I closed my eyes, opened them again, a new year began, and we’re even almost finishing January. Time flies.
In this article I’ll post some updates about my life with computer, software and free software communities. It’s more a “what I’ve been doing” than a “new year plans” post… it seems that I’m learning to not to make so much plans (life comes to break them anyways!).
At home
My home server is still running Debian Jessie. I’m happy that it just works and my services are up, but I’m sad that I couldn’t find time for an upgrade to Debian stable (which is now Debian 9 Stretch) and maybe reinstall it with another config. I have lots of photos and videos to upload in my GNU MediaGoblin instances, but also couldn’t find time to do it (nor to print some of them, which was a plan for 2017, and the files still sleep in external harddrives or DVDs). So, this is a TODO item that crossed the year (yay! now I have almost 12 months ahead to try to complete it!). I’ll try to get this done before summer. I am considering installing my own pump.io instance but I’m not sure it’s good to place it in the same machine as the other services. We’ll see.
I bought a new laptop (well, second hand, but in a very good condition), a Lenovo X230, and this is now my main computer. It’s an i5 with 8 GB RAM. Wow, modern computer at home!
I’m very very happy with it, with its screen, keyboard, and everything. It’s running a clean install of Debian 9 stable with KDE Plasma Desktop and works great. It is not heavy at all so I carry it to work and use it in the public transport (when I can sit) for my contributions to free software.
My phone (Galaxy S III with Lineage OS 14 which is Android 7) fell down and the touchscreen broke (I can see the image but it is unresponsive to touch). When normal boot, the phone is recognized by the PC as storage, and thus I could recover most of the data on it, but it’s not recognized by adb (as when USB debugging is disabled). It is recognized by adb when booted into Recovery (TWRP), though. I tried to enable USB debugging in several ways from adb while in Recovery, but couldn’t. I could switch off the wifi, though, so when I booted the phone it does not receive new messages, etc. I bought an OTG cable but I have no wireless mouse at home and couldn’t make it work with a normal USB mouse. I’ve given up for now until I find a wireless mouse or I have more time, and temporarily returned to use my old Galaxy Ace (with CyanogenMod 7 which is Android 2.3.7). I’ve looked at new phones but I don’t like that all of them have integrated battery, the screens are too big, all of them are very expensive (I know they are hi-tech machines, but don’t want to carry so valuable stuff all the time in my pocket) and other things. I still need to find time to go shopping with the list of phones where I can install Lineage OS (I already visited some stores but didn’t get convinced by the price, or they had no suitable models).
My glasses broke (in a different incident than the phone) and I used old ones for two weeks, because in the middle of the new ones preparation I had some family issues to care about. So putting time in reading or writing in front of the computer has been a bit uncomfortable and I tried to avoid it in the last weeks. Now I have new glasses and I can see very well 🙂 so I’m returning to my computer TODO.
I’ve given up the battle against iThings at home (I lost). I don’t touch them but other members of the family use them. I’m considering contributing to Debian info about testing things or maintaining some wiki pages about accessing iThings from Debian etc, but will leave that for summer, maybe later. Now I just try not to get depressed about this.
At work
We still have servers running Debian Wheezy which is in LTS support until May. I’m confident that we’ll upgrade before Wheezy reaches end of life, but frankly looking at my work plan, I’m not sure when. Every month seems packed with other stuff. I’ve taken some weeks leave to attend my family and I have no clear mind about when and how do things. We’ll see.
I gave a course about free software (in Spanish) for University staff last October. It was 20 hours, and 20 attendants, mostly administrative staff, librarians, and some IT assistants. It went pretty well, we talked about the definition of free software, history, free culture, licenses, free software tools for the office, for Android, and free software as a service (“cloud” stuff). They liked it very much. Many of them didn’t know that our Uni uses free software for our webmail (RoundCube), Cloud services (OwnCloud), and other important areas. I requested promotional material from the FSFE and I gave away many stickers. I also gave away all the Debian stickers that I had, and some other free software stickers. I’m not sure when and how I will get new Debian stickers, not sure if somebody from Madrid is going to FOSDEM. I’m considering printing them myself but I don’t know a good printer (for stickers) here. I’ll ask and try with a small investment, and see how it works out.
