I may have been sewing myself a new pajama.

It was plagued with issues; one of the sleeve is wrong side out and I only realized it when everything was almost done (luckily the pattern is symmetric and it is barely noticeable) and the swirl moved while I was sewing it on (and the sewing machine got stuck multiple times: next time I'm using interfacing, full stop.), and it's a bit deformed, but it's done.

For the swirl, I used Inkscape to Simplify (Ctrl-L) the original Debian Swirl a few times, removed the isolated bits, adjusted some spline nodes by hand and printed on paper. I've then cut, used water soluble glue to attach it to the wrong side of a scrap of red fabric, cut the fabric, removed the paper and then pinned and sewed the fabric on the pajama top.
As mentioned above, the next time I'm doing something like this, some interfacing will be involved somewhere, to keep me sane and the sewing machine happy.

Blogging, because it is somewhat relevant to Free Software :) and there are even sources, under a DFSG-Free license :)

#Treddi, la stampante 3d del @Gruppo Linux Como , per la prima volta SI MUOVE!!!

Ed altre foto della fiera di Erba su social.gl-como.it/photos/valha…

I will do another post later with the sources[esc]bdwapattern of the skirt (the shirtwaist is adapted from a commercial pattern) and more details, but this is the outfit I wore at Lucca Comics this year.

And this post is completely SFW *even* in an Edwardian workplace!

Andfrnd Uploader Beta

URI: content://media/external/images/media/45995
File name: /storage/emulated/0/Download/images.duckduckgo.com.jpg

As the libreboot website warns: there are issues with virtualization on x200 without microcode updated.

Virtualization is something that I use, and I have a number of VMs on that laptop, managed with libvirt; since it has microcode version 1067a, I decided to try and see if I was being lucky and virtualization was working anyway.

The result is that the machines no longer start: the kernel loads, and then it crashes and reboots. I don't remember why, however, I tried to start a debian installer CD (iso) I had around, and that one worked.

So, I decided to investigate a bit more: apparently a new installation done from that iso (debian-8.3.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso) boots and works with no problem, while my (older, I suspect) installations don't. I tried to boot one of the older VMs with that image in recovery mode, tried to chroot in the original root and got failed to run command '/bin/bash': Exec format error.

Since that shell was lacking even the file command, I tried then to start a live image, and choose the lightweight debian-live-8.0.0-amd64-standard.iso: that one didn't start in the same way as the existing images.

Another try with debian-live-8.5.0-i386-lxde-desktop.iso confirmed that apparently Debian > 8.3 works, Debian 8.0 doesn't (I don't have ISOs for versions 8.1 and 8.2 to bisect properly the issue).

I've skimmed the release notes for 8.3 and noticed that there was an update in the intel-microcode package, but AFAIK the installer doesn't have anything from non-free, and I'm sure that non-free wasn't enabled on the VMs.

My next attempt (thanks tosky on #debian-it for suggesting this obvious solution that I was missing :) ) was to run one of the VMs with plain qemu instead of kvm and bring it up-to-date: the upgrade was successful and included the packages in this screenshot, but on reboot it's still not working as before.

Right now, I think I will just recreate from scratch the images I need, but when I'll have time I'd like to investigate the issue a bit more, so hopefully there will be a part 2 to this article.

found on teh interwebz, no idea where it comes from (if you do, please tell me in the comments)

edit: it was as easy as actually opening imgur with javascript on: the source is brendangregg.com/linuxperf.htm…

@Gruppo Linux Como

Since apparently only the Belgians can have nice things, yesterday made myself a couple of notebooks with removable sheets.

Advantages:

* does not require a trip to Belgium¹.
* Respects one international standard (ISO 838), and the sheets can be stored in a regular binder after I'm done writing them.
* I've had fun making them.

Disadvantages:

* Adding and removing sheets is easy, but not as easy as the real thing.

The .scad file for the rings is quite trivial, but if there are requests I can publish it somewhere.

