Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/hackfests.html

The Linux Plumbers
Conference 2012 will take place August 29th to 31st in San Diego,
California. We, the systemd
developers, would like to invite you to two hackfests/sprints that will happen
around LPC:

San Diego: libvirt/LXC/systemd/SELinux Integration Hackfest

On 28th of August we’ll have a hackfest on the topic of closer
integration of libvirt, LXC, systemd and SELinux, colocated with LPC in
San Diego, California. We’ll have a number of key people from these projects
participating, including Dan Walsh, Eric Paris, Daniel P. Berrange, Kay
Sievers and myself.

Topics we’ll cover: making Fedora/Linux boot entirely cleanly in
normal containers, teaching systemd’s control tools minimal
container-awareness (such as being able to list all services of all
containers in one go, in addition to those running on the host
system), unified journal logging across multiple containers, the systemd
container interface, auditing and containers, running multiple
instances from the same /usr tree, and a lot more…

Who should attend? Everybody hacking on the mentioned
projects who wants to help integrating them with the
goal of turning them into a secure, reliable, powerful container
solution for Linux.

Who should not attend? If you don’t hack on any of these
projects, or if you are not interested in closer integration of at
least two of these projects.

How to register? Just show up. You get extra points however
for letting us know in advance (just send us an email). Attendance is
free.

➥ See also: Google+ Event

San Francisco: systemd Journal Sprint

On September 3-7 we’ll have a sprint on the topic of the systemd
Journal. It’s going to take place at the Pantheon headquarters in San
Francisco, California. Among others, Kay Sievers, David Strauss and I will participate.

Who should attend? Everybody who wants to help improving the
systemd Journal, regardless if in its core itself, in client software
for it, hooking up other projects or writing library bindings for
it. Also, if you are using or planning to use the journal for a
project, we’d be very interested in high-bandwith face-to-face
feedback regarding what you are missing, what you don’t like so much, and what
you find awesome in the Journal.

How to register? Please sign up at EventBrite. Attendance is
free. For more information see the invitation
mail.

➥ See also: Google+ Event

See you in California!

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/lenovo-laptop-codes.html

does anybody know how to decode those Lenovo ThinkPad model IDs? I am
interested in the T410s. For example, there’s the model NUK3AGE, and there’s
NUHFXGE, and there’s NUHYXGE. Some web sites claim NUK3AGE has Nvidia graphics,
others claim VGA is Intel-only. Some web sites claim it has a touch screen,
others say the contrary. The Lenovo web site isn’t helpful to figure out the
differences between the models and what the feature set of the various models
really is. I figured out the GE suffix indicates a german keyboard, but what
about the remaining code? Anybody knows how to decypher those IDs or knows a
reliable source explaining their feature set?

Love,

Lennart

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/got-style.html

Uh?

Some folks apparently don’t have much respect for my web design skills — and I always considered myself the Malevich of web design! Pfft!

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/berliners.html

Berliners, you
might want to attend this rally! It’s tomorrow (hmm, or actually today
considering it’s already past midnight), October 11th 2 pm,
Alexanderplatz.

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/fedora-people.html

A while
ago I posted a story on my blog which then appeared on Fedora Planet. In it
I expressed my doubts on the usefulness of the planet, due to its low
signal-to-noise ratio, due to the babel-like mix of languages. As a response to
this posting I got a lot of really dumb comments, both directly on the blog
story and by email. I was called “intolerant”, a “Nazi”, “stupid”, that I
should “revise my geography”, that I should go “fuck myself”, that I apparently
thought that the “world was USA property” ^[1]. Back then I thought
that there were just a few morons in the peripherals of the community. But now, since this
incident happened I started to wonder if we might actually have a bigger
problem in the community.

I guess this is a good opportunity to pimp David Arlie’s alternative
Fedora aggregator which I find a very useful replacement for Fedora Planet.

Footnotes

[1] I am wondering though why people think that I am a monoglot
american? I am not. Neither monoglot, nor american. And if suggesting that I
was was intended as an insult, then I can only say that it insulted me far
less than the insulter might have thought…

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/dopplr.html

Until yesterday Ohloh was the only social network site I was a member of.
That changed now. I joined DOPPLR. It’s pretty
nice. Very Web 2.0, but in the good way. Free Software people, join now!

No, nobody paid me for writing this, I just think it is indeed useful.

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/ich-bin-ein-berliner.html

To whom it may concern: I finally moved from Hamburg (Wohldorf) into my new flat in Berlin (Friedrichshain).

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/felix-america.html

These two lenses cost EUR 679 resp. EUR 386.45 at amazon.de.

On amazon.com you can get them for US$ 639, resp. US$ 289.95.