Debian
I think I have too many things in my plate and would like to close some stuff and focus on other, or maybe do other things.
I feel comfortable doing publicity work, but I would be happier if the team gets bigger and we have more contributors. I’m happy that we managed to publish a Debian Project News issue in DebConf17, a new one in September, and a new one in November, but since then I couldn’t find time to put on it. I’ll try to make a new issue happen before February ends, though. Meanwhile, the team has managed to handle the different announcements (release points and others) and we try to keep the community informed via micronews (mostly) and the blog bits.debian.org.
I’m keeping an eye on DebConf18 organization and I hope I can engage with publicity work about it, but I feel that we will need a local team member that leads the what-to-publish/when-to-publish and probably translations too.
About Spanish translations, I’m very happy that the translations for the Debian website have new contributors and reviewers that are making a really good work. In the last months I’m a bit behind, just trying to review and keep my files up to date, but I hope I can setup a routine in the following weeks to get more involved again, and also try to translate new files too.
Since some time, the Debian website work is the one that keeps my motivation in Debian up. It’s like a paradox because the Debian website is too big, complicated, old in some sense, and we have so much stuff that needs to be done, and so many people complaining or giving ideas (without patches) that one would get overwhelmed, depressed and sometimes would like just to resign from this team. But after all these years, it is now when I feel comfortable with the codebase and experienced enough to try things, review bugs, and try to help with the things needed. So I’m happy to put time in the website team, updating or improving the website, even when I do mistakes, or triage bugs. Also, working in the website is very rewarding because there is always some small thing that I can do to fix something, and thus, “get something done” even when my time is limited. The bad news is that there are also some big tasks that require a lot of time and motivation, and I get them postponed and postponed… 😦 At least, I try to file bugs for all the stuff that I would like to put time on, and maybe slowly, but thanks to all the team members and other contributors, we are advancing: we have a more updated /partners section (still needs work), a new /derivatives section, and we are working on the migration from CVS to Git, the reorganization of the download pages, and other stuff.
Some times I’d like to do other/new things in Debian. Learn to package (and thus, package spigot and gnusrss, used in Publicity, or weewx, that we use it at work, and also help maintaining or adopting some small things), or join the Documentation Team, or put more work in the Outreach Team (relaunch the Welcome Team), or put more work in Internationalization Team. Or maybe other stuff. But before that, I feel that I would need to finish some pending tasks in my current teams, and also find more people for them, too.
Other free software communities
I am still active in the pump.io community, although I don’t post very often in my social network account. I’ll try to open Dianara more often, and use Puma in my new phone (maybe I should adopt/fork Puma…). I am present in the IRC channel (#pump.io in Freenode) and try to organize and attend the meetings. I have a big TODO which is advance our application to join Software Freedom Conservancy (another item that crossed the TODO from 2017 to 2018) but I’ll really try to get this done before January ends.
I keep on testing F-Droid and free software apps for Android (now again in Android 2.x, I get F-Droid crashes all the time “OutofMemory” :D). I keep on reading the IRC channels and mailing list (also the mailing list for Replicant. If I get the broken phone to work with the OTG I will install Replicant on it and will keep it for tests). I keep on translating Android apps when I have some time to kill.
I have no idea who is going to FOSDEM and if I should talk to them prior to their travel (e.g. ask to bring Debian stickers for me if somebody from Madrid goes, or promote if there is any F-Droid or Pump.io or GNU MediaGoblin IRC meeting or talk or whatever) but I really got busy in December-January with life and family stuff, so I just left FOSDEM apart in my mind and will try to join and see the streaming the weekend that the conference is happening, or maybe later.
I think that’s all, or at least this blogpost became very long and I don’t find anything else to write, for now, to make it longer. In any case, it’s hard for me these days to make plans more than one-two weeks ahead. Hopefully I’ll write in my blog more often during this year.
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