Month: April 2007

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Headway Festival 2007

I’m getting ready to go to the Headway Festival 2007 in Amstelveen (near Amsterdam), NL, this weekend. Although Headway is happening indoors, in P60, I will take a tent and a sleeping bag; I suppose I’ll be in for a little adventure.

The original plan was to go see both days of the festival: To-Mera, Sun Caged and California’s Zero Hour on Friday, and Saturday ending with a triple play of Loch Vostok, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and finally, Redemption. (Besides, what is it with Californian prog metal acts and websites that end in …web.com?)

So, I would go with some friends, we’d get some hotel rooms, and drive home Saturday night. As is often the case with plans, they’re subject to change. It turned out that we had to leave Friday night for personal reasons. Aside from not seeing SGM, that raised some problems: A week after we planned the trip, I got accredited to take photos for Bright Eyes Magazine, who, naturally, want me to cover both days. There was also the minor issue of having to cancel the hotel reservations, but that was free of charge, luckily. However, with no one else staying, I had to look for new accomodation, and good luck with that in Amsterdam, on Easter.

There was no chance I could get any hotel close enough to the venue for that time, and there was no chance in hell I would pay €230 per night at the Dorint or some similarly luxurious place, when all I needed and wanted was a floor to lay on, and maybe a roof over my head. Only rather late did it occur to me to check for hostels, bed and breakfast, and… camping grounds!

So now, after everyone else leaves on Friday night, I will try to get to the camping site Het Amsterdamse Bos, crawl into my tent, and hope I won’t freeze. Then, on Saturday night, do the same thing. On Sunday, well-rested (I hope), I’ll start marching towards Amsterdam Zuid WTC train station, to board an ICE going back home. Sound fun? Hell yes. Until you try to put two sleeping bags and a tent and some clothes into a photo backpack… 🙂

I’m off to bed, for too little sleep and trying to fit too many things into too small a bag, and then to go to the Netherlands for some good, old, concert photography. Cross your fingers for good weather 🙂

‘Till Monday! \m/

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Habari 0.1.1 released

Okay, seriously. Habari 0.1.1 Developer Release is now available for download and hacking:

The 0.1.1 version includes a fix for the search XSS problem and removes the misleading warning in the installer.

I don’t recommend using it on a public site without being aware of the problems! At the very least, you should put your Habari install on a different domain that does not hold any important data.

You’re welcome to drop by on irc.freenode.net #habari and join us in our inspired fork… barbe… hacking!

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Habari DR released; forked

Hey, don’t worry! We’re just kidding! You’re reading Habari’s April Fools joke.

Update: ForkPress made 20,070,401 downloads already! I can’t believe it!

It started with great promise, great promises, and at an opportune time. Everyone and their mother were starting to get disgruntled with WordPress – it had its share of scandals, its codebase contained a lot of baggage from ye olde times, some of Matt‘s decisions didn’t go over so well with people, and some didn’t like the whole dot-com stuff going on.

Habari promised everything – a complete rewrite, using today’s technology, under a truly free license, and with a meritocratic development process. And it had a number of big names behind it.

It was a nice idea while it lasted.

It is now obvious to me that both the meritocratic process as well as truly free licenses absolutely and utterly fail to produce open, free software.

You might think this to be a strange thing to say, considering Habari finally released the Developer Review version today. Well, see for yourselves:

If I appear to be angry, it’s because I am! Scott (skippy) and Owen – both cofounders of Habari – have left the very project they founded in the dust, choosing to pursue commercial interests instead. The best part is that the codebase for their fork is probably Habari, and our choice of license allowed – encouraged – them to just take the code! Considering the timing of this decision, and the polish that went into their new projects already, it seems obvious to me that this move has been planned since quite some time — taking the hard work of volunteers, and going dot-com. And the worst part? They probably won’t hire me either, just like Automattic didn’t! In short: WTF BBQ.

I must say I feel happy about Habari’s Development Review release, but at the same time, I feel utterly betrayed. On the bright side, it is a statement about Habari‘s quality, but still…

Skippy, Owen… good luck with your new ventures — ForkPress and bbqPress.

Hire me?

Update: Chris J. Davis also talks about the topic.

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Plan9 from Bell Labs

I kid, I kid. I have no intention of changing operating systems, at least until Linux finally is ready for the Deskop.
Plan 9 still is nice, though!

Much is foul in the state of computing today. Proprietary software is used throughout the industry as well as on the majority of personal computers. The promised Linux Desktop revolution, announced since years, has not happened so far, and people are beginning to doubt it ever will happen.

This madness must end. Continue reading “Plan9 from Bell Labs”