Planet #LUGRadio

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September 01, 2010 08:37 PM

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September 01, 2010 08:37 PM

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September 01, 2010 08:37 PM

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September 01, 2010 08:37 PM

Swiper, no swiping!

(from Least I Could Do)

September 01, 2010 06:24 PM

It was with great sadness that I read earlier that my friend and colleague Ian Clatworthy passed away after his fight with cancer. Although I never knew Ian that well, whenever I did work and spend time with him I always found him to be a fun, light-hearted, and always pleasant person to be around.

Words escape me.

You will be missed, my friend. Rest, well.

September 01, 2010 06:51 AM

No ice cream truck - I’ll have to make do with the view!

August 31, 2010 06:01 PM

Something I keep doing: Forgetting to commit to git.

Having pretty much moved everything over to git & github for all my source control needs, I am now getting used to how Git works. It hasn’t, however, solved the problem that I’ll occasionally work on something for a while, make it work on my local system, then forget to commit to it and return some days later to work on something else. Commits become either huge things of no trackability, or I end up committing by chunk and trying to remember exactly *why* I changed the define syntax to be “look up” instead. So, because I don’t have enough impenetrable bash scripts in my life, I wrote another one.

This one finds git repositories in $HOME, iterates though them looking for where your friendly user hasn’t committed stuff, and then whines to him in email about it.

it’s executed like this:

and the “uncommited-dir.sh” file looks like this:

August 31, 2010 05:08 PM

theworldwelivein:

Rainforest Night Magic (by Michael Menefee)

August 30, 2010 09:36 PM

A little while back I blogged about wanting to reconnect with our ethos. In a continuation of that theme I am keen to talk about stories.

I have talked about stories quite a bit in my writings on community management (particularly so in my book The Art of Community). Stories are important entities in communities – they are vessels in which we share ideas, lessons we have learned, our experience and more. Many stories come laced with these underlining nuggets of wisdom that we then take aware and help us to refine and improve how we interface with the world and the people around us.

Stories though encompass another significant benefit: they allow us to inspire and encourage others via real-world practical examples of our ethos being put into practice.

A story I share at every Ubuntu Developer Summit is that when I started working as the Ubuntu Community Manager I got a lovely email from a kid in Africa who would walk two hours to his local town where he would spend his own money to buy Internet time in an Internet cafe to contribute to Ubuntu and then walk two hours back home. This story was powerful to me. It told me that my job is to help that guy get the most out of his hour, to justify his investment of energy and expense to just get involved in the first place. His story was inspiring, encouraging, and an impressive example of commitment. I always share this story at UDS as an inspiration for us to get the most out of each one-hour session.

These stories benefit us all, and in the continued theme of reconnecting with our ethos, I wanted to ask you folks what are the most inspiring and encouraging stories of Free Software and community that you have heard? Which story have made those little hairs on the back of your neck stand on end?

August 30, 2010 07:12 PM

This weekend I attended London Hackspace’s Arduino For Beginners workshop.

Background

I’ve been a member of Hackspace for quite some time, though I have very little hands on experience with electronics or making things or anything like that, and have up until now tended to only use the Hackspace occasionally for somewhere to work from. When the Arduino workshop was announced I thought it sounded not only very good value for money at £80 for a two day instructor-led course, but also would be a great way to broaden my skills.

In the interest of full disclosure, as a minor fanboy of the Hackspace I am prone to want to portray it and all its endeavours in a good light. However I am trying to write this from the point of view of a paying customer of the workshop (which I was), and will try to be fair and objective.

What we got

Included in the £80 (£100 for non-members) workshop fee was an Earthshine Electronics Arduino compatible starter kit worth about £40, containing a DFRduino Duemilanove and over 150 components for use in the various tutorials.

Day one

I arrived early on the first day expecting to touch in with my Oyster card (Hackspace’s members can access the space 24/7 using any compatible RFID card), but the door was already open and the place was a hive of activity. Inside I found Andy “Bob” Brockhurst, Charles, Neil, Mike from Earthshine, Adrian and several others busy tidying the place up making it usable for a workshop. This included attaching a shelf to one wall for the projector to sit on!

Presentation

Eventually the projector was sorted out, a rather makeshift but legible screen put up for it and things began with a presentation from Bob. Bob’s presentation explained what an Arduino is, the sorts of things they might be used for, the concepts behind “open source hardware”, the available software and some resources for getting more information and hardware. Bob’s presentation is available on his github.

Arduino IDE

Once the presentation was concluded, Bob, Mike, Adrian et al went around ensuring we all had the Arduino IDE installed. This is a piece of Java software comprising a basic editor for the C-like language Arduino is programmed with, together with facilities to compile and upload the code to the board, and a few other features.

There was also a brief diversion into Fritzing, which is another piece of open source software used for producing layouts and prototypes of circuits for sharing with others, ease of manufacturing, etc. Fritzing is not necessary to use the Arduino, but was used to display the board layouts for the examples.

Amongst the delegates there was a mix of Windows, Mac and Linux laptops but we were all eventually able to download and install the IDE. The supplied USB cable once connected to an Arduino board appears as a serial port on the computer, and the IDE just has to be told which board model you have and which serial port to use.

I had a bit of a false start with installing the IDE on Linux, owing to me not reading the documentation. It is necessary on Ubuntu to already have installed gcc-avr and avr-libc otherwise the IDE will be unable to compile your sketch to object code. I think I was in the minority using Linux; it seems Windows is preferred amongst AVR coders. The usual Java blah is needed to run the IDE, but I already had that.

Refreshments

I’m not sure who prepared the refreshments; I know that Clare, Charles’s other half had some hand in it but I don’t know if she was solely responsible. In any case, tea, coffee, cordial, biscuits and flapjacks were provided throughout both days, with sandwiches (two different cheeses, tuna, egg, bacon), crisps and fruit for lunch.

Walk-through of examples

Once everyone had their IDE up and running and had confirmed that the IDE could talk to their Arduino, Bob went through some simple example circuits. While Bob put the circuits up on the projector and explained how they worked, both electronically and software-wise, Mike, Neil and other knowledgeable Arduino hackers moved around the room helping people out where necessary.

