Planet Birmingham

When you were here before
Couldn’t look you in the eye
You’re just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather

In a beautiful world
And I wish I was special
You’re so fuckin’ special

But I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo.
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here.

I don’t care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice
When I’m not around
You’re so fuckin’ special
I wish I was special

But I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo.
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here.

She’s running out again,
She’s running out
She’s run run run running out…

Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You’re so fuckin’ special
I wish I was special…

But I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo,
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here.
I don’t belong here.

It's the end of my first week as a "Technical Solutions Engineer" intern at Google in London.

I'm living a 6 minute walk away from work (which everyone is very jealous of) in a studio flat in Westminster. The flat is about the size of a postage stamp, is in an ex-convent, is currently still full of the previous tenant's belongings, still has no Internet connection and is costing me more than most people's mortgages - but it's home, for the next 12 weeks at least. I can just see the top of Westminster Cathedral from my window and it's quite a weird feeling being around the corner from Buckingham Palace.

So far, working at Google has more than lived up to my expectations. It isn't just the three free meals a day, the permenant supply of snacks and drinks (healthy and not so healthy), the lava lamps, games room, bean bags, hammocks and massage chair. It's the whole atmosphere - the flexible hours, the incredibly friendly and intelligent people and the open-ness. Google might be secretive to the outside world, but internally they're incredibly open - even as an intern the amount of information (and code!) I have access to is astounding.

This week has been quite unusual because there have been a lot of social events - a leaving do, an afternoon of paintballing followed by pubs into the wee hours, and TGIF with free beer and pizza. This is good because the social events involved the gathering of a lot of members of the Partner Solutions Organisation (in which I work) from all over EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) so I really got to know the people behind the organisation in a social context.

The only uncomfortable thing for me is that I am living under my first NDA - for the first time in my life I am learning things that I can't necessarily pass on to other people. I had to do a lot of soul searching before I signed that document. If it wasn't for Google's commitment to Open Source (in their own special way) and particularly Open Standards I think the decision would have been much harder. I can tell you that people here really do take the statement "Do No Evil" very seriously - even if it does cause them lots of problems in the media.

At TGIF (thank goodness it's Friday) yesterday afternoon I had to introduce myself to everyone at the London office, accompanied by many other "Nooglers". All the Nooglers had to create a slide about themselves including a photo (I had pigtails in my photo) and when asked to reveal a "random life lesson" I told a story about the time I found out you shouldn't wear shorts in the Vatican (ask me for the full story). I was also asked who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Batman and controversially answered Spiderman (Batman doesn't even have any superpowers!) .

Google isn't just about fun and games though. I have a very challenging project to work on and it's going to take me at least the first two weeks to get up to scratch on Google's development tools, build system and production infrastructure. There's a steep learning curve to get started, but I think I've hit the ground running so far.

I'll be back soon with further updates.

I actually have no idea why the bill for gas and electricity is so large, but now I know why it came to a name that I don't recognize. It used to be in the name of one of my housemates. The guy that moved out (thank god). When he moved out, he didn't tell anyone. I finally asked his sister weeks later and she confirmed that he was gone, although I was pretty sure that's what had happened when I saw that the TV and all the toilet brushes disappeared.

When he left, he changed the bills to be under a fictitious name. And didn't tell anybody, except possibly his sister, what name to look for. So last week, I saw a letter from the electric/gas company addressed to an unknown name, and realized that I had given no money to either company in quite a long time. I opened it and it alerted me that the gas and power was going to be shut off in a few days time unless we sent them money. A lot of money. The bill is incredibly high.

I called the company and asked if it possibly dated from before we moved in. They refused to discuss anything with me unless I faxed in a copy of my tenancy agreement. I couldn't not get them to agree to delay shutting things off, even. So I did that and they promised to send a revised bill and have not done so.

And then I started talking to my housemates. The sister refused to pay anything and demanded to know why I had called them. (Personally, I think of it as kind of a disaster when power and gas get shut off, but I'm also the sort of person who replaces lightbulbs. Indeed, I'm the only person in this house who replaces lightbulbs.) She claimed the electric company was lying about the amount that we owed. We had already paid bills for the time covered under that bill, when it was in her brother's name. I asked if she could produce copies of these bills, as that would surely help resolve any disputes. She got suddenly very shouty and defensive.

There was an interesting phrase on the bill. It said it was extremely accurate because they had sent somebody around to read the meter. Apparently, the previous bills all said they were the amount that the residents had called up to report.

Now, this is pure speculation on my part, drawn from conjecture and partially remembered rants of my very ranty ex-housemate, but what I suspect is that he was calling them up every month with invented numbers on the meter. Then he switched it to a name unconnected with him and hoped that nothing would get shut off before his sister moved out.

How much is the bill? Less than my monthly rent in London is going to be, but not much less.

The gas/electric company promised to send something within the week, when I explained that we were all about to move and I needed to see something in writing to present to my housemates or else I would get stuck with the whole thing. They made false promises about mailing things.

There's false promises and duplicity all around. And I'm going to get stuck with the entire bill. Because the only way I'm getting any money out of the lying weasel or his sister is going to be to take them to court. And the whole process will certainly involve a wall of manic shouting from both of them. I have more financial capital than emotional capital. I can pay money and make the stress go away.

I was joking earlier that the vibe living here made me pine for the good old days of a disintegrating marriage. Truly I have cursed myself to an expensive divorce.

It’s quite nice how people can see that all my different email addresses can be linked via a gpg key.  If you deal with me through this blog, you can see the companies I work for, and vice versa.

I like that.

We've recently bought some new lightweight camping gear, with the aim of doing some long distance walking and wild camping in the future. (I think I've begun to realise, from my conversations with people, that I'm becoming a bit of an outdoor gear geek!) Last weekend, we decided to test it out a little, up on the Clwydian Hills in North-East Wales. I've put a page up in the walks section of this site with lots of pictures and a description of the route, but I thought I'd also just mention what some of the equipment is that we have been using - equipment which so far I'm extremely pleased with - in case anyone else is looking for some pointers at to what might fit their needs.

The tent is a Big Agnes Seedhouse SuperLight 2 Person, which packs down to just over a kilo and easily fits inside a 35 litre rucksack. We got this from REI in the US, where it was considerably cheaper than in the UK.

I'm sleeping in a Mountain Hardware Lamina 35, which whilst not the lightest bag in its temperature range, does pack down very small and will fit sideways at the bottom of my pack. You can pay as much as you like for a sleeping bag these days, and I reckoned that this was a good compromise. Got it from Cotswold Outdoor in Betws-y-Coed.

For cooking, we're becoming awfully fond of our Trangia 27 series. We got the one with the steel coated pans (too many scares about aluminium around), which doesn't add much weight at all. It weighs in at about a kilo, plus fuel (meths).

And my latest purchase is my Rab Drillium jacket, which I got from Joe Brown's in Capel Curig. This is an incredibly light jacket (around 350g) which is made from the eVent stuff, which has done better than GoreTex in many tests. Waterproof, breathable, hood, light, nice and short so also good for cycling. Oh, and brightly coloured so you can be seen by the helicopters should the worst come to the worst.

Today, I exchanged money for a key to a house in Lewisham, London. I have a gigantic room that looks out on a garden. The garden is magnificently overgrown. Somebody planted many lovely flowers several years ago and then it's been neglected for years, so the flowers grow and twine in glorious tumult. The room has tile floors. It's kind of echo-y, but that will improve as I move my stuff in. It's large enough that I will be able to set up my gear and have enough room left over that I think I'm going to try to freecycle a couch.

I found the room via Outlet, a gay flatmate-finding service. I don't know if the owner is queer herself or not, but she's part of that community in that she makes costumes for drag queens. She's off to some week long festival in Scotland to work with a drag troupe. She also has a gigantic german shepherd (alsatian). Xena get along famously with the other dog. And the owner's daughter is willing to make pocket money dogsitting, so it seems I won't have to find a kennel when I go to that States in July.

