Aigarius Blog (Posts about debconf5)http://aigarius.com/categories/debconf5.atom2021-06-30T20:20:29ZAigars MahinovsNikolaDebconf t-shirtshttp://aigarius.com/blog/2011/08/08/debconf-t-shirts/2011-08-08T11:08:07Z2011-08-08T11:08:07ZAigars Mahinovs<p>http://www.flickr.com/photos/aigarius/5991970488/</p>
<p>Here is one more photo from Debconf11 that has been missed in all the excitement - t-shirts from all Debconfs so far: from Debconf3 up to Debconf11. I was a bit late in stitching it together, so it appeared in the middle of the photo stream and people missed it.</p>
<p>P.S. I also took a bit of time to add some labels to the photos so the people that were not there would know what is happening in the image.</p>
<p>P.P.S. Talking to few key people (housing, venue, catering, networking) to prepare Latvia bid for Debconf13 is in full swing now. :)</p>Did I miss anything?http://aigarius.com/blog/2006/10/18/did-i-miss-anything/2006-10-18T23:10:07Z2006-10-18T23:10:07ZAigars Mahinovs<p></p><p>Catching up on blogs, emails and Debian mailing lists I see that nothing really important has happened while I was off-line: the dunc-tank caboodle escalated and died down when the majority voted that it was not worth the commotion, some people got upset at some other people and decided stop working on Debian because of that, Mozilla went even more bonkers about its trademarks.</p><p><br>The dunk-tank scandal ended just like I thought it would. As one could imply from my <a href="http://www.aigarius.com/blog/2006/09/03/eternal-unstable/">eternal unstable</a> concept, I do not see making releases as a the main thing that Debian contributes to the society - it is more about the integration and cross-empowerment of all the packages that Debian has. In that context, making a release is a not the most important job in Debian, but it need to be done from time to time. Release management combines technical and social challenges - there is not much of novelty in it (I imagine). So, from this perspective, there is nothing bad in money being paid to do this mundane and hard work, if we really, really need to release in a specific time frame (IMHO the only reason to release Debian in 2006, as opposed to 2008, is the Lars tattoo bet). If we return to "release when its ready" paradigm and aim for about one release every 2-3 years (and I see nothing really wrong with that) then paying release manager will not be needed. Money is about getting things done on a schedule. It does not make things good (or bad). It does not make thing important (or not). It make things go by the schedule (unless you pay by the hour). It is the obvious solution to releasing Debian in December. Now two questions need to be answered - will it work? and do we really want to release in December?</p><p><br>The second thing - in any group of 1000 people anyone can easily find a lot of people that he would not love/not respect/disagree with/disregard/hate and be unable to work with. It is no reason to stop working on Debian, unless one does it only to be universally loved. It is inevitable that we will need to learn to do what we like to do without paying attention to the irritations.</p><p><br>And about the trademarks - in Debconf 5 in Helsinki I was giving a talk at the Debian Day, just after I helped to win the first big fight against software patents in EU, and Branden (who was GPL at the time) asked me what do I think Debian should do about its trademarks. Both then and now I strongly think that trademarks and any other litigation inducing concepts (except enforcement of GPL) have no place whatsoever in free software. <strong>I think Debian should lead the way and give up the "Debian" trademark.</strong> And Mozilla should follow the lead. So what if there is a pron site "Debian chicks"? You will not solve that with litigation anyway (at least not in a year or two) and why should we really care? So what if some one make a distro and calls it SuperDebian? If someone will really think that it is related to Debian but better (especially despite warnings to the contrary), then that someone will really deserve to get the trojan planted in that distro. And again, against a well prepared criminal, litigation will not help much.</p><p><br>So, did I miss anything?</p>Revisiting the summerhttp://aigarius.com/blog/2006/03/04/revisiting-the-summer/2006-03-04T21:03:50Z2006-03-04T21:03:50ZAigars Mahinovs<p></p><p> </p><p>I recently uploaded these photos to a gratis stock photo site - <a href="http://www.morguefile.com/archive/?author=aigarius">MorqueFile</a> for other people to use and that brought back all the good and warm memories of Debconf5 back again. So, enjoy the pictures, feel the summer, remember all the people that do not appear in these photos at all:</p> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aigarius/107776270/"> <img alt="http://static.flickr.com/56/107776270_7fc07e5dd8_t.jpg" src="http://static.flickr.com/56/107776270_7fc07e5dd8_t.jpg"> </a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aigarius/107776269/"> <img alt="http://static.flickr.com/50/107776269_b04ad41adf_t.jpg" src="http://static.flickr.com/50/107776269_b04ad41adf_t.jpg"> </a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aigarius/107776267/"> <img alt="http://static.flickr.com/40/107776267_5d68a95869_t.jpg" src="http://static.flickr.com/40/107776267_5d68a95869_t.jpg"> </a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aigarius/107776265/"> <img alt="http://static.flickr.com/46/107776265_c5b80b9a09_t.jpg" src="http://static.flickr.com/46/107776265_c5b80b9a09_t.jpg"> </a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aigarius/107776264/"> <img alt="http://static.flickr.com/46/107776264_fcd2cbb416_t.jpg" src="http://static.flickr.com/46/107776264_fcd2cbb416_t.jpg"> </a> <p>P.S. Yes, MorqueFile people do know that their licenses are stupid, but they do not care enough to go to all the trouble of changing that.