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Looking for volunteering opportunities in Doncaster

Posted by Phil Wyett on
I am currently looking for volunteering opportunities in Doncaster. Organisations can take advantage of my:

- Computer skills
- Mentoring
- Teaching and teaching assistance.
- Administration

I am always open to the learning of new skills and support an organisations goals.

I am power wheelchair bound, so appropriate access is required.

Any organisations interested in me volunteering for them can contact me using the email address below.

Email: philip.wyett@kathenas.org

Volunteering - UK 2010 Equality Act

Posted by Phil Wyett on
As I found out recently, the 2010 Equality Act. here in the U.K. does not protect volunteers. This information provided to me by the Equality Advisory Support Service is very shocking. This lack of protection allows Companies, Charities and Not For Profit Organisations to mistreat and discriminate groups or individuals at will as I have found out myself.

I may circle round back to this after I have done further research and update on further actions taken or to be taken.

Update: 2025-08-25

I would ask those in the U.K. to consider signing the below linked petition and hopefully stir the U.K. government into looking at the rights of volunteers and others in extracurricular activities e.g. contributing to Debian.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/733537

I believe that this type of safeguarding I would hope expands to cover groups such as Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and other organised volunteer (in whole or part) projects.

I will be following the petitions progress.

Debian - graphviz not using its Salsa repository

Posted by Phil Wyett on
graphviz is a large mature project primarily coded in C. Sadly the current maintainer is not using the graphviz Salsa repository that already exists in the debian group.

graphviz package tracker screen - VCS link empty

graphviz salsa repo screen - Not up to date

This current situation is restricting any chance of collaborative development/maintenance of the package. This really needs to be rectified.

Update: 2025-09-07

For context, I filed the bug below in November 2024.

Debian Bug: 1087327

Contribution is ongoing

Posted by Phil Wyett on
Since deciding to stop Debian contribution in the area of Debian Mentors, I have not been idle. I have been doing commits for packages I maintain and also contribute to i.e. upstream projects and other activities that include Ubuntu bug squashing etc.

With my disabilities, it is important to face challenges be they during my daily activities or within the Free/Open Source Software community. These challenges are hard, fun and make me feel useful.

Onwards and upwards.

Kathenas - Wheelchair and dangerous

Posted by Phil Wyett on
This week resigning myself to needing help in daily life and wider, getting out and about. I have this week acquired a Karma E40 Robooter electric wheelchair. This will allow me to go out now and hopefully help in general living.

Karma E40 Robooter Electric Wheelchair


Debian - June 2025 was a busy-ish month

Posted by Phil Wyett on
With freezes in place and much work being done to prepare for Debian 13, it has been a hectic month.

I have been:

1. Reviewing packages and mentoring as part of my contribution to Debian Mentors[1].

2. Making sure the packages I maintain are ready for Debian 13.

3. Doing testing of what will be Debian 13 and its packages.

I have not:

1. Had any movement of my Debian Developer (DD) application.

More to follow soon on this one.

[1] Debian Mentors

New Blog

Posted by Phil Wyett on
Finally found Serendipity, a simple blog platform with easy configuration and gets out of the way so I can just create posts.

The new blog will feature a variety of posts on many different subjects.

Watch this space...