Another interesting few days as I was quoted on the distrowatch weekly newsletter musing about some issues that going on with gentoo. In this instance about trying to be as transparent as possible about what going on from the inside, managed to get a bit of trouble going. Course it was also in some ways a good test of how my server would hold up under a large spike in people visiting. Hi to all of you who might of stuck around. The bandwidth died a horrible death under it though..course that’s what you get when you are not being colo’d somewhere.

This weeks top stories: Gentoo six feet under, yet larry is still alive and kicking?

The history of larry, and how she became a he. Including historical pictures of the surgery. Not for the faint of heart.

Forum personalities, who spends too much time on the forums and why are they here if they don’t use gentoo?

Why do we rice, a addicts story of why they used every gcc optimization in the book.

Other news as it comes in on the ticker that’s been compiled to run 200x faster then your binary compiled ticker.

In seriousness though, even if progress is agonizingly slow on some things, stuff is slowly getting done. Feeling more so as we prepare for some major updates that will hopefully surprise users in general. I’d like to think we can still surprise you all.

Also, I like to thank everyone who’s managed to crawl out of the woodwork to ask about becoming a Archtester and or head towards becoming a full Fledged developer. I think in the past week I’ve spent more time helping, explaining, making sure all the new people are heading in the right direction then doing actual development. I also believe that the total number of people that are heading towards being archtesters for the x86 team have doubled. I just hope that they stay around and enjoy the work. It might seem like grunt work, but it really does help the developers out a lot. It makes our job of testing the packages as well much much simpler.

Do you know what you are doing at 3am? I certainly do, it involves my inability to fall asleep tonight. Even on warm nights such as this I generally can fall asleep. Being 26 degree centigrade or right about 80 fahrenheit doesn’t help matters.

Tonight mostly its a issue with too much on the brain. I tend to avoid personal drama on here as much as I can, because really we all have enough of our own that we don’t want to deal with others. However tonight, I shall ramble and you shall traverse the twisted narrow paths that I follow in my daily life. So suck in that gut and prepare for a ride that you’ll like to put up a mental block for.

Most of the time when I can’t sleep like this is because I have a million things going on in the old brain. Possibilities, likelihood, every scenario of something that is bothering me, or in the case that I’m feeling particularly good about myself. Its to knock myself back to a much more manageable state.

One might wonder why I talk about knocking myself back to a manageable state. In the oddest sense of the word, I feel that I always have something to prove. I’m never good enough for whatever it is I’m doing. Hopefully, because of this strange way of handling things, there are a few consequences. I tend to hopefully be very grounded, believe that I’m not good enough for the people around me, or for that matter to love or be loved. This however doesn’t apply to family as I know I am loved. Just to those outside.

It’d be very easy to place the blame on the fact that from the start of dating, which was a utter disaster by the way that seemed to set a precedent for how the rest of my love life would go so far. That it was a problem with the women and not with me. However, this is a copout that is plaguing(I seem to like plagues…we need a good plague to reduce the population of the earth. Or a war, wars are good for controlling populations as well) (yes those were jokes in bad taste for some of you) our society. Parents won’t take responsibility for what their kids are doing. As a people in the US we are not standing up and telling the media to not blow things out of proportion. Instead, I’ve grown accustomed to only having a dog as a partner so to speak, and she’d happily go to anyone who fed her and tossed a ball. Much like some relationships have been as well.

I’d like to think that my parents generation had it right with how they were raised to take responsibility for their actions for the most part. At least that the hope and generally seems to be the way it is. Then you look at the people in Generation X and whatever the younger guys are called. You see the complete opposite. People run away from taking responsibility of their actions. What has changed in a generation? Computers have become widespread and allow people a level of privacy and anonymousity that gives them the courage to act how they want to act? Are we just so fed up with how everything is going that we’ll just snap and break into primordial monkey crap flinging fights? Perhaps there’s more pressure now and we don’t get away enough to relieve that.

A friend who recently popped up, like he does from time to time told me about a trip he was planning. He’s always been a bit of a free spirit who things seem to always work out for. He was talking about taking a motorcycle from Asia to Europe for four months. I’d love to have the ability to walk away from a job and feel secure enough to do something like that. I just can’t in part because of how I was raised. I don’t just go leaping off a cliff not knowing what is down below. I’d love to be able to just pick up and go when I wanted to but it just isn’t feasible for me at this point. One of my cousins who I love dearly has this ability to do what she wants. She has however dedicated herself to the cheetah foundation in Africa, which I find quite admirable.

This was going to start out about relationships but as it is with me, I went nope better random topics to talk about then personal things. Seemingly random questions seemed like a better plan in the end. Guess I just don’t want to end up like a emo kid with a livejournal.

A twisted look into my psyche. Sit and stay a while. The spiders and bats won’t eat you that quickly. Off to bed for me and possible deletion of this post in the morrow.

