February 2012
2 posts
2 tags
Shipping best practice with juju charms
Check out Why I don’t host my own blog anymore.
I mentioned it to a friend and he immediately piped in “Oh that guy did it wrong, he shouldn’t care about KeepAlive, he needs FastCGI”.
Ok so the guy “messed up” and misconfigured his blog. Zigged instead of zagged. Bummer.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. Right now we offer Wordpress as a juju...
1 tag
Taking a different tack when it comes to growth.
One of the “good problems” I think we have is there’s always things to do. As Charlie Kravetz points out, this can be a bad thing too.
I wanted to post this on Planet to get a better feel for what other people think.
I see my own participation in Xubuntu and Ubuntu development slowing down. Too many events, scheduled on top or close to each other, making it impossible to...
January 2012
3 posts
2 tags
Ubuntu Forums needs single sign on, looking for a...
I’m looking for a PHP/OpenID hero to help us in a bit of a bind we have on the forums.
The forums need a branding update, as well as an update to the vbulletin software they’re running. Unfortunately vbulletin doesn’t support openid(!). I know right.
In the past there was a bit of custom php that was done in order to enable Ubuntu users to use their Ubuntu Single Sign On...
Yo.
I also love Ubuntu. \o/
3 tags
See you at SCALE!
I can’t wait to see some people I haven’t seen in years at SCALE, and meet a bunch of new people!
Come find me and Clint, we’ll be doing talks about juju and Ubuntu Cloud all weekend, as well as answering questions the entire time. I’m easy to find, look for a Red Wings hat and an Ubuntu shirt.
Here’s our post about our talks.
December 2011
3 posts
bbiab
Happy Holidays everyone, I’ll see you all in 2012, I’m off to get on a boat and explore the Caribbean.
3 tags
GNOME Boxes looking for Debian/Ubuntu help...
Zeeshan sends along that he’s looking for help bring GNOME Boxes to Ubuntu and Debian.
If you read any of my previous blog entries, you must be now familiar with this ‘express installation’ concept we have in Boxes. Its pretty neat actually, you just set a few options at the beginning and then you can leave Boxes (or your machine) and when you are back, everything is setup...
The $43 Ikea Galant Standing Desk mod
I’m on holiday and my parents are in town, so I was chatting with my dad about how to modify one of my Ikea Galant corners into a standing desk. Since standing desks are all the rage I’ve been thinking about modifying my desk (instead of spending money on a new one, though they are nice.)
Some of these mods include lifting up the legs, but my dad was concerned about how stable that...
November 2011
12 posts
1 tag
Up the Irons!
I met Nicko McBrain, drummer for Iron Maiden tonight!!
1 tag
IRC Workshops for 12.04.
Thanks to the Ubuntu Classroom team session at UDS we’ve got all the IRC Workshops planned already, along with spiffy ads to spread around.
After much discussion we have decided to “focus” the IRC workshops. Instead of one long week we’re smushing them up to just three days for each “week” but make the days longer to hit more time zones. So they will be from...
UDS Group Photos now available.
Sciri has it up on his blog:
4 tags
Our first Charm School!
We’re holding a Charm School on IRC.
juju Charm School is a virtual event where a juju expert is available to answer questions about writing your own juju charms. The intended audience are people who deploy software and want to contribute charms to the wider devops community to make deploying in the public and private cloud easy.
Attendees are more than welcome to:
Ask questions...
Florida, land of sunshine and awesome people.
Ok so I started making a list of people to thank but it started to get long and then I realized that if I missed someone it would be even worse, so I am sticking to one person:
Chris Johnston
He works on summit.ubuntu.com, the loco directory, and status.ubuntu.com. He’s basically an infrastructure ninja.
Chucktallica
1 tag
Ask Mark, Wednesday, 23 November, 1500UTC
Every Ubuntu Open Week we have a session called “Ask Mark”, where Mark Shuttleworth answers questions from the community in IRC.
Due to scheduling conflicts this didn’t happen last Open Week, so we’re holding a special standalone event on IRC where people can ask Mark questions.
Ask Mark will take place in #ubuntu-classroom at 1500UTC on Freenode. You’ll need to...
1 tag
I'm as transparent as aluminum.
We try hard in Ubuntu to be transparent. We publish our blueprints on our plans before we even get to UDS:
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/sprints/uds-p
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/sprints/uds-o
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/sprints/uds-n
Each session at UDS has an associated etherpad: http://summit.ubuntu.com/ on the schedule, the plenaries are streamed live on...
1 tag
Power blues got you down?
Colin King has started a wiki page with kernels that include a proposed fix to the infamous power regression bug.
If you’re experiencing this, follow the instructions on the page and report back by adding your laptop to the page.
Many thanks to Matthew Garrett for the proposed fix and for explaining the entire EFI/power thing to me at the bar at UDS. It’s always good to hang out...
1 tag
Power user's team 12.04 roadmap.
