It's been days since I've blogged -- I've got a lot to write about Halifax and I've been putting it off, but I wanted to jump on one more time to put in a plug for tomorrow's BarCampMontreal. I keep forgetting how great this city is for interesting technical people. Simon Law is going to be talking about how Web 2.0 is destroying Open Source software, and Austin Hall will talk about how you can get billions of dollars (American) with Zero Knowledge. The full Horaire shows the proposed schedule, but... hey, it's BarCamp, right? Anything could happen. As little as I like being up and about at 9AM on a Saturday morning, I'm excited about the event tomorrow. Should be a good time. tags: barcamp montreal barcampmontreal

Today is the day against DRM. Thousands of people around the world are spreading the word about Digital Restriction Management technologies. The interesting thing about the people building DRM systems is that they're doing evil. They may not think they're doing evil, after all they're generally good people, doing their jobs, feeding their families, and protecting their interests. It's not a big evil, but it is a subtle one. And that's why you shouldn't support them. For decades, the music industry has been making money by selling records and tapes. This was a good business, because it was difficult to produce records, and it was difficult to get tapes into the hands of consumers. They made quite a tidy sum over production and distribution of art, which is a pretty decent living. But then came the Internet. And the Internet got big. Big enough that you're reading what I'm writing, even though we come from completely different backgrounds and are probably miles apart. The interesting thing about the Internet is that copying a song and sending it to someone else costs almost nothing. Zip, zero, zilch. Now traditional media distribution houses are upset. The service they performed was valuable and the goods they sold were scarce. Nowadays, neither or those are true. People can record music in their garages, edit it on their computers, and publish it online. The digital medium has turned art from a scarce resource into an abundance. So what do companies do? They feel that they have to protect their existing business models so they try to push through legislation that would make it illegal to provide abundance. That's like arresting farmers for plant seeds they've harvested from their own wheat. But this is wrong. People are now using the Internet to make and distribute art like we've never seen before. The proliferation of new songs, new pictures, new videos is just enormous. The creative community has exploded through sharing, some of it illegal, and we can all see what a vibe this has caused. DRM is meant to put a stop to that. It's designed to have two components: one is the technology that monitors and restricts what you can do with the art that you've bought, the second is the legislation that makes it illegal to circumvent this technology. So only criminals will be able to give music to their friends. But criminals will do that anyway, laws won't prevent DVD duplication in Asia. They will, however, stop you from listening to music in ways some corporation doesn't want you to. What can you do about it? Make it known that you're against DRM. Make it known that you're against proprietary systems that stifle the creative spirit. And only purchase open systems. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but also because they won't hold you hostage.

Wow, haven't had time to post in a while. Some major highlights over the past couple of weeks:

(longish entry, hidding behind an lj-cut to avoid flooding various aggregators...)



Opus and ConCentric

Angie and I went to Opus and ConCentric. For those not familiar, it's an annual UU Young Adult (18-35yr olds) campout and spritual retreat. When we're there, we do activities, workshops, worship, cook, clean, sit around the fire, swim, talk, laugh, cry, and all the things that come when you throw people together in a space for 10 days. Every time that I go, I both miss it and am glad when I leave. Over the course of the year, I start to think about only the good parts and when I go back. But when I'm there, there's tempers, hurt feelings, things go wrong. At the same time, when I'm there, I meet some of the people I'll connect with the strongest over the course of the year. Sometimes just a feeling or a song from the camp will help me reconnect and push through in the year in between.

This Opus in particular was interesting. I'd been away for two years, after having been on the planning committee for two years. There were things I loved: There were new people, new songs, new games. I learned to crochet, swam naked under the stars, reconnected with many old and new friends. This particular camp in Maryland is the one at which I proposed to Angie in 2000. There were things that sucked: The cooking staff had trouble getting food out for the first few days, which resulted in one of them quitting; a few hospital visits for people onsite stressed my friend who was the first aid attendant. Fortunately, Angie and I have worked in camp kitchens before, and she was able to step in and fill that roll. A ...

I need a collective for a group of people that doesn't sound like 90's corporate psychobabble. 'team's are things that compete. Maybe I'll steal the word from the current Ubuntu release.

... knot of 4 of us are applying to be kitchen staff next year. I have to be careful what I commit to this year, since in general all commitments I'm making to people officially expire in February. I can't tell what life will be like on the other side of having a child!

It's also hard going to a camp where we've been before, I think. My memories of that camp are mostly centred around people who weren't there. One of whom is dead, many have aged out, many just didn't come this time. I miss all of you.

For the drive down, Angie and I rented a Smart Car from Avis. (Photo by Simon Law) Driving down to Maryland was fun. These things aren't for sale in the US until 2008, and there were many pictures of us taken on the drive and at gas stations. At least a dozen SUV drivers walked over to us to ask the mileage. It sustains 120km/h with no problems and doesn't get blown around too much on the highway. A few times I took it up to 130km/h, but at that point it starts to blow around alot. It *is* tiny, though. Packing enough for Angie and me to travel for 10 days was a bit tight, and driving a Yarris when I got back felt *huge*. On the way down, including Angie going to work once, and us taking a detour, the Diesel cost us $35, and the tolls cost us $40.

