I've been a fan of the products manufactured by Schiit Audio for a while now. They are affordable (for high-end audio gear), sound great, are made in the USA¹ and I think their industrial design looks great. I first started with one of their classic "Schiit Stack"², but eventually upgraded to the Modi Multibit (I wanted the TOSLINK input), added a physical EQ (the Loki) and eventually got a Sys when I bought a Vidar speaker amp. The original Schiit Stack being 2 devices high was pretty manageable as-is. With my current 4-high stack though, things became unstable and I had to resort to finding a way to bolt them together. Mooching from a friend with a 3D printer, I printed this clever mount from Thingiverse. It worked well enough, but was somewhat imperfect for multiple reasons:

1. The plastic tabs had a tendency of breaking in two when the screws where tight enough for the stack to feel solid.
2. The plastic wasn't really rigid enough to support the 4 devices properly and the stack, being back-heavy from the cables, was unstable and tipped over easily.
3. Due to the plastic tabs being fragile, it was pretty much impossible to disassemble the stack.

This last issue was what killed this solution for me. When I tried to replace my Modi 2 by the Modi Multibit, the mount pretty much crumbled away. Sadly, my friend warped a bunch of pieces on his 3D printer while trying to print ABS and I couldn't have him print me replacement parts either. After a while, I grew tired of having these four devices laying around my desk and wasting valuable space. I had tasted the 4-stack and knew how better things could be! That's when I realised the solution was to ditch 3D printing altogether, use aluminum framing extrusions and build my own stack out of metal. This was my first time working with aluminium frame extrusions and I had tons of fun! I specced the first version using 10mm x 10mm rails from McMaster-Carr, but discovered they do not ship to residential addresses in Canada... After looking at local options, I then decided to use 15mm x 15mm rails from Misumi. I went with this option since the rails are still small enough not to be an eyesore, but also because this system uses M3 screws, which the Schiit mini series also uses, making assembly much easier. I choose to make the assembled stack quite a bit taller than the previous one made with 3D printed plastic, as I found the headphone amp got pretty hot during the summer and I wanted to provide better airflow. If you are interested in replicating this stack, here are the parts I used, all from Misumi:

• 4 x HFS3-1515 230mm long rails
• 16 x HPTBS3 brackets
• 1 x pack of HNSQ3-3 M3 framing nuts

I didn't order any since I had some already, but you'll also need M3 screws, namely:

• 16 x M3-10 screws, to replace the ones in the Schiit devices
• 16 x M3-6 screws, for the aluminium framing brackets

You can also cheap out and use only M3-10 screws (as I did), but you'll have to use the extra nuts you ordered as spacers. For the curious ones, the cabling is done this way: The Vidar is not part of the actual stack, as it's a 600W amp that weights 10kg :D. The last thing I think I want to change in this setup is the cables. The ones I have are too long for the stack. Shorter ones would reduce the wasted space in the back and make the whole thing more elegant.

