In the past few days, I’ve been rather quiet, since I started ripping Sendpage to shreds. After a few days of reading Sendpage::Device and Sendpage::Db, as well as the corresponding design documents, I’ve decided to try coding the few redesign I have been holding up my mind all this time. For now I’m putting my mods inside RCS working with CVS, thanks to Emacs VC-mode. I’ve put up my first status report for Week 1+. I am also currently dist-upgrading to Dapper, Sid, and Eft chroots… while discovering Perl Design Patterns.
05:42 * zakame can't believe he's building Perl from source
05:43 < ajmitch> sick man


After getting back from DebConf and the 1-week trip afterwards, it took me a full week to get out of most of the chaos travelling usually leaves behind. I still haven't unpacked all stuff from the suitcase, but at least managed to wash the dirty clothes. Oh, and I've signed all keys from the KSP - including madduck's, he showed me his proper German ID card when I asked what this funny Transnational Republic was. (Oh, and if you were listed at the KSP, didn't show up, but I've signed your key anyway, that's because we met before and you have a new UID, in case you are wondering.) The pictures I took are still scatered over several home dirs on different hosts, I'll try to sort/rotate/rename them over the next days. (Oh, and DebConf was great, the trip afterwards likewise - I'll try to write a separate blog post on that later...) At the moment I'm slowly starting to get into frontdesk work. I have some notes from Neil's and Enrico's AM BoF and the discussion BoF round around my "NM process future" proposal that I still have to write down once I'm finished with answering my own NMs' mails. Both BoFs went pretty well, the major outcome being that we should discuss much more among AMs on -newmaint and IRC, have older AM reports available for reference by other AMs, and have some sort of "AM report template" that lists the points the DAMs want to see in the report. About the propsal, my feeling is that we shouldn't implement any major NM changes (like the DM idea) until we really understand what the problem with the current process is. (It takes too long, but that can be fixed by throwing out the not-ready applicants more aggressively.) Thanks to all the people who provided very valuable feedback during the BoFs and in the private conversations afterwards. So far, I've assigned a few applicants to AMs, added comments to the database on the level of prior contribution of the new applicants, and worked a bit on the web pages. The major visible change is that the NM graphs are now included on nm.d.o. The 'big' thing I'd like to implement next is to let the applicants write some application email where they list what they've done for Debian so far before the AM assignment, so we can match NM-AM better, and also improve our judgement of the level of prior contribution. Also, we will probably require 2 advocates per applicant in the future, to make sure people have worked with more than a single DD before. Of course, all this must not get excessive, we don't want to make joining Debian harder than it already is. Then there's also the usual 2k+ message backlog waiting in the Debian mailbox...

A few days ago, AvantGo syncing to my trusted (yet dated) Tungsten C failed all of a sudden. As I hadn't updated anything on the Kubuntu / Ubuntu box I use as my home workstation, and the (aptly named) malsync library which implements the protocol under Linux/Unix didn't change, I was a tad puzzled. Perusing AvantGo's website was pointless. Years ago they mentioned Linux support via the (unsupported) malsync library, now they seem to hide it. So what the heck, off went an email to AvantGo's support. To their credit, a reply arrived within 48 hours. While they pointed me to a Mac OS X answer (eek!) in their knowledgebase, it contained the basic hint: new prc files for a new version were required. So Google: if someone asks you why AvantGo syncing from Linux all of a sudden fails, tell them to get the new files from here. The app is now called M-Business and requires a fresh setup of server, id and password; but you're off to the races afterwards.

