Welcome to the EnergyHQ FAQ. In this little document you'll find some informationabout this site, the EnergyHQ network and some words about myself.

What's with the names, EnergyHQ, flynn and so on?

A bit of history: I got my first computer in 1982, a ZX Spectrum. I learned BASIC and started making my own programs. Then, some years later, I upgraded to an Amiga 500 computer and learned about the demo scene. Now, every scener had a handle and, since I was a big fan of Tron, I chose Flynn as my handle. I was in contact with other sceners and one of them, Dark Angel, offered me the chance of joining Gore Design which, at the moment, was the german section of an austrian group called Energy. I quitted the demo scene in 1998 but kept the handle (mainly for IRC) and when it came time to chose a domain name I went with EnergyHQ since it sounded good. Note that this site has no relationship with the old group (I don't even know if it exists anymore), and I'm not involved in any scene-related activities either. My main interest these days is Unix-like systems.

Why a weblog?

This server went live in fall 2000, when I finally got broadband internet access. The first implemenation was a simple index.html with some basic info. Then I started to update that page until I stopped to think about how nice it would be if I could change it in a more comfortable and flexible way. Enter the weblog. I googled and found several weblog software, none of which convinced me. Some programs only worked with MySQL (which I detest) and others were very limited. Then I heard about this Movable Type thing and gave it a go. I used MT since September 2003 until March 2005. These days the server is running Drupal.

Why is the website in english?

English is the de facto language on the internet. Most of my online friends can't read spanish. If that wasn't enough, I do actually prefer english over spanish, at least for computer-related stuff. My cell phone, my PDA and my computers are set to english, and so is this site. FWIW, not knowing english will severely limit your career these days.

Some post/comment is missing!

My server, my rules. What I write about is my opinion, and you're free to disagree with me. However that doesn't mean I have to tolerate rude or condescending comments. Only once have I deleted a comment. This comment was a direct insult that I'd rather not have to put up with. I usually avoid writing about controversial topics. You'll never see a post talking about politics in my weblog. I have my opinions that I keep to myself and don't feel like discussing here. This first post I ever wrote, back in September of 2003, was a rant about what I felt was wrong in FreeBSD. Somebody didn't like it, for some reason or another, and felt the urge to flood the server with malformed UDP packets. This attempt failed, of course. Because I have better things to do with my time than deal with people with easily bruised egos, I pulled that post and two other posts that some people might find controversial. My opinion about what's wrong in the FreeBSD world hasn't changed, though.

To make this crystal clear, don't mistake this weblog for a public forum. You don't have the right to post here. If I don't like what you post or find it offensive I'll delete it. If you post something in a language other than english you'll be banned. Not fair? Life isn't either.

Some posts have typos or mistakes.

Errare Humanum Est. I usually proof read the posts but there's a chance that some mistake might escape unnoticed. Get over it. :)

I sent you an E-mail but haven't received an answer yet.

If you're someone from the old Amiga days, I might or might not reply to it. No hard feelings, but the past is the past. If we were friends back then I'll get back to you. If you're someone I met at college and you still use Internet Explorer despite being a CS major, then your chance of getting a reply is almost zero. Sorry but I have no respect for people who spent 5 years studying Computer Science and insists on using Windows/Internet Explorer, etc.

I currently have 3 people in my ~/.spamassassin/user_prefs file marked as blacklist_from. All of them are people who constantly troll on several FreeBSD mailing lists. Again, no hard feelings, it's just that I find you annoying enough that I'd rather not read your mail, for the sake of my blood pressure.

The last reason for you not getting a reply from me would be if your SMTP server is using SORBS. SORBS has listed my /15 as dynamic. I asked them politely and never got a reply. Apparently you have to donate $50 to get delisted. Sorry guys, but that sounds like extortion in my book. It's worth mentionning that if you use SORBS I won't read your e-mail either. Please, DON'T USE SORBS.

Normal mail can take anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 weeks to get answered, depending on how busy/tired/whatnot I am at the moment.

