2007 was the year that I became a father, was ordained and finally got a degree.

Originally emailed to Richard Bacon on Five Live.

This got me invited to speak on-air but I wasn't at my laptop to respond to the request in time.

My ongoing efforts to eliminate wires from my desk (I'll just about accept that I have to have a power lead running into the back of my laptop but I want no more than that) led me to buy a set of Acoustic Energy bluetooth speakers to replace my rather old and ailing set. Much like my adventures with openSUSE 10.3 on a Samsung R60plus, this has good and not-so-good aspects.

Now, I'm not daft and I'd checked the BlueZ wiki on audio devices to ensure that it should be possible. The AE speakers support A2DP and so I figured I'd be in business. I was right. To a point.

First, the good news. I followed the guidelines on the Wiki for setting Banshee. I use Banshee for all my listening needs as Helix Banshee allows me to listen to BBC Radio on the RealAudio streams (as an aside, my life would be a lot easier if the BBC would do the Right Thing^TM and start streaming in MP3 or - even better - Ogg Vorbis like Virgin Radio do). This worked perfectly - I enabled the Audio Service in the GNOME bluetooth applet, edited .asoundrc, started Banshee and hit play. A notification popped up inviting me to bond with the speakers and, once I'd done so, the White Stripes came blasting out of the speakers which I hastily turned down (wow, a lot of power). Success.

Now, the not-so-good news. RealPlayer is not listed as a supported player on the Wiki but I had reckoned without Banshee not playing RealAudio streams through the GStreamer plugin. I suppose it should have occurred to me but it simply hadn't. So, if I'm listening to a radio stream I have to either listen through the internal speaker in my laptop or plug into the speakers' mini-jack input (or hope that the BBC do indeed at some point sort out their streaming and not require people to use a proprietary codec). The other not-so-good news is that my bluetooth mouse interferes with the audio so it gets choppy and slows down if I'm using my mouse.

Still, all that is put into perspective by the fact that, other than actually bonding to the speakers, I couldn't use them at all in Windows.

I bought Amanda a Samsung R60plus laptop for Christmas and, while it's a very nice laptop, it has caused some degree of pain so far. This is by no means a full technical review, just a comment on my experiences with it.

First, the good things. It's based on an Intel Core2 Duo CPU with 1G of RAM, this makes it pretty nippy, the dual core of the CPU makes for a noticeable performance jump over my Core Solo-based laptop. The onboard graphics adaptor is an ATI Radeon and the openSUSE ATI guidelines worked perfectly. These drive a very clear and easy to view 15.4 widescreen LCD at 1280x800. The huge hard drive (120G) has plenty of space for the pre-installed Vista^TM and openSUSE 10.3.

Now, here come the problems. The wired network adaptor couldn't be detected and configured during install meaning that I couldn't add online repositories. I proceeded with the installation and installing from the DVDs went very smoothly and quickly but after the installation, the machine apparently would not boot Linux. A bit of experimenting with kernel command-line options revealed that the ACPI stack was the problem. This became Novell bug #350717 and also served to explain why the network adaptor hadn't worked during installation. The default boot option now has acpi=off while I await responses on that bug. The bug incidentally means no power management and the machine doesn't power-off on shutdown.

The wireless adaptor doesn't work, period. lspci reports it as being based on an Atheros chipset so naturally, I downloaded and installed the MadWiFi openSUSE drivers but no dice. So, I tried ndiswrapper following the openSUSE guidelines for Ndiswrapper on Atheros chipsets. This showed some improvement as I could now see my wireless network in NetworkManager but couldn't connect even with no encryption enabled on the router. Now, I can't help but wonder if this is in someway related to the ACPI issue but I can't be sure - especially the MadWiFi issue. I decided to buy a USB dongle that would work and settled on a Ralink based Edimax dongle after seeing it listed on Linux Emporium's Linux-friendly WiFi page. This uses the rt2x00-kmp-* package which is part of the openSUSE core distribution. Cue another bug: Novell bug #350956 and this also doesn't seem to work. Thankfully, with ACPI disabled, the wired adaptor works with the sky2 module so Amanda can at least get online in my study.

Now, some good news and something weird to finish with. It's a little thing but the R60plus has an SD slot in the front. My Asus A6J has one in the side. Mine doesn't work but the one in the R60plus does exactly what you'd hope. Plug in an SD card and it's detected and mounted. If it appears to be from a digital camera, it's treated as such by gnome-volume-manager. Excellent. The weird thing is that plugging speakers or headphones into the headphone mini-jack doesn't cut the internal speakers. It's not a software issue because it's the same in both OSs.

• Think I've done something to my neck in the night, really stiff
• Have just sorted out a huge backlog of hackergotchis for Planet SUSE. If you're a Planet SUSE blogger and you still have Geeko^[1] next to your posts, please let me know and we'll sort out a proper hackergotchi for you.
• Tonight we have A Christmas Journey, the live Nativity walking through the village. The church has partnered with a local arts foundation to make this happen and I'm really looking forward to it.

^[1]

Last time we did the quiz at the Vine, we came second on a tie-break.

The same happened tonight but still a valiant effort by Team Sluts and Faggots.

Note the time on this entry - I just got home.

I got interviewed for the People of openSUSE section of openSUSE News.

If you want to know more about me then

• You need help
• Click here

This morning on Five Live, there was a chap from Hull City Council talking about compensation for the floods earlier this year. I nearly choked when I heard him use the word co-ordinaztion (sic). Why, when there are perfectly good real words in the English language, do people feel the need to make their own words up?

In the odd bit of spare time I get here and there, I've been working on a new look for my site. The current design was done before I started theological college, so it's about time. It's basically complete now so I'm planning to put it live on New Year's Day.

Anyway, as part of doing it, I wanted to replace my current 'mates' list with a blogroll that's a bit more up-to-date. As I trawled around people I know who have blogs, I discovered just how few of them have kept up with posting. You hear in the tech news from time to time how many dead blogs there are. Most of them belong to my friends it would seem.

Which leads me on to Nick. Nick's blog is not dead, just not updated very often because it's about his travels. What is dead is his Google Ads account. Why is it dead or rather, why did he get banned? Because Nick just clicked through all the ads that got put on his site himself to generate income. Nice one Nick. Shame you got rumbled.

Marseille 0-4 Liverpool

A comfortable win with what Rafa described as a 'near perfect' performance. Goals from Gerrard, Torres, Kuyt and Babel meant that the Reds scored sixteen goals in their last three group games to reach the knockout stages.

Porto also won, to top the group, meaning that Liverpool will have to play one of the seeded Italian or Spanish sides in the next round. I think that's a good thing because you have to beat the best to be the best - if Liverpool are to have another deep run in the Champions' League, they're showing the sort of form that could see off anyone.

Astoundingly, today we received an item of post which was correctly addressed: The Revd James and Mrs Amanda Ogley. It turned out to be a Christmas card from the Bishops. So I suppose one would hope they'd know how to address it.

In other news, I've uploaded a load more photos of Callum and I'm being thoroughly festive this year:

I've updated gconf2-rpm-macros in GNOME:Community in preparation for adding a new target repository, openSUSE_10.2+GNOME_STABLE. The update tests the %suse_version macro and %_repository to determine whether the package needs to be populated. If it doesn't, a dummy package is generated which makes life easier for maintainers of packages which have it in their BuildRequires lines.

This is how it's done: The contents of both %install and %files are wrapped in the following:

%if %suse_version < 1030
%if "%_repository" != "openSUSE_10.2+GNOME_STABLE"
Section content goes here
%endif
%endif

Obviously, if we a 10.2 and GNOME:UNSTABLE repository, an extra layer of %if can be added.

