Planet BLUG

N900: partitioning

2010-03-11T08:19:55+00:00

There are some good guides in the wiki, but they use sfdisk and you have to calculate the blocks yourself, what a pain, here is the way how to install fdisk on tn N900

cd /root
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/u/util-linux/util-linux_2.13.1.1-1_armel.deb
dpkg-deb -x util-linux_2.13.1.1-1_armel.deb root
cp root/sbin/fdisk .
rm -r root/
rm util-linux_2.13.1.1-1_armel.deb

In general it from huge advantage if you have a MicroSD card, then you can copy your MyDocs and the /home stuff first and can delete both partitions, after reboot you are totally free to repartinion as you like, after that mount the new partitions, copy the backup back where they belong and reboot again. It worked well if you change the design, for ex. have the vfat on the secon part, but some 3rd party< programms might not like it, so better keep it: part.1=cfat (MyDocs), part.2=linux (Home), part.3=swap. my actual partition table looks like this:

1. 3G vfat
2. 27G ext3
3. rest swap

N900, too much fun

2010-03-10T21:55:28+00:00

Finally i got my N900 and the first think i tried to do is to swap the 27G (vfat) with the 2G (ext3) partitions, went good so far, but then i messed up and reboot by accident (wrong terminal, wanted to shutdown another machine) and my N900 starts crashing on the initial start (inf. loop), now i need not even flash the normal firmware, but do a full overwrite and reset the whole internal memory card, how embarrassing …

I think this time i got for no vfat and sawp at all, just create a single ext3 over the 32G (minus the 256) and do the sawp as well as the vfat (needed for the camera) in the file system via loop device. So then i will be able to resize them dynamicly in care i need more space for photos or bigger swap if i like to run apache ^^

Filesystem: 32G ext3
- 1,5G /swap
- 1,5G /vfat

I am btw extremely surprised by the speed of the 900 compare to the 800 series, the only sad point is a little offset in the map software.

xuedi

StatusNet Cloud Service Public Beta Released

2010-03-09T18:37:01+00:00

Today marks the official launch of the StatusNet Cloud Service (SCS) Beta.

SCS allows anyone to quickly and easily generate a status update site at status.net. Users have three types of plans to choose from, when setting up: single-user, community, or private. The recent StatusNet 0.9 server software release has provided the basis for this public Beta. Fabricatorz.com was involved in the development of StatusNet Cloud Service

More than 10,000 organizations rely on StatusNet’s software as their social networking solution, including software giant Mozilla, NBA competitors Sacramento Kings, and Creative Commons.

Creative Commons Vice President, Mike Linksvayer, says:

StatusNet has filled a communications gap for Creative Commons that we didn’t know we had. With a team distributed by time zone, travel, expertise, and use of various communications methods (email overload, IM, IRC, phone), StatusNet is accessible and usable by the whole staff and has become an invaluable tool for keeping us all in sync.

To learn more about how the StatusNet Cloud Service can help you, read the Official Press Release.

Call for invitations to be the host of GNOME.Asia Summit 2010

2010-03-09T08:34:27+00:00

Dear GNOME friends,

We are call for the host of GNOME.Asia Summit 2010 now !

GNOME.Asia Summit is the yearly GNOME Users and Developers Asian Conference. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, and also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments and businesses to discuss both the present technology and future developments.

GNOME.Asia Summit was held in Beijing, China during 2008 and in Ho-Chi-Minh City, Vietnam during 2009. We would like to continue finding new national locations as we spread GNOME throughout Asia, and we are looking for local organizers to rise to the challenge of organizing an excellent GNOME event. The GNOME.Asia committee will assist in the process, but there is a definitive need for individuals to be actively involved and committed to the planning and delivery of the event.

You can learn more about GNOME.Asia Summit at our official website: http://gnome.asia

The following two links are “must read items” for organizing the GNOME.Asia Summit:

How to:
http://live.gnome.org/How%20to%20Organize%20GNOME.Asia%20Summit
Check list:
http://live.gnome.org/Check%20list%20for%20GNOME.Asia%20Summit

If you are interested in hosting the summit please submit a formal proposal to the GNOME.Asia Committee at asia-summit-list [at] gnome.org. The deadline for proposals is 31st March 2010. You are encouraged to ask questions before writing the formal proposal.

GNOME.Asia is much like a few trees just planted and we want to grow a forest in Asia. We are looking for local organizers in any Asian country with the desire to take on and succeed in the challenges of organizing an excellent GNOME event. We know that you will need all the time you can get to prepare a proposal but we hope we have inspired you to get started.

We are looking forward to hear from you on or before 31st March 2010.

Sincerely,
GNOME.Asia Summit committee

working again on my game

2010-03-09T08:18:40+00:00

History

long time i did not do anything on my game, i had the idea already in 1999. I had always time where i developed a lot, then ot boring and stoped, after a while i found a new better fitting library and i rewrote the whole shit, that happen about 11 time … so almost a rewrite a year, now i had a chat with a fellow BLUG’er and got some new inspiration. This time i will do it the real way, write a road-map first, and do the easy stuff first and then continue, so i wont stuck in reinventing a HTML kind of parsing and browsing system and give up at the end.