We did the drive down in two days. The first day making sure that we crossed the border and getting from Montr al to Albany. On the drive down on the second day, we didn't want to hit the NJ Turnpike at 5pm on a Friday, so we stopped for lunch at a place called Eduardo's Pizza in Boonton, NJ. They had some of the best pizza we've ever had, and the nicest staff. They gave us directions to a waterpark nearby which had a neat ride called High Anxiety (Picture 2 Picture 3). I prefered to call it Funnel of Doom. The park was overpriced for a full day for what you'd get, but the half-day discount prices were worth it and the park was mostly empty because of a state fair.

The drive back was mostly a day of hard driving. Being at camp was wonderful, but we wanted our own *beds*. We got a bit lost coming back, and somehow paid less than $10 in tolls, despite travelling in the same amount of time. I like adventures like that.

So what's next? Re-entry into the world is almost done, but now there's re-entry into the mainstream UU communities. This is the part I find the hardest. Opus is such an idealised world, where we talk about anti-oppression work, changing the world, changing ourselves to help create this new world. The worships are spritually alive (Elandria, YOU ROCK MY WORLD!) and the group doesn't stay long enough for alot of politicking to set in. Our jobs leaving there are always to take a part of that community and recreate it elsewhere. I think it's the toughest job I've ever had.

Go out into the highways and byways. Give the people something of your new vision. You may possess only a small light, but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. Give them not Hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.
- John Murray

For whatever God means to you of course. Blessed be. =)

I just wanted to pass along the invitation. Robin Millette is throwing a birthday party for Debian on Saturday, 19 August 2006. You can show up at 17:30 and apparently it will last until the wee hours of the morning. Just knock at 8655 rue Saint-Denis, Montr al. It's right by the Cr mazie station. I'm afraid I won't be able to attend as I will be far away. But do have fun celebrating!

“Oh, gnome-screensaver, I hate you!” - © Simon Law Oh, and so do I for breaking working software, like mplayer, because known and working xscreensaver interfaces are simply not supported. P.S. It feels so great to see people use the Debian Debconf6 pool photo in their Slashdotted presentations

What do you do with a sunny, summery Sunday in Ottawa? Biking and barbequing, of course. It's traditional to hold the Hacker Bike Ride right after the Ottawa Linux Symposium. The local cycling enthusiasts are, by and large, also pretty geeky so many of them join in on this event. We gathered in the park across from the conference centre. People were milling about, so I had time to rent a bicycle, and soon we were off. This year, I chose to take the long route with everyone else. Richard, on his tall bike, led the way through the streets of Ottawa and on to the bike paths. We went over some very scenic hills, had two people fall off their bikes, and enjoyed ourselves immensely. I spent a lot of time riding quite dangerously, with camera in hand. The most challenging pictures were those taken over the shoulder, as I had to do that blind. A couple of them seemed to turn out. In the process of photographing things, I managed to get my wheels stuck in a rut. It sounded like someone falling over, which caused a few people to look around, but I managed to stay in control. This surprised me, as I haven't ridden a bike in about a year. We finished one leg of our ride in Vincent Massey Park, where the local LUG was holding their annual picnic. I grabbed a hamburger, sat down on a blanket, and inhaled it. There's nothing like hot food after a good bike ride. After lunch, we did a bit of exploring. That's how we found a cicada hiding under a picnic table. Then ostraya did nothing to prevent the penguin from viciously attacking me. There were more silly antics, including penguins on heads and bubble-blowing. But then it was time to pack up and leave. We helped the organizers stow the picnic things away before riding off to Hogs Back Falls. I climbed around on the slick rocks while other people ate their ice cream. We crossed the bridge and then we rode alongside the canal on our way back. This allowed me to see the canoe innovation of brilliance. A canoe with a hitch up front and bicycle wheels mounted on back. I waved to these people and told them they were geniuses. I think they might have thought me a tad weird. By the time we reached the park, it was starting to get late. I returned my bike and said goodbye to people, which was good because I had postcards to send. There's nothing like sending postcards hours before you leave a city.