Bob’s examples built on each other progressively, and included:

• Making an LED blink
• Simulating a traffic light sequence with 3 LEDs
• Adding a button to simulate a pedestrian crossing feature
• Adding a buzzer which sounds when safe to cross

There was also a final example which used a motor as a spinner to simulate an accessible pedestrian crossing, but most people did not attempt this due to the risks of damaging the Arduino board.

Sample code and Fritzing files available on Bob’s github.

Experimentation

The last few hours of the day were taken at our own individual speeds, practising with the examples and seeing what we could get working. Some people surged ahead, completing all examples and then moving on to their own ideas, whereas others took longer or needed some assistance. As far as I could see everyone made their way through the first four examples.

One person’s Arduino was damaged towards the end of day one and was replaced by Mike.

Wrap up of day one

Some time between 4 and 5pm most people started to pack up and we were reminded to try to think of a personal project to work on the next day if we had not done so already.

Day two

Door debacle

I arrived just before 10am the next day owing to general Sunday public transport fail, Jubilee line closure etc., again expecting to swipe my Oyster and again being confounded. This time however it was by a group of people standing outside the Hackspace.

It transpired that we had perhaps tried to be too clever for our own good and the door computer had crashed some time in the night, preventing all of us from getting in. After about 30 minutes, some IRCing, unsuccessful nmapping and leaving of voicemails, Mark popped up on IRC and kindly rushed over to let us in with a real metal key.

Projects

For the rest of this day we all worked on our own individual ideas, with Bob, Neil, Adrian and others milling around dispensing masses of assistance.

I couldn’t really think of anything practically useful to work on so decided I just wanted to push the limits of what I’d already learned. I’d spied the 8×8 matrix display in the kit box and wanted to play with that, but this first would involve learning how to drive a shift register.

The 8×8 matrix has 64 LEDs (actually 128 since each one is either red or green), and connecting up 64 outputs would not only be extremely tedious, the Arduino doesn’t have that many outputs anyway. The component actually has only 16 pins but even so, 16 outputs is too many. A shift register helps solve this by allowing the control of 8 outputs using only 3 pins.

The basic idea is that you use one pin to tell the shift register when you’re ready to start or finish feeding it data, one pin to tell it there is a new piece of data to read, and a third pin for the data itself. After you’ve indicated that you’re finished, all the data you’ve fed in will be output. The 74HC595 shift registers in the kit box have 8 outputs each.

In order to get a working knowledge of the shift register I decided to first try using one to drive 8 LEDs, first to make them count in binary and then to display various patterns. After that I would go on to try the shift registers with the matrix display.

I put a circuit together by following the commentary in one of the examples in Earthshine’s Complete Beginners Guide to the Arduino. Unfortunately I couldn’t get it to produce sensible results. At times it seemed like I almost had it, with it counting up in binary correctly except for a couple of values. Other times it was just completely messed up with the LEDs cycling through all kinds of patterns.

I found debugging this to be very difficult. Dammit Jim, I’m a sysadmin, not a hardware hacker; when I write awful sysadmin Perl I at least have some idea how to debug it! After a couple of hours of frustration I had to ask Bob for help, and after a good while of him checking everything I’d done several times, he was stumped too.

Neil then wandered over and measured the frequencies the Arduino was producing, confirming that my code and the Arduino were working correctly, narrowing the breakage down to my circuit. He got his magnifying glass out, we got the datasheet for the shift register, and after a short while he noticed that I was trying to use the shift register’s latch pin as a clock and vice versa.

It turned out that while the pinout of the shift register was correct in the Earthshine guide, the commentary in the guide had switched around the purpose of the shift register clock input pin and the storage register clock input pin, which accounted for the bizarre behaviour I was seeing. It worked! A similar example on the Arduino site has things the correct way around.

I went ahead and wrote the code to do binary counting and then to put some simple patterns on the LEDs, but after all that I felt a bit too burnt out to go on to the matrix display and decided to quit while I was ahead. I definitely feel confident enough to tackle this on my own now though.

• Code
• Breadboard

I think two more people’s Arduinos were damaged on the second day.

Conclusion

Wins

This workshop was indeed incredible value for money. I think the components, presentation and walk through of examples alone were easily worth £80 and could have been done in one day. What was worth so much more was having knowledgeable people in the same room as you for two days, personally guiding you through the examples and discussing your own ideas. I’ve paid 5 times as much for one day courses that were nowhere near as good.

This could and probably should have justified a doubling or more of price, but I can understand that this was the first workshop put on in the Hackspace and there was a desire to sell it out and gain some experience from the host side.

I hope the workshop is repeated. If it is, and you’re interested in this sort of thing, you should book it quickly.

Suggestions for improvement

• Many Bothans diedTwo or three Arduinos died during the course of the workshop. As far as I could tell through overhearing conversation, every case was related to running them from the power supply instead of the USB power. I think someone put a multimeter on one and found it was supplying over voltage. I understand better PSUs will be sought in future.
• We struggled to fit everyone in. The last two late-comers had less than ideal seating during the presentation because Bob needed to stand in one of the seating places in order to do the presentation. This could probably be easily remedied by tidying up the Hackspace a bit before the day of the workshop. I don’t think there’s any need to reduce the number of participants.
• The screen for the projector was rather tatty and ramshackle. It didn’t matter much for Bob’s presentation because his slides were very simple and just about fitted on the screen, but anything more demanding than that would have real problems.
• The door episode was extremely unfortunate timing. A suggestion was made that at least two of the people running any workshop should have keys in case of similar emergencies. Sounds reasonable.

It looks like the Hackspace are conducting a debrief and some of these issues have already been raised, so it should be easy to improve for next time.

