Search Results: "Christian Perrier"

1 January 2014

Christian Perrier: [life] [running] 2013 summary

Yet another yearly summary of my running activities. As I already explained, now running took precedence over free software activities as you'll notice below... So, what happened on that front in 2013 for running bubulle? I finally managed to run 4603 km during the year, which is 1700km more than 2012. Definitively an explosion as I actually ran over 12.5km every day. I added to this 206km with my moutain bike, all of them achieved during December while I was (and still am) suffering from an injury (fatigue fracture). These 4603km were covered in 458 hours, so a bit over 19 days running and very very slightly over 10km/h. It seems that my favourite race type choice is obvious, here: I'm, by very far, privileging, trail races, either in the country or forests in my neighbourhood....or in moutains. As a result, also, the combined positive climb is faily high, too. Though harder to estimate than distance and time, I end up with about 72,900 meters positive climb (to be compared to last year's 33,000 meters...:-)). Clearly, my summer in moutains made the difference, here.... The longest time period without running, this year, has been 3 days. That's really insane...:-). Particularly when one notices that I happened to run *every day* during 40 consecutive days at one moment, between August and September. Who says that running is indeed a full part of my life? To be honest, I actually didn't run since December 11th (while writing this on January 1st) because of my tibia injury...but I did bike, so that's still some kind of sports, right? Indeed, there have been 282 days in this year where I ran (or biked) at least once. Last year was 205 so....drug addiction is still increasing. Most active month: November with 471km. Less active month: February with 334km (which is indeed more than 2012 most active month..:-)) This year was also a year of records: I ran 14 official races during the year : How about next^W this year? Well, my season's peaks are currently being secured: No marathon as of now...:-). Or, indeed one (Paris in April), but more for fun : I hope to complete it in....less than 5 hours...but still in Spongebob Squarepants suit. You may want to watch TV on April 6th..:-) As I wrote last year : all this of course is assuming that no injury comes up. I currently need to recover from the current one, though it doesn't seem as bad as it seemed a few weeks ago. We'll see on January 1st 2015...:-)

30 December 2013

Christian Perrier: [running] New about my injury

Latest news about my recent injury after last race: the fatigue fracture was really a small one and is not visible on radiography, even after 3 weeks. I'm waiting for the sports doctor advice next week before resuming running...or still wait for a few weeks and still stick to mountain biking. I can tell that not running for more than a few days is really frustrating, particularly when visiting my relatives in St-Etienne, where there are moutains and great trails.

