Bubulle's weblog

Alexander Reichle-Schmehl created Debian bug #710000 on Monday May 27th 2013, against the ftp.debian.org pseudo-package, by cloning a bug report by Rene Engelhard. So, technically speaking, Rene reported this bug....but Tolimar is responsible for that.

Bug #700000 was reported as of February 7th: 3 months and 20 days for 10,000 bugs. This is again a VERY significant drop in the bug reporting rate in Debian. Is that related to the release of jessie? We'll see that in the upcoming 4 months.

As you may have noticed, Debian 7.0 wheezy was released yesterday.

And, well, for the first time ever, I upgraded my main server (kheops....running Debian since buzz is out) to the finest and latest release the same day it was released.

I didn't run into many problems, just a few glitches (some of them might still get some of our users angry, though).

Most noticeably, I couldn't easily update two key packages on this serveer (where I receive all my incoming mail) : roundcube and dovecot.

Roundcube indeed lost support for SQLite backend and that was probably the reason for which I falled into the "Could not perform immediat econfiguration" trap for it. The workarounds mentioned in the release notes did not work and the only solution was to remove the Roundcobe packages then re-add them later on. Not a big deal, as Roundcube is only used by my son (who will attend Debconf again, by the way) for the few mail he still receives on kheops.

Dovecot was more tricky and my mail server temporarily stopped working for my lapto pto grab mail from it. OK, admitedly, I should have read NEWS.Debian that was explaining all problems one might have, particularly problems related to SSL certificates and the use of the "mail" group. But, indeed, that should have deserved a note in the release notes. After all, we're talking there about an obscure php5-suhosin package, right? :-)

Finally, it took me less than 3 hours to upgrade everything with no service interruption for users on my local network, except a 30-minute stop of the IMAP server.

I still have to reboot to get the new kernel in operation and voilà.

Let's now go on our way to jessie!

It seems that I didn't send any update to my international friends for quite a while, at least when it comes at my running activities.

So, in short, I ran A LOT during the first months of April 2013. I mean it. As of now (April 28th), I cumulated 1424 kilometers, with a peak in March up to 375 kilometers. So, that's an average 12 kilometers per day.

How did I achieve this? Among many other things, by doing part of my commute to work by running, which means 14 kilometers in one day, with a backpack containing everything needed to be dressed "normally" while working, plus my laptop, my rain jacket, etc....so up to 4 kilograms on my shoulders. And, yes, I can use a shower at work and I don't stink all day long!

This alone already makes a fairly good training. Of course, all alone, it wouldn't be really funny, so I, of course, add some runs during the week-end, mostly trail running, enjoying the nature around our place.

Official races have been mostly trail races during these months. The only road race has been an half-marathon in Bullion, back in February (4th year in a row I'm running this one, which is traditionnaly the "resume road races" competition in the area). I completed it in 1h39, quite close to my PB, even if....that was meant to be a training only.

In February, still as a preparation race for Paris Ecotrail, I ran a 20km trail in Auffargis (a neat small village in the neighbourhood of our place), again completing it with great success, with a big negative split (for non hard-core runners, a negative split happens when one runs the second half of a race faster than the first one).

All this was in preparation for Paris Ecotrail race, my second time on this 80km race that ends up at Eiffel Tower. Last year, being my first attempt on such distance,, I completed it in 11 hours 5 minutes. To make it short, this year, I finished 579th out of more than 2000 runners, in 9h36. That was indeed a really great result, in line with my 8h15 time back in November for the 70km "Le Puy-Firminy" night race.

Moreover, I could indeed recover very quickly : the race was run on a Saturday and I resumed my "commute runs" on Wednesday.

The next target were two trail races in April : I originally planned a 44km race on April 21st and finally ended up adding to it a 35km trail race on April 7th (the day of Paris Marathon), only 3 weeks after Ecotrail..:-)

And I completed both these with a huge success. Indeed my best trail races ever, again with two negative splits and also a very good place. Indeed, I now usually complete races close to the very first women...:-).

So, on April 7th, the trail du Josas (35km, 800m positive climb... which means about the equivalent of a marathon) was completed in 3h40....and last Sunday, the trail des Lavoirs (44km, 1100m positive climb) was completed in 4h40, with the last 2 kilometers being run above 13km/h. Describing how one can feel when "flying" in the very last kilometers of such a long run is just....impossible. Great, great, great memories.

Then, during the week following the trail des Lavoirs, I ran 101km in 6 days, confirming that recovery is perfect.

So, definitely, I am stunned by what I could achieve during these months, without injury, without big pain. Just good training and good results, without suffering and a giant pleasure.

Yes, running is definitely a drug and I'm deeply addicted. Well, the result is, in short, that I feel good and well, so I think I won't stop soon...:-)

Next challenge : Mont-Blanc marathon, in Chamonix : 42.195km....and 2500meters positive climb, with 1500 meters negative. Start in Chamonix at 1050m high and end at Planpraz (2050m), facing the Mont-Blanc, with a maximum altitude of 2267m during the race. Quite an interesting "marathon", isn't it? That will be my first race in real mountains...and, I guess not the last one. Target time: 6 hours. Secret wish: 5h30.

During summer, I will mostly be preparing for the second part of the year....but I'll certainly enjoy the neighbourhood of Vaumarcus, Switzerland, where I'll attend DebConf. Challenge : combine running, hacking, cheese eating and fit all this in 24 hours every day.

For the end of the year, challenges should peak between October and December:

• October 27th: Toulouse marathon. A "real" one, this time....and eventually my first attempt to get a Boston qualifying time (I need 3h30).
• November 17th: Le Puy-Firminy night race, with 70km half-road, half (easy) trails and 1200m positive climb. Challenge: beat my best time there and complete it for the 3rd year in a row
• December 8th: Saintélyon, a 75km night race between my birth city of St-Étienne and the nearby town of Lyon, through hills....and often with snow. Challenge: finish it..:-)

So, well, see you soon on this blog for another update after Mont-Blanc marathon. Let's hope I'll give you good news.

I am in some way flattered (en_FR?) that some people think that I should stand as DPL candidate (here, or there, or there). Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your confidence, it's appreciated.

Still, I won't stand and I feel like I should explain why.

Yes, I now have some experience in the Debian Project after more than 11 years as DD. Yes, I like to represent the project and I think I don't do that so badly when I do it (which is not as often as one might imagine).

Yes, I feel like I have some experience in acting as a "leader" though I often have doubts about this, probably just like many people who have management duties in their professional life.

Yes, I often define myself as a non-technical person which helps in dealing with problems and projects with different perspectives. Still, this is often not so true and that extends to my professionnal activity. I *am* indeed a technical person but I'm more a "specialist of everything and nothing" in this aspect. That's probably good for a DPL.

But, still I won't stand. There are indeed many reasons for this and I'll try to give them here.

First of all, Debian has always been a hobby for me. A hobby that sometimes ate several hours a day and still eats part of my time. But still a hobby. It can't become the major part of my life. And I think that someone spending one year as DPL "has" to do it as the major part of her|his life.

I can't free time from my work schedule. My work, though being in IT, has few to relate with Free Software, and I can't divert part of it with Debian duties...or merge it with Debian duties. For about 3 years, I compensate the loss of two people in my team by working hard and VERY fast, in a constant stress....connecting with Onera nearly all time long and maintaining the level of services our users deserve as high as I can. And I like it.

I can't free time from my family schedule. Of course, my children don't request much attention right now, they all live their own lives. Jean-Baptiste is now having a full-time paid job and does great things in a geeky style I recognize very well. Sophie will soon be a great graduated social worker and will start working in next Summer. And Magali is studying physical therapy so that she can later help me recovering after too hard running races..:-). However, last and definitely not least, I have a wonderful wife who I want to share as much as I can with. And I can't share Debian with her. Indeed, Elizabeth is the very first reason for my reasoning.....because she is the center of my life for more than 30 years now.

