OSSMichigan.org - Not quite a planet but a state.

I see what you did there…

2010-03-09T18:19:53+00:00

Brian Murray finds out what makes LP’s new patches view awesome.

Not bad! Karl Fogel is currently working on hiding the Fix Committed and Fix Released bugs by default so it’s more of a queue than a huge pile in your face. I am keen to get more feedback on +patches and how it affects your team so don’t be shy!

Tagged: launchpad, patches, ubuntu

Windows 7 mp3 tag editor

2010-03-08T15:19:01+00:00

I just accidentally found Windows 7’s built in mp3 (and presumably other metadata, exif perhaps) tag editor.

I looked for this thing for what felt like hours over the past year. Eventually I sucked it up and downloaded mp3tag, but its still nice to know that this is there for the next time.

Normally when browsing my mp3 files I see a window that looks like this:

See that summary pane at the bottom? Select a file with editable metadata, like an mp3 and resize that pane. Then click one of the metadata values.

Wow, I wish that had been more discoverable. –1 point for Windows 7 for making that far from intuitive, but 1 point for Windows 7 for having the feature.

Registering SQLAlchemy as a Zope component utility

2010-03-06T17:11:29+00:00

I recently ran into a problem with attempting to register a utility on a site in Zope2.12.

zope.sqlalchemy (ties SQLAlchemy into Zope transactions)
zope.localsitemanager (allows creation of Z3 like sites in Z2)

----------
class ORMUtility(object)
....
self.engine = create_engine("sqlite:///:memory", echo=True)
self.Session = scoped_session(sessionmaker(bind=self.engine, extension=ZopeTransactionExtension()))
----------

After using make_objectmanager_site to turn my Folder (ObjectManager) into a site, I was triggering a INewSiteEvent I was hooking it to register local utilities.

----------
@adapter(INewSiteEvent)
def siteSetup(event):
sm.registerUtility(ORMUtility()...
----------

This would throw an "can't pickle module objects". This error was discussed in a thread on the zope-dev mailing list. https://mail.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/2008-June/032019.html. To summarize, modules introduced in the ORMUtility class, create_engine and scoped_session don't support serialization.

I moved from zope.sqlalchemy to a package called z3c.saconfig. This allowed me register an EngineFactory safely. From what I can tell so far, this packages works like a charm in Zope2.12+Five dispite the z3c namespace.

LINQ Abuse with the C# 4 dynamic type

2010-03-05T03:13:48+00:00

With C# 4 adding some support for dynamic typing one of the first thing that I wanted to do is use it with LINQ.

I want to do this:

dynamic x;
var h = from y in x where y == 1 select y.something;

But I get error messages on both where and select that says

Query expressions over source type ‘dynamic’ or with a join sequence of ‘dynamic’ are not allowed

Major bummer.

But surely there is something I can do.

*the title of this post starts with LINQ abuse… please don’t comment about how stupid and evil this is. I know it. Instead, consider this an exercise in getting to know C# a little better.

The dynamic type is just sugar for the object type and some attributes to which the compiler pays attention.

Lets use object…

object things = new[] { 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7, };
var whatIwant = from thing in things
where thing % 2 == 0
select thing;
// or if you like longhand:
var wiw = things.Where(thing => thing%2 == 0).Select(thing => thing);

How does this compile? Well, by making Where and Select resolve to extension methods on object instead of extension methods on IEnumerable<T> (which is what people USUALLY think of when they think LINQ).

public static IEnumerable<dynamic> Select(this object source, Func<dynamic, dynamic> map)
{
    foreach (dynamic item in source as dynamic)
    {
        yield return map(item);
    }
}
public static IEnumerable<dynamic> Where(this object source, Func<dynamic, dynamic> predicate)
{
    foreach (dynamic item in source as dynamic)
    {
        if (predicate(item))
            yield return item;
    }
}

Extension methods on object, then cast to dynamic (extension methods aren’t allowed on dynamic).

It should be short work to fill out whatever LINQ methods are necessary to make whatever LINQ expressions you wish work against dynamic (object) and now you can use LINQ with a source that is typed dynamic.

Keeping track of patches and getting them visibility!

2010-03-04T16:56:44+00:00

Today the Launchpad team released a feature that some of us on the platform team have been dying to see, the +patches view. This basically gives us another way to look at bugs in Launchpad, but now we can concentrate on bugs with patches attached. And since this is done inside Launchpad, we can use this view to look at packages, teams, people, and distro series. So if you’re doing maintenance on Hardy and want to look at patches submitted for that, you can. We also do a nice view that shows us patches by age, to help prevent the dreaded “patch fell through the cracks”. Here’s what it looks like for Gwibber. We’ve left the fixed bugs in there so that if someone runs into the page and wants to look at it they can (Let us know how we can improve this).

What Needs to Get Finished

There are some limitations. Namely right now it just shows us patches sitting in Launchpad. It currently doesn’t show us what patches are shipping in versions of Ubuntu. This is the bug to follow for this work. If you are passionate about this and want to work on it please get ahold of me and I will point you to the right guys on the Launchpad Bugs team. (Don’t worry Anthony Liguori we won’t forget about you!)

We also have a tool called Harvest that aggregates this information from other distributions and upstreams. It would be nice to suck all this up into this kind of view as well!

My Big Dream

I want this more out there in your face as part of everyone’s workflow. I want one page where every person who packages Upstart to see every patch everywhere in one place for every version. And not just for Upstart either, I want everything in the distro. And I want to know by person, or by team, or by package. We know other distros keep track of all their patches like we do, so let’s shove those in there too. I want to be able to have every patch in a package available as a bzr branch so that any person out there can just cherry pick what they want and apply it in a distro branch and push it out. If you’ve ignored a patch sitting in LP for 1048 days the world should know about it. Not to dime you out, but so other people can help you! That’s my dream anyway.

Many thanks to Karl Fogel, Abel Deuring, Deryck Hodge, and Bryce Harrington for the work they’ve put into this first step. If you’re passionate about getting patches visibility then go grab the launchpad code and come talk to us, we have plenty of work to do to make the rest of the dream happen!

If you’re coming to UDS I am planning on having a session on ways forward from here, so I hope you show up if you want to help!

Tagged: launchpad, patches, upstream

Platial and the Neogeography of the Web

2010-03-03T18:01:33+00:00

Over four years ago, as I experimented with the emerging broad tools for location, mobile, and the web, Platial arose to be the new place to easily share location information. Utilizing the increasingly popular GoogleMaps platform they made it clear that people were going to engage in new and comfortable ways with geospatial technology.

I remember being impressed by Platial and the goal of providing a way for anyone to easily annotate places that mattered to them.When I originally pitched the idea of a “Neogeography” book to O’Reilly it was with the inspiration of Di-Ann’s drive to citizen access to geospatial tools that I considered how people should be able to map their genealogy and share their trips.

As Mikel and I built Mapufacture, we partnered with Platial on several projects. Platial had attempted to make a local information aggregator that never really took off, and so we discussed how to utilize the geospatial data aggregation platform in Mapufacture to provide and aggregate content for Platial. I even helped build and test the Platial developer API using the first iterations of AtomPub and OpenSearch, the results of which can now be seen in Mapufacture’s and GeoCommons’ APIs.

In looking at specifically the GeoWeb landscape, Platial definitely provided a necessary capability of easily allowing people to annotate and share locations. It is the more explicit version of more recent location-sharing tools such as FourSquare, BrightKite, or Latitude that merely ask where you are, not what’s important to you. When Mapufacture was acquired by FortiusOne, the combination of the large head of geographic data in GeoCommons, combined with the very long-tail of aggregated sensor and streaming information provided for mixing disparate datasources and understanding of context and relevance. Users want to collaborate around all types of data, and share insights, find out relevant information, share this with friends, family, coworkers, and their government.

Clearly geographic data is not merely limited to traditional map sources or cartographic outputs. Location is being integrated across all platforms and recognized as a primary component of any data. What differs is the means by which users will interact, create, and use this information depending on their needs, context, and capabilities.

As has been widely reported by the news, GeoCommons is archiving the Platial user data and maps. Users can find their data by visiting the GeoCommons Platial Source page and searching for their username or maps and freely download them or build new maps and widgets. Along the way, perhaps users will also realize the capability of combining their personal information with relevant geographic data – because for example, you should know great surfing spots combined with wave heights and approved recreation areas.

Where to Surf? View full map

Di-Ann, Chris, Jason, Jake, and the rest of the tremendous Platial team have provided an amazing lead in the future of user contributed mapping – and while Platial itself is currently on hiatus, we’re excited that GeoCommons can provide a role in continuing open access to Platial users’ data and easy to use tools for them to visualize, analyze, and share their experiences and insights.

Zeroconfing squid-deb-proxy

2010-03-01T00:11:36+00:00

For Lucid this is how you will set up a caching apt server for machines inside your network.

On the server:

sudo apt-get install squid-deb-proxy avahi-utils

Avahi will now advertise that there is a caching proxy available on your network! Now to tell the rest of your computers to look for it. On the client:

sudo apt-get install squid-deb-proxy-client

You might want to set this up as the demand on the package servers increases over the next 2 months. This is also great for laptops because if a caching proxy is there it will use it, if there isn’t one it won’t care. Thanks Michael Vogt!

Tagged: apt, avahi, squid, ubuntu, zeroconf

Jamalicious

2010-02-26T14:15:19+00:00

Just a reminder that I will be running a “How to Run a Jam” session today in #ubuntu-locoteams at 2100 UTC. Check out the schedule for the other sessions!

EDIT: I can’t spell, fixed.

Tagged: jam, ubuntu

Small testing tip of the day.

2010-02-25T14:16:02+00:00

Yesterday my gwibber crashed (for the first time in like 2 weeks!). Unfortunately apport didn’t fire off so I got confused. I know the .crash files end up in /var/crash so I found them in there and struggled to remember the CLI command to sent off the crash files to launchpad.

Thanks to seb128 I now know that if you double-click on the .crash file in Nautilus it will do the right thing and send off the crash report. Neat and easy!

Tagged: apport, it'llbeadupeanyway, ubuntu

Banshee and Fluendo codecs

2010-02-25T13:05:12+00:00

Warning: the following post will only make sense for those running Ubuntu and semi-bleeding edge software for Ubuntu. Feel free to skip this post if you don’t know what the terms Banshee, PPA, and Fluendo mean. You won’t hurt my feelings one bit.

Last night I learned that Banshee had their new 1.5.4 release. I liked Banshee the last time I used it (until Last.fm support was broken) so I decided to give it a whirl and see what happened.

