Mon, 31 Dec 2007
Happy new year!
The year is almost over and a lot has happened. I finished my studies and got engaged, (Again, thank you very much for the many, many congratulations and warm wishes!) now, just before the year is really over I decided to finally make another commitment.
Now, I guess the first thing I'll turn to will be Tasks and Spätzle. ;)
Posted at: 19:01 in /english/personal
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Sun, 30 Dec 2007
Without words ...
Intercultural disclaimer: In Germany it is customary to buy the wedding rings
on the occasion of the engagement and wear them on the left hand until the
actual marriage. Afterwards they are worn on the right hand.
Posted at: 16:37 in /english/personal
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Mon, 19 Nov 2007
Symptoms
The German language has an expression that is "Zeichen der Zeit". Literally translated this means "Signs of the time", the idea behind that expression is that sometimes there are certains things or events that are symptopmatic for a current development or a general change of times.
One of these "Zeichen der Zeit" can currently be observed very nicely in our neighbourhood. In the last half year three shops in our direct vicinity closed down. One was a quite cute 60s cafe that was later rented out to a citizens' action committee, the second was a shop that sold wooden toys, the third was a health food shop. I don't know how long these shops where around, but all of them had lasted for at least a couple years if not longer. Now all three shops are rented out again, two are now temp work agencies, the third is a "consumer bank" that specialises on small consumer credits for things like cars, washing machines or entertainment electronics. Apparently they also cooperate with some mail order firms.
Is this really where we want to go?
Posted at: 23:07 in /english/musings
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Sat, 17 Nov 2007
Back from the bookshop
I am wondering ... when exactly did cookbooks stop being about cooking and start being about cooks?
Posted at: 18:32 in /english/musings
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Mon, 29 Oct 2007
Only three days left ...
Citizens of Germany have only three days left if they want to apply for a new travel passport that does not include its owner's fingerprints. From the 1st of November on German citizens who apply for a new travel passport will have to provide their fingerprints so they can be included in the passport's biometric section. Up until now, fingerprinting was a treatement reserved for those user reasonable suspicion of a crime.
A new travel passport can be applied for at any time, whether the old one is expired or not. Your new passport will be valid for 10 years if you are 26 or older, otherwise it will be valid for only five years. A new passport costs 59,00 Euro respectively 37,50 Euro for those under 26 years.
I for one do not welcome this further erosion of privacy so I got myself a new passport just in time. Guess I'll have to do a lot of travelling in the next 10 years ...
Posted at: 16:40 in /english/politics
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Thu, 02 Aug 2007
Some more positive things and Dear launchpad.net Part 2
More happy people: following up on my last post on nice free software experiences Chris Ball has responded by posting one of his. Are there any more?
Also talking about free software nuisances I remembered my recent grudge with launchpad.net. At that time I was contacted by someone from Canonical shortly after that first post. He said he'd pass my comment on, but in the next days nothing happened so I turned to other things and only occasionally checked back on the site. A few days ago I've again checked back and guess what, the objectionable title has been replaced, both for people using launchpad and for those who don't. The page's title for peple who do not actually use launchpad now reads "X does not use launchpad" and "X in launchpad" for those who do. Much better! Well done launchpad.net!
Posted at: 10:52 in /english/debian
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Sun, 29 Jul 2007
A little comfort
Being in any reasonably large free software project one tends to be confronted with endless little annoyances, frustrations and letdowns. Often it happens that these little things keep growing in our perception the longer they last and the more they trouble us.
In these times it is good to be reminded that the actual thing we invest so much time and energy in is not those little issues that often annoy us so much, but the overlying ideal of free software which is still a great thing, even in view of all the little frustrations that we have to deal with when working on it.
Yesterday I had one of these little experiences that just remind you, just how good a thing free software is:
- At Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:38:49 I filed a whishlist bug against a software I recently started using.
- At Sat, 28 Jul 2007 19:04:35 the bug had been passed on to the software's upstream and I got an email from the upstream author telling me that the feature I wanted was already in the current development version of the software, where I could download the tar.bz2 and how to contact him on jabber.
- At about half to ten I downloaded the code, rolled it into a package and tried it, but couldn't get the new feature to work, so I wrote another email.
- An half hour later I got an answer telling me what I'd done wrong. I fixed my mistake, tested the new feature and found that it did right what I wanted. However, there was one more option I thought would be useful so I contacted the author via jabber.
- In the following 2.5 hours he implemented the additional option that I had asked for, renamed a button I found a bit unintuitive and fixed two bugs I discovered in the process of testing the new feature, sending me new code versions to test after every change.
- I am now using the software with the new feature I asked for and with all the options I wanted from a homemade package but expect the proper Debian package to show up in the archive any day.
- The whole process took three days.
... and this is exactly why free software (and the people in it) is so great. Because if there is something you'd think would be useful, all you have to do is ask and maybe lend a little help in testing and you got it. And this is why it's worth to put up with all the little annoyances, frustrations and letdowns that working with humans brings with it. Even if they sometimes seem to be overwhelming.
PS: I know that there are also enough examples where things didn't go as smooth as this one. But this just makes it more worth and important to highlight and appreciate these examples where everything just worked out perfectly and not just take them as granted.
So, inbetween posting rants and fuming at all the things that tick you off, how about if you think of a nice FLOSS experience you had and share it with the rest of the world?
Posted at: 14:34 in /english/debian
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Sat, 07 Jul 2007
More Pancakes
Following the invitation on the SocialContractTenYears wiki site. We also decided to join the distributed pancake party. So on the evening of July 5th we joined the many other pancake eaters. Pancakes where prepared and much enjoyed with a whole lot of toppings. A nice party!