Stephan: It's worth bearing in mind that most of the people who said Mono will be using Gtk# making a possible total of 19.9%.

Ultimately, who cares so long as they're developing [decent] apps for Linux?

You may not have noticed this as it happened without announcement but, as a result of a conversation on #openSUSE-GNOME, there are now versions of GNOME:Community available for the following arrangements:

• 10.3 + GNOME:STABLE
• 10.3 + GNOME:UNSTABLE
• Factory + GNOME:UNSTABLE

Not all packages are building in them and we need to sort out extra-rpm-macros and gconf2-rpm-macros before extending these to 10.2 + GNOME:[UN]STABLE but it's a start.

I also said this to members of the team on IRC but for the benefit of people who will have missed that, as a member of the clergy, we're coming into my busiest time of the year so I'm officially unreliable on the openSUSE front until December 26th - I'll try to respond to emails and may even update the occasional package (tomboy was upped to 0.8.2 for example) but nothing that's going to require a time investment of more than about a minute.

Does anyone believe that this election was remotely fair and free? When is the international community going to start treating Russia like what it is: a de facto dictatorship and stop fawning over them because they have oil and gas and don't like Muslims any more than the US or UK governments?

...until this moves beyond simply being wanted for a crime?

Those of us who are vocal in pointing out that the current US President is a war criminal and must be held accountable may start being silenced at some point.

Don't think it can't happen.

I no longer work in IT.

I am no longer paid to be a UNIX System Administrator.

I am not looking for a new role.

No matter how much money you offer me, I am not interested.

Please stop phoning me!

About twenty days ago, I started logging on individual sites on my server. Today, I ran logs for Planet SUSE through Webalizer.

You can see the full stats here but interesting things to note are that over 80% of the site's hits are on the RSS feeds, not the site itself meaning that the vast majority of its readers are doing so through a news reader of some description. Also, the host with the most hits is the external side of the SUSE office's firewall in Nuremberg.

Oh yes, and the sites get nearly 800 unique visits per day on average serving nearly 630MBytes per day - for a site that's basically a single page of text, that's a heck of a lot!

Well, not just me. The parish sermon podcast went live this morning with sermons dating back to the start of September and our Nehemiah series available.

• Download individual sermons (MP3 or Ogg Vorbis)
• Subscribe to the Podcast (MP3 only)

...thinking that Facebook's having some problems.

Today I received an order from my favourite Christian bookshop. I won't mention the company name as it wouldn't be fair given the nature of this post. On the whole I really respect the company in question - their profits go to charity and one of our best friends is a senior manager there.

Anyway, I received the order (next year's lectionary and a new Bible for preaching from) today, along with their Christmas catalogue. I have to say that I am just astounded at the sheer quantity of Christian tat that can be purchased these days. An example: a stone key chain in the shape of a fish! Not only that but there are pages and pages of what I'm calling McTheology (Ref).

As if that wasn't all bad enough, I spotted the following in the music section of the catalogue: "Ideal for fan's of good worship music!" (sic). Nnnnnnng!

Friday night, we went and saw Bill Bailey live in Birmingham as part of his Tinselworm tour. We were, apparently, the largest audience he'd ever performed to and I'm not surprised. The gig was at the National Indoor Arena which, even with one block of seats unsold (presumably because of line of sight issues - it was right behind the sound/vision desk), is enormous.

We went with most of the infamous Naughty Table from college - mad props to Liz in particular for organising the whole thing.

Apologies to anyone who'd emailed me recently to ask for something to be done on Planet SUSE - I've got a huge backlog on my inbox at the moment but just did a blitz on updates for that site.

My hosting company was subject to a DDoS this morning which meant that my server was offline for a time. The sites affected by this were:

• My site
• Planet SUSE
• The Parish of Bursledon

Normality seems to have returned now though thankfully.

Roger: perhaps we should revert to the image below for your entries on Planet SUSE?

I myself often get mistaken for the local curate and no matter how much I deny it, people insist that I am. Perhaps they know something I don't...

Sometimes:

• Only some Guns 'n' Roses will do.
• Actually, only some Manic Street Preachers will do.
• I wake up not knowing what day it is.
• My heart sinks when the phone rings.
• I almost consider watching a reality TV show.
• I want to fight for people's rights.
• I get frustrated when computers don't behave as I think they ought.
• I get frustrated when people don't behave as they ought.
• I want to tear up all the red tape.
• I agree with the Conservative Party.

These are not necessarily good things but they are all true.

I'm a weak, fallen, fallible human being stumbling his way through life, trying - with the help of his Saviour - to do his best, be honest and stand up for what I believe in. I drop the ball, get it wrong, screw up. I offend the people I ought not to and I don't offend those who really need it. I allow style to get ahead of substance when I hate it when that happens.

Sometimes, I get it right. Those times are rare though.

Originally posted on Saturday 10th November, subsequently edited

Tomorrow is "Remembrance Day".

I've utterly failed to order white poppies.

I'm being asked to lead the act of remembrance.

After yesterday's website launch, I turned my attention today to the subject of logging. Ever since I commissioned my VPS, I'd not done anything with Apache's logs, simply logging each site to the main Apache log with no string to differentiate them for parsing purposes.

Not any more, I now have a separate log for each site so in due course, I'll be able to produce meaningful analysis of each site's traffic (sadly not including the launch day's logs for the church's site).

This morning, at 09:00 GMT, we launched the new Parish of Bursledon website. The new site should be much easier to navigate and maintain.

Best of all, it's been created entirely using Free Software.

• Pub Quiz: came second on a tie-break at the Vine pub quiz. A job well done by team Jamie Gold Sucks.
• On the TV at the Vine before the quiz (and on my Freeview hard-drive recorder for tomorrow) was Liverpool thrashing Besiktas 8-0. Walk on, walk on... Turns out the Vine is a Scouse pub, I may have found my local in Bursledon.

Monday is November 5th and, aside from being Caz's birthday, it's the day that we in the UK remember Guy Fawkes and the failed plot to blow up Parliament in 1605. I would like to suggest that it's time we left this arcane and offensive day behind.

We should no longer be celebrating the persecution of a religious minority to the point where they felt compelled to take matters into their own hands in the way Fawkes and his co-conspirators did. In the days of a Labour government who are hell-bent on persecuting the Islamic minority in our country, resulting in events such as that seen on July 7th 2005, that such activities are still lauded in this way is dangerous and extremely offensive.

Practically, the traditional modes of celebration - fireworks and bonfires - contribute to carbon emissions and so to climate change.

Lets stop celebrating the persecution of the Catholics - I know I have.

Aaron: Follow this process:

GNOME Control Centre - Appearance - Fonts - Details - Go to Fonts Folder

This opens a Nautilus window at fonts: and you can drop the font files in there and (I'm pretty sure that) it deals with the fc-cache foo

This morning I intended to enjoy a tasty low-fat yoghurt, my usual breakfast. I was horrified to find that the first one I took from the fridge was definitely off and in the second I tried, I found a hair at the bottom of the pot.

I phoned the company who produced said dairy products and was treated very courteously and helpfully upon production of my proper title. Sometimes being able to not be "Mr Ogley" is very helpful.

Pointless but fun things to do #563:

Pour Pepsi into a Coke-branded glass

The GIMP 2.4 has been released and it's available from GNOME:Community for 10.3/Factory. Users on older products will need to use GNOME:STABLE as it requires an updated gtk2 package (and probably other stuff too).

You can 1-click install it using the buttons below:

(10.3)

(Factory)

(A brief aside to start: Google are a large company, whether you choose to trust them with your calendar and schedules is up to you.)