Lewisham is in the south east of London. South of the Themes is not considered as hip as north, but I'm not hip. This room is big and the rent is less than my mortgage used to be, so I'm happy. After I let the room, I walked into the center of Lewisham. There was a market going on, which was unremarkable except that a march came through it. There was a guy with a bullhorn and some chanting people and another guy with a trumpet, who would play a lick in between the chant lines. The chant lines didn't change, so neither did the lick. He played the same 3 or 4 (out of tune) notes over and over and over again. I thought it was weird just on the basis of that, but then as they approached, it turned out that they were doing publicity for a faith healer. Friday night!

Is this every friday night? Is this a one time thing? How do you get 50+ people to march around chanting and handing out pamphlets for a faith healer? As entertaining as this spectacle was, it was also kind of alarming as highly-motivated Christians don't tend to get on well with my people.

Nearly everyone marching was black. The rest of the market was mixed. After they went by, the commentary among the spectators was amusing. They mostly seemed confused, actually. I've always thought of faith healers as an American phenomenon. Some of the commenters were clearly unfamiliar with the concept and not exactly open to it.

The area has a very Oakland-like vibe in general. Including both diversity and snark! I went to a nifty diner and chatted with some people there.

I went to see two other flats on Saturday. The landlords for them were also really cool. I hope I can keep in contact with them. I had two more to see, but canceled, since I've got this room.

So I'm going to be moving in the next week.

I've called or emailed more than 30 landlords. I've called 10 or 15 letting agents. I've seen two flats, both of which silently rejected me. I've got an appointment to see one more. My existing rental contract runs out in 10 days.

The most productive conversation I had today was with a letting agent that suggested I give Xena away. Right. I'm going to give up my loving companion so I can have a shitty studio.

Brits have a reputation for being a nation of dog lovers. But when I think about it, the only people who say that are, themselves, British. No foreigner ever remarks on how beloved pets are. In fact, most Brits seem to be afraid of dogs. If they're not afraid of being bitten, they're afraid of some other, unspecified evil. Dogs smell bad. They shed. They might chew things. They might spontaneously burst into flame and destroy the entire neighborhood as they run around setting it on fire.

French people - they love dogs. The Dutch are fond of dogs. Brits? They wet themselves in terror. Which should not be surprising as that seems to be their response to anything slightly out of the ordinary. I cannot believe that these are the same people who beat the Nazis. I think that evil Nazi scientists must have introduced a mutation into the British gene pool which causes a general inability to cope with anything.

I don't know why I think it would be better to live in London than Brum. It will still be in this fucking country. Sure, they have the NHS and Doctor Who and an active squat scene, but just because their infrastructure is slightly less dismantled than US infrastructure . . . well, I mean, at least America is full of Americans. We might be all a bunch of fucking cowboys, but cowboys can cope with shit. Also, cowboys like dogs.

My budget for a studio is now greater than my mortgage payments were for my house in Berkeley. And I probably won't find anything. I'll be lucky to find anything even if I stay in Brum. It was only a fluke that I got this place and it's sort of falling apart and it's the best that I'll ever be able to do in this fucking little country.

Edit: 21 June 2008

I deeply regret any pro-cowboy comments that I've made.

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After posting my article on ppolicy and OpenLDAP, I was asked whether it would be possile to create separate policies for different groups, rather than a single default.

There is a simple way to do this, pointed out to me by Gavin Henry of Suretec Systems on the OpenLDAP mailing lists:

“Every account that should be subject to password policy control should
have a pwdPolicySubentry attribute containing the DN of a valid
pwdPolicy entry, or they can simply use the configured default. In this
way different users may be managed according to different policies.”

Therefore, the way to do it is to copy your cn=default,ou=policies,dc=example,dc=com to a new dn, such as cn=admins,ou=policies,dc=example,dc=com.

Then in each of your system admins, add the

pwdPolicySubentry:  cn=admins,ou=policies,dc=example,dc=com

Simple really!

*I’m currently waiting to work out how to apply ppolicy by group, rather than having multiple ppolicies applied individually.

I've just talked to an endocrinologist in a british hospital.  The hospital, Birlingham City Hospital is a newish building.  It has large windows and an airy, almost pleasant interior. There is a large central atrium in the center of the outpatient wing. This is part of a shared waiting area. It's almost like cafe. Food and drink are available.

I arrived early for my appointment, as directed and checked in and waited.  The receptionist asked where the patient was. "I'm the patient." She double checked everything and aplogized. Later, when a nurse called me, she also double checked my name and address. The NHS has me listed as "Miss Celeste." My efforts to change this have, so far, failed, alas.

The endo's assistant asked me a bunch of questions and sort of hinted at scary things that can go wrong on T. Blindness?!? Um, not that I've noticed.

The endo then came around to talk to me and ordered a million blood tests and said his assistant would write a letter telling my GP to prescribe sustanon, which is the form of T given to transmen in Europe. I can do it every 3 weeks instead of every 2. Huzzah. I'm to return in 6 months for a follow up.

He ordered 17 blood tests, so now I'm now waiting to have my blood drawn. The tests are for various hormones, cholesterol, glucose levels, things that I don't recognize. Gods help me if they have to take 17 vials. I'm using that blood!

Anyway, the hospital is clean and bright and airy. I've also been to a hospital in france, alas, and this is altogether more pleasant.  But that was Paris' "worst" hospital, so maybe this isn't a fair comparison.

Rows of houses, all bearing down on me
I can feel their blue hands touching me
All these things into position
All these things we’ll one day swallow whole
And fade out again and fade out

This machine will, will not communicate
These thoughts and the strain I am under
Be a world child, form a circle
Before we all go under
And fade out again and fade out again

Cracked eggs, dead birds
Scream as they fight for life
I can feel death, can see its beady eyes
All these things into position
All these things we’ll one day swallow whole
And fade out again and fade out again

Immerse your soul in love
IMMERSE YOUR SOUL IN LOVE

Radiohead

(Click to View)

… that is the question.

Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer
the slings and arrows of outrageous harrasments,
or take ops against a sea of trolls,
and by opposing, end them? To /part; to /quit;
No more; and by a /quit say we end
The head-ache, and thousand virtual pings
That IRC is heir to, ’tis a consumation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To /part; to /quit;
To /quit, perchance to /ignore: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that /quit, what messages may come
When we have shuffled off this virtual coil,
Must give us pause, there’s the respect
That makes calamity of such low ping;
For who could bear the whips and scorns of time?
The operator’s wrong, the users contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after disconnection,
That undiscover’d country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.

Ted Leung is coming to PyCon UK, amongst other things he'll be giving a major keynote talk. Ted is currently Principal Engineer at Sun Microsystems, responsible for Dynamic Languages and Tools, Python and Jython in particular. Previously he was Developement Manager at the OSAF on Chandler, and he is a member of the Apache Software Foundation, with a particular interest in XML. Ted's presence at PyCon UK is being supported by Sun (thank you, Sun!) and will make for an even more interesting conference.

I'm currently combing the internets looking at flatmate listings for London. I hope to find LGBT-friendly folks someplace fairly central that will take my dog and I for £110/week or less. This is more than double what I'm paying now and I'll have to also ride trains a lot more. And yet, it's still definitely on the low end of what's out there. I have faith, though. Somebody will be taken with my dog or that I have a recipe for cactus chili (somebody was recently kind of amazed when I talked about eating prickly pear leaves, so you never know).

My queer-focussed ad says:

I'm a 32 year old ftm looking for London housing starting by July 1. I've been transitioning for about 6 months. Before that I was a dyke. I'm a post-grad student, with a dog. She's an 8 year old lab mix. Friendly but reserved. She is old and spends all her indoor time sleeping and would not require any attention from you. She gets on very well with other dogs and has lived well with cats before (she's overly curious at first, but soon returns to her sleepy state).

