Planet Claws Mail

Paul: Breviary Stuff Publications launches …

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:47:45 +0000

The first title from Breviary Stuff Publications is now in print. It is Buchanan Sharp's scholarly study, In Contempt of All Authority, Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586-1660. On its first publication, (University of California Press, 1980), Christopher Hill remarked, "I have rarely recommended a book with more confidence in its quality. It is quite first class."

It concerns two of the most common types of popular disorders in late Tudor and early Stuart England: the food riots and the anti-enclosure riots in royal forests. Particular attention is paid to the Western Rising of 1626-1632, a series of massive anti-enclosure riots which took place in Gillingham Forest on the Wiltshire-Dorset border, Braydon Forest in Wiltshire and the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. Concurrent riots in Leicester Forest, and Feckenham Forest, Worcestershire, and lesser known disorders in the Western forests which took place during the English Civil War are also investigated.

The leaders and most active participants in riot were rural artisans — skilled men working in non-agricultural employments. These artisans, particularly those in the major industries of seventeenth-century England located in the forested West, were largely wage-earners. Virtually landless cottagers, who relied on the market for food, clothworkers and other artisans frequently engaged in food riots and attempted insurrections during times of depression or harvest failure. These artisans exploited the common waste of the royal forests. Enclosure of the forests by the Crown threatened the livelihood of the workers who depended on the forests for raw material and pasturage.

The most striking demonstration of continuity is to be found in the identities of a number of the rioters and in the nature of the leadership. Twelve of the participants in the riots of 1643-45 had been fined in the Star Chamber for their part in the disorders of the 1620s; eight were artisans, one was a mercer, two were husbandmen, and one was of undetermined status. Four of them were noted as notorious offenders in the 1640s, including a fuller who acted as drummer and John Philips, tanner, who took over leadership of the riots in 1644 from Richard Butler, a poor linenweaver. It is clear from the examinations of witnesses that Butler had been the leader of the riots in 1643 until he was apprehended and brought before the Lords. His opinions, as reported by a number of witnesses, show considerable contempt for Parliament and for Elgin's agent, Thomas Brunker. At the beginnning of the disorders in 1643 he went into a shop to buy gunpowder. When told it cost 1s. 6d. per pound, "hee sayd his monie would not hold out to have soe much, but desired her to lett him have 2 pennyworth and sayd it would be enough to serve Tome Brunker and for his proclamation I care not a fart of mine arse."

Extract from Ch. 9., A Second Western Rising: Riot during the Civil War and Interregnum

Buchanan Sharp's conclusions challenge the dominant modern view that work in rural industry was merely the by-employment of members of peasant households. Contrary to the prevailing interpretation that disaffected men of standing were generally behind disorders such as the Western Rising, manipulating popular grievances for their own ends, In Contempt of All Authority concludes that in times of economic and social distress or political dislocation (such as the Civil War) the “lower orders” of Tudor and Stuart England were provoked into self-organised direct action by very basic issues of food supply, employment, and common rights. In the course of such actions they manifested an intense hatred of the gentry and the well-to-do, whom they held responsible for existing conditions.

The Breviary Stuff Publications offering is the first paperback edition, in an oversized format (191×235mm, 204pp), with a RRP of £12.00. It is available from all good bookshops, online retailers, such as Amazon, and directly from the Breviary Stuff Publications website, www.breviarystuff.org.uk.

Holger Berndt: Nautilus in the stress field between design and function

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:01:00 +0000

So, there's been a lot of talk about Nautilus' present and future design. Especially Izo's article collects some interesting proposals for design enhancement that are in my opinion very well worth consideration. It does, however, also contain some points that make me feel a little uneasy.

Naturally, UI redesign comes not only with re-organisation and re-design of existing functionality, but also with omitting of unimportant components. Also naturally, the latter part is tricky to get right, because people don't like it when the functionality that they are habituated to use is suddenly gone, without any accessible replacement. I don't mean to say that UI reduction is impossible, but it's something that has to be considered carefully, according to the focus and target audience of the project. This is a hard process, because individuals or small groups don't necessarily cover all the use-cases that an application wants to address.

Izo seems to have a typical case of forgotten addressed use-cases in his review when he writes about the stop button:

"The stop button. More useful in web browsers, if you want to stop the web browser from loading a page, completely useless in a file manager, where file accessing times are considerably quicker than web browsing times. You simply never have an opportunity to stop the file manager from loading a page. It’s an old relic. I’ve never used the stop button."

That you have never used a stop button in a (network transparent!) file manager does not mean that it's "completely useless". Got the hint in the parentheses? Nautilus does indeed want to support network filesystems, be it NFS and friends or GIO/GVFS mounted stuff. Loading these is actually not too different to what you do with your browser. These can clearly be very slow, and that you didn't think of that just shows that you forgot an important use-case that Nautilus wants to support, because you have no personal use for it.

Now, I am not saying that the stop button is the best design for that. It most probably isn't. One could for example test if it could be combined with your proposal of the "refresh" button: Display the "refresh" symbol when the displayed location is fully loaded, and put a little stop symbol there while it's loading (this combination of stop/refresh has been proposed before in "Simplified Nautilus").

People are different, and have different ways to use applications. Many other proposals, for example, just assume that the sidebar is visible. You mean to save a little bit of screen space by omitting the small "Home" toolbar button, arguing that it's also accessible in the sidebar? Well, when I look around, a fair number of computer-novices that I see don't have the sidebar visible at all. When forcing it upon them, they actually loose a lot of screen estate, and have a lot more unwanted UI elements in their face. Combine that with the talk about removing the menu bar alltogether (and thus loosing the habituated easily accessible way to toggle the sidebar visibility), and you have a good potential to regress usability for a non-negligible part of your target audience. In the end, people don't open Nautilus to lay back and enjoy its look, but to get work done.

I am also not entirely convinced that it's so bad to have two toolbars. I mean, how much screen estate do you loose, in reality? For one thing, the toolbar covers less space than the sidepane. In browser mode, you typically don't have dozens of Nautilus windows on a single workspace (and as I said, the toolbar covers less space than the sidepane). On the other hand, even if you have reduced the number of toolbar buttons to six plus a wide-enough search window, as your mockups show, what's better: To use a few vertical pixels, or not to be able to see your current folder "Pictures from Patrick's wedding where aunt Maggie got really drunk"? Hard to say.

Split View - Curse or Blessing?

Having the location bar embedded into the toolbar items also has another problem: It doesn't work well with the a split-view filebrowsing mode. This mode got some very harsh criticism at the recent designers hackfest that I stumbled upon by coincidence (strangely, this discussion didn't find its way to Nautilus communication channels yet). I wrote some comments on the corresponding blog posts, but I also want to write a small comment about that here on my own webspace, without the risk of being moderated (as seemed to have happened on other people's digital homes, which obviously found my remarks unpleasant).

First of all, I am disappointed by the way the criticism was expressed. The designers may very well have some valid points, but I wouldn't know, because they seem to actively refuse to answer my request to elaborate on their non-descriptive slating. Also, there are some remarks that make it look like they didn't even give it a fair try before condemning it.

A reccurring question was "why split-view", and the proposal to implement panes in the window manager instead. This is a valid question, and has in fact been discussed on the Nautilus mailing list. (Hint: In general, project mailing lists are a good place for both, to research design decisions and to ask the "why" question.)

Fact is, split-view filebrowsing is not trying to solve window manager shortcommings on the wrong level. Even if Metacity had snap today, this wouldn't be an alternative.

The key difference is the inherent connection between those two panes, which gives clear benefits. When you want to do file management (which is now becomming the key-focus of Nautilus), you often have to deal with two locations at the same time: The source, and the target. What split-view does is to display a "default target" right next to the source. That's why it makes sense to have 2 panels, but not 3 or 4.

This default target is accessible in the menu, via the "{Copy| Move} to other pane" items. Users that need to do heavy-duty file handling can assign keyboard shortcuts to those menu items, and move around files with a single button press.

The “default target” notation offers even more for advanced users, which can access both the source and the target pane in their Nautilus Scripts (and write for example a “diff these two directories” script with very little effort). This surely isn’t possible with a WM snap either.

Users with simpler needs aren’t really affected much by of all this. The only effect for them is that “extra pane” option in the view menu that they don’t wanna click.

I actually think that it is a very natural model to show source and target location when they are that fundamental to the typical action that the user wants to do with a given application. I find it much more intuitive than the clipboard copy/paste stuff that is generally accepted because people got used to this strange idea.

Photo © Adventures in Librarianship on flickr, cc-by-nc-sa

Holger Berndt: Linking notes and email messages

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:11:00 +0000

A few days ago, I've cobbled together a note-taking solution for my email messages. It's very unixy, consisting of a fair number of different parts working together: Claws Mail with the Python plugin and two of the shipped example scripts on the one side, Tomboy with the Claws Mail addin and the Reminder addin on the other side.

Starting with a message selection in Claws Mail,

a click on the "Create Tomboy Note" menu item of the Python example script results in this dialog popping up (I know that this dialog is ultra-ugly, but hey, it's a quick&dirty easy-code example script, nothing more)

which in turn creates this Tomboy note

The Tomboy reminder plugin will take care to remind me about this next monday by raising the note.

To make the round-trip complete, there's a second example script that raises all Tomboy notes that link to a selected message.

Okay, admittedly not the end-user friendliest setup, but it suits my needs pretty well. And it shows the benefits of scripting language interfaces for glueing components together -- it didn't take long to write the scripts to make this work, even though the plugins and addins have not especially been designed for it.

Colin Leroy: C’est surprenant comme on s’attache aux choses

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 14:01:59 +0000

Cela fait presque un an maintenant que je n’ai pas décadenassé le vélo de mon père, presque un an qu’il rouillait, figeait et coinçait tout seul sur le rack à vélo de l’immeuble.
Je n’avais aucune envie de l’utiliser : trop grand pour moi, roots comme un VTT de 1992 peut l’être, au freinage approximatif… Je suis beaucoup mieux sur mon vélo neuf aux standards de ce siècle.

J’ai pris une grande décision aujourd’hui : plutôt que de le laisser pourrir jusqu’au point de non-retour qu’il a d’ailleurs failli atteindre, je suis descendu armé de ma boîte à outils. J’ai démonté ce qui coinçait, lubrifié les passages de vitesses, graissé la transmission, réglé les dérailleurs. J’ai remis une selle et les pédales, j’ai regonflé les pneus. Puis j’ai rangé l’antivol et je suis allé l’amener au vélociste de l’Atelier Bicyclette, un tout petit magasin qui ne fait que de la restauration et de l’occasion.

Je lui ai offert ce vélo contre une somme dérisoire et symbolique. Une fois les câbles changés, et sans doute après quelques réglages et traitements anti-rouilles supplémentaires, il devrait trouver un acquéreur facilement et avoir une troisième vie utile !

Et bien, c’est drôle, mais en repartant à pieds, j’ai eu un petit pincement au coeur auquel je ne m’attendais pas du tout…

Miquel: Override table’s primary key using migrations in rails.

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:00:34 +0000

When a migration is created, rails add a column named id, which is defined as an integer, as table’s primary key column. Sometimes can happen that you don’t want to name your primary key column id using rails. The way you have to write your migration is this one (rails use integer type by default):

def self.up create_table :airport, :primary_key => :airport_id do |t| t.string :iso_code, :limit =>3, :null => false t.string :name, :limit =>150, :null => false t.integer :city_id, :null => false end end

If you have a “many to many” table probably you don’t want to have this id column in your table and you want to define two columns as primary key. This is the way you have to write a migration if you want to define this primary key:

def self.up create_table :airports_cities, :primary_key => [:airport_id, city_id] do |t| t.integer :distance, :null => false end end

In both examples, columns defined as primary key don’t have to be defined because rails do it for you. Using this, you won’t have an id column in your table and you’ll be able to use whatever you want as primary key (even strings).

Hope this helps (to my fish-like memory or to somebody else’s brain).

Holger Berndt: The Tomboy and the Git

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:20:00 +0000

Tomboy's taming of the beast turned out to be a very useful feature for my daily note keeping. But emails are not the only pieces of information that I often find associated with tasks. Another recurring source that I want to reference are commits in source code management systems. So, if Tomboy can play nicely with my MUA, why shouldn't it play nicely with my source code repository browser as well?

Unfortunately, there's no drag-and-drop target for git repository viewers defined. Most viewers just don't let you drag from the commit list into another application. So, I tried to contact the guys from gitk, giggle, and gitg in the hope to define such a dnd target. The guys from gitg seemed to be the only ones interested in that functionality (good thing that gitg is currently my favorite browser anyways), and it didn't take long until they added the required features.

With that in place, it was easy to write a Tomboy addin that handles dropping of git references into a note analogous to dropping email messages: By creating a link with a nice icon and a meaningful text which when clicked opens the git repository viewer and selects the respective commit.

I like these little helpers. They have a good work/gain ratio.

Holger Berndt: Extending and Automating Claws Mail - the sneaky way

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:12:00 +0000

The recent release of Claws Mail 3.7.4 has also seen a much more powerful version of the Python plugin. It is now possible to write scripts that are executed automatically on startup, shutdown, or opening of a compose window. It's also now possible to write scripts that work on an already opened compose window. The user interface got better as well (e.g. it's now possible to trigger scripts via toolbar buttons).

However, what the latest release still lacks, is documentation and examples. After all, features that are not documented don't exist. This is supposed to get better in the next release. I've started adding a few example scripts to the source distribution that show possible solutions to questions that have been raised on the user's mailing list lately. Most of these should already work with the released version of the plugin, with the exception of the startup script that show's how to add new menu items for custom actions into the main window (the examples being a menu item to mark a thread as read, and to add a menu item to create and show the Python plugin's API documentation on-the-fly - isn't introspection cool?).

Anyways, if anybody scripted something cool with the plugin, please consider sending the (well commented) script to me. I'd be happy to consider it for inclusion in the distributed examples.

Miquel: Things to remember 2010-01-12 (former Something I always forget)

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 20:07:30 +0000

Howto create the table to store sessions in Rails
rake db:sessions:create

Howto truncate all *.log files in log/ to zero bytes
rake log:clear

Colin Leroy: Ma première portière

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:17:31 +0000

Mercredi 30 décembre, 16h40. Je vais chez le médecin me faire soigner une angine agaçante.

Il fait beau, Toulouse est calme. En cette veille de réveillon il n’y a plus grand monde. Je pédale tranquillement. Avenue Ségoffin, personne, pas de vent, j’avance bien malgré ma petite forme. Le rond-point à priorité inversé de la rue des trente-six ponts. Pas de voiture garée au milieu. L’avenue Frizac, qui mène au jardin des Plantes, toujours aussi agréable, ombragée, avec ses arbres et sa bande cyclable sans voiture. J’arrive au bout, le feu est rouge. Entre lui et moi, trois voitures que je remonte par la bande, en ralentissant doucement – j’aurais peut-être le vert avant de m’arrêter !

Plus qu’une voiture avant d’arriver au sas cycliste. Mon oeil est attiré par un léger mouvement et déjà je vois une tranche de la portière passager, l’intérieur de la portière, elle s’ouvre vite et je ne pourrais pas passer entre elle et le trottoir. Je ne m’en suis pas encore vraiment rendu compte, mais je sens mes doigts crisper sur les freins. Le frein arrière devient inutile lorsque la roue décolle du sol. Je vois mon cintre à la verticale de mon regard, ma roue avant en dessous au lieu d’etre devant, le haut de la porte ouverte est au niveau de ma gorge, elle est encore à une distance qui paraît un mètre. J’entends vaguement qu’une grande inspiration de stress est prise sur ma gauche. Je sens mon vélo me retenir par les pieds et je me demande si j’arriverai à déclipser au bon moment. Mes doigts désserrent le frein juste avant la bascule et je vois la roue avant reprendre du terrain sur le cintre, et je resserre.

La roue arrière retombe lourdement au sol, je lâche tout et déjà le vélo est par terre et moi debout – comment ?

La passagère a refermé sa porte mais sa bouche est encore ouverte et ses yeux équarquillés. Je ré-ouvre violemment la porte pour entendre “ah bah faut pas remonter les files !”. L’adrénaline est encore à son pic, la catharsis commence, les insultes volent et rien n’en sort de bon.

J’aurais plutôt dû faire un constat : je me suis égratigné le genou (mais sur quoi ?… je ne sais pas) et j’ai dû la toucher, la portière : j’ai un bleu en travers du bras.

Colin Leroy: A week with little Paul

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:51:35 +0000

Since I’m out of a job, I’ve got some time these days, and I spent the last three days with Paul. It was nice !

On monday we went to my ex-job in order to help Lynette (the HR person) getting internet back, We went by bike with Paul in the Gobug trailer. I was afraid he would be cold, but in fact he was a bit too hot with all of the ski outfit… We went to the restaurant with Lynette and two other ex-colleagues, it was a nice moment and Paul has been very nice : after he ate his meal first, he spent time looking around, walking around, and he didn’t disturb us at all !

Paul is now walking all by himself, since about two weeks. He’s getting good now, and he doesn’t need help or a piece of furniture anymore to stand up.

He’s trying to eat by himself too. This gets a little messy on the table.

Yesterday, we stayed at home, and played together when he wasn’t asleep. I’ve read his favourite book with him… a number of times… It’s “Tchou et ses amis”. It’s the story of how Postou the little post truck is sick and can’t deliver the parcels. Paul couldn’t care less about the story line, but he loves to point at the animals in the pictures, again and again, and I repeat their names again and again. That’s fun until the 20th time :-)

Today, we went to the local park to give old bread to ducks, to walk around a bit and let him play outside a bit. He loved that, especially when one duck let Paul chase her around !

Then we went back on the bike. I think Paul loves it about as much as me :)

Ricardo Mones: Defense of fundamental rights on the Internet

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:28:56 +0000

I was going to copy it, but lazy as I am, I think is more interesting to link it, as I'm not the original author and I don't have more much to add, so this is the link to Ana's blog entry «En defensa de los derechos fundamentales en Internet» (in Spanish), hey Ana! ;-)

English readers: if you want to know what this Ana's post is about, read this.

Miquel: Incredible Guitar & Bass performance

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:34:35 +0000

It’s amazing

Miquel: Something I always forget II

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:16:16 +0000

I always forget how to dump my blog’s mysql database. It’s :
mysqldump db_name -u username -p > filename

That's all

Miquel: Something I always forget

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:44:37 +0000

I always forget how to add a source using rubygems. It’s (using ‘http://gems.github.com’ as example) :
gem sources -a http://gems.github.com

That’s all

Ricardo Mones: Migrating disk

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:14:55 +0000

I had in LJ the final story of the failed disk, so, having woken up in the mood of bloggin', it saves me a precious time :-). Lots of console output and boring stuff, you know, but here it goes:

The failing setup were two discs I synced manually from time to time, their partition table:

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0003b1cf

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         122      979933+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2             123         365     1951897+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3             366        1581     9767520   83  Linux
/dev/sda4            1582       24321   182659050    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            1582        2189     4883728+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6            2190        2554     2931831   83  Linux
/dev/sda7            2555        2676      979933+  83  Linux
/dev/sda8            2677       24321   173863431   83  Linux

And mount points:

/dev/sda1               918322    445462    423864  52% /
/dev/sda3              9614148   5303228   3822544  59% /usr
/dev/sda5              4806904   3629392    933328  80% /var
/dev/sda6              2885780   1107812   1748652  39% /opt
/dev/sda7               918322      8256    861070   1% /tmp
/dev/sda8            171134396 135680768  35453628  80% /home

This setup, appart of the manual sync, had some issues to be addressed:

Because of packaging activities /var was always nearly full, so it had to be increased

Because of doubling the memory some months ago, there was less swap than current RAM size (2G), also something to fix

The hardware choice wasn't very difficult, as I tend to like Seagate, so balancing price, capacity and availability decided for a couple of ST3500418AS. These are SATA-II, while my motherboard is SATA-I only but aren't they supposed to be backwards compatible? Well, they are, but you have to setup a jumper to lower interface speed, otherwise the disc isn't even recognized by the motherboard.

Buying the discs had some more difficulties. First tried Alternate, but this time they pretend me to pay the SGAE^[es] tax for media (which is around 12 euros per disc), despite I clearly explained these were system discs to be mounted in RAID (and the tax is supposed only to apply non-system drives). Phoned them even, but no way, so I finally rejected the discs and went Optize, which doesn't seem to have the supposedly legal problem Alternate has with declaring system discs. They were served on time and for less than 90 euros, so bravo for them :).

After having the bare metal, initially these options for migration were considered:

Buy a 2.5 disc, copy current data (a 250 Gb disc is enough), install the new system, copy back

Buy a hard disc enclosure for the remaining good disc, install the new system, use the enclosure to copy data back

Install new system in one disc (sda), copy data from current disc (sdb), replace old disc with second and setup RAID on a running system

But in the end I got it with a fourth option based on this later one: install a new system with all the RAID setup, disconnect second drive (like if the array had failed), reconnect and copy contents of old drive to new system, restore second RAID drive and add it again to the array, so it gets synced again. Nothing to buy and more fun to see how fast the MD rebuilds the array.

So finally this is the new partition table:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000a9eb5

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1         134     1076323+  fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda2             135         620     3903795   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3             621        2322    13671315   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda4            2323       60801   469732567+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5            2323        3416     8787523+  fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda6            3417        3538      979933+  fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda7            3539       12170    69336508+  fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda8           12171       60801   390628476   fd  Linux raid autodetect

And mount points:

/dev/md0               1059264    263360    742096  27% /
/dev/md1              13456532   1703152  11069820  14% /usr
/dev/md2               8649480   1365644   6844464  17% /var
/dev/md3                964408     17632    897784   2% /tmp
/dev/md4              68248448    184216  68064232   1% /opt
/dev/md5             384497716 132355408 252142308  35% /home

BTW, after all I did buy the SATA enclosure for the remaining disc, so I have another 200Gb for pr0n ;-).