PS: In fact, following the composition of this blog post pancakes where had again. Now, that's the Good Life!
Posted at: 13:20 in /english/debian
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Wed, 04 Jul 2007
On Beauty
Every day, when sitting in the bus, I see a lot of girls who obviously invest a lot of time, effort and money into looking good.
... and then render the whole effort useless by putting on this horribly bored, ill-tempered and disdainful look.
Posted at: 09:28 in /english/musings
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Fri, 22 Jun 2007
Hi from DC7
The journey to Edinburgh on Wednesday went pretty well. The only problem I ran into was that after landing at Edinburgh airport we had to wait in the plane for a few more minutes because the airport's doors wouldn't open.
I felt pretty beaten when I finally arrived at the venue and just exchanged a few greetings and took a look around before going to the hostel and finishing my night's sleep. When I got up again it was almost time to go for dinner and then pick up Tolimar who got here on a later plane, since his appclication for travel sponsorship got accepted much earlier. (He's giving a talk and a BoF, so he had a higher priority.)
On Thursday I saw a few talks and attended the debian-women BoF, which I think was very productive and - most importantly - gave us back some of the momentum we'd lost over the last years. We've got a whole lot of plans for new things to do now and I am looking forward to getting to work on them when I get back. The day ended with the DebConf Ceilidh which was pretty fun altough it was quite obvious that geeks may not actually be the best dancers around. Lack of rhythm was easily made up with enthusiasm though and the slight lack of women was also easily compensated. I think that Ceilidh band will remember us. We even contributed a few musicians of our own! Once the Ceilidh was over I pretty much fell right into bed.
Although it's good to be here and meet all the people, only being at DebConf for the last few days generally tends to be rather frustrating. Firstly it's always weird to join a group that has already been together for a while and also DebConf really just isn't something that can be condensed to a few days. I've just about started to get into the flow today (Friday) and tomorrow I'll already be leaving again. Shame.
Anyway, only being here for a bit is still better than not being here at all and I very much hope to have more time next year when we meet in Argentina. For now I'll just enjoy my remaining last day at DebConf and hope for a better time next year.
Posted at: 14:47 in /english/debian/events/debconf7
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Wed, 20 Jun 2007
Off to EDI
It's now shortly before 5am (Argh!) and I'll be leaving home now. If
everything goes as planned this will be my journey:
5:20 - Bus to station
5:43 - Train to Hanover
6:21 - Train to Cologne
9:21 - Train to the Airport (CGN)
10:50 - Plane to EDI
Around noon - Arrival at Teviot.
If I don't show up, something went wrong.
Bye bye for now ... *yawn*
Posted at: 04:59 in /english/debian/events/debconf7
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Sun, 17 Jun 2007
What I learned during my thesis ...
Right, so as
announced I finished my thesis this week. Its translated title is (if
anyone want to know)
"Design and Implementation of a Model for the
Retrieval of Free/Libre Open Source Software using a Case-Based Reasoning
System".
Writing it certainly was an educational experience but I am still happy
it's done now. Especially the last weeks where rather unfunny, more so
since about ten days before my deadline we had a massive heat wave here in
Lower Saxony.
Now that it's done I am still waiting for enthusiam to kick in. So far weariness still prevails. Maybe also because finishing my thesis does not yet end my studies. We also have to do written and oral examinations which will take place in July and after.
So at the moment I spend my days mostly sleeping and trying to muster up enough wanderlust for my trip to DebConf7. (At the moment the prospect of traveling long distance with trains and cheap flights and then be surrounded by a few hundred happy people is still rather daunting.)
Anyway, in order to give an impression of my last weeks and months and to sum this all up, a list of random notes, taken during the last weeks, of what I learned while writing my thesis:
- 6 months are NOT a long time!
- 10.000 chars are not enough to model a Debian package description
- 50 chars are not enough to model a Debian package name (YES, THAT MEANS YOU, libmaypole-plugin-authentication-usersessioncookie-perl!)
- osi.org does not belong to the Open Source Initiative but to Ontario Swine Improvement (Ontario Swine Improvement (OSI) is an industry-run organization dedicated to providing swine improvement and genetic products, programs, information and expertise. Our goal is to help Ontario pork producers achieve competitive advantages and excellence in the global market place.)
- I must not procrastinate.
Procrastination is the mind-killer.
Procrastination is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my thesis.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the thesis has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain. - Dr.-Ing. Roland Bless rules! (So does his LaTeX class for theses.)
- Working without internet is possible. It is even better than working with internet. Simply leave gaps where you need to look up stuff and fill them in in the evening.
- Losing half a litre of blood does not impair my fitness for (brain) work.
- Working with version control requires a minimum of
intelligenceattention. Unfortunately mostly so when ending work (dead tired) and when beginning to work (dead tired). - Side effects: Insomnia, itchy area on left leg, belly aches, little blisters on the sides of my fingers, headaches, slight but constant petulance.
- "I know what I want to say, getting it on paper is the least work." - WROOOONG!
- German is such a crappy language to write scientific texts in. Special greetings to the generic masculine. Gah!
- When the cat's writing her thesis ...
The fun time's over now, darling ;) - "I have don't really like proof-reading your thesis in PDF, can't you just send me the Word file?" is not what you want to hear from your proof reader.
- Good: Debian, vim, subversion, LaTeX, bibtex, evince, xpdf, pdftk, PostgreSQL, OpenOffice.org, dia, gimp, phpESP, tea, coffee, ramen, chocolate, electric fan, eating at the uni's cafeteria twince a day, raw cornflakes straight from the box, frida (my trusty laptop), power naps, pizza, people understanding my true problems, the freedom to burry myself in my work and absolutely and utterly neglect anything else until I am finished.
