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It is my last week in Pennsylvania

Tuesday, Feb 9th, 2010 by pleia2 | 1 Comments

When I moved to Pennsylvania 8 years ago I didn’t really have any kind of attachment to the area, but 8 years is a long time and over these past few weeks I came to realize how deep I had sunk my roots in here. It’s been painful to pull them up for the move, I am really going to miss it here. MJ has family here so he comes back to visit, so at least I’ll have those trips back here with him.

Saturday was spent home packing, as the snowstorm blanketed the area in about 20 inches of snow. I packed up just about everything I could and still live here for another week. The snow also managed to do a number on the flat roof of the building I live in, leaving my neighbors with a considerable amount of water damage (wet vacs and emergency repairs all day on Monday!) and my own apartment with minor leaks in the kitchen. The roof was fixed today, just in time for another 18-24″ of snow to hit the area tonight and tomorrow, they should be back to replace the drywall in the ceiling on Thursday or Friday. All this snow has been fun, it’s quite a nice send-off before I move out to snowless San Francisco.

img_4770.jpg

This afternoon I went to the vet to get health certificates for the cats so they could fly, and I’ve worked out an arrangement with a friend in San Francisco to pick up my cats in case there are unexpected complications with our flights on Tuesday.

I went to my last PLUG meeting before the move on Wednesday at USP, Tor project leader Roger Dingledine came and presented a talk he titled Tor: Anonymous Communications for the Dept of Defense…and you. It was a really great talk, and we let him run almost an hour over his time to answer questions and get through all his slides. The technology of Tor is interesting unto itself, but I found myself even more taken with the effort being put in to diversifying the pool of anonymous users, from working with the Department of Defense to get military using Tor, to human rights activists, to FBI agents. Tonight we ended up cancelling PLUG North due to the snow, a decision I’m whole-heartedly standing behind given the quarter inch of snow which was already on the ground here in Pottstown by 7PM, but it’s sad that I won’t have “one last PLUG North meeting” before I go.

MJ is flying in Saturday, so this weekend starts the move and Tuesday we’re flying out. I have about a million things to do before then…

Filed under: life, philadelphia, san francisco

Camden Aquarium and The Abbaye

Saturday, Feb 6th, 2010 by pleia2 | 3 Comments

Last weekend I met up with waltman and we headed down to Camden to go to Adventure Aquarium. Unfortunately it’s winter, so the ferry isn’t running, but the trip over the bridge and through a bit of Camden was not a big problem.

First stop at the aquarium was to head out to see the seals and penguins!

But the weather was too cold for their African penguins, so they were off exhibit, how disappointing!

The seals were up for doing their show though, showing a bunch of different behaviors as kids volunteered to help out the woman presenting. It was fun, but I was glad to get out of the cold and back into the aquarium after it was over.

One of the most interesting things this aquarium is that they have hippos, and an African porcupine in their West African River Experience. What fun! We got to watch the porcupine being fed (it’s favorite food is bananas) and then the hippos enjoying a meal (snack?) too.

Also great? We got to touch a shark! And some other animals in their touch exhibits, I was able to pet a Moon Jellyfish and a Fresh Water Sting Ray.

I was also very impressed by their shark exhibit. Not only did they have one of those tubes you could walk through and see sharks (video below), their viewing windows were huge and varied which made for lots of great shark viewing.

The rest of the aquarium was really nice too, lots of great exhibits, interesting fish and things. I am very impressed, and a bit sad that I’d never made it over the river to see the aquarium before.

After the aquarium we walked outside and I was able to take some pictures of Philly. I am going to miss it!

Then it was off to dinner! We ended up eating at The Abbaye in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia, which I’d never been to but waltman recommended. My dinner started with a Yards ESA (extra special ale), a great Philly beer! Then was on to dinner, which was one of the most amazing cheese steaks I’ve ever had – chunks of steak marinated in Chimay, with Gruyere cheese, grilled tomatoes, onions, and roasted garlic aioli. I am going to have dreams about this cheese steak. The frites were also really great, some of the best I’ve ever had. In all, I was very impressed with dinner there.

Filed under: animals, beer, philadelphia

International Women’s Day stories about Ubuntu and the computing longevity meme

Monday, Feb 1st, 2010 by pleia2 | 13 Comments

The latest initiative by the Ubuntu Women Project, is a contest to collect “How I discovered Ubuntu” stories written by women. The winner will be announced on March 8th, International Women’s Day.

