Steve's blog

Flights booked for DebConf

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:44:00 +0100

I'll be there, and so will Jo for the first time. Be nice to her, please? :-)

Leaving Amino, on to ARM

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:04:00 +0100

Number 2: Although most of the details were finalised a while ago, I haven't blogged about this yet. I've been working at Amino for over four years, developing software for a range of Linux-based set-top boxes. It's been a good place to work for most of that time, but recently I've decided that it's time to find new employment.

At the end of March, I'll be joining ARM as a Staff Software Engineer, working on Linux and other Open Source / Free Software with them. The job looks awesome, just about exactly what I've been looking for. And I'll be joining two more Debian folk who are working there already. Woo! :-)

It's been a while

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:56:00 +0100

Apologies for not posting in a while. I've been a little busy of late, but I promise to fill in some of the details in the next few days.

Number 1: Jo and I are engaged. We went to a nice restaurant on Saturday for her birthday. I totally surprised her by asking the question in her birthday card: "P.S. Will you marry me" at the bottom. The look on her face as she said "yes" was awesome. *grin*

I had already surprised her a couple of weekends back by taking her to Paris for Valentine's weekend. She didn't know we were going until we got to the checkin desk for the Eurotunnel.

Now I've got a problem, though: what do I do for a surprise two weekends from now? :-)

Helsinki in the autumn

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:08:00 +0100

I arranged a weekend trip for me and Jo at short notice when other plans for the weekend didn't happen. And I'm glad I did, we both had an excellent time! :-)

We met up with Lars and Soile for dinner at their place on Saturday when we arrived, and they were great hosts. We hit the sauna then went back to our hotel, tired from the travel but happy.

I had promised Jo that we would find some reindeer for her, so on Sunday we went overboard. First of all, a trip to the natural history museum in the middle of Helsinki where we got to see models of reindeer and reindeer skeletons (amongst other things!)...

Then we went to the Zetor Tractor Bar for lunch, including (of course!) reindeer to eat. Then on to the zoo to see various animals including big cats and ... reindeer! *grin*

We headed back to the centre of Helsinki and met up with a bunch of the locals for drinks and some dinner. It was excellent to meet up with these folks; I'd not met some of them in a couple of years!

Finally, last thing that night, I surprised Jo with a trip to the Ice Bar in the middle of the city. She had no idea where we were going, and when we got there the look on her face was wonderful!

We both loved the trip, and we'll have to go back again soon.

Silly photos from Spain

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:20:00 +0100

While driving through Spain around DebConf, I saw a few things that I thought I should share with the world...

San Sebastian runs on dbus!

ALSA on a coach:

Wonderful fuel economy! We managed to fill up with diesel, then coast for about 15 miles down a very very very long downhill stretch into Bilbao. And just before we stopped at a toll booth at the bottom of the hill, the car's estimated MPG figure flipped to 99.9 and we got a blurry photo.

Cool DebConf

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 22:58:00 +0100

Yeah, OK, I suck and I should have posted about DebConf 9 while I was there or shortly afterwards. Well, I've been busy with various things (or, to be more specific, one person \o/). I'm slowly catching up on stuff now, so I thought I'd write something and link to some photos!

I drove down from the UK with Neil, Chris and Chris and we had a good trip. We left Cambridge really early on Wednesday the 22nd, stopped at Le Mans for lunch, then headed to San Sebastian overnight. The French autoroutes were mostly empty and we made very good time, swapping drivers every two hours.

The venue was superb, with just about all the facilities we needed on site. And there was a handy outdoor bar in the park just up the street. Yay!

As always, it was excellent to meet up with Debian friends old and new from all over the world. The DebConf team did a great job of making the conference happen and I had a wonderful time, as did everybody else I spoke to.

There was an official day trip involved, but as we had 2 cars from the UK a group of us rebelled and made our own trip out to do touristy things. We visited the Roman ruins in Merida (photos here), then as we were so close to Portugal we decided to head over the border and found the lovely old town of Elvas.

After the conference, we headed slowly back up to the north coast of Spain, stopping over in Madrid and then Bilbao before catching the overnight ferry back to England. Along the way on that trip we saw a few sights such as the historic city of Pamplona and the "Valley of the Fallen", the monument to people killed in the Spanish Civil War.

I got back to Cambridge late on Monday the 3rd, tired but happy. We'd done 2,400 or so miles in the car and several hundred more on the ferry, and we'd all had a great journey. We saw some silly stuff along the way too, and I'll post more about those soon.

Goodwood Festival of Speed 2009

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:45:00 +0100

I went down to Goodwood House again this year for the Festival of Speed, and it was excellent fun. I spent the day with a bunch of friends looking at and listening to a massive range of silly cars. We got to see Formula 1 drivers showing off for the crowd on the hillclimb, rally drivers reliving their best on the specially-made rally stage in the forest and historic sports cars being driven the way they were intended: FAST. *grin*

And, to cap it all, Jo came with us too for the first time and she loved it too. Yay!

