I ve been a wannabe GTD afficionado for some years. I ve wanted to do it, but managing lists has always been something that has too much friction, overhead, or whatever. Finally, though, I think I might have found a way to manage lists that works. My use-case isn t unique, although I will concede I m perhaps being more dogmatic than most. I want something that:

• Is electronic (yes, the hipster PDA is a cool idea, but my handwriting is beyond woeful and I already carry enough crap in my pockets as it is);
• Works offline (because I often do);
• Will work on both my phone and laptop (because I want to have my lists with me when I m not at my computer, but long-form data entry or manipulation on a phone is painful);
• Makes it easy to add, browse, modify, and above all remove items; and
• Is mine (no central databases I don t control, proprietary apps on my phone, etc).

My previous attempt was a tool I called tagnote it was a vim-outliner file full of hierarchically organised outliner entries, with tags inlined. It was a neat idea, but it wasn t smooth to add/browse/delete items, and didn t work with my phone at all (trying to use vim for any length of time on a bottom-of-the-range Android phone would kill me). The current iteration, as the title of this post suggests, is a list manager that entirely uses e-mail. It really is a perfect symbiosis:

• I want lists of text items with titles (Subject:), potentially other metadata (X-Whatever headers), and possibly some notes (the body of the e-mail);
• I need to be able to browse and remove completed items (that s what e-mail clients are for);
• Getting new items into the system is trivial (Anything I send to my PDA s e-mail address goes straight into the INBOX, which I can then process as time permits); and
• Syncing between my laptop and PDA is as simple as offlineimap and K-9 mail.

So what have I got, exactly? It s fairly straightforward:

• An IMAP account on my existing mail server;
• A slightly tweaked copy of mutt (different colours so I don t confuse myself, and a different layout of the index page to get rid of unnecessary columns);
• Another offlineimap account;
• Another K-9 mail account;
• Note2self (a neat little app to take a typed or voice-transcribed note and e-mail it to a pre-set address) on the phone, pre-programmed to e-mail any notes I write to the PDA s inbox; and
• A small shell script to make it trivial to create new lists (which has to be done on the IMAP server for reasons of offlineimap), add new items to a list, sync my lists (in other words, run offlineimap ), display my lists (in other words, run mutt ), and process my tickler file.

That last point is the one I m really happy I achieved. I ve always been a fan of hide it until you need it , but my previous system didn t let me do that. Now, though, I have a separate list called tickler, and all the items in there have an X-Tickle header, which specifies the date I want to see them. Each night a cronjob runs through the tickler and moves anything for today into the INBOX. An X-Tickle-Repeat header lets me have things that repeat over and over again. So in short, using entirely open-source tools and a couple of hours of my time doing things I enjoy anyway (shell scripts! woo!), I ve now got a list manager that doesn t get in my way more than it absolutely has to. We ll see how long I last this time before I feel the urge to improve my lists again.

This blog, together with Romain's, is one of the main homes of stories about how Rcpp can help with getting code to run faster in the context of the R system for statistical programming and analysis. By making it easier to get already existing C or C++ code to R, or equally to extend R with new C++ code, Rcpp can help in getting stuff done. And it is often fairly straightforward to do so. In this context, I have a nice new example. And for once, it is work-related. I generally cannot share too much of what we do there as this is, well, proprietary, but I have this nice new example. The other day, I was constructing (large) time series of implied volatilities. Implied volatilities can be thought of as the complement to an option's price: given a price (and all other observables which can be thought of as fixed), we compute an implied volatility price (typically via the standard Black-Scholes model). Given a changed implied volatility, we infer a new price -- see this Wikipedia page for more details. In essence, it opens the door to all sorts of arbitrage and relative value pricing adventures. Now, we observe prices fairly frequently to create somewhat sizeable time series of option prices. And each price corresponds to one matching implied volatility, and for each such price we have to solve a small and straightforward optimization problem: to compute the implied volatility given the price. This is usually done with an iterative root finder. The problem comes from the fact that we have to do this (i) over and over and over for large data sets, and (ii) that there are a number of callbacks from the (generic) solver to the (standard) option pricer. So our first approach was to just call the corresponding function GBSVolatility from the fOption package from the trusted Rmetrics project by Diethelm Wuertz et al. This worked fine, but even with the usual tricks of splitting over multiple cores/machines, it simply took too long for the resolution and data amount we desired. One of the problems is that this function (which uses the proper uniroot optimizer in R) is not inefficient per se, but simply makes to many function call back to the option pricer as can be seen from a quick glance at the code. The helper function .fGBSVolatility gets called time and time again:

R> GBSVolatility
function (price, TypeFlag = c("c", "p"), S, X, Time, r, b, tol = .Machine$double.eps, 
    maxiter = 10000) 
 
    TypeFlag = TypeFlag[1]
    volatility = uniroot(.fGBSVolatility, interval = c(-10, 10), 
        price = price, TypeFlag = TypeFlag, S = S, X = X, Time = Time, 
        r = r, b = b, tol = tol, maxiter = maxiter)$root
    volatility
 
<environment: namespace:fOptions>
R> 
R> .fGBSVolatility
function (x, price, TypeFlag, S, X, Time, r, b, ...) 
 
    GBS = GBSOption(TypeFlag = TypeFlag, S = S, X = X, Time = Time, 
        r = r, b = b, sigma = x)@price
    price - GBS
 
<environment: namespace:fOptions>

So the next idea was to try the corresponding function from my RQuantLib package which brings (parts of) QuantLib to R. That was seen as been lots faster already. Now, QuantLib is pretty big and so is RQuantLib, and we felt it may not make sense to install it on a number of machines just for this simple problem. So one evening this week I noodled around for an hour or two and combined (i) a basic Black/Scholes calculation and (ii) a standard univariate zero finder (both of which can be found or described in numerous places) to minimize the difference between the observed price and the price given an implied volatility. With about one hundred lines in C++, I had something which felt fast enough. So today I hooked this into R via a two-line wrapper in quickly-created package using Rcpp. I had one more advantage here. For our time series problem, the majority of the parameters (strike, time to maturity, rate, ...) are fixed, so we can structure the problem to be vectorised right from the start. I cannot share the code or more the details of my new implementation. However, both GBSVolatility and EuropeanOprionImpliedVolatility are on CRAN (and as I happen to maintain these for Debian, also just one sudo apt-get install r-cran-foptions r-cran-rquantlib away if you're on Debian or Ubuntu). And writing the other solver is really not that involved. Anyway, here is the result, courtesy of a quick run via the rbenchmark package. We create a vector of length 500; the implied volatility computation will be performed at each point (and yes, our time series are much longer indeed). This is replicated 100 times (as is the default for rbenchmark) for each of the three approaches:

xyz@xxxxxxxx:~$ r xxxxR/packages/xxxxOptions/demo/timing.R
    test replications elapsed  relative user.self sys.self user.child sys.child
3 zzz(X)          100   0.038     1.000     0.040    0.000          0         0
2 RQL(X)          100   3.657    96.237     3.596    0.060          0         0
1 fOp(X)          100 448.060 11791.053   446.644    1.436          0         0
xyz@xxxxxxxx:~$ 

The new local solution is denoted by zzz(X). It is already orders of magnitude faster than the RQL(x) function using RQuantLib (which is, I presume, due to my custom solution internalising the loop). And the new approach is a laughable amount faster than the basic approach (shown as fOp) via fOptions. For one hundred replications of solving implied volatilities for all elements of a vector of size 500, the slow solution takes about 7.5 minutes --- while the fast solution takes 38 milliseconds. Which comes to a relative gain of over 11,000. So sitting down with your C++ compiler to craft a quick one-hundred lines, combining two well-known and tested methods, can reap sizeable benefits. And Rcpp makes it trivial to call this from R.

