Fedora People

J.C.R. Licklider was born 95 years ago today.

Where would we be without his vision, and the inspiration he provided others?

"The first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through networking was a series of memos written by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in August 1962 discussing his "Galactic internal linkNetwork" concept."

So now that Fedora 13 Alpha is out…. have you given it a try? What do you think about the wallpaper? We want to hear your feedback, because there isn’t actually that much time to update the wallpaper for beta, I think a little over a week. We haven’t gotten much feedback about it yet, so we need to hear from you now!

You can give your feedback here in the comments or on the Fedora design team mailing list. How can you provide useful feedback? Here’s a little writeup on that, shamelessly stolen from an earlier blog post:

How to Provide Helpful Critique

Some folks understandably believe art and design are stuffs enshrouded in a mysterious haze of incense smoke without much logic or reason involved. I get it. I’ve been there too, and I think it’s easy to feel that way – discussions about art works sometimes get a bad reputation for being anywhere from fussy, to bizarre, to completely pointless.

You may find solace in the fact that there’s actually plenty of logical principles and elements and a vocabulary for them that can be use to discuss such works in a productive manner that doesn’t involve ‘invoking an embodiment of emotive symbolism’ or similar. I strongly recommend you explore some of this vocabulary, as not only will it help you more effectively communicate your critique but reading through a brief survey of basic design principles will probably even help you explain why you feel a particular way about an element of a work you’re critiquing. Some basic resources:

• Wikipedia: Design elements and principles
• Wikipedia: Composition
• Artwork Critique Form by Marvin Bartel

So…. let us know what you think! Also, here’s some shouts and greets to the rocketeers who’ve worked towards getting the Fedora 13 artwork ready to launch thus far:

Luya Tshimbalanga (bonus points kicking off the process and moving things along!), Charlie Brej, Samuele Storari, Nicu Buculei, Alexander Smirnov, Bogdan Bartos, Onyeibo Oku, Christo Petkov, Mola Pahnadayan, Mel Chua, Hristo Petkov, Kanza Aman, and Catalin Festila!

(If I missed you, get your artwork up on our F13 artwork wiki page! What are you waiting for? )

Filed under: artwork, fedora Tagged: artwork, fedora

I like TigerDirect stores: they're like geek supermarkets. However, they have some really annoying practices, such as entering my card number into their POS system, separately from their POS terminal; the terminal receipt shows only the last 5 digits of the card number, and the cash register receipt shows all but the last 6 digits. Anyone with those two receipts and the Luhn algorithm has the full card number.

But the practice that annoys me the most is having a person at the door "check the receipt" of each person making a purchase. The receipt-checker is standing only a few meters away from the cash register -- what is there to check? Is this an effective loss-prevention practice, or just a way to annoy customers?

Today I bought a micro-SD flash card with adapter for an Open-RD Client system that Seneca just purchased. The sales guy was helpful, and as I took the purchase to the lone cashier on duty, I found her talking to the receipt-checker. She shuffled over to the cash register. I paid and made my way to the door, and the receipt checker smiled at me and popped the top off his blue highlighter. I smiled back.

"May I check your receipt?" he asked.

"No," I answered, continuing to the door. I figured that the purchase has already been made, as far as I know they have to right to search or detain me, the receipt checker saw me pay the cashier, and it's obvious that I have one purchased item and one receipt in my hand.

Thinking he'd heard wrong, he again asked, "May I check it?"

"No," I replied, walking out.

"Thank you," he yelled after me as I left the store.

I have looked around and I thought for a moment, that I never could finish fully my translations in transifex, because not every each ones really commented in gettext files. Exactly with zero bytes. With no word. Between a tons of joker chars, like in morse codes - from where should I know witch joker char is for what? Basically there are some ways to figure out, but currently when I launch POedit, just few files has line comments. I know, this is not really easy to create such PO's - between tons of coding - but when the information is goes in another track... Well... it could mean a lot of trouble. But please, if it's possible - just a few words.... like as the developers of Shotwell POT. It has been done so nicely....