Unfortunately, this is what happened:

The following extra packages will be installed:
freepats gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad libboo2.0-cil libcdaudio1 libdirac0c2a
libkate1 libmimic0 libmms0 libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil libnotify0.4-cil
libopenspc0 libtaglib2.0-cil libwildmidi0 podsleuth
Suggested packages:
banshee-dbg
The following packages will be REMOVED:
gstreamer0.10-fluendo-plugins
The following NEW packages will be installed:
banshee freepats gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad libboo2.0-cil libcdaudio1
libdirac0c2a libkate1 libmimic0 libmms0 libmono-zeroconf1.0-cil
libnotify0.4-cil libopenspc0 libtaglib2.0-cil libwildmidi0 podsleuth
0 upgraded, 15 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 31.8MB/34.5MB of archives.
After this operation, 40.2MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n

Can anyone tell me why Banshee would want to remove the Fluendo codec in preference to the gstreamer-bad codecs? This doesn’t make any sense to me.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

The Great Gwibber Bugkill

2010-02-22T17:27:26+00:00

For the past month or so Ryan and Ken have been basically rewriting chunks of Gwibber, the social networking client that we’re including in Lucid. As we’re passing Feature Freeze and getting into Alpha3 and soon Beta it’s time to start ratcheting up our bug fixing efforts. Unfortunately we have tons of bug reports from older versions of Gwibber. Check out the list here.

We need volunteers to go through these bugs and see if they’re still a problem. And if not, resolve them.

If you want to Adopt Gwibber and help clean house and tidy things up it would really help Ken and Ryan out so they can concentrate on fixing the bugs that are affecting current users and not weeding out old crashers that probably don’t apply anymore. If you find a bug and want to actually fix it, then please fix it and propose a merge, the team is getting much better at doing reviews.

My current gwibber instance has been running for about 2 weeks and it hasn’t crashed, so we’re definitely improving when it comes to reliability. Now it’s up to us to collectively filter the wheat from the chaff to bring the level of polish people will expect for Lucid.

Tagged: gwibber, ubuntu

Call for Londoner community participation, redux

2010-02-19T00:21:12+00:00

Live in the London UK, area and looking to help Ubuntu? The Canonical design team is looking for volunteers to attend research sessions in London. The dates available are 22 Feb through 5 March. This time around we are looking for technically savvy users, you don’t need to be a sysadmin but you should probably know your PPAs and GPGs. The session
takes approximately one hour and there will be a cash incentive.

Please email canonical.research@googlemail.com if you can participate and someone from the research agency will get in touch with you.

I have created a wiki page for all upcoming testing so if you’re in the area and interested please subscribe to the page!

Tagged: design, ubuntu

Updates from Haiti

2010-02-18T18:03:22+00:00

Tom and Schuyler are wrapping up their first deploy with the World Bank to Haiti. They’ve been doing amazing work in connecting the various participants on the ground in sharing data and providing them with lightweight tools and data from the broader web, CrisisMappers, and CrisisCommons community.

Schuyler has been writing up his experiences but due to connectivity and the large amount of work, they’ve been utilizing Twitter: @schulyer and @buckley_tom, continuing to keep the world up to date on their progress, safety, and insights. They have even managed to get out video discussing the use of OpenStreetMap by UN OCHA and other reconstruction efforts.

The USB Drives and USB Sticks that we sent down have seemed to be incredibly useful. The ability to utilize dynamic information and map interfaces in an offline, or semi-disconnected environment is empowering, while also allowing people to still print their maps with the data. We’re now working on deploying these same tools to Afghanistan and other areas that there has been a large amount of data gathered but not broadly distributed.

Tom and Schuyler head back to the U.S. tomorrow, but the job is far from done. Mikel’s Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (H.O.T.) is looking to deploy at the end of March to provide continue logistics support and begin training Haitians on building and utilizing the maps – much like the MapKibera project. Haiti has perhaps an excellent opportunity to leap-frog the use of open data and technology by empowering the government and people with tools they can use in reconstruction.

The platforms continue to evolve, incorporating lessons learned from user needs, to new data sources, and working in varied environments. We’ll continue to provide data and maps through GeoCommons that are usable by everyone, and distribute tools to anyone who needs them.

Version Control Tools Is More Than Just The Tools

2010-02-17T17:43:38+00:00

Martin Fowler has an excellent post on Version Control, and he almost got all of the way there, but for more than just a tiny development shop I think he missed a few important pieces.

http://martinfowler.com/bliki/VersionControlTools.html

Martin does say that Mercurial and git get most of the attention and that the choice between the two come down to “…the shadow of github.”

He is dead right, but I’d argue that this is where the recommendability starts. github is awesome. Ask anyone who has used it and I’ve rarely heard anything negative said. But for anything but the tiniest organization outsourcing your VCS to github is not a practical option. There could be IP requirements or legal requirements about keeping source private and just the over cautious nature of people is to want to run VCS in house. github is not open source. gitorious is.

http://gitorious.org/about

You can go checkout the source code to gitorious and run your own in your own internal organization. AWESOME!

I’d never heard of the Mercurial hosting project http://bitbucket.org/ until i read Martin’s post. That is great to know that it exists. But…

The most mature solution is something which is also open source, has the best project management implementation, has the best bug tracking implementation and integration and is just all around awesome. Its called Launchpad.

http://launchpad.net/

Yes, the same software that drives launchpad is open source and you can install and run it for your own team, company, organization or however you are structured.

Launchpad is written by open source volunteers as well as employees of Canonical. You can buy support for Launchpad from Canonical. Launchpad uses the lesser known bazaar DVCS. Martin kindly left out the DVCS which is used by the most prominent Linux distribution, ubuntu, and the most prominent open source database software, MySQL.

Just like GIT is not going away, because linux uses it, and Mercurial isn’t going away because python and google use it, bazaar is not going away, because ubuntu and mysql use it.

My point is that the web hub to your code and the tools surrounding how you get to your code is just as important as the base DVCS tool itself. SVN has always been good, but ViewVC makes it great. GIT is good. github makes it great. Launchpad makes bazaar great. It makes bazaar at least as good of a choice as either git or mercurial.

Bug Triage 101

2010-02-16T22:25:21+00:00

You’ve seen the openweek sessions, now see it on your big screen in HOT theora action. Bug Triage 101 is now out on video, thanks to the intrepid folks at the Greater Seattle Linux Users Group. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats.

Watch out Avatar, it is now ON.

Tagged: bugs, gslug, ubuntu, video

Global Jam Training, now on weekends!

2010-02-16T16:00:36+00:00

Due to popular demand I have added another “How to Run a Bug Jam” session on a weekend (6 March) to get more coverage.

Check out the full schedule here.

UPDATE: It’s the 6th of March, I can’t parse dates apparently …

Tagged: jam, ubuntu

Laptop shopping: the next level of hell

2010-02-14T19:10:12+00:00

(or “Why I’m this close to saying ’screw it’ getting a damn Apple”)

I really, really hate laptop shopping. It’s not that I don’t like laptops (far from it); it’s just that laptops aren’t a computing device that you have much control over the construction of the device. I’ve built my own desktop machines for quite some time, and have enjoyed the process, so handing off that level of control to someone else can be a bit maddening, especially when no matter how hard you try, you never find “the perfect laptop”.

JoDee has a laptop that is going on 6 years old now. It’s a sturdy HP machine, but there’s been problems with it lately. So, I’ve been looking around for replacement laptop machines. The laptops I’ve found can roughly be broken down into the following categories:

Apple
Thinkpad
A muddled mess of shit thrown together by monkeys

OK, perhaps that’s a bit harsh, but I’m totally getting frustrated by the whole process. One thing that has exacerbated this hatred for laptops is Linux compatibility. See, there’s an ever-growing list of hardware out there that is supported by Linux, and most of it is supported quite well. But, there’s a continual list of vendors that don’t quite support Linux, and worse, have a stranglehold on certain markets of laptop hardware. The biggest offender of perpetuating shit hardware is Broadcom and their crappy network cards. No, it’s not the cards themselves that are crappy, but the drivers for Linux are essentially cobbled together by dedicated volunteers who are more committed to making stuff work than the vendor themselves. The results vary, but essentially I’d rather be treated like a fist-class citizen by manufacturers like Intel than treated like a refugee. So, anything that ships with Broadcom is essentially banned.

Unfortunately this ban leaves me with half of the laptop market shut-off from me.

Below is a list of the manufacturers and where they stand in my laptop purchases:

Dell: Whenever someone compares the computer industry with the car industry, they’re most assuredly talking about Dell. Dell has certain models that are able to have their network card upgraded (for a nominal fee, but whatever) but most models (notably the models that are sold at places like Best Buy and Microcenter) have a Dell 1397 card installed. That’s Dell code-speak for “Broadcom card”. So purchasing a laptop from Dell is like a crap-shoot or a research project, requiring more time than it’s worth to find the select few models of computer that won’t make me want to tear my hair out later. Thanks, Dell! Also of note, Dell is one of the few mass-market laptop manufacturers to ship a machine with Ubuntu Linux on it. Ironically, that computer ships with the same Linux-hostile Dell 1397. Thanks again, Dell.

HP: HP apparently married Broadcom at some point, because there’s only one model of HP computer (A Compaq POS) that doesn’t ship with a Broadcom card. So that’s essentially out.

Lenovo Thinkpad: When Lenovo bought the IBM fabs for the Thinkpad, they must’ve gotten a requirement from IBM stating that they’d have a billion models with varying degrees of stuff in them, and they’d all be slightly overpriced. Oh, and they’d all look like the Thinkpad from the early 2000’s. The Thinkpad, however, is one of the most Linux friendly machines out there, and their reputation for quality is still there. Plus, if I don’t mention Thinkpad, I’ll get a wedgie from my Thinkpad-loving friends.

Toshiba: I want a laptop, not a 50/50 chance of purchasing either the bes tthing in the world, or the biggest piece of crap known to man. There appear to be no models in-between.

Sony: Moving on.

Asus: Asus appears to have taken a page from IBM / Lenovo for having a billion model numbers, but they do appear to have Linux friendly machines that don’t look like they were put together by a drunken MBA committee. Seriously considering this line of laptops.

Apple: Decidedly non-Linux Friendly, but their hardware and OS “just works”. Most of the software that JoDee uses is available on a Macintosh. Expensive, but definitely on the short-list.

System 76: Ubuntu Linux pre-loaded. Unfortunately they only do mail-order, so I wouldn’t be able to play with the machine beforehand.

So, to summarize, most of the laptops that we’ve seen are complete junk when it comes to Linux, save for Asus, Lenovo, and System 76. It’s great to know that there’s so many choices out there, and that saying “screw it, I’m buying an Apple” is becoming more of a palatable decision for me.

I want to be clear here: Laptop manufacturers are losing customers because of their hardware choices. Unfortunately, that sounds like an angry statement that could have been leveled back in the OS/2 days, but for those folks who care about their hardware, and would like a choice, those choices are few and far between. I’d like to ask laptop manufacturers to please give customers a choice for the hardware on their machines, and I’d like to ask Broadcom to please open up their drivers so the manufacturers don’t have to make these decisions to solely support one set of customers.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

Never run a jam before? Find out how.

2010-02-10T20:56:15+00:00

For those of you wondering how to run an effective Global Jam; I will be running IRC sessions 17 and 26 Feb and on 10 March in #ubuntu-locoteams. The wiki page has all the latest info, hope to see you there!

Adopting Upstreams

2010-02-10T20:53:18+00:00

During Ubuntu Developer Week Daniel and I had a session on how to work better with upstreams.