You also know that I happen to run a little bit..:-)...and that requires time too. Something I won't sacrifice as it brought more equilibrium in my life (and a great health, at an age where one has to care about one's health, now).

All this doesn't leave much room. And I indeed noticed that my involvement in Debian has reduced noticeably in the past months. That is indeed the most important point: I'm "slowing down" in Debian...or, at least, I'm trying to find an equilibrium where it represents only a part of my hobbies....and not an ever-growing one.

Last...maybe not least, I'm somehow pessimistic about the future of the project. You may have read that subtly in my writings, here or there. I feel like we are slowing down in innovation and are slowly feeling short of resources. Renewal in project members doesn't come as fast as it used to. You are free to disagree with me and I hope you'll be right to. But, still, that won't remove my pessimism. And, well, it's hard to lead a project when you're partly pessimistic about it, isn't it?

In short, all in all, I'm currently "fighting" in some way to keep motivation for something I deeply love being involved in. And that's really important. And that's why I can't stand: it wouldn't be a good service to the project. It would be good for my ego, certainly (yes, I have one....and sometimes not a small one)....but it wouldn't be a good service to the project, and I also feel it could very well lead me to burnout.

And, if you "nominated" me...or think I would candidate for DPL, you don't want me to burnout and vanish from Debian, right? So, this is why I won't stand.

And this is why you'll continue to have great Cheese and Wine parties at Debconfs....or boring l10n reports....or, here or there, some broken uploads in the archive..:-)....but not another French DPL, at least not /me.

PS: by the way, I have my own list of preferred candidates. Not sure I want it to be public, though...:-)...you'll see soon if I change my mind!

Yesterday, I launched the contest for prediction of the day Debian bugs #800000 and #1000000 will be reported.

For bug #1000000, this is the second set of bets after those we placed back in 2008 when bug #500000 was reported. I then proposed that we have different bets, refined each time. That gives an interesting light on how people estimate the bug report rate (and, to some extent, the project's life).

Have you bet already?

You don't need to be a DD or a DM in order to bet. Just someone wanting to have some fun with Debian contributors. Easy and costless.

Here it is.

Debian had seven hundred thousand bugs reported in its history.

Yet another French winner, indeed two, this time:

• Cedric Boutillier is the winner in the "race of bug #700000" by reporting "override: libzoom-ruby:oldlibs/extra libzoom-ruby1.8:oldlibs/extra" against ftp.debian.org, as part of a quite massive bunch of wishlist bug reports to deal cleanly with old transitional Ruby packages. I somehow suspect Cédric retained his bug reports to catch the right moment..:-)
• I won the bet about the day this bug report would happen by missing it only by 7 days: I did bet for February 14th 2013, two years after the release of squeeze and I was secretely expecting we would also release wheezy around that time.

The French gang already got #200000 (by Michel Grentzinger) and #400000 (by /me), and #600000 by Cyril "KiBi" Brulebois. We're good at stupid games, as it seems.

Of course, I will soon open the wiki page for the bug #800000 bet, which will again include a place where you can also bet for bug #1000000. Be patient, the week-end is coming..:-)

Yet another yearly summary of my running activities. It seems, indeed, that running has now slightly taken precedence over free software activities in my life and priorities for my free time.

To my fellow free software friends: don't worry, I'm not on my way to stop investing my time in Debian. It's quite clear that I'm reducing my involvement, mostly because days only have 24 hours...not because I'm bored or tired by free software development.

But, certainly, it became an important thing that running currently has a small priority over Debian nowadays, for me.

So, what happened on that front in 2012 for running bubulle?

I finally managed to run 2900 km during the year, which is over 400km more than 2011. This is mostly due to the increasing part of running in my daily commute : a typical work week can now be something like this:

• Monday morning, leave home with a big bag and clothes for up to 4 work days (including those I'm wearing) plus running clothes (and shoes).
• Monday evening: come back by running. Either 4km, then 30 minutes train ride, then 3km more....or "the long version": 10km, then 20 minutes train ride, then 3km more.
• Tuesday: go to work by run+train+run, shower, change clothes, work, come back by run+train+run
• Wednesday: ditto
• Thursday: let's have a break. I usually work in another facility where it's less convenient to go by running
• Friday morning: go to work by run+train+run
• Friday evening: come back home with a big bag of dirty clothes

With such an organization, I can end up with weeks where I run up to 50-60 kilometers in 5 days, with peaks that may include 26km in one *work* day. I also end up having room in trains between the runs, I wonder why..:-)

And, of course, during week-ends, I spend some parts of my time running too..:-). Indeed, just like for many drugs, I feel sad during days where I haven't run at all and it's usually hard for me to spend more than 2 days without.

Indeed, the longest time period without running, this year, has been 9 days, just after the Caen marathon, in June. Mostly because, at that time, I reached a moment where training (and believe me, very boring and hard training) consumed all my motivation.

But these moments are indeed very rare and training is mostly *never* boring for me. Mostly because I like running in the nature, in forests, woods, fields, country. Never wearing an MP3 player or any kind of such device toplay music, but just enjoying the outside, whether it's raining, winding, sunny hot. Running (particularly my daily commute) is also the moment where I *think* about my work, my technical activities, my own life, whatever. I think I even sometimes translated some software, mentally, while running..:)

Indeed, there have been 205 days in this year where I ran at least once. Last year was 181 so....drug addiction is increasing.

So, 2900 kilometers. That's about the distance from my place to Moscow in Russia. 282 hours (11 days18 hours.....9d21h last year). Average speed: 10,3km/h (10,5km/h last year). Cumulated height difference: 33,400 meters (27700m last year).

More distance, more time, a bit slower: this is an obvious consequence of more trail running (which includes more difficulties, such as running on volcanoes!).

Most active month: November with 331km. Less active month: June with 141km.

This year was also a year of records:

• personal best broken in September by....14 seconds....on half-marathon with 1h37'28" after failing a first time by 20 seconds in March
• personal best broken twice in the two marathons I ran. first in June, in Caen, after a very hard 8-week training and in difficult conditions (rain, wind, hard race profile) with 3h38'45". Then, I managed to run a stunning 3h33'35" in October in Val du Rueil (a small town in the Seine river valley). That one will be hard to break now.
• longest distance run, with the "80km" Paris Ecotrail run in March, in 11 hours
• great progress in my other "ultra" race (70km in November) which I ran in 8h22 instead of 9h15 last year

I ran 10 official races during the year : two "ultra" races (70km Le Puy-Firminy in November, by night and 80km Paris Ecotrail in March), two marathons (Caen and Val de Rueil), four half-marathons and two "short" (less than 30km) trail races.

How about next^W this year? Well, my goals are currently being secured:

• more trail races than roads races
• Paris 80km Ecotrail again in March. Goal: beat last year's 11 hours
• Le Puy-Firminy 70km again in November. A very nice "small" race (small by number of participants....but the effort is not small!).
• Mont-Blanc "marathon" in late June. Indeed a 42km trail race in Chamonix, starting at 1000m, finishing at 1600m, with a peak at 2300m and 2500m positive vertical gain (1490m negative).
• Another "long" trail race (40-60km) somewhere in April/May
• A "classic" marathon in October/November. Probably somewhere in France. Maybe La Rochelle. That might be the only classic marathon I run this year...unless I decide for another challenge like running two marathons in two consecutive Sundays..:-)
• Do once again my own personal marathon which is just "come back from work by foot".....which nearly equals the distance of a marathon. Something I achieved for the first time in September, in about 5 hours
• Maybe try a 6 or 12 hour race (running for 6 or 12 hours...or more...on a small 1-2km loop). These ones are very friendly ones and the only races where lame runners like me can run along with the best ones, not only for the first 100 meters.