Idea

The idea itself did not change for a long time, its a MMORPG where the character is a spaceship witch is highly customizable it will be cross platform and the inicial server will deal with 1024 clients. It will be a one universe game, no instances, some basic components are:

allegro 4.9 (alias 5 based)
2D game more comic than realistic look
using raknet network library (interesting fair license)
own window system
realtime action
influence by eve online
free and open-source not sure what license yet
C++ based (server & client)
3D client possible later
open network protocol for 3rd party clients

Roadmap

This is just an pre road map, more an idea collection first step first i will do the basic server client communication with some chat system, then the serves object handling and then the clients object display, following that the objects attributes as well and the client interaction with objects over the server, then its already 2020 and i will think about the rest

Linux from Scratch 6.6 is out

2010-03-08T17:17:19+00:00

LinuxThe word Linux refers to several operating systems which are using the Linux kernel. from scratch is not really a Linux system but a method to build from almost nothing an entire system.

The purpose is highly educative for who wants to understand what are the different layers which are composing a modern Linux/Unix operating system.

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Open Clip Art Library 2.0 is Here!

2010-03-08T16:09:24+00:00

The Open Clip Art Library has grown, from humble beginnings in early 2004, into a massive collection of over 24,000 scalable vector images, all created by 1200+ artists from around the world.

OCAL is a powerful platform, through which, all work uploaded to the site is dedicated to the public through Creative Commons’ “Public Domain Dedication”. This means that anyone can download and use the entire SVG library for any purpose, including both free and commercial works!

OCAL now boasts an easily navigable collection, made possible by new thumbnail previews. It has now become much easier to search and download clip art that suits any situation. The new site layout includes an updated theme, from Andy Fitzsimon, that emphasizes user interaction by placing more importance on the portal to upload created work, as well as displaying selections from the ever-growing collection.

Behind the scenes, members of Fabricatorz, including, among others, Bassel Safadi, Michi, Ronaldo Barbachano, and Brad Phillips, have helped push The Open Clip Art Library onto the Aiki Framework. This new PHP + MYSQL platform allows programmers to easily create and work with content management systems from the web.

Please help support the new Open Clip Art site launch by registering (if you haven’t already) and uploading artwork of your own!.

Read the entire Announcement 2.0 here and at the Fabricatorz post.

How Microsoft is forcing you to buy windows even if you don't need it.

2010-03-06T18:34:13+00:00

I recently bought a new computer. A nice 17" laptop. Actually I've been using LinuxThe word Linux refers to several operating systems which are using the Linux kernel. on Desktop since 1997 and I don't need windows. My laptop is sold with windows and it was said that if I don't want it I could save 50€.

So I could be happy. Actually no. Those 50€ should be reimbursed by the brand of my laptop. And for that I must send it to them (sending fees) and it make my laptop unavailable for 2 weeks.

So now they respect the law at splitting the price between the hardware and the operating system. But practically you will never ask to be reimbursed because it is too troublesome.

Hello Planet GNOME

2010-03-05T03:45:21+00:00

As a new poster on Planet GNOME I suppose presentations are in order: my main contributions to GNOME are to try to grow the Asian community and I do this by taking part in the GNOME.Asia Summit organization since its inception in 2008 in Beijing. Last year I actually even gave some talks at the Vietnamese chapter in Ho Chi Minh. Together with my friend Emily Chen we also started a GNOME User Group in Beijing after the first Summit end of 2008 and we do a lot of advocacy to get young Chinese students to take over some Gnome projects.

We’re actually in the middle of the call for host for the 2010 edition and you can find my post about the topic right here. So if anyone in Asia is interested to take up the challenge and be the lead organizer of a great Open Source technical conference showcasing GNOME technologies this is the chance. Note that the whole GNOME.Asia Summit committee will be behind you and we’re now strong of two successful years experience. So please do help spread the word.

I am also part of the localization team of a few GNOME projects especially the educational ones like GComrpis and Rur-ple. I spent a lot of time building a total FOSS solution for schools that included the OS with different educational apps for teaching and learning, tutorials for teachers, training and textbook for students. Of course we use a lot of GNOME and GNOME apps in the solution.

And when not doing GNOME things, I actually also happen to be the President of the (famous!) Beijing LUG (should you be in town please do contact me), on the board of Software Freedom International and very much involved with women in technology and students open source groups.

I hope that by now you have a better idea of who I am and should you have any idea on how to strengthen the Asian GNOME community please do get in touch. Also feel free to browse my previous post to get a better idea of the other things I’m involved with.

StatusNet 0.9.0 and OStatus – Try it out!

2010-03-04T23:37:38+00:00

StatusNet 0.9.0 is released and is available for immediate download from the status.net site.
This release includes the following new features and we invite the developer community to please try it and report back :

Support for the new distributed status update standard OStatus, based on PubSubHubbub, Salmon, Webfinger, and Activity Streams.
Support for location using the Geolocation API. Notices are (optionally) marked with lat-long information with geo microformats, and can be shown on a map.
No fixed content size. Notice size is configurable, from 1 to unlimited number of characters. Default is still 140!
An authorization framework, allowing different levels of users.
A Web-based administration panel.
A moderation system that lets site moderators sandbox, silence, or delete uncooperative users.
A flag system that lets users flag profiles for moderator review.
Support for OAuth authentication in the Twitter API.
User roles system that lets the owner of the site to assign administrator and moderator roles to other users.
A pluggable authentication system.

see the full list of features here:
A full changelog is available at StatusNet 0.9.0/Changelog.

