Leaving in a few minutes for my flight to join MJ in Las Vegas!
I’ll be back late Sunday night.
Oh the neons are a gleamin’ and the gamblers are a dreamin’
Friday, Nov 12th, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments
Filed under: travel
California Ubuntu Hour * 5 + Debian
Tuesday, Nov 9th, 2010 by pleia2 | 3 Comments
This month the Ubuntu California team has really embraced the Ubuntu Hour, we have a whopping 5 planned across the state the next 10 days!
Tomorrow night I’ll be hosting the San Francisco one.
San Francisco Ubuntu Hour
Time & Date: Wednesday, November 10th @ 6-7PM
Location: The Roastery, 199 New Montgomery Street, San Francisco
Details: LoCo Directory: Ubuntu Hour San Francisco
And to mix things up a bit, we’ve scheduled the next Bay Area Debian meeting across the street just following.
Bay Area Debian Meeting
Time & Date: Wednesday, November 10th @ 7-9PM
Location: Henry’s Hunan Restaurant, 110 Natoma St, San Francisco
Details: Bay Area Debian meeting at Henry’s Hunan Restaurant
So please, feel free to join me in attending both!
For public transit and other comprehensive information about how to get there, see the Debian announcement.
At both locations look for the Ubuntu t-shirts and penguins! At Henry’s Hunan I have reservations for dinner under “Bay Area Debian”
November Bay Area Geeknic
Tuesday, Nov 9th, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments
Late last week Melissa Draper spent a couple nights at our home at the tail end of her visit to San Francisco. Friday evening we headed up to Ghirardelli Square for some ice cream sundaes. Then, having finished dessert, we headed back home to meet up with MJ to go out to dinner for a nice piece of Philadelphia at Jake’s Steaks.
Saturday we spent at the latest Bay Area Geeknic!
Coming from the Northeast US, having a picnic in November is a completely foreign idea to me. The weather was warm and sunny, so perfect! In November. I am going to start missing the snow pretty soon.
More photos by Mark are up here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tuxwingsgroup/Geeknic
Mark brought along lots of delicious veggie foods:
And on other grills we made up piles of hot dogs. Mark’s penguin suit came along to the Geeknic too – and for those with flammable concerns, no, he didn’t actually grill in the penguin suit, we were doing some fun promo shots for Geeknics ;)
I’ve put more of my own photos up on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pleia2/sets/72157625344546226/
We ended up with 20 or so people coming out and in all had quite a successful event!
In which San Francisco parties for 4 days
Saturday, Nov 6th, 2010 by pleia2 | 1 Comments
It sure was quite a week to live in San Francisco, plus we had lots of visitors!
MJ’s father and father’s partner, Susana, were in town over the weekend, so on Friday night we joined them for dinner at Chaya on the Embarcadero. Saturday we met at Ferry Building for lunch and browsing of the farmer’s market, and later that evening ended up in Noe Valley at Firefly Restaurant.
Sunday was Halloween! For lunch we all met up down at Fisherman’s Wharf for some tastey fish street food, after which we headed up toward Giardelli Square for our afternoon entertainment, but first I got to admire the gorgeous day looking out over the bay and be yet again thankful to live in such an amazing place.
MJ’s father planned for us all to go on an Electric Tour Company Segway Tour. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the tour, but given my weakness for tourist things I was positive that I wanted to go. The tour starts out with 40 or so minutes of a group of 10 people learning how to use Segways and getting ready to ride them through the streets of San Francisco. I was a bit apprehensive about this and it took some time until I was comfortable riding the thing, but they were great about making sure we were comfortable before leaving the parking lot. The thing with Segways is that the more you think about it, the worse you’ll do on them. Once you get the basics down about how to get on and off them without falling (or bruising your shins) and realize that the handles are only for steering and not to cling on to for dear life, the rest sort of comes to you.
When we wrapped up the Segway tour we all headed back to our respective home and hotel. That’s when San Francisco started going a bit crazy…
October 31st was exceptional for a number of reasons:
- It was the night of the 4th game of the World Series. The San Francisco Giants were playing the Texas Rangers in this 4th game and at the beginning of the game the series score had 2 wins for the Giants and 1 for the Rangers, and in spite of football’s dominance in the American sports scene, we do still love our baseball.
- Halloween! San Francisco loves Halloween, it may even be the biggest holiday here. People dress up and have parties for days, and on Halloween itself the parties in The Castro are legendary.
- Melissa Draper was in town October 31st was her birthday!