BTW, our marketing team has also explained the newest slogan: Rock it. Witch is cool, and nice - but still couldn't decide how to translate - because there is not really fully equal word to it in my language - what pulls through the "rocket/supercool/let's go change" word. BUT, I have the availability after explanation that to be translated. You know, much easier...

Even to wookie with good throath: 
Acworarc ahao! wwwowoan ahao! rcoooaor ahao!

Or with standard 1200 kbaud as R2D2:
Hear it. Feel it. Rock it.

Or any language. Am I right?

I decided to revert to Fedora 12 because of the lack of input for stylus for the tablet. I will wait for beta version.

-----

J'ai décidé de retourner sur Fedora 12 à cause du manque d'entrée du stylus pour la tablette. J'attendrai la version beta.

Vem aí a 1º Semana de Educação e Artes Digitais, uma realização da Casa da Arvore – Projetos Sociais que reunirá do dia 5 a 9 de abril deste ano em Palmas, pesquisadores, educadores, alunos e artistas representantes de projetos inovadores desenvolvidos em várias partes do Brasil. São iniciativas que têm provocado profundas reflexões sobre o universo de possibilidade de produção de conhecimento na era digital, através da arte e da educação. A programação conta com três oficinas voltadas para artistas, estudantes, profissionais liberais e demais interessados em experimentar novas possibilidades de criação a partir de novas tecnologias de informação, comunicação e mobilidade. Para fazer sua inscrição envie um email com o nome, idade, telefone, área de atuação para os e- mails abaixo e aguardar instruções:

Jornalismo na web 2.0 – Nacho Duram (SP) jornalismoweb2.0@gmail.com

Animação Básica em Blender 3D – Erick Henrique (TO) anima.blender.3d@gmail.com

Processamento de som e imagem em tempo real – Jarbas Jácome (PE) processamento.tempo.real@gmail.com

Os painéis serão gratuitos e aberto a toda sociedade.

As oficinas serão cobradas R$ 10,00 e o limite de vagas é 15 pessoas por oficina.

1ª Semana de Educação e Artes Digitais – Palmas – TO
de 05 a 09 de Abril na Av. Teotônio Segurado, 402 Sul, Área Verde, Palmas-TO

Foi anunciado o lançamento da versão de Alfa da Décima Terceira Versão do Fedora, após uma semana de adiamento. Essa primeira versão utilizável do Fedora 13 visa proporcionar aos desenvolvedores de todas as variantes customizadas e empacotadores, um meio de testar e aperfeiçoar os pacotes e as Spins. Além de proporcionar aos aficionadas por inovação experimentarem [...]

I happened to take a look at this and see there wasn't a package for it. It's one of those items that I don't have time to keep up with but I think would be a nice package to have in Fedora. If anyone wants to pick up with this and run with it be my guest!

The package includes a subpackage for devel (a single header file) and a subpackage for the Python bindings. There is also a patch to get the Python code to find the shared object.

Have fun!

