Today someone let me in on an Easter Egg in OpenOffice which displays all the developer’s names.  After a 5 minute wait, lo and behold, my name appears.  :-)  What a nice surprise.

I came across another easter egg this afternoon I thought I would share before I forgot about it.  This one is related to OpenOffice.  To find this easter egg do the following:

Start OpenOffice Spreadsheet (Applications > Office > OpenOffice Spreadsheet)

Within an empty field, type: =GAME("StarWars")

Enjoy

Other Points of Interest

• Please Insert 25 Cents To Login
• Mozilla Firefox Easter Eggs

The fourth of a 13-part series created by Tony Whitmore detailing how to mix a podcast in Ardour on Ubuntu. It was created initially so that members of the Ubuntu UK LoCo team could take part in the Ubuntu UK Podcast. However it was decided to release them because they may be useful to other podcasters, or those wishing to learn more about mixing in Ardour.

In part 4

• Adding a longer track, and aligning it with other tracks.
• Using the "draw gain automation" tool to eliminate unwanted background noise.
• Inserting a sting between segments.

Note: This screencast was originally recorded at a resolution of 2560 by 1024, so is in a very wide screen format. If you have a small screen we recommend you view the lower resolution versions of the video.

Duration 10m14s.

Stream (requires flash player)
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This work is licensed under a
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Have you had the unfortunate need of having to contact the Request Tracker (rt@ubuntu.com)? If you have, you probably know what I mean when I say it can be a very frustrating thing to do.

When I started the ubuntu-cell mailing list, it took about 2 months to get a reply (not get it done, just a reply). Now, with the need of hosting for the PS3 Port, I’m pretty sure it won’t take any less time. 1 month and 6 days … And counting!

Seriously, does anyone else besides me thinks this is absurd?

---

Copyright © 2008 Tiago Faria
Digital fingerprint: f40c9f06bf22a03d8f85bbeee9889816

I often see the odd post about how non-developers can contribute.....

Well as an non-developer I can tell you there are plenty....

1. Write docs.
2. Qa.
3. Design.
4. Tell people about Ubuntu.

I will expand on these points briefly.

1. Can you write in English? How about another language? Yes...
Then you can write documents and become part of the Docs team, also you get to feel the buzz of contributing back to your distro of choice.

2. Can you install Ubuntu? Find faults? Write a structured bug report? Yes...
Then you can become part of the QA team and help the developers by triaging bugs and installing iso's a few days before milestones to help catch bugs before joe public does.

3. Are you an artist? Yes...
Well Ubuntu needs you.

4. Failing all the above have you thought that spreading the word about how good Ubuntu is, is a contribution in itself. Who knows the next brilliant developer, bug triager, scribe or designer could be joe bloggs who you recommended Ubuntu too.

So never say you can't contribute there's just no excuse :)

Thanks for your time.... Now go contribute and get that warm fuzzy feeling...

This is smply script to backup your server and reposrted via email, but i think my script is very simply. please correct me

#!/bin/sh
####################################
#
# Script to creating Backup File
# save fo /usr/sbin/backup.sh
# inspired from ubuntu-serverguide
# thanks to Ubuntu Documentation Team!
# please send me e-mail if you want to recode again!
# thank's before
# Mahyuddin Susanto aka udienz email = udienz@gmail.com
#
####################################

# What a backup?
#DIRECTORY="/var/www /var/spool/mail /etc /boot"
DIRECTORY="/var/www /etc /boot"
EMAIL=udienz@gmail.com
CCEMAIL=udienz@ubuntu.com
# Where to backup to.
TARGET="/tmp/backup"
if test -d $TARGET;
	then EXISTS="yes"
else
	mkdir -p $TARGET
fi

# Create archive filename.
DAY=$(date +%F)
HOST=$(hostname -i)
ARCHIVE="$HOST-$DAY.tgz"

# Print start status message.
echo "Backing up $DIRECTORY to $TARGET/$ARCHIVE"
date
echo

# Backup the files using tar.
tar czf $TARGET/$ARCHIVE $DIRECTORY
md5sum $TARGET/$ARCHIVE >> $TARGET/md5sum.$ARCHIVE.txt
# i dont'know how wo make file contain dirrefent both directory
# diff -rNu /where/come/ /want/toa/ > different$DAY.diff
# dpatch patch-template -p "different$DAY" "different directory" < different$DAY.diff > different$DAY.patch
#maybe, i think using method patching package into good, maybe  

