I've made two new designs for Trunk Tees,
my Cafepress store.
Thank you to Richard Braakman for suggesting the .* one.
Here's all the older designs as well:
I ve been using this process for debugging the installer while launched from a Debian Live desktop. Having a full live environment at your disposal during install is a boon to debugging because you don t have to work within the constraints normally imposed upon you by the limited debian-installer environment. Caveat: running debian-installer from the debian-installer-launcher still has one or two unresolved issues, so unless you re specifically working on live integration issues like I am, compare with a conventional d-i image install to gain the added confidence the install is the same in both environments.
There are no longer active maintainers working on debian-installer-launcher and live-installer, and I think it s really important for wheezy to release with solid support for live installs, so I ve been using this setup to try to solve #702335. So far, progress is slow because I m new to this. If anyone is interested in collaborating in this work, give me a shout. I am SynrG @ irc.oftc.net and can be found on #debian-live and #debian-boot if you would like to drop in.
Overview:
So via hackernews I recently learned about fight code, and my efforts have been fun. Currently my little robot is ranked ~400, but it seems to jump around a fair bit.
Otherwise I've done little coding recently:
It will take 6-24 Hours for your list to be created....wow.
The 2nd Shogi Denousen has began. This is the first cut-throat match between top-notch professional Shogi players(yes, there are such people) and the best crop of computer Shogi engines, 5 on 5.
Shogi is a distant cousin of Chess. Unlike Chess, you may re-use captured pieces anywhere on the board anytime. It brings quite lot of additional complexities, and even after the defeat of Garry Kasparov in 1997, many considered that (at least top-level) human Shogi players have a great lead on computer Shogi engines.
The situation had changed dramatically when a newcomer Shogi engine called Bonanza, developed by a Japanese chemist Kunihito Hoki, won the 16th World Computer Shogi Championship. Bonanza appeared totally out of the blue Hoki incorporated some new ideas developed in the field of computer Chess, and Bonanza beated existing engines with no mercy. Bonanza could even corner some professional Shogi players in 2007. Later Hoki released(but not strictly open-source) the source code of Bonanza, and the standard of computer Shogi has risen considerably since then. Finally, in the 1st Denousen last year, Kunio Yonenaga, long retired but possibly one of the greatest Shogi players in the history, was defeated by Bonkras, a clustered version of Bonanza developed by Eiki Itoh of Fujitsu.
The first match of Denousen this year was held yesterday between Kouru Abe, an 18-year old prodigy from Aomori, and Shueso, which finished in 5th at the 22nd World Computer Shogi Championship. I hoped a close game, but Abe could beat Shueso quite easily. Shueso somehow could not bring its ability into full play, to my great disappointment. Next weekend(Mar. 30), we will see the second match between Shinichi Sato, another young pro, and Ponanza, developed based on Bonanza by Issei Yamamoto of The University of Tokyo.
BTW, Debian already has the package of GPS Shogi, which won the 22nd World Computer Shogi Championship and considered by many the strongest Shogi engine available now (there is also gnushogi in Debian, but gnushogi is quite weak).
You may have fun with
$ xshogi -fsp gpsshogi
| Week | Squeeze | Wheezy | Diff |
|---|---|---|---|
| 43 | 284 (213+71) | 468 (332+136) | +184 (+119/+65) |
| 44 | 261 (201+60) | 408 (265+143) | +147 (+64/+83) |
| 45 | 261 (205+56) | 425 (291+134) | +164 (+86/+78) |
| 46 | 271 (200+71) | 401 (258+143) | +130 (+58/+72) |
| 47 | 283 (209+74) | 366 (221+145) | +83 (+12/+71) |
| 48 | 256 (177+79) | 378 (230+148) | +122 (+53/+69) |
| 49 | 256 (180+76) | 360 (216+155) | +104 (+36/+79) |
| 50 | 204 (148+56) | 339 (195+144) | +135 (+47/+90) |
| 51 | 178 (124+54) | 323 (190+133) | +145 (+66/+79) |
| 52 | 115 (78+37) | 289 (190+99) | +174 (+112/+62) |
| 1 | 93 (60+33) | 287 (171+116) | +194 (+111/+83) |
| 2 | 82 (46+36) | 271 (162+109) | +189 (+116/+73) |
| 3 | 25 (15+10) | 249 (165+84) | +224 (+150/+74) |
| 4 | 14 (8+6) | 244 (176+68) | +230 (+168/+62) |
| 5 | 2 (0+2) | 224 (132+92) | +222 (+132/+90) |
| 6 | release! | 212 (129+83) | +212 (+129/+83) |
| 7 | release+1 | 194 (128+66) | +194 (+128/+66) |
| 8 | release+2 | 206 (144+62) | +206 (+144/+62) |
| 9 | release+3 | 174 (105+69) | +174 (+105/+69) |
| 10 | release+4 | 120 (72+48) | +120 (+72/+48) |
| 11 | release+5 | 115 (74+41) | +115 (+74/+41) |
| 12 | release+6 | 93 (47+46) | +93 (+47/+46) |
| 13 | release+7 | ||
| 14 | release+8 | ||
| 15 | release+9 | ||
| 16 | release+10 | ||
| 17 | release+11 | ||
| 18 | release+12 |
(btw, the source is on github)
During the sprints at PyCon in a spare moment after some awesome OpenGov hacking, I ended up doing the unthinkable:
rpython support in Hy.
