The fifth in a series; see also parts 1, 2, 3, and 4. One piece of advice we got in Mexico went like this: the nicer a place looks, the worse the food and prices will be. Roadside taco stands will be great, and nice-looking restaurants not so much. That seemed to be accurate. We only tried one real nice-looking restaurant and it was very good (though pricy), but it may have been sort of an exception. But perhaps the most interesting bit about eating in Mexico wasn t the food. It s the adventure. We ate one day at Guadalajara s San Juan de Dios market. In that huge labyrinth somewhere was a set of restaurants. They d tend to have a small cooking area, usually just open, and a few tables. We chose one. And at this point, I have to take brief detour and explain something. There are a lot of people in Mexico that do things for tips, and quite often without being asked. Some other examples might be washing a car s windshield at a stoplight. So anyhow, we had ordered our food, and before long, a guy wanders down the aisle and plonks down a boombox. And turns it on. And then he pulled out a microphone, which we quite soon realized was connected to the boombox. (I guess making it more of a karaoke box.) Anyhow, he started singing a song decently and seemed to be enjoying it. About 45 seconds into it, a competing boombox man plonked down a competing boombox 25 feet away, turned it on, and yes, you guessed it pulled out a microphone and started singing a different song. Worse than the first person but louder. Eventually the boombox people left and our lunchtime conversation could resume. But pretty soon a drum guy showed up. He had a bunch of drums on a strap so he could just walk around and play them. He apparently decided that an excellent place to play them would be directly behind my head. I did not entirely agree with his decision, but hey, it beat the competing karaoke guys. Eventually the drum guy left, and somehow between the time I looked down to get out money to pay our bill and the time I had it counted out, a clown had shown up and made several balloon animals for our boys. I tipped him, we paid, and then headed on. You might think from this story that this would be an annoying series of events. And honestly, if it had happened in a big mall in the USA, it would probably have been both annoying and creepy. But really I enjoyed it. The fact that dueling karaoke happened, despite sounding really awful, was pretty funny and really seeing this whole parade of people was interesting too. It made American restaurants seem a little boring. You always know what s going to happen here (and if something surprising does happen, the place probably gets a bad review on Yelp.) Interesting things sometimes happen at mealtimes in Mexico and I like it that way. I had a torta ahogada (drowned sandwich) at that restaurant. And at this point, another brief aside. I m the kind of person that can go to an average American restaurant, see items on the menu helpfully indicated as spicy, order one, and genuinely wonder if other people would find them spicy, because I either don t notice spiciness at all, or maybe notice a tiny bit if I concentrate really hard. Others, meanwhile, might take a bite and lunge for the water. Having said that, I know people that lived in Thailand for awhile and I have nowhere near their tolerance for spiciness. So, having been in Mexico a whole 24 hours or so, I decided not to follow Jonathan s wise lead in ordering a torta with the spicy sauce on the side. I figured I hadn t had anything spicy yet, so maybe this was would be nice and mild for me. Via Jonathan s translation, I ordered it with the spicy sauce. I believe the phrase I heard him use was con chile . The waitress looked at me, gave me an amused the American is ordering it con chile? Hahaha . sort of smile, and went off. Pretty soon our food arrived. (The food always seems to arrive pretty soon in Mexico, by the way.) Oliver was having a bit of a culture shock that day, and mostly refusing to eat (once hunger got the best of him later, he really enjoyed Mexican food.) But the rest of us dug in, including me. I enjoyed my torta. It was spicy, but not too bad. I took some big bites (it was, after all, a thick sandwich) and was really enjoying it. For about a minute. Slowest-acting spiciness I ve had in awhile. Then it hit me. Spiciness, and lots of it. I took a big gulp of my horchata (a creamy sweet rice drink that I found at many restaurants). That helped. A little. I really liked the torta and ate it, but it wouldn t surprise me if the waitress noticed how extremely quickly a drank my horchata Another interesting experience was in Guanajuato. It was raining as we walked towards the Guanajuato market. Their market was large and similar in concept to the Guadalajara one, though a lot smaller. The restaurants were all in a row, in a side of the building that was open to the outside. Most were on the ground level but it looked like a restaurant or two were upstairs. As we approached, all of a sudden people were yelling at us. First it was a guy on the second story, then pretty soon people at the restaurants on the first floor did so as well. They were yelling rapidly in Spanish, waving their menus around in the air. I m imagining they were naming foods they sold or reasons to eat there, but I don t know enough Spanish to know. As we walked down the long row of restaurants, the ones we left behind would quiet down in disgust and other hopeful restaurant owners would take up the yelling and waving cause. I imagine if we did some time-lapse videography and walked up and down that row, we could produce an effect not unlike the sound of a dot-matrix printer going back and forth on the page. Anyhow, we selected one of the quieter restaurants pretty much random. The others then quieted down until another person chanced to walk past at which point it would get loud again. The lunch there was good but I think I mainly will remember it for the selection process! On our way into Guanajuato, we stopped at a wonderful roadside taco place. In typical fashion, they had a large vertical pork thing (I don t know the proper word for it) from which they would carve off meat on the spot anytime someone ordered something with pastor. We found a table. And we ordered a few tacos and such. They were usually a few pesos each (working out to less than a dollar), small round things on a soft tortilla, with meat, cilantro, and onion on top. And typically delicious. They had very little in common with an American taco . We d often order a few, and if we wanted more, just order more. They were made quickly enough for that. Tacos were very similar from one restaurant to the next. My favorite flavors were pastor (pork), chorizo (sausage), and bistec (beef steak). A restaurant in Guadalajara sadly I ve forgotten its name, since we kept calling it the potato place had what I might call a Mexican version of the loaded baked potato, with a meat, queso (cheese), a delicious sauce with a flavor unlike anything I d had before, and some garnish. But really my favorite thing from that restaurant was their amazing juices. I am not much of a juice drinker normally, but in Mexico I went for them whenever they were offered. What passes as fruit juice in the USA has about as much resemblance to a real Mexican fruit juice as Taco Bell has to a real Mexican taco stand. (Very little, in case that wasn t crystal clear.) That particular restaurant offered three types of juices, which were, if I m remembering right, aguas, frescas, and jugos. I has a jugo verde (green juice) on the first visit there. It was good, but the one I can still remember was called, I think, the fresa fresca (fresh strawberry juice). And it was incredible. I m not sure how to describe it, other than real. One observation before I end. It seemed a common thread at some Mexican roadside taco stands to not have soap in their restrooms. Instead there would be a plastic cup holding I kid you not powder-form Tide laundry detergent. It was amusing anyhow. My hands left those places extremely soft and smelling like laundry. One of the last restaurants we visited on our trip was in Ajijic, near the Chapala lake. It was actually right on the lake and served seafood. This was the only restaurant with prices as high as I d be used to in the United States. I ordered a stew served in a stone bowl. It came out sizzling, and since the very thick stone bowl retains heat well, it kept sizzling the entire time I was eating. It was excellent as usual. Coming up in part 6: some thoughts on returning to the United States, our decision to visit, communication, and tips for anyone else considering a first visit to Mexico.