Patch: mongoose-site-location.patch
--- bindings/python/mongoose.py 2010-03-10 20:07:53.735407453 -0500 +++ bindings/python/mongoose.py 2010-03-10 20:09:08.935760549 -0500 @@ -110,7 +110,8 @@ def __init__(self, **kwargs): dll_extension = os.name == 'nt' and 'dll' or 'so' - self.dll = ctypes.CDLL('_mongoose.%s' % dll_extension) + from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib + self.dll = ctypes.CDLL(get_python_lib(1) + '/_mongoose.%s' % dll_extension) start = self.dll.mg_start self.ctx = ctypes.c_voidp(self.dll.mg_start()).value self.version = ctypes.c_char_p(self.dll.mg_version()).value Spec:
# sitearch for others (remove the unneeded one) %{!?python_sitearch: %global python_sitearch %(%{__python} -c "from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_lib; print(get_python_lib(1))")} Name: mongoose Version: 2.8 Release: 1%{?dist} Summary: Simple and easy to use web server Group: System Environment/Daemons License: MIT URL: http://code.google.com/p/mongoose/ Source0: http://mongoose.googlecode.com/files/%{name}-%{version}.tgz Patch0: mongoose-site-location.patch BuildRoot: %{_tmppath}/%{name}-%{version}-%{release}-root-%(%{__id_u} -n) %description Mongoose is an easy to use web server. It can be embedded into existing application to provide a web interface to it. %package python Summary: Python bindings for the mongoose web server Requires: mongoose %description python Mongoose is an easy to use web server. It can be embedded into existing application to provide a web interface to it. This package includes the bindings for the Python programming language. %package devel Summary: Development files for the mongoose web server BuildArch: noarch %description devel Mongoose is an easy to use web server. It can be embedded into existing application to provide a web interface to it. This package includes the development files. %prep %setup -qn %{name} %patch0 %build make %{?_smp_mflags} linux %install rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT # Install the base mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{_bindir} mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{_mandir}/man1/ cp %{name} $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{_bindir} cp %{name}.1 $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{_mandir}/man1/ # Install the python bindings mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{python_sitearch} cp bindings/python/mongoose.py _%{name}.so $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{python_sitearch} # Install the development files mkdir -p $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{_includedir}/%{name}/ cp %{name}.h $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{_includedir}/%{name}/ %clean rm -rf $RPM_BUILD_ROOT %files %defattr(-,root,root,-) %{_bindir}/%{name} %{_mandir}/man1/%{name}.1.gz %files python %defattr(-,root,root,-) %{python_sitearch}/_%{name}.so %{python_sitearch}/%{name}.py* %files devel %defattr(-,root,root,-) %{_includedir}/%{name}/ %changelog * Wed Mar 10 2010 Steve 'Ashcrow' Milner <me> 2.8-1 - Initial spec

No dia 9 de Março foi lançado a versão alfa do Fedora 13 Goddard, após uma semana da data prevista.

Nessa versão as principais features são:

Suporte 3D para placas de vídeos Nvidia, através do drive Nouveau;
RPM versão 4.8;
Inicialização do sistema em menor tempo;
Instalação do sistema com pré-definição de partições separadas para Home e Boot;
Firefox 3.6;
Suporte a mais Webcams;
NetworkManger suporta conexão a internet por meio de celular conectado via Bluetooth;
Kernel 2.6.32
KDE 4.4

Para maiores informações leia o release notes.

Faça o download e ajude a testar e melhorar o próximo release.

I’ll be heading in to Austin tomorrow to check in and get my badge before the crazy lines roll in Friday morning. Tomorrow night I’ll be at the Social Media BBQ at Emo’s. Friday I’ll start off in the Blogger’s Lounge because that’s where all the cool kids hang out. Depending on how my retrospective call at work goes (it’s the end of our agile development cycle) I hope to attend a few UX panels. You can find all the panels I’ve selected to attend on my SXSW schedule.

Saturday night the company I work for is cosponsoring a party with Tumblr, FourSquare, SoundCloud, and KickStarter at Emo’s. They are also cosponsoring the Houston@SXSW party Monday night at Hudson on Fifth. You can RSVP for that party here.

Sadly there doesn’t seem to be any Austin Barcamp activities going on. If there is something going on that I don’t know about yet, please inform me! I’d like to start a discussion on the need for good designers in free and open source software development and to brainstorm ways to get designers more interested in participating!

If you can’t find me at the panels I’ve posted, the Blogger’s Lounge, or at these parties - you should be able to spot me at The Planet’s booths (303 & 305) in the tradeshow sometime Sat & Sun 12 - 6 and Monday 12 - 4. I’m told there will be sweeeeeet giveaways so I hope to see you there!