All this of course is assuming that no injury comes up (my ankles are sometimes yelling outbut I'm fortunate enough to not have articulation problems that many runners have, particularly in knees). We'll see on January 1st 2014...:-)

Samba 4 is out.

That's just it. 21 years (same age than the Linux kernel, 2 years older than Debian) after a crazy australian student started it, Samba 4 is out. Doh.

I happen to be a great fan of ocean races, so like many, particularly here in France, I'm following the Vendée Globe ocean race, alone around the world on 60-feet IMOCA race ships, without stop or assistance.

In its early editions, Vendée Globe was easy to explain : start from Les Sables d'Olonne and come back there after going around Antarctica by leaving it to starboard. Period.

Now, it's a bit more complicated as, for security reasons, the sailors have to pass a few points meant to prevent them from going too south (during first editions, some sailors went as south as 65°S).

Sailors are currently heading "down" the Atlantic and will probably pass in the vicinity of the Tristan da Cunha island.

This island has always been fascinating to me. It is the remotest point inf the world with a permanent population. The closest inhabited land is over 2800km away. 271 people live there. No airport. No regular ship line. Only fishing boats from time to time and that's all. It's probably hard to imagine what is the life there....but I find this fascinating, in some way. Maybe one of these parts of the world where I would like to go and never will. And there's even a volcano (indeed, the island *is* a volcano) :

I wonder if there is a Linux user over there...

That was not my target in today's marathon (my second one in the year). The target was breaking my 3h38'45" record, set on June 10th in Caen.

And, well, I did it. By more than 5 minutes \o/. Of course, the Seine-Eure marathon is the perfect place for this:

• really flat race with no up climbs above 5 meters and an overall up climbing of about 30 meters
• high level marathon. Even though it only has 600 runners, it is the fastest in France, when considering the "median" time (the time of the runner arrivng exactly half of all runners) of about 3h35.
• it is located in Normandy so the likeliness of heat in October is just science-fiction..:-)

My target was running 5'06"/km, so 3h35'11" (but the target was running this as long as possible and see what happens after km 35). I did this nearly perfectly in the first half, reaching the half-marathon in 1h47'30". Double this and you get 3h35'..:-)

"However", I slightly accelerated in the second half, first without noticing, then because....I just could do it..:-). So I managed to run the second half at an average 5'/km, with even the last 2 kilometers around 4'50" and an amazing sprint at the end. Usain bubulle.

The outcome is 3h33'35". Doh. Never thought I could do this. It seems that my unusual preparation (remember the "let's run a marathon when coming back from work, at night", in September? or the 5 half-marathons in a row....culminating in a 3/4 marathon in the 6th week-end?)...was not so bad.

I'm now very close to qualifying times for Boston, my dream marathon (much more than NYC) as they are 3h30' for my age category. Well, another option is to wait turning 55, where the qualifying time is then 3h40..:-)...but it woudl be quite good to complete one under 3h30. Now, it doesn't look like a dream.

We'll see at the end of next year as I will only run one marathon, in autumn, more focusing Spring on ultra running (and, technically, a marathon, but that will be the Mont-Blanc marathon, just before Debconf13....and these 42.195km are quite different from those in Normandy!

It's quite some time since I didn't report about Debian Installer localization. Indeed, thanks to the tireless activity of Cyril Brulebois, we focused on releasing D-I and I indeed stopped harassing translators for updates around July 2012.

Why July? Well, you probably know we have "something" to release as soon as we can and most, if not all, Debian energies should be focused on this!

Or, more precisely speaking, I only focused on getting the newly introduced material translated: we had several changes recently in D-I, mostly focused on important features, such as IPv6 support (thanks to Phil Kern who worked on this), better wireless networking support (thanks to Sorina Sandu) and EFI boot support (thanks to Steve McIntyre).

And, of course, when people change code in D-I, they want to add questions to users, display error and informative messages, etc, etc. And these need translations..:-)

Most translators coped with all this (sometimes with /me hitting them hard on the head to get updates) and D-I beta2 was released with 37 complete translations out of 73 supported languages.

Yesterday, I just resumed the activity of trying to get more updates not only for those recent changes, but also for other older changes...or for languages that never got completed in the past.

As a result, we bumped from 37 compelte languages up to 45 this morning: look for level 1 here (level 2 has been hit by a change in iso-codes, but that change doesn't really affect D-I).

If you language is not 100% in the leftmost column on the stats page, you can probably help. Just get in touch with me and we'll check if somebody is already working on this or not.

(doh, I nearly had it. I just got #690019, #690020 and #690022 for l10n stuff)

Bartek Krawczyk reported Debian bug #690000 on Monday October 8th, against guake. And my friend Sylvestre Ledru, the package maintainer, now has to fix it instead of trying to promote the use of Scilab over proprietary alternatives in the French aerospace research organizations..:-)

Bug #680000 was reported as of July 2nd: 3 months and 8 days for 10,000 bugs. This is a VERY significant drop in the bug reporting rate in Debian.

Last time, I wrote: "How will the wheezy freeze affect this? We'll see in two months!". We have the answer: the wheezy freeze triggerred an important drop in bug reporting rate in Debian. My general feeling is somehow different: for whatever reason, I feel like the *overall* activity in the project has dropped significantly. I seem to have less mails to read, less bugs reported against my packages, even less heated discussions here and there, as well as several very quiet channels on IRC.

Am I pessimistic when feeling that the overall momentum is sliding out of Debian? Maybe I am, so, folks, please make me optimistic and move you fingers out of the place where they are and help releasing that damn penguin.

Apart from that, our next milestone (apart from the wheezy release!) will be bug #700000. Remember the bet?. It looks like the probability of Kartik Mistry winning it is now away (he bet for Now 8th 2012) and the best position is hel by David Prévot (he bet for December 12th). On the other hand, my own chances are increasing if the bug rate drop is confirmed and if bug #700000 is reported in more than 3 months (I bet for February 14th 2013, guess why?). We'll see that in a few weeks!

It's been some time since I didn't write in this blog about my running activities. So let's make an update for my international friends. If you don't care about running, you can move to the next post in your feed reader..:-)

After a quite busy running activity during DebConf 12 in Nicaragua, as well as during the touristic trip we did afterwards, I went back to my "regular" schedule.

Main objectives in September-December are roughly the following:

• Seine-Eure marathon, the flattest marathon in France, on October 21st. This marathon is the one where I set the record which I just broke in June, in Caen. So, the goal is easy to find : break it again. My target time is around 3h37. Not so ambitious in apparence, with a current record at 3h38'45". However, I can't afford the highly meticulous preparation I did in April-May-June, so I try to stay with an achievable target.
• The Le Raid Le Puy-Firminy 70km night run on November 24th. Here, I'll just try to go faster than 9h15 which I achieved last year, trying to have a better race management and avoid cramps. Of course, meteorological conditions will be the key, here, as it can be as low as -15°C in that part of France, in November..:-)

During August, I broke my monthly distance record by running nearly 300km in one month, even achieving 100km in only 5 days, around 24th. That was one of my goals: improve my overall resistance to run repetitions, which is one of the keys for ultra-running. These were achieved with many runs to/back work, with up to 13km in the morning and the same in the evening. Yes, running 26km at about 11km/h (and with some ups and downs in the woods to make it even worse) on a day where one has a normal work activity is quite a challenge.

September has been more focused on marathon preparation. This time, no complicated plan with interval running as the month was also a very busy work month, where fitting training sessions during the day would be hard. So, I made an easy plan : run a half-marathon every Sunday and run part of my work-home commute every day (So, 3km run to the train station, 30mn train ride, then 4km run to my work place, then shower....and the same back after work).

Out of the 5 half-marathons I ran during these 5 Sundays, two of them were official ones. On the first one, I finally managed to break my personal best on half, with 1h37'14". Only a 14 seconds improvement, but that one is certainly one of my best among personal bests....even better than 3h38'45" on marathon..