Part of this work has been improving documentation on how upstreams can find help with what they need, and on the other side of the coin empowering our contributors to be more useful to upstreams. One of these projects is Adopt A Package, where a bug person can take ownership of a package and work specifically on improving it’s situation.

Here’s the page for Nautilus. You’ll note that the team is also keeping a log of the work they’re doing. If you have a favorite package that you would like to adopt, consider joining the team!

If you have more questions, Sense Hofstede and I will be running sessions on #ubuntu-classroom next month (11 March and 18 March) to share tips and tricks! See the Classroom Schedule for more details.

Tagged: bugs, ubuntu, upstream

Global Jam

2010-02-09T20:58:37+00:00

It’s that time again folks, sign up your LoCo. “But Jorge, your LoCo isn’t on there either!” you say, well, that’s because this is the time we start to plan and looking for venues, finding out what kind of jam you want to do and start preparations for the weekend of 26-28 March.

This would also be a good time for your LoCo to find if there’s a hackerspace in your area and get involved in their development. Also, this is the first time we’re having … upgrade jams, where people can concentrate on the upgrade experience.

If you have questions I’m in #ubuntu-locoteams!

Tagged: global jam, loco, ubuntu

Lucas Nussbaum on the Debian/Ubuntu relationship

2010-02-09T17:52:32+00:00

In case you missed it, Lucas has put up the slides to his talk about Debian and Ubuntu at FOSDEM. I did not attend the talk but look forward to the discussion on how people received it. When people ask me about it I usually start of with “It’s complicated.” Not because that’s an excuse, but that the relationship involves many people in many projects. This isn’t a 1:1 mapping, it’s a many:many mapping involving people all around the world. Debian as a whole is over 1,000 people, so anything involving working relationships will naturally not be a straightforward answer.

Regardless this is a good opportunity out there for me to remind Debian Developers that they can ping always us at debian@ubuntu.com for issues or snag one of us at Debconf.

Tagged: debian, ubuntu

Its 2010 and there is still not a good audio manager

2010-02-09T16:33:03+00:00

Its 2010 and iTunes is still slow. Windows Media Player does this 5-20 times a day:

So there are no good comprehensive media library managers.

Its sad but true. I think tomorrow I’ll be going back to using foobar2000 for my audio listening. WMP12 was so so so close for me, but this issue is a show stopper.

Data Dissemination to the Haiti Government

2010-02-08T15:09:42+00:00

In a joint project with the World Bank, USAID, and numerous other partners, there are now 6 TB hard drives on the ground in Haiti with mapping tools and satellite and remote imagery data being shared with the Haitian government. Read more about the project on the FortiusOne blog.

Schuyler Erle and Tom Buckley will be heading down on Tuesday to provide on the ground support between the government agencies and the community.

A tremendous thank you to the numerous individuals and groups that helped and provided tools or data: World Bank, San Diego State University / Calit2, Internet2, Georgetown University, DigitalGlobe, Delta State University, Sahaha, Crisis Mappers, OpenStreetMap, NOAA, Ushahidi, DevelopmentSeed, TelaScience, STAR-TIDES, CrisisCommons, USAID, GeoCommons, OpenSGI, GeoEye.

Social By Default….

2010-02-06T19:28:05+00:00

Shane blogged about the me menu, I want to show you the full blown experience. Thanks to the intense amount of hard work by Ryan Paul and Ken Vandine, we now have this:

They’ve fixed major parts. Moving to desktopcouch has made the application more stable, use less memory, and syncable with your computers. This is the version of Gwibber we’ve all been waiting for. Unfortunately Ken just got on a plane so for Lucid you’ll have to wait until Monday. They should be in the latest PPA though ….

Tagged: gwibber, ubuntu

Application Indicator Update

2010-02-06T19:08:46+00:00

People ask “what’s the big deal about application indicators, they’re just little icons!” As it turns out, when you drain a swamp you can make cool things. KDE applications support StatusNotifier already so Aurélien Gâteau has started landing fixes that will make things like this possible:
Check out the video here.
(Sorry, I failed at video tag and I’m at the airport so I went with the easy fix)

What you see here in the middle is Rhythmbox, ported by Cody Russell (upstreamed patch), then Kopete, and Kmix. You’ll notice that since we’re running GNOME the KDE apps look LIKE THEY SHOULD. If you run KDE and run rhythmbox it will look like IT SHOULD. Nice and “nativey”.

More accessability, and note how he’s scrubbing through the menus with his keyboard.
For third party applications of the world this means they can support one “linux” thing.
Everything behaves the same in both desktops and everything is consistent.
My tray doesn’t feel like a back alley.

We have work to do, the stuff in the old notification tray (on the left in my video) need to be ported. We have committed to fixing the things in main for this cycle. Here you will find a list of bugs of apps we’ve listed to so far. I’ve filed corresponding wishlist bugs in upstream GNOME Bugzilla. If you want to help with this, it’s not considered done until it’s submitted upstream – we also offer a fallback method so that application maintainers can support both with minimal effort.

Find more about our rationale, guidelines, and porting guide here.

PLEASE FEEL FREE to check into application indicator support for your favorite apps in Universe, we need help to figure out which apps people love and want support for. We’ll handle the things on the CD, but we need help to catch all the little fish too. Even filing wishlist bugs and tagging them would be a help.

If you have an upstream with questions, send them to me or #ayatana and we’ll be there to support their efforts, we want people to use this. If you want to go ahead and just port an application then this is an excellent way to get something slick into user’s hands.

Tagged: gnome, kde, ubuntu

double.IsNaN is 100 times slower

2010-02-05T20:16:43+00:00

Its not just your programming group that can’t get it right. I work in a semi-disfunctional group on contract for a client who, not matter how hard we try, doesn’t seem to listen to basic software engineering principles.

I feel a little better (and a great deal worse after thinking about it) when I see that the largest software company in the world deals with some of the same problems.

I found this gem in the WPFToolkit (it is MSPL) source.

// The standard CLR double.IsNaN() function is approximately 100 times slower than our own wrapper,
// so please make sure to use DoubleUtil.IsNaN() in performance sensitive code.
// PS item that tracks the CLR improvement is DevDiv Schedule : 26916.
// IEEE 754 : If the argument is any value in the range 0×7ff0000000000001L through 0×7fffffffffffffffL
// or in the range 0xfff0000000000001L through 0xffffffffffffffffL, the result will be NaN.
public static bool IsNaN(double value)
{
    NanUnion t = new NanUnion();
    t.DoubleValue = value;

    ulong exp = t.UintValue & 0xfff0000000000000;
    ulong man = t.UintValue & 0×000fffffffffffff;
    return (exp == 0×7ff0000000000000 || exp == 0xfff0000000000000) && (man != 0);
}

My jaw was open pretty far for quite a few seconds as I read this.

Introducing “Squid Deb Proxy”

2010-02-05T04:33:21+00:00

I’ve blogged in the past about a squid configuration so you can cache debs on a server for use on your local network. Perennial apt-god Michael Vogt has now added squid-deb-proxy to the archive.

You are now one command away from a rock solid caching solution. Here’s the config if you want to check it out. Just in time for an LTS. Squid has been rock solid for me with a similar configuration.

We were chatting about this and we both came to the conclusion that the next step is to connect this to avahi for the win. I’m sure conference organizers would love it! If you’re interested in adding this feature feel free to branch it in Launchpad and bust it out as Michael will be rocking the Software Center.

Tagged: squid, ubuntu

OMSI Visit (Yes, they have a T. Rex)

2010-02-04T22:14:03+00:00

A bunch of us went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry since we’re in Portland.

We got to see Samson, a T. Rex, and to my delight, they let me clean up a real fossil. Dinosaurs are awesome.

From OMSI 2010

Here I am cleaning up a Juvenile Triceratops horn. This specimen’s name was Brokenhorn.

From OMSI 2010

A hungry velociraptor devours Colin Watson:

From OMSI 2010

and of course, Smilodon is always nice to see:

From OMSI 2010

Rest of the pics are here.

Tagged: dinosaurs, omsi, portland

F-Spot Jam time

2010-02-03T20:08:43+00:00

Round 7 of 100 papercuts is ready to go, with this set concentrating on the default photo editor, F-Spot. If you’re interested, grab a bug and rock it.

Tagged: f-spot, papercuts, ubuntu

Karl Fogel on Bugs

2010-01-30T23:13:59+00:00

Karl Fogel works on Launchpad’s Bugs team. He’s also famous for a bunch of other stuff. Since he’s not syndicated on Planet Ubuntu I would like to point out his post on bugs and tech debt, which is a useful read for everyone!

(Thanks Gabriel Burt for sharing this on greader!)

Tagged: bugs, iworkwithawesomepeople, launchpad

An Application of iPad

2010-01-30T16:57:45+00:00

I really hate the timing of this post, but the ideas are fresh in my head. You can consider this ‘just another iPad post’ if you want.

Ever taken a survey on the streets from someone with a PC style tablet? I’ve taken a few. I’m always surprised by the hardware choice. For some things, it seems like a clipboard and paper would be better.

At work, there is an upcoming project that involves something like the above. Here is why I think the iPad is a better choice. It mostly comes down to boring IT Operations reasons, aka management of the underlying platform.

With iPad, you never have to defragment your disk.
With iPad, you never have to run antivirus or update antivirus definitions.
With iPad, you never have to run anitspyware or update antispyware definitions.
With iPad, there is no moving and spinning disk which is prone to higher failure.
With iPad, you don’t have to worry about some slick-kid or script kiddie downloading and installing some crazy software that turns your computer into a bot or even just overwrites important files preventing you from booting the next time.
With iPad, you don’t have to worry about not having a replacement part available if a piece of hardware fails.
With iPad, the user will have a more familiar experience. Given the prevalence of iPhone, it is likely that an end user will understand many of the touch and drag gestures.
With iPad, there is no stylus like the PC Tablets of old.
With iPad, there is a very clear future. When was the last time apple canceled a product line? Newton? Ok, how about under Jobs? I’ve no idea.

I’m as anti-fud as any person that I know. Yes, the above is definitely anti-windows fud cited by Mac and Linux lovers everywhere and normally I’m the first person to refute it. However, I think under that fud there are tiny grains of truth. For certain applications those bits of truth are highly amplified. It is a different risk vector. These things become very important and translate directly to cost of ownership.

Notice that I’ve listed no pros or cons for iPad as a general purpose device. I don’t care to go there. I’ve also not mentioned if there is much of a market for the above use case (there isn’t enough to sustain the device alone). These are all things to be answered elsewhere. My point in short: here is a use case if you have been wondering for what kind of things iPad can be used.

New Laptop: Setting up Email

2010-01-29T02:23:47+00:00

And my email configuration addiction continues. As you may recall, I did an extensive (now out-dated) post about my email setup. I’m still using the basic configuration outlined there (all of the same programs) just some of my settings have changed a little. I tend to make little changes every now and then which I think will save me a tiny amount of time wet-ware processing my email. Below I outline how I am making the transition to new machines/installs easier for my email setup.

