We've talked a bit about unfortunate incidents of inappropriate behaviour at conferences. But today, I want to point out a tech conference that's trying to help! The Linux Symposium, recognizing that there have been fewer registrations from women in recent years, is offering discounts to female attendees.

I'm reposting my post to the linuxchix announcement list below, in case any of you are interested in coming out. The student registration fees aren't too onerous, but if you ask nicely you might be able to get an additional discount as a WISE member too.

The Linux Symposium would like to offer special deals members of Linuxchix and UbuntuWomen, particularly because many female attendees have lost funding in recent years.

If you're interested in attending but cost has been a factor, please contact info(at)linuxsymposium.org before registering to get the discount.

http://www.linuxsymposium.org/

The Linux Symposium (formerly the Ottawa Linux Symposium, but being held in Montreal this year) is a conference that I often find interesting and useful in surprising ways. For me, the real benefit has been in meeting other linux folk in person, so even if the technical talks seem to be outside of your interests or over your head, it may still be worth coming to meet the people!

I'm going to be doing a very linuxchix-inspired BOF about attracting women to open source, and we usually try to do a linuxchix dessert night too. I'd love to see more women out! And please don't feel shy about saying hi or joining me and whoever I'm with for lunch/dinner/whatever if you come and would like some people to hang out with!

Dr. Steve Brule Rules!

For your health!

Via VideoSift

Any consulting shop that does significant amounts of implementation and development (as we do) needs a project management and ticketing tool. Basecamp seems to be a standard that many people have reached for. We were using Intervals for a while, which is really a fabulous tool if you do a lot of hourly consulting. We also have been using Google spreadsheets for some elements of project management.

All tools have their strengths and weaknesses. And, in addition, the best tool does nothing without good human project management skills using it. As a shop that practices Agile development (we use an adaptation of scrum methodology that seems to work for a shop that does multiple projects with small teams,) finding a good tool that facilitates instead of hobbles Agile was critical for us.

We found, and have chosen to use Redmine for our project management/ticketing system. You can think of it as a multi-project version of Trac, which is a fabulous ticketing/wiki system that we were initially going to go with. Redmine has the elements of Trac that we liked, with the added ability to track multiple projects. Like Basecamp, Redmine has document storage and messaging systems. It doesn’t have milestones per se, but it does allow you to see tasks in calendar and Gantt views, which is very helpful. Unlike Basecamp, you can add custom fields to tickets, users and other features. Having spent many hours in Basecamp, I actually like Redmine much better. It does even do time tracking, which we won’t use, but is nice to know is there. And the wiki is nice. Basecamp’s Writeboards seem so much more like an add on than integrated.

It’s a Ruby on Rails application, and that was actually kind of fun to finally get to install and play with RoR a tiny bit. And it’s great that it’s free and open source. Although that wasn’t an absolute requirement for us, it is most definitely a plus, given so much of our work is implementing open source web tools. And it’s nice to save a few bucks per month.

Suspend (sleep) works very well on the dual-Atom desktop. The only problem with it is that the mouse or keyboard wake it up. I don't mind the keyboard, but the mouse is quite sensitive, so a breeze through the window or a big truck driving by on the street can jiggle the mouse and wake the machine when I'm away.

I've been through all the BIOS screens looking for a setting to flip, but there's nothing there. Some web searching told me that under Windows, there's a setting you can change that will affect this, but I couldn't find anything similar for Linux, until finally drc clued me in to /proc/acpi/wakeup.

cat /proc/acpi/wakeup will tell you all the events that can cause your machine to wake up from various sleep states.

Unfortunately, they're also obscurely coded. Here are mine: Device S-state Status Sysfs node SLPB S4 *enabled P32 S4 disabled pci:0000:00:1e.0 UAR1 S4 enabled pnp:00:0a PEX0 S4 disabled pci:0000:00:1c.0 PEX1 S4 disabled PEX2 S4 disabled pci:0000:00:1c.2 PEX3 S4 disabled pci:0000:00:1c.3 PEX4 S4 disabled PEX5 S4 disabled UHC1 S3 disabled pci:0000:00:1d.0 UHC2 S3 disabled pci:0000:00:1d.1 UHC3 S3 disabled pci:0000:00:1d.2 UHC4 S3 disabled pci:0000:00:1d.3 EHCI S3 disabled pci:0000:00:1d.7 AC9M S4 disabled AZAL S4 disabled pci:0000:00:1b.0

What do all those symbols mean? I have no clue. Apparently the codes come from the BIOS's DSDT code, and since it varies from board to board, nobody has published tables of likely translations.

