Debconf is coming. And I fully agree with Amaya regarding the much needed battery recharge that brings to people (and me in particular.
And to the contrary to the information two posts ago, thanks to getting an unexpected side income from the nice folks of FFII, I did manage to buy myself a Canon 400D instead of my old camera that was stolen from me recently. Unfortunately, I do not earn well enough to also buy a good lens, so I will have to document this Debconf with the kit lens :P. If you want something better, then I beg you to lend me some better Canon (EF or EF-S) lens for the time of the Debconf. Canon EF 17-40 f/4 L (like the one that I took the last years group photos) would really be great!
This year I am thinking of doing both the group photo and the mugshots. Any other ideas for the paparazzi?

Debconf is coming up soon in Edinburgh, so I figured I'd make a couple of posts for people who are coming. Party because I've been busy, but mostly because I'm always busy on the Mondays when meetings happen I'm not involved in organization - I figure when we get closer to the time I'll volunteer to collect people, give directions, and staff the information/reception desk at Teviot for three-four days. (I've got two weeks off work; so I'll be around for 99% of the duration.) Steve's Guide to Edinburgh: Expenses

Compared to many places, such as the USA, Edinburgh is expensive. Partly because it is expensive relative to the UK, but partly because of the exchange rate. Common costs, which will vary a little locally, but are approximately correct for the kind of places you'll be near:

• 20 cigarettes 5.50
  • Inside a pub ~ 7.00 - but ignore them because a) They'll only have 16, and b) You can't smoke in pubs/clubs/indoors nowadays..
• 1 pint of beer 3.00
• 1 pint of milk 0.50
• Bus fare 1.
  • Any single journey, regardless of duration or distance travelled will cost you a single adult ticket.
  • Make more than three journeys in a day and you could get a single-day ticket which costs 2.20
• Taxi fare from Teviot to my house ~ 5.00
  • Alfie, Jacob Applebaum, and other random people who want to watch films, drink beer, and catch up.

That's most of the common prices I think people could care about. If you have specific products / items you'd be curious about feel free to post a comment and I'll give you a figure.

My unofficial Debian packages repository is now powered by lighttpd. This website is hosted on a small vserver I rent and I hope the switch will allow better performance in the future. The configuration was very easy, using fastcgi for PHP5 and mod_simplevhost. The next step is to allow encrypted sessions through OpenSSL which should be painless. I will stick with apache2 on my main (home hosted) server, but will use lighttpd by now on all the vservers I own. I only regret not to have done it earlier!

gpe-expenses is now stable enough for a 0.1.0 release - the NEW queue is really short so it should be in unstable soon.

In order to support the developing gpe-cash (and later gpe-invoice) application(s), the package has been split into a (small) binary and a new shared library - both licenced only under the GPL v2 or later.

The binary depends on libqof1, as before (GPL v2 or later). The new shared library contains the QofExpenses and GpeCurrency objects. QofExpenses is registered with QOF to provide data storage and queries. GpeCurrency is based on the Palm Default Currency Table. http://pilot-qof.sourceforge.net/manual/ch06.html#defaultcurrencytable. This provides a much simpler interface to standard currencies whilst retaining GnuCash data compatibility.

Splitting the objects out allows gpe-cash to share live data with gpe-expenses, reading expense data into double-entry accounts and allows gpe-cash to use sane currencies that can still be converted to GnuCash commodities. gpe-cash will itself contain one or more shared
libraries that include the double-entry financial objects, ready for gpe-invoice to collate data from gpe-contacts, gpe-calendar and gpe-expenses, create invoices (in SQLite) and post transactions to gpe-cash. Early days, I know, but that's the plan. (Invoices would be rendered in HTML/PDF/foo using scripts in the datafreedom packages.) pilot-qof already includes the basic support for generating an invoice from contact, calendar and expense data.

gpe-cash is a fork of gnucash, splitting the behemoth into small(est) functional units and dropping large sections of code - like reports which can be better managed using packages like datafreedom-perl on the desktop. datafreedom already includes example reports from
gpe-expenses. Even so, gpe-cash may well be a large application compared to other GPE packages. So far, gpe-cash comes in at just over 1Mb installed (including libqof1) but there's more Gtk+ stuff to write yet. (Compare with gnucash where the architecture-dependent part alone is >5Mb without any translations, images or other common files or the extra dependencies.) gpe-cash will have none of the dependency problems of gnucash: it just has the object definitions, libqof1, glib2.0, gtk+, gpe and sqlite. (There is an issue with GConf2 right now but I'm sure I can remove the need for that.)

