Some people such as Erich Schubert have suggested how to fold entries by editing planet’s CSS.

I offer the following (works in recent firefoxes) as a userContent.css hack for how I fold long entries on planet. Notably different to Erich’s choice, I use 30em (I have a small font choice) and I use the auto setting for overflow so that I don’t get scrollybars if they’re not needed.

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://planet.debian.org/) {
  div.content {
    max-height: 30em;
    overflow: auto;
  }
}

I have resigned from my role at Canonical where I was a member of the team developing the soyuz portion of the Launchpad project and where I also did some work on Ubuntu also.

I have been given the opportunity to go and do what I have been wanting to do now for almost six years — go to work on the lower levels of the software stack we all take for granted. I will be starting work at Simtec Electronics mid-August and while I will be working on things at as high level as I am used to at Canonical I will also be plunging down through the levels of experience I have gained at MIPS and Zeus, to the as-yet uncharted (for me) waters of programmable logic itself.

To those who I have worked with over the past (nearly-)two years on Launchpad and Ubuntu I wish the very best of luck. I think Launchpad is an excellent project and it has the opportunity to really make a difference to the open source world. I will continue to use Ubuntu on my servers although I imagine that with my new job I’ll be moving a little further back toward Debian (although perhaps not).

To all my friends in the Ubuntu community — I will miss you. Some of you have been invited to come and visit and those invitations still stand, just contact me by mail to discuss them. Those of you who I was helping with packaging or similar are welcome to continue receiving what little help I can offer. And those of you who simply enjoyed a game of cards from time to time — keep on Maoing.

I don’t know if I’ll make it to any of the conferences as a community member, perhaps if there’s one in the UK I may. If not, then Auf Wiedersehen Pet and I’ll see you on the flip-side.

Back on the 9th May, Anthony shared ten words beginning with the letter ‘I’ with us. When prompted he gave me the letter ‘E’ and I gathered some words up and never got around to formulating my post with them in, so here for your delight and delectation are ten words starting with ‘E’ and what they mean to me…

eccentricity

Where a lot of people see 'odd' or 'strange' I see 'eccentric'. Eccentricity is simply a deviation from that which people consider normal. One could say "centered differently" or "not in the usual way" but to me, eccentric simply means interesting. If noone was eccentric, how would we find new normals and new ways to express ourselves?

emotion

A lot of people see emotion as a weakness, but to me it's a strength I could not live without. Emotion is what drives us to smile unbidden, to hug someone, to live life to the full; to love.

encryption

In my life I have been many thing and I will be many things more, but first and foremost I am a geek. In my life as a geek I have been fascinated by many thing, but none quite as much as data security in the form of encryption. Encryption is a way to protect our secrets and a way to communicate without being understood by someone intercepting the message. Encryption is a fundamental part of the way I do my job and the ways in which I contribute to open source projects. I doubt that, without encryption, I would be working on as much free software today as I am.

engineering

The word 'engineering' means different things to different people. It might mean the design of new buildings, or machine parts. It might be the construction of new software or the act of looking after a steam engine. To me it is, quite simply, the act of directed creation itself. I apply engineering principles in almost every part of my life, from the software engineering I do for myself and for my job to the engineering of situations or the organising of others. Engineering is fundamental to my way of life.

entertainment

Quite simply, without entertainment our lives would be less rich. Both being entertained and indeed entertaining others gives us, as a people, a rich and powerful way to derive joy. And joy is paramount.

equality

Equality is a concept which in my opinion needs to be considered carefully. For example, total equality is one of the ways in which communism intended to save the world. But ultimately there cannot be equality of treatment without physical sameness and equivalence. There are degrees and axes of equality and the concept of equality in law of ethnicities or other demographic slices of society is perhaps the most important to me (being of a potentially disadvantaged demographic).

euphemisms

"munching on a chocolate starfish", "spanking the monkey", "Miss Palm and her five daughters dance the shuffle". Come on, how many of you didn't even crack a smile. Euphemisms are a glorious way to inject a little humour into what some consider to be an offensive thing to express.

exceptions

Without exceptions one has only the expected. And that can become rather dull. Exceptions are what inject a litle excitement and confusion into our lives and through that we can grow to understand more of the world around us. The phrase "The exception which proves the rule" is a beautiful example of how the concept of exceptions being fundamental to our lives is deep-seated within our collective consciousness.

exotic

Simply meaning 'foreign' or perhaps "Not from round here" -- to me, exotic invokes the idea of an opportunity to learn something new or to extend my range of understanding of something I already know a bit about. Exotic foods are an opportunity to see how others eat and to learn new ways in which to prepare food for myself. Exotic ideas give rise to the potential for even better engineering within my life.

exploitation

The word 'exploitation' has such negative connotations in so many of its uses in modern society, but I prefer to think of it as the more benign "act of making something more productive". For example, in software engineering one would 'exploit' a property of the data to engineer a more efficient solution. For example compression 'exploits' redundancy in data streams to produce a representation of the same information in less space. Perhaps we should all learn to think less about 'victimisation' or the other negative forms of exploitation and instead learn to exploit the richness of our languages to better express ourselves.

I hope that in some way this has enchanted, entertained, engaged or enlightened you and perhaps encouraged you to express an enthusiasm for some words which mean a little to yourself.