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We’ve all had that moment when our GPS betray us (or, more to the point, our mapping software) I’ve had my PDA insist, on several occasions, that the best route to take involved roads that a 4×4 would hesitate to try. Luckily, Gwen had at least one eye on the road, or it would have been Thelma and Louise Pt 2.

If you enjoy this comic, please use the voting, Digg and Stumble links under the comic. The more traffic we can draw, the more likely it is that we can go to 3 strips a week (and start to really tell some stories.)

Some more Linuxy stories on the other side of the link…

There is nothing wrong with your mail reader. Do not adjust your computer. We have taken control of your newsletter. We control the fonts. We control the layout. We can take your news from plain text to fancy HTML. Now sit back and enjoy… The OFOW* Newsletter.

Which is my way of saying, welcome to the newly HTML-ized weekly newsletter. We’re making the change to HTML in part to make clicking on the article links a bit easier, and decluttering the text of URLs. Hopefully this won’t cause too much inconvenience to anyone, and will enhance your enjoyment of the newsletter.

If you would like to change your settings for this newsletter (plain text or HTML with links), go to the newsletter subscription manager.

This weekend, I discovered my true calling. I’m giving up my life as a writer and software engineer and becoming a fry cook. Well, probably not, as it’s hard to put a kid through college and keep up a 200 year old house on what they make. But I definitely felt I had an affinity for the calling, working four hours at the 4-H kitchen at our County Fair. I make a mean grilled cheese on wheat, if I do say so myself.

Subversion for BSD With All the Bells and Whistles
We also cooked up a nice article for you BSD fans this week. Jeff Palmer led us along the complex path he took to get Subversion set up on his system with all the optional bells and whistles hooked up, including IRC integration.

Thank You, Ctags!
It wouldn’t be a week in the blogs without chromatic thanking something or other. This week, it’s the ctags package.

Big Requirements Up Front
Philip C. Plumlee contrasts the philosophy of specifying everything up front as opposed to specifying the big stuff, in his blog.

Thank You, Akregator!
Akregator is chromatic’s fav of the week, it’s become his RSS reader of choice.

Insecurity
Curtis Poe ponders why security seems such a low priority, and why known insecurities don’t get fixed.

PyMOTW: sched
The Python module of the week is ’sched’, courtesy of Doug Hellmann. It’s a generic event scheduler.

Testability and Good Design
How do you test private methods, which are by definition not accessible outside their own class. Some thoughts from chromatic.

YAP6 Operator: Coercion Operators
Two more sets of Perl 6 operators from Adriano Ferreira, starting out with Coercion operators.

YAP6 Operator: Comparisons - Part I
And then a first set of comparison operators.

PyMOTW: copy
Doug returned with a second Module of the week, the Python ‘copy’ module allows for deep and shallow copying of objects.

Open Source Thoughts: Parrot and Multicore
Kevin Farnham is looking at Parrot, a virtual machine for bytecode programs, as a possible tool for use with multicore architectures.

The “Paradox of Choice” in the F/OSS World
Why do people have so much trouble picking what software to use in the open source world? I addressed this point a few months ago from the development side in an essay called “The Virtues of Monoculture,” now chromatic takes a swing from the user perspective.

RubyForge vs RAA
It seems that Daniel Berger is on a quest to compare RubyForge with all the other software repositories out there. This week, he takes on the Ruby Application Archive. Eating our own now, Daniel?

You’ll notice that there’s no article this week. This is because we’re in the middle of reshuffling the entire ONLamp universe, including the type of articles we run. We hope that in the future, the articles will be directed at the most critical topics that you as readers want to see covered. One side effect of this will be to run less articles each month. Another part of the reorganization will be to consolidate all the various sub-sites (Database, SysAdmin, DevCenter, etc) into the main site. This means you’ll have one-stop shopping for all your LAMP-y needs, rather than having material scattered all over the subsites. I plan to consolidate the blogs too. What this all should result in is a more focused site with high-quality articles.

However, as we make the transition, articles may be a little sporadic, since we basically cut off the stream in mid-flow. The week after this, there will be a great article with the inside track on what’s new in the 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) release of Ubuntu. Also, this week’s “Watering Hole” starts a multi-month action-packed story arc, so be sure to catch it. Until then, keep your root partitions fsck’d!

* The ONLamp Family of Websites: Do not read will operating heavy machinery

James Turner
Site Editor, ONLamp.com
turner@oreilly.com