The Ottawa Linux Symposium is arguably Canada's biggest conference about Linux and its associated technologies. It happens every year, right after the Kernel Summit, which virtually guarantees that some famous people stick around afterwards to attend OLS. Now the Kernel Summit is a small gathering of Linux developers where they hash out big issues in the kernel. After all, it's a lot easier to get your point across when you're sitting in the same room as the person you're talking to. Mailing lists are just not the same. OLS, however, is a free-for-all. If you pay in time, you get to show up. This makes for an astoundingly large conference, about 850 people in total. I brought along wlach, who had never been to OLS before. So I was doing my part in inflating the number of people there. I think he ended up in the right crowds. Which is difficult, because there are a lot of crowds there. People walk past in a blur and you can never quite remember if you've met someone before. At the conference, there are four tracks of presentations, at any one time. Some of these are perennial talks, like the tutorial on writing your own kernel module. And others change as the years go by. The big topic this year was Xen, the free virtualization software that really got huge in the past two years. Xen allows people to run multiple copies of their operating system inside one computer, with very little overhead. This makes it attractive to a lot of people, be they system administrators, software developers, or people who like fiddling with their machine. I met a consultant from Chicago that sells Xen-based solutions. She builds a big server and runs various virtual servers for small business inside that one box. It's very cost effective and is a good way to make server maintanance easy. Whenever I wanted to find her, I'd just pop into one of the ubiquitous Xen talks. The amount of work that gets done at this conference is astounding. You'll see people sitting around at tables hashing out designs and beating out flaws. Hackers huddle around laptops in an attempt to get the C library building on PA-RISC again. That's because the bandwidth to communication is very high and the latency is inconsequential. There were times when I wanted to pull out my laptop and do some work. But then I remembered that I left it in the hotel. Because it's heavy. There's actually a lot of space at OLS, because it's spread across the three floors of the Ottawa Congress Centre. It's really easy to miss someone for weeks before bumping into him at a party. Like opalmirror, for example, who I was very glad to meet in person. And are there ever parties. Ostensibly, you go there for the talks. And talks there are: some of them quite good and the vast majority are rather mediocre. They're the results of a year of hacking, months of academic research, or inspired observation. I have to admit that I get a bit lax when attending speakers. It reminds me too much of the classroom. And just like university, I buy the course notes to mitigate my guilt. They make for good reading when finals come along. It's the conversation that you go there for. When you get to sit down with Alan and have a good laugh about geeky topics. Or buy Donald a drink for working on those ugly network cards all those years ago. You get to connect with people that you've only seen online, or read as their names flashed past in the boot messages. That's that kind of bonding that people yearn for. I'm looking forward to next year already.

I look forward to going to Ottawa every June for the GCC Summit. I've gone every year since it started in 2003 and have no intention of stopping. That's because it feels so much like a family reunion. Let me explain. The core people who have worked on GCC have been doing it for years. They're people who used to work for Cygnus Solutions, back before they were bought out by Red Hat. They're people who work for CodeSourcery. And they're people working for Intel, HP, and IBM who are compiler writers first and employees second. And they all know each other like dysfunctional family. When I first showed up at the first Summit, Jim and I were the new kids. We had just finished typesetting the Using GCC manual that was published by GNU Press. So I went around absorbing compiler technology by osmosis, and trying to get as many developers to sign by pre-press draft. The nice thing about the GCC Summit is that there is only one track of talks. So you never have to choose between two talks that you're interested in. It's a little bad though, since you're always tempted to check your e-mail when there's a lull in the interestingness of the presentations. This year, the focus seemed to be on profiler-driven optimizations. I'm not really sure those are very profitable, as they actually require developers to run their applications as part of the build system. And we all know that humans are lazy. But perhaps I underestimate the heroics that build-systems people will go through to squeeze out that extra ounce of performance. Danny Berlin and Kenneth Zadeck talked about dataflow analysis and getting rid of the terrible implementation inside GCC. I had heard horror stories about flow.c before, but have yet to actually look inside it. Their talk has disuaded me even more. The last thing that sticks in my mind is the GDB talk, which seemed to be the only toolchain talk this year. But these things wax and wane. I skipped out on the afterparty this year, which meant that I couldn't help with the monumental challenge that awaits us after each summit. But I shall return.

I'm terrible at the whole blogging thing, I've been back for two weeks and haven't found the time to summarize my time at DebConf. I had an excellent time. I met a lot of great people and even found a squash partner for the next DebConf. It was really quite unforgettable, so thanks to everyone involved.

Hanging out with sfllaw there, I was exposed to a lot more Ubuntu-esque things that I really had before. Some people there were quite unhappy about Ubuntu. To me, it's just not really that interesting, one because I don't see it as being substantially better or different from Debian and two because it looser stand on freedom. But hey, this is free software, people seem to like it, and I'm glad to see something related to Debian getting money and attention, rather than say RedHat or SUSE. I think a lot of developers would be happier with Ubuntu if it was just easier to ignore.

Then there was that dinner, and the events surrounding it. While I and many others won't miss Ted, I don't think he was treated at all fairly. Being thrown out in the middle of conference when seemly he did nothing wrong there was not very civil. If people could not stand to be around him, they did not have to be around him. He could have just as easily been removed from the project after the conference was over.

Enough griping though. If I came away with anything from the conference, it was a renewed vigor to work on Debian. Now if only my schedule would permit it.