[Ref]

This is pretty rocking news, being able to share online calendars and schedule meetings with fellow Google calendar users has the potential to remove one of the key reasons some people still pay to have an Exchange server. Looking forward to 2.22 already (and we only just got 2.20).

Joe: Congrats!

I don't have a bowtie but I do have some nice Pierre Cardin cufflinks.

Trans-Atlantic may be a bit further to post than you'd been thinking though

I also have a pair of Marston's Pedigree promotional cufflinks - Mmmm, classy...

So far, there are two confirmed candidates for the Lib Dem leadership.

On Wednesday, my MP Chris Huhne announced his candidacy. Currently the Environment spokesperson for the party. This is a higher profile job than in other parties as the Lib Dems have long been the most environmentally-focused of the main parties. Having been runner-up to Menzies Campbell 18 months ago, he'll be hoping to draw on the experience of having been involved in a leadership race before.

This morning, Nick Clegg made his announcement in Sheffield. He is from the party's right wing (although it's all relative) and is the early favourite at the bookmakers. He has also picked up some early support among senior party members including Steve Webb, the party's manifesto writer who had been expected to run himself and comes from the left of the party.

I'm expecting at least one candidate to enter the race before nominations close at the end of the month and, had she not ruled herself out already, I'd suggest it would be Susan Kramer. Watch this space...

I'm at a Child Prevention Protection Day in Winchester today, which I'm anticipating being extra-ordinarily useful. The main reason for this is that I've actually lost count of how many times I did basically the same training at college. The same will be said for everyone else in the room. Sadly, backside covering seems to be the order of the day in the Church these days. This is not to say that I think Child Protection isn't important - it is. I'm acutely aware of its importance, especially now that I'm a parent. The trouble is that there is a real danger that by forcing us to sit through the same thing time after time, we can become so mind-numbed by it that we become blase or annoyed by it. This would be disastrous.

I'm going to make notes in this entry of things that occur to me that would be better uses of my day:

• There's a Deanery Chapter meeting today. This will be very dull but quite possibly useful.
• I could have been at our midweek communion this morning, continuing to get to know people in the parish.
• There are a couple of practical projects at church that I'd involved with at the moment which have pressing deadlines.

I really wish I'd read the notes I printed out recently about connecting to my phone via bluetooth in order to use the GPRS/3G facilty on it because there's no Wi-Fi signal here.

Middle of the afternoon session now and a quote which, had the whole day been condensed into an hour, would have made it worthwhile: "Theology is a minefield" - it certainly is.

So, the Lib Dems are now looking for a new leader after Sir Menzies Campbell's resignation yesterday. Although his departure was sudden, it was hardly surprising and, I think, has come at the right time. Sir Menzies has done a fantastic job steering the party through the difficult period following Charles Kennedy's departure but the reality is that Ming didn't bring enough zing. The latest polls show the party 12% in terms of support and by resigning now, Sir Menzies has ensured that whoever replaces him has a good run at the next general election, whenever that may be - probably 2009 now.

I'll be keeping a close eye on progress, not least as I'm finally going to sign on the virtual dotted line and join the party at last. As the key players - notably Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg - make their moves I'll be providing some inexpert analysis (as well as linking to the experts).

Some useful links:

• The timetable for the contest
• Independent front-page story - with profiles of a lot of candidates at the bottom
• Statement by the party
• Guardian Lib Dems section

[Ref: BBC News - Iraq strike 'kills 15 civilians']

The US-led forces stated that the insurgents had put innocent women and children in danger by their actions and presence.

I have to disagree. It was the American-led forces who put these people in danger 3 1/2 years ago when they illegally invaded Iraq. Without that invasion, there would be no insurgency. Without the power vacuum generated by the complete absence of a follow-up plan, al-Qaeda would never have become established in Iraq.

The US needs to stop ignoring its own responsibility for the situation in Iraq. Sadly, I fear this will never happen while Bush is in the White House. Roll on January 20th 2009.

So far this morning, between myself and Amanda, we have had the following things stuck in our heads:

• The Jack's Subway Tush song from Will and Grace
• The Two Ronnies theme
• The May to December theme

How annoying!

Side note, I need to tidy my desk, badly...

...or at least it will be. It's not up on the servers yet but by the close of play today, we will have unleashed the latest, greatest openSUSE distribution on the world. And even as I've been typing this, it's appeared. Download 10.3 now - use a torrent if you can. Now I need to go and find my blank DVD5s...

Included in openSUSE 10.3 will be the latest Helix-enabled version of Banshee. This means you can listen to your favourite Real Audio streams in Banshee. If you want to listen to BBC radio stations, you can download bbc-ra.xspf and save it to ~/.config/banshee/plugins/stations/user - restart Banshee and off you go.

A lot of buzz in the news this morning about a possible November 1^st general election. I've already put a Lib Dems button on my site to show my support. Perhaps it's time I actually joined the party.

Can't quite believe I've not blogged about the situation in Burma yet but then, I didn't blog about much at all last month.

Anyway, as one of the irrepressible.info fragments on my site points out, 'a military machine of 500,000 soldiers denies a whole nation its most basic rights'. As anyone who's watched the news or read a paper (notably The Independent who I think were the first UK paper to pick up the reports that were getting out of the country) recently knows, this has reached appalling new levels in the last week or so and Buddhist monks are now being hauled off to jails in the north of the country.

The Burma Campaign campaigns for human rights and democracy in Burma - get clued up and, if you can get to London or Edinburgh, demonstrate. The Chinese embassy is being targeted as the largest outside investors and supporters of the junta that controls Burma but other nations also have an interest, including India and South Korea.

Survived the CME residential and then back into the swing of things yesterday.

Recently switched to use the Gimmie bar in place of my main GNOME panel and posted a rather long (and growing) wishlist on the development list.

Noticed I'm in the list of requested interviewees for the People of openSUSE category on openSUSE News - very flattered.

My Action Item from last week's openSUSE GNOME meeting was to produce a template spec file that can be applied by an OSC plugin. Should have it produced today.

It's been a bit of a busy week. Last weekend I took a wedding blessing on the Saturday (for which, cassock alb and white stole) which went well and then on Sunday I led two [extended] communions - first at St Paul's (no robes) then at St Leonard's (cassock and surplice with green stole [Ordinary Time]). I survived both communions - I consider that a success.

On Thursday, we had the first openSUSE GNOME meeting. This is going to be a weekly event at 16:00 GMT. By all accounts, openSUSE 10.3 has now been goldmastered - according to Andreas' blog. (No link available - for the reasons detailed below). It's looking like being a great release and once I've burnt the DVD5, I'm moving my laptop off Factory to 10.3.

I'm now at a CME residential for the weekend - it's at the same place as my pre-ordination retreat which means no net access and I'm having to write this offline - I'll be uploading it when I get home on Monday. I'm currently watching Seinfeld Season 6 - The Big Salad. In the four days of the retreat, I watched the whole of The West Wing Season 7 - I wonder how much Seinfeld I'll see over then next 48 hours.

Haven't blogged in a while (partly because of bug #301707) so here's a quick update:

• New photos of Callum.
• Settling in nicely in Bursledon now and finding our way around well.
• PV is leading the church's men's weekend away this week so I'm going to flying solo to an extent.
• Drafted the GNOME:Community Inclusion Policy.

A couple of photos taken on my phone this week to document what I've been up to:

We had dinner with Dave & Judy on Wednesday and finished the evening with Kosovar coffee

I bought a Bluetooth mouse and so ended up updating bluez-gnome in GNOME:Community

(and Dynix etc before that...)