Yes. That s right. Lisp > Python > C > x86 instructions.
The thanks here goes to Romain Guillebert - who is a really funny rpythonista and took the time to sit down and help me with this frankly insane idea.
It works, though. I filed a bug on shipping rpython bits from PyPy s Debian package (hi, tumbleweed!), which should make building this a skitch easier.
Finally, and unrelatedly, I also just got a .hy > .pyc compiler working (huzzah!) which means no one will ever know we wrote anything in Lisp, ever.
As always, play with the REPL, star the code or have a laugh with it.
Let me know what you hack up!
I ll post the lightning talk I gave after it s posted :)
As part of the DebConf13 fundraising effort, a generous sponsor, Brandorr Group, has proposed to start a matching fund in USD for DebConf13; in place through the end of April 30th. The rules are quite simple:
Some time ago, the QR Code Generator WiFi Access made quite some noise on the mighty Internet. Sure, it is cool to be able to share your WiFi-access with someone by just showing him a QR code he can scan on his phone and the phone will auto-connect to the WiFi. But I get a strange feeling telling someone I do not know my WiFi credentials. No, I do not mean my guests, I know them. I mean that shiny web-service that will generate a QR code for me.
The geek in you will now say: So? Open up a terminal, install qrencode, pipe it the string WIFI:S:<SSID>;T:<WPA WEP >;P:<password>;; and you got our QR code . Yeah, that works. But was it one or two semicolons at the end? And was it really just WPA even if my WiFi uses WPA2? Oh and how do I encode that umlaut again? I do not want to remember this.
Thus, without too much rumble, may I present you: QiFi the pure JS WiFi QR Code Generator. QiFi is a QR code generator for WiFi access in pure JavaScript. It will generate the QR code on your machine, in your browser, not leaking your precious credentials to anyone (but your guests). Don t trust me? Read the code. Fork the code. Host the code yourself.
I hope you will find QiFi at least slightly useful ;-)
Also this year the Debian project was present at Chemnitzer Linuxtage, this time right next the debianforum.de booth. The booth folks arriving on friday organized a flashmob at Expitas after booth setup. Unfortunatly our second planned flashmob at the mensa was boycotted by much more students, so we ended up in the Turm-Brauhaus, which is a great location with good drinks but the service was very harshly.
On the next two days at the booth we chatted and discussed with visitors and other exhibitors a wide variety of questions, including 'When will be (the next Debian version) released?' and 'Are there installation disks available?'. The answers was as always 'When we are ready and we will have reached the quality-level we defined', 'No we don't have installation medias, as they are always outdated. Do you have an USB-dongle with you?'.
Merchandising was requested by visitors as always, but we just had some leftovers of fosdem, brought by Axel.
Many thanks to Florian Baumann, Jan Dittberner, Andreas Tille, Christian Hoffmann, Axel Beckert, Markus Rekkenbeil, Daniel Schier, Jonas Genannt, Jan H rsch and kurio for taking care and running the booth, which worked out this year extreme smoothly from my point of view. Likewise as the last years a special thanks to TMT GmbH & Co. KG, which kindly donated additional boothtickets, the equipment, its transportation and accommodation for almost half of the booth staff.
* So, we got new laptop last week.
The entire plan was to introduce my wife into tech world or atleast in Debian and/or OpenSouce world. I visited home for one of this and other personal reason(s) [Expect next post on this!]. My wife reported her first bug (installation-report, with help from me) which was closed by mighty bubulle! I handed over couple of freely available Python books and we started with codecademy s Python track. So far, things are good, but being really non-tech person, I m currently working as support system for her.