By Monday morning, it was my turn to get up ludicrously early. I managed to catch a hot shower, which was very welcome. You see, they turned off the hot water late at night, and didn't turn it on early in the morning. So if you kept hacker hours, you'd get a cold shower before going to bed. I bid goodbye to my sleeping companions as I rolled my suitcase out of the room and checked out at the Reception desk. I sat on my suitcase with laptop in hand, as we waited for the others to show up. We were carpooling to town in some taxis, as I had an awful bus experience coming in to Oaxtepec. It was in this hour that I taught myself how to blend exposures in the Gimp. There was a lot of fiddling with alpha channels and masks, until I hit upon exactly the right solution. By the time I was done, a rather large group of people had gathered about me. It was about then that four taxis pulled up and we threw all our luggage into little hatchbacks. Then Nattie, Ben, and I squeezed inside and we were off! Instead of choosing the toll highway, our driver decided to take the country roads. This was not such a poor idea, since we got a good look at the countryside. I had never seen fields of cactus before, but I suppose that makes sense. After all, it is edible and requires very little irrigation. We drove along the winding roads and passed through town after town. In one, we had to stop momentarily. That's because a herder was driving his flock of sheep through town. We saw them turn a corner, and then our car was surrounded by a sea of bleating wooly sheep. Then, as quickly as they appeared, they were gone. As we neared Mexico City, we noticed a rather large mountain in the distance. A mountain that spewed smoke. Our driver informed us that it's Popocatepetl, a local active volcano. He pulled over by the side of the road and let Nattie hop out to take photographs. The taxi behind us pulled over as well, and they spent a few minutes snapping shots. I noted that where we had stopped was rather hazy, so I just snapped a few photographs when it appeared in my window. I lucked out, I suppose. You could tell when we approached the city, as the traffic got heavier and things got louder. I awoke from my brief nap to see us pull through a toll-booth and on to a six-lane highway. We managed to get to the international gates at the aeroport, have our luggage unloaded, and paid our driver for his troubles. Then we checked in. My luggage tested positive for explosives about four times. The security guard for Mexicana kept swabbing away with test strips, each time coming up with a different result. Eventually, he printed up a chart, stared at the squiggly lines, and let me put it on the conveyor belt. Then, I met up with Nattie and Ben, and we also bumped into Peter. We bought some postcards and sat in a restaurant. There, we ate overpriced American food and wrote back home. Or rather, Nattie and Ben wrote charming postcards and I dashed off twenty-three hastily worded missives. Then, we hugged goodbye and it was time for me to board my flight. Ben graciously offered to post my mail, because I had run out of time. Liftoff was quite exciting. The wind was gusting so as we took off, I got to see the engine shake furiously in its housing. And we did a little hop as we pulled off the ground. A little girl, sitting behind me, shrieked in distress when we did that. I really don't blame her. Landing in Montr al was a lot safer. Even though we had to go through layers and layers of clouds to do it. It was sort of depressing, actually, flying from gorgeous blue skies into a city covered by grey. But I had brought the sunshine back with me!

I awoke to a very early alarum clock, which I shut off quickly. I dragged myself out of bed to see ze_dinosaur off, but he was far more prepared than I was. I waved goodbye and then collapsed back into bed. Sunday morning was pretty difficult for me. In fact, I only got up in the afternoon. I ate some bananas and showed up to the HackLab where I socialized for a good while. Then we realized that lunch would be smart, so we went to the market. Instead of tortilla based food, we managed to get some stewed meat and deep-fried vegetables. That was rather tasty and I had to waddle back. I spent the rest of the day touching up photographs instead of going on the waterslides. I'm now wondering if that was wise. But at the time, it seemed like a lot of fun. What wasn't so wise was trying an iced treat when I didn't want one. I got some money out of an automated teller and saw a shop across the street that sold iced things. Well, I crossed into the shop and ordered one. They scooped out some ground ice, topped it with mango syrup, splashed it with lime juice, and topped it with salt and chili powder. Now that I think of it, it would be tasty and refreshing if you drank lots of water all day. Somewhere along the line, we got the idea that our last meal in town should be wonderful. So I rounded up a rather large group of people who wanted to go out for dinner, expressed that we'd be going all fancy, and generally herded them into the fanciest restaurant in town. Some people initially complained about the potential cost, but the convival atmosphere and cloth napkins overruled this. So did the tasty platters of beef. We were all quite happily stuffed. Afterwards, a few of us strolled through a park attached to a local historic site. There were plenty of benches to sit upon and we contemplated the night air. I'll have to say that Mexico's nights are a lot less chilly than Montr al's. But the resort had all the lights on, so you couldn't see any stars at all. By the time we had strolled back to the HackLab, people were disassembling the network. I lugged a big server into a van and brought a few more boxes of things there. After the heavy lifting, I took a few more photographs of people, wonderful people, before deciding to retire. But the camera never does capture the fleeting moments.

After the morning talks were over, ze_dinosaur and I decided that Saturday afternoon should be devoted to fun. We rounded up Jesus, Anabelle, Ben and Nattie. And then we set off for the water park. You see, we were actually staying at a huge playground, except we never saw very much of it. Determined to see more, we hike over to the Tower, found the funicular and took a trip down. As we passed over a small wood, I instantly regretted leaving my camera at the hotel. I suppose, however, that I'd regret it more if my camera had taken a swim. We arrived at the bottom and found a flock of geese. This is where I really wanted my camera, because the goslings were oh-so-adorable. Nattie got some photographs while the mother goose hissed furiously at her. We left, found the front gates of the water park, and were told that it was closed. Well, we were quite disappointed. The others went back to the resort, but Ben, Nattie, and I refused to have our afternoon ruined. Instead, we found a washroom, got changed and waded off to the sulphur pools. There's a large spring underneath a big glass dome, which happens to spew out some rather foul smelling water. Much like rotten eggs, really. There, it fed into a series of swimming pools in which vacationers soaked. We waded in to the very cold water and swam a while for a bit. We got used to the smell and temperature, and started having a marvellous time. Then we saw the waterfall. A man was standing beneath a small torrent of water, that beat about his neck and back. In order to stand in place, he hung on to a knotted rope which was tied to the retaining wall. After watching him for a bit, we three decided to give it a go. Swimming up to the fall was the most difficult part, then it was quite relaxing to have water pouring over you like that. I need a bathtub and shower like this, when I build a house. Soon after, we went back to the resort where we dove in the pool and swam a bit. We managed to corrupt Tore's mind and scar him forever. Just then, we were kicked out by the lifeguards because it was 18:00. The air was still scalding and they closed the pool. What are these people thinking? I took a nice shower and then a nap in the front lobby. Since lots of people were leaving on Sunday morning, this was the last night for them to party. So lots of people got quite drunk, including one poor fellow who passed out on the grass. I found a towel for him, so he wasn't so cold. Then, I took plenty of pictures of people, while simultaneously convincing them to wear hats. No really! There are many benefits to hats. And people look great when they have a hat on. I highly encourage you to get one yourself. I stayed up very, very late. Until about 5:00. Then, Eric and I couldn't take it any more and we went to bed.

