Fast Forward

Lucy left for England yesterday (OK, now it’s two days ago — last Friday). That means that I have unusual amount of free time at my hands, and yet even more things that could be done with it.

But I suppose it’s time to update this little blog. It’s probably pointless to enumerate what happened, or what changed. Everything is fine and smooth over here — the wrinkles get worked out over time (with Lucy, without Lucy). Hobbies still take time and I still haven’t given up. My latest determination is to get myself a bassoon for next Christmas. (Now, that will be a year since we got Lucy a Marigaux 901, used, in great condition for a great price, lo and behold, on Austrian ebay. World is so weird sometimes…)

And in the land of [LVM], I have finally started the process to merge code to improve LVM’s behaviour in presence of failed storage hardware (physical volumes gone missing). In the land of Adept, well… first things first.

FOSSCamp

I have visited Prague for the latest Ubuntu- (well, Canonical-) organised event, the FOSSCamp. I have met Johnatan (KUbuntu), Seli (KWin), Lidya (Amarok), Robert (Konsole), Jos (Strigi) and Inge (KOffice). See also Johnatan’s Blog (including a real blurry picture).

So back to Adept — I had some hacking time over there in Prague, and I have almost brought Installer and Updater back to life for Adept 3. I unfortunately didn’t have as much time for it since then — but my current free time situation does open up some possibilities. First and foremost, I should really make a text interface to the underlying libraries for myself, maybe with fancy colourful UI, hopefully one that is comfortably close enough to apt-get and still offers advantages. Hmmmm…

Intermezzo 1

Now zoom out and zoom in somewhere else, enough of coding matters. Our research group at the University had a (tool) paper accepted for ATVA 2008, meaning that I am not unlikely to visit Seoul, South Korea in October. Another piece of distant world to visit.

FOSDEM

Now, that reminds me… Since the last time, I have also been in Belgium — to visit FOSDEM — meeting Alasdair (of LVM) and Bart and Pino of Krita and Okular, respectively… although unfortunately, I didn’t spend nearly enough time with Pino… At least we have spend a day walking around Ghent with Bart (and Lucy, who visited Belgium with me, also having friends of her own there). Moreover, I have spent a lot of mostly productive time with Alasdair, discussing LVM2. And Belgium is nice and pretty, although I didn’t really get around to taste any beer. Maybe next time. And Antwerps were nice, too. Photos? Someday.

LinuxTag

And after that, I have visited Berlin again, for LinuxTag as usual — plus the accompanying LVM discussions, with Milan, Kabi and Mikuláš (Blek) of the Czech part of the team, and Heinz, John and of course Alasdair for the rest of the world… Also as usual, we walked around, had dinners, discussed non-work stuff, etc… a good event all in all. At LinuxTag, I have briefly seen Lidya again, as well as Ossi (whom I nearly didn’t recognise…) and Aaron who (for a change) didn’t recognise me (but to be fair, I didn’t quite stop by to chat and he’s been busy…) and Sebas, cordial as ever (and always a pleasure to meet)… reminds me of Paris two years ago, too.

Intermezzo 2

Less than a month ago, I have finished my first semester of master’s study — two or three more to go (I have completed bachelor’s the semester before). Yes, I am a bachelor of computer science, or something like that, anyway, now. Or so I hope. I did not attend the whatever ceremony and I don’t really have the diploma (or maybe I do, but gods know where it is…).

A short note on Debian with best intentions

I am now sponsoring Trent Buck’s ?darcs packages, contributing a little on the go (making me wish that alpha buildd would make a little more progress…). With Enrico, we have uploaded new versions of wibble and libept, both of which I think make both of us fairly happy. (Although we again managed to hit a way strange compiler issue (only manifested on arm… what have I done that the gods punish me so?), as documented in Debian bug 487406…)

I have packaged dzen2 and taken over haskell-mode (I am losing track of my own packages again — I really need to set up reliable watch files so I don’t miss out too many releases… apparently neither has new upstream versions, so I can sleep peacefully for a little longer).

Intermezzo 3

I am not going to DebConf nor Akademy this year. That makes me a little sad, but it’s all my own fault (and laziness). Next time folks, next time. I haven’t seen Kévin in aeons and he probably removed me from his memory by now… No matter, I’ll try a little harder next year, promise (oh, how many have I made to date?).

Finale

Nothing grandiose, just best wishes to everyone, I have to land in bed now it seems, as I am ever so sleepy. (Just So Stories, anyone?) There I go.