Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Terry Pratchett dies, aged 66. It looks like his last novel will be The Long Utopia, the fourth book in the Long Earth series, co-written with Stephen Baxter.

DON T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.

Terry Pratchett, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch Thank you for everything you wrote. Each and every line was a gem, with another gem hidden inside.

I read a lot this year - I'll write more about that and reflections on goodreads in another post - but most of the things I read weren't published in 2013. (I should also write a bit about my thoughts on e-readers). However, it seems I have enough to write about 2013's novels to make a round-up post worthwhile, so here we go. This year, crime author Robert Galbraith published his first novel The Cuckoo's Calling. I'd never have heard of it if Galbraith was not outed as an alias for Joanne "JK" Rowling. Clues that Rowling was working on a detective story exist as early as a Guardian preview article in 2012 for her last novel, The Casual Vacancy. Further hints, for me, that this was no first-time author were the taglines from Ian Rankin and Val McDermid on the cover, writers of a calibre I'd be surprised a new author could attract. However I don't know whether they were on the pre-unveiling cover or not. Rowling was upset be outed, having enjoyed the freedom to write without the baggage of expectation that she is subject to. I hope she's pleased: prior to her unmasking the novel was warmly received by the (admittedly relatively small) number of people who read it. And a very good novel it is too. It starts with a genre clich of a grizzled, meloncholy detective, Mr. Cormoran Strike, in an upstairs office with a neon light flickering through the window, but fleshes the story out both forwards - a client, a mysterious death - and backwards - how did Mr. Strike end up in that upstairs office - living out of it, no less? As is traditional for the genre there's a very clever twist. What I really enjoyed about Cormoran Strike was Galbraith/Rowling moving quickly from Chandler-esque everyman to a well fleshed-out, complex protagonist, intertwining the development of the character with the unfolding of the wider plot. I'm looking forward to the sequel, expected in 2014. A second surprise favourite this year was Lauren Beukes' time-tripping crime story The Shining Girls. A monsterous murder of women somehow finds a room in Chicago that lets him travel through time (or perhaps the room finds him). He uses this facility to stalk and murder a set of Shining Girls: women who, for one reason or another, literally 'shine' in his perception of them. One such woman survives his first attack and decides to try and find out who attacked her, and why. The crimes are described in a brutal fashion which - from a distance - resemble the sometimes glorified violence for which crime fiction is sometimes criticised, but the focus of the story is very much on the victims: they are fully fleshed out characters and each death is felt by the reader as a genuine tragedy. I discovered Beukes when her earlier novel Zoo City was included in a Humble eBook bundle. On reading The Shining Girls I felt that the novel deserved to be more widely known than I would expect it to be trapped in the ghetto of genre fiction, so I was pleased to discover that the very mainstream Richard and Judy Book Club discovered it. In established author news, Terry Pratchett, having adopted speech recognition for writing (to combat his debilitating Alzheimer's) has seemingly managed to accelerate his rate of production and squeezed out at least two this year: The Long War with Stephen Baxter is the sequel to 2012's The Long Earth which I very much enjoyed, but it really felt like "difficult second novel" to me. Hopefully there'll be a third. Raising Steam, the 40th Discworld novel, was an enjoyable romp around the concept of steam trains, featuring the relatively new Moist von Lipwig who has managed to become one of my favourite Discworld characters. I can't think of much more to say about the novel, really. It's a Discworld novel, probably not the best introduction to the series for a new reader, but will give a reader familiar with the franchise everything they expect, and possibly no more. Iain Banks sadly died this year, shortly after the publication of his last novel, The Quarry. It's sat on my hardback shelf for the time being. I couldn't bring myself to read it in 2013. I did read his last SF offering from the year prior, The Hydrogen Sonata. Sadly, yet coincidentally, both of these books examine the nature of living and dying, The Quarry in particular from the point of view of a terminal cancer sufferer. I have a small backlog of unread Banks fiction which I want to take my time over with. Finally, whilst not really a book, I thoroughly enjoyed the BBC's 2013 adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Natalie Dormer wrote a piece on the making of the drama which should serve as a good introduction. At the time of writing, most of the programmes have disappeared from iPlayer, but I would be surprised if this wasn't released commercially at some point.

