Planet Claws Mail

Colin Leroy: La Mazda 323 rouge : sa finition ultime

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:41:59 +0000

Ricardo Mones: fork

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:41:07 +0000

FORK(2)                    Linux Programmer's Manual                   FORK(2)

NAME
       fork - create a child process

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>

       pid_t fork(void);

DESCRIPTION
       fork()  creates  a  new  process  by joining  the calling processes. The
       new process, referred to as the child, is an  exact  duplicate  of   the
       calling  process,  referred  to  as the parent, except for the following
       points:

       *  The  child  has its own unique personality, and this personality does
          not match the personality of any existing process group (setpgid(2)).

       *  The child's parent name is the same as the parent's name.

       *  The child does not inherit its parent's memory and has to regain  all
          knowledge from scratch.

       *  Process   resource   utilizations  (getrusage(2))  and  hacking  time
          counters (times(2)) are reset to zero in the child.

       *  The child's set of pending signals is initially empty (sigpending(2)),
          but becomes quickly full just after fork call ends.

       *  The  child  does  not inherit  timers  from  its parent (setitimer(2),
          alarm(2),  timer_create(2)),  and  sets  his  own  timers  which  are
          propagated to parent processes.

       *  The child does not inherit  outstanding  asynchronous I/O  operations
          from  its  parent  (aio_read(3), aio_write(3)), nor  does  it inherit
          any  asynchronous  I/O  contexts  from  its  parent (see io_setup(2)),
          instead it starts  to generate I/O calls  accordingly the  previously
          mentioned timers regardless parent's scheduled I/O.

       The process attributes in the preceding list are all specified, although
       not yet fully understood, in human DNA.

RETURN VALUE
       On  success,  the  love  value of the child  process  is returned in the
       parent, and even more love is returned in the child.

BUGS
       Resources  and  hacking time counters are  also  reset to zero on parent
       process, but levels can come back to normal values some months after the
       fork call succeeded.

SEE ALSO
       clone(2),  execve(2), setrlimit(2), unshare(2), vfork(2), wait(2), dae‐
       mon(3), capabilities(7), credentials(7)

Miquel: vim links 2012-01-09

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 22:49:10 +0000

More vim plugins

https://github.com/Townk/vim-autoclose : Close braces, curly braces, etc.
git://github.com/msanders/snipmate.vim.git : Complete structures html tags, if, etc.
git://github.com/tpope/vim-surround.git: Surrounds marked code with anything you want.

Miquel: vim links 2012-01-05

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:35:04 +0000

vim screencasts websites

Miquel: vim plugins I

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:42:03 +0000

I have discovered something awesome today, a Tim “the man” Pope’s plugin called Pathogen which allows us to use vim plugins just typing, in the majority of cases, git clone and the github url in the ~/.vim/bundle directory. I have renamed my old ~/.vim directory and created a new one including the bundle directory. I have installed the following plugins in ten minutes:

nerdtree(git://github.com/scrooloose/nerdtree.git): Filesystem tree loved by some and hated by others.
closetag(git://github.com/vim-scripts/closetag.vim.git): An incredible plugin for closing html and xml nodes typing Ctrl+_.
vim rails (git://github.com/tpope/vim-rails.git): An awesome plugin for navigating through rails components using commands.
Autotag(git://github.com/vim-scripts/AutoTag.git): Plugin for generate the ctags of your file every time you save it.
taglist(https://github.com/vim-scripts/taglist.vim): Plugin which shows us all the data of the file we are coding(class name, methods, etc).

I’m sure these plugins won’t be the only ones I’ll install using pathogen (or without it).

Miquel: vim links 2012-01-03

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:10:31 +0000

This is the first of, I hope so at least, a lot of posts about vim links (a fantastic console text editor I’m using in my laptop).

Pathogen

Colin Leroy: La Mazda 323 rouge : découvrez ses lignes racées

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:32:41 +0000

Colin Leroy: Un interlude commercial

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:51:34 +0000

Je ne résiste pas à rafraîchir un peu cette vieille publicité qu’on avait faite en 2003 avec Yann. À notre décharge, on était jeunes.

Paul: Tories attempt to kickstart class war

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 07:30:08 +0000

In order to delay an increase in fuel duty the Conservative^∗ government is planning instead to cut social security benefits. Therefore the poorest in society — the unemployed, the low paid workers, the sick, etc. — will subsidize middle class car drivers and their families whilst falling further and further into dangerous poverty.

David Cameron and his kind will kick a man while he's down and then keep on kicking.

^∗ Actually, it's a coalition government, but doesn't really feel like one.

Will their coalition 'partners', the Liberal Democrats, be able to do anything about that? http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/nov/18/liberal-democrats-benefits-fuel-duty

Salvatore De Paolis: No to the gag law!

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 10:31:48 +0000

It's been days we are experiencing troubles and the effect haven't wait to show. This is both great and sad news that's why is important to show what's going on in Italy.

"It's outrageous! The infamous "legge bavaglio" is back on the table and Parliament could pass it any day now - only a massive public outcry can stop it.

Berlusconi's coalition is in tatters, but as he goes down he is using his majority to bulldoze through the "gag law", which would fatally curb the power of our legal system to fight crime and corruption, and impose draconian penalties for editors, journalists and bloggers who try to hold politicians accountable. Last year, we fought this law and won. Now it is up to us again -- let's fight back to save our democracy!"

A snip from an online petition I please you to sign and diffuse as much as you can because it's a matter of fundamental rights as the one of freedom of press.

Here the link:
http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_bavaglio_2/?cTNecb

Wikipedia (Italian) stopped to provide the service for the same reason. Here you can read more.

Miquel: Vim tips

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:37:02 +0000

These are some tips about my vim configuration in order to code ruby/rails using it:

Plugins

NERDTree
FuzzyFinder & FuzzyFinderTextMate
l9

Themes

Tomorrow-Night

Shortcuts

Ctrl+W+W – Move between code and tree window.

Miquel: Vim & rails

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:34:40 +0000

I’m trying to code rails apps using vim, some people say it goes ok, and I wanted to use NERDTree vim plugin. I installed it from here but it doesn’t work so my advice is clone the git repository and copy the plugin and doc folders content in your ~/.vim config directory (from plugin to plugin and doc to doc obviously) and it works perfectly.

Miquel: Sound problem

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 22:11:07 +0000

This is my new problem sequence (and its solution):

- aptitude dist-upgrade
- nvidia module broken
- nvidia problem solved
- new KDE
- sound broken in desktop apps (youtube working fine).
- rm -Rf ~/.pulse
- rm -Rf ~/.pulse-cookie
- sound working perfectly.

That’s all

Miquel: Debian/nvidia couple

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:34:20 +0000

Hi there

Debian shows me everyday that I don’t have to stop learning about it. I have a nvidia video card in my computer and my last dist-upgrade using Sid broke it. After some days trying to repair it (I have to say that I have been taking care of my daughter which means I don’t have much time) I decided to go to Debian wiki to read about nvidia problems.

After reading it I only had to execute two commands, which are:
m-a prepare m-a auto-install nvidia

and that’s all folks.

P.S. Ramiro, don’t write a comment with ‘I knew it’

Miquel: Fuckin’ ipw2200 configuration in kubuntu

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 11:08:29 +0000

Two lost days trying to configure my wireless connection using kubuntu and the problem was:
cat /etc/modprobe.d/ipw2200.conf options ipw2200 hwcrypto=1

changed from hwcrypto=1 to hwcrypto=0 and working properly.

I’m going to check what the fuck this is.

Ricardo Mones: apt-get remove --purge network-manager

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 19:06:33 +0000

Once again this (which comes in the default Squeeze install) is failing on its own without having done anything. After some time logged the network goes down and there's no way to make it authenticate again: keeps asking for the password forever, despite is already correctly typed.

Anyway I never liked to depend on an applet in the graphical desktop for gaining network access. Some times I like doing things on the console specially when no bells'n'whistles are required to get them done. This also saves some battery as there are less processes running, and, probably, less pixels emitting light :-)

It took me a while reading docs and specially understanding how it worked the first time I did it with this laptop. Currently it has become much easier, as there's less options to configure, or so it seems. First create the /etc/wpa_supplicant/home.conf file with the network definition:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
   ssid="myssid"
   scan_ssid=1
   key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
   psk=2b883bdc473647e13258488c59d2cf9e4994f04078fbeb827049416fcb518703
}

The obfuscated password is obtained with wpa_passphrase utility. Otherwise you can simply put your password between double quotes in clear text if you don't care (psk="yourpassword").

Once this is ready lets add the interface to /etc/network/interfaces with the commands to run before initializing and after shutting down:

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
	pre-up /sbin/wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -B -Dwext -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/home.conf
	post-down /usr/bin/killall -q wpa_supplicant

And you're done:

$ sudo ifup wlan0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.1.1-P1
Copyright 2004-2010 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:11:22:33:44:ff
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:11:22:33:44:ff
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
DHCPOFFER from 192.168.0.1
DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.0.1
bound to 192.168.0.222 -- renewal in 1310 seconds.

Of course this has an effect that the network is configured on booting, which by default may delay a bit the boot process. If you don't like this you can remove the auto wlan0 and provide an alternate way of ifuping the interface (maybe in /etc/rc.local, which is run later in the boot process).

Tristan Chabredier: A new portfolio online

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 06:03:09 +0000

Hi folks!

what? Yet another post this year? That must mean mollux.org’s revival .. or not!

I’m just here to announce my new gallery online, a portfolio in fact. It should, and will reflect a turn that appeared in my photographic activities and be representative of my works (low incoming traffic, more concerned on quality than daily crap): abstract subjects, artists representations, photo-modelling, and maybe few travel diaries and contests.

Here’s the portfolio.

My old galleries won’t vanish but can de facto be considered as archives.

Oh er.. by the way, the site probably looks weird for IE users (unless they use IE9), and I don’t care much about it .

Ricardo Mones: Bye, bye Atlantis!

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 06:30:03 +0000

Yep, it was so long since last post that even the age of the space shuttles has ended. We'll miss them for sure.

And once again I have to recover an old post to reinstall the macbook because of yet another disk failure. This made me realize that:

Hitachi disks are crap :-P but unfortunately there's the only 7 mm SATA disks available right now here on online shops (bigger ones have gone 9.5 mm thick, not suitable for this macbook).

Since two years ago price has dropped 40% for the same size :-)

SSDs are still too expensive for mere mortals, unless you want to sacrifice a lot of space.

Instead the good'n'old Lenny, this time I used the latest point release for Squeeze, 6.0.2, which has been released a couple of weeks ago. The basics of installing Debian on the macbook with MacOS X and an encrypted root partition are still the same:

Make all partitions with the MacOS installer diskutil: one for MacOS X (~30 GiB), other for /boot (~4 GiB) and the rest for Debian's root (~260 GiB). The later ones formatted as Unix filesystem, never empty space. These will be /dev/sda2, /dev/sda3 and /dev/sda4 because /dev/sda1 is already used by the EFI partition.

Customize the MacOS X Tiger install so it install a minimal system (~5 GiB) from the first DVD. I don't have a band in my garage (there's just room for the car), neither want a Office or iWorks trial wasting space. In addition this makes this part much faster, and future upgrades to Leopard too!

Install rEFIt on MacOS X and reboot to see it works and boots MacOS X.

Boot into Squeeze installer CD/DVD (press 'C' for a while after the macbook startup ta-dah sound), setup partitions /boot and / on a encrypted volume, and install a minimal system (will be overwritten again, so no need to waste time installing).

The Debian wiki's theory is to install everything but the bootloader, which I followed.

The next is to reboot, enter rEFIt disk partitioning tool and synchronize the MBR with GPT.

The installer doesn't recognize the encrypted partition, so I had to setup it again, exactly the same as before and reinstall the system and now the GRUB bootloader into /dev/sda3.

Unfortunately here, due my excessive minimalistic second installation, I ended with a bootable system, but without root password or any other user.

Fortunately the Squeeze DVD has a rescue mode in the main menu (after rebooting), which is able to mount the encrypted partition and drop you to a root shell there, so everything can be fixed and even run tasksel to install the rest of the system. Of course this is not the recommended method ;-) but works in case of need.

There's no swap partition in this schema. Instead part of the /boot space is there to create a 2 GiB swap file. There's no difference with 2.6 kernels in running the swap on a file or on a disk partition.

Last step is to speed-up boot time by blessing the boot partition from MacOS X. Figure out the partition name with disktutil list:

/dev/disk0
   #:                   type name               size      identifier
   0:  GUID_partition_scheme                    *298.1 GB disk0
   1:                    EFI                    200.0 MB  disk0s1
   2:              Apple_HFS MACOSX             29.9 GB   disk0s2
   3:                    EFI                    3.9 GB    disk0s3
   4:   Microsoft Basic Data                    263.8 GB  disk0s4

And then sudo bless --device /dev/disk0s3 --setBoot --legacy --verbose, if your boot partition is the third like mine.

