Comments from the rusty cage

Impressively simple solution to shoulder pain

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:34:32 GMT

For the last ten years I've been suffering from heavy shoulder pain due to a shoulder impingement syndrome. (In short: two bones are too close together, so there's too little space for the shoulder tendons to move, so they become inflamed and hurt a lot.) I've seen different doctors about it, the usual proposals were either regular physiotherapy, pain killer injections or an operation. I didn't really like the idea of the injections or the operation and had been forever putting off the physiotherapy, mostly because it just never seemd to be a good time to tell my boss that I'd have to start coming late or leaving early on a regular basis for the weeks to come and the "slow stretch" I had postponed it to just never showed up.

When the pain again got worse a couple of weeks ago I decided to once more see a doctor about it, mostly hoping that in the years since I last did so they might have come up with an alternative solution. Contrary to his colleagues I had consulted earlier this one actually put most effort into finding out, what had actually caused the syndrome in the first place. After establishing that I had never had an accident involving my shoulders and didn't go in for any sports worth mentioning we turned to professions, in my case IT. His prompt response: "Oh, in that case it's the mouse, maybe also the typing. Get a trackball and a wrist rest. I'll bet you'll feel significantly better after a few weeks already."

I wasn't too sure if that would really help that much, my typing is already pretty ergonomic and - considering I only use Linux and on that mostly command line programs - how much strain can I possibly get from using my mouse? Also, while I had never really used a trackball I still considered them rather awkward and kind of 80s. Also I seriously doubted if such a small change could really influence a condition that had been giving me serious pain for more than ten years. However, at least there was an alternative including neither operation, nor heavy drugs or regular obligations, so I decided to give it a try. I looked a bit into the current supply of trackballs (takes a VERY short time, there are like six to eight proper ones) and in the end got a Kensington Optical Expert Mouse. I actually found its price (over 90 Euros) pretty exaggerated but I still bought it, mostly since it had overall very good reviews and was the only one with a decent scroll facility.

After using the trackball for a couple of weeks I have to conclude: it worked. Really well! After some intial getting used to I now use my trackball just as fast and accurately as I used my mouse and, most importantly, the shoulder pain that had been a more or less constant bother during the last ten years is almost completely gone!

So why am I posting all this? Well mostly because I was really sceptic about (1) using a trackball at all and (2) that it would really make that much of a difference, and I guess a lot of other people feel the same. So this blog post it mostly a recommendation. If you work with your computer a lot and suffer from shoulder pain when lifting your arms or sleeping on the side, check if it might be an impingement problem, they're actually not that rare. And if it is and it's not caused by any other obvious reason do try a trackball. They also come with three buttons and a scroll wheel by now and are really not all that awkward once you get used to them.

Travel plans

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:18:42 GMT

I'll be on the road a lot in the coming weeks. All events (except our anniversary of course) are conferences and thus excellent coffee/beer/key signing possibilities. If you'd like to meet up, drop me a note by mail or irc.

11./12. June 2009: CBLOS'09, Flensburg, Germany
26.-28. June 2009: Off to the Harz mountains to celebrate our first wedding anniversary
17.-24. July 2009: ICCBR-2009, Seattle, WA, USA
25.-31. July 2009: Debconf 9, Cáceres, Spain

Chemnitz Linux Days 2009

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 22:14:24 GMT

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.

Release consequences, as seen at CLT'09

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:34:11 GMT

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.

Looking for free projects!

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 17:47:55 GMT

Dear all, I am currently assembling a talk that discusses if and how the principles of free software can be applied to topics beyond operating systems and software. The first things that come to mind are surely the Creative Commons, free music, free films, free books etc. but I am sure that there is more, also even beyond the digital world.

I already know a couple projects but I am looking for many many more! So, what examples do you know for applications of the free software philosophy that go beyond the usual software/OS area? I'd be happy for any hints, urls, projects, authors, bands, names etc. that come to your mind!