Review: Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett

Series:	Discworld #12
Publisher:	Harper
Copyright:	1991
Printing:	February 2008
ISBN:	0-06-102061-3
Format:	Mass market
Pages:	350

Witches Abroad is the twelfth book in the Discworld series, but there's no strong reason why you couldn't start here. It's the second book about the three witches (Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick), following Wyrd Sisters, and the third book about Granny Weatherwax, but it doesn't assume any knowledge of the previous books or of Discworld in general. Desiderata Hollow is dying. This is not a surprise; she's known for a long time exactly when she was going to die, and that time has come. She's not particularly bothered by it, but it does pose one difficult problem. She's a fairy godmother, as well as a witch, and she's balancing another fairy godmother because they come in pairs. With her dead, Lilith seems likely to win their long struggle, and that would be a bad thing. She needs to pass her wand on to a successor, but she wasn't the planning sort. At least she claims; this comment of hers turns out to hide an elegant bit of manipulation that leaves her wand in the hands of Magrat and sends the three witches on their way to the city of Genua to confront Lilith. There are two halves to Witches Abroad. The first half is the setup described above and their trip across Discworld. The second half is a sort of retelling of Cinderella, as foreshadowed early on by Desiderata. But the whole book is about stories and story shapes and their head-on collisions with the practical confidence of Nanny Ogg and the endless stubbornness of Granny Weatherwax. I think the three witches are one of Pratchett's best inventions, and Granny Weatherwax the best of the three. She has many of the characteristics that would normally relegate her to a supporting mentor figure: older, very knowledgeable, remarkably good at getting her way and at manipulating situations, and not particularly interested in going on adventures. But Pratchett turns this on end at every opportunity. Granny Weatherwax doesn't act like a mentor at all: she doesn't explain things to Magrat, or anyone else; she's almost constantly bickering with the other witches; and she's a fount of irritated and exasperated opinions about the world. She's one of the best irascibly competent characters in fiction, and she steals every scene she's in, refusing to become a supporting character and staying at the center of the story, despite not being a viewpoint character. (Pratchett wisely keeps her out of the viewpoint role for most of the story, since much of her knowledge and "headology" would be less effective if the reader knew what she was thinking.) The dynamics between the three witches are the best part of this book, and I love all three of them. But I'm also a sucker for fractured fairy tales in general, and Witches Abroad is full of them. Their opponent loves stories and has gathered most of her power from reinforcing and manipulating stories, which means that the density of random stories keeps increasing as they approach Genua. That provides numerous opportunities for the witches to stumble through, analyze, take apart, twist, or untwist numerous familiar stories, ranging from Red Riding Hood to Sleeping Beauty. Pratchett keeps things moving right along, not belaboring connections and not explaining too much, which makes it very easy to keep turning pages. The story does get a bit slower in Genua. There's quite a bit of scene-setting and figuring things out, and while Pratchett maintains the steady stream of humor, it isn't quite as compelling without the ever-changing context. He introduces a bit of voodoo magic, which I found to be the least interesting of the multiple styles of magic that show up here. But there are some absolutely brilliant bits with Nanny Ogg's cat, a wonderfully annoyed Cinderella, and an inversion of the traditional story that kept surprising me. I thought the ending was a bit of an anticlimax, but it does fit the nature of the characters. Despite a few plot short-comings, this is my favorite Discworld book up to this point in the series. Definitely recommended, and not a horrible starting point. Followed by Small Gods in the chronological sense and (later) by Lords and Ladies in the plot sense. Rating: 8 out of 10

Brett points at a Guardian article on Terry Deary and his opinion that libraries are no longer relevant. In fact, Mr. Deary goes further: he thinks libraries are destroying the book business by preventing authors, publishers, and bookshops from getting paid. From the article:

As one of the most popular library authors his books were borrowed more than 500,000 times during 2011/12 Deary will have received the maximum amount possible for a writer from the Public Lending Right scheme, which gives authors 6.2p every time one of their books is borrowed, up to a cap of 6,600. "If I sold the book I'd get 30p per book. I get six grand, and I should be getting 180,000. But never mind my selfish author perception what about the bookshops? The libraries are doing nothing for the book industry. They give nothing back, whereas bookshops are selling the book, and the author and the publisher get paid, which is as it should be. What other entertainment do we expect to get for free?" he asked.

He's making several of the same false claims that people in the media business always make whenever they see people enjoying any kind of cultural products without paying for them.

