Recent blog entries for dopey

Random question for the day:

What do you do, on an open source project, where the author takes in any patches that you submit, uses them, but fails to credit you in any way?

31 Jul 2002 (updated 31 Jul 2002 at 01:51 UTC) »
Presentations, Talks, Papers

I'm interested in actually writing talks, however, I hit the wall when I actually go looking for topics. Bugger. So far I've asked people to suggest topics if they want me to cover them... hopefully this will work. Hell, it worked with wildfire submitting me as a talker for the Debian Mini-Conf at LCA2003.

Moodle

Moodle is progressing, some (maybe all, haven't been paying too much attention) have been going in. Got some good ideas about moving with this, and as it stands, the copy is being used live by students and lecturers now.. Rock!

Work

Whoot, finally they believe I am a sysadmin.

Web statistics

Web statistics can be scary. I found out that there have been over one hundred downloads of some talk notes I did for Sydney's Debian Special Interest Group... scary++

May you live in interesting times - Chinese curse.

Its increasingly obvious to me now why this is a curse.

<person>Dougiamas</person> has a nice codebase, <proj>Moodle</proj> which almost does every thing I need for the subject websites. This is a good thing - its even better that he is interested in taking in some of the patches I make. This is an obvious example of why open source is good, and why it works.

Couple of things I'd like to change are to make it more suited to our site - different access levels, standardized dates for subjects - and to make it more customisable.

Customization is tickling at me - I know its not essential to getting the site working for now, so I should be able to leave it for now and work on more urgent things, but its just nigling at me. I'm thinking of changing the theme system to allow customisation of more than just some of the colours, the header and the footer - however, most of the template systems that I've seen that allow you to do this suck.

I'm now thinking of using HTML::Template's port/conversion, called htmltmpl to have a stab at this. htmltmpl is nice, and I'm thinking of having a template for each type of `object' - sidebox, information, calendar, etc - and another template for the complete page (including the header and footer).

This may make it slightly more difficult for a designer to wrap their head around, but it'll allow one hell of a lot more customisation to the interface, which I believe is a good thing.

Re: lilo's 'On not being a street person.'

Lilo, I wasn't challenging you, or you situation. I was merely pointing out that sending a global message, daily, pointing to your personal blog isn't likely to get you may friends.

I'm of the opinion that system-wide messages should be reserved for important messages somehow related to the system, that effect most users. There'd be a lot less antagonism if it weren't pushed in peoples faces, regularly. Possibly channel information/onjoin for any of your channels, a link from the openprojects.net webpage (if one doesn't already exist) and/or comments in the motd are all valid ways of presenting the same information, and not a likely to raise people's ire.

Before I get labed as a troll, or being anti-lilo, I'll freely admit he has done a good job with OPN, and it is a shame to hear that he is out of work. In a Utopian society, those who could provide a good service would be justly rewarded.

Oh, and those morons who were calling me a troll: get a life.

02:08 -lilo- [GlobalNotice] Hi all. Apologies for the interruption. Please take a look at http://somegeek.org/ when you get a chance. Thanks.

I go and take a look, its just Rob asking for money. Is this what OPN has become ?

I'm not saying that Rob isn't doing a good job running the network, but he isn't going to attract many fans by mass-msging everyone on opn to get them to look at his diary.

<work>

Work lacks an identity, a handle. Everytime I feel like I move towards a definite goal, it shifts.

</work>

<response>

tk: In my way of thinking, the changelog is a list of things that you [or somebody else] has done. Going though and changing history [for lack of a better way to express it] just doesnt seem ``right'' to me. I understand your comment that it should be fine to only change the form - I'm not so mad about it to advocate against changing a changelog from html->text [for example].. but [imo] the text of a changelog shouldn't be altered - if you started altering the previous changelogs, then they can loose, or gain new, meanings.. this is definatly not good, especially where you have a document that is published [loosely speaking] both before and after the changes.
Of course, I may just be speaking straight from my rear orifice. Feel free to discard anything much of what I say.

</response>

Cardinal: Whilst I am a Debian Developer, I agree with some [but not all] of the comments made in that bug report. It is wrong to make changes to previous changelog entries.. it is just wrong. However, it is my feeling that the initial bug reporter has a point - but primarily, it is my belief that the use of profanity [a general definition, don't bother quoting dictionary output at me] just makes the particular user look less professional.

Debian is a volunteer organisation. And although it hurts to admit it, there will be people who do not present professionally. I do my part, and I try to look mildly professional in what I do, but not everyone does. Thats fine - you cannot force things like that apon volunteers.

This is the same kind of issue as I saw crop up on policy/vote earlier.. which was withdrawn.. again, the people who do all the work are volunteers. If they were paid, they would have to act responsibly, but they arent, and you have to take a bit of the bad with that as well.

The Rules

  1. People are stupid
  2. The inteligence of a mob can be estimated by taking the inteligence of the stupidest member, then dividing it by the fourth power of the number of people in the mob.

Talk about pants.

What not to do: spend lots of time trying to fix up a Debian package that has been orphaned, when the previous maintainer didnt really mean they orphaned it.

Talk about a waste of time.
Oh well, its not like I've got lots of other interesting things to do.

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