Today didn t exactly go as planned. Terah woke up feeling sick, and by mid-morning was really wanting a nap. Not that that is likely to happen with a 3-year-old and a 4-month-old in the house. I needed to visit the WSU bookstore sometime anyhow, so I suggested I d take Jacob to Wichita for awhile. Jacob had been talking of seeing the trains again for awhile, so he chose these overalls for the day: He wanted me to sing Home On The Range several times as we drove. We stopped at WSU first, and he enjoyed running down the wide sidewalks and trying to hide behind bushes. Then it was on to lunch at HuHot Mongolian Grill. Jacob chose his own ingredients (with some help from me). He chose fish, which noodles he wanted, and of course had some baby corn and carrots. He got a full bowl of ingredients, and of course his favorite part was watching them grill it. He polished off most of his plate, too. He had been talking about ice cream all day. In fact, mention Wichita to Jacob, and he ll almost immediately say, Shall we get some ice cream? I wonder who he gets that from Terah usually takes him to Cold Stone Creamery, but we didn t have enough time to go there. So we went to The Old Mill Tasy Shop, something of along-time local legend in downtown Wichita. Jacob enjoyed noticing that the old brick wall had holes in it while they scooped out his chocolate ice cream and my strawberry sundae. He was too busy devouring his ice cream to notice it came in a metal bowl until I pointed it out to him. Then it was off to the Great Plains Transportation Museum. It was a quiet afternoon in November; not the packed crowd like the last time we were there. He went for the old Santa Fe diesel passenger locomotive first (which he insists is a freight train ). Of course you get to go inside almost everything, and he enjoyed going inside that one, sitting on the engineer s chair, and playing with handles and knobs. We went in several of the cabooses, and he noticed the train potty in one. It s the old open to the ground type, and if you look down inside it, you see the rocks that are underneath the caboose. Jacob thought it was very interesting that the train potty has rocks in it. The museum is right next to some active freight tracks, and Jacob was very much hoping that there d be a freight train going past. He wasn t disappointed; we saw two, plus an airplane and a helicopter. A successful visit, I d say. <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" data="http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377" height="267" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400"><param name="flashvars" value="intl_lang=en-us&amp;photo_secret=8517185815&amp;photo_id=4104904370"><param name="movie" value="http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377"><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><embed allowfullscreen="true" bgcolor="#000000" flashvars="intl_lang=en-us&amp;photo_secret=8517185815&amp;photo_id=4104904370" height="267" src="http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=71377" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400"></embed></object> So I didn t really get done anything I had planned to today, but in spite of being behind on stuff, it s a better day than I had planned. I really enjoy going off and doing things with Jacob. While we were eating lunch, I asked him if he had fun at the bookstore. Yeah! I have fun EVERYWHERE! What a fun perspective, huh?

Following suggestions by some other koha developers and with an increasing amount of silence from long-time koha community supporters liblime, we ve called an IRC meeting next Tuesday. We re concerned that our community is currently not sustainable: the withdrawal of any vendor could seriously damage the project. Moving some of the core project resources to a foundation should ensure its continued stewardship. From my own point of view, our co-op internally tries to keep its TruckNumber high and we d like to use a foundation to make sure the Koha project TruckNumber stays high. There are several groups set up for the koha project and some that existed before: can any of them help to make Koha sustainable? Right now, I think TTLLP is the only Koha hoster which isn t a private for-profit corporation. That seems a bit scary for a 10-year-old project. It s time to fix this. The agenda and information links are on the wiki. Hope to see everyone invoved in koha development there!

