UK Linux User Groups

I love the LoCo Directory. The site provides a fantastic way to browse the global list of Ubuntu LoCo Teams, organize events and more. What is more, it is almost entirely a community-driven project; the site has a series of developers who actively work to improve and refine it.

Next week at UDS we have some sessions to discuss the next steps for the LoCo Directory and I just wanted to share some elements that I think would bring huge value to the site and the wider Ubuntu LoCo community:

• Integrated Help – the goal with the LD has always been for it to be a central hub of information and content about LoCo Teams and how to empower them to be successful. From the dynamic content perspective, this has been really successful, but I would love to see the documentation and resources about what LoCo teams are, how they work, how to run a team, what the LD does etc, all come to the LD and be built in. I would love to see a ‘Help’ tab that takes me to a knowledge base of content. I think a great approach could be a built-in wiki; this would provide a low barrier for everyone to participate.
• Make the LD tab-worthy – I would love to see the LD become interesting enough that I always have it open in a browser tab. Today I only go to the LD when I need to look something up. I would instead love to see the front page of the LD be a constantly updating portal of content that summarizes what is going on in the LoCo community that day. The #locoteams stream is a great first step, but I would love it to also show Planet-like content of LoCo related blog posts, a flickr stream of recent pictures etc. This would get me into the mindset of waking up every morning, going to the LD and seeing what is going on in LoCo teams across the world. That would 1.21 Megatonne of awesome.
• Visually depict the people part of LoCos – LoCo’s are all about awesome people getting together to do awesome things. On the front page of the Ubuntu Developer Summit website we have a scrolling pane of pictures from UDS that depict the social and personality driven environment of UDS. I think it could be fantastic to have the same kind of slider on the front page of the LD with the latest most interesting pictures from LoCo teams (possibly determined by some open voting system that shows the most popular pics). This could great photos of meetings, group shots and other inspirational content.

Just some ideas, and I look forward to discussing them at UDS.

What other ideas do you think could be interesting for the site?

dashkards — dashboard cheat sheets for your favorite mac apps:

Useful!

shopt -s histappend shopt -s checkwinsize export HISTCONTROL=ignoredps:ignorespace export HISTTIMEFORMAT='%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S  ' export EDITOR=vim

histappend: don’t overwrite .bash_history files on each logout; then when someone logs into the server, and messes something up, there’s a vague chance you’ll see what they did. Your history file will obviously grow to be quite big – but suppression of duplicates helps. Mine’s only 900kb after 7 months.

checkwinsize: check the window size after each command, might help some braindead programs cope with you resizing their windows, I guess.

HISTCONTROL: suppress duplicates, ignore spaces

HISTTIMEFORMAT: record a timestamp against each history entry; run ‘history’ to see an example of it’s output…

EDITOR: why would you not use vim?

 

 

Dan Snow explains AV: http://blog.davee.me.uk/post/5166137922/another-dan-snow-yes-to-av-video-this-is-the This is the Referendum Broadcast for Tuesday 3 May 2011. Watch this if you’re still undecided!

This week I have a shot I took while visiting Beeston Castle. This is the start of the path leading up to the castle itself.

Sunny couple, originally uploaded by Bryn_S.

Am in Thailand.

Is very hot.

Hotel room is beautiful.

Pictures when I have more than five minutes wifi time left.

(Please leave comments on the original article rather than any syndications thereof) 0c89b0a701d3cda4ecf6e3837c2783c2)

I really dig Ubuntu One. I love the file sharing, the music store, the contact syncing, the music streaming, the bookmark syncing…I love how I can fire up a new computer and things get synced and I am good to go. I think the Ubuntu One team though are missing a huge opportunity that could bring tremendous innovation to Ubuntu and desktop Linux. But what is this glistening wreath of opportunity?

Not that.

It is collaboration. I know, those of you playing buzzword bingo just ticked a box, but bear with me.

Let me paint a picture as an example.

