Mayor and I And this is where things start going just ballistic! He says something along the line this is a great idea and that we have his full support, I think you should talk to the prime minister (Milorad Dodik) about this as well! I find my way to the government building, wait for brief period of time and I get called inside of the prime ministers cabinet. I tell him somewhat different story, in terms of more details, how we are competing with M nchen for this bid, and how I m actually planning if we win the bid, and if the bid is successful we d most likely change the whole city s infrastructure to Debian. He picks up the phone and calls for someone, person comes in and I m introduced to IT Center General Manager (Krsto Grujic). He tells me that they have few RedHat servers while he leads the way to his office where I m introduced to director of Agency for IT (Srdjan Rajcevic) where we even have this informal talk where Srdjan tells me he used GNU/Linux user himself and that he still manages two OpenBSD servers. We talk about various topics, in the end I tell them what we need for the conference, they write it all down and we exchange contact details, since I was called back up by the prime minister. Prime minister, asks me what I need from him to realize this project and I tell him that I d need everything I gave IT guys below, and binding papers that we d have full government and city support by the end of the month, and that I ll consult with people from Debian in case we need anything else. No problem were his words
Prime minister and I I walk out, really asking myself, what just happened, was that a Disney movie or what? I d really like to use this opportunity to invite all Debian members to come and help us realize this bid. Help us put Bosnia and Herzegovina on map of the open source world! Stay tuned

  deb http://micha.lenk.info/debian etch/

1. It s a busy place, lots of people. No matter where.
2. It has more scooters than you ever saw before. (True, there are two times more scooters than cars).

• Definition in English: long, far, remote, distant; liesurely; Mandarin Pronunciation: YOU1
• Definition in English: axle; personal name of mencius; Mandarin Pronunciation: KE1

--exclude-deb-section='^debug$'
--exclude='/(xen-)?linux-[a-z]+-2\.6[.0-9]*-[-[:alnum:]]*(openvz vserver xen)[-[:alnum:]]*_'
--exclude='(k/kde g/gnome o/openoffice\.org).*/.*_(armel hppa s390)\.deb'
--exclude='(a/axiom/ d/debian-edu-doc/ e/ember( -media)/ e/eclipse(/ -))'
--exclude='(e/erlang g/(gcl(cvs)? ghc6)/ l/llvm(/ -) p/paraview/ o/openturns/)'
--exclude='(s/scalapack(-doc)?/ f/festvox- g/gcc-snapshot/)'
--exclude='(/acl2-books_ /digikam-doc_ /fluid-soundfont-gm_ /deal.ii-doc_)'
--exclude='(/libxmpp4r-ruby-doc_ /lilypond-doc_ /qt4-doc_ /vtk-doc_)'
--exclude='/i18n/Translation-.*\.bz2' --include='/i18n/Translation-(nl de)\.bz2'

• I rarely use debug packages and they are relatively big; if I do need one I'll download it manually from a remote mirror.
• I don't run vserver or xen kernels (and if I did I'd probably compile custom kernels anyway). I do want "regular" kernels because of D-I work.
• I doubt I'll ever want to install KDE, GNOME or OpenOffice on my armel, hppa or s390 boxes, but I do want them for the other three arches.
• Selected individual (mostly scientific) source packages that I doubt I'll ever use but use up significant disk space (and bandwidth when updated). These were found by a simple:

  du -s pool/main/*/*   sort -rn   head -n 50
  

• Selected individual huge binary packages (mostly documentation), found using:

  du -s pool/main/*/*/*.deb   sort -rn   head -n 50
  

• I'm only interested in Dutch and German translations of package descriptions. Well, actually I'm not even interested in those, but it's useful to have them for testing debmirror.

Then they stopped, and Thorin muttered something about supper, and where shall we get a dry patch to sleep on? Not until then did they notice Gandalf was missing. So far he had come all the way with them, never saying if he was in the adventure or merely keeping them company for a while. He had eaten most, talked most, and laughed most. But now he simply was not there at all! Just when a wizard would have been most useful, too, groaned Dori and Nori (who shared the hobbit s views about regular meals, plenty and often).

- J.R.R. Tokien, The Hobbit

Perhaps I have begun to trust my luck more than I used to in the old days he meant last spring before he left his own house, but it seemed centuries ago but anyway I think I will go and have a peep at once and get it over. Now who is coming with me?

- J.R.R. Tokien, The Hobbit

• Do you think that the Free Software community today is overwhelmingly male (even by the standards of the male-dominated IT industry)? If not, thanks for playing. You are living in a fantasy world. Try some basic research.
• Do you think that the significant under-representation of women is a problem? Let's say there are about three answers here:

  Gender disparity in Free Software is a Good Thing

  If this is your position, please announce it explicitly so we all know. Just so you know: I don't want to be part of your all-boys club. You can stop these questions now, sorry to have bothered you.

  I don't really care about gender disparity in Free Software one way or the other

  You may not care; but a significant subset of the Free Software community thinks that it's a problem and would like to address it. Please keep this in mind as you go to the next question. Also, have you thought much about the idea of privilege and how it might apply to your situation?

  I think gender disparity in Free Software is probably a Bad Thing

  Great, glad we agree on that.

• People in our community have a problem with the current state of affairs, and point out some specific behavior that makes the bad situation worse. What should you do?

  Shout them down or attack them

  Gee, it sure is upsetting to hear people talk about problems in the community. It's almost as upsetting as getting bug reports about problems in our software. Shall we shout them down too? Maybe we should attack them! Condescension is also great. Those silly bug reporters!