August 30, 2010 07:14 AM

• Hammer and chisel = superior fridge de-icing #
• Well the new office's dsl connection seems to be 80% working. Just no dhcp response. :-/ #
• Looks fun What's your role @schwukette ? (@schwukette)http://yfrog.com/n1x5ejj #
• Wish the Chav family here could resist smoking in the playground. Grr. #arrowvalley #
• I have swingers shoulder. #
• Waiting for @rowangoodwin to wake up. Then buy lunch, duck food and stuff before invading the park and stealing ice cream. #
• If only "attaching a screenshot" did not involve a word document. #
• The train may soon go on holiday. #
• http://www.kingtonlions.org/EventDetail.asp?EventNo=3781&Section=Information – Aberystwyth to Kington bike ride; 5th sept. #
• Patiently waiting for @bitesms to release a fix for the facebook vs bitesms issue #

August 29, 2010 03:41 PM

You might have heard us talk about this on the latest episode of the Ubuntu Podcast from the UK, but we’re going to be at OSSBarCamp in Dublin on the 24th and 25th September. We went last year and had a great time. Now it’s grown to a two day event, has two streams and a coding competition. There’s a already a lot on the timetable, including talks from Alan, me and my good friend Matt Revell. We’re also going to be doing a live podcast recording on the Saturday, so come along and watch us sweat and prattle our way through an hour show! I’m really looking forward to doing another live show, and we’ll certainly be ready for the party at the Landsdown Hotel afterwards…

Come along and say hello!

August 28, 2010 12:55 PM

These views are my own, and not necessarily those of Canonical.

Some time back the always awesome Earl and Cathy from Zareason loaned me one of their Strata laptops to play with. I met them at an event some time before, and while I had heard of Zareason, I really knew nothing about them. Since then I have learned about their work and played with the Strata. I just wanted to share some thoughts.

Zareason are a company that I think really gets Open Source. They are a small organization and incredibly supportive of Open Source in the local area and wider USA. They pre-install Ubuntu on their machines, focus on open hardware, and one really nice touch is that they include a small screwdriver with each machine because they believe that everyone has the right to be able to open up their machines and peek inside. In this age of screwless, inaccessible boxes and restrictive end-user license agreements, this is a refreshing change. Like most, I would never actually use said little screwdriver…but it is a strong statement of Zareason and their culture. Kudos!

So, as for the machine, it is a zippy little monster and works great. The pre-installed Ubuntu worked great out of the box, with pretty much everything running as expected. One thing that really struck me, is regarding build quality. I consider build quality an essential ingredient in a laptop. Laptops move around a lot, they get thrown into bags, and they get picked up, dragged around and balanced in precarious ways. The Zareason Strata I tried felt incredibly durable…as in…Thinkpad durable. I absolutely adore Thinkpads for this very reason, so again, Kudos Zareason.

Finally, a big decider for me in a laptop is the keyboard. There are many great laptops with horrible plasticky keyboards. The Zareason Strata has a really comfortable, useful, and durable keyboard. It feels strong but not difficult to use. Again, kudos Zareason.

So, Zareason produce great, solid, hardware pre-installed with Ubuntu, they are actively supportive of the Open Source community, and they affirm openness in both the software and hardware. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

August 27, 2010 11:06 PM

My small server currently hosts a number of websites. Too many, really, I should get a bigger server. However, I long ago got bored of creating separate site files for every website I host, so I use MassVHost to make that go away. The same file runs on my dev servers, and it means that to create a new domain all I do is point DNS at it (via hosts, wildcard or whatever) and create a directory with the same name as the site. So, for example, I create /var/www/hosts/unhelpfulclue.aqxs.net/htdocs and http://unhelpfulclue.aqxs.net/ automatically points there.

This is what that looks like:

(That file is in /etc/apache2/sites-available as “vhosting”, then enabled with a2ensite. This is all under Debian. You’ll also need the vhosting module installed, enabled and working. )

One of the most common things you also need to do is automatically redirect people who go to “www.domain.tld” to “domain.tld” or vice versa depending on your religion. In this world, the canonical name of the site is whatever the directory is called. The thing with the 404 errors and the EverythingIsCatchingOnFire (Spot the reference for five points) stuff means that by default 404s go to this script, which in the event of a “This domain doesn’t exist”, it looks for an appropriate domain and sends you there:

(Meaning not only does http://piracyinc.com/ go to the right place, but http://www.piracyinc.info/ does too)

August 27, 2010 02:14 PM

• thank heavens for calpol! 00:11:37, 2010-08-22
• just ate some slightly undercooked salmon waiting for the craps to start 19:00:07, 2010-08-23
• Tickets booked for Thursdays jaunt to Ldn and meetings @ IBM Southbank #systemZ 22:06:01, 2010-08-23
• looking for a new wing mirror for the disco, thanks julie 09:30:13, 2010-08-24
• funniest site i have seen for ages – http://howfuckedismydatabase.com/ (thanks ben) 22:09:54, 2010-08-26

August 27, 2010 01:00 PM

I have two memories of L’Arc de Triomphe:

1. Successfully circumnavigating it in my father-in-law’s Jaguar (while he was in it)
2. Nearly getting ripped off by a photographer with @schwukette. As the photo’s progressed, you could see us getting madder and madder…

theworldwelivein:

Photograph by Jonathon Riley

August 26, 2010 10:39 PM

“In other news, it has come to our attention that the domain name “ferrethandjobs.com” may be misread by some. We are currently investigating other options, but until then, we plan to continue our current branding in the hopes that clearer heads prevail.”

- FerrethAndJobs

August 26, 2010 09:38 PM

I love teepee style tents, and one day will own one (with stove).

Perhaps a yurt too…

theworldwelivein:

Dukha - Lords of the Taiga :: Photography Served

August 26, 2010 08:38 PM

Bike porn!

August 26, 2010 06:37 PM

I haven’t the faintest idea…

fuckyeahcrows:

(via diannehaha)

August 26, 2010 03:33 PM

When using OS X I vary between listening to local (iTunes) and remote (Spotify), but I’ve been frustrated by not being able to use the built-in media keys to control playback. Every time you press Play/Pause key, iTunes assumes it is the only media application running. Which can lead to amusing situations where you either end up with audio from both applications, or alternating between the two. Not too helpfully when you just want to pause…

Quitting iTunes isn’t an option either, since when you press the keys it reopens.