</p>After reading the Final Debconf5 report ...http://aigarius.com/blog/2005/12/03/after-reading-the-final-debconf5-report/2005-12-03T01:12:00Z2005-12-03T01:12:00ZAigars Mahinovs<p></p><p> </p><div> <p>After reading the <a href="http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/12/msg00001.html">Final Debconf5 report</a> I suddenly saw how this report shows all of us how much blood, sweat, tears and ruined stomachs has really been put into organising the best Debconf ever (so far at least). A lot of Debian Developers were present at Debconf5, even more Debian developers, Debian users and other free software users gained something from this event - a better Debian.<br>I feel that we should give all organisers of Debconf5 the prise the deserve, but as we can't send them all to a two week vacation to Hawaii, we could at least express our gratitude on a web page.<br>So, if you feel that Debconf5 has given something good to your life - got to <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/Debconf5ThankTheOrganizers">http://wiki.debian.org/Debconf5ThankTheOrganizers</a> and express that in warm words towards the people that made that happen!<br><br>P.S. Today I configured my Palm to be a IR remote trigger for my Canon 350D, happy like hell about that.<br>P.P.S. Number of unique visitors to my photo gallery has reached 575, with <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/aigarius/68232564/">one</a> of the photos seen by 475 unique visitors, thanks! (Hint: more comments with constructive critique would be useful to improve quality ;))<br>P.P.P.S. For me "a1t" will always mean that girl nicknamed "alt" with the <a href="http://otaku.lv/gallery/albums/forum/20051130_187_P1050305.JPG">shotgun pointed my way</a>, really. </p> </div>Kittoshttp://aigarius.com/blog/2005/07/20/kittos/2005-07-20T23:07:00Z2005-07-20T23:07:00ZAigars Mahinovs<p></p><p> </p><div> <p>I am still recovering my sleep after the Debconf5, but I now have a bit strength to say what I thing about it in general:<br>It was great! Thank you very much to all that helped to make it happen! </p> </div>THE day of socializinghttp://aigarius.com/blog/2005/07/13/the-day-of-socializing/2005-07-13T11:07:00Z2005-07-13T11:07:00ZAigars Mahinovs<p></p><p> </p><div> <p>Yesterday, the 13th of July was the one day that all (or at least most) of Debconf hackers were forcefully disconnected from the Net and thrown into the socializing, sun and nature. It worked pretty well.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02544.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02544.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02547.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02547.jpg"></a><br>First of all we all woke up early this morning - a lot of people even made it to the breakfast after a warning that today's lunch will be comparable to our regular breakfasts. Two boats were organized to bring all the hackers over to the Finnish Fort islands. (Some, like aj, escaped and went sightseeing to the Helsinki)<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02551.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02551.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02559.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02559.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02564.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02564.jpg"></a><br>There was an interesting moment on the way as the boat passed under a bridge that was so low that you could just touch the bridge with your hand without much of a trouble. We also went throughout the jachts of the Baltic Sea regatta and were overtaken by the superseacat ship.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02572.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02572.jpg"></a><br>After arriving on the islands, we had to wait almost for half an hour for the second boat to arrive. To our surprise Holger was on top of it weaving a Jolly Rodger (more about it later).<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc025981.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc025981.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02602.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02602.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02605.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02605.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02597.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02597.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02592.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02592.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02598.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02598.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02581.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02581.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02637.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02637.jpg"></a><br>After being divided into 6 groups, we were lead to see the Fort - walls, cannons, parks, and sand barriers were up for our inspection and admiration. In the tradition that is well known to any software developer, the project manager promised to his king to complete the fort in 4 years. It took 40. Now that is a slight delay none of us would want to experience. This project manager even managed to die in the process of construction, but the king ordered him to stay in the place anyway and designed a monument for the grave with his own hands as a compensation. You can also see our guide in one of the pictures here.