SCM tools

There has been a lot of talk on Planet Debian about SCM tools recently. Lately I’ve been leaning toward using bzr for source control, although cdv is looking nice too (and not just because I help maintain it). I really believe that cdv is trying to solve the underlying problem which is part of all of these systems: ambiguous merging. Most traffic I’ve seen on the developer list have been bram conversing on common lists about solving three-way merges automatically. That said, it requires a standalone server for distributed work, which I think will be it’s downfall. Noone wants to run a server when almost every other new system out there works automatically with any web server you can get your hands on. For now, bzr seems like it’s being actively developed. Given the amazing array of systems out there now, I suspect tools like tailor will be the most important ones. Everyone choose your own, and then work things out from there.

Working

I’ve just recently quit my job at velocity, in order to make room for possible jobs at other places. When I originally quit, a job seemed waiting and ready for me. That has fallen through, but maybe it is meant to be anyway - I need to be working more on my thesis topic than anything else nowadays. I’m picking up some consulting work on the side for a couple of different people, and I’m thinking of advertising my expertise some more in order to have some extra income every once in a while.

Moving

Our apartment looks pretty bare nowadays. If you didn’t know it, you would think we’re moving out. Oh wait, we are. Most everything is packed now - the only thing really left is the kitchen pots and pans and the bedroom. The office is completely bare and will need some major vacuuming. I’m getting more nervous now that the day is coming up quickly. I hope that everything goes smoothly. Calling the new place, everything seems great.

List of things I definitely need to do tomorrow:

• Pick up forwarding address thingys at post office
• Call everyone I can think of and give them the new address
• Call cable company and make sure cable will be turned on when we get there
• Call power company and turn off power at old place, turn on power at new place
• Pack all the things that I have on the list for Wednesday
• Somehow figure out the finances of the move

I shouldn’t be out of comission for more than a couple of days for some of the things which are involved with the office computer, and if something important comes up I still have my trusty iBook kira to work with.

Maintenance

Did the maintenance on the car a while back. It went pretty much exactly as described in the many webpages I looked up beforehand. I changed the oil and oil filter, air filter, and wiper blades. For some reason, one of the old wiper blades was shorter than the other. I would have rotated the tires as well, but I couldn’t find jack stands (2 separate stores) so I got ramps instead. Maybe I can borrow someone’s jack and jack stands and rotate the tires - beats paying $30 to get it done for me. Hell, for $30, I can buy the jack and jack stands when I find them. Still need to schedule the other maintenance, I’ll probably do that today.

Biking

Things are going well with the biking. Friday’s ride map is available. A little over 4 miles in half an hour, I can’t say it was bad, but I was much too tired at the end of it. I definitely need to get back in shape. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up doing it every morning for at least half an hour. Hoping to make it around Hiawatha Lake in the same amount of time soon, and then the goal is Nokomis Lake. I really need to get some gloves for biking though, and probably rewrap my handlebars.

Random Stuff

I’m thinking of switching from WordPress to Drupal. This mostly revolves behind me wanting to put more “normal” pages up on the website about scripts that I write and random software projects, and probably a CV as well. I just started using Drupal for a site that I am creating and the flexibility of it is really one of it’s bonuses. The themes are easy to change and the site in general is easy to make - menus are a snap and creating static pages is practically the default. On the other hand, WordPress has been pretty good and it seems that some nice things are coming down the line, and Drupal doesn’t seem to be as blog-friendly. Also, I will want to import all of my WP stuff into Drupal and I’m not quite sure how to do that yet.

I got something like 60%-70% on the Debian Quiz thingy. I don’t agree with some of the “correct” answers (there seems to be more than one right answer on some questions), but I don’t mind.

My japanese name is 森田 Morita (forest field) æ‹“æµ· Takumi (open sea). Take your real japanese name generator! today! Created with Rum and Monkey’s Name Generator Generator.

Yesterday I took a day and went to meet the old gang at the old stomping grounds. Mostly we just hung out and chatted about old things and new things, and crackpot theories. I had a good time, but I was getting really tired of it at the end. I also put a bunch of miles on the car.

I need to do a bunch of things to the car, the least of which are rotating the tires and changing the oil. I am fairly confident that I can do both of those myself, but feel strange doing it when I don’t have a garage or driveway of my own. I also need to do some more complicated things (flush transmission, drive fluid) which I’ll have done at a shop for sure. I’ll probably change the air filter, since those are a piece of cake. I don’t think it’s allowed to change the oil or do any maintenance in our parking lot, so I may have to do this stuff on the street curb (always tons of fun). It would be nice to find a place I could do this inside.

I have updated the TrainSched Twin Cities Files to include Routes 16 and 50 (combined in one file).

I decided yesterday that I was going to start biking again regularly, so today I cut my bike down from it’s location (I had used zip ties to hold it in the closet over winter) and started out. I found out pretty quick that I wasn’t going to go far with this bike - the tubes had all lost their air over winter and I quickly punctured the back tube. I also noticed that the tires were very old and the threads where showing (I got this bike for $20, remember) so I thought it was high time that I learned how to fix my bike. After some help from a decent webpage and Wal-Mart and SportMart (I would have gotten everything I needed from Wal-Mart but they only had one tire), I had a functioning bike again. I also have a spare tube now just in case I bust another one. Replacing the tubes and tires was surprisingly easy - I think I have the drop-out back wheel to thank for that.

