Sat, 21 Mar 2009
Chemnitz Linux Days 2009
This is my fourth CLT report and they surely are becoming repetitive! But every good event deserves a good report, so here goes:
Contrary to previous years we already arrived on Friday this year. Since we were also not up for another stint with the gym (Aaah the sissifying effects of marriage!) we booked a room with a nice little guesthouse about 15 bus-minutes from the venue.
The conference was great as ever:
- Speakers, booth personel and visitors were taken very good care of, there was nothing left to be desired
- Organisation was exicellent, no (noticable) technical difficulties, no scheduling problems, a helpful staff member literally every 5 meters
- A broad variety of very well-chosen talks from total beginner's to very sophisticated topics
- Several accompanying social events including the 2nd Night of Free Films
- A broad variety of exhibitors from small to large projects, both commercial and non commercial. CLT manages very well to be a community event that feels fun and almost like a family meeting but at the same time instills a sense of seriousness and respectability
I usually visit the CLT mostly for networking but I also managed to see a few talks. I moderated the session on High Performance and got to see three very nice talks on GPU programing, cluster computing and parallel programming.
This year also featured the first talk
on (the lack of) women in Free Software. Unusually enough this one was
even given by a man. I was quite curious about that talk, which was (how
fitting!) scheduled in direct succession to my own. I am kind of torn on
that topic myself. On one hand women in Free Software is a topic that is
very important to me and deserves any attention it can get. On the other
hand instead of talking about how evenly capable women are in Free Software
I'd rather just demonstrate it, for instance by giving a good Free Software
related talk. And instead of talking about how there should be more women
in Free Software I'd rather just be one and try to encourage others with my
example. The usual quota of female speakers at linux events is somewhere
between 2-4% and I just don't like the idea of having a conference with
n men talking about Free Software and 1 woman talking about
women. I've had these settings before and it just doesn't sit well with me.
Because of this I was quite please to find the topic being tackled by a man
this time.
The talk itself, in my impression, left a few open issues though. It was
rather brief and focussed mainly on stating the usual numbers, asserting
that the Women in FLOSS movement wasn't about affirmative action or
discriminating men and explaining how women feel discriminated by sexist
behaviour and advertising and how objection to such things should not be
mistaken as prudery. It's general advice on how to improve the quota of
women in FLOSS mostly boiled down to the linuxchix slogan "Be Polite. Be
Helpful.". What I missed most was practical advice to projects wishing
to attract more female contributors, such as mentoring programs or
low-threshold entry points. Also I felt that the talk lacked a real
motivation beyond "gender balance is a Good Thing". However, I was glad the
topic finally found its way into the CLT as well and I had a couple of very
interesting discussions afterwards.
Concerning my own talk I was rather satisfied as well. Attendance was - as usually in Chemnitz - very good, according to the organisers I got around 200 people. Since I designed the talk as a collaborative project and its feedback was predominantly good I'll continue developing it with the feedback I got and submit it again to other events. I think the topic is very worthwile and there's still a lot in it. Some people asked for a more collaborative way of contributing their thoughts and ideas so I'll just create a wiki to collect the new ideas. I'll of course announce it here as soon as it's in place. The slides and audio recording (both German) are as usually available from the talks page at CLT or my own talks section.
Posted at: 23:14 in /english/debian/events
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Wed, 18 Mar 2009
Release consequences, as seen at CLT'09
Hey Martin, I think you better get that new edition finished real quick!
Translation:
- Book: The Debian System, incl. official Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 sarge on DVD
- Sign: Help yourself! A gift from: Open Source Press
Picture taken at Chemnitzer Linuxtage 2009.
Posted at: 16:34 in /english/debian
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Mon, 18 Aug 2008
Happy belated birthday Debian!
On August 16th 2008 the Debian Project, joy and burden of my geek life, has turned 15 years of age. Congratulations! There have been celebrations all around the world, and we've also had a little party at our home, complete with nice unhealthy food, red wine and chocolate and strawberries for dessert.
For a GNU/Linux distribution 15 years is quite a lot. We're almost the only distribution of such old age (Hi Slackware!) and there've been many, many others that didn't make it half as long. That said I am quite proud of this little project of ours and hope for many happy returns!
Artwork by Andre L.R.Ferreira, source: debianart.org (whose lack of thumbnails is still immensely annoying)
Posted at: 16:05 in /english/debian
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Mon, 23 Jun 2008
Open Source Census Part 2
Finally, here's the looong overdue second post on the Open Source Census. Very shortly after my initial post on my experiences with the Open Source Census I got an e-mail from one of their engineers adressing the points I had made in my post. So here are a few additions to my first post:
- You don't have to use the giant JRE including implementation, there's also a much leaner Ruby implementation of the scanning tool. Tolimar tested it and found it to be functional but also pretty time consuming.
