Web log
My first morning in India I woke up very late in the house of Pavithrans parents. Pavithran was out organizing events for us, his father was at work, leaving me with his mother. She spoke little english - unsure if it was lack of skills or she was humble, or perhaps she just felt as shy as me in the situation.
How to, ahem, do your thing at a restroom when there is no toilet paper but instead a bucket of water? I decided to not yell for help but use my imagination.
How to eat breakfast local style? I knew from dinner previous night with Pavithran that local custom was to eat with my hands and that it (lucky for me) was tolerated in India to use left hand, so turned down the kind offer for a spoon. But were I supposed to mix rice with all the curries? Or one at a time? In which order? What if a curry was too hot to dip my fingers into? Was the liquid stuff to drink or to mix with the rice or eat afterwards?
I asked for help, and first she just smiled at my alien useless language and then when I persisted, she patiently demonstrated with her hands in my food how to do. The only natural thing to do, really, and I dearly appreciate her help and patiency. But wauw, it was mind-blowing to me! Since early childhood, fingers in food is a forbidden thing: "Don't play with the food!". On top of that, having someone else handle my dish while at the table is something I associate with being very old and needing to be spoon-fed.
In the afternoon we went for a small hike to an old stone fortress in the middle of Khammam - with a great view of the sun setting.
Next day we went to Sarada Institute of Technology & Science where I gave my first talk to about 100 students. I had intended to provide concrete facts on Debian generally and on my pet project, Debian Pure Blends, but then the night before decided to radically shift focus to their situation in the early twenties - as best as I could imagine it. Pavithran had clearly expected a different style talk, but I liked it and believe it was received well by the audience as well.
The teacher responsible for the event, Bhukya Jabber, afterwards asked for hints on running Debian at their computer lab. I suggested to not lock down access but instead make it easy to reinstall, and he explained how he was quite interested in a larger degree of learning-by-doing (which I had also promoted in my talk) but was constrained by curriculum dictated higher up in the educational system.
Late that day Pavithrans father introduced me to CPM Khammam - the local offices and community center of the Communist Party - and a colleague of his at the place, N. N. Rao. I instantly fell in love with the place and its atmosphere, and now have an open invitation to come back to spend 1-2 months to study and to collaborate with other users of the place (including some kids hosted there) on Free Software.
Next morning we headed back by train to Hyderabad…
I am still amazed how radical it feels sticking my fingers into food. Not the physical feeling (I am not that disconnected from my body) but similar to a discovery I had as a teenager: After 7 years of piano lessons (and numerous other instruments less patiently) I gave up because I felt it was too hard expressing personality through the instrument. I then sang - as I had always done, just not treating the voice as the serious muical instrument it then became to me. Similarly I now learned that eating with the fingers is not just yet another eating style like fork+knife or sticks - it is the natural one. Obviously, in hinsight.
This text is part of my Asia 2011 scriblings.
Arrival in a new country is always exciting. This was my first time ever to visit India, and although I have heard especially cultural bits and pieces, I was as usual nowhere near "well" prepared.
How to fill out the registration forms (surprisingly needed in addition to the visa already gathered ahead of departure) when your only known address in India is on the laptop you completely drained the battery of during the flight? Luckily they tolerated the "address during stay" to be left blank.
I got out in the heat of Hyderabad in the late afternoon, got a cab, and had my host instruct the cab driver - over the phone via roaming to Denmark - where to drop me off. After a long ride with cows and beautiful dressed pedestrians casually crossing the high speed road and a short pitstop at an ATM, I finally met Pavithran. Until then we only knew each other from casual online chat.
(I should later learn that my first impression was quite unusual - not cows or clothes or chat, but roads capable of driving at high speed!)
Pavithran checked me into a small hotel and we visited his home. It was in the middle of being rebuild, so impossible to stay at as had been our original planed.
After a few hours of looking at the neighbourhood and talking about possible events during the week, we decided to cancel the hotel and instead go visit his parents in Khammam, some 5 hours away by bus…
This text is part of my Asia 2011 scriblings.
First event of my trip was somewhat a gimmick: Give a 30 minutes talk on FreedomBox to an audience of 1 person, in the transit area of Heathrow airport, London.