Christian, that's too easy!

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:17:00 +0100

Give us a harder riddle? :-)

Keep libel laws out of science

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:05:00 +0100

The "Sense about Science" group have written about a ridiculous lawsuit currently happening in the UK. The British Chiropractic Association has sued Simon Singh for libel, based on an article he wrote in the Guardian newspaper in 2008. There is a campaign to express support for Simon and call for an urgent review of English law of libel, and I have signed the petition myself. The right place for scientific debate is out in the open, not shut down by cowards who refuse to show evidence for their claims and instead pay for lawsuits.

age++

Sat, 30 May 2009 12:26:00 +0100

On Thursday it was my birthday, and I fulfilled a promise I made to myself many years ago. I've always been a car nut, and when I was about 6 years old and had posters of Lamborghinis on my bedroom walls I promised myself that by the time I reached 35 I would have one. That would be long enough in the future that it might happen, but I'd still be young enough to still be able to appreciate it. Well, as it got to the beginning of this year I realised I was running out of time and my bank balance didn't quite look large enough to buy a Lamborghini. So, I cheated a little and I hired one for the day on Thursday.

More pictures here.

I had one car booked a few weeks ago, but unfortunately the company involved had to let me down as the car developed problems a couple of days before I was due to have it and needed to go away for repairs. I'm not going to complain too much about them, as it wasn't their fault and they did their level best to make things right: offering a different car, a refund or a later replacement hire. But dammit! I wanted the Lamborghini and I wanted it on my birthday! I quickly rang around on Wednesday to find somebody else, and thankfully the folks at Signature Car Hire were very helpful, sorting out a car with just a few hours' notice. Yay!

When they guys turned up on Thursday morning to deliver the car to my office, I couldn't stop myself grinning like the 6-year old boy whose promise I was keeping. Here was a gorgeous car, and it was mine for the day!!! I planned a route for the day to take in some nice driving roads and, importantly, some tunnels. I've watched Top Gear on the TV and I read Autocar every week, and they had both said that taking a fast sports car through a tunnel with the roof down was a good thing to do. I now know that's an understatement!

As a whole, the car was awesome: the acceleration, the handling, the brakes were all wonderful. But, as I found out on that day, the noise from the engine was just astonishing. I went through several tunnels that day, heading down past Baldock to Hatfield and back, and at full throttle I could not help but laugh out loud at the music coming from the 5-litre V10 orchestra just inches behind me. It's an experience I'm never going to forget. grin.

I also gave short rides to quite a few of the people at work; oddly I had lots of friends that day... :-)

I'd also planned other things for the day. I bought myself a new camera in advance to make sure I got some nice photos of the day. Then at the end of the day I went out to the pub with a huge group of friends and I was forced to drink lots of beer. It was horrible, horrible I tell you.

New additions on Planet Debian

Tue, 26 May 2009 23:47:00 +0100

I've just added feeds for the students working with Debian in the Summer of Code this year. Hopefully they'll soon be dazzling us all with their work... :-)

NAS 1.9.2 in unstable

Tue, 26 May 2009 23:45:00 +0100

Just uploaded this at the weekend, and it was a really nice one to do too. Every single one of the Debian patches that I used to make to the source for NAS has now been accepted upstream, so our diff is now just the Debian packaging metadata. W00t!

New key

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:55:00 +0100

I've followed the advice of Daniel and generated myself a new PGP key. I've moved from an old 1024-bit DSA key (88C7C1F7) to a new 4096-bit RSA key. I've signed the new key with the old one so there is a trust path already, and I've uploaded it to the keyservers today. I'm expecting some DD signatures on it shortly after a trip to the pub tonight. Once the new key is accepted I'll start phasing out the old one, of course. New key details:

pub   4096R/3442684E 2009-05-09
      Key fingerprint = CEBB 5230 1D61 7E91 0390  FE16 5879 7957 3442 684E
uid                  Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>
uid                  Steve McIntyre <stevem@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
uid                  Steve McIntyre <93sam@debian.org>
sub   4096R/E2C26E29 2009-05-09

Whoops, I did it again

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:52:00 +0100

So, it looks like Debian developers want me to be the DPL again for another year. The fools! cackle. :-)

Thanks to people for voting for me and Luk this year, and also thanks to Zack and the secretaries for their efforts in the election this year too.

I'll post something more formal shortly, but right now I'm still working on the latest set of point release CDs/DVDs and tidying up my place after a big party last night. TTFN!

Post-release

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:41:00 +0100

It took us a couple of weeks to organise, but we had a small Lenny release party in Cambridge last weekend. We had the usual crowd of Cambridge folks, plus Noodles and codehelp. Jason Clifford from UKFSN even threw some cash our way to help cover the costs - Thanks Jason! :-) We started at the Regal pub in town, then headed back to my place and drank until late.

Quite a number of the revellers also bought some of our shiny new Lenny release T-shirts! If you'd like one, look at the details here and mail me!

