Michael W. Lucas's Blog, page 21

60 Seconds of WIP, 13 July 2023

Hi folks! Many folks don’t know I write the “We Get Letters” column for the FreeBSD Journal. You can download the PDFs free from their web site. Why do I write a column for free? Because it gives me an opportunity to vent the spleen that’s too toxic for my books.

But a bit of money would be nice so I collected the first three years in Letters to ed(1). Seems that Amazon US just put the paperback on sale, and you can grab it for $4.61. I get my usual payment for it, so please feel free to pillage...

New FreeBSD Journal column out

The new issue of the FreeBSD Journal is out, including my We Get Letters column. Before you click on the browser-based version, know there’s a PDF.

The issue celebrates 30 years of FreeBSD, and has all sorts of articles about the project’s history. By sheer chance, this is my 30th column. I have done my best, but they still won’t fire me. To mark the occasion, I elected to tell the truth.

Free Shipping at My Print Bookstore

I use bookshop.org to sell print books within the United States. It’s not a direct sale from me–I’m an affiliate, and I make a bit more when you buy from them.

For 11 and 12 July 2023, they are offering free shipping on all books.

So if you want one of my print books and you avoid the Bezosbeast, here’s a sale for you.

60 Seconds of WIP, 10 July 2023

Welcome to a bonus “Lucas is debugging his web site’s podcast settings to see if he can auto-syndicate” episode of 60 Seconds of WIP! Because it’s extra, I’m retreating to an earlier point in the Run Your Own Mail Server manuscript to discuss the origin of spam.

Reading transcript:

In 1978 Gary Thuerk, a salesman for the Digital Equipment Corporation, emailed several hundred people he didn’t know an invitation to a demonstration of the new DEC packet-switching systems. Nobody had ever tried com...

60 Seconds of WIP, 7 July 2023

My extensive survey of precisely one person shows that nobody wants to look at my face, so I’m switching these over to MP3. When surveyed, I was very firm on that point. It will also let me put this silly thing into podcast channels.

This week I discuss Delivery Status Notifications, and how everyone loathes read receipts. Email is asynchronous, and should always remain so.

Reading transcript:

Users want to know if emails they send are received or go astray. Delivery Status Notifications, or DSN...

Testing Podcast Setup, RSS Unstable

Folks seem to appreciate the “60 Seconds of WIP” tracks, so I’m planning to record more and distribute them more widely. That means I need to set up my site more properly. It’s a straightforward task, but I’ll need to test integration with the blog’s RSS feed.

Unfortunately, if I post podcasts in a blog category I can’t distribute them to other vendors. Podcast RSS feeds require additional metadata. The WordPress software for doing so assumes that your podcast is its own thing, separate from any...

60 Seconds of WIP, 7 July 2023

My extensive survey of precisely one person shows that nobody wants to look at my face, so I’m switching these over to MP3. When surveyed, I was very firm on that point. It will also let me put this silly thing into podcast channels.

https://mwl.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023-07-06-60SoW.mp3

This week I discuss Delivery Status Notifications, and how everyone loathes read receipts. Email is asynchronous, and should always remain so.

Notes on Amazon Killing Electronic Subscriptions

I’ve been reading Asimov’s Science Fiction for decades. Back when I still had hope and hair, I dreamed of being published therein. I no longer submit to slushpiles, but almost every issue I discover a meatspace friend in its table of contents.

Maybe ten years ago, I switched my subscription from paper to electronic via Amazon. I do all of my fiction reading on a backlit e-ink device. E-ink is a much better reading experience than a screen, especially for us voracious readers. I don’t want the pr...

First BSDCan Operations Team Meeting

I’m posting this here because I’m posting it everywhere.

I’ve just sent an email everyone who volunteered to help make BSDCan 2024 happen. I suspect some of you have not received that email. If you haven’t seen it, please check your spam folder. We need to start organizing now to make 2024 go smoothly. Mostly smoothly.

If you’re on the operations team and didn’t get the email, please poke me directly so I can update your email address.

June’s Jerryrigged Sausage

(This post went to Patronizers at the beginning of June, and the public at the beginning of July.)

Hi folks!

BSDCan dominated this month. It was good. It wasn’t the biggest con we’ve had, but for the first year back it was nice. A handful of folks said they wouldn’t attend because the pandemic is still raging, and that while we would be masked the rest of the world isn’t. I can’t blame them. A couple of random folks on the Internet complained to me that they wouldn’t attend because we had a mask...