There are a few people who know what I've been going through lately and might be a bit worried to read this, but there really is no need to be - I'll be back once I've sorted my head out, honest!

So long (for now), and thanks for all the stinky fish!

So, Stuart, care to elaborate?

Now, word has apparently got out that I'm "into" inflatable things (which indeed is news also to me!) and edit from ##uk on freenode is going to send me his Trexy goat. \o/

*bounce bounce*

Last Tuesday (16th September, 2006), Rob Levin - known to many as Freenode's lilo - was in a tragic car accident while he was out cycling in Houston, Texas. I'm told that he had not a mark on him, however he did suffer head injuries leaving him in a coma. On Saturday 16th September, 2006, while being treated in a local hospital's neuro trauma ICU (Intensive Care Unit) Rob passed away. This terrible news, still, has just not sunk in...

Over the last few months he and I talked rather a lot, and not just about Freenode; we talked about that obviously, but we would also talk about other common interests like Gentoo and Tor, but also life in general. This quite suprised me as he and I had "butted horns", so to speak, occasionally in the past; but, as suprises go, it was really a rather fabulous one.

The last thing I remember him telling me was: "have you tried breathing exercises?" (I was having some trouble sleeping at the time), and what do you know, it worked. Not suprising, really, as he was often good with advice - be it technical or otherwise. It saddens me deeply that we will never speak again...

Rob, you have taught me many many things; from the basics of IRC, to ways of dealing with the problems that life throws at you and that you throw at life. You have been my mentor these past few months, but more importantly you have been a most extraordinary friend. Your untimely passing has touched thousands upon thousands of people, and you will not be forgotten.

Rest in peace, good man. Rest in peace.

With this in mind - and because I'm in a really silly mood, and stuff, and things - I'm going to run a little competition during the day. Here it is:

The first person to e-mail beu[@g.o], or /msg beu@irc.freenode.net with the correct answer to the following question gets one free bug fix. Now, the terms are thus; the bug must be related to a web-based app (something in www-*) and the app itself has to be written in either C, Perl or PHP. That's it. I'll fix at max three bugs, so there'll be a winner, a runner-up, and a "one for luck" third-place prize.

Now for the question: Which picture am I actually drunk in?

(A) Is it this beu? The foreign-looking, tired-feeling, uh, me?
(B) Or is it this camera-shy shortie, chuck? Cilla? Where!! Oh noes!!1@#
(C) This person looks like he's been out on the town... that, or can't handle his vino...
(D) Or... could it be this [mc]brat[ney]?

The Choice Is Yours! </scouse> Oh, and you only have until 12AM UTC! 8)

pkgcore
I've started working on pkgcore this (fine, sunny) afternoon, and I'll be working on supporting binpkgs completely in pkgcore - hopefully! Thus far, I have a minimal doc (which will appear in my overlay shortly) with some random musings about, essentially, how we tac metadata onto a binpkg .tbz2 archive. Since binpkg code will be easy to do - it's mainly just keeping the metadata packed on the end of a binpkg up-to-date and reading/writing said metadata; basically, being able to introspect metadata for a binpkg easily...

I currently have a following "not all all pseudo" code:

1. mmap() open binpkg fd;
2. cast base + offset to a struct containing metadata;
3. ... manipulate data ...;
4. write-out data (if write operation) with a memcpy and msync();
5. munmap() binpkg fd.

Once this is done, we essentially do the following for all write operations:

1. fsync() all fds;
2. fsync all binpkg directory fds (to ensure sync!);
3. ... wait for disk for flush ...;
4. report status to user.

Pretty simple, fast, and effective. Note that this is just for the "update all binpkgs" case, not a single inspect/change binpkg metadata... Time to put this to the test!

To properly (but perhaps poorly ) dissect this subject and explore, I'm going to start by explaining (sort of) why I left Gentoo last year/this year. Basically, I was going through a really bad time mentally, and physically; mentally because I wasn't able to speak to many people about my problems, thus my head was virtually defunct for a large part of last year (September to November); physically because I spent a large chunk of the last part of Q3/much of Q4 2005 either in bed/elsewhere hiding from my problems, not doing much at all. As some already know, it took me a long time battling against these d[a]emons (hah!) to make a comeback. Now enough with the personal stuff...

Today, I've spoken to three people about my problems (you all know who you are <3), and I feel a lot closer to these people. Now, the question that's probably running through your mind is something akin to: "Why is this at all relevant to Gentoo?" Well, here's why:

• Knowing a person you're working with (for example, a fellow developer or user) decreases the chances of heavily misunderstanding something;
• Knowing the people you will have to work with helps just as above, but also you build bigger and better and most importantly stronger relationships, and you build social networks too.

Again, you may be still be wondering why this is appearing on planet.g.o, and why it is relevant. It may not be to all, but I do think it is relevant to how we, as colleagues - and perhaps friends - work and interface with others, and could help/encourage us to sit down and think for a little bit... I'll give an example so everyone is (hopefully!) on the same page:

I started working for $telco in *thinks* late 2004, and when I started I hardly knew anyone. I quickly made friends with a few people, but a lot of people just wanted to keep to themselves, which is fine, until this way of thinking starts damaging the work flow of your peers. Not only this, but the atmosphere was bad because hardly anyone knew each other. Sure, there were small circles of friends, etc, but the fact that nearly all of my staff (hah, yes, my staff... and yes, I'm only 21 going on 22 ;P) were strangers to all the other, uh, strange staff, it made things difficult to say the least... But this situation was soon flipped, and I'll explain why.

Basically, I decided that things needed to change. My boss wasn't happy; my staff weren't at all happy; their boss (me) wasn't happy, and it was very very noticeable. But this story has a happy ending: through initiatives others and myself started - and saw through to the very end - we all started to socialise, and get to know one and other. (We even had a [jokingly] forced "social time" where we'd go up to the roof for a cigarette and chat about life, work, and generally anything.)

It took a few months for this to start to work, but it did; we quite quickly saw the rise in our productivity level; we were not only having fun getting boring work done - sometimes by playing silly games while fixing equipment or dealing with customers! - but we all made new and exciting friendships. And not only this, but because of the very apparent change in how we worked, we got more work done, and all of us - my entire department no less - got a pay rise. And guess what? Internal "flames" on internal extranets/mailing lists completely disappeared!

Now, I'm going to leave this story there and let people think about it a little before I take it somewhere else, but I hope this story has made at least some people think. I think the common term for people smarter than I (yes, I'm quite dumb without caffeine - and high dosages, too!) would be "Food for thought."

And happy Wednesday/Thursday to those in the right timezones!