I missed most of Friday's talks due to some sleeping in. At conferences, I try really, really hard not to succumb to exhaustion, but all those late nights eventually take a toll on me. By the time I got up, people had already left, so I took a leisurely shower and padded off to the Tower. I caught Meike's talk on giving good presentations and wondered if I should do something similar at some other conference? After lunch, we gathered on the grass to take a group photograph. Aigars Mahinovs then climbed up the stairs to the top of the ten metre diving platform, and stared down at us with his borrowed lens. I attempted to convince people to participate in a group hug, but this was fairly difficult. If you look closely, you can see a small island of us. It actually took quite a few shots for Aigars to get a picture, but the results turned out quite well. At least for me. I was wearing a hat, you see, so I didn't have to squint. Rain started to fall again, so people rapidly ran for cover. I ducked into a covered walkway, where we were starting our GnuPG keysigning. I went through a lot of passports and met a lot of people. Venezuelans have the best passport photographs, bar none. And I got to see a non-national identity card. I have to get me one of those. Dinner was held at a restaurant with live music, which we had to ask be turned down. That's because a bunch of us had gotten together for a brainstorming session. I think we came up with some useful things we could do, on both sides, to improve co-operation between Debian and Ubuntu. So I was pretty happy about that. Afterwards, the rain was coming down hard so we rushed back to the hotel room to change. I remember walking on to the HackLab veranda and seeing a bunch of people standing against the walls looking uncomfortable. Aha! It was good that I was wearing my dancing shoes, as we were obviously attending the second anuual Debconf ball. Wolfgang taught me the steps to Argentine tango, but I really couldn't find a partner. So I danced by myself, drawing glances from everyone, until I found some people to dance with. Sadly, many attendees were too shy, or claimed that they were clueless. Of course, I didn't know what I was doing, so they couldn't possibly do any worse. Perhaps next year, they can be convinced. It really is fun, you know.

After a very tasty breakfast of gorditas in the market, I sat through talks all of Thursday morning, which were all quite good. They were visionary talks, talks about where Debian was going to go, and what we can do to get it there. After a brief lunch, we returned for the talk of debugging debian-installer. I've been lugging around my laptop, jamaica, through the entire conference. It's an old A20m, which means that it's a rather bulky looking thing, that is quite heavy. What makes it noticable is that it's been epoxied together, after having been dropped one too many times. People marvel that GNOME runs reasonably on it. Anyway, during the talks, my wireless card decided it didn't want to work any more. Pulling it out and letting it cool down seemed to get it responsible again. Strange. After the afternoon talk on how to find security problems within Debian, I went back to the hotel to change. You see, we were going to a Formal Dinner. I had not packed for a formal dinner, thinking that all functions would be casual at the very most. Still, I pulled out a pair of pressed slacks, an ironed shirt and a colourful tie. When I left my room, it became apparent that Formal actually meant "clothes without any holes". We all packed into the coach buses from yesterday and drove into town. This was actually quite difficult for the drivers, because the streets were very narrow and the buses were incapable of turning around corners. I think it took us fifteen minutes to park, which mostly consisted of doing a 30-point turn. We disembarked and walked into a large building. Two of the walls were made of stone, the rest were made of stucco. There was a small stage presiding over a floor full of fold-up tables which were arranged in a Debianesque spiral. I decided that I was going to be at the nexus of activity, so I sat down at the central table and reserved a seat for AJ. As people seated themselves and started talking, there was a sudden commotion. Holger was running towards AJ with a plastic crown, deposited it unceremoniously on his head, and continued sprinting past. This drew applause and photographs, along some cheering of "Long Live the DPL!" AJ looked decidedly uncomfortable. It's probably for the best that Debian isn't a monarchy. Our evening got more and more interesting. A mariachi band came in the door and started playing. Soon after they started singing, rain began to fall. This made lovely sounds on the tin roof above, which made me a little sleepy. Right about now, a brawl sprang up near the front door. There was some shoving involved and quite a bit of yelling. Soon, the combatants were separated and some of them left the building in anger. All this time, the musicians were playing louder and louder. As the music crescendoed, the rain fell harder and the wind blew stronger, until we had to close up the shutters to keep the water from blowing in. And the band kept trying to play over the rain. Then, slowly, the roof began to spring leaks. We were lining up for food then, and by the time I got to the buffet table, water was pouring into the trays. I managed to get something reasonably dry and scurried back to my seat. Which was wet. After I got some food inside of me, I experience the final act that capped our evening. We were chatting a bit about the strange weather we were having indoors when suddenly, water started cascading down one of the walls. It made a tremendous roar and the floor of the building quickly flooded. As I was photographing the events, the lights suddenly went out with a pop. We were plunged into darkness. I made my way back to my seat and someone eventually found the fusebox. The lights were restored, one by one, and it was soon time to leave. I don't know how the organizers of next year's Debconf are going to be able to top this: ceremony, live music, fisticuffs over a woman, an indoor waterfall, and drama. This was a night we're all going to remember.

