Sherringham Blog

Spitalfields, London

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:28:00 +0100

I worked round the corner from Spitalfields market near London Liverpool Street ten or so years ago. A lot of history in this area, some of it notorious. I made a return visit at the weekend and saw a lot of changes.

For one thing, it now has a goat ...

Right: Kenny Hunter, goat sculpture

Christ Church, designed by Hawksmoor and built between 1714 and 1729, is still there and still striking.

Left: Christ Church, Spitalfields.

SpitalFields Market was bustling and full of fashionable and trendy stalls and shops. Many seem to sell very similar things though, as if there's a "craft" factory somewhere churning out the usual stuff. Still worth a visit because there's almost always something interesting and/or different to see or find. Compared to some high streets now, whether of the delapidated variety (e.g. Oxford Street, East) or the mundane standard variety (many towns), a market like this is much more stimulating.

Below: Spitalfields Market

Debian 7.0 "Wheezy" Released

Sat, 11 May 2013 15:50:00 +0100

Good to see that Debian 7.0 Wheezy was released last week after a 10 month release freeze. Some people think this is far too long, myself included.

Russ Allbery and Lars Wirzenius have written up a proposal to improve the Debian release process, with much inspiration from the agile development method. In short, they want to promote the Testing distribution to a state that it is always releasable, at least to the extent that the entire release process takes only 2 weeks to a month (or so, at most).

In brief, the proposal covers :

Keep the Testing distribution as close to releasable as possible, with more constant attention to bug fixing (especially release critical bugs).
More constant and automated testing done of the distribution.
Focus on ensuring the right core packages are ready and releasable, being less concerned with those packages deemed of secondary importance.

The idea that Testing be changed to either a rolling release or to some form of constantly releasable distribution comes up regularly e.g. see Tanglu and CUT. Allbery and Wirzenius are very well known Debian "old-hands" though, so may be able to make more of a impression on the project. I hope so, but Debian is a very democratic and distributed organisation and consensus is hard to build on this type of question. Debian is also well known for its focus on stability rather than freshness, and stability is an admirable goal. I think the process Allbery and Wirzenius describe can speed a release without sacrificing this by optimising and focusing resource better though. Automation may be the key.

Finally, I really appreciate all the hard work done by all the Debian developers and contributors - I've been running Debian Linux on all my machines for a few years now, a very satisfied user. Like many, I installed Testing many months ago but the long stabilisation period is a bit of a drawback. Right now, it's fine but fairly soon it will start to seem slightly stale. This is less of a problem for a server but more of one for a desktop. A way of optimising the release and update process would be very welcome.

Misty Mountains

Mon, 06 May 2013 17:29:00 +0100

The current banner photograph was taken from a moving train between Edinburgh and Inverness in October last year. I always loved the wild beauty of the landscape in the highlands and the mist here captures some of its chilly but beautiful and awe-inspiring nature.

Very Old Jigsaw

Mon, 06 May 2013 17:16:00 +0100

The British Museum has a room devoted to the Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon ship burial discovered in Suffolk in the late 1930's. Dating from the 7th Century, many beautiful artifacts were found and have been restored over the years. One of the most famous is the Sutton Hoo Helmet.

On the left, a reconstruction of the helmet. On the right, how it looked when it was found.

The reconstruction is described here and it is clear how hard, and how much skill is required when rebuilding such an old and decayed artifact. The original attempt was dismantled in 1968 after further research determined it was inaccurate.

This is just one part of a lot more to see here, including some intricate and beautiful jewellery.

More detail about Sutton Hoo can be found in a good article at Current Archaeology.

Fright

Thu, 02 May 2013 06:47:00 +0100

Luckily, I've only ever been on "stage" back in the mists of time in the school nativity play, where I might have been a shepherd. I think "shepherd" is the role little boys get placed in when they're obviously not star material.

I've not had to do much talking to groups, let alone audiences, but enough to know that I'm not good at it. I tend to clam up and have a severe attack of stage fright with pretty much everything getting thrown out the window: memory, speech capability and heart rate. It's a thoroughly unpleasant experience not sought after!

However, I know that many people overcome this fear, and I'd love to manage to do that myself. Mikael Cho's wriiten about his experiences and how he tried (and succeeded) in fixing his own stage fright. There is hope if you try: small steps first I think with very good preparation.

What happens to our brains when we have stage fright: The science of public speaking