New Yorkers thinking of it as country, any more than there is of me thinking of a town with 15,000 people as a pretty big town. It s a different perspective, and I enjoy different perspectives which is another thing I like about Debconf. There are so many people from all over the world there that different perspectives are inevitable.
If you have seen me anywhere near my computer at DebConf, you probably have seen the face of a hurried, worried developer. Still, if you monitor my Debian-related activity, you will notice it is still quite low, even given my (much needed and very much enjoyed) vacations pre-DebConf. Yes, orga-team work is very time consuming, even if my role is far from central this year. And yes, DebCamp+DebConf are known for sucking time into social interaction, which is great but not so (formally) productive. And yes, I even took 1.5 days off to visit my family and a friend who live in the area...
Still, I managed to release! \ /
Release what?
I have been working with Pooka for the last ~2 years on the Seminary on Collaborative Knowledge Construction. We assembled a group of ~10 speakers/authors, each of whom prepared a chapter for a book meant for publication. Pooka and me coordinated the work, which took a long time because it was also an interaction experiment (and because we both did it only in our free time).
After the coordination work started fading, I took up the task of coming up with a way to translate it all into LaTeX (and fix a host of conversion bugs, and play with the available packages, and... Hey, I'm after all just a LaTeX newbie, and had to learn to tame the beast!), I stumbled upon that precious fact that makes so many projects release.
I stumbled upon a deadline.
We want to publish the book under the seal of IIEc-UNAM. Besides my workplace, it is a very well regarded university, and having its seal in our work is definitively a big plus. And the Publications Committee of my Institute is meeting this week - So I had to send our final manuscript by today.
Having a deadline overlapping with DebConf sucks. But somehow, I managed to do the needed work to my complete satisfaction. The work is now in the Committee's hands, and I expect to have more news soon(ish).
Oh, and where can you get our work? Well, if you register in our site, you will be able to read the whole contents. And once the book is approved and published, the whole work will be published online under a free (CC-BY-SA) license.
BTW, that probably means I will have more time to fix my Debian bugs and pending stuff! \ /
This week, I am attending 
Actually I was at the 
While I have made good progress on many of my 
I had planned long for this Debconf and with the experience from the previous times I did all I could to reach one goal minimise stress. I think I got it right this time.
First of all I got my company (Accenture) pay for the whole thing, so I did not have to worry about sponsorship queue (but instead I must gather and deliver them back some knowledge gained from the conference should be easy). I also managed to get a direct flight there is a weekly flight Tashkent-Riga-New York on Sundays and I got a ticket for that both ways. This took many hours off the travel time and reduced the stress a ton. Then I also did all the prudent travelling things: mostly reading the New York page on Wikitravel. This told me (among other things) what metro line to take to get the best view of the city. And for luggage I took a backpack (for the laptop and walking around) and a roller (for the clothes). I learned a lot from the Up in the air movie, it really teaches one how to take stress out of travel.
This went very well in the beginning I took a bus to the airport early, checked in, breezed trough security and then waited and waited. The boarding only started half an hour after we were scheduled to depart. But I can not complain, because the flight attendant called my name (among a few others) just before boarding and changed my ticket I was bumped up to business class 
. It has been many years since I ve flown a regular (non-budget) airline and now first time ever in the business class! We got regular class meals, but at least we got to sit in the big chairs with lots of leg room. It was great! I bought a paper book (from Charles Stross) to read during the flight, because that is the only thing you can do during take-off and landing and I had some stuff to listen to in my iPhone. I tried sleeping and I think I managed to kill a couple hours that way too. It sure helped combat jet lag later on.
When I arrived, I had my immigration and customs forms filled out. Latvia is on the USA Visa Waiver program, so I just had to fill out a form online prior to the trip to get a permission to enter USA. I only had one printout of the Waiver confirmation page and my airline took that before giving me a boarding pass, so I had no paper copy to give to the guy at the USA border, but he did not even ask for it he only took the two forms I filled out, scanned my passport, took my fingerprints (all fingers) and a photo. Then he gave me back the customs for (stamped) and I could go get my luggage. After that it was just a matter of walking trough customs and giving the customs official the pre-filled and stamped customs form. I was not stopped further.
The AirTrain was a bit confusing you just get on the AirTrain and go where you need to go, you actually pay at the place where AirTrain connects to metro, so when you are coming from the airport you are actually paying ($5) when you are exiting the AirTrain system. There are plenty of AirTrain people that will give you an AirTrain ticked for $5 cash right there or you can use a machine to get it (where you can also pay with a card). The machines also take AmEx, but you must know the PIN code, if your don t know the PIN of you AmEx card (like I don t know the PIN of my corporate AmEx) you can only buy MetroCards at news stands, but there you will not find the unlimited ride tickets only 5 or 10 ride tickets are available.
Next I screwed up a bit and thus got a bit lost in the New York metro system. The Wikitravel recommends to take the AirTrain to Jamaica station and from there take J or Z line into the city for the best views. I went to Jamaica and got into the first metro train that came on to the platform. Unfortunately, that was the E line train and it does not cross with J or Z lines after that, so I was stuck. To complicate the situation E line is under repair, so after a few stops the trains diverted to the F line and I had to scramble to figure out where to get out to get to the 1 line where Columbia University is. I ended up spending more than an hour in the metro, but I got there in the end.
So I emerge from the 116th street metro station directly in front of the campus entrance gate and it starts raining. A thunderstorm swept across New York as soon as I stepped outside the metro station, so I took shelter a the side of the building. It kept raining. After a few minutes decided that I don t want to wait any more, so I put all my electronics into my backpack and went towards the dorm where my room was. The rain was warm, people around me were playing and running around in the wet grass, it was fun.