The air has been hot but dry, so it's been quite bearable if you drink enough water. On Wednesday morning, we woke up to the sound of rain. I went to the window and looked through the glass slats to the basketball court outside. There were puddles in the middle of the dry pavement, and it looked like it was raining only in those puddles! The droplets just evaporated as they hit the ground. This was a promising start to the Debconf day trip. A large group of us met at the front of the resort, near the reception, where there was a parking lot full of buses. Silver buses that look like they drove out of the seventies. We milled about before boarding, which took a while, because of the "herding cats" problem. Once we were all aboard, we drove off. I was sitting on the first bus and we puttered along until we got to the highway. We drove past roadside stalls and restaurants until we got to a town. After going through that, we got to open fields and then a series of hills and valleys. The little bus climbed the largest of these hills, like the Little Engine that Could, and we finally pulled into a parking lot. The museum in front of us was a green concrete structure, which contained an exhibit. We stood in front of a model of the area, while our tour guide explained the history of the site. We were going to visit the ruins of an old city, Xochicalco, which was built as a fortification on the top of this hill. Since I was never a docile student, I went around looking at things, taking photographs, and having fun. I found the staff lounge where there were people sitting around chatting. There was also a large pool of stagnant, alg clogged water. Nearby, a dog with fleas was scratching and biting herself. I decided to give her a wide berth. The rest of the group started heading up a stone path to the old city, so I ran alongside to catch up. By the time we got to the top, we were greeted by some pyramids. Well, they weren't really friendly pyramids, and more like imposing pyramids. I ignored the tour guide again and started taking photographs. I spotted a Tlachtli court in the valley below, which seemed to be in remarkably good shape. The front gates of the city were built to restrict entry, as is normal for a fortified city. In order to actually enter the city, you have to climb about a hundred narrow steps, which is something pretty difficult to do if you're invaders. According to some of the signs that were placed there, it appeared that the city collapsed due to a revolt, as there were plenty of skeletons found near the gates. And because there was plenty of soot on the stones, which indicated a large fire. At the top, we climbed on some of the pyramids. Or rather, other people walked up some stairs and I climbed up them. Which got me in trouble with the local security guards. I suppose I wasn't very good at being sneaky. I should practise more. We left the site and headed to a large restaurant that was just on the side of the road. It's sort of in the middle of nowhere, with only a motel across the street. The staff was warned that we arrived, but they still looked a little panicked, as we crowded inside and took over their restaurant. They had this buffet table set up, which we queued up to serve ourselves. Since it was a buffet, the food and service wasn't of spectacular quality. However, since we had hundreds of people, the food was consumed really quicky and it was very fresh. So it was the tastiest sponsored meal I've had so far. At the restaurant, they kept some pets. There was a dog, a pair of birds, and some others. One of which was the most adorable lizard, who won everyone's hearts. A crowd gathered around Biella Coleman as she petted him. I think she wanted to take him home. After we stuffed ourselves, we climbed back on the buses and drove to Cuernavaca. It had started raining again, lightly, but we got off the bus just after the sun came out. We were greeted by a marketplace in the center of town and given half-an-hour to look around. Since it seemed pretty touristy, I found Biella and Martin Krafft who had the same sentiments, so we walked around the central part of town and played tourist. We found a juice stand that was selling mixed drinks. Martin decided to get an interesting drink, which apparently had too much banana in it. We then decided to find a public restroom, which we did. It advertised very clean washrooms, for only 5 pesos per person. We had reports that it was spotless. Afterwards, we wandered about and found a Japanese-fan store that sold action figures and anime. We then discovered a tobacconist, which got Martin excited. He attempted to buy a cigar, but the person inside refused to sell it to him. It turns out that this was just a friend minding the store, who refused to engage in any business transactions, by proxy. Martin left, and I was disappointed once more by people's misunderstanding of simple economics. The bus returned us to the reception after a rather long drive and I stumbled into the HackLab. On the veranda, people had gathered to have a liquor BoF. Plenty of foreign liquors showed up, including a bottle of Sortil ge that I brought, and they were consumed rapidly. People had trouble staying awake by now, but I'm unsure if it was because of the alcohol. Maybe it's because it was Wednesday.