The only two wakeups that were enabled for me were SLPB and UAR1. SLPB apparently stands for SLeeP Button, and Rik suggested UAR probably stood for Universal Asynchronous Receiver (the more familiar term UART both receives and Transmits.) Some of the other devices in the list can possibly be identified by comparing their pci: codes against lspci, but not those two.

Time for some experimentation. You can toggle any of these by writing to the wakeup device: echo UAR1 >/proc/acpi/wakeup

It turned out that to disable mouse and keyboard wakeup, I had to disable both SLPB and UAR1. With both disabled, the machine wakes up when I press the power button. (What the SLeeP Button is, if it's not the power button, I don't know.)

My mouse and keyboard are PS/2. For a USB mouse and keyboard, look for something like USB0, UHC0, USB1.

The UAR1 setting is remembered even across boots: there's no need to do anything to make sure the setting is remembered. But the SLPB setting resets every time I boot. So I edited /etc/rc.local and added this line: echo SLPB >/proc/acpi/wakeup

So I didn’t actually get to vote in the Triple J top 100 of all time. I feel really stupid to have missed it! I was just asked (live on radio) whether I had voted and I stupidly said yes intending to get straight off the phone and onto the voting, but it was closed! So below are my top 10 songs of all time, some for technical reasons, all for emotional. Thought it might be of interest to some

Meme time!

In no particular order:

• Gorecki – Lamb. Our wedding  song About finding that person that just completes you, that complements and helps you want to be a better person. A beautiful song and a beautiful voice.
• Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana. Changed everything, and yet so simple. Influenced a generation.
• Shame – Stabbing Westward. My favourite angsty teenage song. Once went to a Live (the band) concert just to see Stabbing Westward play support, and then left The man has an incredible voice.
• H – Tool. I love a lot of the older Tool music, this particular one reminds me of  a close friend who died very young in very unfortunate circumstances.
• We’re in this together – Nine Inch Nails. I love pretty much every NIN song, but this one really talks to me about regardless of everything going on, none of us are truly alone.
• Fade to Black – Metallica. One of their best songs, and one that influenced me to learn guitar in the first place.
• Burn – The Cure. an amazing (and dark) song from The Crow soundtrack. One of their best in my opinion. Admittedly takes me back to school
• Cornflake Girl – Tori Amos. Beautiful, powerful and disturbing. Worth looking into the deeper meaning.
• Classical Gas – Mason Williams. An incredible guitar piece that puts me in an almost meditative state when I play it. Technically challenging but also a joy to play and listen to.
• Pathetique – Beethoven. Such an exquisite piano piece, and when played well covers about the entire scope of human emotion. Fun to play too, but I’ve yet to master it

There are so many more songs I love, and I’m sure given more time I’d rejig this another dozen times. So I’ll leave it there Apart from one last honorary mention:

• Space Cadet – Kyuss. Couldn’t leave this off. This 3 person rock band had such a big sound, such a complex and incredible mix. Great fun to play on the bass. Demon Cleaner also very worth listening to.

• Going straight to the server farm this morning means no coffee. This seems like a combination ripe for disaster. #
• Restoring server from backups, finally, after installing to the point where the backup program worked. Next, figure out firmware upgrades! #
• Wondering if it's safe to leave this alone for a while. I've already said "yes to all" for 2 types of conflict- how many more can there be? #
• Truly, I need a job that involves more blinkenlights. I like the server farm. #
• RT @malki @chaodmalma DRAW YOURSELF RIGHT NOW AND POST IT!!!!!!!! http://is.gd/1kVVd #
• I've been here way too long. Hopefully at this point I can finish most of this from home with SSH. If not there's always tomorrow, I guess. #
• I suspect some of these idiots are hipsters that do this shit to be "ironic", or as asshole improv theatre http://is.gd/1l1bi Via @SkarrKrow #

Does the idea of "advocacy" make you nervous? It does sound a bit scary, doesn't it, like those annoying door-to-door religious people. But it's not that way. If you're interested in helping people learn to speak Linux, here are a few easy, non-scary tips.

Following my Saturday trip up to NYC, I spent Sunday with Stephen down at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. We spent all their open hours there, from 1-5PM, and what a great little museum! I never even knew it was there!