Holger Berndt: Nautilus Split View and Upstream

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:12:00 +0000

Check out that screenshot about the current state of splitting a Nautilus window:

The exciting thing is that this is not a screenshot of my split-view branch, but of Gnome git master.

So after successfully using the split view branch for Nautilus for several months, and (mostly thanks to the PPA) getting some feedback from others, I finally requested a review for it. Turned out that I had a good timing, because with the upcomming Gnome Shell, a debate is currently going on anyways about the future role of Nautilus. With a possible switch away from being a desktop shell and towards more typical file management tasks, split-view fits better into the picture as it used to.

I am very happy that Alex Larsson picked up the task to review and clean up the branch. Even more so as he recently commited a reviewed version to Gnome git master, which can be seen in above screenshot.

The UI is not yet final, and there are a few issues still to be worked out, but I really like the route that it's going. So, if all goes well, there won't be any Nautilus packages for Lucid in my PPA..

Miquel: Debian is not easy to install

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:32:54 +0000

18:30 – Donwload Debian stable netinst and burn a CD (15-20 minutes).
19:00 – Installing netinst (over 20 minutes).
19:30 – Reboot, /etc/apt/sources.list changed from stable to unstable && aptitude update && aptitude dist-upgrade (over 25 minutes).
20:00 – aptitude install kde-full (I don’t know, I was having dinner).
22:15 – System configured and running perfectly.
22:20 – Copying data from the old filesystem (ext3) to the new filesystem (ext4).
23:15 – Old system replaced completely by new system.

Sure?

Holger Berndt: The Tomboy and the Beast

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:56:00 +0000

To a large degree, Open Source is about scratching personal itches. The results are oftentimes small scripts, tools or plugins, rather than ending up as big projects of their own. Even if only little time is invested, the result can sometimes make a difference in terms of working efficiency. And picking low-hanging fruits surely is fun!

I'm using Claws Mail as MUA and Tomboy to organise my ideas and workflow. Both are truly excellent in their areas. However, an email is oftentimes connected to an idea, or a task, so I want to connect emails and notes somehow. Unfortunately, Claws Mail and Tomboy don't play well together.

When dragging emails from Claws Mail and dropping them into a Tomboy note, this is what you get:

Of course, the temporary files are cleaned up again after Claws Mail is closed, so the links are not only clumsy and non-descriptive, but also non-persistent and therefore totally useless in a note.

No more! I wrote a little addin for Tomboy that provides Claws Mail integration, so when loaded, email drag'n'drop results in this:

When clicking the link, the email is opened in Claws Mail again.

Code is on GitHub. I still couldn't find enough motivation to write the autofoo for it, so for now, a small hand-cooked Makefile has to do. Be sure to read the README file. I am not a fan of binary releases, but if anybody is interested in the dll, drop me a line. Also note that it currently only works with Claws Mail from CVS.

First impression of the Tomboy addin interface was very positive. It makes writing small addins easy, even for those unfamiliar with the general codebase. Well, even more in this case, as Tomboy ships with an Evolution addin which does the same thing for Evolution, and was an obvious source of inspiration.. Isn't Open Source great?

Miquel: 18 years

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:34:26 +0000

18 years ago Freddie Mercury left us. God save the Queen.

Miquel: will_paginate problem

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:13:42 +0000

Sometimes, a search has to be coded in an application and if you are using rails, probably you’ll use will_paginate. It is a good piece of software, easy to install and easy to use but, if it’s not used correctly, problems may appear.

I use it using a form_for rails’s tag and four search criteria in it. After coding it, I added will_paginate and after doing my first search, I paginated to the second page…it came empty. After googling a little, I noticed that I was sending info using POST method and will_paginate needs GET method to work properly, so the only thing needed was:
:html => { :method => :get}

and it worked perfectly, passing parameters to the next pagination.

Hope this helps, it’s something silly but sometimes silly things made people go into the dark side of coding

Miquel: Problem installing rmagick (using ruby 1.9.1)

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:05:06 +0000

Hi dudes

I’m coding my web application and I need to use the simple_captcha gem, which uses rmagick to generate captchas. I’m trying to install it, I already have imagemagick installed in my debian sid, and I found the following problem

ERROR: Error installing rmagick: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 extconf.rb
checking for Ruby version >= 1.8.5... yes
checking for cc... yes
checking for Magick-config... no
Can't install RMagick 2.12.2. Can't find Magick-config in /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin

Googling a little I found this page which explains what to do, which is ‘apt-get install libmagickcore-dev‘ as root or using sudo.

After this, a new error appears

Building native extensions. This could take a while... ERROR: Error installing rmagick: ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 extconf.rb
checking for Ruby version >= 1.8.5... yes
checking for cc... yes
checking for Magick-config... yes
checking for ImageMagick version >= 6.3.5... yes
checking for HDRI disabled version of ImageMagick... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for wand/MagickWand.h... no

Can't install RMagick 2.12.2. Can't find MagickWand.h.

And a new action is taken ‘apt-get install libmagickwand-dev‘.

Problems solved and gem installed.

Miquel: Problem uploading file using ruby 1.9.1 and rails 2.3.3

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:05:18 +0000

Hi there

I’m coding an application which has to upload files to the server. I have found an error when the uploaded file is saved in server directory. The message from system is

Status: 500 Internal Server Error
invalid byte sequence in US-ASCII

If you are in the same situation and want to solve it (it’s a rack 1.0.1 gem problem), you have three options:

Wait for a new rack release.
Apply the patch (I don’t know where it is).
Apply manually the solution provided here.

Choose one

Miquel: Trying again

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:58:10 +0000

Hi there

After having a baby, there is not a lot of time to do things as I used to do before. I’ll try to write entries to this blog and share ideas, code and useless things with all people who read this humble blog.

Those days I’m trying to code an web app to allow people who like music upload those songs (covers, non-published songs and so on) which come from nowhere but are amazing. I wish I finished it in two or three weeks and publish it under a cool domain.

See you

Colin Leroy: Vélo urbain : les trucs utiles, les trucs inutiles

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:23:21 +0000

Bonjour,

Bon, ça fait plus de deux mois maintenant que je vais travailler à vélo, et au fur et à mesure, j’ai découvert des besoins que j’ignorais jusqu’alors.

Pour rappel je me suis acheté un VTT dans l’optique de faire du VTT, pas trop de l’urbain. Je l’ai donc équipé dès l’achat des trucs indispensables à mes yeux : bar-ends, mini cale-pieds sans lanière, compteur kilométrique, et axes antivols parce qu’il dort en bas.

Ensuite, j’ai commencé à aller travailler avec, puis il a fait moins chaud. J’ai acheté ce coupe-vent léger, et je l’utilise encore. Voici le barême approximatif que j’utilise : au dessus de 20°C, t-shirt à manches courtes; de 15 à 20, t-shirt à manches longues; de 10 à 15, t-shirt à manches courtes + coupe-vent; de 5 à 10°C, t-shirt à manches longues + coupe-vent; de 0° à 5°C, t-shirt manches courtes + manches longues + coupe vent. Testé et approuvé à 2°C, le barême dépend aussi de l’humidité ambiante. En dessous de 0°C, je pense que j’enlèverai le t-shirt à manches courtes et ajouterais une polaire.

Puis il a fait un peu plus sombre. J’ai acheté des Reelight, un système ingénieux fixé sur l’axe de roue, alimenté par induction par deux aimants qui tournent sur la roue. Cependant, c’est trop bas pour être bien visible, j’avais l’impression désagréable de ne pas avoir assez de marge sur la longueur des axes pour être très tranquille. Je les ai donc virés et remplacés par un feu arrière à LED qui ne coûte presque rien, comme ça j’ai pu en acheter un autre pour avoir un deuxième système de fixation pour le siège bébé), et un phare à LED Cateye HL-530 devant, que j’ai choisi bien lumineux et directif. Les deux sont alimentés par des piles bâtons AA et AAA, ce qui me permet d’utiliser des accus NiMH tout bêtes. Le feu arrière doit être rechargé une fois par semaine, le feu avant une fois tous les 10-15 jours.

Niveau visibilité, j’ai aussi acheté un gilet jaune réfléchissant norme EN-471, et du scotch rétro-réfléchissant et fluorescent (chez Leroy Merlin) pour en tartiner le siège bébé. Phares plus gilet, les automobilistes me voient vraiment mieux pour la plupart, cela se sent même sur leur conduite (lorsqu’ils entrent sur un rond-point par exemple, ils ont moins tendance à me griller la priorité).

Enfin, j’ai acheté un mini-rétroviseur que je mets sur le bar-end gauche, à moitié convaincu de la chose vu la petite surface du miroir. C’est ma plus grande surprise : je crois que je ne pourrais plus m’en passer. Ça permet d’anticiper sur une situation quand même assez commune à vélo : lorsqu’on est doublé. Au lieu de serrer les fesses en espérant, on voit très bien, malgré le petit miroir, s’il y a une voiture derrière, à quelle vitesse elle se rapproche, et cela permet de prendre la décision qui s’impose bien en avance : soit il y a la place (voie large, ou bien perseonne en face) et la visibilité et je me serre légèrement vers la droite ; soit c’est limite voire impossible sans danger (voie étroite, voitures en face, virage sans visibilité, ilôt séparateur au milieu), et je me mets bien en avance en plein milieu de la voie. Puis lorsque les conditions sont réunies, je me remets à droite en remerciant.

Enfin, pour la pluie… Après m’être pris une bonne averse estivale dans la tête, je suis arrivé trempé au travail et j’ai dû tout sécher au sèche-mains des toilettes. Pas top. J’ai donc essayé le poncho de Clo et je l’ai rangé aussi vite : prise au vent digne d’un trois-mâts, flaque d’eau entre les mains, et la fois où le vent m’a envoyé le dos du poncho sur la tête, ça a suffi. J’ai acheté une veste anti-pluie en vrai plastique, essayé une fois, arrivé trempé (mais trempé chaud, de sueur). Au final, le coupe vent est suffisamment déperlant pour tenir une heure sous une bonne pluie.

Pour les jambes, j’ai acheté un sur-pantalon en presque-plastique. Il est insupportable quand il fait plus de 15-20°C, mais en dessous de 15°C, ça va : je ne transpire pas trop des jambes. Je ne le prends que quand il fait moche d’avance, s’il fait à peu près beau, je prends le risque, et au cas où je me fasse avoir, j’ai amené du change au travail : chaussettes, chaussures, pantalon, t-shirt, et une serviette.

Et pour la tête, pas besoin de capuche, le casque fonctionne même s’il est aéré, ça enlève la majorité de la goutte.

Enfin, j’ai mis des pneus Schwalbe Marathon (le même genre que sur les vélib) pour crever moins et rouler mieux : avec mes pneus VTT cramponnés pour la boue, je pédalais un peu comme un ours. Je pense les monter sur le vélo de Clo et mettre des Marathon Extreme (pour un grip de folie) d’ici un ou deux mois. (Je repousse un peu car quand j’y pense ils coûtent plus cher que les pneus que je mettais sur la vieille Mazda 323.)

Je pense que je commence à être paré ; il me reste deux petits trucs à améliorer : mon casque, que j’ai acheté pour une pratique de loisirs histoire de faire “éducation silencieuse” vis-à-vis de Paul. J’ai pris le réflexe et j’ai maintenant l’impression d’être à poil si je ne l’ai pas, mais je compte acheter un Ekoi avec écran de protection ; parce que quand il fait frais voire froid, ça pique grave les yeux, dans les descentes j’en pleure, et les lunettes s’embuent tout de suite.

Et mes pédales en plastique avec cale-pieds sont bien mais pas top, pas très rigides, et beaucoup de perte d’énergie du pédalage. Je vais me lancer et passer à la pédale automatique version soft, avec un côté auto, un côté normal.

Colin Leroy: La remorque Trek Gobug

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:54:15 +0000

Lundi, j’ai commandé une remorque Trek Gobug chez cyclo-randonnee.fr (le site est vraiment bien fait, bien explicatif, et Julien, le responsable, fournit un service client parfait. C’est rare :-)) . J’ai reçu la remorque mardi, et je suis rentré avec ce soir, pour la ramener à la maison et l’essayer avec Paul.

La remorque pliée dans mon lab

Premières impressions : Elle n’a pas l’air si lourde que ça, et roule bien à la main. Pliée, elle prend de la place, mais tiendra sans problème où l’on compte la ranger.

Un mot à propos de l’attache remorque, qui est fixé au vélo par l’axe de roue arrière : c’est une pièce métallique épaisse de 5 ou 6 bons millimètres, suffisamment pour empêcher d’utiliser un axe de roue antivol. Le modèle décathlon est trop court et ne ferme même pas ; le modèle Oredon Wheelguard, un peu plus long, n’est pas sécurisant, car on ne peut faire que 3-4 tours d’écrou sur le filetage, ce qui fait léger. Tant pis : j’échangerai mon axe antivol contre l’axe (suffisamment long) fourni à chaque fois que nous utiliserons la remorque, tant que nous n’aurons pas de garage fermé… Vu l’usage qu’on lui destine, ça ira : balade et vacances, pas utilitaire. Pour les trajets de tous les jours, je compte continuer à utiliser le siège Hamax (4 kilos au lieu de 12 et plus pratique pour le rangement).

Plier (et déplier) la remorque se fait en 30 secondes : une pression sur chaque axe de roue pour les enlever, une goupille en haut à enlever pour décliper la “colonne vertébrale” de la remorque, et l’armature arrière bascule vers l’avant.

Accrochée à mon vélo

Niveau confort, on est bien au XXIème siècle : il y a même des porte-gobelets biberons !

L’attache de la remorque au vélo se fait bien, le goupillage côté vélo est un peu compliqué par le fait que l’attache peut tourner sur elle même. Il y a une sangle de sécurité de chaque côté du timon.

Je l’ai essayé vide pendant 17 kilomètres, pour la ramener du travail et aller chercher Paul avec.

Les premiers tours de roue, on se rend à peine compte qu’on traine 12 kilos… Ça ne change pas grand chose en virage, pas grand chose tout droit non plus ; la différence que j’ai noté, c’est surtout en danseuse, ça fait un peu différent.

Ça tire un peu plus, quand même, surtout dans les montées (évidemment…). Je dis ça de manière empirique, j’ai eu l’impression d’avoir plus chaud que d’habitude. J’ai aussi mis 55 minutes au lieu de 45, mais on peut mettre ça au moins en partie sur le fait que… on peut pas remonter les files avec cette remorque accrochée aux fesses ! Coincé dans les bouchons au milieu des enclumes !

Sinon, ben ça a l’air très grand au milieu d’un couloir ou au milieu de mon salon, mais sur la route, pas tant que ça. Avec 80 centimètres de large, ça dépasse à peine, par rapport au cintre qui fait 62 cm. Mon positionnement habituel sur bande cyclable (vers la gauche) laisse les deux roues de la remorque sur la bande cyclable ; sur voie normale, ma position habituelle (au tiers droit de la voie, dans l’alignement des roues droites des voitures) n’est pas à modifier non plus.

Deux fois j’ai pensé ne pas pouvoir monter sur une piste en site propre, à cause des poteaux empêchant les automobilistes indélicats de s’y garer comme des cons, mais, là aussi ça passe.

Arrivé chez Myriam (la nourrice de Paul), j’ai récupéré mon bonhomme qui avait l’air étonné, puis qui a gazouillé tout le trajet. Ça a l’air de lui plaire ! (Pas de photo, je me suis concentré sur “pas faire de bêtise”).

Par contre, arrivé à la maison, c’est la grosse galère. Il faut descendre Paul de la remorque, décrocher la remorque, attacher le vélo, plier la remorque, consoler Paul qui vient de se mordre la langue en tombant de la marche, porter Paul et tirer la remorque vers le hall, monter avec Paul, le mettre dans son lit, redescendre, remonter la remorque.

Ce n’est pas très grave, car on a prévu un usage balade/vacances pour cette remorque ; mais il faut le savoir : si vous habitez dans un appart au 3eme étage, avec pas de garage fermé, c’est beaucoup moins pratique qu’un siège bébé pour un usage utilitaire au jour le jour.

Vivement ce week-end qu’on puisse essayer ça sur le canal du Midi !

Colin Leroy: A new hosting change, again, for Claws Mail

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:28:46 +0000

Since a few years, our website, www.claws-mail.org, has been hosted by the nice people of Develog. Our CVS and mailing-lists were hosted on dotsrc.org, another bunch of nice guys offering hosting to free software projects since years.

However, they’re starting to lack time and manpower to continue providing hosting — I guess they’re, like us, getting older and more and more busy with real life — and are in the process of shutting down hosting.

I’ve grabbed our multiple-year CVS history, and mailing-lists archives and subscribers lists from them, and after asking Yann, I’ve moved them on the same host as www.claws-mail.org.I’ve updated our CVS and Community pages to reflect the changes.

It should provide us with good quality hosting, and it also has the benefit of being free (as in beer) — thanks Yann ! Another advantage is that as Yann trusts me, I have a fair amount of control over the server, if needed.

It has only one drawback, as this server is Yann’s, and his job isn’t to provide free hosting to free software projects, that’ll add a bit of admin-load on my free time. But, mostly, it works and I won’t have a lot to do. I can also do-outsource backups, which makes me feel safer (for a little bit of time, I thought Dotsrc would leave us with no CVS history, which was a freaky thought).

Finally, I’ll be able to migrate us to Subversion or some other version-control software, if and when we agree on something, and I can get some time to do the migration and related (related is what takes some time, I’d have to change our tracker for something like Trac, change my buildbot scripts, fix the commit mail scripts, and other things I probably forget).

Paul: Henry Snowstorm – The One Day House

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:48:55 +0000

The One Day House, a 4-track "EP" from Henry Snowstorm, is now released. 4 instrumentals in a hiphop/downtempo flavour. Like the previous albums, it is available as a free download.

Track Listing:

1. Rough Music
2. The One Day House
3. Paradise at the Epicenter
4. Who? Me!?

the Wild Beast Records (TWB 4)

… keep on and on 'til the break of dawn …

Colin Leroy: Un petit coffre pour siège enfant Hamax

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:12:14 +0000

J’ai acheté un poncho spécial pour que Paul ne soit pas trempé si un jour je le ramène à vélo sous la pluie :

Mais le machin est quand même un peu encombrant pour mon tout petit sac à dos, et du coup, je ne le prends jamais. J’ai donc bricolé un petit coffre (il n’y rentre pas grand chose de plus… mais il faut bien que ça tienne sous le siège avec mon vélo et aussi celui de Clo !) avec… un range-diapo, technologie éprouvée depuis les années 70.

Et voilà ce que ça donne :

Paul: Two radical history pamphlets, old and new

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:56:43 +0000

Two radical history pamphlets; the former supposes a high level of prior knowledge of its subject, whereas the latter serves as an introduction.

Historical Geography Research Series No. 1, 1979
Andrew Charlesworth – Social Protest in a Rural Society : The Spatial Diffusion of the Captain Swing Disturbances of 1830-1831 (78pp.)
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/cornwall/academic_departments/geography/HGRG/Research%20Series.html

1830 was a year of revolution in France and Belgium. In England it saw the revival of agitation for parliamentary reform, sustained partly by the examples of Paris and Brussels and undoubtedly encouraged by the success in Ireland the previous year of O'Connell's Catholic Association. 1830 was a year of tax potests and of widespread industrial unrest. And in the autumn and early winter of that turbulent year, whilst the first steps towards the making of the First Reform Bill were being taken, there swept across southern and eastern England a massive series of protests by agricultural labourers.

The labourers' protests took many forms. In some areas there were demands for higher wages and for tithe reductions, although the two were not always associated. Other areas saw the overseers of the poor attacked; in a few places workhouses were the target of the crowd. In central-southern England forced levies of money by the protestors were common, but even more widespread were the detruction of threshing machines. And as a background to the collective protests there was the firing of barns and ricks and the receipt of threatening letters, often signed by the mythical 'Captain Swing'. Finally, after earlier concessions, order was brutally restored.

Such, in brief and bare outline, were the Captain Swing protests of 1830. In the most detailed study of the the protests so far, Hobsbawn and Rudé maintain that:

One thing can be said with some confidence: they [the protests] were essentially a rural and local phenomenon. That is to say their diffusion had nothing to do with national lines of communication and very little to do even with the local towns. Over most of Sussex, Hampshire and Wiltshire, for instance, the movement spread across such main roads as there were from London to the coast of from one town to another … The path of the rising … followed not the main arteries of national or even county circulation, but the complex system of smaller veins and capilliaries which linked each parish to its neighbours and to its local centres.
[E.J. Hobsbawm and G. Rudé, Captain Swing (London 1969; rev. ed. 1973) 159]

It is contended that these conclusions are at variance with the evidence. In fact, the diffusion of the protests had a great deal to do with national lines of communication. Moreover, it is argued that this altered perception of the spread of the revolt opens up new questions and possibly affords new insights into the world of the agricultural labourer. The new findings challenge not only Hobsbawn and Rudé's views on the spatial patterning of the protests but also their conclusions on the unpolitical motivations of the labourers' actions.

Thus the first part of the monograph sets out to identify the channels along which the disturbances spread. In so doing, although we can identify pathways of the rising different to those indicated by Hobsbawn and Rudé, simple contagion models of diffusion are still inadequate to explain why the major routeways of southern and eastern England guided the spread of the revolt. In the second part of the monograph, therefore, the diffusion of the protests is explained in the light of the work of such historians as Charles Tilly and E.P. Thompson. Their perspective on social protest places more emphasis on the 'political' and organisational aspects of collective action, rather than on economic motivation and on the spontaneity of the outbreak of disturbances. It seeks to place collective protest within its historical context, the spread of crowd turbulence reflecting the political crisis of the day rather than the ever present hardships of the common people.

Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #11, 2009
Steve Mills – A Barbarous and Ungovernable People! A Short History of the Miners of Kingswood Forest (20pp.)
http://brh.org.uk/publications.html

"A barbarous and ungovernable people" is a bit of a strong condemnation of a community. Especially considering that at the time the community in question was situated on the outskirts of a vibrant city in Britain. The people of Kingswood Forest supplied the south west of England and the industries of Bristol with coal, and it is fair to say that without the Kingswood Forest coal Bristol would not be the city it is today. However, the relationship between the two communities was strained to say the least.

By the time of the English Civil War 1642-1649 squatting on the common land of Kingswood Forest had become more widespread and many people exercised their age-old right of eking out a living from the raw materials that their environment provided them with. Following the Restoration of 1660, the Crown sought to reassert its authority in the old Royal Forests, Kingswood Forest included. The residents were not prepared to give up their rights easily and over several generations they resisted through petitions, physical force, tearing down of tollgates, smashing of looms, roadblocks, rioting and other means.

This pamphlet tells the story of the misunderstanding and mistrust which, from time to time, blew up into full scale conflagration.

Colin Leroy: Les problèmes avec l’urbanisation cyclable

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:58:05 +0000

Aujourd’hui, je vais envoyer une lettre à trois des adjoints au maire de Toulouse, responsables des “Ecoquartiers” que je traverse pour aller au boulot. J’aimerai qu’ils aient un retour d’expérience sur les équipements qu’ils ont mis en place pour les cyclistes, car bien que l’intention soit louable, l’implémentation est parfois hasardeuse.

Peut-être que ça pourra servir ! Sait-on jamais (oui, je suis naïf comme ça). En voici le contenu :

À l’attention de Mr Jean-Marc Barès, Nicolas Tissot et Régis Godec, respectivement responsables des secteurs 5, 2 et 6 de Toulouse.

Update, le 6 octobre 2009: J’ai réalisé que le bon contact était Mr Philippe Goirand, adjoint responsable des pistes cyclables. Il m’a répondu avoir transmis mes remarques aux services concernés. J’espère que ça servira !

Messieurs,

Depuis un mois, je me rends au travail à vélo plutôt qu’en train. Mon trajet va de Saint Agne à à la ZAC du Perget de Colomiers (voir carte ci-jointe).

Tout d’abord, je tiens à dire que la situation s’est largement améliorée ces dernières années au niveau de la “cyclabilité” de Toulouse. En particulier, j’ai remarqué que de nombreuses nouvelles bandes cyclables ont vu le jour. Je vous en remercie, cela simplifie beaucoup la vie et réduit considérablement le stress généré par le partage des voies avec les automobiles.

J’ai cependant remarqué quelques problèmes sur le trajet que je prends pour aller au travail et en revenir. Ces problèmes vont du simple agacement au réel danger.

Tout d’abord, la bande cyclable du pont Pierre de Coubertin est matérialisée par une bande de peinture, et un dessin de cycle à intervalle régulier, sur le trottoir et non sur la route. Cela pose deux problèmes. Le premier est celui du partage du trottoir avec les piétons, ce qui est normalement interdit (sauf pied à terre ou enfant de moins de 8 ans), mais aussi dangereux pour les piétons comme pour les cyclistes (écart non prévu, présence d’un handicapé moteur en fauteuil, présence d’une personne aveugle), d’autant plus que la piste zigzague parfois autour des arrêts du bus 34. D’autre part, cette bande est très dangereuse à chacun des croisements : il y a d’abord le danger des voitures qui tournent à droite et coupent la route aux cyclistes (à moins que les cyclistes ne doivent céder le passage ? la peinture en fin de bande fait penser à un stop pour cyclistes à certains croisements, mais rien n’est explicite ; il y a ensuite, après les terres-pleins centraux à ces croisements, le danger des voitures qui arrivent de la droite, et marquent leur cédez-le-passage sur le passage piéton, sans vérifier la bande cyclable. La photo numéro 1 ci-jointe montre l’un de ces croisements.

Sur ce pont, rouler sur la route en ignorant cette bande cyclable très mal implémentée n’est pas possible non plus, car les vélos y gênent les automobilistes, étant donné qu’ils doivent ralentir fort pour doubler en changeant de voie, qu’ils pensent que la place du cycliste est sur cette bande dont ils ne peuvent connaître les inconvénients, et avant tout, parce que la limitation de vitesse à 50 km/h sur ce pont est tout sauf respectée.

Enfin, l’arrivée sur le rond-point séparant le pont de l’avenue de Muret et du boulevard Déodat de Séverac est marqué par une absence totale de sortie propre. Les cyclistes ont le choix entre continuer à emprunter le trottoir et les passages piétons, ou essayer de redescendre sur la route au premier passage piéton.

Sur ce pont, une vraie bande cyclable dans chaque sens, continue, peinte en verte, serait la bienvenue.

Je passe ensuite par le boulevard Déodat de Séverac, du pont Coubertin vers les Arènes. Il y a ici une bande cyclable sur la route, ce qui permet de rouler tranquillement sur la majeure partie du boulevard. Il n’y a que deux problèmes à cet endroit. Devant le lycée, beaucoup de parents automobilistes confondent la piste cyclable avec un parking dépose-minute et s’arrêtent dessus le temps de déposer leurs enfants, forçant les cyclistes à s’arrêter ou à s’insérer dans la voie des voitures. Certains automobilistes venant de la voie d’en face (devant la 206 grise sur la photo 2) n’hésitent pas à couper la route au cycliste pour faire demi-tour (puis dépose-minute) lorsqu’enfin le flot de voitures s’interrompt. Ces problèmes sont d’ordre éducatif hélas, je ne sais pas trop ce qui serait faisable pour obtenir un peu plus de respect de cette bande cyclable. Pour ma part, j’ai arrêté de frapper aux vitres pour signaler leur comportement dangereux aux conducteurs ; ça semble inutile sur le long terme, et potentiellement dangereux (l’usager de la route étant rarement de bonne humeur à l’heure de pointe le matin).

Enfin, sur ce boulevard, la bande cyclable est interrompue sur le dernier tronçon, après la rue Nungesser et Coli, ce qui est très dommage pour cette petite centaine de mètres où je me retrouve coincé dans le bouchon, dans les pots d’échappement. Ce serait un grand progrès que de la compléter.

Je passe ensuite rue de Négogousses, où la construction d’un immeuble nous interdit la piste cyclable, encombrée par divers panneaux, voitures, bétonnières et autres camions-grues, puis par l’avenue de Lardenne.

Sur l’avenue de Lardenne, à la sortie du rond-point Henri Verdier vers Lardenne, on trouve un petit bout de piste cyclable derrière le trottoir et l’arrêt de bus, et qui redescend à peine cinquante mètres plus loin sur la rue (voir photo numéro 3). Pourquoi ne pas avoir raccourci le trottoir pour mettre la bande devant, sur la route ? Cela peut sembler un petit inconvénient, mais lorsqu’ils s’ajoutent les uns aux autres, et que l’on respecte les feux rouges comme je le fais), cela finit par représenter beaucoup d’arrêts/relances inutiles, sur 15 kilomètres.

Toujours sur l’avenue de Lardenne (vers Lardenne), au niveau du croisement avec le chemin Tissié: la bande cyclable quitte la route pour se retrouver sur le trottoir (voir photo numéro 4). Comme sur le pont Pierre de Coubertin, le partage du trottoir est dangereux pour les piétons comme pour les cyclistes. Le cycliste est ensuite censé redescendre sur la route au croisement suivant avec le chemin du Calquet (voir photo numéro 5). À cet endroit, quasiment aucune des voitures qui tournent à droite ne s’arrête pour laisser passer un cycliste lorsque le feu est vert (je pense que la plupart ne voient même pas le cycliste en question). Pour passer, il faut donc attendre que le feu soit rouge sur l’avenue, et donc vert sur le chemin du Calquet. Il va sans dire que je n’ai pris cette portion de piste qu’une seule fois et que je passe maintenant sur la route…

Je tourne ensuite sur le chemin du Touch, et la suite de mon trajet est presque intégralement dépourvu de piste ou bande cyclable ; cependant cela ne me pose pas de problème, le trafic y étant moindre.

Sur le trajet du retour, on retrouve des points durs avenue de Lardenne : Au rond-point des Epoux Mongelard, la piste cyclable disparaît soudainement. Sommes-nous censés prendre le bateau pour monter sur le trottoir, ou bien continuer sur la route ? On ne peut pas le savoir, grâce à l’exposition permanente du vendeur de tondeuses qui recouvre une potentielle peinture de cycle (voir photo numéro 6) ; enfin, en arrivant sur le rond-point/croisement avec la rue Négogousses, la bande cyclable passe derrière le trottoir, pour redescendre transversalement à la route à côté du passage piéton (voir photo 7).

Dans l’attente de votre réponse, je vous remercie de votre attention.

Cordialement,

Colin Leroy

Colin Leroy: Un support de feu arrière pour siège enfant Hamax

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:18:20 +0000

Depuis que je vélotaffe, les jours raccourcissent de plus en plus, et il est maintenant temps de réfléchir à une solution bien visible d’éclairage (j’ai déjà des Reelight, mais c’est pour avoir de la lumière en permanence même si j’oublie le reste).

Pour le feu avant, le porte sac complique les choses, donc on verra ça sous peu.

Pour le feu arrière, j’ai acheté un petit feu à LED de chez decathlon à 5.50 €. J’avais déjà acheté le même (et perdu) il y a quelques années, donc il me restait un support sur la tige de selle.

L’inconvénient c’est qu’avec le siège Hamax, ben ce feu, il sert à rien… Personne le voit à part mon ptit bonhomme…

Donc, matériel : une équerre, deux vis métal, leurs écrous (budget inférieur à 1 €).

Couper la partie ronde du support qui va normalement sur la tige de selle, et garder les deux “bouts” où va la vis. Couper le caoutchouc utilisé pour jointer et les trouer pour pouvoir y passer la vis du même support. Visser le tout :
Monter l’équerre sur le support du siège Hamax (les deux trous de 5 ne nuiront pas à la structure) :
Et voilà le travail !

J’en ai profité pour mettre de la colle forte dans les vis et les écrous, histoire d’éviter qu’on me démonte gentiment tout ça. Pour éviter qu’on ne me démonte le siège lui-même, je l’ai troué pour y passer un petit antivol-câble :

Espérons que ça suffise :-)

Colin Leroy: La taxe carbone et les alternatives crédibles à la voiture thermique

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:02:55 +0000

Récemment une amie se demandait quelles alternatives on pourrait trouver à la voiture à moteur thermique pour consommer et polluer moins, et pourquoi les voitures électriques étaient si cher, et pourquoi il n’y avait pas d’alternative crédible.

Et bien je pense que les alternatives à la voiture à moteur thermique, ce n’est pas une voiture avec un moteur à énergie différente. En effet, l’une des seules matières premières qui puisse fournir autant d’énergie que le pétrole, c’est l’uranium.

Il existe des voitures hybrides comme la Prius (qui consomme toujours 5l/100), des voitures purement électriques qui se traînent sur quelques dizaines de kilomètres (de 60 à 300, 160 en moyenne d’après les différents articles sur voitureelectrique.net juste pour pouvoir faire des pointes à 130), des prototypes à hydrogène, et d’autres trucs farfelus, comme la voiture à air comprimé (MDI par exemple, qui restent très évasifs quant à l’énergie nécessaire à compresser l’air) ou encore le moteur Pantone (qui réduirait la consommation de 30% et la pollution de 70%. Paraît-il. Je dubite. Même si ça marchait, je crois savoir que l’eau n’est pas une ressource renouvelable ou inépuisable).

Tous ces systèmes essayent de moins dépendre du pétrole pour se procurer l’énergie nécessaire au déplacement, mais c’est difficile. Il faut donc diminuer l’énergie nécessaire au déplacement.

La réduction de la masse

Le problème, c’est que ces véhicules pèsent toujours plusieurs centaines de kilos, et roulent toujours à (au moins) une centaine de kilomètres à l’heure. Il faut beaucoup d’énergie pour atteindre ce résultat. Un relativement petit moteur, actuellement, fait 90 chevaux. On trouve des moteurs de 150 ch sur des voitures qui n’ont même pas pour vocation d’être sportive, et des monstres de 2-3 tonnes et 300ch. Pour rappel, un être humain moyennement entraîné a une puissance de 0,20ch…

C’est à dire que quand on prend sa voiture pour se transporter, seul et sans bagages, d’un point A a un point B on utilise un moyen de transport 450 fois plus puissant que nécessaire. Nécessairement, ça consomme beaucoup plus d’énergie que nécessaire. (Je rappelle qu’un trajet sur deux effectué en voiture fait moins de trois kilomètres, et le taux moyen d’occupation d’une voiture est de 1,3 personne).

Pour éviter cela on peut utiliser des moyens de transports différents : la marche, le vélo, les transports en commun (dont le ratio poids total/charge utile est meilleur), et toute une gamme de véhicules à pédales (assistés électriquement ou non) existe déjà, avec lesquels on peut, outre se transporter, transporter des enfants (on peut transporter trois enfants avec un siège enfant et une remorque), transporter des courses (remorque), faire de relativement longues distances (vélo couché, vélomobile – un truc tout bizarre mais s’il était majoritaire en ville… il serait super pratique). Certes, cela demande des efforts physiques, et pour beaucoup, c’est actuellement impensable car c’est dangereux à cause des voitures (c’est en partie faux : ce n’est pas très dangereux, beaucoup moins qu’un deux-roues motorisé, comme le montre ce document de la FUBicy ou celui-ci de la Sécurité Routière. C’est vrai, par contre, que la dangerosité provient des automobiles et poids lourds), ou bien encore parce que ça fait suer (au sens propre) et qu’il faut se changer de tshirt.

Développer les transports en commun, c’est possible (il faudra aussi les rendre attractifs), et rendre le vélo attractif, ça devrait être faisable avec les infrastructures adaptées. Ailleurs, ça marche déjà pas mal :

Enfin, plus la proportion de modes de transports doux est grande, moins ces modes de transports sont dangereux, car ils sont plus pris en compte et respectés.

La réduction de la distance

Pour dépenser moins d’énergie en transport, on peut aussi… moins se transporter. Cela paraît évident mais nous ne sommes pas prêts, psychologiquement, à l’accepter. La plupart d’entre nous qui sommes en appartement espère pouvoir habiter dans une jolie maison avec un jardin, et tant pis si elle est en périphérie, mal desservie par le réseau de transport en commun. Ça, c’est l’une des choses qui rend quasiment indispensable la voiture, et même souvent deux voitures. J’aimerai beaucoup que mon fils puisse jouer dans le jardin quand il le veut… Mais peut-être pas à ce prix…

Mon père architecte me disait que ça fait déjà quelques années que les villes commencent à se regrouper et se re-verticaliser. Il n’est bien sûr plus question de faire des tours comme dans les années 70/80, mais le fait est que le pavillon individuel commence à perdre du terrain sur les petites collectivités. Habiter moins loin de son lieu de travail, faire ses courses près de son domicile (c’est plus cher et le rapport actuel de prix essence/nourriture me pousse à aller les faire en voiture, une fois par mois, chez Leader Price, plutôt que plus souvent au petit Casino d’à côté) sont des alternatives crédibles à la voiture.

La réduction de la vitesse

Plus la vitesse est grande, plus l’énergie nécessaire au déplacement est grande, et le rapport est loin d’être linéaire. Je le sens à vélo, l’effort entre 15 et 20 km/h est peu différent, entre 20 et 25 km/h on commence à le sentir, et entre 25 et 30 km/h, c’est dur et je lutte. C’est normal : avec l’aérodynamisme pourri d’un vélo droit, il faut faire deux fois plus d’effort pour avancer 1,3 fois plus vite.

C’est pareil en voiture : pour aller plus vite, il faut consommer plus. Une Golf diesel de 90ch qui consomme 6l/100 sur l’autoroute à 130, consomme 3,7l/100 sur la même autoroute à 90. Par exemple, avec notre voiture et sur le trajet Toulouse-Tosse, qu’on fait assez souvent, on pourrait faire ça et consommer 15 litres au lieu de 21, mais on perdrait 50 minutes.

Mais c’est pas crédible tout ça, c’est chiant !

Parmi les gens que je connais, toutefois, l’écrasante majorité ne peut pas faire autrement que d’aller travailler en voiture, par exemple. Même les citadins. En réalité et en l’état actuel des infrastructures, la plupart de mes amis citadins pourraient faire une combinaison de : bus, métro, pieds, vélo, train. Ça leur prendrait un peu plus de temps (avec les bouchons, ce n’est pas sûr). Ça leur coûterait certainement moins cher. Mais ce serait un peu moins pratique, car la voiture, elle est en bas de chez nous, et elle nous amène pile au boulot, pas besoin d’attendre qu’elle passe, elle ne fait pas grève, et on peut emmener nos enfants chez la nourrice avec. C’est cette somme d’avantages indéniables de praticité qui fait que ce n’est pas possible de ne pas prendre la voiture. Avec un litre d’essence à 4 euros, soudainement, ces avantages deviendront proportionnellement négligeables et ce sera plus facile de faire autrement…

Clo, par exemple, prend la voiture pour aller travailler, ça lui permet de poser Paul chez la nourrice et d’arriver au travail en trente minutes. En transport en commun, il lui faudrait aller chez la nourrice avec Paul en poussette (12 minutes), poser Paul, aller prendre un métro à la station la plus proche (5 minutes de marche/attente + 20 de métro), puis un bus (15 minutes de marche/attente puis 15 de bus). Une heure dix de transport.

Alternativement, elle pourrait faire huit kilomètres à vélo sur un trajet moyennement adapté (en plein centre ville, il y a peu de pistes cyclables, ou bien sur de grandes artères sur ce trajet). C’est beaucoup plus contraignant, car il faut s’habiller en fonction du temps, se faire pleuvoir dessus, prendre du change quand il fait chaud, et supporter des dizaines d’automobilistes au mieux inattentifs, au pire discourtois. Le vélo sera une alternative crédible quand l’essence sera plus chère. Ou que nous aurons déménagé à un endroit plus adapté à nos lieux de travail.

Pour moi, c’est déjà fait, et c’est facile : j’habite à 500 mètres de la gare où passe un train qui m’emmène directement, sans changement, en 20 minutes à une autre gare située à 600 mètres de mon lieu de travail, pour 35 euros par mois. Considéré comme cela, c’est difficile de trouver un seul avantage à la voiture ! C’est une chance, en un sens, mais aussi, lorsque nous avons emménagé où nous habitons, cette gare (et le métro juste à côté) ont pesé pour beaucoup dans notre choix.

Et le reste ?

Pour consommer moins d’électricité, c’est à peu près pareil : la seule alternative, c’est de changer nos habitudes. Je n’ai pas vraiment besoin de mon serveur dans mon placard. Il pourrait être hébergé en mutualisé. Mais c’est tellement plus pratique que ça me pousse à consommer 100W 24h/24. Pour l’instant…

Pour le chauffage, c’est la même chose : l’amélioration des isolations des logements neufs auraient dû faire baisser les factures de chauffage ces dernières décennies. Or, elles sont restées stables, car les surfaces chauffées ont augmenté. Les constructions neuves, souvent bien isolées, parfois HQE (Haute qualité environnementales), parfois carrément “passives“, sont plus écologiques et économiques dans leur consommation d’énergie que les vieux immeubles en parpaing et simple vitrage. Elles sont aussi plus grandes, plus excentrées, et souvent mieux chauffées, ce qui augmente le coût du chauffage.

Il y a plein d’autres choses que l’on peut changer pour consommer moins d’énergie, et c’est ce que la taxe carbone est censée nous faire réaliser : en nous montrant le vrai prix – à long terme – de notre mode de vie. Et ce qu’on est censé réaliser, c’est que nos habitudes devront changer.

Le commercial du bureau d’à côté dans mon bâtiment, au boulot, avec son Porsche Cayenne (16l/100km, 380g de CO2/km) et sa manie de prendre l’ascenseur pour monter au premier étage (mais pas pour en descendre, ouf, tout n’est pas perdu), peut-être qu’il ne s’en est pas encore rendu compte. Il est caricatural, mais il est loin d’être le seul…

Et surtout, il ne faut pas croire que le problème est transitoire. Ça arrivera vraiment, il y aura pénurie, il y a aura plus de guerres du pétrole, l’énergie coûtera la peau des fesses, et on se limitera parce qu’on aura plus le choix. Paul ne partira peut-être jamais en vacances en avion de l’autre côté de la terre.

Ricardo Mones: -bash: /bin/su: Input/output error

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:27:57 +0000

That's today's message from bash. Fortunately seem's it's able to spawn it, su command and a bunch of others had not been so lucky.

The ps command is another of the lucky ones, an excerpt (hey! less also works) is highly insightful:

20292 ?        S      0:00 sh -c $SMARTD_MAILER -s 'SMART error (FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog) detected on host: busgosu' root 2>&1 << "ENDMAIL"?This email was generated by the smartd daemon running on:??   host name: busgosu?  DNS domain: [Unknown]?  NIS domain: (none)??The following warning/error was logged by the smartd daemon:??Device: /dev/sda, Read SMART Self-Test Log Failed??For details see host's SYSLOG (default: /var/log/syslog).??You can also use the smartctl utility for further investigation.?No additional email messages about this problem will be sent.?ENDMAIL?
20293 ?        S      0:00 /bin/bash -e /usr/share/smartmontools/smartd-runner -s SMART error (FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog) detected on host: busgosu root
20301 ?        S      0:00 run-parts --report --lsbsysinit --arg=/tmp/fileCJFXti --arg=-s --arg=SMART error (FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog) detected on host: busgosu --arg=root -- /etc/smartmontools/run.d
20302 ?        S      0:00 /bin/bash -e /etc/smartmontools/run.d/10mail /tmp/fileCJFXti -s SMART error (FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog) detected on host: busgosu root
20303 ?        S      0:00 /usr/bin/mail -s SMART error (FailedReadSmartSelfTestLog) detected on host: busgosu root

So /dev/sda is dying, now for real. It gave me some warnings two or three weeks ago, so last week I made a complete backup on its twin disk, using ddrescue, because dd wasn't able to do it without failing.