Stewart Smith has written about the removal of a blog from Planet Linux Australia [1] due to publishing a list of URLs that the Australian government wants to censor. The first point I want to make is that even if you had a list with thousands of entries that are not likely to offend anyone or incur any legal liability then it s still not suitable for syndication on most Planet feeds. The correct thing to do is to have a paragraph describing the list and why people would want to read it and then use the MORE feature of your blog so that the rest isn t in the RSS feed. If you use Wordpress which seems to have the MORE function broken then that would mean hosting the list somewhere else. In regard to the specific post, in a comment on Stewart s post Matt suggests that the Planet software somehow filter out certain blog posts. I am not aware of any way of doing that apart from through code changes, Matt could submit some patches to allow that sort of thing. One thing that would be really good would be to have an exclusion tag or category in a blog feed. So you for example you could have feed URLs such as /feed/lca which would be configured to list all posts without the tag not-lca. Another way for a blogger to do this would be to use Yahoo pipes [2]. The people who run a Planet should be prepared to take any feed URL. It would not be difficult for a blogger to create a pipe that excludes all items that have NSFW in the title (or any other possible way of listing them). A final option is to have multiple blogs. I have a blog for documents that I regularly update [3]. Many of those documents had been plain HTML files edited with vi for years before I started blogging. But Wordpress is a reasonable CMS and as I use it for blogging it made sense to use it for other documents too. Wordpress has no good option for managing two types of documents, ones that are date-based (regular blog posts with the date in the URL) and non-date based (which change periodically and have different date stamps). There are Wordpress pages, but the support for having moderate numbers of pages is not great. Also on my document blog I will often have articles appear new regularly as I change the date when updating them. Anyone is welcome to subscribe to the feed for my document blog if they are interested in seeing new versions of the documents, but I expect that most people don t want to. The Debian Wordpress package (as of last time I used it) and my fork of the Debian Wordpress package have great support for multiple blogs. There is Wordpress-MU for bulk blog hosting, but that is only designed for people who want to run something like LiveJournal or Blogger. If you just want a few blogs for friends and relatives then the regular Debian Wordpress package will do the job well. Some bloggers maintain two blogs, one for public things and another for close friends and relatives (people who ARE interested in what they ate for breakfast). Having one blog for the NSFW material would be a reasonable thing to do for certain bloggers. Finally while I doubt that someone who runs a Planet installation faces any legal liability, there is also the issue of a PR liability. From a PR perspective I think it s best for the reputation of Linux users in Australia for certain things to not appear on Planet Linux Australia. That said it would be good if there was a process for removing and reinstating blogs that was publicly documented. There will obviously be many differences of opinion as to what is too risky to allow on the Planet so we should expect that from time to time feeds will be temporarily removed. When that happens what does a blogger have to do to be done to be syndicated again? Update: A comment has revealed a way of filtering out RSS feeds via the feed URLs used by wordpress. A URL such as /feed/cat=-X will give a feed of all articles that don t contain category number X. Multiple categories can be specified when separated by commas. So this allows Wordpress users to exclude their NSFW category from Planet Linux Australia.

• [1] http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2009/03/21/things-not-to-post-on-planet-la/


• [2] http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/


• [3] http://doc.coker.com.au/

Stewart has made some predictions for the future of computing [1]. He predicts that within 2 years the majority of consumer machines will be laptops and have SSD (not rotational media). I predict that by the end of next year more than half of all new consumer machines that are being sold will be laptops (defined as being portable machines with the display and keyboard forming part of a single unit), and that more than half of such machines will have SSD as the primary storage (IE used for booting and for most common file access). I predict that by the end of 2010 the majority of all computers shipped (in all form factors including games consoles and servers) will have SSD as their primary storage. I predict that in late 2010 rotational media will start to go away for most tasks, but for at least the next year the model will be SSD for small/light/fast operations and rotational media for large capacity. I m not disagreeing with Stewart, just being more precise. Also while Val made some good points about the reliability of SSD [2] I don t think that this will be an obstacle in the low-end of the market. There is no little evidence of computers failing in the consumer market due to being unreliable - it seems that Microsoft has conditioned people to expect unreliability. I predict that Sun will not release ZFS under the GPL in time for anyone to care. The release of OpenSolaris was way behind schedule and I don t expect anything different this time around. Stewart predicts that in five years Linux will have significantly more desktop market share than Apple. I agree and also predict that Apple will convert to the Linux kernel. I predict that Apple will become the first Linux distributor to make any significant hardware sales for the mainstream computer market (Linux bundled with hardware has already done well for mobile phones, routers, Tivo, and similar devices where the user doesn t know what OS is running). I predict the death of Windows mobile. I predict that in five years the mobile phone/PDA market will be dominated by Android with a variety of other Linux based phones. I predict that some time after five years the iPhone will go away. Chris Samuel has made some predictions too [3]. He predicts that within two years The distinction between laptops, netbooks and mobile phones will get even more blurred with consumers demanding mobiles with more power and lighter and lighter laptops/netbooks . I believe that the difference between laptops, netbooks, and mobile phones is primarily one of IO (size of keyboard, sockets for peripherals, and size of screen). For desktop use the only application I use which requires more RAM or CPU power than my EeePC 701 can provide is Firefox. A combination of more efficient javascript interpretation and better coding practices by web designers would solve that problem. A significant portion of the mass of a laptop is dedicated to suppporting IO ports and maintaining the structural integrity of the device. A common feature in science fiction is lapotops that can be rolled up, stretched to size, etc (the Thinkpad Butterfly keyboard was an attempt at a first step towards this which failed due to issues of mechanical strength). As some Netbook class systems already have 3G networking built in it seems a logical extension to have telephony functions built in to a laptop. I predict that laptops with full telephony support will go on sale in 2010. One promising feature in regard to laptop IO is the new Display Port [4] video port. It will only be an incremental improvement to the space taken for IO capacity, but I am not expecting anything revolutionary in the near future. I predict that HDMI will be a failure in the market and DVI will never gain critical market share, it will be VGA and Display Port on most systems by 2012. Predicting that technological developments won t happen is always risky, but I predict that the mechanical issues which separate the heavier laptops and desktop-replacements from netbooks (in terms of making a large display and keyboard that won t break frequently) won t be solved within five years. In the same note, I don t expect anyone to try building a mobile phone which can have a full-size screen and keyboard connected to it (although it would be possible to do so). So I expect that the phone/PDA, Netbook, and laptop distinction will remain for at least the next 5 years. One thing that would make sense is to have a small device (PDA or mobile phone) store data that is security relevant and connect it to full-size machines for serious work. So for example you could use a desktop machine for Internet banking (maybe in an Internet cafe) and have your mobile phone ask you to confirm the transaction and then authenticate you to the bank server. I predict a larger role for PDAs and mobile phones as computers as soon as people start to take security seriously. I won t try and guess when that might be, but I predict that it won t be for at least five years. I predict that increasing oil prices will significantly make a significant impact on the price of computers before the end of 2010. Not that I expect the prices to suddenly jump upwards, it s more likely that prices will steadily increase while at the same time new technology to reduce production expenses in other areas is introduced. I also predict that increasing oil prices will increase the desire to maintain systems for longer periods of time without maintenance. For example my Thinkpad T41p has had a few significant part replacements (a couple of motherboards, half the case, and a few keyboard replacements). This is OK while plastic costs almost nothing and the manufacturing expenses are also very low. But in future I expect that people will want laptops that can run for years without needing part replacments and which have a service life of 10 years or more. This requirement for strength will counteract the demand for laptops that are as light as netbooks.

