Mutterings - June 14

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Late :: Dead
2. Encourage :: Befriend
3. Patience :: Spider (the card connection)
4. Loss :: First (piano piece by Schumann)
5. Favor :: Curry
6. Annoying :: Whine (must be the air conditioning in the new offices!)
7. Dealbreaker :: Betrayal
8. Staple :: Diet
9. Consume :: Soup (and there's a first read of that as consommé!)
10. Validation :: Support

Beyond Inclusion: Part One - Lizzie Lowe's Story - Growth but at a price

An interview with the vicar of St James and Emmanuel Didsbury about their response and growth towards inclusion following the death of Lizzie Lowe. Their church's silence on difficult matters of sexuality led Lizzie to believe that she coud not be loved by them or by God as a young gay person. They realised they needed to change. This is worth the watch and consideration. Read more on the church's acions and her story at st james and emmanuel

Mutterings - June 9

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Fanatic :: Wild-eyed
2. Rise :: Sun
3. Ache :: Heart
4. Oh oh oh :: how good is the Lord (very 60s-ish chorus)
5. Chips :: with everything
6. Best of :: Luck
7. Lost :: Souls (Gogol)
8. Gamble :: Dostoyevsky (obviously on a russian novel track!)
9. Longing :: for home
10. Crowd :: Threatening (resists Madding!)

Fosdem 2018

This is going back a bit but earlier this year I went to FOSDEM in Brussels and this is my report for work on what I saw and heard.

I spent Saturday in the community dev room some interesting thoughts on building and supporting open source communities.
- Talk by Riccardo Iaconelli on Italy as hacker friendly, he described the policy all municipality projects are open source
https://developers.italia.it/ some discussion on how to encourage small municipalities to make source open
when those who are 'not our electors' get it for free
- An entertaining talk by Brian Proffitt of Redhat on Media 101 for communities - how to get the
message across to more than just the echo chamber.
- Then Kevin Fleming of Bloomberg on Software philanthropy for all - a talk about how they engage their
staff in volunteer community projects. Running a git event in New York they found that it helped their volunteers' cross project communications. `Pick what you're good at not what's shiny`
SeeKevin on Twitter
- A talk by Jeremy Garcia not so interesting but a nice demo of MeasuerOSS
> don't consider what you want to measure but what you want to accomplish
- Draws veil over the community karaoke and dancing (relieved to see this wasn't recorded) - but there was an advert for [FrOSCon](https://www.froscon.de/) which they emphasised takes place in warmer weather!
- Finally a talk by Vicky Brasseur on `Passing the baton' on planning for succession
Wikipedia page on succession planning implies only leaders need this - not true - described 'bus factor', How frequent interchange of roles prevents ruts, reduces load (by more knowing)
increases motivation. She moved rather quickly. Limit tenure for role (because you then have backup if you move on)
Slides (and notes) at succession planning

Sunday I was in the Distros devroom, far too much light coming from the back to see many slides.
- A talk from Andrej Shadura of Collabora (he wanted to do a LAVA talk but it wasn't accepted)
Talked about [apertis.org](apertis.org) a weird mix of Ubuntu and Debian
- Richard Brown on Distributions are not democracies. Beneficiaries of an open project are not the users but the contributors/maintainers
Differentiated between projects which reinforce the status quo (eg Apache, Ubuntu) and those having technical
committees which are less 'controlled' by the organisation. Usually the motivated rather than the better solutions win?
'democracy is the art & science of running the circus from the monkey cage' HL Mencken. Appeared to want democracy and yet..
- Others with more background have commented on Tristan's talk.

Touristy photos
Ate more waffles than last year.

Adding some culinary comments later.. ah yes at last - the first evening we ate Chez Leon - - mussels! Then asagain as the previous year it was to the Sushi train at Kabuki and the last evening we ate somewhere Brazilian near the Codethink hotel - I stayed elsewhere this year, slightly quieter and breakfast was included!

Flaky rocks

Here's my latest terragen render

rather too flaky the rocks? maybe I should calm down that shader a bit?

Wonders why the picture doesn't show - if you click on the image it will download!

Mutterings - May 22

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Justice :: (like a ) Rolling Stream - old testament - I see I've conflated the justice and righteousness bits.
2. Fireball :: Comet
3. Hip :: Surgery
4. Click :: Billiards
5. Leak :: Government (sometimes deliberately...)
6. Weekly :: Time Sheet
7. Instagram :: Photo
8. Massage :: Stretch
9. Reference :: Employment (I'm getting beyond some of these links soon..)
10. Wedding :: Royal - of course - though I didn't watch any of it live, I had a dental appointment!

Mutterings - May 15

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Concentrated :: Acid
2. Move ahead :: Police (instruction)
3. Weird :: Nights (misremembering the Wild Nights movement of Adams Harmonium!)
4. August :: birthdays (my mother and my daughter)
5. Fresh :: Lemons
6. Actually :: Present
7. Program :: (args) a faulty syntax piece of pascal programming language!
8. Finder :: Keeper
9. Disclaimer :: Legal
10. May :: Night - not quite nights but more music - this time a Rimsky-Korsakov opera!