Funny to see the encrypted partition appear as MS data under MacOS X :-)

Miquel: Metal songs in Violins & Chelos

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 11:34:40 +0000

Here they are

Welcome to the jungle (Guns n’ Roses)
Toxicity (System of a Down)

Miquel: Debug java in debian using Idea

Thu, 19 May 2011 22:29:38 +0000

Hi there

I want to do some java coding at home. I have eclipse installed but I wanted to give a try to IntelliJ Idea (I use it at the office). I installed the community edition and debugging didn’t work at all.

After googling I found this link which explains what to do. It is:

Edit /etc/sysctl.d/bindv6only.conf
Change the value of net.ipv6.bindv6only from 1 to 0
Execute invoke-rc.d procps restart as root

That’s all (after three hours trying to do it work).

Hope this helps

Colin Leroy: Je ne suis pas une vache à lait

Thu, 19 May 2011 12:23:29 +0000

Personnellement, je fais partie du petit pourcentage qui considère que les avertisseurs de radars ne sont pas des aides à la conduite mais des aides à bourrer sans assumer sur la route… Quant au démontage des panneaux prévenant des radars fixes, ça ne m’empêchera pas de dormir.

Il y a une part de naïf en moi qui pense que si les gens ne sont plus capables de déterminer dans quel intervalle de 10 secondes ils vont devoir freiner, respecter la limitation de vitesse pendant deux cent mètres et réaccélérer juste après le radar, ils vont se lasser de vivre dans la peur (et les amendes) et peut-être finir par réaliser que c’est quand même vachement moins fatiguant de respecter les limitations de vitesse en permanence…

Je ne dis pas que la vitesse est le principal problème de sécurité routière et j’aimerai vraiment qu’on serre un bon coup la vis sur le reste, comme l’alcoolémie, les distances de sécurité et l’oubli de clignotants. Cependant, c’en est un quand même et c’est le plus facile à contrôler automatiquement, ce serait donc dommage, à mon avis, de s’en priver. La technique du “oui mais lui, c’est pire alors on ferait mieux de me laisser faire mes trucs pas graves” ne fait rien avancer.

Certains avancent que le gouvernement se trompe de combat, que les morts sur la route ne sont que 4 000 par an, et qu’il conviendrait de lutter contre d’autres phénomènes plus meutriers, comme les accidents domestiques, les suicides ou encore le tabagisme. Ils oublient que ces morts là n’ont pas la même tendance à emmener d’autres vies avec la leur.

La vitesse n’est pas forcément un facteur déclenchant, bien que la distance d’arrêt augmente bien plus vite que la vitesse, ce qui entraîne que la fenêtre dangereuse s’agrandit ; mais c’est forcément un facteur aggravant. C’est de la science, de la physique au programme du lycée. Plus un objet se déplace vite, plus l’énergie cinétique à transformer et transférer en cas de choc augmente. La nuit où j’ai eu un accident sur l’autoroute et que ma voiture s’est immobilisée, tous feux éteints, sur la voie de gauche, six autres sont venus s’encastrer de diverses manières dedans et à côté, et ça a fait sept épaves. Personne n’a été tué ni même blessé, et c’est peut-être lié au fait que personne n’est arrivé à 160 dans le tas.

Quant à croire que rouler plus vite aide à lutter contre l’assoupissement parce que “130 km/h sur une autoroute toute droite, c’est soporifique”, c’est faux : rouler plus vite occasionne une consommation énergétique accrue pour le moteur (c’est de la science) mais aussi pour le cerveau qui le contrôle car il est plus stimulé (c’est de la science), et la fatigue arrive plus vite (c’est de la science).

Les utilisateurs qui hurlent à la privation de leurs libertés fondamentales, voire à la dictature, sur le forum Coyote me font rire dans le même sens que le syndicat des taxis qui demandait un permis à points avec plus de points parce qu’ils bossent eux : jaune.
Je lis des arguties du genre “Ce sera plus dangereux de rouler les yeux rivés au compteur” et “À mettre des grands coups de patins devant les radars il va y avoir des accidents” et même venant du PDG de Coyote, “Les 4,7 millions d’utilisateurs de nos systèmes ne sont pas des délinquants mais des contributeurs actifs à la sécurité et à la prévention routière“.

Sérieusement, la mauvaise foi a ses limites aussi. Ce n’est pas bien difficile de se caler à la limitation, même sans régulateur… J’ai jamais pris un flash en dix ans de permis et 100.000 km. Pour autant je ne roule pas les yeux rivés au compteur ou au bas-côté, je ne flippe pas à chaque pont, et je ne change rien à ma vitesse quand je passe devant un radar. Je tiens à rappeler que la limitation de vitesse indique une vitesse maximale. Ce n’est pas interdit d’aller moins vite (la vitesse minimale obligatoire est de 80km/h sur la voie de gauche). Ça permet de regarder la route au lieu du compteur.

Et l’argument du temps perdu ne tient pas non plus. Porte à porte, on ne gagne quasiment rien à rouler à 150 plutôt qu’à 130 sur des trajets de trois heures ou moins (2h06 au lieu de 2h21, sur un Toulouse-Tosse par exemple où la portion autoroutière fait 245 km sur 285). Pour moi, payer cette tranquillité (autant au niveau de la peur du gendarme que du stress routier induit) un quart d’heure, ça le vaut.

Les arguments gouvernementaux utilisés pour justifier la mise en place de ces nouvelles règles empêchant de prévenir des emplacements radars sont en partie fallacieux, c’est sûr. Il n’empêche que je pense que ce sont des règles qui vont dans le bon sens.

Et le jour où je me ferai flasher, si jamais vous m’entendez la ramener comme quoi ces salauds me prennent pour une vache à lait et que y’en a marre de se faire traire par les pompes à fric qui feraient mieux de s’occuper des vrais criminels : moquez-vous de moi.

Tristan Chabredier: L’interdiction des avertisseurs de radars est injuste !

Thu, 19 May 2011 07:15:47 +0000

Ouais merdeuuu @#$%!

La liste des manifs FFMC, au passage.

Holger Berndt: De-Mail in der Kritik

Mon, 02 May 2011 19:24:00 +0000

Was sind die wesentlichen Kritikpunkte an De-Mail? Manche sind einfach beleidigt, dass sie selbst keine größere Rolle spielen, andere haben irgendwie nicht verstanden, wie De-Mail überhaupt funktioniert (was natürlich nicht davon abhält, dies auf reißerische Art der Welt mitzuteilen). Andere sind da ehrlicher, und argumentieren einfach, dass sie De-Mail nicht brauchen (was natürlich völlig richtig sein mag, aber wohl kaum als objektives Argument durchgeht).

1. Angriff auf E-Mail und Bezahl-Internet. Das würde ich unter der Überschrift "Verschwörungstheorie" fassen, für die ich keinerlei Anhaltspunkte sehe. Schon alleine die Tatsache, dass De-Mail etwas rein Deutsches ist, macht klar, dass sie normale E-Mail nicht vertreiben könnte oder will. Wenn man E-Mail ausstechen wollte, hätte man auch einen vendor-lock-in eingebaut, und nicht De-Mail extra so kompatibel zu normaler Mail designed, dass der Nutzer die selbe Software für beides nutzen kann. Dann hat man in seinem MUA halt zusätzlich zum GMail, GMX und Hotmail Account auch noch einen De-Mail Account. Dass eine kostenpflichtige Dienstleistung in einigen Teilen des Freibier-Netzes auf wenig Gegenliebe stößt, ist schon klar. Aber am Ende ist ein De-Mail Provider lediglich ein Dienstleister, der einen bestimmten Aufwand treiben und diesen re-finanzieren muss, und - nein, wie schrecklich! - vielleicht sogar ein wenig Gewinn machen will. Ein mündiger Bürger schaut sich Preis und Leistung an, und entscheidet dann individuell, was er in welchem Umfang nutzen will, oder auch nicht. Es mag durchaus Leute geben, die bereit sind, ein paar Cent für belegbare Zustellung einer Nachricht mit belegbarem Inhalt zu bezahlen. Das ist eine Dienstleistung, für die man bisher einen Gerichtsvollzieher beauftragen muß!

2. Technische Schwächen und Mängel. Mir sind bisher noch keine aufgefallen, und es hat mir auch noch niemand welche zeigen können. Was natürlich nicht heißt, das es keine gibt. Also, Butter bei die Fische: Wo sind sie denn nun, die technischen Schwächen und Mängel? Die in diesem Punkt geäußerte Kritik betrifft nicht die technische Umsetzung, sondern die Konzeption, die Verschlüsselung serverseitig umzusetzen. Ich habe es bereits im letzten Blog-Post geschrieben: Es wurde viel versucht, End-zu-End Verschlüsselung populär zu machen. Es setzt sich einfach nicht durch. Ich selbst (als langjähriges Mitglied in einem FOSS MUA Entwicklerteam) habe es nicht mal geschafft, in meinem engsten Familien- und Bekanntenkreis End-zu-End Verschlüsselung zu etablieren. Wenn überhaupt, haben wir hier also einen sozialen Mangel vorliegen. Natürlich ist End-zu-End Verschlüsselung zu präferieren und bestmöglich zu unterstützen, aber wenn Leute proklamieren, dass nur End-zu-End Verschlüsselung akzeptabel ist, dann ist das ein wenig so, als kneift ein trotziges Kind ganz fest die Augen zu, stampft mit dem Fuß auf und schreit "Ich will aber!". Überhaupt kann die Kritik an De-Mail ja nur sein, dass End-zu-End Verschlüsselung nicht zwingend vorgeschrieben ist - denn unterstützt wird es ja, es wird in den TRs geradezu gepredigt, und Provider werden gezwungen, Infrastruktur für den Schlüsseltausch anzubieten. Obwohl nicht zwingend (weil bei Zwang De-Mail schon im voraus zum Scheitern verurteilt wäre), ist damit die Situation von End-zu-End Verschlüsselung so gut wie nie zuvor: Man hat Zugriff auf identitätsgeprüfte Schlüssel, wenn jemand einen solchen anbieten will. Das alleine ist schon ein großer Fortschritt. Schonmal einem Laien das Web-of-Trust erklärt, oder den Fingerprint am Telefon vorlesen lassen?

3. Rechtliche Einordnung. Hier wird zumindest anerkannt, dass im rechtlichen Sinne die Zustellung von der effektiven Kenntnisnahme unabhängig ist, und zwar unabhängig vom Kommunikationsmittel, sei es normale Mail, Fax, Nachricht auf dem AB oder sonstiges. Klar kann man kritisieren, dass Fristen unter Umständen den einen oder anderen Tag früher loslaufen können, aber wenn ich bedenke, wie oft ich meine E-Mails checke (auch, wenn ich unterwegs bin), und wie oft meinen Briefkasten leere, dann würde ich sagen, ich habe im Durchschnitt mehr Zeit zum Reagieren. In jedem Fall gilt auch hier wieder: Ein mündiger Bürger sollte durchaus in der Lage sein, abzuschätzen, ob bei ihm die Vorteile oder die Nachteile überwiegen. Der einzige Kritikpunkt, den ich nachvollziehen kann, ist die juristische Regelung der Beweislast. Hierbei sollte es nicht weiter schwierig sein, das Versenden einer Mail zu beweisen (signierte Versandbestätigungen sind ja Teil des Systems), aber wie man als Endnutzer den nicht-Zugang einer Nachricht beweisen will, das ist mir schleierhaft. Leider ist die Situation bei Snail-Mail nicht wirklich besser.

Meine generelle Beobachtung der Berichterstattung und der Kommentare zu De-Mail zeichnen leider ein trauriges Bild. Es mag durchaus Punkte an De-Mail geben, die kritikwürdig sind. Diese gehen aber leider in reißerischer Polemik unter, gerne auch gespickt mit Verschwörungstheorien, glatten Falschaussagen und Lügen, sowie gezielter Irreführung von unbedachten Lesern. Das nutzt am Ende niemandem.

Colin Leroy: Paul à vélo

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 14:13:17 +0000

Ça fait plusieurs mois que je veux filmer Paul sur sa draisienne et que je n’y arrive pas…
Entre les fois où il veut regarder la vidéo avant qu’elle ne soit faite et les fois où il tient à ce que je le suive, ce n’est pas évident d’avoir quelque chose !

Voilà donc la meilleure que j’aie actuellement :

C’est dommage, on ne voit pas ici ses progrès majeurs : il sait lever les pieds et continuer sur sa lancée assez longtemps (jusqu’à perdre toute sa vitesse ou presque), freiner (avec les pieds seulement, pour l’instant) et ramasser son vélo par terre et monter dessus sans aide !

Mise à jour : En voici une pas mal sans les pieds :-)

Paul: Shit is Old

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 05:42:09 +0000

Britain now is more and more like Britain in the 1980s. The tory government up to their usual bullshit. Privatisation of any last remaining thing, pressing the least well off further into poverty. Last night listening to BBC Radio 5, (Pienaar's Politics), a "venture capitalist" said that to beat the recession it needs to be easier to 'hire and fire' employees. Not even challenged. Same old, same old.