• [1] http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2008/11/09/technology-predictions/


• [2] http://valhenson.livejournal.com/25228.html


• [3] http://www.csamuel.org/2008/11/09/technology-predictions


• [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displayport

This all started when a DSA (Debian SysAdmin (those with root rights on all .debian.org machines)) wanted to upgrade the kernel running on our ftp-master host. It was shortly before dinstall, but hey, there it went, and the machine rebooted into a 2.6.28. Besides murphy taking his share making the machine fsck its huge filesystem that is all fine. What wasn t fine was the result we found. An odd one. Suddenly one tool we run during our dinstall run decided to blow up. Well, it did nt break, it just went dead-slow. Usual runtime had been about 5 minutes before, now we had over an hour - and only about 20% of the work was done. YUCK. Thats sure not going to work. Reboot in a 2.6.27 kernel did not show this problem, going back to .28 had it again. Which meant we had yet another reboot to get a working system. At which point investigation of the problem started. Turns out that pythons popen2.popen2 function is closing all available filehandles before it forks. Thats all fine and also what you usually want. Problem is (and all the glory to have found the cause goes to Peter weasel Palfrader) that the .28 kernel included a patch titled rlimit: permit setting RLIMITNOFILE to RLIMINFINITY (0c2d64fb6cae9aae480f6a46cfe79f8d7d48b59f) that allows, as the title implies, to set the limit for number of files to infinity. More citation from weasels mail: Closer investigation showed that the broken default ulimit did not apply to system processes (like stuff started from init). In the end I could establish that all processes that passed through pam_limit at one point had the bad resource limit. Apparently the pam library in Debian etch (4.0) initializes the limits to some default values when it doesn t have any settings in limit.conf to override them. Turns out that for nofiles this is RLIMINFINITY. Commenting out case RLIMITNOFILE in pam_limit.c:267 of our pam package version 0.79-5 fixes that - tho I m not sure what side effects that has. Debian lenny (the upcoming 5.0 version) doesn t have this issue as it uses a different pam (version). So, whatever the fix might be for etch, if any, there is no way we Ftpmaster can force DSA to live with a 2.6.27 kernel forever on our host. As the problem occurs when using popen2 - lets get rid of it. Luckily popen2 was used in dak by people that either did not know the gzip module python has, or it has been there since before that exists. Don t know, but that made removing popen2 a not too hard deal, done by our newest addition to the Ftpteam, Mike O Connor, stew (Thanks!). A pretty nice side effect is a huge improvement to the speed of the tool Prior, using popen2, it took around 5 minutes to do its job. Now using the gzip module we are down to some 44 seconds. Yes, below one minute, but well, must have some effect if you stop forking a thousand times and all that thousand times close all (1024) available filehandles But that alone isn t enough. There was a second tool also using popen2 (thankfully only once instead of a million times). Fixing that tool got its runtime from 2 minutes down to 0.7 seconds. Yes, less than one second, getting the same result out. Thats the gain you get from not going like get a tempfile, zcat foo > tempfile, filehandle=open(file), dowork including reading its content but foo=gzipfile.readitscontents, dowork(foo) . I like it. And am now sure that avoid popen2 at nearly all costs, if you can is a good motto. :)