Sadly after charging my camera after my NYC trip, I completely forgot the battery in the charger when I went down to Philly, I spent the entire museum visit with just the camera on my g1. I’m not the biggest fan of using cellphone for cameras, but the g1 didn’t do so bad! I actually shrunk all the full-size photos in this entry a bit.

Skeleton in Ancient Egyptian exhibit

An ancient Greek on a laptop ;D

Necklace from the Painted Metaphors Exhibit

At 5 we were shooed out of the museum and drove over to the new Chipotle in University City for dinner. Earlier in the day I had twittered about being downtown and my friend DarKrow dropped me a tweet to meet up, so he joined us for dinner. After dinner he introduced us to the best gelato I’ve ever had at a chain called Capogiro Gelato. I ended up with a cone of their Tiramisu and Chocolate Banana. Following that I headed home.

This weekend I’m heading out to San Francisco for a long weekend visit with MJ. I’m flying out Thursday evening and taking a redeye home Sunday night/Monday morning. Plans? Sushi! 4th of July celebrations! Snuggles! Samurai (…in a museum)! OK, maybe won’t get to everything, but it should be a fun weekend :)

This is exactly how I see all screaming snot midgets.

Via VideoSift

I don’t normally see very many Minis on my drive home from work. I’m thinking not a lot of people out where I live own them or something. So as I turned off the main road to head toward my house, I was pleasantly surprised to see a blue Mini up ahead (that wasn’t my neighbor).

I drew closer and prepared to wave. Right as I was about to raise my hand, a hand shot out of the open window of the other car. Do my eyes deceive me? I thought to myself. Could this Mini be waving first? In fact, it was!

So I know I said I’d consider it a success when someone else waved to me first. But…two days? Really? I’m thinking it was some sort of fluke, despite never being waved to first in this town before. Hmm.

I'm setting a goal of finishing the current WIP (Kipper King) by September 15. Anyone care to join me for crazy wordcount efforts? I might try hassling the mad_collective on this note this afternoon, or I might not.

Secondary goal: Second round of edits for Mirage and send her out the door by the end of the year. But I think I might like another round of beta readers on that. We'll see how I feel after round 2. (I'd like to pretend I'll do the same w/ Rook Odds, but that will mean thinking about the cutesy chess names for the chapter titles, which is pretty much what is stopping me.)

In other news, I'll be offline for much of the next week. If it's important, email me directly. If it's really important, call. If you think you might have something really important and don't have my cell number, email me. I will try to catch up on LJ when I get home, but you know how that goes.

The slashing of Adult and Community Education (ACE) funding will have a devastating impact on the ability of people to learn Sign Language in community classes, says Lynne Pillay Labour Spokesperson for Disability Issues.

“The majority of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) classes are delivered through community education and are used by parents and families of deaf children, teachers, nurses, police, and workmates. They are taught by trained NZSL tutors based on a curriculum especially developed for community classes.

http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/stories/2009/06/26/1245b6a21a74
http://www.guide2.co.nz/politics/news/sign-language-classes-not-affected...
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/Business/QOA/b/9/a/49HansQ_20090625_00...

Other info on this issue:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA0906/S00353.htm
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/features/2544933/Dark-times-lo...
etc... just google.

The Government announced in the 2009 Budget that ALL funding for adult education in schools (“evening classes” or “night school”) will end in December 2009. The Government regards the programmes that schools offer as mere “hobby” classes and if schools want to continue, all courses they offer will have to be “self-funded” - this will mean that the fees will increase by 50% or more at some schools and 200% or more at others, if schools decide to continue which is unlikely.

This axing of the funding will also mean that schools will no longer be able to pass on funds to local community groups who also provide classes for adults, training for volunteers and support for many of the disadvantaged in our communities. English language programmes for migrants and refugees will also disappear or will have to cost several hundred dollars more.

Night classes make such a tiny portion of the education budget (0.6%) but they are of such benefit to the community.

Refugees and migrants learn to speak English.
Parents, friends and colleagues of the Deaf learn Sign Lanuage.
New Zealanders learn foreign languages, which myself and colleagues use in business.
I learned Te Reo Maori at a night class.
Budgeting classes, something incredibly important right now, will either become far too expensive or disappear completely.

Fees at my local are currently about $80 per 16 week course - They tell me this will increase to $160 or $320 per course. I doubt they will run, as most of the students cannot afford this.

