I’ve talked about support before. And I’ve had an idea for helping people who (in particular on forums) try to provide useful support. The guys over at the Ubuntu UK Podcast were talking about the CLI vs GUI on their latest show, so I thought I’d share the idea.

The idea is, essentially, to provide an easy web interface to a big library of animated GIFs (yes - it could be videos, but GIFs are easier to embed into a forum). These GIFs would be short clips of clicking on menus and opening the various applications and settings dialogues available in Ubuntu (or your system of choice).

My plan was to build it in Django, because it, by default, has good handling of urls. So to embed a GIF of someone clicking on, say, System -> Preferences -> Keyboard, you would just embed http://www.ubuntugif/system/preferences/keyboard/ and Hey Presto! I think some would also just be images of the dialogue boxes without animation, too.

The hope would be that, because the syntax is so simple, people wouldn’t have to think about it when putting it into a support forum, and people reading the forum would be able to see actually what is supposed to happen.

So - I guess I might get around to building this at some point. If you’re interested in the project, please let me know either in the comments or via IRC

mrBen

mrBen

For the last 3 years now, I’ve endeavoured to relisten to the entire back catalogue of LugRadio episodes in the run up to the awesome LugRadio Live. Last year, I got caught a bit short, but I wrote a little program to keep track of my listening.

This year, I’ve started a lot earlier (144 days to go), but I thought I should add something to the script. So I’ve included listening times to it. Hurrah. Or Something.

Enjoy!

Notes:

1. The % are still based on number of shows, not on listening times. So sue me.
2. The code for the original is still at http://mrben.jedimoose.org/listener.html - when I get around to it I’ll post the updated code (which is even uglier

mrBen

* Apparently this analogy is not, and has never been, accurate.

Those of you at LugRadio Live last year, or who read my review may remember the quiz software that I wrote for it, which did a dual screen setup, and used the Namtai Buzz! controllers for the buzzers.

Anyway - I’ve finally got around to releasing the code into the wild, under the GPL, using launchpad. You can get it here.

(Hopefully someone talented will finish it )

mrBen

Every now and then I feel the need to put up a post purely because it took me ages to find a solution to something online, and I reckon that it might save the next person a bit of time. Apologies to the regular reader for the purely functional nature of this post

The Background
Linux (or specifically Ubuntu) uses a neat program called Network Manager to manage all the network connections. It’s taken a while for it to get there, but I personally think it’s pretty good. It remembers the details of my home wifi network perfectly, and seems to have a better time connecting than the ‘IBM Access Connections’ program that came preinstalled on the Windows half of my work laptop. However, in my case it took it’s trick of remembering stuff too far.

The Problem
I setup my new Linksys router with WPA2 encryption, which works fine under Linux. Sadly, Windows XP doesn’t come installed with this by default (at least, teh wifes laptop didn’t have it as an option). Rather than faffing about with Windows Updates, I thought it would be easier to change it to standard WPA encryption - took about 30 seconds in the Linksys control panel. However, NetworkManager insisted on continuing to try and connect with WPA2, which doesn’t work. In order to connect to the network, I needed to use the “Manual Configuration” option, which wasn’t ideal.

The Solution
One solution would have been to rename the ESSID on my wifi, but I didn’t want to do that, really. There is, however, a better way. NetworkManager stores all it’s data in “gconf” the registry-like component of gnome. Fire up gconf-editor, and navigate to /system/networking/wireless/networks/. All your saved wireless network details are in there. You can then either delete the entry, or, as I did, edit the wpa_psk_wpa_version from 4 to 2 (if you did the same thing as me in the first place). Problem solved.

mrBen

Dear Lazyweb….

Following from my previous post about my projects for the year, I could do with some help on identify the most suitable backup solution.