# Print end status message.
echo
echo "Backup finished"
date

# Long listing of files in $dest to check file sizes.
# ls -lh $TARGET

# Crontab, backingup every sunday
# 0 0 0 * * bash /usr/local/bin/backup.sh

TMPFILE=`mktemp`
exec > "$TMPFILE"
echo "From: \"Backup report $HOST\" "root@$HOST""
echo "To: $EMAIL"
echo "Cc: $CCEMAIL"
echo "Subject: Information about backingup $HOST"
echo ""
echo "Hello mr/mrs $EMAIL and $CCEMAIL!"
echo ""
echo "If you get this email it mean that back-up proses at $HOST,"
echo "is succes, more information about back-up is:"
echo ""
echo "Directory to backup is = $DIRECTORY"
echo "and saved to $TARGET/$ARCHIVE"
echo "finished at `date`"
echo "have MD5SUM `md5sum $TARGET/$ARCHIVE | cut -f1 -d ' '`"
echo ""
echo "`ls -lh $TARGET/`"
echo ""
echo "Best Regard"
echo "............"
exec
/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i < $TMPFILE
rm -f $TMPFILE
#ls -lh $TARGET/

# END Of Script

Today I found this wonderfully useful feature in the Evolution version shipped with Hardy. Saves me some extra steps! Thanks to whoever made that possible!

Wikipedia offers the following definition of etiquette (emphasis mine):

Etiquette, one aspect of decorum, is a code that governs the expectations of social behavior, according to the contemporary conventional norm within a society, social class, or group. Usually unwritten, it may be codified in written form.

The Ubuntu Code of Conduct is our etiquette, codified in written form; it is also universal. It covers:

"behaviour as a member of the Ubuntu Community, in any forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel, install-fest, public meeting or private correspondence"

Written in the affirmative, it offers several adjectives relevant to how Ubuntu development should be done. This universality means making rules and interpretations for Planet Ubuntu based on the CoC might reasonably apply elsewhere. Jono Bacon, member of the Ubuntu Community Council and Canonical's appointed Ubuntu Community Manager once stated he felt excited to work at a place where he didn't have to turn off who he was during work hours or separate what he liked from what he did, and we may shortly discover how Jono feels about diminishing that. Despite the clear wording of universality, Fabián Rodríguez has suggested that the Planet needs more formalized rules than the ones inherited from Debian (English only and "don't be annoying") and the CoC. His position appears to be that including objectionable words and phrases, and objectionable ideas are not respectful, and therefore violate the CoC. I respectfully disagree.

Fabián Rodríguez writes:

I don’t expect anyone to change their “WTF” and “STFU” attitude, just leave it outside this project. Setting up a category to carry only Planet Ubuntu posts may help.

And clarifies in a comment:

Although I am brining up the CoC because we have one, I think it is such common sense I am a bit surprised I even got comments on IRC asking what is wrong with WTF’ing here and there or A**holing now and then. Nothing really. But take it elsewhere. And I’ll gladly meet you there, but it won’t be under my @ubuntu.com hat.

It should be obvious that sending harassing, demeaning or confrontational email to Ubuntu or Debian or any other developers isn't suddenly okay if you didn't use @ubuntu.com as the From address. Similarly, it shouldn't matter whether you tag a post with "ubuntu"; if you act or write from a position within the community, and the audience associates you with Ubuntu, you should follow the guidelines as an ambassador of Ubuntu to the larger Linux community, or at least make a note that you are not acting or writing as a member of the Ubuntu community in cases where it might not be clear. At any rate, if you are an Ubuntu Member, then, you should be worried when someone tries to redefine the Conduct you agreed to follow.

The logical conclusion of Fabián's position is that to be respectful nothing that sets off anyone's triggers may pass through Planet Ubuntu's gates. This is a dangerous place to be: one can think of dozens actions that might be considered offensive to some. As Jordan Mantha eloquently put it:

trying to legislate morality is both undesirable and incredibly difficult for the Community Council to do. They are trying to represent a community made up of people from nations and cultures all over the world, and it’s essentially impossible to satisfy both the moral sensibilities and personal liberties of everybody at the same time. I’m also fairly sure it is neither their right nor their charter to tell people what is and is not offensive.

There exist a number of social, religious and political taboos that various cultures may find offensive. It feels weird being an American (land of assimilation) calling a Canadian (home of multiculturalism) on this. If Ubuntu, "Linux for human beings," demands that writing obey one viewpoint, it potentially offends another one as censorship. For example, most of us may see a Tibetan language translation of Ubuntu as progress in bringing Free Software to people who need it, but to a few the act may suggest an anti-China political statement, akin to adding a Confederate flag to the distribution. The Code of Conduct is fortunate to say nothing about such dry powderkegs. As long as we can hold beliefs, disagree and still obey they Code of Conduct's demands for consideration, respect, collaboration, and consultation, there should be room in Ubuntu for all of us.