I just made my first upload to hackage (not counting uploads I did during my work in Dresden). Don Steward repeatedly told me to package and upload darcswatch, so I just did that. Thanks to Gwern Branwen to contribute the first cabal file.There is little documentation on how to set up darcswatch yourself, so if you actually want to try it out, you most likely will have to get in touch with me. Note that you can just use the installation on http://darcswatch.nomeata.de/.If you, for some reason, feel like hacking on darcswatch, I d be interested in memory reduction. I currently process 916 mails containing 1867 patches and 47MB, as well as 13 repositories, some of which are rather large, and the numbers are increasing.

The Debian Python Modules Team is discussing which DVCS to switch to from SVN. Ondrej Certik asked how to generate a list of commiters to the team s repository, so I looked at it and got this:
emilio@saturno:~/deb/python-modules$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
865 piotr
609 morph
598 kov
532 bzed
388 pox
302 arnau
253 certik
216 shlomme
212 malex
175 hertzog
140 nslater
130 kobold
123 nijel
121 kitterma
106 bernat
99 kibi
87 varun
83 stratus
81 nobse
81 netzwurm
78 azatoth
76 mca
73 dottedmag
70 jluebbe
68 zack
68 cgalisteo
61 speijnik
61 odd_bloke
60 rganesan
55 kumanna
52 werner
50 haas
48 mejo
45 ucko
43 pabs
42 stew
42 luciano
41 mithrandi
40 wardi
36 gudjon
35 jandd
34 smcv
34 brettp
32 jenner
31 davidvilla
31 aurel32
30 rousseau
30 mtaylor
28 thomasbl
26 lool
25 gaspa
25 ffm
24 adn
22 jmalonzo
21 santiago
21 appaji
18 goedson
17 toadstool
17 sto
17 awen
16 mlizaur
16 akumar
15 nacho
14 smr
14 hanska
13 tviehmann
13 norsetto
13 mbaldessari
12 stone
12 sharky
11 rainct
11 fabrizio
10 lash
9 rodrigogc
9 pcc
9 miriam
9 madduck
9 ftlerror
8 pere
8 crschmidt
7 ncommander
7 myon
7 abuss
6 jwilk
6 bdrung
6 atehwa
5 kcoyner
5 catlee
5 andyp
4 vt
4 ross
4 osrevolution
4 lamby
4 baby
3 sez
3 joss
3 geole
2 rustybear
2 edmonds
2 astraw
2 ana
1 twerner
1 tincho
1 pochu
1 danderson
As it s likely that the Python Applications Packaging Team will switch too to the same DVCS at the same time, here are the numbers for its repo:

emilio@saturno:~/deb/python-apps$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
401 nijel
288 piotr
235 gothicx
159 pochu
76 nslater
69 kumanna
68 rainct
66 gilir
63 certik
52 vdanjean
52 bzed
46 dottedmag
41 stani
39 varun
37 kitterma
36 morph
35 odd_bloke
29 pcc
29 gudjon
28 appaji
25 thomasbl
24 arnau
20 sc
20 andyp
18 jalet
15 gerardo
14 eike
14 ana
13 dfiloni
11 tklauser
10 ryanakca
10 nxvl
10 akumar
8 sez
8 baby
6 catlee
4 osrevolution
4 cody-somerville
2 mithrandi
2 cjsmo
1 nenolod
1 ffm
Here I m the 4th most committer And while I was on it, I thought I could do the same for the GNOME and GStreamer teams:
emilio@saturno:~/deb/pkg-gnome$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
5357 lool
2701 joss
1633 slomo
1164 kov
825 seb128
622 jordi
621 jdassen
574 manphiz
335 sjoerd
298 mlang
296 netsnipe
291 grm
255 ross
236 ari
203 pochu
198 ondrej
190 he
180 kilian
176 alanbach
170 ftlerror
148 nobse
112 marco
87 jak
84 samm
78 rfrancoise
75 oysteigi
73 jsogo
65 svena
65 otavio
55 duck
54 jcurbo
53 zorglub
53 rtp
49 wasabi
49 giskard
42 tagoh
42 kartikm
40 gpastore
34 brad
32 robtaylor
31 xaiki
30 stratus
30 daf
26 johannes
24 sander-m
21 kk
19 bubulle
16 arnau
15 dodji
12 mbanck
11 ruoso
11 fpeters
11 dedu
11 christine
10 cpm
7 ember
7 drew
7 debotux
6 tico
6 emil
6 bradsmith
5 robster
5 carlosliu
4 rotty
4 diegoe
3 biebl
2 thibaut
2 ejad
1 naoliv
1 huats
1 gilir