All other half-marathons were run at marathon speed, so targeting 5'06"/km, which will be my planned pace on October 21st. The one I ran on Sept. 16th, which was the other official race I ran was finally done quite significantly faster than this. First of all, because I had hard times to run "only" at 5'06"/km because of other runners emulation. And also, because I ran the last 3 kilometers up to nearly 14km/h (so, down to 4'15"/km), just for fun, because I could do it..:-)

With all this preparation, I think that I now manage to very well manage my marathon speed. I'll probably do a final test tomorrow by trying to keep running at this speed for 3 rounds of my favourite "Maurepas Marathon" circuit, which is just exactly 1/4 of a marathon.

More "funnily", I also did something I never did before during this really crazy month : simply said, I came back from work by running. All the way long. Through woods, forests, along some lakes and finally in the country. 42 kilometers (yes, a marathon). After a work day. Starting at 5:45pm and arriving home after 4h50 minutes. With 2 hours of heavy rain. With 2.5 hours running in the dark (with my headlamp of course). All alone. That was a crazy bet to do....but really great fun achieving this : the GPS trace is here. Really something I have to do again..:-)

So, well, now I'm more or less prepared and having fun is just a matter for time..:-). I'll keep you guys posted with those and, guess what? I'm already picking my target races for next year..:-)

I recently blogged about 3 languages reaching 100% translation for debconf templates in wheezy.

Today, two more languages joined the club: French and Portuguese.

We're still on our way to get seven or even eight complete translations in wheezy. Czech is now only missing "linux-latest" and Spanish waits for sysvinit (which I just NMU'ed) and nova (unfortunately an error in former translation was unnoticed and I discovered it quite late).

David Prévot is still trying to get Danish complete, by doing many fast update rounds and NMUs. I hope he succeeds in this.

After several months of effort by the i18n team (and quite a bit from /me), some NMUs, a lot of help by the release team to accept many unblocks, we finally reached 100% translation for debconf screens, in wheezy, for three languages.

And, no, French is not among them (yet). The first to reach this heaven are Russian, German and Swedish with translations for all translatable debconf screens for packages in Debian testing (which will become the next Debian release).

Three more languages (French, Czech and Portuguese) are waiting for one package to reach testing and another (Spanish) is waiting for three packages.

We should then soon reach 7 complete languages. David Prévot is even trying to get Danish as complete as possible, but it requires pushing for about 15 packages, with many NMUs and unblocks to ask.

I started this work in early April, so it took about SIX months to reach this and be ableto happily make a lot of noise about such achievement. You have no idea how it is appreciated by translators....so you maybe have a better idea why I can be so noisy when some uncoordinated upload (for instance with modified localized material) breaks this...

We'll have much more news about achievements in l10n for wheezy in the upcoming weeks. We had a lot of things that deserve some trumpets, bells or whistles..:-)

Justin B. Rye, the by far most efficient and clever reviewer of the "Debian English Localization Team" (working in the debian-l10n-english mailing list) just created a great page : Why The Name.

This page tries to give a clue about some cryptic packages and software names and is a great moment to read, both because you'll definitely learn something...and also benefit from tJustin's so british humor.

Justin, when do you apply as non-uploading DD?

So, it's now over.

After two weeks of DebCamp+DebConf, followed by two weeks touring over to the best places in Nicaragua with my beloved Elisabeth (our first long holidays as a couple without children since....1987!), my best holidays EVER are over.

I visited a wonderful country. I met wonderful people. And I have to come back as I left un unachieved volcano climb (some could think I did that on purpose just to have an excuse for coming back)...:-)

I'll probably try to blog about all this in a soon-to-come very long bubullish post (IOW: full of typos and Frenglish) for those of you who aren't tired of these.

Now, doh, I have two gardens to clean out before resuming work in less than two weeks.

What is good in "my" job in Debian are opportunities to discover new interesting packages.

While surveying the completion of debconf translations in unstable, I thus noticed a new package named "hoteldruid", that has a few questions and interaction with users.

After my usual mumble because French and a few other languages were *finally* virtually 100% in unstable for a few days...... I went on my usual task in such cases: propose a review of debconf templates and package description to my fellow debian-l10n-english co-workers (/me bends to Justin B. Rye, our tireless, picky, efficient and very clever Master Reviewer for over 5 years now).

Then I discovered what HotelDruid is about: this is a piece of PHP-based software meant to manage....an hotel or bed and breakfast...or any kind of such facility.

Real end-user software. Really useful software. For real people...:-)

Not the gazillionth obscure development language, or yet another encryption library, or yet another mysterious virtualization thing used by 10 people in the world (even if they host thousands of machines).

These are the free software pieces I like the most. Probably Marco Maria Francesco De Santis (the upstream author and Debian package maintainer) somewhere in, I guess, Italy is running a small B&B (or maybe his parents, or his wife/cousin/whatever) *and* is a free software addict. And he wanted to run his business with free software. Same for this French genealogist who once wanted to display his data over the web (and make a real use of that obscure Ocaml language.....yes, pun itended to my friends, here). Of the person who wrote LedgerSMB to manage his business. Or those who use free software to manage hospitals (hi Andreas) or schools (hi DebianEdu folks...and special hi to Petter).

Real software for real people. Of course, developed with obscure geeky things used only by those weird geeks who like to sometimes travel half a planet to just gather together and develop the best free operating system ever.

Guess what? I like this!

And guess what? I proposed the HotelDruid author to check whether we could imrove....translation, of course..:-)

Not much progress ATM (most translations are complete and D-I has been frozen to prepare its release anyway).

• Arabic completes level 3
• Progress for Uyghur in level 2

Status for D-I level 1 (core D-I files):

• 55 languages 100%: ar ast be bg bn bs ca cs cy da de el eo es et eu fa fi fr gl gu he hi id it ja kk km kn ko lo lv mr nb nl pa pl pt pt_BR ro ru si sk sl sr sv ta te th tr ug uk vi zh_CN zh_TW
• 1 language 98%: ga
• 2 languages 97%: hu lt
• 4 languages 95%: dz hr is mk
• 1 language 92%: ml
• others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 2 (packages that have localized material that may appear during default installs, such as iso-codes, tasksel, etc.):

• 39 languages 100%: ast be bg ca cs cy da de eo es eu fa fr gl gu he id is it ja kk km lt lv mr nb nl pl pt ru si sk sl sv th tr uk zh_CN zh_TW
• 3 languages 99%: fi hr vi
• 4 languages 98%: dz pt_BR ro ug
• 1 languages 97%: ta
• 2 languages 94%: ar el
• 1 language 92%: sr
• 5 languages 92%: bn bs hu ko ne
• others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 3 (packages that have localized material that may appear during non-default installs, such as win32-loader)

• 42 languages 100%: ar ast be bg bs ca cs cy da de el eo es fa fi fr ga gl he hr id is it ja kk km lt lv nb nl pl pt ru sk sl sr sv th tr vi zh_CN zh_TW
• 4 languages 98%: hu pt_BR ug uk
• others are 90% or below

Full 100% completeness (hall of fame) for 32 languages: Asturian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Esperanto, Spanish, Persian, French, Galician, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Khmer, Latvian, Norwegian Bokmål, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese

Not sure if that will work as I expect, but here as my runs in the city of Managua, combined in one single map, thanks to OpenRunner:

Here's what I found out during the "Packaging with git" talk at Debconf12. There are certainly cool enhancements. Feel free to share on Planet.

bubulle@sesostris:~ $ cat .bashrc
# http://lukasrieder.com/2009/07/14/extend-your-bash-ps1.html
parse_git_branch() {
  git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/(\1)/'
}

# set a fancy prompt (non-color, unless we know we "want" color)
case "$TERM" in
xterm-color|xterm|screen)
    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\[\033[01;33m\]$(parse_git_branch)\[\033[00m\] \$ '
    ;;
*)
    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w$(parse_git_branch)\$ '
    ;;
esac

After attending several talks and BOFs at Debconf12, I'll grant my personal "Best Talk Award" to Hideki Yamane's Let's shrink Debian package archive!.