[Ref]

The so-called hidden feature of killing the X Server by hitting CTRL-ALT-BS is totally awesome, more than handy at times (especially if one gets hit by bug #244713).

We cannot do without this, it is the very bedrock of the Linux desktop. What sort of person accidentally hits those three keys at the same time - accidentally people! It's hard to conceive of a situation where those three keys could, without the user intending, be pressed simultaneously.

Do not remove this feature by default, please don't.

Or, if you do, include an option in SaX2 to enable it so when I change the xorg.conf to re-enable it I don't lose it subsequently.

Random thing I discovered today: The final episode of season one (man, I hope there's going to be a season two) of Studio 60 is entitled What Kind of Day Has It Been?. This triggered something in my mind because, of course, the final episode of season one of The West Wing has the same title.

That made me wonder, which in turn made me check, and sure enough, the final episode of season one of Sports Night also bears that title.

Mr Sorkin, do I detect a theme?

New paragraph. Insert a link: Planet SUSE Insert an image: This a test posting with Drivel. New paragraph. Insert a link: Planet SUSE Insert an image:

It's been a morning of mundane tasks. Amanda took Callum to a playgroud with EV so I spent the time vacuuming, then cooking, then attending to laundry. All very mundane things. The thing is that it's doing those things here that makes it home. A good feeling to realise that the parish already feels like home.

In light of that fact, here is a photo of part of my parish, this is just down the road from the Jolly Sailor pub.

More mundanity this afternoon as Peter and Sandy are coming round for dinner and the house is still in something of a state.

Whoooa, integration, that's what you need!

I closed bug #222182 this morning after finding that it appears to be fixed in the latest Factory. That means I can now synchronise my LifeDrive and Evolution again which just makes my life a lot easier.

This makes me happy

Quite a fun weekend on the whole. Yeaterday morning we had a men's breakfast at church part of kick-starting the men's work then I took Callum into Southampton for a couple of hours. In the afternoon, I went to the beer festival at the community centre where I enjoyed, among others, some Lancaster Bomber and met some people from the village who I'd not met before. This morning we had a cafe-style breakfast service at St Paul's which was sort of half-way along my imaginary cafe-church slider between cafe and church.

Also been an interesting poker weekend. Yesterday afternoon I made a Royal Flush while playing in a Hold'em Sit-and-Go tournie and then this afternoon I had the pleasure of playing about an hour of Omaha with John Duthie who, along with Katja were playing on micro-limit tables today "to be nice". Undoubtedly good for the site and if Team PokerStars generally start playing on a variety of levels I think it will pay dividends for the company.

The new server is basically ready to go and as soon as I have control of all of my domains, it'll be sorted.

Planet SUSE is already there although you may have to click through to get to it.

If you can see this, this is running on bartlett.

I just did something idiotic - I nuked my inbox!

So, if you had emailed me recently and I had not responded, I've probably now also lost the mail that you sent - sorry.

Stupid, stupid James...

Update: Whoops-be-gone! Inbox restored.

I decided to do the update in Smart instead:

• Install Pascal's package for 10.0.
• Various iterations of adding appropriate channels (openSUSE OSS, non-OSS, updates, Pascal's repo)
• smart update
• smart upgrade
• Above step fails: error: filesystem-10.2-22 requires rpmlib(BuiltinLuaScripts) <= 4.2.2-1 so do it in stages...
• smart upgrade rpm rpm-python pam pam-modules
• At this point I cheated and did rpm -Uvh /var/lib/smart/packages/*.rpm
• SuSEconfig ; ldconfig (just to be on the safe side)
• cat /etc/SuSE-release
  openSUSE 10.2 (i586)
  VERSION = 10.2
• Reboot!
• At this point I had to use the hypervm frontend to login and restart the SSH daemon and insserv it. Another reboot to confirm that it had "taken" and voila! I have updated it to openSUSE 10.2

I have my nice shiny new VPS from a company I'm likely to sing the praises of, based on my communications with them so far (Cheap VPS). The thing is it's a SUSE 10.0 box so, I'm having a small adventure in doing a system update to openSUSE 10.2 using YaST.

Maybe I should just use Smart instead

Packages I have updated and/or fixed in GNOME:Community today:

• gimp-unstable
• mail-notification (note: build fails on Factory due to weird Evolution bug, will resolve tomorrow)
• pidgin
• tomboy

Hoping to get an agreement to change the target for G:C to be GNOME:STABLE for products 10.2 and older which will really help in keeping stuff in sync.

Note to self: Do the gnome-python-desktop work to allow gimmie to support launchers which require su permissions.

• Led worship and the service at St Paul's this morning which went pretty well
• All rooms upstairs are now painted so the house is very close to being done
• Have filed a few bugs over the weekend and provided some info for others - looking forward to hearing how the Bug Slashing Weekend went as a whole.

It's the openSUSE Bug Slashing Weekend and so, in between looking after Callum and painting the upstairs of the house, I'll be on #opensuse-bugs - will you?

Server failure at PinkDylan (hardware apparently) meant that I lost one day's worth of blog and it was only two lines, so no biggie.

• I caved in and am now on Facebook.
• Added a bunch of feeds to Planet SUSE.
• We got back from Soul Survivor Cheshire on Wednesday. The drive back turned out to be a lot better than the drive there.
• SSC itself was really good. Lots of young people came to know Jesus and so did one of the guys running the food vans that were hired in (!) but my favourite moment was on the last night when three couple did the Gay Gordons across the front of the venue during the worship.
• Am looking at alternative hosting arrangements, probably going to go for a VPS service.

I'm 31, so old!

Congrats to JT - you know who you are.

DSL is active at home - yay!

It took us about seven hours (!) to drive up here on Wednesday.

Got to do that all again this Wednesday.

Joy!

(Still no DSL!)

No, I haven't died. Nor have I just decided to keep quiet (like that would ever happen!). This has been a period of enforced non-blogging. I don't like it, I would not recommend it. I do however want to talk about it. So don your best therapist face, let me lean back on my virtual sofa and I'll tell you all about it (and in the words of Niles Crane, "Whereas my brother is a Freudian, I am a Jungian so there'll be no blaming mother today!").

I will instead be blaming BT. More specifically, BT Wholesale who are an odious company in the BT Group. We moved to our new house on the 3rd July and our phone line was activated on the 4th. At that point, my lovely ISP requested that ADSL be activated on the line and were given a date when it would happen. On that date, BTW decided to point out (NOT, please note, when the DSL activation was requested but on the activation date) that there was a conflicting service on the line. Simply finding out what that service was was a feat on the part of the technical manager at the ISP. It turned out that the previous residents' ISP hadn't requested a cease of their DSL. The cease was ordered for a week hence, the 19th. The ISP couldn't request activation until the previous service had been ceased (go figure!) and so, on the 19th, the activation request went in. When BT finally acknowledged that request, they provided an activation date of the 31st(!) The 31st came and went, no DSL. By lunchtime on the 1st (when we were supposed to be heading off to Soul Survivor Cheshire), still no DSL. BTW then informed us that the activation date was the 8th August, when they'd informed the ISP it was the 31st July. Suffice to say, the ISP were livid, as were we and started chasing BTW. As I type this, at Soul Survivor, still no DSL at home. I'm not very confident in the 8th as an activation date either although if it does happen, at least it'll be active when we get home that evening.

BT Wholesale are abusing their monopoly position of providing DSL services on bog-standard telephone wires by getting away with shoddy service, providing conflicting information to people and being singularly unhelpful at every stage of the process. Were there any competition in that sector of the market, they couldn't behave the way they do and get away with it. Short of switching to a cable provider (and buying a whole set of new kit as well as being restricted to their options - I have a static IP and custom DNS configuration from PinkDylan), you're stuck with BTW. Wholly unacceptable.

