Until Tuesday (2011-11-01), I am sort of half-cut-off from the Internet. I can browse, I can blog, and I can push commits to my project repos, but I can’t do IRC or mail. This is a heads-up for my GPSD and other collaborators; I’m still here. How this happened is a case study in 21st-century… Continue reading The pros and cons of tethering
Month: October 2011
Dennis Ritchie day
Tim O’Reilly proposes that we designate the 30th of October as “Dennis Ritchie day”. That works for me. Pass it on. Since my readers are probably wondering: Yes, I knew Dennis slightly. He contributed to The Art Of Unix Programming and was very supportive of the project. He was indeed as pleasant and gracious as… Continue reading Dennis Ritchie day
RFC: Action stamps
This is a request for comment on a convention for uniquely identifying user actions on the Internet. The motivating context was identifying commit changesets in version-control systems in a way independent of the specific VCS. It is anticipated that this format will have uses in recording many other similar sorts of transactions, including actions on… Continue reading RFC: Action stamps
Repositories in Translation
I’ve been doing a lot of repository conversions recently, lifting ancient project histories from Subversion or even CVS into modern distributed version control systems. I’ve written about the technical problems with these conversions elsewhere but they also raise issues that are almost philosophical – and not unlike, actually, the challenges natural-language translators face moving a… Continue reading Repositories in Translation
The Smartphone Wars: Sprint Doubles Down on Dumb
One of my regular commenters points out an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, Sprint Could Yet Strike Out With iPhone. “SPQR” interprets it as follows: The article states that Sprint’s cost to run the iPhone is $15.5 billion over four years. Unclear to me what that “cost” means from the article. The iPhone… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: Sprint Doubles Down on Dumb
On not being destroyed by travel
On G+, Stephen Shankland links to RMS’s travel rules. He faintly praises their transparency but finds them a bit bizarre. For contrast, here are my travel rules, from back when I was accepting a lot of speaking engagements: Yes, mine are much simpler, but don’t be quick to judge RMS until you’ve walked a mile… Continue reading On not being destroyed by travel
A DVCS migration howto
This is a consequence of my recent adventures in repository conversion – a detailed discussion of how to do a high-quality lift of a CVS or Subversion repo to DVCS-land, how to make both git and hg users happy, and what sorts of good practices to teach to keep things tidy.
Bride of the reposturgeon!
Another big repository conversion – the Hercules project – brings with it some new bug fixes and features, so reposurgeon 1.3 has shipped.
Looking for reposurgeon test cases
I just released reposurgeon 1.2 and am continuing to develop the tool. In order to test some of the newer features, I’m looking for repository conversions to do. If you run an open-source project that is still using CVS or Subversion, or some odd non-distributed VCS, I may be willing to lift it to git… Continue reading Looking for reposurgeon test cases
Return of the reposturgeon!
reposurgeon 1.2 is shipped. This is the repository editor I wrote about back in 2010; description here, architectural lessons here. I did a conversion of the repo for the Roundup issue tracker, which had a messy history. It started out as CVS, got up-converted to Subversion, and I grabbed it with git-svn. Cleaning up the… Continue reading Return of the reposturgeon!
Ubuntu and GNOME jump the shark
I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.04 a week or so back in order to get a more recent version of SCons. 11.04 dropped me into the new “Unity” GNOME interface. There may be people in the world for whom Unity is a good idea, but none of them are me. The look is garish and ugly,… Continue reading Ubuntu and GNOME jump the shark
You can tank me later
I have interesting friends. Two of them, who shall remain nameless because it is possible they have let slip to me information that is technically classified, recently told me the best GPSD deployment story since the robot submarine. So, Friend A says “Hey, Eric, did you know GPSD is used in the on-board nav system… Continue reading You can tank me later
On Steve Jobs’s passing
I had been planning to defer commenting on the death of Steve Jobs long enough to give its impact time to cool a little, but Against Nostalgia puts the case I would have made so well and so publicly that it has changed my mind. I met Steve Jobs once in 1999 when I was… Continue reading On Steve Jobs’s passing
The Smartphone Wars: How are the mighty fallen
HP replaces the hapless Leo Apotheker in a manner not very well calculated to reassure anyone that HP has a bright future. Granted, Apotheker’s performance – typified by the now-it’s-dead-oh-maybe-not fumbling around the TouchPad – was dismal. But the new CEO’s first move was to reassure everyone that Apotheker’s cunning plan to turn HP into… Continue reading The Smartphone Wars: How are the mighty fallen
…but GPSD will survive!
Four days after I got the word that Berlios is dying, I have saved GPSD from being pulled under as it sinks. A couple of observations on the project migration follow.