Despite it being his first ever Debconf talk/BOF, Yamane-san did an incredibly complete research work to bring arguments about ways to reduce the size of the archive by using xz compression.

He triggerred a very live discussion (and for this we can also thank all participants) and the quality of his slides was really high.

So, ありがとうございます for this, as Tom Marble said after the talk. You definitely deserve it and I'm proud to have you as teammate in the pkg-fonts team.

As already written, even though it seems, I didn't spend my time running at Debconf12.

Or eating cheese...

Or (tentatively) hiking volcanoes...

Or helping people to kill each other with socks...

Or drinking beers...

Not *only* all of these (some of them at the same time, though hiking a volcano while eating cheese and drinking beers is not particularly easy)....but also some Debian work.

So, I uploaded a backport of samba to squeeze backports and our squeeze users should now have the same samba version than wheezy ones.

I also stopped several cronjobs on i18n.debian.net and moved some material there as links have been (or should be) moved to the brand new i18n.debian.org (and its alias l10n.debian.org).

I did a major cleanup in tasksel, committed several fixes, proposed others for review (mostly to Joey Hess). All this in preparation for a soon-to-come upload, probably after D-I beta1 which has been prepared by Cyril Brulebois while he was.....not attending Debconf12..

I also followed the integration of Sorina Sandu's work on netcfg for link detection and network ESSID choice in Debian Installer. Sorina is doing well in her GSOC work, because she's clearly someone with great capabilities who we will, I hope, be able to keep contributing to Debian. We can also thank the mentoring work of Gaudenz Steinlin to guide Sorina through D-I's arcanes.

I also went through the current status of debconf translation completeness in testing for the 7 languages that target 100% (Czech, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish). Here, the point is mostly taking care that fixes are either:

• already fixed in unstable (therefore checking that unblock requests have been sent by maintainers)
• sent as a bug report (so that I can harrass package maintainers to fix it)
• under work by a localization team (so that I can pester them to move on)

I can we have good chances to achieve this goal for at least 6 of these 7 languages (Czech might be more tricky as several translations are not yet made).

Finally, I also did most of my regular Debian work (which usually takes 1-2 hours every day)...and bits of my paid work (sorry for those people who I shared the table at breakfast, but that was my only common time window with my team at work).

So, well, quite productive weeks, once again.

This morning, I ran again with Noèl, my longstanding Debian running friend.

The goal was, this time, to explore the South-East heights of Managua. I noticed a road that seemed to be quiet enough and not requiring a too long transit through busy, noisy and bad smelling highways.

So, at 06:00 we headed from the Seminole hotel to the road to Masaya (the very large highway that goes in front ofMetrocentro). We had to run along it for a bit less than 2km. Not the best thing but the road was not very busy at that time.

Then, we turned right into a road heading towards a quite "classy" neighbourhood where roads are well paved, there are sidewalks, etc, etc. It was going up ALL TIME LONG, which is interesting as a start. This placed is named "Lomas de Santo Domingo" in Google Maps.

We even found there the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. I can tell you, the Iran ambassador is quite living in a neat place and probably very happy to be there..:-)

Fromthere, a very good concrete road starts to go up and up and up and up. many many very high standard villas, with fences, guards, etc. Strangely, there were several "For Sale" signs instead of "Se Vende". So, I guess this is a sign that this place is mostly inhabited by (very rich) foreigners, diplomats, etc.

This very nice road was also....climbing a lot: 180m in 3.5km, so 5.1% average, but sometimes closer to 10%!

At the very end of the road, we however ended....on a fence. It's apparently guarding the final part of the road where even more fancier villas seem to be, according to the satellite view..:-).

We tried to use a small path up, but had to stop quite quickly.

(OK, Noèl is definitely blurry there....blame the tired eyes after 8.7km climbing all the way)

And then, all we had to do was....going down..:-). Being both in a fairly good shape, that went quite fast. But we both agreed that the final part, above 12km/h along the highway, with the sun hitting hard, was quite a challenge.

I really admire those people who happen to run long distance in places like Managua. I can't even imagine running a marathon here....

GPS trace of what finally turns out to be my longest run here as of now with 17.5km in about 1h40.

A new neighbourhood to explore today: the South-West/West area. Indeed, my original plan was going towards Lagunas de Nejapa and Asososca. However, I now understood that such non urban areas in Managua are almost inaccessible.

It sound like walking and hiking in the nature is not something that urban inhabitants of Managua do often. So, in short, these places are....just impossible to go to.

Anyway, I wanted to see this, just in case. As a consequence, I ended heading westward from Hotel Seminole through Avenida Miguel Obando Y Bravo (the busy highway close to the hotel, where we boarded the Day Trip buses). Running along this one is not a bad thing as it is not that busy, particularly at 05:45..:-)

After crossinb Pista de la Unan that goes north towards the lake, I went 200m east then headed north up to reach the very busy Pista Juan Pablo II (or Pista de la Resistencia). For those who went to the day trip, this is the highway we went through at the beginning of the journey to Leon.

It sounds crazy to run along a busy highway but:

• it was not that busy at that time
• this is the only way to not get lost in the barrios as we'll see later on..:-)

I followed that one during about 4km until it ends facing a cone-style mountain, about 150m high (former volcano crater?)

After that long run straight, I ended at a big crossing, where the highways go either north or south....but a small street continues westward and is apparently going around the Laguna de Nejapa, at least according to Google Maps.

However, there is indeed, as too often here, a barrier (which OSM would have told me, indeed).

Hence, disappointed, I only could go back to the busy streets. I however decided that I would NOT come through the same way but rather try to run in smaller streets.

This is where the problem lies. Indeed, Managua "barrios" are not always connected by streets to the large and busy streets that surround them. This is mostly because several rivers run south to north, towards the lake. And these are canalyzed to avoid floodings, which means there are not that many bridges to cross them. So, it often ends that a barrio is only connected on one or two of its sides, which makes travelling through them particularly difficult and puzzling (especially going in the east-west directions).

So, I happened to search my way many times in these places, particularly in Barrio Pablo Sexto where the rivers directions are really confusing..:-)

I finally had no other choice than going down to the big Pista Juan Pablo II and come back the same way to the hotel.

The final result is a 15km run in 1h20. Not that a bad pace in these weather conditions.

GPS trace

I failed. I didn't go running the day after the Cheese and Wine party (tuesday). I wonder why...:-)

Indeed, I was feeling well, but slightly tired and I woke up at 8am, which means that I would have to go out quite late, in the heat...and run while feeling tired.

And something I have learnt in all my running activities is that when one feels not in shape, better not insist. This is where injuries can come.

Moreover, the next day was meant to be the Day Trip, with a goal for me: climb the Cerro negro volcano as fast as I can, training with my sticks for difficult climbs, in the heat...in the perspective of future races I would like to do in French Alps, in the upcoming years (such as La Montagn'hard : I recommend watching the video).

Sadly, a landslide has cut the road 2km away from the starting point and, despite my desperate attempts to still form a group of "strong people" to go there and do the extra 4km walk anyway....we later learned that the entire road to Cerro Negro is closed and we'd have no chance to go on it. That infortunate, though I hopefully have another chance in the upcoming two weeks, where I'm supposed to come back and climb the volcano with Elizabeth (but, I of course will not leave my beloved one alone on a volcano!).

So, I ended up staying on the beach at Las Peñitas. And, as I explained to Noèl, on days where I *decided* to run, I *need* to run. It's like a drug as you'd guess.