The setup is that there are a number of Windows clients, and a Linux server (probably with software RAID running a mirror setup over 2 drives, allowing for drive failure). The Windows machines may or may not be on the network at specific times (because they’re either laptops, or they’re powered down), and as there is no on-site sysadmin there is also no guarantee that there will be 100% (or 99.999% for that matter) uptime for the file server either. I want to backup important files from the Windows clients to the Linux machine in the most seamless, transparent (for the end user) way.

Originally I had set my heart on iFolder, which would allow me to simply set up “My Documents” on each client as an iFolder, and they would synchonise whenever both client and server are on the network. However, although iFolder is a fantastic piece of software, the project seems a bit dead in the water, and thus I’m not sure I want it in a production environment (plus there aren’t any Ubuntu or Debian packages for it, so I’d need to run CentOS, which I’m less familiar with).

So, I’m stuck for a decent solution. Ideally, as I say, I want it as transparent as possible - I could setup network drives with Samba (in fact, I had it this way in a previous incarnation), but that is not particularly transparent, and would require me (ideally) to setup all the users on the fileserver so that Windows will log in to the drive automagically. Plus, I’d still need some sort of client running to do the backing up, and I would still end up with the problem of it needing to be done on an “adhoc” basis, rather than a schedule.

Any thoughts?

mrBen

LugRadio Season 5 hits the internet today, with a new website design, and 2 new presenters. Looking forward to another season of insightful commentary (or perhaps an “endless stream of sub-par knob gags”) on Linux, Open Source, the Global Intarweb and other such geekery.

mrBen

Thought it was probably time that I laid out some of my initial thoughts of the Nokia N800 that I won at LugRadio Live. I don’t have any pictures / screenshots at the moment, but I promise I’ll get some up soon.

Background

It’s possible that I get some of these technical details a bit wrong - apologies in advance
The Nokia N800 is an “internet tablet” - it’s not a mobile phone, or a PDA. If anything, it’s more like a very small laptop. It runs on Linux, using the Hildon desktop, based on Gtk. It has built in wifi and bluetooth, and a beautiful screen. It even has stereo speakers. It has 2 SD Card slots, now compatible with SD cards up to 8GB in size. I believe both of these are hot-swappable. It comes with a web browser, googletalk for IM, and video conferencing with the built-in webcam, plus a media player, and a few other apps. It supports input via a stylus, or using your finger. It connects to your PC via USB, but doesn’t have any syncing software, nor does it charge over USB. There is a stereo headphone jack that also supports a headphone+microphone set on a single jack.

Some Thoughts

The screen is beautiful. It really is. It’s really crisp and bright. The wifi is good quality, and it has become my tool of choice for small bits of web surfing while at home. The clever bit of software that detects if you’re using the stylus or your thumb and displays different menus/keyboard is an inspired piece of work, although if I was doing a lot of typing I’d probably need to get some sort of bluetooth keyboard.
Being basically a Linux PC makes this a massively versatile device. There is tonnes of software available, and most of it is free. I have a few good tidbits installed:

• Maemo Mapper - a free bit of mapping software that can download maps from various sources, including Google Maps and Open Streetmap. If I had a bluetooth GPS and the flite voice software, it could even be a sat nav unit.
• SCUMMVM - for playing old LucasArts games. Great fun! (I am most of the way through Flight of the Amazon Queen thanks to my commute
• Terminal/SSH - surprisingly useful
• AisleRiot - Solitaire with knobs on

There are, however, 3 big things I dislike about the device:

• The N800’s predecessor, the N770, had a hard cover to protect it - the N800 only has a little cloth sleeve which, while being some protection from scratches, etc, wouldn’t stop the screen getting cracked in an impact.
• The battery life is quite poor - even on my short commute usage, in standby for the rest of the day and night, I probably need to charge every 1.5 days. This is very dependent on how much you use wireless, I believe. And it has got better with the latest firmware. However, it’s really a problem considering that:
• You can’t charge the device through the USB port. This was a real plus of my previous media player. Being able to plug in at work (plugging in non-tested devices to the main sockets is prohibited) was a great benefit.

