My daughter (13 month old) has started forming her first words. Of course there is the usual "Da!" which is also a german word ("There!") but she does not use it consistently and in a meaningfull way. The first word she DOES use consistently and in the context of food, and in only that context, is "More!" (or "Mehr!" in german). Usually she points on the table in front of her where she expects the food to show up, now!

I have no idea from where/whom she got that attitude.

This seems to be a happy day for Debian. It certainly gave me the warm fuzzies when I read people's reactions to the Slashdot item, the steering committee, Madduck's and Joeyh's reflections on how things can work and some comments on IRC. It pleased me enough to get some new bloging infrastructure going in order to be able to chipe in.

There definitely is hope for Debian and change for the better is possible (and actually happens), as seen in the improved climate on IRC.

As with every change for the better, there is need of "positive crisis awareness" in order to reflect on possible changes, build momentum to overcome the status quo and implement changes in order to improve the situation step by step.

Crisis awareness is the awareness that there is a problem that needs solving. In contrast to negative crisis awareness, where one is paralyzed and unable to act on the danger and basically rolls over and dies, positive crisis awareness motivates to initiate change in order to avoid the crash and burn point and turn it into an opportunity of improvement, perhaps.

And exactly this is what I see emerge more and more: People who are no longer satisfied with the current situation and formulate thoughts on how to achieve improvement. A year ago we saw this with the hostile climate on mailing lists and IRC, now people realize that Debian has a lack of leadership, and that this is actually a problem.

We are still not the welcoming and friendly project we ought to be, but we are less hostile already and people know in what direction they want to move in the future (the more friendly one, thankfully). People have realized that hostility and pissing contests are evil and not a sign of l33tness, as some might have thought some time ago. But a culture change is happening, and if we stay on top of the issue we have a very good chance to not only omit the negative, hostile things we used to do but also come up with actively inviting and friendly things we can do.

The same is happening now (on a lesser scale so far) with the leadership area. The great thing is that if Debian takes up its issues and continuously improves there is hardly a limit to its potential. Not the first and strongest, but be the most persistent and patient will win in the end. And if we have incentive and urge to change we might just manage to keep up a continuous improvement process.

I think *that* incentive is the greatest thing we have to thank Ubuntu for.

Today I watched the "An Inconvenient Truth" film which was recommened to us at the foo camp preceeding Euro OSCon. Steve had already blogged about it shortly. While i enjoy the summer evenings at the end of september that I experienced this week, I think we are heading for very serious and even hard times. I would guess that we all will soon have to cut back on many areas of our compfortable lifes: less warm showers, more sweaters in winter, not keeping your computer on 24/7, no more car, no more flights. I have been thinking on where to move, given the delicate position that europe is in with its dependency on the gulf stream.

Incidently i also ran into this cool website today, which makes one consequence of global warming a little bit more realistic. If you are lucky your house in the middle of the city will be beach front property soon.

Yet another example of that positive crisis awareness is needed. Act today and we might just get a major global crisis. Don't act and we might get mass extinction.

This is the reverse lazyweb: I want to share what I learned, since many have similar considerations.

Some time ago I started to use the c't hotline to inform myself before buying computer stuff. Currently I am looking for a new notebook, since my wife poured tea into her old one and the keyboard stopped working.

So today I talked with one of the notebook experts at c't. My criteria were: "small", "long battery lifetime", "reliable", "good warranty", "excellent keyboard" and "works well with Linux".

He recommended that I should look at business notebooks as they came usually in higher quality and with better warranty. He pointed out a downward trend at Lenovo, which seems to produce lower quality machines nower days. Both warranty and technology seem to get reduced in quality. Asus machines break more often then average and their repair/warranty service is bad and improves only slowly. Dell machines break more frequently but their service is good. Linux compatibility seems good at Fujitsu-Siemens notebooks, which seems to have good service/warranty, too. Keyboards have improved a lot over the last few years and he encountered no bad keyboard at any decently priced notebook nower days.

I remember that joeyh and fabbe independently from each other picked a Fujitsu-Siemens. I will look into their offerings now.

Dear Lazyweb!