This entry is not really about computers, technology, or other work-related topics, but more about a hard-hack that I wanted to try for a while. How to make a kilt !!! After a bit of duck-ducking, I decided to follow this excellent tutorial. At first sight the entire process seems a bit long, but you will realize that after the first read, that everything boils down to 3 steps: measure, fold and pin, sew. For the measure part, I've the impression that the formula that is given in the instructable (waist/3*8+1) is a bit short for my comfort and taste. This is the size for the internal apron, the folded part that goes all around your left hip, back, and right hip, and the front apron. My suggestion would be to make the inner apron a bit longer then the front apron. This way the kilt will feel in my opinion more comfortable and it will envelop you body completely. For the fold and pin part, you just need a bit of patience and a ruler. Put the pins parallel to the folding as in the instructable and not perpendicular. This will help you later when sewing everything. The sewing ... If you know how to use a sewing machine, this is going to be a piece of cake. Otherwise, well, I spent more time troubleshooting the machine then sewing the kilt. I've broken few needles in the process and learned how to thread the machine with my eyes blindfolded. Not to mention that you have to learn how to disassemble this machines in a thousand parts to understand how the thread got stuck. It was fun. A lesson that I've learned is that a sewing machine works much better in the morning than late at night when you are tired and sleepy. Really ! Other then that, it was a fun experience. Maybe I'll make another one to commit this skill to mind. Maybe I'll run a kilt making workshop at the next debconf :)

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Review: Passion Play, by Sean Stewart

Publisher:	Ace
Copyright:	1992
Printing:	December 1993
ISBN:	0-441-65241-7
Format:	Mass market
Pages:	194

Diane is a shaper: an empath, a sort of telepath, who sees emotions and the actions of others in the form of patterns and stories that she is nearly compelled to follow. She uses that skill as an investigator, a semi-official adjunct to the police who can read crime scenes and motives and hunt down criminals with uncanny ability. That makes her almost socially acceptable, but a shaper is still not something it's safe to be, something best kept hidden. Diane's world is one of theocracy, of dominance by aggressive religion, and even shapers working with the police are not exactly okay. This is Sean Stewart's first novel. He's since gone on to write many other books, one of which I've read and quite enjoyed (Nobody's Son) and another (Galveston) that won several awards, although he's probably most famous for his work on the ilovebees ARG. Passion Play won a minor award itself: the Aurora for the best Canadian SF novel of the year. I found it surprising as a first novel, since it's sharp, focused, and very short. Usually first novels are stuffed to the gills with ideas and plot, as if material had built up for years and exploded in the first book. Passion Play doesn't have that problem; if anything, it errs on the side of telling too little. This is, at its heart, a mystery. A famous actor died in the middle of a play. It was possibly suicide, possibly an accident, and possibly murder; the events of the death are quite ambiguous. But the actor is very important in Redemptionist politics, which warrants an investigation, and then Diane's shaper instincts start finding a pattern and a story in the death. The rest of the cast and crew form the obvious set of suspects, and have the normal mystery novel variety of flaws, foibles, strong personalities, and possible motives. I'm not much of a mystery novel reader, and to be honest I had some trouble tracking all of the characters and remembering Diane's suspicions about each one. But the details of the mystery are less important to this book than Diane herself. Shapers are not exactly stable. The patterns they see are all-consuming, the experience of others' strong emotions acts like a sort of drug, and shapers can burn themselves out. They can fall into a spiral of seeking stronger and stronger emotions until they can't feel anything at all. That's the core conflict of the book: Diane is slowly losing herself. She has a tenuous existence at the outskirts of a society that has inculcated her with an inflexible set of religious beliefs and an uncompromising attitude towards law and justice, but it's not a stable existence, she knows it, and she doesn't know what to do about it. She knows that the pattern of this particular death is deep and powerful, but she can't stay away from it. This is an unusual, and sometimes disturbing, focus for a story. It's risky, unconventional, and doesn't quite work. I think some of the failure is because of first novel problems, but most of it is due to character problems. In the first novel problems category, Passion Play is a bit too choppy and a bit too disjointed. I think Stewart was trying hard to keep the story focused, fast-moving, and tight, but the introduction of the world background is not particularly smooth, and Diane's first-person account of her emotional state is a bit too labored. The plot wants to build in a smooth arc towards its climax, but the writing and scene-setting jerks and jumps instead of flowing. But the larger problem for me is that there aren't enough interesting characters in this book; specifically, there aren't enough to show all sides of Diane's character. Stewart tries, by introducing Jim early in the book to serve essentially as Diane's friend (and she's desperately in need of one), but he's too much of a non-entity. He serves some plot purposes, but he doesn't have a strong enough voice and character to hold his ground against Diane and balance her obsessive internal monologue. And, other than Jim, all the other characters in the book (with the possible exception of the murder victim) are playing bit roles. They're not bad characters, but they don't feel fully real to either Diane or to the reader. It's very easy to put them into boxes that they never break out of. This does support the feeling of narrative inevitability about some parts of the book, but I think it would have been stronger with more conflict, more open challenging of Diane's perspective. I would characterize Passion Play as interesting but flawed, and ultimately a minor work. I'm not sorry I read it, but neither would I have missed much if I'd gone through life without reading it. It has a few interesting ideas, and a bravely unconventional narrative resolution, but it felt choppy and off-balance. Unless you love Stewart's writing and want to read everything he wrote, or unless you (like me) has a quirk about reading all award winners, this is probably best skipped over in favor of Stewart's later work. Rating: 6 out of 10

