Dublin, Jason, Debian

Oh, I've been way too busy to actually talk about what I'm doing. Last weekend, I visited a friend of mine who currently studies in Dublin. I went to high school with him for a year, and it was undoubtedly the best year I had at school. Although, if I remember correctly, I wasn't that good friends with him back then; that sort of developed a few years later. Yet, he's one of the few people I'm still in quite regular contact with from back then. He is also quite different to me, but that's really refreshing. Anyway, we talked about the good old times a bit (a bit too much for my taste ;). I cannot believe that it has been almost 10 years that I had long hair and was young! Oh my, what happened to me!?! My friend still uses the nick name for me which they gave me back then — "Jason" (don't ask). My friend is in Dublin for a year as an exchange student and from the impression I gained during the 2 days he has a good time there; he mostly hangs around with German people, though, so I'm not sure if his English will improve too much.

During the week I was busy as usual. I'm trying to respond to all the mail I have, and I actually responded to all the mail in my inbox, and only two mails are left in the NM Front Desk and DPL folders. Also, by convincing some AMs that they can handle another applicant, I have been able to reduce the queue significantly. It has been too long for months now, largely because people advocate applicants who are not ready yet (have no package in the archive, haven't contributed anything yet, etc).

SPI, evolution of love & language, Orkut, Debian mini meet

I sent out mails to all contributing members of SPI today asking them to re-new their application. Most of the work for this was done by weasel (for which I'm glad), but I sent the mails because weasel was busy. Later I found an interesting article from an anthropologist writing about evolutionary aspects of love (unfortunately, this article disappeared from the web later, tbm, 2006-02-16). Looking at the site, I also found a link to an article on New Scientist on the development of language. I'm interested in evolutionary psychology in general, and these two topics in particular (especially in language), so this was a good read. I guess I don't have to mention Orkut. I got an invitation last weekend and signed up out of boredom, but since then half of Debian has signed up. It reminds me of "All your base are belong to us" — I wonder how long it'll stay interesting, but probably not all too long. Which is a shame, really, because I like to see how people are connected. However, the site doesn't really offer too much functionality to make it interesting in the long run. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with some Debian people, first going to a pub, then to the beer festival and later for curry.

Snow in Cambridge, eating dsilver's cat, and Mao

Oh my god, it's snowing, in Cambridge — this is just so wrong.

Spent most of my day on various QA and leader things, with some NM inbetween. I think I have now dealt with all mails from Nathanael Nerode in which he found inactive maintainers and suggested orphaning or removing packages. I've found some more developers who seem inactive who I'll contact soon, but it looks fairly good. On Sunday, Colin Watson, Daniel Silverstone and I looked through orphaned packages and removed about 30-40. Never put 2 QA people and an ftpmaster in the same room. This happened because Daniel and Rob invited us for dinner, and so we geeked around a bit in the afternoon, had dinner and then played a game of Mao — which has quite mind boggling given that a) I didn't know the rules, b) the rules mustn't be explained and c) new rules are created during the game (of course without explicitly saying what they are). Overall, a really nice day. On Friday, I accidentally met someone at dinner who's doing a PhD at the same place as I and of whom I didn't know that he was at the same college as I. He took me to the graduate room for Friday night drinks and introduced me to some people. Quite a few of them actually live in the same building as me.

NM & inactive maintainers, mips, sbuild

Ran after various NMs for most of the day, and later helped James lock the accounts of various inactive maintainers and people who have retired from the project. Current statistics: There are 886 developers as of Tue, 20 Jan 2004 01:57:56 +0000. It's amazing how much time I waste^Wspend on active maintainers. On the bright side, some really good applicants have been accepted last week. In the background, I'm compiling various packages on my new MIPS box with sbuild. I don't actually upload them, I mostly do it for the fun, to test the stability of my machine and to learn how sbuild works. (In order to contribute something useful, I'm also starting to build some packages which haven't built on mips before to see if they work. For example, gnustep-base builds just fine after changing some Build-Depends.)