http://gpe-expenses.sourceforge.net/ (CVS available via SF)

http://cashutil.sourceforge.net/gpecash.php. (SVN available via SF)

If you're coming to LinuxTag 2007 in Berlin (May 30 - June 2), you might want to also visit the LinuxBIOS booth (Hall 12, Stand 80). We will be showing a couple of different systems all using LinuxBIOS to boot. There is a boot time competition in the booth (nice T-shirts to win!). On Saturday there's a hands-on LinuxBIOS workshop by Peter Stuge titled "Bring your EPIA, EPIA-M or EPIA-MII board and make it run LinuxBIOS!". Please register in advance at LinuxBIOS booth (Hall 12, Stand 80). If you always wanted to know what this LinuxBIOS stuff is all about — here's your chance to find out!

Hi. Recently, on planet.debian.org, there were quite a few posts relating to blood donations. I must say that I really only live thanks to people donating blood. As many might know, I had a freaking motorcycle accident about 9 years ago. Well, apart from loosing my right leg in the weeks following the accident (irreparable damages to tissues led to amputation), I also lost a lot of blood after the accident. In the six hours following the accident, I got no less than 65 blood infusions (approximately 24-30 litres or 6-8 US gallons). As you can imagine, this is about 3-4 times as much blood as my body normally carries around. At least I can say that I didn’t receive blood without giving some before, though certainly I wasn’t able to give that much blood (I donated about 10 times, approx. 0.45 litres each time). However, due to the medication I now need, I can’t donate blood anymore. Anyhow, I strongly suggest to anyone who is capable of donating blood to do so. And regarding Thijs comment about the frequency of donation and payment: This is highly depending on the area you live in and the organisation who manages the donations. For example, while I donated blood in Dortmund, Germany, I had two options to donate blood: German Red Cross, who would accept a donation every 6 weeks, with free sandwiches, drinks and chocolate but without payment and the city-owned hospital’s blood bank, which allowed a donation every 3 month, with free drinks and a 50DEM (approx. 25EUR/30USD) payment. This sounds as if the city-owned blood bank could attract homeless and junkies who were in for the money, but from my experience, the blood bank did far stricter pre-donation tests (I can’t tell what they did after donation for either organisation) than the red cross. And knowing how much money can be earned with the blood donated, I certainly think that payment is fair, though not strictly necessary. And the blood bank people did a much better job when applying the needle than the red cross people did, which might be because they were used to taking blood from people with bad veins (mostly patients donating blood for themselves for use in a later, planned surgery). But to be fair: I know from other people who had very good experiences with the red cross staff in this respect. Once again: Please donate blood if you can. If you are uncomfortable with the choice you made on your first donation, check out other options for donations. For example, if you almost collapsed when donating blood, try out the plasma donation if it is offered. They usually take the plasma, but give back an equal volume of a substitution, so your circulation isn’t disturbed as much as by taking approx. 0.5 litres from it within an hour. If you feel that the person who applied the needle did a bad job, ask for someone else next time or try a different organisation altogether. cu,
Sven

On my most recent visit to the blood bank, faithful and friendly receptionist Leo handed me this guy on the right: a stuffed pelican as an acknowledgment of my 40th donation. Thanks! I've been a blood donor for some years now, but my blood type is not that useful for regular donations: I've got type AB, which means I can receive any other type of blood, but mine can only be given to others that also have AB (about 3% of the population). That's why they've asked me to become a plasma donor, meaning that during your donation, the blood cells are returned to you while they get to keep the plasma. One advantage is that this is less strenuous and thus can be done more often than regular donations. Donating blood is really easy: register at the blood bank, and get a call around 2-3 times a year. You then may show up at any moment in the two weeks following the call. You get free coffee, a sandwich and a medical check. I can recommend it to anyone (who's eligible). And to answer the FAQ: no, you don't get paid. Edit: facts apply to the Netherlands only. No pelicans were hurt in blogging this post. Your blood type may vary.