Update: Fixed the URL to the T-shirt photo. Doh!

You are not alone

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:29:00 +0100

Shockingly, I seem to have found a woman crazy enough to like me! This delusion looks like it might be long-term; let's see how it goes... :-)

I did a bad bad thing

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:24:00 +0100

OK, so after a lot of dithering I finally decided that I wanted to stand again for re-election in the DPL election this year. That's despite the fact that it's not good for my health and I don't have enough time to start with... Why am I doing it?

I believe I've done a good job in the last year, and lots of other people seem to agree. However, I did not find the time for all the work I hoped to do and I think it's worth carrying on.
I've been pestered to stand again by a lot of my friends in the project.
I wasn't going to let Zack stand unopposed! *grin*

To make the job easier this year if elected, I'm standing with Luk Claes as an assistant. He and I are good friends, and we share ideas and values on a lot of points. My experience from the last year as DPL tells me that the job is a big one, and sharing the load with a willing victim^Wvolunteer should help with that.

Release++

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:25:00 +0100

Thanks to everyone involved. Just finished my pieces of the release process, generating 502 CD/DVD/BD images. And technically it's still February 14th, somewhere... :-)

I should go and get some (more!) sleep, but I want to see us completely finished before I do.

Update: (15th Feb) People have been asking about the BD images. We decided a while back that we wouldn't ship full-size BD ISO images, simply due to the sizes of those images. For the same reason, we didn't generate them for all architectures, just concentrating on i386, amd64 and source. If you're looking for the BD images, you can download/make them via jigdo.

Update #2: (16th Feb) Yes, it's possible that we could make a multi-arch BD image containing all of i386, amd64 and source, similar to the multi-arch DVD. Last time I built that, it would just about fit on a dual-layer disc. That would be a really expensive disc to burn, but let me know by email and I can make the image for you if you really want it.

3rd Free Software Congress in Valencia

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 02:12:00 +0100

I spent much of this week in Alicante. It was wonderful to have a few days away from the beginnings of Winter in Cambridge - Alicante's in South West Spain, right on the Mediterranean. It's a lovely city, although it was very quiet due to the time of year.

I was invited down to Alicante by organisers of the Congrés de Programari Lliure, Comunitat Valenciana, to present a talk about Debian. That I did, and as always my slides and photos are available in case people are interested. I wasn't too sure about what level to aim the talk, so I deliberately went for a general introduction to Debian. That seems to have been the correct level - nobody threw anything at me, and nobody was visibly falling asleep. *grin* It's also the first time I've ever given a talk with official translators, which is a weird experience! The main topic for the conference was the new release of Lliurex, Valencia's own GNU/Linux distribution targeted primarily at use in schools.

The conference was massive; I was told there were about 1500 attendees in all, most of whom were teachers who wanted to come and learn more about Free Software. There was a good spread of talks and workshops, covering topics from development through to deployment in the classroom. The level of enthusiasm for Free Software here was immense - lots of people were keen to learn more about it and get involved. I was told that out of the 15 regions/states of Spain, 11 of them have now started their own distributions to use in schools! Extremadura were the first region to experiment with Free Software like this, and their success with LinEx was a clear inspiration to their neighbours elsewhere in Spain. As well as the obvious cost advantages of moving from proprietary to Free Software, the local governments also love the freedom to use and modify their software however they like - including the ability to provide their own translations.

I met up with a lot of cool people at the conference too. The local education minister (Alejandro Font de Mora) was keen to talk with all the speakers and very enthusiastic about the future of Free Software in his schools. As is increasingly common at FS events around the world, there were of course quite a few Debian people around too. Luciano and Miriam were also giving talks, and I bumped into Rene and Miguel and a whole bunch of others whose names I'm too crap to remember - sorry! I also spoke a lot with Kurt Gramlich, the mega-enthusiastic Skolelinux developer who was also happy to push Debian to everybody he spoke to *grin*. Jon "Maddog" Hall had some excellent ideas that I'm sure we'll all hear more about soon, and his talk was excellent. He did a very good job of explaining how Free Software makes such a difference, including how it helps people to make money. He also explained that due to travel he had missed Halloween at home and he wanted to share the experience of scary masks with the people at the conference:

I had a great time in Alicante, and I'm very grateful for the invitation to go there. I wish that the UK was as far as advanced as Spain in the use of Free Software in education - they've done a huge amount of good work in this area and I'm glad we can help them.

Still ill... :-(

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:55:00 +0100

I posted a couple of weeks back to say that I'd got the Debconf plague again this year. Unfortunately, it looks like I picked up something worse than just the normal cold/'flu. I've been on penicillin for a week to try and clear up a throat infection, but it's not gone yet. Time for blood tests to see if I've got anything worse. I've been too ill to go to work several times in the last couple of weeks, feeling totally exhausted and feverish. Here's hoping that things start clearing up soon...

Again, if I've not responded to you about Debian stuff lately then please pester/remind me as necessary and I'll try to get back to you.