One of the goals of this initiative is to try and answer the “How can I get $woman to use Ubuntu?” question that we often get by demonstrating that there is no single answer for it. Women get involved and interested in Ubuntu for all kinds of reasons, and without knowing anything about her there is really no way to know what specific spark will get her interested in involvement. (For what it’s worth, a much better question is “$woman is interested in $subject and is tied to Windows for $reason but doesn’t like it for $another_reason, she currently uses her computer for $thing0 and $thing1, do you have any suggestions as to how I can try and convert her to Ubuntu?”)

The contest also seeks to give inspiration to women who are interested in using and getting involved with Ubuntu. We seek to not only showing them that they aren’t the only female using Ubuntu, but that not everyone has to be a “typical male computer geek” to get involved.

Which brings me to this “I’ve been computing since…” longevity meme that is quite popular within F/OSS. Like many memes in F/OSS this is a competitive one that gives bragging rights for being the one who started with Linux or programming at the youngest age. This culture of competitiveness based on longevity has, without a doubt, been what has hurt me the most in tech. The sexist comments, the marriage (or worse) proposals upon revealing that I use Linux, the reaction of shock I receive when I tell people what I do for a living are all things I can quickly recover from (especially with a group of supportive folks in Ubuntu Women standing by!). Getting over the fact that I got into Linux in my early 20s when it seems like all my peers have been programming since they were 12 years old is significantly more intimidating and discouraging.

I’m certainly not the exception. In Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing the overwhelming message regarding the problem of women in IT I took from this book was that the traditional conditioning of girls to avoid “horn tooting” or “bragging” as compared to boys, combined with this longevity meme leaves many women who actually take the plunge into a computing degree feeling as though they’re alone, under-qualified and have little chance of success in the field. In reality, the book reports, these women work very hard and are just as qualified as the men in the class, and the ones who don’t switch degrees (a common response to constantly feeling under-qualified) go on to be successful in their careers.

So why is this longevity meme such a major problem for women in general rather than for men (where, admittedly, it still can be a problem)? As a society, at least in the United States, girls don’t tend to be pushed toward tech, and tech is frequently marketed in such a way that I don’t blame them (see: Of Geeks and Girls). While there are now several initiatives out there to get girls interested in technology at a young age, a lot of parents I know make a conscious effort to give their girls computers too, and to some extent the market is catching up, we’re not there yet. Statistically women in the industry still get involved at a later age than men and without considerable confidence the road ahead can be challenging.

So, do we try to kill the longevity meme? No way! We all enjoy a bit of bragging fun now and then. Instead we work to show that people who are involved with computers come in all kinds. This stories project seeks to be a start for addressing that for women in the Ubuntu community. I know some women who have been programming since they were 9 and relax with a pizza, mountain dew and an episode of Star Trek, I know women who work for non-profits and have whole-heartedly jumped on the F/OSS bandwagon, I know mothers who would call themselves non-technical get heavily involved in F/OSS community building, I know women who have stumbled upon F/OSS and with a background that has nothing to do with computing become highly skilled, technical contributors. It’s time to stop taking my word for it and getting these stories from the women themselves.

So, are you a woman, or do you know a woman who can submit a story? Email it to ubuntuwomen.competition at gmail.com by February 22nd!

More details on the contest are here: [UbuntuWomen] International Women’s Day — Competition!

Disclaimer: For all my talk of less geeky females here, I am a pretty hard core geek (I mean, I use a Star Wars handle! …and I just called it a “handle”!). Maybe I didn’t start using Linux until 2002, but in the 90s my mother did frequently wonder what kind of strange teenage girl I was for spending my time in my dark bedroom with pizza and a pile of 386s (oh no, I’m contributing to the meme!). My intention is not to discredit or ignore the geek females in our midst, but to acknowledge that we may be a rare breed and to really get more women involved we need to appeal to contributors from a wider population, just like the Ubuntu project itself does. I seek to encourage all women to contribute to this contest, even if they don’t feel like they have enough “geek cred” or whatever. Oh, and stories from hard core geek girls are completely welcome, those stories are inspiring too!

Filed under: tech, ubuntu planet

Italian Market, Rodin and Art Museums

Friday, Jan 29th, 2010 by pleia2 | 5 Comments

As I’ve mentioned in some other posts, I’ve been trying to hit the major tourist destinations in the Philly area before my move. Last weekend the Rodin Museum was at the top of my list, but then when I popped into the #plug channel waltman suggested I check out the Italian Market in south Philly. So I did!

I had been to Pat’s and Geno’s before, went for the first time a little over a year ago with MJ, but we didn’t actually venture down 9th street to the market.