Restore Config Files

With the purchase of a new laptop, I have to re-setup my email’s (and other applications’) configuration. Luckily, I keep all of my configuration files in version control which is synced between 3 computers; my old laptop, my desktop, and my webserver (for mostly backup purposes, but also for imapfilter). All I had to do was run the following very basic commands:

mkdir src cd src bzr branch greg@my.server.net:/home/greg/src/dotfiles . bzr branch greg@my.server.net:/home/greg/src/scripts . cd scripts ./restore_email_apps.sh ./restore_symlinks_desktop.sh

The first 5 things are pretty self-explanatory: make a directory called “src,” go in there, then create 2 branches of the bzr repos for dotfiles and scripts.

Then, lets run two of the scripts in ~/src/scripts/.

restore_email_apps.sh is really just an easy way for me to remember which applications I use for email and its supported functions. The contents of that shell script is merely:
sudo aptitude install mutt-patched offlineimap msmtp abook
Yep, thats it.

The restore_symlinks_desktop.sh file is a little more involved. Basically, since I keep all of my dotfiles in a bzr repo called ~/src/dotfiles I need to tell the associated applications where to find those files. Well, I don’t really tell the applications, I trick them. I create symbolic links from where they are expecting the file to where I actually keep it. This is a common trick for these types of setups. In fact, if you didn’t want to use a traditional version control system to handle the versioning/syncing between computers you could store your dotfiles in your Ubuntu One folder and then they will be synced automatically. So, restore_symlinks_desktop.sh goes and creates all of those symlinks for me.

offlineimap

Now, you may have noticed that I use offlineimap with my email system. I won’t go into all of the benefits of offlineimap here, but the main ones that I enjoy are: local really fast storage of my mail (vs online) and brain-less email backups (its already backed up already).

However, using offlineimap creates one speed bump in this email setup; you need to redownload all of your email again, which, if you are like me and don’t delete anything (just put it in an Archive folder) then this can take a long time depending on your mail server. And, if you use gmail’s servers, they can lock you out of IMAP access if you download too much. Luckily, offlineimap is pretty robust and allows you to get around that problem fairly easily.

Note: I have only done this with offlineimap using the MailDir format so I don’t know what would be different for the other formats. Also, I haven’t seen any other guides like this online which is A) why I wrote this out and B) makes me wonder if this is bad for some reason [I did this over 5 days ago and haven't lost any email yet].

Anyway, here is what I did:

1) copy my .maildb folder from one computer which had a recent sync to my new laptop using a local LAN. I did this using rsync so it would compress during transit, because even at 10 megs a second, 6 gigs is a lot to transfer.
rsync -e 'ssh -ax' -auhvz --progress greg@192.168.1.102:/home/greg/.maildb/ /home/greg/.maildb/

2) rename the MailDir format email files to reflect the new computer’s hostname. The files look like this:
1264133355_0.24102.alexandria,U=3422,FMD5=e727b00944f81e1d0a95c12886ac4641:2,S
That “alexandria” part is the hostname of my desktop. So, I need to change that to “zen” so it looks like this:
1264133355_0.24102.zen,U=3422,FMD5=e727b00944f81e1d0a95c12886ac4641:2,S
But I need to do that for ALL of my email. find and xargs to the rescue!
find . -name '*' -type f -print0 | xargs -0 rename -v 's/alexandria/zen/'

3) setup offlineimap; ie: install and configure your email accounts. This is already done for me by running those two scripts above. Note: Make sure your ~/.offlineimap folder is empty (ie: don’t copy it over from your old computer).

3b) A big change from my last email setup is that I am now checking one of my mail account (grossmeier.net) over ssh. Basically, offlineimap ssh’s to the server, then runs an imap server (in my case, rimap). I followed the instructions set out here: http://eagain.net/blog/2007/02/09/imap-over-ssh.html (changing the pertinent parts about the imap service on the server, of course).

4) run offlineimap. You should see it SCREAM through your email archive as it adds the metadata to its .offlineimap folder from the local maildir you just copied to the machine.

There ya go. Now when you get a new machine and you use offlineimap to sync your email you don’t need to re-download all of your email again.

Great job everyone!

2010-01-29T02:13:19+00:00

If this comments like the ones left in this story are indicative of how we’re going to present ourselves to users then we should just get it over with and treat them like this.

Thank you for making our jobs harder, the bugs aren’t enough!

Tagged: facepalm, nicejob, notadvocacy

New Laptop

2010-01-28T00:52:10+00:00

I finally broke down and purchased a new laptop.

My old trusty companion was a System76 Darter Ultra (revision 2). It was a great little machine with a 12.1″ screen, as much processor and RAM (4gig after purchase) as I need, and Ubuntu pre-installed. I can’t say enough about the people at System76; a small company out of Denver, Colorado where you know pretty much the whole company by first name. Carl is the owner; Tom is the guy answering your support questions; Erik is in charge of sales; and one of their daughters or nieces helps stuff envelopes on the weekends. I’m sure there are more people involved, but those three people I have had personal communication with via email and/or phone and every time it was great.

Why am I telling you how much I love System76? Because I feel bad not sticking with them for my latest purchase. I now have a Lenovo X200s. Another 12.1″ screen machine that is really light and works great.

Why did I switch my supplier? Honestly, because I wanted a machine that had a little better structural build quality (my Darter was a MSI barebones and started having structural issues near its 3rd year of life) and the X200s is just a little “better” (lighter and higher resolution).

So far, everything is working great out of the box*! The best part is I had a 160gig Intel SSD waiting to be put in it when it arrived. As soon as I replaced the harddrive I installed Lucid using a USB flash drive which was extremely quick. What that means is I never booted the original drive and thus never even saw the Windows 7 logo. :)

This machine, with the SSD drive, simply just screams. Best upgrade investment I ever made.

Action pics:

writing this blog post at my work office:

* The only thing not working correctly is two finger scrolling using the nipple and third mouse button (there is no trackpad). I tried the adding the hal quirk identified here, but it didn’t work. Haven’t messed with it too much, really.

You sound like you’re from London!

2010-01-26T15:23:16+00:00

The Canonical design team is looking for volunteers in London to participate in user testing.

The testing will take place this Friday (29 Jan) during the day and extends all through next week, if you have the time to participate, please email iain at canonical.com directly and he will give you all the information you need.

They’d like a variety of users, so if you’re an expert but your spouse isn’t then you should both come. There will be a paid incentive for volunteers who participate.

There will be heavy testing of Empathy. If you meet these criteria we could use a hand:

People who don’t have an account with Empathy (who will be setting one up for the test)
People who use the Ubuntu version of Empathy
People who use the Upstream version of Empathy

In memoriam: Grandma Maloney

2010-01-23T04:46:49+00:00

Earlier this month my family and I laid to rest my grandmother. She was in deteriorating health in her later years, and two Sundays ago, her long fight with emphysema ended at the hospice. Her funeral was beautiful, and I’m grateful for those who offered their condolences and paid their respects.

Grandma was a very interesting person. Even as a kid I knew that she wasn’t like the prototypical matronly figure of most families. Sure she did all the things that grandmas do for their grandchildren: cook meals, bake various confections, and spoil the hell out the grandkids with various trinkets and toys, but there was a side of grandma that she didn’t generally bring out around me. For her, I was somehow insulated from her real world. Somehow I remained special in her eyes, and very much the young kid that looked forward to playing Yahtzee (even though she’d get a frustrated with my lack of counting skills when it came to tallying up the scoresheets). Grandma also had opinions about things. Sometimes they were spot on, but other times even my young mind would wonder where the heck these opinions came from. One thing was always crystal clear, though: if she liked you, she would respect you. I’m fortunate to say that I always felt respected and loved by my grandma.

Hers was a simple like. She cut hair for a living over at the old Hudson’s building in downtown Detroit. When she retired many years later, she would still cut people’s hair at her place. She had the most amazing “mind-control-device” hair dryer for drying permanents, which I still remember to this day.

She loved to garden. Her house was a veritable jungle of plants, all carefully staked and tended. If it had roots, she could make it grow. She could tell plants apart that to this day I can barely see any difference. And her nemesis was the squirrels in the back yard. She would devises all sorts of schemes to keep them away from her garden, especially her peach tree. She’d hang pie-plates on the branches to the point where the tree was a veritable mobile. One particular event I remember was when she had finally had it with the squirrels and her peach tree. She decided (how, I’m not entirely sure) to make the tree unpalatable for the little buggers. So, she dutifully spread tabasco sauce all over the tree. Needless to say, the tree didn’t have to worry about squirrels any longer.

Her love of life, her candor, and her smile will always be remembered by those who loved her. Like Dad says, she’s up in heaven watching Lawrence Welk live.

Thank you, Grandma, for everything.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

Docs for upstreams and docs for how to work with upstreams.

2010-01-22T20:16:11+00:00

I’ve got a double shot for you today.

As part of my cycle goals I have (mostly) finished the cut of the upstream section of our wiki docs. Sometimes I get a mail from an upstream project who has no idea how Ubuntu works, but they want to get their software into Ubuntu to get it out in people’s hands. They have no idea what SRU, PPAs, and all that other stuff is.

This document kind of gives you an overview of Ubuntu development that you as an upstream care about. So if you’ve ever run into “hey how do we get this fix into Ubuntu?” then this will steer you in the right direction. Ubuntu development can be a bit daunting to step your foot into so I hope this helps people figure out what they need to do to get in Ubuntu.

The next bit is the “Adopt a Package“. The great bit about this is there’s already people out there doing this, so we’re putting together a place where we can share information on best practices so we can be more efficient and weeding through old bugs and making sure that upstream bugs go to the right place. We’ve also put together a nice set of recommendations on how to talk to upstreams to make the work easier for everyone.

Many thanks to everyone who’s helped on this, especially Bruno Girin, Daniel Holbach and Sense Hofstede.

Tagged: bugsquad, ubuntu, upstreams

Core missions and all that.

2010-01-22T02:00:40+00:00

I am surprised at some of the backlash towards the Mozilla folks on the internet for not just “getting over it” and shipping a H.264 decoder in Firefox.

It’s important to remember that fighting for this “open internet” thing is really what their core mission is all about. I totally respect that and I’m really glad that they’re around, because I get the feeling that without an organization like this that we wouldn’t even be arguing about the codec implementation part, we would just be doomed to begin with.

On the other hand as a Linux user I personally am glad that at least I have something better today than I did yesterday. You see, today a bunch of videos on YouTube that normally crush my machine kind of “just work” today or are on their way to working. Ok kind of. If I use Google’s Chrome build or I install the nonfree codecs from the Chromium PPA it just works. But at some point someone will think “Let’s see, wrestle with the 687 ways people think they can get Flash to work reliably, or just install this other browser … hmmm”

On something like a netbook or thin client this is a big deal. The ability for people to watch video on the internet is a major use case, and it’s been a pain point for people like me for as long as we can remember. Am I cheering for open video? Of course I am.

But I’ve also got realistic expectations. We’re always going to struggle with file formats and open standards, but at least today it feels like we’re making a step in the general direction. Did anyone realistically think that they would wake up one day and YouTube was going to be HTML5 with Ogg Theora? Sure, we all wanted that, and I also wanted the Red Wings to have a winning season this year. :-/

I want Theora to be successful, but I personally encode all my things in H.264 because that seems to be what everyone else is using and I get hardware acceleration on all my devices.

