Asheeshworld

Python and supercomputers

2010-08-31T19:13:30Z

"In the interest of promoting weird retro computer architectures, I’ve provided the python....

Committed free software teens

2010-08-31T19:07:55Z

No matter their background, Jones says committed free software teens share four traits: They have a personal story about free software they can share, a deep connection to an open source community, a sense of purpose and a sense of hope about their future.

Non-source: CNN article

My name

2010-08-11T17:08:51Z

My name isn't Paul.

(via maco)

"Debian for Shy People": What's next

2010-08-10T21:45:14Z

What do you do when you have a technical question that you're embarrassed to ask?

The first Sunday of Debconf, I led a birds of a feather (BoF) session called Debian for Shy People. The conference team scheduled it on "Debian Day," a pre-conference day that was open to the public and still had plenty of Debian Developers in attendance. I just uploaded the slides to the "Penta" page for the talk.

I led it because of my own experience. In 2004 or so, I saw Debian as the cool kids' club, that awesome project that I wished I could be a part of. By 2006, I managed to get over myself, read the New Maintainer's Guide, and find a way to get involved. As of mid 2009, I am a full-blown Debian Developer. I have real ultimate power. But I sometimes do still feel hesitation akin to "Imposter Syndrome".

(A bunch of people at Debconf didn't really believe I'm "shy," since I asked a lot of questions at the conference. At core, I don't naturally believe that the things I say are worth hearing, but I patch over this hesitation. Sometimes I speak too much, and then I feel ashamed of burdening everyone. But anyway, this is about Debconf not, me -- so moving on....)

In the past year of being a Developer, one thing I've seen is that other contributors ask me privately for help. Rather than blast the public lists like debian-mentors, they email or IRC private-message me, or SMS me, or find me at a Linux Users Group event. I'm lucky to know these people, and they're lucky to have me as a safe person to ask questions of. Moreover, Debian is better because these people could move past their confusion to make a technical contribution.

I began the BoF session by talking about when someone asked me for help. Then I asked, "How many of you have someone you can ask embarrassing questions of?" Of the forty people crammed into Schapiro 414, two people' raised their hands. One person put it plainly, "I don't know anyone else who does Debian." It reminded me of a fact that Karen discovered when she was doing market research for us at OpenHatch: the vast majority of free software programmers know zero other people who do free software. I had seen the figure; we even used it in a talk to try and convince venture capitalists to fund OpenHatch last year. But I didn't really feel it until I heard it from a room full of Debian contributors.

I structured the BoF in two parts: First, I talked in front of some slides to set the tone properly, and then we enjoyed open discussion. As I was preparing thoes slides, Daniel Morais asked me, "What's the point of having the session? Why not just come up with some ideas, implement them, and not bother also talking about it at the conference?" I had considered this; I decided I wasn't self-confident enough to start implementing ideas without talking to people to make sure I wasn't the only one who saw a problem. But I discovered another benefit of giving the talk: people who want to make Debian more welcoming knew to reach out to me.

So here are some thoughts that came from our discussion (and later discussions during the conference):

We need better mentorship in Debian. Truly, mentorship is a personal relationship. Perhaps matching people up into one-on-one groups would be a good idea. KiBi said that doing so using OpenHatch (if we add mentorship-oriented features!) would be a reasonable way to do it.
I've heard from quite a few people who would be willing to have more one-on-one relationships with mentees.
Everyone (except Manoj) knows that Debian contributors are not born experts. It takes a process of learning and teaching to bring them up to speed.

I set up an Etherpad document on cjb's OpenEtherpad.org. This is what we learned together:

"If your level of understanding might be low, but you want development help, then you might not know if #debian-devel is only for people who are already super involved and know everything and therefore you should feel embarrassed."
People get anxious over their ability to speak English.
Bikeshedding over patches can be a major detractor.
"Asheesh talks too fast."

One idea I had before the BoF was to create a discussion area that was safe for all questions, even if they seem silly. We talked for a while about what name that would take, if it were to become a new IRC channel. We reached something of a conclusion, but in the conference that followed Emmet Hickory offered to help make the debian-mentors IRC channel friendlyer. I think that's the best direction to take things, so the next step is for him and me to write up what we want and send a note to the debian-mentors email list explaining our vision.

In the Etherpad document, people discussed the idea of doing Debian discussion over XMPP (also known as Google Talk, also known as Jabber). We weren't sure how such a place would get critical mass; someone briefly mentioned the idea of an IRC/XMPP gateway. I actually think this discussion is along a very reeasonable path, namely discovering what discussion method(s) Debian contributors want to use. (That might explain why I'm now an admin on forums.debian.net.)

We also briefly discussed the idea of an anonymous question-answering service. I realize now that I'm not going to be able to have time to run that, but I still think it'd be a really cool idea.

Biella would remind me that Debian is already successful at bringing in new contributors. I agree! As a free software project, we have an enormous number of participants. This is a really good thing, and we're clearly doing something right. The purpose of this talk was to figure out how to make contributing to Debian less stressful for those who participate.