It's time, again, to seek for a couple of disks which last for almost five years... if possible.

Colin Leroy: Paul en week-end

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:16:15 +0000

Ce week-end nous sommes allés à Tosse. Il faisait très moche, on a réussi à se promener une demi heure entre les gouttes.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Paul a conduit la voiture, il était très fier :

[See post to watch Flash video]

Ce matin, c’était le tour de Clo de rester dormir une fois Paul réveillé ; j’ai donc eu une grasse mat’ jusqu’à… 07h09. Dur de se lever, mais après c’était chouette de jouer un peu avec mon ptit bonhomme avant que le jour ne se lève…

[See post to watch Flash video]

Holger Berndt: Chronically Underrated: Undo

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:32:00 +0000

In the past years, software designers have done a lot of research not only of what a good user interface is supposed to look like, but also how it is supposed to behave. A key component (that to this day a lot of software still gets wrong) is to not bother users with dialogs, especially not those nasty modal ones, but to just do the right thing. Of course, the program can't always know what the right thing is supposed to be, so to accomodate for mistakes, the application should still shoot ahead, but offer an easy way to undo those actions again. The beautiful article "Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo" by Aza Raskin should be a must-read for all UI developers.

Actually, this not only applies to graphical user interfaces, and clicking away dialog boxes, but also to command line interfaces. I've recently aliased rm with gvfs-trash on a few machines (including my own) for precisely that reason. Unfortunately, this alias does not work completely, but I am still hoping that I can habituate to its limitations.

Unfortunately, Claws Mail is a sinner in that respect, too. On the plus side, it makes it hard to actually loose work (so it's not guilty of Aza's worst software sin). However, in many cases it prevents data loss by distracting the user (by popping up dialog boxes), and makes it hard to revert an accidental operation (like digging up messages in the trash), so it is guilty of Aza's second and third worst software sins. Also, Claws Mail sadly doesn't come with Undo/Redo capabilities at all (well, apart from text entry in the compose window editor).

Some years ago, probably around 2004, I was looking around for a general purpose undo/redo stack that offered GObject integration for a pet project of mine. I was very disappointed to not find anything back then, so I rolled my own. It's a small class that offers undo/redo stacks (optionally with a limited stack size). Stack entries can be grouped, groups can be nested. Everything can have a description. As an optional viewer, I had a simple gtk+ widget to display undo/redo stack entry descriptions in a list (or tree, in case of groups), acting as the view in a MVC pattern. Anyways, in the end, I got distracted from the pet project, and never published it.

So, I thought I could break out the undo class from that old project, clean it up, streamline it a bit, and replace deprecated GObject/gtk+ stuff with shiny new technoligy. While doing that, I was looking around again at available undo frameworks, and was a little surprised to find one for Qt and another one for GObject, both of which I would assume to be older than my class (GUndo's ChangeLog dates back to late 2005, but some copyright headers speak of 1999). I wonder why I haven't found them earlier.. The funny thing is that both are kind of similar to what I did. Especially GUndo is (API-wise) crazily close to what I came up with (but of course, I still like mine better!). I guess there is only a limited amount of reasonable solutions to the undo/redo problem.

We'll see if it's feasible to hook up Claws Mail with an undo stack. It's usually hard to put undo capabilities into a program that hasn't been designed for that from the start. But maybe it'll be possible to put at least a few error-prone actions (like getting back a message that was falsely moved into the trash) in.

Colin Leroy: Comment fabriquer un porte-sac à 0.35€ (pour petit sac)

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:13:37 +0000

Alors voilà… Clo est retournée travailler ! Elle amène Paul chez la nourrice le matin, et c’est moi qui vais le chercher en rentrant du travail. Pour être à l’heure chez elle, j’y vais à vélo, directement en descendant du train.

La difficulté c’est qu’après avoir récupéré Paul, en plus de mon sac à dos, j’ai le sien… un modèle 10L assez épais, que je ne peux pas mettre dans mon dos sans donner des coups de sac dans la tête du ptit bonhomme…

J’ai un peu cherché, et pas trouvé, un porte sac à dos à mettre à sur mon guidon – je le veux centré pour éviter d’être déséquilibré. Comme je n’ai pas trouvé, à part un panier complet, ce dont je ne veux pas (parce que ça saoûle tout le reste du temps)… J’en ai fabriqué un, et ça m’a coûté 35 centimes (ça marche avec une potence comme celle-ci) :

Liste des fournitures :

Une patte plate métallique, longue d’environ 12 centimètres (rayon Quincaillerie de meuble chez Leroy-Merlin)
Deux colliers serre-câbles (chez Leroy-Merlin aussi)

Méthode d’installation :

plier la patte de manière symétrique
percer et couper le milieu de la patte, pour “enjamber” la vis de la potence
positionner la patte, et passer les deux serre-câbles dans ses trous
et voilà !

Tout simple, tout léger, et tout facile à enlever le cas échéant. Ça ne marche qu’avec un sac assez petit pour ne pas toucher la roue, et attention aux bouts de sangle : qu’ils ne se prennent pas dans les rayons !

Colin Leroy: Les cyclistes polluent-ils (plus que les transports en commun) ?

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 06:52:43 +0000

Edit 22 septembre 2009: Comme beaucoup me l’ont fait remarquer en commentaires, le cycle du CO2 humain est très différent du cycle du CO2 fossile et si le calcul ci-dessous reste intéressant, il n’en demeure pas moins que le cycliste pollue beaucoup moins que les transports en commun ou quoi que ce soit qui utilise un moteur (cf commentaires de Mathieu et Quentin)…

Cette semaine, j’ai décidé d’essayer de venir au travail à vélo. Cela me fait un trajet de 15 kilomètres, en trois quarts d’heures, et j’ai trouvé un chemin sympa. C’est donc très agréable (on verra quand il pleuvra si c’est toujours aussi agréable…), et deuxième avantage, on se sent écolo :-)

Mais l’est-on vraiment ? Je me demandais avec Clo dans quelle mesure un cycliste rejette du CO₂ ; j’ai donc cherché pour faire les calculs et en avoir le coeur net, et ai cherché combien un être humain rejette de CO₂ pendant l’effort. J’ai trouvé sur Wikipedia (évidemment) ainsi que sur Volodalen.com, un site de coureurs.

Selon ces deux sites, au repos, la VCO₂ (production instantanée de dioxyde carbone rapportée à l’unité de temps) est d’environ 0,8 litre/minute. Lorsque l’effort s’intensifie, la VCO₂ monte (en même temps que la VO₂, la consommation d’oxygène) jusqu’à environ 5 l/min. Ceci pour un sportif “moyen à bon” de 80 kilos. Ce n’est pas tout à fait moi, mais on va supposer que oui car je n’ai pas l’intention d’aller faire les mêmes graphiques dans une clinique ;-)

Voici le graphique en question :

Selon les mêmes pages, on trouve entre ces deux extrêmes le “seuil ventilatoire” qui représente un niveau d’effort conséquent mais “tenable” longtemps (plus d’une demi-heure d’après “Le sport après 50 ans”). Je vais donc considérer qu’à vélo, je me mets d’instinct à ce niveau d’effort. À ce seuil ventilatoire, nos deux graphiques nous donnent une VCO₂ de 3,5 l/minute au seuil ventilatoire.

C’est parti pour les calculs !

Considérons le CO₂comme un gaz parfait étant donné que la pression est basse ; on utilise donc

p.V = n.R.T

avec :
p : pression en Pa (pascals). Nous avons p = 101325 au niveau de la mer
V : volume en m3. Nous avons ici 3,5 litres de CO₂, soit 0.0035m3
n : en mol, que nous cherchons
R : constante = 8,314472 J.mol-1.K-1
T : température en Kelvin. Nous avons 293.15°K pour 20°C.

Cela nous donne n = (P.V)/(R.T), soit n = (101325*0,0035)/(8,314472*293,15) : n = 0.1454 mol de CO₂.

La masse molaire du CO₂ est de 44 g/mol (2*M_O + M_C avec M_O=16 et M_C=12). J’expire donc 6.40g/minute de CO₂. (Ces calculs rappellent la terminale…)

Sachant que ma vitesse moyenne est d’environ 20 km/h, il me faut 3 minutes pour parcourir un kilomètre et je rejette donc (roulement de tambour) 19,20 g/km de CO₂ à vélo.

Au repos, à 0,8 l/m de CO₂ expiré (calcul identique), je rejette donc 1.46 g/minute. Dans ma voiture il me faut 1 minute par kilomètre (en moyenne sur ses 30000 km, on est à 62km/h), soit 1.46g/km auxquels on ajoute les 149g/km provenant du moteur: 150,46 g/km en voiture.

En train, en comptant 90km/h, ça donne 0.97 g/km (car je me repose aussi). On ne comptera pas la pollution du gros diesel du train qui doit faire peur, vu que de toutes façons, il roule aussi si je ne suis pas dedans (suite au commentaire de Carsten : d’après eco-malin.com, un train diesel rejette environ 90 à 110 g/km de CO₂ par passager. Si l’on compte qu’il y a 100 passagers dedans, cela fait 10 kilos par kilomètre – yay ! Si la SNCF se décidait à électrifier la ligne Toulouse-Auch, ça changerait pas mal : un train électrique c’est 5g/km/passager).

En conséquence, on peut considérer que je pollue vingt fois plus en venant au travail à vélo plutôt qu’en train (en ignorant la pollution du moteur du train qui est “inévitable” ; si on la compte, c’est cinq fois moins à vélo), et seulement sept fois moins en venant à vélo plutôt qu’en voiture.

Bon, bien sûr, ce calcul cède à la mode du CO₂/kilomètre, sans tenir compte de tout le reste des saletés rejetées par un moteur et que je ne rejette pas…

D’autre part, Guillaume me fait remarquer que le cycle de vie du CO₂ “humain” est très court (l’O₂ est transformé en CO₂ par notre corps qui se nourrit de (entre autres) végétaux, qui le captent pour pousser), tandis que le cycle de vie du CO₂ des moteurs à explosion est très long (ils se “nourrissent” d’énergie fossile qui met des millions d’années à se reconstituer).

Dernier détail : plus tu es sportif, plus tes VO₂max et VCO₂max sont élevées, et plus tu rejettes… Si ça se trouve, Lance Armstrong rejette autant qu’une Smart ? :-)

Colin Leroy: Un peu de nouvelles

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:16:41 +0000

Nous voilà rentrés de vacances, qui ont été bien remplies. Nous sommes passés par Paris, Laon, Cambrai, et enfin Orléans, pour un total de 2123 kilomètres qui nous ont permis de voir plein de gens (famille et amis). Paul a bien aimé tout ce monde, mais il a eu un peu de mal avec tous ces changements. Il a détesté les baignoires inconnues, par exemple ; finalement il est même tombé malade pour la première fois de sa vie et se traîne un petit truc. C’est en train de guérir, mais ça lui donne un petite voix cassée entre la rock-star et le chaton.

Cela ne l’empêche pas de faire plein de progrès, et maintenant on peut dire qu’il maitrise le 4-pattes et il est en train de s’attaquer à la station debout (avec quelques secondes sans les mains de temps en temps, c’est impressionnant : ça a l’air magique !).

Le voici en train de jouer aux petites voitures, il n’est jamais trop tôt pour commencer, avec la belle voiture en bois que son grand-père m’avait fabriqué quand j’étais petit !

[See post to watch Flash video]

Et ce matin, il a fait son premier tour à vélo… en tant que passager ! et ça lui a bien plu. Plus il grandit et plus il progresse, plus il nous épate !

Holger Berndt: Claws Mail got bitten by a Snake!

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:09:00 +0000

I've been successfully using the Perl plugin for Claws Mail for a long time now. It hasn't seen many updates lately, but that's because I am mostly happy with it for my personal needs.

However, filters for Claws Mail is one of the few remaining areas where I'm still a Perl user. I have the feeling that my mental capabilities are insufficient for memorizing the dozens (hundreds?) of operators, magic variables etc., especially after a while of absense from the language. "There is more than one way to do it" is fine, but with age, I tend to prefer "There is a single (obvious) way to do it" as a motto. So, for all of my scripting purposes, I found a new home at the Python people. Please, no discussion which one is "better", for whatever definition of "better". Both are nice languages, and I guess people just have to figure out which one suits their individual work flow better.

So, lately, I had to embed a Python interpreter in some C code, and, as often when learning about new technologies, I though this might be a fun add-on to Claws Mail. Don't worry, I am not trying to bloat Claws Mail with every single interpreter out there -- although that might actually be a fun experience.

So I cooked up a small Python plugin for Claws Mail, which adds an interactive Python console to Claws Mail (stolen and adapted from gtkparasite - which is a great project). It's also possible to execute scripts from the menu, for further automation. The interface to Claws Mail is still limited, and only includes calling menu items for now.

(Planet readers: A short demo screencast is here).

Code is on GitHub.

PS: Yes, I know that the name Python actually refers to a commedy group, not to the animal. But I don't care.

Update: The plugin source moved to Claws Mail CVS. It also gained on a new trick on the way -- automated composing of mail messages. See the README file for an example.

Colin Leroy: Datacenters and power consumption

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:09:38 +0000

Now that we’re in 2009, it’s been a few years since we’re more and more aware that energy is a valuable resource that should be spared. Where I work I’m handling a medium-sized datacenter of 160 servers, and they use approximately 28 kW of power. 28.000 watts, that represents 470 light bulbs, always on, burning day and night.

To this, we can add the cooling system’s consumption, which we don’t monitor but we can safely add 3 to 8 kW for the three cooling units, depending on the outside temperature. That’s what fun about datacenters, we have to burn electricity to cool down the room heated by the servers’ electricity consumption. Consider it the equivalent of putting the oven in your fridge when you bake a cake.

We’ve been trying to minimize a bit this consumption. There’s an article there that writes about shutting down servers when they’re not in use – ie, at night, or during the week-end.

Well, we thought of it first ! :-) In my opinion, it isn’t possible to shutdown every server at night : the backups run during the night, and saving its data is much more important to a company than saving electricity – sadly in some sense… So, we can’t shutdown production servers with important data on it. Luckily, where I work, a very large part of the datacenter is used for development and testing – we’re doing cluster-oriented storage, we have clusters, and about 140 out of our 160 servers are completely unused at night: developers go home.

So, one year and half ago already, I’ve implemented a way for developers to tell whether their test servers could be shutdown at night or not (in case they have long-running tests on them). It’s not a huge success, mainly because people choose 24/24 instead of 12/24 “just in case”, I think, but with approximately 30 servers down every night and during week-ends, we still spare 8 kW more than half the time. Still better than nothing…

Besides, at home, I’m now putting my laptop to sleep when I’m not in front of it. The saving’s much less and completely nullified by the server in the cupboard, but it’s still better than the days where I had three servers in the cupboard and didn’t put my laptop to sleep !

Colin Leroy: The Prodigy à Nîmes, c’était une tuerie

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:22:01 +0000

Voilà, je crois que tout est résumé dans le titre :-)

Jeudi 23 nous sommes allés à Nîmes avec Yann et Betty pour voir The Prodigy en concert dans les Arènes. En première partie, il y avait tout d’abord DJ Garfld qui nous a fait du mix pas mal, puis ensuite Birdy Nam Nam qui nous ont fait de l’électro qui était bien mais pas top. En fait ç’aurait été mieux si ç’avait duré moins longtemps. Mais bon, on s’en foutait un peu, on était là pour The Prodigy. Qui ont fini par arriver sur scène et nous ont fait oublier les précédents :-), en envoyant World’s on Fire directement.

La suite a été une heure trente de sauvagerie intense avec pas de temps mort, quand ça s’est terminé on avait l’impression que le concert avait juste commencé, sauf qu’en fait on n’aurait pas tenu tellement plus longtemps :-)

Ils ont réussi à faire asseoir puis sauter toute la fosse ainsi que les gradins sur Smack my Bitch up, c’était assez impressionnant !

Je n’ai trouvé que deux vidéos avec un son pas trop pourri qui rend à peu près correctement, pas surprenant, donc c’est tout :).

Paul: Bristol Radical History Group at the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:44:33 +0000

Last weekend I went along to the Tolpuddle Martyrs Festival. (For those who have never heard of the Tolpuddle Martyrs: "On February 24th, 1834, six farm labourers from Tolpuddle [Dorset, UK] were arrested on a charge of taking part in an ‘illegal oath’ ceremony. The real offence was that they had dared to form a trade union to defend their livelihood. For this they were sentenced to seven years’ transportation to the penal colonies of Australia. The sentences provoked an immense outcry, leading to the first great mass trade union protest. The campaign won free pardons and the Martyrs’ return to England. It was an historic episode in the struggle for trade unionists’ rights in Great Britain.")

Of particular interest to me were a couple talks delivered by the Bristol Radical History Group, which were perhaps the most controversial thing there. These were about the large scale Captain Swing riots "that swept across the south of England 3 years before the events in Tolpuddle." These were controversial in the sense that they were carried out by the so-called ignorant rural peasants. As the speaker pointed out, whereas The Tolpuddle Martyrs were innocent, the Swing Rioters were guilty and they were defiant in their guilt. They recognised their rights as people, despite what the law and the law-makers would have to say on the matter. It is the innocent/guilty polarity, (amongst other reasons), according to the speaker, which means that today many have heard of the Tolpuddle Martyrs but few have heard of Captain Swing, despite the Captain Swing riots being a much larger movement involving a far greater number of people, and being a far bigger problem for the authorities. I agree. The talk was titled 'The Flea and the Elephant', the flea being Tolpuddle, the elephant Captain Swing.

The Bristol Radical History Group have put on many events, check their website for details of upcoming events. They also publish a series of pamphlets, three of which I picked up whilst I was at the festival:

We Come For Our Own And We Shall Have It, Smuggling In Poole And Dorset
Kevin Davies
Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #2
A look at the history of smuggling in Dorset and the government responses to it. This pamphlet examines whether smugglers should be considered folk heroes and to what extent smuggling was a community enterprise.

Yesterday's To-morrow, Bristol's Garden Suburbs
Stephen E. Hunt
Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #8
In 1909, the Bristol Garden Suburb Limited was set up to implement the ideas Ebenezer Howard popularised in To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, first published in 1898. Garden-City principles inspired promising developments at Shirehampton, Sea Mills and Keynsham chocolate factory, but were diluted in the construction of Bristol's interwar housing estates at Knowle West and Bedminster, Hillfields, Southmead, Horfield, Speedwell and St Annes. Today it's timely to revisit Howard's ideas in the light of several topics of green chatter — transition towns, peak oil and Gordon Brown's intention to promote the construction of eco-towns.

Nicotiana Brittanica, The Cotswolds' Illicit Tobacco Cultivation In The 17th Century
Will Simpson & Jim McNeill
Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #9
Four centuries ago a group of farmers from the West Of England decided to see if they could make a living for themselves by growing tobacco. This put them at odds with the English state and its imperial ambition to build a mercantile economy driven by indentured and slave labour. This is their story of resistance.

To date, the Bristol Radical History Group have published 10 pamphlets, see their website for further information.

Holger Berndt: TrashJournal: Your friendly Desktop Raccoon

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 08:08:00 +0000

The Gnome desktop doesn't really have a good view on the trash can. The display in Nautilus is very limited for a number of reasons. Most importantly, it does neither display the original path, nor the deletion date. Thus, it does not allow sorting by deletion date, and you never know where your restored files will end up. Also, if you deleted two files with the same name, there's no way to distinguish between them.

That leaves two choices for the humble user: Keep the trash can in order, or treat it as a black hole.

As a third option, one can use a little Python script that I wrote up recently, which gives a journaled view of the trash can:

Code is (as usual) on GitHub. As it's a Python script, you should be able to just run it (provided that you have Gnome- and GTK+ Python bindings installed).
In fact, if the gconf dependancy was made optional, the script should work on any desktop which conforms to the freedesktop.org trash can spec.

Okay, admittedly, this pet project is basically the result of my wanting to try out GIO, which is actually pretty nice.

Colin Leroy: Quitcount 1.5

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:27:47 +0000

Since I’ve blogged about my little Quitcount tool, I’ve received a Hungarian translation from Páder Rezső, a German translation from Fabian Affolter, and an Italian translation from Salvatore de Paolis, and fixes from a few other people (most of them I already know from Claws Mail, heh :-) Thanks guys! I’ve released 1.5 to have them in a tarball, because this little tool will probably end up packaged in a few distros :-)

Holger Berndt: Excursion to Packaging-Land

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:43:00 +0000

I just pushed a new branch that cherry-picks most of the commits from the split-view branch of Nautilus, but only requires dependancies that are available on a standard Ubuntu Jaunty installation.

More excitingly, I just uploaded packages for this branch for Ubuntu Jaunty to my PPA. The primary reason was to make it easier for me to use the branch at work. But of course, this also makes the code more accessible for Ubuntu users, so I hope for more testing reports.

Ricardo Mones: Debcamp

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:21:42 +0000

So, finally here we are, after a 6 hour travel by car I arrived to DebConf 9 venue on Thursday afternoon.

Weather is marvelously sunny (as expected), but not as hot as the figures may suggest (36ºC at arrival, something less today).

Still a lot of people to come (DebConf starts next week) but nearly about 50 are already here, and growing.

Colin Leroy: QuitCount: what did I save since smoking?