At today’s courses that’s 430 EUR, resp. 195 EUR.

Americans pay 63%, resp. 50% of what Germans have to pay for these lenses. How unfair! 🙁

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/glowing-sun.html

Danish-Mexican design,
this time in built from red ibico PolyOpaque; for your stylish and very
personal red light district.

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/redhat.html

In case anyone wants to know: starting today I am a Red Hat employee.

It’s nice if the first day on the new job is a public holiday.

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/thesis.html

Es ist vollbracht! Today, at 10:54 am — 66 min before deadline — I
handed in my diploma thesis ^[1]. In a few weeks time you may call me
Diplom-Informatiker… Herr Diplom-Informatiker.

That’s all.

Footnotes:

[1] Thesis title is Diensteverwaltung in Ad-Hoc-Netzwerken
(which roughly translates to Service Discovery in Ad-Hoc Networks).
Basically, the thesis is about “Mesh-DNS”, a protocol akin to Multicast DNS (mDNS), which scales
better, fixes a few things and takes Mesh network architectures into account.
It is intended to be integrated into Avahi and
to be used as service discovery protocol in OLPC. It is compatible with DNS-SD, but replaces mDNS. Due to that all
existing software linking against Avahi can make use of it without any major
changes. It adds a zone .mesh which is organized by Mesh-DNS side-by-side to the mDNS-maintained zone .local. You will be able to enable support for Mesh-DNS at Avahi
compile time. Most likely most distros won’t enable it in their default builds,
although it offers quite a few features even outside OLPC, such as
automatic, idiot-proof router transparency.

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/pile-of-paper.html

As an experiment to test how much people are willing to pay for big big pile
of old paper, I am selling my
collection of old editions of the german computer magazine c’t on ebay.de.
Do yourself something good and buy yourself a piece of (german) computer
history. It’s a unique chance because if noone wants it I am going to give it
into recycling, or maybe make a big, big bonfire.

I heard that you can attract girls by reading old german computer magazines
from the late nineties. Not that this would have worked for me, but maybe it
works for you? There is nothing more attractive to a girl than old computer
magazines, especially if they are in a foreign language you don’t understand.

No, I am not kidding!

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/ebay-770.html

I was one of the lucky ones to get a Nokia N800 developer discount code, and
am now a proud owner of one of these toys. Thus I decided to sell
off my old Nokia 770 at Ebay.de. This is your one-time chance to buy a 770
previously owned by one of the Avahi and PulseAudio developers! Wooow! Don’t
miss this chance to add this exclusive device to your memorabilia collection!

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/iq-light-mania.html

As promised here’s a gallery of
better quality photos of a mobile made from mexican style IQ lights.

All these lights have been fabricated using this stencil and this material.

I hope this gallery shows a little bit how fascinating these lamps are and explain why I am so obsessed of them that I cannot stop blogging about them.

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/iq-in-the-movies.html

The (original) IQ Light is featured in the stylish and funny Hollywood movie Lucky Number Slevin:

Related to this, don’t miss this small but beautiful gallery of a mobile built entirely from (mexican style) IQ lights of various sizes. I hope to post better quality pictures of the same mobile shortly:

Oh, and I am finally back in .de after my trip to .au and
linux.conf.au 2007/FOMS 2007. I hope to post a
recap of the conferences and their outcome for PulseAudio and Avahi shortly.

Thanks to the impressing work of Silvia Pfeiffer and the LCA video team there’s now a video of my PulseAudio presentation at LCA available online. (Ogg Theora, Java Cortado). Don’t miss it!

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/iq-light-final.html

A small, final followup on the blog stories about the mexican style IQ Light:

After some unsuccessful experimenting with materials like Polystyrene
(cracks too easily), I settled on 0.3mm white Polypropylene which is both easy
to work with and easy to find. The light becomes a little bit blue-greyish
cold. I bought Ibico PolyOpaque
report covers for this purpose, which you can get at German Staples stores.
You can get it in 25, 50 or 100 DIN-A4 packs. Because only two full-size
pieces can be cut from a single A4 sheet and you need 30 pieces you need at
least 15 sheets for a single full-size lamp. I built 10 lamps in various sizes from
this material and it seems to work pretty well.

Have fun!

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/leben-der-anderen.html

German movies are usually not my thing – I don’t like the topics, I don’t
like the scripting, I don’t like the acting, I don’t like the actors, I don’t
like the drama and I don’t like the humor. (Ok, they usually lack humor entirely, so there’s not much not to like of the humor.)

However, there’s now a notable exception: Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of
Others) is a very good film, one that I really like. It’s an absorbing drama, the scripting is good and the acting is fine. There’s a good reason that
it has won the European Movie Award (Best Film) and is one of the top
contenders for next years’ Oscar (at least the foreign language one).