I’ve found a solution though: Shift (⇧) + Option (⌥) + the media key of your choice will control Spotify (and presumably other applications), but will be ignored by iTunes.

August 26, 2010 02:19 PM

AJS EOS 125mk2

August 26, 2010 01:24 PM

Two bikes and a sunset:

My AJS EOS 125mk2 and Mat’s Suzuki GS125 admiring the views across the Solway Firth from Silloth.

August 26, 2010 01:24 PM

New Bike!:

My brand new AJS EOS 125mk2.

August 26, 2010 01:24 PM

WIN!

in—wonderland:

losingmysenses:

my-clandestines:

mendmyheart:

newfilosofee:

mllehazelwood:

inothernews:juliasegal:meretremfuit:underpantscharleston:

This is a REAL picture from the set…Heath Ledger was apparently a skateboarder.

August 26, 2010 08:37 AM

Just a quick reminder: as part of our awesome Ubuntu Global Jam I am organizing the Ubuntu California Rockridge Jam at A’cuppa Tea, College Ave, Berkeley. The jam is from 10am – 6pm – I hope to see you there!

Don’t live near me? Go and find your nearest jam or organize your own!

August 26, 2010 12:35 AM

theworldwelivein:

Bromo-Tengger-Semeru, Java, Indonesia
© tropicaLiving

August 25, 2010 11:01 PM

My new hobby.

This, believe it or not, is a learner legal 125cc bike. Doesn’t look (or sound) it, but it is.

It’s an AJS EOS 125mk2 faux-custom cruiser, it’s beautiful, and it’s mine.

I am, however, not 17 years old. (In fact I’d love to see a 17 year old handle it - it’s BIG). I’m getting into biking relatively late at 35, but I’m going to make the most of what little good weather we get in the UK.

August 25, 2010 11:01 PM

Some time back the Ayatana project introduced the Application Indicator Framework, based upon technology created by the KDE project. We have been shipping this technology in Ubuntu for a few releases now and it makes the top-right part of the desktop a smooth, efficient, and pleasant experience, getting over the inconsistent and limiting notification area we had before.

To help build integration in the GNOME panel for this indicator work we had Ted Gould, Cody Somerville, and Jason Smith produce an implementation complete with C, Python and C# bindings, had Aurélien Gâteau continue to perform his excellent work with KDE, and Jorge Castro to help spread awareness of this work. In addition to this we contracted some developers to port apps with notification indicators that we ship in Ubuntu to the new framework, and this included apps such as Brasero, GNOME Bluetooth, GNOME Power Manager, Gnome Settings Daemon, XChat-GNOME, iBus, Nautilus, Policykit GNOME, Empathy, Gwibber and more. All of these patches are publicly available if other distros would like to use them.

The community has really got involved with the technology too, with community patches for Lernid, Banshee, LottaNZB, and DejaDup, and System Monitor, Weather, Screenshotting, Workspaces, Device Mounting indicators, support for the indicator framework built into AWN and Lubuntu, and more. I am absolutely delighted to see so much interest from application developers in the technology.

August 25, 2010 10:27 PM

UAC is actually quite good for security in Windows, as it means that anything that could steal your dog and run away with your favourite pillow/boyfriend/girlfriend has to get your permission first. However, the annoying popup that asks me if I’m sure I trust CoH every time it launches has annoyed me since I upgraded to Windows 7. This is how to solve it for arbitrary applications:

Disclaimer

I am a geek. This is geek advice, fraught with assumptions of savvy and technological pitfalls that didn’t happen when I tried it. It assumes you know what you’re doing and that if following these instructions word for word does cause an explosion that destroys you, your computer and your favourite pillow that you will not track me down and take me to a haberdashers to be forced to replace it. Caveat lector.

Tech Background Bit

UAC has no such concept as a “whitelist” and doesn’t provide a mechanism for skipping the prompt, but it does allow you to schedule a task to run with elevated privileges that doesn’t ask permission (because a scheduled task that asks for permission every time it is run is as useful as a chocolate tea service). Martin Zugec came up with a proof-of-concept utility called “Elevator” that creates a scheduled task to be launched immediately with elevated privileges

The method of making it work

1. Go to the webpage and download “SkipUAC.zip”
2. Extract the contents somewhere non-temporary, like c:\program files\SkipUAC
3. In that directory, right click “Install” and click “Run as Administrator” (If you do not click “Run as Administrator” and instead just run it, it will look like it has worked, and the right click menu below will be there, but nothing will happen. RUN IT AS ADMINISTRATOR)
4. Find your Application with the nifty blue and yellow quartered shield on it, right click on it, and select “Elevate Me”. This should work without prompting you. If not, please read the words in the bullet point above, read the text on the web page linked to above, or complain to someone on the internet.
5. Copy your Application’s icon, in case this bit doesn’t work.
6. Slightly complicated bit now. Right click on the Application icon and go to “Properties”, then in front of the command line, prefix it with the path to the place you put SkipUAC, and ElevatorRunner. So if your patcher icon reads: 

   "C:\Program Files\Games\City of Heroes\cohupdater.exe"

   it should now read: 

   "C:\Program Files\SkipUAC\ElevatorRunner.exe" "C:\Program Files\Games\City of Heroes\cohupdater.exe"

7. The natty blue shield should be gone when you click “OK” (and it may have changed the icon to Elevator’s ugly pixelated thing, but you can fix that). Run it, and the application should launch without any permission boxes.

August 25, 2010 08:43 PM

Title purely for poetry Last Thursday (19th) Jamie turned one. The last year has been amazing, if somewhat disruptive, what with a new job to contend with too, and the change in direction with church. And now we’re thinking about moving house too. It’s all go…

My Shinies!

....sleepy...

mrBen

August 25, 2010 05:39 PM

lottey:

Amazing.

Indeed.

