Patrick's playground

The previous post was False.

The next post is True.

Row, row, row your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

Sometimes it is hard to see the difference between this reality and the other reality we call dream. What is a deja vu if not you remembering the potential future you dreamt last week becoming the now?
Worry not about the future, you're moving backwards in time and can't remember what had already happened. All you can remember are fragments of the future, but they are all fuzzy ...
Why is it that dreams are more interesting than being awake? You move to your own reality, not moving or communicating with the rest of the world. Is reality a bad dream we can't escape? Are dreams the reality you are in and reality is just a coherent dream that happens when you are asleep over there?
Reality isn't fixed. Reality isn't stable. Your brain tries to cheat you and filters the glitches, but sometimes they leak through. Coincidences. Impossible things. Extra-sensory perception. It's all there if you listen, but we are trained not to. What is out there can be scary, it is much easier to live in a nice and tidy newtonian universe that was created 4200 years ago by the Watchmaker, who wound it up so it ticks and ticks until it stops.
Crazy, you say? Your conensual hallucination must be true because fnord everyone else sees it. So never mind (no, mind never use) and go back to sleep ... dream of an alarmclock waking you at 6:45am, oh no workday, better wake up, get out of bed ...
Sleep well, universe, for I shall fall asleep now and awake somewhere else. Where you are but a distant dream, and when I go to sleep there I dream you again. Don't be too serious, or I'll not dream you tomorrow, and then there will be nobody to care because they have all been forgotten.
Wake up.

So I've been thinking. (Yeah, scary thought. Get used to it!)
There's tons of old, stale bugs. And few people care about them. Some of them are even obsolete because for example the version triggering it is no longer there. So for all intensive purposes (haha, got you there. Still twitching?) these bugs can be considered INVALID or FIXED.

Now I'm quite busy finding new bugs, and there's only so many hours in a day. So some help is needed. And that's where you can show your skills!
If you feel like having some fun with bugs.gentoo.org and manage to locate some bugs that are (a) very old and (b) look like they can be closed I'll have a look and close them if that is true. The best mode of communication is #gentoo-bugs on irc.freenode.net, there's a good chance you'll get someone else to mangle it if I'm not available.
I'll try to keep a list of bughunters and bugs they got closed and post the statistics if it looks like y'all are making it enough of a challenge. Can you reach the top? :)

In other news, yesterday was bugday, and almost noone cared. This sucks and needs some rectifimacation. We hate bugs, that's why we hunt them!

I've updated the sqlite DB index for my small pkg-search tool.
It contains the files of 8400 packages built for i686 now and is just under 100MB unpacked. Impressive!

To save some space I've switched to lzma for now. Saves near 20% on the compressed file, so less download for you. Thingy can be found here

I've been badly annoyed by some ads lately. As I'm already using AdBlock in Firefox and started growing a large banlist in Konqueror too (leaving Opera dangerously exposed) I started modifying my approach. So here's my additions to /etc/hosts:

# google
127.0.0.1       ssl.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1       www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1       pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1       pagead.googlesyndication.com 
127.0.0.1       adservices.google.com        
127.0.0.1       imageads.googleadservices.com #[Ewido.TrackingCookie.Googleadservices]
127.0.0.1       imageads1.googleadservices.com                                        
127.0.0.1       imageads2.googleadservices.com                                        
127.0.0.1       imageads3.googleadservices.com                                        
127.0.0.1       imageads4.googleadservices.com                                        
127.0.0.1       imageads5.googleadservices.com                                        
127.0.0.1       imageads6.googleadservices.com                                        
127.0.0.1       imageads7.googleadservices.com                                        
127.0.0.1       imageads8.googleadservices.com                                        
127.0.0.1       imageads9.googleadservices.com                                        
127.0.0.1       partner.googleadservices.com                                          
127.0.0.1       www.googleadservices.com                                              
127.0.0.1       apps5.oingo.com #[Microsoft.Typo-Patrol]                              
127.0.0.1       www.appliedsemantics.com                                              
127.0.0.1       service.urchin.com #[Urchin Tracking Module]                          