DebConf5 This tshirt is 15 years old and from DebConf5. It still looks quite nice! DebConf5 was my 3rd DebConf and took place in Helsinki, or rather Espoo, in Finland. This was one of my most favorite DebConfs (though I basically loved them all) and I'm not really sure why, I guess it's because of the kind of community at the event. We stayed in some future dorms of the universtity, which were to be first used by some European athletics chamopionship and which we could use even before that, guests zero. Being in Finland there were of course saunas in the dorms, which we frequently used and greatly enjoyed. Still, one day we had to go on a trip to another sauna in the forest, because of course you cannot visit Finland and only see one sauna. Or at least, you should not. Another aspect which increased community bonding was that we had to authenticate using 802.10 (IIRC, please correct me) which was an authentication standard mostly used for wireless but which also works for wired ethernet, except that not many had used it on Linux before. Thus quite some related bugs were fixed in the first days of DebCamp... Then my powerpc ibook also decided to go bad, so I had to remove 30 screws to get the harddrive out and 30 screws back in, to not have 30 screws laying around for a week. Then I put the harddrive into a spare (x86) laptop and only used my /home partition and was very happy this worked nicely. And then, for travelling back, I had to unscrew and screw 30 times again. (I think my first attempt took 1.5h and the fourth only 45min or so Back home then I bought a laptop where one could remove the harddrive using one screw. Oh, and then I was foolish during the DebConf5 preparations and said, that I could imagine setting up a team and doing video recordings, as previous DebConfs mostly didn't have recordings and the one that had, didn't have releases of them... And so we did videos. And as we were mostly inexperienced we did them the hard way: during the day we recorded on tape and then when the talks were done, we used a postprocessing tool called 'cinelerra' and edited them. And because Eric Evans was on the team and because Eric worked every night almost all night, all nights, we managed to actually release them all when DebConf5 was over. I very well remember many many (23 or 42) Debian people cleaning the dorms thoroughly (as they were brand new..) and Eric just sitting somewhere, exhausted and watching the cleaners. And everybody was happy Eric was idling there, cause we knew why. In the aftermath of DebConf5 Ben Hutchings then wrote videolink (removed from sid in 2013) which we used to create video DVDs of our recordings based on a simple html file with links to the actual videos. There were many more memorable events. The boat ride was great. A pirate flag appeared. One night people played guitar until very late (or rather early) close to the dorms, so at about 3 AM someone complained about it, not in person, but on the debian-devel mailinglist. And those drunk people playing guitar, replied immediatly on the mailinglist. And then someone from the guitar group gave a talk, at 9 AM, and the video is online... (It's a very slowwwwwww talk.) If you haven't been to or close to the polar circles it's almost impossible to anticipate how life is in summer there. It get's a bit darker after midnight or rather after 1 AM and then at 3 AM it get's light again, so it's reaaaaaaally easy to miss the night once and it's absolutly not hard to miss the night for several nights in a row. And then I shared a room with 3 people who all snore quite loud... There was more. I was lucky to witness the first (or second?) cheese and whine party which at that time took place in a dorm room with, dunno 10 people and maybe 15 kinds of cheese. And, of course, I met many wonderful people there, to mention a few I'll say Jesus, I mean mooch or data, Amaya and p2. And thanks to some bad luck which turned well, I also had my first time ever Sushi in Helsinki. And and and. DebConfs are soooooooo good! I'll stop here as I originally planned to only write a paragraph or two about each and there are quite some to be written! Oh, and as we all learned, there are probably no mosquitos in Helsinki, just in Espoo. And you can swim naked through a lake and catch a taxi on the other site, with no clothes and no money, no big deal. (And you might not believe it, but that wasn't me. I cannot swim that well.)

* Mooch will stay at my place for a month. He brought me back my smile when he landed in MAD
* Shopping for cool tshirts always makes me feel good!
* New antidepressants, working great form day-1

Yes, humans are^W^WI am quite simple after all.

1st of May is in most civilized countries a bank holiday (term that means “if you work for a bank, you dont have to go to work” and is closely similar to a standard holiday). Ireland prides itself for moving the holidays to the morning after, so you can enjoy a long weekend, and did we: rented a car, took off and visited the country side. Well, right after we exchanged seats, since apparently one cannot drive here on the left side of the car. The country is in much better state than the 10 years old Lonely Planet describes: good condition signaled roads and a B&B on every other corner. From Dublin we jumped to Kilkenny were we had a beer (guess which one) and enjoyed a concert on a pub, since they had some festival going on. It also meant we had to stay a bit far from the center. Moving south from Kilkenny we visited Waterford and from there we moved all the way to Cork, for a small visit. Lara lives there, and we had a great chocolate and some food after paying a visit to the cathedral. After deciding not to spend the night in the city we headed towards Old Head. That was a great plan. The view from the cliffs in there is impresive. Pity they have a golf course which will not allow you to reach the tip. One night over in Timoleague, after a beer in the local pub and we headed back to Dublin. A nice relaxing weekend away from the city. The best: sunny countryside, getting away for a while, B&Bs (mostly the second B). The weird: driving on the left, requires loads of concentration not to make mistakes and shifting gears with the left hand is not great. The worst: having to jump from B&B to another one looking for a bed. Also it made it interesting, since we never knew where we were going to end.