Like all superhero movies, it’s back, this time with James Gifford driving the effort to help document “hot rodding” tips for power users. Here’s his proposal for a 12.04 roadmap.
And here’s the wiki page
Feel free to dive in!
Awwwww yeah ...
How I roll ...
October 2011
8 posts
2 tags
OpenWeek Summary for Wednesday
Here are the logs from yesterday’s OpenWeek sessions:
Advanced dualboot (Win/Ubuntu) config sharing a lot of stuff! - Tiago Carrondo
How to contribute translating Ubuntu — David Planella
Volunteer Leadership -What does it take? - akgraner
Writing your first Ubuntu app — David Planella
Social Networking in Ubuntu: What’s new? - KenVanDine
And here’s the...
2 tags
Mobile schedule for UDS
The guidebook mobile schedule for UDS-P is now ready, install it here:
And just search for UDS in the application. Then you’ll have the UDS schedule, events, sponsorship information, and maps in your pocket:
The schedule updates every 10 minutes, and there’s a convenient QR code on each schedule page so at UDS itself you’ll be able to just take a shot of one of the...
2 tags
OpenWeek Summary for Tuesday
NOTE! We are starting a bit early today at 1300UTC, and also today tomorrow we have Rick Spencer’s Q+A. Rick is the engineering manager for the Ubuntu Platform, so he’s got good working knowledge of Ubuntu as a whole, so bring your hard questions!
Here’s the logs from yesterday’s sessions:
Getting Started with Ubuntu Development - Daniel Holbach
Is your system Ubuntu...
2 tags
OpenWeek Summary for Monday
We had some great sessions yesterday, here are the links to the logs:
Introduction and General Ubuntu Q&A - Jorge Castro
Contributing to Ubuntu at a Local level: A Roadmap - Randall Ross
Getting the most out of LoCo Teams Portal - Michael Hall
Juju: DevOps Distilled - Clint Byrum
We’ve got some nice content for you today too, starting at 1400UTC:
Daniel’s going to do a 2...
1 tag
Open Week Starts today!
Join us in #ubuntu-classroom IRC! Here’s the schedule
2 tags
Looking for some LoCo Team Portal Developers
Being able to find each other is a key part of building community. I mean, what’s the point of having a release party if no one knows where to go? This is why we have tools for bringing people together. We call it the LoCo Team Portal. It’s a portal where local community teams can claim their space, list their events and meetings, as well as allowing people to show their interest,...
1 tag
Let's make it personal.
One thing Jono’s talked about in the past is how to make Ubuntu more personal. One of the things that suck about the internet is that we’re all behind monitors and keyboards, and it’s hard to remember that there’s a human being on the other end of the line.
Things like Google Hangouts are helping too, it lets us just talk and be more like we are in real life than typing...
1 tag
Open Week Schedule Finalized, come get some
We’re all set to go for Open Week. We’ve got some great sessions lined up.
We’ve got contributing at a local leve, loco team portal, juju for devops, getting started with ubuntu development, ubuntu friendly, ubuntu brainstorm, translations, writing your first app, leadership, social networking via gwibber, bug hunting, ubuntu orchestra, xubuntu, advanced dual booting...
September 2011
7 posts
1 tag
1 tag
The Obi 100, the coolest little box I've never...
Apparently my new apartment is also a Faraday cage, and I can’t get any cell phone signal. Walking outside gets me 3g and full signal, but inside, nothing. Thanks to Google Voice though, I’ve been able to just route all my calls to my PC, so I can still do my conference calls.
However, this isn’t so reliable, especially when multiarch was landing and I didn’t figure out...
2 tags
Appetite of the Beast
It ends up Nicko McBrain (the drummer from Iron Maiden) own a BBQ joint in Florida, quite close to me.
He wasn’t around but apparently he stops by at night after he golfs. And they have wireless. I think I’ve found my new coworking space.
(More pics)
1 tag
Looking for a few good people.
I’m looking for instructors for Ubuntu Open Week, which is traditionally held on the week after release on #ubuntu-classroom on Freenode. Want to teach a course on something? Here’s a great way to jump in and help out.
(Original Post) (Logo by htorque)
2 tags
Ask a Unity Developer ....
The Unity team is doing an “Ask me Anything” on Reddit if you want to join in.
1 tag
Just buy this....
Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s my idea of AC/DC was basically everything after “Back in Black”, which made them a household name.
I finally snagged the new Blu Ray of Let There be Rock, which is great for people like me because it’s a good time capsule to what that era was like. My only image of Bon Scott was just the replays on the radio.
However, on...
2 tags
Using Alt-tab and Alt-` in Unity
For 11.10 the launcher team worked on a new alt-tab. Here’s how I use it to switch between not only applications, but windows within applications.
