A last good bye to Paul

Over the years I made a fair good number of "friends" over the internet. I use quotes because these are not the kind of folk you talk to when life is hard or with whom you go for a pint or two after work; most of them live thousands of kilometres away. These are folk with whom I exchange e-mails and forum comments, and by one reason or another mutual respect builds up to the kind of complicity that exists between real friends. I had the fortune to meet a few of them along the years, filling the gaps in my perception of their personality, many times in unexpected, but always positive, ways. But at best I get to see each of these folk once a year.

Earlier this week I learnt that one of my internet friends passed away. It was a news that left a special kind of void and logging in me.

Ubuntu sailing into uncharted waters

Every time a new Ubuntu release is out there is always some controversy on this or that new quirk the developers of this distribution decide to take. With a release cycle of only 6 months that's all to be expected for, if you're willing to use the latest Ubuntu you simply have to accept the fact that you're by default also a tester. That's pretty much one of the tenets of FOSS, more so with a product that tries to be as innovative as Ubuntu. About 18 months ago, when the new desktop environment was introduced a good deal of backlash came up. Indeed the first Unity versions were difficult to understand and buggy; but today, after absorbing its logic and with most bugs dealt with, I can only say it clearly improved my productivity over Gnome 2. That's just the way it is: the latest Ubuntu release is a bleeding edge product and you are part of its maturation process; if you don't like it you can always opt for an older release.

But only one month away from the introduction of Ubuntu 12.10 a new Unity feature has been made public that can potentially change all this.

Loose notes from a conference

Earlier this month I went to an Environmental Modelling conference in Leipzig to present an article on my current professional endeavours. On any field, conferences are mostly important for the networking you build, meeting people from literally all continents and finding new projects to work on. This particular conference was no exception on that regard, but apart from that, there were some interesting points in terms of software worthy of note. Below the fold is a loose collection of thoughts I brought back.

Bundes-Europa oder Tod

Since early age I've been fascinated with politics and the eternal melee around the steering of the common future. In many ways it resembles chess, a game that I much appreciate, were each side lays a series of tactics supporting a final strategy. Last week we had a display of political chess at its best, justifying once more my passion. In chess sometimes a player that had been losing material and apparently getting cornered to his half board can pull out an unexpected play that by exploring some weakness in the opponent's back defence can give him back the initiative. It was more or less that that Angela Merkel achieved by directly calling for a European Federation last week, exploring the fact that François Holland, her main opponent today, had to associate himself with euro-sceptics in his road to the French presidency.

Irrespective of her faith in her words, as usual Angela Merkel got the timing wrong. She says the federation has to be built in the next 5 years, but Europe doesn't have even 5 months, it might not even have 5 days. This call for a European Federation should have been issued 4 years ago, in the wake of the credit freeze. The elections in Greece this Sunday may just mark another moment when events overcome Angela Merkel, sending her back to the defensive.

Getting MySQL back after another Ubuntu upgrade mess up

In my first look on Ubuntu 12.04 I got the impression that everything went fine with the upgrade from version 11.10. And indeed during a few weeks things went as smoothly as before. Until last week. I had to test an old project and got complains about the database connection. This database is managed by MySQL, hence I tried to access it with MySQL Administrator, which, lo and behold, wasn't installed any more. Though zombie icons still remained within the launcher and main menu, all packages related to MySQL had been disabled by the upgrade. There you go Ubuntu, you did it again!

My first reaction was simply to search for available packages, and indeed version 5.5 of MySQL is available in the repositories for this new Ubuntu release. I immediately proceeded to the install command, with it that starting a painful journey to get MySQL back on Ubuntu.

The last ASPO conference

On the evening of the first day of the 10^th conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO), in Vienna, Rembrandt asked me if I'd write again the usual summary. My immediate answer was "No". Lack of time and motivation let me far from such undertaking. Hours later a title popped up in my mind; the dead time at airports and air planes provided the necessary space for the content.

The title "last conference" can be interpreted in varied ways. It can refer simply to the latest, it can also allude to this being the last ever, or even the last I'll ever attend. I haven't quite decided which is it. Below the fold is a short account of my feelings about ASPO 10, may it shed some light on the title.

A very rare concert

I found this by chance a few days ago. It is the most interesting video I've seen in quite some time.