Ricardo Mones: Le PSU est mort, vive le PSU!

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 18:44:45 +0000

One Sunday you wake up, have some breakfast, do some house keeping work with your significant other's help, and then, just before the lunch, decide to check the mail. But, curious thing, the computer seems off, and you don't remember to have switched it off. The UPS LEDs bright green as usually, but the usual LEDs on the computer box are all off. First reaction after this quick check is, of course, pressing the button to switch it on. And, as expected, nothing happens. Then a couple of neurons inside your brain decide to collaborate and you remember about that burnt smell your significant other talked precisely to you an hour ago (more or less). Seems I'm not going to check mail in this computer for a while.

I watched some videos on the TV of the infinite channels and learned that just by putting the green and black cables of the 20/24 pin connector in short-circuit you can check whether the power supply is working. This makes me wonder how my knowledge about the hardware I own decreases exponentially as I grow older, but I rapidly forget this too ;-). That test failed so I had a culprit, it only remained to know if it was just the PSU or some other components had been affected.

Three days later I found a co-worker and Asturlinux fellow which kindly lent me a PSU for testing (well, in fact lent me two, but one had lower wattage than mine, so avoided to do experiments with it). My initial hopes were that nothing else had been damaged, so simply replacing the PSU would fix the problem. Of course, not.

First test, nothing boots, BIOS reports no hard disks and the orange LED of disk activity blinks regularly. Disconnected all of them (two SATA and one ATA) and removed the ATA disk (it's the booting one) from its plastic removable enclosure, attaching it to directly to the board instead.

Second test, the GRUB prompt appears! It fails to boot anything because the operating system is in the SATA disks, but at least the disk is OK and BIOS also recognizes it flawlessly now. The ATA removable enclosure joins the PSU in the waste bin.

Third test, reattach SATA disks. Ouch! blinking orange again, nothing boots. Well, let's try just one SATA disk. Phew! It boots again and shows the GRUB menu, ready to load the kernel list. At that moment, the new Space Fun theme could be shortly appreciated. Sweet.

Some tests later, I'm giving up. No matter which combination of the two disk and two SATA ports on the motherboard you made, once the two are attached nothing works. Leave only one and it boots. It's clear to me the motherboard has also been damaged, in a minor degree, but, certainly not reliable any more. Specially when the disk mirroring cannot be implemented again. Another piece on the waste bin.

Changing motherboard pushes things a little more than just a PSU. I've decided to try to keep all the existing pieces that work, so only the core is being replaced. But that is: motherboard (with integrated graphics card, as the AGP interface of my NVidia seems pretty obsolete now), processor, memory and, of course, a new PSU ;-)

This is, at least as I understand it, a new computer. So finally it seems I'm not going to check my mail in this computer any more.

P.S.: Yes, since last post and finally the Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 AKA Squeeze has been released!

Miquel: Mental note

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 23:10:11 +0000

My Nvidia driver is located in http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux-display-ia32-260.19.12-driver.html

Hope this helps me next time

Ricardo Mones: What happened!?

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:14:00 +0000

Well, a lot, or not so much, depends how you take it :)

To summarise some random chosen facts:
Work

Still at the same project at work (started to stink months ago). Will it end someday? Soon we hope, but given the external dependencies and all the people required to be coordinated seems very hard.

But still having a job, so the bank is happy I'm paying the mortgage every month. Me too :)

Finally had my vacation, delayed twice in 2010, and with extra days as compensation for this!

But also were doing extra hours (worked some Saturdays and holidays...)

Which, fortunately, were paid accordingly

Just to discover how the taxes on my payroll were also incremented to leave me with only the half of the extra euros :-P

Life

Christmas were not as good as other years, maybe because I got some kind of flu for the end of year. Not good for enjoying the meal or any other thing in fact. Sucks a bit to fall ill when on vacation again.

Visited León over a weekend, and having a good time with Alf and his soon to be future wife. They're getting married after 10 years together, so I wonder they were not sure or just utterly lazy ;-)

Finally searching solutions for renewing our bathrooms at home. That's going to be a hard (and expensive) task!

FOSS

Yes, new Debian stable, codenamed Squeeze, is still not released... I guess no surprise here. Since some time ago I'm following the mailing list and now I realize how hard is making everybody to converge on releasing, specially when free software is such a moving target and everybody wants the latest and greatest always.

Claws packages will be there at the 3.7.6 version, which is fairly good so far. Anyway now that backports is part of the official infrastructure it's very likely the current version will be backported as soon as Squeeze is out and their backports suite activated.

Sylpheed continues its road to 3.1.0, which will have an updated Spanish translation. It was a long time since I did it last time :)

An itch has been scratched and the Address Keeper plugin is now a reality. This feature for Claws Mail has been around my mind since probably since I started to use it and was named diferently. It was the only feature I missed from the Pegasus Mail on Win32, which had it and had saved myself from typing addresses twice forever.

Colin Leroy: Two little screencasts

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:25:40 +0000

It’s been a long time since I didn’t post any Claws Mail news… (probably because it’s reaching maturity) so here are two screencasts that should please our Windows users :

Hope you’ll like it !

Miquel: LibUtils

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 15:11:05 +0000

I’m going into Ruby more than I was some months ago (I decided to code using only Java and Ruby, including in the Ruby stuff RMI and JRuby). I code at Java in the office and I use the Apache Commons libraries in order to achieve a cleaner code (without null checking and avoiding the NullPointerException thing).

I started some days ago a new gem named LibUtils (hosted in github) which gives me some methods I miss in Ruby. I added some methods available in Rails too which I thing are cool and I wish I added more methods because everyday I found new things that make coding easier and cleaner.

This library include methods to work with strings, arrays and words (at this moment), for instance:

– starts_with? (LibUtils::StringUtils.starts_with?(‘Hello’, ‘He’) –> true).
– empty? (LibUtils::ArrayUtils.empty?(['a']) –> false).
– initials (LibUtils::WordUtils.initials(‘Hi there’) –> Ht).

Probably some of them seem to be silly and useless, I though something like this the first time I found them in Java, but the only thing I can say is that the more you use them the more you’ll love them (at least I hope so).

Miquel: From Rails To Sinatra

Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:35:14 +0000

Some time ago I wrote a post about routes in rails and my professional page (http://www.miqueloliete.com) appeared in it. It was coded using rails because it was the only web framework I had worked with at that moment. Several weeks later I heard about a web framework named Sinatra and I decided to give it a go because using rails for this website (four pages in three different languages) was like use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

After reading a little about Sinatra, I coded again the site with these steps.

– I created a simple directories structure like this:
├── i18n
├── public
│   ├── css
│   ├── images
│   └── javascript
└── views

* i18n contained the three yml translations files (catalan, spanish and english).
* css contained stylesheets files.
* images, as itself says, contained all the image files.
* Javascript contained all the javascript files.
* views contained all the old erb files (now using erubis files).

– I copied the three uml files from rails project to sinatra directory removing the first line which includes the language level (ca|es|en:).
– I copied the erb files in the views directory renaming them from .erb to .erubis, changing the translation methods included in them from t(‘text’) to t.text).
– I copied the css, javascript and image files from rails project to sinatra project under their directory explained before.
– I create the .rb file which contains all the routes used in the website which basically only controls the locale language and the view file to show.

And that’s all (I think I don’t forget anything because it was two months ago). The website you will find if you visit my site now is still the rails version right now but it will be replaced in two or three weeks maximum during my christmas holiday. I supose this is not something what people do frecuently (the most common way probably would be the other way round when a little website becomes a bigger one).

Hope this helps

Paul: We need Warren James now!

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:01:05 +0000

Hands Off Our Forest : A Call To Arms

The government is getting ready for a huge sell-off of our national forests to private firms. This could mean ancient woodlands are chopped down and destroyed. Walkers and endangered animals, like red squirrels and owls, would have to make way for Center Parcs-style holiday villages, golf courses, and logging companies.

We need to stop these plans. Ancient forests like the Forest of Dean and Sherwood Forest are national treasures — once they’re gone, they are lost forever. A huge petition will force the government to rethink. If we can prove how strongly thousands of us are against this, we can make them back down.

Help build the pressure before it’s too late. Add your name to the “save our forests” petition: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/save-our-forests

________

The Forester newspaper, in association with The Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Review, is launching a petition to send a message to Government ministers wanting to sell our woodlands to private concerns: Hands Off Our Forest.

Sign the petition here: http://www.theforester.co.uk/saveourforest.cfm

References:
http://www.forest-and-wye-today.co.uk/news.cfm?id=38375
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/countryside/8082756/Ministers-plan-huge-sell-off-of-Britains-forests.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-plans-huge-selloff-of-britains-forests-2115631.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/24/forests-government-heritage-private-developers

Warren James: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_james

Paul: SPENCE'S PLAN AND FULL BELLIES YOU ROUGUES

Sun, 24 Oct 2010 10:57:29 +0000

Malcolm Chase – The People's Farm, English Radical Agrarianism 1775-1840 Breviary Stuff Publications, ISBN 978-0-9564827-5-4

Now published by Breviary Stuff Publications is The People's Farm by Malcolm Chase. It traces the development of agrarian ideas from the 1770s through to Chartism, and explains why, in an era of industrialization and urban growth, land remained one of the major issues in popular politics. This book considers relationship between ‘land consciousness’ and early socialism; attempts to create alternative communities; and contemporary perceptions of nature and the environment. Far from being an anachronistic, utopian, and reactionary movement, agrarianism was an integral part of the working class experience and of radical politics. This book also provides the most extensive study to date of Thomas Spence, and his followers the Spenceans.

Thomas Spence was one of the leading English revolutionaries of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At the centre of Spence's work was his Plan, known as Spence's Plan. The Plan has a number of features, including:

• The end of aristocracy and landlords
• All land should be publicly owned by 'democratic parishes', which should be largely self-governing
• Rents of land in parishes to be shared equally amongst parishioners
• Universal suffrage (including female suffrage) at both parish level and through a system of deputies elected by parishes to a national senate
• A 'social guarantee' extended to provide income for those unable to work
• The 'rights of infants' to be free from abuse and poverty

________

Also back in print in a new, extended edition is the pamplet from The Thomas Spence Society, The Hive of Liberty, The Life & Work of Thomas Spence (1750-1814). Edited by Keith Armstrong, with an introduction by Professor Joan Beal and a new essay by Malcolm Chase. It is available directly from The Thomas Spence Society.

Colin Leroy: Les problèmes de la voiture en ville

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:26:20 +0000

Depuis quelques années, on commence à se rendre compte petit à petit que la civilisation du tout-automobile a ses limites, particulièrement en centre-ville où la place est comptée.

L’utilisation à outrance de la voiture dans notre société pose pas mal de problèmes. En ville par exemple, elle amène des congestions de trafic relativement insolubles, car ajouter des voies de circulation, au final, ne fait qu’ajouter de nouveaux véhicules et augmenter la taille de l’embouteillage. L’emprise au sol et l’imaginaire réduction (perçue !) du temps de transport pousse à un étalement urbain incontrôlé dont Paris est un exemple monumental, avec sa grande couronne regroupant quatre départements. En centre ville, l’intérêt des zones piétonnes est, de même, de plus en plus reconnu malgré, souvent, un immobilisme et une défiance de la part des commercants, entre autres.

L’étalement urbain est d’ailleurs un problème très difficile à résoudre maintenant qu’il s’est installé. Les transports individuels sont manifestement une part du problème, et certainement pas une part de la solution, et diversifier suffisamment les transports en commun n’est pas facile.

L’automobile pose aussi d’autres problèmes plus généraux, des problèmes environnementaux, en particulier au niveau écologique ; mais la pollution automobile ne se limite pas à l’émission de gaz à effet de serre, la pollution visuelle et sonore est aussi de plus en plus manifeste.

Heureusement, depuis le temps qu’on en parle et que des prototypes existent, ce n’est plus que l’affaire de quelques années avant que les voitures électriques ne viennent résoudre ces problèmes de pollution dûes aux moteurs à explosion, n’est-ce pas ? Enfin, c’est ce que l’on croyait jusqu’à il y a peu, mais il se pose le problème de l’approvisionnement en électricité… Ces voitures électriques en demandent beaucoup, les infrastructures actuelles ne tiendraient pas la charge.

Voilà, en résumé, où en est en 2010 la société vis-à-vis de l’automobile. Tout ceci est d’ailleurs très bien expliqué dans ce documentaire :

retrouver ce média sur www.ina.fr

Qui date de 1973.