I managed to plan my night such that I could be a part of all these exciting things. Once we were back home we flipped on the first part of the World Series game and I got my witch costume together. We watched until MJ left for dinner with his family and I headed over to Thirsty Bear to meet up with Melissa and some friends to celebrate her birthday with some good food and beers. It ended up working out pretty well, in spite of the game Thirsty Bear wasn’t crowded so we could secure a quiet table near the front, and we could hear the cheers of the folks who were there so keeping up with the score wasn’t a problem! The Giants won the game, resulting in a 3-1 lead in the series, and we enjoyed a lovely dessert of cinnamon churros & spanish hot chocolate.
From Thirsty Bear a few of us decided to brave the crowds of the Castro and experience just what it was like to be down there on Halloween. We met up with Mark Terranova who was dressed as a penguin and after making our way through crazy crowds along Castro Street we ended up hanging out at Toad Hall.
Castro Halloween experience under our belt, we ended up heading home shortly before midnight.
Monday! Aside from it being a typical work day, it was the 5th game of the world series. Would the Giants win and take home the title of World Champions for the first time in 56 years?
They sure did. I watched the game at home, hoping desperately in the final innings, with Giants leading, that the game would be over in time for our 8PM dinner plans with MJ’s father and I’d be able to see it finish – and I lucked out. The whole city then erupted in cheers, screams, sirens, fireworks and honking horns when the final inning ended with Giants in a 3-1 lead. Our whole streetcar trip down to the Castro for dinner at Starbelly Restaurant was accompanied by the celebratory noise. Dinner itself was nice and quiet, and I enjoyed a nice mushroom pizza, and we were able to get home before the “riot” celebrations broke out later in the evening.
Now the first major league game I went to was back in April when the Giants played the Phillies and I’ve since fallen in love with the game, going to an A’s game where I got a signed baseball and to their stadium for a tailgate party, then to another Giants game in August where they played the Cubs. I then watched several of the post season games from home as they beat the Phillies to end up in the World Series. What a ride :)
Tuesday was voting day! In San Francisco when it’s time to vote you receive a couple of 100+ booklets with voting material in them with the propositions and candidates. This was my first time voting here so I got to see all the work it takes to make an informed decision – and it sure is a lot. That night saw one of the few Republican to Democrat switches in this season (our new governor is a democrat) and although Prop 19 failed, there was a fair amount of celebrating going on around here.
Wednesday was the Giants-win-the-World-Series parade! It took place on Montgomery and Market Streets, so I was able to somewhat see it on Market from our roof:
And I headed downstairs to mingle with the crowd for a few minutes before heading back to work:
The event ended up at city hall where thousands gathered for speeches and collective celebration (this time far more peaceful!). When I went out to lunch there was confetti all over the streets, the bars were overflowing and people everywhere where decked out in the orange and black of the Giants. What a day!
Thursday the city seemed back to normal aside from some “Let’s go Giants” chants now and then. Melissa (whose birthday I mentioned above) was our second visitor of the week, arriving at our place on Thursday afternoon and was here for our Geeknic today, which I’ll post photos of in a later post. Now off to the airport and to wish her well on her way back home!
Filed under: family, san francisco
It’s official, over 5% of Ubuntu Members are women!
Tuesday, Nov 2nd, 2010 by pleia2 | 27 Comments
Today I’m delighted to announce that it’s official:
There are currently 625 Ubuntu Members and at least 32 of them are women, which means over 5% of Ubuntu Members are women!
We hate turning people into numbers, but late last year it was decided by the Ubuntu Women Project that we’d start tracking metrics of the percentage of women who are Ubuntu Members. This tracking was launched by Alan Bell and bases criteria of gender upon: self-identification, use of public resources (wiki pages, public blogs), and our own public knowledge from meeting each other at UDS and other conferences (there very well may even be more women working in our midst who have not chosen to disclose their gender in public).
Why is 5% important? Back in 2006 the oft-cited FLOSSPOLS declared that only about 1.5% of FLOSS community members were female. A poll in the Ubuntu forums community around the same time came back with a number of 2.4%. We have since launched Ubuntu Women and worked hard to support and encourage women who come to us to become more involved with the the project, and then to make that step to Membership when they were ready. It’s exciting to see the numbers improve over the years, and I hope that the Ubuntu Women Project can continue to make a difference moving forward, eventually driving itself to obsolescence.
Of course Ubuntu Women didn’t help all 5% of these women. In my past few years of involvement I’ve been seeing more women becoming involved with the community on their own, and today there is a large number women who work on Ubuntu who have never been involved with Ubuntu Women at all. It’s exciting to watch Ubuntu become a more inclusive community and to see the passion and support of new people joining from existing community members overcome (or negate) many of the barriers that may have been problems in the past.
