Nemiver 0.7.2

Nemiver 0.7.2 is out. It is a bugfix, minor feature and translation update release.

NEWS | tarball | Fedora Packages

Nemiver 0.7.1

The first bugfix release of the Nemiver 0.7.x series is out.

This version addresses various nits here and there, takes care of some low level details to make sure Nemiver works well with the Archer branch of GDB and contains some updated translations.

News file and tarball are available from the usual places.

Thanks to the continuous good work of my fellows distro packagers, the binaries should appear on a mirror near you in a couple of days.

For what it is worth, Fedora 10, 11, and Rawhide packages are available for the impatients.

Happy hacking.

Maker's schedule, Manager's Schedule

I stumbled accross this gem from the always excellent Paul Graham.
It's a nice model to grasp how programmers and managers use their time differently. I guess we all felt this intuitively, but it takes a Paul Graham to express it clearly. A must read.

Nemiver 0.6.5

So Nemiver 0.6.5 is out.

Last release was in late November 2008. Too many things to do I guess.

This release is about pushing out all the little bugfixes that happened since 0.6.4. We have been fixing little quirks here and there as they were appearing during our day to day use of the tool. The result is a tool that a bit more pleasant to use, at least for my personal workflows :)

Apart from that, the Nemiver repository moved from SVN to git and the mailing list moved to the GNOME infrastructure. You can now browse the source code from here and checkout the code by typing:

git clone git://git.gnome.org/nemiver

Fedora 9, 10 and rawhide packages should hit a mirror near you soon, but the impatients can grab them here.

Catchup

Fosdem 2009

So, Fosdem is over. Yes I am late. As always.

I caught quite a serious cold even before going to Fosdem this year, so I spent the entire event drinking tea and sleeping at 23h30 at worst. Believe it or not, I was able to wake up quite early on Saturday and Sunday, so I didn't miss any morning conference and, although I came back with the flu still, I was less destroyed than after the previous Fosdems.

"Early to bed and early rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise", they say. I still have to practise that one. I am not there yet :)

What is sure though, is that I had a voice extinction quite on time for my talk. yay.

So How did my Nemiver talk go ? Well, I haven't received much tomatoes so I guess either the ton of my voice was okay-ish enough to not disturb the audience during its nap, or the talk was okay-ish, or ...
Well, I guess that question shall remain unanswered for years to come.

In any case, the pdf slides of the presentation are here.

All in all, this Fosdem event was nice. Aside from the talks, I met lots of cool people and hang around with the Mandriva crew. Very nice chaps. They even took some nice photos.

Fedora

So I've finally been approved as a Fedora packager. \o/
The packages I'll be (co)maintaining so far are:

• cloog
  
• geglmm
  
• marlin
  
• nemiver
• ghex

I've always be willing to take part in packaging. I was just too lazy busy to sit dow and get into the approval process. I can tick that as done now. yeeesh.

Les "open space", mauvais même pour la santé

Je n'ai jamais aimé les "Open Space".

De manière empirique, j'y ai ressenti une grande difficulté à me concentrer et une propension à être plus fatigué. De plus j'ai horreur qu'une personne regarde mon écran derriere mon dos. Non pas que j'ai quoi que ce soit à cacher, mais j'ai tendance à préférer faire face aux gens, plutôt qu'a les avoir dans mon dos. Sinon, j'ai tendance à vouloir me retourner. Bref, les Open Space, pour un codeur, j'ai toujours trouvé cela vraiment moyen.

L'argument en faveur des Open Space que j'ai le plus entendu était, en gros, qu'ils favoriseraient une "meilleure communication entre employés" me paraissait, somme toute, assez faible. Dans des Open Space, lorsque l'on veut discuter avec un collègue, on est obligé de se rendre dans une salle de réunion. Sinon, on dérange tous les autres.

Bref, la raison qui me parait la plus valable est tout simplement celle qui tourne autour du pognon. Il est moins cher d'avoir un Open Space plutôt que de permettre à chaque employé d'avoir un bureau individuel. Faire attention à l'oseille n'est pas honteux, au contraire. Simplement il faut le dire, et ne pas se cacher derrière des pseudo arguments distillés par des DRH qui répètent à tue-tête le sermon qu'ils ont reçu à leur dernier séminaire de formation.

Quand bien même, il faudrait peut être un jour étudier le gain net entre ce que l'on paie financièrement à court terme en bureaux individuels, et ce que l'on gagne en productivité, performance, santé (eh oui la santé a un coût, partagé par toute la société) des employés.

D'ici la, une étude Australienne révèlerait, entre autres, que les Open Space sont perçus de manière négative par les employés, causent une augmentation du stress, de la pression artérielle, ainsi qu'une élévation du taux de turn over. En ces périodes de crise, j'imagine que la composante turn over risque de paraître moins visible, ceci dit. L'étude n'en demeure pas moins intéressante cependant.

A bon entendeur, salut.

I am going to fosdem 2009

So I have booked my train ticket and hotel for this year's FOSDEM.

For those won't don't know, FOSDEM is the biggest european Free Software event, dedicated at contributors and afficionados in general who are not necessarily professionals. At FOSDEM, you don't need to wear a suit or a tie. You don't need to pay to get in. Still, you can attend high quality talks given by core contributors.

Also, FOSDEM is located in Brussels, making it a rather central place to join if you live in Europe. Plane (or train) tickets and hotels prices are relatively affordable if you book them early enough.

Clearly, FOSDEM _is_ the Free Software conference to attend if you live in Europe, are interested in the technical sides of things and would like to meet contributors for real.

I will arrive on Friday February 6th in the evening and I am going to stay at Sabina Hotel. See you all there.