I’ve spent a lot of this week fighting with svn. Things that should have been simple, somehow kept failing. I was merging changes from a read-only http repo into a local working copy, which is checked out from an https repo. For some reason, that doesn’t work. Normally it does, but on this large merge, it just borked.
Thankfully the remote repo is also available over https. That solved the first problem. I merged, tidied up, and was ready to commit. Then the commit failed because svn was trying to do something fancy with the merge-from repo. I don’t know what or why, but it wouldn’t commit the files. So then I spent hours and hours trying various things. In the end I reverted all the newly created files, then added them back to the working copy, and finally it would commit.
What a pain in the ass.
I’m planning to explore bazaar for all my own version control needs, and if it works well, I’ll switch all our projects over. I’m hoping, like Ubuntu, it just works. 
The budget airline Oasis Hong Kong has appointed liquidators. Technically the court appointed the liquidators, but anyway, the airline is in liquidation. My sympathies to anyone who has booked flights with them and is waiting to hear. In my experience, liquidators are absolutely ruthless and out solely to maximise their fees. KPMG is the liquidator in this case, I doubt it will be any different.
What a shame, Oasis was a great way to get from Europe - Asia - North America. Their 2 routes were major hubs and very useful for the global budget traveller.
I met Jason Calacanis at the blogger breakfast this morning. Duncan Riley was there, although I didn’t meet him. Somebody said he (Duncan) was a big wig, so I was checking him out online after the meeting. I came across Duncan talking about Jason. Jason originally posted, 37 signals responded (my favourite post of the lot), and finally Jason somewhat retracted.
Personally, the key quote comes from Jason’s follow up post:
My work *is* my life.
That’s in line with my impression of Jason from this morning’s breakfast. He struck me as the typically edgy, always on the go, workaholic, American entrepreneur. He has that craving that so many entrepreneurs have. I think it’s what drives them to achieve greatness. By contrast, I think it’s also what keeps them from being happy.
I met Jason’s wife at the event. If I’d read all this stuff beforehand I’d have been interested to get her opinion.
Personally, Jason epitomises the type of entrepreneur I don’t want to be. I respect his success and his drive, but it’s definitely not how I want to live. I’m much more in line with 37 signals thinking. In any venture, I’d want people to work as little as possible, while still getting the job done. I value my free time more than the money that any business success might bring. I’ll give the workaholics a wide berth.
I was at a blogger’s breakfast with the guys from Mahalo this morning. It was interesting to meet some Sydney tech people. There was a mix of people. Primarily fairly switched on, fairly corporate looking suits. A spattering of geeks and Jason devotees. It was quite a small affair, about 25 people all told.
I definitely made one or two interesting connections. Karl is an impressive guy. He’s 16 years old and maintains a gaming server network of 628 servers. He and his dad run the business with one other technician. Impressive for 16.
The overall feel was very corporate. A lot of guys in suits. Initially only 1 woman before Zara and Jason’s wife arrived. I wonder if that’s typical of the tech scene in Sydney. I hope it’s a more mixed bag. I’m on the lookout for a few more events to check out.
I saw Iron Man tonight. It’s a good movie. For some reason I’d heard it was really good. I’d say it’s good, not the best movie I’ve seen this year, but definitely good.
The effects are awesome. The story itself is great, in a cheesy, comic book sort of way. The acting is acceptable, not quite oscar winning. It’s not 100% predictable, which is nice.
Given that it was $10 Tuesday, I’m glad I made the effort to see it. I’m glad I didn’t take the $31 gold class seats though!
Conclusion: If you’ve got a spare couple of hours or the tickets are cheap, go see it, it’s entertaining and enjoyable.
I had some challenges with Zend Studio so I’m posting this for anyone with the same problems (and for my own records). I found the solution here. The issue is related to compiz. Additionally, Sun’s java5 needs to be the default java (set with `sudo update-java-alternatives`).
I have installed Ubuntu. It all seems to be running quite smoothly. VMWare is working, which is nice. I had some initial sound issues with Skype but it looks like it was a volume issue, sorted now. Waiting for Zend studio to download, hopefully that will be an easy install.
Overall, the process was rather painless. I’m loving synaptic package management. It really is much better than RPM. The desktop effects are taking a bit of getting used to. I can’t drag / drop windows onto the workspaces, but that’s not too big a deal.
So far, I’m pleased with the switch. For all you visual people, here’s a wee screenshot of the workspace switcher.
Some things that impressed me:
- Media buttons “just work”, I can play / pause / forward / etc music, beautiful.
- Installing copyright “questionable” plugins (MP3s, divx, etc) was painless and granny easy.
- The windows key does stuff, out of the box, not very useful stuff, but still stuff!
- I could import my pidgin, Evolution and something else data from Fedora. Nice.
- Desktop effects are enabled out of the box (compiz for the techies).
- Stuff prompts for configuration during install, for example ddclient. Handy.
I’m pleased I’ve switched over to Ubuntu. I’m a little wary that the #ubuntu channel is quite busy. Ubuntu seems to be popular with new linux users so there seem to be a lot of “newby” questions on there. Good they’re being answered, but it can be a pain for more experienced users.
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