So, I went running on the beach..:-). In the early afternoon, during a very hot day (probably the best weather we ever had, which makes me even more regret "my" volcano), about 34°C, no shade...and some wind, and sand...:-)

Running on the beach is not as hard as one would imagine as long as you stay at the limit of the water, where the sand is compact. Indeed, this is even good for articulations as the sand soil is of course soft and absorbs impacts. The only drawback is that this beach is quite not so flat and this is sometimes like running across a hill all time long.

Anyway, I went north up to Poneloya, up to the point where a river blocks the path along the beach, then I headed back. I had originally the intent to continue south-east, past the place where we were, up to the start of Juan Venaco island. However, the face wind when comign back, as well as the very hot sun, really achieved me....and I decided it would be wiser to stop. I however couldn't resist running IN the waves, which means I now have very humid shoes (but I have two pairs of those...:-))

Today (Thursday), was a more standard run in Managua, with Noèl and Ralf. We once again went to the South suburbs|hills. All three of us were suite tired as it seems, so we chose a quite slow pace and, still, the climb was not that easy. We went the same way I went with Ralf a few days ago, but we didn't enter the "dogs path" this time, but rather tried to continue the road south.

After 4.5 km, we had however to stop because the path didn't go further and, anyway, I think it was enough for all of us..:-)

The way back, we tried another way, which was not particularly touristic (close to the National Soccer Stadium....a not so impressive stadium, but soccer is not the national sport here in Nicaragua, where people are more in base-ball or boxing).

Both GPS traces:

• Run on the beach
• Run in South Managua

See you tomorrow for yet another GPS trace..:-)

For once, I went north. Which means going *into* the city but I also need to explore that part of Managua, right?

Therefore, I went down north heading to the lake and Old Cathedral.

Surroundings of the Old Cathedral and Presidential House are strange. There is nearly nobody around, few activity. Doesn't look like a city's "heart".

I also reached the lakeshore. I already read that managua is more or less "turning its back" to its lake. It's really true. There's nearly no place where one can actually freely reach the lakeshore, at least where I was. Seems that, here also, the nasty habit of bars and restaurants to "privatize" the shores, as one can see in Italy, sometimes Mexico....is also happening. I'm happy we have laws against this in France, indeed.

Fun to also see a small recreation park...just like Coney Island, in some way..:)

Anyway, I could still reach the lakeshore at some point and take a picture of the Chiltepe Peninsula (guess what on it? A volcano, of course...).

I finally went back up through a different neighbourhood than the one I went down. Often "not so nice" streets, in some poor neighbourhood but, again, I always felt very safe....and people are still saying "bon dia" when you meet them.

GPS trace is here, as usual.

I've been lazy today: I just went to the same place than yesterday..:-)

I actually waslate and missed the meeting with Noèl who indeed went running in about the same neighbourhood, as well as Martin Bagge who went running on the road to the "Intermezzo" restaurant I described earlier..:-)

So, no real fancy description today. And, as usual, the full GPS trace is here.

The interesting challenge is to see if I can manage to achieve a run every day..:-). We'll see!

The challenge is now more and more to find good places to run without too much cars and noises....and not too far away.

Today, I think I made it well..:-)

After a look on the map, and some wild guess from what I now know of the way the city is organized, I decided to go south-west of Managa, from the hotel Seminole.

This is again a hilly run because, anyway, wherever you go south in Managua, you're going up.

Ralf, who arrived just yesterday, joined me and, I guess, enjoyed the run.

After going through an obviously quite rich neighbourhood with nice villas, gardeners, huge US truck-style cars, we went close to the Mormonschurch...and a mosque, then headed westward close to "Colegio Americano", with fences, walls, guards in the corner, etc. Seems that any tiny bit of USA in the world needs an army to protect it.

Crossing la Pista Suburbana, we then went on a very quiet roads towards the hill, in a very green and peaceful area. House there were really not as fancy as in other places, even seeming quite "poor" in some way. However, we never felt any problem and people we meet on the way are always friendly and smiling : "Hola", "Buenos Dias", etc.

At the end of the road, after about half an hour, we decided to head back. However, as going back the same way is boring, I suggested we head up west as my phone's map (it is very helpful to have a smartphone with GPS and Google Maps for wandering through unknwon places) was mentioning another road going north-west a little bit westward.

So we entered a small trail between house|farms...with dogs! These were a bit "scary" as they were barking at us and of course running entirely freely. On the other hand, none was really aggressive and we had no problem. I however saw a few people really staring at us as I guess there are not so many runners in this place..:-). But still, we never felt unsafe: just in a quite uncommon place.

After abotu 500m we found the "road" that was on my map: indeed a path going down slowly along the hill. And there was the marvel. An incredible panoramic view going going the volcanoes that are East and North of Leon : San Cristobal, Telica Rota, Pilas elHoj and last but definitely not least: EL MOMOTOMBO. A nearly perfect pyramid-style volcano that lies about 50km north-west of Managua, on the eastern shore of Managua Lake. The view there is...just fantastic with also a 180° panorama to West and North-West of the lake and the volcanoes area.

After this, all we had to do was heading back to the hotel and share this with you...:-)

As usual, the full GPS trace is here.

Yet another Grand Plan today: run in Masaya Volcan National Park.

Masaya Volcano is one of the most active volcanoes in Nicaragua. It is located only 20km south-east of Managua, so going there is as easy as renting a taxi.

The original plan was to drive to the entrance of the National park (on the road to Masaya city), then run up to the volcan, so from 250m altitude up to about 600m.

I therefore rented a taxi with the kind help of Norman, and we agreed to meet up at 08:30 at the hotel, along with Noèl and Daniel (who was planning to walk up, not running).

After discussing here or there, Kurt and Gaudenz joined, both with the intent of running up. Others would also have liked to join, but I wasn't in the mood of organizing a full bus of Debconfers..:-). My plan was to enjoy pyself the hike...not to manage several taxis, etc.

We thus packed in Denis blue taxi...a fancy and very visible customized blue car that looked like it had been the topic of on episode of the "Pimp My Ride" TV show..:-)

Sitting 4 people at the back of a regular car without hitting some blue neon lights, or 7" TV screens is kinda tricky, but we made it.

When arriving at the park's entrance, we however learned that it is forbidden to walk or hike up the road by foot, because of potential high concentrations of Carbon Dioxide. Sadly, we then had to pack again in the car and go up with it.

After reaching the parking close to the volcano's active crater (that is said to have a small lava lake at its bottom, one of the very few in the world), we decided to head up for going round the Nindira crater, an inactive crater located slightly above. Unfortunately, again, the path around the Masaya crater is forbidden to walk on, because of landslides.

We indeed still had great fun by running around this crater (which is about a 2.5 kilometers round trip, very very hilly and sometimes hard to run on such as a mountain path.

After about 50 minutes and two laps (after all, we had a giant stadium!), we headed back to the parking, packed 5 sweating geeks in the car and went back to the hotel.

Full GPS trace is here. I also put a few pictures on Facebook, supposedly visible by anybody : Masaya crater and Nindiri crater.

It's still good to be at Debcamp before DebConf and I'm not running all day long, contrary to what you might think by reading my posts.

Of course, I'm always busy with "social-like" activities such as doing my best for us to have a good Cheese and Wine Party as, now that I'm trapped into it, people expect it to be better and better each year. Or to revive the traditional Assassins game.

But Debian is not only about killing cheese with socks and I try to also achieve a few things while being here.

As of now, I can already count a few things:

• completing dpkg translation and dpkg manpages translations (I blessed Guillem Jover a lot for being so picky and changing so many details in dpkg messages....and I blessed Raphaël a lot for writing so detailed manpages). To be honest, that part was not achieved during Debcamp but during.....the flight from Paris to Atlanta and partly during the Atlanta-Managua flight. Being upgraded to Premium helped as there are power sockets in seats there..:-)
• completing APT translation and APT manpages translations. Here, a big work had been done by Justin Rye to bring more English in a big pile of Germish and I had to fight hard to check significative changes out of the typo and grammar fixes
• preparing a backport of samba for squeeze. We'll have samba 3.6.6 in wheezy and our squeeze users deserve it also
• go through a few leftovers from the Paris i18n sprint that created i18n.debian.org, such as creating a page for the I18n team.
• discuss (briefly) with David Prévot have the Debian website l10n pages point to material from i18n.debian.org and no longeri18n.debian.net

The only thing I nearly haven't worked on yet is....the talk I have on Sunday and that is supposed to explain newcomers how to join the crowd of localization fanatics.