USB keyboards with touchpad, no Internet, Jordi Mallach

Went to the department yesterday to attend an obligatory introduction about safety. I'm part of Engineering so they talked about stuff like chemicals and explosions while I was constantly thinking "I'm a software person, leave me alone". However, he also talked about computers, ergonomics and RSI. After the talk, I mentioned that I had some problems with typing in the past (fortunately I haven't had any problems at all in the last few months), and complained that I didn't even get my own PC and had to use my laptop. I don't really have a problem with using my laptop anyway, having used laptops as my primary machines for about 3 years now. However, the problem with laptops is that the screen is quite low so your posture is usually not ideal. He mentioned that the department can get me an external keyboard, which I found really cool, especially since I wanted to try this for a while anyway. The biggest reason stopping me from getting an USB keyboard is that I really like small keyboards and touchpads. I don't want to use a mouse since that would only slow me down. However, a quick look on the web showed me that there are USB keywords with touchpads. Can anyone recommend a good one? (Ideally, it should be small, something like a Happy Hacking Keyboard Lite 2, but with integrated touchpad.) After the talk, I went to my work place where I still don't have Internet. I met another PhD student who started in October and he's still waiting for an IP address, too! However, he said that the migration has been planned for January for a while, so I hope they'll free up some IP addresses soon.

Jordi found the solution for a font problem I had, thanks. He thinks that I think that he sucks, but we all know that this is not true at all, right. ;-) What would we do without our Jordi, the vice-DPL! (I hope you'll remember these kind words during the next elections, Jordi ;-) Daniel Silverstone is coming in a few minutes to go shopping again.

Italy, Spain, etc.

I've been invited to Italy for some meetings and to give a talk. I'll go there for a few days right after FOSDEM in Belgium. And before that, I'll be at a conference in Spain for a few days. I actually asked my supervisor if that's okay and he's fine with it. Seeing that Ryan Air had cheap flights on offer, I also booked a flight to Dublin for a weekend in February so I can visit a friend who studies there this year.

I also submitted some comments to EC's Open Source Observatory, integrated Emanuele Rocca's temporary orphaned.html replacement a few days ago, etc.

Pissup in a brewery, ill, PowerPC 64 port

There was a meeting at my institute yesterday in which every unit gave a presentation about what they are doing. This was quite informative, although I cannot really relate to what most of them are doing. Afterwards, I met a PhD student who has the same supervisor as I. This was pretty useful. After the meeting, I went home since I still don't have an IP address at work. I tried getting a new chair for my room, but the furniture officer wasn't around. I'm really quite unproductive because sitting at my table isn't very comfortable. In the afternoon, I actually unpacked my suitcase (these RL things…). Later, I went to the pissup in a brewery which Daniel Silverstone had organized. Quite a few Debian people were there — the usual Cambridge crowd.

I think I'm ill. In fact, I know I'm ill, but I guess I don't want to admit it. ;-) I spent most of the afternoon in bed, first sleeping and then answering some e-mail. It looks as if we'd finally get remote access to a 64 bit PowerPC system. I talked to IBM several times about this port, and I hope we'll get a dedicated machine in the near future. I also contacted some Debian people who I think should come to FOSDEM. There's a track on usability and I hope Mario Lang can give a talk about the work he's done for debian-installer.

Shopping, King's college

Yesterday, I went to the main site of the Engineering Department to get an access card and another computer account. I waited for 40 minutes and when I asked whether they forgot about me it turned out the person I was supposed wasn't actually there. Doh! So I went to my work place, connected my laptop with the IP address I stole from a Windows client there and found out that I had been assigned an IP address for my room. My two supervisors also scheduled a meeting with me for the next day, at 9 in the morning (ouch). After catching up on e-mail and having dinner, Daniel Silverstone kindly came by with his car and took me shopping to the big Tesco. I bought various things, like Pint glasses and some food. I was surprised how little money I spent for all the things, and the whole thing didn't take too long even if Daniel wants to make people believe otherwise (actually, let me mention that he claimed he was patient, but then was crying like a baby after shopping with me for 5 minutes!). Anyway, during the day (after lunch), I stopped for a minute to take some pictures and thought that I can be really happy to live in such a beautiful city.

Today, got up at about 8.30 and left at about 8.57 for my meeting. Talked about my research interests for an hour, and then my supervisors had to go to another meeting and scheduled another one with me for the next day (guess when? Right, 9am). Went to the main Engineering site, and got an access card and signed up for an account.