(Sorry about the flicker, seems to be a result of recording it)
August 2011
2 posts
2 tags
Etherpad-lite, now easy to deploy for your events
Etherpad Lite is awesome. Have you ever organized a conference, large meeting, or foocamp and thought “wow, I could really have used an etherpad at this event.” But many times organizers don’t have the resources to get this kind of stuff running. Now, in an effort to make it trivial for anyone to set up an etherpad, James has implemented an etherpad lite formula for ensemble.
...
1 tag
Workaround for Unity Web Applications in Chromium
Alex has found a great workaround for fixing web applications in Unity.
BAMF has been plagued by this bug, which basically means it groups Chromium and Chrome windows under the browser icon. That means my gmail, IRC, music, etc. all get matched as generic browser windows instead of separate applications.
It’s quite easy, you just edit the .desktop that Chromium makes and tell it to make a...
July 2011
7 posts
2 tags
My first attempt at an Ensemble formula
Since every one else is doing it, I thought I’d play with more Ensemble tonight, but instead of firing something up I started working on a formula for summit, the tool we used to schedule UDS.
First Chris Johnston and Michael Hall started an etherpad with the instructions for installing summit (and we’re doing one for the LoCo directory too since we like biting off more than we can...
2 tags
A retrospective of the first year of Ask Ubuntu
Today Ask Ubuntu celebrates it’s first year in existence. Though publicly launched on the eve of 10.10.10, the site went into private beta one year ago today. At the time Evan Dandrea had seen Area 51 and had proposed an Ubuntu Stack Exchange.
I was just as confused as everyone else. It wasn’t until I spoke with Evan at Debconf 10 where he explained it to me. In fact, you can...
Whoops, almost forgot!
Whoa, almost forgot to send some funds to Novacut, thanks for the pro tip Planet Ubuntu!
2 tags
Easy Hadoop via Ensemble
People are talking a lot about Hadoop and Big Data. This is an area where a tool like Ensemble can really help out. Juan Negron has distilled the installation process for Hadoop on Ubuntu into a formula.
Check out the instructions (1,2) that Mark was reading, and then you can see how Mark took all that Hadoop expertise and just used the Ensemble Formula to dramatically simplify the...
Asking Better Questions
andrewsomething pointed out some questions that need love. One sure fire way I’ve noticed that will help get your question answered is to keep improving it. The simple fact is, you can expect the quality of an answer to be proportional to the amount of effort you’ve put into your question. If you don’t provide any detail, no one can really answer your question.
Every once in a...
Beaches and Sun for a Year
Next week I’m packing up my things and moving to Boca Raton, Florida, home of awesome beaches and retired people who sit around.
It’s going to be a busy Summer, I’ve started working on Ensemble this cycle so you’ll see me talking about that a bunch more — it’s nice to be working with server-type stuff again, especially with something new and exciting.
I look...
2 tags
Sharing Ensemble Formulas
Ahmed and I have tagged some Ensemble formula requests as bitesize. The PHP ones will be pretty straight forward, so if you’re deploying in EC2 and want to dive in and share your expertise (and snag some existing formulas for yourself!)
If you’re looking for a Formula for something you’d like to see to be made easy to deploy in EC2 please feel free to file a new bug.
You can...
June 2011
5 posts
I don't really have the words for this.
Not a dialog I was expecting this morning.
(Kill me)
1 tag
What kind of apps should people make with Ubuntu...
This cycle I’ll be working with the immitable Stuart Langridge on building out a community around the Ubuntu One Developer Programme, which he announced at UDS. The video isn’t up yet (but I’ll blog about it when it is).
Some of the parts are now coming together. You can find the API docs here:
https://one.ubuntu.com/developer/
and I’ve started a wiki page of some...
2 tags
Some more opportunities for Unity contributions
I was checking out some of the incoming merge proposals from contributors and I noticed a FIXME in a comment and decided to see what’s in the Unity source code that someone might want to check out if they’re looking for something TODO or FIXME.
Turns out it’s not as bad as you’d think,
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/Bitesize/Opportunities
I’m going to update this...
1 tag
"For crying out loud Amber, it's just a stupid...
… and the second I said this sentence to Amber Graner at UDS I followed it up with “in the same way that it’s just an operating system, and it’s just a computer, really, it’s not worth it.”
And that made me feel better after totally thrusting a spear into her chest.
We were about 10 minutes into the “Let’s have someone work on Ubuntu Weekly News...
1 tag
Sorry I didn't respond to you on IRC, I was busy...
So I’m not sure if this is a Canonical/Ubuntu thing or just a geek thing. But I’ve not taken a vacation in about a year, since I got married. They keep saying that Americans suck at vacations (apparently the Japanese are even more workaholics, but whatever).
So screw it, for my 1st year anniversary not only did I hit up Florida but I hit up the Bahamas and swam with dolphins. It was...
May 2011
4 posts
1 tag
Advert team survey
The Ubuntu Advertisements Team is running a user experience survey. You can find it here:
http://bit.ly/lZk5xw