The other thing that I need to get sorted out is Bluetooth networking - the N800 doesn’t support the wireless setup at work, so I’d like to be able to connect through the bluetooth on my laptop, but this is not part of the default setup, which is a shame.

All-in-all, this is an amazing little device. I have lots of things I still want to try on it (installing Django, play with GPS, install a calendar and syncing, etc), but I think it will be a faithful friend for a long while.

mrBen

As regular readers of my blog will know, I wasn’t expecting to be able to attend LRL this year, but, through the extreme generosity of a number of people (you know who you are) I was. No regrets

I’ve left writing this post for a number of days, to let the tiredness wear off, to (hopefully) write a decent, balanced review of the weekend. I’ll take you through what I did, and then comment on the pros and cons and then come to some conclusions for next year.

What I Did

Friday

We (neuro, Essk, Xalior and I) left my house at around 1000, with me having worked solid from 0600, and already tired We made good time down the M74/M6 and hit Tebay early for a nice lunch. Then we hit the massive tailback on the M6, which was evil, and held us up for _ages_ and we finally arrived at the Quality Chin for about 1700. I was staying elsewhere, and had to wait around for Aq to come and pick me up, so I snuck in a couple of quick pints while watching a bit of tennis and footy in the QC bar.

After a bit of pizza, and a bit of lugging kit into Jono’s house, we headed off to the Hogshead for the pre-LRL party. This was massively busy, which is always good to see, and I managed to chat with quite a few folk, as well as pick up the game that I one from GamerTag Radio (namely Ankh: Heart of Osiris). Oh, and I drunk some beer, much of which was free as in beer.

A quick kebab on the way home and then a cup of tea before falling into bed far too late

Saturday

Up at 6am to load the van and head down to the venue for 7.30am, to be met by the horde of crew (of which I was one) to setup the venue in time for the doors opening at 10am. Fuelled by bacon sarnies (thanks BigRon and babyron!) the crew worked like a well oiled machine, and the huge swag bags were filled, the chairs put out, and badges cut and folded and everything was done.
After the intro, I headed into Ted Haegars talk on the Bungee development stuff. Looks pretty cool, although I’m not convinced it’s something I’d ever use (sorry, Ted), but Ted is always good to listen to. Then I ran upstairs and caught the end of the Bazaar talk, and Laszlo’s Jokosher talk, which was hugely entertaining.
At lunch, Xalior once again stepped up to the community plate, and forked out for pizzas for the #lugradio faithful, along with Kat’s lovely cakes I think next year we need to be a bit more organised about this, although I’m not sure how best to sort it, particularly with so many of the #lr people on the crew.
After lunch was the scary ‘Adam Sweets Gong-a-thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza’ which involved Adam Sweet, in a thong, with a gong, compering 3 minute talks. I gave a quick talk on LinkPot, which seems to be gathering momentum, but I wished I’d thought more about what I was going to say, as I could’ve filled the time better. Then I ran up to find I’d missed Elleo’s SabreGL talk, which was a shame, so I ran back down for the rest of the lightbulb talks.
At 1500 I went into the Mass Debate in the main talk room - this was a great venue for this, and I really enjoyed the debate this year - the previous 2 years I haven’t really got into it. After that there was a choice of 4 things I wanted to see, but I was really tired, so I missed all of them….
The (formal) part of the day ended with LugRadio Live and Unleashed, which was great fun, not least because I managed (to my enormous surprise) to be named Community Hero again, winning myself a (very shiny) Nokia N800 (more on that in future posts….), a hazmat suit (don’t ask) and an oil painting of the Chinny Raccoon, painted by the very talented Chris Hayes (who also did the LinkPot graphics). I feel both enormous pride, and a certain amount of guilt, at being name CH again. I hope that I can do enough in the next 12 months for people to feel that I deserve it, and that the community is a better place.
Afterwards we cleared the hall (and played with the N800) then picked up pizza before the evening par-tay. I feel it was a little quieter than last year - without the same vibe - although that may have been an indication of my physical state at the time Left at 1230 to go to bed.

