(While I have a lot big stuff going on in my life right now, I don't feel most of it's suitable for blogging. So here's a bit of insignificant fluff.)

I have this nethack game that won't end. I started it before Christmas, and got much, much deeper into the dungeon than I've ever managed before. Taunted Jerry with it as we hung out over the holidays; he repeatedly losing while I quested and cleared out the castle, and genocided liches to get through the valley of the dead, and generally just kept building up a character that wouldn't quit.

Yeoj the Student of Metals St:18/06 Dx:18 Co:18 In:16 Wi:18 Ch:14 Lawful Dlvl:42 $:0 HP:138(138) Pw:29(147) AC:-15 Xp:20/5196103 T:66175 Hungry Burdened

I should mention: I mostly don't play nethack often, only swinging back around to give it another try every year or two. So for many years I'd play a few games that quickly ended in Yet Another Stupid Death, and occasionally feel proud when I got as far as Minetown or the Oracle. Recently, though, I've started focusing on Monks, and gotten rather good at playing them in the early game.

So, this is my first character who got through the early game, completed the quest, and went well into the late-game. I know where that vibrating square is, I have plenty of wishes to round out my kit. So it would be an ascention candidate, except my chances of doing that on the first try are ... slim.

And, do I want to? The descriptions of what I'd need to do to even try seem a bit tedious.

So, unsure if he wants to ascend, and fearing YASD, my monk sits in his recently aquired tower at level 42 of the dungeon. For months. And so I can't play nethack.

The character I'm role playing has decided to opt out of the game. (Oops, I meant to leave real life out of this, but it's somehow snuck back in there.)

Meanwhile, this Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup that @Play keeps talking about looks interesting...

(previously previously)

snapshot.debian.org launched
with all Debian packages produced in the past 5 years
6.5 terabytes

first Wikipedia database dump in 4.5 years
5.6 terabytes (32 gigabytes compressed)

My reflex on seeing both of these was to think about putting them into git repositories.

For snapshot.debian.org, injecting source packages into git repositories is easy with git-import-dsc (and it can also use pristine-tar to make the original tarballs accessible with a miminal overhead). I hope the snapshot.debian.org admins find time & space to do that, because being able to easily access git annotate data spanning 5 years for any package in the archive would be very useful.

To produce a usable git repository from the Wikipedia dump would probably involve writing a custom git-fast-import that processed the huge xml dump, and chunked it up into individual files, and commits changing those files. Frankly, I do prefer wikis that store data in git in that format natively and don't have multi-month dump procedures. ;)

How big would the git repos be? My SWAG is well under 1 terabyte for snapshot.debian.org, and between 30 and 300 gigabytes for the wikipedia data.

This month is the ten year anniversary of when I started blogging with this post.

After a strong start in 2000 thanks to advogato.org, I slowed down, and 2003 saw no blog posts at all. Since then I have kept going fairly steadily, to no set schedule, writing when I feel the need.

In all, 984 posts over ten years, or almost two posts per week. 205000 words. 650 pages if it were all bound into a book.

(Sounds like a lot maybe, but the software I've grown to run the blog is 3 times longer.)

DebConf 10 will be held this August 1-7, in New York. I love DebConf, and I look forward to seeing friends at it each year. It rekindles my interest in the project; I leave each DebConf with new things to do.

Many developers make it to most DebConfs, helped by the conference's impressive travel and lodging funding. But I know others have never gotten to experience DebConf, or have not been in years. If that's you, there's probably a reason. Maybe the scheduling never works out for you, and I can't help with that. But if your reason comes down to "money" or "they'd never pick me", we can help.

This year there is special funding available for Debian Developers (and DMs) who have not been to DebConf before, or who have not been in years. Outgoing DPL Steve McIntyre has previusly mentioned this special funding, and his successor Stefano Zacchiroli has asked me to manage it, since it was originally my idea.

Email me soon (before May 15th) to apply, or to suggest that a team member should be sponsored. This wiki page has the details.

Let us get you to DebConf -- I promise you won't regret it!

PS,