I'm looking for a home with some communal space and queer or queer-friendly housemates. I'm from California originally and like to think of myself as relaxed and easy to get on with. I've spent the last 3 years abroad and plan to live in England for the next 2 or 3 years while getting my PhD. I like to play music, but I'm not loud. I don't mind if you are.

Feel free to contact me at celesteh@gmail.com or to pass along my information to your friends who need a housemate.

I really don't want to have to be stealth in my home. Some of my mail gets addressed to Miss or Ms. I recently told my cable company representative that my bank had mistakenly listed me as "miss" because they thought I had a girl's name. This story is apparently believable - different cultures/countries do gender names differently, but it wouldn't explain why my former landlords were all using the wrong pronouns. So I don't know how much choice I have about being out - not that I want to live in fear of being found out.

Part of what was nice about being in Holland is that I was kind of just a regular person again for a while. It would be nice to be like that more of the time.

So, am sittig in my hotel room, after spending way too long getting here, drinking tea, and using up the Wifi.

It doesn’t actually start till tomorrow, so not much to say - but I shall probably blog some more.

Good night out tonight, with a few of the Speakers, some good conversation, though really dissappointed that everywhere stops selling food at like - 10pm. Which is about when we got to the hotel. I think I’ve had a single bitterballe (or however it’s spelt) - roll on breakfast tomorrow morning is all I can say - and dissapointed that the place we went to only had two kinds of beer, or wine….

Still, all good fun, looking forward to tomorrow. Just not liking the fact I have a single bed. I haven’t slept in one for 6 years!

Just on Manchester City’s Website - www.mcfc.co.uk

In the top right are the British, Chinese and Thai flags, for localised versions of the site.

Check out the thai one.. the Queen of Thailand is on it.. can anyone speak Thai?

www.mcfc.co.th

Too many D’s for my liking… but a fantastic marketing point.

After David Davis resigned from the Commons today, the speech he gave focused on where technology and policy collide.

We will have, shortly, the most intrusive identity card system in the world, a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictator should have with thousands of innocent children and millions of innocent citizens on it.

We witness and assault on jury trial - that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary abuse by the state, short cuts to our justice system will make our system neither firm nor fair and the creation of a database state opening up our private lives to the prying eyes of official snoopers and exposing our personal data to careless civil servants and criminal hackers.

It’s definately time for the debate to happen.  Just because we can do things with technology doesn’t mean we should.

We're pleased to announce that Jacob Kaplan-Moss will be giving a talk on "What's New in Django 1.0". Jacob is one of the lead developers of the Django web framework and with version 1.0 being due around the time of PyCon UK, this is an opportunity to find out all about it from the horse's mouth.

One of the things that I think is missing from the BBC news WebSite is the name of the journalist who penned the article. There are hundreds of articles on the BBC WebSite which are all unattributed. Some of the articles are fantastic, whilst others provoke interesting debate.

In order for people to understand the stories better, by being able to know more about the background of the article, I think it would be good for the BBC to subtitle each article with the authors name, thereby allowing directing to disputes regarding the article.

Debates on the articles should be left to the BBC blogs - and more and more are appearing on the site. However, newspapers and magazines publish their authors’ information with the articles, therefore I think the BBC should too.

Please sign the following petition if you agree, and please pass on the URL:

http://www.petitiononline.com/bbcauth/petition.html

I got to the ferry terminal before 9:00AM on Sunday. The check-in supervisor agreed to check in my dog then. She gave me a hard time about the dog having two chips and her rabies certification. At the time, I was alarmed that there might be an issue with getting on the boat, but I think the woman was just annoyed and wanted to give me a hard time.

I was super, super, super grateful. I expected to be told no or to have to pay a high last-minute fare, but neither of those things happened. Apparently, I had a very flexible ticket. So, it was with great joy that I learned I could get on the boat and wouldn't have to buy a new ticket. Huzzah.

Checking in to the ferry means biking up to the check in booth where you present your travel documents and receive a cabin key. If you have a dog, they have a chip reader you must use. Then you bike up to the Dutch border patrol who inspect your passport and give you an exit stamp. The agent frowned at my passport and turned to her coworker and explained in Dutch that the picture looked like me, but the passport seemed to say I was a woman. There was obviously some kind of problem! She turned to me. "I'm transsexual." I said in English. She asked if I had any documentation proving that. I offered to show her my testosterone ampoules. "You must have this problem with your passport a lot." she said. Actually, a panhandler had called me "mevrouw" in the train station that morning. The agent looked shocked. How could anybody think that?! She let me on the boat. "Have a good trip, sir!"

One advantage of biking onto a ferry is that immigration at Harwich is not nearly as awful as immigration at the airport. I think this is partly because there are not conveniently located holding pens. If detaining somebody is really easy, then they're more likely to do it. If it requires leaving your booth, finding a supervisor, etc etc etc, well, it's too much trouble. I was barely hassled at all. Alas, the gender marker on my passport was not any kind of an issue.

But the problem with biking onto ferries is that they're really meant for cars. Especially the daytime ferries. I was the only biker at all. I biked over to the train station to discover that no trains were running. I talked to somebody. "What train were you planning on catching?" she asked. Um. I wouldn't think it would be making too much of an assumption that you could just get off one of the twice daily ferries and then get on a train at the attached train station. That's just crazy talk! Finally a bus came by and refused to take me unless I folded everything. He came back for me an hour later. I've now been all over East Anglia by bus. It's lovely country. Narrow country roads. Rolling farmland. Pretty little pubs. Bed and breakfasts. We went from tiny shut-down rail station to tiny shut-down rail station where nobody got on or off the bus.

We finally rolled in to a working station. I asked for an itinerary from the agent. "You can't get there tonight." he said. I could get as far as London, which my ticket specifically didn't cover. Note to travellers: do not buy tickets between Brum and Harwich which say "not London" for the route, as such a route does not exist. The agent said I couldn't go that way. I whined. He relented.

I called Paula and explained my predicament. She was not exactly thrilled. She had to go to work in the morning. I whined. She relented. It was a warm night at midnight, when I stood ringing her doorbell. I pondered pitching a tent on the grass in her courtyard. Presumably, the neighbors would complain. I kept ringing the doorbell. Mine wouldn't wake me up either, actually. But hers finally did and she let me in.

The next morning, after peak hours on the train had passed, I biked across London to the cheaper station to Brum. My ticket still said "not London" and as I was on the second day of using it, I was not entirely sure about it. The station agent didn't want to let me past the fare gates. I whined. He relented. Note to travellers: when facing disasters in the UK, try whining.

I called Eric, who had my keys. He was at school. So after my train came in, I biked to school from the train station. Brum is hilly once you get off the canal path. Also, all my stuff for gigging + bike touring stuff + dog. I got to school and drank some water and got my keys and then went home where I put on clean clothes. I desperately wanted a shower after sweating so much, but Nicole's train (from the airport where she arrived that same morning) was past due. I just wanted to wear socks that hadn't been worn for three days previous.

Nicole was not pleased at my lateness, but I whined and she relented. It took me voer 24 hours to get home. I've flown inter nationally and made train connections, etc and been home faster. Every time I try to cross the UK, something goes horribly wrong or near wrong. Also, biking down Oxford street really sucks.

People I would like to thank: Kendra for letting me sleep on her futon unexpectedly (and lending me a SIM card), Paula for letting me sleep at her apartment unexpectedly, Eric for being around with my keys.

Beau Bo D’Or has come up with this amusing poster in preparation for George W. Bush’s visit to London (which it seems only anti-war groups are taking an interest in), and it’s bouncing around the blogs at the moment.

Much as I do harbour a dislike for both Bush and Johnson, it seems unfair to take this quote so massively out of context.