I decided to move the old 1-RU Pentium III server (the thing providing all the storage for my MythTV box via ATAoE) from under the bed in the spare room to the linen cupboard. It had a brief stop in the wardrobe in the spare room, but it didn't really help with the noise. Sarah was a concerned about the heat in the linen cupboard, as this is where the patch panel is, so caesar is already in here, along with an Ethernet switch, an ADSL modem, a wireless access point, and the Vonage ATA. There's a lot of DC plug packs generating heat, so it was a reasonable concern. I figured in this day and age, someone must make some sort of USB temperature sensor, and after some searching around, I discovered the DLP-TEMP-G, which seemed to be about the right price, doing what I wanted. I'm going to say the web page was a bit ambiguous, but it was probably just late at night, because I read the bottom as having the option to buy it from Mouser, or via PayPal directly with DLP Design. So I went down the latter path, because I generally prefer to deal directly with the manufacturer. Turns out what I was actually ordering was just a "Test Application", so that email I'd received the day after I placed my order for two units was all I was going to get. I figured this out after a week or so of wondering when it was going to arrive. They were really good about it, and refunded me my $40, even though I'd received said software, and I placed a new order with Mouser for what I really wanted. Now this time, I just didn't read things thoroughly enough, although I'll still say that things were a little ambiguously worded. The page I've linked to above does say "DLP-TEMP-G and 1 DS18B20 sensor $25.00", but when reading datasheet, it goes on about three sensors, and coming with one that isn't soldered on so that you can optionally run a cable between it and the board. I somehow interpreted this as meaning there were two sensors on the board, and one loose. Not the case. The board supports having up to three DS18B20 sensors attached to it, however you please. It comes with one unattached. In hindsight, why would you want two temperature sensors directly on the board? So the moral of this story is I just can't read. Anyway, I got home from Santa Monica last night, and the goods had finally turned up, so I had a play. The DS18B20 just looks like a transistor. I initially ignored it, and just shoved the USB board in caesar, and it happily recognised it

usb 1-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 8
usb 1-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for FTDI USB Serial Device
ftdi_sio 1-1:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
drivers/usb/serial/ftdi_sio.c: Detected FT232BM
usb 1-1: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0
usbcore: registered new driver ftdi_sio
drivers/usb/serial/ftdi_sio.c: v1.4.3:USB FTDI Serial Converters Driver

I then fooled around with minicom, and discovered that the little transistor thing I'd been ignoring was indeed the temperature sensor, as I got a reading of zero back (when using this program I found on the 'net). So I went to bed, and this morning did a bit of messing around with the sensor, and with a bit of creative bending, I've got it sitting in the S1 holes without requiring any soldering. It tells me the linen cupboard is about 44 degrees Celsius. Warm, but I don't think it's in any immediate danger of bursting into flames. Wouldn't surprise me if some of the gear in there isn't too keen about the temperature though. At least we won't have to worry about mold. Next step is to convince cacti to graph it, and nagios to monitor it, and we're in business. Here's a little Python program I knocked up to grab the temperature. pyserial is nice. Read on, Macduff!

Ilenia and I are looking for tickets to go "home" (Eugene, Oregon) this summer. We've had pretty good luck with Lufthansa in the past (as opposed to Air France, which lost a huge bag of my stuff), so we turned to them first to look for flights. I like the page they have for prices/dates, which gives you a nice way to look around for a better price without stabbing randomly at dates: Big long Lufthansa URL However, the maddening thing is that the prices change frequently. Not every day, but often after even 5 minutes! They bounce around up to 100 euro at a time. I understand the theory behind price descrimination, but this is the classic case where the customer ends up feeling like they're being made fun of and goes elsewhere. United, in our case, which offers a cheaper price for the same plane (they're Lufthansa's partner and thus share flights).

Ryan Lovett commented:

"CUPS sometimes doesn't reflect accurage page counting statistics in page.log when receiving jobs from Windows clients in this manner. YMMV, however. Another nuisance is that if you have multiple printers that use the same driver they will be hard to differentiate by name and Windows 2k/XP doesn't let you rename network printers. There is a solution, but it involves modifying the windows registry."