What computers comprise the EnergyHQ network?

• Mindfields : gateway, firewall, dns/smtp/web server. (k6-2 300MHz/256MiB/100GB, running OpenBSD 3.7)
• Scienide : my main desktop. (AMD Athlon64 3000+/1GiB/2x9GB, all scsi, running FreeBSD 6.0-BETA2)
• Hyperspeed : devel box. (Athlon XP 2400+/512MiB/60GB, running NetBSD 2.0.1)
• Firestarter : test box (SGI Indy R4000@100MHz/64MiB/4GB, running NetBSD 2.0.1)
• Breathe : FreeBSD ports testing box (k6-2 450MHz/64MiB/13GB, running FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE)

Yes, all the computers are named after Prodigy songs.

That's a lot of BSD, what about Linux?

My first unix-like system at home was Slackware on my back then new 486 DX2 box. After a few years I switched to Debian and later to FreeBSD. More recently I've tried Gentoo, Crux and Arch. All of them are very nice Linux distros but I prefer sticking to *BSD. First, I don't like the GNU userland, I prefer the BSD one. I never understood the rationale behind the --super-long-option, and I've been bitten several times by scripts that assume the world is a Linux box using bash as /bin/sh, GNU tar generated files that cannot be unpacked on Solaris and other nice interoperability issues that have driven me away from GNU tools in general. I'm also a BSD license advocate and don't consider the GPL to be free enough. Of course, that's my opinion which I'm not going to argue about with anybody. I don't try to force my licensing ideas on other people and don't tolerate GNU zealots, or any other kind of zealot, for that matter, to try to do so with me.

What about Windows?

What about it? I have nothing against Windows, I just don't feel comfortable using it. I'm a programmer and unix-like systems serve me best. I guess, if I was forced to use Windows, I could install Cygwin and end up with something similar. For now we'll stick to the real thing™, thanks.

What does "Send patches or shut up" mean?

In the free software world it's considered rude to whine about something you want or don't like without actually doing something about it yourself. In other words, put your work where your mouth is. So when somebody complains about something he is usually given the proverbial "Send patches or shut up."

The fun thing is that you can also apply this to real life situations, and I use it all the time on IRC, even for non computer related topics. Someone complains about the weather and then he is told to send patches or shut up, even if it doesn't make any sense.

What are super glue-laced cigarettes?

This is an ongoing joke on the #freebsd channel. It doesn't mean anything. A guy called p13 once told us about all sorts of weird stuff he had smoked, so we came up with the super glue cigarettes idea. Some (naive) people though we were serious and were worried about our health. I actually don't smoke, and never have.

Why do you mention Trabant, Barkas and other similar cars all the time?

This is another ongoing joke, started by me when p13 mentioned Trabant and later Barkas. We talk about them as if they were some kind of luxury cars, don't take it seriously.

All your software is at version 0.something

Yes, version 1.0 is reached when no bugs are left (haha) and no more features can be added. Don't be fooled by the low version numbers, my software is pretty well written and usually bug free. I remember watching a documentary about Edsger Wybe Dijkstra where he asks what's with all those versions and decimals in software. Please, buy FOO 6.5, new and improved, we fixed all the problems in FOO 6.4.9. So why didn't you guys get it right the first time then? Just ask yourself this: What worthy features has Microsoft added to Office since 1997? That's what I thought.

What's your favourite...

• Shell? tcsh
• Editor? xemacs, but I also use vi(m) and nedit.
• Operating System? The 3 BSDs.
• Mail client? Sylpheed
• Web browser? Firefox
• Programming language? C
• MTA? postfix
• Game? nethack, of course. I've been playing Shinobi since 1991 and even play it sometimes via Mame. I'm also the maintainer of the xmame port in FreeBSD, btw.
• SCM? perforce

Besides computers, what more things do you like?

I love my cat, music, movies and reading. I'm single and have no intention of changing that. See here for a complete explanation. You can check my Orkut profile for more info about me.