Interested in the project? If you want to help out or are interested yourself, head over to ubuntu-women.org to learn more.
Filed under: tech, ubuntu planet
One Laptop per Child SF Community Summit 2010: Wrap-up
Monday, Nov 1st, 2010 by pleia2 | 1 Comments
I’m happy to report that the OLPCSF Community Summit 2010 on Oct 22-24th was an outstanding success! We had an excellent team of volunteers whose skills in a variety of different areas really came together under Sameer Verma’s lead and the attendees of the summit itself brought energy to the event that was palpable.
On the evening of Friday the 22nd we hosted our opening reception and opened the registration table (where we gave out t-shirts and other goodies). We were treated to hors d’oeuvres, wine, beer and juice brought by volunteer June Kleider and her family. A local puppeteer was brought in for some entertainment and several OLPC-related groups had tables set up to show off their groups and hardware projects. Well into the evening the Dean of the SFSU Business College, Nancy Hayes, welcomed us and Carol Ruth Silver thanked the volunteers and presented Sameer with a proclamation from the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom. proclaiming October 23, 2010 One Laptop per Child Day in San Francisco.
More of Mike’s photos from the event are here: OLPC SF Community Summit 2010 Slideshow
And Mark Terranova got this great photo of Alex Kleider and me (thanks Mark!):
More of Mark’s photos can be found on Picasa here: OLPC
Being new to OLPC the whole event was very eye-opening for me, but a few things really stood out.
The first was Bruce Baikie’s presentation on alternative power sources. It turns out that while I certainly know that there are many parts of the world that “don’t have power” I’ve never actually thought much about the options they have for moving forward with building an infrastructure for power. Additionally, his talk made me realize that while in the first world nations we have centralized power grids. a decentralized utility may actually be a better way to move forward with some of these places, especially the ones which are more remote.
In his talk, he first started out discussing why alternative power sources were important (which touched upon lack of centralization I mentioned above, plus typical discussion about dependence upon non-renewable resources). He then moved into talking about some of the most viable options:
- Solar cells
- Micro-Hydroelectric (power from streams and hilltops)
- Wind Turbines
- Biogas from Animal Farms
Now of course when we talk about power at an OLPC event, the focus is going to be bringing enough power in to power the XO laptops. Following Bruce’s presentation the folks from XO Dock, who create a low-cost docking and charging solution that provides the One Laptop per Child “XO” laptops with safe storage and reliable power distribution.
The XO Dock group seeks to address this problem:
This is a room with power at a school with XOs, as you can see the laptops are being charged by daisy-chained power strips from just a couple of power outlets in the room. XO Dock group had a demo of their device which is built out of popular PVC piping (so, cheap, easy to find, and resistant to a lot of different conditions). As the weekend progressed we saw other solutions to this power problem too, several of which created in the field as the need arose.
I was also very interested to learn about the work being done on the XO School Server (XS). Sameer has been working with a student to do a variety of tests on hardware to see what will best run the server (standard x86 machines, XOs, etc), and this photo shows one of their experiments – an external drive glued to the back of an XO:
Aside from simple backups and the extra infrastructure capabilities that the XS provides, it was really interesting to see how people were making us of Moodle, and how they’ve integrated it in the XO.
In general I was inspired to hear that there are a number of large educational establishments using Moodle, including SFSU (our venue) itself. It’s certainly something I’ll need to look into more in the coming months for Ubuntu-related course material.
See, don’t worry Ubuntu friends! I haven’t abandoned you for Fedora-based OLPC work, but being part of this summit certainly drove home some of the things I knew about the flexibility and power of Linux and open source. It also introduced me to people who feel the same way about open education that I do about open source, and it was fascinating to see how much overlap there was in our goals and how open education on open source technology really is a match made in heaven. With both, now not only can students and teachers learn material, they can manipulate their whole learning environments to meet their specific needs and push the boundaries of what they can and have access to learn.
Awesome event, I hope we do it again next year! For more photos from the summit, check out the event wiki: Community_Summit_2010#Photography_Album_.26_Film.21
Finally, in what are some fascinating coincidences:
- He wasn’t involved with the summit itself, but the founder of OLPC was on The Colbert Report on Monday the 25th! This video is really great for answering the most common questions about OLPC: Nicholas Negroponte – The Colbert Report – 10/25/10 – Video Clip
- My boss has also had open education on his mind, and wrote a blog post about it last week: Buckminster Fuller and the Open Educational Resources Movement
First Mountain View Ubuntu Hour
Friday, Oct 22nd, 2010 by pleia2 | 1 Comments
On Thursday evening I attended the first Mountain View Ubuntu Hour, where we had 13 attendees! This ended up being a bit of a combination Ubuntu Hour and release party for the folks in Mountain View, and I brought along a few of Ubuntu and Kubuntu 10.10 CDs for attendees.