The Spectator article (from 2003) that it comes from starts like this:

“What has brought so many folk on to the streets, however, is a much broader case: that the President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy, and who by his violent and ill-thought-out actions in Afghanistan and Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place.”

i.e. he is attributing this viewpoint to the protesters, not stating his own opinion.

It also contains the following:

“As they bawl and wave, they might bear in mind that this was precisely the kind of behaviour forbidden in Iraq these last 25 years. It is no thanks to the marchers, or their supporters, that the Iraqis now have the freedom to demonstrate without being shot or tortured. It is thanks to the man whose visit they deplore.”

I do not agree with the latter viewpoint either; I’m just pointing out that this is his actual opinion from the same article. It’s the complete opposite to that which the poster above suggests.

Update: As you can see from Beau Bo D’Or’s comment, he has now found a direct quote from Johnson saying something similar. It seems that Johnson had a complete change of heart in the space of just under one year. Still it seems much better to use this new (if not as amusing) quote that represent his own views and not those of another group.

It’s a massively important area of discussion, with huge social implications.  However, because it comes under the “geek umbrella” - most people choose to ignore it or ’switch off’ from the conversation.

“Digital Rights, and what “feature creep” can achieve in terms of illegal/immoral operation.”

It’s something that I think needs to be put in the forefront of the public psyche - in so far as legal issues are regarded by the majority.

Leaving social issues to a group of people often stereotyped as having negligible social skills doesn’t seem to be a sensible idea.

I thought i was supposed to check in at 22:00, so i came at 21:48 to give my self a few minutes.

The people behind the desk wouldn't even acknowledge that i was pounding alarmedly on the door. Finally, i saw a police van and they told me i was too late.  The boat sails at 22:00. It was 21:55. She said she was sorry.

If i can check in to a boat tomorrow before 10:13, i can still take xena. Otherwise, i can't go until tuessday because she will need to be re-treated for ticks. Not that there's any poasibility of her having any. But the re-treatment will be bad for her health.

Fuc fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Now i'm on train back to den haag that i couldn't even buy tickets for because the fucking macjine at the ferry terminal only takes coins or dutch cards.

Nicole, eric has my keys. I will email you his phone number when i get to kendra's house and can get some juice in my phone.

I knew i would fuck this up somehow.  Fucking god fucking damn it. Fuck, i have a dr appointment. I'm such a fucking idiot.

X crashes on start.. “Error: Failed to load nvidia

nano /etc/modprobe.d/lrm-video

remove all references to nvidia

restart gdm

done

So, today i was supposed to leave on an overnight bike trip, but my bike buddy cancelled.  Her thesis defense suddenly got rescheduled.  Ouch.  She encouraged me to carry on alone.  Ive been considering that advice, but since I have a semi-monastic existance in England, Im not really looking for more alone time right now, so Im in Amsterdam.

Im staying again with Petra and Erika and Suzane et al.  I havent yet blogged about their house. I want to describe it as Eden. Its completely idyllic.  Next to the Vondelpark on Overtoom.  All of the housemates are good friends.  They seem to be good friends with all of their neighbors.  Everyone walking by seems insanely friendly.  I talk to the dog people.  And they have a garden.  With apple trees (oand figs and kiwis).

But, its not Eden, as the house cat will not lie down with my dog.  (I think they would, if given more time.)  But its better than Eden.  The tree of knowledge is up for grabs.  The people that live here are academics, activists, musicians.  Also, (I think I mentioned this before) they have a poster of Buck Angel in the bathroom.  Innocence is overrated.

The building is a former police station, which was squatted several years ago and became legalized.  In the basement, there are still two jail cells left, one of which has the original door.  It is a small cement space with no natural light.  The door has a lot of locks on it.  Petra offered to lock me in, but I declined.  I dont want induce anxiety!

Whatever bad mojo the building may have once possesed has long since been cleansed.  Its lovely. The people are lovely.  I used to dream of having some sort of hippie commune, with a combination of shared and private spaces.  Where people shared resources and worked together at happy communal living.  Its very gratifying to see a successful model.

Its also interesting that its decended from a squat.  I think what I want to do when I get to London is find a studio to work in and rent that, to keep my gear and to work away from where I live.  And I think I want to squat some living space.  Theres a queer squatter movement around Europe.  A lot of people talk about how the squat scene has declined.  But, I mean, I think the solution for that is to get more active!

This house shows how something oppositional can be vibrant and be integrated into the community, to create beauty and vibrance without gentrification.  If given resources, people will create their own solutions to social problems.  Squatting is a resource to communities.

I've finally uploaded a few pictures to our website.

See :

• Rowan on his tummy
• Our new office
• Rachel's birthday cake (cake-pod anyone?)
• Emily's photos of us camping near Bromyard
• Random Dyfi Enduro photos
• LRF Bromsgrove running thing
• Bromsgrove's Mint Lounge - Rachel's birthday outing

Rowan posing on the train

In the UK recently there have been a number of widely reported stabbings and murders among the youth of our country.  It’s a sad state of affairs that youths are now using knives to attack and end innocent lives, but it’s a symptom of a problem - not the problem itself.

Today, the government announced that it will be pushing stricter penalties on those who carry knives, and that possession is equal to ‘intent to use.’  This is the point at which I am very concerned.  Although I think it’s abhorrent that a few people in our society would wish to attack or defend themselves using knives - this type of law has no place in a developed society.

There are a number of people who rely on a knife in order to do their work - and the majority of people I’ve worked with in the trades carried a knife.  It’s a ‘tool’ that is very necessary for many people to carry - it’s also a tool that may come in use in unforeseeable situations.  They’re also a very natural and historical tool - that have been carried around by gentlemen for centuries.

Last year, I wrote about a trip I took to the Nontron Knife Festival, at which I bought myself a knife.  I wouldn’t say I have particular need for a knife - but there are situations (such as when I’m fishing, camping .etc) when a knife is a useful tool to have.  I’d take a photo and put it up, but I’ve left it at a friends after a camping trip.

With the proposed law (and current situation), should my friend and I decide to rendezvous on foot in order for me to take back my knife, the chances are that if we were seen one of us would end up in court.  However, should I drive up to Sheffield (from my home in Birmingham) and pick up the knife in my car - my chances are massively diminished.

The other point is that playing with my knife is sometimes therapeutic.  In January, I was eating an apple at my desk and cutting it up with the knife in my hand to eat it.  It’s a pretty normal thing to do with a knife, and 100% legal.  However, after eating the apple and cleaning my knife, I dropped it into my pocket.  I wasn’t leaving the house any time soon, and didn’t want to leave it in the kitchen draw.  Only later on in the evening did I realise I still had it on me, so I left the pub I was in and took it home, before coming out again.

Now I’d consider this a responsible action, however, should I have been stopped in the pub or on the way home by the Police - I’d be facing a court appearance and custody.  A disproportionate response to an innocent misadventure.

It’s a shame that the law-abiding citizen has to suffer for the minority of idiots that choose to wield knives in an ungainly fashion - and then the majority of ‘illegally used’ knives are kitchen knives/cleavers.  Do we ban these too?

It’s a silly precedent that the government are setting - they should be looking at the wider social picture, rather than at an easy-to-target symptom of the problem.  Curbing civil liberties is going to have little affect on the people who wield their knives illegally.  I do understand there is a problem with knife crime in the UK, but better policing and targeting of unruly youths is the answer - not creating new laws to limit the general public’s freedom.

Yesterday I received a call from my landlord at roughly 4:34pm informing me my room had been broken into and that the door had been 'done in'. Thankfully nothing was taken, despite my macbook being sat on the bed and my desktop fully setup. Semi-conscious that a return visit could be due I've taken basic security into my own hands by installing a do-it-yourself security kit. A blog post will be due in the next few days once I've finished tweeking the system but currently I have a few precautions in place.