So a lot has been going on here at DebConf 6. Yesterday we spent a sun soaked day at Xochicalco. It was hot out, but not unbearable, and it was really interesting. Makes me want to see Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, even though I'll bet it will be crap. We also had a delicious late lunch at a local buffet. I think the key to their deliciousness was serving actual Mexican food, rather than the quasi-Western fare at the hotel. We also had the foreign liquor BoF, which had excellent representation from various countries. I want to go to Puerto Rico for Christmas. The night before sfllaw had the genius idea to get some tuna and feed the kittens running around the hotel complex. They fought tooth and claw for every scrap of the tuna, then proceeded to wrestle and play for our amusement. They were still afraid of us, but not so badly, and it was completely adorable. Pictures are up on sfllaw's Flickr stream. Before a small group of us had dinner at a small Argentinian steak house. It was fantastic, and put me a meat coma for the rest of the night. Earlier in the day I attended an interesting talk by Don Amstrong about the GPLv3. He helped clarify some questions I had on the optional components of the license and how to combine them. Very interesting, and it's nice that Debian is represented on committees helping draft the next draft. Tuesday I attended a couple of very interesting talks by Manoj relating to SELinux. He basically confirmed my suspicion that SELinux is really hard, but nonetheless worthwhile. I'll have to pick up O'Reilly's SELinux book and learn more. It looks likely it will be in the base install in some form or another for etch. Monday night's highlight was a discussion between madduck, sfllaw and I. We talked mostly about why people feel unhappy about Ubuntu and maybe some ways of fixing it. Hopefully this DebConf will help bring the two camps together more than before. I've also been killed in Assassins, after only killing my first victim. I also thank the gods that I brought my old Orinocco wireless card, because the Broadcom drivers for my PowerBook isn't happy with the wireless here. I could of sworn that thing was working at some point. The flaky Internet connectivity is frustrating, but I can tell the volunteers are fighting a hard battle against some tough limitations, so thanks for the hard work! PS: If anyone knows a good way to get the Fn-key with Page Up/Down working on a Aluminum PowerBook, a beverage of your choice is yours.

The Internet connectivity here is not so great, which is why I'm posting journal entries in batch mode. The fact that we have Internet here is fairly impressive, because of all the awesome people who have climbed up on roofs and things. Now, the resort does not supply Internet so people had to figure something out. There's an ISP and Internet caf in town, but no physical link between them. So they've set up two antennas, one on the roof of the ISP, and we've got a wireless link. Then, they've strung switches and access points along the roofs of walkways to cover large parts of the resort with Internet connectivity. Sadly, there's a lot of latency associated with this. I went to talks for most of the day and was wandering around the HackLab at dinner time. I convinced ze_dinosaur, and then Agnieszka and David, to go out to a steakhouse in town. We walked out of the complex and back into Rinc n del Viejo, where we all decided to order beef. My filet mignon was huge and tender and juicy and flavourful. The vegetables on the side were insipid, but the beef was just marvellous. Other people had other steaks, which were equally as tasty. We stuffed ourselves silly and then waddled out of the restaurant. There was some beer shopping done after dinner and I picked up of tuna. My companions thought I was crazy, but I thought it was brilliant. After returning to the HackLab, we discovered that the Internet connectivity was being rejiggered to work better. So people were holding an impromptu dancing BOF, which looked quite fun. I found the wine and cheese BOF nearby and found a bit of room to eat some fancy cheeses. Some of them were very creamy, others very sharp, and still more which were deliciously pungent. Eric and I left for our room, where I put some tuna in a bowl. We then took them out to a walkway where we had some kitten sightings. After a bit of hesitation, some little furballs realized that the bowl was full of delicious food. I managed to get quite close to them and took as many photographs as I could. Their mother sat nearby, guarding them from predators, and keeping a watchful eye on me. There are four kittens in that litter and they are all so adorable. At one point, the orange kitten had his entire body in the bowl, to prevent everyone else from eating. After they had stuffed themselves, they started playing happily. They chased each other around, bounced about, and climbed trees. Then, the two big ones decided to play wrestle all over the grass. We basically suffered from cute overload and spent a long time going, "Awww."

I woke up early Monday morning, showered and got dressed. You know there are now six people in our hotel room. Simon, Eric, Blars, M ritz, Jimmy, and I have to share one shower which makes the process a bit slow. And this shower is a push-button shower that you have to hold in order to keep the water running. And the water never really gets hot. I was typing on IRC and found Matt Zimmerman on-line. We started chatting and noticed that we were in the same room. I tried looking for someone wearing a grey hat, but couldn't find him until I looked beside me. There he was, having sat down right next to ze_dinosaur. Since Mark Shuttleworth is my boss, I paid attention to his talk, and noticed that bug 35051 popped up during the presentation. You know you've been staring at too many bugs when you know which ones they are in the bug tracking system. I talked to Matt a bit about work, because Debconf is a good time to talk about QA, right? We finished up our discussion, typed a bit on our laptops, and decided that food would be a good idea. We found some people from Intel, who introduced themselves as Mike, Mark, and Denise. I thought that Denise's name sounded familiar and then I realised that she's Denise Cooper, who worked on opening up Sun's source code. I was so happy to finally meet her, since we had talked years ago. We walked towards town to get some better food and picked up Blars. Then we saw xtat, whom I knew only from LiveJournal, and his girlfriend. I invited them to join us and we walked around town for a while. We went to this Argentinian restaurant, called Rinc n del Viejo, that had napkins on the table. I didn't want to get my hopes up, so I expected something plain, but everything was incredibly delicious. We started with some wonderful empanadas, a delicious tomato salad, and guacamole y totopos. Then I ate queso con chorizo. By the time we finished, we were all completely stuffed. We picked up some pesos and then decided to walk off this big meal. We went exploring the town and wandered about a bit. We hiked up a hill and found a street full of vibrant colours. I realized that we were in the construction district, with stores selling paint, lumber, sinks, pools, and even hand-painted tiles. A little bit further on, past some clothing stores, we found a very cute hotel that looks like it would be really fun to stay in. We found a daycare with an awesome wall, with little figures dancing about. There was a little kid who was standing inside a florists, drumming on the counter and looking very bored. Another child ducked into a used television shop. After about an hour or so, we were hot and thirsty so we decided to head back. But before we returned to the resort, we stopped at a fruit store and picked up some fruit for breakfast. Boy, oh boy, is that fruit every good. Mangos were fragrant and sweet and juicy. Bananas are just heavenly. The plantains were just wonderful. If only we could get fruit like this in Canada. And I don't even like eating fruit.