- The flat can look worse. Much!
- Bad:
- The FSIL (student council for teaching students) belt grinding(!) tables on the balcony in front of the students' working rooms.
- People trying to be nice and asking how it's going with the thesis.
- Fellow students greeting me with "Hey still here?"
- Our evil DPL blogging about his highly addictive monsterz just when I got to work.
- I'll do it after I handed in the thesis.
- I'll see a doctor about it after I handed in the thesis ...
- I should commit much more often (svn that is)
- How come there are so many extra 'i's in your thesis?" Because it's Linux!
- Sense of time is overrated.
- Print shop guy is mean.
A = Me, overtired, having formatted and doing last changes to this document the whole night through and on until 20 minutes before the printing appointment.
B = Print shop guy
B: You know that's not A4 ...
A: WHAT?!
B: Yea, it's too big.
A: WHAT?! But, but, I ... That can't be!
B: I'm telling you, it's too big. See, 0.3mm too long and 0.12mm too wide
A: ... *death stare*
- The examination office is now located in the fourth floor in the building next to the post office at the Hindenburgplatz.
- Tolimar is the most patient and understand guy I've ever known.
Thank you! - 6 months are SUCH a long time!
Posted at: 19:05 in /english/uni
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Just when you are about to give up ...
It actually seemed as though I wouldn't be going to DebConf this year. I didn't get to work much the last two months, since I wanted to spend all my time on the near completion of my thesis so I didn't have the money to pay for a flight (or train) to EDI and back myself. Due to that same thesis I also didn't have the time to prepare a talk this year so I was also not a speaker. Since I am also neither a DD nor in NM I was pretty sure I wouldn't be eligible for travel sponsorship this year. And, as expected, I was indeed very far down the queue, so when I still hadn't heard anything about being sponsored until about a week before DebConf was starting I had pretty much given up on the whole thing and resigned to the fact that this year's DebConf would happen without me.
However, on 10 June I had a mail in my Inbox. Subject: "Your travel cost sponsorship request for DebConf7". It seems the DebConf team was able to dig up some more money and do another run on the sponsorship queue. This was three days before I had to get my thesis to the print shop and I wasn't really doing anything else except for frantically going over my proof readers' annotations, doing last minute additions, changes etc. and occasionally lie down for a few hours of rather uneasy sleep. So my first reaction was something along the lines of "What?! Now?! I don't have time for this now! Go away!" and I was pretty close to answering the mail saying "Thank's but that's too short notice. I won't be coming, have fun, see you all next year." Luckily Tolimar prevented this though and actually managed to find a flight for me that not only goes on the actual days that I had originally planned to arrive and leave but that is also not far over my travel sponsorship!
So, long story short, I'll be flying to EDI on Wednesday. It'll only be for the very last few days and I am probably already missing out on lots and lots of stuff, but at least I'll be able to attend for a few days. And in time for debian-women's third birthday! :)
I just hope everything will go well, it seems there's a lot of trouble with flying to DebConf this year, at least judging from what I read on planet and heard on irc.
See you all soon!
Posted at: 11:19 in /english/debian/events/debconf7
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Fri, 15 Jun 2007
Done
Done!
More later.
Now ... sleep . . . ZZ Z ZZ ZZ ZZZ
Posted at: 16:53 in /english/uni
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Mon, 21 May 2007
The barbecue season has now officially begun!
1 Pack of mixed BBQ meat: 5,90
1 Bottle of 2005 Montepulciano d'Abruzzo: 1,99
1 Throw away grill: 3,50
The fun that is an indoor BBQ party: Priceless!
With the weather being so great and everyone having nice barbecues, we wanted to have one too. Unfortunatelly we don't have a balcony or a (nice) garden. (We do have a grassy patch in front of our house but it's not exactly a place you want to sit at and have dinner.) Also do not have a proper barbecue to take somewhere nice and somehow when we travel to friends we always bring bad weather with us.
This weekend however, we decided to go for it. We got ourselfs one of those disposable grills, put it on the largest window sill, strategically placed a fan and a bucket of water and declared the indoor barbecue season officially opened.
Our experiences in short
Good:- Comfortable! Toilet, fridge, heating and electric light nearby
- Easy and low cost. You basically just light the only flammable bit on the whole thing, wait until the nasty accelerant is all burned up and the coals glow nicely
- No carrying around of stuff. Fridge, kitchen table etc near by
- That tiny thing really holds a long time. We both were absolutely stuffed, while the grill was still well hot
- BIG FUN!
Bad:
- SMOKE. The fan helps but doesn't solve the problem entirely
- Grill does not get very hot, large stuff takes a while. Bad when you are hungry, good towards the end though
- Throw away grill manual is only in Swedish, Finnish, Danish and Dutch. I wonder what "Grilliä saa käyttää ainoastaan ulkona!" means ...
- Worried looks from people walking by the house at the column of smoke rising from a window at the fourth floor. Help to stand in the window and smile in a relaxed way.
- Running down four floors just because your darling dropped the aluminium foil
- SMOKE! (You don't appreciate the full odeur until you come back into the kitchen the next morning.)
PS: How do you extinguish a throw away grill once you're done?
PPS: Shower!
PPPS: Kids, do not try this at home!
Posted at: 23:08 in /english/misc
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Sun, 20 May 2007
What a show!
Right, some time has passed since our Fiesta Mexicana, but still here's my record of this memorable evening.