Chilling effects

Attitude is one thing; I think RTFM or STFU are rarely productive statements. But what's appeared goes far beyond that. Fabián prefers that people who don't agree with his flexible interpretation of "respect" go away. I know at least one guy who does. He still contributes to the development of Ubuntu, but what he has to say is less often heard because despite his reputation, he's quite willing to implicitly comply with the infantilization of the Planet and rarely tags posts our way. It's fortunate that it's easy to include individual RSS feeds in Liferea directly, but if I don't know there's an amount of self censorship going on first, I simply lose that insight, no matter how germane it is to Ubuntu, Free Software or the communities that surround them.

But even if we were to agree that some topics are a bridge too far, specific words and phrases found offensive by some have no clear relation with respect, and already are within contemporary conventional norms when used in moderation. In fact, this entire enlightened discussion would have come across as condescending rather than conversational if the language were to be sanitized; by using that language the author communicates that the audience is a peer, which is central to the point. Self-censored writing feels inauthentic. In that thread, the author comments:

I haven't been particularly active in the Ubuntu community (my first introduction to the open source world), largely because everyone is so damned polite all the time, and as a result the discussions seem fairly dry and limited to technical topics.

This is a disappointing failure to integrate, especially since Rhythmbox needs a lot of lovin', and I'd be happy to see Ubuntu play a foundational role in making that happen.

Doing something constructive about it

One thing that can be done is to offer editorial advice ahead of publication. I've often wished to have a few trustworthy people preview my work on this blog and offer suggestions the way kuro5hin does before going public with a writing. It's a bit sad that the advent of blogging software led to the downfall of community driven writing like k5. Stephan's writing comes across as a bit... "stream of thought," and perhaps a round of editorial review can create something more effective at communicating his ideas and getting people to agree with him. I suspect such offers will be treated as censorship, though a good editor offers only advice, not orders.

Since people are seeking, among other remedies, the removal of Stephan's blog from the Planet, I thought I'd do them a favor. As far as I can tell, the current Planet software doesn't implement filtering (the Venus branch might, but will it support queries?), but the entire Planet software is easy to duplicate, and it's output is easy to manipulate. Here's what the Planet looks like without Stephan Hermann. And for comparison, without Fabián's blog. You can find the construction of this relatively simple construction here. If that doesn't float your boat, I've also constructed a simple dirty words filter. Feel free to customize, the defaults come from the expert on the subject. I've also considered running an alternative, unofficial planet similar to Dave Airlied's, but I'm not sure it's possible without coming across as arrogant or causing hurt feelings.

Finally, the Community Council has this topic on their agenda, and if it doesn't get tabled for lack of time, will be heard at the next meeting. If you can't attend, there are logs available for all such meetings on irclogs.ubuntu.com. In the spirit of being collaborative, it seems relevant to invite Emma Hogbin's opinion, as it seems the language of her lecture that started the mess Fabián and Stephan find themselves in now. As an invited speaker to the now canceled Ubuntu Live! event, decisions rendered would clearly affect her future participation with the Ubuntu community.

If you take one thing away from this essay let it be this: Booting members from the project is in no way, shape, or form "collaborative", and should be taken only when all reasonable measures have failed.

I am pleased (?) to annunce that BIND9 exploit is out (CVE-2008-1447).

This exploit targets a fairly ubiquitous flaw in DNS implementations which allow the insertion of malicious DNS records into the cache of the target nameserver.
This exploit caches a single malicious host entry into the target nameserver.
By causing the target nameserver to query for random hostnames at the target domain, the attacker can spoof a response to the target server including an answer for the query, an authority server record, and an additional record for that server, causing target nameserver to insert the additional record into the cache.

This issue was fixed in ubuntu via USN-622-1 but more ISP are now vulnerable.

emgent@amnistia:~$ sudo su root
[sudo] password for emgent:
root@amnistia:/home/emgent# echo “nameserver 208.67.222.222” > /etc/resolv.conf
root@amnistia:/home/emgent# echo “nameserver 208.67.220.220” >> /etc/resolv.conf
root@amnistia:/home/emgent# exit
exit
emgent@amnistia:~$

