Thecus N2100 arrived

Last saturday, I fetched the N2100 which I had on order since quite a while, put in the two 500G hard disks, and powered it on. Installing Debian to a machine with no console is pretty fun, but luckily the installer makes it all rather easy (there's this thing that allows you to ssh into the running installer and from there start the installation menu; they originally wrote that for installing to an s390 box, but obviously it works for any architecture...).

After installing the box, I upgraded the base system against security.debian.org and removed some software that I didn't need, and rebooted the thing. And then...

... nothing. It didn't seem to come up.

As it turned out, the stuff which I removed (a horrible solution to a problem that doesn't exist) just hapepned to be responsible for loading the NIC driver module; so after reboot, the box didn't have a network interface anymore as far as the kernel was concerned. Pretty stupid, that.

Luckily, fixing that wasn't too hard. Remove the hard disks, put them in another box, edit some files in /etc, put the disk back in the Thecus, boot. There.

I now have a wonderfully small system that I'll use as home server, and which will replace rock in that function. Seen as how rock is a power-hungry desktop with five power-hungry hard disks, whereas goa, the new box, is an economic ARM-based system, that'll be good for the environment as well.

Isn't that nice.

The only downside to this is that I'll now have to do some configuration and migration work, since you can't just put a disk with Debian/i386 on it in an arm box and hope it'll work. But that's okay.

The world according to spammers...

• Nobody can get it up anymore
• Everybody's horribly sick (and needs illegally acquired medicine)
• The world below the equator is full of dead filthy rich people who need their money transferred off some obscure account by someone above the equator
• The world above the equator is filled with filthy rich people who win the lottery every other day. Twice.
• ... and to fix that, luckily there're stock markets that work, with guaranteed interest rates of 20% or more.
• And last but not least: everyone has five pentabytes of diskspace.

Now if only.

Linux Magazine on the DPL election

I bought me a copy of Linux Magazine last week or so, which contained an article on the DPL election.

The parts that talked about me said something approximating

Apart from being a developer, Wouter Verhelst also represented Debian at FOSDEM

and

In his platform, Verhelst criticised organizational failures

I'm frankly stunned that "representing Debian at FOSDEM" is what really makes me stand out as a Debian Developer; especially as I don't, actually, represent Debian there -- I merely organize the Debian presence. Also, I went through great pains in trying to make it clear in my platform that I didn't want to criticise anyone. I guess that didn't quite come out right, then

OTOH, I'm sure it's hard for a journalist to condense my platform into a single sentence, just as it is hard to describe who a person is in the same amount of text. But it's still... strange.

Pub crawls

Doing a pub crawl in Belgium is a fun experience: you go to "several" bars (say, six) in a row, and drink a beer in each. You end up slightly drunk, but not so much that you don't remember who you are. And given the rule is "one drink per bar", and that other people usually are slower than you in drinking theirs, that helps improve the blood-per-alcohol ratio.

Doing a pub crawl in Scotland is also a fun experience, but in a different style. Not only are their beers over twice as large as Belgian ones, they also have great Scotch. Both of which help getting you drunk much, much faster. After having seen the inside of five bars last night, and having had 1+1+1+3+2 drinks (if I'm not mistaken), it's a bit of a miracle I still made it in bed in one piece. One called Steve.

Online Banking

MJ Ray blogs about online banking, and how they're all stupid. I wish I could feel his pain (sortof...), but I don't. And that isn't because I don't have an online banking account, since I do.

My bank actually thought about this stuff before implementing it. Rather than using a silly password, they have an implementation that makes use of the Digipass, a small hardware token you get as part of your contract. If it breaks or I lose it (and yes, this has happened), I go to the bank and immediately get another one, without being charged additionally for it (at least not if I don't need one digipass every other day).

Their webserver implementation involves a standard HTTPS server, and a set of webpages of which I'm not entirely sure whether they're standards-compliant, but at least they've tested it on more browsers than just IE; and since they don't require any other client-side software besides a browser, it easily works on free operating systems.

If I wanted to, I could also use a smartcard reader and my regular debit card -- but I don't have to. That's the good part about it.

The only downside about Fortis is that they're not the cheapest. But that's okay—I don't mind paying for quality.

DebCamp/DebConf

After having been here in Edinburgh for about a week now and not having blogged about it, I'm starting to feel slightly guilty about it. Only slightly so, however.

I did figure out that the wireless on my PowerBook doesn't work with 2.6.21, whereas it seems to (flakily) work with 2.6.18. Yay broadcom.

Not.

Anyway, life here in Edinburgh has been fun so far. Mostly. I had a bit of Mao-playing, some bit of "putting faces to names", a bit of Scotch-tasting (of which I still need to remember taking one (1) bottle home for $BROTHER who really likes the stuff), and a bit of getting-so-drunk-I-woke-up-not-yet-completely-sober-and-decided-it-might-be-nice-to-find-my-bed-again, too.

Like I said, mostly fun.

The guy puking on my luggage last night wasn't fun, but at least he managed to puke most of it right next to my luggage. But I'll still have some laundry to do, I guess.

DebCamp to me isn't about being productive, so much as it is about meeting people and getting to know the environment. But I still managed to do some work on nbd-server, which is now at version 2.9.3 (plus some patches stolen from svn) in Debian. That helps, too.