In a word: Wow! Panteon Rococo did a spectacular show! I've known and liked their music before, but seeing them live is a whole different matter and just sooo much better! Although their tour has already been lasting for quite some time, they showed absolutely no sign of fatigue. The Vier Linden was pretty full but not cram-full so there was still enough space to dance. (And while we are speaking of dancing, let me say, that some of my muscles are still sore! Those guys just don't give you a rest!)
Throughout the whole concert the mood both on and in front of the stage were great and the guys were fooling around and inciting the audience, with themselves setting a good example of how to absolutely lose it (and play an instrument at the same time!) the whole time. The only downer was that a lot of what they said seemed to get lost since many in the audience didn't speak (enough) Spanish, which lead to a kind of lack of timely reactions. (Shenka yells something - Spanish speakers: "Yaay!" - Tiny delay - Rest of crowd: "Yaaaaay!"). Most weren't botherd by this though, and neither seemed the band. After all, it is pretty clear where Panteon Rococo stand and what their opinions are, so there isn't much to guess.
Consequently when the band showed first signs of getting towards the end of the concert the audience wouldn't let them go. They of course played La carencia and all the other favourites but the audience just wouldn't get enough, so the encores(?) kind of turned into a "Who drops first" contest. (We did.)
If you have any chance to see them while they're over here, do it!. The tour is still on and you can still see Panteon Rococo on the following dates:
20.05.2007 D - Hamburg @ Fabrik
22.05.2007 D - Rostock @ Mau Club
23.05.2007 D - Potsdam @ Lindenpark
24.05.2007 D - Dresden @ Scheune
25.05.2007 D - Paderborn @ Kulturwerkstatt
26.05.2007 D - Rottenburg @ Stadthalle
27.05.2007 D - Passau @ Pfingst Open Air
28.05.2007 D - Essen @ Pfingst Open AIr
19.07.2007 E - Huesca @ Pirineos Sur
20.07.2007 E - Barcelona @ London Bar
PS: Paco soo reminds me of weasel!
Posted at: 17:13 in /english/ent
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Tue, 15 May 2007
A little DebConf6 revival
Ever since I've returned from DC6 I've been planning to return to Mexico one day. Given the current state of my vacation fund this won't be any time soon. However, as a kind of consolation I'll have a little bit of Mexico coming to me this week!
Panteón Rococó (alternate non-official site without so much flash) from Mexico City will be giving a concert in my crummy little hometown! Yay! If you are into good Ska music and living near Hildesheim don't miss out on this one!
Oh, almost forgot. The whole thing happens on
Wed 16 May 2007
Admission: 19:00, Begins 20:00
Vier Linden
Alfelder Str. 55b
31139 Hildesheim
Tickets: 12,00 Euro Advance Booking or 15,00 Euro Box Office
Posted at: 09:36 in /english/ent
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Mon, 07 May 2007
Chère racaille
Unfortunatelly, Mr Sarkozy winnig these elections does not come as a total surprise. Still it is not something you have to passively accept. You still have a democracy. What is needed now is a strong and watchful opposition, in and outside the parliaments. Remain alert, protect and defend your République and the rights its residents have! We're with you!
Best,
Meike
Posted at: 09:56 in /english/politics
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Sun, 06 May 2007
Guys!
Learn to bake!
Chicks dig it!
On popular demand: The (German) recipe. Special hints from the baker: don't make the milk too hot, that'll kill the yeast. Also put the yeast-milk-flour mixture in a sufficiently large dish to avoid extra cleaning work. (A regular coffee cup is too small!)
Posted at: 14:16 in /english/misc
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Sat, 28 Apr 2007
Full Metal Village
Should you live in or near one of the few German cities that have a cinema that shows Full Metal Village, do watch it! We just returned from Hanover where the Kino am Raschplatz plays it. Terrific movie! (Trailer on youtube)
The documentary by Sung-Hyung Cho describes the small and rather rual German village Wacken, before and during the Heavy Metal Festival Wacken Open Air. It portrays some of its inhabitants and shows their life in a rural area and how they adopted to world's largest Heavy Metal Open Air happening on their acres each year. It's at the same time poetic and funny. More funny though ... (We were in tears from laughing by the end)
PS: Also noteworthy, attac have produced a promotional film that is shown during the advertisings in German cinemas and calls to join the G8 protests at Heiligendam. Wouldn't have expected that! Nice idea though.
Posted at: 23:29 in /english/ent
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Sat, 21 Apr 2007
Dear Launchpad.net
I recently stumbled over my launchpad site. Now, while I don't mind you automatically creating a launchpad site for me, as long as it clearly indicates that I am not actually using it, its title "Meike Reichle's contributions to Free Software" does seem a bit overly hegemonic, doesn't it?
For what it's worth, my contributions to Free Software are still listed here, here and here!
Posted at: 21:35 in /english/debian
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Wed, 18 Apr 2007
Blog Birthday
I recently read through my blog's archive and guess what, today is its official second birthday! :) Its very first post was exactly two years ago and dealt with the upcoming LinuxTag.
Thinking back, this blog has come a long way: from a simple list-like page without any navigational elements in my student webspace (constantly being in trouble with my 20Mb quota), to my first forays into php, to a rather horrible nested tables fest hosted on a friend's server, to today when I finally got my own server and domain and returned to simple handwritten html + css and blosxom.
Its choice of content has mainly remained the same though: Debian, uni, personal life and the the occasional rant when there was nowhere else to complain ;)
Posted at: 19:41 in /english/meta
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Tue, 17 Apr 2007
Incommunicado
Those who have recently tried to reach me, may have noticed that at least during the day I am mostly offline at the moment. The reason for this is, that I am currenty a bit more than half through the six months I got for the final thesis of my M.A. degree, and while the first "half time" was rather easy going with mostly empirical work, preperation and planning, the second half is now much more work intensive with the actual implementation and getting the whole thing on paper.
