The first psychiatric survivor archive has kicked off in Toronto and Debian Venezuela is soon hosting a MiniDebconf. The word on the streets is that Chavez uses Debian.. Now that would be a great picture to see.

Joey Hess from Debian has come up with a pretty nifty analysis of thread patterns in email. This is a great example of the geek technique to transform what seems like chaos (and can surely be experienced as such) into something more categorical, segmentable, and thus manageable.

This year I purchased a 3 chip video camera with the hopes of capturing some good footage at geek conferences. Part of my motivation was selfish (perhaps one day I can make a small documentary) and part of my motivation was selfless (give video footage to the geek community). Now my footage is available and I will put more up in the coming year.

Warning: I have no experience with shooting so I am sure I have done most things wrong. I hope to learn some of the more technical stuff over the next few years.

I have made it to South Africa and the official part of the Law and Society conference has come, sadly, to an end. It has been an amazing experience for reasons that deserve a lot more attention than I have right now so I will wait to write some about it when I have more time.

But before I forget, Lars has been thoughtful enough to put the Debian History Roundtable Discussion on the Debian Wiki.

I organized this roundtable at Debconf4 and while there is a good chunk of information from the discussion, there is a lot missing and perhaps even wrong, so please make changes and additions.

Last month I went to Mexico to attend Debconf6 and then I traveled with 4 geeks to Oaxaca. Here are a few photos from the trip, which was quite lovely, though I stalled writing anything about it here because I was thrown into a strom of sickness during my last week there and into my first week here.

I have been to Mexico a few times before though usually in passing or in Baja, which is somewhat nice but desolate. This was the first time I had any sustained exposure to Mexico and it was quite nice. Some of my favorite things about the country and my visit are perhaps a little odd but they are what took me in and here are some of them…

For example, during Debconf proper, I feel in love with the following reptile and very surprisingly, because, when it comes to animals, I usually like the soft and cuddly and not the scaly and spiny. But…. this lizard was…. special. Here is how I found him: We were eating at a restaurant after a visit to some ruins and there we found this little guy caged at the back of the restaurant. I was more than a little miffed that he was trapped (and by butting his head against the cage, he clearly was saying I WANT OUT) and so was about to pull a “PETA move” and just let him out. But I decided that was not such a good idea so instead I went over to the owners to ask why the little one was caged. In answer to my query, they promptly pulled him out and told me he first that he was a chameleon (which does not seem right to me) and was usually free to roam but when there are a lot of folks (as there were) they lock him up.

He plopped the little one on my arm and alas, what I pleasantly found out was that a lizard can act an awful lot like a dog. He LOVED to be pet and basically had a look of all-out-pleasure when you stroked his back. And at times, with a particularily good stroke, he would even subtly smile and flutter his hind leg a little just like a doggie.

Aside from a special dog-like reptile, there were many other things that I loved about Mexico. The food at the market was divine, divine, especially the corn smut a.k.a huitlacoche and all the salsas were better than you could imagine. It is tragic that every city does not have a local market with such divine food.

The architecture of Oaxaca was especially stuning as was the whole city center. It reminded me of viejo San Juan in Puerto Rico but the buildings were a little lower (apparently because of earthquakes) and the environment was dryer and more expansive. Our hostel was courtyard style (as were many houses there) and I think the courtyard should be revived as the defacto style for housing as this is probably one of the most enticing and smart architectural styles ever (at least in warm places). While a home is suppsed to provide shelter to enclose, the courtyard brings some of the outside inside and some of the inside outside.

While in Oaxaca we met some folks from espora, walked a lot in the city, met up with other Debian folks traveling about, and cleaned out Vagrant’s ear which was truly … well I won’t go into that. We also drove for a few hours up to the mountains for a few nice hikes. The town hoped we happy trip and I think we did.

Mexico city, by a number of measures, is one of the largest in the world and I unfortunately only got to see the Zocalo area as well as the subway. The center was quite impressive and especially nice before a thunderous storm One night at the Zocalo we happened upon a free concert, the lineup including the Tijuana Nortec Collective.

One of the most dynamite parts of Mexico City is its impressive and I mean impressive subway system. In a nutshell, the system is large, clean, efficient, cheap, and quiet (thanks to thick and black rubber tires). The trains come quickly, ferrying the millions of riders who pay 20 cents for a ride on a lovely bright orange train. Every time I rode it, without fail, a vendor entered the car, loaded with a backpack that doubled as a radio/stereo, who was selling pirated music. I appreciated the sample and bought one disc chock full of mp3s.

Like most urban trains, the riders are silent and I have always wondered why this is so. When I go to PR, I ride the busses much more and there, as in the states on the busses, there seems to be more open flow of chatter. Perhaps it is because trains are quite comfortable and they lull already tired riders into a state of quite contemplation. Who knows.

So these are some of the things that I liked about Mexico but perhaps the most exciting part about the country was the clear political heatwave passing through, just as it is with much of Latin America. In the zocalo of Mexico City there were various stands protesting the attacks in Atenco, as well as general protests against neoliberal policies. The city of Oaxca was also filled to the gills with protesting teachers, demanding a pay raise. Thousands of them were camped out all over the city center, which is apparently a year rite. Sadly, in the last week the police broke up the protest, violently…

Another Debconf has come and passed. This was my 3rd conference and surely to be one of the more memorable, partly because I showed up for the whole time (and am now traveling with 4 other DD’s in Mexico) and partly because of a few problems that plagued my visit. There is no doubt that I had a wonderful time but some of my attention was drawn away from enjoyment toward crisis management. For the first few days, it was due to computer problems (now sort of fixed) and then the last few days I had “Biella Hardware” problems in the form of one of the worst combo sore throats/ body aches that I have had in recent memory (now sort of fixed but not entirely).

