01:33: Completely-unmaintained packages that YOU USE...

On Ubuntu, you can get a list of packages that are installed on your system but completely unmaintained by running this command:

dpkg --get-selections | grep '\Winstall' | cut -f1 | xargs apt-cache show | egrep '^Filename: pool/(universe|multiverse)/.*' | sed -re 's:.*/([^_]+)_(.*)_.*:\1:' | less -N

Packages in this list have not had time allocated to them for integration or QA prior to release, and they do not receive regular security-updates or bug-fixes following initial release.

As one moves further off-centre from Ubuntu's primary target-audience, the number of items in that list increases, and which items they are becomes more unsettling.

For example: I prefer to use the official GNOME web-browser, Epiphany--for reasons nicely summarised on Daniel Bo's weblog. Ubuntu shipped no updates for Epiphany during the lifetime of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), despite there having been several provided by Ubuntu's upstream community--with the first update making its way into Debian just 2 weeks after the initial (random?) snapshot was made for Karmic. That's no updates for the GNOME web-browser available through Ubuntu until the next release, 6 months later. If you stick with Ubuntu's Long Term Service (LTS) releases, then you can expect to go 2 years with no updates for this or any other package in the `universe' or `multiverse' sections of Ubuntu.

Having my web-browser, or anything else that faces the network, go without security-updates should be unsettling enough; but there are other items in my list that are even more unsettling: packages like gnutls-bin, which is supposed to be a security tool. And there are enough other `minorly-unsettling' items in my list that the sheer number of them all together is itself unsettling.

A friend was surprised to find that the "OTR" plugin for Pidgin, which he used to keep his IM conversations secure, is in universe-- which, again, means that he cannot expect security updates for it. So much for his secure conversations.

How many items are in your list, and what are they?

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20:51: Love Bug(fix): libvisualid 0.2.1

It's Valentine's Day and libvisualid 0.2.1 is out, to fix some bugs that managed to escape with version 0.2.0; changes include:

• Automatic complexity-limiting is actually enabled.
• A divide-by-zero bug affecting the rendering of line-glyphs with exactly one `rib' sub-glyph has been fixed.
• Under-reporting of the complexity added to Line-glyphs by multiple `ribs' has been fixed.
• Two issues in the best-common-substring logic used to associate file-names with pre-existing VisualID-glyphs for other, related files have been resolved: memory-leaks have been fixed, and strings that were treated as circular are now treated correctly.
• The VisualID Explorer now renders glyphs with a fixed 1:1 aspect-ratio, scaled without distortion to fit the available drawing-area.

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09:09: Baby's Drawings

The latest libvisualid code produced this, during testing:

When I asked Jay what he saw in it, he said, "three houseflies forming a political party".

I printed it out and brought it to Pam, who responded, "what's with the flies?". I told her that it was a VisualID. She trimmed it and hung it on the refrigerator.

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