I've had a few weeks with very little time spent on Debian. I did set aside some time to try to find and fix an RC bug, to help the release. Steven C commented to let me know about the UDD Developer's Dashboard which is a great way to find RC bugs relevant to a team. I sat down to try and fix #648272 in 'Abuse' but sadly I didn't manage, instead finding another possible RC bug #689457 on the way. I was curious as to how long the version 1 web services API for musicbrainz will be kept around, in case there was a strong likelyhood it would be turned off during the lifetime of wheezy. If that were the case, then it might have been worth requesting freeze exceptions to patch the last few WS1 clients to use WS2 instead. However, the musicbrainz developers have no plans to turn off WS1 as long as there are people still using it. This is a bit of a chicken and egg situation for wheezy, but probably not strong enough grounds to persue it any further. So last night was my first "Debian Day" in a while, and by chance I've had a number of enquiries for software and packages which I haven't touched in a while. For the prboom package, we rebuild the upstream tarball to remove some material we don't have the right to distribute. The code that does the repackaging lives in a script called debian/fix_upstream.sh. Prboom upstream release very infrequently, so the script hasn't been run in a while. Fabian Greffrath noticed some bashisms which meant it would not work reliably with a non-bash /bin/sh. He also noticed that we couldn't build the binary lump data/prboom.wad using only free software since some changes that were made to freedoom. One possible fix was to expand the deutex package to recognise freedoom.wad, which I've now applied. Fabian has fixed the bashism issue, but I suspect a more robust solution long-term would be to always rebuild data/prboom.wad during package build, so that code gets exercised more often. The prboom changes are in the Git repository but I haven't release them yet. I need to decide whether it's worth requesting a freeze exception for the orig tarball build issue. It's not an FTBFS but it's similar: you could not rebuild a binary distributed in the source tarball using software only in Debian, at least not without some workarounds. We've had another request to package Prboom+. I've never been particularly interested in doing this myself, but it would probably be very little work, you could more-or-less take the prboom packaging as it stands. One thing I thought would be interesting to try would be to set up a git repository for the packaging and import the upstream Subversion repository in its entirety via git svn, rather than just import the released tarballs. Sadly their repository layout is not quite ideal for this. game-data-packager continues to grow. Following hot on the heels of Hexen 2 support, Markus Koschany has written preliminary support for LGeneral, a game which has been in Debian, at least in part, on and off. Hopefully we'll have that merged soon, and finish of Hexen 2 support whilst we're at it. On that note, here's a lazyweb question: what's the most convenient way to determine the length (at microsecond resolution) of a PCM WAV file from the command-line? Finally, we've been building Debian-based virtual machines at work, which meant dusting off some old preseed files and tweaking them to have unattended installs. This took a lot longer than I thought. It's certainly a lot more painful than kickstart and Redhat-based systems, and it's very unlikely that a preseed file that worked for one version of Debian would fully work for another. I'm not certain but I think even different releases of d-i targetting the same release "break" assumptions you might make, particularly about which questions you need to answer via the kernel command line, rather than in the preseed file. That's one thing we really need to sort. It's crazy having to specify keyboard layouts in the command line for VMs which won't ever have a keyboard. The disparity between what the user is asked, what value is written to the debconf database at that point in the install process, and what ends up in the debconf database at the end of the process is also a real pain: answering a question about keyboard layout sets half a dozen different debconf values in a cascade that is probably sensitive to other things like priority or whether d-i is in expert mode, too. So working backwards from the debconf database of an installed machine is an exercise in frustration, and figuring out which questions are asked prior to the preseed file being read for any given d-i or Debian release is a slow trial and error process. I'm going to get in touch with the d-i folks and see what kind of continuous integration systems they have in place. It would be great to have commit-level notification that you've broken preseed builds. If not for the d-i folks, then certainly at work.

A blog post from Martin Bekkelund today tell the story of how Amazon erased the books from a customer's kindle, locked the account and refuse to tell the customer why. If a real book store did this to a customer, it would be called breaking into private property and theft. The story has spread around the net today. A bit more background information is available in Norwegian from digi.no. It is no surprise that digital restriction mechanisms (DRM) are used this way, as it has been warned about such abuse since DRM was introduced many years back. And Amazon proved in 2009 that it was willing to break into customers equipment and remove the books people had bought, when it removed the book 1984 by George Orwell from all the customers who had bought it. From the official comments, it even sounded like Amazon would never do that again. And here we are, three years later. And thought this action is against Norwegian regulations and law, it is according to the terms of use as written by Amazon, and it is hard to hold Amazon accountable to Norwegian laws. It is just yet another example of unacceptable terms of use on the web, and how they are used to remove customer rights. Luckily for electronic books, there are alternatives without unacceptable terms. For example Project Gutenberg (about 40,000 books), Project Runenberg (1,652 books) and The Internet Archive (3,641,797 books) have heaps of books without DRM, which can read by anyone and shared with anyone. Update 2012-10-23: This story broke in the morning on Monday. In the evening after the story had spread all across the Internet, Amazon restored the account of the user, as reported by digi.no and NRK. Apparently public pressure work. The story from Martin have seen several twitter messages per minute the last 24 hours, which is quite a lot, and is still drawing a lot of attention. But even when the account is restored, the fundamental problem still exist. I recommend reading two opinions from Simon Phipps and Glen Moody if you want to learn more about the fundamentals and more details about the original story.

Turbogears 2 uses Toscawidgets 2 for a series of very clever widgets and base objects that you can use in your projects. One I have been playing with is the jqGridWidget which uses jquery to display a grid. The idea with jquery is creating a grid or other object and then using javascript to call back to the webserver to obtain the data which usually comes from a database using the very excellent SQLAlchemy framework. I found it a bit fiddly to get going and it is unforgiving, you get one thing wrong and you end up with an empty grid but when it works, it works very well. The code above is a snippet of the widget I use to make the graph. This is the visual side of the graph and shows just the graph with nothing in it. You need the datatype and url lines in the options which tell the code the url to get the data. I have an items controller and within it there is a jqgrid method. Note the number of columns I have, the data sent by the jqgrid method has to match this. Deep inside the items controller is a jqgrid method. The idea is to return some rows of data back to the grid in the exact way the grid expects it otherwise you get, yep more empty grids. The four items in the value for the cell in the dictionary must equal the number defined for the colNames. I found it was useful to have firebug looking at my gets and another widget based upon SQLAjqGridWidget which is a lot simpler to setup but much less flexible too.

Related articles

• TurboGears2 2.2.0 (pypi.python.org)
• js.jqgrid 4.4.1 (pypi.python.org)

It's been six months since Xfce 4.10 has been released. And it's been four months since Wheezy is frozen. Due to this timing (and the fact Squeeze has 4.6 and doing a 4.6 4.10 upgrade needed some tuning in various packages), it was decided to not try to push 4.10 into Wheezy that late in the release cycle. So Xfce 4.10 was uploaded to experimental instead, and as it needs a full rebuild of all panel plugins against 4.10 panel (another reason for not trying to push it to Wheezy), those have not been uploaded. You can try Xfce 4.10 using experimental, but you'll need to remove the xfce4-goodies metapackage and the various depending plugin (since they'll just crash if you try to load them on 4.10 panel). Multiple people asked me (either on IRC, by private or public mail) when 4.10 will be uploaded to unstable and transition to testing. Like last time, the answer is : not before Wheezy is released. Right now, we're more interested in stabilizing Wheezy and squashing the bugs there than adding new ones in unstable. So, if you want to have Xfce 4.10 in Debian sid/testing sooner, then the easiest and fastest way is to fix some release critical bugs so we can release sooner, and then start breaking sid by uploading a whole lot of new stuff there. Note that this is true also for other software like GNOME, KDE stack (I have no idea how to call it these days), the Linux kernel, strongswan or whatever. About development releases of Xfce 4.11 (like the recently released exo 0.9 and Thunar 1.5), well, since we already use experimental for 4.10, there's not much chance they get uploaded anytime soon. We could try to package them and let people build it themselves, or I could host it somewhere on my server for people to try. But as I already said, we're more interested in fixing bug in Wheezy right now, and people interested in finding bugs in Xfce development releases (so they are fixed for the final one) should build it themselves and report everything they find on the Xfce bugzilla. TL;DR: if you care about new, shiny stuff, please help fixing RC bugs in Wheezy.