In addition to the last posting here a new one:

[Original by Johnny Vulcan via flicke under cc-licence; edited by Henrik Heigl]

[Original by Velo Steve via flickr, edited by Henrik Heigl]

[Original by Abraxas3d via flickr, edited by Henrik Heigl]

Continuando la "tradizione" dei giovedì di test, domani sarà la volta delle webcam.

Infatti, dopo il lavoro già svolto in Fedora 10 e Fedora 12 per migliorare il supporto a tutti i tipi di webcam, anche per Fedora 13 Hans de Goede ha deciso di lavorare sui driver di quelle ancora parzialmente (o per nulla) funzionanti, con particolare attenzione alle cosidette "dual-mode camera", che possono cioè funzionare sia da webcam che da fotocamera digitale.

Come al solito, partecipare è semplice: se già state usando la versione Alpha, eseguite Cheese o un programma analogo e verificate che la vostra webcam funzioni correttamente.

Se invece non avete installato la Alpha è sempre possibile usare il live CD più recente ed eseguire i test senza installare nulla. Questo metodo è consigliato anche a tutti agli utenti di altre distribuzioni che vogliano contribuire ai progetti conivolti (kernel e libv4l): i problemi riportati e risolti finiranno ovviamente anche nella vostra distribuzione. Potenza dell'open source :)

Tutti i dettagli sulla pagina wiki dedicata.

I’m totally jazzed about the upcoming Marketing FAD which kicks off this weekend.  The Marketeers will be meeting in Raleigh, Friday (late-late Friday, probably starting at zee Waffle House!) and ending Tuesday; I’ll be headed out of town Wednesday.  We have a boatload of deliverables we plan on knocking out, and on top of that, well, FUN STUFF.  We’re going to a hockey game, for one – and, coincidentally, It will be the Carolina Hurricanes vs. Phoenix Coyotes.

So for background: Ryan Rix and I are both traveling to RDU from… you guessed it, Phoenix.  I am not exactly the world’s biggest sports nut, but of course I have to root for my hometown, so I’ve been cracking jokes about how I’m going to be decked out in my full Coyotes gear (which, of course, I don’t actually have).  Here’s a fun clip from the marketing meeting yesterday on IRC, where we were discussing any last-minute items we needed to wrap up before our FAD:

20:06:35 <spevack> so I think we're in pretty decent shape. 20:06:46 <spevack> That's really about it from my end. 20:06:47 <spevack> HOCKEY 20:06:48 <spevack> 20:06:48 <spevack> EOF 20:06:50 <rbergeron> oh 20:07:09 * rbergeron and rrix are bringin yotes gear 20:07:27 * rrix has a jersey 20:07:31 * mchua chuckles 20:07:35 <rbergeron> oh, you do? ergh 20:07:43 * rbergeron has... facepaint?

In any case: I’m somewhat packed, I’m only bringing 2 pairs of shoes (zomg, I know, right?!) because I have to make room for…

COOKIES!!

I’m up to my ears in promises. ke4qqq may be going home from the FAD with 10 boxes of girl scout cookies because of his limesurvey awesomeness (plz see my ongoing tale of luv for survey-goodness on the fp.o market research wiki page).

But seriously: I had a point to this blog post. And I’m getting to it…. right… now.

Tagged: cookies, FAD, Fedora, marketing

For as long as I can remember I have found the LWN.net Community Calendar very useful. It would perhaps be nice to have a similar web-based calendar for Fedora events across the world. Currently, the events are tracked by this page. That is nice but doesn’t give the visual representation of a month full of events world-wide.

It would be nice to have a calendar that integrates with FAS and, allows someone to post the details of the event. Another group of folks, can take a look-see at the posting and approve it to be listed. The original poster could choose to be the event owner or, add someone who is the actual owner. Since Events etc fall under the ambit of FAmSCo, perhaps they might consider this stuff.