emilio@saturno:~/deb/pkg-gstreamer$ svn log egrep "^r[0-9]+ cut -f2 -d sed s/-guest// sort uniq -c sort -n -r
891 lool
840 slomo
99 pnormand
69 sjoerd
27 seb128
21 manphiz
8 he
7 aquette
4 elmarco
1 fabian
Conclusions:
- Why do I have the full python-modules and pkg-gstreamer trees, if I have just one commit to DPMT, and don t even have commit access to the GStreamer team?
- If you don t want to seem like you have done less commits than you have actually done, don t change your alioth name when you become a DD (hint: pox-guest and piotr in python-modules are the same person)
- If the switch to a new VCS was based on a vote where you have one vote per commit, the top 3 commiters in pkg-gnome could win the vote if they chosed the same! For python-apps it s the 4 top commiters, and the 7 ones for python-modules. pkg-gstreamer is a bit special

1. Dishwasher, by Pete Jordan
2. Windfalls, by Jean Hegland
3. River of Gods, by Ian McDonald
4. Powers, by Le Guin
5. Real World Haskell, by O'Sullivan, Goerzen, Stewart
6. Matter, by Iain M. Banks
7. Ars Magica, by Tweet & Rein Hagen

Nice set of books. Pity I'm in the middle of all of them. Lately I have a hard time finishing many novels, I think because waiting for the plot to play out gets boring. Although River of Gods has mostly just confused me with too many viewpoint characters. And by this, where each box is a chapter, and that big box I'm just at the start of scares me: Dishwasher is fun light reading. If I'd thought to bring it to its owner, Jay, who misplaced it, I could have picked it up from where I left off months ago and read it on the plane. Double oops. Oh well, there's always my next doctor or dentist appointment. Powers is a probably great book by Le Guin. I hope there are many more to come, but the tendancy is to savor what's available. Also, I have it in dead tree edition, which I tend to save up for when I need them. Windfalls is such a dead tree book, hibernating in the yurt for me to get back to them some day. I may have to start it over, since it's pretty involved, and rather out of my usual comfort zone. Real World Haskell is coming along well, I hope. Matter hasn't pulled me in yet, oddly. Ars Magica I've been flipping through the PDF of idly.

---

Anyway, after all that, turning up a random story generator in 1 kilobyte of code couldn't help but feel like a relief.

I have been mostly silent about the campaign here but this video is too good to remain so (and makes me wonder if Colbert and Stewart wrote the speech for Obama)

I have been mostly silent about the campaign here but this video is too good to remain so (and makes me wonder if Colbert and Stewart wrote the speech for Obama)

I needed a little humor to offset what has been a pretty grueling and trying and tiring week of work so today’s visit to the bosom of American Freedom was quite welcome. Stephen Colbert is as great to see in person/live as he is on his show (or better). His energy seems bottomless, though of course his large crew of helpers and assistants I am helps sustain his energy. The last time I saw a T.V. show being taped was also on my birthday, my 8th one to be exact, when I went to watch one of the first boy toy bands Menudo as they strutted their stuff for a bunch of screaming girls. Though Colbert has *nothing* on these fine shiny Menudo outfits (no one really can), he has a lot else to offer, like his biting wit. It is well worth the time, trip, long wait on line, and freezing conditions of the studio. For those also in a week of bottomless work and in need of some humor, take a look here

stew has announced on the Debian NYC social list the bug squashing party to happen in his place at Brooklyn, NY. If you are around the area and willing to attend, write your name down on the wiki page and get ready to be rewarded by home-brewed beer and grilled bounties per squashed RC bug! stew also offers sleeping facilities in case you need it.