as zack has mentioned earlier today, the count of RC bugs is falling. & the release team is again proposing RC buggy packages for removal from testing.

these were my RC bug related activities during the last week:

• #623578 gadfly: "gadfly: build wrong version of the packaging during a binNMU"
  apply patch from Guillem Jover, upload to DELAYED/2
• #675971 mumble: "Cannot communicate with the vast majority of Mumble servers due to lack of required baseline codec"
  file pre-approval unblock request #691098
• #677943 munin: "/etc/apache2/conf.d/munin removed on upgrade"
  send a patch to the BTS
• #685632 liquidsoap: "liquidsoap: missing versioned depend on libcamomile-ocaml-data"
  make dependency versioned, upload to DELAYED/2
• #688891 psad: "psad: modifies conffiles (policy 10.7.3): /etc/psad/psad.conf"
  send a patch to the BTS
• #689537 pdnsd: "pdnsd: deletes conffiles on package removal (policy 10.7.3): /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/002_NetMan_pdnsd"
  include patch from Stuart Prescott, do a QA upload
• #689683 prelude-manager: "prelude-manager: modifies conffiles (policy 10.7.3): /etc/prelude-manager/prelude-manager.conf"
  fix conffile handling, upload to DELAYED/2
• #690368 pdnsd: "pdnsd: postinst overwrites admin changes to /etc/default/pdnsd"
  fix conffile handling, do a QA upload
• #691015 conserver-client: "conserver-client: fails to upgrade from testing: Can't locate Tie/Hash/NamedCapture.pm in @INC"
  propose a patch to fix the mistake in my NMU

The words "quantum leap" lead to the second misconception that changes of said physical system are instantaneous, which is obviously wrong. Unnamed ten year Debian dude, please take a physics 101: The photon of the LASER comes from a stimulated emission, which is a transition between different states.

A quantum leap is a leap between two states where there is no state in between. That makes it usually quite small, but also quite sudden (think of Lasers). So a quantum leap is a jump not allowing any intermediate states, i.e. a "abrupt change, sudden increase" like Merriam Webster defines it. This then get a "dramatic advance" and suddenly the meaning shifted from something so small it could not be divided to something quite big. But before you complain people use the new common meaning instead of the classic physicalistic meaning, ask yourself: Would you prefer if people kept talking about "disruptive" changes to announce they did something big? Update: I'm using quantum jump in the sense as for example used in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_electron_transition. If quantum jump is something different to you, my post might not make much sense.

I am moving into an office. And as any proud husband and father, I want to have photos of my wife and daughter on my desk. The year being 2012, I did not hike to the photo shop to get a print framed, but instead thought to myself that I should put a digital photo frame onto my table. This idea exposed me to the ridiculous world of consumer electronics. It led me to conclude that digital picture frame designers need to be whacked with cluebats. Step by step Once accepted, the thought of a digital photo frame developed into a product definition along the following lines: my idea photo frame would connect to my Wifi-network, and obtain the photos on-the-go from a folder exposed via HTTP or CIFS, and then go on to display them in random order, incorporating new photos as it encounters them. With this in mind, I went to the shops, and since I believe in specialised retailers and want to support them, my first stop was Foto Sauter at Sendlinger Tor. Unfortunately, none of the frames they had came with Wifi, so I decided to look further. I vehemently oppose to the business practices of the Metro group, thus skipped Saturn and MediaMarkt, and eventually ended up at Conrad. They had a frame with Wifi! I jumped for joy, until I read the manual: pictures can be obtained from Flickr and Picasa. Period. All other models on the Internet seem to be similarly limited, including the new Sony S-frame. The night before, Penny had researched the field a bit and came to the conclusion that the S-frame would be the best product available. This led me to scratch Wifi off my requirements list and get a model that would read photos off a USB stick. I went back to the photo store and bought a "Sony S-frame", only to discover that it cannot show photos in random order. It has three viewing modes (single photo, collage, single photo with clock), and a random mode, but guess what: the random mode randomly switches the viewing modes, which then display the photos in lexicographical order. How stupid is that??? I returned the product and left the store after discovering that none of their products could do random playback. I went back to Conrad and found an "Intenso MediaCreator" (what media does it create???), which displayed the photos seemingly randomly. But at home I found out that the "random" order is always the same, probably because the bright engineer that programmed this thought it was better to sort filenames by last letter and call it random, than to figure out a way to roll a dice on the device. I wrote to the support team and asked them. The response was that the desired functionality (random selection) is not possible and won't be made available. So I am returning the product. Gah! Would someone please tell me about a digital picture frame (8 inch or so) that can display images in random order, ideally loading them off a CIFS share via Wifi? Or is it really the case that consumer electronics are completely useless these days, by which I mean that "consumers" have dumbed down so far to buy this crap? Update: a lot of people wrote in suggesting to invest in a cheap Android tablet. Some suggested Raspberry Pis in USB host mode (emulating the USB stick and hence the source of the images, provided that the frame doesn't cache). Other suggestions included the Samsung SPF-85V which can display images according to an RSS feed but needs Microsoft for that (or maybe not), and the community-developed, Linux-based Joggler. Regarding the non-random order on the Intenso frame, Paul Hedderly postulated that the order comes from the filesystems (FAT order) and can be changed by writing the files differently.

Puppet I've really had it with Puppet. I used to be able to put up with all its downsides

• Non-Unix approach to everything (own transport, self-made PKI, non-intuitive configuration language, a faint attempt at versioning (bitbucket), and much much more )
• Ruby
• Abysmal slowness
• Lack of basic functionality (e.g. replace a line of text)
• Host management and configuration programming intertwined, lack of a high-level approach to defining functionality
• Horrific error messages
• Catastrophic upgrade paths
• Did I mention Ruby and its speed?
• Lack of IPv6 support
• [I could keep going ]

but now that my fourth attempt to upgrade my complex configuration from version 0.25.5 to version 2.7 failed due to a myriad of completely incomprehensible errors ("err: Could not run Puppet configuration client: interning empty string") and many hours were lost in trying to hunt these down using binary searches, I am giving up. Bye bye Puppet.

An alternative But I need an alternative. I want a system that is capable of handling a large number of hosts, but not so complex that one wouldn't put it to use for half a dozen machines. The configuration management system I want looks about as follows: It

• makes use of existing infrastructure (e.g. SSH transport and public keys, Unix toolchain, Debian package management and debconf)
• interacts with the package management system (Debian only in my case)
• can provision files whose contents might depend on context, particular machine data and conditionals. There should be a unified templating approach for static and dynamic files, with the ability to override the source of data (e.g. a default template used unless a template exists for a class of machine, or a specific hostname)
• can edit files on the target machine in a flexible and robust manner
• can remove files
• can run commands when files change
• can reference data from other machines (e.g. obtain the certificate fingerprint of each hosts that define me as their SMTP smarthost)
• can control running services (i.e. enable init.d scripts, check that a process is running
• is written in a sensible language
• is modular and easily extensible, ideally using a well-known language (e.g. Python!)
• allows to specify infrastructure with tags ("all webservers", "all machines in Zurich", "machines that are in Munich and receive mail"), but with the ability to override every parameter for a specific host
• should just do configuration management, and not try to take away jobs from monitoring software
• logs changes per-machine and collects data about applied configurations in a central location
• is configured using flat files that are human-readable so that the configuration may be stored in Git (e.g. YAML, not XML)
• can be configured using scripts in a flexible way

Since for me, Ruby is a downside of Puppet, I won't look at Chef, but from this page, I gleaned a couple of links: Ansible, Quattor, Salt, and bcfg2 (which uses XML though). And of course, there remains the ephemeral cfengine.

cfengine I haven't used cfengine since 2002, but I am not convinced it's worth a new look because it seems to be an academic project with gigantic complexity and a whole vernacular to its own. There is no doubt that it is a powerful solution, and the most mature of all of them, but it's far away from the Unix-like simplicity that I've come to love in almost 20 years of Debian. Do correct me if I am wrong.

