Gunnar Wolf - Nice grey life - page 2

Given that Bálint just braggedblogged about how efficiently he can build a Linux kernel (less than 8 seconds, wow! Well, yes, until you read it is the result of aggressive caching and is achieved only for a second run), and that a question just popped up today on the Debian ARM mailing list, «is an ARM computer a good choice? Which one?», I decided to share my results of an experiment I did several months ago, to graphically show to my students the effects of parallelism, the artifacts of hyperthreading, the effects of different architecture sets, and even illustrate about...

I have mentioned several times in this blog, as well as by other communication means, that I am very happy with the laptop I bought (used) about a year and a half ago: an ARM-based Lenovo Yoga C630. Yes, I knew from the very beginning that using this laptop would pose a challenge to me in many ways, as full hardware support for ARM laptops are nowhere as easy as for plain boring x86 systems. But the advantages far outweigh the inconvenience (i.e. the hoops I had to jump through to handle video-out when I started teaching presentially, which are...

Greetings from Viluppuram, Tamil Nadu, South India! As a preparation and warm-up for DebConf in September, the Debian people in India have organized a miniDebConf. Well, I don’t want to be unfair to them — They have been regularly organizing miniDebConfs for over a decade, and while most of the attendees are students local to this state in South India (the very ``tip’’ of the country; Tamil Nadu is the Eastern side, and Kerala, where Kochi is and DebConf will be held, is the Western side), I have talked with attendees from very different regions of this country. This miniDebConf...

As many of you know, I work at UNAM, Mexico’s largest university. My work is split in two parts: My “full-time” job is to be the systems and network administrator at the Economics Research Institute, and I do some hours of teaching at the Engineering Faculty. At the Institute, my role is academic — but although I have tried to frame my works in a way amenable to analysis grounded on the Social Sciences (Construcción Colaborativa del Conocimiento, Hecho con Creative Commons, Mecanismos de privacidad y anonimato), so far, I have not taken part of academic collaboration with my coworkers...

In Mexico, we have the great luck to live among vestiges of long-gone cultures, some that were conquered and in some way got adapted and survived into our modern, mostly-West-Europan-derived society, and some that thrived but disappeared many more centuries ago. And although not everybody feels the same way, in my family we have always enjoyed visiting archaeological sites — when I was a child and today. Some of the regulars that follow this blog (or its syndicators) will remember Xochicalco, as it was the destination we chose for the daytrip back in the day, in DebConf6 (May 2006). This...

So, it’s this weird time of year where we make a balance and share with the world some ideas about the future. And… yes, it’s time to take care of this blog, as its activity has dropped once again. So… maybe it’d be nice to start this post by checking how much have I blogged over the years: 2004: 27 2005: 92 2006: 65 2007: 83 2008: 64 2009: 62 2010: 48 2011: 25 2012: 27 2013: 29 2014: 37 2015: 18 2016: 19 2017: 20 2018: 19 2019: 19 2020: 14 2021: 11 2022: 10 (yes, this is an...

A couple of weeks ago, I read a blog post by former Debian Developer Lars Wirzenius offering a free basic (6hr) course on the Rust language to interested free software and open source software programmers. I know Lars offers training courses in programming, and besides knowing him for ~20 years and being proud to consider us to be friends, have worked with him in a couple of projects (i.e. he is upstream for vmdb2, which I maintain in Debian and use for generating the Raspberry Pi Debian images) — He is a talented programmer, and a fun guy to be...

Years ago, it was customary that some of us stated publicly the way we think in time of Debian General Resolutions (GRs). And even if we didn’t, vote lists were open (except when voting for people, i.e. when electing a DPL), so if interested we could understand what our different peers thought. This is the first vote, though, where a Debian vote is protected under voting secrecy. I think it is sad we chose that path, as I liken a GR vote more with a voting process within a general assembly of a cooperative than with a countrywide voting one;...

Last Wednesday my father, Kurt Bernardo Wolf Bogner, took the steps towards his next journey, the last that would start in this life. I cannot put words to this… so just sharing this with the world will have to suffice. Goodbye to my teacher, my friend, the person I have always looked up to. Some of his friends were able to put in words more than what I can come up with. If you can read Spanish, you can read the eulogy from the Science Academy of Morelos. His last project, enjoyable by anybody who reads Spanish, is the book...

I have been a bearded subject since I was 18, back in 1994. Yes, during 1999-2000, I shaved for my military service, and I briefly tried the goatee look in 2008… Few people nowadays can imagine my face without a forest of hair. But sometimes, life happens. And, unlike my good friend Bdale, I didn’t get Linus to do the honors… But, all in all, here I am: Turns out, I have been suffering from quite bad skin infections for a couple of years already. Last Friday, I checked in to the hospital, with an ugly, swollen face (I won’t...