When movement is detected around the door the camera begins to take burst shots. These shots are then sent straight up to Apollo, my VM for safe keeping online. I can access the photos from work too. The shots are also kept on a USB pen which has been bolted firmly under the desk in case the Internet connection fails. I've got a few other tricks planned as further fall backs should the two mentioned fail.

The pictures aren't too bad, no worse than the quality of CCTV you see on Crimewatch, here's a couple of snaps it took while I was testing it all:

Evaluation

So on the last day to the ETC, we started out with an evaluation. It was a big love-in. "I love you guys! You're all so great!" It was a nice, positive vibe. There was some discussion about privacy and posting images from the con and some also about possibly having some equipment or an organization. The stream was constantly screwed up, so maybe an org should buy a computer for streaming instead of trying to recycle junk computers into a stream machine every time?

Aileen spoke up about how she was happy that there was no organization and it was all kind of ad-hoc. She talked about how people could just do things and it would all fit in some how. She said that since people wanted me to come, they had just changed the policy on who could come and that was that. An organization might be limiting.

I felt all warm and fuzzy. Aw, they really do like me! I'd spent the whole week feeling awkward about whether I was really meant to be there. Was I intruding? Were people annoyed by me? Was it all in my head? When people shortened "women and gender minorities" to "women" what did that imply for my presence? Aileen's statement was not contradicted at all. Clearly my nervousness had been in my perceptions only! I felt pretty good and thanked people for letting me come.

That was a weird thing to do.

Beach

Then, we rode the train north to the the dunes and walked several km to the beach. It was a bit cold and cloudy, but still very nice. The beach had a strange, thick foam. We sat out and picnicked. Some people tried to swim in the frigid, foamy north sea. After a while, we moved to a cafe where we drank tea and hot coca and beer. It was on the beach, but had glass set up to obstruct the wind, but not the view. Some ETC people starting climbing up the outside and juggling and otherwise being silly. I laughed so hard my sides are still sore.

It started to rain, so we went back to A'dam. Some of us went to a benefit dinner for migrants. A few others, including me, went to get stuff from our space, with a vague promise of dinner.

The Discussion

There was no dinner. Instead there was a lot of discussion about the future of ETC. I felt really uncomfortable during it because it talked a lot about trans issues. Some of the people there felt like there should have been discussion before the definition of who was to come was changed.

What I was thinking at the time was, "I've only been transitioning for a few months. I'm not fully secure with it. Anything talking about this is like poking a fresh wound. I want to be proud of who I am and my queer identity, but I still feel sad that I failed at being a woman. I really tried to make it work, but couldn't."

I don't have a clear memory of everything that was said. Because unless somebody is saying something like Aileen said, it feels like poking a wound. In fact, some of the things said were transphobic. It mostly wasn't personal (it never is), but I felt terrible afterwards.

Right now, my inclination is that I will not go to another ETC event. Last year was really the last time I went into a gendered space as a woman and it was so positive and the contacts that I made so valuable, that I had hoped I could still participate. Part of my pre-transition identity really had a lot to do with being in a certain kind of gendered space: feminist spaces where variance is welcome. ETC was the perfect combination: feminism, tech, green, free culture. All these progressive elements have synergy and it was so wonderful to be around others making the same connections.

A generation ago, there was worry that lesbians would somehow mess up feminism. Now it's transgender people. C'est la vie. I'll do my own sort of gender liberation, you do yours. I'm in search of a community. God knows where I can find it.

The Party

So, feeling like shit, I started biking towards a drag party. At least I can do drag, right? Or something. I was really feeling low wondering how I will ever be able to have a coherent sense of self if I have to pick between my own gender and the political issues that I see as so vital. Part of what motivated me to transition was that guys a few years out say that they don't really have to think about gender anymore. It's something that for years now, I've had to think about all the time. Now my hopes to be able to move on to something else seemed to be doomed. I wanted to just keep biking forever and not stop.

But I did stop and there was a sign on the door which said, "you are now entering a gender-free zone." Well, that's a positive development. I paid my cover and went to get a beer and one of my (awesome) hosts was behind the bar dressed as a pirate! She took me around backstage where I painted on a goatee. There were people in all kinds of drag. Butch women in dresses. People presenting some female drag items paired with some male drag items. Hairy cleavage. Goatee and eye makeup. Every kind of genderfuck. I started feeling better.

There was a burlesque show / drag show / comedy show / whatever fun thing. Dykes, bis, trannies, queers. It was awesome. Afterwards there was dancing. This being amsterdam, there was also more booze and more pot and it was totally awesome.

And suddenly, instead of being some irreconcilable fringe character, I'm all sexy and cool. Girls were after me!

I'm in puberty right now, for the second time. It's cool, but it's still weird. I haven't been feeling especially attractive. But there, suddenly, people wanted to kiss me! I was out dancing and being drunk and stupid until the sun came up.

The Next Day

I went to help clean the bar. I was supposed to help clean the ETC space, but the bar also needed cleaning. And I had happier feelings about it. There were people I really wanted to see while doing ETC cleanup, but my last conversations there had sucked so much.

So I got things out of going to ETC this time, but I think it was a lot about seeing people I had met before and being in a country that I want to return to. And being in queer spaces that were just coincidental to ETC.

I don't know anything about anything. I kind of like being foreign, obviously, or I would move home. But, I guess that's a broad category of experiences and some are great and some are not. I was thinking of trying to play on the Ladyfest circuit, but right now, I'm wary of it. Part of being foreign is creating communities of outsiders, of expats, of artists, of queers. I felt it sometimes in ETC, with some people. Some folks there were awesome.

I need something right now. English isolation = not so great. Somebody in the discussion of doom suggested that I start a group. I guess I have to.

Anyway, that's the last about ETC. I'm ready to move on and feel some complexities some place else. Maybe in music. I'm supposed to be a composer.

Ningun lugar works wioth gender, sexuality and technology.

Their project is called generatech. In barcelona.

We've been shown a video with women having sex and some text that may have mentioned debian, but i don't know because there was sex.

They're doing an event in july in barcelona about gender and foss.

Last year the only performance was 'post porn' and sm. Their events have workshops and performancces. They do debian stuff. Also there was sex. Now there are more videos. Maybe with sex.

I can't post these notes, because it's too about the sex.

Um.. So this video had a faux queen hrassed by guy who stabbed him in the gut and then fucked the  wound. Meat products were involved in the production.er. Wow.

I don't understand the difference between porn and post porn. Also, apparenrly there was feminist text along with images of women fucking. Which might as well be a secret message, alas.

This is a re-post, but in case some of you missed it the first time, I highly encourage you to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjqsB1huDxg

I'm still sorting through my thoughts about the last few days, but I'm feeling more and more negative. Just because I want to feel good about something doesn't mean that I do. I can try to be forgiving, but that means I need to first acknowledge that there's a sin to forgive instead of telling myself that everything is fine. What I feel is what I feel. Saying I feel something different doesn't make it so.

I will write something less abstract later. Obviously, I'm going to talk about transphobia. On the one hand, it might be more appropriate to hash this out with specific people or on a closed list. I don't want to do that for two reasons. One is a high-minded desire to educate, etc. But, more, I just don't want to have these conversations further. And I shouldn't have to.

Today, we moved to a nicer/bigger/better office within The Business Centre. This was prompted by a "Which would you prefer - a better office or a pay rise?" question to the minions, who all responded with "Better office". It's probably an understatement to say we were cramped in our previous one, but it was relatively cheap.

So - the good news (?) is that the employees now have a window to look out of - although the view is not really something to write home about - it is far better than no view.

At the end of June, we'll be saying good-bye to Ade, who's going back to Uni as his industrial year ends. He's being replaced by Moobert.