I put together a supybot plugin for that can query a udd instance. Here's some examples of what it can do so far:

stew> judd: info apache2.2-common
judd> stew: apache2.2-common (net): is optional; Version: 2.2.3-4+etch5; Size: 
      963938 ; Installed: 3276 -- Next generation, scalable, extendable web server
stew> judd: versions apache2.2-common
judd> stew: apache2.2-common: 2.2.3-4+etch5 (etch) 2.2.9-7 (lenny) 2.2.9-8 (sid)
stew> judd: info apache2.2-common --arch alpha --release sid
judd> stew: apache2.2-common (net): is optional; Version: 2.2.9-7; Size: 858136 ; 
      Installed: 3824 -- Apache HTTP Server common files
stew> judd: rcbugs linux-2.6
judd> stew: RC bugs in linux-2.6: 242866 243022 383403 412950 433501 440445 
      490910 494007 494009 494010 494308 494842 498631
stew> judd: bug 242866
judd> stew: Bug #242866 (pending) linux-2.6 -- drivers containing firmware blobs; 
      Severity: serious; Last Modified: 2008-05-17 08:15:02
stew> judd: depends libc6
judd> stew: libc6 -- Depends: tzdata
stew> judd: maint python-xlib
judd> stew: Debian Python Modules Team 
       is listed as maintainer of 
      python-xlib 0.14-2
stew> judd: maint python-xlib 0.13-1
judd> stew: Mike O'Connor  is listed as maintainer of python-xlib 
      0.13-1
stew> judd: uploader python-xlib 0.13-1
judd> stew: Uploader of python-xlib 0.13-1: Clint Adams (Debian) 
      
stew> judd uploader python-xlib 0.14-2
judd> stew: Uploader of python-xlib 0.14-2: Mike O'Connor (stew) 

We did already have the 'dpkg' bot in #debian which can do much of this stuff, but it often takes a long time to respond. Anyone that has used dpkg for this functionality has probably been suprised by how long it might take to respond after:

dpkg> Updating debian files... please wait.

I'll be adding new queries. If there are some you'd like to see, let me know. They are very quick and easy to implement. Right now I have the bot in #debian on freenode. If you'd like to see it in more channels, send me a message.

I found an interesting but old analysis from Don Stewart about trends in the tiling window manager market. I was curious so I tried to make it again to see the result 8 months later. I took the vote data rather than installed, because it's more accurate: it tries to count people who use the software rather then people that just installed it. And we all know that installing a software does not mean you're using it. awesome is rising fast. It has overtaken larswm and xmonad very quickly. Now it seems it just kicked wmii out of the game, and the next target will be the famous ion3, which should be deprecated in some weeks. I'm very impressed. I never though it will happen that way. That stats, so it means anything you want them to mean, but I think it's very cool anyway. I think that the next thing to do is to beat the floating-only window manager like the *box, etc An interesting challenge, so stay tuned!

On Wednesday, OSCon really goes into high gear (and the wifi croaks) at OSCon. The people that aren't going to the tutorials all arrive, and aren't yet sluggish from the late-night vendor parties and BOFs.

The keynotes were OK, and after that, I listened to Keith Packard talk about the future of X. Then it was off to finish the preparation for my own talk on Linux on the corporate desktop. It was the first time I spoke at OSCon, and it seems to have gone well. I keep running into people that were at the talk and thought of some more questions -- and of course I chatted with a number of people right after as well. There are a number of other companies that are planning on doing what we've done, or even started down the implementation path already. It's some effort making something of OSCon quality (Damian Conway suggests something like 10 hours preparing for every 1 hour presenting -- I didn't do that), but I'm glad I did.

The Expo Hall opened Wednesday as well. Met some interesting folks there -- Open Lina, a company that sells Linux hardware, an Open Source groupware product I hadn't heard of before (they are apparently working on Debian Packages too), and some others I can't remember right now...

Tuesday I had dinner at Andina, a Peruvian restaurant, with fellow Haskellers Bryan O'Sullivan and Don Stewart -- the first time the three of us Real World Haskell folks met in one place.

Today brought Nat Torkington's excellent keynote, and also r0ml's great talk this afternoon ("I started this talk in 2003, and it's run a bit long.") Another great time for some networking in the hallways and expo hall. One of the LinuxFest Northwest folks had attended my talk, happened to see me as I was stuffing one of the may free t-shirts that vendors were giving out into my laptop bag (by afternoon, they were getting quite in your face about it), and struck up a conversation.

Went for sushi over lunch with a couple of folks from #oscon on IRC, then dinner with Debian folks.

Been a busy week, but met lots of people. I didn't go to as many talks as I planned because I was so busy talking to people -- guess that means the conference was a hit.