21 December 2013

Christian Perrier: [life] Running update December 21st 2013

Last time I blogged about my running activities was after DebConf 13 in Switzerland, back in August. At that time, I just completed two great moutain races in one month (Mont-Blanc Marathon, then EDF Cenis Tour, one being 42km and 2500m positive climb and the other one being 50km and 2700m). EDF Cenis Tour was my best result overall in a trail race, being ranked 40th out of more than 300 runners and 3rd in my age category (men 50-59). So, in late August, I was preparing for my "autumn challenge", a succession of 3 long distance races in a row: Quite a challenge, indeed, to run 3 long distance events in a row, with only 3 weeks between them. Preparation for all this was mostly piling up kilometers over kilometers. First in road and flat training, when the goal was the marathon. So, after piking to 471 kilometers in August (more than 15km/day), I ran 452 in September and again 420 in October. During that preparation, I also broke my personal best in half-marathon, down to 1h34. I therefore was perfectly fit for the Toulouse Marathon and, indeed, unsurprisingly, I achieved my first goal by breaking my personal best down to.....3h25' and a few seconds. Really a great achievement and something that gives me a little hope of being able to qualify for Boston Marathon (though chances are a bit low again: I can apply because I'm below 3h30 but the chances that I get a seat are not very big). Recovery from the marathon was easy, thanks to the big preparation and then the second race came very quickly: Le Puy-Firminy. My third participation to this night race, organised by a cousin of mine. I completed the first one in 9h15....then, last year, the second one in 8h25. And, this year, well......7h15 and 26th out of over 200 runners. Huge, great and stunning performance for me, really. Everything went so well that I can't remember any moment where I had any doubt. And I will indeed remember the last kilometer ran along with my sister (who is also a runner) and where she.....couldn't follow me while I was sprinting at about 14km/h after 68 kilometers. Definitely my best race this year. And then came the last challenge: Saint lyon. If you never saw it, you have no idea. While Le Puy-Firminy features 200 runners and 150 walkers over 68 kilometers, this one features 6000 runners for 75 kilometers. Six THOUSAND. The vision of a light snake, kilometers long, over the hills in St-Etienne neighbourhood, was stunning. Moreover, we ran that one, with snow, ice and cold (down to -10 C at the highest point of the race). So, here, the goal was running with my friend and share the joy of the race with her, all along...and eventually beat her personal best on this race (11h15 last year, while the race was 5km shorter). We made it really well, despite the crowd and the fact that it doesn't allow running one's real speed. Despite the ice and snow that makes downhills really.....interesting. Despite dolors I had in my legs at the end of the race. We completed the race in 10h38, quite away from our secret goal (9h30) but that one was really ambitious...:-). And we crossed the finish line together, hand in hand, for the third time of our running life. And we shared tears at the end of the race. And we shared many great moments over that week-end. Moments that let one remember what the definition of "friendship" is. I found my "running sister" in Sabine and this is something we really appreciate and is hard to explain. All this would make a great conclusion if.....I hadn't injured my leg with this accumulation. Indeed, as one might expect after such a hard challenge, I discovered during the days that followed the last race, that I have a fatigue fracture on my left tibia. As a consequence, I need to stop running for about 6 weeks....which you can understand is kinda hard for me. But, guess what? I'm allowed to bike...:-). So, well, I repaired my old moutain bike and now, I'm biking instead of running...:-) Finally, 2013 has been my greatest running year, again. 4700 kilometers ran over the year, nearly 13km/day in average. 14 races (3 road races and 11 trail races). 463 hours spent running and 72,000meters climbed (about 8 Sagarmatha, aka Everest, climbed). 2 Personal Best performances. 2 long distance races which I ran in more than 1 hour less then last year. 2 new moutain races. And first running injury...:-) 2014 will be different. I will run again some races I alreay ran such as Paris 80km Ecotrail or Le Puy Firminy (4th time in a row). But I also hope to be able to run one of the Ultra Tour du Mont-Blanc races in late August in Chamonix (need to be picked up at the bib lottery for this to happen). And probably some other interesting challenges such as running the Paris Marathon dressed as SpongeBob....one week after running the 80km Ecotrail....:-) But you'll see that in my next running update, of course. Merry New Year and Happy Christmas!

Christian Perrier: So, what's up with bubulle in Debian?

This is the end of the year and time for me to look back and summarize what happened to my Debian life during 2013. In short, it clearly seems that this year is the "year after peak of involvment" year. Up to 2010 included, my involvment in Debian constantly increased. 2011 and 2012 have seen some kind of stagnation with still some high involvment in some areas (i18n obviously, DebConf-related stuff, font packaging...) but already some reduction in others (D-I for instance...where the overall involvment of Debian developers is nos quite low, Kibi excepted). But, clearly, in 2013, something changed. And, indeed, it's easy to see what happened. In 2007, I started to motivate myself to resume my practice of sports (I used to be a well-trained volleyball player back in 80's) and I started running. More and more and more and more. 992km in 2008, 1700km in 2009 (and my first marathon), 2200km in 2010 (and my first ultras), 2500km in 2011 (and my first 80km), 2900km in 2012 (and more ultras) and....about 4700km in 2013 (with many many firsts). What changed is now obvious. Running and sports (and related activites such as a lot of socializing with other runners) took over free software activities. Last summer and autumn made it clear, indeed. While I was attending my 10th DebConf in a row (I think we're very few people to have achieved this), it was not my summer's "peak". I spent some great time in Switzerland, still enjoyed a lot meeting again with old and new friends from all over the world. I did some good hacking and achived quite some good things over there. But, still, that was not what I will keep from this summer because.....I had two great moutain races in July and August and *this* is what I'll keep. So, here we are: I'm reducing my involvment in Debian, obviously. Some things are handed over to other people, formally or informally. Some other things will indeed wait for someone to pick them up....or might slowly die as it sometimes happens in this project. I will very probably not attend DebConf14 in Portland even though I have been among the people who were enthusiastic when we picked that bid. But the dates conflict with the Ultra Tour du Mont-Blanc races in Chamonix, where I'll hopefully try to complete my first "over 100km" race in moutains. I will probably decline being part of the Debconf bids team for DC15 as well as the sponsoring team. I nearly stopped working on Samba packages and will not attend SambaXP in May. That's my challenge now. I don't want to completely quit this project and it's indeed harder than it seems, when one's involvment is going down. I'm currently trying to find the right balance to still stay involved in what has been a great part of my life in the last 15-20 years. For instance, I'll try to successfully mentor two applicants from the Outreach Program for Women. Or still continue to work occasionnally on font packages. Or still continue to manage D-I i18n. But you'll be seeing (and hearing) me less. The challenge is to still continue seeing and hearing me about Debian and free software and it's indeed less easy than it seems. I hope I'll succeed.