So yeah, I’m not really helping the cause, but people shouldn’t flame the Mozilla guys for sticking to their guns — it’ll be great in a few years when someone decides that the entire internet needs to pay the H.264 license piper, maybe by then we’ll “get over it”!

On a related note, anyone know what’s up with this?

Tagged: google, html5, mozilla, youtube

Burndown Haiku

2010-01-20T20:47:18+00:00

Dark black line, I hate
Low hanging fruit, cannot find
Is it far too late?

Tagged: haiku, ubuntu

Grassroots Crisis development organization

2010-01-18T19:21:20+00:00

On Saturday, CrisisCamp Haiti was a revolutionary step that was indubitably a success. Within 3 days of an idea a small group of people helped coordinate and run a series of CrisisCamp Haiti code-a-thons across 5+ cities, over 400 participants, and at least 20 continuous hours of work. At least 6 projects were started, and many more existing projects added people to their community, taught new skills, and built out new features.

In general, the last week has involved a whirlwind of grassroots organization and development of numerous projects. This change of realtime engagement and response by volunteers and non-traditional organizations through internet has no doubt raised the hackles, or at least the concern, of traditional responders, agencies, and government. There are often voiced considerations of causing confusion, providing technology that will have no use, and lack of organization and hierarchy.

Even within these grassroots participants there are calls for centralization, and building chains of responsibility that are somewhat antithesis to the very mechanism by which the project started and how it acts. Many of these projects formulated from simple ideas, growth through passion, an aligned community, and freedom to explore ideas and vet these within the organization. Over time the best ideas crystalize and become part of the long term project and others spin out to new projects.

It’s about the Mindshare and Multiplied Resources

In the beginning of a Crisis response there is an intense desire for people to engage and provide some type of resource: money, time, guidance, knowledge, contacts. At the same time, there is the alternate side of organizations seeking these vast, and limited, resources. Aid agencies put out SMS shortcodes for donations, PayPal links, matching funds. First responders need time, physical labor, and fortitude. Technology projects seek knowledge, translation, testing, documentation, data, integration.

Perhaps uniquely, technology has the possibility of multiplying any individuals efforts. By providing code, or data, and aggregating that data out, my contribution can feed into numerous other projects – whereas time or money is nominally a single use resource. It can buy water, or work for an hour moving rubble, and that’s all that resource can do for that time.

So a perceived problem is in bifurcation and redundancy of efforts and confusion. This can largely be mitigated by open collaboration, and easily sharing data through interchanges. Projects like the People Finder is slowly converging on this type of solution through the use of PFIF exchange and common aggregation points with API’s.

We’re working on improving the CrisisCommons.org site and wiki in order to track active projects, aggregate similar efforts and point volunteers to project homes to join their individual communities.

mitechie

2010-01-18T01:07:16+00:00

I’ve been playing with Turbogear2 (TG2) for some personal tools that help me get work done. One of the things I’ve run into is an important missing feature that my work code has that isn’t in my TG2 application yet.

In my PHP5 app for work, I use the Doctrine ORM and I have post insert, update, delete hooks that will actually go in and log changes to the system. It works great and I can build up a history of an object over time to see who changes which fields and such.

With my TG2 app doing inserts and updates I initiall just faked the log events by manually saving Log() objects from within my controllers as I do the work that needs to be done.

This sucks though since the point is that I don’t have to think about things. Anytime code changes something it’s logged. So I had to start searching the SqlAlchemy (SA) docs to figure out how to duplicate this in TG2. I wanted something that’s pretty invisible. In my PHP5 code I have a custom method I can put onto my Models in case I want to override the default logged messages and such.

I found part of what I’m looking for in the SA MapperExtension. This blog post got me looking in the right direction. The MapperExtension providers a set of methods to hook a function into. The hooks I’m interested in are the ‘after_delete’, ‘after_insert’, ‘after_update’ method. These are passed in the instance of the object and a connection object so I can generate an SQL query to manually save the log entry for the object.

So I have something that looks a little bit like this:

from sqlalchemy.orm.interfaces import MapperExtension

class LogChanges(MapperExtension):

    def after_insert(self, mapper, connection, instance):
        query = "INSERT INTO log ( username, \
            type, \
            client_ip, \
            application ) VALUES( '%s', %d, '%s', '%s')" % ( u"rick",
                4,
                u'127.0.0.1',
                u'my_app')

        connection.execute(query)

Then I pass that into my declarative model as:

__mapper_args__ = {'extension': LogChanges()}

This is very cool and all, but it’s not all the way where I want to head. First, the manual SQL logging query kind of sucks. I have an AppLog() model that I just want to pass in some values to to create a log entry. I’m thinking what I really should do is find a different way to do the logging itself. I’m debating between actually doing a separate logging application that I would call with the objects details.

The problem with this is that one of the things I do in my current app is store the old values of the object. This way I can loop through them and see which values actually changed and generate that in the log message. This is pretty
darn useful.

The other downside is that I don’t have a good way to have a custom logging message generator is I just call a Logging app API.

So I think I might try out the double db connection methods that SA and TG2 support. This way I could actually try to use the second db instance with a Logging() object to write out the changes without messing up the current session/unit of work.

The missing part here is that I’m still not really sure how to get the ‘old’ object values in order to generate a list of fields that have been changed. Guess I have some more hacking to do.

mitechie

2010-01-16T02:29:20+00:00

Today is moving day. I’ve run my own blog for a long while. I had a s9y blog setup and for the last year I’ve managed something like 2 posts. I want to get back into blogging as I’ve actually been doing some fun stuff. I also want to bring together my tech posting and my woodwork posting into one place. It’s just easier to manage and hopefully it’ll get me posting more often.

It looks like migrating my old posts is going to be a chore. We’ll see how that goes later on. If you want to follow along realize there will be more non-tech content in the blog so subscribe to the tech category if you don’t want the misc stuff.

Now to get working on some new posts about the various projects I’ve been hacking on lately.

Did my bit.

2010-01-15T18:11:21+00:00

This is one of my favorite charities, here’s their report if you are interested.

Haiti Mapping

2010-01-15T12:56:09+00:00

The last 2 days have been filled with coordinating various efforts in gathering information and volunteers responding to the massive Haiti earthquakes of January 12. The analysis team at FortiusOne has put together a news dashboard highlighting the event and current response efforts.

There have been several tremendous groups that have actively been contributing data and tools both with remote developers and responders on the ground. CrisisMappers, CrisisCommons, Ushahidi, OpenStreetMap, just to name a few.

Many data providers have been making their data freely available. This is most notable when looking at Mikel’s screenshots of OpenStreetMap before the quake and after volunteers began tracing over historic maps and newer satellite imagery from Digital Globe and GeoEye.

Other efforts:

Ushahidi Haiti is crowd-sourcing reports. You can send a text message to 447624802524, send an email to haiti@ushahidi.com, or send a tweet with the hashtag/s #haiti or #haitiquake.
The CrisisCommons Wiki has a list of available data and organizations
Sahana has a form to list offices and organizations that are working on the ground
GeoCommons search for Haiti has all the datasets and maps that people have contributed for download as Spreadsheet, Shapefile, KML, and more
OpenStreetMap’s Project Haiti has a list of datasets and people tracing data

Showcasing Free Culture

2010-01-12T15:09:22+00:00

It’s that time of the year, where we ask for contributions to the Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase.

If you have your Ubuntu CD handy there is a directory of example content on there. In there you’ll find a video or audio submission from someone who entered last time. Check out some past winners.

Note: There won’t be any pictures this time around, just a video and an audio bit. For photos please submit your entry to the ubuntu-artwork flickr group as part of the wallpaper contest for Lucid.

My Whole App is a LINQ Expression

2010-01-10T20:53:03+00:00

I just published an application which I consider useful over on codeplex with source hosted on launchpad.

http://wlanchannelinfo.codeplex.com/

https://code.edge.launchpad.net/~evarlast/+junk/WlanChannelInfo

I wrote this because Wifi in my home is very slow. Its so slow I’m tempted to run a network cable to my couch so that even when I’m couch surfing I can have fast access to my server.

In an effort to diagnose my slow Wifi, I tried to see if my neighbors were causing interference by running Wifi on the same or overlapping channel as me. I downloaded netstumbler; it didn’t work. I downloaded some other tool; neither did it.

So I wondered how hard it would be to write my own. It turns out Windows 7 added to the Wlan* api to expose all of the necessary data. After some digging I found the managedwlan project on codeplex. Now I got to play.

Once I figured out the api, I was able to write the entire application with pretty much one LINQ expression:

var client = new WlanClient();
var retval =
from wlanIface in client.Interfaces
from bssentry in wlanIface.GetNetworkBssList()
from network in wlanIface.GetAvailableNetworkList(Wlan.WlanGetAvailableNetworkFlags.IncludeAllAdhocProfiles)
where InterfaceService.GetStringForSSID(network.dot11Ssid) == InterfaceService.GetStringForSSID(bssentry.dot11Ssid)
select new WifiInfo
{
bssentry = GetStringForSSID(bssentry.dot11Ssid),
channel = Wifi.FrequencyChannelMap[bssentry.chCenterFrequency],
frequency = bssentry.chCenterFrequency,
linqQuality = bssentry.linkQuality,
strength = bssentry.rssi,
signalQuality = network.wlanSignalQuality,
wifitype = network.dot11BssType
};

The result of that expression is directly databound to a WPF DataGrid and I can now view the data that I want to.

I really love the platform (C#+.NET) on which I work.

From Rush to R30 – A listening retrospective: Hold Your Fire

2010-01-08T04:15:28+00:00

Continuing the ever-popular, and semi-regular series of reviewing all of the Rush studio albums from Rush to R30 (and possibly dipping in to Snakes and Arrows, since I’m so damn late with this series), I bring you the latest installment, and quite possibly the most important Rush album of all time; at least, if you were a high school student in the late ’80’s with a penchant for technical synthesizer-based music.

Much like your first kiss, you never forget your first Rush album. “Hold Your Fire” was that album for me. Released while I was still in high school, it was the album that sparked my love of Rush; and while I think (with rare exception) just about any Rush album would serve this purpose, I feel fortunate that I found Rush with “Hold your Fire”. This album has a very mature keyboard sound to it, and while the drum parts aren’t too over-the-top, they’re definitely challenging (especially to a fledgling drummer like myself learning for the first time of Neil Peart). This album also showcases a few overdubs that the band didn’t replicate in concert. I’m not sure if it was the first, but it started showing (for me) that the band was pushing their limits.