The guard showed me where to go to check in. It was really simple sign here, here is you magnetic stripe key, have fun. And the room was just as spartan bed, desk, chair, closet, bathroom and a large fan under the window. The first night I did not know that I could actually turn that fan down, so I slept to the sound of full fan blasting, much like on the airplane. The dorm looks ancient it looks like it was build in the 60s and never changed since then. I mean, I ve lived in worse places, but people would at least change wall sockets or faucets or ceiling paint every other decade or so. The newest things here were the magnetic locks on the doors and a TV and a mini fridge in the hallway.
After dropping my things I went off to the Mudd building across the campus to check in with people in the hacklab. It was just starting to take shape, but many great and familiar people were already there. It was like walking into a family home same warm welcome smiles and that great feel of belonging to the group.
After I quick chat I went off downtown. The plan was that I left my old Canon 400D camera back at home and that I would buy a new Canon 550D here in New York on arrival. Unfortunately I underestimated the travel time on subway and by the time I got back downtown most shops where already closed. I got to checking out a Best Buy and was told there that they don t have 550D in stock. Next morning I went for a full scale search B&H Photo Video store, J&R Express, another BestBuy none of them had the Canon 550D (aka T2i) in stock in a body-only configuration. BestBuy had a few sets with the kit lens, but I did not want paying 100$ extra for something I already have. The last option was Adorama and I got lucky I nabbed the last 550D they had and it was body-only.
Now I was back, with a camera in my hands and the Debconf10 could really begin!
About two weeks ago I got a 
Sometimes I write things that are for myself, and later decide to release on the off-chance other people might be interested.
I've hated procmail for a long time, but it is extremely flexible, and for the longest time I figured since I'd got things working the way I wanted there was little point changing.
When it comes to procmail there are few alternatives:
I just did some work on two NBD features: authentication and named
exports.
The first was written by Brad Allen back in 2008. I'd been thinking
about an authentication scheme back at DebConf 8, and discussed it on
the nbd-general mailinglist. Brad picked it up and ran with it, but it
never got finished. Basically, what I did today was forward-port the
code so that it would compile (and work) with today's version of the NBD
utilities.
I tested it and it works, but I'm not sure what to do with it. NBD is
not encrypted; so there's no protection against TCP hijacking or some
such. Oh well; I might still integrate it into nbd mainline.
The second feature is something way more interesting. It had been on
my long-term TODO list for quite a while, but I never sat down to
implement it. Until today, that is. This patch has been compile-tested,
but I haven't functionally tested it yet; I'll do that tomorrow.
The main reason it took so long to implement, was that initial NBD
handshake made that quite hard. Upon connecting, nbd-server as it
currently exists will open the file or block device that it needs to
export, and before nbd-client has sent anything sends
information on that export (its size, whether or not it is read-only,
etc) to the client. Unfortunately, this does mean that I cannot add new
features to nbd-server while retaining full backwards compatibility if
these features may involve changing what nbd-server sends during the
initial handshake, as is the case here. This could be worked around by
having the server first send information on a "default" export to the
client, and then variate that if the client informs the server that it
actually wants something else. But this would have been rather ugly,
since it means that errors in open() or stat() calls for the initial
"default" export would have to be non-fatal until the client actually
tries to read or write to or from the device, at which point they would
suddenly become fatal. This would open a can of worms near which I
didn't want to tread.
The way I fixed it in the end, however, is fairly simple. If names
are used to specify an export, nbd-server can live with just one port to
export all block devices that it supports, rather than needing many. As
such, I can "reserve" one port for the new-style named exports. On this
port, nbd-server would expect that clients send a name,
and would not function correctly with clients that don't understand
names. At the same time, nbd-server could still export the same block
devices on other ports as well, using the old-style protocol, for
clients that do not support named devices.
This would of course require that both the client and the server know
perfectly well what the port is, and that it does not change too easily.
As such, I've just put in a request for an assigned port number over at
IANA, so that I can be sure that the port will not change unexpectedly.
This also means I won't make a public release with this change until the
port number has been assigned, so that I don't need to support two
'default' nbd-server ports in the future (one "temporary" and one
IANA-assigned port).
For now, however, I think I'll go grab some food.
After a quite long string freeze and last minute efforts by
translators, I finally stopped the clock on Sunday July 11th for D-I
localization update meant for the release of the beta1 version of
debian-installer for squeeze.
We finally have 65 supported languages. In a final effort, Belarusian,
Ukrainian, Hungarian, Tagalog, Kurdish, Croatian and Macedonian were
"rescued" and completed enough for being included in the release.
Unfortunately, I had to deactivate Wolof, Serbian and Welsh because of
lack of activity. For Serbian, this is very infortunate as
new translators indeed tried to contact me with updates, which I
missed and discovered only after it wasn't possible to revert the
change. Good news are that Serbian is now already reactivated for the
next release and we will even have both the Cyrillic and Latin
versions of it.
The mass upload of D-I packages happened mostly on Sunday 12th (you
probably noticed that if you follow debian-devel-changes).
It is already possible to test what will be D-I beta1: just go to 
I spent the last two days at the BSP in Munich thanks to everyone
for inviting & feeding me, & especially to Stefan for hosting me
again!
Finally we have the same exact features as the upstream precompiled
one. YAY!
Here's the story. 
Looking at it now, that it's all done, it doesn't seem that long.
However, I had to face the infamous 
A social micropayment system allows you to donate a small amount of money (a few pennies/cents) to thank someone else for a good blog post, piece of music, or for a free software that you enjoy. That s what 