24 November 2013

Christian Perrier: Less IRC...

Over last months, I notice I'm not that active on IRC. Still, my always connected IRSSI client was constantly connected to 12+ channels. I just decided to reduce this to channels where I'm still (loosely) active and maybe less likely to miss highlights (or answer then 3 days later). So, I'll stick to the following: And that's all. So, well, if you want to catch me, you know where to go. But, really, mail is much more preferrable to reach me out nowadays.

20 November 2013

Christian Perrier: Bug #730000

Yet another round number for a translator..:-) Am rico Monteiro reported Debian bug #730000 on Wednesday November 20th, against the bilibop package. One of our recurrent debconf translations bug report Bug #720000 was reported as of August 17th: 3 months and 3 days for 10,000 bugs. Slight slowdown in the bug reporting rate after a small acceleration last time. So, we're still on our way to bug #800000 and bug #1000000.

31 August 2013

Christian Perrier: DebConf 13: running outcome

This DebConf has been the first one where I ran every day. That proved to be kinda hard on some mornings, but I found a way to circumvent that by proposing group runs at the end of the relevant days. In total, I managed to run 12 days in a row, for a grand total of 186.88km, in 21h22', for a total height difference of 6972m. In short, I nearly climbed Mount Aconcagua, Americas highest peak..:-) Most of these runs were quite slow ones and rather "short" ones (around 15km), because of the nature of the paths around (nearly impossible to find something flat except by running around the football field). The longest run was for the DayTrip, with about 25km in about 4 hours (including some pauses) and 1600m height difference. I'm definitely working on my moutain running skills more than marathon and other kind of "speed" races. That followed a great results for my last race, the "EDF Cenis Tour" 50km trail race in Lanslebourg, French Alps, where I completed the race in 6h38, nearly the sametime than Mont-Blanc marathon, 1 month earlier....which was 8 kilometers shorter. I'm apparently ready for very long distance mountain races, now, as it seems. Thanks you DebConf 13 organizers for choosing such a great locations for us, crazy runners. And, despite that, my next running goal is a "classical" marathon, the Toulouse marathon in late October, where I expect breaking the 3h30 barrier, that would indeed be a qualifier for the Boston Marathon, one of my dreams for the future (and, yes, it is still a dream, despite this year's events).

Christian Perrier: DebConf 13: hacking outcome

I *did* some hacking at DebConf, as usual. For once, I had no TODO list: after all, I never complete these, so why make one? Still, I participated to discussions around samba packaging, mostly animated by Ivo De Decker and I think we're making good progress towards samba 4.x packages. The road is long, quite complicated, but we now have a stronger team, with a very active Ivo, Jeroen Dekkers who officially joined, Steve Langasek who still cherishes one of his pet packages (and even branched in our git with the Ubuntu packages). Great work and thanks to Ivo for pushing this forward. I also worked quite actively on the migration of fonts packages to git (I now reached the point where I'm more comfortable with git than SVN, yes, everything can happen). These packages were modernized at the same time and checked for new upstream versions (I have to say that few of these fonts had new upstream versions, indeed). We unfortunately found no time to have a good font BoF in Vaumarcus, indeed...but I'm not sure we would have many things to say. The work is done and done well, in this team. Some progress was made, also, for restoring a working "monolithic" build of D-I. This build gathers together all udebs from unstable, which means it offers a D-I image that uses ALL udebs from nustable.....which is not the default of other images. This would be very helpful for translators who want to check their work as soon as possible. In the future, with a Jenkins task that would build each package at each commit and then build a monolithic image, we could have a way to provide a tes snapshot of D-I git repos.....which could help catching more bugs (or more of my stupid mistakes). So, in general, I consider this a quite successful DebConf when it comes at "real" production.