Ansible Ansible looks interesting. It seems rather bottom-up, first introducing a way to remotely execute commands on hosts, which you can then later extend/automate to manage the host configurations. It uses SSH for transport, and its reason-to-be made me want to look at it. My ventures into the Ansible domain are not over yet, but I've put them on hold. First of all, it's not yet packaged for Debian (Ubuntu-PPA packages work on Debian squeeze and wheezy). Second, I was put off a bit by its gratuitous use of the shell to run commands, as well as other design decisions. Check this out: there are modules for the remote execution of commands, namely "shell", "command", and "raw". The shell modules should be self-explanatory; the command module provides some idempotency, such as not running the command if a file exists (or not). To do this, it creates a Python script in /tmp on the target and then executes that like so:

$SHELL -c /tmp/ansible/ansible-1350291485.22-74945524909437/command

Correct me if I am wrong, but there is zero need for this shell indirection. My attempts at finding an answer on IRC were met by user "daniel_hozac" with a reason along the lines of "it's needed, believe me", and on the mailing list, I am told that only the shell can execute a script by parsing the interpreter line at the top of the module. Finally, the raw execution module also executes using the shell And there a few other design decisions that I can't quite explain, around the command-line switch --sudo see the aforementioned message In short: running a command like

ansible -v arnold.madduck.net -a "/usr/bin/apt-get update" --sudo

does not invoke apt-get with sudo, as one might like; it invokes the shell that runs the Python script that runs the command. Effectively therefore, you need to allow sudo shell execution, and for proper automation, this has to be possible without a password. And then you might just as well allow root logins again. The author seems to think that "core behaviour" is that sudo allows all execution and that limiting the commands to run is not a use-case that Ansible will support. Apparently, I was the first to ever suggest this. There are always ways around (e.g. skip --sudo and just use sudo as the command, simply ignore the useless shell invocation and trust that your machine can handle it, but when such design decisions remain incomprehensible and get defended by the project people, then I am hesitant to invest more time on principle.

Salt Finally, I've looked at Salt, which is what I've spent most time on so far. From the discussions I started on host targeting and data collection, it soon became apparent that Salt is very thin and flexible, and that the user community is accomodating. Unfortunately, Salt does not use SSH, but at least it reuses existing functionality (ZeroMQ). As opposed to the push/pull model, Salt "minions" interestingly maintain a persistent connection to the server (which is not yet very stable), and while non-root usage is still not unproblematic, at least there has already been work done in this direction. I think I will investigate Salt more as it does look like it can do what I want. The YAML-based syntax does seem a bit brittle, but it's the best I've found so far. NP: The Pineapple Thief: Someone Here is Missing

As you may know, when Phil Zimmermann published PGP, his goal was to counter the wide spying possibilities the development of electronic communications offered to the authorities, by promoting the general use of encryption so that 1. governments would not be able to restrict it afterwards and 2. it becomes possible to encrypt messages for privacy without drawing suspicion. Now, cryptography has made its way and is widely use, but mostly for commercial website and only sparsely for mail. Indeed, contrary to signing, encrypting a message requires that the recipient has a crypto key and is able and willing to use it to decrypt your message. To alleviate this problem, I thought that it would be useful to have a way, when sending a message, to tell your recipients that you would like that they encrypt their answers, because you are able and willing to get encrypted mail. I think the most relevant way to do that would be by adding a dedicated header field:

Encryption-Desired: PGP

In that header, one would be able to indicate what protocols he accepts. I suggest a comma-separated list, with the following possible values: PGP (or PGP/MIME and PGP/traditional for people that only accept one of these two PGP formats), S/MIME. For instance:

Encryption-Desired: PGP/MIME, S/MIME

It may be useful to be able to indicate that you either always wish your messages to be encrypted, or that it is only for this message's replies. If this is really relevant, it would take two distinct headers: Encryption-Desired and Reply-Encryption-Desired. Any thought about that proposal? Next thing to do, determine how to have that standardized at IANA and how to promote it.

Civil liberties and privacy in the western world are going down the drain, and it is hard to fight against it. I try to do my best, but time is limited. I hope you do your best too. A few years ago I came across a marvellous drawing by Clay Bennett visualising some of what is going on.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. - Benjamin Franklin

Do you feel safe at the airport? I do not. Do you feel safe when you see a surveillance camera? I do not. Do you feel safe when you leave electronic traces of your behaviour and opinions? I do not. I just remember the Panopticom, and can not help help to think that we are slowly transforming our society to a huge Panopticom on our own.