Signing up for uni

Got my student card and signed up for an account at the central Computing Service (got a very unaesthetic username but I won't use it much anyway). Back at King's, also signed up for an IP address for my room, and I asked the network guy who long it will take. He said he ran out of IP addresses, but he'll look into it in the afternoon (alas, this obviously didn't happen). Food at college seemed good and cheap. After lunch, I went to the bank to change my address and pay in some money, and then went to the Centre for Technology Management (where I'm doing my PhD) to talk to my supervisor and sort things out. As it turns out, they don't even provide me with a dedicated PC. It's not really a problem since I have my laptop, but I think this is really lame. Every PhD student should get their own PC. Anyway, I have to go to the main Engineering site tomorrow to get an access site and an IP address.

Cambridge

Arrived in Cambridge. It's much warmer here than in Austria. I went to King's College and talked to the porters there and they told me that my accommodation is not on college grounds but a minute away. So I left the main college site and someone who obviously saw me entering and leaving again after 5 minutes commented gee, you didn't last long. I went to the place I'm staying and upon hearing the room number, the warden said that it's a very tiny room. Oh my. I went there, and while it's tiny, I think I can cope with it. But the major problem is the view from the window: I only see the roof and nothing else. Also, there's only a bath on my floor (which is directly under the roof) but there's a shower (and kitchen) on the level down (as on all other floors) so I guess I'll be able to use that. The chair for my table is not high enough (it's awkward to type on the laptop when its on the table), and the table is way too small (although I guess I'm spoiled by my last table which was about 3.5 meters long).

Since Internet wasn't working, I headed to cjwatson's place. I caught up on e-mail, then we watched Stargate and now he's cooking some pasta. In the meantime, I fixed the Debian Developer's Packages Overview site because his author didn't respond to my mail, and I tried fixing the PTS but I cannot due to file permission problems, so I mailed the author.

Debian NM, moving

Processed 8 Debian NM reports in the last few days, and rescued 2 applicants from dormant Application Managers and finished their applications.

Jonathan Oxer called me an honorary Aussie today… funny... Paul Sladen called me honorary Englishman (or something like that) about a year ago… and I'll be there again in a couple of hours. I really wonder why I never manage to pack in time when I'm moving countries. It's 2 am and I've got to get up at 6 in order to catch my flight… Ryan Air's 15 kg limitation is hilarious.

debian-installer, DPL, QA

Read through some installation reports about debian-installer and tried to triage the bug reports a bit; then sent some DPL mails and later hacked on some QA related scripts. Now I'm surprising tired considering it's only getting midnight.

IDE, RAID/LVM

My sister arrived from the States and brought me the IDE controll and hard drive I ordered. Thus, I've been playing with Software RAID and LVM this evening.

Europe

And 22 hours or so later he's in Europe again. And I'm freezing. I arrived at about 8am, and actually had an appointment with my dentist at 10.30. At about 5pm I felt a little tired and wanted to crash for an hour or two. I woke up at 2am and was confused what time it was. It was dark outside, but considering it's winter here it might just as well have been 6pm or something like that only. ;-) Anyway, I guess it's no coincidence that 5pm and 2am corresponds to 3am and 12pm Aussie time.

Holidays

Since I haven't written for a few weeks, this update is fairly large. (And, indeed, I never completed this entry when I started it at the end of 2003; most of it was written in January 2005, slightly more than a year later). Basically, I finished my degree, and had some great holidays. First, I stayed at a beach house in Victoria, and then I returned to Melbourne where I finally got to do some sightseeing. I then spent some days in Canberra, and finally I got some sun in Sydney.

Beach house, Pt Londsdale (December 1-4, 2003)

Right after university was over, I went to a house close to the beach with a few friends. The beach house was in Point Londsdale which is east of Melbourne. The weather wasn't terribly good on the first day, but then I spent a nice day at the beach. It was really hot, and it was absolutely wonderful because we had the whole beach for ourselves. Unfortunately the weather was fairly cold, but after I while I finally got used to it and got in… that was fun... It must have been a few years since I last went swimming in the sea. The weather wasn't all too overwhelming for the next days, but I still had a nice, relaxing time, basically doing nothing and for once not even reading e-mail for a full day.