1. Every loan from a library is not a lost sale. More than 500 thousand loans does not mean 500 thousand lost sales. When borrowing a book is free, people will do it even if they aren't sure if they're going to like a book. The cheapest book by Mr. Deary I Amazon UK is 4.27 when sold as new by amazon (I'll ignored used books for the moment). The threshold for buying a book at that price is much, much higher than borrowing on for free.
2. Letting people have stuff for free does not automatically mean they won't pay for other stuff. Indeed, they may well pay for the very stuff they got for free. See the several experiments to let customers set their own price for music, books, or computer games, or the success Cory Doctorow has letting people download e-books of his novels for free, and then letting people donate one or more hardcopies of the book to schools and libraries. This is not a model that will work well for everyone, but it proves the point: charging people money for each copy is not necessary to make good profit. In fact, studies of "Internet pirates", or people who download music and movies (and books) more or less illegally from the Internet, show that such people tend to spend more money on music and movies (and books!) than the average person. That's not something the publishers want to talk about, or hear. (I am talking here about real research, not the propganda material that lobbying organisations produce.)
3. Why would people buy a book in the first place? They need to know they'll like it, but more importantly, they need to like reading in the first place. See point 1: if books cost any amount of money, the threshold for getting one is high. If you don't have easy, convenient access to books when you're a child, you're unlikely to be a reader of books when you're an adult. Public libraries are the perfect way to give people access to a wide variety of literature. In fact, they're about the most perfect marketing ploy in the history of media: the libraries pay for the books, and they pay each time they loan out a book, and every time a new future customer is brainwashed that much more into getting more stuff in the future. Libraries are not just for children, of course. Adult readers use them as well, and they're just as important as children, as far as the marketing ploy is concerned.

It's a bit sad that bookshops are dying out. Public libraries have, however, nothing to do with it. Online booksellers are usually cheaper, and have vastly larger catalogues, and that's a much more likely culprit. Also, bookshops have no intrinsic right to exist: they're middle-men who make a living by making it more convenient for customers to get what they want, and if they get out-competed, that's business life. Now, I neglected above to consider the possibility of buying used books. The reason for that is that media companies, and their lobbying organisations, would like to make selling of used books, music recordings, movies, and computer games not happen anymore. For example, Sony, and files patents for, stopping people from playing used games on its game consoles, even without Internet access. Mr. Deary seems to be following the MPAA and RIAA checklist on how to talk about those evil people who enjoy something without paying for it every time. It can't be long before he starts asking for a ban on selling used books. Let's hope, however, that reality and facts and sense win this time, and that we can let Mr. Deary live alone in his little horrible hallucination.

OK - so I've just been reading the Gaurdian Article on Terry Deary saying that Libraries are outdated and should be got rid of. I entirely disagree with him, I spent a fair amount of my youth borrowing books from my local library, when I had no income, and so the only alternative to borrowing from the library would have been saving up for second hand books... which he wouldn't have seen a penny from. These days I buy Quite A Few books (OK - so, mostly on the kindle these days, but still), if it hadn't have been for libraries when I was younger and couldn't afford to purchase books, I may never have properly picked up the reading habit. His claim that they're killing bookshops is also, in my opinion, entirely wrong. Bookshops are closing more because of the ease of ordering books online and getting them delivered to your door, with a huge collection of books available from large warehouses rather than the stock that a book store can sell easily. We've got a vast collection of literature available to us now, and it's only ever going upwards, no book shop or single library is going to be able to cater for the entirely different needs of their customers. Libraries do inter library lending, which means that the collection of rarer, less popular books are still available (potentially with a bit of a wait), and every time the book is lent the author gets some funds. If he seriously thinks that if libraries closed the number of people reading his material would stay the same I think he's mistaken. He also doesn't seem to take in to account at all the second hand book market. All I have to say is NYARGH.

here's my weekly list of RC bugs that I've worked on:

• #665234 src:libpoe-component-client-mpd-perl: "libpoe-component-client-mpd-perl: FTBFS: tests hang"
  upload new upstream release (pkg-perl)
• #666351 src:openr2: "openr2: FTBFS: dh_install: libopenr2-bin missing files (etc/openr2/*.conf), aborting"
  fix build* targets in debian/rules, upload to DELAYED/3
• #666654 src:apt-dpkg-ref: "apt-dpkg-ref: FTBFS: cp: cannot stat apt-dpkg-ref.pdf': No such file or directory"
  manual close
• #667764 strongswan-starter: "strongswan-starter: package must not include /var/lock/subsys"
  create lock directory in init script instead of shipping it, upload to DELAYED/3
• #669433 src:grafx2: "grafx2: FTBFS: fileformats.c:30:17: fatal error: png.h: No such file or directory"
  add build dependency on libpng-dev, upload to DELAYED/2
• #669559 src:xserver-xorg-video-mach64: "xserver-xorg-video-mach64: FTBFS: cp: cannot stat debian/tmp/usr/share/man': No such file or directory"
  manual close
• #670221 plptools: "plptools: fails to install due to insserv rejecting the script header"
  fix init script as proposed by Andreas Beckmann, upload to DELAYED/2
• #671962 src:freerdp: "freerdp: FTBFS: dh_install: libfreerdp1 missing files (usr/lib/*.so.*), aborting"
  send patch from Ubuntu / Michael Terry to the BTS
• #674761 src:gpx2shp: "Build-depend on obsolete proj package"
  fix build dependency, upload to DELAYED/2

a rather lazy bugsquashing week but with a little cheating a managed to get at at least 7 RC bugs:

• #642738 src:styx: "styx: FTBFS: ./config.status: 1358: ./config.status: gawk: not found"
  add missing build dependency, upload to DELAYED/2
• #643471 src:lbreakout2: "lbreakout2: FTBFS: server.c:1093:16: error: 'LC_ALL' undeclared (first use in this function)"
  add a patch to include locale.h, upload to DELAYED/2
• #648842 src:libpgplot-perl: "libpgplot-perl: needs to be rebuilt against perl 5.14"
  do a versioned close, Carlo Segre has manually rebuilt the package (pkg-perl)
• #650598 src:pygpiv: "pygpiv: /usr/include/glib-2.0/glib/gtypes.h:34:24: fatal error: glibconfig.h: No such file or directory"
  apply patch from Ubuntu / Daniel Polehn, Michael Terry, upload to DELAYED/2
• #651231 src:xymon: "FTBFS: PCRE not found"
  add (extended) patch from from Ubuntu / Steve Langasek, upload to DELAYED/5, later rescheduled to 0-day by maintainer
• #651907 src:ido: "ido FTBFS uses G_CONST_RETURN with G_DISABLE_DEPRECATED"
  add patch from peter green, upload to DELAYED/2
• #652446 p7zip: "p7zip FTBFS with multiarch libwxgtk2.8-dev"
  add patch from peter green, upload to DELAYED/2

Ugh, in the last year and a half I've only posted once. With the move to Ireland, starting a new job, and then using too much Google+, I forgot about this blog thing. So, to start with something easy, I'll tell you about some films I watched recently. This weekend I had a marathon of films, after sometime without watching any, I watched two at home and two at my favourite cinema in Dublin: the IFI, which I recommend to anyone living here. First, on Friday, I watched Brazil, the 1985 classic from Terry Gilliam. It was a long overdue obligation to watch it, and some discussions with a friend about cinema made me finally do it. It was an amazing film. Among the many memorable scenes, and cinephile winks, I liked the one copying the famous Odessa steps sequence. The problems related to its US release reminded me a bit of the problems with the edition of Touch of evil, although in the case of Brazil, what the big studio did to the film was to butcher it. On Saturday I continued on the Gilliam streak and re-watched 12 Monkeys, which I had forgotten completely. Another great film, with a clearly bigger budget, it does not rely on the money but in the plot, art, and acting to be memorable. Also, I love the main theme, a tune from Astor Piazzolla called "Suite Punta del Este". Just after finishing the film, I read that some people from the local Couch Surfing group were meeting at the IFI to see one of the many features of the Polish film festival that took place this weekend. So I went and saw A short film about killing, a powerful and shocking movie about the death penalty. Considered by many to be one of the most horrifying depictions of a killing (two, in fact), it didn't shock me as much as some other films had done, maybe it was because of the cinema overdose... Anyway, it was another must-see. IMDB asserts that the Polish government suspended the death penalty in Poland for five years after the release of this film, but I could not find sources to confirm this. This morning I woke up pretty early, which is completely uncommon for me on a Sunday. So I decided to use the tickets offered by the IFI for a pre-screening that I had assumed I would not use, since I had to be in the cinema at 11! This time it was an Irish documentary about Bernadette Devlin, called Bernadette: Notes on a political journey. It was really interesting, even if I had never heard about this important figure of Ulster politics in the sixties. Sadly, because of my ignorance on the topic (and some northern accents that I have trouble understanding), I missed many parts of the film. In any case, it has increased my appetite to know more about the Troubles, which had started when I visited the Republican neighbourhood of Belfast, specially Falls road. Tags: Life, Planet Debian

It doesn t look so old in hex; Zero, x, Two, Eight but I finally got there. So on this day, what other landmarks am I up to?