If you get the chance to see this movie, do it! It’s worth it.

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/iqlamp-stencil.html

As promised, here’s
a stencil drawing of the Mexican-style IQ Lamp: .ps, .svg, .pdf. (1:1, DIN A4/ISO 216 paper size)

30 of these are needed to assemble one mexican style lamp, as depicted below.
The material to cut these patterns from needs to be a thin (less than .5 mm
thick) plastic (or maybe cardboard) which needs to be flexible – but not too
flexible, and not glossy. It might be advisable to use energy-saving light
bulbs for this lamp. They are entirely hidden inside the lamp and might be good
to avoid overheating of the plastic. Assembling
instructions, Video, Instructable. Please note
that assembling the mexican-style IQ light needs a quite a bit manual force
because all pieces are bent a little, in contrast to the original danish
design which appears to be assembled without any force. (at least the video
clip suggests that.) For mounting a cable/lamp socket you might need to cut a
small hole in one of the plastic sheets, to put the cable through.

Once again the photo:

Have fun!

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/chasing-light.html

Last friday I posted a little Lazyweb experiment,
a hunt for information about a certain kind of lamp sold by a street dealer in
Mexico City. A quick followup on the results:

Surprinsingly many people responded, mostly by email, and partly by blog comment.
As it appears I am not the only one who’s looking for this specific type of
lamp. Furthermore, a non-trivial set of Planet Gnome readers actually already
owns one of these devices. Apparently counterfeit versions of this lamp are
sold all around the world by street dealers and on markets.

The lamp seems to be a modified version of the “IQ Light”, a self
assembly lighting system made up of interlocking quadrilaterals. It is
a scandinavian design, by Holger Strøm, 1973. It is nowadays
exclusively distributed by Bald & Bang,
Denmark. The lighting system has a very interesting web site of its own, which even includes an
HOWTO for
assembling these lamps. The Bald & Bang web site has a
very stylish video which also shows how to assemble an IQ lamp.

While my mexican specimen and the official design are very similar, they
differ: the mexican design looks – in a way – “tighter” and … better (at
least in my humble opinion). For comparison, please have a look on the photo I took from the mexican version which is shown
above, and on the many photos returned by Google
Images, or the one from the IQ Light homepage. It
appears as if the basic geometrical form used by the mexican design is somehow
more narrow than the official danish one.

So, where can one buy one of those lamps? Fake and real ones are sold on
eBay, every
now an then. The Museum
Store of the New York MoMA sells the original version for super-cheap $160.
If you search with Google you’ll find many more offers like this one, but all
of them are not exactly cheap – for a bunch of thin plastic sheets. All these
shops sell the danish version of the design, noone was able to point me to a shop
where the modified, “mexican” version is sold.

Given the hefty price tag and the fact that the fake, mexican version looks
better then the original one, I will now build my own lamps, based on the
mexican design. For that I will disassamble my specimen (at least partially)
and create a paper stencil of the basic plastic pattern. I hope to put this up
for download as a .ps file some time next week, since many people
asked for instructions for building these lamps. Presumably the original
design is protected by copyright, hence I will not publish a step-by-step guide
how to build your own fake version. But thankfully this is not even necessary, since the vendor already published a HOWTO and a video for this, online.

Thank you very much for your numerous responses!

Post Syndicated from Lennart Poettering original https://0pointer.net/blog/mexico-lamp.html

Let’s see how well Lazyweb works for me!

One of the nicest types of lamps I know is depicted on this photo:

This lamp is built from a number (16 or so, it’s so difficult to count) of
identical shapes which are put together (a mano) in a very simple, mathematical
fashion. No glue or anything else is need to make it a very robust object. The
lamp looks a little bit like certain Julia fractals, its geometrical structure
is just beautiful. Every mathematical mind will enjoy it.

This particular specimen has been bought from a street dealer in Mexico
City, and has been made of thin plastic sheets. I saw the same model made from
paper on a market near Barcelona this summer (during GUADEC). Unfortunately I
didn’t seize the chance to buy any back then, and now I am regretting it!

I’ve been trying to find this model in German and US shops for the last
months (Christmas is approaching fast!) but couldn’t find a single specimen. I
wonder who designed this ingenious lamp and who produces it. It looks like a
scandinavian design to me, but that’s just an uneducated guess.

If you have any information about this specific lamp model, or could even
provide me with a pointer where to buy or how to order these lamps in/from
Germany, please leave a comment to this blog story, or write me an email to
mzynzcr (at) 0pointer (dot) de! Thank you very much!