17 August 2013

Christian Perrier: More French pages than English pages on Debian web site

As of today, thanks to the tremendous work of the French localization team in Debian, there are more web pages in French than there are in English, on Debian web site. How can this happen? Indeed, the Debian web site is not always made of pages primarily written in English. There are some French, Spanish, Chinese pages. These are not translated into English because.....there is no translation team for English (the debian-l10n-english mailing list more acts as a review board). So, given that French translators nearly translated ALL English web pages and because there are quite a few French pages, we currently have 5802 web pages in French, while there are only 5801 in English. The French Cabal definitely reached its goal: we have the DPL, we have the web site. Toutes vos possessions nous appartiennent d sormais. I'm now preparing a GR in order to turn French into the official communication language in Debian. PS: merci Thomas Vincent qui a largement contribu ce succ s ces derniers jours !

Christian Perrier: Bug #720000

Laurent Bigonville reported Debian bug #720000 on Saturday August 17th 2013, against the drizzle package. This bug is already marked pending by Tobias Frost, the package maintainer. Bug #710000 was reported as of May 27th: 2 months and 21 days for 10,000 bugs. For once, this is a rate acceleration which we can probably explain by the release of wheezy and the work strongly resumed by many maintainers for the release of jessie. It is indeed interesting to see that this 720000th bug report happened nearly on Debian's 20th birthday. To make it short, we could then say that Debian had 36,000 bug reports every year in average (which is not exactly true as the BTS records start in 1996). Funnily also, this is the first time since I'm doing this recurrent post every 10,000 bugs that one happens *during* a DebConf, a few hours before DebConf 13 officially ends up.

27 July 2013

Christian Perrier: [life] Running update July 27th 2013: Bubulle now runs in moutains

My last running update was sent after I had a great April month with two successful trail races (35km then 44km). The next target was Mont-Blanc marathon in Chamonix valley in early July, so it's time for me to send a new update before summer. May and June was mostly training. Huge training. Very long distances with 375km in May and over 430 in June (breaking my former monthly record by over 50 kilometers). Yes, that means over 14 kilometers every day..:-) I indeed achieved that with my "go to work partly by running" habits, which are now deeply included in my daily schedule. Much more convenient than bus ride (with the typical random schedules of RATP, which French people translate by "Rentre Avec Tes Pieds" or "Come back home by walking"....which is exactly what I'm doing). With such training (sometimes including extra rides in the forests, with short but steep ups and downs)....I was well prepared for THE early summer goal : Marathon du Mont-Blanc in Chamonix (not Ultra Trail du Mont-blanc : this one, I'm not ready for....yet).. My first mountain trail race, and what race! Imagine 42km in the moutain lovers heaven, namely the Chamonix Valley, with the Mont-Blanc, Aiguille Verte, Aiguille du Midi, Aiguilles Rouges, etc. above your head. Of course, not only in the valley but goind up and down "slightly"....in short 2200 meters positive climb..:-) I ran it with a female friend of mine, who I met in local races and through runners web forums. Sabine has about the same running skills than me and we developed a good and nice friendship, sharing our love for running in the nature. So, during May and June, we decided to run this race together as we were both registered for it. A first trial in a local 35km trail race two weeks before the MMB was very successful. We ended up in 3h40 and Sabine was ranked 5th female runner. And, moreover, we had a tremendous pleasure by crossing the finishing line together. So, we did it again in Chamonix. And, hell, we did it well: I had set the goal to 6 hours and 30 minutes and we completed the race in..... 6 hours and 34 minutes. Much much better than I and she would have expected. And, believe me, crossing the finishing line was again a special moment, particularly because the crowd at the end of this race make it look like l'Alpe d'Huez on the Tour de France. And, this on a wonderful sunny day, arriving at Planpraz, facing the Mont-Blanc. If you've ever been to Chamonix, you know what I mean. So, first moutain trail and, hell, not the last one! For those of you who can read French...or just want to see some pictures of a running bubulle, here is the link to the story. And these 42 kilometers were indeed so well done that the day after, while coming down from the famous Aiguille du Midi with Elisabeth (who came with me to Chamonix, of course)...I decided to run down from the cable car intermediate stop (2300m altitude) to Chamonix (1050m). Over 1200 meters down in 48 minutes... :-). Just a bit slower than the cable car....:) The remaining of July saw me again running back and forth to work and I'm indeed about to break my monthly record, eventually reaching 450 kilometers in one month and only two days NOT running in the whole month. Yeah, crazy. The upcoming Sunday, August 4th, just before going to Debconf 13, I'll spend a few days in Lanslebourg and will be running the EDF Cenis Tour trail, for 50 kilometers and 2600 meters positive climb. This time, a very "small" race, with no more than 150 runners. So, that will be another experience by running nearly entirely alone between 1400 and 2700 meters altitude. I'll post the outcome (or you'll probably hear about it at DC13....). See you, hopefully not in 3 months, for another update about running Bubulle.

