Another beautiful day here in Paradise. Montreal is fantastic in the late Spring/early Summer -- it's a great time to be here in the city. Yesterday, Amita June and I went to Parc Jean Drapeau, the beautiful park on an island in the St. Lawrence, the former site of Expo 67. We played at the (really cool) new playground, ran around in the grass, and looked at the river rushing by. Today I rolled out a new table-of-contents layout on Wikitravel; you can see an example on our page about France. It's the culmination of about 11 months of debate and compromise amongst Wikitravellers, me, Maj, Internet Brands, and pretty much everyone else under the sun. It took a looong time, but we eventually got something that most people could live with and (shock!) some people actually liked. It wasn't easy, and my earlier unilateral decisions about it were so upsetting to people that it produced our current Wikitravel:Technical infrastructure policy. It's been great to finally reach some closure on this particular issue, since it was such a source of learning for me. tags: wikitravel wiki montreal amitajune toc

RoCoCo -- one week and counting We've got about one week before RoCoCoCamp starts. It's going to be pretty exciting; we've had a lot of responses and the list of participants is growing strong. But there are still a lot of infrastructure things to be done -- I'm going to be really impressed if we get them all done before next Friday. I'm getting more and more amazed that the folks in Portland (Oregon) manage to put on RecentChangesCamp there. It's pretty hard to do a three-day unconference. tags: rocococamp barcamp barcampmontreal recentchangescamp

Kanren So, I've just finished re-reading The Reasoned Schemer, the sequel to The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen. Reasoned is a really nice introduction into what seems to be a classic compulsion for Scheme freaks: re-implementing the logic language Prolog more-or-less in Scheme. The little language that unfolds in Reasoned is elegant, simple, and best of all, extremely Scheme-y. There's a really long digression into binary mathematics and deriving bitwise operations for arithmetical functions, which all seems to be the long way around the block since it's unlikely that users of their system would use anything but the math system built into the host language, Scheme. The implementation in TRS is laid out at the back of the book. It's a learning version of a bigger project, called Kanren. I've been fiddling with the system, which has re-inspired my dream of creating a declarative language framework for Web applications. I'd like to see what Web programming in Kanren would be like... I'll see how it goes. tags: kanren scheme the reasoned schemer logic prolog

Domains Another way I spent my time today was that we've finally gotten around to transferring the wikitravel.org/.net/.com domains to IB. IB's owned the site for a while, but we've never really had a reason to switch the domains over, so it's gone undone for a long time. And I'm kind of glad. It sucks transferring domains between registrars. wikitravel.org was on Joker. which used to be my registrar of choice, but which has been superseded by Godaddy. Transferring a single domain took 6 Web forms (on two different sites), 3 security codes, and 4 email confirmations. Thankfully, this also gave me a chance to transfer over my speculative domains phonojournalist.com (for telephone photos) and phrygiancap.org, for general freedom issues. I like the phrygian cap, what can I say? All right, so I have a lot of domains that I'm unlikely to ever exploit. If that's so wrong, I don't want to be right. tags: domains ib joker godaddy phonojournalist phrygian cap

A frysk package is ready to test; it's available here. It is targeted for sid and is apt-get'able, just add :

deb http://thomas.g.girard.free.fr/frysk/ ./

to your /etc/apt/sources.list. For now you'll also need to install Java-Gnome packages in NEW, also available from:

deb http://thomas.g.girard.free.fr/java-gnome/ ./

Last, you'll need libaudit0 from Philipp's private repo. Unless something really weird is found in this frysk package, it will be uploaded to master right after auditd. Update: uploaded to experimental

Even though GCC 4.2 has seen many delays and still hasn't been released (although it's finally getting close), a lot of development has already been done on trunk for the release of GCC 4.3. I started testing 4.3 in March and in addition to finding and reporting compiler issues I have filed bugs on packages that fail to build with GCC 4.3. The idea is to give people an advance warning and to be ready for GCC 4.3 when it will be released. We have almost 500 bugs related to GCC 4.3 already, mostly due to a clean-up of C++ headers in GCC that has exposed sloppy programming in many programs. Fortunately, these bugs are easy to fix. As I'm finding common mistakes in packages, I will document these problems and way to make sure a program is ready for GCC 4.3. Common problems

• Missing #include directives
• Pedantic preprocessor warnings by default in C++ (hopefully a temporary change in GCC)

As phpMyAdmin themes for trunk are not compatible with 2.10.x releases, there was created 2.10 branch for themes compatible with those releases. Today I added 2.10 themes to demo server and they are also available as subversion snapshots. I hope this will help fixing possible issues with them.

