Category: Gentoo

That’s right folks. The box is dead. The motherboard fan won’t work, the media disk is clicking (that was 120GB SATA with all my multimedia on it). And it won’t boot. Even the livecd hangs when trying to mount the livecd filesystem. So, I guess it’s time to try and find somewhere I can take the other disks to mount and get data off. Oh well…

So, the Genesi PPC box arrived in almost perfect condition. It was sitting packed in a box this whole time, so there was barely even any dirt in it or around it. It booted right up, and I got the data off it. It’s a very quiet box. Since it has 2 ethernet ports on it, it’ll become my new dns/dhcp server etc.

As for my athlon box, the CPU fan came loose and fell right off. So did the memory stick. So we had to go to a computer store to get a tube of Arctic Silver (last one!). Once I reformat the PPC and start the hardened gentoo install on it, I’ll start repairing the athlon XP. I hope it at least boots.. If all goes well, I’ll upgrade to kernel 2.6 on it (I had been holding off because the attempt I’d tried failed — due to evms1->evms2 issues), and use it as a media server and print server.

…is finally here. You heard right, ladies and gentlemen. The computer that’s been in LA since I moved to Boston almost two years ago arrived tonight. I haven’t switched it on or anything like that. I’ll save that part for the weekend. I plan to open the sucker up and look out for dust and loose connections and stuff. The case did take a wee bit of damage, but nothing fatal, I don’t think.

The Genesi ppc box also arrived. Good times ahead. My old box will just become the router, mail server and print server. The Genesi box will go back to being a general purpose desktop for work and testing of packages.

I’m pretty excited by all of this!

Oh, now that I think about it… I can play flight simulator again. OK, I may have to rethink my plans 🙂

Pretty much from the second week of my employment, I had made it my mission to make the DevZone area of the website a lot friendlier. For those of you that had checked out that site when I first mentioned it, you would have noticed that the http://dev.streambase.com link took you to a register/login page. Say what? So, in a nutshell, you had to fork over the 411 to get the 411, which in my mind was not a fair trade.

Now, however, is a new time and a different story. We’ve spent a few weeks rehashing the DevZone. Among the changes:

1. No longer on a subdomain — the new DevZone is off the main site at http://www.streambase.com/developers/
2. The DevZone is now a link on the main navigation bar on the corporate pages
3. Documentation is opened up entirely — that’s right folks — 900 odd pages of it, free to see
4. We’ve put up a small training video — essentially it’s StreamBase in 6 minutes (a getting started guide)
5. a contrib area with code and articles and FAQs and contest winners

There was a lot of work by a lot of people to get that in and going. My favourite change is the disappearance of the .php suffixes on most pages in the DevZone, towards future-proof URLs.

Please go in and check it out. Leave me comments here or on email (or the devzone feedback email) about your thoughts. I hope that we’ve succeeded in making it a friendlier, more inviting and engaging place for people to check out StreamBase, and explore its awesome stream processing power. I hope at least 4 of my 8 readers check it out :p

A few people have talked about Stuart’s departure already. And I didn’t read any of the planet yesterday, when I posted.

So that means it’s been 2 days since his official announcement, and I’ve been suspiciously quiet about it 🙁

Well, no longer. A few of us knew Stuart was going to retire a little bit before his resignation from the board. I will be honest here: I did not even try to talk Stu out of it. I wanted to. I felt the pain of his leaving pretty strongly. Over the years, however, I’ve learned a little bit about him, and so I knew that I’d not make a dent in his decision. He didn’t resign in a fit of rashness or anger. He’s most certainly exasperated/frustrated and probably a little angry, yes. But his action was not impulsive. It was thought-out. His mind, what I’m getting at, was made up. And nothing I or anyone could say or do was going to change it. So when he confided his intention to me, I could but accept what I was hearing.

And, in a way, seeing him resign took some wind out of my own sails. I guess, ladies and gentlemen, that that made Stuart one of my rocks in Gentoo. I need not paint a picture of Stuart, because anyone who’s used Gentoo for a few months will recognise his work. He was an integral part of the overlays project, the Seeds project, the webapps team (which includes apache and its sexy configuration, and php which is not so sexy, but that’s just me), and a lot more.

The thing about Stu is that he always tried to build and mend bridges. He had this uncanny ability to swallow pride and make the first steps to peace. He’s human, of course, and so he’s not perfect, but I’ll tell you this: if 80% of Gentoo developers did that, we wouldn’t see as many dismal and sad blog posts on this planet.

He’s going to continue the Seeds project as much as he can outside of Gentoo. And there’s certainly a fair share of us who will champion it within. So my tiny comfort is that at least Stuart Herbert is still involved, in some way, with Gentoo.

Farewell, Stu.