August 25, 2010 04:47 PM

I’ve been on a roll with using Emacs to make my workflow more efficient. So far, so good. The latest major addition is my adoption of the most-excellent Magit mode for integrating Git and Emacs in a wonderfully-efficient way. One of the best features is that you get a magit-status buffer which acts like your Git command center. From there you can perform whatever actions you want and call up any repository information you need with ease. The feature I really wish it had was a git-blame viewer but Magit has so dramatically improved my git workflow that I really don’t care.

August 25, 2010 12:17 PM

Productivity Guaranteed:

First up is self-control. Self-control doesn’t get much airtime these days. It ranks right up there with personal responsibility and doing the right thing. We tend not to like these terms because they place emphasis on our ability, and oftentimes we fail. Self-control in getting things done is convincing yourself to not look for distractions when you reach a tough spot.

Wonderful advice. Perhaps I should take it. ;)

August 24, 2010 10:51 PM

Today I had a call with Jussi from the Ubuntu IRC Council. We spent some time discussing a range of different topics, but then Jussi raised an important question which I think could benefit from some community discussion.

Today we have many methods of providing free support for our users – the Ubuntu Forums, Launchpad Answers, Ubuntu StackExchange and of course IRC. With each of the web resources there is a method of identifying those who are providing a significant and sustained contribution when providing support by checking their account profiles.

Unfortunately we don’t have this today for IRC. The simple reality is that there are many community members who use IRC every day and provide fantastically valuable support for our community, but there is no way of sufficiently articulating their contributions in a way that could, for example, be assessed for Ubuntu Membership.

The outcome I would like to achieve here is that someone in the IRC community who provides support could apply for Ubuntu Membership and the Ubuntu Membership Board could take a look at a profile that accurately and concisely summarizes their contributions, thus identifying that such contributions are significant and sustained, and therefore suitable for membership.

One option I was thinking could be something that I am thinking of as a ‘thankbot’. Imagine this context

<jono> hey, how do I do X, Y, and Z on Ubuntu?
<erica> hi jono, all you do is click on the frizometer and select babang.
<jono> ahh, that is it, thanks so much!
<erica> jono, it would be
<jono> thankbot erica
<thankbot> erica got thanked by jono - erica has been thanked: 28 times

We could then provide a means for others to check how many times a given person has been thanked, and it could be even cooler to have IRC client plug-ins that shows the number of thanks next to the persons nick.

Of course, the bot would want to be armed with the ability to not be gamed (such as limiting the number of thanks from the same person, to avoid spamming the bot), but these would all be details.

Could this work, and if not, is there a better idea out there to solve the problem of providing better visibility on our contributors who provide great support?

August 24, 2010 07:16 PM

When I first heard about Free Software in 1998 I was mesmerized by it’s potential. Sure, back then the software was complex and some would argue ugly, but underneath the rough edges was a thing of beauty — the opportunity for people to come together to make new things, and anyone with the inclination and energy could take part. Back then our community was small and intimate. Most people seemed to know each other, and there was a tremendous sense of family within Free Software.

Things are quite different today: while the ethos has remained unchanged, Free Software and Open Source are popular concepts and terms, we have many comprehensive Free Software platforms, and our small community has now become a huge, sprawling, global community that has diversified; inspiring everyone to bring their gifts and their talents to the community.

So, why am I talking about this? I think these days it is easy for us to purely focus on the ones and zeros, the bugs and patches, the squabbles, the emails, and the challenges that face Free Software. While these things are part and parcel of our community, I worry sometimes that we forget the very human reasons why many of us got involved.

I was reminded of this last week. I was having a pretty shitty day, I had spent most of the day on the phone, I had oodles of email and TODO items to get though, and I was just feeling a bit tired and worn out. As my day came to end I saw a tweet show up on my desktop from someone who had just used Linux for the first time and was expressing how excited they were at exploring their new system. When I read it it took me right back to 1998 when I felt exactly the same way.

My take away from that day was that I think it is healthy for us to remind each other why we got involved in Free Software and Open Source, and I wanted to ask you all what attracted you, and what still attracts you to our community. To be frank — I don’t care which community you are in, whether it is Ubuntu, Red Hat, Solaris, GNOME, KDE, X, OpenStreetMap, whatever — I am more interested in the ethos which transcends the borders if these different communities.

So, why are you passionate about Free Software and Open Source?

August 24, 2010 03:40 AM

suicideblonde:

Leonard Cohen - Waiting for a Miracle

Baby, I’ve been waiting,
I’ve been waiting night and day.
I didn’t see the time,
I waited half my life away.

(from the Natural Born Killers sndtrk)

Love this song, and the film. My first date with @schwukette. :)

August 23, 2010 11:35 PM

I am just beginning to get into the planning stages for the next cycle for my team, and as part of this cycle we would like to really focus on attracting more developers to participate in Ubuntu. We would like to see more people interested in getting involved in packaging, fixing bugs, and joining our community. Daniel Holbach on my team will be leading much of this work.

Right now the 11.04 planning slate is clean, and we are looking for what you all feel are the areas in which Daniel’s time and effort would be best spent in the interests of having more people participate.

Where do you think we should focus our efforts?

August 23, 2010 08:56 PM

Birdhouse: A notepad for Twitter.

Wonderful introduction video.

August 23, 2010 07:32 PM

The Last Exorcism - BEST OF Chatroulette reactions (via thelastexorcism)

August 23, 2010 07:06 PM

Hot on the heels of the announcement of the Natty Narwhal, I am tickled pink to announce the details of the next Ubuntu Developer Summit taking place in Orlando, USA from 25th – 29th October 2010. We also have a brand new Ubuntu Developer Summit website which provides all the details about how to get there and why UDS is interesting if you are in our community, if you are an upstream, and if you are a vendor.

The Ubuntu Developer Summit one of the most important events in the Ubuntu calendar and at it we discuss, debate and design the next version of Ubuntu. We bring together the entire Canonical development team and sponsor a large number of community members across the wide range of areas in which people contribute to Ubuntu. This includes packaging, translations, documentation, testing, LoCo teams and more. UDS is an incredible experience, filled with smart and enthusiastic people, fast paced and exhausting, but incredibly gratifying to be part of the process that builds the next Ubuntu.