It has been a long time since i posted an entry. Many things have happened. Many things have changed. Let’s summarize them. I no longer live in Finland. I moved out on January the 29th, almost exactly by the day 8 and half years after I moved there. Right now I am in Dublin, Ireland, but you never know for how long. In any case I am enjoying quite much. Not as dark as Finland in winter, not as rainy as people think it is. Yeah, it rains, but it was rainy in Finland too. And here in not as cold. I no longer work for Nokia. My employer has changed and I am enjoying every single bit of it. I have not resigned from Debian, although I have not been active for the last months. If you add the new job (hiring process), moving and settling down, you could understand the lack of time. At least I can. Now things are getting stable (I got my ADSL connected only last weekend, and my server at home with all the mail redirected only yesterday) so I am ready to restart with my commitments. Also my employer will allow me to do some Debian work, so I only need my GPG key to be reinstated in the keyring (there is a ticket for it, so I just have to wait). And finally, if you want to follow where I have been spending some of my time, follow my flickr photostream.

Saturday, March the 24th. Underbar. Helsinki.

The date: Friday, 19th of Jan.
The time: starting at around 21.00
The place: Olivers 21 (in Annankatu 21)
The who: DJ Mooch Vs. resident DJ
The what: Electronic music, starting with chillhouse and grooving towards progressive and electro house.
The why: because i/you can. And because i/you want it. ;)

Last night I figured out I cannot sleep when I have a song in my head that repeats itself like a broken record, and I cannot identify who is the author. So I had to get my RockBox powered iPod and plug the bugs on my ears. 7 songs later (around one hour of music listening) I entered Morpheus’ world with a grin in my face. Music makes me happy.

Happy SysAdmin day to all!

(Specially to Mr Climent (aka [data mooch]), my favourite sysadmin ever!)

So I went from this: To this: It’s not called the Halfway House for nothing. It’s been just a couple days over two weeks, and I’m doing awesome. Loving every minute, or close to it. I love the freedom of being out on my own, love having my own schedule, love dealing with getting my own food, even don’t mind doing my own laundry. Not to say I don’t love my friends and family too. But still. Unpacking was fun. Apparently the person I’m subletting from played a tap-dancing stormtrooper in a student-written Star Wars musical. And there were… fun things left in the closet. And I couldn’t resist, if just a little. It was beautiful for the first couple days of being down here, but lately it’s been not as good - muggy, hazy, too hot, etc. Though today was better than the last couple. Here’s Boston from Cambridge, two weeks ago: My house isn’t air-conditioned, but the Media Lab is — so it works out okay since I spend the middle part of my day there anyhow. I’ve been thinking about getting a window AC unit, but the trouble with relying solely on bike, public transport, and foot to get around is that it’s a pain in the ass to move around large objects. I love the Debian scene down here too. There are some great people, and since the rest of my college class doesn’t arrive until August, I’ve mostly been hanging out with them. There’s this bizarre feeling of connection with other Debian people. Not to mention I’d already met some of them when I was down in April. Last Friday I went out and biked around Boston with Boston’s Critical Mass. It was pretty exhilarating and fun. (This is before; I didn’t really feel like biking and taking pictures at the same time.) And afterward there was an Acetarium sushi party which involved meeting Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier, who writes for Newsforge/Linux.com/etc. Yesterday I went out to visit the Boston Harbor Islands with Mako and Mika (nobody else showed up — too early or something). They were pretty damn nice, if I don’t say so myself. The weather held up as decent, and although the ferry out from Boston costs money, the inter-island shuttle is free for moochers who want to cruise from island to island around the harbor. The islands weren’t even that crowded, which was surprising considering their proximity to Boston and abundance of pretty nice beaches. Of course, come August it will probably become impossible for me to hang out with Debian people 5/7 days a week. So, gotta stock up… y’know, before they kick me out and stop feeding me awesome vegetarian food…