I ve used KDE as desktop. Machine runs on latest kernel from experimental due to issues with hardware mentioned here. I was not able to explain IRC in much depth, so we re using non-free methods like Google Talk for communicating and reporting.
Wish us luck! 
I ll report Part 2 when things will be enough to report the progress.
People often ask me why I invest in low-tech, old-school investments like gold and silver bullion.
Surely for somebody working with technology every day, I would have some advantage in the world of investment?
The events of Cyprus this week should provide a clear answer: we've all been told that there is nothing safer than cash in the bank, protected by a Government deposit insurance scheme.
Yet it appears that in a pattern reminiscent of the real life Ocean's 11 bank robbery, the culprits waited for a long weekend and set about doing the unthinkable after the lights went out on a Friday night. Three days wasn't enough for them to complete their plan (or getaway?), and so Cypriot banks are closed for a further two days.
Just like in the type of bank robbery seen in the movies, the money was put there by people who worked for it, and it is taken away by people who didn't.
Sadly, this is also a reflection on a society as a whole. As a result of apathy, contentedness, obsession with non-issues such as immigration, or excuses about how we don't care about politics, nobody has bothered to watch the politicians.
The 2008 British film The Bank Job showed real robbers sent into a bank in the traditional manner (it is based on the true story of the 1971 Baker Street robbery). Although not substantiated, conjecture in the press suggests that British authorities were involved and got real crooks to make it look authentic. Today's press suggests that Cypriot authorities are in a similar way trying to make it look like Germany is the bad guy.
Back to the gold and silver. A recent report in Science Magazine suggests it takes 100,000 years for natural processes such as earthquakes to create even small deposits of precious metals. Most politicians are taking their pension in less than 10 years and wouldn't have the time or power to interfere with or manipulate such an inherently natural physical phenomenon, and this is why bullion has remained a consistent and respected investment for thousands of years.
Does anyone imagine that fresh reserves of gold are forming in the cavities under Cyprus during this week's tremors? Or will those cavities be somewhat more sparse?
For some time, Weblate was showing avatars for users. Just as I've discovered Libravatar - free and federated alternative to Gravatar, I thought it would be better replacement.
Quickly looking at their website, it seems that they transparently provide all avatars from Gravatar as well, so the migration seems to be pretty much painless. Basic replacement to use their server is just matter of changing base URLs, however to support federated behavior, you have to install pyLibravatar. Weblate in Git now supports both these ways.
While implementing the client side, I did also setup my own instance of Surrogator to provide avatars for some of my domains. Surprisingly this worked fine without problems, but let's see how much used this will actually become.
Filed under: English Phpmyadmin Weblate 2 comments Flattr this!
It is customary during Debian Project Leader elections to write a rebuttal of the other candidate's platform. However, this is very hard to do this year, as there are a lot of overlaps between platforms, goals and ideas this time around. It is hard to rebute another platform, without also rebuting one's own. So instead of trying to highlight where I disagree (there's very little of that, if at all), I'd like to point out where I found each platform lacking.Mind you, these notes are primarily based off of the platforms, because I'm sadly still behind on my debian-vote@ reading list. Furthermore, due to the high level of similarity between platforms, I will not always single out one or the other, but mention what I found lacking, or troublesome in general instead. So unless stated otherwise, my thoughts below apply to both Moray's and Lucas' platforms.The thing I miss most from both platforms is the curious lack of plans about non-packaging project members (something which I strongly emphasize in my own platform). Similarly, even though Moray does mention encouraging more local events, I find those few paragraphs a little bit lacking; and Lucas does not even mention local teams in his platform, even though they are a very, very important part of the wider Debian community, and a terrific tool in our asset. They can further our reach by long miles! Considering their importance, little's said about either local teams or local events, even when the candidate does explicitly recognise their importance.On the other hand, Lucas writes about innovation within Debian (which I found lacking in Moray's platform) - but while he does bring up the topic, I sadly found that section of his platform vague, a mistake I made last year myself, and which I tried to avoid this time, by explicitly listing a few of my ideas on how I'd imagine inspiring & motivating people (which, in turn, would foster innovation within the project).From what I see - and I may be wrong here, and I am obviously biased - both platforms are reasonably explicit when it comes to easier topics, things that we know to work, and which we'd all continue doing in the very same spirit as our predecessor. But when it comes to experimenting, to new ideas, I found both platforms too vague. There are exceptions, of course, Moray's intern idea for example is sufficiently well explained, as far as it is possible within the limits of a platform. I found no similar thing in Lucas' platform, however, most of the ideas he explained were technical things, and those are the areas where we're fairly good at, where we already have a reasonably chance of improving - and thus, an easier topic. I was suprised by Lucas' platform, because even though he lists the need for experimentation important, the lack of truly experimental ideas was lacking - I found more in Moray's platform.All in all, I found the discussions on debian-vote@ much more useful so far, than the platforms, a lot of things were asked and answered there that the platforms did not touch.
