bsp 2012

Debian Bug Squashing Party Mechelen

Ever since my company moved offices back in June, I've been wanting to do this: organize a BSP. It just hadn't happened yet.

Today, I decided that unless I start actually making this a concrete plan rather than some vague idea, it isn't going to happen. So, here we go: during the weekend of the 15th and 16th of December, I expect some people to show up and help stamping out those pesky RC bugs.

If you've been wanting to help Debian somehow but don't know where to start, this is your chance! Don't worry about not knowing how all this works; there will be Debian Developers attending who can help you out (two DDs have told me that they'd like to attend, and of course I will be there too). If you've got some experience in Debian packaging, your help would of course be all the more appreciated.

Even if you can't make it the whole weekend, that's fine too! Just be there for as long as you can, and help stamp out those pesky RC bugs. The more people help out, the better!

Posted
webmail

Dear lazyweb,

I am looking for a replacement for IlohaMail, since I just noticed it stopped working reliably:

[Mon Oct 29 18:57:18 2012] [error] [client 195.144.91.202] PHP Warning:  strcasecmp() expects parameter 1 to be string, array given in /usr/share/IlohaMail/include/mime.inc on line 87, referer: [...]

This happens when trying to view an email. When that happens, the headers are parsed correctly, but the body isn't shown, and one has to instead click on the "view source" link to see anything at all.

There's actually a patch for this bug gathering dust in the BTS; that, plus the fact that it has not seen any upstream activity since 2005, and that the last maintainer upload into Debian was in 2008, makes me conclude that IlohaMail is probably dead.

Therefore, I'm looking for a replacement. Specifically, I'm looking for:

  • Something simple and lightweight. The server on which this will be running is a QNAP 419U, which is powerful enough to do some useful things, but not to the extent that I can just waste resources. Additionally, the webmail is only used as an emergency thing, when I don't have my laptop immediately with me.
  • If it's not written in PHP, that'd be a plus.
  • It must not require MySQL, and preferably no database at all (though I can live with PostgreSQL if needs be).
  • It should try to get at the mail either through IMAP or through reading maildirs

Does something like that exist? If so, pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Posted
fastest slug

The fastest slug in the world (probably)

How fast do slugs travel? Empirical evidence tells me that's about 1 meter per hour1. But not this slug.

IMAG0114

As I was driving home from $CUSTOMER, I noticed something on my car. At first I thought it was bird poop, but then bird poop doesn't move. As the animal crawled higher and higher next to my windshield (while I was driving down the highway), I thought it would soon be blown off; but no, it bravely held on. Since it was crawling against my driving direction, that meant it was hurling down the highway at about 119.999 kph. I'm not sure if slugs have emotions; but if they do, the poor animal must've been terribly scared.

Since these weird 120kph winds kept blowing on this weird and not very sticky surface that is the rubber and the metal edge to the side of the winshield, the animal kept going until it found that the glass of the windshield itself is actually a very interesting place for it to settle. By that time I had reached a usable exit, so I went off. As I reduced the car's speed once off the highway, the animal had decided that it was fairly nice outside its house now, and was starting to move horizontally along my windshield. Not exactly what I wanted it to do. So I took the above picture with the wrong camera (I remembered a mere few minutes later that I had my DSLR in the back of my car), took it off, and released it into the nearby bushes.

Of course, by that time I'd driven several dozens of kilometers away from wherever it was that I picked it up, so the animal will probably never get home again. But hey, I'm sure it'll love the new bushes.

1 Once, over half a lifetime ago, I noticed a slug sitting by the side of the road. Not having much else to do, I sat down and watched it. By the time it had moved some two meters, it had gotten dark and cold, and I went home. At that point, my parents told me they'd started to worry because I was two hours late from school.

I could be slightly wrong about the numbers, though. It's been a long time.

Posted