Mostly been working on Debian recently, including this new package:

apt-gentoo

apt-gentoo enhances the Debian package installation experience to make it fully competitive with newly-popular source-based distributions. As packages are installed, apt-gentoo automatically downloads their build logs from the buildd network. The logs are then slowly scrolled past on the user's terminal to simulate building the software on the local machine. apt-gentoo optionally, and by default, gives increased realism by spinning the CPU in a tight loop between build log lines, and writing large files to disk.

An additional utility apt-gentoo-benchmark is included to tune the delay loops for your hardware by finding the length of time taken by typical compiler and linker runs. (On slow or low-memory hardware we recommend leaving these values at their defaults.)

Please test - download the deb from http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~mma29/apt-gentoo/

FOSDEM

I finally got transport and somewhere to stay organised for FOSDEM. (The place to be, apparently, is the Hotel Astrid.)

Debian

Since the last time I posted I finally made it out of the Debian NM process. So I get to upload packages directly rather than having to hassle my sponsor to do it for me. Unsurprisingly enough, this makes things much quicker.

Work

I've been writing up a paper to submit to a conference. This is now mostly done, but I still have a few sections to tidy up, where I've thought of extra things to say that I can still fit into the 8 page limit.

Well, the gnome-blog applet seems to work to post here, which is nice.

I should be going to bed (3.05 a.m.), but here's a quick update on what I'm up to:

Work

I've now finished the course I was doing this year in Cambridge. I eventually also got sorted out what I'll be doing next - I should be returning to Edinburgh in October, to study for a PhD. I'll be doing research on probabilistic modelling, probably starting off by looking further at the research I did for my MSc.

Conferences

Earlier this week I was at GUADEC in Dublin, which was good. Lots of interesting talks, and I got to meet lots of new people as well as seeing again some I already knew. Next week I might go up to Linux Expo in Birmingham, though probably just for a day if I do.

I'm also trying to organise travel plans for next month - I'm planning to go to DebCamp/DebConf, and I might try to fit in LinuxTag first. I really need to get flights booked up, but I need to wait to hear back from people about LinuxTag arrangements.

GPE

I tried to mention GPE to people appropriately at GUADEC, since a lot of GNOME developers still haven't heard about it. There were also some more directed discussions with various GNOME people. Unfortunately my iPAQ has developed an odd touchscreen problem, so I stopped being able to do demonstrations myself (or to check my mail during the talks using the conference wireless network).

In Cambridge I've been spending a fair amount of time seeing people who are going home soon, while I'm still living in the same city as them. However, I have had time to start making Debian packages for more of GPE. While Debian isn't really suitable for running on current handhelds, packages would be useful for testing and development (and hopefully might attract a few more developers).

Life

Unfortunately I'm pretty busy just now with work for my course, so haven't had much time for free software development. I have, however, got round to deciding to go to, and making arrangements to get to, FOSDEM. I still expect to be busy then, but I'm just hoping I'll manage to fit everything in somehow. Only a few days before that I'm going to Edinburgh to give a presentation on the research I did last year, in the Music, Informatics and Cognition seminar series - I really ought to get round to finishing my slides for that....

GPE

As implied above, little progress on my part. I did find time, though to do some indirect advertising by writing an article on gpe-julia for a site run by some friends of mine, ProjectZ.