Sunday was the first day of actual talks. The night before, ze_dinosaur had arrived and so we hunted for breakfast together. We walked out and found Jesus who was walking towards town. We opted to follow him to the mercado in the town just outside the side gate of the resort. We walked into the market and down some stairs. There are just little stalls where people were selling hats or CDs or pots or clothes. When we walked a bit further, we found a covered area where sweet-smelling smoke swirled everywhere. We sat down on a bench with a thin counter in front of us and someone came back with menus. I ordered a chorizo quesadilla and a glass of horchata. They were very fresh and very, very tasty. I went to the Torre Parlimentaria where the welcome speeches were happening. Mexico has been very warm and sunny, which means dehydration and sunburns. The tower is air-conditioned, so this was a very welcome environment. We sat through a talk where Simon Phipps from Sun announced work he's done with Sun to get more and more software opened. He seems to be very enthusiastic about Free Software, which he mentioned specifically, so I hope he does well with his persuasions within Sun. I no longer remember what I did after this. I think I might have walked around a bit before having the caterred lunch. I've been eating these sponsored meals for a couple of days and they've been rather substandard. Sure, they're edible and doesn't make anyone sick. But it's insipid, because they're trying to put out European style meals, which the kitchen doesn't know how to do. Since I'm travelling, I'm totally going to eat tasty local food, which I won't be able to get in Canada. At lunchtime, I bumped into Filipe whom I met at OLS last year. He introduced me to his Brazillian friends and we discovered that Tiego and Tassia who are studying in Montr al. I promised them that we'd get some Debian get-together in early June, before they leave. It's rather warm right now. The temperature goes about 30 C every day, but the humidity is always close to 30% so it doesn't get very sticky. But it does make such things like ice cream more important. Interestingly enough, lots of American products are for sale in Mexico, but under completely different brand names. After dinner, we went to the HackLab which is a building set up to encourage people to work with their computers. There are plenty of tables and chairs, with extension cords sprawled everywhere. I sat down for a game of Mao, and then got up several hours later. I wandered outside, where people were hanging out on the veranda, so I sat down on the grass in a circle and chatted with people until the early hours of the morning. Debconf, you're so bad for my health.

I was staying over at dcoombs's place on Friday night, which was very gracious with him. It also meant that I got a ride to the aeroport on Saturday morning, so that I could catch my 8:05 flight. After going through security, I waited for a bit and read a book. Then we boarded and waited on the tarmac for an oil filter change. No kidding. We took off and I soon fell asleep, as I was quite tired. By the time I woke up, we were flying over sunny Mexico. We landed at the aeroport, picked up my baggage, went through customs and ended up in the terminal. It was full of people with signs looking for their loved ones. I made my way past them and followed a sign that looked like it was for taxis. Along the way, I saw an HSBC and poked my head inside. I was slightly disappointed that nobody was speaking Chinese. I bought a flat-rate taxi fare to the Terminal de autobuses in Tasque a. The taxi driver, Bito, loaded my suitcase in the car and we were off. His English was non-existant so we spoke to each other with our hands. The rest of the time, I spent staring out the window. Mexico City is bright and colourful! Everything has vibrant splashes of colour. There are huge fleets of old Volkswagon Beatles driving around, many of them operating as green taxicabs. We drove past shops and stores and the signs were hand-painted and awesome. When we got to the poorer communities, I started seeing tags on buildings, but then we drove past these huge murals spray-painted on large walls. He let me off at the terminal and I bought a ticket to Oaxtepec. This was done through plenty of pointing and reading off of computer teminals. Then, I went out Gate 3 and walked into a mass of people. Now, I'm used to people queueing up, but this was not a common concept here. I tapped someone on the should and asked how I could get on my bus. Giacomo introduced himself and tried to explain the system. But he eventually just talked to the ticket collector who let me on the same coach. I discovered that he had family who lived in Hamilton and invited him to look me up if he ever visited Montr al. When we got to Oaxtepec, I staggered off the bus and picked up my luggage. Then I got un-carsick by sitting down on something stable. I was standing outside the front gates of the Centro vacacional Oaxtepec IMSS. I considered the long hike up a big hill, and then hired a cab that took me up to the Recepcion building where I got checked in. I dragged my luggage to the room and met Blars there. I picked out a bed amongst the five still available. I had finally arrived.