• I ve been programming, on and off, for 28 years (thanks for teaching me Chris anyone still use LOGO?)
• Writing Free Software for 17 years (thanks Terry for explaining the concepts and giving me my first Linux)
• A debian developer for 14 years (thanks for telling me and eventually adding me Bruce)

Some people get a little sad hitting this age, but it really is only a number, wether it is 0 28, \050 or even 40. As the saying goes: only the dead don t age.

AltOS 1.0 TeleMini support and a host of new features Bdale and I are pleased to announce the release of AltOS version 1.0. AltOS is the core of the software for all of the Altus Metrum products. It consists of cc1111-based microcontroller firmware and Java-based ground station software. AltOS Firmware TeleMini support, Kalman Filtering and more Support for the new TeleMini altimeter is included in version 1.0 along with a wealth of other new features:

• Change telemetry to be encoded in multiple 32-byte packets. This enables support for TeleMini and other devices without requiring further updates to the TeleDongle firmware. Previous versions of the firmware used a large monolithic telemetry packet 95 bytes long. The old single-packet format included all of the rapidly updating data coming from the on-board sensors, along with slowly changing GPS data and never-changing configuration data. Not only were the packets large (reducing the reliability of reception), they were also device-specific, encoding precisely the set of information available in TeleMetrum. The new telemetry system uses mulitple different formatted telemetry packets, all 32 bytes in length, transmitting rapidly changing data often and other data more slowly. This should improve reception, but more importantly, allows for different devices to send different sets of data. Within the TeleDongle, this change was implemented by removing all of the telemetry decoding logic from the embedded device and moving it to the AltosUI java code running on the host. This means that the TeleDongle can now receive arbitrary telemetry packets without having new firmware installed.
• Support operation of TeleMetrum with the antenna pointing aft. Previous firmware versions required the antenna to be pointing upwards, now there is a configuration option allowing the antenna to point aft, to aid installation in some airframes. A TeleMetrum user, DK Duncan, changed the firmware on his board to flip the accelerometer ADC values around. This produced something that worked on the ground, so he went and flew it. And it just worked. I added this as a configuration option, including all of the Java code to change it. Nice that any Altus Metrum user can try things like this out and then have them get added in the next version of the software.
• Ability to disable telemetry. For airframes where an antenna just isn t possible, or where radio transmissions might cause trouble with other electronics, there s a configuration option to disable all telemetry. Note that the board will still enable the radio link in idle mode. Terry Lee is taking a TeleMetrum board for a ride during LDRS this year, but with TeleMetrum mixed in with a pile of other electronics, he didn t want us transmitting during flight and causing potential RFI issues with other boards in the air frame. Instead of building a custom version of the firmware, we just made this a configurable mode.
• Arbitrary frequency selection. The radios in Altus Metrum devices can be programmed to a wide range of frequencies, so instead of limiting devices to 10 pre-selected channels , the new firmware allows the user to choose any frequency in the 70cm band. Note that the RF matching circuit on the boards is tuned for around 435MHz, so frequencies far from that may reduce the available range.
• Kalman-filter based flight-tracking. The model-based sensor fusion approach of a Kalman filter means that AltOS now computes apogee much more accurately than before, generally within a fraction of a second. In addition, this approach allows the baro-only TeleMini device to correctly identify Mach transitions, avoiding the error-prone selection of a Mach delay. Developing this feature made extensive use of the simulator which runs the flight management code using sensor data captured on previous flights. Somehow, we ve managed to collect log data from over 100 flights; replaying them on the ground means that even before the first flight with the new firmware, we were confident that it would work.

AltosUI New Features AltosUI has also seen quite a bit of work for the 1.0.1 release. Of course, many of the changes in AltosUI are to accomodate the new TeleMini altimeter and changes in the AltOS firmware for TeleMetrum. In addition, we ve also added lots of new features in response to user requests.

