Paludis 0.36.0 Released

Paludis 0.36.0 has been released:

• system packages are now treated as ‘used’ for –uninstall.
• Fetch related errors that can be caught up-front are now tested at –pretend time.
• Support for [.key=value] dependency specifications.
• Support for configurable output managers. These are undocumented in this release and configuration formats may change without backwards compatibility; documentation and stability will be provided once we’ve ironed out any kinks. With the default configuration, message logs for all packages and build logs for failed packages are kept in /var/log/paludis/.
• SLOT and EAPI now show up as metadata keys, and are searchable.

Paludis 0.34.5 Released

Paludis 0.34.5 has been released:

• –continue-on-failure would always consider old-style virtuals
  unsatisfied. This is now fixed.

Fiction, Fiction, Television

• Anathem, by Neal Stephenson. Rather good, although the ending looks suspiciously like it’s mocking all those misguided fools who say Stephenson can’t write endings.
• House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski. 20% brilliance, 70% filler hidden behind novelty.
• Dollhouse. Has potential. I give it ten episodes, by which point it will either be awesome and cancelled or lame and going on for another five years. I may change my mind next week.

Paludis 0.34.4 Released

Paludis 0.34.4 has been released:

• VDB entries lacking CONFIG_PROTECT keys (such as those created by Portage) would cause an error in 0.34.3. This is now fixed.
• Tests for 0.34.3 would fail as root because reads and writes to a-rw files would still succeed. Affected tests are now skipped when root.

Paludis 0.34.3 Released

Paludis 0.34.3 has been released:

• Unfortunately std::ifstream and std::ofstream are allowed to fail in unobvious ways when given a duff file. In particular, gcc won’t error out when a std::ifstream is created for a directory until the first read occurs. So we write our own stream buffer classes that do error checking and throw useful exceptions on error, and use those instead.

Paludis 0.34.2 Released

Paludis 0.34.2 has been released:

• Wildcards are now allowed for –contents and –executables.
• A hardlink-merging bug has been fixed.
• New appareo client, for manifest generation.

Pakuma Choroka K1: Great Laptop Bag or the Greatest Laptop Bag?

I got a Pakuma Choroka K1 for Christmas, to replace my rapidly falling apart generic backpack. I must say, I am extremely impressed.

First up, space. There’s plenty of room for a beast of a laptop, the power supply and a mouse. And a load of paper. And several large books. And a water bottle. And the shopping. And a cat or small dog. No problems there.

Next up, the organisation of said space. Lots of compartments and pockets. Possibly slightly overdoing things, but fortunately the little compartments are inside big compartments, so there’s no wasted space if you decide not to use them.

The foam-cushioned laptop compartment (supposedly using NASA-invented memory foam, and if you believe that I’ve got a bridge for sale) appears to be effective.

Then there’s the strap. My old backpack’s straps were falling off and falling apart thanks to shoddy stitching and cheap materials. No danger of this here.

The clever bits… Two stand out. First, the nifty little hole to allow headphones to go into the bag. Neat. Second, the slightly-shiny light grey inner lining. This makes it much easier to see things inside the bag.

Colour-wise, it’s inoffensive, which is all I care about.

A couple of things I’d possibly consider changing: The big cushioned laptop-holding section does waste a bit of space if there’s no laptop in the bag. Making it removable would be rather nifty, although possibly difficult to do without reducing the strength of the bag. And a small handle on the top of the bag wouldn’t go amiss either — the over-the-shoulder strap is sometimes overkill.

All in all, a rather good buy, especially if someone else is paying for it.