<br>It is worth mentioning that there was an interesting guiding system in this place - every guide constructed his excursion from a set of checkpoints taken in order based on his/her preference and on what checkpoints the other guides are now.<br>Also you can see a couple of photographs that include me - this is a rear occurrence.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02609.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02609.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02616-3.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02616-3.jpg"></a><br>After the excursions, we had lunch in a truly Debian fashion - pieces of bread, butter, meat, cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, apples and small drink packs. Then everyone went around and assembled his own lunch. The Debian party was occupying most part of the biggest lawn of the islands - that looked pretty strange.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02629.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02629.jpg"></a><br>In the progress I discovered that the not only shoes of Andreas Tille have a logo with a swirl, but that it is also extremely similar to the logo of <a href="http://www.akl.lt/">Lithuaninan Open Source Association</a>. That is fun.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02648.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02648.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02649_1.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02649_1.jpg"></a><br>On the way back I was on the small boat that went first. Amaya and Holger were here too. The made quite a team - Holger waived the pirate flag, Amaya waved her hand. Noone could resist that - everyone waived back :).<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02653.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02653.jpg"></a><br>We went a bit more quiet after the military showed their interest.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02654.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02654.jpg"></a><br>One more fun thing - that is a really bad way to choose a name for a ship :P<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02656.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02656.jpg"></a><br>And here you can see my selfportrait attempt. Looks quite ok to me :)<br></p><p> </p> <br> After that great fun, some waiting for Gunnar come back on the second boat with the key to our room (doh.) and a dinner, I went off to search for the big sauna. After some asking around, I fond it and also found all Japanese people there. After about half an hour the sauna key was finally found and we could get the party started.<br>The place had two saunas (electrical and wood) and a big rest place with a piano. I first occupied the big sauna (which was heated up beforehand by some kind soul) and started pouring water on the stones and entertaining the constantly increasing audience. After some time the sauna was full, but thanks to my activity, some people started to go out to cool down - the logical turnaround of selfregulation started. The second sauna warmed up in an hour and fast became the most popular one, despite it being able to only fit 5-6 people at a time.<br>Debian is a truly unique society - were else will you see lots of naked people of both sexes listening, with a great interest, a classical piano concert or singing "Yesterday" or "Over the rainbow".<br>Somewhere around midnight I understood that basically almost every person in the world is a geek, but most of them are so afraid and ashamed of it that they hide it, because otherwise they would be shunned by the society. On the other hand Debian is the society that encourages geekiness and grows on our differences. I think that a geek is just a person that is not afraid to show his individuality and that is increasingly important in our globalization obsessed world. </div>Debconf5 group photohttp://aigarius.com/blog/2005/07/12/debconf5-group-photo/2005-07-12T22:07:00Z2005-07-12T22:07:00ZAigars Mahinovs<p></p><p> </p><div> <p> <a href="http://people.debian.org/~aigarius/debconf5_group.jpg"> <img src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/320/debconf5_group.jpg"> <br> <br> Here it is</a> (Google sized down the picture, so I used p.d.o :()<br>Many thanks Arto Teräs fot taking the picture! There will be a version with an imagemap with names soonish.<br><br>Note how shy and unnoticable I am in the picture - the one in the yellow t-shirt, in the middle :D </p> </div>July 12th - still Debconfinghttp://aigarius.com/blog/2005/07/12/july-12th-still-debconfing/2005-07-12T11:07:00Z2005-07-12T11:07:00ZAigars Mahinovs<p></p><p> </p><div> <p>This post is kindof a warm up before the comprehensible report about all activities of the June 13th, so this will have more pictures then usual, but less then the next :)<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02496.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02496.jpg"></a><br>First of all I must note that I've been walking barefoot for most of the week and I must say that it feels really good, except for the really sharp stones. Walking on the grass feel especially good.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02501.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02501.jpg"></a><br>The other thing is how Debconf is not fully empthy even at 6 in the morning - you can see the dorm hacking area here has some people already awake (the people that were still awake, went to sleep half an hour ago).<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02502.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02502.jpg"></a><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02504.