Gunnar Wolf - Nice grey life

Meeting Debian people for having a good time together, for some good hacking, for learning, for teaching… Is always fun and welcome. It brings energy, life and joy. And this year, due to the six-months-long relocation my family and me decided to have to Argentina, I was unable to attend the real deal, DebConf23 at India. And while I know DebConf is an experience like no other, this year I took part in two miniDebConfs. One I have already shared in this same blog: I was in MiniDebConf Tamil Nadu in India, followed by some days of pre-DebConf preparation and...

Almost a month ago, I went to my always loved Rancho Electrónico to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Debian project. Hats off to Jathan for all the work he put into this! I was there for close to 3hr, and be it following up an install, doing a talk, or whatever — he was doing it. But anyway, I only managed to attend with one of my (great, beautiful and always loved) generic Debian or DebConf T-shirts. Today, when going through a box of old T-shirts, I found the shirt I was looking for to bring to the occasion....

Back in June 2018, Michael Stapelberg put the Raspberry Pi image building up for adoption. He created the first set of “unofficial, experimental” Raspberry Pi images for Debian. I promptly answered to him, and while it took me some time to actually warp my head around Michael’s work, managed to eventually do so. By December, I started pushing some updates. Not only that: I didn’t think much about it in the beginning, as the needed non-free pacakge was called raspi3-firmware, but… By early 2019, I had it running for all of the then-available Raspberry families (so the package was naturally...

Mexico’s education sector had one of the longest lockdowns due to COVID: As everybody, we “went virtual” in March 2020, and it was only by late February 2022 that I went back to teach presentially at the University. But for the semester starting next Tuesday, I’m going back to a full-online mode. Why? Because me and my family will be travelling to Argentina for six months, starting this October and until next March. When I went to ask for my teaching to be “frozen” for two semesters, the Head of Division told me he was actually looking for teachers wanting...

We took a couple of days of for a family vacation / road trip through the hills of Central Mexico. The overall trip does not look like anything out of the ordinary… …Other than the fact that Google forecasted we’d take approximately 15.5 hours driving for 852Km — that is, an average of almost 55 Km/h. And yes, that’s what we signed up for. And that’s what we got. Of course, the exact routes are not exactly what Google suggested (I can say we optimized a bit the route, i.e., by avoiding the metropolitan area of Querétaro, at the extreme...

It’s been a very long time I haven’t blogged about e-voting, although some might remember it’s been a topic I have long worked with; particularly, it was the topic of my 2018 Masters thesis, plus some five articles I wrote in the 2010-2018 period. After the thesis, I have to admit I got weary of the subject, and haven’t pursued it anymore. So, I was saddened and dismayed to read that –once again, as it has already happened– the electoral authorities would set up a pilot e-voting program in the local elections this year, that would probably lead to a...

After my father passed away, I brought home most of the personal items he had, both at home and at his office. Among many, many (many, many, many) other things, I brought two of his personal treasures: His photo collection and a box with the 8mm movies he shot approximately between 1956 and 1989, when he was forced into modernity and got a portable videocassette recorder. I have talked with several friends, as I really want to get it all in a digital format, and while I’ve been making slow but steady advances scanning the photo reels, I was particularly...

Twenty years… A seemingly big, very round number, at least for me. I can recall several very well-known songs mentioning this timespan: «It was twenty years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play», sang four youth idols in 1967 for whom said timespan was not-quite-but-almost their full lifes so far. «Si las cosas que uno quiere se pudieran alcanzar, tú me quisieras lo mismo que veinte años atrás» (if what one wants could be achieved, you would love me the same as twenty years ago), says a heartbroken song by María Teresa Vera where she is resigned not...

Phew! Today, after four days of combing through code I am unfamiliar with, I was finally able to change my expression. I’m finally at the part of my PhD work where I am tasked with implementing the protocol I claim improves from the current situation. I wrote a script to deploy the infrastructure I need for the experiment, and was not expecting any issues — I am not (yet) familiar with the Go language (in which the Hockeypuck key server is developed), but I have managed to install it several times, and it holds no terrible surprises anymore for me....

After my last post, Bálint (who prompted it with his last post) suggested I should do a hybrid test of his tests and my extremes. He suggested I should build the Linux kernel using my Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB model), but using the Firebuild build accelerator. Before going any further: I must make clear that while Firebuild is freely redistributable, it is not made available under a free license. It is free for personal use or commercial trial, but otherwise requires licensing. Bálint managed to build a Linux kernel in just over 8 seconds. So, how did my test go?...