The news that Marla Ruzicka died over the weekend has been spreading, along with recognition of who she was, and of the great work that she had been doing in Iraq. To walk almost completely defenseless through the people of Iraq was a huge act of bravery which puts most others to shame (myself included).
Today, This Is Rumor Control published [an interview with Marla’s father](http://www.thisisrumorcontrol.org/node/2065) which is very much worth reading.
I’ve started using an IPv6 tunnel on my laptop at home - using [SixXS](http://www.sixxs.net/) as a tunnel broker. It works very well actually, just wish there was more to do with IPv6 right now, except play around with it 
There are some Debian packages, but when I decided to recompile against Ubuntu, I made some changes:
* Debconf support
* Init script that can detect failed connections, also looks like other Ubuntu init scripts
* Installs man page
* Installs Sxx, Kxx rcX.d scripts
* Miscellaneous other changes
The biggest change is obviously debconf support, but it’s something that really makes the package look well integrated with the system. Quite proud of it, really!
Some Screenshots!
=================
First, debconf asks for your SixXS username and password.
Then if the username and password are correct, it may (depending on the frontend) ask you to select from a list of available tunnels.
If the username and/or password are incorrect, it will ask if you want to recheck your authentication details before continuing.
And that’s it! It reads and writes the configuration to /etc/aiccu.conf, and it all seems to work well.
Update: some working apt sources:
deb [http://www.lyranthe.org/ubuntu/](http://www.lyranthe.org/ubuntu/) hoary universe
deb-src [http://www.lyranthe.org/ubuntu/](http://www.lyranthe.org/ubuntu/) hoary universe
Another example of patent abuse at work. I feel disgusted that this kind of thing (software patents, to be a bit more precise) could become mandatory throughout the EU. Sorry - for anybody who actually does believe that it would be a good thing… no how, no way. I want no Sword of Damocles hanging over any piece of code I write, thank you very much.
For the people who use 一太郎 in Japan, 今仕様がない。
After an episode today in work with stability testing, where my code turned out not to be very stable, I think it’s time that I start thinking about putting up a page with details of how to efficiently perform multithreading with libxml2 and libxslt.
Things like (this is what bit me today) mutex-locking the creation and destruction of XSLT parser and stylesheet contexts - as they share dictionaries, and the reference counting for the dictionaries isn’t thread-safe.
I don’t know if this page will actually happen, but I’m sure I’ll come across a few more gotchas before I’m finished with this project!
The kind of backtrace I got was:
#0 0×400c2b41 in __kill () from /lib/i686/libc.so.6
#1 0×4004987b in raise (sig=6) at signals.c:65
#2 0×400c40c2 in abort () at ../sysdeps/generic/abort.c:88
#3 0×0822ddae in xxxxx (ptr=0×876cfd8, f=0×82c6479 “xxxxx.c”, l=646) at xxxxx.c:xxx
#4 0×080b36ef in free_func (mem=0×876cfd8) at xxxxx.c:xxx
#5 0×081b9ded in xmlDictFree (dict=0×8762ec0) at dict.c:472
#6 0×08192a0c in xmlFreeDoc (cur=0×8766158) at tree.c:1157
#7 0×081c9bf5 in xsltFreeStylesheet (sheet=0×8766268) at xslt.c:495
That was caused by an abort() upon detection of a double-free. The crash was also seen under xmlXPathFreeCompExpr(), also when freeing the dictionary.
*Mini-Update:* I decided to send a patch to the libxml2 mailing list instead. It’s quite likely to be more efficient (more granular locking). And the acceptance of patches like this means that a page on how to do multithreading with libxml2 is a bit less important.
I think actually that it was only with 2.6.7 or thereabouts that libxml2 seriously began to take care of internal race conditions in certain shared areas (like the catalog).
The post-Christmas period was spent skiing with my family in Sauze d’Oulx. Usually ski trips involve complete removal from the world at large - not a word about the world outside is heard until the return home. Not this time. The tsunami event unfolded throughout the trip, as the scale of the disaster became horribly apparent. There is little I can say about that currently, as it beggars my imagination to think of the suffering that happened, and that which is ongoing in those countries right now.