• Add main/apogee voltage graphs to the data plot. This provides a visual indication if the igniters failed before being fired.
• Scan for altimeter devices by watching the defined telemetry frequencies. This avoids the problem of remembering what frequency a device was configured to use, which is especially important with TeleMini which does not include a USB connection.
• Monitor altimeter state in Idle mode. This provides much of the information presented in the Pad dialog from the Monitor Flight command, monitoring the igniters, battery and GPS status withing requiring the flight computer to be armed and ready for flight.
• Pre-load map images from home. For those launch sites which don t provide free Wi-Fi, this allows you to download the necessary satellite images given the location of the launch site. A list of known launch sites is maintained at altusmetrum.org which AltosUI downloads to populate a menu; if you ve got a launch site not on that list, please send the name of it, latitude and longitude along with a link to the web site of the controlling club to the altusmetrum mailing list.
• Flight statistics are now displayed in the Graph data window. These include max height/speed/accel, average descent rates and a few other bits of information. The Graph Data window can now be reached from the Landed tab in the Monitor Flight window so you can immediately see the results of a flight.

John W. Dean wrote in insightful series of three articles for Findlaw about Authoritarian Conservatives [1]. In summary there are Authoritarian Followers who follow their leader blindly and Authoritarian Leaders who do whatever it takes to gain and maintain power. The Authoritarian mindset lends itself towards right-wing politics. Mick Ebeling gave an inspiring TED talk about his work developing a system to produce art that is controlled by eye movements [2]. The development work was started to support the quadriplegic graffiti artist TEMPT1. Mick s most noteworthy point is that all the hardware design and software are free so anyone can implement it without asking an insurance company or hospital (this is one of the few occasions when a TED speaker has received a standing ovation during a talk). The Eyewriter.org site has the designs and source which is licensed under the GPL [3]. Morgan Spurlock (who is famous for Supersize Me ) gave an amusing TED talk titled The Greatest TED Talk Ever Sold [4]. He provides some interesting information about the brand sponsorship process and his new movie The Greatest Movie Ever Sold . Ralph Langner gave an interesting TED talk about reverse-engineering the Stuxnet worm and discovering that it was targetted at the Iranian nuclear program [5]. The fact that the Stuxnet environment could be turned to other uses such as disrupting power plants is a great concern, particularly as it has special code to prevent automatic safety systems from activating. Angela Belcher gave an interesting TED talk about using nature to grow batteries [6]. She is evolving and engineering viruses to manufacture parts of batteries and assemble them, the aim is to scale up the process to manufacture batteries for the Prius and other large devices at room temperature with no toxic materials. She is also working on biological methods of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen which has the obvious potential for fuel-cell power and also solar PV cells. As an aside she mentions giving a copy of the Periodic Table to Barack Obama and he told her that he will look at it periodically . Bruce Schnier gave a good overview of the issues related to human perceptions of security in his TED talk about The Security Mirage [7]. There isn t much new in that for people who have been doing computer work but it s good to have an overview of lots of issues. TED has an interesting interview with Gerry Douglas about his work developing touch-screen computer systems for processing medical data in Malawi [8]. This is worth reading by everyone who is involved in software design, many of the things that he has done go against traditional design methods. Mike Matas gave an interesting demo at TED of the first proper digital book [9]. The book is by Al Gore and is run on the iPad/iPhone platform (hopefully they will have an Android version soon). His company is in the business of licensing software for creating digital books. The demonstration featured a mixture of pictures, video, audio, and maps with the pinch interface to move them around. Dr Sommers of Tufts University wrote an interesting post for Psychology Today titled Why it s Never About Race [10]. It seems that there are lots of patterns of people being treated differently on the basis of race but for every specific case no-one wants to believe that racial bias was involved. The Register has an amusing article about what might have happened if Kate had left Prince William at the altar [11]. Fiorenzo Omenetto gave an interesting TED talk about synthetic silk [12]. He is working on developing artificial fibers and solids based on the same proteins as silk which can be used for storing information (DVDs and holograms), medical implants (which can be re-absorbed into the body and which don t trigger an immune response), and cups among other things. Maybe my next tie will have a no pupae were harmed in the production notice. ;) The CDC has released a guide to preparing for a Zombie apocalypse [13], while it s unlikely that Zombies will attack, the same suggestions will help people prepare for the other medical emergencies that involve the CDC. Salon has an interesting article by Glenn Greenwald who interviewed Benjamin Ferencz about aggressive warfare [14]. Benjamin was a prosecutor for war crimes at Nuremberg after WW2 and compares the US actions since 9-11 with what was deemed to be illegal by the standards of WW2. Eli Pariser gave an interesting TED talk about Online Filter Bubbles [15]. He claims that services such as Facebook and Google should give more of a mixture of results rather than targetting for what people want. The problem with this idea is that presenting links that someone doesn t want to click doesn t do any good. It s not as if the filter bubble effect relies on modern media or can be easily solved. Terry Moore gave a TED talk about how to tie shoelaces [16]. Basically he advocates using a doubly-slipped Reef Knot instead of a doubly-slipped Granny Knot. Now I just need to figure out how to tie a doubly-slipped Reef Knot quickly and reliably. Terry uses this as a mathaphor for other ways in which one might habitually do something in a non-optimal way.

