From Berne, the Swiss capital, hails a band I really like by the name of Züri West. The name itself is a pun: the folks from Berne love their city (rightfully so!) and join the rest of Switzerland in looking down a bit upon Zurich, which is “metropolitan” and “hip” and has often been considered the real capital of Switzerland. Located west of Zurich, Berne is thus “Züri West”, and by using this name, the Bernese band ridicules the Zurich folks a bit. Well, that’s my interpretation anyway and I make no claim over its correctness, and I surely don’t want to get mixed up in local politics!

Where was I? Oh yeah: Züri West (Flash-using homepage] make rock music, and they’re good with their instruments. The result are groovy and melodic sounds, which everyone in Switzerland knows.

What I find particularly amazing about this band are their lyrics. Kuno, the singer, sings almost all songs in the Bernese dialect, which I’ve learnt to the point of understanding it, though I can’t speak it yet. It’s a beautiful dialect, and Kuno displays magnificent control over it.

When I say beautiful, I do not only mean its sound, but also the way it allows one to express thoughts, situations, feelings, etc.. It’s very lyrical, often poetic, but always very much to the point. It sounds natural, yet not at all blunt.

In addition, Züri West’s songs display no haste. Again, this is a bit ironic since the Bernese are said to be slow, but what I mean is that the band is unafraid to take their time to recount what they have to say. Forget 4/4 beats and verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus, it’s a lot more as if the band shaped the music around the story they’re telling.

(Of course I have no reason to claim that the Bernese are actually slow. According to my dear (Bernese) friend Isabel, they are just considerate to give the rest of the world enough time to parse and understand their sophisticated verbal and non-verbal output).

I won’t be able to convey all of the lyrical beauties of their music to you, but what I want to do is translate my favourite of their songs, which is based on a story by Peter Bichsel and it’s called “America does not exist”.

Keep in mind that their version rhymes, which I won’t be able to achieve in the translation. I’ll try to keep the flow though. Imagine a jazzy, slightly Latin groove to it. And it’s sung, not spoken.

This is the story of Colombo
not the one from the TV show
but of a guy who once lived in Spain
and who was a bit of a freak
capable of nothing
and always telling weird stuff
without giving it much thought
until one day someone told him: you’ve got to learn a trade
you have to live your life
nobody takes you for real like this
and most just laugh about you
what are the options
he asked - what do you do
I’m an explorer - the other guy said
I sail my ship out to the sea
through the various parts of the globe
that sounds very interesting - I’d like that too
and so Colombo said - I’ll become a famous explorer

And he told it to everyone
and everyone just started laughing
and he said: just wait and see
and the people didn’t believe him
and he got sulky
and the people almost died laughing
and he left the town
and hid somewhere in the forest
where he remained for 13 weeks - 13 weeks in the shrubs
and the people searched and felt ashamed
and noone knew where he might be
and noone laughed anymore when suddenly on a wonderful morning he was back
then everyone rejoiced
and when he said: i told you so
I discovered a new land
it’s out there somewhere in the sea
then everyone listened
and was kind to him
and tried hard to make some dreadfully serious faces

The explorer from the first verse
Amerigo Vespucci is his name
just happened to be in town
and said: good for you, but I won’t believe you until I see it myself
and went off to set sail immediately
and after exactly 13 weeks and a day and a night he was finally back
and the people all went down to the port
and Colombo was nervous, almost ill because he had lied
and he was horribly frightened
and pale
and looked noone in the eyes

But Vespucci smiled and stood in front of the people
and blinked at Colombo and told that he had found it
and Colombo was so glad that he didn’t tell on him
and called out Amerigo Amerigo and the people joined in

And Colombo became famous and until the end of his days
he was never actually sure and never dared to ask
whether America really existed
over time, more people went there and when they came back
they told stories and they tell the same stories until today
and noone knows anything more than he knew before
and everyone saw exactly the same
and that sounds very dodgy
and tastes a bit like screenplay and Hollywood

America doesn’t exist
they never found it
America doesn’t exist
it’s all just a tale
America doesn’t exist
it’s all lies and made up
America doesn’t exist
America is just a rumour

NP: Züri West: Züri West

I was excited by Pierre’s idea to add Git branch information to the Zsh prompt and even more so when I saw Mike implement support for multiple VCSs.