To contact me, simply drop me an e-mail or prod me on irc (alphascorpii on OFTC and freenode).

How to know ...

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:54:18 GMT

In response to Lior:

How to know you're dating a free software guy?

You can recognize you're dating a free software guy by:

You've finally found someone who shares your interests.
He knows it is called GNU/Linux.
He understands why you refuse to talk via gTalk, MSN or icq.
His browser of choice is called Iceweasel, as is yours.
He likes to attend your talks at Open Source conferences.

And the #1 way is:

You've finally found a guy who stands above stereotyping women as technically and technologically ignorant.

More Blatant Advertising: Eleonore Digital

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 10:37:34 GMT

Here's one more post for my own little "advertising section", where I introduce gender-related projects that I think are a good idea but deserve some more publicity. So, last time we had geekspeakr.com, this time I'd like to introduce to you the Eleonore Digital Project.

In a nutshell they are organising a project where groups of students all over Europe work together in creating an educational 3D computer game that deals with the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Each team is assigned an episode or a certain aspect of Eleonore's life and they will research this, draft a concept and finally create their respective part or episode of the game. Doing this they will only work with free software, namely Debian as the Operating System, OOo, Blender etc. A longer (and better) description of what they want to do and the motivation behind all of this can be found in their project description or on the Eleonore Project site itself.

In my opinion the project seems to be a really good idea and I wish them the best of luck! What I like most about it is that it is not exclusively for girls, so that it does not create a kind of "artificial biotope" for girls to work in. Instead it aims to rise the girls ratio by means of a project topic that (so I assume) mostly appeals to girls. And I am especially happy that when looking for a topic that appeals to girls they came up with something better than fan homepages, foto love stories, and what else you find in "girls IT projects" these days. I am pretty sure that reading and researching on the life of one of the most influential women in European history is going to do them much more good that creating princess-themes webpages! I am also quite happy that they picked Debian as their operating system. I think Debian being used in a school project is a nice example that it is in fact not as "user-unfriendly" as it is often claimed to be! I've also introduced the project to the Debian Women Project and Miriam had the very good idea to also forward it to the Debian Games Team, so I hope we'll get some good cooperation here.

Where's Meike?

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

As September is traditionally the "conference month" I'll be travelling all around Germany within the next weeks. So, inspired by Matthew, here's a short list of events I'll attend in September 2008. If anyone's up for a coffee, keysigning or something let me know!

August 31st to September 4th 9th European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning, Trier, Germany
September 5th to September 7th 3rd Congress on Solidary Economy Bremen, Bremen, Germany (Will probably arrive on Saturday)
September 23rd to September 26th 31st edition of the Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Kaiserslautern, Germany (Will probably arrive on Monday)

3rd Congress on Solidary Economy Bremen

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:42:24 GMT

If you happen to be near Bremen, Germany around the 5.-7. September 2008 and have an interest in solidary economy, free software, renewable energies and the like you might want to stop by at the 3rd Congress on Solidary Economy (German website).

I haven't been at the first two of these congresses but I was invited as a speaker for this one, so I'll be around at least on Saturday and probably also on Sunday. I'll mainly be on a panel on free and open source software which will take place on Saturday evening at 20:00. (Prime Time :)) But I've also let myself be talked into joining another panel at 17:00 which is somehow ubuntu-related (Communtu). I am not yet sure if I'll have much to contribute there, I am neither a ubuntu specialist nor particularly fond of it, but the organiser said he wouldn't mind and he'd welcome critical remarks just as much, so, we'll see.

I am really looking forward to being a speaker on an event again! Ever since I started my PhD I've been much too busy to attend (leave alone prepare talks for) as many events as I'd have liked. I hope the situation will improve next year when things get rolling with my PhD. (Currently still in a "topic orientation/find a project/write proposals" state ...)

Happy belated birthday Debian!

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:05:58 GMT

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)

What everyone's been waiting for

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:01:00 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: Geekspeakr

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.