Background on #ubuntu-quality:
[SNIP]
(04:36) ( emgent) hello
(04:37) ( LaserJock) hi emgent
(04:37) ( emgent) I’m plased to annunce that BIND9 exploit is now pubblic.
(04:37) ( emgent) s/plased/pleased/
(04:38) ( persia) It the solution also public, and distributed?
(04:38) ( emgent) sure. fixed some week ago in ubuntu.
(04:38)  * LaserJock wonders if he should clap or not
(04:39) ( emgent) but more ISP are vulnerale now..
(04:40) ( emgent) persia: you can check your dns on http://www.doxpara.com/ (right menu)
(04:42) ( emgent) s/vulnerale/vulnerable/
(04:44) ( Hobbsee) oh good!  telstra isn’t.
(04:45) ( emgent) nice, Telecom Italia now is vuln.
(04:45) ( persia) NTT is vulnerable, but that is bot unsurprising and unlikely to cause issues.
(04:45) ( emgent) I use Open DNS
(04:47) ( LaserJock) mine is vulnerable it says
(04:47) ( emgent) switch to open dns
(04:49) ( emgent) exploit was pubblished some hours ago.. and there is a big problem.. now all people can hack vuln DNS and redirect google.com to sarcazzo.com for example.
(04:50) ( emgent) i go to write a post in planet.
(04:50) ( LaserJock) interesting
[SNIP]

happy defending!

Make of them what you will.

daniels@psyence:~/x/xorg/xserver% wc -l **/*.[ch] | tail -1
  730420 total
daniels@psyence:~/x/xorg/xserver% git diff -p xorg-server-0_99_1.. | diffstat | tail -1
 2747 files changed, 178062 insertions(+), 628051 deletions(-)
daniels@psyence:~/x/xorg/xserver% echo $((628051-178062))
449989

It’s coming up, the Global Bug Jam.  Are you ready?

Have no fear, your friendly Michigan LoCo team will be hosting a GBJ event in Southeast Michigan where you can come learn the trade of triaging and have a great time doing so.  I know from experience that their Bug Jams are great events.  They even filled a room at Penguicon on the topic thanks to Wolfger.

Come one, come all to the Global Bug Jam, no experience required, only a desire to have fun and contribute.

The Important Information:

Where: Clinton Macomb Public Library (map)
When: 1pm to 6pm on Saturday August 9th
Who: The Michigan LoCo Team and You!

(See THIS PAGE for the latest information)

The third of a 13-part series created by Tony Whitmore detailing how to mix a podcast in Ardour on Ubuntu. It was created initially so that members of the Ubuntu UK LoCo team could take part in the Ubuntu UK Podcast. However it was decided to release them because they may be useful to other podcasters, or those wishing to learn more about mixing in Ardour.

In part 3

• Podcast running order
• Aligning multiple tracks
• Fading music down and up with the "draw gain automation" tool

Note: This screencast was originally recorded at a resolution of 2560 by 1024, so is in a very wide screen format. If you have a small screen we recommend you view the lower resolution versions of the video.

Duration 8m33s.

Stream (requires flash player)
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(Video will play in a pop-up window)

Download
2560x1024 Ogg/Vorbis/Theora

Download
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1280x512 Flash Video
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This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

We’re rolling out an update to Launchpad at 22.00 UTC today (23rd July). Launchpad will be offline for a few minutes, however we’re allowing a one hour window.

This down-time is part of our roll-out of Launchpad 2.0 release.

Offline at: 22.00 UTC 23rd July
Expected back before: 23.00 UTC 23rd July

Saturday 19th, 7pm at Engineering Faculty Jember universty we made basic training about ubuntu. we made class in the night because many student have another class in the morning. in this clas we have 2 mentors, me and Ashadebi (from Debian Indonesia).

We studied dual boot installation and make connection to repositories server. This class sponsored by Jerux (Jember Linux) and Engineering faculty. many students at engineering faculty have gigantic spirit to sudiying linux speciallu Ubuntu and Debian :D.

Next meeting in engineering faculty at 27th July 2008 at 7pm and will dicussing about installation and basic terminal

hey look’s at the picture! he is ashadebi

we have 15 participant at here.

If I have set up everything right this should be my first post to the planet.

I got my Ubuntu membership yesterday from the EMEA membership board. Approval process went smooth (tip to other hopeful applicants - links to pictures seem to be a hit, especially if most of your other documentation is in a non-English language). A big thanks goes to Martin and Søren for supporting my membership.

After the irc approval was over and done with I went for a few beers with (among others) my good friend Søren - not really to celebrate, but just because it is the holidays and we have these days off.

I wish I could end this blog post with a promise of all the Ubuntu specific stuff I’m going to do over the next couple of days, but unfortunately I think my school work comes first right now - or at least that is what I tell myself.