A guy from India now living in London helped preparing my visit to India, an was eager to participate - so much that he was willing to drive out to the airport to meet me.
The meeting failed, unfortunately:
My flight got delayed, and my one-man "audience" got caught in other duties. 
Fun to try nevertheless. Also looking back, that crazy attempt to squeeze in a meeting during a 1 hour stop-over was an indicator of the general pace of the India trip…
This text is part of my Asia 2011 scriblings.
In september I visited Brussels, Belgium. EPFSUG had kindly invited me to give a talk about FreedomBox in the European Parliament, and together we extended to also visit other organizations - both grassroots and more formal.
I returned home exhausted but also fuelled with renewed energy and passion, and decided to engage in more such activities. Also, an old promise of mine to visit friends in the Aceh region of Indonesia (whom I met in Taiwan a few years back) rumbled in the back of my head.
After a bit of juggling with travel routes and sponsoring options, my course was set for a 2½ month journey with Debian Pure Blends as main theme:
- England: London
- India: Khammam, Hyderabad, Mangaluru, Bengaluru
- Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City, Can Tho
- Thailand: Bangkok
- Malaysia: Putrajaya
- Indonesia: Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Bogor, Banda Aceh, Takengon
- England: Cambridge
Debian will be sponsoring East Asia part, and Debian enthusiasts in India seek sponsorship for India part.
SMS is used to lock car doors
Copenhagen Carpool soon receive a new batch of electric cars. The new cars will contain a cellphone tied to the door locks, to only let into the car the member who booked its current timeslot.
I am setting up the system to connect the cars with their booking calendar.
The general idea is to…
- Connect a standard cellphone to a computer.
- Forward sms messages received on the phone to the calendar.
- Send messages from the calendar through the phone.
- Leave the system in a corner, turned on 24/7.
Most of my work is in trying to avoid ways things might go wrong — which so often happens when computers are involved.
What if… * messages are delayed or lost? * a chain of messages arrive out of order? * messages are sent faster than they can be delivered?
Reliable conversation
Human conversation is most reliable when using plain speak. Slang, sarcasm or jokes raise the risk of misunderstandings. This is quite similar in computer conversation.
When surfing the Web, you normally "GET" a web page or "POST" new data like a search query. The words "GET" and "POST" are "plain speak" of the World Wide Web — defined as a principle called "REST" or "RESTful design".
I use the Kannel tool to talk directly to the phones. When an sms arrives on the phone, Kannel "GET"s it to the calendar. That's weakly expressed — better if it had "POST"ed the message instead.
Kannel is a quite reliable tool, but not RESTful in conversations. That requires extra attention at other parts of the setup to avoid breakage in special situations.
That worries me.
Each car has a blog
So I setup a gateway from Kannel to RESTful conversation. And choose classic blogging as style of conversation:
- The carpool fleet is a blogroll
- each car has a blog
- each sms emitted from a car is a blog entry
Blogging comes in two flavors, — RSS and Atom. Both cover distribution of messages. I use Atom because it is newest and coolest, and because it also covers creating and editing meesages with the AtomPub extension.
AtomPub allows the calendar to create an empty message — which then triggers an sms from the car which "fills it in."
AtomPub also let the calendar "PUT" tags onto existing messages, to mark them as processed, read etc., and let an admin or a cleanup script "DELETE" outdated entries or blogs. The words "PUT" and "DELETE" are RESTful conversation as well.
The system is dancing!
My sms-to-blog gateway is written in Perl, using the Dancer toolkit.
Dancer makes it simple to setup a RESTful web conversation, and when I contacted the authors on IRC, they swiftly added support for the non-RESTful quirk that I needed.
My sms-to-blog gateway is not yet ready, but basic routines work. The project is public, and code is Free Software.
I am involved in developing something coined as the FreedomBox.
Explaining it to my mum the other day, she wisely asks if it, albeit clearly an exciting challenge we've picked, really is doable? Surely the World has gone sour, but is such radical change even possible?
Annoying question! And clever 
For some years, tech media has tried predict when Linux have reached momentum for ordinary users. That current or next year was to become the Year of the Linux Desktop. Funny thing, seen in restrospect, is how "the year" kept being postponed, and when finally OLPC paved the way for the boom of Netbooks and arguably we got there, the World had moved on: Now Free Sofware is as common and as usable on desktops as commercially driven systems. It is taken for granted, not praised, and we look forward for the Next Big Challenge (as geeks) or Next Big Excitement (as users).