#doubleclick
127.0.0.1  ad.doubleclick.net #[MVPS.Criteria]
127.0.0.1  ad2.doubleclick.net #[Panda.Spyware:Cookie/Doubleclick]
127.0.0.1  ad.3ad.doubleclick.net                                 
127.0.0.1  ad.3au.doubleclick.net                                 
127.0.0.1  ad.adx.doubleclick.net                                 
127.0.0.1  ad.ae.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.ar.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.au.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.be.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.br.doubleclick.net #[SunBelt.DoubleClick]           
127.0.0.1  ad.ca.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.ch.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.cl.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.cn.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.de.doubleclick.net #[Tenebril.Tracking.Cookie]      
127.0.0.1  ad.dk.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.es.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.fi.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.fr.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.gr.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.hk.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.hu.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.ie.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.in.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.jp.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.kr.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.it.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.nl.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.no.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.nz.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.pl.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.pt.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.ro.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.ru.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.se.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.sg.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.terra.doubleclick.net                               
127.0.0.1  ad.th.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.tw.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.uk.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.us.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.za.doubleclick.net                                  
127.0.0.1  ad.n2434.doubleclick.net                               
127.0.0.1  creatives.doubleclick.net                              
127.0.0.1  dfp.doubleclick.net                                    
127.0.0.1  fls.doubleclick.net                                    
127.0.0.1  ir.doubleclick.net                                     
127.0.0.1  iv.doubleclick.net                                     
127.0.0.1  ln.doubleclick.net #[Lycos]                            
127.0.0.1  m.doubleclick.net                                      
127.0.0.1  m2.doubleclick.net                                     
127.0.0.1  m3.doubleclick.net                                     
127.0.0.1  m.us.doubleclick.net                                   
127.0.0.1  motifcdn.doubleclick.net                               
127.0.0.1  motifcdn2.doubleclick.net                              
127.0.0.1  n3285ad.doubleclick.net                                
127.0.0.1  n3349ad.doubleclick.net                                
127.0.0.1  n4061ad.doubleclick.net                                
127.0.0.1  n4403ad.doubleclick.net                                
127.0.0.1  n479ad.doubleclick.net                                 
127.0.0.1  n609ad.doubleclick.net                                 
127.0.0.1  optout.doubleclick.net                                 
127.0.0.1  optimize.doubleclick.net                               
127.0.0.1  optimize.3optimization.doubleclick.net                 
127.0.0.1  paypalssl.doubleclick.net                              
127.0.0.1  rd.intl.doubleclick.net                                
127.0.0.1  se1.doubleclick.net                                    
127.0.0.1  twx.doubleclick.net                                    
127.0.0.1  doubleclick.ne.jp                                      
127.0.0.1  www3.doubleclick.net                                   
127.0.0.1  www.doubleclick.net                                    
127.0.0.1  doubleclick.com                                        
127.0.0.1  ad.doubleclick.com                                     
127.0.0.1  www2.doubleclick.com                                   
127.0.0.1  www3.doubleclick.com                                   
127.0.0.1  www.doubleclick.com                                    
127.0.0.1  www.messagemedia.com                                   
127.0.0.1  www.performics.com                                     
127.0.0.1  doubleclick.shockwave.com                              
# [Google/DoubleClick via Falk AdSolution][Falk eSolutions AG]    
127.0.0.1  a.as-eu.falkag.net                                     
127.0.0.1  a.as-eu1.falkag.net                                    
127.0.0.1  admin.as-eu.falkag.net                                 
127.0.0.1  bw.as-eu.falkag.net                                    
127.0.0.1  c.as-eu.falkag.net                                     
127.0.0.1  data.as-eu.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  e.as-eu.falkag.net #[Ewido.TrackingCookie.Falkag]
127.0.0.1  f.as-eu.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  origin.as-eu.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  red.as-eu.falkag.net #[McAfee.Adware-Zeno]
127.0.0.1  red01.as-eu.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  sel.as-eu.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  a.as-test.falkag.net #[Panda.Spyware:Cookie/Falkag]
127.0.0.1  bw.as-test.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  red.as-test.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  sel.as-test.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  a.as-us.falkag.net #[SunBelt.as-us.falkag]
127.0.0.1  b.as-us.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  bw.as-us.falkag.net #[a1339.g.akamai.net]
127.0.0.1  c.as-us.falkag.net #[Tenebril.Tracking.Cookie]
127.0.0.1  data.as-us.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  e.as-us.falkag.net #[a1339.g.akamai.net]
127.0.0.1  origin.as-us.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  red.as-us.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  red01.as-us.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  s.as-us.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  sel.as-us.falkag.net
127.0.0.1  as1.falkag.de #[Ad-Aware.Tracking.Cookie]
127.0.0.1  www.falkag.de

Et voila. Your Intertubez have now about 75% less braindamage. It's funny to see websites cleaning up on reload ... blink blink reload empty. Only text left ...

There's one issue though: It's by far not complete. I think I'll need some privoxy added to that to be really happy. If I do I'll let you know how it goes.

Hai everyone,
I've been a bit quiet the last few $timeunits. Life is good.

Here is a little toy I've been working on since yesterday. It is still very embryonic, but what it does is simple: Map files to packages and packages to files, using a local sqlite DB I generated out of binary packages. The index is not complete, it has been generated with ~5500 packages. I will try to update it when I have more packages built.

If you have any great queries just throw them at me and I'll try to update the query script. Also I intend to totally rewrite the database structure because I've already noticed a few issues with the current design. But for now have fun with it!

So, KDE overlay is still metric tons of fun. With KDE 4.1 RC1 in and most things working there's not that much to do at the moment. svn is slowly showing the first sign of 4.2 as a few things are breaking every now and then.
KOffice released an alpha 9 yesterday, and Civil added that to the overlay before I could do it. So in turn I had to outdo him by adding a live koffice ebuild. That seems to mostly work, so next I'll try to see what's wrong with the split ebuilds I've been experimenting with. Most likely some really small irrelevant piece I have not yet noticed, who knows.

We're all waiting for RC2 / final of KDE 4.1 now, that'll be the next big commit fight. If you want to discuss, annoy or do other things with us feel free to join #gentoo-kde4-live on irc.freenode.net.

In other news, portage has grown parallelization support in svn. You can now tell it how many ebuilds to process in parallel or limit it to a certain system load. I guess that will be one of the most popular features with end-users as you can now max out your dual quadcores all the time every time. Thanks Zac!

I've been surprised today by the release of RC1 of KDE. As a reaction we've bumped the ebuilds in the kdesvn-portage overlay and are testing them as well as we can. Looks like a few things are still broken, but that should be fixed soon.

Because plasma has had a bugfixing spree a short while ago it works on all my machines now, so I'm actually using kde-svn at the moment. An I like it. What I do notice though is that my "old" 2Ghz X2 is slowly becoming obsolete, I can't keep up with all the kids and their quads when it comes to compile speed. Anyone in the mood to donate a Phenom? ;)

I've been playing a bit with my newest toy and generated some shiny graphs. Here's the first one:



And here's a second one:

So what does it mean? Very easy. The first graph is the install time of three applications. Guess who.

The second graph is the time to do two operations. Again, guess who does what.

Quite funny, isn't it?