I was given a list by waltman: “cheese — dibruno’s, claudio’s. bread — sarcones, Anthony’s has good coffee” and I followed it! Picked up some delicious cheeses and pepperoni from DiBruno Bros, where I saw this great sign out front:

The bread from Sarcone’s Bakery was delicious with said cheese, and the coffee from Anthony’s was great on that chilly day while I walked down the street shopping for some fruits and vegetables. On Monday evening I even made pizza from my Italian Market ingredients!

I then met up with my friend Mike who came out from New Jersey for lunch at Potbelly Sandwich Shop on City Ave. Then it was off to the museum!

What actually prompted my visit was learning that one of ten casts of The Thinker in the US was there, and I wanted to see it.

Voila! It turns out there is one in San Francisco too, so I’ll have to visit it once I’m out there! We then ventured into the museum itself, past an empty fountain (the courtyard probably looks much nicer in the summer!) and then past The Gates of Hell.


Rodin Museum entrance, photo by Mike Edwards

I have to be honest, while Rodin certainly made a lot of beautiful pieces, my favorites are the ones which are most life like. Much of the abstract or “rough” pieces he did held no interest for me.


Saint John the Baptist Preaching base, photo by Mike Edwards

I will say though that for some reason I was completely captivated by his piece, The Hand of God, I might have to pick up a miniature cast of it at some point.

Since the museum ended up being a small one and we had the rest of the afternoon in front of us we then wandered up the Benjamin Franklin Parkway to spend a bit of time at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.


View of Ben Franklin Parkway from steps of the Art Muesum, photo by Mike Edwards

I had seen about 2/3rds of the museum, this trip I ended up wandering around the second floor through the European Art 1500-1850 section. There is a lot of literal and religious art (both Christian and Roman) in this period and it’s some of my favorite. But since this is sculpture day, the following are two of my favorite pieces in that wing of the museum.


Bust of Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Jean-Antoine Houdon, French, photo by Mike Edwards


The Birth of Venus, c. 1799, Heinrich Keller, Swiss, photo by Mike Edwards

We ended up staying until the museum closed at 5 and I headed home before it starting raining too much.

Tomorrow I’m planning on going to Adventure Aquarium in Camden, which I’ve never been to. Then heading over to Old City Philly to find some early dinner. Hooray Philadelphia adventures!

Just over 2 more weeks until the move, my apartment is full of boxes.

Filed under: philadelphia

Ubuntu Community Learning Project Update

Friday, Jan 29th, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

On Monday the 11th The Ubuntu Community Learning Project (UCLP) held a meeting to review our progress through and since the holidays.

The UCLP is attempting to make professional education course materials, because we believe that education is one of the biggest barriers to getting new users and increasing existing users abilities.

We are working to develop course material in 5 different segments, How to Use, Maintain, Develop, Spread and Teach Ubuntu. This material is structured in the form of classes that can be taught in real life classrooms, on IRC and/or via our Moodle site.

The team decided upon the licensing (CC:BY-SA) and to formally use AsciiDoc for core material (for rationale, see Martin Owens’ blog post: Document Formats for Learning Materials) and Nigel Babu has been working hard with the team to develop documentation for this. We now have a documented Course Layout for in-classroom classes and Charles Profitt has been working on the Moodle side for online learning.

So many avenues to explore! How do you contribute? First, Join the Team by swinging by to have a talk to us in #ubuntu-learning or engage us on the Ubuntu Community Learning Project mailing list (you’re also welcome to email me directly at lyz@ubuntu.com, please do!). We currently have people writing courses in .odt, on the wiki, in bzr using AsciiDoc and in Moodle, so there are a number of ways to get involved now. We also need folks who are interestied in doing peer review of the classes. Other tasks are outlined here.

Ready to write? Here’s the quick FAQ I tossed together based on the most popular questions that come up in channel.

  1. How do I select/sign up for a topic to write about?

    2. See Course Assignment

  2. What is the layout I should follow?

    3. See Course Layout

  3. Where do I submit what I’ve written, what is the development workflow?

    4. See Course Development

We’re still in the process of completing full documentation for our asciidoc+bzr procedure for contributions (I’m in the middle of writing my first class!) so if you have any questions, please ask us.

How do you take advantage of the materials we’ve created thus far? Martin Owens has already written several sysadmin classes:

Currently being developed and reviewed:

  • Using Launchpad by Duane Hinnen
  • Contributing to UCLP with Bazaar and AsciiDoc by Nigel Babu

You are also welcome to visit our Moodle site, where Charles Profitt has imported some courses and we’re actively developing others. And if you’re an educator, be sure to check out Charles Profitt’s Ubuntu Educators Ning Network.

Filed under: tech, ubuntu planet

Ubuntu User Day Success!

