Posts for May 2007

2007-05-03: Usenet hierarchy work

Julien ÉLIE has been doing great work on tracking down information about various Usenet hierarchies, finding up-to-date group lists, and feeding me a ton of changes to the configuration that generates the ftp.isc.org list. I absorbed a bunch of that last weekend and tonight during the basketball game I got a ton more done. A few more sessions and I should have that up to date, which will be very nice and will get another thing off my list of things to feel guilty about.

The hot list now is this, Debian Policy work, INN, and News::Gateway. If I manage to get up to date with all of those things, I'll be feeling generally on top of my life again. Then the trick is to find the right balance of time so that I can stay up to date on everything that I'm doing.

2007-05-03 22:34 — Permanent link

2007-05-04: Even more hierarchy work

Down to only thirty messages or so to go through. I'm guessing that the delta on the ftp.isc.org list for this week is going to be too large to post.

At some point, I need to use all of this to update Stanford's news servers for the hierarchies we carry, and then consider carrying more text hierarchies. After I move them to Debian, though.

This is good; I feel like I've gotten something done today, after being in meetings essentially all day.

2007-05-04 23:31 — Permanent link

2007-05-07: "Tort reform"

The next time someone tries to claim that malpractice claims are making practicing medicine too expensive, that juries hand out millions of dollars on frivolous lawsuits, or that the legal system is out of control, pay close attention to who is pushing this agenda and follow the money. You'll find that many of these groups are funded by corporate interests and corporate defense attorneys. No wonder they feel that way.

There's an excellent summary at an old Making Light post that also has a great summary of the truth about bureaucracy and the reason why you should also be skeptical of anyone claiming that a procedure is too complex.

2007-05-07 18:29 — Permanent link

2007-05-10: pam-afs-session 1.4

With this release, I think the module is feature-complete relative to all of the other AFS-supporting PAM modules. This release adds HP-UX support and adds the afs_cells parameter to specify which cells to obtain tokens in.

You can get the latest version from the pam-afs-session distribution page.

2007-05-10 21:57 — Permanent link

2007-05-17: Latest book haul

Well, after a conference and then getting rather ill for a bit, I'm back, and am starting to get back into the regular patterns of life. I have a ton of stupid errands I have to take care of right now that are making me rather stressed, but hopefully I can clear out several of them in the next few days.

Meanwhile, while I was sick, a couple of Powell's orders came in, combined with some books that a friend picked up for me at the Palo Alto Friends of the Library book sale:

M.M. Buckner -- Neurolink (sff)
Emma Bull -- Finder (sff)
Samuel R. Delany -- Nova (sff)
Samuel R. Delany -- Triton (sff)
Nicola Griffith -- Always (mainstream)
Eric Hoffer -- The True Believer (non-fiction)
Fred Saberhagen -- Ardneh's Sword (sff)
Melissa Scott -- Shadow Man (sff)
J.R.R. Tolkien -- The Children of Húrin (sff)

I'm starting the new Griffith now. I've finished three other books that I haven't had a chance to write reviews for. Hopefully before too long.

2007-05-17 21:22 — Permanent link

2007-05-31: cvslog 1.59

cvslog was printing Perl warnings when the user running CVS didn't exist on the local system. (It tried to map the user to a full name and then didn't properly check whether that full name was undefined.) This is a minor release to fix that bug.

You can get the latest version from the cvslog distribution page.

(I actually released this a while back, but wasn't posting very much to my journal at the time and never announced it.)

2007-05-31 23:45 — Permanent link