I would like to find the symbolic solution for XT0, YT0, dSX, dSY, qX and qY to this set of equations, in a numerically stable way:

XT0 + real_X1*dSX*Cos[qX] + real_Y1*dSY*Sin[qY] == own_X1,
YT0 - real_X1*dSX*Sin[qX] + real_Y1*dSY*Cos[qY] == own_Y1,
XT0 + real_X2*dSX*Cos[qX] + real_Y2*dSY*Sin[qY] == own_X2,
YT0 - real_X2*dSX*Sin[qX] + real_Y2*dSY*Cos[qY] == own_Y2,
XT0 + real_X3*dSX*Cos[qX] + real_Y3*dSY*Sin[qY] == own_X3,
YT0 - real_X3*dSX*Sin[qX] + real_Y3*dSY*Cos[qY] == own_Y3


Mathematica seems to not come back at all when asked for a solution, Maxima (in Debian) refuses cooporation, Maple produces a solution by approximating Sin and Cos with polynoms (which is not good enough for the whole range of [-Pi .. +Pi] and furthermore is not numerically stable.

This is for finding the parameters for the transformation between two different coordinate systems of maps. The real_* and the own_* coordinates are three identical points on both maps. A numeric solution (with simulated annealing from the gnu scientific library) exists but seems to be not exact enough. See also http://www.posc.org/Epicentre.2_2/DataModel/ExamplesofUsage/eu_cs35.html

An old friend who is a sucker for weird sounds (he listens to Heino) today sent me the North Korea's national anthem. Having read a bit about the country, I have a hard time imagining anyone there singing such a jubilous song. You can listen to it here.

Several people's blogs have appeared recently in the planet with the different points of view on the different candidates and various rants regarding the DPL office - Well... This time I have not yet been able even to read the platforms of the different candidates (of course, I plan on doing it quite soon), but I follow the posts on the subject with interest. The most interesting post so far is Martin Michlmayr's - Of course, being an ex-DPL, there are important experiences he has that few people do.
A couple of days ago I was talking with one of the candidates with whom I have talked and worked in the past. My main gripe with the whole process is that, although as a project we need a leader, an easily identifiable single contact person who knows the teams, knows the people and can speak on the project's behalf, I have not seen much being done by the past DPLs towards the inside of the project. Of course, it's easy to bitch around when I sit in the comfortable silent majority most of the time - Currently I am devoting quite less time and effort to Debian than what I should, although it is true that setting up Debconf6 in Oaxtepec takes a _lot_ of time and that it will facilitate much more interaction between Debian people (which is good for the project) than me working more and better on my packages and on doing interesting team work.
Maybe something that would make me to vote for somebody, more than the most coherent and best written platforms, is for the candidate to admit the lack of importance of the role to most of the project - or to defend how to make it again a leadership position.
Following Martin's post, maybe we do need a Bruce-like leader who tells us what to do and drives the project. Or maybe not, maybe we could do better with reducing the importance of the post towards the inside and emphasizing it's mostly a confidence vote for somebody to speak on behalf of us all. And even this would be difficult, as a sad flame in debian-private some months ago reminds us that nobody can speak on behalf os the whole project because somebody might be offended by the viewpoint taken by the official?
I am no big believer in democracies. I do think that sticking to much to a democratic constitution (where democracies are very scarce in the Free Software world, where projects tend to have benevolent dictators grown by meritocracy instead of democratically elected) and allowing everybody to voice too much the same opinion in our regular flamewars has lead Debian to the communications swamp it is right now. We do have very effective small teams (quoting Andreas Schuldei' term for the phenomenon that seems to work best and appear naturally in our project), integration between teams is quite good... But having 1000+ people sitting in a big room and shouting at each other is plainly not fun. Maybe we should stop pretending that there is no cabal (forgod'ssake...) and admit that there is and it works, and we (the drones) implement Their decisions? Nah... That sounds it would only create more flamewars.
But seriously: Towards the inside, do we need a leader? Have we ever used it?

Andreas Schuldei starts by complaining this is not the kind of setting he expected.It was not a BOF meant to be open to everyone.