So, what has happened in the last month? Well, I've started at Bursledon and preached my first sermon there which went okay. It's been a fairly light month as things wound down for summer. The house is coming together thanks to a lot of help from Amanda's parents and their paintbrushes. We've had Caz to visit and my study is just about ready.

We're currently at Soul Survivor Cheshire which is going pretty well although the site is pretty basic - next year the northern event is moving to Stafford.

Yes, today was the ordination and it's fair to say that the Cathedral put on a good show. I think anyone who knows me knows that I don't go in for all the catholic malarky but the service all went off as it was supposed to and I'm now a deacon in the Church of England and licensed to the parish of Bursledon.

All in all the day was quite good until I discovered that I lost my wallet at some point over the last 24 hours so I'm in the process of cancelling bank cards...

Evidence of the ordination is below.

So the big final clock is ticking and in under 17 hours the service starts. The weasther stinks here at the moment so I can't see the post-service photos being taken outside. I'm going to get an early night tonight because it's an early start tomorrow.

I think I've survived anyway and I've had time to both pray and watch (so far) all but the final three episodes of season seven. I'm just looking forward to getting the service done and the move out of the way so I can get on with the job.

Have kept in communication with members of the Naughty Table and Tea Club as well as phoning Amanda a lot so the latest entry in my list of how to survive the retreat is:

• Keep your mobile phone on. Getting a text from a colleague on another retreat will brighten the afternoon and calling your spouse (or, if you're single, close family members) will get you through.

The best thing about tomorrow is going to be that I get to see Amanda and Callum again because I miss them terribly.

Watching "Internal Displacement" from season seven of The West Wing on a break in the afternoon and the wonk baiting line just issued forth from Josh's lips.

Had my interview with Bishop Michael this morning and thankfully he's still going to ordain me on Sunday. On Monday, the removal company are now not only going to pack our stuff but also move it all to Bursledon. Very cool apart from the fact that I've arranged a night in the Cadland for that night before driving down on the Tuesday. So, the Monday night will see me sleeping on a lilo in a sleeping bag.

That's right, I made it to the end of day two. The biggest thing today was that at Evening Prayer today it was the turn of the deacons-to-be to lead the service (the retreat is for both those to be made deacon and those to be made presbyter [priest]). There's a few of us from the New Wine style and so we decided that we would add a bit of balance to the more traditional style of worship that there's been so far. It ended up falling to me (as the guy with the guitar and more worship resources than you can shake a well-greased stick at) to lead worship during the service. It went pretty well and I think it helped those of us for whom that is our natural position while also opening horizons for those for whom that's not to where they would naturally gravitate. Also today I arranged for a Sky engineer to come out only a couple of days after we move into the house in Bursledon to install a dish there. We're going out for a curry tomorrow night - rar!

And now, some more tips for surviving the retreat:

• Don't allow yourself to get hung up on the aspects of churchmanship that those around you may display that you yourself may feel profoundly uncomfortable with. I did at first (almost screamed when the bishop used the word altar at the rehearsal) but it's simply not worth it. Moreover, it'll get between you and making the most of the retreat.
• Be sure to remember everything you need and/or want to have with you. I remembered my robes. Just. On the downside, I forgot the small crate of Hobgoblin ale I'd bought to bring with me. It's the little things that make the difference.

First day of ordination retreat and I'm glad I survived. So I thought I'd start putting some thoughts down on how to get through this thing. I expect this list will grow over the course of the retreat. First of all though, I need to recount the day itself.

Drove down very early this morning with a car full of musical instruments which I deposited at the vicarage. Then I headed the bishop's house for lunch followed by the rehearsal at the cathedral. Right after the rehearsal it was straight down to the retreat and I just got back to my room (23.15 in case I don't remember to preserve timestamps on these posts).

Okay, so how to survive the retreat:

• Pray that you have a good bunch on retreat with you. I honestly don't think I could have done any better unless I was with the Naughty Table or the Tea Club from college. The people around you will always make a huge difference in any context, especially this.
• Take a book. Not something published by Kingsway, not something on the subject of theology, something totally unimproving. This is the same rule as for selection conference. Then I took a Pratchett book, this time The Book of Dave by Will Self.
• Take other forms of entertainment. I have with me season seven of The West Wing on DVD and my DAB radio. If you have an iPod or other digital audio player, take it.
• Go to the pub. Just go. That's where I just returned from. Go to the pub. In case that wasn't clear: Go To The Pub.
• Then, once you've made sure you'll stay sane, pray and make the most of the space the retreat affords you.

As of 0730 (+0100) today I expect to be offline until late Sunday. Please do not expect emails to be read, never mind responded to. I expect that all mailing lists will effectively be transferred to /dev/null upon my return so if you have a query that you want me to read, please send it to me directly and be patient.

I don't know why I thought of this today but about a month ago I was walking home and as I turned into my street I spotted a bunch of chavs walking about fifty yards ahead of me with their canine companions. I heard one of their number call out to his pet, "Oi, Quaver!" I couldn't help but think "I bet he doesn't have other dogs named Minim and Crotchet."

I bought myself a little present, a Pure PocketDAB 1500 which is just brilliant. It means I can now listen to 6music when I'm out and about or listen to Five Live without being subject to the vagaries of AM reception.

I go on pre-ordination retreat tomorrow and I suspect there may not be internet access so this may well be my last post until after the service on Sunday.

My ordination stole arrived from Emma today and it looks fantastic, I'm utterly thrilled with it. I'm not putting a photo here so that it can remain a surprise for people coming to the ordination (I promise to post tickets over the weekend).

I also ordered a book from Amazon to read during the pre-ordination retreat, The Book of Dave by Will Self and bought myself a new pair of shoes for the service.

So, I'm just about ready. Final duty up here on Monday night (I'm helping with a training night at St Luke's for the new evening service), hair appointment on Tuesday and on Wednesday I head down for the retreat.

Today:

• Had supervision with John over breakfast
• Made amendments to dissertation based on that supervision
• Chatted briefly with Christina to check some facts
• Got the actual title of the dissertation signed off
• Had lunch with Amanda and Callum
• Submitted final version of the dissertation
• Cleared out my college room
• Emotional farewells with Karen and Rachel as we all departed college today

That's it, 33 months doesn't seem enough preparation for what starts in six days time with my retreat.

Oh, and I'm still involved with the production of college's Learning and Teaching Strategy (as is Rachel).

So, maybe it's not really an ending but really a point to pause for reflection.

• Commissioning Service and the associated social activities were great - so good to have the rest of the Naughty Table there supporting Rachel and me as we were sent out.
• Down in Watford on Sunday. Went to the morning service at SSW and saw loads of people which was superb. They made the mistake of giving me the microphone half-way through the service to share where we're going to. I almost preached
• After the service we had lunch and then afternoon tea with Carole and Andrew. Just lovely to see them. Delivered a bunch of ordination tickets too while we were there. Must put the rest in the post...
• Monday until today I've been working on my dissertation and I submitted the first complete draft to my supervisor today. It's due on Friday and I'm hoping to have it done and in tomorrow so I can go to the Nottingham Open tennis on Friday.

Today's the Commissioning Service at college where those of us who are leaving are prayed for and commissioned for the next phase of our lives in ministry and mission.

