Stuff Michael Meeks is doing
|
|
This is my (in)activity log. You might like to visit my employer
Novell which is an amazing company, and also
Dell who in days of yore provided me with a
free laptop for Gnome development / conferences.
Also if you have the time to read this sort of stuff you could enlighten
yourself by going to Unraveling Wittgenstein's net or if
you are feeling objectionable perhaps here.
Older items:
2010: (
J
F
M
),
2009: (
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
),
2008: (
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
),
2006,
2006,
2005,
2004,
2003,
2002,
2001,
2000,
1999,
legacy html
-
Up at 6am, hiked to Preson Park, train to Gatwick, waited
for delayed flight. Extremely impressed with the battery life on
this new Duo (with SSD). Caught up with the news variously.
-
Read Simon's excellent position oncontributor
agreements, with relation to the (potentially problematic) Project
Harmony.
-
Highly amused by an article in The Economist on 'the cost
of weapons'. Learned an important new German term: Eierlegende
Wollmilchsau or "egg-producing wool-milk-sow" (apparently this
is the A400M specification) - could there really be engineering and
business problems with a-priori over-specification ? Another
priceless quote:
In Iraq and Afghanistan numbers matter more than
firepower. The same applies to warships fighting pirates off the
coast of Somalia; a ship cannot be in two places at the same time.
As Stalin reputedly said, "Quantity has a quality all of its
own".
-
Read a nice article on gcc
with some helpful reminiscence on the egcs/gcc fork and its
resolution.
-
Up early, breakfast, out shopping for misc. omitted party
items, did some work, lunch. Out shopping again for vegetarian
sausages - which live in a carefully camouflagued section of
Tescos (in a freezer).
-
Back for Miriam's party, barbeque mayhem, playing the guitar
for various musical games (log-pot tragically failed in the portable
CD player), trying to force feed the assorted children & parents,
and so on. Good to see Sue, Adam & James too.
-
Bid farewell to them all; Cheryl kindly dropped me to the
station, set off - using the new Android device, which (now I'm not
in the middle of no-where) seems to have some great Edge/3G
connectivity, even on the train.
-
Reviewed, merged, and pushed the next set of awesome
bootchart2 work from Riccardo. Wondered how I can get an ESRCH
(No such process) response from a pread at a valid address, on
a memory map of a (live) process'
/proc/<pid>/mem
particularly when the process is still alive afterwards (with
the same pid); most odd.
-
Lie in, off to All Saints (NCC not meeting it seems).
Max preached briefly, good to walk homw with Bronie & Robin
(recently avoiding death in a falling ladder episode).
-
Had Effie and Dee over for lunch, lovely to spend some
time with them. Set too cleaning the house a little for the
onslaught of babies tomorrow. Girls watched the lame children's
movie: Stuart Little.
-
Got accidentally swallowed by Hannah's bed-time story:
the Lord of the Rings; stayed up deep into the night getting
Saruman finished off properly.
-
Up early, packed everything into the car, roof-box, etc.
Off to see Sandra's to swim in the pool again - M. finally shed her
fear of the water and started swimming lengths at crazy speed in
her swimming ring, good.
-
Picked some apples, had lunch, bid 'bye to the parents &
thanks for their help, and set off to drive home. Three and a bit
hours later (a very clear drive) arrived.
-
Unpacked variously, fed the babes, read them stories. Started
on the inbox, oh dear ... perhaps a mistake; but it's a bank holiday
on Monday too it seems.
-
Interested to read that Wheat
has been tentatively sequenced:
The wheat genome is the largest genome decoded to date.
It is five times larger than the human genome and is known to be a
very complex structure, comprised of three independent genomes.(BBC)
Interesting - if you were astounded by having an ~identical genome to
a chimpanzee, perhaps it is time to get a bigger-is-better inferiority
complex going with your breakfast cereal; alternatively - time to start
collecting base-pairs (or chromosomes ?).
-
Everyone off to Fountains
Abbey to admire the ancient ruins of the monastary there. Some spectacular
construction and architecture by the Cistercians - apparently
they started their first monestary in a swamp - on purpose to make it harder
to live there: which as a side-effect made them experts in water management.