P.S Gentoo nominations for trustee’s still haven’t happened. Guy’s and Gal’s lets get our act together for that much at least. If need be consider this a official nomination for Grant Goodyear and Seemant Kulleen to be reelected for another year.

Well, its been a interesting week for me at least. I’ve gotten quite a few people annoyed at me it would appear because I’m actually going to attempt to do something about at least one problem in gentoo. It’s amazing in some ways that people will complain about the problem and then turn their back when it comes time to do something about it. It really makes me wonder in some ways how much these people care about the project they are working on. Its also much like the people who will support you in private, but will walk away when its in the public eye. Its nice to know you support me in private, however that doesn’t do any good when I actually need the support. Its appreciated but discombobulating.

All of this combined with the fact that working on gentoo has not been as much fun as it has in the past. Has made me consider retiring. I’m sure a few people would like to see me go, but its not quite yet that I’ll be going. Sorry to disappoint you on that matter. The reason I mention this is because, a lot of developers are considering the same exact thing. There’s lots of questions of why this is, and lots of if’s about what is causing it.

One that was brought up by talking with seemant, was the fact that Gentoo isn’t the same kind of a community project it once was. Its also not a business either. We’re in a transition to something that isn’t either. As there’s a whole great huge percentage of devs that would hate to have this be a business. There’s also some that would love to see it become one (I’d like to hear from people from each side their reasons for your thoughts on the matter). So where in the middle do we fall? No matter the problem, there always seems to be a middle. As a organization, we don’t have a rich uncle to support the development of the product and hire people like flameeyes to work on it full time. I’d love to as a organization be able to do such a thing, but financially it isn’t feasible. Our community is great with support, technical and financial. It keeps the infrastructure equipment running in a fairly content state. We also are quite lucky with the vendors that we’ve become associated with. Without their donations we’d not be where we are today.

So in many, many ways we are a very lucky community to have the support internally and externally. So why do we still have the issues we have. Its a matter that people really do truly suck at being humans. There is little to no herd mentality within the human race. Many people are far better off in the lone wolf state then actually interacting and communicating in a effective manner with other people.You can’t force those people to work with a pack well, however there are ways to keep them from invading and taking over and controlling yours. That just takes one member of the pack to stop and say no, and in theory others will follow. In practice, with gentoo development, the opposite happens. The person who stands up notices that the rest of the herd has just kept on moving away.

Well, I think I’m filling the shoes of another dev who wasn’t known for brevity either. So who actually reads down to this part at all?

Well, I’m back from Toronto and the business trip that I was there for. It was fun and actually met a few people there. That is unusual for me as I tend to avoid new people because I’m shy. No one is going to believe me about that.

Not a whole lot going on with gentoo though. I think that’s mostly to do with a great big helping of apathy. The foundation has this currently with elections and the fact that we should at least be getting nominations going if nothing else. This is what I’m talking about as a plague on the project as it stands now. One which has allowed the trolls to take over and command that we are like debian. Sorry guys over at debian, but you have to admit you are famous for the flame wars as much as anything else.

I’ve grown tired of it and I’m going to stop avoiding doing anything like everyone else is doing. I’m going to actively go after the trolls and the people who only seem to like to stir up trouble. One of the reasons I think people have not gone after it is because of the potential consequences. Its quite likely that whoever goes after these people will have Developer Relations on their asses. Which could lead to the forceful removal of that person. Its rare for me to take such a risk for something I enjoy for the most part. However, its something that someone has to do to stop the regression to primordial human beings who knock each other out and drag them by their hair.

One solution that has been mentioned is appointing a new Lord and Master of the project that would be the vision of where we are going as a group. This would work if we had someone with a strong enough will to stay a course that was in the interest of the project as a whole. This is a very hard thing to look at and try to be impartial about as we all have a vision of what gentoo should be. In all reality we need to find a system that just works for us now and stay with it until something changes that allows us a better option. Management isn’t the key problem right now, its the actual developers themselves and that apathy. If we were to get rid of that. It’d get a lot better in the long run as people would take care of the situations themselves before it can get out of hand.

In personal stuff related to Gentoo, I’ve stepped up to take over for mark on the x86 team as people said yep to Halcy0n’s recommendation of me taking over his position as co-lead of the project. Its yet another thing to take up my time, along with cause more headaches dealing with people who just want to cause issues. Userrel went off and apparently had some fun while I was gone. Christel is aggressive when it comes to making things happen. Which has its advantages, but I’d of liked to have talked about the gentoo women idea before it was seemingly randomly approved by the three or so active members of userrel. So far unfortunately I’ve been mostly absent for userrel for all the things going on above. Its not something that I know I’ll be able to correct or really improve upon but, I’d like to at least know and toss in some opinions on the various sides that can be involved with something that is thought up. I might not be able to think up every side but I generally can come up with some people don’t think about and can give cause to a pause on moving forward with haste.