Photography. My roommate Aigars is quite a photographer, he came with his digital SLR and several lenses, an item I've lusted after for some time. Large apertures and manual controls are what every real photographer demands, and digital SLR's deliver. I told him my idea for a small sky recording station so that people could make movies of the paths that the stars take, and how it changes over the year. Ultimately I want a network of these stations, all uploading their pictures so I can examine them for anamolies. This is a hard problem, because stars are so faint. Aigars said to take a picture of the whole sky, a 1000 millimeter lense and a $50 computer scanner with some modifications should be able to do the job. Programming. Finally made progress in programming, now that I know where everything is in Oaxtepec. My IRC bot didn't handle things gracefully when the server refused to let it log in, but that is fixed now. Tomorrow I hope to add multi-channel support. Reading through the new IRC RFC, I have the information I need to make a proper configuration file for the software. The design is sketched out and feels right, finally. Weekend vs. Weekday. Oaxtepec is much quieter today. Saturday and Sunday there were far more vendors on the street, and they stayed open much later. Today everything closed down around 6pm when the church bell tolled the summons to mass. I couldn't find the coconut man; maybe he only comes on weekends. Half the stalls at the mercado were empty. During the weekend, the resort was full of vacationers swimming, barbecuing, picnicing, playing soccer, or just sunbathing while the kids ran around. Everyone, young and old, but mostly young adult men and women, were running around in bathing trunks and bikinis. The happy noises were great to wake up to. This morning the sounds were quieter, but still present. The swimming pools here get a lot of use. During the weekend, there was a large tent where some ladies were giving body massages for $10. I didn't see them today. Probably they will be here again next weekend. Food. Tried a dish called "pancita" today. I saw people eating noodles and assumed pancita was a noodle dish, like the Filipino pancit. But no. It is a type of tomato soup filled with chopped up beef rind and chunks of fat. For only P31, I bought a small chicken. It was perfectly marinated and roasted, better than Kentucky Fried Chicken. I paid the money, and the shopkeeper brought out a pair of scissors and cut the chicken into all the appropriate pieces for easy eating, just like they do in Korea (viz the use of scissors) Church. Attended mass tonight, since the church was so close. The church is magnificent. It really is a cathedral inside; to see the ceiling you have to crane your neck. And when you do, you see paintings of angels playing instruments. I went into the nave to pray, and saw a giant depiction of the ark of the covenant. It was very realistic, with the cherubim covering it with their wings. And above it, was a painting of the wine and bread offering, which were offered on the altar daily. The priest was a black man from Illinois; after a bit of attempting to speak to each other in Spanish, we realized we both spoke English, and got on famously from then on. The cathedral opens at 10am, closes for lunch from 2pm-4pm, and then is open until mass is finished. This must be what the church was like in the beginning; a place where believers could drop in any time to be with others of their kind, to meet, eat, drink, discuss, and elevate each other to a higher plane. I am sad that we don't have this in Canada. Debian. There were some Debian talks and presentations, but nothing too interesting. Finally met Mark Shuttleworth, Anthony Towns, Manoj Srivastava, and Roblimo Miller. Clifford Beshers of Linspire almost convinced me to look into the Haskell computer language. I couldn't quite tell what Haskell has that LISP doesn't, apart from forcing strong types on you and being very fast and efficient in benchmarks tests. Marga didn't give me meal tickets before, so Graham printed some up for me today. By pure serendipity, I sat at dinner with the only other Canadian developers at the conference; Simon Law and Eric Dorland from Montreal. The drinking started at 11pm and is still going strong; the atmosphere is very convivial right now, but half of us are still tapping away at our keyboards.

I’m one of those waiting until the last call for votes to send the ballot: - - -=-=-=-=-=- Don’t Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
52717dc0-26e3-4337-a88b-cc2c260fcb51
[ 3 ] Choice 1: Jeroen van Wolffelaar
[ 4 ] Choice 2: Ari Pollak
[ 2 ] Choice 3: Steve McIntyre
[ 1 ] Choice 4: Anthony Towns
[ 3 ] Choice 5: Andreas Schuldei
[ 6 ] Choice 6: Jonathan aka Ted Walther
[ 4 ] Choice 7: Bill Allombert
[ 5 ] Choice 8: None Of The Above
- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don’t Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Good luck to everyone on the election!

- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don t Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
52717dc0-26e3-4337-a88b-cc2c260fcb51
[ 3 ] Choice 1: Jeroen van Wolffelaar
[ 5 ] Choice 2: Ari Pollak
[ 1 ] Choice 3: Steve McIntyre
[ 3 ] Choice 4: Anthony Towns
[ 4 ] Choice 5: Andreas Schuldei
[ 7 ] Choice 6: Jonathan aka Ted Walther
[ 2 ] Choice 7: Bill Allombert
[ 6 ] Choice 8: None Of The Above
- - -=-=-=-=-=- Don t Delete Anything Between These Lines =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

This year, we're dealing with the worst DPL election I've known. Despite the high number of candidates, none of them makes me really feel like voting for him.