Matthias Klose, the tireless force behind the Debian / Ubuntu gcc, python, and what have you packages, sent me a minimal patch to let littler build when the ld linker uses the --as-needed option (as Ubuntu builds now do): all it took was a little reordering of arguments. With that, I did a little cleanup as it has been a while since version 0.1.3. The brief (upstream) ChangeLog is as follows:

2011-09-15  Dirk Eddelbuettel  <edd>
        * configure.in: Mark as release 0.1.4
        * Makefile.am: Applied patch by Mathias Klose to prevent FTBFS with
          'ld --as-needed', cf LP bug 770980.
        * littler.c: A few small tweaks suggested by 'gcc -Wall'
        * examples/install2.r: Added a second R package installer example
        * examples/update.r: Switch to '/usr/bin/r -t' as shebang line
        * examples/fsizes.r: Dito
        * littler.c: Update copyrights to 2011
        * README: Idem

littler provides r (pronounced littler), a shebang / scripting / quick eval / pipelining front-end to the the R language and data analysis environment. As usual, our code is available via our svn archive or from tarballs off my littler page and the local directory here. A fresh package is in Debian's incoming queue and will hit mirrors shortly.

In this screencast, I implement a new feature in git-annex. I spend around 10 minutes writing haskell code, 10 minutes staring at type errors, and 10 minutes writing documentation. A normal coding session for me. I give a play-by-play, and some thoughts of what programming is like for me these days. <video controls="controls" src="http://kitenet.net/~joey/screencasts/git-annex_coding_in_haskell.ogg"></video> git-annex coding in haskell.ogg (38 MB) on vimeo Not shown is the hour I spent the next day changing the "optimize" subcommand implemented here into "--auto" options that can be passed to git-annex's get and drop commands.

I am haunted by the nagging fear that I have mailboxes, tucked into a dark corner of an office somewhere, and perhaps even full of checks and important documents, that I don't know exist.

Our MirBSD online manual pages and other assorted BSD documentation (except of course the merely copied ncurses, lynx etc. documentation and the texinfo generated HTML pages) has just gained a major facelift. They look alike in lynx(1) best web browser ever and less(1)/man(1) now, and remind of a DEC VT420 on a CSS capable Buntbrause. Thanks to our contributor XTaran for aid with the colour scheme! Since these are generated from catmanpages, heuristics are used for things like where should bold/underline begin/end (since nroff(1) is not always the brightest but working on that), and hyperlinks can only be generated for other manpage references (whose targets may or may not exist, for example if they aren t part of MirOS base/XFree86 ). But on the other hand, Valid XHTML/1.1 and CSS speaks for itself

There are several reasons why someone would want to build a custom kernel for their Android phone. In my case, this is because I wanted performance counters (those used by the perf tool that comes with the kernel source). In Julian Seward s case, he wanted swap support to overcome the limited memory amount on these devices in order to run valgrind. In both cases, the usual suspects (AOSP, CyanogenMod) don t provide the wanted features in prebuilt ROMs. There are also several reasons why someone would NOT want to build a complete ROM for their Android phone. In my case, the Nexus S is what I use to work on Firefox Mobile, but it is also my actual mobile phone. It s a quite painful and long process to create a custom ROM, and another long (but arguably less painful thanks to ROM manager) process to backup the phone data, install the ROM, restore the phone data. And if you happen to like or use the proprietary Google Apps that don t come with the AOSP sources, you need to add more steps. There are however tricks that allow to build a custom kernel for the Nexus S and use it with the system already on the phone. Please note that the following procedure has only been tested on two Nexus S with a 2.6.35.7-something kernel (one with a stock ROM, but unlocked, and another one with an AOSP build). Also please note that there are various ways to achieve many of the steps in this procedure, but I ll only mention one (or two in a few cases). Finally, please note some steps rely on your device being rooted. There may be ways to do without, but I m pretty sure it requires an unlocked device at the very least. This post doesn t cover neither rooting nor unlocking. Preparing a build environment To build an Android kernel, you need a cross-compiling toolchain. Theoretically, any will do, provided it targets ARM. I just used the one coming in the Android NDK:

$ wget http://dl.google.com/android/ndk/android-ndk-r6b-linux-x86.tar.bz2
$ tar -jxf android-ndk-r6b-linux-x86.tar.bz2
$ export ARCH=arm
$ export CROSS_COMPILE=$(pwd)/android-ndk-r6b/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.4.3/prebuilt/linux-x86/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-

For the latter, you need to use a directory path containing prefixed versions (such as arm-eabi-gcc or arm-linux-androideabi-gcc), and include the prefix, but not gcc . You will also need the adb tool coming from the Android SDK. You can install it this way:

$ wget http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r12-linux_x86.tgz
$ tar -zxf android-sdk_r12-linux_x86.tgz
$ android-sdk-linux_x86/tools/android update sdk -u -t platform-tool
$ export PATH=$PATH:$(pwd)/android-sdk-linux_x86/platform-tools

Building the kernel For the Nexus S, one needs to use the Samsung Android kernel tree, which happens to be unavailable at the moment of writing due to the kernel.org outage. Fortunately, there is a clone used for the B2G project, which also happens to contain the necessary cherry-picked patch to add support for the PMU registers on the Nexus S CPU that are needed for the performance counters.