Also, the OStatus process is underway!

OStatus lets people on different social networks follow each other. It’s transparent to your friends, colleagues and family which software or service you use. They can get your status updates on their own sites and reply, like, or re-post your updates.

OStatus isn’t a new protocol; it applies some great protocols in a natural and reasonable way to make distributed social networking possible.

The OStatus spec is a first step in this direction. We’re eager to work with other implementers to make it better, to smooth the rough edges, and to improve the overall experience.

Everyone interested is invited to join the ostatus-discuss mailing list to get this discussion moving.

Thanks to everyone who’s made these protocols work so well together. We hope that OStatus can bring these efforts one more step forward.

Lightsaber Yielding Lego Rejon

2010-03-03T07:33:30+00:00

joncruz-son-made-me-as-lego-rejon-smaller, originally uploaded by rejon.

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

Jon Cruz’s (from Inkscape and who named me REJON) son made me as a lego light saber yielding character. I feel quite honored now I guess I should get to the having kids project sometime

Thanks Jon and Tina! Your son is really cool! I feel now that I’ve reached a new level

Ok, after this post and my smiling avatar one, I’m lowering my narcissism level. You’ll see in a few hours when the bombs start dropping

Breizh Entropy Congress. Rennes, France

2010-03-02T18:59:34+00:00

Here is a message from some friends of Fabricatorz at the Breizh Entropy Congress in Rennes, France. They have an open call for papers/proposals/talks on subjects related to free and open technologies:

March 10th is the deadline to send us a few words on the projects or the subject that you would like to present at Breizh Entropy Congress (Rennes, France, April 15-17 2010). After your submission, we will contact you before March 20th to tell you if it is going to be part of the schedule. The schedule with the timetable will be published on March 25th.

ANYONE can submit a proposal to Breizh Entropy Congress: students, entrepreneurs, enthusiasts, artists, free software activists, tinkerers, hackers… on ANY subject related to free and open technologies. This congress
is about eclectism!

To participate, send a mail to cfp@breizh-entropy.org including the following
points:
- Format of the submission: lecture, workshop, installation, lightning talk, other…
- Title of the submission
- Name of speaker(s)/presenter(s)/artist(s)
- Language (if applicable): French/English
- Summary of the submission
- Short bio of the speaker
- Hardware/logistics requirements
- Contact e-mail and (if possible) mobile phone

The complete call for proposals is online:
http://www.breizh-entropy.org/cfp.html

Retrieving an external CSS file

2010-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

When deploying this blog it occurred to me that modifying the CSS would be terribly annoying if it was "hardcoded" in the image, so I decided to store it in another file I can modify via ssh or ftp.

Here's what the MyRootComponent >> style method looks like now:

style

|aCSSFile theCSSdata|

aCSSFile := FileStream fileNamed: '/var/www/style.css'.
theCSSdata := aCSSFile contentsOfEntireFile.
aCSSFile close.

^theCSSdata

StatusNet launches StatusNet Enterprise Network!

2010-02-25T20:23:46+00:00

StatusNet did a launch today of StatusNet Enterprise Network, their support program specifically tailored for corporate clients.

Enterprise Network members participate in StatusNet’s exclusive on-line enterprise community, where they can get advice from other enterprise users and interact directly with StatusNet architects and engineers.

For details on SEN plans, see http://status.net/enterprise network.

Finally, my own domain

2010-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

It's been a real pain, first I wanted to get bytheseaside.st, but for some reason the money transfer didn't work the two times I tried to register it. I sent e-mails and requests without any luck whatsoever, so finally I gave up.

Then I tried to get asmalltalkbytheseasi.de, but it seems you absolutely need to reside in Germany to own a .de domain (unless, of course, you pay 30 extra euros for them to overlook this mandatory requirement).

So today I spent a good deal of hours configuring the domain, DNSs, Apache2, and tweaking the whole thing because the CSS wouldn't render properly and the images and links to the FileLibrary wouldn't work at all.

To get it working, I followed this guidelines:

http://book.seaside.st/book/advanced/deployment/deployment-apache/configure-apache

I'm running a Debian Etch server with Apache 2.2 in it, so I also had to do the following:

Troubleshooting the Proxy. On some systems the above configuration may not suffice to get Seaside working. Check the error_log and if you get an error messages in the Apache log saying client denied by server configuration just remove the file /etc/mods-enabled/proxy.conf from the configuration.

That's when I realized that images and links to the FileLibrary were not working at all, and after googling, asking at #seaside, and exchanging some e-mails in the seaside list, I finally gave up without having figured out what the hell the problem was, so I solved it by coping all the files to a static folder in my server and referencing them in absolute URLs, now the website works perfectly!

By the way, I know it's not the most beautiful design ever, but still, if you wanna take a look at the CSS, you can check http://67.223.242.82/style.css

Help Me Pick a new REJON Head Icon.