So, since the beginning of this month I've sentenced myself to a kind of "voluntary solitary confinement". In practice this means that I usually get up in the morning, have breakfast, read up on email, irc etc, pack some fruit and our largest insulating teapot and leave for the university. There I move into one of the less popular student working rooms, spread all my stuff and work on my thesis until about 6 in the evening, return home, again read up on my backlog, have dinner, watch a movie and then go to bed.
Although this sounds (and in fact is) rather monotonous, it is also a very productive modus operandi, since the student working rooms are literally bare of any distraction. There are a few tables, a few chairs and occasionally someone else comes in, quietly works for a while and leaves again. Leaving my wireless card at home gives me additional protection from the three gazillion distractions the dreaded internet has to offer.
I don't know yet for how long I'll keep this up, but for the moment it works quite nicely and I produce a few pages (almost) every day. So please excuse that my e-mails are somewhat laggy at the moment, and if you want to talk to me on irc or the phone, try between 19:00 and 23:00 CEST.
Posted at: 14:14 in /english/meta
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Sat, 14 Apr 2007
Spring
After wearing heavy shoes and army boots all winter, the first day wearing regular chucks again feels like walking barefoot.
It's spring! :)
Posted at: 17:12 in /english/misc
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Fri, 13 Apr 2007
Sugar Eggs
Tolimar: It's
okay! Some else took care of it!
:D
Thanks, aba!
Posted at: 21:11 in /english/misc
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Wed, 14 Mar 2007
You know what's creepy?
Traveling to a country you've never been to before, walking into a random cafe and being recognised by someone.
Something like that happened to me when I was in Barcelona. We didn't have much time to look at things when we were there, since we were mostly either in the meeting or at the hotel. So, when we had a few free hours left before getting on our flight back, we decided to take a little walk around the city. However, shortly after we had left it started raining cats and dogs, so we took refuge into a nearby starbucks.
When I was ordering my hot chocolate, a girl walked up to me and
asked me
"Do you by any chance study in Hildesheim?"
"Yes ..."
"IIM?"
"Yes ..."
"You're Meike, right?"
"Yes ..."
Turns out, she was an IIM student as well and recognised me from a seminar. I must confess, I didn't recognise her. Shame on me! I was also totally surprised though. Who would have expected ... :)
Posted at: 23:52 in /english/travel
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Tue, 13 Mar 2007
More on pneumatics
Maks: You're welcome! This is not actually my current playlist or top 10 (or top 11) though. It's really just the songs that put most strain on said pneumatic thingy by having a rhythm that is on the one hand catchy enough to make me bounce along and on the other hand slow enough to be "doinged" with an office chair. (NOFX's Don't call me white is a good example for a totally undoingable song. The classic punk rhythm generally is just way too fast to be rendered on an office chair without stopping to type. Thinking about it, I guess Ska sucks by Propaghandi roughly marks the line between doingability and undoingability)
The word creations in this post are especially dedicated to Clint. A surreal salute!
Posted at: 02:23 in /english/misc
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Mon, 12 Mar 2007
What kills my office chair's pneumatic thingy
- Blues Brothers: Ghost Riders in the Sky
- Irie Revoltes: Ska
- Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen, and Pat Enright: Man of constant sorrow
- Nancy McCallion: On we go
- The Coasters: Down in Mexico
- Nancy Sinatra: These boots are made for walking
- Aretha Franklin: Think
- Golden Earring: Radar love
- War: Low Rider
- Juanes: Camisa Negra
- Steve Miller Band: Magic Carpet Ride
*doing* *doing* *doing* *doing*
Posted at: 19:25 in /english/misc
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Sun, 11 Mar 2007
Back from CLT 2007
Here's, finally, the conclusion of my report from this year's CLT. It's a bit belated since when I got home from Chemnitz I only had a few hours to sleep and repack until I had to leave for Barcelona. ("Business trip", no blog material. It went well, though.) Anyway, I am back now and finally have the time to finish this and upload my slides and pictures.
The social event was great fun, there was again a really nice buffet and we sat together with some people from team(ix). There was a quiz again, this time the task was to find as many linux commands in a text as possible. We even found a few more than the organisers had expected! :) Everyone got a little chocolate Marx bust as a prize and the first three places got an Uli Stein chocolate keyboard. (Pictures in the gallery)
I spent the biggest part of Sunday at the Debian booth or wandering through the exhibition area. It was a bit more quiet than on Saturday, probably also because of the social event and the Linux-Night that took place at the same time.
The slides for my two talks are now on my talks page, the pictures I took are in the gallery and more pictures can be found at the event's pictures collection.
PS: Dear fli4l guys, your picture is here!
PPS: Thank you, Noel!
Posted at: 23:32 in /english/debian/events
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Sat, 03 Mar 2007
Saturday at CLT almost over
Hi from Chemnitz! As expected it's great here. As usual. :) My two talks went really well. They were mostly freely improvised since I was kind of slack regarding their preperation, but I got very positive feedback on both and plan to expand them for future events.
There's still a lot of visitors walking around. The debian booth is well visited with questions in all ranges, babelbox is running merily on the demo machine in rotation with bb, which never ceases to fascinate people. ;)
My saturday was really busy. I walked over here around 8:30, had breakfast and gave my first talk. After a two hour break I gave the other one and ever since then I've been switching from one conversation to the next without pauses. Most of these conversations were with "strangers" who visited my talks and wanted to tell me about projects and ideas of their own, their personal experiences with Linux and Free Software or give further suggestions for my talks. I've really enjoyed these conversations, though they got a bit tiring after a while since for some reason people always catch me when walking somewhere, and so most of these long conversations were held standing and my legs are pudding now.