Truly, a "Debian for Shy People" effort isn't about shy people. It's about the moments of self-doubt we all have in which we don't know what to do and are too embarrassed to ask. I think that if the project more friendly, we can find more participants, make better use of our current ones, and see improvements to our diversity.

Whew, that was long. What do you think of all this?

Oracle updates Java. Eclipse breaks. Who's to blame?

2010-07-28T23:22:07Z

Writes the wise Zancarius, "Let's just blame everyone and get it over with."

Unpublished proprietary emptiness

2010-07-27T17:55:21Z

For a good time, check out the unpublished proprietary source code of AT&T, as shipped by Sun in Solaris.

It does nothing, successfully.

Thumbs up

2010-07-21T17:54:35Z

Chris has a penchant for the terse. When agreeing with me online, he would find himself writing "OK" or "Sounds good." But really he didn't have anything to say; he just wanted to say he agreed.

So now we say:

This means "thumbs up."

This means "thumbs down."

(Why "b" and "p"? They look like thumbs-up and thumbs-down.)

Strategies for creating drain

2010-07-09T17:10:12Z

File under: self-indulgent whining

I wrote a bit ago about joy minus drain. This morning, a friend put me through something that created a lot of drain.

He and I aren't going to see each other for a while. So in the morning, he arrived and was enthusiastic to hang out with me. Knowing how much I like the Smitten Kitchen lemon ricotta pancakes, he asks, "Can you find a recipe for blueberry ricotta pancakes?"

I find that recipe and print out a copy. (Actually two, by mistake. But that's okay.) I head toward the kitchen and, feeling more enthusiastic about the day, start working on the big pile of dishes that I left from last night. As I do that, he cooks. Showing forethought, he already has ricotta cheese to use for the recipe.

As usual (probably this isn't a good trait), I keep an eye on his cooking. Things seem to be going fine; he even successfully split the egg yolk from the whites! I do more dishes, and we talk about what we might do in this last day we'll see each other for a while.

I look back at his bowls, and I notice a few flecks of egg yolk in the whites. I sigh, knowing what he does not: you can't beat egg whites into stiff peaks if there's even a drop of yolk in them. I explain this to him, and he thinks it will be okay. They just won't be super stiff peaks.

There's something already draining about this. Something of a let-down. I guess I'd rather not be around to see this sort of imperfection during the process, even if the result will be good, because for the rest of the cooking period I'll be wondering if the result would be better if I had just done it. And you probably thought I wasn't a perfectionist.

But that's not the important bit. A moment later, he gets a phone call. During that period, I stretch out and relax on the couch. I figure we can get back to our work in the kitchen when we're together. After the phone call, I learn that he was scheduled to have lunch with a mutual friend at noon at Magic Carpet.

It's 11:45, and the Magic Carpet truck is a 20 minute walk away. The only sensible thing to do, if he's to have any chance of keeping his lunch plans, is to drop everything and run out the door.

Ugh. Utterly lame.

Any of the following thoughts might have popped into my head.

In the future, I'll trust his enthusiasm a little less.
If he had just used his brain he could have brought back breakfast, not ricotta cheese, and then we could have had a nice relaxed morning.
I have seen this pattern before. I should know better.

As a consolation prize, he invites me! And I accept. And we hurry and put the pancake batter away in the fridge. He needs to bike there to make the time, and not having a bike, asks if he can borrow mine. Blake (who happens to be visiting) and I take a few minutes to get ready. After a few blocks, I reflect.

I'm hungry, and I don't even know what I want to get done today. Is hanging out at Magic Carpet with our mutual friend really the top thing on my list? I don't know, and I'm hungry. So I went home. Blake went on, which was fine with me, and presumably joined them at Magic Carpet. It is a tasty place, and it's on his way to a train station back to Swarthmore.

If I want to be in the business of patching over other people's failure to plan, I guess I could make a checklist of things to make sure.

Well, there it is. I'll try to use it going forward as a drain-avoidance tactic.

rose in Japan is down; time to make backups

2010-06-26T05:33:32Z

For some reason, my server in Japan is down. (This website is hosted from Minnesota.) For that reason, freeculture.org is down.

Today is a good day to remember that I should make frequent backups. I'm doing a backup run of the Minnesota machine right now.

Libraries Do Gaga

2010-06-09T14:40:54Z

In a video called Libraries Do Gaga, the University of Washington Information School gives some tips for finding information. They've gone Gaga, tying their own lyrics to recent pop music. For example, they sing:

Look, your naive searching just ain't gonna get it done,
'Cause when it comes to search, if it's not tough it isn't fun (fun).

My favorite part is the sliding shelf between 3:24 and 3:29. Don't skip to it; wait for it.

Karen remarks:

<karenrustad_> I don't understand why library school people are always hot.
<<karenrustad_> Like, seriously.