Now that Tim Connors has taken the lid off it, I feel I should opine on the matter. Microblogging is just not terribly exciting for the reader. I don't see the point in aggregating it. I don't particularly find Mikal's blatherings terribly exciting reading. I don't find Stewart's twitterings much fun either. I think Facebook's status updates are a better way to poll such things, myself, and it's where I confine my "microblogging" to. I think one of the things that used to make reading blogs more worthwhile than reading mailing lists was the high signal-to-noise ratio. Back in the day, there was a bit of a "cost" or barrier to entry for writing a blog post. For most blogs, it wasn't as easy as writing an email. I still hand-craft my blog posts in HTML, so for me to write something, I have to have enough inclination to fire up an editor and write the words. Often I run out of motivation half way through a blog post, and just end up scrapping it. I'm sitting on a few more lengthy posts that I haven't managed to summon up the energy to write at all yet. I think some of the "push-button publishing" out there is rapidly commoditising blogging, to the point where it becomes as easy or easier than writing an email. And we all know what happened to email... Blogging for me is essentially a journal. I like to use it to refer back to. To share what I'm doing with others. Occasionally it can be cathartic. Often it's a substitute for going to work and telling my co-workers about what crazy geeky thing I've done in my spare time. Mostly it's for me. The fact that I choose to share it with the world is not really a primary motivating factor for me, it just makes it more accessible for me, and sometimes helpful for others.

Of recent simple/guilty pleasures.. Wading in the creek and browsing on blooming watercress.
Emergency repair of my broken sandal.
The most yummy cherries from Ken's tree.
Gogol Bordello - Super Taranta!
Lamb stew with pickled lemon and fresh mint.
Fixing my broken sandal right w/ metal reinforcement.
West 10 LDN.
Homemade mango lassi. (At least it's not bacon.)

YAY! I'm now a Debian Developer. I started celebrating by uploading an NMU for the oldest patch of a RC bug I had sitting in the BTS. Thanks to Ari for advocating my membership, to Ari, Clint, Free, Piotr for sponsoring my uploads, and TomV. for managing my application. Also a special thanks to sam for making the last minute DAM appointments, which probably sped up my account creation, thus, finally 'making debian sexier' :).

I don't think any of these are mine, but this needs to be published to the general public (at least until it rests on AlumNit).