Why Limit by Gender

We live in a patriarchy. People who are perceived as male have privilege over people who are not. This starts from very early childhood and continues through adulthood. Statistically, people raised as girls tend to be steered away from science, technology and math. Children internalize these messages, so as adults, people tend to think of men as being good at technology and women as not. This is easily observable by phrases like "the mom test" or "the girlfriend test" for software usability. Women are dumb, so if they can manage the user interface, it must be really good, because even a neophyte can handle it. Because your mom could never be a software engineer. Your girlfriend could never be a hacker.

There's a million arguments already made about how mtfs share this sort of experience. Many are aware of their gender identity from early childhood and internalize all of this crap too. Finally, when they do transition, they get all the discrimination against women, and also all the discrimination against trans people. And ftms tend to also be around these kinds of places. We were perceived as girls through our childhood. I had a lot of access to technology as a child, but definitely felt unwelcome in my highschool's computer room. The boys used tools like degrading pornography to enforce the male gaze and male dominance (and heterosexual dominance) to keep others out.

Women and gender minorities, therefore, tend have a shared experience around technology. It is an experience of being discouraged, of being not taken seriously, of being excluded.

New Feminism

The ETC had a kind of interesting talk about New Feminism. (There were some issues with it, but whatever). One of the speakers, Rosy, was making a lot of generalizations, which irked many, but I think there were some kernels of truth in what she was getting out. She heavily disparaged identity politics, saying they were an aspect of capitalism and market segmentation. MTV was trying to sell us our identity. I bristled a bit about this, since MTV is most definitely not selling me my transgender identity. It's something I have to constantly fight for. I asked her about agency. If an identity is being asserted in opposition to corporate culture, what does that mean?

She said identity politics were narcissistic and had several problems. If we say women should be equal, well, equal to what? Should rich white women become just like rich white men? Furthermore, it creates a context of victimhood. In order to organize for rights around a particular identity, you need to say that identity is lacking. I think she meant to imply that there's a danger there of failing to see intersections. She noted that there are situations where lesbians were the dominant political power. If you see lesbians constantly as an oppressed class, you won't see where you're oppressing others.

Of course, you sometimes have identities forced upon you by others and organizing around that is vital. In the feminist forum that I help moderate (livejournal feminist), we have rules about "oppression olympics" where we require that intersectionality be taken into account. I think that Rosy's thinking and our thinking is very similar. Yes, there is an institutional, hierarchical power structure in society which privileges some identities and bodies over others (the Patriarchy!), but we all function within it and might be upholding it in ways that privilege ourselves. A white lesbian is still white. A upper class gay man is still upper class.

There aren't that many places where lesbians are at the top of the heap. But when you're talking about women-only spaces, such a situation can arise.

Focussing on Women

Comparing oppressions is rarely a useful exercise, but if you wanted to do so, there are metric you could use. I would pick unemployment figures and salary gaps to look at economic discrimination. I would use hate crime statistics and domestic violence statistic to look at safety issues. There are a few other metrics that one could employ. People who are out as transgendered do worse on these metrics than do heterosexual women. They even do worse than lesbians.

So if you were the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and you had a policy of only admitting people who had been born and raised as female and who were still female-identified, you would have a policy of excluding people who were lower on the ladder than you. I think most progressives can agree that there's value in oppressed classes creating their own spaces. I think most progressives can similarly agree that there is not value in privileged classes creating their own spaces. A men-only event is different than a women-only event.

So excluding trans people is asserting privilege. Yes, it changes the vibe. But if a group of all-white women suddenly racially integrates, that changes the vibe too. If you bemoan that, you're a fucking racist. Certainly, it's more comfortable to be around people of your own race, gender, and economic class. But if you're trying to do something political to benefit people who face gender-based discrimination and you're all cisgender, bourgeoise, legally immigrated, white women, that's kind of problematic. If you worry that changing that will change the vibe of your event, well . . . the response that springs most immediately to mind is "fuck you."

Who gets Access

We've all heard the stories or perhaps even experienced a hostile male response to spaces that exclude them. I think the contexts of power and privilege make these replies different than trans people asking for access. Indeed, the entire justification and model of progressive, gender-exclusive spaces says these are different replies. But in the patriarcal challenge, the cisgender man says, "can I come if I wear a dress?" The annoyed feminist says, "no, fuck off." How can we tell who is a man in a dress trying to start a problem and who is gender minority?

The Gender Police

We can judge them by how well they pass! Yes, in this fantastic model, we employ something I'm going to call the cisgender gaze. Gender normative people can feel empowered to determine how well transgender people are passing. It's a fun diversion for cis people. And devastating to the identity of trans people! Yay!

When I try to explain the male gaze to people, I sometimes talk about a phenomenon that occurs on University Campuses in the US. Sometimes men will set up chairs along a bust walk way and make score cards like those used in the Olympics. A woman walks by and they all hold up scores on her attractiveness. 6.3, 7.5, 8.1. However, unlike the Olympics, these are just women trying to get to class who did not ask to be rated by their male peers. Indeed, they are no longer peers, there are judges and judged. A power structure is created where one class of people sits dominant over another class of people. Men judge women. In the context of a rape culture, this is especially alarming.

The cisgender gaze has a lot in common with the male gaze in that a rating and ranking system is employed. The people doing the rating have economic and social power (in a broader social context) over the rated. And we live in a society where the rated have to be concerned about experiencing violence at the hands of the class of people that is rating them.

Plus, this has the added bonus of kicking people where they're already wounded. Trans people often have a lot of anxiety about passing, especially when they're just starting on their transition. We can all wish this were not so. But nobody would transition if they did not with to be perceived as a particular gender. Furthermore, there is a safety issue when we try to get access to other gendered spaces, like toilets.

Would you tell a cisgender woman that she looks like a man and you would think she was one if you encountered her out in public? Then why the fuck would you tell a trans person that you were certain you could read them? Fuck you. A woman wh heard that would probably feel like shit about it. But some trans people are also fighting for their identity. I have to jump through a million hoops with the NHS. I have to come out to people. I have to struggle to assert my gender identity. You just told me I'm failing at a core aspect of my identity. I don't even want to fucking hear that I'm passing very well today. Are we best friends? Do I get to tell you that those trousers might make your ass look big? No? Then shut the fuck up.

At last year's ETC, we all went swimming naked in the Danube because it was hot as hell. I felt really weird being naked in front of other people, largely because of trans issues. At the time, it really felt ok. Now, though, I wish I hadn't. People were talking to me last week about my breasts. Yes, they're larger than you would think. No, they're not especially masculine. I don't want to fucking hear about my boobs from anybody, unless we're snogging or something. They are not up for casual conversation! Again, shut the fuck up.

Up For Further Discussion

The change from Women Only to Women and Gender Minorities was made without much discussion. Nobody wanted to have an argument. Some people wanted me (and a couple of other transguys) to come, so the change was made.

That's great for you that you don't have to argue about who should access gendered spaces. But alas, I know you meant well, but then those conversations fell on my shoulders.

There might be a bajillion trans organizations and trans activist, but I've just come out in a foreign country where I don't know that many people. I don't know any such groups. I'm one person trying to get through multiple border crossings at the same time. I don't have the resources to deal with extra shit..

My roots are in feminist spaces, in queer spaces, in women's spaces, in doing tech. I'm not entirely pleased to be moving away away from certain aspects of my roots. When I first realized I was queer, I had several unhappy breaks from the institutions of my childhood. I lost my religion, for example. Former spaces of support suddenly excluded me. Now, it seems like the spaces that I found, that seemed so much better than the spaces that excluded me, are now breaking away also. This fucking hurts.

About a year ago I ditched my web hosting company in search of more freedom. I wanted to control my own email, I wanted to configure Apache exactly how I wanted, be able to modify the php.ini when ever I wanted. I had limited options:

1. Get a dedicated server,
2. host from home,
3. continue paying a web host

One night I was talking about this dilemma with a friend who told me that he had a 'virtual server'. He explained to me how its designed basically for web geeks and small companies who want their own setups, but cannot afford for a server, taking up an entire unit in a rack. The concept is simple, one physical machine running 64gb+ of ram, vast amounts of RAIDed storage and several quad-core processors hosts many 'virtual machines'. Each virtual machine essentially runs it own kernel, linux or BSD being the typical flavours, that sits on top of the host machine. This provides users with their own OS environment to do with it what they want. I of course chose Debian GNU/Linux.

