Slacker Update

So I have fallen in to that cycle that we all do, the "Oh hai, I have not updated this in ages!" cycle.

So the two areas of my geek life that have changed are, a) a change of University, b) life as a new OpenBSD developer.

University of Kent

Having finished my undergraduate degree at Bouremouth University, I have moved on to the University of Kent to do a PhD in reverse engineering of executable code. The uni is very green indeed, its like a large field scattered with a few buildings. Amusingly some of the building are mirror images of each other, making them most confusing. There is a rumour that these buildings were designed as prisons because they didn't think a University would succeed?! Come to think of it, those buildings are very prison-feeling.

The infrastructure here is great. I was most impressed. Some of the highlights:

• Several outward facing UNIX boxes for students to SSH into (or use via sunrays in a room called "rox")


• Option to have your @kent.ac.uk mail delivered to one of these machines for retrieval using mutt, pine or mail, or even via IMAP/POP.


• VPN - Will be useful if I move off-campus


• Subversion and trac hosting for all students


• University hosted IRC server, which we mostly use for arranging lunch and pub meets.


• Dedicated sysadmins, ones who have heard of UNIX. Ones who run it on their desktop. Ones who hang on IRC and help people out. Very refreshing.


• MirrorService - A large opensource mirror, including sourceforge, many linux distros, BSD distros, firefox etc...

So thatsa all useful stuff. I am settling in well, getting on well with my supervisor and office-mates.

P2K9

I was invited to the OpenBSD ports hackathon this year, where I became an OpenBSD developer. I amanged to get a fair amount done that week, including:

• The much needed MPlayer update.


• TeX Live 2009.


• TeX Works update (to a release).


• Xpdf security fix.


• Javascript support for elinks.


• OpenTTD update.


• Ziproxy.


• Pms update.


• Qt-creator.


• Flickcurl update.


• Orbital Eunuchs Sniper (games/snipe2d).


• A brief look at mixxx, cmake and ncmpc.

Amongst the hacking, beer, spa, feasting etc :)