2010-02-23T04:22:39+00:00

#hahaha is my laugh hashtag. So, please take this post with a grain of salt. I know it is pretty hilarious to post this publicly to get feedback, but its a fun thing, right?

At FOSDEM2010 I finally met long time collaborator Nicu Buculei from Open Clip Art Library, Inkscape and CREATE in preparation meetings for Libre Graphics Meeting 2010.

It struck me like a bolt of lightning while we were at a meeting that I remembered Nicu created my original disembodied REJON head!

I love this head, but I always felt like the head looked a little bit dead or dumb. For those that know me, I usually have a pretty big smile or look like I’m about to laugh all the time (see Joi’s photo he took when I randomly ran into him and Sean Bonner in Venice this weekend).

So, I talked Nicu into making me a new one! Here is his first draft with and updated bling and teeth smile. What do you think?

Feedback came in that my avatar is a bit scary and maybe shows too much teeth. One friend said, “well, its a disembodied head!” Here is a slightly less smily rejon. Thoughts?

So, after more feedback, Nicu created me just an updated blingy REJON head icon. Simple and safe. Is it better?

Ok, now I’m done with my massive narcissistic post about which avatar I should use. Really, I’m hopeful that you fine readers will make some comments and help me select one to use moving forward in SHARISM2010

10by10by10: Support the Libre Graphics Meeting!

2010-02-22T17:26:14+00:00

10by10by10: Support LGM2010!

The Libre Graphics Meeting (LGM) is the annual working conference for free software graphics application users and developers. The fifth edition takes place 27-30 May 2010 in Brussels, Belgium. Teams from GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, Krita, Scribus, Hugin, Open Font Library and many other graphics projects gather to improve their software and discuss new ideas for interoperability and shared standards.
http://www.libregraphicsmeeting.org

LGM2010 has launched a fundraising campaign called 10by10by10 to raise $10,000 USD from grants, $10K from corporations and $10K from the community. The funds raised from granting organizations, public, and corporate partners will allow participants who have no other means of sponsoring their travel to Brussels to attend the event.

You can contribute to 10by10by10 at: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/8926

All donations are tax deductible for US taxpayers. For larger donations from corporations and individuals, please contact us directly at lgm@gnome.org

Totally Free Network Services

2010-02-21T19:18:42+00:00

This is a slide share that describes how Status.Net is unique from other existing servies and why it is a step in the right direction towards a totally free network service:

Your life and your business are your own!

Take control of your status!

Need something federated and scalable beyond one person or companies efforts!

Totally Free Network Services

Ubuntu’s netbook-launcher-efl on the Gdium

2010-02-20T03:14:43+00:00

As some of you are probably already aware of, Ubuntu’s next release will feature an enlightenment based release of its netbook desktop. Initially, this was targeted for ARM devices that were not able to perform 3D acceleration and therefore run the “classic” version of the netbook desktop.
The code is available on launchpad and after building the enlightenment related dependencies (libeina, evas, ecore, eet, edje, elementary), it builds successfully on the latest Mandriva release on the Gdium, see (screenshot is clickable):

Unfortunately, the alternative theme is not working properly, it seems that moving elements are not drawn properly for the moment, I’ll have to check that into more details and see if I can find out what’s going wrong. I will also see if I can replace default icons with the icon set that is used on Mandriva’s iDesk configuration but that’s an encouraging start

Last but not least, because we are having issues with our ICP registration at greenboard.org.cn, this blog is now hosted by Fred along with a temporary mirror for Greenboard. Thanks!

StatusCampLA Announced and StatusNet at SCALE2010

2010-02-16T01:11:46+00:00

In addition to doing a StatusCheck at FOSDEM2010 in Brussels this Saturday night, we are announcing StatusCampLA to be held in synchronization with SCALE2010 in Los Angeles, Feb 19-21 in LA, USA. Since this is a big Linux conference, we want to focus this unconference on open standards, free network services and hacking on StatusNet, the AGPL licensed software StatusNet and Identica are built on.

Come one! Come all, to the first StatusCamp unconference in LA. It will be held on Friday, February 19, 2010 at the Linux and Hackers’ conference SCALE conference venue, Westin LAX in Concourse B, from 10 AM until 5 PM. @Brion, @Zach, @Nate, myself (@rejon) and Emma (@emma) will be in attendance. Come on out! Lead a session and join in the fun! Since this is an unconference, please arrive at start-time to help set the schedule for the day. Topics for StatusCampLA will be general from technical discussions to micro-blogging standards to general software development practices in usage of Status.Net. We hope you will come out to the event! Please RSVP to this FREE event by sending your name to http://identi.ca/rejon or email jon@status.net. We want to know how much coffee and snacks to bring. I made up a rap for our event: “StatusCheck on the left, who’s on deck? StatusCheck to the right, hacking day and night!” Ok, apologies for the cheesiness of that rhyme

StatusCheck

Also note, for all those attending, at 5 PM we will move over to the hotel bar in the lobby to have the first big StatusCheck drink meetup in LA. If you can’t make StatusCampLA, surely you can come and relax at do a StatusCheck!

You want to start a StatusCamp?

