...of, by or about Telsa Gwynne.
If you are reading this, you probably found it through either my homepage or my diary. Why you are still checking pages that have not been updated in ages, I have no idea. But now I have updated a few answers and deleted the rest, you are at least likely to escape being misled.
Note that this is all one (very) long page. You don't need to load multiple copies: you'll find all the answers on here somewhere.
Last updated: August 2007.
A: This is a bit tricky to answer. But probably, yes.
Everyone who asks me this is referring to Telsa who is married
to a well-known Linux hacker
. So yes, I'm that.
Q: Are you sure? (You have a different surname. That's not his machine address.)
A: Yes, I am sure. (I didn't change my surname when we married. He has lots of machine addresses.) I am not sure how I can convince you on this one.
A: No, no relation at all, despite some of the more optimistic (or merely misspelt) search engine queries that have shown up in my logs.
Q: Nice nickname. What's your real name?
A: Telsa is my real name. Yes. Really.
Q: I think I remember you, but you had a different name then..
A: Yes. My family use my middle name and I used it until I had finished university. I like my first name better so I use that.
Q: You have dropped out of sight. Where have you gone?
A: I am still where I was: physically in Swansea and virtually on the end of an email client. I found keeping up with endless blogs and RSS feeds and project Wiki pages and IRC channels and mailing lists and announcements and Myspace and Facebook and planets and the rest impossible, and just fell out of contact with a lot of it. The instant resulting peace and rise in my spirits just reinforced how fractious and rude a lot of free software development is. I see no need for me to take that any more. Life is much better without it. I now wonder why I put up with it for so long.
A: On the net: I contribute to Wikipedia, chat on IRC to some friends, and still love email. Off the net, I was hooked by a short Open University course, and even before getting my results I had signed up for another 80 points' worth in the same year: the same year that I did a language A-level locally and went on an intensive week of Latin. It was all brilliant (well, I'm not sure about the food on the Latin course, and now I come to think of it, Rousseau at Christmas is very far from fun), and now I am going back to university at Swansea.
Q: So, how's Alan? Can you ask him or tell him...?
A: No. No, I can't. I hate to sound petty about this but I am not his relay service. If you want to get something to Alan, send it to him. (By the same token, if you want me to know something, do not send it to him. He never remembers to tell me.)
Q: Did Alan get my email? He didn't reply.
A: I have absolutely no idea.
Q: Alan didn't reply/I can't find his email address... So I am sending this to you instead: can you forward it?
A: Short answer: no, but here's where you should have sent it:
Q: Please help persuade Alan to attend a particular show. We'd love to see you there, too.
A: Please don't think that my personal list of places I want to visit has any bearing on his speaking engagements. I can assure you they don't. Your chances of getting Alan to an event are best if it's a technical do; if you place few or no restrictions on reproduction of the information; if high-cost events are used to fund a cheap do for the local LUG; and if he can get there without flying. Unfortunately, he gets travelsick in coaches, so we're really talking about trains or ferries here. If you're on the European rail network, you have a good chance. If you're in the US, you're pretty much out of luck since the advent of the DMCA law and its use to hassle hackers.
Q: Alan's diary went all Welsh. Please translate it/make him stop/tell him I can't read it/explain why.
A: Alan has not updated his diary (in any language) since 2004, so you're not missing much now. More pertinently, even if I could make him stop (unlikely), I wouldn't think of trying.
Q: Alan took a year off from kernel work to do an MBA. Why?
A: Because he enjoyed it. Now it's over, he has not moved job or anything. He is still hacking things and working for Red Hat.
Q: What software did you use to write it?
A: vim and rsync :) It went like this:
localbox$ cd Diary
localbox$ vim diary.html
localbox$ lynx diary.html # testing for sanity and typos
localbox$ ./rsync-to-zen # this is a one-liner
The one-liner is rsync -e ssh -vzra ./diary.html telsa@www.linux.org.uk:~telsa/public_html/Diary/diary.html
Every month or so, I logged in to linux.org.uk, moved the current diary to the appropriately-named old diary page, added it to the diary index, and logged back out again.
That's it, basically, although I also have a "Validate this!" button on my Mozilla toolbar and tended to do that after updating. If it failed the validator, back to the start.
A: Oh god, that bloody RSS feed. I started that diary before blogging and Blogger and RSS this and planet that, and to add an RSS feed was a pain in the neck. A friend wrote me a neat thing to generate an RSS feed and it worked brilliantly, but I had to remember to write my HTML to fit the feed, which I did, just; and I had to remember actually to run the script. Which I didn't.
A: Possibly, but not in the same form. I have been stuck on the details for ages, so it won't be any time soon.
Q: I've seen you and Alan talk at each other over IRC. You live in the same house. Isn't that a bit...odd?
A: Not really. It's not like we're sitting next to each other. He works from home. I can barge into his room, trying not to trip over whatever is open on the floor, and hope that he is not mid-telephone conference. This is not always welcomed. Or I can say something on IRC where he will see it when he has time to talk.
Q: What are good places to visit in the UK?
A: I have absolutely no idea what are good places for you to visit in the UK. It depends totally on your interests. I love history, despise shopping (except for books), don't follow football or most music, have still not spent more than about two months of my total life ever in the south of Britain (this includes day trips to London), and use public transport.
This doesn't make me a very good tour guide to Britain.
Q: Are you learning Welsh alongside Alan?
A: It's the other way around. I am the one who got him to the
lessons. I have wanted to learn Welsh all my life. There's so many
different reasons, but I want to
sums it up. Realising it was
not too late made me happy. Missing the start date by a week one year
did not make me happy. So the next year I was determined. To my surprise,
Alan came too. This has had some
unforeseen side-effects. They are
not my fault.