$ git clone -b devrom-2.6.35 https://github.com/cgjones/samsung-android-kernel
$ cd samsung-android-kernel

You can then either start from the default kernel configuration:

$ make herring_defconfig

or use the one from the B2G project, which enables interesting features such as oprofile:

$ wget -O .config https://raw.github.com/cgjones/B2G/master/config/kernel-nexuss4g

From then, you can use the make menuconfig or similar commands to further configure your kernel. One of the problems you d first encounter when booting such a custom kernel image is that the bcm4329 driver module that is shipped in the system partition (and not in the boot image) won t match the kernel, and won t be loaded. The unfortunate consequence is the lack of WiFi support. One way to overcome this problem is to overwrite the kernel module in the system partition, but I didn t want to have to deal with switching modules when switching kernels. There is however a trick allowing the existing module to be loaded by the kernel: compile a kernel with the same version string as the one already on the phone. Please note this only really works if the kernel is really about the same. If there are differences in the binary interface between the kernel and the modules, it will fail in possibly dangerous ways. To use that trick, you first need to know what kernel version is running on your device. Settings > About phone > Kernel version will give you that information on the device itself. You can also retrieve that information with the following command:

$ adb shell cat /proc/version

With my stock ROM, this looks like the following:

Linux version 2.6.35.7-ge382d80 (android-build@apa28.mtv.corp.google.com) (gcc version 4.4.3 (GCC) ) #1 PREEMPT Thu Mar 31 21:11:55 PDT 2011

In the About phone information, it looks like:

2.6.35.7-ge382d80
android-build@apa28

The important part above is -ge382d80, and that is what we will be using in our kernel build. Make sure the part preceding -ge382d80 does match the output of the following command:

$ make kernelversion

The trick is to write that -ge382d80 in a .scmversion file in the kernel source tree (obviously, you need to replace -ge382d80 with whatever your device has):

$ echo -ge382d80 > .scmversion

The kernel can now be built:

$ make -j$(($(grep -c processor /proc/cpuinfo) * 3 / 2))

The -j part is the general rule I use when choosing the number of parallel processes make can use at the same time. You can pick whatever suits you better. Before going further, we need to get back to the main directory:

$ cd ..

Getting the current boot image The Android boot image living in the device doesn t contain only a kernel. It also contains a ramdisk containing a few scripts and binaries, that starts the system initialization. As we will be using the ramdisk coming with the existing kernel, we need to get that ramdisk from the device flash memory:

$ adb shell cat /proc/mtd awk -F'[:"]' '$3 == "boot" print $1 '

The above command will print the mtd device name corresponding to the boot partition. On the Nexus S, this should be mtd2.

$ adb shell
$ su
# dd if=/dev/mtd/mtd2 of=/sdcard/boot.img bs=4096
2048+0 records in
2048+0 records out
8388608 bytes transferred in x.xxx secs (xxxxxxxx bytes/sec)
# exit
$ exit

In the above command sequence, replace mtd2 with whatever the previous command did output for you. Now, you can retrieve the boot image:

$ adb pull /sdcard/boot.img

Creating the new boot image We first want to extract the ramdisk from that boot image. There are various tools to do so, but for convenience, I took unbootimg, on github, and modified it slightly to seemlessly support the page size on the Nexus S. For convenience as well, we ll use mkbootimg even if fastboot is able to create boot images. Building unbootimg, as well as the other tools rely on the Android build system, but since I didn t want to go through setting it up, I figured a minimalistic way to build the tools:

$ git clone https://github.com/glandium/unbootimg.git
$ git clone git://git.linaro.org/android/platform/system/core.git

The latter is a clone of git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/system/core.git, which is down at the moment.

$ gcc -o unbootimg/unbootimg unbootimg/unbootimg.c core/libmincrypt/sha.c -Icore/include -Icore/mkbootimg
$ gcc -o mkbootimg core/mkbootimg/mkbootimg.c core/libmincrypt/sha.c -Icore/include
$ gcc -o fastboot core/fastboot/ protocol,engine,bootimg,fastboot,usb_linux,util_linux .c core/libzipfile/ centraldir,zipfile .c -Icore/mkbootimg -Icore/include -lz

Once the tools are built, we can extract the various data from the boot image:

$ unbootimg/unbootimg boot.img
section sizes incorrect
kernel 1000 2b1b84
ramdisk 2b3000 22d55
second 2d6000 0
total 2d6000 800000
...but we can still continue

Don t worry about the error messages about incorrect section sizes if it tells you we can still continue . The unbootimg program creates three files:

• boot.img-mk, containing the mkbootimg options required to produce a working boot image,
• boot.img-kernel, containing the kernel image,
• boot.img-ramdisk.cpio.gz, containing the gzipped ramdisk, which we will reuse as-is.

All that is left to do is to generate the new boot image:

$ eval ./mkbootimg $(sed s,boot.img-kernel,samsung-android-kernel/arch/arm/boot/zImage, boot.img-mk)

Booting the image There are two ways you can use the resulting boot image: one-time boot or flash. If you want to go for the latter, it is best to actually do both, starting with the one-time boot, to be sure you won t be leaving your phone useless (though recovery is there to the rescue, but is not covered here). First, you need to get your device in the fastboot mode, a.k.a. boot-loader:

$ adb reboot bootloader

Alternatively, you can power it off, and power it back on while pressing the volume up button. Once you see the boot-loader screen, you can test the boot image with a one-time boot:

$ ./fastboot boot boot.img
downloading 'boot.img'...
OKAY [ 0.xxxs]
booting...
OKAY [ 0.xxxs]
finished. total time: 0.xxxs

As a side note, if fastboot sits waiting for device , it either means your device is not in fastboot mode (or is not connected), or that you have permissions issues on the corresponding USB device in /dev. Your device should now be starting up, and eventually be usable under your brand new kernel (and WiFi should be working, too). Congratulations. If you want to use that kernel permanently, you can now flash it after going back in the bootloader:

$ adb reboot bootloader
$ ./fastboot flash boot boot.img
sending 'boot' (2904 KB)...
OKAY [ 0.xxxs]
writing 'boot'...
OKAY [ 0.xxxs]
finished. total time: 0.xxxs
$ ./fastboot reboot

Voil .