This is the first StatusCampLA! Its also the third StatusCamp after our successfulStatusCampMontreal and StatusCampSF. We want to do more StatusCamps globally and encourage anyone interested in hosting their own StatusCamp, to start one! If you are interested, send me a message at @rejon or via email jon@status.net.

We have shirts, stickers and posters now which I can send to you as a schwag bomb to get you started! Free stuff is cool. Hacking is cooler.

What’s your StatusCampLA hashtag?

The hashtag for this event will be #statuscampLA

Venue

Los Angeles Airport Westin
5400 West Century Boulevard
Los Angeles, California 90045
Phone: (310) 216-5858
Fax: (310) 417-4545

Google Map to the Venue

Westin LAX Hotel, Concourse B

For more information

…and to get some ideas for sessions, please visit: http://statuscamp.org/la

group your windows with kwin in KDE-4.4

2010-02-12T02:59:45+00:00

With KDE-4.4, you can group some windows together, kwin provide this awesome feature. All you need do to achieve this is just right click on the windows title bar, select Move to window group.

Nexus One Digitizer Repair

2010-02-08T15:35:04+00:00

As some of you may know, I got the Nexus One a few weeks ago. After having it about 3 weeks, I dropped it. The glass digitizer cracked.

I sourced a replacement digitizer (glass screen) via Alibaba from China. I had to buy bulk (10) – so anyone in Singapore who has a broken Nexus One, email me. I’m selling.

I fixed it, took about 2 hours, but it works! No left over screws!

Thanks to iFixIt at http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus-One/1654/1!

My photos are here:

Nexus One Digitizer Repair

links for 2010-02-05

2010-02-05T22:03:12+00:00

The business value of social networks

An interesting look into the business benefits and value you can derive from social networking. Some interesting and unexpected use cases

(tags: opengovernment socialmedia socialnetworking business)
Of governments and geeks

A great article linking open government, FOSS and open data together. Also covers briefly the attitudes to open government in the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Nice work!

(tags: foss government gov20 gov2au opensource opendata opengovernment)

My chat with jabberwacky

2010-02-05T10:26:49+00:00

I just was searching through the web and found this learning chatbot, after talking to him for 10 min and he told me about very interesting stuff (He believe that pigs can fly, but still don’t know homer simson) i got some very amazing result that i really did not expect:

[..] long chat [..]
he: You are the one who is confusing.
me: Really?
he: Yes, really.
me: Heng! Ni tau jian!!
he: Shen me ?

This bot really understand girlish Chinese slang!

Have fun chatting: http://international.jabberwacky.com/

Cheers
xuedi

Drupal modules necessary to start any web site

2010-02-04T16:15:45+00:00

Beginners with DrupalDrupal is a content management system (http://www.drupal.org) are often lost among the vast quantity of modules they need to take to start a project.

The Drupal archive is called the core. It is just enough to enable a base of work but limits can come quickly.

For any project I am starting, those are the ones which are always taken :

CCK : http://drupal.org/project/cck

The CCK (Content Construction Kit) module allows to create some content type templates. Drupal is coming with some basic ones but you might want to use some others.

Why ?

For various reasons :

How to enable root access in ubuntu ?

2010-02-04T13:31:48+00:00

This is very simple.

Press ALT+F2 and type xterm followed by ENTER.

A shell is opening so you can type :
sudo passwd root
Then type your password once, followed by the password you want to set up for the root user twice.

Thanks Aron Xu, our translation team coordinator

2010-02-03T15:21:52+00:00

Ubuntu Desktop will include Chinese translation by default, which mean users will get a localized livecd when he download the official image from Ubuntu Cdimage, all he need to do is chose Chinese at the boot screen.

This great job was achieved by Aron Xu, who hasn't join us for too long. But he is very active in Open Source community, like Ubuntu, GNOME, etc. So, kudos shall go to him for his contribution.

my page got hacked

2010-02-02T22:57:24+00:00

Well, i luckily call myself a programmer and not admin, so i don’t feel to bad about what happend ^^

Today i noticed that my Firefox plugin NoScript reported a script that should be executed at my blog, as its my blog i know i never add such a thing. So i checked and now the one year not updateing my WP hit back straight in my face, i was hacked

After checking my server i could confirm that it is just a WP hack (hopefully), most likely i cough one of these WP worms that a recently going around for old WP installations. It was anyway time to do a fresh reinstall, this time i decide to install straight out from the SVN, not the trunk, but the last stable, now i just need to do:

svn co http://core.svn.wordpress.org/tags/2.<new release> .

to keep up to date, i also installed some interesting plugins, and paranoid as i am now read the code in detail of all that plugins

hopefully this will keep a while running. Soon i will add the old posts as well, and try to post a little more often than before.

Cheers
xuedi

Basic rules for FOSS Localization

2010-02-02T03:03:43+00:00

I have been spending some time reviewing a few FOSS educational software translations over the last months. Localization is a commitment if you want to do a good job; badly localized software leads to poor experience (people simply won’t use the software) and gives the wrong message that FOSS applications are just bad software. So if you thought localization was just pure translation, then you need to think again! Hopefully my experience will help more people to start a localization effort well prepared and be proud of the work they did.