Wow, that's a surprisingly daft bug. I also heard at work that some versions of Windows remove network printers if the network they're on is disconnected. Anyway, enough Microsoft Windows for now. I don't have to touch it very often and then only to make sure it can connect to my servers.

I am currently writing a general purpose shared library for acpi (more on that soon).
I was interested in having a function call graph especially to see if the interface looks somehow clean and to include it in the documentation of the library. Of course I wanted to do it with open source tools. There are several tools for static call graphs but if you want dynamic call graphs you have to use additional features of your compiler to generate a graph based on code during runtime.

The first variant I tried was using egypt a small perl script to generate a dot file. Dot (today included into graphviz? is a tool originally developed at AT&T to generate hierarchical or layered drawings of directed graphs.

So what is needed?
First install software (here on a Debian systen, egypt is not included in Debian):
$ aptitude install graphviz graphicsmagick (+ download egypt from the homepage)

Compile your software using gcc with the option -dr to dump an RTL file of the source.
Most of gcc's work is done in an intermediate representation of your code, called register transfer language (RTL). This pretty much describes the instructions in plain text and is inspired by LISP lists.
Ok, here we go:
$ gcc -dr list.c libacpi.c test.c
This generates three RTL files, for every source file one. Depending on the gcc version the names may vary, here the names are libacpi.c.00.expand list.c.00.expand and test.c.00.expand.

Now use egypt to create a dot file (I don't want one for test.c now):
$ egypt libacpi.c.00.expand list.c.00.expand dot -Gsize=100,100 -Grankdir=LR -Tps -o graph.ps
Egypt will create dot-output and by piping it to dot with -Tps -o graph.ps you get the resulting graph as a ps file. -Grankdir is used to generate a graph which runs from the left to the right, default is up-down which looks a bit strange.

Now convert the ps file into a png:
$ gm convert graph.ps graph.png
The result looks like this (looks cool huh? ):



The second variant I tested is a bit different and in my opinion the resulting graph looks a bit better.
The gcc commandline switch -finstrument-functions allows easy creations of call-graphs for C/C++ (script languages used but I haven't tried).
You need to compile every file with the -finstrument-functions switch. Then gcc places a call to the functions __cyg_profile_func_enter upon entering a function and __cyg_profile_func_exit on leaving a function.

Compile your sources with -g and -finstrumental-functions:
$ gcc -g -finstrumental-functions list.c libacpi.c test.c -o test
Now you need to get some source code by Sebastian Krahmer (SuSE):
$ wget http://www.suse.de/~krahmer/instrumental/instrumental.tgz && tar xvfz instrumental.tgz && cd instrumental
Compile a shared object file:
$ cc -fPIC -c instrumental.c && ld -Bshareable instrumental.o -o inst.so
This generates a shared object file you can preload with LD_PRELOAD
$ LD_PRELOAD=./inst.so test
.....

Now you will find a log.inst.dot.<pid> and log.inst.ascii.<pid> in /tmp (path can be modified in instrumental.c).
The first file is a dot file you can now create a ps and a png file with but you need to attach a closing bracket at the end of the file since the package is not
able to intercept exit() or aborts. echo ' ' >> log.inst.dot.<pid>
$ dot -Gsize=15,20 -Grankdir=LR -Tps -o graph.ps log.inst.dot.<pid> && gm convert graph.ps graph.png
The result looks like:


PDF file which scales a bit better

The other file represents the call graph in ascii:
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- main (0x8049ea4)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- check_acpi_support (0x8048984)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- get_acpi_version (0x8048782)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- get_acpi_content (0x80486b4)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- scan_acpi_value (0x8048837)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- init_acpi_batt (0x80489d6)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- dir_list (0x804a447)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- new_list (0x804a23c)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- append_node (0x804a309)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- append_node (0x804a309)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- read_acpi_battinfo (0x80497d3)
~ [1000 1000 1000] -- get_acpi_content (0x80486b4)
....

So both methods work but the first seems to be more useful if you want a graph for a specific file, not a specific program since you get an RTL file for each source file and you don't need all to create the dot file. The second method however looks better but has the limitation that you actually need to run the program (but that's dynamic and not static) and you can't (correct me if I miss something) create graphs for single files.

Have fun creating graphs for your favorite software and have a look into Sebastian Krahmers paper http://www.suse.de/~krahmer/instrumental/instrumental.pdf and http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-graphvis/. He also created a graph for openssh http://www.suse.de/~krahmer/ossh4.6.pdf.

