Philadelphia Bug Jam!

Monday, Feb 23rd, 2009 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On Saturday the Philadelphia team of Ubuntu US Pennsylvania hosted our BugJam. PLUG member Art Alexion graciously offered us space at Resources for Human Development in great room with wired connections for the event, and access to a kitchen for our goodies.

People started arriving around noon and we got things set up, retrieved the Oreo Cake and sticky buns donated by Pechter’s Bread. We started things off pretty socially, answering basic questions and getting everyone online, with launchpad accounts. I had drafted up some handouts the night before and Jim Fisher supplied a bunch of printouts of the bug workflow charts. When people were finally settled in Connor Imes did a short presentation tour of the important Wiki pages and basics on how to find and handle bugs.

More photos were posted on our gallery: http://gallery.ubuntupennsylvania.org/main.php?g2_itemId=523.

We spent until 6PM there, a six hours that went by far more quickly than any of us had anticipated. All told, we had 9 people show up, 7 who were able to attend for the entire BugJam. We even saw some new faces, which is always a delight.

Great event! Awesome work everyone!

Filed under: computers, events, philadelphia, plug, ubuntu planet

Extending London trip for UKUUG Spring Conference!

Monday, Feb 16th, 2009 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

As I’ve mentioned, earlier this year I decided to skip over to London for a week. After sorting out my plans to visit from March 14-22 I learned about the UKUUG Spring Conference from March 24-26, and perhaps more importantly, I learned about the conference bursaries. I put off ordering my plane tickets and checked with my boss to confirm that I could extend my trip if I was sponsored for the conference, got his go ahead, and applied.

I learned today that my application was accepted! Wow! Saying I’m excited doesn’t even begin to cover it, and while reviewing the topics today my boss said “where is my passport? I want to go.” Suffice to say, the topics are right up our alley at work and I’ll be taking lots of notes to bring back home.

Decided to purchase my plane tickets for March 14-29th, so I will be flying out late on Saturday 14th for an overnight flight and coming back Sunday afternoon on the 29th. I still need to sort out how to get there/back from the Philadelphia airport, what I’m doing with the cats (Michael wants to look after them, as usual, but settlement on the house is during that time so it might be tricky/impossible) and there some transportation logistics once I’m there to work out. But in all, things are coming together nicely, it should be a fantastic trip, and I’m delighted that I can take a full two weeks for my first overseas trip.

Yay!!! :)

Filed under: computers, plug, travel, ubuntu planet

UCP, US Teams, Ubuntu BugJam in Philly

Saturday, Feb 7th, 2009 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

As many of my local friends can attest, I spent much of my January as a bit of a hermit. I made it out for a PLUG North meeting (great talk on zsh by Paul Snyder), but otherwise spent a lot of time hanging in. February is shaping up to be a more active month.

I rang in February in Baltimore, where I was spending a weekend at an Ubuntu Certified Professionals course redevelopment sprint. I was able to meet Belinda Lopez and Nick Barcet from Canonical, as well as Adam Sommer (The Awesome), Dan Trevino, and others who were a real pleasure to work with. The weekend was a lot of fun, and hopefully just as productive :)

Wednesday night I headed down to the city for a PLUG Central meeting, where there was a talk on clustering and Lustre. Thursday evening I had dinner with a friend at Blue Pacific down in King of Prussia. Friday I had dinner with a former co-worker at Michael’s Deli in King of Prussia (diner+great beer, yay!) and then got home a bit late for another USTeams Meeting in #ubuntu-us. We defined the mentor qualifications for the team and the board will accept volunteers for the mentor positions soon. We’re continuing to move forward with revitalizing the team, I have a few tasks on my plate that I hope to get to this afternoon. Plus we were able to take some time to talk to a couple Global Bug Jam events that US teams are holding.

Finally, the Ubuntu Pennsylvania team has an event of our own planned in Philadelphia for the Global Bug Jam! We’ll be hosting it on Saturday, February 21, 2009 from noon-6PM, after which we’ll head out for optional dinner and beers.

Filed under: events, philadelphia, plug, ubuntu planet

Going International!

Saturday, Jan 24th, 2009 by pleia2 | 6 Comments

Every year the world seems smaller to me. Since I got online in ’98 I’ve had friends all over the world, but I think I’ve just gotten more involved with people worldwide, become more conscious of conferences I want to attend, things happening that I’d like to see and getting to know more people I’d like to meet sometime. For a long time I’ve been saying “I will travel more!” but so many things got in the way, whether it was work, money, life events or something else.