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02504.jpg"></a><br>A breakfast is quite light around here, but if you are skillfull at maquerading, you can get a second serving :). (Note: the person in the photo <i>is</i> facing the camera)<br>Some obligatory photos of the speakers have been skipped this time - look at the group picture if you want to see how they look like. I will try to blog about the other things happening here - things that are not going to be available as HD video.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02514.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02514.jpg"></a><br>Here is the photo of the (currently empthy) second room where some of the talks are held. I went here for the presentation from the OpneOffice.org Debian Team. That sure sounds big. But it apears that there are only two people on the team and that feeling of having a big team is kind of hurting them. So - OOO@Debian *does* need your help.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02533.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02533.jpg"></a><br>One other unconvential event is Branden jumping around and screaming "It did it again, you are my witness" and putting an obscure error message op on the big screen - you can see it here in all the glory. It seams that Mozilla screws up the type detection :)<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02540.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02540.jpg"></a><br>And even trough the daytrip is planned tomorrow morning, the fun still goes on far into the night. </p> </div>11th of July in HELhttp://aigarius.com/blog/2005/07/11/11th-of-july-in-hel/2005-07-11T22:07:00Z2005-07-11T22:07:00ZAigars Mahinovs<p></p><p> </p><div> <p>The first thing I really noticed in the morning was that I missed the breakfast, again.<br>On the other hand this wall in the cafeteria caught my lens - this is a clock up in the air, aprox. 3-4 meters up from the floor. Now that you know, where it is, notice the power plugs ... I mean ... why???<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02479.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02479.jpg"></a><br>Soon after that I got the chance to play around with the new Nokia 770 toy. It really is a marvel - beautiful software, great hardware. You can see it here accessing the Slashdot over GPRS.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02484.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02484.jpg"></a><br>One of the talks I've been more interested in was the CDD talk by Andreas Tille (see my other blog entery about it):<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02488.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02488.jpg"></a><br>I didn't take many photos this day, so this one gets into top packages - this is the cafeteria full with Debian Developers over the dinner time.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02491.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02491.jpg"></a><br><br>Soon after that I went to the dorm room to do some UI prototyping in Glade for my SoC project, but I was too tired and I had to go to sleep after a couple of hours. </p> </div>Delayed photoblog - July 10http://aigarius.com/blog/2005/07/10/delayed-photoblog-july-10/2005-07-10T21:07:00Z2005-07-10T21:07:00ZAigars Mahinovs<p></p><p> </p><div> <p>This day is rich on pictures - 8 of them got in here, but that is a bit compensated by low number of photos tomorrow :)<br>Here is a photo of the cafeteria where all meal are served at the Debconf. It is not a bomb bunker.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02407.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02407.jpg"></a><br>This is the breakfast of mine for the day. You might wonder - why does that look so much like a lunch? Because it is. I missed the breakfast and only woke up at lunch. Doh.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02417.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02417.jpg"></a><br>And the I arrived at the talks and the first thing that I see on the screen is ...<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02421.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02421.jpg"></a><br>Branden followed that up with a detailed talk about man pages. You can now also see that debconf2x-man generates better man pages then the first version.<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02427.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02427.jpg"></a><br>The talk by Enriko was also very interesting, but despite being a bit sleepy, he moved so fast all the time, that I have no usable picture of him :(<br>Going back to Smokki we went by 'the lost band':<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02450.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02450.jpg"></a><br>Here is a very bad attempt of mine to make a panoramic photo of the Smokki hacklab:<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02452.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02452.jpg"></a><br>Many people wondered, why the hacklab webcam vibrates while going right and left. Here you can see it:<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02460.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02460.jpg"></a><br>After the long hacking hours, many developers like to relax and have some kind of movement, for example like this:<br><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/1600/dsc02473.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7026/1037/200/dsc02473.jpg"></a><br>Also sauna is an option. Today sauna was particulary good as it was finnaly turned up to 100 C, like I asked for the last two days :) </p> </div>