Having heard of Rush from one of the other drummers (Joe Dematta), I headed over to Harmony House and debated on which album to pick up. I generally defer to the latest album that a band has released (sometimes to my own peril). At the time, “Hold Your Fire” was the absolute latest, and Rush was in their 1980’s new-wave looking best (save for Geddy Lee, who had a haircut that looked more like Daniel Boone than anything). At first play the album sounded so simple. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I think it was along the lines of Dragonforce-esque drum playing. What I heard was a damn good, dare I say it, _pop_ album. Surely this couldn’t be the vaunted Rush that I had heard of. Thankfully, I pressed onward, and every chance that I could, I asked my parents for money to buy Rush tapes (at the princely price of ~$5 each from Meijer. A bargain). So with the stepping stone of “Hold Your Fire”, I was off. And here we go:

Force Ten: A tour-de-force to start off the album. This is quite a driving piece of music that never fails to get me in the mood to sit back and enjoy the rest of the album

Time Stand Still: One of their more popular songs. The video is pretty trippy, and the first time I saw it I wondered what the hell Rush was smoking when they made it. Definitely one of the touchstone songs of my life as it flies past.

Open Secrets: A bit of a sleeper on this album. I still think the lyric “I should have looked at your face instead” is a bit of a childish taunt, but it makes perfect sense in the context of the rest of the song.

Second Nature: “Folks are basically decent, conventional wisdom would say. Well, we read about the exceptions in the papers every day”. A moving song, and one that never fails to make me think about the place I share in this world.

Prime Mover: Driving and rocking. I love this song.

Lock and Key: Not much of a fan of this particular song. I pretty much wait for the next song, which is practically a theme song for me:

Mission: Not sure what to say about this song, other than I believe every single word of it, and would play it every single day if it wouldn’t ever get stale. Also, Neil Peart’s marimba and drum part near the middle of this song is freaking unbelievable, even though it’s slightly overdubbed. Hearing it played live is absolutely amazing.

Turn the page: Not a cover of Bob Seger, despite the similarity of titles. Geddy is on fire on this song, and the track just bristles with energy. Another favorite.

Tai Shan: Quiet and meditative. Excellent usage of samples. Quite a departure from your standard Rush fare, and a shining example of the musicianship present in this band.

High Water: A satisfying conclusion to a great album. Neil’s drum part in this song was a perennial practicing favorite of mine.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

I’m Lazy And I Need My Helpers

2010-01-08T02:27:48+00:00

public static class NumericExtensions
{
public static bool IsZero(this byte number)
{
return 0==number;
}
public static bool IsZero(this short number)
{
return 0==number;
}
public static bool IsZero(this int number)
{
return 0==number;
}
public static bool IsZero(this long number)
{
return 0==number;
}
public static bool IsZero(this float number)
{
return 0==number;
}
public static bool IsZero(this double number)
{
return 0==number;
}
public static bool IsZero(this decimal number)
{
return 0==number;
}
}

I wanted something like this today as I was toggling between NUnit and MSTest. Sure, Assert.That( something, Is(0) ) is readable, but its not portable. Its NUnit only, and for this project, I can’t do that. I also like the english reading of IsZero() vs. Is(0)

I think I’ve stated before that any code on this blog (c) by me and licensed under the MIT/X11 License, but for certain bits of code, I see no point in that. So I’m going to start tagging code with CC0, Unlicense and/or WTFPL.

excited about in 2010

2010-01-07T13:20:02+00:00

As always, each new year brings a refreshed feeling of excitement. Perhaps its the long holidays and copious amounts of food, family and fun, or seeing a magic new number on the calendar that makes it feel like “The Future!”, or just a desire to take advantage of an allowed re-emergence of self and goal setting. Of course, time isn’t discontinous, so 2010 isn’t disconnected from the current continuum of development and trends – but it’s still worthwhile to take the time to step back and consider where we are and where we’re going.

Mashable and James, amongst many others, have excellent predictions that will and won’t happen in 2010. Generally they are good insight into trends in the geo and mobile space, although I will take up counterpoint to some of his suppositions on File Formats, Interfaces, OpenStreetMap and Augmented Reality.

File Formats and Interfaces

Geo is definitely becoming mainstream – everyone in my family has a PND, uses Google Maps, and are asking about various location sharing applications. In the next year we’ll see geo become part of the assumed infrastructure, like the timestamp on a post or article, the location will be embedded.

I don’t think TAG (Twitter, Apple Google), as James puts it, will be the only location sharing services. They, along with even more used Facebook, will definitely be the general public interface to location query and sharing – but just because of this reason alone they will have to be very generic, leaving room for specialized location based services to still thrive in niches. FourSquare offers ‘gaming’ or Flickr visual media, and others for music, drinking, sight-seeing, and house finding. They will leverage TAG, or at least TG.

Apple is like the Nintendo of consumer technology – more interested in providing an integrated, compelling experience, and privacy, before full open-ness and engaging with the developer or geek. They’ll still have API’s, but not something like OpenSocial, GeoRSS, or FireEagle integration.

The iPhone, and to lesser extent Android, have been revolutionizing mobile devices. They are truly providing windows into the rest of the web of data combined with the real world. It’s natural for geopatial tools to move into these interfaces, but like any good user experience it won’t be the same capabilities you find on a desktop or browser application. The utilities will be specialized for the small screens, finger inputs, and out-and-about tasks.

For file formats, the Shapefile, unfortunately, isn’t near EOL. Too many tools only speak shapefile, and there is numerous legacy data that is still only available in Shapefile. Sites like GeoCommons offer alternate formats for all the data, but that still won’t remove this basic format. Only when there is a truly open, license free, API to File GeoDatabases (FGDB), and every off the shelf tool can talk that API or Spatialite, will Shapefiles begin disappearing out.

GeoRSS and/or KML, on the other hand, will be in every service that does anything Geo. Looking at any iPhone App review that includes KML (or doesn’t) brings up this point. Near enough everyone has Google Earth on their desktop, and Google is making big pushes in the utilization of Google Earth Plugin for in-browser virtual globes.

Visualization Technologies

To date, we’ve been stuck with either Flash or JavaScript DOM magic (and yes, Silverlight is out there too) in order to do data and geospatial visualization in the browser. As I mentioned, Google has been pushing Google Earth Browser, but also more generally they released O3D, a modern incarnation of X3D, providing for more general capabilities for creating 3D browser experiences. VRML lives!

More recently, there has been a resurgence in vector graphics that don’t rely on proprietary technologies or additional plugins. SVG and Canvas support is pretty widely supported except in the infamous Internet Explorer (which I hear is still being used even today). Examples such as ProtoVis, Cartagen and Tom Carden’s experiments definitely demonstrate that SVG is just on the cusp of being able to do a majority of compelling visualizations capabilities.

Another driver for alternative visualization platforms is the drive to mobile device integration. I don’t see Apple allowing Adobe onto the iPhone anytime soon, and even Android doesn’t have support. What types of visualization make sense is still a very open question – but whatever they are will be done with something like SVG.

Geo Data Skirmishes

James suggests that OpenStreetMap “won’t dominate”. While it won’t dominate, I disagree that it won’t continue to be extremely successful.

Google has recently moved to gathering their own data. They still have a long way to go, with many, many errors in roads, areas, addresses, and businesses and they’re using the crowd to help clean it up. Google is in fact proving the crowd-sourced model. It will be successful. Google is doing it with Google’s data, so there is no positive external benefit to that work – so to the industry it just looks like another data provider. However, with this proven model OpenStreetMap will succeed since any effort built into OSM has a positive benefit to anyone else.

However, there is a major difference in the trajectory OpenStreetMap is taking in the United States compared with Europe and other regions. In most other countries, the governments had very draconian licensing and as such OpenStreetMap was creating data from blank areas – starting from scratch, and building a community of volunteers along the way.

By contrast, in the US a vast majority of the data is free, and becoming more available everyday under the new administration. Therefore the US has a broad coverage of decent data without having first built the user community. So the difficulty here is both in building out community, as well as engaging companies that can do the same thing on their own while retaining proprietary rights to the data.

What’s fascinating, and what signals the ultimate long term success of OpenStreetMap, is that US state, local, and federal government agencies themselves are engaging with OpenStreetMap. They are investigating how to put their data directly into OSM, and possibly even re-incorporate updates and modifications back to their own infrastructures. Some are even considering using OSM toolset as their infrastructure. OpenStreetMap is going through some growing pains with respect to licensing, maintenance, and community – but all necessary steps in moving from a small cadre of hackers to a global, public project.

As we see an increase in open government, specifically driven by the US Administration’s directives, as well as other initiatives such as INSPIRE, this embrace and utilization of open platforms, and repositories, for sharing, federation, and syncronization of data will increase.

And as for augmented reality, it won’t be as big as you think… yet.

Choo choo!

2010-01-03T07:57:12+00:00

sudo apt-get install sl

Windows Home Server backup database

2010-01-02T15:16:20+00:00

I’m seriously thinking I should change my backup strategy. I use Windows Home Server for one thing and one thing only, Backups. Sure the file share stuff is nice, but I already have a Linux server with samba with my file shares. WHS lovers will say I should migrate, but all I see that gaining me a day or so of copying files and no real benefit.

I recently got a new laptop and when adding this into the mix I had to add more storage to my WHS. I did, and after doing so I got this:

What good is a backup system if it loses your backups? Not much good IMO.

Windows 7’s backup is very good now and I think I may benefit from just using it rather than WHS. I’ll duke it out with WHS one last time, but I won’t be recommending it to Mom, Dad or Grandma anytime soon.

Digital Goons

2009-12-30T04:10:54+00:00

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about freedom and Digital Rights Management (DRM) recently. I’ve become enamored with checking out more eBooks as of late (the swelling book shelves of the apartment can attest to that. ;) ) There are a number of bookstores out on the internet that sell ebooks, but like most things digital, the devil is in the details, or rather in the DRM protectin those ebooks. Unlike the music industry, which has had it’s proverbial ass handed to it over the issue of copy protection, the book-publishing industry has had no such epiphany. There are likely several reasons for this disparity. It’s easy to circumvent DRM legally by ripping a CD, where converting a book digitally would require either destroying a physical copy by scanning it page-by-page, or require someone to sit down and type in the words on the page. Whatever the reason the book publishing industry has an amazing array of different schemes to make it more difficult to read a book on a computer or other device. Worse, some publishers feel it necessary to make you pay for each format you want to use; want a PDF and a copy for another portable device? That’ll be the price of two copies, please. What really stood out for me was the arrogance of it all. It’s like the book-publisher decides “OK, you want to read this book? Well, we can’t just have that, You’ll need to tell us what device you want to read it on, and you’ll need special software to get it on that device (can’t have you willy-nilly reading that book anywhere else!), and we’ll need to make sure you can’t print it, or use copy / paste to take notes from it (yes, this is a restriction some eBooks have. Imagine writing a review for a book for a book on your computer that you can’t digitally quote from)”. It’s interesting that in order to have digital permission for a book, I need to allow a publisher to dictate to me the terms of the agreement. They’re making lifestyle decisions for me, and I’m paying for the privilege. This really struck a chord with me when I realized that the eBooks that I bought for my old Palm device were essentially worthless to me now that I no longer carry the device. Sure, there are PC readers for the format that was used, but they’re Windows only, so I’d have to make another lifestyle decision in order to read them. Would you accept someone telling you how to read your paperback books at home? “You’ll need to read them on the couch only; no reading in bed, or you might get a crick in your neck. Also, you’ll need to read it with this reading lamp that costs $50 retail. It has the proper lumens for reading by. And, hope you understand Spanish because that’s the only language we’re publishing in”. Would you accept those conditions?