Last year I decided to not let this happen anymore. I finally got a passport and I started traveling more, and by taking some long weekends throughout the year I had a great traveling year outside of Pennsylvania:

Arlington, Virginia (weekend, D&D Experience)
San Francisco, California (long weekend, visited Google, went on a Sonoma County wine tour)
Washington DC (weekend, Smithsonians, Zoo)
Niagara Falls, Canada (long weekend 4th of July, my first time ever out of the US)
New York City, New York (weekend, HOPE conference)
Orlando, Florida (funeral, visiting family)

And even within Pennsylvania I finally hit several of the landmarks in Philadelphia, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Mutter Museum, Eastern State Penitentiary, Academy of Natural Sciences. WIthin Pennsylvania I finally wandered all around Lancaster and finally tasted shoo-fly pie, headed up to the Crayola Factory in Easton, went to the Pioneer Tunnel Coal Mine in Ashland, and went on a wine and cheese train ride at the East Stroudsburg Railroad. I finished off the year on New Years watching a giant fiberglass Peep drop in Bethlehem.

This year? Going international, but first I reviewed things in the past that made things so difficult.

Money. Always troublesome, but I’ve cut back in other places to afford trips, and while on trips kept to a strict budget. When it came down to it, I would rather go somewhere and be thrifty than not go at all. I really do know people all over the world, and I know loads of welcoming people who have extended the “If you’re ever in town and need a place to stay…” invite, which helps tremendously with expenses.

Work. I have a stable job with 2 weeks of vacation time, and now only my own work schedule to plan around. Plus, there is a chance I can go to a conference or two this year if I can prove it’s beneficial to my work (woo paid time off!). Ultimately I would like to have a job where I could work from anywhere anytime, I really envy the folks who have such flexibility. Even if I had to work 8 hours each day, I would love to do it telecommuting from a broadband connection in Belgium, Singapore or Peru and use the other 16 hours of my day and weekends to sleep and visit attractions.

Life Events. There is no avoiding these. I have lost three close family members in the past 5 years, and since I have to travel each time to see family it typically ate into my vacation time. All I can do is hope for the best and make the most of it when they happen.

So, with January almost over and all these grand plans in my head, where am I planning to head off to first?

For a week, from March 14-22 I’ll be visiting London!

And later this year? Lots of thoughts, keeping an eye out for Ubuntu Developers Summit locations and probably will do some more Europe traveling. Hoping firm up plans in the next few months.

Filed under: events, philadelphia, travel

New bike tire for trainer, tircd and rearranging desk

Saturday, Jan 10th, 2009 by pleia2 | 4 Comments

I didn’t get out much this week, ended up skipping PLUG on Wednesday when the weather got icy in my neck of the woods, and then Thursday I skipped movie plans with a friend after a tiring work day and need for an early start on Friday.

I did get some stuff done this week though. Finally managed to get down to Tailwind Bicycles to get a back tire for Nessy so I could use it on the trainer. They were very very helpful, showing me how to change the tire so I could do it myself next time, hurrah! Now I have it back home and all set up.

Yesterday I learned about tircd from Mike Greb. Back when I started using Twitter I used it with the official bot in bitlbee, so it all was great with my IRC-centric workflow. Then the twitterbot died and I’ve spent months fiddling with other clients, twhirl for a while, twitbin, then settling upon gwibber – until one of the dependencies broke in the PPA for hardy and made it unusable without snagging packages from Intrepid. So I was pretty excited when I learned I could get twitter back in IRC, so I installed it on r2b1 alongside Bitlbee, opened up the firewall to my server and connected my irc client to twit.cause.a.t.rainwreck.com (yes, there has to be a new subdomain for every service I run) and now I have tweets in IRC again.

I also rearranged my desk last night. I was getting tired of having the printer, test machine and firewall on the top of my desk taking up precious space. So I piled them all nicely on top of each other with my desktop and sparc and ran power and ethernet wires into my closet to power the printer which now lives in there. I still need another extension cord to get rid of that hanging power strip (nice huh?) but it’s much more workable than it was. The extra desk space is very nice.

And this weekend I’m hanging in. Working on some project stuff, hanging out with my kitties, chatting with a friend. It’s been snowy out today too, love snow, I think I’ll go make some hot chocolate.

Filed under: computers

Valley Forge

Saturday, Jan 10th, 2009 by pleia2 | 3 Comments

I drive past it several times a month, but the last (and first!) time I was actually at Valley Forge National Historical Park was in 2005 with Michael. I always say I’m going to go back, but it never happens.

So last weekend I was coming back from Micro Center having just picked up my new Canon and ran into a wall of traffic on 422. A quick check of KYW‘s traffic report explained there was an event near the Oaks exit, backing up traffic for miles and causing delays of over an hour. So I hopped on 23 through the park and figured I’d get home via Phoenixville. No go, traffic there too. Instead of sitting in traffic for an hour I popped into the park and decided to take a walk. Phew, you wouldn’t think it would take so much to get me to a park I actually do quite enjoy!