Christian Perrier: Developers per country (July 2013)

This is time again for my annual report about the number of developers per country. This is now the fifth edition of this report, after the 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009 editions. So, here we are with the July 2013 version, sorted by the ratio of *active* developers per million population for each country.
Act: number of active developers
Dev: total number of developers
A/M: number of active devels per million pop.
D/M: number of devels per million pop.
2009: rank in 2009
2010: rank in 2010
2011: rank in 2011 (June)
2011: rank in 2012 (June)
2013: rank now
Code Name Population Act Dev Dev Act/Million Dev/Million 2009 2010 June 2011 June 2012 July 2013
fi Finland 5259250 19 31 3,61 5,89 1 1 1 1 1
ie Ireland 4670976 12 15 2,57 3,21 13 9 6 2 2
ch Switzerland 7870134 20 27 2,54 3,43 2 2 2 3 3
mq Martinique 396404 1 1 2,52 2,52

3 4 4
se Sweden 9088728 22 37 2,42 4,07 3 6 7 5 5
no Norway 4973029 12 15 2,41 3,02 5 4 4 6 6
nz New Zealand 4331600 10 15 2,31 3,46 4 3 5 7 7
de Germany 81471834 165 235 2,03 2,88 7 7 9 9 8 *
lu Luxemburg 503302 1 1 1,99 1,99 8 5 8 8 9 *
at Austria 8217280 16 26 1,95 3,16 6 8 10 10 10
fr France 65350000 100 130 1,53 1,99 12 12 11 11 11
au Australia 22607571 31 59 1,37 2,61 9 10 12 12 12
be Belgium 11071483 14 17 1,26 1,54 10 11 13 13 13
uk United-Kingdom 62698362 73 114 1,16 1,82 14 14 14 14 14
nl Netherlands 16728091 19 40 1,14 2,39 11 13 15 15 15
ca Canada 33476688 32 61 0,96 1,82 15 15 17 16 16
dk Denmark 5529888 5 10 0,9 1,81 17 17 16 17 17
es Spain 46754784 35 56 0,75 1,2 16 16 19 18 18
it Italy 59464644 36 51 0,61 0,86 23 22 22 19 19
cz Czech Rep 10190213 6 6 0,59 0,59 21 20 21 21 20 *
lt Lithuania 3535547 2 2 0,57 0,57 28 19 20 22 21 *
us USA 313232044 173 378 0,55 1,21 19 21 25 24 22 *
il Israel 7740900 4 6 0,52 0,78 24 24 24 25 23 *
hu Hungary 10076062 5 10 0,5 0,99 18 25 26 20 24 *
hr Croatia 4290612 2 2 0,47 0,47 20 18 18 26 25 *
lv Latvia 2204708 1 1 0,45 0,45 26 26 27 27 26 *
bg Bulgaria 7364570 3 3 0,41 0,41 25 23 23 23 27 *
uy Uruguay 3477778 1 2 0,29 0,58 22 27 28 28 28
jp Japan 127078679 35 50 0,28 0,39 30 28 29 29 29
pl Poland 38441588 10 14 0,26 0,36 29 29 30 30 30
cr Costa Rica 4301712 1 1 0,23 0,23 31 30 31 31 31
by Belarus 9577552 2 2 0,21 0,21 35 36 39 39 32 *
sg Singapore 5183700 1 1 0,19 0,19


33 33
pt Portugal 10561614 2 4 0,19 0,38 27 32 32 34 34
gr Greece 10787690 2 3 0,19 0,28 33 38 34 35 35
sk Slovakia 5477038 1 1 0,18 0,18 32 31 33 36 36
ar Argentina 40677348 6 8 0,15 0,2 34 33 35 32 37 *
rs Serbia 7186862 1 1 0,14 0,14



38 *
tw Taiwan 23040040 3 3 0,13 0,13 37 34 37 37 39 *
br Brazil 192376496 21 23 0,11 0,12 36 35 38 38 40 *
cu Cuba 11241161 1 1 0,09 0,09
38 41 41 41
kr South Korea 48754657 4 6 0,08 0,12 39 39 42 42 42
gt Guatemala 13824463 1 1 0,07 0,07