The fourth in a series; see also parts 1, 2, and 3. This post is going to be more a photolog than a narrative, and I apologize in advance for it being a bit disjointed. I ve already touched on these themes a bit in the other post, but now it s time to focus on them. Immediately after leaving the airport, it s quite clear that things are a little different. Trees are square. People ride around in the backs of pickups sometimes on top of piles of debris. Left turns are made in front of other lanes of traffic going the same way. But those are just the things obvious from the road. It s a lot of fun to enjoy the differences. First, the ubiquitous square trees. They look pretty, and are found all over. I also found carefully-manicured trees in cone shapes, more cylindrical shapes, etc. It seems that tree care is taken seriously in Mexico. It was also not uncommon to see the bottom few feet of a tree painted white. A park in Guanajuato had a whole bunch of trees carefully trimmed. And from up on the mountain, it still looked impressive (the green area behind the dome). Driving in Mexico was interesting for a lot of reasons. The highways there aren t quite as limited access as the freeways in the USA. It was quite common to see bicyclists, walkers, a mule, or some cattle ambling along the side of the road. Roadside taco stands don t require taking an exit. You just pull off the road because it s right there. Some sights were a bit surprising. Cattle in a pickup, with rope, for instance. Or cattle crossing the highway on the overpass. Street vendors were everywhere. Stop at a red light and someone might spring from the side of the road and suddenly start washing your windshield (expecting a tip); try to sell you flowers, juice, or bug zappers; or even throw business card-sized advertisements for adult websites into any open windows they can find. One night we saw an incredible fire juggler. I would have tipped him well but he was too far away to do so before the light turned green. Mexico s history stretches back into prehistoric times, and we saw the Teuchitlan ruins at Guachimontones one day. It was truly a remarkable feeling to be able to walk down the middle of the ancient ball court, or to climb up one pyramid and see the other from it. It s not exactly architecture, but Jacob and Oliver sure enjoyed visiting the hot springs at Bosque de la Primavera. Jacob still remembers that where the steam is, the water is 200 degrees, and we CAN T TOUCH IT THERE! Back in Guadalajara, here s a photo from the inside of the grand old cathedral. Compared to the cathedrals we saw in Europe, this was of a similar general size and design, and perhaps only slightly newer. But one big difference: worshipers outnumbered tourists at every Mexican cathedral I saw, whether in the center of Guadalajara or at a rainy intersection in Guanajuato or a plaza in Tlaquepaque. It made them feel more alive, and perhaps more sacred as well. One surprise was seeing people sitting on the steps of the cathedral in downtown Guadalajara selling trinkets such as beads. I think the only other place I had seen something like that was in New Orleans. All of Guadalajara s Centro was beautiful. Much of it survives from colonial days; I think a person could spend days exploring its museums and buildings. Way too many of my 900 photos were taken in Centro to post on the blog, but just for flavor, here s one of the less than historic scenes. Yes, that is a bus shaped like a tequila bottle. Fountains were beautiful and common across Mexico. A few of them were easily reachable by boys, and ours sure loved those. There was a lot of public art, including this interesting chair/skeleton/I m not sure what it is: And, just for good measure while walking around Centro, they tossed in an apparent Redundant Array of Inexpensive Typewriters. I don t know what they were doing, but there were about a dozen guys sitting out in the sun typing on their manual typewriters on their identical tables. And who can leave Guadalajara without seeing one of North America s most impressive traffic circles. I ve got to hand it to the Mexicans for making something that is normally really boring into an interesting work of art. Over in Guanajuato, a lot of driving takes place in the city s vast underground tunnel system. Here s a scene emerging from one of them. Guanajuato was already getting decorated for Mexican independence day festivities (Sept. 15-16) while we were there. Here s a typical Guanajuato street scene. Many of the streets were closed to traffic and perhaps not wide enough to handle vehicles anyway. Those streets had a wonderful peaceful and slow feel to them. I feel that I ve barely done the trip justice with this post. The feelings of walking down a beautiful Guanajuato street, or stepping into a Spanish cathedral, or even seeing a bunch of guys with typewriters, just can t be replicated. It s brimming with history and character, and shouldn t be missed.

Using plain C arrays of coordinates, instead of Vertex Buffer Objects, confused some readers. I did it so that the very first tutorials would be simpler. However, it also appears that plain C arrays are not supported at all starting with OpenGL 3.0. Plus, specifying offsets is done differently in each case, and people will use VBOs in the end for performances. So the basic tutorials are now rewritten to use VBOs It took me longer than expected!

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenGL_Programming#The_basics_arc

I must admit that I m a bit lost about the conclusions of the Don t fear the fsync()! (lf.org down; google cache) debate. My understanding was that using fsync() was the right thing to do when we cared about data being written to disk. When using cp or tar, I usually care about my data being written to the disk, so why don t they use fsync()? Shouldn t they?

So, this story begins in January 2001, when I applied in the Debian New Maintainer Process. I wanted to maintain Geneweb, which I was using to publish my genealogy research results. And I wanted to keep it up-to-date while upstream was doing a quite fast development. Moreover, I quickly noticed that Geneweb had big trouble in respecting the way data is organized on a Debian system, and respect the FHS. How to have weveral users able to publish their data on the same server without compromizing the overall system security, etc. Upstream development didn't really care about that. Daniel de Rauglaudre is an excellent genealogist and developer but he was not interested in making Geneweb clean "the Debian way". For instance, at that time, it wasn't easy to setup a server, where genealogy databases could be published without having to manually launch a daemon in user mode at each reboot. Arranging this was indeed my first contribution. I contributed a few patches to make it easier to turn Geneweb into something FHS-compliant...and I developed init scripts and an organization allowing one to have shared databases after system reboots. That was rapidly a great introduction to Debian maintainer scripts and even security-related challenges. And all this....because I needed it. Basically, in 2001, the geneweb package adopted the organization it still has in Debian and Ubuntu, 10 years later:

• daemon optionnally launched at boot time, listening on a configurable port
• daemon running with an unprivileged account
• local group of users allowed to "publish" their data by putting files in /var/lib/geneweb (should now be moved to /srv, I guess)
• related maintenance of this with debconf (including keeping local modifications made *out* of debconf, which is sometimes neglected by maintainers)

While doing so, I was going through the New Maintainer Process. The Debian developer who had signed my key was Sam Tardieu, of of those longstanding "Freenix" dudes I was sometimes hanging around. I don't remember who did write my advocacy. Michael Mattice was my first Application Manager. Interestingly, here are the three first questions he asked my as part of the Policy and Procedures check :

• Firstly, can you explain the key points of the Social Contract and DFSG?
• Donald Knuth, author of TeX, insists that no-one has the right to modify the source code of TeX, and that any changes must be made using "change files" (a sort of patch file). Furthermore, any modification of TeX which produces something which fails the "trip test" (a regression test suite) may not be called TeX. So how come TeX (in the guise of tetex-*) is in main?
• What is Debian's (current) approach to non-free software? Why?
• Debian was offered a Debian-specific license to package a certain piece of software (I forget which). Would we put it in main?