It was chilly out, made worse by the wind and the thin jacket I was wearing and lack of gloves (in my other coat!) but once I got walking I warmed up a bit. I got lucky and my brand new camera came with the battery pack partially charged, so I could even try out my new camera.

As usual at the park, I also saw some animals.

It was a nice walk, I will have to take my bike out there sometime this spring for some riding.

Filed under: animals, philadelphia

Pink Electronics :)

Sunday, Jan 4th, 2009 by pleia2 | 12 Comments

Yesterday I headed down to Microcenter to pick up a new camera that I bought through their “buy online, pick up in store” option. I’ve had a 3 megapixel PowerShot A70 for ages, but these past few months it’s been dying, and now most photos end up with green lines or other issues. I was able to snag a PowerShot SD1100 IS Digital ELPH in the color “Pink Melody” for pretty cheap – woohoo! It’s a great compact camera, plus, like all modern Canons it has a great interface, gorgeous screen and works flawlessly in Linux.

Oh and it’s pink, so I get to add it to my pink electronics collection!

Nintendo DS, camera, phone, mini9 and remote… for my pink dvd player.

Filed under: computers, pink, ubuntu planet

Marshmallow Peep NYE

Thursday, Jan 1st, 2009 by pleia2 | 6 Comments

Last night I met up with Stephen to attend the Bethlehem First Night celebration, the height of which was the dropping of a big fiberglass Peep at midnight.

It was cold last night, by the time we arrived and parked in Bethlehem it was shortly after 7, and already 20 degrees out. We wandered around looking for food for about an hour, finally settling on Rosanna’s Restaurant, a pizzeria on Broad street near where we parked for the evening. They closed at 9:30, so we headed back out into the cold at that time and went down to the plaza where the peep drop was taking place.

We mostly just hung out with other people huddled by the fire pits placed throughout the square, but the two hours down there were livened up by a few things, including a friendly crowd…

…ice sculptures!

…Peep roasting!

..for Peep smores! The Peep smore kits were being given away by the event organizers, very fun.

Shortly after 11 I was getting a bit too cold, so we flocked inside town hall with a lot of other people to huddle in the warmth. At around quarter to midnight we went back outside to celebrate the new year with the rest of the crowd.

And so, at midnight to much cheering we watched the big Peep be lowered from a crane in the corner of the square.

It was so cold, did I mention that? We skipped most of the fireworks and headed back to the car at that point. The crowd was actually not that bad, and getting out of the garage (which turned out to be free that night!) and the city of Bethlehem was trivial.

A very fun night! Happy 2009! :)

Filed under: events

Vespa: My Pink Dell Mini9 w/ Ubuntu

Sunday, Dec 28th, 2008 by pleia2 | 29 Comments

I’ve wanted a pink laptop for ages, this Christmas a few of my friends got together and pitched in to buy me the pink Dell Mini9 I’d been drooling over for months. Wow! Thanks again guys, you rock.

First off, here are the specs. Which makes it twice as powerful with many more features than my current laptop.

As a whole? I love this netbook. It’s fast, it’s light, it’s silent, it’s pink and coming preloaded with Ubuntu 8.04 was quite nice. I named it Vespa (after Princess Vespa from Spaceballs). The screen is 8.9″ viewable and has a default resolution of 1024×600 which makes for a very usable amount of space, and the fact that it’s backlit makes the display itself brilliant and clear. The touchpad is appropriately sensitive and nice to use. When I close the lid it suspends properly. Out of the box everything works, I just tested my camera with skype this afternoon (it also came with a program called “cheese” that the camera works with).

As you can see above, it comes with a little book about Ubuntu published by Dell. It’s copyrighted so I can’t scan and share the contents without permission, but it’s a cute little 20 page booklet that goes over the basics of how to get going with Ubuntu. Dell customizes Gnome a bit, but switching back to regular Gnome is as easy as a menu option to “Switch Desktop Mode” (you choose either “Dell” or “Classic” Desktop).

Now that all that “Yes, it’s awesome!” talk is out of the way, I do have a few gripes, some of which are pretty major.

The keyboard (Ubuntu casebadge is my addition, alas, Dell has no Ubuntu sticker for their Ubuntu Mini9s):

Honestly? As a whole it doesn’t bother me. I’m used to hunting for insert and home keys on a laptop keyboard. Having the tilde and pipe and others, and all f-keys usable via the function key hasn’t annoyed me nearly as much as I feared it might. It’s all quite usable except for one thing – the location of the apostrophe. Rather than being between the enter and ;: key, it’s next to the space bar and the enter key is next to the ;: – this means that I’m happily typing along and keep hitting the enter key to enter an apostrophe, gah. I’ll probably get used to it, but it really was a poor design choice, maybe I’ll try some fancy key remapping to try and solve this.