Oh, and I'm still jetlagged and go to bed daily at 10pm...:-)

The Grand Plan today was reaching the end of the road I already explored on Tuesday. Named "Camino Las Viudas", it's climbing in the southern hills up to a place named "Intermzeeo del Bosque", apparently a very fancy (and expensive) restaurant.

The road climbs in the apparently "rich" neighbourhood of Managua, with very fancy villas as guarded by private security, as well as private condominiums, guarded as well.

What's funny to see is that, at the bottom of the road, when it crosses a large avenue (Pista Suburbana Espana), you can find several auto-rickshaws, just like those you find everywhere in India. Those autos apparently drive people who happen to work in these villas (like maids, gardeners, security guards, etc.) up to the place they work.

We even met two cows wandering on the road and I hesitated waiting for a rickshaw to show up and take a pic of the road (with holes), the auto and the cows, then pretending that I'm no longer in Nicaragua but back in Karnataka.

I did the run along with Noèl Köthe, who I was very happy to find again, restoring our now famous Debconf Runners Duet. We even found the German Embassy!

Though climb, even if we took care to start at 6 a.m. to avoid the heat (and also the traffic and noise). Noèl unfortunately had to give up at 1km from the top of the road, when a 15% climb suddenly "killed" his legs. I need to train him more for ups and downs..:-)

I could continue the road and finally reached the restaurant....which was guarded by private security (as apparently everything in this country) who unfortunately didn't let me in despite my desperate attempts to convince him, in broken Spanish, that I just wanted to take a few pictures and not place a bomb or rob someone...

So, I gota little bit disappointed and the only option was then....to run down for another 8.5 kilometers, accelerating all the way, to finish nearly at 14 km/h on Managua's sidewalks...Fun.

Great run (nearly 400m positive slope in less than 17km). Next challenge : find another such nice run in the neighbourhood! Maybe Volcan Masaya tomorrow.

GPS trace is here.

Second day in managua, second day running.

Today, after breakfast, so at about 7h45, I went out running with Gaudenz Steinlin. The goal was to go to laguna de Tiscapa, a lagoon of volcanic origin, in the middle of the city of Managua.

The laguna is not really far away from the place we're staying at (about 2.5km). However, as usual here, the only way to get there is along the streets. Noisy streets. Often smelly streets. But that's the only way.

For instance, it took Gaudenz several minutes before he could manage to cross the "Pista Beljamin Zelodon", a quite busy highway.

The lagoon per se is really nice, particularly the view from the Sandino monument where you can see the Peninsula de Chiltepe.

However, apart from that, it was sometimes a quite boring run because of the traffic, noise, etc. But I enjoyed again having a good run with Gaudenz. We'll do this again, but in another place..:-)

GPS trace for that run is here.

One part of my yearly activity at DebConf is exploring the conference neighbourhood for good running spots.

So, the first one this year has been an up and down run on "Camino Las Viudas", heading south from Managua.

The path is easy to find: when exiting from Hotel Seminole, turn right in the street, cross the large boulevard on continue staright ahead for how many kilometers as you want.

It climbs up in the hills all along, so that's quite a though one with about 5% slope all along.

I stopped in the middle of nothing, just because I didn't want to run for more than one hour. I'll have to come back and see where this road goes. It seems to be climbing continuously..:-)

So, one of my forthcoming plans is going to *the end* of this road, just to see what's there. From OpenStreetMap, it seems to end up in the hills.

The run trace can be seen there.

Jan Dejemyr reported Debian bug #680000 on Monday July 2nd, against update-manager-core.

Bug #670000 was reported as of April 22nd: 2 months and 10 days for 10,000 bugs. About a constant bug report rate (2 months and 7 days last time).

How will the wheezy freeze affect this? We'll see in two months!

D-I beta 1 is in preparation. Commits to level 1 are still allowed but no guarantee they'll make it to beta1 and therefore wheezy.

• Galician, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Basque complete level 2 (indeed I committed espeakup translations which I forgot to commit)
• Norwegian Bokmål completes level 2
• Romanian completes level 1
• As a consequence, Galician, Norwegian Bokmål, Thai and Traditional Chinese join the "fully complete" gang

Status for D-I level 1 (core D-I files):

• 55 languages 100%: ar ast be bg bn bs ca cs cy da de el eo es et eu fa fi fr gl gu he hi id it ja kk km kn ko lo lv mr nb nl pa pl pt pt_BR ro ru si sk sl sr sv ta te th tr ug uk vi zh_CN zh_TW
• 1 language 98%: ga
• 2 languages 97%: hu lt
• 4 languages 95%: dz hr is mk
• 1 language 92%: ml
• others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 2 (packages that have localized material that may appear during default installs, such as iso-codes, tasksel, etc.):

• 39 languages 100%: ast be bg ca cs cy da de eo es eu fa fr gl gu he id is it ja kk km lt lv mr nb nl pl pt ru si sk sl sv th tr uk zh_CN zh_TW
• 3 languages 99%: fi hr vi
• 3 languages 98%: dz pt_BR ro
• 2 languages 97%: ta ug
• 2 languages 94%: ar el
• 1 language 92%: sr
• 5 languages 92%: bn bs hu ko ne
• others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 3 (packages that have localized material that may appear during non-default installs, such as win32-loader)

• 41 languages 100%: ast be bg bs ca cs cy da de el eo es fa fi fr ga gl he hr id is it ja kk km lt lv nb nl pl pt ru sk sl sr sv th tr vi zh_CN zh_TW
• 4 languages 98%: hu pt_BR ug uk
• others are 90% or below

Full 100% completeness (hall of fame) for 32 languages: Asturian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Esperanto, Spanish, Persian, French, Galician, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Khmer, Latvian, Norwegian Bokmål, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese

The D-I beta release is in preparation so we have many last minute updates and I'm uploading gazillion of packages. Each time, I upload one....a translator pops up and sends another update, etc. :-)

• Galician completed level 1, progress for level 2
• Irish progress in level 1
• Welsh completes level 2 and 3 and joins the Hall of Fame
• Croatian progress in level 1

Status for D-I level 1 (core D-I files):

• 54 languages 100%: ar ast be bg bn bs ca cs cy da de el eo es et eu fa fi fr gl gu he hi id it ja kk km kn ko lo lv mr nb nl pa pl pt pt_BR ru si sk sl sr sv ta te th tr ug uk vi zh_CN zh_TW
• 1 language 98%: ga
• 2 languages 97%: hu lt
• 5 languages 95%: dz hr is mk ro
• 1 language 92%: ml
• others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 2 (packages that have localized material that may appear during default installs, such as iso-codes, tasksel, etc.):

• 34 languages 100%: ast be bg ca cs cy da de eo es fa fr gu he id is it ja kk km lt lv mr nl pl pt ru si sk sl sv tr uk zh_CN
• 8 languages 99%: eu fi gl hr nb th vi zh_TW
• 3 languages 98%: dz pt_BR ro
• 2 languages 97%: ta ug
• 2 languages 94%: ar el
• 1 language 92%: sr
• 5 languages 92%: bn bs hu ko ne
• others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 3 (packages that have localized material that may appear during non-default installs, such as win32-loader)

• 41 languages 100%: ast be bg bs ca cs cy da de el eo es fa fi fr ga gl he hr id is it ja kk km lt lv nb nl pl pt ru sk sl sr sv th tr vi zh_CN zh_TW
• 3 languages 98%: hu ug uk
• others are 90% or below