Lots of wandering in the sun with the babes, admiring the mill's water works,
and so on.
-
Read the amusing literature, on eg. lead
water pipes, something approximately like this:
"The Monks used lead pipes for their water, but
nationally we replaced our lead water piping forty years ago. There are three
problems with lead piping - first, hair loss (not such a big issue for Monks),
second - loss of short term memory, and third - I can't remember."
-
Home in the evening, ice creams from England's (nominally) oldest
sweet shop. Watched Howel's Moving Castle with the
babes, fed them dinner, and left the parents to baby-sit them.
-
Out for dinner with my wife - bliss. Swift pint beforehand, then
really an extraordiarily good restaurant The Willow
at Pateley Bridge - amazed to find such unusually good food. Back, bed
late.
-
Off to find a suitable river to muck about in with
the babes - to attempt to teach them what rivers are for -
and to expunge the Townie "ooh my dress might get muddy"
-
Much fun paddling and slipping about in a river,
seemingly near an old Roman road. Suitable dam building
exploits - fitting considering the rocky terrain. Training
in the ubiquity of sheep, rabbit etc. droppings and the
necessity of treading on them if you are to make any
progress. Much successful de-townification.
-
On to an abandoned lime kiln on the moors, and
climbed up to an observation point over a huge limestone
quarry - completely invisible from the road / nearby - with
grass banks concealing and muting a vast pit packed with
interesting looking machines. The girls took a great interest
in the various mechanical monsters and their roles, but were
disapointed by a lack of blasting.
-
On into Grassington and through to find a pleasant
spot near the river to have a picnic lunch;
-
Home, to watch Jurrasic Park together; hmm. Then
dinner and packed everyone off to bed.
-
Amazed to see the British media reporting news like
this
Doctors with religious beliefs are less likely
to take decisions which could hasten the death of those who
are terminally ill, a study suggests
. Odd
that the converse is not the news: Doctors with no religious
beliefs are more likely to take decisions which could hasten
death ... etc. I hope my doctor has a high commitment to
(at least my) life.
-
Up early, J. app't with doctor. Off to Sandra's to swim
again, swum the morning away happily - followed by some fruit
picking and lunch.
-
Off to Brimham Rocks in the afternoon - much clambering
over rocks. Uncle John came over - really lovely to see him,
wrecked precious SUSE Labs T-shirt, and one of few remaining
intact pairs of trousers while attempting some ridiculous
climbing feat with two children - succeeded, but at what cost ?
-
Back together for lunch at Sandra's, running about with
the babes in the garden - British (touch) Bulldog, Packed them
off to bed late.
-
Up early, booked an appointment for J. with the local GP,
mercifully 20 metres from the house. Off to visit
The Forbidden
Corner
apparently (The strangest place in the world) - discovered on
arriving that it doesn't open until nearly midday (oh). Spent some
time wandering the pleasant grounds, getting mobbed by hungyr ducks,
and admiring a flock of swifts flying fast and close between us as
we walked to catch some sort of insect near the ground.
-
A snatch of lunch, and we set off to sample the strange-ness.
And indeed, as advertised, it was really extremely unusual. a set of
fine gardens, with an over-arching maze - some extraordinary follies,
a labryinth of underground tunnels of unusual complexity, castle
pieces, grotesque statues, and lots of IR controlled water sprays -
everything a child could want, and more. Strangely E. was terrified
by the relatively mild burping entrance gate, and not by some of the
very tight underground spaces. M. sat out a lot of dark, underground
twistiness with Grandma.
-
Eventually back home, rather late. Fish and Chips dinner,
put the babes to bed, and chatted with the parents. Bed earlyish.
-
Up early, breakfast, off to Sandra's house; met up
with the grandparents. Went swimming with all the family at
some considerable length and with much amusement.
-
Lunch, then off to visit some caves nearby on the
hills. Back for dinner, watched DVD with the babes for a
bit, and then enjoyed Runaway Jury with the wife:
excellent stuff.
