Planet Grep survey: Results
I'll start off with the bad news: surveymonkey sucks. Their free offering does not allow me to export the data, expose it to other people, or do anything useful with it beyond seeing a summary and the individual responses. Of course I can go for a paid option, but they charge $19.99 or some such per month. WTF, you can get dedicated blade hosting for half that price. What I've done is manually copy all the data in a database of my own, so that I could do useful things with it. Next time, I think I'll roll my own survey thing.
Anyway.
The full results (apart from the responses free-form question) are available at my site, and will continue to be updated as more results come in; I'm not closing the survey (though I do not expect more results to change things in an earth-shattering manner anymore). In short, after 53 people had responded, the following can be concluded:
- Most people read Planet Grep on a daily frequency (or higher)
- Planet Grep is mostly read by people who actually post to it, too, though definitely not just those people.
- Regarding the amount of content, for each of 'technical/geeky', 'non-technical', 'number of subscribers', 'number of new posts daily', and 'overall', most people replied 'love it'. However, there are subtle differences; for instance, the 'non-technical' option also saw a significant number of people entering 'too much', while the 'technical/geeky' option had a number of people express that they'd like to see more, in various gradations.
- On the topic of, well, content topics, most people seem to agree that Planet Grep is mostly about 'FLOSS development' and 'Using FLOSS software', whereas 'commercial posts' are not welcomed by most readers. Other topics are less clear; 'Development in general' seems expected as part of Planet Grep by most readers, as is 'Politics around FLOSS', though in a somewhat lesser extent. The opinions about 'Non-FLOSS software' are somewhat balanced, while a small majority frown upon posts on 'Life in general'.
- Regarding selective RSS feeds, most people do not seem to think this is necessary. The clear winner here is that such feeds should only be used for Planet Grep 'if the amount of off-topic content would be too high otherwise'.
- Finally, I'm happy to report that most people seem happy about Planet Grep; over 60% of respondents feels that Planet Grep is 'okay, though it could be improved in some areas', the second option which people could choose.
Finally, I also received 17 responses in the final free-form question. Most of these were either thanks or clarifications of earlier questions (or both), which were welcome, but did not otherwise add new information. Two, however, did add new information:
The first was a suggestion to add Tom Bayens to Planet Grep (which I've since done), along with other not further qualified 'influential Belgians in software development'. I'd like to use this opportunity to reiterate the fact that suggestions of blogs are always welcome, either to me or to Kris; if they fit the profile, they'll be added without hesitation. We can't be expected to know each and every Belgian FLOSS person, obviously, so if you think there's someone who belongs on Planet Grep, then please let us know!
The second was a sentiment that 'twitter(-like)' posts do not belong on Planet Grep. I tend to agree with that; Planet Grep is supposed to be a good read, not a statement of what people are doing at a particular point of time, which fits 'regular' blogs more than it fits microblogging.
So there, that's that. I'll be contacting a few people over the next few days and/or weeks, so that I can work out an arrangement which better suits how the Planet Grep readership prefers to see things; but other than that, not much is going to change.
0x1f
Yes, exactly a year from now, I'l again be able to say I'm 20 years old. 0x20, that is.
Star Trek
So, as a birthday present to me, I just returned from watching the new movie. Since the official release date is only in two days (but movies are traditionally released on wednesdays in Belgium, so they moved it ahead over here), and since this was in fact the first time it was shown, I guess there's not that many people who've seen it yet. So I won't disclose too many details.
I can say that it's an interesting movie. Funny, exciting, and with an unexpected ending.
Hrm. Well, no, that's not exactly true; the buildup to the ending starts pretty much halfway in the movie. However, you wouldn't expect it before seeing it, that's for sure.
Best joke in the whole movie, in my opinion: Pavel Andrejevitch "wictor, wictor" Checkov trying to authenticate to the computer.
"Access code unknown".
grin.
Console-setup sucks
I have a few reasons for this:
- It wants to change the framebuffer font without asking. I seriously dislike the font it sets up.