Though I am not all that fond of Karl Fogel’s so called “cozy” San Francisco heater(because it does not work), I am more fond of his ideas on copyright. And I think his recent modest proposal that calls for a shorter term period for copyright and proportional registration is a good one. I agree with 90% of it although I am not sure that all types of creations are “created” equal in so far as I would be more comfortable with having software under a shorter term and books under a slightly longer one.

Yesterday we had one of our first full-evening rains of this Summer. It started raining around 15:00, and didn't really stop until past 22:00. Most of the time, it was a low intensity rain. Also yesterday, Sergio and I started with the Debian course I recently talked about - Fun!
Now... This course is scheduled at Instituto de Astronom a, which is halfway between my work and my home. 19:00 to 21:00.
I decided to leave early, so we could check some pending details - At 18:00. I biked to Astronom a, about 1.5km. When I arrived, I was as wet as you usually get at a regular rain: I still had some dry spots under my arms and legs. Nothing terrible, although a bit coldish - Anyway, that's a top-down approach for hydrodinamics, the approach most people are used to.
When we finished this session, I had to go out in a rush, as I had a meeting at 20:00 at Balderas (downtown Mexico City, ~25min away by metro). Of course, I was one hour late already, and adding the time it would take me to get home, leave the bike and run to the metro, I could not just sit and wait for the rain to get any easier on me. So I pedalled.
Contrary to what I originally expected, I didn't get soaked wet in the usual pattern. Stronger rain leads to more rain flowing down the road. Yes, almost immediately I felt a cold shudder on my legs and back: The water sprayed from below by my wheels. Of course, the front wheel was even more fun, as it sprayed my face from below - My helmet has a small protuberance at the front to make some shadow, and tilting a bit my head forward prevented the rain from hitting my eyes - but the dirty water, with small bits of wood and whatnot, from the ground found an easy way to my face. My only defense was to close the eyes as much as I could without losing visibility. A strange excercise to do :) Anyway, that's the bottom-up approach for hydrodinamics.
Anyway, by the time I got home, after an extra ~1.5km, my pants were basically a soup. My shirt was not exactly dry, but it still kept me a bit warm. I just ushered inside, grabbed a jacket, and went on for my second meeting.

goText (Java apllication for your phone to send messages onver GPRS) has just received support to send messages to Czech Vodafone network. It is using public SMS gateway, the only drawback is that you have to detect captcha used on this page. But it still is cheaper than sending regullar SMS :-). To use this service, add following URL to your goText services:

http://www.gotext.org/pub/cz-vodafone.php

I was reading some of the debate regarding this guy and his business: The man who owns the Internet and got to thinking about the comparison between domain names and real estate. One of the things that irritates me about domain name squatters is that they can essentially sit on a good name forever, at very, very little cost. You can't do that in real estate, because you have to pay property taxes, which acts as an incentive to actually do something productive with the property, rather than simply let it sit there until someone comes and offers to buy it from you for even more than you paid. So you can't let the space go completely to waste - you have a big incentive to at the very least rent it out to someone who can make money with it. You can't really rent out a domain name, though. Since it's an integral part of your brand and identity, it would be insane to borrow one for a few years, whereas with a physical business renting space, people will still be able to find you if you move. Perhaps an annual tax based on the purchase price of domain names would encourage people to either do something valuable with them or pass them on to someone who could? I don't think anyone would be sad to see pure speculators gone, but on the other hand, I have a strong suspicion that all the extra taxes and red tape would make the idea a net negative, and taxes on 'real' domains like google or ebay, would simply be passed on to consumers, and so wouldn't be desireable. In any case, it's something interesting to think about.