If you are concerned about the impact of these cuts, you can contact, by email or letter:

Your local MP
AnneTolley, the Minister of Education
Bill English, the Minister of Finance
Trevor Mallard or Maryann Street, Opposition Spokespeople for Education

It is FREE to write to any MP. You just have to send it to FREEPOST Parliament, PO Box 18888, Wellington.

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• PMX spam art! http://is.gd/1jg0q #
• I just wasted 1.5 hrs in the server farm with a non-booting debian cd, a non-booting dell firmware cd, and a non-networkd gnewsense install. #
• These people remind me of hamsters fussing over their filthy bedding materials: http://is.gd/1jrYL Via @coilhouse #
• So, yeah. The reason disks don't work? It's amd64, not ia64. That would have been good to know yesterday, when I was assured it was intel. #
• Want to drown things. I guess I'll have to settle on driving to Syracuse. #
• Waiting for the bus when the last one came 15 minutes ago. It's what I do, apparently. #
• Some kids say some rather disturbing (in an innocent way) things, e.g. "I want to grow up", "I want to have a future". Makes you wonder. #
• @elwing: This is the only 64 bit system I have actually used as such, as I like to play 32 bit games (WoW on wine) on my own personal boxen. in reply to elwing #

This is pretty interesting. The US Air Force have a methodology to deal with online responses like comments. I like it how trolls and “ragers” require HQ be notified

I think it helps people not used to communicating online think about different sorts of negative feedback, and how it is important to engage with some, and possibly not with others. Also the “response considerations” were quite good too to encourage transparency and accountability in online communications.

Click on the image for the larger more readable version.

Mono is a free/libre/opensource implementation of C#.

C# is a programming language that came out of a closed source software company named Microsoft. - and Microsoft own patents on C#.

Thus there's a threat hanging over any free software that relies on mono/C# - what if Microsoft suddenly decides enforce their patent.

Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation have released a Why free software shouldn't depend on Mono or C#.

The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue. The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. (See http://swpat.org and http://progfree.org.) This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.

Let me add my voice to this - don't write programs in C#.

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Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone series: had read this once before, up to whatever was current at the time (O is for Outlaw?). Currently ready to start the last book so far, T is for Trespass.

Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone series: Also had read before, up to whatever was current at the time. I'm currently up to "Both Ends of the Night", or 17 books down, 10 to go.

Sara Paretsky's V I Warshawski series. Probably only four or five books in the series when I last read it. I'm now up to # 10 (Hard Time) of 13.

Robert B. Parker's Spenser series: Hadn't ever read it before. Wasn't much moved by the tv series, but really got into it with the made for tv movies with Joe Mantegna. I'm up to "Walking Shadow", which is # 21 of 35.

Michael Jecks' Simon Puttock series: I think that had three or four books, if that many, when last I encountered it. I'm on the second of 24 now (The Merchant's Partner).

And as mentioned before here, Piers Anthony's Xanth series: have read the first book, ready for the second (The Source of Magic), 30 to go beyond that.

I like to have basic emergency procedures, and as I'm about to travel I sent my 'in case of emergency' document to my parents and housemates. Some have replied saying that I was very organised, but I don't think it takes much effort. I keep an electronic document that gets updated when there is a relevant change in circumstances (e.g. change of home or employment) and keep a printed copy in the front of my diary and my luggage when travelling. It is, in fact, not much more than a copy of the personal details form that gets pre-printed in many diaries, but keeping it electronically means I don't have to copy it out into a new diary every year.

Adjust as appropriate:

* my phone number (in case I've got separated from my diary or luggage)

* home phone number (to contact housemates)

* parents/spouse/next-of-kin phone numbers

* employer phone number

* phone number of home parish + religion/denomination and any relevant details (e.g. 'last rites')

* allergies

* blood group

* spectacle prescription

* Medicare number

* private health insurance membership

* organ donor register number, or organ donation instructions

* date document was updated

For me, this all fits on one A5 sheet of paper.

Eh, eu fui ao Google Developer Day. Não devo ser uma pessoa deslumbrável. Ou minha personalidade de diva resmungona realmente chegou ao ápice. A falta de internet me incomodou (tinha wireless do hotel, mas custava uma pequena fortuna), a falta de chá/café me incomodou (tava frio, pô, eu sei que lindas modelos distribuíram picolés loucamente, mas eu queria um chá quentinho para aguentar as salas geladas, picolé… hm, não) e era muito bizarro aquela mesa de coffee-break linda, montada, e o garçon dizendo “só dez pras quatro”.