Recently this sort of digital lifestyle incursion bit me hard. JoDee’s laptop has a wireless card that I despise with a fiery passion. I’d like nothing more than to yank it out and ship it back to the manufacturer just to have the satisfaction of having it out of the house. So I decided when it crapped out again after the latest upgrade to finally be done with it and buy a new card. I found one cheap enough and made my purchase. Today it arrived, and I happily opened up the computer and gleefully installed the new card. I plugged everything back in, and powered up the machine. This is what greeted me:

“104-Unsupported wireless network device detected”

What that message says, in a nutshell, is that HP in their infinite wisdom has decided that the card that I wanted to use was rubbish, and that only their card (which is verifiably rubbish) is a blessed card, and I should stop trying to defile _my own laptop_ with the new card. Keep in mind that 1. I generally know my way around computers, and 2. I’m not trying anything funny other than replacing one standard part with another standard part. Nope, HP has programmed the BIOS to tell me to go fuck myself if I stray from their path.

DRM in media and software is nothing more than the ability for folks to exercise control over you and your stuff. It’s an attempt at ownership of material that you’ve purchased, and of control over hardware that you use. There are companies that “get it”; most computer book publishers don’t use DRM anymore, and offer multiple formats. Several game publishers have PDF files that are DRM-Free (some with watermarking, which I’m perfectly OK with, so long as it doesn’t prevent me from using the material). There are a handful of fiction publishers that don’t cripple their eBooks. Baen Books (http://baen.com) is exemplary in their stance on freedom in publishing. It’s time to ask publishers to stop dictating how and where we use ebooks, and to allow for a more open marketplace to flourish. With rare exception, no bookstore will discriminate against a certain group of customers, yet DRM not only discrimintates, it also excludes people from purchasing and reading books. I urge you to avoid purchasing books from sellers that promote DRM (and while the Kindle is pretty liberal with their DRM, they still have it. Sorry, Rick. :) ) Promoting an open marketplace benefits us all, and allows us as readers, and users to read and ejoy and use books, software, and hardware as we see fit. That’s too precious to give up.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.

Brutal Legend.

2009-12-26T05:21:59+00:00

Ok, so this game has been in my inbox for about 3 weeks (yay GameFly!), so I haven’t had a chance to play it until today. I’ve been distracted by Dragon Age: Origins – which is a separate post; some people have called it the greatest RPG of the decade. It’s up there, and probably, and yeah I am a Bioware addict, but I don’t want to go there right now.

I want to talk about Brutal Legend.

It’s pretty awesome, and here’s why (and why not!)

It’s metal – It’s got the right things. Ozzy, Lemmy, Megadeth, and a bunch of others. The derived things that they didn’t get licenses for are suitably mimicked. There’s one level where I swear I am getting bombarded by Dragonforce for like 45 minutes. At the end I was like “Jesus man, it’s like some kind of Dragonforce nightmare!” And then I found out it really was Dragonforce. Yay.
The playlist – It’s proper, and the bits you don’t agree with are part of the evil plot. See the part about Dragonforce!
The shitty playlist – Motley Crue, Ratt, Dokken, Quiet Riot, Whitesnake, and Skid Row. I thought this game was about metal?
FUCKING ANVIL
The playlist, really – I love the mix overall, I mean, you’ve got Testament in there, a bit of Slayer, some Priest, and even Dethklok, etc. I dig having the original Diamondhead “Am I Evil?” and Budgie’s “Breadfan” on there.
I got sick of the “play a concert” levels, with trying to get fans and stuff, mostly I just wanted to bash some skulls in.

I enjoyed Jack Black in the game. At first I thought I would get a Jack Black overload, like in “Be Kind Rewind” where the whole movie sucked so you got stuck with Jack Black in full-on-mode for 2 hours and then you’re all pissed off at the end, but for those 20 minutes where did his gold parts acting out in the individual movies it was great. This is more of a “Jack Black in a supporting role” kind of thing, where you’re not fucking sick of him after 10 minutes. I like this kind of Jack Black.

It’s obvious that the people that made this game listen to metal, I salute them, I literally laughed out loud plenty of times in this game. However there are things that you know “should be” in this game if it wasn’t for record companies and all that stupid crap or some kind of drama.

Thrash is not well represented – 1 Slayer song, 2 megadeth songs, 1 anthrax song, and 0 metallica, whoops!
NWOBHM – There is 0 Iron Maiden in this game. You made a game about heavy metal without any Iron Maiden, you get a prize!
Ozzybath – Plenty of Ozzy and Black Sabbath, this is really great!

I suspect the music soundtrack is like the first Guitar Hero game, a bunch of artists and managers probably being conservative about whether they should be involved; I totally love that the game infers to managers and the music industry being … well, you know. I suspect that for the sequel we’ll get the proper metal bands that we want plus all the chaff, and in the end what the fans really will want is a combination of the soundtrack of the two games….

Interesting wikipedia article with all the goodies. I like the game so far, if anything it’s damn clever, all the metal monuments across the land, the little injokes, the not-so-subtle stereotypes. I’ll keep playing it over the break, please leave your comments below!

Tagged: metal

Asus eeetop 2002 and Ubuntu

2009-12-20T21:03:02+00:00

Since Jill started her PhD we’ve been slowly converting the guest room into a home office. For those of you not familiar with grad school and beyond, this is basically a room with a computer, a high capacity printer, and 2,347,345 reams of paper that routinely explode into mountains of tree-killing mayhem.

She has been comfortable with her Dell XPS 1330, but she’s gotten to the point where working out of the couch in a laptop is distracting and a desktop in the middle of a pile of papers started to make sense. I didn’t want to spend too much, so we decided that a full Ubuntu PC would meet her needs. I wanted something quiet and sleek, with a webcam and built in wireless, since I wasn’t about to run a cable up two stories.

After much deliberation I settled on a black friday Amazon deal, $431 for an Asus Eee Top ET2002 (video review) with free shipping. This is an all in one box with a 20″ monitor, Atom 330 processor, and 2gb of RAM , and ~240gb drive. This is quite an amazing deal so I went with it. Having seen one of these at an Ubuntu booth at Ontario Linuxfest I was confident that everything would just work. Keep in mind at this price this is the non-touchscreen screen. (EDIT: Correction to the price, this PC was $431, not $331, that would be ridiculous!)

The hardware is nice, it comes in one box and when it’s set up there’s only one cable (power) that you need. The out-of-the-box Vista experience is one of the worst I’ve ever seen from any vendor on any platform. After the 15-minute “finish the OEM OS install” the vendor’s next installer comes in, which installs out of date versions of Adobe Reader, their weird desktop launcher bits, etc. after a reboot it then goes and updates all that software. After (I kid you not), 45 minutes of grinding, the computer was finally ready to use. After I got the hardware info I needed (I could not find any hardware specs on the internet for the wifi so I had to get it from the PC) I went ahead and reached for my Karmic CD. This BIOS in the machine didn’t have an option to PXE boot (which is a shame, it would be a great LTSP client) or boot from USB so I had to use a CD. The install went off without a hitch.

On boot up I set up her account and added the Ubuntu b-sides to take care of the obvious additions. The wireless was odd, it kept conking out every few minutes for about 30 seconds. I thought that an updated driver might do the trick, so I installed the backported new wireless drivers that our kernel team provides and after that the wireless was solid. The wireless card is an Atheros AR9285 btw. After that I added her the PC to the Dropbox account and let it sync overnight.

Some tidbits about the hardware:

The Atom 330 – I was expecting a typically horrible netbook processor, but this is a really great little chip. It shows up as 4 CPUs (it’s dual cored and hyperthreaded) and is 64 bit capable. I wouldn’t recommend encoding DVDs but for general computing use it did the job and I don’t really complain about it.
Nvidia ION – Ok, this is fantastic. I’ve switched her over to mplayer to use VDPAU and it just cuts through HD like butter. I am looking forward to having gstreamer-enabled VDPAU in the future so I don’t have to swap the default bits out.
Flash – is of course still absolutely terrible. However I found a neat plugin that replaces the flash on youtube with the h264 file that they use for the iPhone and then inlines it in the page with html5 video. It’s slick, and more importantly since the ffmpeg in chrome is multithreaded it spreads the decoding over the CPU cores, so the playback is much, much better than the flash video. I’ve asked fta if it’s possible to use the browser’s ffmpeg with a VDPAU backend to accelerate this in hardware, but I haven’t gotten too far into that.
The hard drive – It’s a pokey 5400rpm drive, was probably used to keep the heat down. This kind of makes IO intensive applications not very fun to use. Firefox was a grindfest, and OOo is not very fun to launch either. However Jill seems to find the OOo performance acceptable and I’ve almost completed moving most of her work to Google Docs anyway.
Amazon MP3 in 64 bit was annoying to fix, I used some work around on the internet I am not proud of, however I hope to transition to the Ubuntu One music store when it is available. Striving to keep with as much a default install as possible I left Rhythmbox on there for her. Her G1 is detected and syncs as expected.
The mouse – it’s kind of crap so I replaced it with one she uses for her laptop. In case you’re wondering the colored keyboard in the picture is a gboard, which is a dedicated keyboard for Gmail that the manufacturer sent me to test how well it works in Linux (it works great and ootb with 0 config by the way).
Suspend and Resume just work, I have it set up to suspend when you hit the power button.
The Camera works great:

All in all, I think the ET2002 is a great little box, especially for the price I got it at! On some days I go up there and work out of her office and have no problems getting work done. I am mulling replacing the pokey drive with a cheap SSD for noise,heat, and performance win, but this isn’t the kind of machine that has easy to see drive bays or things of that nature so I don’t know if I want to take it apart. The speakers aren’t amazing but good enough to listen to music while working.

I only wish that there was an option for Ubuntu out of the box on an all-in-one so I wouldn’t have had to spend 2 hours making it work better. I think system76 should take the guts of the meerkat and put together something just as compelling! If you’ve seen these with the touchscreen and Ubuntu Netbook Remix (now the Netbook Edition) then you know how cool it can be with the touch stuff.

Etherpad open sourced and OSS web services

2009-12-18T17:24:18+00:00

Stormy asks if oss can transition to a web services world, and uses the Etherpad open sourcing as an example. First off, I think it’s going to have to regardless if it wants it or not.

A few weeks ago my python-mako broke on my Lucid system, and I just didn’t care to fix it right then, so my gwibber was effectively broken. But I wanted to still use twitter. So I used Chrome’s app mode to embed a website called hahlo and then use that as my desktop application. In that screenshot you’ll also see my google tasks as an app, looks alot like Tasque! And I’ve already talked about alice. I already use gmail and gtalk for mail and IM, what’s another few apps?

So as I was explaining this over IM with Ryan Paul and the usual “yeah but you don’t get native widgets”, “you have to give your credentials to other sites”, “so now instead of 15 desktop apps taking all your memory you have 15 browser instances taking up all your memory”, and the usual bits. So I made the decision to try to use as many “web apps” on my desktop for as long as I could to see “how long I would last”. That was 2 weeks ago. Today I’ve determined that I’m not really going back. When Chrome does a “Create Application Shortcuts” thing it creates a .desktop file. I put these in my Ubuntu One folder. Voila, I am now “syncing” my applications across all my machines.