¹ yes, I know that the website lists distributors for my country, but I've never seen it sold anywhere.

Andfrnd Uploader Beta

URI: file:///storage/sdcard1/DCIM/Camera/IMG_20160714_194532.jpg
File name: /storage/sdcard1/DCIM/Camera/IMG_20160714_194532.jpg

With Debconf being in South Africa, a lot of people (like me) probably weren't able to attend and are missing the cheese and wine party, mao games and general socialization that is happening there.

One thing we don't have to miss, however, are the talks: as usual the video team is doing a great job recording and streaming all talks so that people can still participate a bit from their home.

What they do, however, requires a lot of manpower, so if you are attending Debconf please consider volunteering to help: from my experience last year they are very nice people who are welcoming towards new contributors and they have periodical training sessions to help people getting started with the various tasks. More informations about video team meetings and training session are in the topic of the IRC channel, #debconf-video@OFTC.

I don't think there are cookies involved (which just proves that the video team isn't evil), but you may get a t-shirt and you will get a warm fuzzy feeling of having helped people around the world.

@Debian #debconf

About one year ago, during my first Debconf, I've felt the need for some way to tell people whether I was busy on my laptop doing stuff that required concentration or just passing some time between talks etc. and available for interruptions, socialization or context switches.

One easily available method of course would have been to ping me on IRC (and then probably go on chatting on it while being in the same room, of course :) ), but I wanted to try something that allowed for less planning and worked even in places with less connectivity.

My first idea was a base laptop sticker with two statuses and then a removable one used to cover the wrong status and point to the correct one, and I still think it would be nice, but having it printed is probably going to be somewhat expensive, so I shelved the project for the time being.

Lately, however, I've been playing with hexagonal stickers and decided to design something on this topic, whith the result in the figure above, with the “hacking” sticker being my first choice, and the “concentrating” alternative probably useful while surrounded by people who may misunderstand the term “hacking”.

While idly looking around for sticker printing prices I realized that it didn't necessarly have to be a sticker and started to consider alternatives.

One format I'm trying is inspired by "do not disturb" door signs: I've used some laminating pouches I already had around which are slightly bigger than credit-card format (but credit-card size would also work of course ) and cut a notch so that they can be attached to the open lid of a laptop.

They seem to fit well on my laptop lid, and apart from a bad tendency to attract every bit of lint in a radius of a few meters the form factor looks good. I'll try to use them at the next conference to see if they actually work for their intended purpose.

SVG sources (and a PDF) are available on my website under the CC-BY-SA license.

This evening I've played around a bit with the Sticker Constructor Specification and its template, and this is the result:

Now I just have to:

* find somebody in Europe who prints good stickers and doesn't require illustrator (or other proprietary software) to submit files for non-rectangular shapes
* find out which Debian team I should contact to submit the files so that they can be used by everybody interested.

But neither will happen today, nor probably tomorrow, because lazy O:-)

Edit: now that I'm awake I realized I forgot to thank @Enrico Zini Zini and MadameZou for their help in combining my two proposals in a better design.

Source svg

Una serie di corsi gratuiti su coursera non saranno piu' disponibili a partire dal 30 giugno. Scaricateli prima che scompaiano!

medium.freecodecamp.com/the-da…

Corrispondente primaverile del Linux Day, il Linux Presentation Day è un evento europeo nel corso del quale i gruppi locali di utenti Linux e Software Libero si mettono a disposizione del pubblico per far conoscere il loro mondo, rispondere a domande, mostrare opportunità poco conosciute e — perché no? — divertirsi assieme.

Alcuni gruppi di utenti linux delle province di Varese e Como saranno a disposizione quel sabato pomeriggio, il 30 aprile, dalle 14:30 alle 19 a Tradate, presso il FaberLab in Viale Europa 4/a.