Yesterday I submitted MM310 and MM320. MM310 was the first module of the year and had been waiting for a tidy-up for quite some time. MM320 was my final module of the year and I surprised some very clever people by having written it all (including doing all my reading) within four days while also attending the leavers' course. That all means that, with the exception of my dissertation which I need to finish by Friday, I managed to complete and submit all my work by the deadline. Rar!

We had Liz over for dinner last night which was lovely. It meant that in the afternoon I went to Sainsbury's to buy ingredients for cooking. The weather yesterday afternoon was foul, torrential rain and a heavy thunder storm. The storm caused a brief power-cut (under a second long) at Sainsbury's which in turn caused all the tills to reboot. They took an inordinate amount of time to come back up. Some thoughts:

• If your sales depends on electronic points of sale such as these, put them all on UPSs.
• Upgrade the hardware so that they boot more quickly. The Windows 2000 (eugh!) boot screen took an age to clear as did the .bat script that ran at login. The EPOS software itself started very quickly when it was launched but the machines had caused a delay before that point.
• Don't use Windows, just don't.

It's not often I blog solely about poker but I just had to this morning. Overnight, Phil Helmuth won his eleventh World Series Of Poker bracelet. He won Event 15 of this year's WSOP, the $1,500 no-limit Hold'em event.

• Read about the event as it happened
• Watch the final hand
• Interview with Phil about it all

Now, the challenge is for number twelve to be in something other than Hold'em...

Yes, five days until the deadline. This actually won't be the final push but it sure feels like it at college at the moment. Started MM320 (Hermeneutics) this morning and should hit 400 words before lunch. That may not sound like much but I always start essays slowly and then hit my stride around 500-600 words. The next 1700-2000 words or so normally flow and just leave me to tidy-up at the end and wrap it up.

Haven't really commented on what's been going on the world in a while, so a brief pause from the essay to do just that. The G8 leaders met last week and announced $60bn to relieve suffering from Aids in Africa. A joke. Of that $60bn, only $3bn is actually new and they're behind already on the 2005 commitment. Read more.

An interesting piece in the Independent's Information supplement on Saturday (doesn't appear to be online as well) about one of the hostages at Guantanamo Bay. Not that remarkable except that the reason he is there is that he is an al-Jazeera journalist who was snatched while on assignment in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He tells of the life of torture endured by the people held in America's Gulag. I note that this morning, Colin Powell has called for Guantanamo's immediate closure.

On a less heavy note, was interested to read the account of the World Series Of Poker's 7-Card Stud final table. Greg Raymer and Barry Greenstein from Team Poker Stars both made this table that went through the night. A remarkable table to observe no doubt and I hope that the ESPN coverage reflects that.

I just wandered through the kitchen to get myself a coffee and I noticed the door of the fridge as I put the milk back in it. We have those magnetic letters on the fridge which we use to spell various things from time to time^[1]. A few weeks ago, while we were down in Bursledon, the people who are going to be our tenants from this summer came to look around the house to check it over and all that. They had rearranged the letters on the fridge to spell "NICE HOUSE". Isn't that sweet?

And the coffee is Cafe Direct Kilimanjaro - yummy!

^[1] How cool are these Periodic Table magnets from my Think Geek wishlist?

• Today was the Focus Leavers' Retreat which Amanda was at (and she took CJ with her) so I had the day to myself.
• Tried mowing the lawn but it's a little bit of control. Add to that the fact the grass was all heavily laden with pollen just waiting to be released and my double-dose of antihistamine this morning didn't stand a chance. We do at least now have a path to the shed but I think I may have to borrow a strimmer.
• Had a haircut and then tried to go buy some new shoes for my ordination. Failed miserably in Beeston and didn't have the right change for a bus into Nottingham (how dumb is it to require the correct change?). Going to have to go into the city at some point though because the pair I'd wear otherwise have worn through the soles.
• The libpurple, pidgin and finch packages in GNOME:Community now match up with the packages in GNOME:UNSTABLE (which in turn were based on my packages in G:C) so that the meanwhile and mono plugins are now subpackages of libpurple. While I was at it I created a new package, gconf2-rpm-macros, which provides the new macros that will be in 10.3 on older products in G:C. Packagers can read more details here.
• Tomorrow's our last Sunday at St Luke's. It's also the final Sunday in the current service pattern so it's going to be quite a day.

• Submitted the first draft of the first chapter of my dissertation for supervision. Also submitted the final version of my Hebrew assignment. Aiming to arrange a title for my Hermeneutics assignment today. Deadline for all my work is a week today and I also have a couple of things that need tidying up before submission. Going to need a week's extension on the dissertation I think.
• Support for Pidgin has now been added to Gimmie. openSUSE packages are in GNOME:Community.

• Leavers' Quiet Day today. I'm not a fan of quiet days at the best of times and when I have a dissertation to be getting on with, even less so. Thankfully I was able to write just over 700 words over lunch so that made it a bit better.
• Uploaded more photos of Callum taken on my phone. Learning that the phone's camera is great in optimal light and when totally still, a bit dodgy otherwise.

• Last week I got my purple and green stoles from Michelle and Amanda was good enough to take a couple of photos. I've used one of these to create myself a new hackergotchi which appears below. I've changed the Planet SUSE config to use this.
• Good Sunday. Church in the morning, some housework this afternoon and then, after we put CJ to bed, pizza and champagne for supper. Watched Two Cathedrals and got misty eyed during Brothers in Arms as always. Then watched the penultimate episode of 24 Day 6 (the final episode is recording right now).

My new hackergotchi

I had another Facebook email overnight (no link for reasons that will become apparent). Over the last few months a number of my friends (real friends, people I actually know, this isn't spam) have "added me as a friend on Facebook". This I find fascinating as I don't use Facebook, I never have used Facebook, I am not registered with Facebook, I have no desire to be registered with it (because, obviously, I really need another online pursuit to consume my time, don't I? I only just got the Slashdot monkey off my back!). So, how is it possible for people to "add me as a friend"? Shouldn't Facebook say

Hang on, that person isn't registered. You can't add him but you can invite him to join

Getting invitations from these people would make a lot more sense. I'd still ignore them but it would make more sense.

It's been the Half-Term Reading Week this past week and I've been working on my dissertation. Didn't make as much progress as I'd hoped but it could have been worse. Leavers' Course starts on Monday with a Quiet Day then, over the next two weeks, I'll learn about doing funerals, weddings, baptisms, clergy tax, the ordination service itself and lots, lots more.

Alerted HantsLUG to my imminent arrival in their neck of the woods. Not sure how often I'll actually make it to meetings but it's good to make the contacts. I'm going to get myself added to their planet too - so that's one more thing for me to read.

Have decided not to cable-up the house in Bursledon for data - that's just so last century. The wired portion of the LAN will all exist in my study. Amanda's going to have an office upstairs so I'm going to have to get a wi-fi adaptor for weasel. Obviously it needs to work with Linux and preferably with Free drivers. If I have to resort to proprietary drivers or ndiswrapper that'll be a bit of a pain. Also, ideally I'd like it to be USB because in the midst of moving house I don't want to have to bother opening up a system unit. The hunt begins...

• Pidgin 2.0.1 packages are now in GNOME:Community for 10.1, 10.2 and Factory (i586 - some issues with x86_64 on the Build Service at the moment it seems). Also, Stanislav has merged in the old Gaim patches that Martin Szulecki kindly ported for us on the GNOME:UNSTABLE packages. He's also split out some plugins into subpackages. This is a really smart idea and I'll be merging his changes to the GNOME:Community packages so that they match what ultimately ends up in Factory.
• Leading worship and co-leading the service at St Luke's this morning. It'll be the last thing I do on a Sunday before we leave for Bursledon.