You’ve got a partitioned disk image, how do you pull out of that just the filesystem(s)? It’s easy with libguestfs tools:

$ virt-list-filesystems -al disk.img /dev/sda1 ext4 /dev/vg_f12x32/lv_root ext4 /dev/vg_f12x32/lv_swap swap $ virt-cat disk.img /dev/sda1 > boot.fs $ file boot.fs boot.fs: Linux rev 1.0 ext4 filesystem data (extents) (huge files) $ virt-cat disk.img /dev/vg_f12x32/lv_root > root.fs

You can also use guestfish to examine the filesystem image:

$ guestfish -a boot.fs -m /dev/sda Welcome to guestfish, the libguestfs filesystem interactive shell for editing virtual machine filesystems. Type: 'help' for help with commands 'quit' to quit the shell ><fs> ll / total 15941 dr-xr-xr-x. 5 root root 1024 Mar 8 19:37 . dr-xr-xr-x 19 root root 0 Mar 8 13:40 .. -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1486532 Nov 7 21:38 System.map-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 103788 Nov 7 21:38 config-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 1024 Mar 8 19:12 efi drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root 1024 Mar 8 19:49 grub -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 11253019 Mar 8 19:39 initramfs-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE.img drwx------. 2 root root 12288 Mar 8 18:45 lost+found -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 3454368 Nov 7 21:38 vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE ><fs> cat /grub/grub.conf # grub.conf generated by anaconda # # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg. # root (hd0,0) # kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_f12x32-lv_root # initrd /initrd-[generic-]version.img #boot=/dev/sda default=0 timeout=0 splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title Fedora (2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE ro root=/dev/mapper/vg_f12x32-lv_root LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=uk rhgb quiet initrd /initramfs-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE.img ><fs>

I appreciated Kevin Fenzi’s post on Knowing Vs. Doing and it pushed me to clarify the thinking behind my original post.

Kevin has a great point that there can be a lot of enjoyment from “knowing” and acquiring knowledge to which I would add, “even if there is no plan for what you will do with that knowledge.”  There is nothing wrong with that.

I want to be a person of greater forward progress and accomplishment.  These are two things that I value.  I also value knowledge.  I’ve found, however, that when I place all my value on knowledge things get lopsided–more and more time gets invested in “wanting to know” and the resistance to “doing” gets higher.

This makes me wonder if the discussions in the Fedora Project are too focused on “being right” before “doing.” Mitch Joel had a recent article along similar lines called Complaining vs. Doing.  I’m hoping for more “doing” and less talking, arguing, and complaining.

No one is required to share my values of forward progress, accomplishment, and knowledge.  I do think it is important to consider the affect our values might be having on the Fedora Project.  If someone places a high value on arguing and debate, does that create an environment for a pleasant, sustainable Fedora Project?

Someone could equally argue my values of forward progress and accomplishment are detrimental to the Fedora Project, though if I thought that were true, naturally I would not focus on them.

What do you value most as it relates to the Fedora Project and what are you doing about it?

Filed under: Fedora, Productivity

Ladies and gentlemen, God Street Wine is getting back together for a couple of shows this summer and their fan club presale tickets go on sale in a half hour. I was bummed because I was getting on a flight to Austin for a friend’s wedding, right before ticketing opened. Well, I am on that flight now and apparently all American Airlines domestic flights have WiFi. Technology can be awesome sometimes (usually when it makes it easier to do every day things). Let’s just hope my battery doesn’t die before I can snag a few tickets.

Note: Fedora connected flawlessly. Bar none, we have the easiest networking setup out there. Dan Williams has done a kick ass job with Network Manager!

Update: Just purchased six tickets for Friday and six for the Saturday shows! The money goes to a good cause and I have plenty of friends who will come back to NY for this.

[read this post in: ar de es fr it ja ko pt ru zh-CN ]

The best reference book.

Fedora 11 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bible

xD !

[sub focus - rock it]

did’nt believe it fits so good… hear it, feeil it, rock it.