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:10:08 +0000

Paul (my friend, not my son) said to me some time ago, “Still obsessed with smoking, I see ;-)”. That made me realize that indeed, stopping smoking sometimes make me think more about it than I did when I smoked. I guess that’s rather logical, I’m still in the long process of readjustment (of my habits, my neurons and my brain). My sister quit years ago and still thinks of it from time to time, too. She showed me she still has a quit counter widget loaded on her Mac OS X, with really big numbers on it, and I looked for one on my XFCE desktop. I didn’t find any, though, so I wrote one myself :-)

Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby present you QuitCount, a little piece of software that has no other practical value than keeping yourself motivated if you try and quit smoking, and in a second phase, impressing yourself with big numbers (I already didn’t inhale more than 12 grams of tar).

You can also use it as a start counter to see how much you smoked since you started, but don’t; that’s scary.

Translators and packagers welcomed!

Paul: No Quarter publications

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:26:17 +0000

	No Quarter #4 Issue number 4 of No Quarter, the publication sometimes described as "a zine about radical history", has been released. This issue contains The "Illegalists" by Doug Imrie, reprinted from Anarchy: a Journal of Desire Armed. Illegalism is the anarchist philosophy which embraces criminality as a method of reappropriation of wealth. This article is primarily concerned with the actions of French illegalist Marius Jacob and his band of illegalists who were active between the late 1800s and early 1900s. Following on from this is Why I Was A Burglar by Alexandre Jacob, (reprinted from Fifth Estate, #370), where we can read a personal account of an illegalist. Also in this issue is an interview with a founding member of Past Tense and the South London Radical History group on his motivations and experiences. This is followed by two pieces on Anna Trapnel, seventeenth century Fifth Monarchist prophetess and Roger Crab, seventeenth century hermit, ethical vegetarian, and political writer, (besides other epithets). The life of Franklin Rosemont, poet, artist, historian, street speaker and surrealist activist, who died shortly before this issue went to print, is heralded. No Quarter #4 finishes up with a review of Anja Kirschner's 2008 film, Trail of the Spider and several book reviews.
	No Quarter #4.5 The Politics of Carnival This half-issue of No Quarter was produced in a limited edition as a fundraiser for the 2009 Calgary Anarchist Bookfair. It contains an audio CD which has an eclectic mix of music which relates to No Quarter's areas of interest. It seeks to promote carnival as subversion, as a coming together of the people under their own rules and their own organisation, as opposed to carnival as social control. From a British perspective you might illustrate that by saying that it is juxtaposing the free festival scene of the late 20th century with Glastonbury festival as it is now. Its packaging is such a good solution and shows the innovation needed by small scale fanzine producers.
	No Quarter Pamphlet Series #2 : Trevor Bark – Crime Becomes Custom, Custom Becomes Crime Author's abstract: The British Marxist Historians (BMH) were involved in the study not only of protest and social movements, but of what was and was becoming crime. The enclosures, the change from wages in kind (perquisites) to the wage form itself (Linebaugh 1991), wood gathering, nutting and so on that were previously peoples custom were criminalized and fought politically by the disposessed. Thompsons 'moral economy' theses was based upon the study of bread riots, and this in turn became part of what is known as the social crime debate (Douglas Hay et al, 1975) Rather than economic crime and protest being central to the poors' lives, crime became marginalized and left to the professionals or a marginalized lumpen element in the Fordist era. Into the late modern era we have seen the growth of crime often linked to high unemployment and 'flexibility', and the growth of social movement protest. The themes of the BMH about a militant participation in the present, a political Marxism, and reconstructing theory are important ones. To that end we involve ourselves in the social movements, whether that is a rediscovery of the mass tobacco and alcohol smuggler, other informal economic activity in the city, or the emerging anti-capitalist movement. I am presenting a case for the development of the social crime concept by testing whether the key characteristics can be found today, and also politically reassessing the nature of crime itself. Originally (Hay et al, 1975) said it wasn't possible to distinguish between 'good' criminals here and 'bad' criminals there, and this all blurred into the labouring poor; Linebaugh (1991) notes payment of wages was often years behind. The distinction between the respectable/unrespectable, non-deserving and deserving poor manifested itself in the political development of the Labour movement and Marxism, and can be found within the anti-capitalist movement. Following "No Logo" and its emphasis on the trademark brand names in the shops I will present analysis about shoplifting and whether the politics of part of the anti-capitalist movement has had any effect on shoplifters choices. I will ask the question about how you go about destroying the brand most effectively, and outline the liberalism found within "No Logo". 'Crime' is now a central feature of the social movements large manifestations and also for a significant section of the general public.
	No Quarter Pamphlet Series #3 : Omasius Gorgut – Poor Man's Heaven, The Land of Cokaygne: A 14th Century Utopian Vision "In most if not all the corners of Europe, in their mythologies, folk tales, popular songs and festivals, the poor of the Middle Ages dreamed up a land where their sufferings were reversed, where people lived in harmony and plenty without having to work. The lives of the poor in medieval times were viciously hard – oppressed and exploited by the rich and the church, terrorised by their hired soldiers, forced to work all their lives without hope of any change in their situation. On the one hand they were told constantly by the Church that they could not expect and should not dream of a better existence in this life; on the other that a paradise existed for them somewhere in another. People were also “much more directly aware than they are today of the tyranny of necessity, the essential hardness in the nature of things. Man was so far from being the master of his environment that he was always prone to feel that it was his master. He depended on the weather not only because bad weather is unpleasant, but because a bad season might mean absolute famine. And, under the very best conditions, long hours and a bare living were still a necessity from which he could see no possible way of escape.” (A.L. Morton) Not surprising then that their frustrated dreams should create a place where everything was free, where life was easy, where the weather was always fine, where all desires came true – and where the rich could never hope to come. Their dream of a Utopia of the poor appears as the English Cokaygne and the French Coquaigne, as Pomona or the pagan Island of Apples, where “all is plenty and the golden age ever lasts. Cows give their milk in such abundance that they fill large ponds in milking. There, too, is a palace all of glass, floating in the air and receiving within its transparent walls the souls of the blessed." (Baring-Gould) It is the Irish Hy Brasil, where "milk flows from some of the rivulets, others gush with wine". In medieval German legend it is Scharaffenland, or Venusberg, the mountain of delight and love, where Lady Venus held her court, leading a fantastical life of pleasure in the company of carefree spirits of the air, together with fair nymphs of woodland and water, and heroes seduced there from the world above. In Holland they imagined Cokaygne as Luikkerland, where “All you loafers always lying about, Farmer, soldier, and clerk, you live without work, Here the fences are sausages, the houses are cake, And the fowl fly roasted, ready to eat.” The dream is expressed as the Country of the Young, as Lubberland; as the Poor Man's Heaven and the Rock Candy Mountains. These fantastic lands shared the same characteristics: an earthly and earthy paradise, an island of magical abundance, of eternal youth and eternal summer, of joy, fellowship and peace. “Brueghel painted it in a picture that has many of the most characteristic features: the roof of cakes, the roast pig running round with a knife in its side, the mountain of dumpling and the citizens who lie at their case waiting for all good things to drop into their mouths… It is the Utopia of the hard-driven serf… for whom the getting of a bare living is a constant struggle.” In 14th Century England, this image of a free earthly paradise emerged in a popular song, The Land of Cokaygne. Many versions existed, varying from area to area; and it was anonymous, a product of many minds, an expression of the subversive desires of a class." This text is an updated version of that originally issued by Past Tense.
Further information on No Quarter publications can be found on the No Quarter website: anarchistpirates.blogspot.com

Ricardo Mones: Go virtual and die

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:44:43 +0000

Yesterday I got a interesting announce in my inbox: try our hosting solution for free during two months. The announce came from the nice people of Gandi, the registrar where I maintain my mones.org domain.

So far, so good. Applied and got my share in minutes. The features are not impressive, just the minimal: 256 MB RAM, 3 GB (system) + 5 GB (data) disk, 5 Mbit bandwidth and a 1/60th part of the processor, which is marketed as something between a Pentium III and Via C7 processor (not very informative).
What took most time was to wait the reverse DNS to be active because of my change of mind in the middle of the process :-). The system installed was Debian Lenny, of course, and took just minutes.

Less than 24 hours later you can see what happens, and I have not access to the server... despite I love the way Gandi does business those are not the things that inspire confidence in a hosting solution :-(.

Colin Leroy: Deux mois sans cigarette

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:42:16 +0000

Ça y est, ça fait plus de deux mois que j’ai arrêté de fumer. J’en suis fier :)

Depuis ce post à J+ 3 semaines, j’ai continué à évoluer sur le chemin de l’ex-fumeur. Les clopes réflexe (après manger, en attendant le train, …) ne sont plus dangeureuses et ne me tentent plus du tout. La plupart du temps, je n’y pense même pas ; il arrive cependant que l’idée me traverse la tête que c’est l’heure de descendre fumer après le film, par exemple. La force de cette habitude ne doit pas être sous-estimée, pourtant : Clo m’a dit qu’il lui arrive encore de se dire qu’elle allait, par exemple, lire son mail pendant que je serais en bas, avant d’avoir un “instant pff n’importe quoi”…

Il reste la difficulté des occasions exceptionnelles et spéciales où j’avais l’habitude de fumer, par exemple une situation conflictuelle me provoque encore une envie de fuite vers une cigarette. Il faudra que je me méfie lors des prochains mariages, sorties ciné. La prochaine occasion du genre c’est dans un mois, fin juillet, concert de Prodigy. Truc de punk, méfiance, j’ai peur de ne pas pouvoir me reposer sur la loi Evin sur ce coup là. Je compte sur le tassement de la foule pour empêcher les gens de fumer.

L’avantage de pas fumer c’est que ça va quand même beaucoup mieux dans mes poumons. (Comme dirait mon médecin traitant en rigolant, “Ooooh, c’est vrai ? Quelle surprise, je m’y attendais pas du tout !”) Je n’ai plus besoin de traitement de fond et très rarement de ventoline. Je peux faire trente kilomètres à vélo avec un non-fumeur entraîné (hello Yann) et le suivre, ou en faire six comme un bourrin pour ne pas rater le train (et arriver à l’heure sauf que y’a grève, mais ceci est une autre histoire). Un autre avantage c’est que quand il flotte ou qu’il fait 34°C à l’ombre j’ai pas besoin de sortir.

Sinon, d’autres indices me laissent croire que ça progresse plutôt bien : au boulot, l’empêcheur d’arrêter en rond n’essaye plus de me pousser à la clope, depuis peu. On ne me dit plus que je suis chiant depuis que j’ai arrêté – c’est vrai que j’ai eu une phase où j’ai été, on va dire, plus direct qu’avant. Je crois que ça m’est resté un peu, mais d’un autre côté, envoyer paître, à dose raisonnable, ça fait moins de mal (à tous) que de serrer les dents en attendant que l’agacement passe. Enfin, les clopes des autres commencent à puer à peu près tout le temps (au début de l’arrêt, elles sentaient bon), et lorsqu’un collègue fumeur vient me demander quelque chose juste après sa clope, c’est une infection. Chers collègues fumeurs, vous commencez à sentir mauvais dans mon nez, et je m’en réjouis, c’est bon signe pour moi.

Colin Leroy: Escalade en falaise : vidéo

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:15:48 +0000

Voici un petit montage des vidéos du week-end dernier.

[See post to watch Flash video]

Colin Leroy: Première sortie escalade en falaise !

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:59:05 +0000

Dimanche, Clo m’a fait une super surprise de fête des pères et m’a emmené au pied du Roc d’Anglard, à Saint-Antonin Noble Val, grimper en compagnie de Pascale et Gildas et d’Ariane et Olivier. Ça fait maintenant plus d’un an que j’ai commencé l’escalade avec mes collègues et j’arrive à peu près au niveau 6b. Mais jusqu’ici je n’en avais fait qu’en salle, à Altissimo Saint-Martin. La salle est super, avec une partie bloc et une partie voie ; mais ça reste du mur artificiel avec des prises de couleur à suivre.

Dimanche, j’ai donc découvert plusieurs choses que je ne connaissais pas.

Tout d’abord, au pied de la falaise, on a l’embarras du choix pour commencer la voie (ou pas !). Pas de couleur pour se guider, juste une direction générale, celle de la prochaine plaquette… Et parfois il faut tâtonner, ou faire un léger détour pour se simplifier la vie.

Jusqu’ici, en salle, je n’avais jamais grimpé qu’en moulinette (où la corde est déjà passée en haut de la voie, et redescend, ce qui suspend le grimpeur qui chute. En falaise par contre, lorsque la corde n’est pas encore placée, il faut grimper “en tête”, c’est à dire que sur chaque plaquette rencontrée (tous les un à deux mètres), il faut poser une dégaine puis y accrocher la corde. Lorsque l’on dépasse ensuite la dégaine, on est au-dessus du point d’assurage, et une chute fait redescendre de deux fois la distance qui nous sépare de ladite dégaine. C’est donc avec beaucoup plus de précautions que j’ai entrepris chaque passage difficile, et je n’ai pas expérimenté cette fois ce qu’on appelle un vol. La confiance dans l’assureur et dans le matériel me semble indispensable pour grimper en tête sans avoir (trop) peur du vol… C’est d’ailleurs pour cette raison que j’ai refusé d’assurer les autres, car je n’ai pas (encore) appris à assurer avec un 8.

Une fois arrivé en haut de la voie, on rencontre un anneau souveau doublé d’une chaîne. Il sert à y passer la corde afin de pouvoir redescendre en moulinette sans laisser de matériel : on récupère les dégaines en redescendant. Pour installer cette moulinette, il faut d’abord se vacher, c’est à dire s’accrocher solidement à l’anneau à l’aide d’une longe adaptée et d’un mousqueton adapté lui aussi. Une fois vaché, l’assurage ne sert plus : on est accroché à la paroi par la longe. Il faut alors passer la corde d’assurage dans l’anneau sur le mur, puis la défaire du baudrier. Ceci doit être fait dans cet ordre afin d’éviter de laisser malencontreusement tomber la corde, et se retrouver coincé là haut en attendant les secours. J’ai donc fait ma première ascension en tête après m’être entraîné à la manoeuvre à terre :-) et j’ai malgré tout réussi à me tromper, en passant ma corde dans le mousqueton de ma vache au lieu de l’anneau du mur… Et j’ai donc recommencé la manoeuvre deux fois. (Je précise à l’attention de ma Maman que cette erreur n’était pas dangereuse, ç’aurait été impossible de se dé-vacher sans réaliser le problème. Ne t’inquiète pas Maman :-)

Les fois suivantes je ne me suis pas trompé :-)

Au final, j’ai beaucoup aimé cette journée (dont j’ai mis plus de photos sur cet album) et j’espère bien y retourner cet été !

Holger Berndt: Nautilus Split View Update

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:20:00 +0000

I've been working on cleaning up the history of the my Nautilus split view branch, and basing it on the official git repository. That's done now, so consider this post a call for testing! Grab the source and get it running. Please send emails with bug reports, patches, remarks, and also success stories. I'd also be interested in reports from spatial-mode users, just to make sure the patchset doesn't introduce any regressions for them. I'd really like some more testing before requesting a review upstream.

Some visual polishing took place compared to the old screencast, for example the thin border in the theme's selected-color around the active pane, and shadow around the inactive pane.

The buttons with the greyed-out look in the location bar on the right side of the screenshot are in fact sensitive. Clicking e.g. directory buttons changes to the respective directory and also make that pane active. The grey zoom control widgets and the insensitive-looking background work in an analogous way. That's not exactly HIG-compliant, but it seems very natural and intuitive.

Colin Leroy: Politicards à la con

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:48:05 +0000

Levebvre, porte-parole de l’UMP, après que le conseil constitutionnel aie tranché en défaveur de certains points de la loi création et internet (Hadopi): “Les socialistes [...] n’ont pas de quoi être fiers. [...] après le recours devant le Conseil constitutionnel, ils auront des comptes à rendre aux artistes et dans les urnes“.

Riester: “Le texte permettait déjà aux internautes de déposer un recours devant le juge. On gagne une étape, on va directement au juge. Donc le caractère dissuasif sera encore plus fort“. À part le fait que ta loi foulait la présomption d’innocence aux pieds, t’as tout compris…

Veut-il dire qu’ils auraient préféré passer une loi anticonstitutionnelle sans rien demander à personne ? Y’en a vraiment qui doutent de rien…

Enfin, je me rends compte que bien que ces gens m’indignent, j’arrive mal à expliquer pourquoi. Mon avocat préféré y arrive beaucoup mieux.

Colin Leroy: Webkit2pdf

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 08:56:28 +0000

Some time before Christmas, I was looking for a nice gift to Clo and had a idea I found good: a good quality printed version of her blog, for the souvenir, would be quite unique and nice.

Problem is that printing it would be really painful, with about 80 posts, I didn’t want to do that manually and thought it’d be better to be able to automate that with html2ps or something like this.

html2ps having a really crappy rendering, I investigated Webkit and found it would print nicely, but it only supported printing via print dialog, which was painful too. So I dived into webkit-gtk’s code and patched it and added support for PDF export (via GTK+ print support); then proceeded to write a little app to batch-export to PDF a list of URLs.

That done, I used pdftk (the PDF ToolKit) to concatenate all these PDFs into a big one, uploaded it to lulu.com and there was the result:

Some more iterations of the webkit patch later and with the help of Gustavo Noronha of GNOME fame, an official API was defined, implemented and commited to Webkit. After reworking my app a bit to fit this API, I’ve been able to test it with the second volume of Clo’s blog (yes, she writes quite a lot, this second volume has 350 pages for little Paul’s first six monthes !), and here’s a new piece of free software born: webkit2pdf. It requires a fairly recent Webkit version; I’m not even sure they released since the patch’s in.

Colin Leroy: Statistiques sur les mesures ANFR (Agence Nationale des Fréquences)

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:13:23 +0000

À force de lire des articles sur les ondes pulsées du réseau GSM, qui nous émettraient trop fort dans les cerveaux, provoquant des cancers et des maux de têtes (mais pas dans cet ordre), j’ai voulu voir par moi-même l’étendue des dégâts concernant ces antennes.

Il paraît que le consensus scientifique est qu’un seuil d’exposition inférieur à 0.6V/m est réputé non dangereux pour la santé, et certaines associations comme Robin des Toits militent pour atteindre un tel seuil partout sur le territoire. Le but est noble, mais le ton alarmiste et je n’aime pas le ton alarmiste, surtout que les médias relaient (héhé) bien souvent les cris Au Loup sans aucune analyse derrière.

N’étant jamais si bien servi que par moi-même, après avoir regardé sur le site de l’ANFR, Cartoradio, à combien de V/m j’étais exposé à la maison, et après avoir trouvé ces chiffres (entre 0.11 et 0.51 V/m selon la bande) très peu inquiétants, je me suis demandé si j’étais juste chanceux ou si la plupart des antennes relais arrosaient déjà relativement peu.

J’ai donc enregistré toutes les pages de mesures de l’ANFR de la numéro 1 à la numéro 16328, modulo celles qui n’existent pas, grâce à ce script ; notez bien qu’une pause de 2 secondes a été insérée entre chaque enregistrement, pour le cas improbable où j’aurai pu mettre leur serveur à genoux à moi tout seul.

Profitant du fait que chacune des pages est sur le même modèle, j’ai ensuite extrait les valeurs correspondant aux émetteurs GSM avec ce script vers ce fichier CSV, que j’ai ensuite importé dans une base MySQL (car je suis nul en tableur) afin de pouvoir manipuler toutes ces données. Pour ceux qui sont nuls en base de données, il est aussi possible de l’importer dans un tableur en utilisant le séparateur de champ “,”. Pour ceux qui ne font pas confiance au fichier CSV, mes scripts sont disponibles pour le refaire.

Voici quelques résultats. J’ai été surpris de voir le niveau moyen et médian augmenter au fil des années : j’aurais pensé que, la technologie évoluant, les émissions auraient nécessité moins de puissance. J’ai aussi été surpris de voir une médiane inférieure ou égale à 0.6V/s : suite au bourrage de crâne des médias, je supposais qu’on était assaillis d’ondes néfastes en permanence. Ceci dit, ce schéma sur la FAQ de l’ANFR a tendance à montrer qu’il faut, pour être irradié dans les règles de l’art, se mettre pile en face d’une antenne relais. En dessous, on ne risque pas grand chose.

Quant au wifi, à 0.3V/m à 40 centimètres de la borne, à mon avis, ce n’est pas vraiment la peine de flipper du hotspot de l’hôtel d’à côté. Robin des Toits mentionne aussi la dangerosité du Bluetooth (portée de 10 à 100 mètres) ou encore des tags RFID (portée de quelques centimètres dans la majorité des cas – on trouve par exemple un tag RFID dans les systèmes de déverrouillage de portes à ventouse) ; de mon côté, j’émets (huhu) quelques doutes là dessus. L’ANFR ne mesure même pas ce type d’émission.

Ceci dit, on fait dire ce qu’on veut aux statistiques, donc j’enjoins quiconque est intéressé de faire ses propres statistiques, à partir du fichier CSV, et de me prouver que mon cerveau est déjà fondu.

Quelques chiffres que j’ai trouvé intéressants :

Nombre total de mesures : 14829
Nombre de mesures avec signal <= 0.6 V/m : 9584 (64.63 % du total) (entre 0 et 0.6 V/m :9584 – 64.63 % du total)
Nombre de mesures avec signal <= 1 V/m : 11500 (77.55 % du total) (entre 0.6 et 1 V/m :1916 – 12.92 % du total)
Nombre de mesures avec signal <= 2 V/m : 13429 (90.56 % du total) (entre 1 et 2 V/m :1929 – 13.01 % du total)
Nombre de mesures avec signal <= 4 V/m : 14353 (96.79 % du total) (entre 2 et 4 V/m :924 – 6.23 % du total)
Nombre de mesures avec signal <= 10 V/m : 14780 (99.67 % du total) (entre 4 et 10 V/m :427 – 2.88 % du total)
Nombre de mesures avec signal <= 20 V/m : 14821 (99.95 % du total) (entre 10 et 20 V/m :41 – 0.28 % du total)
Nombre de mesures avec signal <= 30 V/m : 14827 (99.99 % du total) (entre 20 et 30 V/m :6 – 0.04 % du total)
Nombre de mesures avec signal <= 50 V/m : 14829 (100 % du total) (entre 30 et 50 V/m :2 – 0.01 % du total)

Nombre de mesures par puissance, de 0 à 5 V/m

Nombre de mesures par puissance, de 5 à 50 V/m

Les quatre mesures dont le signal est supérieur à 25 V/m sont : 8165, 8166 et 8181 (même endroit) et 13919. La distance de mesure est de 1, 3, 3 et 5 mètres pour chacune d’elles et la zone de mesure est interdite au public.