Ah, sim, vocês querem saber das palestras, claro, né? Se eu falei até agora de outra coisa, é porque não me impressionaram tanto assim. Olha, o Google Wave é SENSACIONAL, isso é bem verdade. Mas… o resto… achei… hm… “legal”, “bacana”, adjetivos não tão empolgantes assim. Palestras muito longas e repetitivas, talvez. Ou palestrantes não muito carismáticos (eu queria ENFORCAR o francesinho que a cada dez palavras dizia “Brazil!” “Futebol!” “Canvas!”, ah, ok, canvas fazia parte do script).

Enfim, aguardem o Google Wave. Acho que todo mundo foi ao Google Developer Day pra isso, e o resto foi encheção de lingüiça de HTML 5 (oooh look shiny!) e Social Bullshit. Com picolés e mulatas.

For those interested in hanging out with the MBL folk, our plan is as follows:

Meet inside city hall (by the pool, the usual spot) at 1pm

Wander as per usual.

We'll be in Major's Hill park around 6ish, if anyone wants to meet up just for dinner and fireworks. We usually sit to the left of the stage, under the trees, and can be found by the bubbles and children surrounding us.

(Mental note: buy bubbles today)

I realise the weather forecast doesn't look so good (thunderstorms in the evening). If it's raining and miserable, we may hit up museums and stuff downtown for a bit, then you're are all welcome back at my place for games and general hanging out.

Yes, this is still not a Europe recap. I’m sorry!

When I first bought my Mini Cooper back in 2007, I received a handbook instructing me how to act as a Mini owner, called the Unauthorized Owner’s Manual. The disclaimer in the front states, “This manual is not intended to help you understand the operation and maintenance of your motor vehicle. Rather, it is meant to provide you with invaluable information that would, under normal motoring conditions, take most MINI owners months to discover for themselves. Information has been painstakingly gleaned from many hours of vehicle operation.”

One of the first things this book tells you is that MINI owners do not obsess over the cleanliness of their cars. Which is something I’m good at doing, as washing my car really rarely crosses my mind. It states, “Maintain proper perspective. MINI owners do not irrationally obsess about such things. Bug guts on the grille and muddy fenders are signs of a healthy, well-motored life. Imagine it’s like tooling around town in an abstract painting.”

Continuing through, the book informs you how to make out properly in your car and tips on how to flirt at red lights.

But the real point of this post is on pages 26 and 28 of the manual. Page 26 states, “Dating back to MINI’s birth in the UK, there exists a time-honored tradition of owners greeting each other when they pass on the streets. The moment you first sat in your MINI, you became a member of the family. So, as is customary, try and refrain from acts of shyness, aloofness or woeful complacency. When you pass another MINI, say, ‘Hey.’” Page 28 has graphical representation of different waves you can do to other vehicles.

I was excited when I first read this. I like it when people wave to me. I dated an abundance of guys with Jeeps in 1999 and 2000, and they all taught me about the ‘Jeep wave’, so I was excited to have one of my own. And then I figured out: no one in this town follows the manual.

I was shy at first, so I was waiting for people to wave to me. But no one ever did. In the first year and a half of owning my car, literally the only other Mini owner who waved to me was my neighbor who lived three doors down and also had a Mini. I don’t know if this is because we both owns Minis or because we are neighbors. Maybe it’s both.

When I went to Europe, Mini Coopers were practically every third car, especially in Paris. I kept wanting to wave to them. Even the parked ones. But I would look like a fool, considering I was an American tourist walking around on foot. So I returned to the States with a new resolve to restart the Mini wave here in Nashville. Hence, Operation: MINI wave was born.

Except Minis are NOT every third car here. They are quite rare. And when I see them, they are on the wrong side of the road or in some other location that makes it impossible to wave to them. So I was a little disgruntled when I got back and could go for days without even seeing one of my own kind.

Until yesterday.

I performed my first successful wave yesterday to a guy in a white Mini on West End Ave. Rock on. (For the curious, we both partook in a Commoner Wave.) So Operation: MINI wave has officially begun. I will consider it a success when people start waving to me, without me waving first. I would also consider it a success if I get a certain local celebrity who drives a Mini to wave at me.

So, if you happen to be a local Mini driver, please do your part. Let’s be friendly car owners!