Full 100% completeness (hall of fame) for 28 languages: Asturian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Welsh, Danish, German, Esperanto, Spanish, Persian, French, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Khmer, Latvian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese

Debian is such a universal system:

# apt-get install wine and cheese
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  brasero brasero-common cheese-common desktop-file-utils evolution-data-server-common gcr gir1.2-atk-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-gst-1.0 gir1.2-cogl-1.0
  gir1.2-coglpango-1.0 gir1.2-evince-3.0 gir1.2-freedesktop gir1.2-gdkpixbuf-2.0 gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-0.10 gir1.2-gstreamer-0.10 gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-gtkclutter-1.0
  gir1.2-gtksource-3.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 gir1.2-pango-1.0 gnome-desktop3-data gnome-icon-theme gnome-keyring gnome-sushi gnome-video-effects gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly gvfs
  gvfs-backends gvfs-common gvfs-daemons gvfs-libs hwdata libbrasero-media3-1 libburn4 libcamel-1.2-29 libcap2-bin libcdio-cdda1 libcdio-paranoia1 libcdio13 libcheese-gtk21
  libcheese3 libclutter-1.0-0 libclutter-1.0-common libclutter-gst-1.0-0 libclutter-gtk-1.0-0 libclutter-imcontext-0.1-0 libcluttergesture-0.0.2-0 libcogl-common libcogl-pango0
  libcogl9 libebook-1.2-12 libecal-1.2-10 libedataserver-1.2-15 libedataserverui-3.0-1 libevdocument3-4 libevview3-3 libexempi3 libgck-1-0 libgcr-3-1 libgcr-3-common libgee2
  libgjs0b libglib2.0-data libgnome-desktop-3-2 libgssdp-1.0-3 libgupnp-1.0-4 libgxps2 libisofs6 libjson-glib-1.0-0 libjte1 libmozjs185-1.0 libmpg123-0 libmx-1.0-2 libmx-bin
  libmx-common libnautilus-extension1a libpam-cap libpam-gnome-keyring libpoppler-glib8 libpoppler19 libquvi-scripts libquvi7 libsidplay1 libt1-5 libtotem-plparser17
  libtracker-sparql-0.14-0 libwine libwine-alsa libwine-bin libwine-gecko-1.4 libwine-gl nautilus nautilus-data nautilus-sendto wine-bin
Suggested packages:
  libdvdcss2 gnome-video-effects-frei0r libcap-dev sidplay-base xsidplay wine-doc libwine-cms libwine-sane libwine-ldap libwine-print libwine-openal libwine-gphoto2 eog
  xdg-user-dirs tracker pidgin gajim ttf-mscorefonts-installer winbind avscan klamav clamav 
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  and brasero brasero-common cheese cheese-common desktop-file-utils evolution-data-server-common gcr gir1.2-atk-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-1.0 gir1.2-clutter-gst-1.0 gir1.2-cogl-1.0
  gir1.2-coglpango-1.0 gir1.2-evince-3.0 gir1.2-freedesktop gir1.2-gdkpixbuf-2.0 gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-0.10 gir1.2-gstreamer-0.10 gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-gtkclutter-1.0
  gir1.2-gtksource-3.0 gir1.2-json-1.0 gir1.2-pango-1.0 gnome-desktop3-data gnome-icon-theme gnome-keyring gnome-sushi gnome-video-effects gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
  gvfs-backends hwdata libbrasero-media3-1 libburn4 libcamel-1.2-29 libcap2-bin libcdio-cdda1 libcdio-paranoia1 libcdio13 libcheese-gtk21 libcheese3 libclutter-1.0-0
  libclutter-1.0-common libclutter-gst-1.0-0 libclutter-gtk-1.0-0 libclutter-imcontext-0.1-0 libcluttergesture-0.0.2-0 libcogl-common libcogl-pango0 libcogl9 libebook-1.2-12
  libecal-1.2-10 libedataserver-1.2-15 libedataserverui-3.0-1 libevdocument3-4 libevview3-3 libexempi3 libgck-1-0 libgcr-3-1 libgcr-3-common libgee2 libgjs0b libglib2.0-data
  libgnome-desktop-3-2 libgssdp-1.0-3 libgupnp-1.0-4 libgxps2 libisofs6 libjson-glib-1.0-0 libjte1 libmozjs185-1.0 libmpg123-0 libmx-1.0-2 libmx-bin libmx-common
  libnautilus-extension1a libpam-cap libpam-gnome-keyring libpoppler-glib8 libpoppler19 libquvi-scripts libquvi7 libsidplay1 libt1-5 libtotem-plparser17 libtracker-sparql-0.14-0
  libwine libwine-alsa libwine-bin libwine-gecko-1.4 libwine-gl nautilus nautilus-data nautilus-sendto wine wine-bin The following packages will be upgraded:
  gvfs gvfs-common gvfs-daemons gvfs-libs   
4 upgraded, 95 newly installed, 0 to remove and 974 not upgraded.   
Need to get 100 MB/104 MB of archives.
After this operation, 250 MB of additional disk space will be used.

Thanks to Zobel, who pointed me to this one....

• Galician progress in level 1 and level 2
• Welsh completes level 1
• Latvan completes level 3 and is now 100% everywhere

Status for D-I level 1 (core D-I files):

• 53 languages 100%: ar ast be bg bn bs ca cs cy da de el eo es et eu fa fi fr gu he hi id it ja kk km kn ko lo lv mr nb nl pa pl pt pt_BR ru si sk sl sr sv ta te th tr ug uk vi zh_CN zh_TW
• 3 languages 97%: ga hu lt
• 5 languages 95%: dz gl is mk ro
• 1 language 92%: ml
• others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 2 (packages that have localized material that may appear during default installs, such as iso-codes, tasksel, etc.):

• 33 languages 100%: ast be bg ca cs da de eo es fa fr gu he id is it ja kk km lt lv mr nl pl pt ru si sk sl sv tr uk zh_CN
• 7 languages 99%: eu fi hr nb th vi zh_TW
• 4 languages 98%: dz gl pt_BR ro
• 2 languages 97%: ta ug
• 2 languages 94%: ar el
• 1 language 92%: sr
• 5 languages 92%: bn bs hu ko ne
• others are 90% or below

Status for D-I level 3 (packages that have localized material that may appear during non-default installs, such as win32-loader)

• 40 languages 100%: ast be bg bs ca cs da de el eo es fa fi fr ga gl he hr id is it ja kk km lt lv nb nl pl pt ru sk sl sr sv th tr vi zh_CN zh_TW
• 3 languages 98%: hu ug uk
• others are 90% or below

Full 100% completeness (hall of fame) for 27 languages: Asturian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Esperanto, Spanish, Persian, French, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kazakh, Khmer, Latvian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish, Simplified Chinese

I made it..:-)

Despite quite horrible weather conditions (heavy rain before the race, strong rain during the first 1/2h, light rain up to half-marathon....and wind during the first 25 kilometers), I managed to break my personal best in a marathon, down to 3h38'45".

Not a huge improvement (1'35") but, given that this race is not the easiest ever (the last 17 kilometers are made of ups and downs, for a total 150 meters positive slope and 60 meters height difference between start and finish), a very good result indeed.

This has been my first "negative split" marathon, with a second half faster than the first. Also I managed to keep the same speed all along the race, each kilometer being 5'02" and 5'16" except one at 5'23 because of the steepest hill there. Final kilometer in 4'50"!

As I was hoping, training gives results...

Now, I'm heading to a summer without races, but probably great runs during DebConf in Nicaragua.

Next "big" race : Seine-Eure marathon, in Val de Rueil, France, on October 20th. Here, I again expect to break my PB as this is a very flat race (the place where I set my previous PB, indeed)