posts

Background I am a twice failed backup software developer.

I've bought a new laptop to more efficiently work when I'm away from home.

Computer programmers create computer programs, and somehow people get it and use it.

I recently needed to get a new laptop, and this brought up the question: how do I make sure it works?

Lars Wirzenius Consulting Ltd has created a Git repository with the source code of Debian 12 (bookworm), the main component.

I've just pushed out the release 0.40 of vmdb2, my tool for creating a disk image with Debian installed.

I wrote an essay on things I've learned about programming in the 40 years I've been doing it: https://liw.fi/40/.

For a lark I made an ext4 file system with a billion empty files. https://gitlab.com/larswirzenius/create-empty-files has the program I wrote for this.

The "XY problem": The XY problem is asking about your attempted solution rather than your actual problem.

For various reasons, the way my $PATH environment variable gets constructed results in a long, repetitive list of directories.

pub ed25519/31DA8032081D901D 2023-11-12 [C] [expires: 2024-11-11] Key fingerprint = EA0B 7399 ECCF 9282 A74E F8F8 31DA 8032 081D 901D uid [ultimate] Lars Wirzenius uid [ultimate] Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.fi> sub e…

I've updated, by completely rewriting, my introductory guide and overview of the Getting Things Done (GTD) system, from a hacker's point of view.

Introduction I have strong opinions, strongly held, about tickets, issues, and tasks.

I've started a new job this month.

I've recently made releases of vmdb2 and v-i. vmdb2 is my tool for creating a disk image with Debian installed.

This is a blog post version of a short talk I gave recently at a Rust Finland meetup.

I recently asked on the fediverse: If you're a programmer and use a continuous integration system to build, test, and maybe deliver or deploy the software, what's your biggest annoyance or gripe?

I wrote an article The early days of Linux for LWN.net, with some of my memories of the start of Linux.

I use the David Allen Getting Things Done system (GTD for short) to cope with all the many, conflicting, things the world throws at me.

A rant about "year of Linux on the desktop" from a tired old man.

seq 1000 | while read i; do echo $i; echo run test suite; echo; done All quality software should have an automated test suite: some way to ensure that at least the primary happy path works.

I bought a new keyboard and have been using it for about a month now as my daily driver.

I'm giving my free training course in the Rust language to FOSS developers again, on Sunday November 20.

For the past three Saturdays, I've been training half a dozen free and open source software developers in the basics of the Rust programming language.

Do you write code for free and open source projects?

Building things that work for a long time requires a shift in thinking and in attitude and a lot of ongoing effort.

Soile made a short film, Earth 2.0 last week, for a film camp thing here in Manchester.

In September, The FUUG Foundation gave me a grant to buy some hardware for Obnam development.

Out of curiosity, and because it is Sunday morning and I have a cold and can't get my brain to do anything tricky, I counted the number of candidates in each year's DPL elections.

I've just released version 0.2 of v-i, my non-interactive, fairly fast, unofficial, alternative installer of Debian for physical computers ("bare metal").

Recently, the power brick for my home Internet router PC failed.

I've just pushed out version 0.8.0 of Obnam, an encrypting backup program.

I offer a training course in the Rust programming language: Basics of Rust.

ETA, 2022-05-19: I'm happy this blog post has gathered a fair bit of interest.

Every free and open source project should probably make a release from time to time.

Linus's Law is "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".

A year ago I published an offer to review the README of free and open source projects.

I've published release 0.1 of v-i, my installer for Debian based on vmdb2.

For my backup program, Obnam, I needed to find a way to insert many rows into an SQLite database table as quickly as possible.

I did some interviews of volunteer stakeholders of the Sequoia PGP command line tool. sq.

Daniel gave an online talk at FOSDEM about Subplot, our tool for documenting acceptance criteria and their verification.

A ratchet is a wonderful device and a powerful metaphor.

I use a laptop as my primary computer: it's hooked to my nice keyboard, my nice mouse, and my two monitors.

We're breaking Subplot, our acceptance testing tool.

I'm doing a (custom) Debian installer (just a hobby, won't be useful and reliable like the official one) for my Thinkpad X220 laptop.

I've just released version 0.6.0 of Obnam, the encrypting backup program.

I've just released version 0.5.0 of Obnam, the encrypting backup program.

I'm writing a user guide for the Sequoia-PGP command line tool sq, and would like feedback.

I published my essay on re-thinking email.

This northern hemisphere summer I changed jobs from the Wikimedia Foundation to helping develop Sequoia-PGP, the OpenPGP implementation in Rust that focuses on ease of use.