Cultural adaptation and knowing who that software was written for are paramount in the process. I’ve put up a few rules together hoping it will help newcomers, if I missed anything please feel free to add yours in the comment section!

Know your audience (the people using the software) and pick words that they can easily understand
Have some knowledge in software terminology (if not, web search is your buddy)
Be familiar with the software (try it out before translating it and don’t hesitate to use that software when you are doing the translation)
Be more than fluent in the target language and good enough in the original language (not the other way round)
Don’t be afraid to change the meaning in order to fit cultural differences (e.g. for Rur-ple, we picked a meaningful Chinese robot name rather than doing a phonetic conversion: names must have meaning in Chinese for people and more specifically children to remember)
Use the same terms across the whole software (either by proof reading or with the help of localization tools like Poedit and OmegaT)
Have someone good enough in both languages to review your work and hopefully familiar with the software (he needs to use the software not just read the text)
Fixes, typo corrections and improvements from the source language need to be fed back to the original project in order to help improve the overall quality of the software and all its translation
Keep track of changes and reasons behind so that can be useful for other languages
Have the passion and the time to commit to do a good work

Blogging on ZDNet Asia

2010-02-02T02:05:23+00:00

Following the steps of Michael and Peter I’ve just started to blog on ZDNet Asia yesterday. My writings there will be a lot more “journalistic” than my random stories over here and covering Linux and Open Source in China, and not what I personally get involved with. Most likely I will also add the feed to the BLUG Planet but only once I’m done writing a feed filter that removes the add in the default feed. If there are any specific topic that you would like to be covered just leave a comment at either place.

Open source blog reloaded!

2010-02-01T10:22:03+00:00

This is with great pleasure that this "little corner of the Web" is resuming activities through another member of the (now famous ;-)) Beijing Linux User Group (BLUG) doing the reporting. I was reading my predecessors first posts to get a feel of what a.....

Come to StatusCheck Brussels at FOSDEM 2010 Next Saturday

2010-01-31T20:13:46+00:00

That’s right! The StatusNet crew invites you #StatusCheckBRU to grab a beer on Saturday night, February 6, 2010 in Brussels at nearby “A La Mort Subite” for a couple of hours to talk all things StatusNet, the free network service microblogging software. Myself (@rejon) and @Evan will be on hand and have free limited number of new StatusNet shirts, loads of new stickers, and lots of discussions to be had. This is a StatusCheck to coincide with FOSDEM, a Free and Open Software Developer Meeting. You don’t miss StatusNet CEO and Identi.ca Founder, Evan Prodromou’s presentation on Sunday at 4 PM at FOSDEM, either.

http://fosdem.org/2010/schedule/events/820

You are invited to this #StatusCheckBRU where we will have beers, free shirts, free StatusNet sign-ups for private beta, stickers, and great discussion fun. Please go to the wiki page and let us know you are coming!

Put it on your calendars and share it with your friends!

StatusCheckBRU, 6 PM

A La Mort Subite
rue Montagne-aux-Herbes Potagères 7
B-1000 Brussels
+32-(0)2-513.13.18

Map: http://ur1.ca/l16z

http://www.alamortsubite.com/

UPDATE: In addition to some other staffers and community members, StatusNet’s own User Experience Designer, @csarven(Sarven Capadisli) will be on-hand at FOSDEM and the StatusCheckBRU.

using sasl as authentication to login freenode

2010-01-31T14:39:39+00:00

freenode migrated to use a new server, which forked from others, something notable to me are: 1 support ssl, 2 support sasl authentication, 3 support hang on over 100 channels simultaneously. To get sasl work, you need some configuration work to do:

install corresponding package

sudo aptitude install libcrypt-blowfish-perl libcrypt-dh-perl libcrypt-openssl-bignum-perl

download irssi script provided by freenode, and make it run atuomatically

cd ~/.irssi/scripts/

wget http://freenode.net/sasl/cap_sasl.pl

cd autorun

ln -s ../cap_sasl.pl .

make it run automatically /RUN cap_sasl.pl

/sasl set freenode primary-nick password DH-BLOWFISH

/sasl save

/save

reconnect to freenode, you will see

22:30:54 [freenode] -!- Irssi: CLICAP: supported by server: identify-msg multi-prefix sasl

22:30:54 [freenode] -!- Irssi: CLICAP: requesting: multi-prefix sasl
22:30:55 [freenode] -!- Irssi: CLICAP: now enabled: multi-prefix sasl
22:30:56 [freenode] -!- freeflying!freeflying@ubuntu/member/freeflying freeflying You are now logged in as freeflying.

