Older blog entries for mtearle (starting at number 46)

Congratulations guys!

Vending Machines - Spent the majority of Saturday at UCC working on our Snack and Coke Vending machines. The Snack machine now has a RJ-45 socket on the back so we can speak serial to it's controller board with our custom ROM built by Bernard. (I built an evil simulator of the ROM UI in PyGTK to help people develop the server software for it). The Coke machine is now clean inside from many years of exploded coke can gunge and is now riced up with two new 12v fans so it actually cools drinks now. Hopefully Cameron will post the photos of the day soon.

Work - Politics: stuffed, Planning: crazed, Staff Development: hah!

Linux Australia - Making progress, much rantage about the GST.

Help is on it's way - Saw Farenheit 9/11 last night at the cinema. Watched it taking a critical view given the reportage that I listened to during the past few weeks, it still convinced me of it's argument. For our American listeners, do go see it even if you hate Michael Moore, be informed rather than ignorant - and ask why these arguments and accusations are even possible.

PS. Just saw JibJab. Where has all the Australian political satire disappeared to?

Pdub and Jefka - Congratulations dudes!

Linux Australia -

STATUS: MOVING FORWARD

- things are happening (FTA, Media Training) overall, Treasury slowly appears to be coming together (although I spend too much time in spinlocks waiting on others presently)

Debian - The local reaction to the recent Debian GR has been interesting, mostly, Death of Debian, News at 11. At work, the largest common fear is that the GR will basically result in an even more out of date stable release and we'll have to migrate to a different platform for our various servers for up to date software with the features needed for the various systems that we support (for example, later versions of php)

With the usual synchronicity of my life things at work have highlighted the link between strategy, policy and implementation with each needing to support the other to make effective progress. The GR and AJ's subsequent post highlights the schisms between all three in the Debian project. GNOME seems to have tackled this (taking examples) with an organised release schedule (Strategy), freezes (Policy) and documented release planning and bug days (Implementation).

Of course, things are much easier for a desktop environment than a software distribution ... okay, now taking a step back and looking at Debian. Release is determined by the number of bugs (specifically release critical bugs, but the number of other bugs has impact too) in the "stable" set of packages (with the number of packages growing at an ever increasing rate). The disconnect here lies in the criteria for a release and how a package is chosen to be pushed into the release with the DFSG and number of bugs being absolute criteria for that; I don't think it's being viewed as a process from the creation of a package through to DFSG compliant bug free goodness with the community being able to take snapshots along the way.

On a related note, another observation that I noticed being made about the GR and recent election of the DPL was the low percantage of Debian Developers that voted. The Debian Project reveals it's American heritage here with non-compulsory voting (this is being written from an Australian point-of-view), developers are not meant to be uncontactable by email and are meant to be active, so why can they opt out of voting on things such as GRs that affect the whole project?

Governance - have being thinking about this in relation to the half dozen committees that I have been on and other projects that I have observed, why is it so hard to get it right?

shiny new work desktop - 2.8Ghz goodness, hopefully, I'll get the opportunity to actually getting around to doing some dev work on it before it becomes hopelessly slow :)

Barriers to entry... - It's good to see the Evolution guys giving ways for people to help out their project; however it's not the itch for me ... I wonder what ways there are for us with low attention spans to help out projects.

Thank $DEITY - Scored a HP Laserjet 4 for $5 AUD, it even works - sweet. Some days you'd have to agree $DEITY is smiling at you....

IV - IV is over. The concert with the Prague Chamber Orchestra of Dvorak Stabat Mater was a resounding success

Linux Australia - Just had our face to face committee meeting in Melbourne - interesting to see more of the city than just Tullamarine airport. Thinks look like they'll go well this year with a focus for the organisation solidly cemented. On a sad note, it meant I had to miss Oday for the first time in a decade at my University ...

Other stuff ... - jdub condolences at your workplace being eaten by iiBorg

I can't believe it's not a KVM - Upon the suggestion of the evil Mr Quirk and my need for a two port KVM grabbed an old printer switchbox and make up some cables from DB25 connectors and old VGA monitor cables. It works ... the picture is not pretty but it works

linux.conf.au 2004 - Catch the red eye out to Adelaide this morning; the conference looks like it is going to be a blast ... rock on Monday morning.

There's a whole in the river where my memory lies ... - Finally got over the post linux.conf.au 2003 burnout ...

Camera zoom - Somebody gives you a thought experiment or a new way of looking at things, something nice happens and then all of a sudden it feels like the camera has zoomed out and it all falls back into persepective.

Shig & Meryki's Hat Party - The pimp hat, chains and suit went down well and much fun was had by one and all.

Debian - Signed up into the New Maintainer process. Some parts of it seems like they have been done well and thought through, others less so. Currently working (slowly) on Policy and Procedures.

Digital Camera - bought myself a cheap $AU 249 Vivitar Vivican 3610 digital camera - ok but crappy shutter speed and handles awfully in low light. Needed to patch my kernel to make it appear properly as a USB mass storage device.

Alert But Not Alarmed - linux.conf.au 2003With it now being less than 4 days to the start, most of the hard stuff is behind us now.... it's gonna rock. More when I've had some sleep.

linux.conf.au - You heard it here first, Registrations To Linux.Conf.Au are now open. CFP is progressing well, we should know soon who the speakers that are coming are.

October - it's getting awfully close to my birthday, mental note - "must get life"

It's a wide open road - Watching "A Long Way To The Top", it amazing all the great Aussie music there is ... didn't realise half of it was.

I miss the Loft, it was a cultural and social refuge of a kind, a shared meme. Unfortunately it decided to stay behind in the nineties whilst the rest of us moved on. Will we find something to replace it?

OpenOffice - Burn a copy and give to a local small business. I don't think many end users have heard of it; if you can't get them running Linux at least get them using OpenOffice.

Back To The Future - Computer Emulators - Running an emulator for my first computer (VZ300) (Z80 based computer) on my laptop. Oh, the irony!

linux.conf.au - Paper review is starting, Registrations should be open soon

One year since graduation ... - Still have a job in Perth's catatonic IT job market

One year since ... - For The People -

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

- Laurence Binyon

One year since ... - The Rhetoric - Fortress America is here and it just doesn't understand. The number of anti-US letters (against US foreign policy) in this weeks paper has been telling and reassuring that the Australian public isn't blindly following King Bush.