After I conquered my bicycle maintenance need, I figured I should go for a ride anyway just to make sure I hadn’t screwed everything up. I intended to go along my “normal” route (I’ve only taken it twice), I got sidetracked when I forgot the turn that I was supposed to take, and had a little sojurn through Mendota. The kickass Google Maps Pedometer can show you the route. Just shy of 10 miles, but it was pretty hot out and I had forgotten my water bottle (doh!) so I had to take a couple breaks in the middle - not that I minded stopping - the route is very scenic. I actually stopped down by the river in Mendota since I was there anyway. It was the middle of the day, which is obviously the worst time to go biking without water (eek! sun!).

Tomorrow I start with water and a bike that works early in the morning. Hope this gives me the kickstart that my day needs usually. Velocity last night was not too bad, although sortof short. Tonight should be crazier, they just called me asking if I could come early.

Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (Book) Authors:David Allen Manufacturer:Penguin (Non-Classics) Released:31 December, 2002 Rating: B+

I came across this book through a few interesting websites, 43folders being one of them. The “GTD” system for time management has been bandied around the geek-sphere recently it seems. You don’t actually have to read the book in order to get the main ideas of GTD, but I thought that dancing around the edges without diving in is a disservice to a system like this. The good part is that it does actually help you, well, get things done. Everyone has their own systems for figuring out what needs to be done in a day - this book seems to distill a bunch of good ideas into one system which works decently well. I have implemented it myself and present my findings here. If you find that your life is in disarray and you can’t decide what to do (what did you do yesterday? why didn’t you do X?) then you may want to give this book a try.

Well, for understatement of the year, I haven’t been updating much recently. I’ll try not to be too long-winded.

Trip to England

As some of you saw, in May we took a trip to England. I didn’t get to meet anyone there that I knew, but hope to go back. The trip was pretty stressful on Di, which made it not so much fun. Definitely next time we go, we will stay closer to London and get to spend more time together. There is just much more to see in London and everywhere else. One thing that I did like about England was the traffic control - or rather the lack of traffic control at many places. It surprised me how many of the intersections were roundabouts instead. If only we could get a few more of those here - and people would learn how to use them. There’s a roundabout near Minnehaha Park here and everyone exhibits complete lack of knowledge on how to use them, it’s always frustrating.

New Job

I got a new job in order to make some extra money, mostly on weekends and nights. I’m working ~10-12 hours a week couriering for Velocity Express in the Twin Cities area. The work is very easy, and it gets me basically free gas and maintenance on the car through the business I setup for it (all drivers are Velocity are independent contractors). Sometimes when work is slow, I watch some anime again. I’m not sure how long it’s going to be before I quit again, but it’ll probably be sometime in the next two months.

New Place

Di and I decided that we were going to move a while back, and the crazy apartment searching ensued. We have decided on a new place, the Franklin Coop. The apartment is nice - granted, it would have to be really bad in order to be worse than the place we’re at currently. It’s in a slightly less nice neighborhood, but it’s a much more convenient - the grocery, bank, university, and light rail are in walking distance. We’re moving at the beginning of September, with the help of some movers. We’ve worked out where all of the furniture is going all ready, and have started packing. It’s probably a little early to start, but we figure that the sooner we start, the less work it’s going to be at the end of the process. The people at the moving crew were very nice and give every intention of making the move the smoothest that we have ever done. New addresses to everyone who thinks they need one soon.

Books

I’ve finished both Getting Things Done, The Empty Cradle, What Just Happened, and should be posting reviews soon.

New Toys

I got a few new toys - a power inverter to run the iBook in the car, a new cell phone, and a Palm Zire 21. I picked up the Palm on a eBay for a nice small price, and it’s been a big help with keeping me on task and at my appointments. I also am really happy with the environment that Palm has setup for programming, and I hope to delve into the world soon. There seems to be a dearth of free (as in speech) programs out there for it. I downloaded a nice Transit Schedule program called TrainSched. Unfortunately, it requires the schedules to be in a specific format which isn’t easy to get out of Metro Transit site. I started converting the schedules today and plan on continuing. Behold, the Twin Cities TrainSched page. Expect one more database file to be uploaded each week. Next week: 16/50.

New SCCS

I started using arch exclusively. It’s branching and merging tools make it not only easy to follow other source control systems, but easy to make changes locally or a small branch of changes which then gets merged back. I’ll be putting the debian stuff in arch soon, so it’s not just sitting on one computer begging for a hard drive failure.

I discovered TrainSched for the Palm, and wanted to use it for my purposes in the Twin Cities, so I started creating data files. The CSV files are what are fed into the tool included with trainsched to produce the PalmDB files. I’ve tested the DBs here shortly, but not extensively

And I just finished reading the book…

Steve Kemp: I agree with you. Websites should always be accessible sans-www. So do many others.

Also, your blog seems to have some problem with commenting on your most recent post.

I’ve decided that I am going to ditch my cell phone in favor of a cheaper VoIP solution. This requires me to change phone numbers unfortunately. If you have my old cell phone number and need my new number, I give you one of two options:

• email or IM me
• Call my old number before Wednesday, May 25