Many places I go I meet people telling how much they liked graphic tutorials and how much they learned about using GIMP and Inkscape following theb, and this makes me feel bad, as I am quite busy lately with a lot of things (video and photography ate a lot of my time) and rarely manage to write something new. But here is a perfect opportunity, Fedora 13 entered Alpha and had a code name (Goddard) and so far a visual theme based on rocketry, so it seems a tutorial titled "Drawing a rocket with Inkscape is not rocket science" would be just fit.

The target here is to produce something like this, not extremely realistic but easily recognizable as a rocket and the most important, fun (hopefully) and easy to create by someone who is using Inkscape for the first time.

So start Inkscape and draw a rectangle, which must be more tall than wide (we are drawing a rocket!) and have straight, not rounded corners.

Then select it and convert to path, we will do node editing.

Now go in node editor and select the two top nodes. The following operation can be done (as far as I know) only from keyboard: press Ctrl + Alt + > to enlarge the segment, the result should be a trapezium with the big side up.

With the same two top nodes selected, add a new node in the middle of their segment.

Select the new node (only it) and move it up (keep the Ctrl key pressed to limit the movement to vertical only).

Select back the two nodes that were the top corners of the rectangle and make them symmetric, for a shape starting to look like a bullet/rocket.

To finish the bullet shape of the rocket body we need to make the bottom edge rounded: select the two bottom corners, add a new node in the middle, select it, move a bit up and made it symmetric, now we have a bullet, an aerodynamic shape.

A rocket needs some "wings", so we will create another rectangle, this time much smaller.

Select the rectangle and click on it once, this will put in in rotate/skew mode so we need to skew it a bit my dragging on the arrow on one of its edges.

Move it in position, next to the rocket body.

Again, in rotate/skew mode, rotate it a bit by dragging one of the arrows at the corners, until we like the alignment. Note: no worry if the alignment is not perfect, lower it under the body and when filled with color this won't be noticeable.

Select the wing and duplicate it.

Flip the new (duplicate) wing horizontally and move it to the other side of the rocket body (keep Ctrl pressed to limit the movement to horizontal).

The wing facing us is another thin rectangle, with the same height as the other wings (technically, we should have two rectangles, one for each edge, but for now use one for simplicity). To center the new wing to the rocket body, select it and the body, then use the Align and Distribute dialog to align them horizontally relative to the biggest item (the body).

Now you know what is needed for a funny rocket? A window, so the astronauts inside can look at the space. Start by drawing a circle, which will be the windows frame (I think I am boring repeating this, but keep Ctrl pressed, so what you draw is a round circle not an ellipse).

Select the circle and the rocket body and align vertically to the center of the body.

Another smaller circle will be the real window.

Select the two circles and align them horizontally and vertically.

Now color the items, using either the color palette at the bottom, the Fill and Stroke button in the toolbar or any of the other possible ways (there are quite a few). A rocket is usually silverish, so use shades of gray.

If you want the rocket less realistic but screaming "Fedora", make those grays a bit bluish or go the extra mile and straightly use the Fedora colors (light and dark blue).

Back to our rocket, let's make it fly. Take the Bezier tool (pen) and draw freely a few spikes, they will be the flame.

Color the flame red or a redish orange and lower it under the rocket body.

The core of the flame is supposed to be warmer, so let's draw a new set of smaller spikes in yellow.

Optionally, if we want the rocket cruising, not just taking-off, select everything and rotate a bit.

A bit of beautification never hurt, so let's make the rocket a bit more realistic (if you can call that "realistic") and less cartoon. Remove the strokes (for example using the Fill and Stroke dialog) and use silver gradients for all metallic surfaces, do this by using the Gradient tool, dragging and editing colors.

Fill everything with gradients, including the flames and the window.

Select the inner (yellow) flame and using the Fill and Stroke dialog Blur it a bit for a more realistic (and prettier) look.

Blur also the outer (red/orange) flame. And that's about all.

Now our rocket can take-of and fly proudly. Go to the stars and beyond them!