43 *
ve Venezuela 28047938 2 2 0,07 0,07 40 45 50 49 44 *
ec Ecuador 15007343 1 1 0,07 0,07
40 43 43 45 *
co Colombia 45566856 3 4 0,07 0,09 41 44 46 47 46 *
cl Chile 16746491 1 2 0,06 0,12 42 41 44 44 47 *
za South Africa 50590000 3 10 0,06 0,2 38 48 48 48 48
ru Russia 143030106 7 8 0,05 0,06 43 42 47 45 49 *
mg Madagascar 21281844 1 1 0,05 0,05 44 37 40 40 50 *
ro Romania 21904551 1 2 0,05 0,09 45 43 45 46 51 *
my Malaysia 28250000 1 1 0,04 0,04

49 50 52 *
pe Peru 29907003 1 1 0,03 0,03 46 46 51 51 53 *
tr Turkey 74724269 2 2 0,03 0,03 47 47 52 52 54 *
ua Ukraine 45134707 1 1 0,02 0,02 48 53 58 59 55 *
th Thailand 66720153 1 2 0,01 0,03 50 50 54 54 56 *
eg Egypt 80081093 1 3 0,01 0,04 51 51 55 55 57 *
mx Mexico 112336538 1 1 0,01 0,01 49 49 53 53 58 *
cn China 1344413526 10 14 0,01 0,01 53 53 57 56 59 *
in India 1210193422 9 9 0,01 0,01 52 52 56 57 60 *
sv El Salvador 7066403 0 1 0 0,14

36 58 61 *





























957 1535 62,35%






A few interesting facts:

28 May 2013

Christian Perrier: Bug #710000

Alexander Reichle-Schmehl created Debian bug #710000 on Monday May 27th 2013, against the ftp.debian.org pseudo-package, by cloning a bug report by Rene Engelhard. So, technically speaking, Rene reported this bug....but Tolimar is responsible for that. Bug #700000 was reported as of February 7th: 3 months and 20 days for 10,000 bugs. This is again a VERY significant drop in the bug reporting rate in Debian. Is that related to the release of jessie? We'll see that in the upcoming 4 months.

6 May 2013

Christian Perrier: Wheezy is out: my main box upgraded the same day

As you may have noticed, Debian 7.0 wheezy was released yesterday. And, well, for the first time ever, I upgraded my main server (kheops....running Debian since buzz is out) to the finest and latest release the same day it was released. I didn't run into many problems, just a few glitches (some of them might still get some of our users angry, though). Most noticeably, I couldn't easily update two key packages on this serveer (where I receive all my incoming mail) : roundcube and dovecot. Roundcube indeed lost support for SQLite backend and that was probably the reason for which I falled into the "Could not perform immediat econfiguration" trap for it. The workarounds mentioned in the release notes did not work and the only solution was to remove the Roundcobe packages then re-add them later on. Not a big deal, as Roundcube is only used by my son (who will attend Debconf again, by the way) for the few mail he still receives on kheops. Dovecot was more tricky and my mail server temporarily stopped working for my lapto pto grab mail from it. OK, admitedly, I should have read NEWS.Debian that was explaining all problems one might have, particularly problems related to SSL certificates and the use of the "mail" group. But, indeed, that should have deserved a note in the release notes. After all, we're talking there about an obscure php5-suhosin package, right? :-) Finally, it took me less than 3 hours to upgrade everything with no service interruption for users on my local network, except a 30-minute stop of the IMAP server. I still have to reboot to get the new kernel in operation and voil . Let's now go on our way to jessie!

28 April 2013

Christian Perrier: [life] Running update: January-April...and more.

