Rebel Power Supply

Ubuntu Mobile’s finally released!

In personal news, my Topology professor is challenging me to create a more efficient Python program that deals with this problem from our Topology homework:

The set consisting of two elements {a, b} can be given four different topologies:
1. {∅, {a, b}} – The indiscrete topology
2. {∅, {a}, {b}, {a, b}} – The discrete topology
3. {∅, {a}, {a, b}}
4. {∅, {b}, {a, b}}
Each of these is a topology on {a, b} because each one includes {a, b} and is closed
under ∩ and . There are no other topologies on {a, b} because any other set of subsets
would fail to include ∅ or {a, b}.
Determine all of the topologies on the three element set {a, b, c}. Remember that a
topology on X is a set of subsets of X. There are 23 subsets of X. So there are at 3
most 22 = 256 possibilities, most of which fail to be topologies. Any topology must
include ∅ and {a, b, c}. So this cuts down the search. In particular, since we have
no choice but to include these two subsets, the actual subsets of {a, b, c} that are
“up for grabs” are only the remaining 23 − 2 of them. That is, you only need to check 3
22 −2 = 64 possibilities. Even for these, many will fail to be topologies. For example,
τ = {∅, {a}, {b}, {c}, {a, b, c}} is not a topology because {a} ∈ τ and {b} ∈ τ but
{a} ∪ {b} ∈/ τ.

Set theory… brutal.

My progress in packaging is going pretty well. I feel like every time I attend a “Packaging 101″ session (Thank you Ubuntu Developer Week!) things make 500 times more sense. I’ve actually successfully created the hello package from the Packaging Guide, and even made another from scratch. Next up is to run through some of the recipies in the guide, and start getting really familiar with the tools.

What I think is really cool, is packaging Firefox3 extensions. I’m catching up on the Firefox3 IRC session right now. Sounds like it’ll be really useful, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, since it’s such a new area. In other words, it’s right up my alley

One issue I’m running in to is installing bazaar. If anyone knows how to fix this:

bzr: ERROR: Couldn't import bzrlib and dependencies.
Please check bzrlib is on your PYTHONPATH.

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/bzr", line 64, in
import bzrlib
ImportError: No module named bzrlib


let me know. Meanwhile, the google searching continues.

Oh man. So I’ve been playing around with the packaging guide and working on my 5 bugs for the day. Except that there are some ridiculous errors being generated when I’m trying to install some packages I need. At least it seems like everyone else has this issue, and the fix was released about half an hour ago. I like how by the time I noticed the problem, a patch had already been submitted. I’m going to crash and check the status in the morning.

My friend Chris Lee and Chapman’s Acapella Group have a video up on Youtube, which I highly recommend to everyone

A new bill supporting net freedom and net neutrality is hitting the House of Representatives. The Google Public Policy blog also has a post up about it. The web has been a source of liberty and innovation for years, and we need to ensure it remains so. The best thing we can do is head over to Save the Internet and contact our local Representatives.

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I won’t lie. I was one of those kids that got a Nokia N-Gage back in the day. Not necessarily the best choice in hindsight, but it was a blast competing on the Arena. So I had fun with it, and that’s what matters. I think.

For better or worse, it seems that Nokia’s trying to bring it back from the grave. I knew that Nokia was planning on N-Gage being more of a platform than a specific phone, but it’s good to see it finally in action, and looking decent.

By the way, I’m still holding out for OpenMoko in a few months

Looks like there’s going to be an entire week devoted to teaching the community how to help contribute to Ubuntu as developers Daniel Holbach and MOTU keep coming up with engaging ways for users to become contributors, which is awesome. The action all takes place February 18th to February 22nd in #ubuntu-classroom. Anyone even remotely interested should totally stop by.

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SCaLE6x was a blast. I had a lot crash on me this weekend, so I was only there for a little bit today, but it had an amazing atmosphere. Ars Technica has a good article about Chris Blizzard’s talk on the future of Mozilla and Firefox, which is exciting. Props to Neal, Nathan, and Seth for being awesome. I’ve only heard great things about the Ubuntu California booth

My father was on a business trip to Florida last December, and he lost one of his two Palm Treos. After spending some time wondering if he should get a replacement, and then vacillating about which phone to get, I guess he had finally made a decision. I called him Tuesday, February 5th to say Hi, and he told me that he just got a new iPhone. I started tripping out on him, telling him that I’d just read on techmeme that Steve Jobs updated it to 16GB today, and he should’ve waited and checked with me first.

All that I can say is that apparently my 51-year old father knew about the new iPhone before I did

Real programmers use Vim.