(... well, I like to think I can!) So, on a completely unimportant website that I frequent, I've ended up being a moderator on the site forums. Something about knowing *nix and PHP apparently.. Anyway, I've always had a beef with the way english is used and abused on the Internet. You know, all those abbreviations, and incorrect word usage that just seethes "I'm an illiterate prick." U, 2, ur, da, r, etc etc.. and also the so incredibly common misuse of your/you're and they're/there/their. GAH. Yech. Anyway, this particular site is no exception. Some of the users have appalling habits. (Ab)using my powers as a moderator, I've started to demand some care and attention to the most glaring errors - mainly towards my most intense pet peeve, misuse of "your" and "you're". Looking for a place that describes all this stuff well, I stumbled across this site. I couldn't have said it better. Thank you Sarah D. Bunting! (I especially liked, and agree with this:

And no, in fact, I don't know what you mean when you write me a hate mail that reads, "You're site sucks," because that doesn't mean anything. Because it's grammatically incorrect. Because you've substituted a contraction of a verb phrase for an adjective, thus rendering the sentence nonsensical. And it makes you look stupid, and therefore I cannot take you seriously.

)

I saw on Planet Debian that Enrico Zini had some trouble using xen-tools:

Installing the base system.   This will take a while!
	
Copying files from host to image.
Finished
Something went wrong with the debootstrap installation
Aborting

This basically means that the invocation of debootstrap failed to leave the system with a /bin/ls present - meaning it failed for some reason. My immediate mad debugging skillz suggest retrying with either –verbose, or –cache=no. The first will hopefully show the problem, the second will most likely fix the problem. I’ve seen this a few times, but haven’t updated the code to check for it. When creating a new Xen instance of, say 4gb, we copy all the packages from the host systems /var/cache/apt/archives so that debootstrap doesn’t redownload things and use up bandidth. If these cached files are >4gb then the new image is 100% full and debootstrap won’t run successfully! In related news I’m currently working on a system called image-server - this is a distributed xen-create-image script. The idea is that you have a central host which is responsible for creating Xen images of Debian, RedHat, Gentoo, and serving them to clients. This isn’t much use for a home user, but as a hosting company wanting to provide Xen instances of semi-arbitary Linux distributions it should come in handy. In other news I want to work on modularising the Xen tools scripts and moving them onto xen-tools.org.

On a whim I gave up with my personal web gallery implementation and switched to Flickr. Now, uploading is fun. I could use the web-based upload form, but as I can't DnD from Nautilus into a text field that is dull, and whilst copy/paste works that is also dull. I can email images but I can't send lots at once (they have a 12M limit per email), and have to remove the signature and GPG signing for every message. Also dull. I'll get a billion people shouting "use F-Spot", which I tried, but it doesn't want to import some of my photos, and it doesn't work with my photo storage either, so that isn't an option for now. Thus, I'm considering writing a small Nautilus extension in Python, so that in the context menu of every image there is a Upload to Flickr option. I'd prefer not to re-invent the wheel so does anyone else has written a simple GNOMEy uploading tool for Flickr? Thanks!

Hacked up a quick REST-style webinterface for the debtags AI classifier, try for example: http://alextreme.org/ai/emacs/use::editing to get the chance emacs is used for editing. My server had to train all night to process all tags, so a central debtags-ai-webservice makes sense. An issue is that it's not very clear which tags are available (an ajax-like interface would be much more human-friendly), but then again this interface is meant to be easily parseable. Next step is to actually use the classifier for approving suggested tags...

Last week Vicky and myself went to Paris for a brief holiday (Tuesday to Saturday). The weather wasn't as great as we were hoping for the beginning of June, but at least it didn't rain too hard. Paris was nicer than expected, but I'll blog about that more when I've sorted the photos. NP: Motion, The Cinematic Orchestra

Benjamin Seidenberg's Blog: New Anti-Spam Measures uses a simple maths test, which should work, but it produced a rambling SQL error for me. I emailed it as requested and got an error back saying Command died with status 1: "/usr/share/doc/spamassassin/examples/filter.sh" That may block all spam, but also blocks other mail, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. [links in permalink version]

As #368922 highlights, when you upgrade dhcp3-client, the version that was started whenever the interface(s) were ifuped remains running. So upgrading the package won't necessarily do anything for you in the immediate term. I guess the best way to proceed will be to parse /etc/network/interfaces and ask the user if the postinst should bounce the interfaces that are found to be running DHCP. It's a little fraught with danger, so I'm going to think about it more before I do anything.