Unfortunately, Mike’s a Bash user, and so I took it upon myself to port the idea to Zsh. The file 60vcsprompt is sourced from my .zshrc, which sets psvar[1] through psvar[3]. Those are then used in 80prompt (also sourced from .zshrc) when setting $PS1.

My prompt follows the same principle as Mike’s and puts the branch name at the repository root location in the repository path. In the following example, ~, ~/code, and ~/code/netconf/netconf are three separate Git repositories, while ~/code/unionfs-fuse and ~/code/unperish are maintained with Mercurial and Bazaar respectively:

lapse:~|master|% cd code
lapse:~/code|master|% cd netconf 
lapse:~/code|master|netconf% cd netconf
lapse:..e/netconf/netconf|master|% cd src
lapse:..etconf/netconf|master|src% git checkout no-threads
Switched to branch "no-threads"
lapse:..nf/netconf|no-threads|src% cd ../../../unionfs-fuse 
lapse:../unionfs-fuse|hg:default|% cd ../unperish
lapse:..unperish|bzr:unperish@159|%

You’ll notice that unlike Mike’s prompt, mine’s limited to a maximum length of 25 characters. However, the repository root path is kept at least 10 characters long, so the prompt might get longer than 25 characters if you descend deep into a repository’s subdirectories.

I couldn’t easily figure out how to add support for other version control systems, so if you do, please feed back the patches! And the same goes for suggestions and improvements.

One of the next things I am planning to implement is an indicator for when your working tree contains uncommitted changes, e.g.:

lapse:..etconf/netconf|master|src% touch foo
lapse:..tconf/netconf|master*|src%

So watch those files.

NP: Gazpacho: Bravo

A common rant against Launchpad is that it’s closed: the code is proprietary, and Canonical doesn’t give raw access to the data they collect via the interface. Anyway, other people have taken up this issue, and it’s not the point of this post to do so.

I’ve heard two argument why Launchpad is closed: first, it’s a test bed for a product, which Canonical hopes to market to commercial entities to manage their own release cycles. And second: it’s purposely cross-project and tries to integrate and link between them. Thus, lots of instances of Launchpad would defeat the point.

I’ll address these points in turn, starting from the back:

While I won’t deny a “pre-trend” towards (back to) “mainframe-like” computing, with Google, Amazon, and others providing rent-a-computer-cycle services. In addition, environmental concerns cast clouds over the 400W heating appliance under your desk, which happens to run your word processor and browser when it doesn’t lose track of its countless spare cycles. Yet, I maintain that centralised services, such as Launchpad are a thing of the past.

If you ask me, Launchpad got it wrong, even though it’s light years further than its predecessors. It features pleasant graphics and obviously has had lots of smart thinking and experience shoved into it, but it’s still centralised. It might be a business case, but it’s not what the world needs.

We’ve seen massive growth of decentralised approaches to classic services, from file sharing to version control, from number crunching to simple web browsing, and yet, there’s Launchpad, single point of entry (and failure) to the world of data surrounding Free software (at least if you follow their vision).

What we need is something as slick as Launchpad, and thousands of instances thereof, which all peer with each other, automatically. The information would automatically be mirrored wherever it’s referenced, so the entire cloud would be highly-available and failure-proof.

Obviously, this wouldn’t render itself well to the (traditional) software business model Canonical seems to strive for, so they’re unlikely to go down this route.

But we could. It would be a non-competitor.

Update: thanks for the copious feedback I’ve received. Among them was a comment by [Elliot Murphy]](http://launchpad.net/~statik), who speaks of “us” and thus leads me to believe that he’s part of the Launchpad team:

We’re definitely listening, and we still have lots more improvements we want to make. Our goal is collaboration, not centralization: thats why we build bazaar, are working busily on doing two-way integration with other bug tracker systems, and are building the best API we can. Our goal in the team is to make it trivially easy for you to get all the data that you put into launchpad back out through the API, data portability is very important. There is no big evil business model, but it would be socially irresponsible if we did not work toward making launchpad self-sustaining. It has been a long road, but the launchpad team is steadily working toward a distributed model, one step at a time.

While it’s definitely nice to hear that data portability is a concern to them, I don’t see Debian using Launchpad without the ability to run it on our own servers. I’m definitely curious to hear more about the distributed model the team is pursuing.

I certainly don’t have a problem with self-sustainability, but in the Free software world, I do wonder what that is supposed to achieve. Release early, release often, anyone?