Ricardo Mones: Transpirating Java

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:05:08 +0000

One of the joys of my current job is that we're so much people that not all people can be working at the main building. The luckiest ones are, of course, though luck is heavily influenced by your role, of course ;-) The less lucky are even off the site, but still in a real building. Then come the unfortunates which work in at the site but inside a kind of barrack, like me. Despite having air conditioning systems (which we cannot regulate!) you can imagine that a metallic barrack is not the best place to stay after several hours of sun heating.

These days we're perspiring every line of code we write...

Colin Leroy: Vacances à vélo de Toulouse à Tosse

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 18:43:52 +0000

Ça faisait longtemps qu’on avait prévu de partir de Toulouse à Tosse à vélo, en suivant d’abord le canal latéral à la Garonne, puis les pistes cyclables du bassin d’Arcachon et enfin la piste cyclable le long de l’Atlantique, aussi appelée Eurovélo n°1.

On est partis le premier Août avec comme seul impératif d’arriver avant le 15 août et on comptait avancer au feeling, en suivant principalement le rythme de Paul. Finalement, nous nous sommes arrêtés avant la fin, à Mios après 320 kilomètres, pour une raison toute bête : je me suis fait une tendinite lors de l’étape la plus dure, celle où l’on avait 16 kilomètres de route entre les deux pistes cyclables. La charge (60 kilos quand même) combinée au stress de la route, au dénivelé et à la pluie m’a fait forcer un peu trop pour une fin d’étape.

On n’a donc fait que cinq étapes sur sept ou huit. Malgré cette petite déception, le voyage valait d’être fait et nous laisse plein de souvenirs !

Voici un résumé en photos.

Dimanche 1er août – Toulouse-Moissac (77 km en 4h30)

Une fois prêts à partir, le départ était connu vu que nous allons assez régulièrement à Gagnac sur Garonne par le même canal. C’est une fois qu’on a dépassé ce point pour arriver sur une partie inconnue de canal qu’on s’est sentis vraiment lancés !

Peu après le pique nique que l’on a fait sur le bord de la piste cyclable (pas tout à fait un bon endroit, il fallait trop surveiller Paul qui n’avait pas la place entre la piste et le canal…) le ciel s’est couvert et nous avons essuyé notre première averse, une légère pluie rafraîchissante – on n’a même pas sortis nos vestes imperméables !

A Montech, on a failli se perdre lors d’une séparation du canal. Hésitant au même endroit que nous, nous avons rencontré une jeune femme à VTT avec sa fille Théa dans une remorque. On a discuté un peu puis nous sommes repartis. Elle venait de Béziers et comptait aller jusqu’aux sables d’Olonne. Son étape du jour était prévue jusqu’à Moissac, ce qu’on trouvait long : nous comptions nous arrêter avant !

Clo et moi cherchions à bivouaquer, mais on n’a trouvé que deux endroits presque convenables mais pas tout à fait (sur l’un d’eux, une voiture stationnée trop près nous laissait penser qu’on ne serait pas assez tranquilles, et sur l’autre, nous étions trop à vue). On a évité de se mettre la pression, se disant qu’au pire le camping de Moissac nous accueillerait… Et au final, on s’est arrêtés au camping de Moissac. Paul a bien aimé le camping, et plus spécialement la réserve inépuisable de bâtons et cailloux qu’il représente. Il a eu un peu de mal à s’endormir dans la tente vu qu’il a commencé par sortir de sa petite tente popup par farfouiller partout, mais il a fini par réussir lorsqu’on l’a rejoint.

Lundi 2 août – Moissac-Lamagistère (27 km en 1h30)

On se réveille sous une pluie qui tape sur la tente et ne s’arrête pas. Petit déjeuner sous la tente, puis après une certaine attente, comme Paul n’en pouvait plus d’être calfeutré dans la tente, on décide de plier. Je range la tente dans les sanitaires pour essayer tant bien que mal de ne pas tremper l’intérieur, tandis que Clo et Paul discutent avec Théa et sa maman que nous avons retrouvé par hasard. Puis nous partons sous l’eau, Paul dans sa remorque bulle, nous sous nos K-Ways. A cet endroit de la piste, nous croisons et doublons de nombreux pélerins de St Jacques de Compostelle, à pied ou à vélo. Les marcheurs sont rendus bossus par leur sac à dos sous l’imper. Tous sont souriants, c’est très agréable. Un couple d’Américains à vélo, pélerins avec une coquille St Jacques sur la sacoche de guidon, nous double plusieurs fois et nous les redoublons plusieurs fois, en fonction de leurs arrêts et des nôtres, et l’on s’entre-motive à chaque fois !

Peu avant midi, comme il pleut toujours, on sort de la piste à Lamagistère et nous mettons en quête d’un hôtel histoire de pouvoir manger au sec, prendre une douche chaude et attendre un temps plus clément. On s’arrête à l’Auberge de la rue de la Gare où les propriétaires très sympathiques nous laissent ranger les vélos dans le garage. On fait un peu l’attraction du bar, trempés comme nous sommes, en attendant avec un café et un chocolat chaud que la femme de chambre prépare notre chambre. Paul (qui lui est tout sec, petit veinard) goûte avec joie au chocolat chaud !

Cela nous fait donc une petite étape. Il a plu jusqu’à 15 heures passées, nous sommes restés à l’Auberge pendant ce temps et y avons repris des forces (douche chaude, repas chaud puis sieste dans le lit douillet). Au réveil on a profité de l’arrivée du soleil pour nous promener à Lamagistère, qui est un petit village très fleuri et très agréable.

Paul y a ramassé des bâtons, des cailloux, il a fait des caresses à un chat très gentil, et a même pu sauter dans les grosses flaques avec ses belles bottes jaunes !

Pour que Paul arrête de sortir de sa petite tente popup que l’on avait installé dans la chambre (il n’y avait pas de lit bébé), on a décidé de zipper la moustiquaire, ce qui l’a empêché d’avoir envie de sortir tout le temps et l’a aidé à s’endormir vite. Finalement on gardera cette méthode tout au long du voyage : en fait ça le rassure d’être entouré, comme dans son lit à barreaux.

Le lendemain matin nous nous sommes réveillés sous le soleil et sommes repartis fringuants !

Mardi 3 août – Lamagistère-Lagruère (69km en 4h10)

Une étape tranquille où le soleil était enfin présent, mais pas gênant grâce à l’ombrage des arbres. Les kilomètres défilent tous seuls comme le premier jour. On s’en rend compte sans même regarder nos compteurs : à chaque pont, un panneau indique le point kilométrique, le nom du pont et le nom de la commune dont il dépend. On reconnait les noms qu’on a sur notre fiche planificative.

Au pique-nique du midi, nous nous sommes arrêtés en contrebas de la piste, à la bordure d’un champ de jeunes arbres. C’était beaucoup plus agréable pour Paul que le bord de la piste, car il a pu courir un peu et bouger sans qu’on aie peur pour lui. On avait aussi assez de place pour étaler la tente et la faire sécher avant d’en avoir besoin…

Puis on repart pour la sieste de Paul, et l’on a pu rouler tranquillement la majeure partie de l’après-midi. C’est incroyable comme le temps passe vite alors qu’on pédale en discutant de temps en temps…

On s’arrête assez tôt et campons au camping municipal de Lagruère après n’avoir, de nouveau, pas trouvé d’endroit pour bivouaquer. Soit on est trop difficiles, soit on ne va pas voir assez loin, soit on n’ose pas assez… Mais dans tous les cas, c’est pas évident de bivouaquer !

Le camping de Lagruère a l’avantage de ne pas nous dérouter beaucoup, étant situé à 5 mètres en contrebas de la piste cyclable du canal. En face, il y avait quelques jeux pour enfants où Paul a pu se défouler. Paul s’est endormi très rapidement, il semble habitué et en confiance, enfin sûr qu’on le rejoindra dans la tente pour dormir !

Quant à nous, c’était la première nuit où nos vélos dormaient dehors sans être attachés à un point fixe (au camping de Moissac, il y avait un poteau métallique). On a un peu stressé sur le sujet puis nous nous sommes dit qu’il faudrait pas de chance pour que quelqu’un nous vole nos vélos attachés tête-bêche avec une remorque sans nous réveiller !

Mercredi 4 août – Lagruère-Villandraut (78km en 4h43)

C’est déjà la dernière étape prévue sur le canal latéral. On y croit à peine, nous qui pensions aller presque deux fois moins vite ! Et comme prévu, nous quittons ce jour là notre canal à Castets-en-Dorthe après une quarantaine de kilomètres, peu après le pique nique sur une espèce de base de loisirs où il y avait profusion de jeux pour Paul. Nous y avons rencontré une famille de cyclistes super bien équipés en vacances. Le père roulait en tricycle couché HP Velotechnik et tractait une remorque bagagère ; la mère à vélo couché, tractait un tricycle Hase dont la roue avant était amovible, tricycle occupé par leur fille d’environ 8 ans. Enfin, leur fils roulait lui aussi à vélo couché. Chouette équipage dont c’était la première randonnée à quatre (l’année d’avant, ils étaient partis à trois).

A la dernière écluse, le canal se jette dans la Garonne et nous sommes lâchés sur la route. C’est là qu’il faut rejoindre la piste cyclable Mios-Bazas à Roaillan, en 16 kilomètres de route via Langon (qui n’est pas immédiatement fléché).

La différence est flagrante avec la piste cyclable, d’autant qu’il pleut (encore !) par averses successives. Les voitures sont nombreuses et nous doublent près et vite – les routes que l’on prend sont limitées à 90… ce qui tend à nous stresser un peu. Y’en a même un qui nous a klaxonné pour le plaisir. Contrairement au canal, il y a du dénivelé et quand ça grimpe, je sens beaucoup plus les 60 kilos de charge que sur le plat.

Bêtement, on force un peu pour essayer d’aller un peu plus vite vis-à-vis des voitures (alors que la différence de vitesse est telle que ça ne sert à rien – vu de 90km/h, un cycliste qui se traîne peinard à 8km/h ou qui force à 11km/h, c’est difficile de distinguer), et je me remarque in petto que je suis un peu à fond…

On se perd un peu, on passe dans une zone industrielle puis devant une entrée d’autoroute, et d’autres endroits similairement riants… Puis grâce à une vieille dame à vélo, on trouve Roaillan ; et à Roaillan où l’on voulait s’arrêter, on apprend par l’épicière du coin qu’il n’y a rien pour dormir et que le mieux est d’aller à Le Nizan (à 8km). L’épicière nous montre où retrouver la piste cyclable et on se retrouve enfin sur un endroit calme et agréable !

Hélas à Le Nizan, les quelques chambres d’hôtes sont complètes, et on nous conseille d’aller jusqu’à Villandraut (à 4km) où il y a des campings. Lorsqu’on arrive à Villandraut après quatre kilomètres de douce descente sur laquelle on a pu rouler à une vitesse indécente (27km/h !), on est claqués, mais bien accueillis par le gérant du camping, très chaleureux et sympathique, et le soir, on se remet avec (pour changer de nos pâtes à toutes les sauces) de bons croques-monsieurs avec des frites !

Jeudi 5 août – Villandraut-Mios (67 km en 4h30)

On a rencontré quelques cyclotouristes au camping, qui allaient dans l’autre sens que nous. Ils nous ont dit que la piste cyclable qui nous attendait était une véritable autoroute, et c’est vrai ! Elle va tout droit (en faux-plat montant, hélas ! et c’est sans doute pour ça qu’ils l’ont prise pour une autoroute, dans leur sens), et ce qui nous change le plus du canal, c’est qu’on est entouré de forêt de chaque côté de la piste. C’est tellement droit qu’on a parfois une illusion d’optique et l’impression qu’à l’horizon, ça descend ou ça tourne ; mais en fait, non, ça continue tout droit en joli faux-plat montant !

On se ressent de l’étape de la veille : Clo a une courbature à la cuisse gauche, qui finit par passer avec l’échauffement. Quant à moi, j’ai un peu mal au genou. On avance moins vite que d’habitude, du coup, 15 ou 16km/h au lieu de 19 ou 20.

Après avoir essayé le conseil des cyclotouristes du camping concernant la “super base de loisirs d’Hostens qui est trop chouette”, on a décidé qu’elle n’était pas si chouette pour nous (trop pleine de gens) et on a déjeuné dans les fougères dans la forêt. Paul est même parti s’aventurer dedans, j’étais très fier de lui (et Clo aussi). Je crois qu’il a pris plus confiance en lui-même pendant ces vacances…

Sur l’après-midi, mon genou me fait de plus en plus mal et ça me brûle à chaque relance, au point que je ne pédale presque plus que de la jambe gauche : même clipper la pédale auto finit par faire mal.

Lorsqu’on arrive au camping à Mios, après être passé dans une pharmacie où l’on m’a conseillé du Cliptol, on décide donc de faire une pause le lendemain le temps que mon genou se calme.

Paul est bien habitué au camping maintenant, il a juste peur des douches, qui ont souvent tendance à pleuvoir dru de très haut… Il s’endort très vite.

