Blog

Memory

Published on July 2, 2018.

On Monday, 25 June I attended the funeral celebrating the life of Peter Rankin, the father of a friend, at Preston Minster that you can see at the photo.

Peter was diagnosed with brain cancer in November 2017 and passed away on Sunday 10 June following a six-month battle with a brain tumour. The tribute from the family, when my friend read William Shakespeare’s Peace Maker text, was, in the good sense, hard to describe. The eulogy, by Bishop David Chillingworth, and the tribute, by Councillor Brian Rollo, were inspiring.

Phone Free

Published on July 1, 2018.

On Wednesday, 27 June my phone, not the one in the photo, stopped booting. It was turning off when the battery goes under 75%, which is something common when your battery start to get old, because the battery does not provide enough voltage for the phone. Since I have Android Debug Bridge (ADB) enable on my phone I could access the error log:

$ dmesg
<11>[ 1848.823537] init: Warning! Service coloradjust needs a SELinux domain defined; please fix!
<11>[ 1848.828744] init: Unable to write persistent property to temp file /data/property/.temp.sEHuAG errno: 30
<11>[ 1848.836631] init: Unable to write persistent property to temp file /data/property/.temp.IzyHeV errno: 30
<3>[ 1849.194448] msm_qti_pp_get_rms_value_control, back not active to query rms be_idx:3
<6>[ 1849.195315] core_get_license_status: cmdrsp_license_result.result = 0x15 for module 0x1
<3>[ 1849.195387] msm_dolby_dap_param_to_get_control_get, port_id not set, do not query ADM
<3>[ 1849.195585] adm_callback: cmd = 0x1032a returned error = 0x2
<3>[ 1849.195600] adm_callback: ADM get param error = 2, resuming
<11>[ 1849.839796] init: Warning! Service checksdkpath needs a SELinux domain defined; please fix!
<11>[ 1849.870062] octvm: [25038][arg_idx 3]: /system/bin/mcd init 4 
<11>[ 1849.870293] octvm: mount cgroup failed, Permission denied
<36>[ 1849.870414] type=1400 audit(1867.889:404): avc: denied { mounton } for pid=25038 comm="mcd" path="/sys/fs/cgroup" dev="tmpfs" ino=7598 scontext=u:r:mcd:s0 tcontext=u:object_r:tmpfs:s0 tclass=dir permissive=0
<11>[ 1849.870781] init: Unable to write persistent property to temp file /data/property/.temp.nxZrD8 errno: 30
<11>[ 1850.139709] init: untracked pid 25071 killed by signal 9
<3>[ 1850.186173] adm_get_params: get params timed out port_id = 0x0
<3>[ 1850.186195] msm_dolby_dap_param_visualizer_control_get: get parameters failed
<11>[ 1853.194137] init: Warning! Service coloradjust needs a SELinux domain defined; please fix!
<11>[ 1853.197861] init: Unable to write persistent property to temp file /data/property/.temp.DTFdG2 errno: 30
<11>[ 1853.198355] init: Unable to write persistent property to temp file /data/property/.temp.CPVl2d errno: 30
<3>[ 1853.568313] msm_qti_pp_get_rms_value_control, back not active to query rms be_idx:3
<6>[ 1853.569243] core_get_license_status: cmdrsp_license_result.result = 0x15 for module 0x1
<3>[ 1853.569306] msm_dolby_dap_param_to_get_control_get, port_id not set, do not query ADM
<3>[ 1853.569505] adm_callback: cmd = 0x1032a returned error = 0x2
<3>[ 1853.569522] adm_callback: ADM get param error = 2, resuming
<11>[ 1854.203853] init: Warning! Service checksdkpath needs a SELinux domain defined; please fix!
<11>[ 1854.234235] octvm: [25191][arg_idx 3]: /system/bin/mcd init 4 
<11>[ 1854.234445] octvm: mount cgroup failed, Permission denied
<36>[ 1854.234540] type=1400 audit(1872.249:405): avc: denied { mounton } for pid=25191 comm="mcd" path="/sys/fs/cgroup" dev="tmpfs" ino=7598 scontext=u:r:mcd:s0 tcontext=u:object_r:tmpfs:s0 tclass=dir permissive=0
<11>[ 1854.234842] init: Unable to write persistent property to temp file /data/property/.temp.01pQIj errno: 30
<3>[ 1854.566194] adm_get_params: get params timed out port_id = 0x0
<3>[ 1854.566216] msm_dolby_dap_param_visualizer_control_get: get parameters failed
<3>[ 1855.966191] Error: returning -4 value

From the log, we can see that Android is trying to write some data but something is preventing it. After search on the internet for one explanation, I founded Rohith Madhavan’s answer to one question related with Errno 30 - Read only file system on Ask Ubuntu/Stack Exchange that says

Present Over Perfect

Published on June 30, 2018.

This week I read Shauna Niequist’s book “Present Over Perfect: Leaving Behind Frantic for a Simpler, More Soulful Way of Living”. It was an interesting reading with short chapters that were full of reflections about priorities that we have in our life.

Small part of the book touch Shauna’s behaviour related with travels, accept every invitation to travel and speak, which was similar to mine at the begin of this year. In the following calendar, the tomato days are the ones where I was travelling (20 of 35 days).

CarpentryCon2018

Published on June 27, 2018.

By Raniere Silva, Software Sustainability Institute, Aleksandra Nenadic, Software Sustainability Institute, Mario Antonioletti, Software Sustainability Institute.

Software Carpentry "restarted once again in January 2012 with a new grant from the Sloan Foundation, and backing from the Mozilla Foundation" [1]. Soon after, the Software Sustainability Institute launched the Software Carpentry movement in the UK by organising and staffing the first workshops together with Greg Wilson [3, 4].  Since then, the Institute has been The Carpentries’ Platinum partner and has provided help to The Carpentries movement by funding a workshop administrator position to coordinate workshops in the UK and Europe. The Institute's staff regularly teach at workshops and have been actively promoting The Carpentries' programmes to educational institutions around the UK. Throughout this time, we have witnessed and supported the UK and worldwide expansion of the Carpentries’ community and the rise of a number of new Carpentries (Data, Library, HPC, Social Sciences, Digital Humanities, etc.). In the UK alone, there are now 15 institutions that have their own relationships with The Carpentries and are actively running Carpentries programmes. After six years of working and communicating with The Carpentries’ staff and community via email and various video conferencing tools at all sorts of early or late hours, we finally met them face-to-face for the very first time at CarpentryCon 2018. It was all very exciting!

Measuring Behaviour 2018

Published on June 22, 2018.

We know that seven out of ten UK researchers reported that their work would be impossible without software, but, sometimes when attending domain specific conferences, we still get surprised at the importance of software in research. On June 2018, I attended Measuring Behavior 2018 by invitation of our fellow Robyn Grant.

Measuring Behavior 2018 was a three-day conference hosted at the Manchester Metropolitan University and covered analysis methods for behavioral data, techniques for human factors studies, mazes and behavioral tests, sensors for measuring behavior, extracting behavior from audio-video streams and a few other related topics.