Mike actually asked the questions on February 17th and I probably answered immediately. Unfortunately it seems that I lost my answers. Maybe they are in some archive somewhere. Would be interesting to see how I ended giving an answer about the TeX exception.:-) Immediately, Mike moved to the Tasks and Skills step and checked my geneweb and lifelines packages (I already prepared a package for that other genealogy software). From my records, he found a few lintian warnings, which I probably made my best to fix, then later on, on March 12th, he answered me that thigns were OK and he was marking the T&S step as passed...handing things over to the NM database, asking me what username I wanted on debian.org (obviously, you know what I answered to this!). Then nothing happened..:-) I was not that impatient, but finally, around June 27th, I politely mailed NM Frontdesk (I guess) to get news...and I got a very quick answer by Martin Michlmayr. Martin was indeed worried about the situation (he told me I was on his radar....fun as, many years later, as many DDs, Martin probably went on mine because of pending localization work..:-)) Finally, Martin decided he was not entirely happy with the (maybe too short) processing for P&P and proposed me (very politely, you know how Martin is!) to do it again. So, some more questions...:-) Here, I have the answers. Really fun ro read. Hang on, pure bubulle style, very verbose!

• Q: Do you know (and can you explain) the difference between free speech and free beer? Is Debian mainly about free speech or free beer? My answer: Free speech means that one is able to say what one wants, without any constraint. No one can tell you what you should say. Mozilla is free software. A free beer, on the other hand, is a beer that you don't be charged for. You may drink a free beer but maybe cannot be free to choose the beer you want to drink...:-). Internet Explorer is a free beer. By chance, we french-speaking people have two different words for this (libre and gratuit). Some people have even adopted "libre software " for being used instead of "free software".
• Q: The e-mail client pine is in non-free. Can you tell me the difference between main, contrib and non-free? My answer (typos and horrible English not corrected...): Packages in main are OK with Debian Free Software Guidelines (which defin what is considered "free" by Debian) and all other requirements of the Debian Policy. Packages in contrib are OK witgh DFSG bu may break some other constraints. For instance, they may be wrappers for non-free packages (the old netscape wrappers were good examples. The setiathome package is also another example as it requires the download of the setiathome client which is not free, because source code is not available). Very buggy packages may also be placed into contrib instead of main (a QA requirement). Pakages in non-free are not conform to DFSG. Simply speaking they are not "free software" as defined by DFSG. Some of them because their licence prohibits redistribution, or redistribution of derived work (the french package of Bernard Gaulle fot Latex could fall there).
• Q: Do you agree to uphold the Social Contract and the DFSG? Answer: Yes I do (wow! I'm back 16 years down to my wedding day...:-)) (Doh, already kidding with fellow DDs)
• Q: If you are accepted as a Debian developer, you will get accounts on the Debian machines. Have you read the Debian Machine Usage Policies (DMUP) at http://www.debian.org/devel/dmup ? Do you accept them? My answer: I did read the DMUP and I fully accept them.
• Q: What are Non-Maintainer Uploads (NMUs) and when would you do an NMU? Answer: This is an update for a package which is done by someone who is *not* the official package maintainer (I guess I give the correct english definition : I read the translated dev. reference....). First of all, a NMU should be done after trying to get in contact with the official package maintainer. I don't know if this is the awaited answer, but this point looks important to me. This is the only way for verifying that (s)he is not working on the same problem. NMU's are the most welcome during freeze phases when they correct bugs rated "severe" of higher. They are also welcome when they come from Debian Security Manager(s) for correcting security-related bugs. Another NMU source are those which are needed for ports to work. As a recent, and probably not very experienced package manager, I would probably be very prident with NMU's anyway...:-)
• Q: Tell me 3 different methods to close a bug in the BTS. Answer: Well, If I have properly understood Dev. Reference, there are two recommended methods and a third which is discouraged :
  1. properly use the debian/changelog file (by adding "Closes: Bug#xxxxx" statements in it). The bug will automagically be closed by the archive maintenance software
  2. by mail by sending the .changes file to xxxxx-done@bugs.debian.org, xxxxx being the bug number
  3. by sending a "close" command to control@bugs.debian.org
  The latter should never be used, says Dev. Reference. I must admit that I don't know why it is still mentioned. There is certainly a good reason. I'm not aware of another method...
• Q: What would you do if a bug was reported against your package and you are not able to fix it yourself? Answer: First, I would double check with upstream author(s) if this cannot be fixed by him/her/them.... Then, I would probably ask for help and/or advice in debian-qa if the bug is critical, grave or serious. If it is normal, I would ask on debian-devel or maybe think more about possible solutions.... If the bug still cannot be fixed and is "severe" or higher, I would either consider orphaning it (not being able to fix it may mean that I do not have the skills for maintaining it properly) or having it adopted by someone else. I don't think there is a unique answer there. The key point for me is certainly "ask for help in debian-qa". (OK, not the best answer ever...)
• Q: You've just heard about this great program and would like to package > it, what would you do? Answer: First, check on the WNPP page. The purpose here is avoiding having two people working on the same package. Then, assuming no on,e works on it, open a bug against wnpp speudo-package with a copy to debian-devel. The "bug" should include a short description of the package and what I intend to do for packaging. The URL for downloading sources for the program should be given. The subject of the bug report is normalized. The bug report should be of the "wishlist" class. When the new package is ready and uploaded for the first time, it should include the appropriate statement for closing the wnpp bug.
• Q: Do you know what 'lintian' is? Why is it useful? Answer: It is a set of tools for making automatic checks of packages. It may detect some bugs, common errors, Debian Policy violations and so on. This is a very useful tools for polishing packages. For instance, in my "geneweb" unofficial package, the last remaining lintian report is about the creation of a /var/geneweb directory which violates Debian Policy.
• Q: What does version 3.4-2.1 mean? What Debian control file would you put this in? (Hint: NMU). Answer: This is the Debian package of version 3.4 of program "foo". The current package version in the distribution was -2 and someone made a NMU of this package. This would be put in debian/changelog
• Q: You have a package in contrib, why would it have to go there? What could you do (in theory at least) to get it into main? Answer: The package in consistent with DFSG but other constraints are not respected. The most probable reason is being dependent of "non-free" packages (there may be other reasons but none comes to my mind at this time....). In that case, I should try to make it independent of these packages. For instance, trying to replace a "Depends: netscape-base" line by a "Depends: www-browser" line...if it may be done, of course!
• Q: If you had a file in your package which usualy gets changed by a user for local settings, how doyou make sure your next version of the package doesn't overwrite it? Answer: By putting its name into the debian/conffiles line. By the way, I guess you're meaning "changed by a local system administrator for local settings" here, don't you? (hey, answering a question with another one, good trick, man...)
• Q: What would you do if you wanted to retire from the project and let other developers maintainer your packages? Answer: The correct term is "orphan" the package. Make a bug report against wnpp (with a normalised subject starting with O, see Dev. Ref). The bug severity is "normal". If this is an important package for the distribution, the bug should be of "important" severity and the bug report should have a subject beginning with RFA (Request For Azdoption). In that case, an announce in debian-devel is also asked. In both cases, a new package should be uploaded with Debian QA Group as maintainer.