Sunday

Began much as Saturday, with the crew setting up. I had realised on the Saturday that I had forgotten to locate the sound clips that I needed for the comedy buzzers on the quiz software I had written for Bruno for the quiz later on that afternoon, so I secreted myself in a corner for 90 minutes while I trawled through lugradio episodes for the right bits. Then I managed to catch a bit of Becky Hogge’s talk before lunch.
After lunch I caught a bit of Gerv’s talk, but I really need to see the whole thing Then I got everything ready for the Quiz. Amazingly, the Quiz software seemed to work fine, and we had some good fun - Bruno hosted, while the LugRadio and Hashlugradio crews faced off. The HLR folks won by a whisker, although it was a close run thing. It was difficult to concentrate on the audience reaction, what with worrying about the software and trying to compete, but people said it was good afterwards. (Source code for the quiz stuff will be available soon)
And then it was over.

Except for the (now) traditional post-LRL community party, at the QC. This was great fun, as always, and a group of us regailed each other with quality (and not so quality) jokes, and we got in a quick game of Hungry Hippos before going to bed.

Conclusions

Positives

• The new venue was excellent. Admittedly the atrium was problematic (see Negatives), but the main talk and lightning talk rooms were top notch, and I felt the exhibition area was probably better placed than last year.
• Top names, top talks. I felt like I saw more this year, but there was still a huge amount to choose from, and some really wide and varied topics.
• The community remains as wonderful as ever - a great bunch of folk that I really wish I had more time to spend with
• I won an N800!
• I felt the Live and Unleashed was good this year - it’s a tricky thing to do, because you’re trying to record a show for people to listen to, while at the same time fit in a lot of prizegiving-type stuff, and audience interaction. Very glad they sorted out a radio mike this year
• The crew were fantastic this year. And I felt like people were really able to help out, and feel useful at the event. Last year I was very much sorting out what I could with the Lan Gaming, and didn’t really feel like I had contributed, but this year I felt that I had been useful, and played a part in making the event a success.
• The quiz software worked! I was really nervous that something would go wrong, and, apart from a single crash :(, everything went smoothly.
• Top quality swag bags (aka “LRL Nutsacks”)

Negatives

• The price of beer. Both in the Quality Chin, and in the venue, the price and selection of beer left much to be desired. Plus the promised cafe at the venue decided not to serve food
• The Saturday night was a little flat for me this year, although that might just be me. Plus I forget to get Hungry Hippos out of neuro’s car
• The atrium at the venue has challenges in both lighting and acoustics. It’s a very echoey room, with huge skylights that made the projector a bit useless. However, I believe these can be overcome for next year.
• The exhibition was a bit quiet this year - I hope that they did well enough to feel it was worthwhile, and maybe persuade others to come next year, although I can imagine it’s a tricky event to ’sell’ to some organisations.

Summary

LRL was better than ever this year. Yes, there are things that could be improved. But that just means that next year will be even better My biggest fear is that the arrival of LRL US (”Sworn in the USA”) may mean that some of the big names from the States won’t bother travelling to the UK for the “main event”. But there are still plenty of big names in Europe who would come, I guess.
My hope is that I can find time during this year to think more constructively about LRL 2008. One of the negative comments I saw on another blog was about the amount of stuff that seemed aimed at the “inner circle” of fans (those who participate in IRC and the forums I think) and I want to think of ways to improve that.

mrBen

Back on May 8th I began my LugRadio listening marathon. Well - 49 days and 80 shows later, and I’m finished (apart from the to-be-released-on-Monday Season 4 Episode 22). It’s been an interesting experience, cramming it all in in such a short space of time, but I’ve enjoyed (almost) every minute of it.

Roll on LugRadio Live (10 days and counting)

mrBen

LugRadio Live 2007: be there!