Moyennes :

Moyenne des 227 mesures en 2001 :0.67 V/m – médiane 0.3 V/m – distance moyenne* : 53.83 m
Moyenne des 741 mesures en 2002 :0.5 V/m – médiane 0.2 V/m – distance moyenne* : 66.68 m
Moyenne des 1632 mesures en 2003 :0.57 V/m – médiane 0.3 V/m – distance moyenne* : 80.79 m
Moyenne des 1737 mesures en 2004 :0.7 V/m – médiane 0.4 V/m – distance moyenne* : 63.71 m
Moyenne des 1941 mesures en 2005 :0.84 V/m – médiane 0.4 V/m – distance moyenne* : 72.4 m
Moyenne des 2634 mesures en 2006 :0.9 V/m – médiane 0.4 V/m – distance moyenne* : 72.29 m
Moyenne des 2380 mesures en 2007 :0.89 V/m – médiane 0.4 V/m – distance moyenne* : 62.7 m
Moyenne des 2525 mesures en 2008 :0.97 V/m – médiane 0.5 V/m – distance moyenne* : 66.5 m
Moyenne des 1007 mesures en 2009 :1.08 V/m – médiane 0.6 V/m – distance moyenne* : 81.23 m
Moyenne des 14829 mesures :0.83 V/m – médiane 0.4 V/m – distance moyenne* : 69.73 m

Moyenne et médiane des mesures, par an

*: les distances sont faussées par la présence de données vides et de données floues dans les données ANFR (‘50 m – 100 m’ compte pour 50, ‘<50 m’ compte 0, par exemple).

Colin Leroy: New ride

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 07:05:39 +0000

English readers of this place may not know yet, but this post was about me quitting smoking. So, yes, I’ve quit smoking since a month, 39 days to be precise :-)

Given how I feel in better shape, especially in the body parts involved in breathing (allergies, asthma), I decided it was time to ditch my old, rusty and un-fun bike that my dad gave me 10 years ago and which has been built in 1992 or something (yes, if I treat myself with a bike after one month, I wonder what I’ll find after one year…). This old Giant Coldrock is now officially retired, and replaced by a brand new Giant (can’t help, they make good bikes) Rincon which is until now a very nice ride. I’ve only used it in the city for now, but I can’t wait to put some mud on it.

The mandatory pictures :

Old Giant Coldrock – Photo courtesy tmbs.nl

new Giant Rincon – photo courtesy Giant bicycles

All of this doesn’t help me patch Claws Mail…

Paul: Greedy, Thieving Bastards

Mon, 25 May 2009 09:55:17 +0000

It is said that public confidence in politicians is at a very low ebb following the Telegraph's leaking (and subsequent reporting by most newspapers) of the majority of politicians' questionable expenses claims. Claiming for second homes, piano tuning, clearing of a moat (£2,115), an ornamental duck house (£1,645), swimming pool maintenance (several claims), mortgages that don't exist (£15,000+), double-claims for council tax, a trouser press (more than one claim), home cinema system, removal of wisteria, trimming hedge around "helipad" (£609), leather rocking chair (£1,200), food, toilet seat, eye liner, biscuits, and so on, and so on, ad nauseum.

Politicians from all the main three parties have been exposed. Most give the appearance of being humbled in the media now that they have been found out, however, some, (the Tory gentry, as you may imagine), have appeared indignant that they should have to answer to the lower classes. An example of this is Anthony Steen, MP for Totnes in Devon, who claims that we are all just jealous of his million pound home: "I've done nothing criminal, that's the most awful thing, and do you know what it's about? Jealousy. I've got a very, very large house. Some people say it looks like Balmoral. It's a merchant's house of the 19th century. It's not particularly attractive, it just does me nicely."

What is surprising, or perhaps unfortunate, is that it takes something like this exposé in the media to lower the public's confidence in MPs when just a quick browse through history will show that they have been stealing from us for years. Most people would face fines or imprisonment for theft, but these MPs just give an apology, pay a little back and feel exonerated.

There have been heated, angry public debates where politicians are confronted by their constituents, resulting in some MPs being in denial about the feelings of the people whom they are supposed to represent. One wonders if this could be the spark to ignite the summer of discontent of which there have been murmurings of in the press. There is a long history of social protest in the UK, as you can imagine (if you don't already know). Let us take the act of incendiarism as an example and quote from John E. Archer's 'By A Flash and A Scare', where he asks Why Incendiarism?:

East Anglia had a history of social protest prior to 1830 and the combatants involved in the riots, marches and demonstrations had learnt to their cost that open displays of protest brought in their wake punishments ranging from the death penalty at worst, to imprisonment at best. One has to remember the traumas and psychological impact that these sentences had on small village communities. In the village of Withersfield, for instance, with a population of 500, it must have been painful to witness the transportation of six labourers, who were later joined by their wives and children. In all, a short-lived riot permanently thinned this small village of well over twenty inhabitants. Many of these open confrontations were also unsuccessful in achieving their desired aims, the riots of 1835-36 especially so. Therefore there was little incentive to organize or protest if the ringleaders were to be singled out and given harsh sentences while points of grievance continued to exist. Open confrontation was also hindered by the increase in population, since employers held the whip hand on the employment market. Thus one major avenue of rural protest was closed up and the alternatives of individual terrorist action became a more viable proposition. Practicality was a strong driving force; fear of detection, fear of punishment, fear of association, all created a climate of secretiveness. The army, the yeomanry and the special constables were all powerless against such night-time attacks on property. To this extent Hobsbawm and Rudé were correct to view incendiarism as an active response to defeat.

If incendiarism was, as often argued, so detrimental to the economic interests of labourers, why then did it develop to such an extent before 1850? Farmers before 1830 were probably not insured and the fires would have caused financial hardship, but after that date insurance protected the majority and the fires were not so economically devastating. But was the main purpose of incendiarism to cause financial loss to property holders? The answer was considerably more complex than simple economics. Incendiaries never aimed to kill or injure property holders and their choice of targets was often discriminatory. That much we can be sure of. These acts of protest should be placed into a similar category as 'ceffyl pren' of Wales and the 'rough music' of rural England. It was a psychological weapon with a great deal of impact in the small communities. The sufferer was a target of hatred and he and the rest of the community knew as much. The victim had been singled out for special treatment and the fire was there to publicize the fact that he, more than any other person, had transgressed against someone or some custom. One labourer made the telling remark of an incendiary victim: 'the sooner he's out of the country the better.' In another case, Peck of Congham (Norfolk), although insured, claimed another incendiary fire 'would oblige him to relinquish business altogether.'

The publicity factor of incendiarism was important, for some fires were reported to have been visible across forty miles of countryside and they attracted large celebrating crowds, up to 3,000 in one or two cases. It is impossible to quantify the fear of fire but undoubtedly the farmers' fear was considerable. In a letter to Melbourne, the Home Secretary, the Reverend Brett of Congham wrote that 'panic generally prevails' in the county after the large number of fires. Labourers maintained 'nothing scares the farmers like a good fire'. This quite natural dread cannot be emphasized enough as a psychological weapon. Such a 'flash and a scare' provoked a repsonse from employers, often a favourable one, and to that end it has to be considered successful in a limited way.

Labour was adversely affected after a large stack or granary fire, especially if the fire occurred before the threshing season, but the incendiary's hatred transcended such considerations. To him the stacks and barns were symbols of wealth, oppression and power and the fires were a method of 'getting even'. If this was the case then it was more than likely that fires were lit in a less discriminating fashion during periods of greatest distress, because all employers would have been regarded in a similar way as oppressors of labour. Campbell Foster thought this to be the case in 1844 when he wrote:

Can we feel surprised that a labourer out of work half the week, and leaving his home, without having broken his fast … , should return a dangerous man, ready to strike a lucifer match and thrust it into the farmer's stack, who will not give him work, or into any stack, because it is the evidence of wealth and comfort, which, hungered and starving, he hates to see?

While farm work may have been adversely affected by incendiarism on a very localized scale—the individual farms which experienced arson attacks—regionally, employment was created by farmers keen to lessen the possibility of incendiarism in their neighbourhoods. Nightwatchmen were employed extensively during intensive periods of incendiarism. In a number of cases they proved ineffective and in at least two cases nightwatchmen were actually convicted of incendiarism. One labourer reportedly said 'the fires did poor men good, for they now get two shillings a night watching them'. General farm work 'not actually required, that is not immediately beneficial, such as marl and clay carting, cutting down fences, cleaning borders', likewise increased. Arson also halted intended wage reductions and, in some cases, forced them to rise by a shilling or two a week.

Incendiarism was primarily a response by labourers, especially the younger ones, to the oppressive social and economic conditions which they were forced to endure. It is possible to describe the fires as disorganized and uncoordinated acts of protest kindled by a work-force lacking bargaining power and fearful of open confrontation.

—
Links
MPs' expenses in detail (The Telegraph)
MPs' expenses on Google Earth (The Telegraph)

Paul: Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Mushalla

Fri, 22 May 2009 13:43:06 +0000

A video of the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble performing Mushalla outside BBC Television Centre is avaliable to view at the BBC website. A great track. They were billed to appear on the BBC television show Later with Jools Holland but did not – I don't know why.

They have recently released a 10" single, Alyo/Flipside, on the ever interesting Honest Jon's Records and a new album is due to be released shortly, (June 1st), also on Honest Jon's.

Other links:
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble website: www.hynoticbrass.net
Honest Jon's Records: www.honestjons.com
Hypnotic Brass Ensemble at Wikipedia: wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotic_brass_ensemble
Broad Casting Documentary Part 1: Tony Allen & Hypnotic Brass : www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBuwd2Dqul4
Broad Casting Documentary Part 2: Tony Allen & Hypnotic Brass : www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYQ1Hijuu_c

Holger Berndt: Geo-Tagging

Sun, 17 May 2009 08:25:00 +0000

Lately, I had to deal with digital maps at work - a very interesting topic. As I wanted to check out libchamplain anyways, I did a little plugin to display an estimate of the sender's location on a map in Claws Mail. This is a screenshot of one of my mails from a conference which I attended last year:

Of course, there's no way to infer the geographic location of a sender from the mail with any kind of certainty. For example, as mailing list management software tends to rewrite the mail headers, mails to the Claws Mail Users mailing list show up as originated here:

Other mailing lists (like GTK+, or Cairo) work fine, though.

The surprising (and somehow scary) result is that it works on a surprisingly large number of mails (in my quick test, almost half of the time), and if it does, it's oftentimes quite accurate, with deviations sometimes as small as 2 or 3 kilometers. I honestly wouldn't have expected that. The plugin is currently hosted on github, and requires Claws Mail from CVS and libchamplain 0.3.

On a side note: Also on github is an early version of a Gnome plugin, which includes the Gnome address book in Claws Mail's completion list. That plugin crashes on unload, though, which also happens during Claws Mail shutdown. I haven't investigated that in detail yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was due to a dependancy library not being plugin safe. Wouldn't be the first time.

Ricardo Mones: As times goes by

Sat, 16 May 2009 12:37:45 +0000

It's amazing to check and see how much has passed since last post. Not that I had nothing to tell, but maybe not in the mood to do it. Anyway there's not much excitement in my life lately, but looking back seems it isn't going too bad.

The project we were working at is already at production stage, and with only two or three phone calls to solve minor issues so far, which is not common, as I've heard. This is something I, as a the project leader, am proud of, and not being wrong with all the work-hours invested in testing and bugfixing ;-). The client seems to be happy with the results, and a second phase is planned, so more work waiting for our group. This contrasts with the landscape in other parts of the company, and the rumors floating around fed by the bad economic situation. Currently we already started other project for the our regional government, so we can't get bored at work until the end of year or so... Anyway, if luck smiles to me, I'll be doing more interesting things by the next year: yesterday submitted a grant application for review. Grants is a R+D program to provide funds for innovative ideas within the company. My idea is not so new, but it will be fun to investigate how to replace our Windows based SOE (i.e.: the image deployed in our laptops and desktops) by a Linux based one.

Time for lunch now...

Colin Leroy: A taste of Prodigy’s latest record,

Thu, 14 May 2009 20:16:09 +0000

…Invaders must die, which I can’t stop listening to since two weeks :

Here’s a video where they explain a bit of each track’s history. I didn’t get much of what they say :-) but it gives a good taste of the record’s energy.

Invaders Must Die, track by track from The Prodigy on Vimeo.

At the start the record surprised me quite a lot, but with more listening I find there are some similarities with the Experience, their first record (Charly, for example).

Colin Leroy: Un pas de plus vers la perfection

Wed, 13 May 2009 18:09:04 +0000

Voilà bientôt trois semaines que je suis parti en vacances avec ma petite famille…Mais Clo a très bien blogué sur le sujet et je compte plutôt vous raconter autre chose.

Je voulais profiter de ces vacances pour me débarrasser d’une mauvaise habitude, et je crois bien avoir réussi : quelques jours avant le départ, je me suis fait prescrire des patchs et pastilles à la nicotine, et le jour du départ à Beaulieu, je m’en suis collé un, j’ai jeté mon tabac et mes feuilles, rangé le briquet à côté de la gazinière et nous sommes partis.

Le premier jour j’ai eu pas mal envie de fumer, j’ai mangé quelques pastilles. Avoir attendu les vacances était effectivement une bonne idée, car l’envie m’a semblé plus une envie d’habitude qu’un manque physique (et pour cause, j’avais un patch) : la clope d’après le café, la clope de la pause sur l’autoroute, la clope d’après manger, …

Le deuxième jour, la même chose, le plus difficile était de passer outre l’envie-réflexe d’allumer une clope aux moments habituels : remplacées par des pastilles. Les pastilles, ça fait mal au ventre cependant.

Le troisième jour j’ai essayé de résister sans pastilles, et ça a marché.

Le quatrième jour, j’ai oublié de mettre un patch. Je m’en suis rendu compte peu avant midi, et j’ai décidé d’attendre de voir si j’en aurais réellement besoin. C’est ce jour là qu’on est allés m’acheter des chaussures à Nice Étoile, en plein centre de Nice après une heure de bouchons et sous la pluie donc le centre co était blindé. J’ai un peu grincé des dents mais… c’est passé :-) Clo ne m’a pas spécialement trouvé irritable, ou à peine.

De retour au boulot, dix jours après l’arrêt, je n’ai dit à personne que j’avais arrêté de fumer, histoire de gagner un peu de temps de tranquillité pour casser les habitudes de la clope au boulot. Je les ai remplacées par des verres d’eau, les clopes “faut que je me lève de mon siège” ; par un bout de discussion avec un collègue, les clopes “avec le café”. Et celle d’après manger, par plus de discussions à table (j’ai lu partout “ne restez pas à table après manger pour éviter la tentation”, mais ces conseils datent sans doute d’avant que les restos soient non-fumeurs), au lieu de lâcher tout le monde en avance…

C’est plus difficile qu’en vacances où l’on est dans un cadre inconnu, sans routine. Pas mal plus dur. Mais ça a l’air de tenir ! Faut juste pas me faire trop chier… :-)

Puis j’ai fini par le dire, que j’avais arrêté, lorsqu’on m’a explicitement demandé si je voulais accompagner pour une clope. Et là, je n’ai pas regretté de m’être octroyé une petite semaine de secret… Ça n’a pas raté, forcément et comme prévu, y’a un boulet pour essayer de me tenter par tous les moyens possibles. Il ne m’a pas encore collé une clope sous le nez mais ça ne saurait tarder. J’ai de la chance, il n’y en a qu’un (sur quatre fumeurs). J’m'en fous, en un sens ça m’agace mais il n’y arrivera pas, contrairement à moi qui y arriverai. Et puis il fait ça parce qu’il est jaloux de mon succès et de ma classe.

J’en suis donc à 18 jours sans tabac. C’est curieux mais depuis, j’ai (presque) plus besoin de mon traitement anti-asthme, et presque plus d’allergies non plus… Trop cool :-)

Pour les gens qui ont envie d’arrêter, j’ai trouvé un site suisse vraiment bien fichu avec plein d’informations, tests de dépendance, compteurs motivants, forums etc : stop-tabac.ch.

Colin Leroy: Souvenirs d’enfance

Wed, 06 May 2009 06:08:24 +0000

Bon, suite au sale coup que Mathieu me fait me voici dans l’obligation de répondre à quelques questions. C’est une idée de son grand frère que je ne connais même pas, mais si je joue pas le jeu Mathieu va se faire taper, donc je fais un effort.

Le but : répondre à 6 questions sur les souvenirs d’enfance et passer ensuite le relais à 3 personnes. Voici les questions :

Quel est le jouet qui vous a fait le plus plaisir ?
Quel cadeau vous a particulièrement déplu, avec impossibilité d’exprimer votre sentiment, bonne éducation oblige ?
Quel jouet avez-vous rêvé d’avoir sans jamais qu’il vous soit offert ?
Quel jouet avez-vous détourné de son objet initial et avec lequel vous avez passé beaucoup de temps ?
Quel jeu a fini au fond de l’armoire après une demie-heure et a constitué le plus gros gachis ?
Quel jeu a occupé vos récréations un bon bout de temps ?

Et mes réponses :

J’hésite. On va dire mon premier vélo de grand, un vrai VTT avec des roues de 24″ et DIX vitesses !
Peut-être ce livre d‘Histoire de France. Un jour où je m’ennuyais, j’ai fini par le lire et au final il m’a plu. J’ai eu deux ou trois cadeaux vraiment pires, mais plus tard, une fois adulte, donc ça n’entre pas dans le cadre de ce post et il n’y a pas prescription, donc motus.
Je ne me souviens d’aucun. Par contre je me souviens d’une déception immense lorsqu’il a fallu rendre mon Apple //c pour le remplacer par un Mac LC. (La remise était non négligeable à l’époque, 5000F sur 15000, donc je peux comprendre, mais quand même, j’étais dégouté).
J’ai passé énormément de temps à jouer au Lego, mais je ne pense pas avoir réussi à détourner ça de son objet initial qui est quand même assez vaste.
Une voiture téléguidée pourrie (avec un fil et qui tournait que quand elle voulait). Par contre j’ai aussi eu (plus tard) une vraie voiture télécommandée qui faisait du 30km/h et avec laquelle j’ai accidenté pas mal de choses dans l’appartement.
L’épervier (en primaire) ou un truc du genre. Et les billes (plein !) Après c’était sans doute plus varié… J’ai souvenir d’avoir lu les manuels du BASIC et du DOS pendant la récré au collège, mais ça m’a pas pris quatre ans.

Donc voilà, ça, c’est fait. Au tour de : Clo, Erwan, et Antoine. Soyez forts :-)

Holger Berndt: Easter weekend coding fun

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:17:00 +0000

Had some slack time over the easter weekend, so I was able to do some fun coding.

The Nautilus crew accepted two small patches of mine to deal with keyboard shortcuts. Now it's possible to assign shortcuts to Nautilus scripts, and the shortcuts are remembered accross sessions. That's fixing two long-term annoyances of mine. It landed just in time for Gnome 2.26.1, meaning the Ubuntu Jaunty is shipping the fixes already. Good timing.

The Nautilus split view branch that I have been blogging about (Planet readers: There is a screencast embedded in the previous post) is an ongoing pet project. I consider the branch pretty feature complete, except maybe background color modification of the inactive pane. However, the branch is currently based on an older revision, so the next big thing to do would be rebasing to the current state. In general, I am not hesitating to rebase the public branch on github when appropriate, even though I know that it's bad. Drop me a message if you want to contribute, and that poses problems for you. Anyways, with Gnome moving to git, all that is becomming easier, especially for externals. Did I already mention that git is awesome?

Of course, Claws Mail got some love, too. The notification plugin got support for window manager urgency hints and the fd.o sound specification. It also got a reworked bubble logic, to fix issues with Ubuntu's broken notification daemon. That will be going into cvs once I was able to test with Ubuntu Jaunty. I also wrote a little patch to include Gnome's addressbook in Claws Mail's address completion. The latter is not likely to go into cvs, but I may wrap the patch up and create a plugin for that.

Paul: Unofficial Claws Mail ClamAV™ Plugin – version 3.5 unleashed!

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:01:52 +0000

A new version of the unofficial Claws Mail ClamAV™ Plugin has been released. Version 3.5 supports Clam AntiVirus™ version 0.95, libclamav 6:2:0 — that is, at least it does once you apply the Personal Build patch.

Further details and downloads can be found on the Unofficial Claws Mail ClamAV™ Plugin page.

Colin Leroy: Paul having fun in the bath

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:08:12 +0000

Hi!

I couldn’t resist putting this short video from Clo’s blog (even if it’s flash, yes :-)

[See post to watch Flash video]

The water level was 8 centimeters lower after 15 minutes of this game… (that’s 3.2 inches for you strange-unit-using people :-P)

It looks like the age where Paul will refuse to go to bath is far, far away!

Also, Paul is starting to be able to stay sit for a few minutes; he has a tooth pointing, and he started eating mashed vegetables since a week or so. He’s growing so fast!

Miquel: Railscast script II

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:08:04 +0000

Hi there

Some of you would remember Railscast script, so I coded a new version using SQLite3.