-
Lie in, breakfast, off to local CofE Church. Fine
puzzle painting experience in creche; discovered our next
door neighbour Sue there, and had her over for lunch.
-
Off to see Julia's Aunt Nickie, drove over some
beautiful moors with the heather in bloom: lovely. Spent
some time with her, admired the garden, tea & cake.
-
On to see M&D at Sandra's house, wandered the
field next-door to see the sheep, and try to spy rabbits;
back late - lots of tired babies to put to bed late.
-
Up late, finishing To End All Wars - a
rather gripping true story of redemption in a Japanese
prisoner of war camp building the Burma railroad.
-
Lie in, packed the house up into the car; set off north.
Good, clear progress up the A1M, lunch at C ... onwards.
Arrived at Pately Bridge early afternoon.
-
Discovered house still being cleaned out, unpacked the
car, and managed to back it into the garage; 25.4mm spare at the
back and 50.8mm at the front (Guiness Book of Records
measurement-style).
-
Took the babes into the high street (20 metres away)
to shop, and wandered across the bridge - admiring the extra
floodable meadow next to the river, and the water-proof wall
around it - with the unfeasibly high depth measuring device
in the river.
-
Home, out again to buy bits, took the babes to the
park, Grandma & Grandad arrived, played on swings and
so on. Back for dinner, packed everyone to bed. Watched
The Princess Bride until lateish: "When I was your
age, Television was called 'Books'".
-
Poked mail, code reading. Amused to see SanDisk (a company
whose products I rather like) doing the age old trick of creating
a new market space to lead in: in this case seemingly a rather
contrived space; tut tut.
-
Bought the Fluendo DVD player, goes against the grain, but
it works nicely seemingly (at least for The Pricess Bride - and
after all what more do you need ?).
-
Drove Thomas & Becky to the station.
-
Dinner, packed babes to bed & read stories. Back to work,
fixed an Evolution crasher, dug at bootchart2 netlink oddness around
error handling with Kay's hand-holding; seemingly MeeGo fooled me by
dying at the first hurdle: on
socket (PF_NETLINK, SOCK_DGRAM, 11); -
pushed a clean fix to bootchart2. Some nice patches coming in from
Riccardo Magliocchetti (xrmx) gave him git/push access.
-
Packed for the next weeks off on holiday, backed up
the laptop, filled out Clarity for the future.
-
Mail, news, Clarity, fluff. Lunch with Jill. Filed
misc bugs with traces. Chased an Evo. bug for a while, some
odd combination of threading, gdbus, glib signals taking a
gstrv, and some unpleasant memory corruption.
-
Boggled at Intel buying McAffe - what a strange
acquisition, attempted somehow to detect an underlying
strategy ... there is clearly a missing piece somewhere.
-
Enjoyed Richard Fontana's
Copyright Assignment slides
from LinuxCon - particularly the conclusion slide which I
reproduce:
- Formal contribution agreements are Bad:
- No real legal advantages
- Signals basic lack of legal confidence in FOSS
- Negates social/technical advantages of FOSS
- Ethical concerns
- More justifiable if assignee is nonprofit fiduciary
- Otherwise, best policies are informal, pure FOSS, documented
-
Dinner early, conference call late; awaited Tom & Becky
who clearly were enjoying themselves too much in Cambridge.
-
Prodded mail, moved OOoCon flights to arrive
midday 31st, looked into some Evo / Camel reference leaks.
Lunch.
-
Fixed some bootchart2 bugs for Kay; boggled
generally at taskstats not giving data for some processes
(or am I just not asking for it somehow). Jared's staff
meeting.
-
Thomas & Becky arrived late, dinner, and sat
up enjoying their company for a while.
-
More mail, conference calls, wrote LXF column, synched up
with Pete, worked late. Interested to see
fires' Open Source car.
-
Prodded mail, contemplated copyrights, caught up with JP
fresh from his vacation. Drove home got babes packed into bed.
In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my
own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Novell, The
Lithuanian Gov't or Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's also important to
realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy.
Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences,
bio.
or fun.
Michael Meeks (michael.meeks@novell.com)