In a few minutes (hopefully) the social will start and I hope it will be as good as last year. I plan to take things a bit easier tomorrow, visit other peoples booths, take some pictures and maybe even visit a talk or two. The rest of this day will hopefully be spend having some more inspiring conversations, enjoying good food and drink and continuing to try to coax Noel into relinquishing to me his old Debian shirt, that he grew out of. (Small Debian shirts are such a rare and precious good!)
Posted at: 19:29 in /english/debian/events
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Fri, 02 Mar 2007
Off to Chemnitz
In about half an hour I'll leave for Chemnitz in order to attend the Chemnitzer Linux-Tage 2007. I am very much looking forward to going there. Ever since the LinuxTag left Karlsruhe, the CLT are my favourite Linux event within Germany. Because of this I registered even two talks this year, one in the beginners section and of course the inevitable social talk. ;-)
They're both new, so this CLT will feature two premieres. Giving new talks basically means that anything is possible. Very high rock and roll factor! New talks always have the highest risc for "accidents" but also they're usually most fun, because there's still some room (or need) for improvisation left. This is probably also why I tend to lose interest in a talk once I've given it a few times. Though, the BOFH one is of course a golden oldie!
PS: Tolimar is a copycat!
Posted at: 16:17 in /english/debian/events
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Wed, 28 Feb 2007
Deutsche Post - when fact beats fiction
Sometimes it happens, that items that are handeled by the German Mail (Deutsche Post) get damaged by their technical installations. When this happens, the item is put into a transparent plastic bag, together with a letter excusing the accident and telling the recipient how to file a request for investigation. So far so good. Unfortunately the envelope that got ripped in that case included two pendants that fell out and got lost.
I didn't expect this to be much of a problem, but when I tried to file my request at the mail office it turned out, that there is no form for that kind of incident. The regular form used for requests for investigation assumes that the whole shipment got lost. There is no way to indicate, that it is not an envelope that is missing but merely its content. Trying to exlpain that to the lady there also wasn't successful. Except for repeatedly telling me that I had no right to claim compensation when posting things via regular mail (I know!!) she wasn't of much help. In the end I filled out the form as good as possiblei, gave comments where necessary and the lady promised me I would at least get a confirmation from the service centre.
So today, after waiting for more then two weeks I finally got a letter
from the service centre. Guess what it said: "Dear Mister(!)
Reichle.
And now,
guess how I got it. Ripped, in a transparent plastic bag.
The investigation can not be carried out at the moment, since
the information you provided is not complete. Please complete and correct
the information according the missing item ..."
Posted at: 00:47 in /english/misc
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Tue, 20 Feb 2007
Bilingual
I've decided to split my blog into an English and a German section. This is mostly because I've now also started blogging about some local events that are probably not of much interest to readers from other countries, so I'll blog these in German, but the rest will still be in English. All English posts will still be syndicated on Planet Debian, the German ones will only be readable via my blog or the respective feed.
Talking about feeds, I spent some time trying out different feed formats for this blog, since I had some trouble with Planet. The current one (rss2.0) doesn't validate because there is html in the description element but apart from that it seems to be fine, so I'll keep it for the moment.
Posted at: 15:19 in /english/meta
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Wed, 07 Feb 2007
Planet weirdness or Dear Lazyweb
Should you be reading this blog via planet.debian.org, you may have noticed, that since a few days my posts stay on top of the page much longer than they should, usually for a few hours, and then start wandering down with the rest. The problem is: I am not editing my posts. Checking my rss feed shows a pubDate, e.g. Tue, 06 Feb 2007 20:26:00 CEST for my last post, and that pubDate doesn't change.
Could it be a problem, that the pubDate is in CEST rather than, say, UTC? Or that it doesn't give the offset? I am using blosxom and this began happening when I removed the until then unconfigured timezone plugin from /etc/blosxom/plugins/ because I wanted the date of my posts to be at my local time and that (actually) works without having the timezone plugin, so I thought I wouldn't need it. I've now replaced it and set the timezone to CEST. This didn't affect the pubDate of my rss, but maybe it will fix my planet problem. If not, any other ideas how to fix this would be most welcome.
UpdateAs I've been made aware by several people, we currently have CET, not CEST. Thanks for mentioning :) I am still trying to find the reason for all this. In the meantime, please excuse my planet b0rking.
Posted at: 13:38 in /english/meta
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Tue, 06 Feb 2007
Second and third day in Luxembourg
Right, back from Luxembourg and here's how the other two days went:
I woke up pretty early on Friday. Damn sportsmen, seems they all jump
out of bed at 6 am, to happily (and noisily) engage in their
respective sports. Horrible. I've never heard so many people be in such
a good mood at such an early hour.
Breakfast was great though!
I spent the rest of the day at the LinuxDays site. It was situated in the ground floor of the Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor and consisted of two rooms for talks and workshops and a tiny exhibition area with tables from Lilux, CAcert and a book shop. (Oooh, the temptation!!) It was also possible, to sit in the nearby cafe, which was right next to the exhibition area. Unfortunately LinuxDays.lu don't provide any kind of hacking centre (read: chair + table + power plugs), but the friendly people from CAcert offered me a seat at their booth/table so I could do some work.
My talk went quite good. I didn't feel as comfortable giving it as I usually do, since it weren't my slides. But I still think it went quite well and there were some interesting questions afterwards. There aren't any recordings of the talk, but the slides can as usually be found in the talks section of my homepage.