Ok, there has been a lot of noise (again) about what should be in ubuntu planet, last time i wasn’t a member so i didn’t comment on the topic, but being that now i am here are my thoughts on the topic:

• Planet ubuntu is and should be a window to the community: Some people read planet to be up to date on the technical news, but that’s what changelog stands for, and planet ubuntu (or our blogs) aren’t actually changelogs. So the idea of limiting the what should be posted or not doesn’t seem really fair to me
• Ubuntu member represent the ubuntu community: All of us, being part of this community, an being officially recognized as members of it, gives us the representation of this community and for the people we are not just a lot of single people, we are the ubuntu community as a whole, so everything you said is taken as if it comes from the community especially if it is on one of the community’s communication channel, like mailing lists or planet. So we need to thing 3 times after post something on them since it won’t be treated as our own and personal opinion, but as the community one.
• Respects saved Respects: Before doing something it will be a good idea to think “If someone do this to me, would i like it?” If not, please don’t, everyone of us have different opinions on different topic, but it doesn’t give us the right to challenge people and be unrespectful. And said that you can say whatever you want, just need to find the right way to do it and express your opinion, is better to say “i don’t think so, i think is better like this” than saying “What were you thinking? that’s wrong!”

I don’t want to create more discussion on it, i think planet ubuntu is fine as it is now, and nothing need to be changed but the attitude of ourselves.

I agree with “repurposing Planet” post of Jordan Mantha. I saw once a post suggesting to create the Universe Ubuntu, where all topics would be placed.

I’m not writing too much on my English blog, but I’ll follow what Jordan said. I’ll correct the tags of my posts and keep on Planet Ubuntu only the posts tagged as ubuntu.

The second of a 13-part series created by Tony Whitmore detailing how to mix a podcast in Ardour on Ubuntu. It was created initially so that members of the Ubuntu UK LoCo team could take part in the Ubuntu UK Podcast. However it was decided to release them because they may be useful to other podcasters, or those wishing to learn more about mixing in Ardour.

In part 2

• Some tips regarding jack and realtime kernels
• Sessions in Ardour
• Adding tracks
• Add audio files to tracks

Note: This screencast was originally recorded at a resolution of 2560 by 1024, so is in a very wide screen format. If you have a small screen we recommend you view the lower resolution versions of the video.

Duration 8m20s.

Stream (requires flash player)
2560x1024 Flash
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640x256 Flash
(Video will play in a pop-up window)

Download
2560x1024 Ogg/Vorbis/Theora

Download
2560x1024 Flash Video
1280x512 Flash Video
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This work is licensed under a
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Me and some friends are currently organizing an event for Ubuntu enthusiasts in Manila, called Ubuntu Love Day Manila, tentatively scheduled on the 23rd of August. The venue is still for confirmation, but we plan it to be at the University of the Philippines campus in Diliman, Quezon City. We plan this to be a half-day [...]

Congratulations to members of our newly approved LoCos: Lithuania and Tunisia!

The Japanese Team continues doing excellent work as it passed its yearly review with flying colors!

As said on the previous post, I attended LUGradio Live last weekend. I’m still very, very, VERY tired, flying isn’t exactly an enjoyable experience ever, and this time the return flights were delayed because of bad weather conditions in Amsterdam.

Anyway, I left home on Friday around 0100 in the morning. The first flight to Amsterdam left at 0615 local time and I was in Wolverhampton about 13 hours from leaving home. I’ve never been to England if you don’t count the two times at Stanstead Airport on my way to and from GUADEC’06 in Spain, so it was really fun to take a train to Wolverhampton from Birmingham International - seeing some scenery on the way with English houses, canals and red brick buildings! (Yes, one has to take the most of everything!) I was lucky enough to have someone guide me around the whole weekend, and I guess Mez really thought I was insane oohing and aahing about the scenery - yes, it can amaze someone who has seen double decker buses and attached house rows and canals and such since age 3 watching Postman Pat on telly but never actually seeing them!

Anyway, after checking into Hotel Britannia it was time to head out for the preconference drinks. Finally a chance to meet so many people I’ve not met before! It was also time to dispense some of the “Greetings from Finland” gifts I had brought with me, so for example ompaul got one of the cloudberry liqueur bottles to spice up ice cream with. The time flied and I remember giving out my business cards, crocheting and walking back to the hotel…

To wake up to ompaul’s SMS “Goin 4 breakfast” with a mild headache wasn’t fun. Then again, him telling a joke that he doesn’t use emacs because he doesn’t lisp was excellent :-P <emacsfangirl />

To wrap up both days talks with a few words:

• I loved emmajane’s talk. All of the stuff in her speech was exactly as I think too.
• OpenKnowledge is a thing that should be encouraged more - I should know, having been Wikipedia activist for years
• Now I understand why Wubi might be such a problem - we really need a better way to clear out the dirty flag from ntfs with Linux
• History of Samba is somewhat amusing
• I guess I *should* go to Assembly this year
• Respect to mjg59, AGAIN
• When shall I have time and energy to start cycling again and to log the routes to OpenStreetMap?
• Oooh, ooh, I’m on the top ten contributors of Terminator!