It seems that I didn't send any update to my international friends for quite a while, at least when it comes at my running activities. So, in short, I ran A LOT during the first months of April 2013. I mean it. As of now (April 28th), I cumulated 1424 kilometers, with a peak in March up to 375 kilometers. So, that's an average 12 kilometers per day. How did I achieve this? Among many other things, by doing part of my commute to work by running, which means 14 kilometers in one day, with a backpack containing everything needed to be dressed "normally" while working, plus my laptop, my rain jacket, etc....so up to 4 kilograms on my shoulders. And, yes, I can use a shower at work and I don't stink all day long! This alone already makes a fairly good training. Of course, all alone, it wouldn't be really funny, so I, of course, add some runs during the week-end, mostly trail running, enjoying the nature around our place. Official races have been mostly trail races during these months. The only road race has been an half-marathon in Bullion, back in February (4th year in a row I'm running this one, which is traditionnaly the "resume road races" competition in the area). I completed it in 1h39, quite close to my PB, even if....that was meant to be a training only. In February, still as a preparation race for Paris Ecotrail, I ran a 20km trail in Auffargis (a neat small village in the neighbourhood of our place), again completing it with great success, with a big negative split (for non hard-core runners, a negative split happens when one runs the second half of a race faster than the first one). All this was in preparation for Paris Ecotrail race, my second time on this 80km race that ends up at Eiffel Tower. Last year, being my first attempt on such distance,, I completed it in 11 hours 5 minutes. To make it short, this year, I finished 579th out of more than 2000 runners, in 9h36. That was indeed a really great result, in line with my 8h15 time back in November for the 70km "Le Puy-Firminy" night race. Moreover, I could indeed recover very quickly : the race was run on a Saturday and I resumed my "commute runs" on Wednesday. The next target were two trail races in April : I originally planned a 44km race on April 21st and finally ended up adding to it a 35km trail race on April 7th (the day of Paris Marathon), only 3 weeks after Ecotrail..:-) And I completed both these with a huge success. Indeed my best trail races ever, again with two negative splits and also a very good place. Indeed, I now usually complete races close to the very first women...:-). So, on April 7th, the trail du Josas (35km, 800m positive climb... which means about the equivalent of a marathon) was completed in 3h40....and last Sunday, the trail des Lavoirs (44km, 1100m positive climb) was completed in 4h40, with the last 2 kilometers being run above 13km/h. Describing how one can feel when "flying" in the very last kilometers of such a long run is just....impossible. Great, great, great memories. Then, during the week following the trail des Lavoirs, I ran 101km in 6 days, confirming that recovery is perfect. So, definitely, I am stunned by what I could achieve during these months, without injury, without big pain. Just good training and good results, without suffering and a giant pleasure. Yes, running is definitely a drug and I'm deeply addicted. Well, the result is, in short, that I feel good and well, so I think I won't stop soon...:-) Next challenge : Mont-Blanc marathon, in Chamonix : 42.195km....and 2500meters positive climb, with 1500 meters negative. Start in Chamonix at 1050m high and end at Planpraz (2050m), facing the Mont-Blanc, with a maximum altitude of 2267m during the race. Quite an interesting "marathon", isn't it? That will be my first race in real mountains...and, I guess not the last one. Target time: 6 hours. Secret wish: 5h30. During summer, I will mostly be preparing for the second part of the year....but I'll certainly enjoy the neighbourhood of Vaumarcus, Switzerland, where I'll attend DebConf. Challenge : combine running, hacking, cheese eating and fit all this in 24 hours every day. For the end of the year, challenges should peak between October and December: So, well, see you soon on this blog for another update after Mont-Blanc marathon. Let's hope I'll give you good news.

Vasudev Kamath: Tribute to Beloved Teacher

Today I'm writing this blog with saddened heart. My mentor and a best friend Dr.Ashokkumar is no more. He died yesterday after fighing with Lymph Node cancer. Ashokkumar or Ashok sir that is how we all students used to address him, was a Professor in Information Science Engineering in NMAM Institue of Technology and recently transferred to Computer Science Engineering Departement. My last meeting him with him was last year December during which he was looking every bit okay other than he had knee pain because of which he couldn't walk freely. But I never imagined that it will be my last meeting with him. Ashok sir was also behind the FLOSS event that took place in NMAM Institute of Technology including MiniDebconf 2011 which saw 2 of the foreign DD's Christian Perrier and Jonas Smedegaard. It was because of his first organized FLOSS event which I volunteered called Linux Habba I entered into the FLOSS world. This means its because of him that I started my FLOSS world journey and reached to my current level. Also it was because of his motivation I started writing this blog which I continue till this day.
I whole heartedly thank Ashok sir for teaching me guiding me and motivating me during my difficult times. You will always be remembered through out my life. May your soul Rest In Peace.
Here are the 2 pics of Ashok sir taken during Minidebconf (Credits: Christian Perrier and Kartik Mistry) Ashokkumar with Jonas and Me Ashokkumar during inaugaration of MiniDebconf with Christian and Kartik on stage Good bye Sir :-(

17 February 2013

M nica Ram rez Arceda: The DPL Game

I love playing let's play DPL game! My fantastic four:
  • enrico zini
  • gregor herrmann
  • moray allan
  • christian perrier (*)
And I could think in more people, but rules only allow to present four candidates And I am sure there are more people that I could nominate, but it's difficult to know everybody in Debian (*) Sorry bubulle, I had this list before you wrote your post :-P In fact, I like DPLs who don't like the idea of being a leader ;-)

