Older blog entries for slef (starting at number 92)

Basic set theory rule of blog aggregate generation: aggregate_i+1 = (blogs/aggregate_i) u (aggregate_inblogs)

I need to update 2822->div handling of X-URL and rssitem->2822 From and Message-ID creation, too.

I'm not sure whether it's just that I hadn't spotted it before, but the US-Aus FTA (and the danger of a US Digital Millenium Copyright import) has made Linux Australia campaign. I think many Aussies drank the "technical advantages will be enough" juice of some OSS-hardcores far too deeply. Some time ago, I was told that Australia was an example of FSF's failure to campaign convincingly. When I looked, Australia had no real FSF presence!

I've been worried for some time that the lack of an FSF-sympathetic body meant the Aussies were going to get squished by the proprietary publisher political (P3) lobbyists, but I can't do everything and Aus is a long way from here. Fortunately, as the P3 guys attack, the freedom fighters there have got organised. I wish them success. If you are in Australia, please help their campaign. Freedom to hack may depend on it.

More locally, FFII are holding another on- and off-line protest . I'm not participating online this time because the last one took a site I used offline for weeks. I had to hunt for mirrors and backups. It is not good to waste free software supporter time like that. When FFII stop talking about "close" and "block access", I will support their protests again.

Nearly had a bad thing happen to mabloss, as I confused > with | when moving blog entries around. Fortunately, I had the newly-clobbered script open in an editor, so no harm done. I uploaded a new tarball of mabloss to stop that happening again. I guess a release was needed if I was worried about losing my edit.

Music sales are down. Aren't we surprised? No. I agree with most of richdawe's comment on music - additionally, when vendors start suing their target market, it puts me off buying from them. Living in a crap FM/AM coverage area, I probably bought more recorded music before getting ADSL and satellite and getting access to a decent selection of radio stations.

That reminds me to describe the fun hardware hack. I want to be able to listen to sat radio without the tv on, so I hooked up some PC speakers (into the VCR, because the sat box's audio sockets seem to be an odd size). No power points available, so solder a 99p DC plug onto a 89p 4-AA battery holder and we have music! I am really out of practice at soldering: took 3 goes to get a good joint. Sounds good now, but I wonder how long the batteries will live. Time to read the speaker specs and do some maths.

Limbered up for today's serious hacking by putting together a small library for doing Condorcet ballots in MzScheme. You can see some output on ALUG main. Yet another bit of code that I should upload somewhere. Something to convert submitted ballots into email would be next, but it's not worth developing further yet.

It's now lunchtime. Maybe for this afternoon's limbering, I'll hack the improvements I want into MaBloss.

I'm sure there was something else. Never mind.

Thanks to all answering my appeal for UK language info. I'll reply ASAP if I haven't already.

Another Monday and another "do today" mailbox of 22 items, as well as the paper items on the in-tray and whatever else turns up during the day. Good mix of topics, with some sysadmin, some koha, some AFFS, some GNUstep.org, some financial and some other stuff. Should be an interesting day.

Not sure what I've been doing for the last week, other than working. I have some simple software that I should package up and release this week, doing web/email "cloaking" (framed bounces and aliases to us). Still not hacked the new ideas into mabloss or jewel. Had an email about web site stuff. I should update my savannah project page.

Also need to upload the fixed wily to unstable, as upstream seem uninterested in the patch (or anything much I write). Maybe one last try at sending it to them first.

I'm compiling a listing of free software translation projects for the UK's languages. I've not found much for Cornish, Scots or Scots Gaelic. If you know of active translations for those languages, please click the link and email me a URL. Many thanks in advance!

More info...

The world got its revenge today. Nearly 2 hours to clear the email that arrived overnight. Most of it was work stuff, not lists, so can't really be ignored.

After that, this morning was solid work, doing a dependency chase on an archaic non-Debian machine that I can't upgrade. I just hope the customer's firewall is up to the job. It seems restrictive when trying to work through it, but I still worry it would let the box be used in DoS tricks. I've told the customer my thoughts, so it's their choice now.

Trying a new trick with todo lists, using an "action this day" mailbox and moving things to and from the inbox. If it works, I'll write it up.

Lots of stuff pending for AFFS, GNUstep.org and others. Everything is waking up from hibernation, it seems. Really doesn't feel like spring here yet, though.

1. GNUsteppers are very cool people.
2. FOSDEM is chaotic. Very chaotic. Talks often appear not on the programme. Audience size varies from about a dozen to uncounted hundreds.
3. Freeedem is more chaotic. Some of the talks are very interesting, but it is difficult to predict what you will see. 15mins between the two makes it harder to take chances.
4. If there is no chairman, pretend to be one. Then you get interesting talks to watch instead of people standing around by the stage.
5. GNUsteppers are cool people, but might not be slow drivers or good navigators.
6. FFII swpat talks always contain new information and are worth tracking down. The gravestones make their stand easy to spot.
7. FOSDEM barmen will not sell you closed bottles of beer for the train, even if asked.
8. OGo seems interesting.
9. The GNUstep Live CD is popular.
10. I do not enjoy meeting people from Britain who I have already met, unless they have something to discuss beyond "how many beers I have drunk".
11. Too many people know me now. Borrowed name tags do not work any more. I cannot impersonate a defence programmer. What's more, a lot of them tell me my name: "You're MJ Ray". I already know that.
12. I must fully script talks.
13. Referring to "all churches" when talking to a serious catholic on the train home starts an argument. "There is only one church." Hmmm.
14. Did I mention how cool GNUsteppers are?

I just sent my nomination/platform to be koha's release manager for the 2.0 series, taking over from the development manager. Most of it was fairly uncontroversial normal practice (major fixes trigger a release, minors get batched into a periodic release, that sort of thing), but I plan to fix the lingering z3950daemon bugs by offering an alternative Z39.50 search, if one is developed in time. Z39.50 is a killer feature for libraries and I will allow in new code during a stable series if it fixes those bugs. I'd link to my full platform, but it's a sourceforge list and it still won't give me a page after 20mins trying. ETOOBIG.

More info...

• The UK government is still trying to allow Genetically Mangled (GM) crops to be grown here, the news said today. MORI opinion poll says that over a third of those questioned are strongly opposed to GM crops and just over a tenth strongly support them. Our representatives aren't representative, yet again.
• Someone asked me about running ASP on Apache. I know it's still not a good idea, but since the last time I looked, there's Mono ASP.NET. If you know how well this works, email me please (replace DOT with a .) and let me know (review URLs welcome). Does it run ASP as well as ASPX?
• It seems I'm down to speak at Freeedem about what happened at FLOSSIE. I'd best make sure I pack my notes and brain. I offered, but now is the first confirmation. This weekend looks busy and fun best make sure all spare batteries are fully charged tomorrow.

The SCSI still doesn't work, but now I have an error message to work with: SCSI error <1 0 0 0> return code 0x70000 \n end_request: I/O error, dev sda sector 960 \n Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 865 \n lost page write due to I/O error on sda1. Then it repeats, very slowly, with sector and block increasing by one each time. If you've fixed this before, drop me an email. I'll look elsewhere.