So the thing about blogging is that when you stop for a bit, you stop for a bit longer. And then a bit longer and on. Well, that’s what happens to me anyway. Take Rach, for example. I owed her a letter probably 6 months ago. And then I’m thinking of what to write, and more and more, then I wait, because there’s more to be thought of, and then I realise it’s getting later and later, and so I get more and more sheepish. And 1 week becomes 6 months. So, I’ll be catching up on my letter writing this weekend, because there’s so much to tell.

Meanwhile, we’re back from Thanksgiving vacation. At work, we’re wrapping up the final bits of the new Dev Zone (not yet published, but at least the docs have been opened for a couple of weeks). We’ll be ready to unveil it soon enough. I also put in the new xterm release into portage this evening. So those of you on stable profiles waiting for xterm-222, your architecture team should be putting that in for you soon.

I wasn’t going to do another Master Cleanse till the new year, but a few things have happened. We’d started running, if you remember. And we took our gear to vacation with us. Before we left we ran the first 2 days of Week 4 here. Kinda. The first day we couldn’t do the last five-minute block at all. The second day, we did 4 and a half minutes of it. The third day was in LA. The park there is on a bit of an incline (a slight one, admittedly, but you can feel it). So we were struggling again, and couldn’t do the last five-minute block again. Then we got to Oklahoma, and the first morning there, I felt the beginnings of a cold. My glands swelled and my throat closed up painfully. That did us in. I couldn’t run like that, because swallowing was painful. That lasted till yesterday more or less (ie, our first day back in Boston). I even missed my first day back at work, due to fever and throat-achiness.

Today, I’m much much better, and because of all the food and stuff that was consumed during the holiday, we decided to go on a 10-day Master Cleanse. This time, Aimee is doing it with me. And also, my sister and her fiance (both in Rochacha) are doing the Master Cleanse right now!

So anyway, we had a dinner tonight (order-in Chinese), and it’s a few minutes to bedtime, so we’re drinking senna tea. Tomorrow morning: the first flush. Aimee’s nervous. I’m ambivalent (about the flush). We have a truckload of lemons, a boatload of maple syrup, a tonne of cayenne and we’ll need to refill on water tomorrow afternoon.

I’ll keep the blog updated with the progress on both of us.

Obviously, Christian won the last battle. I do concede defeat.

But I’m about to strike back.

I guess our definitions of holiday differ slightly. I believe a holiday to be anything where you take a break from something. So you can take a holiday from work, and still hack Gentoo, or take a holiday from Gentoo and get your sanity back, etc. In your case I recommend both a time-out and a holiday from Gentoo at least. From work as well, if you can manage it. Honestly, just a weekend away would probably do your wonders. Take a weekend road trip to some beautiful place, is my suggestion.

In fact, that leads to point #2. Just make up a reason that you have to go away for: “I need to go see this lake/river/tree/rock/fish/bicycle.” And go! Do not take your laptop, and just go. You don’t need too much money to have a holiday, you know. Hell, just go do something different this weekend. If you don’t go clubbing, then go clubbing. Go to a race, or a soccer match, or to church. Get out there, see things, do people. Go to the park and play frisbee (though it may be too cold for that). There must be something to do there that involves hanging out with other people and meeting people.

It seems to me you’re suffering from the same sorts of symptoms a lot of Gentoo’ers suffer from. I have, my own self, in the past. You go away and all you think about is Gentoo and what all things you need to do. But you know what? You have to let it go. There’s no other way to put it. You have to realise that life in Gentoo will continue. Yes, some recruitees may get pissed off. Others may get frustrated. But that will happen regardless.

At some point, my friend, you have to think of you.

Well, Christian, I took the phrase “time-out to mean holiday. In other words, a time out from gentoo is a holiday away from it. Having said that, your time out has been about as effective as Alec’s. You guys need to learn to get away from the keyboard. :p

Especially with real life work becoming more intense for a while: it’s one thing if Gentoo provides you some temporary relief and an escape; quite another if Gentoo just adds to your stress. If it’s the seconds, then you should be more dedicated to your time-out 🙂

It does, however, sound like you deserve a holiday from all this. Perhaps the readers can suggest some places?

Look here, Christian, don’t you dare think about leaving, ok? I think the extended break is a good idea, but you’ve yet to actually do it, you know :p.

In fact, for someone on holiday, you’ve been extraordinarily active. So, do what you need to do, just don’t leave. That is all.

As for the bitchfests and flamefests, it actually seems to me as though things are improving in a small, almost imperceptible way. Let’s see if that can become a tide.

New stuff? Nothing much, I’m actually working on creating a couple of websites with Django, only the coolest web framework around. It really is cool:

I have:

• 80% of the first site done — figuring out events and recurring and stuff with that
• 98% of the second one — figuring out comment feeds and tagging related items
• 5% of the third site — I only started that one yesterday

Yes, Django rocks. Its community rocks. People like Magus- (not magnus) and [530] and ubernostrum completely rock. I’d be nowhere near where I am with those sites without those three.