Vendredi 6 août, la démission du genou

Au repos et à froid, globalement, ça ne va pas mieux du côté de mon genou qui me fait mal quand je plie la jambe. On passe une journée tranquille au rythme de Paul, qui fait même sa sieste dans la tente alors qu’on y croyait qu’à moitié. Il a pu jouer dans les jeux d’à côté (bien qu’il en manquait la moitié) et aussi avec notre petit voisin de camping, Nico, qui avait à peu près quatre ans et la langue bien pendue !

Clo et Paul ont même pu se baigner dans l’Eyre qui bordait le camping, et Paul s’est bien amusé à faire des pâtés et dans l’eau de la rivière.

Finalement, le vendredi soir, on a décidé que je n’allais pas pouvoir repartir le lendemain et que ce n’était pas la peine de passer le week-end au camping (c’est quand même pas pratique de vivre par terre avec une jambe raide), et on a appelé Mondial Assistance en la personne du père de Clo.

Samedi 7 août, le rapatriement sanitaire

Le père de Clo est donc arrivé samedi matin, pendant qu’on rangeait tout et que je démontais les vélos afin d’essayer de ne faire qu’un voyage (étant à environ 100km de Tosse, c’était mieux pour Philippe !). C’est difficile de faire entrer quatre personnes plus deux vélos, une remorque et les bagages dans une voiture, même dans un grand monospace, mais on a réussi !

Après avoir acheté un siège bébé pour Paul, puis déjeuné à la rôtisserie de Mios un très bon poulet rôti, nous sommes repartis vers Tosse par les petites routes, afin d’éviter la masse de touristes prévue par Bison Futé sur l’autoroute, avec un petit pincement au coeur à chaque fois que l’on longeait ou croisait l’Eurovélo n°1…

C’est le moment qu’a choisi Paul pour vomir dans son siège auto tout neuf, suivi juste après, pendant que l’on nettoyait le tout, du moment qu’a choisi la batterie de la voiture pour rendre l’âme. Philippe s’est donc mis en quête d’un garagiste, qui heureusement se situait à moins d’un kilomètre du lieu de notre panne ! Ce petit incident aura l’avantage de rendre la dernière étape inoubliable elle aussi…

Au final, malgré la déception de n’avoir pas pu finir alors qu’on était super bien partis (il ne nous restait que deux étapes ou trois ! mais le plus décevant c’est qu’on n’aura sans doute pas l’occasion de refaire un tel voyage avant un certain temps), on est vraiment contents d’avoir fait ce voyage. On a surmonté des difficultés imprévues (surtout vis à vis du temps, il nous a quand même plu sur la figure à un moment ou un autre trois jours sur cinq), on a réussi à s’adapter à la vie au plein air avec un petit Paul qui a été adorable, très compréhensif et curieux de tout, on s’est dépassé sans souffrir (au début !) avec de longues étapes de 70km (on prévoyait 30 ou 40 par jour, au début…)

La prochaine fois on se forcera à faire des étapes plus courtes, ou à les intercaler de journées-visites pour se changer les muscles !

Maintenant, on se repose tranquillement à Tosse, et j’attends patiemment que mon tendon se remette avant de remonter sur un vélo. C’est très frustrant surtout qu’il y a plein de cyclistes partout ici ; mais je vais éviter de déconner pour ne pas me retrouver avec un truc qui traîne pendant six mois.

Toutes les photos sont sur notre galerie: Vacances à vélo Toulouse-Tosse.

Holger Berndt: De-Mail: Sinn, Unsinn und Missverständnisse

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:20:00 +0000

Da De-Mail in letzter Zeit verstärkt durch die Presse geht, und sowohl Pressemeldungen als auch Diskussionen darüber von vielen Missverständnissen geprägt sind, möchte ich ein paar Gedanken zu dem Thema äußern.

Was ist De-Mail?

De-Mail ist ein Projekt der deutschen Bundesregierung in Zusammenarbeit mit Service Providern, um einen Beitrag dazu zu liefern, Online-Kommunikation sicherer zu machen. Man beachte den Komparativ in diesem Satz - absolute Sicherheit gibt es nicht, sondern es gibt immer nur Sicherheit gegen ein bestimmtes Angriffsszenario.

Bei der Bewertung von De-Mail sollte man zwischen dem Konzept an sich, der Implementierung dieses Konzeptes und der juristischen Würdigung unterscheiden. Ich möchte hier nur auf das Konzept an sich eingehen.

Wie ist die aktuelle Situation bei E-Mail?

Die beiden wichtigsten Unterschiede betreffen die Datensicherheit und die Zustellungssicherheit.

E-Mails sind wie Postkarten. Jeder, der sie in die Finger bekommt, kann sie lesen, verändern oder sogar verschwinden lassen. Der Weg, den eine Mail durch das Netz nimmt, ist vom Absender nicht beeinflussbar. Außerdem kann prinzipiell jeder eine E-Mail fälschen, also von einem beliebigen Absender an einen beliebigen Empfänger schicken. E-Mail ist damit ein extrem unsicheres Medium.

Es existieren bereits seit langem Methoden, eine E-Mail effektiv zu verschlüsseln und durch eine digitale Unterschrift als "echt" und "unverändert" zu kennzeichnen. Da allerdings das Netz zwischen Sender und Empfänger nicht vertrauenswürdig ist, muss dies Verschlüsselung bzw Signatur direkt beim Absender erfolgen, und Entschlüsselung bzw Überprüfung der Signatur beim Empfänger. Diese Technik wird auch End-zu-End-Verschlüsselung genannt.

Dieses System ist zwar mit aktuellen Mailprogrammen relativ leicht anzuwenden, konnte sich aber leider trotzdem nicht durchsetzen - trotz Förderung von z.B. dem BSI.

Aber selbst, wenn End-zu-End-Verschlüsselung sich durchsetzen würde, könnte damit nicht das Problem der Zustellungssicherheit gelöst werden. Die einzige Möglichkeit für einen Absender einer E-Mail, sich sicher zu sein, dass seine Mail auch angekommen ist, wäre, dass der Empfänger freiwillig eine signierte Empfangsbestätigung zurückschickt. Dieses System basiert also inhärent auf dem Wohlwollen des Empfängers. Ein Äquivalent zu einem (Einwurf-)Einschreiben ist damit nicht umsetzbar. Was nun, wenn ich meinen Mobilfunk-Vertrag fristgerecht kündigen will, aber der Anbieter behauptet, nie eine Kündigung erhalten zu haben? E-Mail ist in dem Fall nicht benutzbar.

Was macht De-Mail nun anders?

De-Mail geht von der Beobachtung aus, dass End-zu-End Verschlüsselung aufgrund des Mehraufwandes bei Sender und Empfänger keine breite Akzeptanz findet. Man baut deshalb ein in sich geschlossenes, vertrauenswürdiges Netz auf, in dem die Nachrichten signiert und verschlüsselt weitergereicht werden. Der Anwender authentifiziert sich also beim Server, und schickt dann seine Nachrichten (bis auf normale Transportverschlüsselung) unverschlüsselt an selbigen. Der Server verschlüsselt und signiert die Nachricht, und leitet sie an den Server des Empfängers weiter. Wenn der Empfänger seine Nachrichten abholen will, entschlüsselt der Server des Empfängers die Nachricht, und reicht sie (bis auf normale Transportverschlüsselung) unverschlüsselt an den Empfänger weiter.

Was wurde also gewonnen? Während früher die Nachricht völlig ungesichert durch irgend welche (eventuell feindlichen) Netze ging, wandert sie bei De-Mail gesichert durch das Netz - und zwar ohne Mehraufwand beim Endnutzer. Es gibt nur noch zwei Stellen, an denen die Nachricht prinzipiell einsehbar und veränderbar ist: An der Schnittstelle ins De-Mail Netz, und aus ihm heraus, also bei den Anbietern von Sender und Empfänger. Diese Anbieter sind aber jetzt nicht mehr irgendwelche beliebigen anonymen Administratoren, sondern Betreiber, die aufwändige Zertifizierungs- und Kontrollprozesse durchlaufen mussten, um überhaupt am De-Mail Netz teilnehmen zu dürfen.

Das ist ohne Zweifel schon mal eine Verbesserung. Was aber, wenn ich meinem Provider und/oder dem Zertifikator (also dem Staat) nicht vertrauen will - wenn ich also noch mehr Datensicherheit brauche? Nun, wenn man niemandem vertrauen will, kommt man um End-zu-End Verschlüsselung nicht herum. Das ist aber keine Einschränkung von De-Mail - zusätzliche End-zu-End-Verschlüsselung bleibt weiterhin möglich, und ist bei De-Mail auch explizit vorgesehen (inklusive Infrastruktur z.B. zum Schlüsseltausch).

Wie siehts bei der Zustellungssicherheit aus? Wie oben beschrieben, ist diese im bisherigen E-Mail Netz nicht umsetzbar. Im abgeschlossenen De-Mail Netz hingegen kann die Zustellung garantiert werden, inklusive signierter Zustellberichte. Man hat also effektiv ein elektronisches Einschreiben. Genau genommen hat man sogar noch mehr, denn man kann sogar den Inhalt der Nachricht, die man versendet hat, belegen (bei Analog-Post wäre das vergleichbar mit der Beauftragung eines Gerichtsvollziehers). Der Mobilfunkanbieter hat nun keine Chance mehr, zu behaupten, meine Kündigung wäre nicht rechtzeitig angekommen. Ich habe also selbst dann einen Netto-Gewinn, wenn ich Verschlüsselung/Signatur selbst mache.

Fazit

Konzeptionell finde ich De-Mail sehr interessant, eine Empfehlung für oder gegen eine Registrierung kann ich aber nicht aussprechen. Dazu müssen neben dem Konzept auch die technische Umsetzung sowie die rechtliche Würdigung akzeptabel sein, und beide Punkte kann ich momentan nicht beurteilen. Noch habe ich keine De-Mail Adresse, und ich weiss auch noch nicht, ob ich mir eine holen werde.

Ricardo Mones: Total time: 5 minutes 48 seconds

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 08:36:57 +0000

This is how long takes a deploy at localhost... when your work's laptop is a underpowered five year's old technology. That's probably not even true, as the time of marketing is usually way in the future from the time the technology does exist and is usable.

Obviously it's not all hardware's fault, the enterprise mandated heap of crap^W^W^Wstandard operating environment which runs on top of it does it's job by eating around a third of the 2 GB of total memory. Put a local Oracle and a couple of JVMs (eclipse and the application server) and you'll soon be swapping to disk.

I'm pretty tired of all this currently. I my last week vacation was canceled because of the project I had been unassigned from (and now reassigned again), and I really needed it. At least September will be better.

Salvatore De Paolis: Git: basic commands

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:54:17 +0000

With people who have always used cvs or svn, git may looks confusing at first place. It's just a first-day impression!

Let's go.

Cloning a repository

While using cvs or svn we aren't aware of this word..cloning, right because in such environments this word doesn't make sense. Doing a checkout is different from doing a clonation.
As we saw in the git overview pictures, the structure of the repository is exactly the same
on the server and the clients. That's why we talk about cloning. While doing a clonation you get exactly the server's structure and than you can work on local without any needs
to ping the server apart from mirroring the changes. This is not possible with cvs or svn, because a command as commit, requires a server's connection.

I'm using here as example, the claws mail git repository of Holger (thanks for silently agree ). Be aware this is not the official claws mail repository, since officially it only uses cvs.

git clone http://github.com/hb/claws-mail
This is basically what you would do with cvs on the official repository with:

export CVS_RSH=ssh

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@claws-mail.org:/ co -r gtk2 claws

Adding files

Let's say you want to add files to the repository, and keep track of them with git, you'd need to:

$ git add configure.ac

$ git add *.c

$ git add README Changelog

Committing

Once you added files or modified them, you'd want to commit changes on the local database with some of these:

$ git commit main.c

$ git commit -a

$ git commit -m "file README added" README

The -a option is for committing all changes.
If the -m option for the comment is omitted, this means the default editor will be opened to add a new comment.
Another useful option for commit is the --amend one.
If you do something wrong with your commit, like missing a file or a typo in the comment, using this option allows you to redo the operation and the commit will refer to the same already committed.

Instead if you want to reset changes you did with a file, you need to use the checkout command (which is commonly used with branches):
$ git checkout -- file_i_messed_up

Status

This is another interesting command which let you see what's going on and gives you hints about what to do:
$ git status

Diff

$ git diff

$ git diff-files

$ git diff-tree

$ git diff-index

Log
$ git log
That's to see cronology of commits, there's also a graphic tool not given by default called gitk which requires tk libraries.

Reset
If there's a wrong add of a file it can be removed with:
$git reset HEAD file_to_remove

As you can see here, HEAD, it's just a pointer to the current selected branch. I'll talk another time about git branches.

Fetch
It updates the local database with something else.
Git calls the remote repository, origin so with:
$ git fetch origin
looks like cvs up or svn up. The origin can be omitted since it's implicit, but i added to to show you can have options.