# Copyright (C) YEAR Free Software Foundation, Inc. # This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package. # FIRST AUTHOR <email>, YEAR. # #, fuzzy msgid "" msgstr "" "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n" "POT-Creation-Date: 2012-10-12 11:14+0300\n" "PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n" "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <email>\n" "Language-Team: LANGUAGE <ll>\n" "Language: \n" "MIME-Version: 1.0\n" "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n" "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n" #. type: Title # #, no-wrap msgid "Retro-style live webcam of our couch" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "\n" msgstr "" #. type: Title ## #, no-wrap msgid "Here's my office - Live!" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "I generally work from home, sitting in our big red couch." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "Last fall, when I told this to" msgstr "" #. type: Title ## #, no-wrap msgid "Technical setup" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #: #, no-wrap msgid "[[!graph src="""\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "rankdir=LR\n" "webcam -> motion -> stream;\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "Most of my work is in trying to avoid ways things might go wrong which so " "often happens when computers are involved." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "What if \n" " * messages are delayed or lost?\n" " * a chain of messages arrive out of order?\n" " * messages are sent faster than they can be delivered?\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[Copenhagen Carpool]: http://www.kobenhavnsdelebiler.dk/\n" " "K benhavns Delebiler"\n" msgstr "" #. type: Title ## #, no-wrap msgid "Reliable conversation" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "Human conversation is most reliable when using plain speak. Slang, sarcasm " "or jokes raise the risk of misunderstandings. This is quite similar in " "computer conversation." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "When surfing the Web, you normally "GET" a web page or "POST" new data " "like a search query. The words "GET" and "POST" are "plain speak" of " "the World Wide Web defined as a principle called "[REST][]" or " ""RESTful design"." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "rankdir=LR\n" ""fetch document" -> website [label="GET", dir="back"];\n" ""provide info" -> website [label="POST"];\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "I use the [Kannel][] tool to talk directly to the phones. When an sms " "arrives on the phone, Kannel "GET"s it to the calendar. That's weakly " "expressed better if it had "POST"ed the message instead." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "rankdir=LR\n" ""provide sms info" -> "calendar" [label="GET" style="dotted"];\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "Kannel is a quite reliable tool, but not RESTful in conversations. That " "requires extra attention at other parts of the setup to avoid breakage in " "special situations." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "That worries me." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[Kannel]: http://www.kannel.org/\n" " "Kannel: Open Source WAP and SMS Gateway"\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[REST]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST\n" " "Representational State Transfer"\n" msgstr "" #. type: Title ## #, no-wrap msgid "Each car has a blog" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "So I setup a gateway from Kannel to RESTful conversation. And choose " "classic blogging as style of conversation:" msgstr "" #. type: Bullet: ' * ' msgid "The carpool fleet is a blogroll" msgstr "" #. type: Bullet: ' * ' msgid "each car has a blog" msgstr "" #. type: Bullet: ' * ' msgid "each sms emitted from a car is a blog entry" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "Blogging comes in two flavors, [RSS][] and [Atom][]. Both cover " "distribution of messages. I use Atom because it is newest and coolest, and " "because it also covers creating and editing meesages with the [AtomPub][] " "extension." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "AtomPub allows the calendar to create an empty message which then " "triggers an sms from the car which "fills it in."" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "AtomPub also let the calendar "PUT" tags onto existing messages, to mark " "them as processed, read etc., and let an admin or a cleanup script " ""DELETE" outdated entries or blogs. The words "PUT" and "DELETE" are " "RESTful conversation as well." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[Atom]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom\n" " "Atom"\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[RSS]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS\n" " "RSS"\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[AtomPub]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AtomPub\n" " "AtomPub"\n" msgstr "" #. type: Title ## #, no-wrap msgid "The system is dancing!" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "My sms-to-blog gateway is written in [Perl][], using the [Dancer][] toolkit." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "Dancer makes it simple to setup a RESTful web conversation, and when I " "contacted the authors on [IRC][], they swiftly added support for the " "non-RESTful quirk that I needed." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "rankdir=LR\n" "phone -> "sms gateway" [dir="both"];\n" ""sms gateway" -> "blog gateway" [dir="both", style="dotted"];\n" ""blog gateway" -> calendar [dir="both"];\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "My sms-to-blog gateway is not yet ready, but basic routines work. The " "[project is public][], and code is [Free Software][]." msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[Perl]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl\n" " "Perl"\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[Dancer]: http://www.perldancer.org/\n" " "Dancer: Perl web development framework"\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[IRC]: http://www.perldancer.org/irc\n" " "IRC Chat system (Internet Relay Chat)"\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[project is public]: git://source.delebilfonden.dk/msg/\n" " "Kannel-to-AtomPub Gateway"\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "[Free Software]: http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines\n" " "The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)"\n" msgstr ""