Debcamp was really stressing - It seemed we would not be able to get things to work for Debconf. And it would suck. I was quite down when I last wrote a blog entry - Not in mine, but in Debconf's. Things looked quite hellish, and I was _very_ annoyed - Well, I must say: Thanks to you all for the support. Mooch's request has been honored extensively, and it does help. Really.
Yesterday we had the Debian Day. About 50 Mexicans showed up, after we had to jump through some hoops with the Oaxtepec management people (thank you, thank you, you are great! Real dedication to your job, to make us feel welcome and important). The talks were interesting and well presented, and the people left happy - and some of them, left quite late. We had presence from at least one national newspaper (La Jornada and a magazine, Software Guru. Good.
Then, during the night, we were flooded by arriving foreigners. Boy, the hacklab was packed! Good thing we now will have both hacklabs running.
I have to thank most than to anybody else to my wife, Gaby a.k.a. Nadezhda - She has done all the ugly paperwork... Without her, we would all not be here. And later, I would probably be sitting in jail or something ;-)
Seems that the bugs are ironed out. Now I'll try to attend the "Sun and Debian: can we be friends?" round table.

If you meet mooch, the inventor of the official DebConf-6 hug day on the toilet...

As pointed out by mooch: Today is DebConf hug day! You are allowed to hug anyone at any time. Especially volunteers and members of the orga team, but of course everyone else, who looks like he needs a hug, should be hugged, too.

Debcamp was really stressing - It seemed we would not be able to get things to work for Debconf. And it would suck. I was quite down when I last wrote a blog entry - Not in mine, but in Debconf's. Things looked quite hellish, and I was _very_ annoyed - Well, I must say: Thanks to you all for the support. Mooch's request has been honored extensively, and it does help. Really.
Yesterday we had the Debian Day. About 50 Mexicans showed up, after we had to jump through some hoops with the Oaxtepec management people (thank you, thank you, you are great! Real dedication to your job, to make us feel welcome and important). The talks were interesting and well presented, and the people left happy - and some of them, left quite late. We had presence from at least one national newspaper (La Jornada and a magazine, Software Guru. Good.
Then, during the night, we were flooded by arriving foreigners. Boy, the hacklab was packed! Good thing we now will have both hacklabs running.
I have to thank most than to anybody else to my wife, Gaby a.k.a. Nadezhda - She has done all the ugly paperwork... Without her, we would all not be here. And later, I would probably be sitting in jail or something ;-)
Seems that the bugs are ironed out. Now I'll try to attend the "Sun and Debian: can we be friends?" round table.

During the weekend, while I was in Mallorca, Joey Hess wrote an email to me in quite a hurry, he was coming to one of the Extremadura Sessions and needed a place to sleep at in Madrid. So, of course, due to my legendary hospitality, I happily accepted having him over. Franzi, Simon Richter s GF joined us, and so did tbm, who we had not welcomed to Spain yet. We set up a nice little dinner in order to properly celebrate Joey s 30th Birthday. OMG, I am also older than Joey Hess! Bummer.

I just asked him to bring some English Muffins, I got the standard answer:

> Please bring English muffins with you :)
You like (American) English muffins? :-)

Same as Erinn told me on IRC when I asked her to bring some to Mexico in exchange for vegan Allioli.