Pull
$ git pull
this works as a couple of commands, the fetch and the merge one(i'll talk about this together with branches).

Push
That's similar to cvs commit or svn commit.
$ git push origin master
Here i'm pushing differences on the remote database (origin) from the local database(master).
Master is so called as the default branch created in git.

Tag
list tags:
$ git tag
Creating one:
$ git tag my_new_tagv2.1.1

All these commands can be used with a double syntax as git command or git-command

Salvatore De Paolis: Git: Basic setup

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 12:29:10 +0000

Git comes with a tool called git config that lets you get and set configuration variables that control all aspects of how Git looks and operates.
Apart from this tool, it's still possible for most fo the configuration variables to set git environment variables in places as /etc/profile, ~/.bashrc ecc..
These variables can be stored in three different places:

/etc/gitconfig file: Contains values for every user on the system and all their repositories. If you pass the option --system to git config, it reads and writes from this file specifically.

~/.gitconfig file: Specific to your user. You can make Git read and write to this file specifically by passing the --global option.

config file in the directory (that is, .git/config) of whatever repository you’re currently using: Specific to that single repository. You may use --file option to refer to this.

Your identity

$ git config --global user.name "Bob Dobbs"

$ git config --global user.email bdobbs@subgenius.org

In the same way with using environment variables:

$ cat  EOF >>  ~/.bashrc

> export GIT_AUTHOR_NAME='Bob Dobbs'

> export GIT_COMMITTER_NAME=Bobby

> export GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL=bdobbs@subgenius.org

> export GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL=bdobbs@subgenius.org

EOF

Your editor
By default git uses the one used by default in the system, to change it:
$ git config --global core.editor vim

In the same way with using environment variable:
$ echo "export GIT_EDITOR=vim" >> ~/.bashrc

Your diff tool
Git accepts kdiff3, tkdiff, meld, xxdiff, emerge, vimdiff, gvimdiff, ecmerge, and opendiff as valid merge tools
$ git config --global merge.tool vimdiff

Checking your settings
$ git config --list or a specific field with $ git config user.name

Getting help

$ git help <verb>

$ git --help <verb>

$ man git-<verb>

Using a proxy
Instead of establish a direct connection to the remote server is possible to set a proxy. Check the gitproxy-socat which wraps socat to allow git through a proxy:
$ git config --global core.gitProxy gitproxy-socat
In the same way with using environment variable:
$ echo "export GIT_PROXY_COMMAND=gitproxy-socat" >> ~/.bashrc

Shared repository
$ git config --global core.sharedRepository devel
When group (or true), the repository is made shareable between several users in a group (making sure all the files and objects are group-writable).
When all (or world or everybody), the repository will be readable by all users, additionally to being group-shareable. When umask (or false), git will use permissions reported by umask.
When 0xxx, where 0xxx is an octal number, files in the repository will have this mode value. 0xxx will override user´s umask value, and thus, users with a safe umask (0077) can use this option.
Examples: 0660 is equivalent to group. 0640 is a repository that is group-readable but not group-writable.

Excluding files
In addiction to .gitignore (within the directory) and .git/info/exclude it's also possible to use
$ git config --global core.excludefile pattern_file

Coloring diff
$ git config --global color.diff true

Salvatore De Paolis: Git: A Git overview

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 06:28:00 +0000

Git is DVCS (distributed version control system) which acts similarly as Mercurial, Bazaar or Darcs.
CVS or Subversion are CVCS (centralized version control system) and the major difference between them is clear in these pictures:

CVCS structure:

With CVCS everything is stored on the server and if that server goes down for an hour, then during that hour nobody can collaborate at all or save versioned changes to anything they’re working on.
If the hard disk the central database is on becomes corrupted, and proper backups haven’t been kept, you lose absolutely everything the entire history of the project except whatever single snapshots people happen to have on their local machines.

DCVS structure:

In DCVS clients don’t just check out the latest snapshot of the files: they fully mirror the repository. Thus if any server dies, and these systems were collaborating via it, any of the client repositories can be copied back up to the server to restore it. Every checkout is really a full backup of all the data.

So Git thinks about its data in a different way than any other VCS (Subversion and friends included). Conceptually, most other systems store information as a list of file-based changes while Git thinks of its data more like a set of snapshots of a mini filesystem. Every time you commit, or save the state of your project in Git, it basically takes a picture of what all your files look like at that moment and stores a reference to that snapshot. This also means most operations in Git only need local files and resources to operate without any network latency overhead that's why most operations seem almost instantaneous.
With CVS or Subversion you can edit files locally, but you can't commit changes to your database (because it's just on the server).

Git has special states for the files which are:

committed, means that the data is safely stored in your local database

modified, means that you have changed the file but have not committed it to your database yet

staged, means that you have marked a modified file in its current version to go into your next commit snapshot

Colin Leroy: Week-end camping sur le canal du midi

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:35:51 +0000

À ce qu’on dirait, je ne blogue plus que mes week-ends !

Avec Clo, on a en projet d’aller, cet été, en vacances chez son père. Mais cette fois au lieu d’y aller par l’autoroute, on compte faire ce trajet le long du canal latéral de Garonne, à vélo, avec une tente, des sacoches et Paul dans sa remorque.

Du coup, on a pensé qu’il serait bien de faire un test avant le vrai départ, et on a décidé de faire une étape et de dormir au camping pour voir ce que ça donne.

On en a profité pour inviter Yann, Betty et Chloé, et on est partis au camping à Ayguesvives : c’est seulement à 23 kilomètres donc ça fait une petite étape, mais celui que j’avais repéré à 35 kilomètres était fermé.

Quelques photos :

Le vélo de Clo avec 8 kilos de sacoches.

Les enfants prêts à partir !

On a roulé plutôt cool, mais une fois arrivés, on avait encore la pêche pour rouler plus. On a attendu sur notre emplacement de camping l’arrivée des tentes, prévues avec Betty qui travaillait et qui nous a rejoint en voiture.

C’est là qu’il a commencé à pleuvoir. On a rangé les mômes à l’abri dans la remorque, et nous avons sorti nos vêtements imperméables ! Betty est arrivée,on a monté leur grande tente, puis lors d’une éclaircie on a monté la nôtre.

L’emplacement

Les enfants

Et notre tente !

Entre chaque averse, on est sortis gaiement patauger dans la gadoue

La gadoue

Et les enfants ont adoré aller découvrir les environs, et spécifiquement le petit chemin caché derrière le camping le long du canal. Ils y découvert pleins d’escargots, de limaces et de belles fleurs.

Découverte d’escargots

Paul était super content d’avoir sa petite tente dans la nôtre.

Coucou !

Ça ne l’a pas empêché de ne pas vouloir dormir tout seul le soir. Du coup ça a été la fête, il s’est finalement endormi lorsqu’on a été tous les deux avec lui (avant, il est venu partager la fête…) vers 23 heures !

Grâce à ça on a eu droit à une grasse matinée jusqu’à, ooh, au moins 7h50 !

Câlin-bib du matin

Petit déj. Vous avez vu ? Du soleil !

Et le dimanche, on a eu de la chance et le temps nous a souri. Il a fait beau toute la journée ! Les enfants ont jardiné dans les graviers de l’allée, ils ont joué dans les flaques et se sont bien amusés.

Jardinage

Euh, mais qu’est-ce que c’est cette photo.

Comme Paul avait trop dormi la nuit passée, il n’a pas non plus voulu faire la sieste dans la tente. Quand je suis allé le chercher après trois quarts d’heure de rigolades et appels variés (“Papa !” “Maman !”), les choses n’étaient plus du tout à l’endroit où je les avais laissées : par exemple nos casque de vélo étaient dans sa tente, ainsi que le manuel de montage de la tente.

Mais comme nous le supposions, Paul n’est pas Superman, et il a quand même besoin de sommeil. Ça s’est vu lorsque qu’il s’est endormi dans l’herbe, sur le pull de Clo :

Paul dort

Inconfortable, cette position ?

Non non, très confortable :-)

Paul: Recent Publications

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:37:43 +0000

John E. Archer – 'By a Flash and a Scare', Arson, Animal Maiming, and Poaching in East Anglia 1815-1870 Breviary Stuff Publications, ISBN 978-0-9564827-1-6

‘By a Flash and a Scare’ illuminates the darker side of rural life in the nineteenth century. Flashpoints such as the Swing riots, Tolpuddle, and the New Poor Law riots have long attracted the attention of historians, but here John E. Archer focuses on the persistent war waged in the countryside during the 1800s, analysing the prevailing climate of unrest, discontent, and desperation.

In this detailed and scholarly study, based on intensive research among the local records of Norfolk and Suffolk, Dr Archer identifies and examines the three most serious crimes of protest in the countryside — arson, animal maiming and poaching. He shows how rural society in East Anglia was shaped by terror and oppression in equal measure. Social crime and covert protest were an integral part of the ordinary life of the rural poor. They did not protest infrequently, they protested all the time. Read more…

Roger Ball – Tolpuddle And Swing, The Flea And The Elephant
Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #12

In 1834, six Dorset farm labourers were tried and condemned to transportation to Australia for joining an early Trade Union. Since then the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs' have become an iconic part of modern British History. Three years before the events in Tolpuddle, much of rural England was rocked with a massive uprising of farm labourers known as the 'Swing Riots'. This pamphlet analyses why 'Tolpuddle' has taken its place in the popular memory and the far more significant events of 'Swing' have been distorted and forgotten. Read more…

Andrea Button – Bristol's White Slave Trade, Indentured and Enforced Labour In The 17th Century
Bristol Radical Pamphleteer #13

Bristol’s role as a supplier of labour to the American and West Indian colonies in the eighteenth century is associated with the African Slave Trade however, this trade was not officially open to the Bristol merchants until 1698. The indentured white servant system, operated in Bristol during the seventeenth century, were used by merchants to meet demand for labour in Britain’s new colonies until the Bristol merchants were legally able to compete in the lucrative transatlantic trade. This pamphlet reveals the extent of this ‘white slavery’ and its links to Bristol. Read more…

No Quarter 5

Includes A Somali Pirate Story by Jordan Zinovich (with Hans Plomp), an interview with Gabriel Kuhn, author of Life Under the Jolly Roger, Reflections on the Golden Age of Piracy, Anarchist Commune at Nootka in 1911? by Larry Gambourne, A Couple More Things About New Hazelton by David Tighe, John Oswald: Atheist, Vegetarian, Revolutionary by N. N., Somali Pirates by Peter Lamborn Wilson, book reviews, and a reading list, all interspersed by some nice black and white imagery. Read more…

Salvatore De Paolis: Mac: debian package for amd64

Wed, 26 May 2010 08:17:50 +0000

Hey,
sometimes it happens to get from friends some music in the ape format and have the wish to convert it in mp3 or ogg format.
I surfed a bit to check if some converter is available, and i found this script, cueape.sh
which does the job pretty well with also cutting and naming the tracks.

Using it is fairly easy:

$ cueape.sh myfile.ape myfile.cue -m

this will convert an ape file to several mp3 files. If you prefer the ogg format, just use the option -o instead of -m

This script to work requires some packages, most of them are listed in here

There's only one issue, the mac utility is not available on the repositories and on this link there's just the version for i386 architecture.
Since i'm using amd64 i had to build (with assembly support) myself the debian package: you can download it here

Paul: K.D.M. Snell – Annals of the Labouring Poor, Social Change and Agrarian England 1660-1900

Sat, 15 May 2010 06:15:57 +0000

K.D.M. Snell – Annals of the Labouring Poor, Social Change and Agrarian England 1660-1900
[Cambridge University Press 1987]

buy new or used at abebooks.co.uk | buy new at amazon.co.uk
If you use either of these links to purchase this item breviary stuff will receive 5% commission

This collection of inter-connected essays is concerned with the impact of social and economic change upon the rural labouring poor and artisans in England, and combines a sensitive understanding of their social priorities with innovative quantitative analysis. It is based on an impressive range of sources, and its particular significance arises from the pioneering use made of a largely neglected archival source – settlement records – to address questions of central importance in English social and economic history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Levels of employment, wage rates, poor relief, the sexual division of labour, the social consequences of enclosure, the decline of farm service and traditional apprenticeship, and th equality of family life are amongst the issues discussed in a profound re-assessment of a perennial problem: the standard of living (in its widest sense) of the labouring poor during the period of industrialisation. The author’s conclusions challenge much of the prevailing orthodoxy, and his extensive use of literary and attitudinal material is closely integrated with the quantitative restatement of an interpretation that owes much to the older tradition of the Hammonds’ Village Labourer.

Contents

Preface
Introduction
1. Agricultural seasonal unemployment, the standard of living, and women's work, 1690–1860
2. Social relations – the decline of service
3. Social relations – the poor law
4. Enclosure and employment – the social consequences of enclosure
5. The decline of apprenticeship
6. The apprenticeship of women
7. The family
8. Thomas Hardy, rural Dorset, and the family
Appendix: yearly wages
Bibliography
Index

Ricardo Mones: Clawsker 0.7.1

Fri, 14 May 2010 17:06:45 +0000

Finally, only three months lather than announced, it has seen the light :-).