- Load-wise the scanner comes with a --throttle option that makes it pause every n scanned files, so that your system isn't knocked out completely.
- Different from what I said there is a --help parameter, but the JRE has to come up first, so it takes some time until it outputs anything.
Tolimar was also contacted by the developer, he explained to him how to exclude individual directories using the Ruby version (not sure if it's also possible in the Java version) and how reports can be submitted anonymously. So, the privacy protection issues can also be taken care of.
I was very impressed by the quick and thorough reaction to both Tolimar's and my own post and hope this post will be of some help to the project and get them some more submissions.
One last note: Meike is indeed a female name. So no, he won't post a response, but she will ;)
Posted at: 01:26 in /english/debian
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Thu, 24 Apr 2008
Open Source Census - kinda fishy
I recently read about the Open Source Census and thought it would be a nice thing to also put my vote in and make sure my operating system of choice was properly represented (currently it doesn't seem to be). After creating an account there, downloading a 45M tgz including among other things a complete java runtime environment, starting the scan tool that takes neither a -h nor a --help parameter and watching it hog 70% CPU for over 20 minutes I lost patience and killed the script.
Somehow this whole thing is not exactly inspiring confidence and I start getting an idea why there are currently (Thu Apr 24 12:47:57 CEST 2008) only 53 Debian users who submitted their data. Although it's a pity Debian is (and will probably continue to be) so underrepresented there, I can't say I blame anyone for not taking part.
Posted at: 18:00 in /english/debian
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Fri, 18 Apr 2008
Thank you!
Yay! A big fat thank you to:
PS: Independently from recent events my account and also the other 18 where not created by Jörg, but on James' initiative. Just to put things straight.
Posted at: 15:32 in /english/debian
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Sun, 13 Apr 2008
What a sh***y week!
- Last weekend didn't exist due to deadline on Tuesday.
- Yet another night shift on Monday due to deadline on Tuesday.
- After meeting the deadline on Tuesday came home to find the house in scaffholding and a note from the owner: "We're going to do the whole facade, new insulation, colour etc. The construction works are estimated to take about eight weeks. We kindly take the liberty to point out that §554 BGB forces you to tolerate this. This modernisation is accompanied by a raise in rent of 22 Euros per Month
- Thursday: Dentist appointment. Got my first filling ever. Personal Waterloo and also not an experience I whish to repeat. Still hurts a bit.
- Saturday: It becomes clear that the DPL elections are going to happen without me, although I had hoped otherwise. Well, at least this is a problem shared.
- Sunday: My favourite candidate didn't win. Meh.
And now, off to clean the flat and hope for better luck next week.
*sigh*
Posted at: 13:09 in /english/debian
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Mon, 31 Mar 2008
Yay, I'm through
Since yesterday I am through with my NM procedure. Looking back I get to the same conclusion as probably most NMs have: not overly hard, but time-consuming and glad to have it over with. Anyway, so far so good, just waiting for DAM approval and my account now. There are still a couple of people in front of me but I hope for another processing before the elections close. (I guess it would at least be good for the turnout.)
For now, many thanks to my Application Manager Andreas Barth who has been very responsive and always answered my mails quickly and thoroughly, and also to Martin Zobel-Helas for advocating me.
Posted at: 08:19 in /english/debian
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Sun, 02 Mar 2008
Chemnitz Linux Days 2008
Seems as if the Chemnitz Linux Days somehow turned out to be the only Linux event I still attend regularly. These days I miss out on most of them, simply because of a total lack of spare time, however, I somehow always make the CLT ... no matter how big the hassle may be! They're just worth it :)
My talk went well, even though I actually got a bit pressed on time this year and had to cut the Q&A part. The (German) slides for my talk are as usually on my talks page.
Posted at: 11:14 in /english/debian/events
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Sat, 26 Jan 2008
Look Ma I'm on Podcast!
I recently had my first podcast experience, when I was approached by Mario Heide of the German podcast pofacs.de ("Podcast für alternative Computer Systeme") who asked me for an interview. To be true, I first had to read up a bit on podcasts, but after a little research I was very happy to accept his invitation. We did the interview via Sykpe, which wasn't exactly optimal sound-wise but still very nice. We talked mostly about Debian, primarily from a first time user point of view.
The (German) interview is online now and will, as I just heard, also be included on the next LinuxUser magazine CD. If you do understand German also have a look at the other podcasts there and thanks again to Mario for giving me the opportunity to brag a bit about Debian.
Posted at: 01:00 in /english/debian
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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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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
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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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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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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