Meeting the people behind the voices of LUGradio was cool. Chinny Raccoon was kyuuuut. Crocheted a lot since had no wifi. Bought stuff from O’Reilly desk again (Learning Python and Craft: Fashioning Technology), drank way too much coffee to stay awake, enjoyed the little karaoke I listened to before heading to sleep, and am considering ordering Linux Magazine again.

not related to the conference itself:

• Black pudding at hotel breakfast table tasted more like blood pancakes than mustamakkara
• Had my first curry and first fish and chips
• Will not drink Strongbow for a while, it got boring after a while
• OMG things is so cheap in UK! example01 vs. comparison01, example02 vs. comparison02
• OMG the variety of food in restaurants and shops! Vegetarian and organic choices everywhere!

hmhm. I want to move to England. I’ve fallen in love with something there :-)

So, this weekend just gone was the weekend of LugRadio Live. Here’s how it went for me. Friday morning, I got up, finished packing my stuff into my suitcase and headed off to the airport to go and pick up Myrtti. After missing a couple of buses, eventually got there, just in time to meet her as she was coming out of Arrivals.

We then headed off to Wolverhampton, with Myrtti being amazed by English houses (don’t ask me - I don’t know either) arriving in Wolverhampton 20 minutes before we could check into the hotel. So we went for food. Well, actually, I went for food, and Myrtti came with me. Moon Under Water has nice food, as do most Wetherspoons.

Anyway, from there on, Myrtti and I went and checked into the hotel, and then had a bit of a chat  (and checked on the CaveyCam) while waiting for the evening events to kick off.

The evening events… god. well… I don’t remember a lot of it. I remember coming in, sitting down, and sitting down with Daviey, ompaul, and a couple of other people (I can’t remember who!) and well - the night went on from there.

Left the Evening Events @ around midnight, and walked back with ompaul and Myrtti to the hotel. Couldn’t sleep, as there was a dry-riser next to my room, so at 4am, I gave up, and registered on flickr, uploading the photos from the night that I’d taken.

Then, at 6am, I went hunting for breakfast, had a little walk round Wolverhampton, and found that Spar had food, so bought a couple of sausage sandwiches from there (and a couple of cans of Relentless). Went back to the hotel room, answered the wake up call, and headed to the venue just before 7.

I was the second person there after Chris (Proctor) - am proud of that, and spent the morning setting up all those lovely banners that you people saw (and chasing after some that had gone missing).

Did anyone notice that the can of relentless I’d thrown in the bin had been used to help stick up the Main Stage schedule poster? No? Good… twas amusing though.

Thanks to Mrs Ron for providing the Bacon Sarnies though

Anyways, sat down and started to film the intro, then moved onto the first talk in the Atrium (I signed up for the morning sessions on crew - why oh why?). I had to try and keep myself from falling asleep due to no sleep in the first one, but towards the end, the caffeine kicked in, and I started to wake up.

Next up was Bruuuuunnoooooo’s talk… it was “tres amusant” … I enjoyed watching it, and am glad that the audio isn’t coming from the camera, or all you’d have heard was my laughing.

After that, It was lunch. Woo. Headed off to the Moon Under Water for what was meant to be an SBLUG gathering, but, couldn’t find them in the packed pub, so ended up sitting with Barbie and JJ and chatting to them while we had food.

Came back and scoped out the Exhibitors for a bit (and yes, played some TF2) before going to watch the gong-a-thong… mrben… raccoon pants… I won’t say anymore, or my mind will explode. Though I must say, I did love Matthew Garrett’s talk on how he hates the community.

After that, I went back and gamed for a bit, before heading to the Live and Unleashed recording. Found Myrtti again there, and gave her a bit of a shoulder rub while watching it (and laughing my ass off too!)

So. There brought an end to Day 1… except, it wasn’t over. By this time, I was feeling pretty crap… no sleep. So went and packed up, then headed back to the hotel, slept for a bit, then headed to Karaoke.

I didn’t stay long, and was on the soft drinks all night, but managed to fit in a rendition of “Summer Nights” - I do a mean Olivia Newton John. I’m kind of dissapointed that the guy I was singing it with (my Ex Boss) didn’t know the words, but I’ve had a promise from froodie that next year she’ll do the John Travolta, and I can do the Olivia Newton John. Speaking of froodie - great rendition of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” - I was singing along in the back of the venue (and drawing funny looks by air-drumming/air-guitaring)

Sunday morning. I was still tired, but due to exhaustion - I’d actually managed to sleep. Though - I think the fact that the following comment was made in IRC means that I didn’t look as fresh-faced as I’d have like to believe I was.