# Copyright (C) YEAR Free Software Foundation, Inc. # This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package. # FIRST AUTHOR <email>, YEAR. # #, fuzzy msgid "" msgstr "" "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\n" "POT-Creation-Date: 2012-10-12 11:14+0300\n" "PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI+ZONE\n" "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <email>\n" "Language-Team: LANGUAGE <ll>\n" "Language: \n" "MIME-Version: 1.0\n" "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\n" "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n" #. type: Title # #, no-wrap msgid "Status hos doktoren" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" "**Jonas Smedegaard** [dr.jones at pobox.com " "](mailto:friends%40jones.dk?Subject=Status%20hos%20doktoren&In-Reply-To=1.5.4.32.19971011010004.0067de34%40kaospilot.dk) " "\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "_Sat Oct 11 15:22:00 CEST 1997_" msgstr "" #. type: Bullet: ' * ' #: msgid "Previous message: [Spamming? ](000001.html)" msgstr "" #. type: Bullet: ' * ' #: msgid "" "**Messages sorted by:** ? date (date.html#2) ? thread (thread.html#2) " "? subject (subject.html#2) ? author (author.html#2)" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid " Hej Patrik (og alle Jer andre )!\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " >_Vad sker med dig det var ett stycke tid diden?\n" " _>_Vad skedde der med ditt arbejde pa cafeet og pa skolen?\n" " _\n" " Lang historie!\n" " (den kommer nu )\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Jeg tror snart jeg har laert (the hard way) hvor dyr jeg egentligt er i " "drift.\n" " Jeg har nu i 3 maneder "ligget med r ven *under* vandskorpen" " " konomisk: minus 15.000,- pa kontoen. Det vender forhabentligvis indenfor " "den naeste maned - ellers pa jeg tage et regulaert lan, hvis jeg fortsat " "skal have firma som fuldtidsbeskaeftigelse.\n" " Det betyder, at jeg for tiden arbejder fra ca. 9 morgen til 0:30 nat syv " "dage om ugen (med enkelte eftermiddage eller aftener fri). Der er faktisk " "opgaver at lave, som ogsa gi'r penge i kassen - men det har der ikke vaeret " "for nogle maneder siden, og nar der var, har jeg taget mig for billigt " "betalt (men du kender mig jo!). Jeg er begyndt mere at involvere min " "storebror, nar jeg udarbejder tilbud, til at hjaelpe mig med en mere reel " "prissaetning.\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid " Her er lidt(?) om, hvad jeg beskaeftiger mig med for tiden:\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " *** Homebase ***\n" " Jeg far forbindelse fra mit kontor og ned til Mejlgade om en lille uge - " "rent teoretisk ihvertfald - derefter skal jeg ha' elektronikken til at " "fungere \n" " Jeg administrerer deres servere og netvaerk, og er "Boss" for Morten " "P. fra Frontl berne, som er blevet hyret til at vedligeholde alle " "arbejdspladserne pa skolen.\n" " Jeg har *intet* at g re med content pa webserveren. Efter i foraret at " "have haft DogSystem (et par nystartede edb-folk) til at udarbejde noget " "smart (som vist aldrig blev rigtigt til noget) har Uffe nu faet samlet nogle " "studerende (vist primaert fra hold 3), som skal hitte pa noget \n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Her er et uddrag af en mail til Rasmus fra hold 3:\n" " >>_Du ma gerne f lge lidt med i arbejdet og sende mig en kommentar " "eller\n" " _>>_gode rad, hvis du f ler for det.\n" " _>_\n" " _>_Jeg har et ambivalent forhold til Jeres arbejde:\n" " _>_ - Jeg f ler for det, Ja. Meget!\n" " _>_ - I sidder og laver mit arbejde \n" " _>_ - Meningen med mit arbejde er ar g re mig selv arbejdsl s - sa det " "er\n" " _>_*godt*, at I laver det \n" " _>_ - I laver det maske bedre, maske darligere end jeg ville ha' gjort " "det -\n" " _>_men helt sikkert anderledes!\n" " _>_ - Min force (og min kaephest!) er grundstrukturer mere end visuel " "(og\n" " _>_anden) indpakning. Det er svaert at kommentere og komme med gode rad, " "nar de\n" " _>_er omkring grundstruktur. Det kraever naesten, at man sidder ved " "roret \n" " _>_ - Hvis ikke jeg kommer med mine kommentarer nu, skal jeg enten holde " "mund\n" " _>_med det (og det er svaert) eller de vil udvikles til bagklogskab og\n" " _>_bedrevidenhed \n" " _>_ - Jeg har egentligt for travlt til at beskaeftige mig med det: Jeg " "har hele\n" " _>_tiden haft "travlt". At jeg har "for travlt" er et udtryk for, at " "jeg er\n" " _>_blevet klar over, at for at leve et liv som selvstaendigt " "erhvervsdrivende\n" " _>_er det ikke nok at arbejde hardt - man skal ogsa ta' penge for " "det Jeg\n" " _>_har derfor ikke for travlt, hvis der er penge i lortet (men det er " "sjaeldent\n" " _>_tilfaeldet i Mejlgade - til gengaeld er der sa meget andet " "dernede!).\n" " _\n" " *** Brugerflade-design ***\n" " Jeg har faet et job ved Frontl berne: VPAE (Virtual Project Assistance " "Environment).\n" " De er med i et faelles-nordisk projekt om at lave en "virtuel " "projektvugge" - altsa et forum pa Internet med en raekke vaerkt jer til " "projektudvikling og administration af gamle projekter.\n" " Konkret arbejder jeg i diss uger pa design af brugergraenseflade " "(dialogbokse osv.) og n dvendige datastrukturer til et system til " "udarbejdelse af en projektbeskrivelse.\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Jeg arbejder taet sammen med Morten P., og det er utroligt spaendende at " "arbejde med en konkret, mindre opgave med stor paedagogisk og funktionel " "vaerdi.\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " *** Praktikant ***\n" " En af mine venner fra gymnasietiden, Henrik, studerer informatik (det " "hedder vist noget lidt andet ) her i rhus, og meget tyder pa, at han " "snart kommer i praktik her hos mig i en maned.\n" " Han skal arbejde meget selvstaendigt. Jeg har brug for hans viden " "indenfor PR, han kan bruge mig som "pr veklud", og jeg kan stille medier " "(webserver o.l.) til hans radighed.\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Jeg har en ide om at vaere meget aben overfor brug af praktikanter - " "ikke bare som nem arbejdskraft (det er kraevende at saette i arbejde, og at " "give opgaver fra sig!), men mere fordi det giver mig en traening i " "formidling af min viden, og erfaringer mht. "s saetning" af mine metoder " "og ideer som tekniker - men det kraever maske lidt uddybning :\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Mit virke er grundliggende at bygge bro mellem teknikere og brugere " "indenfor IT. Det har 2 aspekter - at naerme teknikeren til brugeren, og at " "naermere brugeren til teknikken. Jeg arbejder med undervisning (arketyper, " "paedagogik og kommunikation), brugerfladedesign og almen radgivning for at " "hjaelpe brugeren pa vej. For at hjaelpe teknikeren tager jeg udgangspunkt i " "mig selv og mit arbejde med brugeren, og udvikler herigennem en raekke " "metoder og tankesaet, som jeg vil formidle - gennem praktikanter eller " "evt. decideret undervisning - til andre teknikere, som ikke i det daglige " "arbejder "i begge lejre", og derfor ikke ser de samme problematikker som " "mig.\n" " konomisk skulle "Projekt dr. Jones" gerne baeres igennem " "vha. konkrete projekter - virksomheder og enkeltpersoner, som har behov for " "min viden og mit arbejde, og som er villige til at betale merprisen for " "forskning fremfor traditionelle l sninger (NB! jeg bruger bevidst ikke ord " "som "udvikling" og "innovation" - for mit arbejde f rer til tider " "tilbage til udgangspunktet - det er ikke *altid* n dvendigt at opfinde den " "dybe tallerken igen!)\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Henrik vil ikke give mig de store erfaringer mht. formidling af min " "viden - jeg har for stor en pukkel af opgaver liggende til at kunne gabe " "over ham ogsa. Denne gang er det primaert hans felt - PR - jeg kan drage " "nytte af.\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " *** Undevisning ***\n" " Jeg har nu i en maned undeervist i edb som valgfag pa IDA " "(Idraetsdagh jskolen). Indtil nu har det vaeret 2 timer om ugen, elever i " "alderen 30-60 ar - men om fa uger bliver der yderligere 4 timer om ugen med " "elever pa 20-30 ar.\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Afl nningen er symbolsk (nej, god l n regnet som underviser, jeg far " "samme l n som en uddannet laerer - men ikke sammenholdt med, hvor " ""dyrebar" min tid er som selvstaendig ), men sjaeldent har jeg oplevet " "sa tydeligt et ryk i min paedagogiske forstaelse og opmaerksomhed.\n" " Jeg bliver sandsynligvis ikke haengende ved IDA i mere end et 1/2-1 ar - " "det er simpelthen for tids- og ressourcekraevende - men h ster gode " "erfaringer salaenge (og bader mig i deres positive feedback :-)\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " *** Brugerflade-programmering ***\n" " Samtidig (egentligt burde jeg forlaengst vaere faerdig, men opgaven greb " "om sig) arbejder jeg pa mit eget projekt: BOS (BrugerOpdateringsSystem).\n" " Det er et CGI-script (lille program pa en web-server), som muligg r " "redigering af indholdet pa websider uafhaengigt af sidens grafiske " "opsaetning, og - vaesentligst - UDEN AT SKRIVE EEN ENESTE KODE!\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " 1. udgave af BOS betalte jeg en programm r 15.000,- for at udvikle. Jeg " "havde brug for det til en opgave for AC (Akademikernes Centralorganisation), " "som skulle bruge det til bl.a. pressemeddelelser og publicering af et " "manedsblad pa deres 200+ siders websider (som jeg ogsa har lavet!).\n" " Da AC i sensommeren kom med rettelser og udvidelser til deres website " "blev der brug for forbedringer af BOS, og jeg erfarede, at min programm r " "havde lavet meget u-fleksibel kode, som var umulig at bygge videre pa.\n" " 2. udgave af BOS er nu naesten faerdig. Jeg valgte at skrive det om fra " "grunden selv (med hjaelp fra en god ven, som studerer datalogi), og har " "efterhanden skrevet ca. 750 linjers kode i programmeringssproget Perl \n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Jeg havde ikke troet, at jeg nogensinde skulle kunne programmere. Det " "kraever disciplin og god forstaelse for grundliggende datastrukturer, som " "jeg hidtil troede n dvendiggjorde et mangearigt universitetsstudie " "(datalogi).\n" " Jeg vil ikke sla mig ned som programm r, men kan nu bruge det som ekstra " "fjer i min vifte af erfaringsomrader, i min rejse mod "At vaere det ledende " "radgivningsorgan i Danmark indenfor anvendt edb"!\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " *** Internet-Cafe ***\n" " Jeg har jo kontor i 2 lokaler hos NETLAB, en spillecafe (computerspil i " "netvaerk). Det tog ikke mange jeblikke at slutte deres og mit netvaerk " "sammen, sa alle spillecomputerne ogsa kunne komme pa Internet - desvaerre " "fungerede det ikke med store computerspil (lang teknisk forklaring ), kun " "med alm. ting som e-mail og at "surfe" pa nettet.\n" " Jeg far snart (indenfor fa uger) "aegte" adgang til Internet, via fast " "forbindelse d gnet rundt. Sa kan der spilles computerspil via Internet, og " "spillecafeen er reelt blevet en Internet-Cafe \n" " Den kommende Internetforbindelse er dog ikke saerligt kraftig (64kbit - " "2-4 x modemhastighed) til deling mellem 20 kraftige maskiner, og har lagt en " "f ler ind hos Telia: Om ikke de har lyst til at sponsorere stedet. Give os " "en kraftig forbindelse til Internet, og til gengaeld fa reklamevaerdien af " "en stabil og hurtig forbindelse Folk der bliver rigtigt bidt af det vil " "jo f r eller siden k be en maskine selv, og sa far de jo brug for en " "Internet-udbyder \n" " Min rolle bliver at administrere "hullet" (eller "hullerne" til " "Internet, og evt. ogsa at strukturere og administrere mail-adresser til " "bes gende pa cafeen.\n" " konomisk forestiller jeg mig en fast procentdel af indtaegterne i " "cafeen - eller evt. simpelthen en billigere husleje?!?. Det gaelder om at " "finde en prispolitik, som spiller sammen med den grundliggende holdning ved " "bade dr. Jones og NETLAB om et indbydende, seri st (uden at blive kedeligt!) " "milj fremfor "flest muligt forbi kasseapperatet".\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid " -\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Det blev et laengere brev - og jeg tror faktisk, jeg vil genbruge det " "til ogsa at fortaelle familie og andre venner, hvorfor de har h rst sa lidt " "til mig pa det sidste \n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Hej allesammen!\n" " Haber I nyder tilvaerelsen. Det g r jeg - men traenger ogsa snart til et " "lille pusterum - juleferie i Sydfrankrig, regner jeg med!\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text #, no-wrap msgid "" " Ha' det bra!\n" " Jonas\n" " :_-)\n" " _\n" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "" "[More information about the Friends mailing list](http://mail.jones.dk/cgi- " "bin/mailman/listinfo/friends)" msgstr "" #. type: Plain text msgid "This text is part of my friends scriblings." msgstr ""