22:30:56 [freenode] -!- Irssi: SASL authentication successful

Cycling: to Shahe reservoir

2010-01-31T10:00:00+00:00

Time: Jan 31 15:20-16:30

Temp: 6 ℃

Route:
[from my home to Shahe](http://ditu.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC%E5%B8%82%E6%98%8C%E5%B9%B3%E5%8C%BA%E5%90%8C%E6%88%90%E8%A1%97+(%E9%BE%99%E6%B3%BD%E8%8B%91%E5%B0%8F%E5%8C%BA)&daddr=%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC%E5%B8%82%E6%98%8C%E5%B9%B3%E5%8C%BA%E6%B2%99%E6%B2%B3%E6%B0%B4%E5%BA%93&hl=zh-CN&geocode=FQFwYwIdUufuBiGOqnDcnSjLkg%3BFQZoZAIdJ-TuBilRdpIAVPnwNTFWH1M-TSJegg&mra=ls&sll=40.18282,116.195015&sspn=0.250753,0.611801&brcurrent=3,0x35f0f06ba870ac75:0x470cc62b53ab9e78,0,0x35f05296e7142cb9:0xb9625620af0fa98a%3B5,0,0&ie=UTF8&ll=40.10066,116.299725&spn=0.062764,0.15295&z=13 "from my home to Shahe")

Not so cold today, very nice for cycling.

Google Maps (Lat=40.134662,Lng=116.319271)

GNOME.Asia Summit 2010 – Call for Host

2010-01-27T08:05:58+00:00

As part of the GNOME.Asia Summit Committee, I would like to post the Call for Host of the GNOME.Asia Summit 2010 here and let all the communities in Asia know that we are looking for potential host this year. Please find below the announcement and don’t hesitate to pass the message along!

Dear GNOME friends,

We are call for the host of GNOME.Asia Summit 2010 now !

GNOME.Asia Summit is the yearly GNOME Users and Developers Asian Conference. The event focuses primarily on the GNOME desktop, and also covers applications and the development platform tools. It brings together the GNOME community in Asia to provide a forum for users, developers, foundation leaders, governments and businesses to discuss both the present technology and future developments.

You can learn more about GNOME.Asia Summit at our official website: http://gnome.asia

The following two links are “must read items” for organizing the GNOME.Asia Summit:

If you are interested in hosting the summit please submit a formal proposal to the GNOME.Asia Committee at asia-summit-list [at] gnome.org. The deadline for proposals is 31st March 2010. You are encouraged to ask questions before writing the formal proposal.

We are looking forward to hear from you on or before 31st March 2010.

Sincerely,

GNOME.Asia Summit committee

ubuntu installfest last year

2010-01-26T15:31:13+00:00

I forgot to write it down when it had been finished last year, so here are some photos I wanna to share with all of you. Attendees are not too much, but we were there, had some end users laptop installed with Ubuntu.

My home office

2010-01-26T15:01:08+00:00

upgraded my blog system, installed a plugin which can let me use my photo from flickr much easier. Because more than 70 of our colleagues are working at home, so its seems a nice idea to share with each others what your home looks like. so here is one corner of mine.

New phone number

2010-01-26T02:34:02+00:00

Some of you might have received a SMS from me this morning, I have switched mobile provider and therefore have a new number. I’ll keep the old one for another month during the transition period. Why did I switch? Well the main reason is that I am getting about 10 to 20 SMS and 1-3 MMS spam a day with China Mobile. Being a “Diamond member” (the highest membership level at China Mobile) I did call them a week ago to ask to solve the problem (there are many many technical solutions they could implement) but the only two things they could tell me is that they got an award for fighting spam (???) and that I should install a software on my phone to do that. Note that I started to get spam from day one with them. I suspect their staff are just selling customer data for a few bucks. I still told the customer representative I gave them a week to address the issue or else I would switch carrier. Nothing has happened, so here I come China Unicom. On top of not getting spam (at least at the beginning) I’ll get the pleasure to enjoy 3G on my phone (as China Mobile only supports the Chinese 3G standard on overpriced handsets made only for the Chinese market) and flat rate calling all over China.

I won’t post my new number here, but for those of you who know me, do not hesitate to either send me an sms or drop me an email to get the new number.

Chinese Reactions to Google Maybe Leaving China

2010-01-25T08:01:02+00:00

You’ve probably heard the news that Google may leave China. A few folks asked me how the Chinese feel about it, so we dug around a couple Chinese Internet message boards to get some responses.

If you haven’t been following the story, these news articles provide great background informaiton:

- Statement from Google: A new approach to China from the Washington Post.
- Google’s New Approach to China from GlobalVoices Advocacy.
- China: Clinton Internet speech harms ties with US from Yahoo! News.

Before reading what we have below, go check China Smack’s, Say Goodbye to Google China? Chinese Reactions, which contains great translations and more article links.

In the following translations from a tt.mop.com message board posting by azheng270, Harmony refers to Chinese government censorship and TG and Celestial Dynasty refer to the government.

I’ve been using google services, I like google, Google China has been working on it as well.
Many Chinese Internet users like me know the truth that google’s going to leave
In fact, no matter what, we do not want google really leaving us.
Everyone in type in google search bar “google Do not leave”
I hope google can fight on in Chinese Internet at this so called “harmony”

Replies

Bob_99
I’m using google and screaming: google, don’t leave me!

青衫女
This is sadness of Celestial dynasty

jerry8688
This is the feature of Celestial dynasty

猥琐中年
All should leave, this is abyss

DJ舞曲DJ
How does TG monopoly if google stays?
China can not not have monopolized industry!(must have)

http://www.kenengba.com/post/2257.html
一位Google员工及韩寒对Google退出中国的看法
I had also prepared the other manuscripts, but the recent release other information not in the mood. We still continue to focus on Google out of things in China bar.