Following on from their first video, Freedom March, the LugRadio team have released this second promotional, “viral” video, which is a bit less serious Enjoy.

mrBen

In what is, frankly, a surprisingly sober and thought provoking video, “Freedom March”, the 4 large gents of LugRadio have announced that the registrations for LugRadio Live are open here.

You should be coming, really. (Ya Rly)

mrBen

Then go out and buy a Dell, with Ubuntu preinstalled. (OK - I realise that this is not particularly new news, but there you go.)

Currently they haven’t released these in the UK - part of me hopes they do, but I would then feel duty bound to buy one, which I can’t afford.

Dell responded to a flood of requests on their IdeaStorm website to sell machines with Linux preinstalled, but I am seriously worried that much of the fervour would not be backed up by actual hard cash over the counter, and this would be a tragedy. So, if you’re in the US, and you’ve got at least $599 to spare, then why not give it a go? (And, lets be honest, $599 is not bad for a laptop, albeit slightly underspecced). It’s not about whether Dell are any good, but rather about seeing Linux available preinstalled on machines from mainstream vendors. And that is good for _all_ of us, whether we use Linux or not.

mrBen

I have, in the past, waxed lyrical about the different types of “user” that we see in the IT, and more specifically Linux / Open Source community. However, another year has passed, and there have continued to be many discussions on the web, and shows like Lugradio that have skirted round one particular point that I want to highlight today.

My original post included (at the bottom) this point:

• We need to create communities that are not necessarily based on contribution, but merely on membership. Analysers of social trend say that, in this day and age, people first need to feel that they belong, then they will begin to believe, and only lastly will their behaviour change. We need to create communities where people can just belong. Once they then begin to ‘believe’ in that community, then they can recieve opportunities to take action, and ‘behave’ as a community member should.

Belong, Believe, Behave. The 3 Bs that, I believe, should become the mantra that Free software advocates live their lives by. Sadly, their current behaviour seems to suggest that they’re doing it backward - expecting people to “behave” in a particular way (yes, RMS, I’m talking about you and your GNU/Linux), then to change their beliefs, and then finally allowing them to belong to “the community”. This is backward, and, with some exceptions, will most likely fail to create long term growth within the community.

This, I reckon, is probably where I’m about to come into conflict with Aq’s viewpoint, which I, for the most part, agree with. When it comes to Linux, I believe we need to get people to feel like they belong, by ensuring that they can do everything they need to do, even if this requires proprietary codecs and/or drivers. I don’t like them, in the long term I don’t want them, but I think that to leave them out entirely means that we are requiring new users to behave before they belong (or believe). I really like the way the new Restricted Drivers applet works in Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), as I think this is a good way to let people “belong” first, but gives them an insight into what it means to “believe”.

So - enough of the rhetoric - what are some things that I think need to change?

1. We need to help people to simply “belong” to the community, without expecting (or impressing on) them to believe in all the facets of Free Software.
2. We need to polish our apologetics so that we can explain the whys and hows of Free software without sounding like zealots
3. We need to recognise that many people will have a period of time where they believe without fully behaving - they believe in open source drivers, but use proprietary drivers, etc.
4. We need to sensitively include elements in our software that bridges the gaps between Free software and proprietary software that:
   1. Allows for quick, simple, hands-off integration, rather than creating big obstacles, of proprietary elements
   2. Provides succinct, and practical, reasons
      why

      the proprietary elements are “bad”

That’ll do for a start. Let the flamewar comments begin.

mrBen

Even though it has been reported in many places, I couldn’t fail to mention this.

The mighty (in character, not stature) Matthew Revell has departed from the LugRadio team. He’s been there since the beginning, and the show will not be the same without him (although it will, I have no doubt, continue to be a fantastic show), and his particular slant on all things Linux and open source.

It is with genuine sadness that I say goodbye to Matt as a presenter.

mrBen

Not much of a battle, really. I was sitting at work today, contemplating doing some “proper” work for once, but in the end I decided on something completely different.