I like very much a Test::Unit framework. I've found it as a very handy tool for organising the tests. I really don't like the standard Test::Simple and its deriveratives. I don't understand why I have to see the output for each failed test. I rather like the do-or-die tests grouped logically as test units. Somebody write me a note for Exception::Base module that it depends on non-core Perl modules. It is not for runtime but build dependency. Even that, it is true, because Test::Unit is a somewhat heavy module and it depends on i.e. Errors. I decided to reimplement Test::Unit. So it is available Test::Unit::Lite already! It is much lighter replacement for original Test::Unit. It should be compatible for existing test suites. The intention was possibility of bundling the Test::Unit::Lite with other module distributions:

$ perl -MTest::Unit::Lite -e bundle

It copies the Test::Unit::Lite module to the inc directory in the distribution source. The Test::Unit module isn't perfect. The most annoying behaviour is the random order for calling test cases. The Test::Unit::Lite sorts the function names and calls it always in the same order. There is not so many Perl modules distributions that use Test::Unit. I hope a little that my package could change this situation and the test units will be more popular and easier to use.

Steve Kinsella wrote:

"Your right to ride on the road is in jeopardy. The revised Highway Code says cyclists should "use cycle facilities where possible". [...] The implications of this are bad. First, we will suffer more abuse and intimidating driving. Secondly cyclists will be disobeying the Highway Code when they assess that a cycle lane or path is dangerous and act accordingly. Thirdly, if a cyclist is involved in an accident and tries to claim damages, the insurance companies are likely to argue that the rider contributed to the accident by not using the cycle facility. The Highway Code has been laid before parliament. It will automatically be approved possibly by 20 May unless it is referred to a House of Commons Committee which cannot amend it and can only recommend the whole document be rejected. [...] There is a petition on the government website. One can be sceptical about the value of these petitions but the publicity is valuable as can be seen from this Sunday Times article of 7 May. It is interesting to note that 35 MP's objected to the original revised wording. Unfortunately, the replacement wording is worse. 11,000 objections were received to the previous wording. There are 70, 000 in the CTC alone who should now be objecting. If this Highway Code is approved by government cyclists will effectively lose the right to ride on the road where there are alternative routes or adjacent facilities. Please register your name on the petition and persuade others to do the same."

(via nscycle )

My first uploads to Debain since Etch was declared frozen for real. A minor new upstream version of slashem with ubuntu patches and new debconf translations and a relative larger upstream version of inotify-tools. My Debian todo-list: making lib-packages for inotify-tools, looking af raop-play, and then give the slashem packaging some love.

We did it again! The GRML Team proudly presents the first release candidates for the GRML 1.0 branch. This includes the brand new GRML64 and also the GRML-Small Live CD. This release includes several new features, here a small selection:

• updated to X.org 7.3
• updated to libc6 2.5
• use of UTF-8 as default encoding
• ?LaTeX: switch from tetex to texlive
• grml-x: use of evdev (dropped options -nousb and -nops2, added -ps2 and -usb instead), improved error handling and execution
• grml-autoconfig: dropped userspace/powernowd stuff in cpufrequeny scaling in favour of the ondemand-governor
• integrated grml-quickconfig within zsh-login
• got rid of grml-sysvinit, using plain sysvinit from Debian without any hacks now
• support basic rescanning in live-cd initrd
• grml-debootstrap (install plain Debian fast and easy)
• grml-quickconfig: get fast access to some basic grml-scripts
• Kernel 2.6.20

And much more. Please help us testing and get your copy from our development mirror:

Release	Codename
grml 1.0-rc1	Meilenschwein
grml-small 0.4-rc1	Release Codename: Springginkerl
grml64 0.1-rc1	LiveShell

• Please report any issues via our bts.
• If you have any feedback join us via IRC in #grml@freenode

Had a great day yesterday. It was 20C outside in Montreal, so Maj and I had a bunch of friends over for "Sunday brunch" (at 3PM). I call it "bruncher", as a twist on diner and souper, lunch and dinner in Quebecois French, respectively. Our friends Patti and Meg, Anne-Marie and Jeff, Tobias and Cato, Heather and Damien, John Usher, Niko, and Maj's sister Lori were all there. I fired up my grill and made shrimp skewers, tuna burgers and salmon burgers (courtesy of the president), and tofu sausages, as well as corn on the cob. I prepped up a big green salad and a pasta salad, plus cheese and bread and chips and fresh guacamole. Topped off with a lot of vinho verde and the tasty EXP from Toasted Head, and we had a pretty nice meal. Oh, and John brought a pineapple, and we had berries and ice cream and watermelon for dessert. Nice. tags: grilling montreal bruncher