Well its election time again, posters are starting to go up 5 months before the polls go on. This is also the case for gentoo, elections should be upon us. A overly boring time for gentoo as no one wants to be involved with the foundations work. As I’ve discussed previously, that’s because no one thinks about the importance of what they do. Notice how I keep harping on this point?

The 501(c) is progressing slowly, and hopefully we’ll be a full non profit soon, one which donations will be tax deductable for people who always end up paying (like say me!). Its also a nice way to say where the money that would go to the government..goes to someone who you would prefer. The bank moving is where it was last I heard. I was supossed to get some info which hasn’t happened and don’t think will be coming. Grant hopefully has the issues with paypal resolved and will be getting out the previous quarters funding information out relatively soon… These are all fairly important if “boring” things. Finally, there’s finding a home for the foundation. Which reminds me to write back to another organization that as kind enough to give me some information about how to go about a few things. (Note to self: email Daniel about this as well)

In other news as most people who follow a few of the mailing lists have seen, I’ve become the colead of userrel. In the slightly odd move as I tend to not like being a person at the front of stuff. I prefer working in the background and be the silent hand leading. No I’m not a puppet master! *kicks the marionnette setups under the couch* Ahem, part of the reason I am doing it is because I enjoy interacting with users, in some cases much more then developers. It will however get me more involved with the politics that run through any organization. Userrel is one of those projects that people will either love or hate, depending on how they view opensource. The naysayers will talk about the fact that users can talk to the dev’s directly without fear. While true, as some people will say, we have developers who are quite easy to talk with..but quite busy at the same time..and then we have equally busy developers who have social skills that are on par with a sloth toed lemur. The former are quite easy to talk to as a user, the latter well leaves you coming away with a bad taste in your mouth possibly.

What’s all my animal analogy have to do with userrel. Well for one I’d like to help gentoo return to the tighter knit community between developers and users. One which users won’t be afraid to come talk with us and fear getting bamboozled or worse ashamed of having asked or suggested something. It took me a good week of thinking heavily about it before I decided to become a member of the project. I still have a lot of concerns that I hope to address; and the changes will take time, lots of it as it will all be slow changes in minor ways. Don’t look for something overnight. Its a delicate path that has to be taken.

I’ve wanted to work on my website for a while now and add a new theme that I’ve had in my head for a while. I started a new skin for it this weekend and ended up tossing it away. Mostly because I learned that the banner/logo ends up being the basis of my designs for colors etc. I tried to do other aspects of it and ended up disliking it and junking it all. Guess I should learn to do things in the order that works for me on design.

Edit: I’ll be in Toronto for the beginning of next week, if any devs are in that area let me know. I’d like to meet ya, assuming the business I’m up there for doesn’t go into the wee hours of the night.

Its somewhat interesting that I don’t feel like I have time to work on writing anything lately. Even if there has been at least one interesting thing going on.

The other day a coworker gave me a article about tree’s being one of the best crops to grow simply because they are overall non destructive to the environment and create vast area’s of ecosystem under their canopy. Now I’d not thought about it in depth but what was said is entirely correct.

One such example that was stated involved the explosion of Mount St Hellens. Part of it was owned by a private timberland company who went in right after it, collected all the destroyed timber for close to 100,000 homes and planted two year old Douglas firs. Now also consider that all the heavy equipment also caused the ash to mix in with the nitrogen rich soil, which allows seedlings to have a fairly good chance of sprouting. Those tree’s are now over 20 feet tall and will be viable crop in 20 years. The other half that was created as a experiment by the government and left untouched is still quite bare.

That is actually a amazing example of how concerted efforts to provide proper forest management can do far better then anyone would expect. This now leads me back to my own family.

My grandfather was a logger for a good portion of his life, as was his father before him. Unlike a great portion of the loggers at the time, the didn’t clearcut area’s and leave them to become meadows where tree’s can’t spawn again. They selectively logged. One of the advantages of this is that it allowed sunlight to again penetrate the canopy and new growth tree’s could sprout and reach back up to the canopy. They were really ahead of their time in that respect.

Now, why would I talk about tree’s as much as I am. Simply because of the fact that wood doesn’t require a ton of added energy to do anything with it. To create steel requires a huge amount of effort and pollution. Tree’s absorb the pollution as they grow and then get used for heat, homes, paper, and furniture. Consider also the fact that 60% of the wood that is cut down is used for heating and cooking and you can see that its a very valuable resource.

So here’s something to consider..What would happen if we were to say remove some farmland that is used for grazing and convert it to a tree that would live in that area. It’d create quite a few acres of new forest land where many wildlife creatures would live. Its just a very interesting idea.

This then brings us to growth in general. As cities grow more area is covered with asphalt and concrete, those area’s become death zones for anything really. The illusion is created that its healthy and vibrant and that’s running in the other direction of what actually is happening. The growth of the area for nature becomes basically nil. I guess that could explain why I’ve always hated living in large cities.

Would like to thank Patrick Moore for his in depth article. I have paraphrased parts of his writings in this posting. You can find his site at http://www.greenspirit.com