So, since recently bugs.debian.org has started using libravatar avatars. Not yet the federated service, but that s supposedly in the works. But for that, one of course need to run each own service. Which I wanted to do. In a simple way.
So I did it.
_avatars._tcp.pusling.com. 43200 IN SRV 10 10 80 static.pusling.com.and in my root dir for that one I have source/ and avatar/
$ lsIn source, I have default.png which I m serving and a series of avatars for various email addresses
avatar source
$ ls source/and then I have a simple script to generate the right file names:
debian@pusling.com default.png
#! /bin/sh (cd avatar;and the last piece of magic to get everything to work:
ls while read file ; do [ -L $file ] && rm $file ; done
)
for i in source/*@* ; do ln -s ../$i avatar/$(echo -n $(basename $i) sha256sum sed s/-// ) ; done
for i in source/*@* ; do ln -s ../$i avatar/$(echo -n $(basename $i) md5sum sed s/-// ) ; done
$ cat avatar/.htaccessand a set of index.html files created with touch . So there you go. A simple libravatar service, ignoring some pieces of the spec, but it should be good enough for most people. I might save my rants about the libravatar spec for another day. But it involves implementing a complete redirecting service and scaling of images. When will debian.org and kde.org start providing avatar services?
ErrorDocument 404 /source/default.png
ForceType image/png <Files index.html >
ForceType text/html
</Files>
Dear users and supporters of the backports service!
The Backports Team is pleased to announce the next important step on getting backports more integrated. People who are reading debian-infrastructure-announce will have seen that there was an archive maintenance last weekend: starting with wheezy-backports the packages will be accessible from the regular pool instead of a separate one, and all backports uploads will be processed through the regular upload queue (including those for squeeze-backports and squeeze-backports-sloppy).
For Users
What exactly does that mean for you? For users of wheezy, the sources.list entry will be different, a simple substitute of squeeze for wheezy won't work. The new format is:
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-backports mainSo it is debian instead of debian-backports, and offered through the regular mirror network. Feel invited to check your regular mirror if it carries backports and pull from there. For Contributers What does it mean for contributing developers? Uploads for backports are no longer to be pushed to backports-master but to ftp.upload.debian.org, like any other regular package. Also, given that the packages are served from the same archive install there is no need to include the original tarball in the upload any longer because the archive knows it (Squeeze and beyond). Also, given that the upload goes to the same upload queue, there is only one keyring used anymore, so no more pain with expired or replaced keys. We though still keep the rule of adding your UID to an ACL list (this also includes DM additions). This is mostly only to give us the chance to remind you that uploads to backports are directly available for installation onto stable systems and you thus should take special care there. We carefully tried to take over the old ACLs, in case you can't upload anymore, please tell us so we can look into the issue. I've mentioned wheezy-backports (and squeeze-backports-sloppy) a few times here already, and you might wonder when it will be available. Technically, it is available from now on. Practically, while you could already upload to it, the set up of the buildd network is more painful than expected, so please allow the Buildd Team some days for setting them up. The upload rules for wheezy-backports are the same: packages that are in the next suite are accepted. Given that Jessie isn't created yet, we want you to think about whether the package you want to upload will go into Jessie final, and that you are taking a closer look once Jessie is created and the package entered there about the upgradeability. For the time until the suite is available, you can see this as relaxed upload rule. The same goes for squeeze-backports-sloppy: packages from two suites after Squeeze are acceptable, which turns it into the same relaxed rule as wheezy-backports above. Please also keep in mind that uploads to squeeze-backports-sloppy usually should be accompanied by uploads to wheezy-backports so people are able to upgrade from squeeze-backports-sloppy to wheezy with wheezy-backports. Thanks Finally, we want to thank the FTP-Master Team for their fine work on making this happen. The documentation on backports-master has been updated, and in case of any doubt or question, feel free to ask them on either the debian-backports mailinglist, or in case of sensitive topics ask us directly. Enjoy!
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