Montessori This morning Maj and I went to visit a potential pre-school and day-care centre for Amita June. It's the Outremont Montessori school, which was pretty nice inside and had a friendly staff. My three brothers and I were all taught using the Montessori method, and my mother is a Montessori instructor, so I'm probably a little picky about Montessori schools. But the Outremont one is bilingual, and they have all the Montessori method equipment, and a real commitment to it. The main thing I'm concerned about is that the teachers aren't AMI trained, as far as I can tell. They do a two-month workshop in the method, whereas AMI-trained teachers have one- or two-year degrees. I think we're going to check out the program and enroll Amita June for the day care (which is less intensive than the pre-school) and see how we feel about it. That is, if we get in: they've got a full school right now, but they might be able to put us on the waiting list. tags: amitajune preschool montessori teachers

Plattsburgh International I'm pretty excited about the incipient opening of Plattsburgh International Airport, which calls itself "Montreal's U.S. Airport" (really!). Plattsburgh lies right across the New York (state) border, about 100km from Montreal and about a one to two hour drive depending on border crossing times. The clear market is for Montrealers seeking discount flights to (other) destinations in the USA. I think that's going to require significantly cheaper flights than are available at Trudeau Airport. Fortunately, that might not be that hard -- Trudeau is really lacking in cheap fares. But will the new airport's fares be cheap enough to justify driving an hour and crossing a land border? I'd be surprised. (via montreal city weblog, which is awesome.) ddf says: Sure, it's a bit of drive. But consider the fact that border customs is way less of a pain than airport customs. I think if you are traveling with a lot of bag and don't want to risk some extensive search before being able to board in Montreal, it might be worth the drive. tags: plattsburgh montreal airport

Current Gammu versioning scheme confuses people a lot. For some time 1.x.0 versions are stable and 1.x.y are testing. However when somebody sees 1.10.5, he things this is updated version of Gammu 1.10.0. So it's probably time to move to something more obvious starting from next development cycle. To stay as much compatible as possible with current scheme, I thing about minor change - so start testing releases on something like 1.11.90. I thing this is also quite often used (I've seen such versions in PyGTK in past) and nobody will confuse it with patch releases. Or should I switch to something completely different? I currently do not consider 1.11.0-rc1 as I'd like to keep version only numeric.

According to The Irish Times Weekend Supplement, todays recommended viewing includes We Love the Sky at Night, BBC1, 4.45pm

A celebration of the 50-year old astrology program, presented by the peerlesss star-gazer Patrick Moore, and featuring contributions from Jon Culshaw, Richard Branson, Myleene Klass, Charles Kennedy, Brian Blessed, Alex James, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Tim Rice and Arthur C Clarke.

Tags astronomy, spelling

This is again a bugfix & enhancement release for pommed:

• proper support for the PowerBook5,8 and PowerBook5,9; the ambient light sensors and the keyboard backlight are handled by the PMU05 on these machines (and not the LMU, there’s no LMU), and they have a Geyser USB keyboard+trackpad
• new keyboard backlight toggle mode, used when the automatic keyboard backlight is disabled in the config file
• removed some hardcoded settings in the pmac code (i2c adapter device name, share the LMU information between the keyboard backlight and the ambient light sensors code)

Bugs, patches and ideas welcome, at the usual place.

It's scary how much negative publicity a single user can cause for a whole project...90% of the time when I read about OpenSolaris, it's by a highly aggressive troll, also known as the "author" of cdrecord (the term "current upstream maintainer" is probably more appropriate).And it's always the same blah-blah, how much superior Solaris is to Linux.But what is much worse is the way he posts and hist persistence. (I'd link some postings, but they're all in german at Heise). At Heise News, whenever there is a posting related to Linux (e.g. because of Berlin considering a Linux migration, or a posting about ZFS), he reiterates that you shouldn't be using Linux but OpenSolaris. And then flames anybody who again mentions Linux or GNU. Because as we all know, GNU tar is bad, and POSIX tar is the only god...One reason to avoid OpenSolaris is just to keep a distance from him. I'm sure that there are some good things in OpenSolaris, too. And that there are some smart people working on it. But you have to understand: I'd be more willing to setup a FreeBSD, NetBSD or OSX system (or even a windows system) than maybe having to deal with him when I run into some problem where I might need assistance. When doing FL/OSS development, I want a nice community around me, and the part I see of the OpenSolaris community is not very well-behaved.You might want to read this blog posting on Linux and Solaris scalability by DaveM for some comments on similar Solaris FUD. Seems like J.S. isn't the only aggressive advocate who prefers to flame instead of trying to impress with technical issues, professionalism and personality.

