There are four new faces in important positions at fd.o. In lexicographical order:

• Adam Conrad - admin. Adam is a 'dedicated' admin - it is the only task he currently performs at fd.o, and he has pledged to take ultimate responsibility for the machine. This should help keep it more secure and eliminate some of the more funky issues with it. Adam earns his food and shelter by being an admin, so hopefully he's alright.
• Chris Lee - release team member. Chris is the other member (along with myself) of the release team, and will work with me on the platform, et al.
• Colin Charles - listmaster. Colin's main work is in moderation of all the fd.o-operated lists, but also does other list-related tasks. This should cut turnaround time down immensely.
• Pascal Hakim - listmaster. Pasc is one of Debian's listmasters, and is currently mainly working on creative spam-reduction techniques, so Colin has to do less work.

WiFi from the iPaq is nifty, but the ability to IRC from lecture with PocketPuTTY is potentially dangerous (irssi users: '/bind u sb goto -10', '/bind d sb goto +10').

X work is progressing very smoothly, with the modular-infrastructure-in-monolithic-codebase server working with ATI acceleration, and the loader close to bearing fruit. We're finally here.

I plan to spend any free software time I have this weekend on the poor fledgling platform. That means articulating a coherent vision, and initial proposals for the first release. Maybe even finish the install-module migration. So, if you're around in the platform, be around this weekend. Help is always appreciated, hint hint.

So, a modular-built X server works.

Completely. ATI driver, 2D acceleration, no blue bias or anything. The loader isn't quite in yet (static-only), but I'll take that. This is the X.Org X11R6.7 codebase (all of programs/Xserver), with a modular build system (autotools). xlibs and xapps still come from the same source.

This doesn't have COMPOSITE and XEVIE yet (or indeed, DAMAGE and XFIXES), but it's still very exciting - very easy to add from here. Word to the stars, with Mars bars (that rhyme is not mine, I swear).

HOLY CRAP.

xserver's hw/xorg component (formerly known as Xizzle) just loaded the fbdev server and, like, displayed stuff. I got a basic session going, and despite the fact the colourmaps were weird, I could click on stuff and fully use the mouse, and ditto keyboard.

Tomorrow is an official day of celebration. I'm not going to do any work, at all. Just celebrate.

xlibs 1.0.1's release has silently slipped, very very badly. libX11 still hasn't been merged, and it took me a while to finish off all the other merges. I'm going to call a bunch of point releases separately (probably tomorrow night, assuming I finally finish this essay), and do a united xlibs release once the libX11 merge is done (and xtrans fixed).

Today, I enjoyed a rare day off. I woke up late, read the papers, had a leisurely breakfast, went and played with my little sister for a couple of hours, and then we went to Readings, where I bought a bit over $200 worth of stuff with my one-time 20% voucher (god I love uni - so much free stuff). This included Squarepusher's Ultravisitor, and a whole bunch of political/history books, which are all shaping up to be very interesting.

Now, I have a stew cooking in the oven to tend to, and a lemon and lime tart to start on. I think I'm enjoying the 'day off' concept.