After a phone call with Bishop Paul (Southampton) I can now announce that we found a curacy. On July 1st in Winchester Cathedral at 10am I will be ordained Deacon and take up the post of Curate in the parish of Bursledon at the churches of St Leonard and St Paul.

We're both really looking forward to this especially as, after so many false starts, we've found the absolute ideal place and not had to settle for somewhere that we're not going to suit.

Had the final lectures of the main body of the course this morning. That is to say that in terms of teaching I've now completed my degree (although I still have work to complete and hand in). After next week's reading week the leavers' course starts. This runs for two weeks and concludes with the Commissioning Service.

Pending a phone call this evening, some exciting news should appear here.

[AC Milan 2-1 Liverpool]

A fluke opening goal and a general inability to finish from the Liverpool strikers (not surprising - story of the last two seasons).

Just like in Istanbul two years ago - yes, I'll admit it - the best team lost. Very proud of the lads tonight but bemused by Rafa bringing on Arbeloa rather than an attacking option (Bellamy?) near the death.

Phoned Five Live for 606 tonight but, unlike 728 days ago, they didn't call me back.

Off to bed.

• Visiting a possible curacy tomorrow and Tuesday, very excited about this one.
• Possible tenants for our house are having a look round tomorrow. Thanks to JdC for opening the house to them for us.
• Champions' League final on Wednesday night - I'll be in the same pub as for the Istanbul final. All being well, I'll be celebrating again and, who know, maybe on 606 again .

Wow, a couple of days pass and ...

• The parish we visited last week wasn't the right place, so the search continues.
• Submitted first draft of my Hebrew assessment yesterday.
• We went out for a chinese last night with Mike which was a fantastic evening. Many thanks to Ellie and Jeremy for babysitting CJ.
• Seriously hoping more Labour MPs get behind John McDonnell.
• Pete makes a very good point about missing kids. Madeleine McCann is not the only missing girl in or connected with the UK at the moment.
• So, the latest victims of the UK government's racist anti-Muslim policies have been released without charge. This government continues to harass people based on their religion and ethnic background and it sickens me. Just because someone had a connection with someone who committed a crime^[1] does not make that person a criminal. Unless they're a Muslim of course it would seem. This is the sort of behaviour one expects of a terrorist state such as the USA or Israel and I'm ashamed that the government of my country continues to have policies of this sort.

^[1]... and that the 7/7 bombers knew the full-scale of what they were committing has never been proven.

• A few months ago I bought a new phone, a Sony Ericsson K610i, and it's useful for me for a few reasons:
  • It's 3G and occasionally I need to access t'Internet when I'm out and about.
  • It's got a half-decent 2-megapixel camera in it and I like to snap to record my days from time to time.
  • It appears as a USB mass storage device which makes it very easy to use with my Linux-based laptop.
• Using this phone I've (of course) been taking photos of Callum and today I uploaded them all to the gallery.
• Yesterday my fellowship group at college went to the Cheesecake Shop and things got very odd. Photos of this are also in the gallery.
• I've also shot a couple of short videos of Callum:
  • Callum close-up.
  • Callum learnt to roll from his front to his back.

Didn't have time to post yesterday in response to Blair's announcement that he will finally step down on 27 June. So, here it is:

Goodbye you spinning, untrustworthy, lying, self-absorbed, celebrity and power-obsessed man and take your corrupt, anti-muslim, anti-working class, pro-American, anti-student, secretive, undemocratic, immoral agenda with you.

Just be thankful that you were able to resign when you should have been impeached for lying to the nation and to parliament to justify the decision you had already made to invade a sovereign nation, namely Iraq, illegally and unjustly. You have shown scant regard for the rule of law by eroding the burden of proof and allowing house-arrest in the cases of people who have never even been charged with offences, much less convicted. Your successes will forever be overshadowed by the dark side of your agenda.

Even on the day that you announced the news the whole nation should be glad to hear, your disgraceful regime sought again to 'bury bad news' about another of your plans to curtail the rights and freedoms of the people of this nation, that you so sickeningly called the greatest nation on earth. Does this sound familiar?

The Independent sum up Blair's legacy better than anyone with another of their fantastic front pages:

• Phone-call Sunday lunchtime from my bank's anti-fraud department asking about a transaction to a U.S. internet firm. Suffice to say I hadn't made the transaction. Transaction cancelled, card cancelled and cut up, new card in post.
• Visit yesterday from Neil, Emma and Lauren. First time we'd seen them since Lauren's dedication - she's really grown. Great to catch up. Emma's designing and making my ordination stole, looking forward to seeing it.

Wow Ben, this demo rocks out - what a great idea. It sort of reminds of click-n-run or whatever Linspire's thing was called bu, y'know, good.

Quite honoured that you've used my Pidgin package as part of the demo too.

Keep up all posted on how it progresses, I can't really test it since I don't use 10.2 and don't have the time to replicate it for Factory.

Yes, it's that time of the year when the house gets a bit of a blitz. It's not been rendered completely spotless of course because we intend to be moving out in a couple of months and the whole place will be being cleaned and redecorated to make it ready for the tenants we will (hopefully) be getting through college.

Going to look at another parish tomorrow. As before I'm not saying where it is at this stage but I'll certainly be posting our progress.

Mmmmm, lots of Ps...

Pidgin 2.0.0 final is now available from GNOME:Community. Anyone with that repository setup in Smart or YaST (or zypper or opensuse-updater or whatever the hell other package management tools we have these days) will get it as an automatic upgrade to Gaim the next time you upgrade.

Broxtowe results are in (that's our borough here in Nottingham) and the Lib Dems gained three seats on the council. Not enough to make them the largest party unfortunately but they moved from third to second. Tragically and sadly, the BNP won one seat. Thankfully the member of that racist and evil outfit shouldn't be able to have any real effect but it's a very sad state of affairs.

Voting problems in Scotland possibly resulting in as many as 100,000 lost votes north of the border. Hopefully the Electoral Commission will carry out a full review of what happened. If this had happened in an African nation there would be calls for the election to be declared void on the grounds of not being free and fair. See also Black Box Voting.

I'm off to vote on my way to college.

If you're one of the 39 million people in the UK entitled to vote today, don't forget to do so. It's your voice, use it.

Liverpool 1-0 Chelsea (Agg: 1-1)
Liverpool go through 4-1 on penalties.

I think we're going to do it again, it's felt like fate in the same way that 2005 did for a couple of rounds now. Major props to Reina for the saves, Gerrard for marshaling the troops, Agger for putting us in the shootout, Kuyt for finishing it and for scoring a goal that seemed on the replay to be onside even though it was disallowed and to the Kop for being the 12th man over the 120 minutes.

Athens here we come...

Pidgin (the replacement for Gaim) and Gimmie (the all-new GNOME Panel replacement) are now in GNOME:Community.

Pidgin provides the following packages (all with a -devel package): pidgin, the GTK+ instant messaging client; finch, the text console instant messaging client; libpurple, the library used by pidgin and finch. It's available for all versions from 10.1 upwards (possibly right back to 9.3 - waiting to see if it builds okay. If it doesn't I'm not investing any time in it though).

Gimmie has been in my home repository for a while but it was time to move it to G:C. This continues to be available for all distro versions from 10.0 upwards. I'll be working on a patch to make it support Pidgin instead of Gaim soon.

BBC correspondent, Alan Johnston, was abducted in Gaza on 12 March 2007. Follow the above link and sign the petition calling for his release. The people of Gaza need people who, like Alan, are prepared to tell their story to the world. Journalists must be able to work without fear if they are to be able to be impartial and do their job. Alan Johnston must be freed.