One by one my desktop apps are being replaced by web versions that let me get access to my data wherever I am, and I’m totally ok with that, so I think OSS apps will have to compete in this space. I know having your life in the cloud is controversial for some people, but not for me.

I generally agree with what Stormy says, it would be nice to have a one stop shop of open web services for me to have all my stuff on. I think etherpad is a bad example however, because etherpad has the potential to be very very awesome for OSS conferences and events. Currently right now for events like UDS we use a tool called Gobby, which is great but has many limitations. First off, it’s a seperate application that people need to have installed and it can be flaky. It’s not really integrated into anything we use right now so when we start a session someone asks “which gobby document?”, and then you have 16 million colors to choose from, etc. Etherpad is much easier to use, it doesn’t need anything but a browser. My ideal goal would be pad.ubuntu.com, and each one has a corresponding document that is the same as the irc and spec name so that we have pad.ubuntu.com/community/lucid/developerweek-roadmap or whatever. The service just becomes another item in the URL namespace for that project.

I would imagine that for Summit and GUADEC it would be great for people to use etherpad.gnome.org to work on their ideas, and then be able to push a button to have their notes pushed right to live.gnome.org. Heck, someone can very well just make the etherpad UI be the editing interface for Moin and we could just work in realtime editors all the time! The possibilities are definitely there; I can see organizations like GNOME, KDE, etc. having etherpad instances as a service to developers like they have IRC, wikis, and mailing lists. I think this is valuable for them because organizations want to control their data, that’s why they have their own bugtrackers and infrastructure. The opening of the code let’s them at least experiment with this. I don’t think projects will want to run a service like Sugar or something, but for a tool like this I think it would be great.

Sure, no one likes when code is just thrown over the wall, that’s not going to stop people from messing with it and forming their own communities around it. And if it doesn’t work out and the project dies then that’s a shame, but like everything else, evolution doesn’t really take sides it just drives forward and the things that adapt to that environment move on. I personally hope this one lives and thrives!

Someone in IRC asks: “Wait, so you say the desktop is obsolete, why don’t you just say that.” I leave that up to you to discuss! For me personally there are some things that need to be local, there’s no web thing that can replace Banshee for me, I wish that web apps could use my notify-osd, and a wiki just doesn’t cut it compared to Tomboy. However there was a time when I couldn’t imagine using webmail and now the thought of using a local mail client frightens me. We’ll see!

Geeks drive girls out of computer science

2009-12-17T17:50:08+00:00

My wife linked me to this article about a cultural study done on certain masculine aspects of things which often surround computer science.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34437233/ns/technology_and_science-science/

She (my wife) brought it up in the context of cables and cords lying around and I’d guess that extends to the unused laptop, mouse or keyboard. She is a very neat person. I am less so, but she keeps me in check. This is good.

The article talks about the physical environment of a computer science classroom or office. I don’t know what classrooms this study is looking at. I can only assume that they are primary and secondary classrooms because the college classrooms in which I teach and in which I attended are the same boring sterile classrooms in which all subjects are taught.

I can comment on offices. The quote from the article is a quote by the lead researching Sapna Cheryan from the University of Washington. She says “… the image that immediately pops into many of their minds is of the computer geek surrounded by such things as computer games, science-fiction memorabilia and junk food.”

I’d like to address each of things. There are no computer games on my desk at home nor at work. At home, I share a desk with my wife, occasionally there is a game left out. They are hers. I have her Rollercoaster Tycoon CD in my backpack right now, because she left it in my disk drive. I do not play video games. It is a choice. I used to play a few video games. I think that when Starcraft 2 comes out, I’ll probably play that video game.

I have some science fiction memorabilia stuffed in drawers at home. A hat from the cast of the original Stargate movie. A signed Richard Dean Anderson photograph. Both of these were gifts from people who knew that I love Stargate. I don’t leave them out. I don’t talk about them. In fact, if any of my coworkers read this, both items will probably be a surprise to them, and they will probably make fun of me greatly for each of them.

Junk food is bad. I’d probably eat lots of junk food if I didn’t have my wife to take care of me and she didn’t constantly remind me about good nutrition and encourage me by talking to me about the food industry, summarizing books for me and watching movies with me such as Supersize Me and Food Inc. I bring my lunch to work almost every day rather than eat out. As I write this many of my coworkers are out at the monthly Ann Arbor “Nerd Lunch”. I try to eat healthy.

I try to eat healthy to the point that food preparation is something that I can talk at length about. Last night I made cottage cheese. I bake all my own bread. I’ve not bought bread from a store in over 6 years. I make my own chicken stock. I make a lot of things that are often bought. I do not consider any of these things add to my computer geek. If anything I’m a non-geek. These things are also traditionally non-masculine activities. Although more recently I think they are more niche hobbies than feminine activities.

What is the point? I guess I’m trying to say, look deeper. Yes, on the surface there is a video game, bad-sci-fi, junk food culture to computer science, but as soon as you peel back the first layer there is a variety and depth as wide as any other profession.

Premature optimization

2009-12-17T04:43:44+00:00

We all know it’s bad. But, programming for performance in reasonable ways is good. So, what’s the difference?

Sometimes we think we know that a piece of code is important so we spend some time optimizing it. And in the end it’s less clear, and less maintainable, and it turns out that our bottlenecks are all elsewhere.

But, sometimes we do know where bottlenecks are going to be, we’ve learned from experience, and we know what needs to be done.

We know that architecture determines performance, and architecture isn’t easily bolted on at the end of the project.

So we have a conundrum. We shouldn’t optimize yet because we don’t know where the bottlenecks will be. We shouldn’t wait to optimize because we can’t easily retrofit a good architecture on a complex system.

Some of the conundrum is only apparent — there’s a difference between architectural problems that need to be set up front, and the kind of low level micro-optimization that obscures more than it helps. But, sometimes these conflicts are real — how do I know if I need a multi-process multi-consumer queue system for PDF generation before we build the system and benchmark it? If you don’t need it, that kind of extra architectural complexity just obscures the bit of code that actually solves the problem.

Solving the problem by going meta

Perhaps the problem really is that we’re dumb and optimize the wrong things at the wrong time. The solution to that problem is to get less dumb. Which means that we ought to spend time optimizing “learning”, both within our project processes, and across projects.

Codifying this learning is what the Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture book was all about.

And I think it’s great as far as it goes, and if you haven’t read it you should buy it now.

But there are a lot of patterns that I can identify from my last half dozen projects that aren’t covered in PoEAA, so it would be great to see a next generation of books and blog posts that cover the modern architectural trade-offs that you have to make, something that covers some of the paterns of the web.

Scalability via in HTTP, etags, caching, and load balancing (the whole RESTful services argument), networked async processing patterns, etc. Scaling to the public web levels requires a whole different set of architectural principles than scaling to the old “enterprise” levels did, and that knowledge seems very much in flux.

It would be great if it also provided some advice for those of us who’ve moved into what Neil Ford has called the world of the Polyglot Programmer, patterns for coordinating activities across language barriers in a sensible way. That’s part of the nature of modern web systems too.

I’ve just had the most eye opening moment of my life.

2009-12-15T23:16:21+00:00

So I’ve been really pumped up about getting a snuggie as a gift. Mine was even the deluxe, it has like pockets and stuff. Anyway, I have been using this thing all week and I love it. Except it’s more designed for you to lay in the couch, not sitting in a computer chair – it’s basically a big hospital gown, not a poncho or anything like that. So it was kind of falling down on occasion, so I wanted to mod it to add a belt (I am using a big paperclip to wrap the open end around myself.) I figure, HEY, if I wrap it around my waist it will be more manageable.

So I was having this conversation with a friend thinking I was being clever and that this is the greatest thing ever. But it turns out I’m a total moron:

Trevor: so basically it’s a robe?
me: no, more like a hospital gown, the back is open
it’s more for like, laying on the couch

Trevor: turn it around…
Trevor: and then tell me if it’s not a robe

me: OMG.

This snuggie guy is laughing all the way to the bank I tell you.

Pandion “Free Software” can go to hell

2009-12-15T20:58:12+00:00

I’m not entirely sure that it is what installed Ask Toolbar on my system without asking me, but I am 100% entirely sure that it is what changed my browser start page without asking me.

EVIL EVIL EVIL

Pandion IM software from http://pandion.im/ should be avoided.

It doesn’t matter that it is GPL and free as in speech. It is evil.

How do we expand Open Source?

2009-12-14T03:56:43+00:00

So, one thing which keeps comming up in a bunch of different areas of my life is how we can expand the ethic of Open Source development.

People want TurboGears to do more than it does, they want other open source projects to grow, they want new open source projects in specific areas, and they want Open Source like activity in other professions like nursing or construction.

I definitely don’t have the answers. But I’ve had this conversation with a lot of folks over the last couple of months, and some of them had some great ideas.

So, in the spirit of opening up a larger conversation about these issues, here are a couple of thoughts distilled from all those conversations.

Institutionalizing Open Source Values

It is of course possible to create cultural institutions around which money can be channeled into Open Source development.

And all the legal mechanisms needed to structure those institutions in the right way are available today.

But the trick it seems is to create the institutions in such a way that money is delivered in small enough amounts that individuals remain in control. Money is powerfully persuasive, but one of the keys to the current success of open source is that collective action is always purely voluntary.

But at the same time the money needs to come in large enough amounts to make a difference. People need to be able to support lives and families on the work they do advancing various projects. To the extent that this is reliable income, we can remove competing priorities, and developers will be able to devote themselves more fully to projects that advance the common good.

So, the key to making all of this work is going to be the “bureaucracies” we create to manage the flow of money. They need to be tuned properly to the nature of the work, stable enough to provide a level of personal security, and perhaps above all they need to be financially transparent.

Creating the right kinds of organizational structures will help us channel the right amounts of money to the right people, and creating the wrong kinds will create perverse incentives that pollute the whole system.

Most of what’s been happening so far in this direction are ecosystems of companies built around open source offerings. This has worked pretty well, but it’s clear that there can be conflicts of interest, and the nature of commercial ownership leaves even the best run companies vulnerable to sudden changes (acquisition of small open source companies by huge proprietary competitors is already a fact of life).

But, what seems more interesting to me at this point is the number of foundations that are being are created for popular projects or groups of popular projects, etc.

These institutions will continue to grow, but they have the potential to change the way projects are run, so I expect a lot of fits and starts as we mature.

Open Source for other Professions

With that thought in mind perhaps lawyers, doctors, and other professions already have a form of the Open Source ethic, which has grown up around large institutions, and functions to spread knowledge and advance the state of the art of those groups. These institutions work to create new knowledge, train practitioners, and they seem to work pretty well.

If you haven’t caught on already I think it might be fair to say that this sub-section of these professions is called “academics.” ;)

Of course the university system isn’t perfect, and it’s taken hundreds of years to evolve to it’s current state, but I think it does provide some insight into how we might evolve larger institutional presences around open source, not in the next few years, but in the next few decades.