What a bunch of questions..:-). Reading my answers ten years after, I see that some answers are somehow naive but, after all, they're not so bad. I really remember spending hours in writing them (my English was somehow more shaky at that time) The last question was: "Please tell me about about yourself and what you intend to do for Debian". Here, Martin opened a big can of worms..:-) So, you'll learn about this in the next episode..:-)

Continuing my series of articles on dpkg s errors, this time I ll cover a pretty common one which has several variations:

Setting up acpid (1:2.0.12-1) ...
rm: cannot remove  /etc/rc1.d/K20acpid': No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing acpid (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 acpid

Even if dpkg is failing and outputting the error message, the real problem is not in dpkg but in the installed package (acpid in the example above). As we already learned, a package contains not only files but also maintainer scripts that are executed at various points of the installation process (see some useful graphics to understand how they are called, thanks to Margarita Manterola). In the introductory example it was acpid s post-installation script that failed, and dpkg is only forwarding that failure back to the caller. The maintainer scripts are stored in /var/lib/dpkg/info/. You can thus inspect them and even modify them if you hit a bug and want to work around it (do this only if you understand what you do!). One common modification is to add set -x at the start of the script and to retry the failing operation. That way you can see what s executed exactly. Here s what the output could look like after the addition of set -x to /var/lib/dpkg/info/acpid.postinst:

$ sudo dpkg --configure acpid
Setting up acpid (1:2.0.12-1) ...
+ dpkg --compare-versions 1:2.0.11-1 lt-nl 1.0.10-3
+ dpkg --compare-versions 1:2.0.11-1 lt-nl 1.0.6-16
+ dpkg --compare-versions 1:2.0.11-1 lt 1.0.6-6
+ rm /etc/rc1.d/K20acpid
rm: cannot remove  /etc/rc1.d/K20acpid': No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing acpid (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 acpid

This output helps you locate the command that is actually failing. Here s it s relatively easy since we have an error message from rm . And the fix is trivial too, we replace rm with rm -f so that it doesn t fail when the file doesn t exist (this is a fake bug I made up for this article I just added a failing rm call but it s inspired by real bugs I experienced). Maintainer scripts are supposed to be idempotent: we should be able to execute them several times in a row without bad consequences. It happens from time to time that the maintainer gets this wrong on the first try it works, so he uploads his package and we discover the problem only later once someone ended up executing the same code twice for some reason.

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A couple of weeks ago my old laptop decided to rest forever, and I was forced to impose some economic pressure onto the consumption of the planet resources by acquiring a new one. Fortunately this happened while I am still here in Canada, where it is reasonably cheaper to get a decent laptop than it is in Brazil. Although I did not have the budget I wanted for buying a really kick ass laptop, I was able to buy a decent one, an HP Pavilion G6 1B74CA. I went on 4 different shops with a USB stick loaded with Debian Live to check whether all the hardware would work ok. I always asked one of the salesman before rebooting the laptops, but it was funny to see the reactions of the different employees who came by to check what I was doing: some of them barely noticed that GNOME was not Windows XYZ, and and some asked whether I was hacking the laptops. Unfortunately, I wasn t able to find a single laptop in which the wireless worked out of the box with the Squeeze kernel, which sucks. I searched over the internet a lot, and it seems that even the vendors recommended by the FSF do not provide laptops with wireless cards that work without non-free blobs. Other issue I had was with the Intel graphics. After the kernel enables the modesetting, the backlight goes to the minimum and it looks like you have no video. There are a couple of workarounds in the internet, and the one in which you add acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor to the kernel parameters makes the laptop turn on by itself in the morning. This is probably caused by broken ACPI handling in the BIOS, who almost always is written by people on crack. The other issues I had were related to the keyboard. First, the BIOS came by default with Access keys mode enabled, which means that by default pressing F2-F12 actually activated the multimedia keys instead of the real function keys. It was disapointing to hit F12 and have my wireless turned off. After disabling this in the BIOS setup, it was OK. Well, not quite: for some reason, Fn+F4 did not generate the expected keycodes. After some research on the internet, I found a interesting Ubuntu bug . It seems that the latest and greatest version of Windows starts its video setup application via the Meta+P shortcut ( Meta is the actual name of what Windows people call the Windows key ). Guess what the morons writing the HP BIOS did yes, they made the keys Fn+F4 (where F4 has video setup as its multimedia key ) generate the keycodes for Meta+P! It would be a lot easier for everyone in the world if the people at Microsoft just make their stuff listen to both Meta+P and the video setup keycode, which is generated by every laptop out there, to activate the Windows screen setup thing. This way the very smart dudes writing BIOS at HP wouldn t need to make Fn+F4 generate the keycodes for Meta+P and break every single desktop that is not procuced at Redmond.

