Fosdem 2008 is already over. Definitively one of the most crowded editions, and the one people will refer to as the sauna edition, due to the high temperatures in the different rooms. Hereunder a list of sessions I frequented :


* I started in the Drupal devroom listening to 2 Drupal talks. The first featured some of the new goodies that are in Drupal 6, and will be in Drupal 7. Interesting, but way too short to get a good glimpse of the new version(s). The second talk was about Drupal theming. A bit dissapointing, cause it didn't shed enough light on the difficult task that is Drupal theming.


* Then of to the Mozilla devroom, where the boys of Miro were talking about their attempt of creating a full-featured media player, capable of getting its content from internet. Seems like they were trying to build an open source contestor against Joost or iTunes, or maybe they were just preaching the revolution in medialand, and in the meantime earn a buck with it. I'm afraid Miro will tumble in the big gap that's between Mac OS' media player and some Media Center software.


* The next session was a good intro into CentOS, the famous RedHat EL compatible distribution. Seven years of support, now that's what I call long-term. How can any sysadmin not fall in love with CentOS ?


* At that time, I suffered from a neck ache that was killing me, but I still joined the Debian devroom. Last year the room was way too small, but this year was even worse. Please Fosdem folks, give these Debian nerds a decent room to meet next year.
Petter Reinholdtsen is the sysv-rc maintainer in Debian, and has the power to halt every Debian box in the world by making a mistake in his package(s). The subject of his talk was the problem of the ordening in the rc-script numbering. The solution was a central authorising package, with some control scripts for Debian packagers. I must say I rather like the OpenSolaris SMF framework for starting services, a great centralised way -with logfiles- for service management. Have a look at SMF in a day if you want more detail about this great software.

Drupal 6.0 has been released, so I'm evaluating this right now on a local copy of this site. It's looking good, though I still need to make a list of modules I'm using which are not included in Drupal Core, find a way to implement taxonomy_image in the used theme, and most importantly, find some spare hours where I can do all this undisturbed. Tomorrow time to listen to the Drupal sessions on Fosdem, hopefully there are some interesting tips to find out.

I don't think anyone will notice, but I removed my home-brewn RSS feed daemon from this site, which was my own implementation of XULChannels. The software has been superseded by various RSS feedreaders and Planet software, and even I didn't consulted it anymore.

andLinux is a complete Ubuntu system capable of running Linux apps natively on windows. It uses the coLinux Windows compiled Linux kernel to achieve this, and you can install more applications with aptitude. I can imagine situations where I would like to use this.

Have you ever wondered why the Audi in front of you has a logo of four interlocked rings? Did you know that the Cadillac emblem was inspired by a family crest of a nobleman who later turned out to be a fraud? Neatorama.com offers a fascinating look into the evolution of some well-known car logos.

Gisteren mij toch laten verleiden om een (zwarte) Senseo te kopen. Sinds ik een Senseo kopje dronk bij mijn schoonbroer, was ik onder de indruk van de snelheid waarmee zoiets een kop koffie schenkt. En aangezien ik het iedere ochtend beu was om te wachten op mijn trage percolator, is zo'n speedo koffiezetter natuurlijk een geschenk uit de hemel. Maar superlekkere koffie ? Nee, dan toch liever uit de gewone koffiezet. Of een 'echte' koffiezetter, zo eentje die de bonen nog maalt. Maar wel pricy, helaas.


Ik moet natuurlijk wel de verschillende Senseo smaken eens proberen. Wie tips heeft, laat ze maar komen.

Face it, not all programs offer a good user interface, or lack some stability. Some even might even drive you crazy. In some cases you could probably write your own book on frustrations with the proprietary programs shown here. In other cases, you’ll discover that the open source alternative isn’t quite up to snuff yet. And, in other cases still, you’ll learn that some proprietary programs are real gems, but that the open source advocate can replace those gems with equally shiny objects from the open source repertoire.

Nexenta Core platform 1.0 is now available. NexentaCore includes the complete OpenSolaris kernel (Nevada build 82) and runtime, along with Debian and GNU toolchains. NexentaCore is a minimal (core) foundation that can be used to quickly build servers, desktops, and custom distributions tailored for specialized applications. However, unlike NexentaOS desktop distribution, NexentaCore does not aim to provide a complete desktop.

GMapsmania : 100 fun things to do with Google Maps. From planning a London tube journey, or aligning your satellite dish properly, to a 18th century map of France.

One image says more than thousand words. One beautiful image says more than your 50 page report why you need more server hardware. Adding gradients to RRDtool graphs adds the necessary schwung to your monitoring reports.