Poo Alliterations
- The Earl of Excrement
- The Duke of Dung
- The Prince of Poop
- The Sultan of Shit
- The Father of Feces
- The Matriarch of Merde
- The Steward of Stink
- The Dignitary of Dangleberries
- The Grand Poohbah of Grand Poo
- The Tyrant of Turd
- The Shogun of Scheisse
- The Baron of Bowels
- The Cardinal of Crap
- The Director of Dump
- The Surveyor of Stool
- The Lord of the Log
- The Crown Prince of Cow Patties
- The Royal Archbishop of Road Apples
- The Duchess of Droppings
- The Princess of Poodie
- The Legionnaire of Loaf
- The Supervisor of Stinkers
- The Pharaoh of Floaters
- The Magnate of Manure
- The Tycoon of TCPDumps
- The Czar of Czesspools
- The Mogul of Bowel Movements
- The Ruler of the Runs
- The Dean of Diarrhea
- The Royal Ringleader of Rump Raisins
- The Denizen of Doo-doo
- The Emperor of Evacuations
- The Headmaster of Horrible Odors
- The Titan of the Trots
- The King of Klingons
- The Big Boss of Bum Beans
- The Taskmaster of Turtleheads
- The Supervising Sovereign of Sewer Serpents
- The Colonel of Colon Cobras
- The Nobleman of Number Two
- The Top Dog of Toilet Twinkies
- The Kingpin of Keester Cakes
- The Shepherd of Sea Pickles
- The Head Navigator of Heinie Nuggets
- Rectal Representative
- The Commander of Cow Pie
- The First Mate of Fecal Matter
- The Creator of Cloth Touchers
- The Protector of Porcelan
- The Theologian of the Throne
- The God of Grunts
- The Small Insignificant Yodeling President of Shit in your Pants
- The Diaper Destroyer
- The Loader of Loincloths
- The Pontiff of Plum Pudding
- The Daiymo of Dysentery
- The Master of Montezuma's revenge
- The Squire of Squirts
- The [Weaver] of [WvLog]s
- The Primary Contact of Pudding Cookies
- The Best Producer of Brown Puddles
- The Senior Partner of Steaming Piles
- The Fine Baker of Fudge Brownies
- The Sheriff of Stench
- The Don of the Deuce
- The Torrid Putrid Tainted Pervert of Two-Ply Toilet Paper
- The Sacred Monarch of Skid Marks
- The Main Scientist of Microfeceological Studies
- The G.I. Joe of Gastro Intestinal Journeys
- The Premier of Polyps
- The Brigadier General of Bedpan Gold
- The Plunger Pilot
- The Specialist of Splashers
- The Foreman of Fake Farts
- The Ambassador's Under-Secretary of Astounding Unearthly Scents
- The Old Man and the Sea of Odiferous Monsters in the Sink
- The Bafflingly Blunt and Blasphemous Bearer of Big Bad Beastly Booty Burdens
- The Crisp Pungence of Chain Pooping
- The Goddess of Groundhogging
- The Burly Bobby's Brief Battle with Brim Blasting Bowel Bombs
- The Nasty Neighbour's Noisy and Nefarious Neglect of Normal Nasal Niceties
- The Judge Jury and Executor of Jolly Jumper Excrement
- The Forwarder of the Forwarded
- The Wizard of the Water-closet
- The Grunting Lobber of Great Logs
- The Annoyingly Arrogant Architect of Awful and Abhorrent yet Amazingly Aerodynamic Anal Atrocities
- The Dark, Dangerous and Delusional Dealer of Death-Defying Doses of Disturbingly Decadent Dung
- The Shakespeare of Sinfully Smelly and Supremely Scary Scripture with Soggy Stains and Screaming Splashes
- The Wise but Weakened Warlord Whose Willful Wrath Was Wholly Wrought With Wicked and Wretched Winds from Within
- The Languid and Lackluster Legend of the Little Log from the Loo and its Lavish Life of Luxury in a Lasagna
- The Kahuna of Kaka
- The Emergency Evacuator of Enraged Entrails
- The Squire of Sultry Stinknuggets
- The Deadening Discomfort of a Dearth of Dumps
- The Far From Favourable Fragrance of Four Fragments of Fantastically Fresh Feces
- The Principal of Prodigiously Putrid Pellets
- The Markedly Morose Maintenance of Maniacally Mounded Midden Movements and Mostly Meaty Meals Mysteriously Made Mushy
- The Crass and Cranky Coroner Connecting Clues Concerning a Cornucopia of Casualties Caused by a Crude Cluster of Completely Contemptible Colon Concoctions
- The Thinking Thoughts of a Thinker
- The Horrible, Hubristic Heathen Hoarding Hoary Humps of Hideousness Hailing from His Huge Hairy Heinie in His Harmfully Heady Hovel
- Inane Writings on Irritated Wreathing of the Incubator of Wrath
- That Special Numbness from Sniffing Noodled Stink Nougat
- The Moral Sanctity of the Mystery Shit
- The Ornery Opressor's Opulent Outpost Overseeing the Ordinary Occupants' Outrageous and Ongoing Observance Of an Occasional but Offensive Orgy Of Offal
- The Rector of Relief
- The Rectal Regurgitator
- The Shit Squat
- The Smelly Surprise
- The World Wide Wisdom
- The Slayer Supreme of System Shock

Anatomy of a Murder. David Denby put it best:

Otto Preminger s Anatomy of a Murder, from 1959, is still the best courtroom drama ever made in this country, and, in its occasional forays out of the court, among the finest evocations of place an Upper Peninsula Michigan resort area in the off-season, leafless, underpopulated, alcoholic, and forlorn. James Stewart, in one of his wonderful melancholy late performances, plays a former county prosecutor named Biegler, a lifelong bachelor who now spends his time with a non-practicing lawyer (Arthur O Connell) and an unpaid secretary (Eve Arden), who sticks around for the wisecracks. The movie is leisurely, detailed, realistic, intensely companionable; you get a sense of how people exist at the margins of a profession without losing their dignity.

Although there are some distinctions between a murder defense in the 1950’s in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and modern-day patent litigation, the essence of trial technique is really not all that different. Highly recommended.

Prosecutor: Lieutenant Manion, wasn’t your action against Barney Quill much the same thing as your action against Miller or the Lieutenant you slapped at the cocktail party — all done in the heat of anger, with a willful, conscious desire to hurt or kill?

Defendant: I don’t remember my action against Quill.

Prosecutor: How long had you known your wife was stepping out with Quill?

Defendant: I never knew anything like that. I trust my wife.

Prosecutor: You just occasionally beat her up for the fun of it, I suppose?

Defense Counsel: There has been nothing established to permit a question like that. He keeps trying to insinuate without ever coming to the point. Let him ask the Lieutenant, did he ever beat his wife.

Judge: I will sustain the objection. Do you want to re-phrase your question, Mr. Dancer?

Prosecutor: No thank you, Your Honor. I’ve finished.

Technorati Tags: Otto Preminger, Anatomy of a Murder, David Denby

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