For the longest time, I went by the nick "Yoe" when I went on IRC. When I chose this nick for myself, I was sixteen, and the Internet computer at the local public library had an IRC client installed that I tried out. Obviously, my first choice of nick -- "wouter", a fairly common first name in Dutch-speaking regions -- was already chosen, so I had to come up with something else. If I'd realized that I'd still be using this nick today, seventeen years later, I might have chosen that nick with a bit more care... Over the years, some people have asked me what the nickname meant, where it came from. I've never really told anyone the entire story, mainly because it was somewhat embarrasing. But hey, we've all been 16, right? In the early nineties, there was a show on TV called "Het huis van wantrouwen". On this show, they had a running joke involving a short clip of Belgian members of parliament informally voting on a subject by raising hands (literally); the joke was that this clip was dubbed with a bunch of people saying "Yoe, de manne" -- which is dutch for something along the lines of "Yo, guys". As a young geeky teenager, I found this joke way more funny than it actually was; and as such, a few years later, during one of the more weird episodes of my life, I started pranking people by sneaking up to them from behind and shouting "Yoe, de manne" right next to their ears. I even managed to do this to one of our teachers who was walking on the playground. This was just around the time when I first tried out this "IRC" thing. It didn't take me too long to realize I was the only person who thought this "joke" was funny; but somehow the nick stuck, and here we are, 17 years later, I'm still using it. Or, well, I was. As of today, if you want to catch me on IRC, you'll find me going by "wouter" instead of "Yoe". Of course someone had registered that nick several years ago, but then he hadn't been using it in years, and so after a quick request to the OFTC admins they made it available for me. Whee.

This month, I will have been with Canonical for 5 years. It s been fantastic, but I ve decided to move on. Next week, I m going to start working for Google, helping out with ChromeOS, which I m pretty excited about. I m sad to be leaving Canonical, but I comfort myself by knowing that I m not leaving Ubuntu or any other projects I m involved in. I believe in Ubuntu, I use it everywhere, and I m friends with so many of its people. And I m still core-dev, so I ll continue to break^Wsecure things as much as I can in Ubuntu, and continue working on getting similar stuff into Debian. :) For nostalgic purposes, I dug up my first security update (sponsored by pitti), and my first Ubuntu Security Notice. I m proud of Ubuntu s strong security record and how far the security feature list has come. The Ubuntu Security Team is an awesome group of people, and I m honored to have worked with them. I m looking forward to the new adventures, but I will miss the previous ones.

2011, Kees Cook. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

As many people reading this may know, my wife Jyoti was in the World Trade Center on 9/11. When the first plane hit, she joined some colleagues at her employers offices on the 78th floor of the South Tower to see what was going on. A few minutes later she went downstairs to her desk on the 77th floor to call me and tell me about it. That's when the second plane hit. Everyone on the 78th floor was instantly killed as she would have been if she had decided to stay. She and some friends, covered in debris and soaked in jet fuel, blinded by thick black smoke made their way down 77 flights of stairs (the elevators were out of action) and even though she was seven months pregnant with our daughter at the time she went all the way down without stopping to rest. An NYPD officer Ramon Suarez helped her out and to an ambulance. He went back to rescue others and died half an hour later when the North Tower collapsed. I was at home. After getting ready and saying my morning prayers, I was leisurly preparing breakfast before starting the day. I started getting phone calls asking "Is Jyoti ok?" Of course she was. Why wouldn't she be? I somehow don't remember who said it first but I was told to turn on the TV because a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I spent the rest of the morning glued to the screen in horror as information on what exactly had happened. Absolutely the lowest moment of my life was when I saw, in real time, the twin towers fall. It was several more hours before I actually got to talk to Jyoti on the phone, confirmation that she was still alive. I didn't get to actually see her and hold her until the next day owing to the curfew around Manhattan. So that's what happened that day. We have repeatedly been told "Never forget" but truth be told some of the details are already fading from my memory. For my wife too, while she occasionally had panic attacks at first, every day life is foremost now and it is only on days like this that her ordeal comes to mind. Our daughter Shailaja is now 10 years old and an honor roll student who just started 4th grade. She knows the story but is not affected by it. These are good things in my opinion. What the jihadists want most of all is apocalypse. They wanted the world to change course but ten years later America remains as generous, bull-headed, lively, spiritual, garish and crude as ever. That's the sweetest revenge lovers of life can have. Don't give up your rights and your daily routines to fear but make the bastards give up theirs. Or as the cliche goes, the terrorists will win.

As I wrote in part 1, my family and I were in Mexico recently. Today I ll write about the places we stayed. We spent most of the time in a room we rented in a private home in Guadalajara. My friend Jonathan had found it for us, and it was not too far from his home. The owner was a grandmother, and across the courtyard was more family, including a granddaughter close in age to our boys. They enjoyed playing together. It was really a perfect arrangement for us. There s no better way to be a part of local life when traveling than to stay in someone s house. Here s our bedroom: Notice the glass slats in the window it s a nifty, though not airtight, alternative to our regular windows. More on that later. More of the inside: We had a bit of a language barrier while in Mexico, though never anything significant. My Spanish vocabulary started with almost nothing and I reached maybe a few dozen words by the time we left. Terah knew some Spanish from high school and college, and my friend was fluent. Our hostess also knew a little English. But we all communicated well enough. Terah or Jonathan would help translate when needed. As I d seen before, the children would say things to each other, but never seemed to be bothered that their playmates didn t understand what was being said. They just had a great time anyhow. On Sunday afternoon, when we came back from our activities, there was a buzz of activity. Children everywhere outside, running and playing. Adults too, chatting. We didn t know exactly what was happening, but sent Jacob and Oliver out to play anyhow (which they were eager to do). The yard was enclosed by a wall, so children could pretty much run around without lots of supervision. Eventually they were invited to have some birthday cake (ah ha!) it was one of the children s birthday. Jacob and Oliver actually were served the first two pieces of cake (as the amigos ). Everyone seemed so friendly, warm, and welcoming. Each morning started with breakfast at the house, followed by a scene like this: That s Jacob and Oliver, looking to see if Jonathan had arrived for the day yet. I often noticed in Mexico that I was unsure if I was inside or outside. Here in Kansas, we can have a string of summer days that each exceed 110F (44C) or a few weeks in winter that never get above 15F (-9C), even in daytime. And then we have some pleasant days like right now, too or rain blowing sideways at 60MPH. In general, we spend a lot of effort keeping the outside, well, out. It is quite clear that this isn t a problem in the Guadalajara area. Some restaurants could have been described as buildings with large, open windows so you feel a lot of breeze while inside. Or perhaps as a simple shade roof with a few supports on the edges, so you re never really inside at all (sort of like going under a small shade tent outdoors). To the extent that windows could close, many of them couldn t be made airtight. It was clear that in that area, people spend more energy finding ways to invite the outdoors in rather than to keep it out, thanks to the year-round moderate climate. Perhaps the best example of this surprised me one evening. We were arriving in Guanajuato, an old silver mining town in the mountains, and were going to spend the night at Hotel Socav n, which had been recommended to us by a local friend of Jonathan s. From the street, the hotel looked tiny. But walk in, and you get in this old-looking (and feeling) entry tunnel: That s the front desk, apparently cut out of it there on the right. We asked to see some of the rooms before buying apparently a normal request around there. The innkeeper agreed, and gave us keys and directions to find them on the third floor. It included going up 2 flights of stairs, passing through a courtyard, and going up another flight. It was after dark, and the hotel was dimly lit something I was fine with. I thought we were stepping out into a beautiful atrium with some potted plants in the center of the building something fairly common in some nicer hotels. Until I felt rain on my head. Then I realized that the courtyard, which began two floors up from the street, was open to the sky. Beautiful! Here was the view from out room door: And down the hall : After getting home, a Google happened to turn up some reviews of this hotel. I was so annoyed at what some people wrote! One person gave them only 3 stars because they didn t have air conditioning, had poor water pressure, and lots of steps . Someone else complained of the dark entry tunnel something I couldn t help but smiling about the moment I entered. My review, which should hopefully get posted soon, is certainly different. I gave them 5 stars, because if I wanted a Super 8 with generic fluorescent lighting and the same layout as thousands of other hotels, I would have gone to Nebraska instead of Mexico. Most homes and local hotels in the region don t have air conditioning because they don t need it, and that s just how water pressure is in Mexico (due to needing to pump it from municipal supplies to private storage tanks overhead). And who doesn t appreciate entering a hotel through a brick tunnel? Ah, sigh This should give you some idea of the kind of travel we like: part of the point of traveling is enjoying the differences from home, and I think it is a huge mistake to be annoyed at everything that is different. Enjoy the differences! Finally, here s a photo of the staircase in the home we stayed in, which I thought was fascinating:

A few days ago I blogged about my main computer s configuration files and desktop s appearance and today I managed to add a few little tweaks to those, they are:

• Google s contacts list integrated into Mutt
• a cleaner and nicer Login screen

Curious to know how you can easily integrate your Google s contacts into Mutt? Well, you should be able to achieve that within a few minutes after reading this small HowTo: 1. Download and install goobook as explained here. 2. Setup a .goobookrc file into your Home directory. It should look like this: 3. Add the relevant configuration bits into your /etc/Muttrc file:

set query_command="goobook query '%s'"
bind editor <Tab> complete-query
macro index,pager a "<pipe-message>goobook add<return>" "Add sender's address to your Google contacts"

4. Your configuration should be good to go now, so here s a few examples on goobook s usage within Mutt:

• Use TAB if you want to auto-complete a mail address when specifying the To: field.
• Use the A key if you want to add sender s address to your Google contacts.
• Use the Q key for querying your contacts list.

We can now move on on customizing your Login Screen running GDM3. Let s begin with a screenshoot: I definitely love it, it s clear and clean and most of all it has everything I need, no extra toolbars or menus. If you agree with me, open up the /etc/gdm3/greeter.gconf-defaults file and do the needed changes. This is how your greeter.gconf-defaults file should look like:

/desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename      /path/to/your/dusty-bg/file # dusty's background can be downloaded here.
/desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme              Darklooks # this is my main theme, feel free to adapt that to your needs.
/apps/gdm/simple-greeter/logo_icon_name         debian-swirl # this is the default on Debian's systems.
/desktop/gnome/sound/event_sounds               false # I don't like hearing any sound when when I am prompted to insert my user's details on the Login Screen.
/apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list      true # users list will be disabled, you won't be able to select your username from a list but you'll have to insert that yourself.
/apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager      false # default, no need to change this.
/apps/gnome-power-manager/ui/icon_policy        never # default, no need to change this.

We are close to the end but we are missing an important detail: how can you safely remove bottom s toolbar and menus for a clearer and cleaner Login Screen? Open up the /var/lib/gdm3/.gconf.mandatory/%gconf-tree.xml file, search for the <dir name= general > section and apply the following change:

- <entry name="compositing_manager" mtime="1315580582" type="bool" value="false"/>
+ <entry name="compositing_manager" mtime="1315580582" type="bool" value="true"/>

But what if you prefer keeping the toolbar as it is, but you definitely don t like seeing the Accessibility icon appearing on your Login Screen? On the same file as above, search for the <dir name= accessibility > section and modify the following string as it follows:

- <entry name="enable" mtime="1315580582" type="bool" value="true"/>
+ <entry name="enable" mtime="1315580582" type="bool" value="false"/>

See you on my next blog post and don t forget to have a look at my GitHub s repository! Oh and follow me on Twitter!

Today was my last race before Berlin marathon on Sept. 25th. Berlin is meant to be one of the three "peaks" of my running year, after the succession of Paris Ecotrail (55km) and Paris marathon in two weeks in April....and before a 67km night race in November (Le Puy-Firminy). I was worried about my shaky training last weeks because of some pain in an ankle which I partly twisted while running on a very steep trail in early August. So, I planned running an half-marathon today in Bois d'Arcy, very close to my place. Last year saw me completing this one in 1h37. Of course, no way this time to try this again: the point was running at my planned marathon pace (5'05"/km) for the first 18-19km and "see what happens" later on. Even trying this two weeks before a marathon is....unrecommended! I made this fairly well, with a 5'/km pace for the first 10km, then a little slowdown between km10 and 15 (mostly because I was running all alone in large and very straight alleys in the forest)....and a very very long sprint from km 18.5 with speeds up to 4'40"/km, and a final 400m where I was kinda flying (1'37"). So, finally, I end up with a very promising 1h43'19", much below the planned 1h45, and my second half-marathon time ever. Now, two weeks mostly resting as the goal will be keeping this 5'05" pace in Berlin, for a targeted 3h35 (which is kinda ambitious considering my lack of speed work during last weeks while I was trying to recover this injured ankle). See you in Berlin on 25th....

With this release come two long-awaited improvements:

• database speedups;
• fix for iTunes timing out after 30 minutes.