For every UDS, Canonical sponsors a number of community members to attend the event. We are looking for those who want to bring some real insight and expertise in their area of Ubuntu, be it development or community governance. If you feel you could offer this but can’t afford to cover your expenses of attending, you should apply for sponsorship. The deadline for sponsorship is 8th September 2010.

August 23, 2010 05:24 PM

Cryptic Studios have finally announced their rumoured Neverwinter Nights game, and though it doesn’t appear to be an MMO (Odd not only because that was the rumour, but because Cryptic’s game history is City of Heroes, Champions Online and Star Trek Online)

Also interesting, though, is that the new game is based on the D&D 4th Edition ruleset, which is roughly what happens if you apply a computer-game cooldown-style mechanic on an RPG game. It would be interesting to see a cRPG with the “At will”/”Per Encounter”/”Daily” mechanic.

August 23, 2010 03:29 PM

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

- Oscar Wilde

August 23, 2010 10:15 AM

a nice little monster

I have in my home, as of now, 2 PCs (a desktop, and a server/media-centre), 3 Android phones, an ebook reader, a crappy-but-cheap Chinese Android tablet - and 3 'netbooks'. The newest addition to the menagerie is an Asus Eee PC 1215N, which rather wipes the floor with the its two predecessors...

Threw the N1 in there for comparison, just to make the point that a 2010-era smartphone can even outspec an EeePC 701, in the right light - same resolution screen, though obviously smaller with a much higher DPI, faster CPU in terms of raw clock speed, longer battery life and although the 701 has more storage than an N1, my N1 typically has a 16GB microSD card in it. Anyway, back to the 1215N.

I picked it up at the Hong Kong Computer & Communications Festival on 20th August - notable because there is, as far as I know, no firm release date for this machine in the US, and Amazon UK were listing it with a pre-order fulfilment date of August 23rd, but have just updated it to September 7th! I've had my eye on this model for a while, and knew it was due out late August or early September, but hadn't heard anything at all about Hong Kong release dates, so I did something a bit naive - I simply called Asus last week and asked them. After being passed around a couple of times, I was quite shocked to get a straight answer ("at the computer festival this Friday") to a straight question, since I was fully expecting to be told that they hadn't announced a date, and certainly weren't going to randomly disclose it to an anonymous individual caller - kudos to Asus.

Going back to that Amazon.co.uk listing, while the date has changed, the price has stayed the same, at £429 (US$666, €524, HK$5180). The machine is actually available in a few other places, and looking at a Swedish site they are listing it at 5290 Kronor (£459, US$712, €560, HK$5540). There is no price available for the US, but rumours are placing it around US$500 (£321, €393, HK$3888) - which to be fair would exclude any sales taxes, unlike the European prices. Me, I paid HK$3780 (US$486, £313, €382) in cash and took it home - there are no sales taxes in Hong Kong, and there was no delivery charge or delay - so I think I did pretty well there!

Inside the somewhat-sparse brown cardboard box was the laptop, the battery (see below), a charger with a UK (and therefore HK) figure-8 cable to plug into it, a warranty card, and a relatively simple manual in English and both Traditional and Simplified Chinese. The guys who sold it to me were nice enough to throw in a case - ugly-but-functional - an extra year of official Asus warranty, and an antivirus package - entirely useless to me. Not exactly an extensive package, but that's probably a good thing in these green days...

There appears to only be one 1215N model number across the world, but there are a few variable specs which will change depending on where you get the machine. In particular, mine has a 320GB hard drive (but some may have 250GB), a 6-cell battery (4-cell being the alternative), 3 USB 2.0 ports (some models advertised with 2 USB 3.0 and 1 USB 2.0) and 2 GB RAM in the form of 2 1GB sticks (as opposed to 4GB or even 1GB options). While I'd quite like the USB 3.0 ports, just for future-proofing, I'm reasonably happy with the HK spec, and while 4GB RAM would be nice, it would be pretty easy, and not particularly expensive, to upgrade it myself since the two SODIMM sockets are in fact the only easily-accessible and user-upgradable innards.

Now, I Don't Do Windows^TM. The 1215N came with Windows 7 Premium something-or-other, but I Don't Do Windows^TM so I got rid of it pretty sharp-ish - shoved Ubuntu on it, because that was what I had lying around, and what I've been running on my older EeePCs, but I'm not sure what it'll end up with. I did see Windows 7 running on demo units at the 'festival', and it seemed to run alright, for Windows. Did I mention that I Don't Do Windows^TM? The salesman did run up the Windows Experience doodad, and while I can't remember the exact scores, they were 5.something for the memory and disk tests, and 3.something for the CPU, graphics and gaming - not too bad in the scheme of things for a device like this, I think. Anyway, I Don't Do Windows^TM so let's move on.

On paper, at least, it's somewhat comparable to the MacBook Air - the 1215N has a slightly smaller screen with a slightly higher resolution, a slower CPU but not massively so, the same amount of RAM, much bigger hard drive, theoretically-similar Nvidia graphics but with a lower-power, lower-performance Intel chip as well, and slightly more heft, 1.45kg (with 6cell battery) vs. 1.36kg for the MacBook Air. The Air is much much thinner, 19.4mm at its thickest compared with 37mm for the 1215n - but then the 1215n has a smaller 'face'. The kicker, of course, is that the Air costs over 3 times as much as the 1215n - I'm not trying to suggest that they are in the same class as machine, just point out that there isn't as much difference as you might think...