At my Institute, we get the El Financiero newspaper - I like it quite a bit. It's very well balanced, with opinions from all of the political and economical points of view. Of course, it has huge business and market sections which I don't usually even care on looking at, as I won't understand much anyway. Those sections usually include advertisements for potential courses and businesses.
Today, Nadezhda showed me an ad that's just beautiful - It shows off the level of commitment and seriousness a company has. It is so beautiful that it deserves me copying it in Spanish and translating it for your further enjoyment. Of course, if somebody stumbles upon this advertisement at my personal blog - I don't know them, they might just be serious but clueless :)

GRUPO DE ASESORES PROFESIONALES
CONVOCA
A acad micos, investigadores, intelectuales, economistas y expertos en reformas estructurales para el an lisis de las siguientes:

• Econom a y finanzas
• Educaci n y empleo
• Seguridad y desarrollo social
• Pol tica y Energ a
• Reforma del estado

Para integrarse a un equipo serio y propositivo de Profesionales en estas reas que brinde asesor a puntual sobre las antes descritas.
REQUISITOS: Titulados con Maestr a y/o Doctorado. Contar con publicaciones especializadas.
Interesados enviar CV al correo electr nico:
juan_zzz_at_starmedia_dot_com
juan_3zzz_at_yahoo_dot_com_dot_mx
Bosque de Ciruelos No. 140, piso 12, oficina 1202, col. Bosques de las Lomas

And now, for your further amusement, in my hastily translated English, as faithfully as I can do it.

GROUP OF PROFESSIONAL ADVISORS
INVITES
Academics, researchers, intelectuals, economists and structural reform experts for the analysis of the following areas:

• Economics and finances
• Education and employment
• Social security and development
• Politics and Energy
• State reform

To join a serious and propositive team of Professionals in the above areas that gives punctual advice regarding the aforementioned.
REQUIREMENTS: Holders of a title, with M.Sc. or Ph.D. studies. Having specialized publications.
Interested people, send your CV by email to:
juan_zzz_at_starmedia_dot_com
juan_3zzz_at_yahoo_dot_com_dot_mx
Bosque de Ciruelos No. 140, piso 12, oficina 1202, col. Bosques de las Lomas

Yes, several of the redaction mistakes are in the original text (and several more were introduced due to my English translation, of course).
Anyway... Would you believe in the seriousness of a professional-looking group of economists, paying around US$2000 for 1/4 page in one of the leading Mexican newspapers? By the way, their offices are located at one of Mexico City's most exclusive, expensive areas. But... For $ deity 's sake... COME ON! Please tell juan_zzz to get a decent-looking mail and domain! Having their main contact addresses at two free mail providers, Starmedia and Yahoo, does no service at all to their professional image! How can people still not pay even a bit of attention to those basic details?

Tonight I turned 27. By chance, this fell onto a Tuesday, and there is a great dancing party every Monday. This monday, there was also a great band, the Souvenirs. They're pure fun and great for dancing - so I obviously opted to celebrate my birthday there.This probably was the nicest birthday party I've ever had: lots of friends showed up (though mostly girls, but thats fine with me :-)), we danced a lot. And danced. And danced. :-) And I'll probably spend some more hours today dancing later this day.And with dancing I mean: Swing, Lindy Hop, Balboa. I just love this music and these dances. So playful, sometimes cheeky - swinging...

Would you like to swing on a star
Carry moonbeams home in a jar

Todays music was also great, a nice speed and patterns you could play with... I don't know what it is, adrenaline?, that makes dancing so much fun. And probably the communication. Dancing is all about communication. There was this class titled "Moves that make the follow smile" once... That is the best moment in a dance, when you managed to lead the follow into some slight variations or some fun move matching the music, it worked out great and you see this flash of delight in their face... this "I'm not sure what we just did, but it felt just so right"-smile. The "I didn't know we could do that"-smile. That's what I'm striving for. Sometimes there are some moments in a song where this works out great, and occasionally there is a song where it works out through most of the song. These are the really great moments when dancing.Sorry, no pictures or videos. Just memories.Keep on swingin'!I'm really looking forward to events such as Senigallia (Summer Jamboree) or the Munich Lindy Exchange.And of course our regular events here in Munich, such as our Thursday open air get-together at Hofgarten, sundays in Salon Erna and mondays in Cord.

