Comments from the rusty cage

What everyone's been waiting for

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:01:11 GMT

Open Source Census Part 2

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 23:26:34 GMT

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 ;)

A Debian Love Story ...

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:20:26 GMT

First encounter: LinuxTag 2005. Both were staffing the Debian booth. She was a speaker on debian-women, he organised the DebianDay
First feelings unfold: on #debian.de
First I miss you: During DebConf5, he was there, she wasn't
First gift: A Debconf5 shirt and Finnish chocolates
Next reunion and first kiss: At ApacheCon 2005, both were staffing the Debian booth
Preferred secret love notes medium: planet.debian.org
First "public appearance" as a couple: Berlinux 2005, both staffing the Debian booth and giving talks on packaging and user motivation
First relationship-stress-test: Both joining the DebConf6 orga team -- passed!
First anniversary: Exact date retrieved thanks to www.debian.org/events/2005/
Official engagement announcement: Over a planet.debian.org post
First Inter-DD-Marriage: Today in two weeks!

Debian, I owe you!

Open Source Census - kinda fishy

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

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.

Thank you!

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:32:23 GMT

Yay! A big fat thank you to:

zobel for advocating me

aba for being a great (and thorough) AM

HE for checking my application so fast

DSA, DAM and the Keyring Maintainer for pushing the right buttons and especially for doing so on a friday, so nothing gets in the way of a proper celebration tonight!

Tolimar for moral support

Pia for her invaluable support with T&S2

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.

Blatant Advertising

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:04:45 GMT

No news in this post, just a little advertising. I just came across geekspeakr.com and think it's a really great idea. From the site:

Many organisers of technical conferences, meetups, and dinners want to have more gender-balance in their lineups, but they don't know where to find technical women speakers.

Enter geekspeakr.com, a simple directory and connections system to help technical women speakers and event organisers to find each other.

I guess this could also be interesting for a some of my fellow Debian Women.

What a sh***y week!

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:09:25 GMT

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*

Yay, I'm through

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 06:19:00 GMT

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.

Chemnitz Linux Days 2008

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 10:14:00 GMT

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.

Look Ma I'm on Podcast!

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 00:00:01 GMT

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.