Thanks to nUboon2Age of Ubuntu California for planning it. In spite of the long commute I hope to attend more in the future! We’re looking at planning a few throughout the Bay area per month, Mountain View joining the regular San Francisco Hours, and perhaps adding one down in San Jose.
This month is pretty busy for the team. In addition to several release parties, there are two more big events coming up for the team in the coming week:
- Sunday, October 24th: Booth at the East Bay Maker Faire
- Thursday, October 28th: Lighting the Maverick LAMP with Ubuntu 10.10
Unfortunately due to my OLPCSF Summit commitments I’m not able to attend the booth at the East Bay Maker Faire, but I will try very hard to catch a train early enough to head down to Yahoo! for the “Lighting the Maverick LAMP” event, it should be a lot of fun.
My last day in Dublin: Seals, Malahide Castle and drinks!
Friday, Oct 22nd, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments
Finally, my last post about Dublin. I’m happy to report that as I write this post about my last day in Dublin, MJ’s last day has wrapped up and he’s coming home to me tomorrow!
Saturday morning we slept in. We had a leisurely lunch on O’Connell Street and at 2PM hopped on a bus for the Dublin Bay & Castle Tour. I have to admit that it was, predictably, the “Take time to feed the seals” that grabbed my attention with the description of this particular tour. The ride out to Howth was a nice one, and upon arriving the tour guide took those of us who were interested up the pier to meet some of “Howth’s residents” – the seals! Just behind where the seals congregate you can go to Dorans on the Pier and for 2 euros get yourself a dozen or so fish to feed the seals, so we did.
There were plenty of seagulls around eager to take advantage of the feeding, but the seals that were hanging around did manage to get a fair number of fish thrown in their direction.
The stop in Howth didn’t end up being very long, we had time to follow the tour guide down the pier to hear some stories about the town, and then all piled back on to the bus to head toward Malahide Castle.
The tour through the castle (where I couldn’t take pictures) was led by our own tour guide and took us through several rooms which were decorated with pieces from the national museums. The castle had been in hands of the Talbot family for almost 800 years, until it was sold to the Irish state in 1975 and opened to public tours. Perhaps the event of most historical, and tragic note for the castle was the Battle of the Boyne, in which 14 members of the family “sat down to breakfast in the Great Hall, and all were dead by evening” and to commemorate this, the large “The Battle of the Boyne” painting by Jan Wyck hangs in the formal dining room.
The tour got us back into Dublin around 5:30PM so we headed out to check out the third of three “formerly something else and now a bar” places – The Church Bar. Just like The Bank from a couple nights before, the interior was exquisite and has little changed from when the building was an operating church – including the organ (as you can see in the picture of the center bar), old memorials lining the walls (and presumably the crypts that go along with them?) and the stained glass windows.
The tidbit that most drove me to come here though was that Arthur Guinness (founder of the brewery) was married here in 1761. Very cool! Thinking about it, I really should have ordered a Guinness! But I had a craving for one last cider before heading home, so I went with that. Then I had my picture taken with the bust of Mr. Guinness:
Our next stop was the Porterhouse Brewing Company location in Temple Bar. In spite of not being much of a porter drinker I had a look at their pile of awards and decided to go with their Plain Porter, and I’m very glad I did. It was the best porter I’ve ever had! The description from their website: “A classic modern light stout with the added complexity of a late kettle hop. Aromatic character. Rich roast, dry, clean and bitter without any sourness.” These are the same characteristics that I enjoy in a good ale, so it’s not a surprise that I’d find it such a pleasant drink. After a few drinks it was over to the kebab place across the street to round off our evening with a nice kebab.
Upon arriving back at the hotel I packed and got ready for my flight in the morning… dark and early in the morning. I grabbed an airport bus at 7AM and was off to the airport to head back home.
In all, an absolutely amazing trip, I really fell in love with Dublin. And I was fortunate that the only rain I experienced while there happened over-night so didn’t impact my travels at all (even if I did joke that living in California I missed rain, and went to Dublin to see some).
San Francisco Mayor Proclaims October 23, 2010 OLPC Day
Friday, Oct 22nd, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments
Tonight we launch our One Laptop per Child San Francisco Community Summit 2010 with an opening reception at 5PM. I’m so excited!
But the big announcement today was that the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, has proclaimed that October 23, 2010 is One Laptop per Child Day in San Francisco!
