Updatey-ho.

Lately there have been dozens of things I've meant to post about and I haven't got around to it. Mostly due to my terrible memory - I can think of something 2 minutes from my front door when I'm walking home, and it'll still be forgotten before I've got in, let alone booted up the PC (I'm still not leaving it on 24/7 like any rational household does, due to the dodgy power around here... must buy a UPS).

Speaking of computers and dodginess, another reason for not posting has been the various PC problems I've had lately - including most recently, the ADSL part of my local exchange blowing up or burning out or something, Thursday lunchtime. Due to the rather unhelpful hours that my ISP offer official phone support, I couldn't report this until Friday morning, and BT didn't fix it until sometime this weekend (not sure exactly when, as I was at the filmfest in 'nam for most of the weekend).

Speaking of computers, I have a Socket 939 motherboard and two 512MB sticks of DDR400 RAM for sale if anyone wants them - motherboard is brand new, used for about 2 hours (enough to figure out that my problem wasn't my old motherboard), comes with box, manual, etc. The RAM has been in use for a year or so.

In less geeky news, my girlfriend has a new boyfriend (fsvo 'new' - they've been faffing around being not quite officially in a relationship for some time now). This means I have the usual 'OMG what did I just agree to?!?' jitters, despite having spent quite a lot of the last few weeks encouraging them both in the right direction :) Emotions eh?

The 'nam filmfest was good (with the exception of 'Goth', courtesy of ninjagirl, which was every bit as bad as promised and therefore good in its own very special way). It's really weird how tiring it is to sit around and watch movies for two whole days though - I'm exhausted, feel like I've skipped a night's sleep.

Why doesn't LJ have a 'mixed' mood?

RIP Rob Levin AKA 'lilo'

I've just got on IRC and found out that Rob Levin, the guy who created Freenode (previously OpenProjects, previously Linpeople), died yesterday of injuries sustained in a road accident last week.

Without the network of people that Rob built up, I literally have no idea where my career would be at this point - the #linpeople community was a massive influence on me while I was still finishing my degree more than seven years ago. Their good example led me to form MK LUG, and before that their help and support made me leap confidently (or at least, with some vague amount of hope that I could survive it) into my first Perl job. For me, the network that is now called Freenode pretty much defines the phrase 'the open source community'.

Rob frequently took time over the years that I've been using the network to pop up in a /msg and ask me how I was doing, just chat about everyday life... I have no idea how many of the users on his network he managed to build a personal relationship with at this kind of level, but he definitely struck me as someone who really cared about what he did and the people he helped by doing it.

I hope that Freenode continues to build on all the work that Rob has been doing over the years. I'm junior staff on the network now myself, so I hope to be part of that process.

My sympathies to all who knew lilo, particularly to those who knew him better than I did, and most of all to his family.

RIP lilo.


http://freenode.net/news.shtml - brief announcement.

http://pastebin.ca/173572 - Q+A session.


Update: http://lilo.freenode.net - online book of condolences

Anyone? Bueller?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bagrec/236103653/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/teflon/224076191/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zjyg/237586855/