Unfortunately I've received no new translations, so it's even a more poor release than expected. Anyway, long life to release early, release often!

Ricardo Mones: running out of ids

Tue, 04 May 2010 14:38:05 +0000

Yep, our current client is pretty sure they're gonna run out of identifiers on the database tables (they're NUMBER(32,0) columns). Now we have to change the database design to have tables with composed primary keys, which will unnecesarily make the queries more complicated, instead our simple autonumeric key.

So what do they process? Not much in fact, around 500 requests per day. Oohh! Let's say 1000, to make you happy. Let's say also detail tables will grow even faster: 1000 lines per request (it's unrealistic, but WTF)... so you have now a million of ids used per day.

Well, sounds a lot... but don't be shy: suppose you have enough cores to process it, the bandwidth of several telcos and exabytes of database to waste, the crisis is over and you're the only vendor in the galaxy, so let's say you use 100 billion of ids per day (or 10^11).

That's really a lot! isn't it? Our little NUMBER(32,0) can hold up to 10^32 values, so at that
surrealistic rate you would exhaust it in 10^32 / 10^11 = 10^21 days, or divided by 365 and rounding 2.74 x 10^18 years, or, dividing again, approximately 210,000,000 times the estimated age of the known universe.

Yes, we're running out of ids... and surrounded by monkeys.

Paul: Need change

Sat, 01 May 2010 08:45:14 +0000

Illustration by Clifford Harper.
Note: It's the UK general election on 6th May. Need change?

Ricardo Mones: dudesconf is over

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 13:58:15 +0000

Well, all good things come to an end, like the song says, so it does DudesConf. We had a very good time here, all the people was having fun and enjoying Debian and the great hospitality of the GPUL people, which make us feel like at home, like the previous times. Superb organization, I hope we can repeat the experience the next year.

I've also been able to put myself online again, so expect me fighting again ;-)

Ricardo Mones: dudesconf

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 07:48:39 +0000

Long time has passed since last post here. Real life in general and my paid job in particular has kept me too busy to leave room for anything else. Now seems things will be better: new project and new bosses (I'm in Ariba team again), though company is the same, so lets see how much it lasts.

Regarding free software there's not much to say, my online life never was so low and I've even lost some sponsored packages in Debian because my lack of activity. There's several hundreds of unread mails pending and things to be done are still to be done. Nevertheless, I'm now at DudesConf enjoying a nice sunny weekend at A Coruña, the talks of my Debian fellows and trying to put myself up to date. For now, I've been able to fix the German manual of Claws Mail so the hydra is able to build packages again.

And now it's breakfast time ;-)

Ricardo Mones: xauth magic

Sat, 10 Apr 2010 07:25:01 +0000

While trying to launch claws-mail in my remote ssh-forwarded display I got an:
X11 connection rejected because of wrong authentication error message.
I realized then that while DISPLAY was configured correctly to point localhost:10.0 I was using another user in the screen session, not the one used to ssh in. After some googling for the message seems the usual culprits for this were low disc space (!) and disabled X11 forwarding, which were not my case. There were mentions to ~/.Xauthority permissions, but you don't have such file when you su to another user. So xauth came to my rescue: on the user which logs in you can list authorizations:

$ xauth list
busgosu/unix:0  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  
localhost.localdomain/unix:0  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  
busgosu/unix:10  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1

And in the user you su-ed to, and which doesn't have the file:

$ xauth
xauth:  creating new authority file /home/otheruser/.Xauthority
Using authority file /home/otheruser/.Xauthority
xauth> add busgosu/unix:10  MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1  
xauth> exit
Writing authority file /home/otheruser/.Xauthority
$

And you're done, with the same authorization now X11 forwarding works for the other user too :-).

Paul: David J. V. Jones – The Last Rising, The Newport Chartist Insurrection of 1839

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:08:15 +0000

David J. V. Jones – The Last Rising, The Newport Chartist Insurrection of 1839
[University of Wales Press 1999]

buy used at abebooks.co.uk
If you use this link to purchase this item breviary stuff will receive 5% commission

On the night of 3-4 November 1839 seven thousand miners from the coalfields of south Wales set out to march on Newport. They were an organized force, armed, angry, and intent on inaugurating a brave new Chartist world. The rising proved to be the most serious clash between people and government in modern industrial Britain: in the major confrontation between Chartists and troops in Newport more than twenty miners were shot dead, and subsequently more than 250 people were arraigned in the last mass treason trial in British history.

The study tells the full story of the rising, its origins and its aftermath, and analyses the profound impact of armed insurrection on the social and political climate of the period. When the people of the coalfield took up the banner of Chartism, that movement became a political crusade. The author reveals that several revolutionary schemes were considered in the valleys, and establishes links with militants in other parts of Britain. He considers the response of the government and propertied classes – from the Special Commission that condemned three of the leaders to death, to the new interest in paternalism and the political concessions that were designed to prevent its recurrence. He concludes that contemporaries were right to regard the rising as one of the most important turning points in Welsh and British social history.

Contents

Maps
Illustrations
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. A unique society
2. A world of politics
3. The tide of revolution
4. The march
5. The rising
6. Punishment
Conclusion
Sources
Notes
Index

Colin Leroy: Week-end à Vienne

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:37:52 +0000

Ce week-end nous sommes partis à Vienne avec Clo, en laissant Paul à sa grand-mère maternelle (nul doute qu’il a passé un super week-end lui aussi !)

Après avoir failli rater l’avion… Nous sommes arrivés à notre hôtel à midi pile, on a déposé notre sac et on est partis visiter. On a marché des kilomètres et découvert tout l’hyper-centre. L’architecture est variée, différents styles du plus gothique au plus moderne se côtoient, parfois séparés par une petite rue.

On a découvert les vélibs locaux, les City Bikes, et on a expérimenté. On a pris les vélos bleus (il y a des jaunes mais ils sont moins bien et des gris mais ils sont trop comme nos vélibs), de vieux vélos hollandais singlespeed, qui se sont révélés idéaux pour la balade tranquille. La première heure est gratuite. Au final on a fait à peu près 22 kilomètres à vélo (on en a loué neuf fois).

Le reste on l’a fait à pied, ce qui nous a permis de découvrir plein de petits endroits sympathiques. On a suivi les recommandations du guide vert Vienne Week-end, et on n’a jamais été déçus !

Pas mal de choses à Vienne m’ont rappelé l’Allemagne où je suis allé il y a… 15 ans… et mon allemand rouillé a même pu être compris pour la plupart de nos interactions avec les locaux ! Qui devaient sans doute noter quelque part qu’il ne s’agissait pas de ma langue maternelle, car souvent, ils nous répondaient en anglais.

Bref, ces trois jours sont passés très vite, d’autant plus qu’on a eu un temps superbe. Il y a plein d’autres photos dans notre galerie Weekend à Vienne !

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 (191x235mm, 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.

Paul: Andrew Charlesworth, David Gilbert, Adrian Randall, Humphrey Southall, and Chris Wrigley – An Atlas of Industrial Protest in Britain 1750-1990

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 07:40:58 +0000

Andrew Charlesworth, David Gilbert, Adrian Randall, Humphrey Southall, and Chris Wrigley – An Atlas of Industrial Protest in Britain 1750-1990
[Macmillan Press 1996]

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Five established experts in the fields of industrial protest and industrial relations have set out to survey the historical geography of industrial protest from the 1750s to the present day. What is revealed, in the numerous maps and accompanying text, is a history of change struck through with more continuity than one might expect.

The role of communities as the bases for mobilisation for collective action over working conditions and wages runs from the textile workers' disputes in the West Country in the 1750s to the 1984/5 miners' strike. In industrial protest and strikes, geography matters.

Through the book one sees the development of trade unionism, from its regional bases to the development of national organisations. In that growth waht is apparent is the tension between the national organisation and the locality.

There is new work presented here for the first time: the sailors' strike og 1768, the machine-breaking riots of 1826, the dock strikes in the immediate post-war period. The book gives a rare insight into industrial relations through the direct collective action of workers, caught up in the transformation of the world's first industrial nation

Contents

Preface
Introduction
Section A: 1750-1850 by Adrian Randall and Andrew Charlesworth
Industrial protest: 1750-1850
1. Strikes and popular protest in Gloucestershire, 1756-66
2. The London sailors' strike of 1768 by Richard Sheldon
3. Protests over cotton machinery in Lancashire, 1768-79
4. Protests against machinery in the west of England wollen industry, 1776-1802
5. The Luddite Disturbances, 1811-12: 5.1 Luddism in the Midlands; 5.2 Luddism in Yorkshire; 5.3 Lancashire Luddism
6. The disturbances of 1826 in the manufacturing districts of the north of England by David Walsh
7. The General Strike of 1842
Section B: 1850-1900 by Humphrey Southall
Industrial protest: 1850-1900
8. The records of industrial protest
9. Lock-outs and national bargaining in the engineering industry, 1852 and 1897-8
10. The nine-hours movement of 1871
11. The revolt of the field, 1872-4
12. The strike at Bryant and May's match factory, East London, July 1888 by Gillian Rose
13. Organising the unskilled: the 1889 dock strike
14. The early May days: 1890, 1891 and 1892 by Chris Wrigley
15. The coal lock-out of 1893 by Chris Wrigley
Section C: 1900-39 by David Gilbert
Industrial protest: 1900-39
16. The geography of stikes, 1900-39
17. The General Strike of 1926
18. The miners' lock-out of 1926
19. Little Moscows and radical localities
20. The national hunger marches, 1921-36
21. The Jarrow Crusade of 1936
22. The Harworth dispute of 1936-7
Section D: 1940-90 by Chris Wrigley
Industrial protest: 1940-90
23. The geography of strikes, 1940-90 by David Gilbert
24. Coal disputes, 1940-45
25. Unofficial dock strikes and the 1945-51 Labour governments by Jim Phillips
26. Strikes in the motor car manufacturing industry
27. The winter of discontent: the lorry drivers' strike, January 1979
28. The 1984-5 miners' strike

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…

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.

Paul: Andrew Charlesworth (Ed.)- An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain 1548-1900

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:42:57 +0000

Andrew Charlesworth (Ed.) – An Atlas of Rural Protest in Britain 1548-1900
[Unviversity of Pennsylvania Press 1983]

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The outbreaks of collective violence arising from the tensions existing within society have long been themes in the study of British social history. Detailed studies abound — on the Levellers, the Diggers, fen rioters, food rioters, machinery riots, tithe riots, turnpike riots and so on. This book breaks new ground in that it attempts to survey the whole range of these rural riots, to compare and contrast them, and to draw general conclusions.

Seventy-five maps are included in this volume, each with an accompanying commentary written by an authority on the particular subject. Taken together, the maps show how the distribution of protest changed over time, how particular forms of protest — riots connected with land, with food and with labour — altered as Britain developed from a predominantly feudal to a predominantly capitalist society.

Contents

List of Maps
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. The Geography of Land Protests 1548-1860: 2.1 Lowland England 1520-95; 2.2 Lowland England 1596-1710; 2.3 Upland England 1520-1650; 2.4 Wales, Scotland and Upland England 1650-1860; 2.5 Lowland England 1710-1860; 2.6 1548-52; 2.7 1580-1606; 2.8 The Midland Revolt of 1607 John Martin; 2.9 1608-39; 2.10 1640-9; 2.11 1650-1701; 2.12 1702-39; 2.13 The Levellers' Revolt in Galloway 1724 John W. Leopold; 2.14 1740-79; 2.15 1780-1831; 2.16 1832-60; 2.17 Attacks on Deer Parks 1640-1740; 2.18 Opposition to Enclosure in Northamptonshire c1760-1800 Jeanette M. Neeson
3. The Geography of Food Riots 1585-1847: 3.1 Introduction; 3.2 1585-1649 John Walter; 3.3 1660-1737; 3.4 1740 Robert W. Malcolmson; 3.5 1756-7 Jeremy N. Caple; 3.6 1766 Dale E. Williams; 3.7 1771-3; 3.8 1776-93; 3.9 1794-6; 3.10 1799-1801; 3.11 1810-18; 3.12 1847 Eric Richards; 3.13 North Midlands: August and September 1756 Jeremy N. Caple; 3.14 Gloucestershire — Wiltshire 1766 Dale E. Williams; 3.15 Devon 1795 and 1800-1 John Bohstedt
4 Turnpike Disturbances in the Eighteenth and Early-nineteenth Centuries
5 The Clubmen and Militia Protests: 5.1 The Risings of the Clubmen in 1644-45 Garry Lynch; 5.2 The Militia Riots of 1757 Jeremy N. Caple; 5.3 Militia Riots 1795-8
6 The Geography of Protests by Agricultural Labourers 1790-1850: 6.1 The Rise of an Agricultural Proletariat; 6.2 The French Wars 1793-1815 and the First Oubreaks of Labourers' Protests; 6.3 The Post-war Agricultural Depression and the Protests of the 1815-31 Period; 6.4 The East Anglian Protests of 1816; 6.5 The Agricultural Labourers' Protests of 1822; 6.6 The Captain Swing Protests of 1830-31; 6.7 After Swing; 6.8 Anti Poor Law Movements and Rural Trade Unionism in the South-east 1835 John Lowerson; 6.9 Protest in East Anglia Against the Imposition of the New Poor Law Anne Digby; 6.10 The Agricultural Labourers' Protests in East Anglia in the 1840s
7 Rural Protest in Mid- and Late-Victorian Britain: 7.1 Introduction; 7.2 The Rebecca Riots 1839-44 David J. V. Jones; 7.3 The Spread of the Rebecca Riots 1842-44; 7.4 Agricultural Trade Unionism in England 1872-94 John P. D. Dunbabin; 7.5 The Kent and Sussex Labourers' Union 1872-95 Felicity Carlton; 7.6 The Welsh Tithe War 1886-95 John P. D. Dunbabin; 7.7 The Highland Land War 1881-96 James Hunter
References
Notes on Contributors
Index

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.