The new version is this one and the empty database is that one.

Enjoy it

P.S. Remember to rename the empty database file from EmptyRailsCastDownloader.db to RailsCastDownloader.db.

Miquel: Railscast script

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 20:08:00 +0000

As some of you know, I am coding using the Ruby On Rails framework right now. Apart of this, I am a huge fan of http://railscasts.com/ and I like to watch the screencasts published in it.

Some weeks ago and during four weeks, my internet connection took me back almost to the 56 Kb modem age (my download speed was 100 kbps) and I was not able to watch the published episodes. Years ago I coded a perl script named deb-downloader because I was in a similar situation and I had to upgrade my Debian sid so I decided to code a little ruby script to download all the episodes from wherever I was and watch them at home.

This is the script and it is used for downloading the episodes you don’t have (the episodes already downloaded are stored in a text file and to not be downloaded again). If you like this script, you are free to use it, modify it and distribute it (it is under the GPL license) and even send me suggestions about how to improve it or add new functionalities.

Btw, I have downloaded all the episodes and I’m waiting for the new one (it is usually published every Monday).

Colin Leroy: Vos sauvegardes : faites-les. Ou regrettez-le

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:21:03 +0000

D’expérience, ça ne sert à rien de le dire. Il faut l’expérimenter pour s’y mettre.

Songez à ce que contient le disque dur de votre ordinateur. Des documents, des emails, de la musique, des photos, des films. Sur les photos, les emails, et les films, on peut retrouver des moments normaux : un pique nique, une discussion sur les horaires de train pour les vacances de 2003. On peut aussi y retrouver d’autres moments : votre mariage, préparation, photos du jour J, photos du lendemain ; votre fils à sa naissance, à 2 jours, à deux semaines ; un voyage à l’autre bout de la terre…

Voici à quoi ressemble ledit disque dur :

Le plateau tourne à 7200 tours par minute, et la tête de lecture flotte à une dizaine de microns au dessus, ce qui se représente un centième de l’épaisseur d’un cheveu.

La question n’est donc pas si, mais quand cette belle mécanique va faillir. Lorsque ce sera arrivé, tous les fichiers stockés dessus disparaîtront à jamais. Et même si vous en êtes conscients, ça vous arrivera car vous aurez repoussé et repoussé le moment de mettre une bonne sauvegarde en place, jusqu’à trop tard.

Maintenant que vous avez expérimenté la perte de quelques gigaoctets de données irremplaçables, le moment est venu de la mettre en place, cette sauvegarde. Il y a différents points à suivre :

Mauvaise sauvegarde

Procédure manuelle (insertion d’un disque externe ou d’un DVD vierge, opérations manuelles pour copier les fichiers) : vous allez en avoir assez très vite et le problème réapparaîtra.
Sauvegarde non testée : Une fois les fichiers sauvegardés on met tout ça dans un placard et on n’y pense plus. Tant qu’on n’a pas relu les fichiers présents sur la sauvegarde, on ne peut être sûr qu’elle est correcte.
Sauvegarde sur un unique média : Si la panne arrive au début d’une sauvegarde, celle-ci sera vide. Il faut au moins deux médias.

Bonne sauvegarde

Automatique : crontab sous Linux, tâches planifiées sous Windows, Time Machine sous Mac OS X.
Sur deux médias ou plus : par exemple deux disques externes, ou une sauvegarde distante : Dropbox par exemple.
Vérifiée à intervalles réguliers.

Oui, c’est pénible, mais ça vaut le coup. Je me suis fait avoir une fois, ma mère s’est faite avoir une fois, des milliers de gens se font avoir chaque jour et perdent les photos de leurs enfants ou les 2 ans de travail passés sur leur thèse.

Colin Leroy: On se “fait” un Scrabble

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:29:30 +0000

À chaque fois qu’on a envie de se faire un Scrabble c’est le même problème : on n’en a pas.

Avec Clo, on a donc décidé de prendre le taureau par les cornes. Ingrédients:

Wikipédia
Google Images
Carton
Papier
Ciseaux
Stylo
Surligneurs

Deux heures plus tard, ça donne :

On en est très fiers, et il est tout à fait jouable même si les lettres sont plus légères que d’habitude !

Paul: Google offers large donations to FOSS Email Application projects

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 17:02:07 +0000

If only it were true.

Since google launched gmail IMAP the Claws Mail development team (and several Claws Mail users) seem to have devoted a proportionately high amount of time to answering questions and working around problems that arise through gmail's IMAP implementation. The same must surely be true of other open source teams. How many wasted man-hours must that add up to through all the different development teams and how many more useful things could have been achieved in that time? How far will they set things back?

Don't believe the hype!

Colin Leroy: geekounet.org soon available

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:36:57 +0000

Dear readers,

I’ll stop renewing one of the domain names I have, geekounet.org, because I don’t use it enough. It expires on April 12th.

If someone there is interested by this domain name, just tell me, I’d rather transfer it to someone I appreciate than to let the domain squatters get hold of it.

Update: I’ve started the transfer procedure to Pierre, who’s going to make a much better use of the domain than these idiot professional-domain-grabbers.

Colin Leroy: RAID1 array enlarging

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:12:13 +0000

Here’s a quick recipe to easily enlarge a RAID1 array with the least possible downtime, using linux 2.6 and mdadm.

We’ll start with a two-disk setup, /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, containing two arrays, /dev/md0 and /dev/md1. /dev/md0 is mounted on / and /dev/md1 is mounted on /backup. We want to grow /dev/md1 from 230GB to 898G (switching from 250GB disks to 1TB).

/dev/md0 has /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1, /dev/md1 has /dev/sda3 and /dev/sdb3, while swap partitions are on /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb2.

Obligatory warning: Use your own brain when following this procedure. Don’t follow me blindly – it’s your data at stake.

Booting on degraded array: don’t shoot yourself in the foot.

When you’ll remove one of the existing disks, your computer won’t be able to boot if grub isn’t installed on the other disk’s bootsector, so make sure that grub is installed on both disks’ MBR:
#grub
grub> find /boot/grub/menu.lst
(hd0,0)
(hd1,0)
grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> root(hd1,0)
grub> setup (hd1)

Shutdown the computer, remove sdb, put in one of the new 1TB disks in place, and reboot. Booting can take some time while the initrd’s mdadm tries to find the missing disk.

You’ll boot with degraded arrays, as shown there:
#cat /proc/mdstat
md0 : active raid1 sda1[0]
19534912 blocks [1/2] [U_]

md1 : active raid1 sda3[0]
223134720 blocks [1/2] [U_]

Now, we’ll dump sda’s partition table:
#sfdisk -d /dev/sda > partitions.txt

Edit the partitions.txt file to remove the size=xxxxxxx field on the sda3 line, so that the biggest possible partition size will be used. The file will look like:

# partition table of /dev/sda
unit: sectors
/dev/sda1 : start= 63, size= 39070017, Id=fd, bootable
/dev/sda2 : start= 39070080, size= 1959930, Id=82
/dev/sda3 : start= 41030010, Id=fd
/dev/sda4 : start= 0, size= 0, Id= 0

Disk initialisation

Now partition sdb using this table:
#sfdisk /dev/sdb < partitions.txt

recreate swap if needed:
#mkswap /dev/sdb2; swapon -a

Put sdb back in the arrays:
#mdadm –manage /dev/md0 –add /dev/sdb1
#mdadm –manage /dev/md1 –add /dev/sdb3

Wait until the array is resynchronised and clean. I use:
#watch cat /proc/mdstat #(quit with Ctrl-C)

Install grub on the new disk using grub, like previously (sdb is hd1 for grub), so that you’ll be able to boot from it.

Changing the second disk

Shutdown, remove sda, put the second new disk in place of it, and reboot – make sure your BIOS is configured to try and boot on both drives.

Now you’ll have degraded arrays again:
#cat /proc/mdstat
md0 : active raid1 sdb1[0]
19534912 blocks [1/2] [_U]

md1 : active raid1 sdb3[0]
223134720 blocks [1/2] [_U]

Redo the whole disk initialisation section, this time on sda instead of sdb. Don’t forget to reinstall grub on sda.

In the end you’ll get your arrays clean as they were before, but /dev/md1 will still be 230GB instead of using the whole available room on the disks’ partitions 3.

Grow the things

Let’s ask mdadm to take the whole partitions size for md1:
#mdadm –grow /dev/md1 –size=max

You’ll have to wait for synchronisation again (watch cat /proc/mdstat).

The only remaining thing is to grow the ext3 filesystem sitting on md1, and that’s where the most downtime happen (your data won’t be available unless you do a live FS resize, which I didn’t want to test); these steps took about 30 minutes to complete for me:
#umount /dev/md1
#e2fsck -f /dev/md1 #(it’s better to force a check to avoid a resize failure)
#resize2fs /dev/md1 #(this makes the filesystem the biggest possible)
#e2fsck -f /dev/md1 #(verify that everything is OK)
#mount /dev/md1 #(and you’re done, as df -h should show you):

# df -h /dev/md1
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/md1 898G 228G 634G 27% /backup

Rambling about half-finished RAID setups

One thing you may have noticed is that I’m installing grub on both drives. This can seem evident, but most software RAID arrays I’ve seen couldn’t boot out of the second disk for lack of an MBR. It makes the RAID setup useful when your second disk fails, but if it’s the first, you’re forced to resort to a rescue CD or PXE boot to reboot your server. This makes things much harder to fix, provokes cold sweats, downtimes, and user annoyment. Install grub on both disks. Check the system boots when removing one disk, both the first or the second, before going into production. Don’t misunderstand your RAID arrays as a backup system. RAID arrays provides redundancy and eases (a LOT) recovering from a failed disk, but it doesn’t eases recovering from two failed disks; and it doesn’t recover lost data from human mistakes either. Regarding failed disks, best results are achieved by monitoring the disks – with smartd for example – and replacing suspicious disks too soon rather than too late.

Ricardo Mones: Facts and things that happen

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 09:26:01 +0000

Since last post...

A new year has began! (according some calendar systems, at least)

Obama is ruling the world! (yes, they could)

Debian Lenny is out! (congratulate ourselves!)

CVS packages built by hydra are uploaded nightly to claws-mail.org

Recent claws-mail packages are again uploaded to unstable (thanks to libetpan maintainer who uploaded it to sid)

Still working 10 hours a day...

But given current economic situation we have to congratulate for it... :-(

Colin Leroy: 0.30 defect/KLOC

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:31:55 +0000

I’ve had Claws-Mail added to Coverity’s scanner. The first result is : 0.30 report per 1000 lines of code. This is quite good I think, although these metrics aren’t a holy graal and static checking doesn’t catch everything.

There are 91 reports to look at, which I’ll start doing tomorrow evening – I’ll be alone at home this week, will use this time to bugfix!

Update: 6 reports remain, which are false positives. The fixed problems were mainly resource leaks (either fds or memory allocations), missing NULL checks when dereferencing pointers — most of them harmless but good to have fixed anyway, and uninitialized variables. No horrible bug was found by Coverity’s scanner, just corner cases. I’ve also ran some external plugins through it, and most of them are rather clean, with the exception of VCalendar, where most reports are due to libical which uses an apparently confusing memory allocation/free scheme.

Holger Berndt: Splitting the Shell ...

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:58:00 +0000

... but hopefully without cracking it completely.

Some time ago, I read up on split view filebrowsing in Nautilus, Gnome's desktop shell. The requests, comments, discussions, polls, and flames fill endless bugreports, forums, ideas, articles, and mailing list threads. Well, I am one of those people that like Nautilus, but miss the split view capability during heavy duty filebrowsing jobs. I liked Norton Commander back in the old days, and its numerous successors. And I am not alone.

So, in the true spirit of Open Source, I finally got my hands dirty and got a shot at it. It's not completely finished, but in a state that allows for a screencast preview:

The code is hosted on github:

$ git clone                                               git://github.com/hb/nautilus.git
$ git checkout -b split-view origin/split-view

But will it blend? That is the question.

I am curious if that branch will make it upstream. If you'd like that, you can help with testing and reporting (both, failures and successful uses)! While the patch is UI-wise minimal-invasive, quite a lot of code had to be shoveled around, so I am happy about every tester.

(the beautiful shell picture is by giopuo, published on flickr under Creative Commons by & share alike)

Miquel: Lenny (Debian GNU/Linux 5.0) released

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 14:08:02 +0000

Good news for the open source world. Lenny, the new Debian’s stable version, is out

Read about it here

Paul: Sentenced to education

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 08:58:46 +0000

Following on from the previous post, it is worth noting a recent news item which has revealed that, on average, in England and Wales a parent is sent to jail every two weeks for their child's truancy. There were 10,000 prosecutions in England alone in 2007.

This is all part of New Labour's target, launched in 1998, to cut truancy, which includes pouring millions of pounds, (over £800m), into the initiative, giving the police new powers to drag kids back to school, hefty fines and imprisonment for parents, paging and text messaging of parents, electronic tagging of parents, withdrawal of child benefit for truants' parents, spiked security fences tipped with paint which marks pupils' uniforms if they try to climb in or out, swipecards for pupils, fingertip scanning of pupils, informing travel agents to warn parents of the dangers of term-time holidays, and so on.

Does it work?

In 2008 truancy rates in England reached their highest level since 1997.

If school days are the best days of your life, go and see a psychiatrist!

Miquel: RoR and SQLite3 problems

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:36:41 +0000

I wrote an entry some time ago about the one-file SQL engines and I wanted to code an experiment about a website using SQLite3 as database. I coded a little site named http://www.cheatsheetsandrecipes.com and it worked ok, so that was the time to deploy it in my server in production mode.

Once the site was deployed, I spent some days trying to solve a problem with my database queries and finally I found the problem. There is a problem with rails 2.2.2 and sqlite3 version (explained here) which forces me to change to mysql and cancel my experiment because in my workstation sqlite3’s version is 3.5.9 and in my server it is 3.3.8.

Now the web is working with mysql (maybe I’ll change it again with the new debian stable version codenamed ‘lenny’ which is going to be release this weekend if everything works fine) and feel free to provide cheatsheets and recipes.

See you.

P.S. Maybe accessing to http://www.cheatsheetsandrecipes.com doesn’t work. It is because I bought the domain some hours ago and dns are replicating the ip address (be a little patient).

P.S.S. http://www.cheatsheetsandrecipes.com is beta, don’t be cruel with it (it began as an experiment and there are a lot of things to improve).

Paul: It's a class thing

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 10:52:23 +0000

Who Cares about the White Working Class? is "a new study on the white working class and ethnic diversity in Britain"¹ published by The Runnymede Trust, an "independent policy research organisation focusing on equality and justice through the promotion of a successful multi-ethnic society."²

"The essays in this volume all point to the paradoxical and hypocritical ways in which the ruling classes speak for the white working class on the one hand, and how they speak about them on the other. Whereas middle class commentators are happy to defend the white working class interests against the onslaught of politically correct multiculturalism, they will simultaneously deride and riducule the feckless and underserving poor, who have squandered the opportunities gracefully given to them by the state, and therefore righfully be left to wallow in their own poverty."³

The study has been prompted by "a recent emphasis in the media and by other commentators on the segragation of, and competition between, ethnic groups [which] has suggested that white working class communities may be losing out in the conflict over the allocation of scarce resources. … [It] shows that … the most disadvantaged working-class people of whatever ethnic background, roughly the poorest fifth of the population, are increasingly separated from the more prosperous majority by inequalities of income, housing and education. By emphasizing the virtues of individual self-determination and the exercising of 'choice', recent governments have in fact entrenched the ability of the middle and upper classes to avoid downward social mobility and preserve the best of life's goods for their own children. Moreover, the rhetoric of politicians and commentators has tended to abandon the description 'working-class', preferring instead to use terms such as 'hard working families' in order to contrast the the virtuous many with an underclass perceived as feckless and undeserving. … life chances for today's children are overwhelmingly linked to parental income, occupations and educational qualifications — in other words, class. The poor white working class share many more problems with the poor from minority ethnic groups than some of them recognise."⁴

The media's skewed portrayal of the white working class, e.g. the BBC's White Season and Channel 4's Immigration: — The Inconvenient Truth, is exposed as fallacy, "the white working class are habitually pitched against those of minority ethnic groups and immigrants, while larger social and economic structures are left out of the debate altogether. … The media's efforts to acknowledge and discuss white working class grievances has excluded issues such as the legacy of Thatcherism and deindustrialisation, or the rise of the super-rich under Labour. Instead, there is a fairly consistent message that the white working class are the losers … while minority ethnic groups are the winners – at the direct expense of the white working class."⁵

"The white working classes are discriminated against on a range of different fronts, including their accent, their style, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the social spaces they frequent, the postcode of their homes, possibly even their names. But they are not discriminated against because they are white."³

"When commentators argue over the neglected interests of the 'white working class', the comparison to other groups is always in terms of their ethnicity, with Bangladeshis in Tower Hamlets, or Pakistanis in Oldham. The distinctive social position of these groups is presented in terms of their ethnic identity, as cultural or religious difference, rather than by the very marked class inequalities that they also experience. This exaggerates the differences between ethnic groups, and masks what they hold in common. By stressing the whiteness of the white working class, the class inequality of other ethnic groups also slips from view. This sidesteps the real issue of class inequality."⁶ Of course, this is how the game works for the ruling classes: divide and rule. It always has. For example, see the employment and vagrancy laws, first in the UK, then later in the colonies, bending workers as far as they will go before they break.^*

"The rising significance of education in British society has not undermined the role of class; instead it has opened up new avenues for class competition and disadvantage. … despite the meritocratic values⁷ of British society, high social position still helps to 'insure' against weaker educational performance, and numerous studies show that if we compare lower achievers, those from more privileged backgrounds have much better careers than their less advantaged peers. … the fact remains that it is often harder for privileged children to fail than it is for disadvantaged children to succeed."⁶

England is the "most explicit example of the use of schooling by the upper classes to dominate the lower classes. … Adam Smith epitomised the English bourgeois viewpoint regarding working class education in The Wealth of Nations:

An instructed and intelligent people besides are always more decent and orderly than an ignorant one … less apt to be misled into any wanton or unnecessary opposition to the measures of government.

For Smith, as well as for the vast majority of the political, and intellectual élite at the time, the schooling of the working classes was always to be subordinate and inferior to that of the middle classes, designed to contain and pacify rather than to educate and liberate.⁸ When the English state schooling system was set up in the late 19th century the intention of the dominant classes was still to police and control the working classes rather than to educate them."⁹

All well and good, and to paraphrase a line from the introduction, this may all appear as truisms to you or I, even verging on the banal, but it is good that an organisation such as the Runnymede Trust has finally lifted the corner of the carpet and reported on what they've seen brushed under there. I welcome this publication, even if it does put itself well within the bracket of the middle class once again speaking about and for the working class — then again, the main body of readership will be the middle class, that is, I guess, its target audience. Mostly the essays are highly readable but, for me, it fell down in two places. One of these essays in particular made for nauseating reading indeed: the 8th and final essay. It starts with, "The remit for this chapter was to produce a contribution which translates academic thinking to non-academic audiences"¹⁰. An incredibly condescending read! Who did the author think he was writing for, the odd working class person who happened to come across the publication? If the difference between academic writing and non-acedemic writing is the dumbing-down for its apparently dumbed-down audience, then he did a great job. But, seriously, the main difference between an academic person and a non-academic person is the academic's ability to produce prose, but not his thought processes and his ability to understand and reason. This last essay was unnecessary.

Having said that, the report is, however, a stimulating read on the whole. If it works towards creating more solidarity and self-awareness within the working class, then it's a good thing.

Who Cares about the White Working Class? is available as a free PDF from the Runnymede Trust, here.

——
1. http://www.runnymedetrust.org/
2. Who Cares about the White Working Class?, inside cover.
3. Kjartan Páll Sveinsson, Introduction: The White Working Class and Multiculturalism: Is There Space for a Progressive Agenda?, What Does this mean for Race Equality? — The Aims of this Volume, pp. 5-6
4. Dr Kate Gavron, Foreword, pp. 2
5. Kjartan Páll Sveinsson, Introduction: The White Working Class and Multiculturalism: Is There Space for a Progressive Agenda?, Class Re-emerges in Political Discourse, pp. 5
6. Wendy Bottero, Class in the 21st Century, pp. 7, 10
7. …or, rather, because of them?
8. So little has changed.
9. Diane Reay, Making Sense of White Working Class Educational Underachievement, A Brief History of the Working Class Underachievement, pp. 23
10. Danny Dorling, From Housing to Health — To Whom are the White Working Class Losing Out? Frequently Asked Questions, pp. 59-65

Colin Leroy: Some news – at last!

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:25:17 +0000

Hello, dear abandoned readers, and happy new year!

I’ve not been very verbose on my blog this last month… Let’s try to fix that!

I’ve been pretty busy, first with holidays, where we drove over two tousand kilometers to Clo’s father’s place, then to my parents’, then back to Clo’s father’s. These were great holidays, we’ve been able to see about everybody we wanted to see on such occasions, and we’ve been able to rest quite well, as this is the moment that our son Paul chose to… start sleeping complete nights! Yay! So, since December 19th, we enjoy normal nights with no 3 am wake-up (well, actually Paul woke up once or twice since, but that’s a good ratio anyway).

We came back in Toulouse a few days after the new year, only to find that our heating pipes started leaking during the holidays. Yay. One more apartment problem. We really didn’t need this, as this means no heating… in January… with three months old Paul :-(

Since then we’ve started Cold War with our landlord, who is rather reluctant to pay for the fixes — it’s not as if he had the choice, as a decent apartment is required by law and decency includes heating — but he’s taking his time. We’re trying to leverage the little power we have, and we should have news next week now. He won’t be able to escape for much longer.