Google Sitemaps isn't just about giving google an easier way to index your whole website. (There are two reasons you might want to give Google a sitemap: One is that this will result in extra links in the search results, since Google apparently uses the sitemap to give the user some extra navigation links with the search result; the other is that this way Google can avoid any flash or javascript magic you might be using - though it's a bad idea - in your webpage.) One nice feature they added is that they give you an excerpt of the web searches turning up your web page, and the average placement for this term. This is a very nice tool to find out how Google "sees" your webpage. Google also gives you a list of common terms used to refer to your webpage. Results for my personal webpage have been very interesting. There are a couple of highly ranked search terms that I would never have expected, that will turn up my page with a high placement. The funniest result is my #1 ranking for Sportfreunde Stiller Torrent, obviously a file sharers search term (Sportfreunde Stiller are a great German indie rock band; check out their new You have to win Zweikampf soccer album. Consider buying it.). I'm not a filesharer. I like web radios (especially when they play lots of indie music and have high quality Ogg Vorbis streams like M94.5) and I use last.fm quite frequently. I have however blogged on Bittorrent technology aspects (as a legal file transfer protocol. Did you know that Debian GNU/Linux considers to use torrent technology for distributing software updates?), and also blogged on young German bands that have made the top of the charts the last few years.

Went to South Bend, Indiana, on Friday for the 2006 Sunburst Marathon yesterday morning. This is a smallish marathon with 600 runners, embedded in a half-marathon, 10k and 5k all of which start at the College Football Hall of Fame and end in the Notre Dame football stadium. Early 6:00am start, made worse by the fact that it is one time zone earlier too so I got up at 3:30am 'my time. Ouch. The race almost didn't start as a hazardous materials spill was announced right at start time. Luckily, that got taken care of and we were off and running at 6:15am. The first ten to twelve miles went pretty well and fast, and I slowed down a little afterwards. I started to pay for the fast first half with some oncoming cramps starting around mile 18. Somehow I managed to suppress the cramps with a combination of walking water stops, gatorade, gu (handed out by the race organisers a four or five water stops -- nice!) and sheer stubbornness and some more walking when needed. I had aimed to beat my Boston qualifying time of 3:20 -- and I did with a chip time of 3:17:48, which is also another PR and a nice improvement over the previous three marathons. So on to Boston for the one hundred eleventh Boston Marathon next April!

(Sorry Robert, this is a meta-blog-post. Perhaps I should create a catagory for them?) Since being syndicated on Planet Debian, the amount of comment spam I’ve gotten has risen sharply. No spam has made it onto th site itself, since I moderate the first comment someone makes, but the emails have gotten annoying. Therefore, I put a turing test into place. Blind users will be happy to hear it’s not a CAPTCHA, instead it’s one more field to fill out that asks a very basic math question to prevent spambots from commenting. Users who registered back when I required it won’t even get the field, isn’t that nice?
To the readers of Planet Debian who are probably asking “Why Do I Care?”: If you don’t mind, try out the system to make sure it works. I figure the readership of that site will have a fairly diverse set of browsers and maybe even a few using accessibility ehancements that can confirm that the system has no problems. If you encounter any problems, email me at astronut@dlgeek.net or ping me on IRC (astronut on both freenode and oftc).

My E3 is currently sitting running KPhone/Pi under OPIE. Annoyingly I currently have to have a USB mouse attached due to lack of a suitable pointing device on the E3, but I'm sure that's solvable in time. More disappointing is the fact that it doesn't really work. :( I can successfully SIP register with my local Asterisk instance, and dial voicemail successfully. I only hear a fragment of the "Chameleon mail" prompt and attempting to send DTMF to choose a mailbox doesn't work either - I don't know if this is because I leave it too late or if they don't get sent at all. OpenEmbedded doesn't have any other OPIE based SIP or IAX clients, nor anything text mode that I can see. I found ZiaxPhone but it seems to be closed source so I can't rebuild it. Guess I'll have to find a text mode client and try to work out if it's KPhone, the audio driver or the E3 not being fast enough that's the problem.