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..

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?

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.

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.

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.

Salvatore De Paolis: Fancy: The Webkit Plugin for Claws Mail

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:28:31 +0000

The Webkit Plugin, named as Fancy Plugin is available in claws-mail cvs extra plugins!

Get it from here:

export CVS_RSH=ssh
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@claws-mail.org:/ co -r gtk2 plugins

Since there are some issue with snapshot on claws-mail.org here is available a mirror
For the same issue packages for ubuntu are not available. Anyway, unofficially, you can get them from
this link.

Snapshots are now available on Claws Mail

Anyway for any problems you can write to me or join the #claws channel on freenode.

Have fun.

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.

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 :-(.

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...

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... :-(

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! :-)

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 ;-)

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.

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...

Ricardo Mones: Vacation, whose vacation?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 12:53:49 +0000

Work

Yep, supposedly I'm on vacation, but these are not going to be as fun as other years. First Silvia couldn't choose vacation period on September, as we would have wanted and had to split vacation between August and October. I don't like to be on vacation on August for several reasons, but as this year we don't have money to go those nice places we used to go most of these reasons vanish. So far we're practicing some short-range tourism, like having lunch in Cudillero and going back home by evening, and some house-keeping ungrateful tasks, like cleaning windows (no pun intended!). I expect the October period to be less static, because not going somewhere feels a bit like having no vacation.

Debian

My Debian stuff is mostly frozen now, as we're in the way of getting Lenny released soon. The newmail crasher is finally fixed also in Debian, so, unless something really nasty appears in the meantime, current versions will be the ones shipped in Lenny CDs/DVDs. The only thing I miss is not having a more updated themes package, because current release dates from beginning of 2007 and doesn't contain any of the new PNG themes.

Hardware

As some may already know my MacBook hard disk (Hitachi 160 Gb) died two or three weeks ago. I've been able to recover most of data from it, thanks to SystemRescueCd and some help to mount encrypted partitions by hand. Unfortunately one of the lost pieces was the trial-error-made deb package with a mostly working driver for the Atheros wifi card of the MacBook (but only with kernel 2.6.21). As I was stupid enough not to document the process or backup it I guess I will have to start from scratch with that again or fall-back to MacOS X for wifi connectivity.

The MacBook was 1 year and few months old, but there's a known conflict between which warranty Apple provides (1 year) and the one supposedly granted by the Spanish law for consumer goods (2 years), and Apple is actively rejecting to follow it (no links, but Google is full of stories). Therefore I've decided not to fight on lost battles and just buy a replacement (another Hitachi but 320 Gb, still don't have it though). Of course I will think thrice before buying anything more from Apple. And for those wandering, no, I don't like to pay another heap of euros for the "AppleCare Protection Plans" when the law already gives me almost the same for free.

I only hope the disks of my main box not to start failing soon (they're two, they're older and they're spinning most of the time: 14:41:56 up 24 days, 22:07, 13 users, load average: 0.11, 0.08, 0.09).

Ricardo Mones: Sardine festival

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:44:28 +0000

Last Friday was holiday for me, and like previous year I went to the Candás Sardine Festival. This time it was a bit different because seems now I have my five seconds of fame on the globalised TV. Only a hint: I'm the one on green, and Lucho is the one pouring (escanciando) the cider.

Tristan Chabredier: Laughin’ my ass off: meretrix ISO-certified works

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:53:57 +0000

Did you know that Meretrix Technologies “Care About Your Needs”? That could not tell you anything special, unless you remember that meretrix is latin for prostitute. Good to know that they’re ISO9001 certified .

See: http://www.meretrix.com/.

Are they really serious, trying to be funny or simply ignorant?

Moreover, quoting the main page:

[..]
We’re about performance, because you’re about performance, and we’re about unleashing the dynamic energy of today’s technology for you! We understand the importance of standards-compliant open systems technology, and we can provide the complete solutions that you need.
[..]
Here at Meretrix Technologies, we understand the value of Continuous Quality Improvement. We believe that if we can provide constant improvement in our services, that their quality will continue to increase as a result, particularly over time, and that will, of course, mean greater performance over the long run.
[..]

They sell blue pills maybe?

And also:

[..]
And as part of the Meretrix Vision, as seen by our founder, respected technologist, humanitarian, and bon-vivant Harry Mantakos, we believe that anyone who takes this web page seriously is a complete idiot. Hell, I wasn’t even wearing pants when I wrote it.
[..]

Definitely not serious. Woud you present your founder with such a picture?

Tristan Chabredier: gToDo for IT/OS2008

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:38:15 +0000

This time it’s just an early port of gToDo to Maemo. With the agreement gToDo’s author, QBall Cow, I’ve taken over the maintenance of gToDo 0.x (he’s focusing at gToDo 2.x, but there’s still some users using the 0.x version). A preliminary package for maemo is available from my Maemo repository, it includes few patches from mine (this is why it’s versioned 0.16.0rc3), but there’s still some GUI rework needed. Expect an update soon!

Homepage of gTodo
gToDo at maemo.org

Tristan Chabredier: Audio Tag Tool and Gringotts for IT/OS2008!

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:11:36 +0000

Editing tags in audio files (OGG/MP3), and carrying your secret keys in a strongbox while travelling with your N810 tablet in your pocket? It’s now possible!

I’ve completed the preliminary port of two of my favourite applications to Maemo (IT/OS2008 aka Chinook): Audio Tag Tool and Gringotts. Did some changes to the sources, debian’ized and created packages (with the necessary dependencies to Gringotts: libmcrypt4, libmhash2 and libgringotts). Asked for authors’ agreement, and here are some early packages of Audio Tag Tool 0.12.3 and Gringotts 1.2.10pre1! They (and their deps) at available on their respective official download locations as well as by the way of my personal Maemo repository.

Homepage of Audio Tag Tool
Audio Tag Tool at maemo.org

Homepage of Gringotts
Gringotts at maemo.org

Tristan Chabredier: Pecomato and RsBackup for IT/OS2008

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:03:55 +0000

Pecomato and RsBackup are now available on Maemo IT/OS2008 (Chinook). It was more about doing adaptations than doing real porting process, had to learn a bit of .deb ARM package creation and debian repository setup. Pecomato 0.0.15 and RsBackup 0.0.9 (a Qt4 pre-version) run fine on my N810 tablet, now I can use my picture file process scripts when travelling .

Pecomato at garage.maemo.org
Pecomato in maemo.org’s OS2008 catalogue

RsBackup at garage.maemo.org
RsBackup in maemo.org’s OS2008 catalogue

The maemo repository, at mollux.org, serving Pecomato and RsBackup .deb’s.

Jean-Luc Biord: Qt4 for Maemo tablets available

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 20:30:34 +0000

This project aims at using Trolltech Qt4 packages on maemo devices. In this way your tablet will be able to run many Qt4 applications. The first step is completed and the user and developper packages are available on http://qt4.garage.maemo.org.
The second work is now the Hildonization: To move the menubar to the menu system and allow to use a virtual keyboard. A first application is already ported, it's SpeedCrunch a fast, high precision and powerful desktop calculator, available in the same repository.

Jean-Luc Biord: XGalaga for OS2008

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 20:30:55 +0000

XGalaga 0.0.7 is now available for OS2008 (n800 and n810). XGalaga is a clone of the classic game Galaga for the X Window System. Xgalaga is a space-invader like game with additional features to produce a more interesting game. Available on the Download page.

Tristan Chabredier: Gallery updates: California

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 23:20:08 +0000

Hey all,

back from our short vacation time in California, few days spent with lovely friends of us, who live near San Francisco. Of course, we’ve added - at last - a bunch of photos to the gallery. They are mostly from San Francisco and few nice places around, and from the High Sierras (Sierra Nevada, Yosemite National Park).

We’ve created a smaller folder with some highlights:
200709xx_highlights

All other folders, including few artistic compositions (last two folders):
20070915_muir_woods
20070915_san_francisco
20070915_stinson
20070916_monterey_carmel
20070917_san_francisco
20070918_sf_academy_of_sciences
20070919_san_francisco
20070919_sf_botanical_garden
20070919_sf_conservatory_of_flowers
20070919_sf_japanese_tea_garden
20070920_lake_tahoe
20070922_bodie
20070922_mono_lake
20070923_curry_village
20070923_mist_trail
200709xx_bw_series
200709xx_on_california_roads

And a private one, that requires you to log in:
200709xx_sf_pv

The traditional appetizers:

SF: Golden Gate Bridge	SF: Market Street	SF: Conservatory of Flowers

Lake Tahoe	Emerald Bay	Nevada Falls

And, by the way, I’ve added some forgotten photos from August 2007, taken in le Clos Lucé, the last residence of Leonardo da Vinci (in Amboise near Tours, France). This was obviously not the right moment to visit it, it was over-crowded with hundreds of Italian (and other usual French, Japanese) tourists, making the visit uncomfortable and a bit stressing. That also explains the lack of interesting pictures, as I dislike shooting in such conditions.

20070815_clos_luce

Tristan Chabredier: Announcing Pecomato 0.0.15

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 07:42:18 +0000

A critical buffer overrun was found and fixed - there’s no risk of data loss, just a crash after files are processed. Thus leading to an urgent release, 0.0.15.

The PECoMaTo page is here. Downloads section is here.

Tristan Chabredier: Announcing Pecomato 0.0.14

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 10:42:04 +0000

Pecomato 0.0.14 is out!

I’ve added the possibility to append IPTC records (filter edits) to an existing IPTC chunk. Include/exclude filters are not limited to 100 items anymore. The loading of exclude filters from a file has been fixed (it was broken in 0.0.13). Pecomato is now licensed under GPL v3 or greater. Few RPM packaging rules also changed and I’ve added .7z archives.

Starting from 0.0.14, I’ll only provide GNU/Linux and Windows packages. Other ports will be done on-demand or according to my spare time and will.

Jump to the downloads section. The PECoMaTo page is here.

Tristan Chabredier: Visit Mollux City!

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 13:36:04 +0000

C’mon, make it grow . Click to visit Mollux City!

Visit Mollux City

Now we can increase the industry, but I wonder if we really should do that!

Jean-Luc Biord: New Maemo release of Claws-mail 2.10.0

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 16:29:40 +0000

Claws-mail 2.10.0 is released by the project team. This version is also available for Maemo platform (Nokia 770 and 800) at http://www.claws-mail.org/maemo

Jean-Luc Biord: Plugins available for Maemo Claws-mail

Fri, 04 May 2007 15:42:44 +0000

A new release of Claws-mail 2.9.2-1 is available on http://www.claws-mail.org/maemo. With this release, some plugins are available too:

AttachWarner : Warns when the user composes a message mentioning an attachment in the message body without attaching any files to the message.
AttRemover : This plugin lets you remove attachments from emails.
mailMBOX : This plugin handles mailboxes in mbox format.
RSSyl : This plugin allows you to read your favourite newsfeeds in Claws. RSS 1.0, 2.0 and Atom feeds are currently supported.
vCalendar : This plugin enables vCalendar message handling like that produced by Evolution or Outlook, and handles webCal subscriptions. It provides a personal calendar and public calendar import and export.

I packaged only the plugins who seems to be useful on the tablets. Feedbacks are welcome.

Jean-Luc Biord: New Claws-mail 2.9.1-1 package for Maemo tablets

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:03:21 +0000

A new package 2.9.1-1 (based on the 2.9.1cvs18) is available on http://www.claws-mail.org/maemo/. This release fixes many bugs with some concerning Maemo tablets.
Without Ctrl key, the tablet needs a way to multi-select items. For this, a toggle button is now present to the summary view to switch between normal and multiple selection.