I just got back from taking Zach Copley to the airport, and for the first time in a few days I'm sitting in front of my desktop computer again, trying to get back on track. I think it's probably a good idea to get my notes about RoCoCoCamp down on electronic paper while the experience is still fresh in my mind. (I wrote about the first day in Journal/29 Flor al CCXV). Saturday morning I got up considerably later than I had the day before, and I took my time getting to SAT. Which was OK, since things went much smoother in the morning. The only really annoying thing about Saturday was that I had to wash about 50 cups by hand -- we'd run out of clean cups, and I couldn't figure out how to run the dishwasher. It didn't take long, but it meant that I had my head down in the sink as people came in and didn't get to spend as much time talking to them. I was glad to hear that people had a good time going to L'Utopik on Friday night. Apparently a few people who'd flown in late on Friday got a chance to meet up with the experienced crew at L'Utopik, so they were well-prepped for Saturday. Probably the biggest buzz of the pre-sessions was SJ Klein's pair of functional OLPC laptops. They were cute and fun -- I got a few minutes to play with them, and I enjoyed the interface tremendously -- although it took me a few tries to open it. People were fiddling with them throughout the day -- including Amita June, who came late in the afternoon -- and Tristan P loquin even blogged about them. My first session was about wiki and other technologies, which I titled Wiki And.... (I borrowed the name from Last Exit to Brooklyn, in which it seems no-one eats anything but "coffee and".) My main point was that a) wiki people tend to overuse wiki where other software tools may be more appropriate and b) we need to be careful with impedance mismatches when using wiki with technologies with other cultures behind them. Wikis and blogs mismatch; wikis and forums mismatch. You need to work out ways to make them work culturally. As a proof-of-concept that there are ridiculous applications for wiki, I created in about 3 minutes before the session the wikiclock. It's a computer clock that runs on wiki technology: the time is kept up-to-date by human beings editing the page, rather than with software. I was so pleased with myself that I twittered about it, and from there it's taken on a life of its own. The clock is implemented on the amazing minimalist system pageoftext.com. I heard about p.o.t. from Liz Henry's April report from Palo Alto Wiki Wednesday, and I think it's totally great. It's a cross between a pastebin and a wiki -- like an open-edited ImageShack for text. Brilliant. The second session I did was a hyper-focused one on a particular Semantic Web problem. Both Wikitravel and Open Guides have tons of information on "places" in various cities. (That is, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, hotels, museums, parks, etc.). It would be good to export our data on these places to each other, so we could possibly keep them in sync. For example, if a restaurant changes its hours , that info could be updated on The Open Guide to London and automatically synched to the Wikitravel page on London. So we went over some ways to do this kind of interchange; we'd brainstormed before about it on the Open Guides' RDF Workshop, but it was good to sit down with Earle Martin and do some face-to-face hacking on the idea. We don't yet have a vocabulary for it, but we'll get something going on the new wikirdf.org site (which also emerged from this session). I had a great lunch with a lot of people from RoCoCo on the terrace at the Bar St. Sulpice, about 8 blocks away on rue St. Denis. The sun was out, it was cool, and we had a very nice time. It was especially nice to see Marcus Bornfreund and Tina Pipers of Creative Commons Canada, who'd come to talk about the PDwiki, a project to collaboratively document Canadian works in the public domain (see Canadian Public Domain Registry Announced). We talked quite a bit about the social challenges of getting a community excited about such a dry subject, but I think we got some good ideas about it. In the afternoon I led a session on MediaWiki. We were lucky enough to have Tim Starling sit in, and he told everyone about the new developments going on with MW. He's refactoring some very deep parts of the storage and rendering sections of the code, which will result in considerably better reliability, performance, and flexibility. I think it sounds great. I had to work the registration desk for the last session of the day, which was pretty great because I ended up baby-sitting Anoushka Jaroski-Biava for most of the time. But I missed Robin Millette's cool talk about BuzzyBee, which looks to be really fun to play with. We rounded out the evening with music, pizza, and beer at the SAT. tobias.dj played some great dance music, and we had some wiki-collaborative VJ-ing using the SAT's fancy screen systems. All the kids were there -- Mark and Allegra's daughter No ma as well as Amita June. Fun. Sunday morning I didn't have to start coffee until 9AM -- luxury! We had a great Open Space Technology convergence -- a way to turn the discussions of the previous few days into action items for going forward. I did a convergence session on the future of RecentChangesCamp. We had most of the interested parties available (except for the RCC Portland organizers, who had to fly out early that morning). We made some decisions about future RCCs, and we made some plans for next year's RCC -- in the Bay Area (California). Last night we brought back the Keiki gang to our house, since it was great to have them all in Montreal for the event. We did a big brainstorming session on next steps to launching the project, and we also did some graphic design review of potential logos. We have some great designs coming; I'm really happy we got Sarven Capadisli and Bridget to work on the site. I had to crash out at 10:30PM -- Amita and I fell asleep together -- but others were up late talking and thinking. I don't know how they did it -- I was all talked out by the end of RoCoCo. All in all I had a fantastic time -- the event far surpassed my expectations. It was hard -- too hard. I bit off far more than I could chew. But I think we did a good job of establishing Montreal as a technology city -- Wiki City Canada -- in the international mind, and I think we also brought together some really interesting people for some fruitful and productive work. You can see some of the projects that came directly out of RoCoCo on the FutureChanges page -- an ingenious name courtesy of Pm. And there are some indirect ones that we can expect soon. tags: rocococamp recentchangescamp wiki open space montreal barcampmontreal keiki wikiclock pageoftext