Don’t worry, in the meantime we have backup heaters which suck a lot of electricity, but keep the flat approximately warm. We decided two weeks ago that Clo and Paul should go spend two weeks at her father’s, in order to enjoy a normal modern house with heaters in all rooms, so we went there (on the Atlantic coast) on January 23rd… and woke up the 24th after the Klaus storm with an electricity outage. In Clo’s father modern house, no electricity means no light, no heating, and no hot water. Thanks, Murphy. At least this house has manual shutters, contrary to his neighbors who have electric shutters and thus were condemned to live in the dark with candles the whole day !

In the end, Clo decided to stay, waiting for the power to come back; it came back on the following thursday, but they managed to get an extra heater too, so lived well through this. Clo blogged about it when internet came back :)

Apart from this, I’m doing approximately five differents things at once at work — five interesting things! In particular I’m starting a new intranet project which involves starting from scratch and use interesting technologies I’ve not used a lot, like AJAX. It makes the development very fun and, combined with clean object-oriented PHP5, very fast. I’m amazed at the ease of progression, plugging bricks with each other.

All of this explains why I seem to have fallen out of Internet…

Salvatore De Paolis: Persistence of Bit

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 20:15:20 +0000

…things are almost done, I just need to move few other stuff from my home pc to this nice new server.

Actually I’ m going to install an E-learning platform and an eportfolio & social network framework here but I cutted a small slice to host this blog and few other things…probably an svn or git repository too.

Paul: The disproportionate Israeli attacks on Gaza

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:24:57 +0000

In 21 days, 27-Dec-08 to 18-Jan-09:

Total Casualties:

Palestinian			Israeli
1,300 dead	5,100 injured		13 dead	80 injured

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2009/jan/03/israelandthepalestinians

------
Palestine Solidarity Campaign: http://www.palestinecampaign.org/
Stop the War Coalition: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/
War on Want: http://www.waronwant.org/
Jews for Justice for Palestinians: http://www.jfjfp.org/

Colin Leroy: Funny pdf

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:22:29 +0000

When converting a rather broken PDF (ugly fonts) to PS, pdf2ps told me:

**** Warning: Fonts with Subtype = /TrueType should be embedded.
The following fonts were not embedded:
OptimaLT

**** This file had errors that were repaired or ignored.
**** The file was produced by:
**** >>>> Adobe Photoshop for Windows <<<<
**** Please notify the author of the software that produced this
**** file that it does not conform to Adobe’s published PDF
**** specification.

Quite ironic :-)

Miquel: Wordpress upgraded

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 18:14:13 +0000

Hi there

After a long time without writing anything, I have decided to write this post to thank to all wordpress people the efforts done to publish this fantastic software.

I’ve upgraded this blog from 2.3.1 to 2.7 and what I have had to do are:

Execute my wordpress database backup script.
Untar latest.tat.gz in my apache directory.
Copy the wordpress themes used in the new version.
Copy the uploaded files.
Change the blog link from the old version to the new one.
Access to my blog after upgrading.
Click the link to upgrade my database structure.

e voilà!!!!

Isn’t it amazing

Ricardo Mones: back to vacation!

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 21:55:30 +0000

Getting older left me a nice flu as a birthday present. So nice that I had to take my first couple of sick leave days. The fever, which reached 39.1 Celsius degrees at some moment, didn't let me do other things than stay in bed and sleep (when possible). At the beginning of the week I was somewhat recovered, but today my throat still hurts slightly (probably because I've stopped taking analgesics as soon as fever disappeared).

Anyway I feel better now, and despite having missed the Claws Mail 3.7.0 released completely (no Spanish translation updates again) I can at least bring the Debian packages as a Christmas present ;-)

They're at experimental (claws-mail and extra-plugins), as previous ones, because required libetpan is still there.

This time it happened Sylpheed has released also a new version, namely 2.6.0, also in experimental now. On the other side the sylpheed-gtk1 package has been removed from Debian. I doubt someone uses it currently. Anyway, after the massive bug cleanup will let see if someone cares :-)

I have also a pending release of Clawsker, to support the new hidden preference in 3.7.0, but tomorrow we're going to visit Madrid for the weekend, so I guess it can wait until next week or even the new year! Going by car, I hope the snow and ice don't take part in the travel... wish me luck! :-)

Paul: Henry Snowstorm – Demolition Ballroom

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 07:15:29 +0000

Track Listing:

1. The Western Rising
2. Henry's Pipe and Tool Works
3. Sneak Attack
4. Sing a Song of Violence
5. Hashashin
6. Demolition Ballroom
7. My One Flesh
8. Lights Went Out
9. Saviour
10. Don't Let Go
11. Airflow
12. Hang On

the Wild Beast Records (TWB 2)

The new album from Henry Snowstorm has just been released — 12 instrumentals in a hiphop/downtempo flavour. Like the previous album, Civil Unrest, it's available as a free download.

What's in a name? Think Cheltenham Road, Bristol, circa 1984. I'll say no more.

This album has been produced using only FOSS.

Henry Snowstorm gets the party started

therefore consider seriously what you ought to doe in this cause, now is the time to break the neck of tyranny, which if you do not, be sure that Tyranny will breake your neckes one day, because you had him in your power, and did not break his neck. I would not have you kill Tyrants, for then you might kill your selves, but first destroy tyranny in your selves, and then in others: first doe such things your selves, as you would have others to doe, for he that bids me do, and doth the good he bids, he leads me to the substantive, and leaves me not in quid.

Tyranipocrit Discovered, 1649

Ricardo Mones: 14

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 12:14:01 +0000

Hint for subject:

final class Age {
  public static void main(String args[]) {
    System.out.println (java.lang.Integer.parseInt ("14", 32));
  }
}

It was last Friday, in fact, but I'm so absorbed by work lately that had no time for anything else.

Today I've been (somehow) gifted with the last album from Henry Snowstorm. In one word: captivating. In three words: craving for more. It made my afternoon despite having to waste it filling a powerpoint with useless project data for a Delivery Assurance meeting tomorrow. That doesn't mean I'm against DA, nope. But starting to do it when the project is nearly finished instead doing QA (fixing bugs) is a waste of time IMHO.

As a curiosity this post is being written from Safari under Mac OS 10.5 AKA Leopard. After being able to get a copy for free (free for me, not for its owner) I resized partitions in MacBook and reinstalled everything again (30 Gb isn't enough for Leopard upgrade from Tiger, but a Leopard installation from scratch takes much less space, which I discovered too late, after having doubled it). Now will see if I can use/build Claws Mail natively on it. For now I can see its display under the included X11 server, which seems to be a new feature in Leopard. Another one is "Spaces"... yep they have discovered multiple desktops now... amazing, isn't it ;-)

Colin Leroy: Nice moments

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:05:37 +0000

Having a baby isn’t always the easiest thing in the world, but there are some moments that are particularly enjoyable.

By the way, little Paul had his second monthiversary yesterday. Time goes fast!

Colin Leroy: Organizing core dumps

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:34:55 +0000

Tired of looking for core files in your whole $HOME (because apps do chdir, and cores are by default in $PWD)?

mkdir /cores; chmod go+w /cores; echo “/cores/%e.%p.core” > /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern

And voilà, you’ll find your cores easily in /cores. Much easier than find ~ -mtime 0 -name ‘core*’ !

Colin Leroy: Dell’s Ubuntu offering

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:08:46 +0000

Yesterday I received my new laptop, a Dell XPS m1330. I bought it to replace Clo’s aging laptop (the right hinge is broken, the battery is dead, and the DVD drive is so utterly broken I had to physically remove it because the stream of errors logged to syslogd made the laptop slow…) with my previous laptop, a Sony Vaio in good condition. I blogged about the Vaio Ubuntu install last year ; it basically worked fine, with only a few quirks.

This time, I decided to buy a Dell for a few reasons ; first, their customer support is constantly improving in my eyes (and I use it a lot : given that I maintain about hundred Dell servers and thirty Dell workstations, they have their share of hard drives, motherboard or power supply failures). Also, last year they started to offer Ubuntu on some of their computers, and I really wanted to vote with my wallet here, and avoid paying the Windows tax for the first time!

I found two little annoyances upon booting the new laptop: Dell installs the 32 bits version of Ubuntu although the platform is 64 bits; and they leave the default partition scheme, with a big root filesystem and nothing else (apart their diagnostics partition). I prefer having a separate /home, in case I have to reinstall the distribution. No showstoppers, though; it just shows me 3.5GB of memory instead of 4GB.

As expected, all the hardware bits work out of the box (this is the big advantage of buying Linux preinstalled, and not too surprising as most of the chips in there are Intel) : CPU scaling, video, wifi, bluetooth, webcam – and they all work with free software. Hibernate works out of the box, as well as suspend (to RAM). Even the little remote control they give, that one puts in the ExpressCard slot for storage, works like a breeze: it sends keycodes, and you don’t have to mess around with lirc to make it work with mplayer. Finally, no need to lift ass to hit pause on the movie :-)

Setting up the machine was pretty quick, just a matter of apt-getting the packages I use (starting with xubuntu-desktop) and migrating my 50GBs of /home data and dot-files. I now get the occasional command-not-found warning for packages I forgot to reinstall, and that’s solved in seconds.

I got the 9-cell battery to get more autonomy, and combined with good power management (it eats 15 watts when idling with the screen to the brightest and all subsystems and radios on), it gets 6 hours of battery life when idling, more than 4 with a standard workload (my standard workload being mostly typing and compiling).

Finally, the stuff seems pretty solid and doesn’t weigh too much – I have no precise number (too bad I brought back the baby scale last week ;-) but it’s easier on the shoulder than the previous 15.4″ laptops I had. Dell says the it starts at 1.8kgs, I guess mine’s 2.2kgs with the big battery.

Colin Leroy: Registar switch

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:39:01 +0000

Back in may 2001, I grabbed my first domain name, colino.net. I wanted to stop switching URL each time I switched the hosting. At the time I had no debit card, and I chose the first registrar I found which accepted payment by cheque, amen.fr.

Since then, I grumbled and grumbled each time I had to log in to their web administration interface, for domain renewal, DNS glue records updates, etc ; but out of habit, I bought two more domain names from them : my wife’s, and a second one I had.

Finally, last week, after more failing glue records updates, I switched my domain and my wife’s domain to gandi.net. I left the third one on amen, as I don’t plan on renewing it, it’s useless for me to keep two domain names.

I knew Gandi beforehand as it’s the registrar for my work’s domain, and I’m glad I did the switch. Their interface is multiple times better, it does what it has to do and doesn’t bug out when hitting Submit with not even an error message.

Colin Leroy: Résiliation de contrats à la MAAF, les doigts dans le nez

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:45:11 +0000

Vous l’avez sans doute remarqué : dans le domaine des assurances ou des banques, il est toujours beaucoup plus facile de souscrire un contrat que d’en résilier un, tout comme il est beaucoup plus facile de payer que de se faire rembourser après un sinistre…

Eh bien, la MAAF ne déroge pas à cette règle ! Vous vous souviendrez peut-être de mon accident de voiture il y a un an… Suite à cet accident, la MAAF qui assurait la voiture a unilatéralement résilié le contrat, et j’ai dû me trouver un assureur spécial alcooliques et irresponsables :-)

Malgré cela, ils avaient soigneusement oublié de résilier les petits plus qu’on avait souscrit (protection du conducteur, protection des passagers, individuelle accident…) ; petits plus que j’ai donc payé pour rien cette année.

J’ai donc reçu mon avis d’échéance hier, le 21 novembre, et me suis dit qu’il fallait que je résilie ces inutilités. En lisant les petits caractères, j’ai appris que “la date limite d’exercice de [mon] droit à dénoncer la reconduction du contrat est le 31 octobre”. Détail amusant, tous les avis d’échéance MAAF arrivent après cette date… Mais plus loin il est précisé en aussi petits caractères que “si le présent avis d’échéance m’a été adressé après cette date, je dispose d’un délai de vingt jours pour exercer ce droit, soit par lettre recommandée, [...], soit par une déclaration faite dans mon agence”.

Fort de ces informations, je prépare un petit courrier type, je prends mon avis d’échéance, l’enveloppe avec le cachet de la Poste, me prépare psychologiquement et me rends à l’agence MAAF la plus proche.

Tandis que j’attends mon tour, le client précédent venu lui aussi pour une résiliation se fait envoyer paître pour cause de c’est passé, le 31 octobre, ce qui a l’avantage de bien compléter ma préparation psychologique.

Lorsque mon tour vient la gentille dame me regarde avec des yeux navrés et m’indique que c’est impossible de résilier ces contrats… La raison invoquée est la même, c’est passé le 31 octobre… Trop dommage, essaye l’an prochain, me dit son sourire !

Lorsque je lui réponds que j’ai lu les petits caractères et qu’il me semble que j’ai encore vingt jours, elle fait mine de réfléchir et de lire lesdits petits caractères puis me répond qu’effectivement, je peux dénoncer la reconduction par lettre recommandée…

Information que j’ai complété par “ou dans mon agence, voyez la ligne d’après”. N’ayant plus de fausse raison de m’envoyer paître, elle m’a demandé de préparer un petit courrier ; et la tête qu’elle a fait lorsque je lui ai sorti ma lettre, prête, en deux exemplaires, “Remise en main propre le 22 novembre 2008“, était tordante. Durant le temps de ce court échange de trois arguments merdiques aussitôt contrés, elle est passé d’un franc sourire à un certain agacement.

Je suis donc parti avec mes contrats inutiles résiliés et ma copie de lettre remise en main propre dûment tamponnée et signée, mais je regrette juste de n’avoir pas poussé le jeu un tout petit peu plus loin ; j’aurais voulu lui demander si ces mensonges par omission sont une directive de l’agence ou de la maison mère. Je penche pour une directive de la maison mère, car une autre fois on m’avait fait la même chose — sauf que je n’avais pas encore lu les petits caractères…

En tout cas, la façon qu’ils ont de traiter les demandes de résiliation est vraiment emplie de mauvaise foi et de tentatives de désinformation pour éviter au client d’obtenir ce qu’il est en droit d’obtenir. C’est assez agaçant.

Paul: Menahan Street Band – Make The Road By Walking

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:54:21 +0000

Track Listing:

1. Make the Road by Walking
2. Tired of Fighting
3. Home Again!
4. Montego Sunset
5. Karina
6. The Traitor
7. The Contender
8. Birds
9. Esma
10. Going the Distance

Dunham Records (DUN 1000)

It is not often that I blog about a record or CD purchase that I have made, but occasionally a new release comes out that goes the extra distance and really stands out among the rest. Last time, back in May 2007, it was Hypnotic Brass Ensemble's War/Mercury 10" single, this time it is the Menahan Street Band's Make The Road By Walking album. For me, this is the release of 2008.

To quote the wikipedia entry:
The Menahan Street Band is a collaboration of musicians from Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, El Michels Affair, Antibalas and the Budos Band, brought together by musician/producer Thomas Brenneck to record hits in the bedroom of his Menahan St. apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn. With influences reaching beyond the funk/soul/afrobeat architecture of their other projects into the more ethereal realms of Curtis Mayfield and Mulatu Astatke, the Menahan Street Band creates a unique new instrumental soul sound that is as raw as it is lush.

Make The Road By Walking takes it name from an organization named "Make the Road By Walking" which is located around the corner from Menahan Street (on Grove Street) which "catalyzes change for low-income New Yorkers by working in five Impact Areas: Expanding Civil Rights and Civic Engagement; Promoting Health for all New Yorkers; Improving Housing and Fostering Environmental Justice; Winning Justice in the Workplace; Promoting Access, Excellence and Opportunity in Education." It sounds like every community could do with an organisation such as this.

The "Make the Road By Walking" organisation, in turn, takes its name from the poem Proverbios y cantares XXIX by Antonio Machado (1875-1939):

Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.

Searcher, there is no road.
We make the road by walking.

Ricardo Mones: Lenny will rock you!

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:59:41 +0000

It took two months, but finally the hard disk replacement for the MacBook has come. Of course I'll think twice before ordering anything else from Alternate (ES), not to mention the fact they served the SD cards without micro adapter (which means they're useless to me)...

Anyway that was not the point. The point was, as you may have guessed, I tried the latest Debian installer for Lenny, which is beta 2 at this moment:

First, the niceness of jigdo downloading the first amd64 DVD image flawlessly and without a single retry.

Second, wodim burning it without error in a disc I had forgotten for two weeks inside the drive.

Third, being able to swap broken disk and the new one despite Apple's instructions to change it forgot to mention you need a very small torx screwdriver to detach the drive from the pulling tab it has (it's located deeply inside and the tab is necessary for removing it).

Fourth, partitioning and installing MacOS X... well, last time I tried dual-boot it didn't work at all, so I had to try again, and with a 320 GB disk using less than 10% for a proprietary OS doesn't look like a great loss ;-). Partitioning is a bit tricky, as detailed in the wiki, but the Disk Utility method worked fine for me. Scheme was 30-2-288 (more or less), you'll discover later why. Worth to mention that the MacOS X showed a lot of upgrades after setting up the wireless, including an EFI firmware upgrade (new boot ROM version is MB21.00A5.B07). I installed all of these before continuing.

Fifth, installing rEFIt, though this one has no trick...

Sixth, rebooting and installing Lenny beta 2 from the DVD. To run an encrypted system two partitions are required, one for /boot (unencrypted, bootable) and other for the encrypted filesystem, hence the two partitions defined. I forgot to add a swap partition, but a swap file can be added later. The uswsusp package will warn about lacking swap, but seems it does complain even if you have a swap partition. You have to avoid installing bootloader at this point, because MBR layout is not the same that GPT (which Disk Utility wrote), hence bootloader installer would be misled.

Seventh, rebooting and entering rEFIt's disk utility, which immediately offers to resync MBR to match GPT layout. Wonderful.

Eighth, restarting Debian installation again, having to reinstall, because the filesystem inside the big encrypted partition is not recognized and had to be reformatted. Not a great problem though. Finally installing grub in the /boot partition, and finish installation.

Et voilà!

Upon restart, rEFIt menu shows both MacStuff and the penguin, and both work fine... in fact I'm writing this from the new Safari in MacOS X, because the wireless card in Debian is still to be configured, but that's another story...

Note: if you're going to try this, first of all read the wiki like I did, it has been improved a lot.

Ricardo Mones: Bits, bytes and nibbles

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 18:51:43 +0000

If you think Debian has one of the most time consuming and complicated process to join in, now look at this nice mess our beloved ftp master produced and one of the effects that caused. Despite of helping Joerg with one of his packages I'm not the one to told anybody what to do with their time, but fixing any of the RC bugs which are preventing Lenny to be released would have been more useful for Debian than writing such proposal. Introducing more classes of people in an already clustered project will only end on more problems and, IMHO, doesn't help to address the problems it's supposed to solve.

Colin Leroy: Newborns and your mental health

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:36:09 +0000

6.30 pm – baby eating
7.00 pm – father and mother start eating dinner while baby’s calm
7.10 pm – baby starts crying, parents postpone dinner
7.30 pm – baby eating
8.00 pm – finish dinner hastily while baby cries in the background
9.00 pm – baby still cries
10.00 pm – baby stopped crying, thanks to having his mouth full of milk
11.00 pm – baby cries again, pauses as you take him in your arms
11.30 pm – baby resumes crying after getting his diaper changed
12.30 pm – baby suddenly stops crying
12.31 pm – dad gets up in fear that baby stopped breathing.
12.32 pm – baby is breathing. notices dad, wakes up and starts crying again.
12.33 pm – dad hates himself.

Ricardo Mones: And another one gone...

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 18:32:17 +0000

Yep, another vacation period gone. Lately I'm posting from vacation on vacation, so it may seem I'm on permanent vacation, but, of course, that's not true. It's just I'm more lazy than often, maybe influenced by reading of Why I Fucking Hate Weblogs! this past week. Or maybe not, as I'm posting again ;-)

As these post tend also to be a recapitulation of my, well, activities (or part of them), this will be no exception. In no particular order...

The claws-mail and extra-plugins packages are now in experimental (they require a libetpan which is only in experimental, so no other choice was possible here). Because a strange bug which made CVS Claws Mail crash on exit in my box, I found some motivation to start from scratch again my build script and make it something different: package CVS for Debian. Primary target was to prove that the bug was not in Claws but somewhere else in the build chain, which resulted a right intuition. Secondary was to have an automatic CVS packager, so I could still use CVS and Debian packages and the added benefit of keeping packaging always synced with upstream requirements (otherwise build breaks).The result can't be other than another wild beast. As you may figure out, these experiments are only possible thanks to the strong commitment of the Claws Mail Team in keeping CVS break-free.

Went to watch "El hombre almohada" (ES), which we liked a lot. Curiously we met and old friend and his girlfriend at the theatre, and shared the usual desires to date for some drink, but I still didn't feel motivated to call him. While is no excuse, he didn't do either, anyway I'm happy to know things go fine for them.

Movies have also taken some time, right now I can remember "Burn After Reading" which we laughed nicely (Silvia more than me though) and "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" which didn't left me the same sweet mouth-taste than the first part.

I've seriously decided to take over my long procrastinated final project at university and finally get my grade. The idea was born several months ago, but got a sudden stop when I went to Madrid early this year. Now I'm back with it. There was some work done previously, and this week of vacation was preparing all the development environment which a Java based webapp requires... which is more of the same I have at work (well, except I'm on Linux here, not XP :-P), but I preferred not to innovate in order of getting things done right.

At least tomorrow is still vacation...

Colin Leroy: Et voilà le travail :)

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:56:13 +0000

Ça y est, Paul est né ! Depuis le temps qu’on l’attendait, on n’est pas déçus : c’est le plus beau :-)

Il est né le 13 octobre à 16h48. Voici trois photos de lui à quelques heures :

Paul a une heure

Le lendemain matin (le 14)

Il commence à avoir de nouveau faim !

Vous aurez plus de nouvelles sur le blog quand nous rentrerons de la maternité :-)