Wireless worked out of the box, which was great. But while the machine is packed with Intel parts, and then they had to go and do this:

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller (rev 01)

Broadcom? Why oh why!? I’ve already run into a bug where the wl module hangs upon sshing to other machines, which is a primary function for this netbook (I’m connected to at least 3 servers via ssh 24/7). I was able to find this bug, which they’ve released a fix for, but until I can snag that release, the problem is fixed via issuing this command each time I connect to a wireless network:

sudo iwpriv eth1 set_vlanmode 0

Which leads me to my next gripe… why don’t I have this fix on my Mini9? Because this machine ships with the “dell-mini.archive.canonical.com” sources.list which is not kept up to date with all security patches and fixes for Hardy. This is really quite worrying, and is making me seriously consider wiping the install and installing things myself, perhaps Xubuntu Intrepid – and fighting with it to get all the hardware working again, knowing that since restoration is via the Ubuntu 8.04 DVD + a drivers disk, that I’ll need a USB dvd-rom (or some other trickery) to restore to factory settings.

There are also a couple little things – like FireFox being covered with Yahoo! stuff, the default page is yahoo.com, there is a Yahoo! toolbar by default, the default search engine is Yahoo!. Easily turned off and changed, of course, but being in Linux for so long I’m not used to a fresh install so blatantly advertising like that (reminds me of AOL icons on the desktops of old Windows installs).

With the exception of the apostrophe and broadcom chipset, the issues are pretty much just software related. Tossing a vanilla install on here would be where I’d begin with an eeePC (ships with a version of Xandros I dislike) or an Aspire One (AFAIK only ships with Windows, which I wouldn’t use). Having the Mini9 shipped with a decent Ubuntu install where all the hardware works is great – if I really can’t be bothered to take the time to reinstall and fiddle with hardware, I really could go on with this factory install without too much headache (or heartache). Plus I’m happy to support Dell shipping with Ubuntu releases, I believe having big companies make steps like this is vital to the growth and success of Linux on the desktop. Hooray Mini9!

Filed under: computers, pink, plug, ubuntu planet

Merry Christmas! And Good Things :)

Wednesday, Dec 24th, 2008 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

It’s Christmas Eve! This evening I’m snuggled up on my couch with some hot chocolate, cookies and a couple kitties watching Hogfather. Splendid. Tomorrow Baerana invited me over to her place to spend the Christmas afternoon with her, b2s and a couple of their friends. It’s so nice to have friends to spend Christmas with.

I got thinking holiday stuff early this season. On the weekend after Thanksgiving my friend Mike took me to the Wachovia Center (the first time I’d been to a big venue in Philly!) to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. And what a spectacular show! I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I was in no way disappointed, it was diverse and fun and engaging. A really great night, made even better by a dinner at Monk’s Cafe just prior to the show.

In spite of the dark beach pictures in my last entry, the majority of my trip to Florida earlier this month was sunny, like when I took these photos in the community where my grandfather lives:

Since I moved here I’ve been pondering whether to sign up for a gym membership or get an indoor trainer for my bike. In the end I went with indoor trainer, which I ordered this past weekend – and it arrived this evening! It took a bit of time to put the bike on it since I wasn’t familiar with the mechanics of the bike, but it all came together nicely after some fiddling. I am going to go to a bike shop soon and see about getting a smooth rear tire for the back when it’s on the trainer, it’s pretty noisy with the mountain bike tire on there.

On the tech side, I did a migration recently taking a slightly older than current version of Drupal that was installed from a tarball and migrated it into a Debian infrastructure. I’m not quite on the Drupal bandwagon in spite of its popularity within the Ubuntu community, but I am a fan of handling security upgrades of webapps through the OS package manager. It was a fun project to tackle, I should convert my notes into a useful form. Maybe this weekend. I’ve also had some time to contribute to webcalendar. A major release came out a couple months ago, and though it won’t get into Lenny (past freeze time), there is some work to do to get it prepped for release in Squeeze. So I’ve triaged some bugs and started testing the new .deb, within which I found bugs WRT the database upgrades. What else… I’m loving gwibber for twitter and facebook feeds. I was using twhirl, but then an Adobe Air upgrade went badly and while it was broken I used the Intrepid version of gwibber, and fell in love. And Google streetmapped the house I grew up in! How cool is that?

Finally, I have some amazing friends. I’ve been going on about getting a pink laptop for over a year now, and when the netbooks started coming out I started drooling. When Dell released their Mini9 and promised colored ones, including pink, would be released with Ubuntu? Had. To. Have. And I said so, often. So earlier this month a few of my friends schemed to order one for me. On Saturday Mike gave me a card which contained a beautifully drafted insert containing specs for my pink Mini9. I almost cried, but opted for grins and squeals of excitement. How amazing of them! Thank you Mike! Thank you Stephen! Thank you :) It has been shipped and I’ll be driving to New Jersey to retrieve it from Mike on Saturday (almost a week ahead of schedule!). Glee!