For the last 2 years, in the run-up to the mighty LugRadio Live, I have set myself the task of re-listening to all the previous episodes of LugRadio (yes, even the first one, and yes, even the political special edition) in the months leading up to the event.

Now, in 2005 and 2006, I knew I was going to be attending quite early on in the year (and there were less shows) so it wasn’t too much of a problem. This year, however, the decision to go was only made last week, with less than 70 days to go, and over 70 shows to listen to. Shock horror!

So I decided, in my wisdom, to write a little script in Python to keep track of how many I’d listened to, and how far I had to go, and how many I would need to listen to each day to achieve my target. And, for the hell of it, I thought I would convert the script from a simple command-line script, into a simply CGI script so that you could all revel in my genius. Or madness. Or stalkerdom. Whatever.

You can view the results at http://mrben.jedimoose.org/listener.py and view the code at http://mrben.jedimoose.org/listener.html. (Thanks to Vim for producing nice colour-highlighted HTML from the code) If you’re performing a similar feat, feel free to use the code, but I’d like to know about it. It’s not the best code in the world, but it works

mrBen

The other day I did a fresh install of the newly-release Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). There are a number of new features, but one I had forgotten about was the video codec detection system. I logged onto the BBC website today and thought I would try and watch some of the snooker (they stream it live). The BBC video player is always a bit interesting, so I launched the file in a standalone player and, as expected, the codec was not available.

However, this was detected, and I was offered the appropriate codec (via Gstreamer plugins), which it then downloaded and installed, and now I’m sitting here watching it perfectly. Another coup for Ubuntu.

mrBen

[edit]Footnote: The embedded browser player now also works, although it didn’t seem to spark off the codec installer, which would’ve been even neater.[/edit]

Well, thanks to a couple of generous offers, and my endlessly patient wife, it looks like I will have the unexpected pleasure of attending the mighty LUGRadio Live again this year.

I really hadn’t expected this to happen, so it’s all the more exciting now that it is!

If you’ve never attended, then you should really think about it - it’s _the_ premier Linux and Open Source community event in the UK (if not the world!).

mrBen

Gaming under Linux has always been an interesting challenge. There are some really decent games out there (Quake4, Doom3, Unreal Tournament 2004, Enemy Territory), but many games don’t get released for Linux.

Open Source Gaming is even trickier - all the games I mentioned above are proprietary, although id software do release their older engines under the GPL when they’re out of date. For instance, the Quake 3 source was released about 12 months ago, which has led to a number of free standing FPS games for Linux (Tremulous is one of my favourites, but Urban Terror has just been released, and looks pretty good too.)

However, the other day a new game came on my radar. A game that had previously been released commercially by Eidos, but which was open sourced under the GPL a few years ago, and is now available on all platforms, and with some upgraded graphics now. The game is called WarZone2100, and it’s a top quality RTS (real-time strategy) game. Unlike many of this type of game, there isn’t an overabundance of resource management - it’s mostly about fighting the enemy, and battle strategy, but there is a goodly amount of researching artifacts, and designing new vehicles, and the suchlike.

The documentation is a bit lacking on the website - it took me a bit of hunting to find the keyboard shortcuts, but the game is still great fun. Plus, and this is often what separates commercial games from open source, there is a single-player campaign mode, which I’m playing at the moment.

One thing to note - the only thing they couldn’t open source was the video codec library, meaning that there are none of the cut-scene videos, which have been replaced with text transcripts instead. But you really don’t miss anything

Go and try it out, and maybe we’ll have a fight on-line sometime

mrBen

Well - the event of the year is returning. Jono and the guys have confirmed that the open source/Linux event of the year will be taking place on the 7th-8th July at The Light-House.

If the postings on the last 2 years events haven’t yet persuaded you to give it a try, then you’re a hopeless case! I’ll see you there (wife/child permitting…..)

mrBen