<Amaya> helix: english muffins!
<helix> Amaya: I don t think US english muffins are any good, but I could be wrong

WTF is wrong with English Muffins? They are my favourite breakfast, but I must acknowledge that not having an oven to slightly roast them into sucks :(

Anyway, I will take a bus really early in the morning tomorrow to join the Extremadura crowd. And I will start a little Staying at Amaya s HOWTO . It has been Holger, Miriam, Mooch, Hanna, Tuukka, Lars, Joey Hess, Franzi and Simon so far since I rented this small, run down attic that I call $HOME. That s less than a year :)

I was invited to give a talk on Debian Women in Mallorca, last weekend, during the Jornades de Programari Lliure hosted by Bulma, the LUG from Mallorca. The island is a beautiful place, sure, over exploited because of tourism, and full of Germans, which is not intrinsically bad in itself, but if you know where to look, there s still virgin beaches with no electricity (power is provided by the sun) or tap water. There is 350 sunny days a year in Mallorca. Amazing. My pics are up at My gallery. My slides are also here. I even run into a mgp bug that I still need to report.

The organizers treated us wonderfully, we were hosted in a luxurious countryside hotel, where I found a cat that was Vi s wild twin, it was semi-feral, but enjoyed having (mooching) breakfast next to us in the sunny patio. Speakers even got a rental car to get around the island, which was greatly appreciated. If you want to meet some of us, download the hello world video . The organizers went out of their way to make us feel comfortable and at home, had video-streaming during the talks, real-time screenshots of the speaker s slides on a website, and every single detail that makes you realize they are one of a kind. I want to thank them for a wonderful weekend, that really recharged my batteries and karma, and also helped me remind the reasons of my involvement in Free Software, (total world domination, and of course, changing this ugly world into a more fair place), and why Free Software is (or should be declared) Heritage of Humanity.

Marcelo Branco attended with his wonderful namorada, Renata, a great girl. You might have met Marcelo in Debconf4 in Porto Alegre. He is in part responsible for Brazil s embracing free software, the point of reference in every party, and now employed by the Spanish Administration to build an international network of Public Administrations throughout the world to make Governments use, defend and embrace Free Software. His talk was one of those critical moments in life after which you find find yourself thinking faster and harder, on why. The figures he gave were hair-raising. Brazil s annual budget to put an end to hunger in the country is roughly half of the money spent on proprietary software licenses. It is a hell of a lot of money, given that only 8% of the population use software at all, and only half of them, that is 4%, is actually paying for a license. We also rode one of those rental cars around Mallorca, spotting the loveliest of places, wanting to retire there, after we change the world.

Ricardo Galli, upstream for Men ame.net, an improved digg in Spanish, also gave a mind blowing talk on ethical responsibility, intellectual property, and introduced me to the whole Zen-talk concept. His slides were awesome, so was his talk, and he was a pleasure to listen to.

Dato also gave a talk, on Debian, very complete, and very to the point. He could not make us play Mao, though, we were too tired at night.

Antonio Larrosa, one of our national glories. He is a KDE developer since KDE was born, and even got to work for Suse until it became Novell. As far as I remember, he was one of my youth idols in the times when Linux was still not ready for the desktop, he was one of the many that changed this. And we made a deal that turns him into one of my all-time heroes. He will write a KDE client for Mao, according to my specs, but I will have to switch to KDE. Therefore, here is my gpg-signed part of the deal:

I hereby declare that I will switch my desktop to KDE if my friend, Antonio
Larrosa, writes a Mao Client for me. This client will be networked, and have a
Chat window. It will follow the Cambridge Standard Five-Card Mao rules.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFEP/FONFDtUT/MKpARAiiaAKCZUGEzGDA1ioCFK60TrS7APp71/ACgsMJh
rENpTKAsUSmPf/YzDkY7wU4=
=OHpi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Those of you visiting debconf this year might consider asking their friends, workmates,... (even their boss at work) to give away that old laptop that is not used anymore, and with a battery which does not hold more than few minutes. The purpose? Bring it/them to debconf and give them away to people working for Debian in one way or another who dont even have a proper desktop to work with. I will be leaving from Finland, so if you have anything you want to give away, send me an email: mooch () debian ! org