Cause and solution So, Technorati has a good listing for rocococamp items, but I especially liked Steve Faguy's post: Wiki: The cause of, and solution to, all of life s problems. Steve was an extremely game participant in the event, which I think was pretty incredible. He wrote a good overview of wikis in the Montreal Gazette this year. A funny thing happened on Friday evening during the daily wrap-up known as "Evening News". We had Open Space's minimalist instructions posted on the walls of the SAT, so people would see and remember them. Steve pointed out that the first of Open Space's "four principles" is grammatically incorrect: Whoever comes is the right people. He said, "In the spirit of wiki, I'm going to correct it right now!" And to applause, he got up with a marker and changed the "is" to "are". This stimulated an interesting discussion. One person noted that the "is" is there because possibly only one person could show up for a session, and that's OK. Finally, Brandon CS Sanders stood up and said, "I like 'is' because when we come together like this, we form a cohesive group, however temporary -- 'a people'. So I'm going to change it back." And he did -- to lots of applause, again. Steve came up to me at the end of the night, laughing. "I got reverted! I should have started an edit war!" It was a hoot; he's got a good sense of humour. tags: stevefaguy rocococamp wiki openspace brandoncssanders

bill watson commented:

"Excellent report. I'm a member of Co-op Group (Northern) and also United. United is an extremely well run outfit with well maintained shops. They also have about 30 petrol stations, mostly in Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. The fear from United members, on the proposed merger, is that focus will be lost and regional investment diluted. United are also trialing factory made shop units which are erected on-site (similar to the way McDonalds do it). This gives a turnaround time of about 16 weeks from start to shop opening. There is one not far from me (Ditton) and it's very popular. The United website United Acquisitions gives lots of info on this and other things."

I've mixed feelings on modular build (McStores?) - it makes the construction greener, but there seems little information on the long-term energy use of the store. Maybe it's simply unknown yet. The offer of a finder's fee for new store sites is interesting. I wonder if that will spread to the Co-operative Group after the merger. As I understand it, the fear from tCG members is that we're getting a lot of new members and a new chief exec who seems to have a very different focus to the members. I'm sure we'd be happy to see well-run and well-maintained shops, but will it mean even more centralisation and all the mistakes that means? Like stocking no Somerset Cheddars in some Somerset stores, with the confusing excuse that (as far as I could understand - see previously-mentioned answers to AGM food questions) no supplier offers enough units that meet the specifications or it's unsuitable for our type of stores ("Welcome"). I'm glad so many people liked the report, anyway.

With great help from Ouattara Oumar Aziz an new version of SBackup is shaping up in the svn repo and a day ago I created a public beta version - 0.10.4~beta10 which can be downloaded here.
Please report any bugs or regressions to Sourceforge bug tracker. Also an update for translations and new translations can be added. You can either translate in Launchpad or download the template file from the SVN. But beware that there are more translations in Launchpad then in the SVN at the moment, so check there first.
If no blocker bugs are found, we could see a new stable release of SBackup in a weeks time. I am sure that a lot of people will be happy to hear that :). Edit: For some reason, the DEB on the Sourceforge site was cut to third of its size, I uploaded a new version, it should be fine now. And by popular request here is a screenshot, note that by using simple timing the /etc/cron. daily,weekly,monthly folders are used and thus anacron runs the backups if the computer was off at the scheduled time.