I want all my computing environments "furnished" similarly and as close to my personal taste as possible - be it big and small machines, self-administered and user accounts of others. and not only for myself - similar is needed for the environments I help maintain for my friends Siri, Erik and Peter. The environments are seldom fully equal, so simply copying things around is rarely useful. Here's a checklist of things that I need to customize and syncronize for me and my friends to feel at $HOME :

• System-wide
  • Tools available on the system
  • Graphical login and Desktop environments
  • Adjust fonts, colors etc. of terminal emulator, file manager etc.
  • Register SSH in monkeysphere, MAC in DHCP and hostname in DNS
• Account
  • Syncronize browser bookmarks
  • Install/configure browser search plugins, config tweaks etc.
  • Setup email and messaging accounts, and syncronize archives
  • Syncronize development scripts, git repositories etc.
  • Register account in monkeysphere

Above is work-in-progress. I hope to later extend with more details - probably by linking to separate pages about each subtopic.

For writing tests for GVFS (current tests, proposed improvements) I want to run Samba as normal user, so that we can test gvfs smb backend without root privileges and thus can run them safely and conveniently in a make check environment for developers and in JHBuild for continuous integration testing. Before these tests could only run under gvfs-testbed, which needs root. Unlike other servers such as ssh or ftp, this turned out surprisingly non-obvious and hard, so I want to document it in this blog post for posterity s benefit. Running the server Running smbd itself is mainly an exercise of figuring out all the options that you need to set; Alex Larsson and I had some fun figuring out all the quirks and hiccups that happen between Ubuntu s and Fedora s packaging and 3.6 vs. 4.0, but finally arrived at something working. First, you need to create an empty directory where smbd can put all its databases and state files in. For tests you would use mkdtemp(), but for easier reading I just assume mkdir /tmp/samba here. The main knowledge is in the Samba configuration file, let s call it /tmp/smb.conf:

[global]
workgroup = TESTGROUP
interfaces = lo 127.0.0.0/8
smb ports = 1445
log level = 2
map to guest = Bad User
passdb backend = smbpasswd
smb passwd file = /tmp/smbpasswd
lock directory = /tmp/samba
state directory = /tmp/samba
cache directory = /tmp/samba
pid directory = /tmp/samba
private dir = /tmp/samba
ncalrpc dir = /tmp/samba
[public]
path = /tmp/public
guest ok = yes
[private]
path = /tmp/private
read only = no

For running this as a normal user you need to set a port > 1024, so this uses 1445 to resemble the original (privileged) port 445. The map to guest line makes anonymous logins work on Fedora/Samba 4.0 (I m not sure whether it s a distribution or a version issue). Don t ask about dir vs. directory , that s an inconsistency in Samba; with above names it works on both 3.6 and 4.0. We use the old smbpasswd backend as shipping large tdb files is usually too inconvenient and brittle for test suites. I created an smbpasswd file by running smbpasswd on a real Samba installation, and then using pdbedit to convert it to a smbpasswd file:

sudo smbpasswd -a martin
sudo pdbedit -i tdbsam:/var/lib/samba/passdb.tdb -e smbpasswd:/tmp/smbpasswd

The result for password foo is

myuser:0:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:AC8E657F83DF82BEEA5D43BDAF7800CC:[U          ]:LCT-507C14C7:

which you are welcome to copy&paste (you can replace myuser with any valid user name, of course). This also defines two shares, one public, one authenticated. You need to create the directories and populate them a bit:

mkdir /tmp/public /tmp/private
echo hello > /tmp/public/hello.txt
echo secret > /tmp/private/myfile.txt

Now you can run the server with

smbd -iFS -s /tmp/smb.conf

The main problem with this approach is that smbd exits ( Server exit (failed to receive smb request) ) after a client terminates, so you need to write your tests in a way to only run one connection/request per test, or to start smbd in a loop. Running the client If you merely use the smbclient command line tool, this is rather simple: It has a -p option for specifying the port:

$ smbclient -p 1445 //localhost/private
Enter martin's password: [enter "foo" here]
Domain=[TESTGROUP] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.6.6]
smb: \> dir
  .                                   D        0  Wed Oct 17 08:28:23 2012
  ..                                  D        0  Wed Oct 17 08:31:24 2012
  myfile.txt                                   7  Wed Oct 17 08:28:23 2012

In the case of gvfs it wasn t so simple, however. Surprisingly, libsmbclient does not have an API to set the port, it always assumes 445. smbclient itself uses some internal libcli API which does have a way to change the port, but it s not exposed through libsmbclient. However, Alex and I found some mailing list posts ([1], [2]) that mention $LIBSMB_PROG, and it s also mentioned in smbclient s manpage. It doesn t quite work as advertised in the second ML post (you can t set it to smbd, smbd apparently doesn t speak the socket protocol over stdin/stdout), and it s not being used anywhere in the current Samba sources, but what does work is to use good old netcat:

export LIBSMB_PROG="nc localhost 1445"

with that, you can use smbclient or any program using libsmbclient to talk to our test smb server running as user.