Summarizing the general tendencies of the candidates:

• Jonathan Walther is a populist who's saying anything that could bring him any vote, after having spread infamous political ideas on Debian lists two years ago.


• Andreas Schuldei is a pure teletubby, fed with rainbows and sunshine.


• Steve McIntyre talks like something that's between a teletubby and a commercial guy with ultra-bright shining smile.


• Ari Pollak likes cats and Samuel L. Jackson. There can be nothing wrong with such a guy.


• Anthony Towns has a very appealing platform, but his past behavior when occupying a key position makes me very reluctant to see him as the DPL.


• Jeroen van Wolffelaar wants to force developers to be nice to each other. Teletubbies can also have fascist tendencies.


• Bill is a very nice guy with good ideas. He's also the only candidate who hasn't voted for option 2 in the GFDL GR - read, the only one who seems to be interested in truly free software. Sadly, he's not very good with public relations.

That makes only 2 candidates I can decently put above "None of the above": Bill and Zeke the cat. I know many developers disagree with my analysis for the other ones, but when filling your ballot, you shouldn't forget that behind their words, there is what they will actually do if elected.

Several people's blogs have appeared recently in the planet with the different points of view on the different candidates and various rants regarding the DPL office - Well... This time I have not yet been able even to read the platforms of the different candidates (of course, I plan on doing it quite soon), but I follow the posts on the subject with interest. The most interesting post so far is Martin Michlmayr's - Of course, being an ex-DPL, there are important experiences he has that few people do.
A couple of days ago I was talking with one of the candidates with whom I have talked and worked in the past. My main gripe with the whole process is that, although as a project we need a leader, an easily identifiable single contact person who knows the teams, knows the people and can speak on the project's behalf, I have not seen much being done by the past DPLs towards the inside of the project. Of course, it's easy to bitch around when I sit in the comfortable silent majority most of the time - Currently I am devoting quite less time and effort to Debian than what I should, although it is true that setting up Debconf6 in Oaxtepec takes a _lot_ of time and that it will facilitate much more interaction between Debian people (which is good for the project) than me working more and better on my packages and on doing interesting team work.
Maybe something that would make me to vote for somebody, more than the most coherent and best written platforms, is for the candidate to admit the lack of importance of the role to most of the project - or to defend how to make it again a leadership position.
Following Martin's post, maybe we do need a Bruce-like leader who tells us what to do and drives the project. Or maybe not, maybe we could do better with reducing the importance of the post towards the inside and emphasizing it's mostly a confidence vote for somebody to speak on behalf of us all. And even this would be difficult, as a sad flame in debian-private some months ago reminds us that nobody can speak on behalf os the whole project because somebody might be offended by the viewpoint taken by the official?
I am no big believer in democracies. I do think that sticking to much to a democratic constitution (where democracies are very scarce in the Free Software world, where projects tend to have benevolent dictators grown by meritocracy instead of democratically elected) and allowing everybody to voice too much the same opinion in our regular flamewars has lead Debian to the communications swamp it is right now. We do have very effective small teams (quoting Andreas Schuldei' term for the phenomenon that seems to work best and appear naturally in our project), integration between teams is quite good... But having 1000+ people sitting in a big room and shouting at each other is plainly not fun. Maybe we should stop pretending that there is no cabal (forgod'ssake...) and admit that there is and it works, and we (the drones) implement Their decisions? Nah... That sounds it would only create more flamewars.
But seriously: Towards the inside, do we need a leader? Have we ever used it?

Since everyone else seems to give their opinion on DPL candidates over at Planet Debian, I'll join the chorus. Since I've met and know most of the candidates, I'll focus on what cannot be in their platform: their personality.