A few weeks ago a friend and I were on Skype and having a conversation about how we could solve a particular technical challenge. As the discussion got more and more complex, we knew we needed to resort to visual diagrams to keep on track. In other words: we both needed to collaborate together on a document.

So, we did what is natural for many Ubuntu users. I opened up Inkscape and created something and then had the idea of sharing it with him via Ubuntu One. I created a folder in my Ubuntu One directory, saved the file to it and shared it with him from Nautilus. Ubuntu One did it’s thing and immediately popped up a notification bubble to say the file was uploading. A few seconds later my buddy said he saw a notification bubble indicating that the file was syncing.

We were now in a great position. He opened up the file in Inkscape and viewed it. As our conversation continued he made some changes to the file and then saved. Because he saved to a shared folder, Ubuntu One automatically updated the new file in the share and my Ubuntu One downloaded the file automatically – without doing anything we were synced up. Rock and roll. At this point I then re-opened the file in Inkscape and I could see the new content. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The awesome thing about Ubuntu One is that all the technology is there for people to collaborate in this batch-processing kind of way, but it currently feels too manual in how you engage that sharing and collaboration. Ideally we want to build this right into apps using Ubuntu One as the back-end.

The User Experience

This is what I would like to propose as the experience for the end user, and I will talk about the app developer experience soon. Please be warned: these mock-ups are crude and simplistic and would need the design and UI usability expertise of the design team to refine, but you should get the picture (pun intended) of the experience.

Imagine my friend and I are in the same position and wanting to collaborate together on a document. I would create the diagram in Inkscape and then click the File menu and see:

I would click on Collaborate using Ubuntu One (to be clear, this could be a different menu string, this is just an idea) and then you would see this:

Here I can type in a name for the document (note, not a filename, a document name) and I can use the search box to select who I want to share it with. Entering a search term would search through my address book and I can select people to add to the share.

When I click Share each of the contacts I share the document with will get a message to ask them if they want to accept the share (this ideally would be a notification), such as:

At this point my friend could select the first option and view the file in Inkscape. Alternatively, he could click the Preview button to preview the file (if this is a document such as a PDF) or choose to accept the share and load it later.

If my friend would like to load it later, he could open Inkscape and select File -> Open and there would be a slightly modified Open dialog box:

The only difference here is that there is an Ubuntu One option in the sidebar and when he clicks it, it just lists the documents shared that can be loaded into the app. The Recent Documents menu option in the File menu should also list Ubuntu One documents.

Now, here is a key point: if we both have the file open in our respective Inkscapes and one of us makes a change, the file would be automatically synced (which it does today), but also the application would automatically update the content and refresh the view to reflect the new version of the file. As an example, if I make a change to my document, the file would sync automatically over Ubuntu One and my friend’s Inkscape would reload the file to display the new content.

I believe this would offer a hugely compelling experience – it would allow people to collaborate using desktop tools, using Ubuntu One a seamless syncronization and storage service, and any new Ubuntu machine that you set up would have all your documents ready to roll.

The Developer Experience

To achieve this from a developer perspective, the Ubuntu One team would need to provide an API for app authors to use to build this support into their apps. Ideally this would present a series of standard components that app authors can use to add this support in a really simple way.

As an example, I can imaging that I could use a Python module to add this support and then connect a menu item in my File menu to sync_with_u1() which would display the Collaborate on Ubuntu One dialog box (I could imagine there being ubuntuone-api as well as ubuntuone-api-gtk and ubuntuone-api-qt packages for the different pre-built dialogs). Upon the user entering content, the different values could then be passed to process_u1_sync().

Ideally the app could then have some kind of listener built-in which could listen for a signal that indicates that the current Ubuntu One document has been updated and then trigger a method in the app that would reload the data and refresh the view.

It seems to me that the underlying infrastructure is all there to do this – all it would need is a thin Ubuntu One API and some standard dialog boxes (so that all apps have a uniform experience).