Teaser Tuesday - May 15

The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Shelley and Stanley passed a joint between them and we all drank tea and talked and then went out and stood crowded on their tiny balcony to watch the muted sunrise through columns of blown rain. It was a good night.

from Gwendoline Riley's Cold Water our book group book of March, I selected this having been asked for a book of local interest. This book of a worker in a Manchester Northern Quarter bar with an ex-boyfriend in Macclesfield appeared to fit the bill! I was though one of the few who enjoyed the book - a bit dank and dismal but wonderful observations!

Mutterings - May 10

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Capsule :: Gemini (age!)
2. ZZZs :: Snores
3. Reprimand :: Disciplinary
4. Democratic :: Oath
5. Wrist :: Slap
6. Spiked :: Drink
7. Sick :: Cat
8. Lipstick :: Purple
9. Surround :: Sound
10. Census :: Bethlehem

Mutterings - Apr 29

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Kitchen :: Sink
2. Luck :: Beginner's (Rabbit?)
3. Ball :: Cock (sorry - but I'm sure mine is linked to sinks and plumbing!)
4. Master :: Draughtsman (or in IT git master - version control..)
5. Chocolate :: Bunny
6. Avoid :: Skid
7. Tired :: and emotional (George Brown I think?)
8. Sleepy :: Dopey (we're considering meeting room names in the new work offices and there's 7 rooms so one submitted suggestion was..)
9. Diet :: Calorie
10. Top :: MOnitor system (top is a Linux command for displaying machine hogs)

Mutterings - Apr 18

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Frustration :: Bang (the table)
2. Mistaken :: Identity
3. Twirl :: Give us a ...
4. Constipation :: Bloat
5. Purple :: Haze
6. Phone :: Message
7. Frizz :: Hair
8. Sequel :: Suspense
9. Ache :: Tooth (muttered with feeling)
10. Fat :: Subcutaneous

Mutterings - Apr 3

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Error :: Message
2. Kitty :: Malone (web searches...)
3. Delay :: Timing
4. Scale :: Model
5. Calculation :: Geometric
6. System :: Failure
7. Innovation :: Brilliant
8. April :: Shower
9. Comforter :: Spirit (Holy)
10. Frustrating :: Lost

Glacial Firefox

Recently my firefox installation here on the desktop has started behaving very oddle. It's running very slowly and even going to one tab and then returning to the previous one at that point refreshing the webpage happens (apparently) very slowly - this occurs even for the 'blank' tab. I'm running the beta and am on 60.0b8. The menus are fine it's just displaying content. I've restarted several times and the beta has also upgraded - also involving a restart. This is with Ubuntu 17.10 and I see I'm not the only one with this problem seeing a discussion on the mozilla.support.firefox newsgroup - and in the other case the problem is with a Windows installation. It takes over 10 seconds to display the 'blank' page- weird, about to try a restart without addons. Even posting this blog firefox sits down for a rest every few words.
PostScript..I've restarted without addons which makes a little difference but still c 10 sec to display an already opened 'New Tab' tab.

Mutterings - Apr 2

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Food :: Hall
2. Storm :: Warning
3. Install :: Screen
4. Report :: School
5. Dream :: Wet
6. Analysis :: Structural
7. Redirect :: Browser
8. 78 :: No idea (oh
9. Weather :: Balloon
10. Protect :: Trade

Mutterings - Mar 26

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Impose :: Mountain
2. Surreal :: Fish
3. March :: 4:4
4. Optimism :: Blind
5. Conference :: Call
6. Matter :: Mind
7. Believing :: Faith
8. I :: am.
9. Brace :: Teeth (impending trips to the dentist but not for one of these!)
10. Fortune :: Cookie

(catching up!)

Teaser Tuesday - Mar 18

The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

I've not done one of these for a bit, but am enjoying this book!

She changed tack. "This watch is for Anna's own good, to disentangle her from her web of deceit

From The Wonder Emma's Donoghue's novel of moral complexity in 19th century Ireland.

Mutterings - Mar 18

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Prestigious :: tateur (completing the magician word in french!)
2. Guilt :: Shame
3. Booth :: Peanuts (the psychiatrist is IN)
4. Ambiance :: Soothing
5. Import :: Package (python language idiom)
6. Crisp :: Quentin
7. Show :: Light
8. Warm :: Fuzzies (I see it's in various web dictionaries)
9. Flapping :: Tent
10. Surge :: Tidal

Dawn on the way to the station

I'm still doing some early mornings, usually catching the 7:30 train into work and sometimes the dawn is worth a picture!

I seem to have missed out on pictures during the cold spell!

Mutterings - Mar 6

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Favorite book :: Well thumbed (evading challenge - though for me an impossible request)
2. Every day :: Prayers
3. Believe it :: See it
4. Up :: Down
5. Life :: Lesson
6. Exercise :: 108 steps
7. Week 1 :: January!
8. Country :: Walking
9. Quality :: Street (sorry!)
10. Favorite movie :: Classic (these words sound like a means of extracting password recovery questions :-))

Mutterings - Mar 4

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Awesome :: Experience
2. Race :: (not always to the ) Swift
3. Pear :: Sorbet
4. Unintentional :: Accident
5. Cough :: Wheeze
6. Repeat :: Mark (in music)
7. Aching :: Void
8. Vibrate :: Sympathetic
9. Tooth :: Ache
10. Insult :: Rage