The third day started as the second one, but this time I stayed in bed and watched the Sendung mit der Maus instead of getting up at such an inappropriately early hour. I had actually planned to travel back to Hildesheim by train, but the very nice guys from quintessenz.at offered me a ride to Mannheim, which made my journey back home a lot more pleasant and also much more comfortable, since I could then take a direct train from Mannheim to Hildesheim.
Concluding, I'd like to thank the organisers of LinuxDays.lu for the really good service! (I've never before been at a Linux Day where speakers were provided with such a lot of stuff. (Free hotel, travel reimbursement, free food AND a book from the book shop! Yay!) It's been really fun, speaking at this event and I can recommend it to anyone. LinuxDays.lu may not be the biggest or most popular Linux Day, but it's a really nice local event and very professionally organised!
PS: So, where are the pictures I promised?
They are in a
directory on my home machine, and this will remain the only place
they're at until I've found a simple script to generate web galleries
(such as album, galrey, jigl, shalbum ...) that manages to generate a
gallery that doesn't use tables but CSS or I found the time to rewrite
or produce an according template for any of these scripts. Grrr.
Posted at: 20:26 in /english/travel
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Fri, 02 Feb 2007
First day in Luxembourg
- The train to Frankfurt is agreeably empty but, as usually, terribly cold! My fingernails are blueish!!
- Yay, Chinese food from a paper box. (I love those. They're classic!)
- Book recommendation of the day: English as a Second F*cking Language (Eek! Bookzilla is down!)
- The next train was an IC. I even got a seat with a power plug.
- The power plug was broken though.
- I noticed when my laptop suddenly went down without warning
- Mental note: Fix acpi!
- The train ride to Koblenz is really beautiful! The steep Rhine banks, the castles, the barges ...
- Mental note: Go there for holidays!
- I took pictures, but don't get them off my camera. Forgot the cable. Damn.
- There are pictures of the event at the event's site though. Also Sven is here, so I trust everything will be documented most exhaustively ;)
- The last train did an "unscheduled stop". Engine trouble. They fixed it rather quickly though.
- Using public transportation in a foreign country is a real challenge. Extra points for doing it in the country's capital, at rush hour, in the dark.
- ... and in French of course.
- WLAN at the Centre Henri Tudor works! only http and ssh though.
- Thank god for tunneling
- Favourite question of the day: "Are you a punk or a hacker?" Answer: "That goes together."
- I met some people and went for a pizza afterwards. Pizza Rucola. Hmm!
- F***ing HUGE hotel.
- It's a sport hotel. It has rubber floors and looks very much like a gym in some places.
- Some of my worst and most humiliating childhood/youth memories feature gyms. Urgh!
- WLAN costs 5 Eu for 24 hrs. Ts!
- The wall is decorated with a reprint of the poster for the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Tasteful. Apparently every room has an Olympics poster. Maybe they should've left this one out.
- There's a sign saying you shouldn't smoke, and another one saying you shouldn't smoke in bed. Heh.
- Good night.
Posted at: 12:16 in /english/travel
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Tue, 30 Jan 2007
They're at it again
(Almost all links in this text lead to German sources. Sorry, but this is a local topic and there aren't any English sources.)
Unfortunately, Hildesheim is home to some rather prominent figures of the German neo-nazi scene. One of them has now registered for a protest march through Hildesheim on the 24 February 2007.
The reason for this is, that an other neo-nazi event, that had been disguised as a "birthday party", but was in fact a propaganda event featuring talks by "contemporary witnesses" and "an evening of ballads" and was arranged by "National Forces of Hildesheim and the Association of German Women" had been prevented by the Hildesheim police.
As a reaction to this, the aforementioned gentleman has now registered for a demonstration with the Hildesheim city council. (In Germany you need to register demonstrations.) Official head of the whole thing is this other gentleman, who has a history of trying to organise nazi demonstrations. He occasionally does so in Leipzig, where he tries to organise such demonstrations about twice a year. Their attendance is dropping though and they are usually met with about ten times as many counter demonstrators and thus have to be ended prematurely, exposing them as the unwanted and ridiculous farces they really are.
However, the fact that people still try to register demonstrations such as this one is worrying. And the fact that this one is meant to be in the town I live in makes me pretty angry. Fortunately the demonstration is met with broad opposition. An alliance has been formed, consisting of the German adult education centre of Hildesheim (VHS), the Federation of German Trade Unions (DGB), Verdi, our public services union, Attac, the Antifa, the refugee council of Lower Saxony and the political parties with the Hildesheim Greens as the most active part at the moment. It is good to see, that such neo-nazi endeavours are met with such a broad opposition, and that this opposition does not only originate from the "usual suspects", but from the centre of society. (The VHS for example is usually a non-political organisation, and seeing them engage in such an alliance and even hosting its meetings is pretty cool!)
It's not sure yet, whether the demonstration will be approved. It probably will, but with a bunch of extra conditions. If it is approved, it is even more important to meet it with the resistance it deserves! So, if you are living near Hildesheim, watch this space for announcements of the planned counter measures.
Posted at: 10:36 in /english/politics
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Fri, 26 Jan 2007
LinuxDays.lu anyone?
I'll be going to the LinuxDays in Luxembourg next week. As far as I know, there won't be an exhibition, so, no Debian booth. But I'll be giving a talk. It's not on one of my usual topics, but on security this time. The reason for this is, that I am giving this talk instead of Lukas Grunwald, who originally registered the talk but then couldn't give it.
I am really looking forward to going there. I've never before been to Luxembourg and I am curious what it's going to be like. I am also looking forward to giving the talk, since it will be something very different from my usual ones and I am curious to see what differences there will be.