Saturday, Jan 23rd, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Ubuntu User Day

We just wrapped up our first Ubuntu User Day! Now, whose idea was it to have our first Ubuntu User Day last 15 hours? What a day! A 1 hour introduction, plus 13 instructors teaching 14 classes in #ubuntu-classroom!

Thanks to our awesome crew for making this long day fun one, and for doing such a fantastic job of tag-teaming it so that we all could take breaks throughout the day.

Thanks to all our instructors for putting so much time into each of their presentations. And a special thanks to duanedesign who filled in when one of our presenters fell ill, and starcraftman who ended up doing a second session to fill in for a presenter who couldn’t get online.

And thanks to everyone who attended these sessions, we have nothing without an audience! Thanks for your fantastic questions! And thanks for the feedback we received on our survey.

In case you missed it, logs and outlines (for sessions that had them) for the whole day have been posted on the wiki here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDays/Logs/January2010

Ubuntu User Day en Espanol

Prefer Spanish? Diego Turcios reports the smashing success of the Spanish User Day today as well! Logs for those sessions are on their wiki:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DiaDelUsuarioUbuntu/LogsEnero2010

Now it’s time for me to get some rest :)

Filed under: tech, ubuntu planet

Philly Zoo and more move preparations

Saturday, Jan 23rd, 2010 by pleia2 | 0 Comments

Last weekend my mother was visiting. We ended up spending much of the visit just relaxing, went out to dinner a couple of times, I introduced her to Firefly and she ended up borrowing Tru Calling after she started watching it while I was working on Monday.

We did end up heading down to the city on Saturday though, to go to the Philadelphia Zoo! I’d been there twice before since moving to the Philly area, the first time with MJ and Bae and the second time back in 2008 for the Brew at the Zoo.

Kitties!

They finally had gotten rid of the last of the elephants, I miss them! The San Francisco Zoo also retired the last of their elephants a couple years ago due to similar problems – too small of a living environment and no budget to build a new one. But the new Big Cat Falls is a fun exhibit.

Giraffe!

Penguins!

After the zoo we headed up to City Ave to grab some dinner at Chipotle. She flew home on Tuesday afternoon, after which I broke out the moving boxes and started packing up more things.

In addition to packing I’ve had to do a reanalysis of my network in an effort to cut the number of systems I’m running down from 5 to… less. I ended up retiring my Sparc Ultra10 last night, it had been functioning as a firewall and backup server. My Xen server is now my firewall, and I no longer have a system hooked up to my TV, which is fine for the last three weeks I’m here in PA. So I’ll be bringing out my old laptop, my netbook and my xen server/firewall. My desktop? That’s being replaced by pieces for a system I’m having shipped to MJ’s, we worked this week to pick out the parts from newegg and order it with a cute white and pink flowers case! It will be a significant improvement from my current system, 2G of RAM really hasn’t been cutting it when I start playing with VirtualBox and a lot of high resolution photo editing. I still have a lot of things to do before the move, but I’ve gone ahead and got most of my service cancellations set up, been calling around to figure out other things I need to do. It’s going to be a busy three weeks.

Tomorrow I’m meeting up with my friend Mike to visit the Rodin Museum in Philadelphia, which will cross off another museum on my “to visit before I leave Philly” list. Hooray!

Filed under: animals, family, life, philadelphia

Pink USB Cable

Saturday, Jan 23rd, 2010 by pleia2 | 4 Comments

More pink! A couple weeks ago friend of mine, knowing of my love for pink electronics and gadgets, sent me a pink USB cable.

So here’s my pink mini9 charging my pink G1, with my brand new pink (ok, the photo makes it look more purple than it is) USB cable :)

Thanks again, Fabian!

Filed under: computers, pink

The Mercer Museum

Saturday, Jan 16th, 2010 by pleia2 | 2 Comments

I’ve been trying to visit some of the local attractions I’ve missed while living here. I know as soon as I move away I’ll realize there are a hundred other things I wanted to see before I left, I’ll just have to see those when I come back for visits!

One of the things on my list was the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, and I was finally able to make it out there this past weekend with my friend Stephen. In spite of the lack of heating in the museum on that chilly day, it wasn’t a disappointment!

The building itself is quite exceptional from the outside. It becomes even more so when you learn that the entire thing was made from concrete. Even the window frames are concrete! According to the museum, this was done for 2 reasons: so the building wouldn’t burn down and to help prevent robbery. And according to wikipedia: “Locals mocked his choice of building materials, but on completion of the museum, he lit a bonfire on its roof to prove that it was fireproof.”

