moray

08:00 pm - DebConf8

10:14 pm

For those of you who don't know, I'm now based in Grenoble, France, for at least a year, working at INRIA Rhône-Alpes. I'm doing research there fairly closely related to my PhD topic.

Debian people: I now have ADSL and a computer in my flat, so hopefully I'll get time to update my packages some time soon.

09:11 pm - Documentation

If you're ever writing the instructions for a washing machine with many similar cycles identified by letters of the alphabet in an arbitrary order, please note that it's not entirely helpful to hide 'Arrêt avec eau dans la cuve' (= stop with water in the drum) among various small print in the eighth column of a multi-page table.

Fortunately there was a mop within reach.

04:34 pm

I was slightly surprised to find that the Linux User Group in Isfahan, Iran, had the most equal gender balance I've yet seen at that kind of event. (On the day I visited, there were about 14 women and 28 men attending.)

06:30 pm - etch release party, Edinburgh

There will be beer/an etch release party in Edinburgh on Thursday (2007-04-12), at the Auld Hoose. Turn up from about 7.30; some of us will be getting food.

06:10 pm - DebConf travel

If you're coming to DebConf and intend to get to Edinburgh by train, you should book your tickets now -- I noticed that in the last few days GNER finally started taking bookings for travel at the end of June.

DebConf travel info page

At the moment you can book, for example, London to Edinburgh Waverley on Saturday 16 June for £12.50, while the best price I'm seeing for Edinburgh Waverley to London on Sunday 24 June is £28.50. These cheap tickets may all be sold fairly soon. A flexible Saver Return ticket (depart any time except rush hour on a fixed date, then return any date within a month) is showing as £98.20. If you'll be spending more than £60 on UK train travel, and are a student or less than 26, you should get a Young Person's Railcard, which for £20 gives you 1/3 off tickets for a year -- even with the cost of the railcard you can save money on a single journey.

Apparently GNER won't post tickets outside the UK. At any rate, rather than rely on the postal service, I prefer to use the FastTicket option, which means you pick up the tickets from a machine in the station.

The GNER London--Edinburgh trains have wifi, though you have to pay for it unless you get a First Class ticket (which also gives free tea and coffee, and more space). There are power sockets by the seats to plug in your laptop.

08:41 pm - DebConf registration reminder

If you are requesting sponsored food or accommodation for DebConf, go to the "Travel, accommodation and costs" tab in the conference registration system, and make sure you have entered the dates you plan to arrive/depart. As the recent message to d-d-a said, we need to know them by Wednesday 31 January.

If you haven't made plans yet, the recommended arrival/departure dates are, as on the website, 2007-06-16 and 2007-06-24. We would like to help as many people as possible who require sponsorship to come to DebConf, and we will use the information you provide now to calculate how much travel sponsorship we can afford to give out.

The Call for Papers also closes on 31 January, so if you're interested in doing a DebConf talk but haven't submitted one yet, it's time to start thinking about it.

01:01 am

We finally announced the dates for next year's DebConf in Edinburgh, as Sunday 17 to Saturday 23 June.

10:32 pm

Today I took the train to Dalmeny, walked over the Forth road bridge, and got the train back from North Queensferry. As you might expect, I took some photographs [6 more behind link].

12:12 am

I'm still rather behind on putting trip photographs on the web, but here are a set from a train journey across the Balkans in August.

04:15 pm

I've put up a dozen photographs from my recent trip to Istanbul.

01:16 am - DPL election

Congratulations aj!

11:49 pm

For the Debian Developers among you not following on IRC, I'm posting the DPL debate as it happens at http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~mma29/temp/dpldebate/out/

10:28 pm

Photos from FOSDEM

09:17 pm

Since I was in the mood after doing the ones from Libya, I got round today to uploading a few pictures from
St Petersburg in July 2005.

02:09 am

I've put up a few photos from Libya in December.

10:40 pm

Some of the books I read in 2005:
( list )

01:48 am

On Sunday I took a break from working on a conference paper (submitted today), when Wolfgang, Charlotte, John and Tim invited themselves over for dinner. I think all the comments about being afraid I'd poison them were a joke....

04:53 am

Some of the books I read in 2004:

( books meme )

I have a pretty bad memory, so this is based on what's sitting on the most-recently filled bookshelf here, rather than being complete or necessarily entirely correct.

(Idea taken from Hanna.)

03:40 pm

Have now uploaded some photographs from my most recent visit to Egypt.