Besides that, there was food, there was skiing, I got flu for the last day or two of the trip. And now it’s back to work.
The Register is reporting that the patent vote has been delayed until 3pm. This is apparently because the Polish minister wants to make a statement on the directive. This is somewhat unusual for an “A item”, which is normally passed without any debate or meaningful comment whatsoever. In addition, the Munich mayor has called on the German minister to take the item off the agenda. However, this action would be unprecedented. More news later
Update: As mentioned on the FFII site, the Polish minister requested the removal of the directive from the agenda. And it has been. So looks like we might be safe for another short period of time, at least (until the next meeting of the Competitiveness Council).
The so-called Software Patent Directive has been tabled as an A-item at tomorrow’s Agriculture and Fisheries meeting, in spite of the current less than stellar support among the individual countries. It seems that diplomatic issues are stalling recognition that there is no longer a qualified majority, and that this should not be passed without further debate.
There is an online letter available which summarises the issue, and should be linked to where possible. Of course, the best way to proceed is to fax your local Minister for Agriculture.
Our local Minister for Agriculture is Ms. Mary Coughlan. She is in Brussels at the moment, but the department will forward on messages. The fax number for the department is 01-6614515, or you can hand in letters by hand at Agriculture House, Kildare Street, Dublin 2.
It looks like the social conservatives won. The general information from exit polls suggested that moral values were most important to users, followed by the economy. Not quite “it’s the economy, stupid,” after all! And it really wasn’t the “war on terror” which won it either.
I consider myself a social liberal of some sort or form, which I guess means that I don’t think that government should be a regulator of every part of daily life. Of course, one then has to hope that people will in general do the right thing. But there are many ideas of what “the right thing” is, and it doesn’t always seem right that the government should be the arbitrers of that divide, sometimes; for example, single-sex marriage in the US. It’s not like it’s hurting anybody, I really don’t mind either way, but I wouldn’t want to force my views on people. That does seem to be the way the US is going, for better or worse (I’m sure some people would say better).
At the end of the day, I’m not sure how different international events will be over the next four years. But at home, it may cause large changes. The fact alone that four Chief Justices may retire over the next four years alone is going to be huge.
On the international front, I hope that the neoconservatives and Bush have learned their lesson with Iraq. I fear otherwise.
Back (again)
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Hello, it’s been a while, busy again. What have I been up to?
Well, there’s been a lot of stuff at work. Which I’d prefer not to talk about right now; the start of next year might be more appropriate. What I can say is that I’m off performance and architecture, and back(?) in product development. C, C, C. Oh I just bought a cool book by Sedgewick on algorithms, but that’s neither here nor there…
Hallowe’en has come and gone. It really impacted on my last week - because I made my own costume. Made, as in sewed. With a sewing machine. With hemming, and interfacing, and reversing seams so that they’re in the garment, things like that. Quite a learning experience! But definitely more work than I expected. Still, it was worthwhile - there’s [two photos available](http://www.lyranthe.org/gallery/main.php?g2_view=core:ShowItem&g2_itemId=124)
So - Friday was a day off work (so I could finish the costume), then work party on Friday night, followed by a trip to Terry’s party. Latter better than the former.
And - Saturday involved a large, rather cool, Hallowe’en/birthday party in Kimmage. Best party I’ve been at in a while, thank you to the organiser!
I’m living in a new apartment near Shelbourne Park. As a new development, it’s tidy and clean, and a lovely place to just relax, or to invite friends to. Mal lives there too, if anybody’s looking for him 
I have my (two) ski holidays booked. Painfully expensive… but… ah y’know how it is Going with family at Christmas, with friends in February. Mastering short turns, and getting to grips with moguls - those are my tasks this year.
If you’re interested in bridge, some friends play it in Mahaffeys on Monday evening. I’m trying to get into it, but there’s a learning curve that I’m working on.
Oh, there’s some sort of election in the US today, I hear… If you can vote, vote! Not that it’s important for the continuation of civilisation as we know it, or anything…