L'evento, a ingresso libero, non è rivolto a professionisti dell'informatica, ma al grande pubblico, e non prevede un programma prefissato di talk formali, ma spazi liberi dove conversare liberamente e senza vincoli di scalette di vari argomenti a seconda degli interessi specifici dei partecipanti.

@Gruppo Linux Como

Ne approfitto per fare gli auguri a @Fabio . E intanto segnalo un possibile baco (o misconfigurazione). Sul promemoria dei compleanni vedo:

Compleanni questa settimana:
Fabio 11 PM Lunedì 29 Febbraio

[oggi]Non dovrebbe essere 00 AM Martedì 1 Marzo?

(e mi chiedo anche come si formatti il testo in Friendika... e perche' mi mette gli acapi dove non ci sono )

Questa sera ore 21.20 ritrovo in sede per una serata su "Treddi", l'orsett-- la stampante 3D costruita da zero dal GL-Como.
Il nostro buon meccanico @Davide De Prisco ci aggiornerà sullo stato del progetto e si discuterà di come proseguirlo.
Prima tappa: plotter 2D!

Nella foto, Treddi in una foto d'epoca

Yesterday I've finally donated to become a Conservancy Supporter.

The reasons to donate have already been explained many times both on Planet Debian and elsewhere; a few weeks ago I wrote a post (in Italian) on the Ninux community blog to spread the word about it.

So, why I haven't donated earlier?

Trying to donate via PayPal from Italy (and, it seems, from Europe in general) requires a PayPal account, which I don't have and don't want to have, so I contacted them to ask for bank transfer instructions.
The first instructions I received were too complex for my online-only bank account, so I asked my bank for help, there was an exchange of emails, further simpler instructions from their bank, a small donation to test everything and time passed.

Finally, the good news: it is possible to donate to Conservancy from Italy (and probably from elsewhere in EU) using a SEPA transfer with minimal commissions and usually available from the home banking websites, so that it doesn't require significantly more effort than using paypal.
You can contact Conservancy via e-mail to get the relevant payment data.

(Conservancy has an account in EUR which is then used to pay for expenses in EUR, so no currency conversion commission are involved.)

Nel caso a qualcuno potesse interessare, un bigino sul funzionamento dei vari tipi di alimentatori:

global.tdk.com/news_center/pub…

( from: righto.com/2012/10/a-dozen-usb… )

The default behaviour of ssh in debian testing has changed a bit: now it uses ECDSA and shows SHA256 fingerprints by default instead of using RSA and showing MD5 fingerprints.

Of course, most listings of host fingerprints still only show MD5 fingerprints for an RSA key.

This is a way to ask a server for its keys and print their fingerprints, allowing some crosscheck.

$ ssh-keyscan -t rsa,ecdsa $SERVER > keys.pub && ssh-keygen -lf keys.pub -E md5
$ # check the results against the published listing
$ ssh-keygen -lf keys.pub

I can think of an attack on this: somebody could intercept the communication, send you the right RSA pubkey and their own ECDSA, and then redirect the communication toward their own host.

Relevant links:

permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linu…
bridge.grumpy-troll.org/2011/0…
enricozini.org/2008/tips/ssh-h…

(Post title courtesy of @Enrico Zini )

I've decided I don't want to keep an ssh key on my traveling laptop, but I still need to be able to authenticate to a number of hosts (and expecially gpg repositories). I also have an OpenPGP smartcard (from the FSFE). A plan is starting to form.

There are a number of guides available, but many of those are obsolete; the following pages are from this decade:

• Using GnuPG (2.1) for SSH authentication
• Using GnuPG for SSH authentication (from the same author, using GnuPG 2.0, includess still current notes on using a smartcard)
• How to use authentication subkeys in gpg for SSH public key authentication
• SSH authentication with your PGP key

I've had some success from outside X, now I need to find out where I should disable ssh-agent from starting every time a start an X session, so that gpg-agent can take its place.

@Gruppo Linux Como @LIFO #gnupg