Did you ever want to know how a video card works? Here you go, courtesy of the fine folks at X.org and the DRI project: How Video Cards Work and Radeon Architecture.

I’ll be making my first big appearance as a Sun employee next Monday at CommunityOne in San Francisco (this is the day before JavaOne). In addition to participating in the keynote with Tim O’Reilly, Rich Green, and Tim Bray, I’ve put together a track called Linux vs. Solaris? designed to show that the gap between Linux and Solaris isn’t as wide as one might think:

All too often, technologies are pitted against each other in the popular imagination, and Linux and Solaris are no exception—”Linux vs. Solaris” certainly does make a catchy soundbyte. Despite the juxtaposition, Linux and Solaris have much in common—both are open source, have common ancestry, and are similar enough that both users and developers can move back and forth between them with comparative ease. The “vs.” mentality is caused as much by lack of understanding of the “other side” as anything else. In this track, we will focus on the similarities between Linux and Solaris rather than the differences, the goal being to increase understanding of Solaris among Linux users and developers and vice versa. Where we discuss differences, these differences will be expressed in terms of “how we can learn from each other”. We will also discuss the migration up the stack of developer platforms and address the question, “Do operating systems still matter?” The ultimate goal of the track is to change the conversation: Not Linux vs. Solaris, but open vs. closed.

The track includes four sessions. I’ll kick things off by answering the burning question: “What’s a Linux guy doing at Sun?” Next, Jeff Bailey of Canonical and Bart Smaalders of Sun will take us “inside the sausage factory” to show how Ubuntu and Solaris, respectively, get made. Next, Don Kretsch of Sun and Joe Little of Stanford will show us Solaris Express Developer Edition and Nexenta, two very different takes on OpenSolaris. And last but certainly not least, Josh Berkus, Robert Lor, Harpreet Singh, Tim Bray, and Greg Luck will highlight why the OS still very much matters even as software development moves up the stack. Of course, there are a number of other great tracks as well. If operating systems are your bag, you should also check out the OpenSolaris track. Fortunately, my times don’t overlap with Ben Rockwood’s introduction to OpenSolaris, nor will I have to miss the opportunity to see the amazing Bryan Cantrill, Adam Leventhal, and Mike Shapiro educate, entertain, and gesticulate wildly! If you’re in San Francisco or the Bay area or are already planning to be at JavaOne, you should definitely plan to attend CommunityOne too. Register today! (P.S. - It’s free!)

By far the best summary I've seen of BarCampMontreal2 have been Damien DiFede's great sketchbook from BarCampMontreal2. Here's the sketch from my discussion about wiki business models and Maj's discussion of Wikitravel Extra. I also really like the one about Hugh's talk on failure and the one for Sylvain's talk about Silicon Valley (c'est loin). tags: barcamp barcampmontreal barcampmontreal2 sketches

I already had the idea to get LPI certified - expensive fun. Thanks to Joerg and co. for organizing the cheap exams during Debconf, I already have signed-up for LPI101 in the morning and LPI102 in the afternoon and wrote our $$$-director of the comany a mail that I’d like to get 95 more at the end of this month. Finally a little reference to the blog of Martin F. Krafft - and especially “Why? I am a Debian developer”. I think this is just bullshit, sorry. LPI is dedicated for system administrators, BOFHs, techies, however. Not that stuff what a Debian developer is doing. I mean, a DD should have knowledge about Debian including knowledge about software development, documentation, how to build packages, write some scripts… But does he need to know how to manage iptables or know where you need to set the fontserver? I think no… LPI asks many questions about old stuff, like the XFS, ISA Cards, Analog modems usw. The normal user today doesn’t need to care about this things, even a Debian developer mustn’t. I think many DDs never have touched an ISA card. So, I will participate in the exams, please don’t blame me if I fail.

Current gcc seems to re-execute itself when asked to use a different target with the -b option. This makes things difficult. In other embedded programming news, uClibc is going to be named libc.so.uc0.9.29. The package name will be for the ftpmasters to decide.

Read Roberto Sosa’s column on the reasons why each of them could win the Super Fight. Can’t wait!