But now I was on my own. If I broke something I'd be charged per hour for tech time, what happens if I crash the machine and all my mail gets bounced and lost? What if someone hacks me? There was a lot that could go wrong, but thankfully I had  a number of freebies and useful services included with my vm.

• A backup MX server that will hold and forward you any mail which can't reach your machine,
  
• three DNS servers to host your domains, or act as slaves to your own DNS server,
• internal repositories so you can get your packages extremely quickly and without paying for the bandwidth,
• SSH access to the host machine so when everything does go wrong you still have a life line to your machine. This has been a life saver one more than one occasion.

Everything turned out to be a lot easier than I could have anticipated. The freedom I now had to run my own BIND server, my own Postfix, Apache was just how I wanted it, all the PHP modules I wanted installed. This is what I had been looking for and I've recommended virtual machines to many people like myself, web developers and Linux geeks that want a remote machine but are scared off by the committment to a dedicated server. A year on and I still recommend them to anyone who reads this.

The price increase from a semi-decent web host to a VM is minimal, and I guarantee in no time you'll be using the vm for more than just web hosting. I now run Irssi/screen for IRC, multiple SVN repositories and host a number of friend's sites. I've taken advantage of the compile farm a few times too. When I think back now I simply couldn't imagine using a web hosting company again.

Here's some links for those interested:

• Bytemark are the company I have my virtual machine with, I can't recommend them enough.
• Xen is the brains behind behind my vm and its free (GPL).
• Wikipedia has a really nice comparison of virtual machines, you'll find more here than I could possibly tell you.
  

Now you may register for PyCon UK 2008, please use the Booking Form. once again we have an Extra Early Bird rate, this is available for one week only, when the Early Bird rate will apply until 4th August.
There are exhibitions at the National Exhibition Centre during PyCon UK, so it would be a good idea to book your hotel room early. The Society has a block booking at the Etap Hotel, which you can book at the reduced rate of £38, otherwise the Etap will be charging £43 during the exhibition period.
This year we are having a Tutorials Day on Friday 12th September. There is a fee for the Tutorials, and while details of the Tutorials are being finalised, there is a special Early Bird rate of £35 for the day. For that you will be able to attend any tutorial, subject to places being available. Later there will be a tutorials booking form and priority will be given to early bookers.
Book early now - PyCon UK 2008 will be a great conference!

Today I was in Sandhurst for the dedication of Ava, my friend Paul’s daughter. I didn’t really know what to expect other than “it’s a bit like a christening”, which it was.

Of course I was really there just to catch up with Paul and to see Ava for the first time, so I’ll skip the religious bits. I think she was really very energetic and surprisingly happy to perform for people’s cameras, resulting in a number of very cute shots.

It was also great to see old work friends Chris and Simon to catch up with their lives over the last ~2 years, some good, some bad.

I would see all of these people more often if I could drive; that is getting a little irritating now, so I really should try to find the time from somewhere. Either that or Berkshire needs to get a transport network a little more like Greater London.

Oh and not forgetting the bonus appearance of my favourite domesticated animal, the greyhound!

On Saturday I was invited over to Jenny’s dad’s open day for the narrow gauge railway he has in the garden. Yes, a train track in his garden that you can ride on! Except there was no way I was going to ride on it myself and risk looking very silly. I just took a bunch of photos and made myself useful as a teaboy. A fun day though, and it was good to meet most of the family for the first time.

There’s some pictures of previous open days too.

Since I needed to go to Sandhurst the next day, I ended up having to get home that night using a selection of trains and night buses from Beaconsfield via Northolt Park and Heathrow. On the upside the 3g dongle with the Eee PC is working quite nicely for email/irc in the middle of nowhere.

I woke up today at a noon and then went to help clean up the bar where I was dancing until 4 am. Got to sleep at 5-something this morning. I feel destroyed from tiredness, but not so much from hangover. Which is nice, since I had a lot of beer and pot but no dinner last night.

The last couple of days have felt tumultuous. Stress ameliorated through unclean living. I felt twice as outsider and twice as insider in the span of a few hours than I've felt in months. Also, twice as alive. I need to think about some stuff.

But I wanted to share that I've been trashed the last few nights in a row, as this seems to be expected behavior when one visits amsterdam.

In the last-post, I went through the most popular Firefox extensions and talked about whether they were good ideas or not. However, it seems that not a lot of people think about another side to this, i.e. what are your Firefox extensions licenced under?

It turns out that a lot of the extensions available through Firefox are not free/open source software at all.

One example is the StumbleUpon Extension. StumbleUpon is a web service that allows you to share links with other users. Sometimes readers have shared this site and my number of visitors have gone up (cheers for that). StumbleUpon is commonly used through a toolbar provided as an extension through Firefox or Internet Explorer, (and a comment-in-the-last-post reminded me about it).

This made me think, what is the licence of this Firefox extension? If you go to the StumbleUpon-homepage, there is no software licence or terms at all. If you click the "Download now - Free" button, you go through to the download-page, still no licence or terms. I unzipped the extension, looking for a software licence, nothing. This made me very suspicious, when people are proud of their licence, they put it right in front of you, what are they hiding?

Eventually, after a bit of digging and Googling, I found their Toolbar-License and guess what? Yes you guessed it, it is proprietary software. So if you want to run free software/open source, then get it off your system now!

Their licence only gives you:

"a non-transferable ... non-sublicensable ... license to reproduce (solely to install and execute) the Toolbar on one of your computers, in executable object code format only, for your personal, non-commercial use only,"

Of course, the "Toolbar" is released as a Firefox extension, in plain-text Javascript and XUL, not in object code format. There is not really object code at all in Javascript, object code is a C term. But the lawyer writing the boilerplate probably didn't know or care about the difference. Anyhow, the licence continues:

"You may not modify, make derivative works of, copy, reproduce, publish, or reverse engineer the Toolbar"

This is in complete opposition to free software/open source, where all users have four freedoms:

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0)
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Don't sell out your freedoms so cheaply! If you want the most free software computer possible, look up the licenses of your extensions.

For example, here are five popular extensions that are free software/open source:

• Firebug: Mozilla Public License 1.1
• Flashblock: Mozilla Triple Licence (MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1)
• AdblockPlus: Mozilla Public License 1.1
• FireGPG: Mozilla Triple Licence (MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0/LGPL 2.1)
• NoScript: GPL

Please do audit your own, and let us know what you find. Knowing which extensions are free and which are not free would be really helpful.

Digg-entry

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So - after my post about wanting a conference laptop - I went out and bought one today. I got myself a nice, large, Dual Core 17″ Jobby. Ok, I’ve realised afterwards that it might be a bit of a gas guzzler, but, at least, as long as I have power, it should meet all my needs. And it’s the first machine that I’ve had where, out of the box, everything works perfectly, and the first where I’ve been able to properly use the Desktop effects (Darn proprietary Video Cards!)

Anyway, along with this - I’ve now installed Ubuntu on it. Actual Ubuntu - rather than Kubuntu. This means that I now have nearly a full shipment of *buntu that I’m regularly using. Kubuntu @ work and on my desktop at home, Xubuntu on the eeePC, and Ubuntu on this new Laptop.