• [1] http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070925.html
• [2] http://www.ted.com/talks/mick_ebeling_the_invention_that_unlocked_a_locked_in_artist.html
• [3] http://www.eyewriter.org/developer/
• [4] http://www.ted.com/talks/morgan_spurlock_the_greatest_ted_talk_ever_sold.html
• [5] http://www.ted.com/talks/ralph_langner_cracking_stuxnet_a_21st_century_cyberweapon.html
• [6] http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_belcher_using_nature_to_grow_batteries.html
• [7] http://www.ted.com/talks/bruce_schneier.html
• [8] http://blog.ted.com/2011/04/29/fellows-friday-with-gerry-douglas/
• [9] http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_matas.html
• [10] http://www.psychologytoday.com/collections/201104/happy-birth-certificate-mr-president/why-its-never-about-race
• [11] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/28/operation_pumpkin/
• [12] http://www.ted.com/talks/fiorenzo_omenetto_silk_the_ancient_material_of_the_future.html
• [13] http://emergency.cdc.gov/socialmedia/zombies_blog.asp
• [14] http://www.salon.com/news/osama_bin_laden/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2011/05/13/nuremberg
• [15] http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html
• [16] http://www.ted.com/talks/terry_moore_how_to_tie_your_shoes.html

This is just a quick note to say: Next week, I am going to be at: My goals for the conference:

• On Day 3, participate in a panel called How to keep and make productive libre graphics projects?
• Talk about the success of the recent Build It events.
• Learn more about the world of free software graphics app development.
• Enjoy the opportunity to speak French.
• Say 'hi' to old friends like Jon Phillips.
• Give chocolate to Michael Terry for staying positive on a recent gimp-deve thread.

I'm going to arrive in Montreal at 6:30am on Tuesday on an overnight Greyhound bus from Boston. So another goal:

• Make it through Tuesday without embarrassingly falling asleep in public.

If you want to say hi to me during the conference, email me and make sure we meet up!

Went to the Chicago Symphony yesterday to see Regina Carter as well as Jazz wunderkind Esperanza Spalding perform one seat each with their respective bands. Regina Carter was presenting material from her current record 'Reverse Thread'. This was a real nice set of African-themed world music featuring Carter herself on violin, Yacouba Sissoko on kora, Will Holshouser on accordion, Chris Lightcap on bass and Alvester Garnett on drums. Some of pieces were really, really nicely done and I particularly enjoyed Holshouser on the accordion. After the break, Esperanza Spalding come on for her Chamber Music Society'. Lovely setup with Spalding on acoustic bass and vocals, Leo Genovese on piano/keyboards, Sara Caswell on violin, Lois Martin on viola, Jody Redhage on cello, the always impressice Terry Lyne Carrington on drums and Leala Cyr on backing vocals (and one co-lead in a really nice duet with Spalding). This was clearly more experimental and a chunk of the audience left during the act. But there is room for improvided chamber music, and it was a good modern music act. And Spalding is really quite impressive and I will gladly go and see her again.