If anyone of you is going to LinuxDays.lu too and wants to meet for coffee or a beer, drop me note!
Posted at: 23:16 in /english/travel
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Fri, 19 Jan 2007
Storm's over
Kyrill crossed Hildesheim yesterday evening. Some parts of the city got hit rather badly with roofs being completely untiled and trees falling on buildings. It seems we were lucky to only lose a few tiles, since there have been reports of debris flying about in our street yesterday and the little park opposite our house looks not too good today. No disrooted trees though. However, in the next street a poplar tree was disrooted and fell on a car killing one man and injuring two others, one of them severely. Guess that explains the many ambulances going by yesterday :/
This morning, with daylight back most things seem back to normal. There's quite lot of stuff lying about and the river has really high water and also carries a lot of debris, mainly boughs and twigs though.
PS: What bothers me most, ist that most news services today have headlines such as "Storm "Kyrill": The best Photos from our readers" and similar. I hate it when people have nothing better to do than to pull out their f***ing mobile phones and take pictures whenever something bad happens and this is not exactly helping!
Posted at: 10:54 in /english/personal
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Mon, 15 Jan 2007
Difficult nicks and a new domain
When I was home for christmas there was also a class reunion. As it is with such occasions I had to give out my email address a number of times. Now, when I chose my domain I decided to use my online nick (alphascorpii) since it was adequately unique to be still available and could easily be associated with me. However, my nick is almost only used in writing and thus mostly copy-pasted or entered using tab-completion. Those who do use it in real life too know how it's spelled (or at least pronounced). At the reunion though I had to spell it out for a few people and the 'ph' and even more the 'ii' often caused confusion.
As a result of this, alphascorpii.net can now also be reached via a10i.net! I hope this will simplify things for those who are not familiar with Alpha Scorpii.
Posted at: 21:46 in /english/meta
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Fri, 12 Jan 2007
Happy New Year! and some resolutions
Slightly belated, but still: Happy new year everyone!
We spent the holidays with my parents, pretty relaxing, didn't do much but lie on the couch, do crosswords and watch my sisters dwarf rabbit, that my mom hat to "rabbit-sit". Christmas was as usual a three-generations celebration and quite nice.
On the 4th we went to see Irie Révoltés. Absolutely great concert!! We danced our hearts out. But, you know what? The best is not only seeing a great concert, but having the next day off. Sleeping in 'til way past noon, waking up with a beep in yours ears, a smelly pile of cloths beside your bed and every muscle sore. Have a wonderful breakfast with eggs and sausage, spend half an hour under a hot shower and spend the rest of the day humming melodies and tending to your aching muscles. Wonderful!
Unfortunately the new year didn't continue that great. I caught a nasty cold and spent the last four days in bed. But, oh well, it's getting better, I can almost breathe soundlessly again!.
Generally, this is going to be a very important year! In the middle of December I registered my Magister (comparable to a master's) thesis. I've got six months to finish it, so the first half of this year will be used for that. Once the thesis is handed in, the final (really final this time) exams start, first a very long written one, than an oral one, this will take until October. After that ... well, we'll see. I've set my mind on a PhD, since I'd like to pursue an academic career, so the next step will probably be trying to get a PhD grant. First things first though ...
Resolutions
Finally this is probably the first new year I really made some new year's resolutions. I'll put them here, so I can nail myself down to it over the year:
- First off, there are some things that I simply hope to keep the
way they are:
- I live in a wonderful relationship that I hope will simply go on forever :)
- Also, I have quite a cool job (several actually), that I hope I can keep for another while.
- I changed my eating habits quite drastically during the
last months. I used to love everything "Just add water": teas,
soups,puddings ... RAMEN!! Luckily it didn't reflect on
my weight, which is pretty constant, but still I know that
stuff is 90% chemical crap and who knows what it will lead to.
(I know the optimal human would have three eyes, but I am
actually quite happy with my average two.)
So, I've cut down on that quite a bit and now have a subscription with an organic farm nearby that delivers so called Abokisten (subscription boxes?) that are delivered weekly and contain different vegetables, fruit, a loaf of bread and some cheese. The boxes' content is kind of randomized, so you get something different every week. It's a pretty neat service, since the food is really great, the price is reasonable, it's delivered right to my door, and (most of all) it makes me cook! So, here's another Keep that up!
- So much for the keeping, now for the changes/tasks: I guess the first is, of course, my thesis and exams. I plan to do those as good as possible. I'll be something of a challenge though. This is the first time I do such a large "project" (the thesis takes six months) all on my own, and (most worrying) at home. So here's a test on self-discipline!
- Although I've done a lot of acting in my "younger years" (haha) I've always been rather unmusical. This has been nagging on me for quite a while, so I've taken up playing the Blues Harp last month. I picked that instrument since I love the Blues and it's also easy to learn but still very flexible (and cheap). So far it's been huge fun but the art is, as always, keeping it up.
- There's this little blog I'm maintaining, that has been horribly neglected over the last year, so another resolution is to post here more often. (This way posts also won't have to be so horribly long, such as this one.)
- I couldn't help but notice that that geek girls top ten which Erinn mentioned (congrats by the way :)) contains but one European women. So here's something to do as well. There's quite a bunch of pretty impressing ladies over here, too. (Even AFTER 1950,dear CNET) And it seems, they need a bit more visibility. Maybe there are some things that can be done about that too ...
So, lots of plans. I hope publishing them here will help sticking to them. This also concludes my "little post", I hope the next will follow in a more timely manner.
Posted at: 18:56 in /english/personal
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