Potential Uses

I can think of a variety of different methods in which people could collaborate using this batch-type functionality:

• Music – imagine this in Jokosher. I could create a project and record the drums, and then save to Ubuntu one and it would sync my project and all the recorded audio. Then a friend across the world could record a guitar piece and sync, and then I would get her performance. This could be a great way to make music together in a distribution manner.
• Video – the same approach to the music example above could be used for video.
• Documents – sharing office documents could be useful for reviewing documents, updating spreadsheets, reviewing presentations and more.

I am sure there are many more uses.

I am going to talk to the Ubuntu One team and see if this could be an option. I will keep my fingers crossed.

UPDATE: I have registered a blueprint and this will be discussed at UDS.

• You would think there is a wedding on today 08:50:36, 2011-04-29
• Kate looks bored at speech #RoyalWedding 11:15:10, 2011-04-29

How our small startup survived the Amazon EC2 Cloud-pocalypse:

(via Instapaper)

Today we released Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, and you can find out more about it and download it here.

This has been a ferociously busy cycle and with it we set out with significant, audacious goals. We shipped a new shell, a new media player, significant improvements to Ubuntu One, and we worked hard to deliver all this change and opportunity in a predictable, stable and slick product. I am really proud of the result.

In this release we had over 320 developers contribute to it from both Canonical and the community, a new community of 17 new Unity contributors form, hundreds of translators translate Natty into 43 languages, countless LoCo teams get together for different global events and many other contributions made to documentation, testing, art, design, and more.

In short, out community came together and really delivered.

Thankyou.

Thankyou to everyone who shared their insights and skills to help make Ubuntu better for everyone. It is you all who are helping us to bring Free Software to the world, and I can’t think of a better family to be on this train with.

And now, we celebrate!

I’ve been smacking my head against a wall for some time now, trying to get a working Django + PostgreSQL combo running on OS X, but I’ve finally found a working solution.

1. Install PostgreSQL with Hombrew
2. Install psycopg2 (and Django) via pip (or easy_install)
3. If that fails, try it again, but prefix the command with ‘env ARCHFLAGS=”-arch i386 -arch x86_64”’ (and sudo, if required)

…of tickets for OggCamp!

We’ve released a hundred more tickets after the last two hundred went in under a week!

Our third OggCamp will be held on the 13th & 14th August at Farnham Maltings in Surrey, UK. We’re really looking forward to this! It’s a great venue, and we’re eager to get people in the community to come along and talk about stuff that interests them! Can’t wait!

                          Tweet

A couple of weeks ago I posted that all 200 free tickets for OggCamp 11 were taken in just 5 days. We had quite a few anguished howls from people who had missed the chance to get their hands on a ticket. So we have done deals, scratched backs and twiddled knobs and I’m pleased to say that we’ve been able to make another 100 tickets available! You can get them now (and I do recommend that you act fast!) from http://oggcamp11.eventbrite.com/.

If you want more information about OggCamp, the biggest, best and boldest community-run FLOSS conference in the UK, please visit the website at http://oggcamp.org.

Having a smartphone has completely changed my phone usage. In particular, my phone has now become my primary game platform (although I’m very enamoured with the work’s Barnes and Noble Nook Color I have running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread)). One type of game I always seem to come back to consistently is that of the football simulator, and I thought it would be interesting to compare the 2 big hitters – FIFA10 and PES 2011.

FIFA10
FIFA10 has been around for a lot longer than PES, so I’ve played it an awful lot more. It’s also had some updates, which did resolve some of it’s initial niggling problems (like not multi-tasking properly). I’ve played a about 7 seasons worth of manager mode, and most of a season in Be A Pro mode. I’ve played in Amateur, Semi-Pro and Pro levels, too.

