jmtd → log → debian → Post 'RSI'

A quick summary of the last few weeks. It's been a bit quiet, mainly because I had a cold which kept me from work for 3 days. However, during the build up and for a time after that I was keeping offline as much as possible as I had "arthgesic" symptoms (in short, painful wrists).

I took a look at the debconf6 DVD release candidates and found that the menus didn't work quite as expected on two of my hardware players. After a few exchanges of tests (change this byte here, etc.), Ben Hutchings managed to sort the problem in time for the final release.

Ben also kindly helped me get doom-package into shape and sponsored the upload. After a nail-biting wait in NEW (which in all fairness was not long at all), the package has made it into Etch.

One package I'm working on which is not intended for Etch happens to be a Java program. It's quite an interesting one for me, too, because it's graphical, but it uses AWT rather than Swing, and happens to work very well with the Free Software Java implementations.

I'm up to Philosophy and Procedures in the NM process. In preparation, I'm re-reading all the main Debian documents. This has actually proved fruitful, as I've spotted some mistakes and started filing corrections for them. This reminded me of the AM and NM talks at Debconf6, where there was some discussion about how feasible practical tasks are for the NM process.

I've missed a few weeks of Debconf work, but I managed to catch the meeting on Monday night and I'm taking charge of Accommodation from here on in. The importance of this is rather frightening but I've assured people I'll scream for help if it's necessary.

Finally, I've just bought a Thecus n2100 home NAS server. This is an interesting ARM-based machine that happens to work reasonably well with Debian. They also seem to have supported the porting effort by providing free machines to some developers, which is great. Although I did buy this to function as a NAS server, I'm hoping I can help out with the port (and learn a bit about embedded systems in the process).