For the next 10 weeks I'll be posting sports content related to Bay Area teams. I'm currently taking an intro to features writing class, and we're required to keep a blog that focuses on a specific topic. I enjoy sports a lot, so I'll be covering Bay Area sports teams (Sharks, Earthquakes, Raiders, 49ers, Warriors, etc.). I'll also be trialing using Reddit for comments. If it works well, I'll continue using it for the rest of my blog as well. And with that, here goes:
This week the Green Bay Packers will be facing the Atlanta Falcons in the very last NFL game at the Georgia Dome for the NFC Championship. A few hours later, the Pittsburgh Steelers will meet the New England Patriots in Foxboro competing for the AFC Championship - and this will be only the third playoff game in NFL history featuring two quarterbacks with multiple Super Bowl victories.
Neither Bay Area football team has a direct stake in this game, but Raiders and 49ers fans have a lot to root for this weekend.
49ers: If you're a 49ers fan, you want to root for the Falcons to lose. This might sound a little weird, but currently the 49ers are looking to hire Falcons offensive coordinator, Kyle Shanahan, as their new head coach. However, until the Falcons' season ends, they cannnot officially hire him. And since 49ers general manager search depends upon having a head coach, they can get a head start by two weeks if the Falcons lose this weekend.
Raiders: Do you remember the Tuck Rule Game? If so, you'll still probably be rooting for anyone but Tom Brady, quarterback for the Patriots. If not, well, you'll probably want to root for the Steelers, who eliminated Raiders' division rival Kansas City Chiefs last weekend in one of the most bizarre playoff games. Even though the Steelers could not score a single touchdown, they topped the Chiefs two touchdowns with a record six field goals. Raiders fans who had to endure two losses to the Chiefs this season surely appreciated how the Steelers embarrassed the Chiefs on prime time television.
Discuss this post on Reddit.
Software Freedom Conservancy is a pretty awesome non-profit that does some great stuff. They currently have a fundraising match going on, that was recently extended for another week. If you're able to, I think it's worthwhile to support their organization and mission. I just renewed my membership.
Barring any bugs, the last set of changes to the MediaWiki Debian package for the stretch release landed earlier this month. There are some documentation changes, and updates for changes to other, related packages. One of the other changes is the addition of a "powered by Debian" footer icon (drawn by the amazing Isarra), right next to the default "powered by MediaWiki" one.
This will only be added by default to new installs of the MediaWiki package. But existing users can just copy the following code snippet into their LocalSettings.php file (adjust paths as necessary):
# Add a "powered by Debian" footer icon
$wgFooterIcons['poweredby']['debian'] = [
"src" => "/mediawiki/resources/assets/debian/poweredby_debian_1x.png",
"url" => "https://www.debian.org/",
"alt" => "Powered by Debian",
"srcset" =>
"/mediawiki/resources/assets/debian/poweredby_debian_1_5x.png 1.5x, " .
"/mediawiki/resources/assets/debian/poweredby_debian_2x.png 2x",
];
The image files are included in the package itself, or you can grab them from the Git repository. The source SVG is available from Wikimedia Commons.
Today texvc was re-accepted for inclusion into Debian. texvc is a TeX validator and converter than can be used with the Math extension to generate PNGs of math equations. It had been removed from Jessie when MediaWiki itself was removed. However, a texvc package is still useful for those who aren't using the MediaWiki Debian package, since it requires OCaml to build from source, which can be pretty difficult.
Pending no other issues, texvc will be included in Debian Stretch. I am also working on having it included in jessie-backports for users still on Jessie.
And as always, thanks to Moritz for reviewing and sponsoring the package!
Originally posted on Twitter.
New laptop sticker!
In MediaWiki 1.28, MaxSem improved diff limits in the pure PHP diff implementation that ships with MediaWiki core. However Wikimedia and other larger wikis use a PHP extension called wikidiff2, for better performance and additional support for Japanese, Chinese, and Thai.
wikidiff2 1.4.1 is now available in Debian unstable and will ship in stretch, and should soon be available in jessie-backports and my PPA for Ubuntu Trusty and Xenial users. This is the first major update of the package in two years. And installation in MediaWiki 1.27+ is now even more straightforward, as long as the module is installed, it will automatically be used, no global configuration required.
Additionally, releases of wikidiff2 will now be hosted and signed on releases.wikimedia.org.