Sightseeing in Melbourne (December 5-7, 2003)

After spending some time in Point Londsdale, I went back to Melbourne. I finally got around to doing some sightseeing. Aurelio Turco, whom I met at the LUV meeting where I gave a talk, kindly offered to show me around the botanic gardens and that's what we did on Saturday. On Sunday, I went to the zoo, which was really nice. I saw all my little friends, and I especially liked the giraffe. They were feeding it right at the time I was there, and I found it amazing what a long tongue the giraffe had. I also saw some kangaroos for the first time, but they were really boring and were just lying around. Melbourne zoo is really nice.

Canberra (December 9-11, 2003)

I went to Canberra for a few days, partly to meet the people at IBM OzLabs and also to do some sightseeing. Andrew Pollock kindly took me around and we went to some space exploration center and the zoo. This is the famous Canberra zoo where Linus was bitten by a penguin. They had a sign up there telling the story of Linus and Tux. There was a reservoir close to Andrew's place and we saw some wild kangaroos. Unfortunately, they went away as we approached them. I spent a day at IBM OzLabs and met all the cool guys like Tridge, Rusty and Chris Yeoh, and on one evening we also had a Debian get together.

Sydney (December 11-17, 2003)

When I arrived in Sydney, it was raining but the weather improved a lot over the next few days. On Saturday, I went to Herbert Xu's place so he could take a look at my laptop and fix a few issues with it. It was really amazing watching him going through the kernel sources. On Sunday, I went to Manly Beach. The weather wasn't great when I left so I thought I'd just go for a walk but then it was pretty warm and I regretted not bringing a towel along. However, the following three days I spent at Coogee beach and it was simply amazing. The water was warm, the beach was nice; it simply rocked!

Back Melbourne and then to Europe

Unfortunately, I only had a few days at the beach. I had to return to Melbourne, pack all my stuff, and then catch my flight back to Europe. I really enjoyed Australia. It's a great place, and the only downside really is that it's just too damn far away.

Beach

I managed to go to the beach for a bit on Monday. The weather was really nice… I collected some shells. I'm really looking forward to going to the beach for a week in about 10 days. That will be great fun. In the meantime, I have one more paper to go. I just fixed up the paper which is due tomorrow; I have to fix another paper and then I'll start on the last paper. I also arranged a meeting with some Debian people in Canberra.

One more paper to go…

Yeah, finished another paper; only one more to go (next weekend). I might go the beach tomorrow or on Monday. It has been over 30 degrees the past few days.

Going to Canberra

Just booked a flight from Melbourne to Canberra, a coach from there to Sydney and a flight back to Melbourne. I'm going to meet with the LSB folks at IBM OzLabs in Canberra and I'll also arrange a meeting with the Debian developers there. Then going to sample some beaches in Sydney. ;-)

LUV meeting, reading, flights

Hmm, I can hardly remember what happened in the weeks since I lasted posted. Last Wednesday, I gave my standard Debian talk at the LUV meeting and then headed to a cafe with some people including Grant who had completely cut his hair and shaven his long beard. On Thursday, we watched the Matrix… I guess everyone knows by now how much it sucked. And on the weekend I actually started writing one of the three 5000 word papers which are due in 2 weeks. I'm glad at least one is done. I'm going to start with the next one soon, but in the meantime…

I finally did some reading again. I read Douglas Adams's The Salmon of Doubt a couple of weeks ago and found surprisingly many mentions of Richard Dawkins. I didn't know there was a connection, but thinking about it, it all makes perfect sense. I then discovered that Dawkins has recently published a new book and, to my surprise, that there are some books by him I haven't read yet. So I started with Climbing Mount Improbable and also discovered Matt Ridley's new Nature via Nurture in our library. I'm currently reading The language of the genes by Steve Jones. Being so busy all the time, I haven't done much reading lately, but I'm glad I took the time.

I also finally booked a flight back to Europe. Since I was late, I was on the waiting list for a while but then my flight for the 18th December was confirmed.

DPL, Kill Bill

A few days ago I posted a summary of my first six months as DPL. I have also been invited to give a talk about Debian at the Linux Users of Victoria meeting in November.

On Wednesday, I watched Kill Bill (Vol. 1), Quentin Tarantino's new movie. Even though I read a couple if reviews, I didn't know what to expect exactly. However, one thing was clear from all the reviews: the movie is bloody; and, yes, it was bloody, absurdly bloody even. I'm not really sure what to think of the movie, but I think it was pretty good. I thought it was too slow at the beginning, but that changed after a while. I also finally got around to watching Bowling for Columbine; I suppose no comment is needed here.