  Argue them out of having a problem

  This just doesn't work very well. Someone has already volunteered to tell you about a problem that you hadn't noticed. You are unlikely to convince them that they were imagining things.

  Take them seriously

  Yes! It seems to be surprising to some commentators that this is not a witch hunt or a lynch mob (interesting that these terms often-used in defense of white men connote specific historical traditions of the exercise of male privilege and white privilege, respectively). Well-meaning people have respectfully raised good-faith concerns about the state of our community, and made very simple suggestions about what to do to make the community more welcoming to women: lay off the sexist remarks at conferences, apologize when some nonsense does slip through we're all struggling with various kinds of internalized oppression, you won't be perfect and try not to do it again. Why not listen to these people? Why not support them?

dotfile-manager update [directory]

Update the contents of the named directory to the most recent version, via "hg pull" or HTTP fetch. This could be trivially updated to allow git/subversion/CVS to be used instead. (directory defaults to ~/.dotfiles/ if not specified.)

dotfile-manager link [directory]

For each file in the named directory link _foo to ~/.foo. (directory defaults to ~/.dotfiles/ if not specified.) e.g. directory/_screenrc will be linked to from ~/.screenrc. But hostnames count too! So you can create directory/_screenrc.gold and that will be the target of ~/.screenrc on the host gold.my.flat

dotfile-manager tidy

This removes any dangling ~/.* symlinks.

dotfile-manager report

Report on any file ~/.* which isn't a symlink - those files might be added in the future.

dotfile-manager update ~/.dotfiles
dotfile-manager update ~/.dotfiles-private
dotfile-manager link ~/.dotfiles
dotfile-manager link ~/.dotfiles-private

1. PostgreSQL (MySQL does not provide sufficient geospacial features) I will be using Postgres 8.4.1; please adjust your paths for your version and/or distributor.
2. PostGIS spacial database extensions I will be using version 1.4.0.
3. Django I will be using version 1.1. This version includes the GeoDjango framework.
4. GEOS geometry engine I will be using version 3.0.0 from the libgeos-c1 package in Debian unstable.

$ django-admin startproject ukpostcodes
$ cd ukpostcodes
$ ./manage.py startapp postcodes

$ sudo -u postgres createlang plpgsql -d <databasename>
$ sudo -u postgres psql <databasename> -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis.sql
$ sudo -u postgres psql <databasename> -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/spatial_ref_sys.sql

from django.contrib.gis.db import models
class Postcode(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=8, db_index=True)
    location = models.PointField()
    objects = models.GeoManager()

$ ./manage syncdb

$ mkdir -p postcodes/management/commands
$ touch postcodes/management/commands/__init__.py
$ touch postcodes/management/__init__.py

import sys
import csv
from django.contrib.gis.geos import Point
from django.core.management.base import BaseCommand
from postcodes.models import Postcode
class Command(BaseCommand):
    def handle(self, \*args, \*\*options):
        Postcode.objects.all().delete()
        count = 0
        for row in csv.reader(sys.stdin):
            try:
                name = row[0].upper().strip().replace('  ', ' ')
                location = Point(map(float, row[13:15]))
            except ValueError:
                print "I: skipping %r" % row
                continue
            Postcode.objects.create(name=name, location=location)
            count += 1
            if count % 10000 == 0:
                print "Imported %d" % count

$ bunzip2 /path/to/uk-post-codes-2009.bz2   ./manage.py import_postcodes

>>> from postcodes.models import Postcode
>>> palace = Postcode.objects.get(name='SW1A 1AA')
>>> palace
<Postcode: SW1A 1AA>

>>> from django.contrib.gis.measure import Distance
>>> area = (palace.location, Distance(mi=1))
>>> Postcode.objects.filter(location__distance_lte=area)
[<Postcode: SE1 7BF>, <Postcode: SE1 7SG>, <Postcode: SE1 7JA>, <Postcode: SE1 7PB>,
 <Postcode: SE1 7PD>, <Postcode: SW1A 1DW>, <Postcode: SW1A 1EA>, <Postcode: SW1A 1EE>,
 <Postcode: SW1A 1EF>, <Postcode: SW1A 1EG>, '...(remaining elements truncated)...']
>>> Postcode.objects.filter(location__distance_lte=area)
7024

>>> Postcode.objects.distance(palace.location).order_by('distance')[:4]
[<Postcode: SW1A 1AA>, <Postcode: SW1E 6JP>, <Postcode: SW1E 6LA>, <Postcode: SW1E 6WG>]

class PizzaJoint(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    postcode = models.ForeignKey(Postcode)
    objects = models.GeoManager()
    def __unicode__(self):
         return self.name

>>> def add_pizza_joint(name, loc):
...     code = Postcode.objects.get(name=loc)
...     PizzaJoint.objects.create(name=name, postcode=code)
...
>>> add_pizza_joint('Pizza Hut', 'SW1E 6SQ')
>>> add_pizza_joint('Pizza Express', 'SW1E 5NA')
>>> add_pizza_joint('Pizza On The Park', 'SW1X 7LY')

>>> PizzaJoint.objects.filter(postcode=palace)
[]

>>> PizzaJoint.objects.distance(palace.location,
            field_name='postcode__location').order_by('distance')
[<PizzaJoint: Pizza Hut>, <PizzaJoint: Pizza Express>, <PizzaJoint: Pizza On The Park>]

>>> for x in PizzaJoint.objects.distance(palace.location,
                     field_name='postcode__location').order_by('distance'):
...    print "%s (%d metres away)" % (x, x.distance.m)
...
Pizza Hut (499 metres away)
Pizza Express (509 metres away)
Pizza On The Park (902 metres away)