So I was about to configure an FTP server to let a friend upload content for a website... and then I came to my senses and remembered sftp exists. It's supported by the same graphical clients, and avoids me having to figure out SSL certificates and so on. Next problem: we want to both edit the site. Okay, so I create a group, make it the default group for both users... and now I need to set the umask to 002 so that all group members can edit all files. There's no option in the client... ...

This week, Google released an extension called BITE which lets you file bug reports from within Chrome (or Chromium). If you are testing web applications, it lets you attach screenshots and/or automated tests to reproduce the bug you've found. There's just one small catch: they haven't released a server to go with the client. Oops. Apparently the internal systems are too tightly integrated to make that possible. I have hacked up enough stubs of a BITE server in Perl to get the client to "log in" and show off some features. (Warning: it doesn't actually do anything useful yet.) ...

Note to self: when disabling Range headers in Apache to fix CVE-2011-3192, be sure to read the updated advisory and also disable Request-Range headers. (Presumably not "Range-Request" as in the summary of that link?) Or just apply the handy Debian update, of course.

Some things I have learnt this week at DebConf: The cost of living in the UK is much higher than in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I feel much better about life when I am being a fun and exciting person, compared to boring and cynical. My laptop is not well-suited to travelling - poor battery life, and poor wifi. However, I have mastered the art of taking only hand luggage. I have quietly resolved to spend more time doing things that I enjoy, that maximise the use of my skills, and which help other people; and spend less time on the opposite. ...

It feels good to be at DebConf again, this time in Banja Luka. This is my fifth consecutive DebConf. Getting here was fairly painful; a flight from Split was delayed, so I had to get a later bus than planned from Zagreb. Still, I met a bunch of DebConf attendees getting the same bus, so at least there was conversation. Packaging-wise, I have been working on adding KiokuDB (and associated backends) into Debian. I wrote a patch for libossp-uuid-perl yesterday to fix a bug with its Data::UUID compatibility; this probably means I'll drop the Data::UUID ITP. Having looked at the code, I don't see how it can be easily fixed for multi-user systems. ...

I have turned off comments on my blog - there was too much spam, and I'm not planning to invest the time to fix that properly. On the one hand, this is a shame - it removes an opportunity for other people to respond to what I might write. On the other hand, the idea that this was any kind of two-way conversation was always a badly-maintained illusion. I didn't have any kind of notifications set up to tell me when comments arrived; so I rarely read them, and almost never replied. I don't want to build a commercial enterprise or a "community". ...

I have recently finished watching The Prisoner (1967). All the surrealism is messing with my head. In other news, I updated GNU Enscript. Oh, and I filed an ITP for the real Data::UUID, and promptly found a symlink attack which I suspect I failed to disclose responsibly. Hmm. I could write a lot more, but the short version is: I need a holiday.

The UK government publishes lots of spending data now. Let's do cool stuff! ScraperWiki is one of these new-fangled cloud services, hosting code that scrapes websites. You can throw some python (or ruby, or php) together to download all the CSV files for a department. Google Refine is like a spreadsheet on crack, with features ideal for cleaning up messy data sets. I saw it for the first time at OpenTech 2011 a few weeks ago in London. You can take the government data, clean up the worst typos, and integrate it into the scraperwiki scraper. ...

I've been promoted - my job title will now be 'Software Architect'. This seems to mean I'll be writing documents rather than code - any higher-level, and I'd need Mark Shuttleworth's spacesuit. Is this a good thing? Anyway, I celebrated by opening my last bottle of Debian wine. <spam>Unfortunately, I can't take up my new role until we have hired a replacement. UK-based developers who know Perl and ideally PostgreSQL might want to look at the job description, although I'd recommend sending your CV and covering letter to me directly. I don't get a referral bonus, it's just that I don't like what that agency does with your carefully-crafted application.</spam> ...

A new release of Gnash, version 0.8.9, is due in the near future. Plenty of bugs have been fixed, but some users are still going to have problems playing YouTube videos. Here's a short explanation. At some point last year, YouTube started setting HTTP cookies in your web browser, to keep track of which of their video servers is nearest to your machine. This lets them provide a better experience for you (I guess). Here's a diagram of what goes on in your browser: ...