The hardware

For a netbook, it's pretty big and heavy. The photo shows a clear comparison with the Eees 901 and 701, but other photos clearly show why - the 12 inch screen is huge compared with the 9incher, and makes the 7 inch screen on the original Eee PC look like what it is, a toy. On the other hand, I've always called them 'little laptops' instead of netbooks, and that name fits well. The hardware is actually somewhat of a hybrid - it's a netbookish screen, but it has a full-sized keyboard and a CPU designed for a nettop (i.e. a 'little desktop'), with the upside being higher performance and the downside being less power management than chips designed for true 'netbooks'. As I mentioned above, it's also got hybrid graphics, with a low-power, low-performance Intel chip and a higher-performance, higher-power Nvidia chip, although the switching isn't working with Linux at the moment - I'm not much of a gamer, and multi-threaded decoding largely makes up for the lower graphics performance when viewing video files.

At this point, I'm pretty happy with the new toy. The Linux support is slightly lacking - small things like the sound driver needing a tweak to support the headphone socket, and bigger things like the Nvidia Optimus stuff being largely implement in the Windows drivers only. I'm sure things will improve - it's a pretty new machine, and Linux drivers have a nice habit of quietly getting better support for new hardware.

August 23, 2010 08:01 AM

I don’t tend to blog about appeals, but I came across this terribly sad story and I really want to encourage you all too also pledge and support him. Here is what happened, written by a friend of Colin:

Colin & I have been close friends for 13 years when we started our MBA program together. We then both lived in London and our children played together. Colin moved back to his home town of Boston before I returned to the US and unfortunately he got divorced from his wife, an Egyptian national, in 2008. He was granted full legal custody by the US courts of his two young boys (US citizens). His wife created forged passports in a fake name and kidnapped his two children by illegally flying back to Cairo on Egypt Air. He hasn’t seen them in more than a year and she is in hiding.

Mirvat el Nady now has an arrest warrant in the US and is wanted by Interpol (see here). Colin is being supported by his Senator John Kerry and has received help from Vice President Biden and Attorney General, Eric Holder. The problem is that Egypt doesn’t support the Hague Convention and doesn’t have an extradition policy with the United States so they don’t recognize any of the international legal rulings in Colin’s favor. Colin has now won visitation rights in an Egyptian court, but Mirvat didn’t show up at the legally required meeting day / time in Egypt.

You can see an interview with Colin here about his ordeal.

I am not a father yet, but it doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to understand how painful and heartbreaking it must be to have your kids taken away from you and to have no idea where they are…and no way of getting in touch with them.

I wanted to encourage you all to show your support for Colin, and contribute to his legal defense fund. You can also show your support by joining this Facebook page; I am sure kind words of support on that page will be welcomed.

We pledged today, and with him aiming to raise $25,000 for the legal defence fund, if we all contribute a little this could really help this family. Thanks, folks.

August 23, 2010 01:31 AM

• Tonight I will be dreaming "single, double, king. £3". How can you keep shouting that continually for hours on end you horrible man? #
• Come on. DVDs are £1… Roll up.. Roll up. #
• A very fat woman just bought maternity trousers from. So glad I'm not her. #studley #carboot #
• My poor toe. http://yfrog.com/7dsy0zj – moral: better trainers needed for hockey. #
• Good hockey games. Body aching, toe nicely bruised. #
• "hello? Happy birthday to you too. Bye!" #toddler #phoneconversation #
• Why won't @rowangoodwin say "[flash] gordon's alive!"… #
• -> RT @dick_turpin iphone users have more sex than Android users http://ping.fm/sRDjd <- oh really? Why do my employees want 'droids? #
• Facebook places eh? 4sq might soon be made redundant. Wish the updated iphone app worked for me tho. #
• We have a new weapon against automated sales calls. tt-weasels and tt-monkeys. Thanks #asterisk #
• Why can't a uni compsci dept. put a form online? Must i really print, write on dead tree and scan it in to submit/email. Grr. #aber #fail #
• Today I did a total of 101 pushups thanks to the Hundred Pushups iPhone app. (Week 3, Day 2, Level 3) #100Pushups #
• #WhatWouldYouTellYour18YearOldSelf Here are the lottery numbers for the next month #
• Who'd have known… Dodford is quite good for mountain biking Nutnells wood and Pepperwood -good evening http://osm.org/go/euw@v@f4- #
• To cycle or run; that is the question of this evening. #

August 22, 2010 03:41 PM

I’m experimenting with using Tumblr for blogging etc. so for now I’m going to post links to those articles here too, until I figure out what to do long-term:

http://blog.davee.me.uk/post/992238436/how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

August 22, 2010 03:07 PM

OMG! I used to have one of these! Should I get another?

August 21, 2010 02:57 PM

• Watching Ponyo with kids on sofa, nice Sat mornin chill time 09:43:00, 2010-08-14
• Think Orange data network very dodgy recently 15:10:58, 2010-08-19

August 21, 2010 01:00 PM

You looking at me?

Made by my son. :)

August 20, 2010 05:32 PM

August 20, 2010 02:16 PM

SpaceBalls Alien (via mendicon)

(Tried to post this via my iPhone last night, but the app only supports local video, and when I tried the main site it would only accept Vimeo videos.)

August 20, 2010 08:15 AM

OK, before I begin, this is going to be a terribly presented ramble. I have written it, proof read it, and proof read it again, and it still sounds like a child with a crayon wrote it. This is because my thoughts are unstructured, but I am keen to share them anyway. Patience is appreciated, friends…

Recently I have been thinking about how my work as Ubuntu Community Manager balances out between the work I perform with volunteers in the community, and employees of Canonical who contribute to the community as well as other business units. The reason for these thoughts is that recently I have been feeling that I could do a better job of spending more time with our volunteers and supporting them with their goals. We have a tremendous, inspiring, hard-working and excitable community…and I have just been feeling like I could improve in how much “face time” I have with our active contributors.

So, I have been evaluating methods in which I can do this. As I thought more about it, I came to the realization that part of the limitations on my time these days is because my responsibilities today compared to my responsibilities when I started this role are two quite different places.

Just under four years ago when I joined Canonical as the Ubuntu Community Manager, life was a lot easier. Back then it was just me, I had no team, the company was a lot smaller, and not only were there no direct reports for me to manage, but there were far fewer other departments, units, teams, and other entities that needed input from me. When I started I had three primary high-level responsibilities:

1. Provide leadership and guidance in a core set of community projects.
2. Help to resolve and unblock issues and problems across the community.
3. Provide inspiration and encouragement for the community to feel passionate about the problems we are trying to solve and the opportunities that we are seeking together.