Pros
– Manager Mode and Be a Pro are excellent additions to the game, increasing it’s longevity and playability
– The variety of button combinations makes for a very in-depth (albeit complex at times) control system
– The game play is fast
– Menu system is responsive
– Good “training” subsystem

Cons
– Mis-hitting controls is easy to do, and it seems to misregister at lot of the time (this is possibly a problem with multi-touch on the HTC Desire – I am investigating further at this point)
– Some moves which should be simple aren’t – double-tap for a cross is very hard to get right.
– “Manager” mode doesn’t really involve much management beyond formation. You can’t see health or fitness levels from the team screen, so you can’t make tactical decisions based on player’s suitability
– Free kicks seem overly complicated to get right – scoring from a free-kick should be an art form, not black magic.
– The change in difficulty between amateur and semi-pro is _huge_; it was bad enough I almost gave up. Semi-pro to pro has been easier to handle.
– You basically run everywhere because the slower option is much harder to achieve

PES2011
PES I have played mostly on the Nook, which has a much bigger screen, which shows off the graphics nicely. I’ve been playing in Regular and Professional levels. I’ve played a European club competition, an international cup and most of a league season.

Pros
– Quick-game – auto-picks the teams and just jumps straight in. Perfect
– Controls are big and simple. Complex passing manouvers are simple
– Scoring overhead kicks! It’s easy, and it’s fun
– Replay system is excellent, and offers saving your replays to a gallery

Cons
– Sometimes it’s hard to select items on the menu.
– No manager mode, despite having better team management system – you play 1 season on a league, and that’s it. No cups, or anything
– Not the real teams – usually find, but surely “Merseyside Red” should at least have a red team strip, not blue…..?
– Player selection is mostly automatic, which can be frustrating
– Penalty kicks are too hard to take (IMO)
– Menu system with slide-then-press is awkward – often it slides when you’re trying to tap; “Tap Anywhere” splash screen is pointless
– Training system only offers free-play and penalties

So – which one do I play the most? Well – it depends on a number of other factors. PES is more “arcadey” – easy to pickup and play a game. FIFA feels more in-depth, but it does require an investment of time to get used to the controls and difficulty level. If PES had a better “manager” mode (seasons, transfers, etc) then it would win outright.

mrBen

Garden of Remembrance, originally uploaded by Bryn_S.

Second thoughts…, originally uploaded by Bryn_S.

Elizabeth blogged it already, but I thought I would pump it through my loudspeaker too.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area on Thursday night (28th April at 7.30pm), be sure to head over to the Thirsty Bear (661 Howard Street, San Francisco 94105) to join us for our Ubuntu 11.04 release party. It will be a pretty informal affair – just a get together in a bar/restaurant.

Feel free to just show up, and if you can RSVP here that would be great too.

Oh, and to be 100% clear – everyone is welcome to the party. This is a celebration, and a celebration to welcomes everyone, whether you use Ubuntu or not; if you are not part of the Ubuntu community but would like to meet everyone, you are more than welcome!

Not in the San Francisco Bay Area? No problem, find a release party near you – there are currently 60 events planned!

1. If you’re using InnoDB, ensure innodb_buffer_pool_size is set to a decent value – I choose about 25% of physical memory… ideally this is larger than your dataset size, but obviously may not be posible, and the server may have to do other stuff….
2. If you’re using InnoDB stop the O/S from also trying to cache ‘stuff’ in the buffer cache – using innodb_flush_method=O_DIRECT
3. Download the MySQL Tuner perl script (wget -O http://mysqltuner.pl > mysqltuner.pl) and run (e.g. perl mysqltuner.pl –user root –pass blahblah; it might point out a few variables to change; node the ‘maximum possible memory usage – you don’t want this to exceed 50% for a normal LAMP server).
4. I use something like the below to optimize all tables, beware this will cause MyISAM tables to lock up … so you really need to run it in a quiet period.

SQL="select concat(TABLE_SCHEMA, '.', TABLE_NAME) from information_schema.TABLES where TABLE_SCHEMA IN ('database1','database2', 'databaseN') and Data_free > 500 AND Engine = 'MyISAM' " for table in $(mysql --skip-column-names  --batch -u root -prahrah -e "$SQL") do mysql --batch -u root -pxxxxx -e "optimize table $table" sleep 10 done

See also PHP Conference InnoDB talk and MySQL Tuner

No one has time for charity, originally uploaded by Bryn_S.