- I have a habit of writing my own Xkb keymap. With xorg <= 7.3, that meant creating a file /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/wouter and having something like Option "XkbLayout" "wouter" in xorg.conf. Console-setup doesn't pick that up, though, and loads a default keymap that somehow looks closely similar to what I'm using.
- What's worse, the default keymap it picks up on my Apple Powerbook (which isn't my primary laptop anymore, but considering how my actual primary laptop is in for repairs, is what I need to use for now) is a PC Belgian AZERTY keymap, rather than the Apple AZERTY. This is *wrong*.
I might understand why they did this kind of thing, but the current implementation of autodetection is horribly broken.
"Please file a bug!"
I received a few comments on my previous post, some of which suggested that I file a bugreport explaining my thoughts. Of course I did consider that; and I do agree that in many cases, filing a bugreport is the right thing to do. However, this is not always the case.
There are times when you just know that a bug which expresses your feelings towards a particular thing will just be closed on sight, or at the very least tagged 'wontfix'. Filing a bugreport in such a case is just not helpful, and a waste of both my time and that of the maintainer. As such, I just don't do it.
Instead, what I will do is rant. Not because I want to annoy the world, but because it helps me to blow off steam—that's what my blog is for. Also, writing out my thoughts on a particular subject will often help me to reconsider things in such a way that I'll be able to better formulate what the real bug really is; and if it doesn't, it's likely that other people will respond and point me towards what I'm misunderstanding—if I am—so that, again, I might be able to better formulate what the bug really is.
If I sound frustrated in a rant, that's because I am. The simple fact that someone changed something in a piece of technology that I'm using with the intent of improving things should not have to mean that I agree that it is, indeed, an improvement. I will not hide my feelings because it might offend someone. I've done that too much in the past.
So please, pretty please, with sugar on top, when I'm ranting, do not tell me to file a bug report.
That is all.
Belpic 3.5.2 has been released.
... and this time, with the source. Finally; it's been about a year since 3.5.0 came out without any source.
That's not to say it's going to be in the archive tomorrow; they changed the build system (again), and the source has been overhauled to such an extent that it basically isn't even the same software anymore. I'll have to re-learn everything, make sure it builds properly, and hope to do so by the time squeeze releases.
Yes, I realize that squeeze is still far away from release. Sigh.
Perhaps this is a good project for debcamp...
COBOL
According to The Registry, COBOL is now slightly over 50 years old.
I wish I could say I never wrote a single line of COBOL, but I can't. In college, I was taught COBOL for three long years. Even though I've managed to purge most of that knowledge from my brain (good riddance), I still have nightmares about the horrible way in which one writes COBOL.
I wish I could say COBOL is dying, but it isn't. People still write new COBOL today. I mean, seriously, there's a standard called 'COBOL 2002. 'Nuff said.
I wish I could say COBOL isn't a problem, but it's the sole source of most of the Y2K issues way back when. Its features invite many of the kind of horribly wrong coding styles which cause bugs; Y2K is just one.
I wish I could say COBOL code is pretty, but it isn't. Just to give one example: the first 7 characters of every line of code in each and every COBOL program are 0x20. That is, space. Nothing. Utterly useless. There is no reason for this in modern environments, yet it's still there. Note why I dislike significant whitespace. Another example is the fact that you can't just say 'foo = 1 + 1'. Instead, you have to say 'MOVE 1 TO FOO', and then add a second statement that says 'ADD 1 TO FOO'. I'll just use english if I want to write a novel, thank you.
I wish I could say I didn't care about COBOL anymore, but for some weird reason, I do.
And just in case you were confused: no, I do not have warm, fuzzy feelings for COBOL.
If there was a button that would nuke all the COBOL code on the planet, would I push it? Probably not immediately. I'm sure it would take time for me to recover from the sheer joy of knowing that this button actually exists, before I'll be physically capable of keeping my hands steady for the amount of time required for me to actually be able to push it.
COBOL is proof of either the absense of any deity, or the existence of the devil. Given the chance, no sane person, let alone a sane deity, would allow the creation of such an abomination.
At least I don't have to deal with it anymore. That part is not going to change. Ever.