jcm's blog

I like Fedoras, I think I’ll wear them more often.

It’s official. I have jumped ship and will be moving to work for a super cool Linux vendor and supplier of fine haberdashery. As I result, I’m planning to relocate to Boston later in the year and work with some fine folks over in the Westford, MA office once we get all of the paperwork sorted out. See, there was a reason for my short trip to Boston a few weeks back after all

Jon.

ajh invited me to swing by Ottawa next month, so I’ve decided to look at combining that weekend visit with a little day trip over to the West Coast, to visit friends. Deepak tells me he believes that I’d seriously take a day trip from the East Coast to Portland for some coffee and of course, he’s not wrong.

Jon.

It’s that time again. I watched the news, it was bad. Stories about human rights violations never make me feel great in the evening. So, I decided to up my donations to human rights organisations and signed up to the American Civil Liberties Union while I was at it. As if that wasn’t enough, I decided I probably should be a card carrying member of the Free Software Foundation, so I did that too. Yes, all I really want is RMS’s voice on my answerphone.

[UPDATE] For an example of my concerns about identity cards and government collected information about citizens, see the excellent pizza commercial on the ACLU website.

Jon.

According to the BBC, MPs in the British parliament have voted to oblige people applying for passports to be put on the ID card register.

Apparently, identity cards will reduce identity theft, cure all disease, rid the world of terrorists and evildoers, whilst simultaneously earning every bearer a free Nobel peace prize. Wow! With the kind of crap this government is churning out, who wouldn’t want to get one? Not me. Thing is, I’m not a complete moron so I’m able to see beyond this to the police state they want to create in the United Kingdom. Identity cards won’t do anything to remove terrorists and evildoers (they’ll just get fake documents as they always have done) but they will cost citizens very real money that could be spent curing diseases and building world class hospitals. I expect identity theft to increase once there’s a single point of failure.

On days like this, I’m actually almost quite thankful for the (unelected) peers in the house of Lords because they at least seem to see some kind of folly going on here. Too many people have fallen for the terrorism hysteria, so it looks like the UK is going to shortly give in and just throw civil liberties out of the window. Some of the human rights organisations I contribute to (Liberty, Amnesty International) will try to undo this nonsense, as will my political party (the Liberal Democrats) but I fear it’s too late now.

It’s a shame that British citizens don’t have any constitutional rights to speak of. For a country that’s been around as long as this one, it’s very much stuck in the stone age.

[UPDATED] Decided it was about time that I also joined the ACLU.

Jon.

Wanna see how long I can write through the night, powered only by caffeine? Let’s find out…

I’ve got a bit of a lag on the book and some stumbling blocks came up, so I’m using my holiday tomorrow to good effect and writing through the night to get things back on track. I got the toolchains chapter in last week, tonight it’s time for chapter 5 – Software Configuration Management (SCM) and the introduction to get written.

[UPDATED] Turns out I’m only going to get one chapter done tonight. But that’s not too bad – one whole chapter from start to finish in an evening is a great burn rate. I should get the Portability material finished off later today, and the introduction done by tonight. Then, sleep, and to get myself in a writing routine so it doesn’t get backed up going forward. This was my own fault for procrastinating over the writing thing – but I’ve fixed that now. Now all I need are more evenings with working broadband and I should be ok.

Jon.

I was searching for some Linux Standard Base documentation earlier and came across the wikipedia user by the same name. I love the talk on that page. Let me quote a few items for you.

Turns out (as you may know) that the name LaShawn Barber is a little well known. So, some helpful wikipedia person decides:

We don’t allow the usage of celebrities’ names as User names

To which the reply comes:

Ahem, this is my real life name. Just because a celebrity has the same name doesn’t mean they can copyright it

Then a lot of activating and deactivating of the account follows, ending in a discussion of how this person can change their wikipedia name so as to not possibly cause offensive to some “celebrity”, for example:

La Shawn, it would definitely save you hassle to choose another name

Great. Just in case you ever thought wikipedia wasn’t filled with far too many annoying people, go take a read of that link. Maybe we should just perfect some test and name everyone unlikely to ever make it big with a random alphanumeric string to avoid bothering wikipedians? Would work until a dude called 15GQRHE89 became famous.

Jon.

Apparently, I’m now the top fan of Runrig on last.fm, having listened to Runrig tracks over 2249 times that it’s logged (it doesn’t log the listening I do on my iPod). That’s almost 5 days of continuous playback, but I’d guess in reality we’re talking weeks (I only started listening to Runrig last year). I should so go to a concert – anyone else interested in coming along to one?

There’s a concert in NYC on April 4. I’ve got to go over to Boston/NYC around then anyway so I think I’ll try to swing by, if I can.

Jon.