In another of those rare but entertaining convergences between two of my lives, I spent a while yesterday afternoon with Steve the Systems Guy at the office explaining how he could use libxml’s python bindings to solve a problem on which he’s working. This was not a hard sell. He already had python and xml in mind, and he’s completely committed to switching to free software wherever possible. He’s a smart guy. He just needed to bounce questions off of someone familiar with the technologies.

Saw a funny little episode Monday while at the blood bank donating. I was laying on the comfy chaise with a needle in my arm reading, so I didn’t have my glasses on. But I thought I recognized one of the people over in the waiting area as a Minor Local Television Celebrity who shall remain nameless. This being a small pond, Minor Celebrity and I are vaguely acquainted, but I wasn’t sure it was her in my blurry glassless vision, so I let it slide without a nod of recognition.

As I was finishing up, the blood bank person called Minor Celebrity’s name and gave her a polite “How are you this morning?” Her response. “I’m pissed. I’ve been waiting 20 minutes.”

This, gentle readers, is an opportunity missed. Giving blood is a complete pain in the ass. It can be moreso at our local blood bank, which has something of a reputation for being a bit, uh. slow. But hey, you’re doing something good for a fellow human, giving them some of your blood. That is nothing if not an opportunity to feel good about your relationship with the common weal. Don’t waste the opportunity by getting pissed off because you had to wait. Bring a book! Enjoy the commons!

I’ve mentioned this before, so I won’t go into detail about this whole blood/commons thing, except to say to the free/open software developers in the audience who are motivated by the moral aspects of making a contributions to the commons – go give blood! This is one of those systems that works best if a whole bunch of individuals each make a tiny contribution. Sound familiar?

But remember to take a book.

Thanks to Daniel’s revamped libxml2 API docs build system, I’ve been able to start picking my way through fixing a bunch of nagging little things that needed fixing – missing documentation for macro definitions, mostly. Not particularly stimulating work, but it’s been needed for a while, and it’s pretty mindless, a more productive use of brain-dead time than pulling down the “games” menu and saying, “Hey, wonder what this one does?”

I’ve been avoiding building the latest GNOME out of cvs, but thanks to the effortless Garnome I was able to do a build this weekend to play with and start checking on the docs.

Obligatory screenshot:

Nothing really to see here. You can move along now.