Ah, back to Epiphany this week and I came to a realisation. All of the time that I was using Firefox I had completely stopped using bookmarks. Strange I know, but I had stopped adding or even using any of my existing bookmarks. I would instead just leave pages open and let Firefox open then again each time it started. It was during the switch when I realised that in order to continue with the pages I had open in Firefox I would have to bookmark them before I switched. Now that I am back using Epiphany I'd like to let people know about my favourite feature, tag based bookmarks. Instead of placing each bookmark in a folder, you simply tag each one like del.icio.us and a bookmark hierarchy is built automatically. So if you haven't tried out Epiphany recently, or at all. Please give it a try. Now if I could just get Epilicious to sync with del.icio.us properly I'd be very happy.

Daniel, mine seem to like cheese and onion crisps. So maybe the whole batch is faulty.

There seems to have been a lot of talk recently about using Open Source software for social networking, which has been something that has been at the back of my mind for quite a while now. If you could take a web site and using the presence information and IM features from jabber, you already have the beginnings of a social networking or community site. The main advantage I can see is that anyone could start their own social networking site, rather than joining one of the larger existing (closed source) sites or basing a community around a web forum (which I tend to avoid if at all possible). Now if I can just properly gather my thoughts on this I would start some coding.

There seems to have been a lot of talk recently about using Open Source software for social networking, which has been something that has been at the back of my mind for quite a while now. If you could take a web site and using the presence information and IM features from jabber, you already have the beginnings of a social networking or community site. The main advantage I can see is that anyone could start their own social networking site, rather than joining one of the larger existing (closed source) sites or basing a community around a web forum (which I tend to avoid if at all possible). Now if I can just properly gather my thoughts on this I would start some coding.

I decided that I really needed to start making proper backups of the data on my server this week. I did have a tape drive in the server at one point but I never remembered to change the tape, or indeed ever test the backups. Now that I have a Linksys NSLU2 (a slug), which I bought to use as a local Debian mirror. "Why not use it for backing up my important data?" I thought, so I leapt into action. The first job was to replace the drive in the USB caddy with a 250Gb drive. 250Gb should be plenty for both the mirror and the backups, which is mostly source code, mail and photos. After that installing and setting up rsnapshot was a snap. It sure beats the "keep some stuff on my laptop" backup method I was using, which did save me from a major brain fade moment involving my Maildir folder. I shall now wallow in the warm glow that only a backup provides.

Debian turns 14 today, I have a little personal celebration lined up for tonight. I'll be raising a glass to all those involved in making Debian what it is, and all those working on making Debian even better for the future.

• Debconf 7 was just awesome: It was great to meet up with hendry, daniel, otavio and marco from the Debian Live crew, as well as countless others.. I’m already putting some pennies aside for Argentina.
• I managed to graduate with a 2:1, which was enough to get accepted on my Masters course which starts in September. I still need to find somewhere to live though. Congratulations to everyone else who finished this year!
• Google SoC work is going okay. I was recently in that uncomfortable position where I had taken a wrong turn and was getting less and less motivated to correct myself. However, I now have much more Pythonistic interface around the configuration files, as well as a working wizard based on the gtk.Assistant widget. Now I just need to get the expert mode cleaned up pretty soon and then proceed in fixing up some issues in the underlying shell scripts. I’ll prepare a quick screencast and write about this in more detail again soon.
• LugRadio Live was pretty good. I was manning the Debian stall on the first day: David Watson brought along a TFT and a Debian mirror on a Linksys NSLU2, which was great when demoing Debian Live images as well as the experimental graphical builder. If I had a faster machine it would have been nice to provide some sort of ‘custom live CD service’ for passers by. The second day was interesting and I managed to get to a few talks, as well as meet up with some of the other Bongo guys.
• Yet more groupthink is underway with GUADEC just up the road in Birmingham. I will have to miss Wednesday due to my graduation ceremony and having my flat stripped bare by my parents — just sleeping bags for my brother and I until hometime on Saturday. GUADEC feels slightly different to the other events I’ve been to — I’m not a Gnome developer so there are a lot of unfamiliar faces, but maybe this will make me change my mind: Telepathy does look awesome, and I’ve had ideas about writing a decent mind-mapping tool for some time now…

On the subject of conferences, I’m also planning to attend AngloHaskell, LinuxConf Europe amd PyCon UK. Let me know if you want to meet up or need a place to crash.

To celebrate the 10th birthday of the Debian Social Contract I had my share of pancakes. Did you have your pancakes today?

I hate you all... well except for the video team, and of course the people giving talks, and the people attending the talks or the BOFs, and anyone else who makes it possible for me to see the talks without actually attending. Ah well, hope everyone has a great time at debconf later this month in Edinburgh, and I'll maybe see you at future debconf if I can get the time off work.

Don't you just love the subject lines on spam.

First day back at work was "fun", it involved phrases like "Internet connection down", "BT line fault" and the all time classic "My email isn't working". Do these faults always wait until just after a holiday to crop up? And the best part is that I get to go back tomorrow for more "fun".

Tonight I have replaced my Wordpress blog with a Drupal installation ( as some may have noticed due to my poorly timed test post ). I was finding that Wordpress didn't make it easy to host much more than just a blog, what I wanted was a complete site and not just a blog. So Drupal looks much more like what I need. For now I have set up the blog part, the rest of the content will follow.

After a nice week long holiday, I was greeted in work this morning by the evil red lights on the NAS device we use for backups. Why do these things happen while I’m on holiday? Anyway, after discovering that the drives were borked beyond repair, I ordered replacements and set up a temporary backup of the data until the NAS is back up and running tomorrow. I think I’ll set up a trap to catch the gremlins next time I take time off work.

I’m extremely happy to let everyone know that I am now a Debian Developer. I’d like to thank my AM - Martin Michlmayr, Drew Parsons for advocating me and sponsoring uploads, and Roger Leigh for also sponsoring uploads. I’d also like to thanks the FD and DAM teams (looks like they have been busy during this last week). The entire process took 13 months to complete, with that time roughly split between waiting for an AM and then covering P&P and T&S. My wait in the FD and DAM queues was quite short. Of course the first thing I did once I found out, like any email freak was to update my .sig file. Thanks once again to all of those people that helped during my time in the NM queue.