The majority of time working on these goals was working with our volunteers. I certainly did have tasks and objectives within the company, but by and large the majority of my focus was with our volunteers. One might suggest I was “foot loose and fancy free”, if you can say that about someone who plays in a thrash metal band…

Today things are quite different. I now have four employees who report to me, I am now a platform manager (this means I am one of the managers on the Ubuntu team), and the company has grown significantly in size, which means far more departments, units, teams, projects, and other entities who have subsequently requested input and assistance from me. Of course, I myself have experienced this change and growth first-hand, and so have my colleagues, but I have also realized I have not done a very good job talking about this change with our community.

Today my role has evolved to include an additional three high-level sets of requirements:

1. Provide leadership and guidance in a core set of community projects.
2. Help to resolve and unblock issues and problems across the community.
3. Provide inspiration and encouragement for the community to feel passionate about the problems we are trying to solve and the opportunities that we are seeking together.
4. Manage a team to help them be successful in their own work and bring value to the community.
5. Provide guidance to other teams and units inside Canonical.
6. Provide a public face and representation for Ubuntu (and increasingly, Canonical).

The challenge that I have faced is that these latter three additions require a significant amount of work. As one such example, my team is very distributed — I am based in California, Jorge is in Detroit, Daniel is in Berlin, David is in València, and Ahmed is in Cairo. With us being so distributed, I consider 1-on-1 time with the guys as very important in helping them to be successful in their roles and feel a strong sense of team spirit and morale. As such, it is important to me that I have an hour each week with them on a voice call for 1-on-1 time. When we take those four hour-long calls and also add our team call, that already sucks up half a work day just for the team. When we then factor in all the other interaction between the team and the guidance the team rightly expects from me, “managing the team” takes up a significant amount of time. Of course, it is valuable time, and time well spent and important for our team, but it is also time in which I am primarily working with my colleagues as opposed to volunteers.

Another element has been the sheer growth of Canonical. We are much bigger than we were, and I see a core responsibility of my role and my team’s role is in helping those who join us, particularly those who don’t come from an Open Source background, to get a strong sense of our community values and commitments. This not only involves helping to on-board new team members, but with six times as many employees than when I started, it also significantly raises the number of instances in which such team members are looking for help and guidance to ensure that such community relations, which are so important to the company, are well executed. Again, this is important and valuable time well spent, but again time in which I am primarily working with the company and not volunteers.

Finally, Ubuntu has become a global phenomenon. It has become increasingly a house-hold name, a common sight in coffee shops and trains, and with this success has developed (a) a lot of press interest and requests for comment, and (b) an increasing level of critique and expectations from a wider demographic of users. As one of the more public personas associated with Ubuntu and Canonical, I am therefore often expected to provide input and commentary to the press and elsewhere, particularly with anything community-related (which is a pretty wide spectrum of content both actually within and often outside my domain). Again, important and valuable work, but time handling company responsibilities as opposed to working with volunteers.

Of course, while the scope of responsibility has increased with these additional three areas, my time available has not really increased (it increased a little as I work longer days now and I travel a lot less ever since I got married), and as such the additional areas of responsibility have naturally cut into the time that was originally devoted to the first three areas I outlined which were primarily volunteer-targeted. This is why some of you who have been following my work for a long time may have picked up that I am spending a little less time collaborating with our volunteers than I used to – I am basically knee deep in these other responsibilities.

Now, this is to be expected. I now have a team, and priority is my team and their success. Part and parcel of having a team grow up around you is that you end up spending more and more time being a manager and helping your team to enjoy a structured, safe, and enjoyable work environment. In traditional management, this is common and the manager becomes a little less visible to the team as she is focused on managing the team and the expectations of the team from key stakeholders in the company (and in our case, the community).

The problem is, I don’t want to be less visible.

I believe that having a close and hands-on relationship with the Ubuntu contributor community is important, and irrespective of whether it is “important” or not, I just enjoy spending time with our community; they are my friends, my peers, my colleagues, and in many cases people who inspire me.

So, after all this rambling I wanted this blog post to achieve two primary goals. Firstly, for those of you who have not seen me as much as you did a few years back, I hope this explains a little about why that is. Secondly, if you have any ideas and suggestions about techniques and approaches that I can use to continue to fulfill my expectations to my team and peers, but squeeze in more “face-time” time with our volunteers, I would love to hear. Oh, and before some smart arse suggests it…spending more hours in front of a computer is not really an option; I don’t want solve one problem (trying to find smarter ways of working to spend more time with our volunteers) and replace it with another (my wife get the hump that I am working too much).

Thanks for reading.

August 20, 2010 05:45 AM

“All I’ve got is consonants.”

This is how I feel playing Words With Friends…

August 19, 2010 11:07 PM

I have never really got the mp3 craze – there are so many ways in which they just don’t seem that immediate and easy. I can’t play mp3s in my car, for example, unless I change my car / get a new stereo / get an FM transmitter,  and also spend time loading whatever mp3s [...]

August 19, 2010 08:47 PM

The nice folks over at Ubuntu UK Podcast discussing the Ubuntu Certification Database which I recently overhauled.

Lifted from their latest espisode “S03E14 - His Nose in the Book” (the audio is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license).

August 19, 2010 02:36 PM

Fail. :(

August 19, 2010 12:56 PM

Does Tumblr encourage consumption or creation of content? Is re-blogging creation?

Since I switched from (my hosted) Wordpress to Tumblr, I’ve noticed a few things:

1. I’ve spent a lot less time - i.e. none - updating the software
2. I’ve spent even less time blogging than I used to
3. My information consumption has increased

#1 was intended, #2 is disappointing, and #3 was inevitable.

Time for another re-think, because I really want to be getting more out of this than just seeing lots of nice pictures…

August 19, 2010 09:31 AM