For more see the OLPC blog at: http://blog.laptop.org/2010/10/22/october-23-is-olpc-day-in-sf/
It’s been a real honor to be a part of the planning committee for this event, I’ve been able to work with some truly amazing people and I’m looking forward to an exciting weekend of education, technology and outreach tracks. The XOs run on Fedora, but I’m particularly excited to meet Luke Faraone, who is part of the team working on Sugar packages for Ubuntu.
Limited remote participation and streaming will be available for some sessions, see here for details: http://olpcsf.org/CommunitySummit2010/#remote
Book of Kells, Dublin Castle, Christ Church and Saint Patrick’s
Thursday, Oct 21st, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments
Friday I decided to spend the day visiting the great Cathedrals of Dublin, as well as crossing off Dublin Castle and the Book of Kells from my to-see list.
First was the The Old Library and the Book of Kells Exhibition. The Book of Kells portion of the exhibition featured a couple of big rooms that you walk through which explain what the Book of Kells is, who wrote it, the methods used in creation, and details about other illuminated manuscripts (a couple of which are also on display). In the end of the exhibit, in a dark room, you finally get to actually see the Book of Kells, under glass and open to an illuminated page. It was pretty cool to see such a famous book, and I think I can safely say it’s the oldest book I’ve ever seen. Now it was the Book of Kells that really drew my interest to this location, but I was in for quite a treat when I walked upstairs to the Long Room for the Old Library portion of the exhibit. From the site: “The main chamber of the Old Library is the Long Room, and at nearly 65 metres in length, it is filled with 200,000 of the Library’s oldest books. “ It was beautiful! While I probably will get an ebook reader one of these days, I still am firmly in the “I like to touch books” camp.
It was then off to Dublin Castle. It was the one thing on my list I already felt somewhat familiar with because MJ sent me pictures and told me about it the last time he was in Dublin, but there is nothing like seeing it for yourself. It was built in the 1200s on the orders of King John of England and throughout the centuries it primarily was the seat of British rule within the country. Since the formation of the Irish Free State it’s now a major Irish government building, the inauguration of the Irish president happens here, among other things.
The original castle lasted until the 1600s when it was rebuilt to be the structure we largely see today. Only one of the original record tower remaining standing today. However, excavations of the site unearthed the foundations of a second “Powder” tower and one of the archways which used to stretch over the River Poddle. The tour guide also pointed out what deeper excavations showed, what they believe to be part of the original fortifications that the vikings put in place on that location even earlier than the original towers.
My next stop was Christ Church Cathedral. I am not a Christian, but cathedrals have always fascinated me. This fascination turned into awe as I got older and could further appreciate the exceptional amount of work and artistry that was put into them by people in times past who didn’t have access to the technology we have today.
The inside of the cathedral was stunning, huge stained glass windows, the amazing architecture you come to expect from such places, and probably the most welcoming staff I’d encountered on my already exceptionally welcoming trip!
Aside from the typical splendor of a grand cathedral, Christ Church has some interesting artifacts, the first being a holy relic – the preserved heart of St Laurence O’Toole. Earlier in my trip Laura had told me that the head of another religious figure was in a cathedral we passed, and not knowing much about Catholic lore it struck me as somewhat macabre. It turns out that it’s very common for these old European catholic churches to have them and in the faith they are regarded as a source of miracles. Still a bit creepy for me but at least I had an explanation.
A less spiritual duo also graces the halls of Christ Church Cathedral – a cat and rat which became trapped in an organ pipe in the 1850s and were mummified. They are now on display downstairs in the crypt, where there is also a coffee shop.
It was then time for lunch! I stopped at Legends Bar for a nice sandwich and drink.
The other famous cathedral on my list was Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Another gorgeous church full of Irish history, it also boasts a beautiful park just next to it.
Perhaps their most famous burial is that of Jonathan Swift, a cleric who became Dean of Saint Patrick’s and is most famous as the author of the popular Gulliver’s Travels. In the center of the church you can see his burial plate.
I took a TON more photos during the day, which are over in my Dublin flickr gallery.
By the time I had finished visiting Saint Patrick’s I was pretty tired, so I headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit. When MJ got back from work we headed out to the second of three “formerly something else and now a bar” places I went to in Dublin – The Bank on College Green. Of course this used to be a bank! I enjoyed my first Bulmers Cider of the trip (after completely forgetting it existed for the first half of my trip, I love British Isles cider!) and a wonderful Guinness and beef pie.
We wrapped up the evening with a stop at The Porterhouse Brewery Central location on the way to our hotel. I snagged their red ale since ales tend to be what I prefer, but I wasn’t a huge fan. Luckily they were able to redeem themselves the following night when I tried their fantastic porter.
Filed under: travel