This email was sent from LiveJournal / Six Apart through Responsys. You are receiving this email because your LiveJournal preferences indicate you are interested in receiving LJ News by email. If you do not want to receive LJ news by email, please login and edit your preferences: http://www.livejournal.com/editinfo.bml

They don't. I never set a preference for it and there is no such preference on that page. And I could have read that on the front page or news anyway. WTF? Updated: Removed broken preformatting of the quoted text.

I’ve been blogging a bit about my family lately — this entry about my brother Jonah’s band and this entry about my wife’s blog, so I didn’t want to leave out my youngest brother, Andrew. He has gained some renown as a tennis star at Macalester College. Men’s tennis gets help from a ‘Trainwreck’ perhaps captures it best:

Picture this: nervous first-year, short shorts, longer t-shirt, brown dress shoes, newly broken glasses taped together with white sports tape. He begins his first varsity tennis practice, he is excited. So excited in fact that he tips over the ball hopper while doing warm-ups, spilling tennis balls all over the court. That’s when they started calling me ‘Trainwreck,’ coach wanted to call me ‘Shoes,’ but the team agreed on Trainwreck,. Andrew ‘Trainwreck’ Kessel ‘07 said.

See also Athlete of the Week (scroll down to “Week 29”) and Cobbers Beat Scots 7-2 in Moorhead . I never even played intramural sports in college, so I can only appreciate Andrew’s success vicariously. Also, I’m now hosting a website for Jonah’s nascent photography business, Kessel Imaging. (Kids these days, they want to do everything with Flash! In my day, we hand-coded HTML and CSS.)

As i already wrote, i am currently organizing a couple of Bug Squashing Parties this fall. My idea is that we have up to four or five BSPs on one weekend around the globe, and this repeated on three weekends directly after the base freeze. This should help us to get the RC count down to some reasonable number so we can release Etch in - this time. As i have been asked to stick to iso 8601 or rfc 3339 date format (yes, i should have thought about this before sending out the announcement), here are the current planed dates (in a better readable format for international readers):

1. August 11th, 2006 - August 13th, 2006: Testing d-i and fixing bugs in the installation process
2. September 08th, 2006 -September 10th, 2006: Testing upgrades from pre-release etch and sarge and fix remaining bugs
3. October 06th, 2006 - October 8th, 2006: Fixing remaining bugs in core packages

The following places so far have been offered to host a BSP:

• University of Z rich, Switzerland
• University of Darmstadt, Germany
• cole Centrale Paris, France
• Argentina (no exact place given yet)
• maybe: Student Dorm Salesianum Don Bosco, Vienna, Austria

I still hope we get round about 15 different locations world-wide for all events. If none of the dates above meet your diary, but you would be able to host a BSP on a different date within that timeframe, fine with me, just commit it to the wiki. Or your place is not yet listed, do the same. There is not much you need to host a BSP, just online connection, a room/place where the actual bug squashing will happen and a place where non-local DDs could find a place to sleep. See here for more information. Even so it will be a bit stressful i still plan to attend on all of the above weekends to one BSP in Europe.

Rachele and I went to Montreal for the day this past weekend. It was the longest time we’ve ever left our one year old daughter Esther—just over twelve hours with my parents. Remarkably, she survived, and didn’t even miss us. Every time I go to Montreal I’m reminded of just how much better Canada is. For example, Senzala, a Brazilian breakfast place in Mile End, served the most delicious gourmet poached eggs (pictured here with Rachele): We also had a great time visiting the Botanical Garden, a vast park that dwarfs anything Boston has to offer. Here are a few examples of the flora—click on the image to see the full size version. Along with poached eggs, beautiful gardens, and socialized healthcare, what more could one ask for?