16 February 2013

Christian Perrier: DPL game or why I'm not your man

I am in some way flattered (en_FR?) that some people think that I should stand as DPL candidate (here, or there, or there). Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your confidence, it's appreciated. Still, I won't stand and I feel like I should explain why. Yes, I now have some experience in the Debian Project after more than 11 years as DD. Yes, I like to represent the project and I think I don't do that so badly when I do it (which is not as often as one might imagine). Yes, I feel like I have some experience in acting as a "leader" though I often have doubts about this, probably just like many people who have management duties in their professional life. Yes, I often define myself as a non-technical person which helps in dealing with problems and projects with different perspectives. Still, this is often not so true and that extends to my professionnal activity. I *am* indeed a technical person but I'm more a "specialist of everything and nothing" in this aspect. That's probably good for a DPL. But, still I won't stand. There are indeed many reasons for this and I'll try to give them here. First of all, Debian has always been a hobby for me. A hobby that sometimes ate several hours a day and still eats part of my time. But still a hobby. It can't become the major part of my life. And I think that someone spending one year as DPL "has" to do it as the major part of her his life. I can't free time from my work schedule. My work, though being in IT, has few to relate with Free Software, and I can't divert part of it with Debian duties...or merge it with Debian duties. For about 3 years, I compensate the loss of two people in my team by working hard and VERY fast, in a constant stress....connecting with Onera nearly all time long and maintaining the level of services our users deserve as high as I can. And I like it. I can't free time from my family schedule. Of course, my children don't request much attention right now, they all live their own lives. Jean-Baptiste is now having a full-time paid job and does great things in a geeky style I recognize very well. Sophie will soon be a great graduated social worker and will start working in next Summer. And Magali is studying physical therapy so that she can later help me recovering after too hard running races..:-). However, last and definitely not least, I have a wonderful wife who I want to share as much as I can with. And I can't share Debian with her. Indeed, Elizabeth is the very first reason for my reasoning.....because she is the center of my life for more than 30 years now. You also know that I happen to run a little bit..:-)...and that requires time too. Something I won't sacrifice as it brought more equilibrium in my life (and a great health, at an age where one has to care about one's health, now). All this doesn't leave much room. And I indeed noticed that my involvement in Debian has reduced noticeably in the past months. That is indeed the most important point: I'm "slowing down" in Debian...or, at least, I'm trying to find an equilibrium where it represents only a part of my hobbies....and not an ever-growing one. Last...maybe not least, I'm somehow pessimistic about the future of the project. You may have read that subtly in my writings, here or there. I feel like we are slowing down in innovation and are slowly feeling short of resources. Renewal in project members doesn't come as fast as it used to. You are free to disagree with me and I hope you'll be right to. But, still, that won't remove my pessimism. And, well, it's hard to lead a project when you're partly pessimistic about it, isn't it? In short, all in all, I'm currently "fighting" in some way to keep motivation for something I deeply love being involved in. And that's really important. And that's why I can't stand: it wouldn't be a good service to the project. It would be good for my ego, certainly (yes, I have one....and sometimes not a small one)....but it wouldn't be a good service to the project, and I also feel it could very well lead me to burnout. And, if you "nominated" me...or think I would candidate for DPL, you don't want me to burnout and vanish from Debian, right? So, this is why I won't stand. And this is why you'll continue to have great Cheese and Wine parties at Debconfs....or boring l10n reports....or, here or there, some broken uploads in the archive..:-)....but not another French DPL, at least not /me. PS: by the way, I have my own list of preferred candidates. Not sure I want it to be public, though...:-)...you'll see soon if I change my mind!

15 February 2013

Josselin Mouette: The DPL game

Following the DPL game call for players, here are my nominations for the fantastic four (in alphabetical order) :
  1. Luca Falavigna
  2. Tollef Fog Heen
  3. Yves-Alexis Perez
  4. Christian Perrier
These are four randomly selected people among those who share an understanding of the Debian community, a sense of leadership, and the ability to drive people forward with solutions.

Kartik Mistry: My fantastic four aka #DPLgame

* Inspired by DPL Game post. Not in order,
1. Christian Perrier
2. Martin Zobel-Helas
3. Russ Allbery
4. Cyril Brulebois Pick anyone. All four are capable leaders! Although, I only met Christian personally from list, I ve watched others doing great work in Debian since long time.

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