I've decided to post this entry in the style of Michael Meeks.

• Up early, played with babe while A had lie-in. Shower then into town for lunch. Lunch at Nero then home.
• Finished the actual words of my placement report, it just needs to be made a bit more pretty and I should get it in Monday morning. Also will submit my statement of financial position then for at such time as I get a curacy sorted.
• Some discussion on opensuse-gnome about 2.19 this week. It developed a side-discussion on the way Factory is built.
• Realised I last redesigned this site back when I was getting ready to come to college. May think about a new design for when I leave college. If I have time.

My DSL went down yesterday evening at around 17:30 UK time (that's 16:30 GMT). One implication of this is that, since my mail server is on that line, all mail for my various domains are currently queueing on the secondary server.

If you need to get hold of, you can email my gmail.com address which is my forename followed by a dot and then my surname. That should be clear enough. Of course, I can only access that if I'm online and that means when I'm not at home at the moment.

Hopefully the issue should be sorted soon though.

Update: Sorted now.

The new logo has prompted a few emails enquiring why the site is called Planet SUSE and not planetSUSE or Planet openSUSE or Planet SUSE Enterprise or Planet Wandering Minstrels (okay, not the last one).

So, to clarify. The reason it's two words is because as well as being part of the SUSE community, it's also part of the Planet Universe. The standard nomenclature for sites using the Planet code is Planet X. In this case X==SUSE.

For further clarification, the reason it's Planet SUSE not openSUSE or whatever is that it covers both openSUSE and SUSE Linux Enterprise people. There are far more people whose work affects both than that only affects one or the other and ultimately, we're part of the same big, happy, lizard-shaped family and we need to get along.

So there it is. Planet SUSE, over three years old and the name is now made clear.

Yesterday I handed in MM316 and reached just over 3000 words on my Placement Report, which I'm continuing with today. I'm now at the stage where I get to do some real theology with it, my favourite part of the report.

Interestingly, a poll of the laptop users in the college reading room right now would reveal OS market shares of OSX: 50%; Linux: 25%, XP: 25%. Windows is dieing folks, put it out of its and our misery.

I had had enough of looking at my rather amateurish logo for Planet SUSE, so I asked Jakub if he could come up with a replacement and he's produced a stormer. It's up to his usual high standards and I think it looks fantastic.

Check out the difference:

My old logo

Jakub's new logo

I love Common Worship. Now, I know speaking positively about a liturgical product is going to come as something of a shock to regular readers so I had better explain.

What I don't love is a straight down-the-line, by-the-numbers, right off the page Common Worship communion service. Communion's not that big a deal for me anyway and doing it word for word as it's found on the page just kills it stone dead as far as I'm concerned.

What I do love is the resource that the whole Common Worship family provides. By that I mean the basic service texts, Daily Prayer, and New Patterns for Worship.

I was leading the 11.15 service at church yesterday. It was a service of the word but I like to use a few vaguely familiar bits of liturgy. The standard collect for yesterday, Second Sunday of Easter, is deadly. Common Worship alternative collects to the rescue with a much better option. Then it was New Patterns with a quality Kyrie confession (that's "Lord have mercy") and Absolution for the time of year and theme of service.

So, all in all, hooray for Common Worship for helping me put together a familiar yet fresh semi-liturgical service for my family at St Luke's.

Catch up from the last few days:

• Watched Liverpool-PSV on Wednesday night. Watched the first half at the Charlton Arms and then moved to the Chequers Inn for the second half because of the total lack of atmosphere at the Charlton. 1-0 is "job done" but the Liverpool side (admittedly with some key players rested) were quite poor on the whole. At full-time I walked down into Beeston and went to the Commercial Inn where I ran into Skye from college. All in all a very enjoyable night.
• Been working on my Placement Report for college. It's pretty slow going but I reckon it'll be done by the end of the vacation.
• I've had to remove Karl from Planet SUSE as the Atom feed for his Blogger blog was messing around again.
• It's pollen season again and doesn't my nose just know it?

Went to the Cadland tonight and found that one of their guest ales at the moment is 'The Rev James'. What a lot of people may not know is that, assuming I do get ordained, I'll be the Revd James not the Revd Ogley. A photo of the pump badge is below. Spooky after what I posted earlier.

Amanda and Callum are down with her parents this week. House feels really strange without them.

Well, apart from Sunday's Easter greeting, I've been rather quiet for the last week or so. The reason for this is that it's been a week of reflection on our part.

Last Tuesday, we went to a parish that we were in communication with regarding a curacy (it would be inappropriate for me to name the parish). This was our second visit to this parish, the first so far that we'd visited more than once. Suffice to say we were very enthusiastic about the prospect of ministering in that place.

The day seemed to go very well and we met the whole staff team over the course of the time we spent there. The following evening, the incumbent of the parish called with the results of their discussion. The decision was that they didn't want to go forward with us. The reasons are not important for a public record but I think the incumbent behaved entirely correctly and appropriately in the situation.

Now, over the course of this year, I have joked at college about being the least employable ordinand in the country as the vast majority of my colleagues at college were fixed up with title posts to serve.

The question we found ourselves asking last week was whether we will actually find something. We have been reassured by those in the know that it is not unusual for people to still be looking for a post now and for those people to then be sorted in the end.

We are trusting that the, frankly unexpected, decision by this parish not to continue in communication with us regarding the curacy represents God moving 'in a mysterious way' because the pairing of us and that context was the wrong one. We are also trusting that the right place will come up. I hope that the right place involves ordained ministry. However, if it does not, so be it.

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

He is risen indeed. Alleluia.

[Ref] Copyright © The Archbishops' Council of the Church of England, 2000-2006

• The first fine Saturday that's coincided with a green bin collection week so I got out into the garden this morning to give the lawn its first mow of the Spring.
• Inspired by that and the [relatively] recent upgrade of swamprat to openSUSE 10.2, I imported by giblib and camE into the Build Service (home repo).
• Resurrected the webcam, pointing at the newly mown garden.
• New season of Doctor Who started this evening. The new companion, Martha Jones, was fantastic and I think she'll work out great. There was a good pace to the episode with everything happening at a nice high tempo until the last few minutes. If you missed it tonight, catch tomorrow's repeat on BBC Three.

Well, laptop is back and repaired, I've done online updates on both Linux and t'other OS and now I'm ready to get back to normality.

Having it back has also meant I've finally been able to upload some more photos of Callum.

Easter vacation to do list (unordered):

• Dig into Gimmie packages for 10.3
• Finish Hebrew text study
• Placement report
• Chaplaincy essay

Well, it's now the first week of the vacation. The repair on my laptop was completed but it then failed its QA test and so went back to the engineer yesterday - news today I hope.

Hebrew proposal was accepted and, to that end, spent yesterday and Monday translating Psalm 139: 17-22 ready to do a text study on it.

All vestments have now been delivered apart from my stoles which are a different matter as they have to be custom designed, painted, embroidered etc. So, I now have a couple of clerical shirts (just nasty poly-cotton ones that were part of a package - going to get some nicer cotton ones for if I were ever to wear one), cassock, surplice, cassock alb and a black preaching scarf. I also have a handy 'slot-in' clerical collar insert for normal-collared shirts. It's made of fabric rather than plastic so it's washable, flexible and looks more at home in a shirt collar. I'll probably keep that in the glove box of the car in case I need it. Might possibly get a second one to keep in my laptop bag for when I'm out and about on foot.

The number of openSUSE-related mails that are stacking up in the absence of my laptop is growing, hope I have it back soon.

• Added Boyd to Planet SUSE.
• Boyd updated Tomboy in GNOME:Community to 0