<+ompaul>    Mez, on sunday you looked like someone had eaten enough of your brain not to kill you but to stop you from understanding there was sunday

So yeah. Once again, set up at a ridiculously early time (this time 8am though) - I managed to be one of the people on the Coffee Run to Starbucks, so that worked well for me. I didn’t have to do much.

Started off the morning upstairs in the Lightning talk room, watching Barbies talk (and getting told off for raising my hand to answer his questions). Was still a good talk the second time round. And some of the stuff I forgot the first time, I’ve now seen again. I must apologise to Barbie for laughing to myself towards the end of the talk though. When you have a crew radio on, and you can hear Jono telling everyone he’s in the toilet with a speaker, you can’t help but laugh (I so wish that the LCD display in the atrium was something we could send messages to - I would have sent “FlashHug Jono now - he’s in the loo!”)

Next was Agostino Russo’s talk about Wubi - which was quite interesting. I’ve not actually used wubi myself, but to see it working in situ, and to hear about the geekyness behind it was actually quite cool.

Lunchtime again, where I spent outside eating sandwhiches and munch provided by MrsRon again, before I came back in, scoped the exhibitors again, and generally mingled talking with people until it was time for Chris Jones’ (Ng) talk about terminator.

Next was the goodbyes… Sad to see them go - but - they WILL be back next year! (YAY!). Sad to see the podcast end, but it was a good ending to a good weekend.

Then we packed up, and found out that the bar we’d arranged to goto afterwards… was closed…. FAIL. Got it sorted out in the end, and after food, ended up at the Novotel bar, where there were quite a few people. Twas good talking to people there, a nice friendly relaxed atmosphere, and a nicely stocked bar. I must say though - I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in a long time than I did with standing outside smoking with Xalior, Daviey and a few others (failhat!). Xalior is an extremely funny guy.

Anyways, from there, it was time to head home, after another night in the hotel, and taking Myrtti on a whirlwind tour of Birmingham’s Music Stores

To me, it’ll be a weekend to remember. There were a lot of firsts for me, and a lot of fun.

I must say though, thumbs up to Tony Whitmore and Ron Wellsted for doing an amazing job at organising everything this year. And to all the rest of the crew who made everything run so smoothly (and Tig for the trousers! and barely leaving the sound desk!)

This just came across the email, courtesy of Nick Ellery:
——-
This week’s Hug Day will be focusing on Apt! There are currently about
127 New bug reports regarding Apt and we will be focusing on reducing
that number in addition to looking at some outstanding Incomplete and
Confirmed bugs.  We’ll do this by following up with reporters,
documenting test cases, and confirming bug reports.  The event
will be held in #ubuntu-bugs on Freenode. The list of targeted bugs
and tasks is posted at:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20080724

Our goal is to deal with all of the bugs on that list.

So on 24 July 2008, in all timezones, we’ll be meeting in #ubuntu-bugs
on irc.freenode.net for another Ubuntu Hug Day.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay
—–

So if you have some time and want to help out, come join us!

After declaring inbox bankruptcy, changing the way I collect and manage my email, and tweeting a few times about my attempt to embrace the zen of Inbox Zero, I decided to automate the process, removing any potential editorialising between email client and reporting of the project status. I’ve set it up to post at 22:00 every night.

Here’s the script if anyone else wants to play (it also demonstrates how to post to twitter with wget, which may be handy for other automation projects):

#!/bin/sh
MB_POST="http://identi.ca/api/statuses/update.xml
  http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml"

MB_USER=state your username
MB_PASS=state your password

IZ="$(find Maildir/cur/ Maildir/new/ -type f | wc -l)"
if [ $IZ -gt 0 ]; then
  IZ="$IZ"
else
  IZ="ZERO"
fi
IZ="inbox zero status: $IZ"

for MB_HTTP in $MB_POST; do
  wget -qO- --delete-after 
    --user="$MB_USER" --password="$MB_PASS" 
    --post-data "status=$IZ" $MB_HTTP > /dev/null
done

Update: Fixed script to use any Twitter-style microblog API, and included example URL from identi.ca. Go freedom!

Update: Even better, just post to all of them at once! Also fixed anchor… Despite switching to the visual editor weeks ago, I’m still not 100% used to the convenience of it.

Hello launchaders!

I am pleased to announce the opening Bug 250952 which provides the required integration of a Away system for developers in Launchpad!

Thanks for your support Barry Warsaw, and good work!