Perhaps a similar fate is to be expected for FreedomBox: Initially when sparking our interest, and repeatedly since although we still today have nothing concrete to show - indeed even before we started hacking on it or knew the name of our dreams - our Prophet declared the Year of the FreedomBox. Not explicitly, but the cleverly phrased "right now."
I am excited and proud to be working on FreedomBox, and foolishly hope it will be ready for worldwide consumption in a very recent "right now" - well aware that most likely it won't happen like that. Thing is, I don't really care how it happens, if only something does. This is due to the way we work: Hacking may appear from outside as larger projects, but really is juggling piles of small pieces for an eternal jigsaw puzzle, with each piece usable in multiple ways and across projects. I do not work only on FreedomBox, just as I did not work only on Sugar before that, or only with Debian as my platform:
I work on Freedom-enabling technologies and ways to frame them for the Real World to use them with a vengeance.
I sure hope you take the results for granted. That's true success!
On november 12-14 the FOSSASIA conference is held in Việt Nam, with fellow Debian hackers turning it into a Mini-Debconf.
When initially confronted with the plan at Debconf10 I was thrilled to participate. When returning home, however, I decided (or let my girlfriend decide for us) to move to a beautiful old cottage house — unfortunately clashing with the FOSSASIA event.
Recently Andreas, scheduled to give a speak on Debian Pure Blends at FOSSASIA, had to cancel his trip. I then decided to participate after all, as that subject has been a passion of mine for a few years: I would be sad if this wasn't promoted at FOSSASIA, and I should hopefully know enough of it for an interesting talk.
After FOSSASIA I will stay another 1½ week offering to exchange ideas and knowledge with hackers in the area of Hồ Chí Minh.
Thanks to the friends convincing me to participate, especially Héctor, Andrew and Paul. And thanks a bunch to Debian for sponsoring the flight tickets!
Advanced: Undergone development, moved some steps forward
People tend to look at the word "advanced" as a positive term - as similar to "improved". But all it means is it has undergone development.
A rotten tomato is an advanced tomato.
To determine if development is positive one must consider the direction it is taking.
One could say that advancing implies moving forward, but "forward" isn't always the best way to go.
Logical: Structured, clinical
Logical is not the same as "simple". Although logical expressions can be as simple as "2+2=4", a computer contains so many layers of logic that they cease to be simple.
Computers are constructed logically, but so complex that they can be built only "somewhat flawless."
Effective: having a rapid impact
When you are effective you get alot done in a small amount of time or effort.
A tool is effective only if you become effective by using it.
For someone who don't know the path, no wind is a good wind.
Problem solving
Biggest challenges is in locating and describing a problem, not in fixing it. Problem solving badly prepared can even be damaging, because problematic structures below the surface can get even better hidden by a too simple "quick fix".
Read your emails with pleasure.
Read greetings from here and from there - also from ones who write "I love you", and enjoy Nigerians attempting in long phrases to persuade you to exchange your pin-code with a fictious diamant mine.
And have a curious look at those emails seemingly delivered to you by error: Your collegue from work quoting a piece in hebrew and attaching a Word document. Your swedish friend warning in english about a virus you immediately must remove using her attached Excel spreadsheet. Bill Gates himself personally inviting you to a contest about a Nokia phone - you only need to "click here". Or yourself(?!?) sending you some gibberish and attaching a compressed file…
Virus are in attachments!
So read calmly your emails. Just avoid opening ATTACHMENTS that you do not know about. Are you in doubt, then ask the sender for an explanation or clarification.
You should NOT be afraid to read emails, and you should NOT follow hastily instructions you do not understand.
Are you in doubt then consult your local geek.
(and are you afraid you will be laughed at, then consult me - I won't laugh!).
One freaky detail: Some email applications (especially those from Microsoft) are so "nice" as to open attachments automatically - without your prior request. Consult your local geek if you worry that you are "gifted" with such applications.
But above all: Don't get frightened! Fear and suspicion are unpleasant creatures, and irrelevant in relation to email virus.
- Jonas