In an hour or two, I'll be doing my m68k got kicked out of etch!?!?! Oh noes! BoF. The schedule already lists 11 people who will be attending, so that's cool. Let's hope we get something productive out of it.

Rumours of our death have been greatly exaggerated

No, the m68k port is not dead. Yes, there's an issue with etch-m68k, it mainly being that we haven't set it up properly after these months that we could've done so. That doesn't make it dead. I'd also have appreciated some inquiry from you before sending out such rumours, Joey.

One of my goals for DebCamp/DebConf was to talk about it with the people involved and getting a buildd host up and running. That sortof is underway now. At the same time, it isn't.

In any case, I planned yesterday, after my BoF, to give this the highest priority now. Expect some results RSN(tm).

Debian Tartan

For all those people wondering what the Debian Tartan looks like, and what the fuzz about the kilts is:

There.

Update: people asked for the names. Updated the flickr page to include those I know of.

Joshua Bell in the metro

A few months ago, the Washington Post featured an article about Joshua Bell playing his violin (which happens to be a Stradivarius) in a Washington metro station. Contrary to their expectations, nobody stopped by to listen.

The article tries to find reasons for why this happened, digging into theories by a number of famous philosophers. While those are undoubtedly not far from the truth, let me dig up another theory:

Joshua Bell may be one of the best musicians in the world; that doesn't mean he's one of the best street musicians in the world.

You see, if you play your Stradivarius in a concert hall, you don't have to do much to get people's attention. If your name is Joshua Bell and you play in the New York Opera House, people pay good money to get a seat months in advance, they circle the date on their calendar, and they look forward to it for weeks. When the big day arrives, they dress up, they drive up to the opera house, they queue for the privilege of being allowed to show their tickets and being allowed in, they take their seats, and they wait in excitement and anticipation until the big moment arrives.

If your name is Joshua Bell and you play your Stradivarius in a concert hall, people will clap their hands you before you've even started. You'd better make it be good, or they'll demand their money back.

If, however, you play on the street, then that's a completely different matter.

You don't get to have people circle the date of your street concert months in advance. You have exactly one second to let them know you're playing. You don't get to have an audience that will clap their hands the very moment they see you turn the corner; instead, you'll see an audience that would rather you did not stand in the middle of the way like that, so that they would not have to look out for you. In short, you don't get their attention on a silver platter; instead, you have to earn it.

As someone who's done street music in the past, I can tell you that earning someone's attention isn't something you will do by playing the most difficult music that can be found. You should remember that you've got just a few seconds to catch someone's attention; from the moment they vaguely hear someone's playing, until that time when they're getting annoyed at the volume your, no doubt wonderful, instrument is making. If you want people to stop and listen, you need to do it in that very short timeframe.

A wild and fast virtuoso piece, while sure to get you a great reaction by an audience in an opera house, is only a very noisy thing if you just get a few seconds of it—even if those few seconds are by the best violin player alive.

The best way to get someone's attention is to give them something they recognize.

The article notes the reactions from a few passers-by. It did not surprise me that of the three or four people who actually stopped and listened, one recognized the violinist as Joshua Bell, and the other had been a violinist himself in a previous life.

Both had something they recognized, which made both stop for a few moments to check what they were seeing. That's what gave them more time to appreciate how truly beatifull this music was, and that's why they waited.

The real way to get people to stop, to get a crowd around you, and to have them to listen to you, is not to play what gets you the best results in an Opera House or other concert hall. Instead, you should play something that will catch people's attention. A brilliant piece that is unknown will not do that. A funny variation on "Oh When The Saints" will, because people recognize the music.

That's not to say that street musicians should only play stuff like "Oh When The Saints". Getting money from playing on the street has more to it than just the music you're playing; just as important is the place where you're playing, and the time when you're doing it:

• If you're playing in a busy hallway, then people will just hurry along. Stopping gets them angry other people walking in their back, so that doesn't happen. If, on the other hand, you play on a large market square or some such, then people are much more likely to stand and listen—people walk in all directions there at the same time, so you have to look out anyway.
• If you're playing in a closed metro station, you'd better not use an instrument that's too loud. If you do, that will make people move away from you, rather than towards you, because they'll notice they can not talk on their cell phones or some such. If they have to pass by where you're playing to get to where they're going, they'll increase their speed so that they're faster past you. Both options give you less time to catch their attention.
• If you're playing on a monday morning during rush hour, you're not going to be getting a load of success. Everyone is going to work, and you're just something in the background, not much more interesting than the guy who's changing the billboard. If, OTOH, you're playing in a busy shopping mall on a sunny saturday afternoon, you'll get a large crowd anyhow.

A good street musician knows these things, and applies them even without knowing. He'll instinctively know whether it's a good day to do street music, and he'll rather go to a bar and have a hot drink if it's not.

So why didn't Joshua Bell get a crowd around him? Easy: he isn't a very good street musician.

No more swimming

A while back, if you asked Google Maps for silly driving directions such as between the USA and the United Kingdom, your directions would include stuff like "Swim across the atlantic ocean", as can be seen in this blog post.

Unfortunately, they 'fixed' their code, and it no longer does this. Sad. After all, it's not as if it's impossible to swim across the Atlantic.

Dinner

Interesting dinner last night (dutch only, though the URL alone should give you quite some clue already). Eventually two people didn't turn up (one because he was sick, and another because... he didn't turn up), but 13 people still make for a good evening.