Inside, the place is packed from floor the ceiling. Every wall and railing has a boat, carriage, apple press… you name it, hanging from it. The ceiling, 5 stories up, has chairs, tables and cradles hanging down, seemingly precariously.

Many of the items really were “normal life from America pre-1900s” but there were some more amusing pieces, like the “Vampire Killing Kit” pictured above, which the museum believes to be of contemporary origins made to look old for the benefit (or deception?) of vampire lore collectors.

You know, I feel quite silly for not realizing the “tortoise shell” design that a lot of plastic combs and hair clips was not just a design – it was because these same things used to be made from tortoise shells. I think it’s because I never could have imagined that such things could be made from the shells, amazing. Also pictured above are some tools for clock-making, as I was trying to figure out what “geeky” pursuits people got into, and if I wasn’t a woman what profession I’d be most likely be inclined to follow – clock-making seemed sufficiently fascinating.

Much of what occupied my mind as we walked through the museum was “wow, how would I have survived in the days of churning butter, washing clothes by hand, curing meat and preserving fruits, making my own clothes…?” With a dash of “no wonder we’re fat now!” as we take so many tasks for granted that were such a chore 150 years ago – laundry day today means quite a different thing than laundry day back then.

Another thing that had me preoccupied was the feeling that Henry Mercer was pretty eccentric, to say the least. He cataloged and wrote categorization rules for thousands of items, and while it may be fascinating today (perhaps a testament to his future-thinking), I can’t imagine what people of his day thought of him for collecting all of these items, some of which were still contemporary in his day, and building a whole museum around his collection. According to the museum many of the displays are the same as when he assembled them upon building of the museum.

Toward the end of the visit, on the 6th floor, you start finding strange stairways and halls which frequently end abruptly or go into staff-only sections of the museum. This is where it really gets interesting (and chilly, the 6th floor was freezing!). In one of the rooms there was an old horse-drawn hearse, in another gallows – complete with trap door, which you might miss if you don’t stop to take a look since you walk *under* it as you walk through the oddly-shaped room. Another room is full of wood and coal burning stoves, and opens into a maze of stairways and hallways which goes into a room full of front plates used on these stoves, pictured above.


Lyz outside on the 6th floor of the museum (photo by Stephen)

We spent about 2 hours at the museum, and in spite of the previously mentioned chilly weather the only floors of the museum which were very cold were the 5th and 6th, with a coat on the rest of the museum was quite tolerable, I’m glad they keep it open in the winter in spite of the chill. For dinner we hopped on 202 and headed down to East Norriton for indian dinner at Bombay High – yum!

What is my next Philly adventure? I’ve been before, but with weather today in the comfortable 40s I’m taking my mother out to the Philadelphia Zoo. But first… some coffee.

Filed under: life, philadelphia

Ubuntu User Day on January 23rd

Friday, Jan 15th, 2010 by pleia2 | 3 Comments

Ubuntu User Day

Yesterday Chris Johnston announced the upcoming Ubuntu User Day.

From the announcement (emphasis is mine):

The Ubuntu User Days Team would like to announce the first Ubuntu User Day, on January 23, 2010. This will be a very informative one day session geared towards beginner and intermediate Ubuntu users, as well as people who are interested in using Ubuntu. We have 14 classes covering topics ranging from installing Ubuntu, finding help, equivalent programs, using IRC, getting involved in the Ubuntu Community and more. We have enlisted the help of many talented people to lead these classes throughout the day.

These classes will be taught in #ubuntu-classroom with questions being asked in #ubuntu-classroom-chat on irc.freenode.net. Please visit http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UserDays for a complete class list and schedule of classes.

There is also a Spanish version of Ubuntu User Days being offered on January, 23, 2010. Please visit Día Del Usuario Ubuntu at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DiaDelUsuarioUbuntu for more information on the Spanish Ubuntu User Day!

The classes will begin at 12:00 UTC and end at 3:00AM (Sun) UTC

The birth of this event was at a Community Roundtable session at the Ubuntu Developers Summit back in November in a moment where the remote participation really shined. As soon as the idea came up there Chris Johnston and Penelope Stowe volunteered to help via their remote participation in IRC, and within a few minutes I had an email drafted for the Beginners Team to seek collaboration. As the project grew we enlisted the help of Mark Cox, leader of the North Carolina LoCo Team and Nigel Babu who recruited the help of several Indian LoCo Team members to present for the day and then worked with Nathan Handler to get the Lernid schedule submitted.

It’s been a real delight to work on this project with all these fantastic folks and to see all these teams come together for our first Ubuntu User Day. So join us on Saturday, January 23rd to share with us the fruits of our labors!

Filed under: tech, ubuntu planet
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