I know everyone reading this is thinking “you know, I sure would like to join some more IRC channels.”  We’ll here’s your chance!

The Free Software Foundation has just registered the channel #fsf-members on Freenode.  This channel is specifically for communication with other FSF associate members.  So come on in and hang out!  If you want to speak with a more general audience on FSF topics, #fsf is, and has been, available.

And as a teaser: if you are a FSF Associate Member, you can ask to get a FSF cloak on Freenode.  Just send your member number and registered IRC nick to campaigns@fsf.org

Hope to see a bunch of the Ubuntu people there!

The first of a 13-part series created by Tony Whitmore detailing how to mix a podcast in Ardour on Ubuntu. It was created initially so that members of the Ubuntu UK LoCo team could take part in the Ubuntu UK Podcast. However it was decided to release them because they may be useful to other podcasters, or those wishing to learn more about mixing in Ardour.

In part 1

• A brief introduction to the applications used
• Some tips on setting up the environment

Note: This screencast was originally recorded at a resolution of 2560 by 1024, so is in a very wide screen format. If you have a small screen we recommend you view the lower resolution versions of the video.

Duration 5m06s.

Stream (requires flash player)
2560x1024 Flash
1280x512 Flash
640x256 Flash
(Video will play in a pop-up window)

Download
2560x1024 Ogg/Vorbis/Theora

Download
2560x1024 Flash Video
1280x512 Flash Video
640x256 Flash Video

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Looks like drizzle is announced now. I’ve spent a bit of time after work and on lunch breaks helping out here and there, and I’m excited about working on a database project again. Why am I working on the project? Average time from when I write a patch to when it goes into the tree has been measured in minutes, not in hours/days/weeks/months. Yes, I’m running the test suite first. Yes, I’m getting another person to review the code first. This is an example of how adding people to a project can slow it down, and how getting out of the way of the engineers can have amazing results. We set up bug tracker, code hosting, team organization, package build system, mailing list, IRC channel, and more in a matter of minutes, and it has been amazing to see how fast the code is coming in from all over the world. There was truly a pent-up demand for somewhere to be able to freely work on ideas.

If you haven’t read Ian’s paper about the community-agile process, you should. You can see many of the ideas there in how the drizzle project is run. There is lots of work to do, and I think it’s going to be great fun to see how far we can push drizzle. And the code is safely in a FLOSS distributed version control system that I have mirrors of, so nobody can put the code behind a corporate firewall and seal it off - it’s alive and growing and unstoppable. If anyone wants to mirror the code, that is fine and I’ll help you do it.

Sometimes people look at databases as boring, as a solved problem. I’m here to tell you that building interesting applications that have any kind of persistent state is not a solved problem, there are a lot more fantastic ideas to try, and some ideas that have only recently become practical. Check out the code and put up a branch with some ideas of your own!

We don’t have packages for ubuntu yet, but we will be putting up a PPA soon. As you can imagine, there is still a fair amount of work involved in finishing the renaming and making packages that don’t conflict with existing mysql installs.

I have a second blog in which I don’t go on any rants etc, just post technical stuff. I just posted a entry today on Linux memory management, especially with databases. One thing that was confusing to me originally is that, for instance, on an Oracle server, I have a free output like this:


total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 16027 15889 138 0 48 14673
-/+ buffers/cache: 1166 14860
Swap: 5122 486 4636


So there is like 15 gigs cached out of 16 gigs total. Obviously with 2 million oracle processes, it is hard to tell how much memory it is actually using, and I stumbled on the ‘ipcs’ command which lets me see those shared buffer sizes.

If you have a bit more insight into this and can proof read the blog post, that would be great to let me know if I made a mistake. Thanks!

Database Memory Management

While at the last FOSSCamp, I learned that the Debian bug tracking system has a SOAP interface for executing remote procedure calls. I thought it would be useful to use it to search for Debian bug reports related to Ubuntu bugs.

Subsequently, I’ve written a script, part of the ubuntu-qa-tools project, that allows you to do just that. For example, python debian-bug-search.py xserver-xorg-core "Bad valuators" will search the package xserver-xorg-core for bugs with the string “Bad valuators” in them.  I find it much more convenient than opening a new tab in Firefox.  Most importantly, it has helped me find a fair number of related bugs and add upstream bug tasks in Launchpad.

Since I didn’t have any MySQL public courses planned this summer, I’ve been using my work time from the last week in the new eBox website.

I’m still far away from what I’d like, but I’m proud my design skills have improved considerably.

For those of you who still don’t know what it is, eBox is a server for the easy administration of corporate networks. eBox was included with the last release of Ubuntu. See eBox in Ubuntu