Update: Philip Newborough took up the issue and has received a number of noteworthy replies. It made me very happy that he sees my post as “a rant about Launchpad which is not lambasting Canonical for their proprietary Launchpad software;” I wasn’t aiming for any lambasting.

NP: Nine Inch Nails: Further Down the Spiral

Readers of my blog may recall that I don’t take it well when someone takes my breakfast from me, especially something as good as Bircher Müesli.

Today, on my way to Limerick for some intensive Ph.D. work, I decided to try again and put a container with 300g of this beloved food into my hand luggage.

Noone noticed. And now I am happily fed and enjoying the increased sense of security on this airplane.

NP: Pulp: We Love Life

This morning, at Zurich airport, I was greeted by massive banners saying:

We welcome the fans of the future European champion

Does this mean that Switzerland won’t be champion, or that Swiss fans generally arrive by plane?

Bloody football championships! I still have 6 days in which I don’t have plans outside of the country. Help!

NP: Gazpacho: Firebird

Dear all: I am not interested in social networking sites. Please don’t give them my email address for their invitation letters and email address database.

In general, don’t give them anyone’s address without the person’s consent. You never know what kind of abuse might happen with the addresses they collect.

NP: Gazpacho: Bravo

Last night, my flatmate asked the question of whether it is possible to do anything in a selfless way, or whether everything one does can be traced back to one’s own interests. I am not fit for these kinds of philosophical arguments anymore, so we pursued another topic instead.

Today I am sitting on a Swiss flight and am being bombarded by commercials on the stationary television screens they use for safety instructions and the onboard entertainment.

Swisscom purchased advertising space, and there they proudly let us know, in German, English, and French that “1 million kids in Switzerland jump for joy as Swisscom brings free Internet access to their schools. Simply so.” (sic).

When I read this, I first though: why the heck are Swiss schools still in need of Internet connections? Why do we tolerate an economy or situation in which the Internet isn’t ubiquitous yet?

And then, my mind suddenly made the connection to last night’s discussion on selflessness: even though Swisscom is trying to communicate that they’re being selflessly good by providing access to the school’s, they obviously aren’t, or they wouldn’t be using the factoid for advertising.

The curious aspect is that I wouldn’t normally have absorbed their message or linked it to last night’s discussion. The reason that I did is because of the gross errors in their English translation.

The German “einfach so”, which I think they translated wrongly, suggests that they did something without any particular reason. I am not a native English speaker, but “simply so” doesn’t exist, and it (thus) doesn’t have that meaning.

Dear Swisscom, and all other companies who think that English is hip, or who actually want to reach out beyond the borders of four-language-Switzerland: consider employing someone who can speak the language to help with your marketing. Even if you want to let the world think that what you do is without commerical interests.

NP: The Flower Kings: Unfold the Future

Update: initially, I criticised Swisscom for using “jumping for joy”, which makes no sense to me. Apparently, however, it’s an idiom. I should have checked, especially since I am criticising the use of a language non-native to me. Thanks to the various people who wrote in for kindly pointing out my mistake.

When I got in to my hotel room last night, it was brightly illuminated and the TV was on with music and a message to greet me. The first thing I did was turn it off, along with most of the lights.

Later, I asked at the reception when they turn on the lights. I was expecting them to have a central switch for each room that the receptionist could flip when the guest finished checking in and has started to make way towards the room.

Not so. The guy behind the desk told me that housekeeping sets it all up.

So my lights have been on and the TV blasting for the entire afternoon and evening. That did not make me feel at home. It made me cross.

NP: The Pineapple Thief: 8 Days Later

I am very excited to announce that Jonathan Roes has successfully applied to the Google Summer of Code 2008 and will be working on netconf over this summer. With his help, I am confident that netconf 1.0 in Debian “lenny” is no longer a dream.

Jonathan is a soon-to-be computer science graduate from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and his application was (by far) the most convincing of the ten I received. He has several years of programming and Linux experience and it’s quite obvious that he has understood the philosophy of netconf.

I am looking forward to working with Jonathan!

NP: Underworld: Second Toughest of the Infants

In certain geek circles, especially those centred around IRC channels, it seems common practice to refer to each other by nicknames, even during real life meetings. This drives me crazy.

I’d like the world to know that I am Martin, unless you speak to me on IRC. This also means that I am Martin on mailing lists and any other form of communication, except IRC.

Love,
Martin

NP: Pulp: Freaks