Now that I am in Oxaca, I hope to spend a little time blogging about this year’s Debconf but before I wanted to pass along what I think has been one of the more amusing experiences thus far in Mexico. So yesterday a group of us (Jeroeun, Martin K, Micah, Vagrant) rented a car to head off to the Southern city of Oxaca. I have actually never rented a car in a foreign country, and I was a little concerned about everything from price to roads to cops. Amid my nervousness, the employee at Thrify was sort of reassuing and quite nice but he gave us some unfortunate news: he warned us that as we reached this one particular circular intersection in Mexico City we would be stopped by a cop (because we are tourists) and basically bribed. This was not surprising news to be but I was surprised at how upset this made me. (maybe because I have never had such an experience and thought I would mangle it when the time came to pass off the money or offset the bribe or whatever). Anyway, after we packed 5 bodies and copious luggage into our compact Nissan, we headed off somewhat prepared to face off the cop and decided it was best I drive as I was the Spanish speaker. We made our way through the congested streets and headed toward the intersection and as we got closer, I thought to myself “how are they going to spot us within all this traffic?” But you see, the thing about this intersection is as soon as you make the turn left, you hit a light and need to stop for a long time. And you see, this gives the cop ample time to switch on the “tourist radar” and spot the noticeable white bodies. Sure enough, within 30 seconds of stopping at the intersection, a Mexican cop walks over and there is where the fun began.

So he basically told me that I did not use my signal lights for turning when I made a left and that this infraction would cost me US $120. At this point I started to get a little freaked (I already dropped too much money on a rental car) but I remained calm and told him basically in Spanish “With all respect, officer, I think I used my light because I am in a foreign country and am very aware that I must follow all traffic rules.” After a little back and forth, I moved on to the “bribe stage.” While we were told that 100 pesos (10 US) was the typical bribe, we, being cheapskates, just offered 5 US. And then, magically, at that point, the officer said, “ok just go ahead and be careful not to repeat the offense next time.” I was shocked. I mean there was some money being offered right there and I was sure he was going to ask for a little more. But he backed off. Why?

I think it was a combination of factors. Ok so perhaps he was surprised that I knew what was going on. Perhaps he was uncomfortable that I knew Spanish. But I think he the tipping point was due to cultural factors. I think he found it odd that there was this little woman driving a car with 4 grown and pretty large men. Given the gender dynamics in the country, this was just beyond his cultural comfort zone and he realized that I was badassss, and he just backed off. Ok, so I don’t really know if that is what happened but I like the explanation and am glad I got off the hook

For many years a number of Debian Developers have suggested that I include my blog on Planet Debian. Over the last few years, a combination of inertia and resistance kept me away, but I think after my 3rd Debconf, my 2nd talk at Debconf, and writings on Debian, I decided it would be a nice idea. For those readers of Interprete, there will still be enteries there that won’t appear on Debian Planet as the only categories that are slated to appear are the posts related to Debian, technology and the anthropology of technology.

After a year of missing a Debconf, I have made it to Debconf 6 where I had planned to give my talk on hacker codes of value on Monday and then basically chill out against and depsite the the hot and spicy Mexican environment. Not a bad plan and not one too hard to keep unless your file system turns to mush, and worse it happened before I really completed the prep for the talk. Ai Bendito, Caramba, Conchale, Mama Mia… That sucked.

There are worse places where this sort of fiasco could have happen like during the luddite society annual conference or something. I mean geeks during Debconf are having fun but they are also spending a lot of time doing what they do best: hacking! So as soon as grub reported an error, there were a pack of geeks, drunk on and with and for technology (and as the day wore on drunk on tequila too) who took the challenge (as they so love to do and as I will talk about during my talk) to fix the problem.

Now my slides are recovered, my system is back (without the rest of my files but I have backups for most of them) and now it is back to the grind so I can finish my talk. This time, I will make sure to make backups every 5 minutes or so.
Hay Benditio!

I try to go to at least once hacker/developer conference per year and when they are in Latin America, it is just impossible to resist. So this year I am going to Debconf6 being held just outside of Mexico City in mid-May. Along with presenting a paper, I may do a little filming too of the event.

Today someone pointed me to this uber-geeky set of graphs that offers all the essential stats:

* Participant’s accomodation requirements.
* Confirmed Participants
* Participant’s countries.
* Participant’s food requirements.
* Participant’s laptops details.
* Participants by gender and type
* Proposals by track, status and type
* Participant’s shirt requirements.
* Participants who request sponsorship.
* Sponsorship for participants travels.

Now most of these stats are essential for the organizers and they are attacking a conference’s unwieldy ways with the help of technology. They are also great for a researcher like me as they have done a good chunk of really interesting and important statistical data. And while technology is usually never an easy panacea to social ills or hurdles, if used tactically and well, like these organizers use it (and know how to use it), it can help quite a bit, at least judging from the last Debconf I went to, which was simply wonderful.

The topic of styles of leadership in Debian is ongoing and surfaces a little more strongly during the election period, which is happening now. tbm, a past DPL posted a blog entry on the limits of strong-one-person leadership in Debian, thoughts that followed this irc discussion with a long-time developer joey hess. I don’t really have time to say much but for those who work on leadership in larger virtual projects, this discussion may be of interest.