I also had fun thinking up another name for the laptop. I’ve called it synergy. Which basically means lots of small things working together to make something greater in whole than of it’s component parts (Think of two muscles working together to give you a sort of idea) - The reason? Well - partly because my computer naming scheme revolves around the “I can’t be bothered of thinking of a name” (put politely) - and - synergy, is of course, ultimate laziness, putting small things together to make something bigger (convoluted excuse I know!) and well - it completes my having what my idea of the 3 primary WM’s are (Gnome, KDE, and XFCE), and means that my experience of Linux as a whole, is a more rounded and richer experience (Again, convoluted!) but anyway - here are my machines and what I call them (from the newest acquisition to the oldest)

• Synergy - The new “Conference” Laptop
• Stupor - My VPS for running the important things on
• Lethargy - My eeePC
• Coma - My work PC
• Anorak - Radio Amarok’s primary server (named after a Radio Amarok inside joke)
• Torpor - My “playground” VPS (where I keep all the non-critical stuff)
• Apathy - My Home Desktop

So - those are my machines, but, knowing that I have a similar naming schema to Daniel Silverstone, it begs me to ask.

What do you call your machines and why?

We're really pleased that Mark Shuttleworth will be giving a keynote speech at PyCon UK 2008. Mark is the founder of Ubuntu and a fan of Python and his keynote will be a highlight of our conference.
Mark's company, Canonical, will be taking an active part in PyCon UK as well and we can expect to see and meet Ubuntu developers. Steve Alexander will be giving a talk on on how to write Python programs that interface with Bazaar and Launchpad and Matthias Klose, who is in charge of getting Python libraries and programs into Ubuntu, will tell us how to get our Python code into Ubuntu effectively.

I recently looked at the forthcoming Epiphany browser based-on-Webkit. However, some people told me that Firefox has so many extensions that it would not be possible for a new browser to compete, even among the target audience of GNOME users. Is this true?

I am not a C hacker and don't want to be at this stage, so I can't really help with the heavy lifting in finishing the new Epiphany. However, the previous Gecko-based version allowed you to write extensions in Python, so if that is true in the new version, I could write an extension or two.

The old gecko version of Epiphany had various extensions, and a dozen or so of the best were bundled in the Epiphany-Extensions package.

Firefox extensions

It is early days because, as far as I know, the new Epiphany extension API is not written yet, however, we can do a little research about Firefox extensions, and seeing which ones are worth replicating on Epiphany. I myself have FireGPG (allows you to use GPG with webmail), Flashblock (blocks Flash movies unless whitelisted) and FireBug (see below).

There are 2353 add-ons and themes in the Firefox add-on database, several are abandoned in that they have not been updated to work with modern versions of Firefox. The bottom 1000 have had very little impact. For example, the "Et Lolcat" extension translates English to 'locat', it has only been downloaded 26 times ever. I doubt the lack of a lolcat extension is going to prevent anyone from using Epiphany.

As you might expect, outside the big hitters, the popularity of extensions tails off pretty fast. The top few add-ons have been download hundreds of thousands of times, the 100th add-on has been downloaded 10,000 times, the 1000th add-on has hardly ever been downloaded by anyone.

So lets ignore all the themes as Epiphany themes according to your desktop theme; lets also ignore all the abandoned extensions and the extensions which have never really been downloaded by anyone. So we can say there are less than 500 extensions that are actually relevant for our purposes. This is still a massive number. I cannot think of another piece of software that has 500 active extensions.

In the rest of this post, I look through the list of the top 100 downloaded-add-ons. This list of course is dynamic, so will change according to when you view it. So where I have included a number, it is the position in the top 100 when I looked at it. Do not worry I don't talk about 100 add-ons, a lot of the top 100 add-ons are themes and dictionaries which I have ignored.

The top three

Video DownloadHelper (1) - This allows people to rip videos out of sites like Youtube, as does UnPlug (37) and a million others. This could be easily replicated by Epiphany but maybe a better approach would be a "save-as" button in Gnash? Likewise Flashblock would not be required if Gnash has an option for "only play when the user agrees to".

Adblock Plus (2) provides advert blocking, as does Adblock and Adblock Filterset.G Updater (38). In the old Epiphany, there already was a decent adblock. This can and no doubt will be easily replicated by an Epiphany extension.

NoScript (3) provides blocking and white-listing of Javascript. This could be easily replicated by an Epiphany extension. Epiphany already gives you the ability to turn Javascript on and off globally, the extension just needs to give the ability to control this behaviour per site.

Not all extensions are priorities

IE Tab (7) allows Windows users of Firefox to open non-standard webpages in IE. This is not available on Firefox for Linux so is irrelevant. People should not write IE only webpages.

Next we have the replacements for Firefox's rubbish download dialog: DownThemAll (4), Download Statusbar (6), PDF Download (10), Fast Video Download (15), ScrapBook (28). Hopefully Epiphany's download dialog will be good enough out of the gate. So these are not a priority.

Foxmarks (9) and Speed Dial (29) are replacements for Firefox's annoying bookmarks dialog. Epiphany's bookmark manager is better, so these extensions are not a high priority.

Greasemonkey (5) is a higher level extension tool, it basically makes it easier to write extensions for Firefox, especially per site extensions. If Epiphany's extensions are easy to write, this will not be needed.

The Fasterfox (17) extension allows you to prefetch pages, as well as make concurrent connections, i.e. download the same page ten times at the same time. I am undecided weather this extension is a good idea for the web. I wouldn't want people using it on my sites.

A web browser is not a desktop environment or package manager

Quite a few of the extensions use Firefox as a convenient way to make and distribute an application, not surprising as Windows does not have a package manager. These extensions may have none or only tangential connection to the fact that Firefox is a web browser. Many of these in Linux would work just as fine or better as a separate application, indeed many equivalent applications already exist and are probably better.

FireFTP (18) is an FTP client, GNOME has GFTP which is perfectly fine. FoxyTunes (27) is a media player frontend, Linux has billions of media players. Forecastfox (12) tells you the weather, the GNOME desktop already tells you the weather, we can even look out a window. Likewise, FoxClocks (30) tells you the time, which the GNOME desktop does by default. After 40, we have RSS Readers such as the "Feed Sidebar" and "Sage", as well the IRC client ChatZilla. GNOME has lots of RSS Readers, e.g. Straw and Liferea, and Linux has lots of IRC Clients. The best way to use IRC is to use a client that can run 24/7 on the server, such as Irssi.

ScribeFire is a Firefox extension that provides a text editor for blogging. There is GNOME-blog available through all the package managers, but I prefer to use a real text editor. FoxSaver is an extension to provide a screensaver and photoviewer, GNOME has the Eye of GNOME image viewer and its own screensaver. ReminderFox (35) provides reminders, as GNOME already does.

PicLens (8) provides desktop effects for Firefox on Windows. It is not available for Linux, but Compiz with Epiphany does a better job. The same applies to "Tab Effect" (21) and FireGestures (24).

The Firebug (13) extension is a fantastic toolkit for web designers that turns your browser into a complete Dreamweaver clone. This would perhaps be better as a webkit based application, the same goes for "Web Developer" (20).

"Better Gmail 2" (14) provides extra options for Gmail, turning Gmail into a rich desktop application. The whole point of web-based email is that you can access it from any computer anywhere without special software. If you want to use installed software, then Gnome has Evolution which is richer than any web application.

I also skimmed through the 100 to 200 most popular add-ons, and it was more of the same. I hate to be a snob, but it seems that the most downloaded extensions are not necessarily the best ones!

Conclusion

There are many hundreds of Firefox extensions, some of them are absolutely fantastic, however many are repetitive, many also replicate things that already exist on a GNOME based system by default or are quickly available in the package manager. A large number of the extensions are old and have not been ported to modern versions, and some of them are just bad ideas.

This survey has convinced me that it is quality not quantity that matters, that with just 20 well chosen extensions, Epiphany could offer the features that 80% of GNOME users want, with 50 well chosen extensions, it could offer the features that 95% of GNOME users want. I am talking about extensions that actually have something to do with web browsing, not turning Firefox into a jukebox, or into a calendar, into a Compiz replacement, or into an operating system of its own.

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