• Jeroen Van Wolffelaar: I've met him in person a few times (at FOSDEM, and at DebConf5 in Helsinki), and his dedication to and passion about Debian is... wonderful. His experience with being in the DPL team last year and his infrastructural involvement in the FTP team should mean that he's quite up to date on Debian's big picture.
That being said, I'm not entirely sure he'd be the perfect DPL candidate. All his passion and dedication aside, he's rather new(ish) to the project (having received his Debian account only one or two years ago, IIRC), and might not have the experience one would expect from someone who's been with Debian for a longer time. That's not a fatal flaw, but it does mean I'm a bit... reserved as to his candidacy. I'll still rank him pretty high, but not as number one.
• Ari Pollak: ha. ha. hah.
• Steve McIntyre: Also someone I know from both previous FOSDEMs and DebConf5. The impression I have from Steve is that he's someone who has a very (very) clear view on how Free Software in general, and the Debian project specifically, works. He's a very nice guy, easy to work with in the encounters I've had with him, and has the sort of calm but focussed attitude you'd expect from someone who's done a lot of things in his time, and therefore isn't all that easily impressed by new but short-lived manies anymore. Which, I think, is a virtue for a leader; a leader should be focused on the long-term benefits, not on the short-term fun. I expect him to be able to disconnect himself from immediate issues, instead having a look at the big picture when required.
I think the message is clear: Steve is going to get my #1 vote.
• Anthony Towns: a difficult one to form an opinion about. Aj has been a long-time valuable and dedicated contributor to the project; for that, he deserves (and receives) my respect and praise. He can be expected to know the project inside out, which is something very helpful for a DPL.
However, I don't think it's a secret that aj and I disagree on certain issues of the social aspects of the Debian project. Since his platform specifically mentions those things, I don't think I'll be ranking him very high on my list. I won't object to him becoming DPL, however, and I'll still be happy should he be our DPL. Just not as much as if it were Steve. Additionally, Anthony has a bit of a tendency to be imposing his view on others, which I think is a bad quality for a DPL. He's aware of that, however, and claimed he'll try to avoid making that mistake, which is helpful. Oh, and what's with the singing? ;-)
• Andreas Schuldei: When Andreas mentions in his platform that he's got great leadership capabilities, he isn't lying, as everyone looking at how DebConf is organized can see. However, the few times that I met him in person, there was something subconsciously that now makes me think twice to vote for him. I don't know what it is. I'll still rank him pretty high, but not as number 1.
• Jonathan Walther: This guy needs a reality check. No, really.
• Bill Allombert: Also someone whom I've met a number of times at FOSDEM. Bill is a bit of a modest, timid guy with a passion for Debian and Free Software. Though I respect him as a person and for the work he does in Debian, I don't think he has the perfect personality to become a DPL. No offense, Bill; but you'll end up rather low on my list.

It's that time time of the year again when the Debian Project gathers to elect a new leader. This year there are a record seven candidates. I just spent a couple of hours reading their platforms and a lot (not all, my eyes glazed over after a bit) of the discussions on debian-vote and these are my initial impressions. Jeroen Van Wolffelaar: Jeroen seems to have a good grasp of where the bottlenecks in the Debian system are. He supports the project Scud idea which has not really worked well so far (as far as I can see) but claims he knows what is wrong and how to fix it. He is young and still a student which might hamper his ability to travel which is a big part of being DPL. Astutely notes that Debian needs to stand out from the crowd more. Zeke the Cat: Does he have the balls to be an effective leader? Steve McIntyre: Not really high profile within the project as far as I can tell. Will he be able to "herd cats"? His platform is mainly about reforming Debians' social structure so this is a real concern. The idea of imposing some level of performance standard on developers is intriguing but he is rather short of details on how it is supposed to happen. Anthony Towns: Anthony is heavily involved in such roles as ftpmaster and release manager. It would be a shame if being DPL actually meant he would have less time for that sort of thing. He claims to be running mainly to introduce some new ideas. So hopefully he won't mind if we keep him in the boiler room instead of, um, athwart the foc'sle? Andreas Schuldei I like the idea of frequent face to face meetings. Andreas is a good fundraiser so if anyone can make this happen, he can. But in the absence of support from an eccentric billionaire is this really feasible? Also a member of project Scud. Johnathan 'Ted' Walther: Retar-ted. Bill Allombert: Also suffers from being relatively unknown (IMO.) A bit low on ideas and basically wants to maintain the status quo as far as social issues go. I can't consider him a viable contender. At the moment I'm leaning towards voting for Jeroen but Andreas and Anthony are still in the running. The IRC debate should be interesting.