For some reason, 60G of free space on my notebook suddenly turned into 60G of movies. Bownian motion, perhaps. Unfortunately, in this particular case, I absolutely don't like to let a movie (or book, for that matter) unfinished, so I watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (directed by Terry Gilliam, starring Johnny Depp; so far, so good) from start to finish. After the first half hour I started wondering if the plot is going to start. The reptile party in the hotel lobby was a short entertaining interlude, but to the end, no plot manifests. I'm left wondering what this was all about. Quantum of Solace on the other hand is good entertainment. Probably not one of the best, but still worth watching if you like her majesty's secret agent. Going back to movies I've seen before is something I like to do as well, so having another evening in company with the unforgettable Leon (the professional) was time well spent. I didn't give up on Terry Gilliam yet and met The Fisher King. While the story is completely different, it does feel a bit similar to 12 Monkeys in terms of set design and atmosphere. Speaking of Terry Gilliam: I'm curious how his current attempt at The Man Who Killed Don Quixote turns out; so far I've only seen him losing this movie in the documentary about the aborted last attempt: Lost in La Mancha. On the funny side, Dogma and especially The Wedding Crashers were worth watching. If you have to pick one, it's the latter one. Dogma feels a bit forced in some places. Returning back to the opening theme: seeing Inland Empire was another evening that left me confused. The main story is interesting enough, but I have to admit that I just couldn't follow where all the other sub plots tie in, or if they even are supposed to. And I'm not only talking about the rabbit family (those felt a bit like the Middle of the Film in The Meaning of Life and were quite in order.)

I guess having only the Japanese version of Tetsuo and not understanding anything might not have helped, but on the other hand there isn't all that much dialogue. Tetsuo is one of those movies I find difficult to judge; while it has some great moments, I also found it to be a bit long in some parts. Very good sound track, though. YMMV, I guess. If you like the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, you may want to have a peak at Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic, which I found quite well made (... and where I once again found that I don't have a good memory for faces, although in the end I remembered where I saw Twoflower's face just before reading the name in the closing credits ...) A bit disappointing, in contrast, was Terry Pratchett's Hogfather: to me, it proves that a movie should have some distance to the book, since what works when written down doesn't necessarily work on the screen. I quite liked Michelle Dockery as Susan, though.

So after Royal Mail shut down useful community websites causing MP comments on the idiocy of Royal Mail, I was rather surprised to get this little thing in the post today: That s a postmark advert for Celebrating 50 years of POSTCODES 1959-2009 . So this is what Royal Mail does with some of the money it makes from its claimed monopoly on postcode databases: it spends it on ink to celebrate postcodes in the bit where they can t sell adverts. After the postcode-takedown, I suggested deleting postcodes from all our co-op s websites. Instead, another member has persuaded me to contribute to something like free the postcode, which I first saw on CycleStreets blog. As well as slapping its customers, Royal Mail is also currently taking on its workers who are campaigning for sustainable jobs and against the recent increase in bullying and harassment cases. I already send most of my letters, invoices and so on electronically since our three nearest post offices closed last year. I ve noticed Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op switching to DPD and Terry Lane suggesting more online use. Are those good approaches? How are you adapting to the postal delays? Have you put your postcode into free the postcode or a similar site?

While Linux and Debian are plenty of programs for backing up your system, things change when you need a backup system for a common desktop user. In this area there is a lot of room for improvement, as programs for KDE and GNOME are years behind what programs for Windows and Mac OS X are offering.
There has been some programs intents of writing a good program, full featured and with a nice graphical interface, as Simple Backup, and its fork Not So Simple Backup, pybackpack, or TimeVault, an intent to clone Apple s TImeMachine, and it s fork TimeVaultNG written for KDE. Those are projects that start with a great impulse, even some of the mentored by Google Summer of Code, and when they reach some basic functionality, they get abandoned or not being properly maintained.
What I would like to see for a backup system for desktop user is:

• Desktop independent backend. Why implement and reimplement and reimplement again. A lot of effort is lost in early stages, until program starts to be functional. For this, using yet written utils as rdif-backup, duplicity or rdup would allow this step to get ready faster, and being more reliable.
• Frontend integrated with desktop, being it GNOME or KDE. This will imply implementing two desktop clients, so they can use technologies available to each one.
• Using dbus for communicating frontend and backend.
• Backend should be able to detect removable devicies as well as network based backups (think on NAS), and only perform the backup if they are present
• Allow to store backups also in Amazon S3. This could be in raw or even better, with a system that would allow mounting the remote device as a local HDD. This is something JungleDisk makes, and using fuse should not be hard to implement

A lot of improvement and innovation has taken place in Linux Desktop during all these years, but backups are also important for SOHO users, and they need a well integrated program for doing that, as console based solutions usually require configuration skills which desktop users don t have.
Updated 6th April 22:26 CEST: I have been recommended in comments to try Back in Time and D j Dup. Both are in active delopment, which is a bonus. The first one works in a similar way to TimeVault, while the second one works using duplicity as backend, but has support to upload the resulting files to a remote server using SSH or to Amazon S3. I will investigate more on these apps.