And here is a transcript from a video interview of Han Han, a young Chinese car racer and writer, on China’s Tudou video sharing site. In this transcript, the fifty cents party refers to people who are paid half a Chinese yuan per Internet message board post supporting Chinese government policy, and Phoenix is a Hong Kong based broadcaster. His interview is no longer available on Tudou.

China’s Internet has become the largest local area network
by Han Han:

The following is the text Record, thanks @ chenshaoju @ melodyskiing @ zypatroon of labor:

I just want to tell Google, a good one.

Then I feel that Google itself, he was at home doing a lot of things, I personally have very much appreciated. Whether it’s to go and stay, I think this is it they have to decide.

I am of course sorry, in terms of Facebook, Youtube, is also included to assume that Google is now gone, then all of the international best internet stations have left us, but I personally In fact, for many of Google’s behavior with their spiritual, then do not bother you are a business holding head, not holding commercial purposes, which I think is not important, because if you are holding commercial purposes, at the same time you can go to the benefit of others, of course, the best.

It’s not like here in many parts of China, you holding commercial purposes, you go to harm others, being the case, we want people to earn money, why do not you choose a benefit of others do?

So I can say is quite regrettable that all the world’s best internet stations have to leave us, the Chinese Internet has become one the world’s largest local area network.

If so, I think anyway, quite unfortunately, we stepped up technology anyway - whether it is over the wall, or with other technologies, we are strengthening the bar anyway.

Because the trend is concerned, these, we have all of these, including young friends, the media, including young people grow up, you have a more open media, more voices, and this historical trend is not stopped, any block of this the historical trend, in a few years later, will be ridiculed by others, so a good go.

be careful with fifty cents Party
Google announced a possible withdrawal of China, and netizens have since discussed this topic. Allows Chinese Internet users to speak in the community, I see a lot of support for Google’s remarks, see a lot of people seen that the nature of Google to leave.

However, there are a lot of the media deliberately misleading Internet users, Google deliberately ugly, or even using some of distorted values to judge the matter.

Readers read the report online should be careful when these arguments:

1. Google Book Search can not because the Chinese writers to reach an agreement to withdraw from shame to China

2. Google’s technology, not strong enough, was been extracted China Baidu

3. Google tried to use business to interfere in China’s internal affairs

4. no Google, China Internet still strong

5. China’s Internet is fully open

A party newspaper editor told me that he could not stand the newspaper recently slandered Google, distorting the facts, intend to resign. I think we should give him applause.

The following article is about what really happened with google China, many people think it’s the truth why google is leaving, and the article got deleted not long after posted. A netizen saved the screenshot for more people to read. http://www.yupoo.com/photos/zoom?id=ff8080812626f15a012632dc592770f3
The main point of this article is that TG sent spies in google and they stole open source and coding send to TG for controlling the human right activist’s movements. The pornographic was the reason for them to leave. Because of this stealing code incident, google feels threaten about the whole company being destroyed and bankrupt. So they decided to leave China anyways.

Replies
wuluoyi
support google, it’s still possible to stay

windliao
Insert a team, I’v read the NetEase reported that the Ministry of Commerce in response to the comments there is a lot of disdain on google, ha ha.
Probably we should have an “illegal flowers” to google here.
Micky
I just saw this link, it might be the truth about what happened

xiaowan3
This article first comes from broadband Hill, the author called “Du Yuesheng.” It has been evaporated already.
Tatsuya
Even the sun can not stand what happened with google China and appeared in the event of the millennium a black hole. Shit.

Cary
Look up the news on Phoenix, we can not trust any of these ”media” anymore

Old
Do you know who owns Phoenix?

Irvin
I heard Phoenix has TG police background, just heard about it!

cj_sd
It’s a public secret for years
N7
Track Phoenix IP, it’s coming from the same IP of CCTV and it’s not in HK anymore, it’s in BJ

I think these Internet message board postings give a bit of insight as to how China’s Internet-savvy younger generation view this issue.

For my part, it’s difficult for me to imagine Google being allowed to stay in China. But I sure hope I’m wrong.

SHARISM2010

2010-01-25T00:43:45+00:00

和希拉里谈话后的合影, originally uploaded by IsaacMao .

linux.conf.au 2010 – Day 5: more open gov & hacking for children

2010-01-22T11:52:17+00:00

I was a little late getting in this morning due to a headache and feeling like I’d been hit by a truck, so unfortunately this meant I missed giving my lightning talk. For those who were interested, I’ll be blogging the content next week.

I met up with Glyn Moody, Stephen Schmid and Julian Carver for a casual chat about open government which was really interesting. We spoke about Open data, which Glyn saw as low hanging fruit. We also spoke about other types of projects happening around transparency in government and technology procurement. It’s interesting to me, because there is a lot of rhetoric around open datoa, citizen engagement and making government more transparent, but there isn’t a lot of discussion about how the current processes of technology procurement may actually inhibit open government initiatives.

Steve has been working for 2 1/2 years on developing the Open Technology Foundation strategy along with some of the other clever folk at the South Australian Office of the CIO, and they are now in the process of putting the plan into action. The Open Technology Foundation will be a great support mechanism for government in pursuing open data, standards, technology and methodologies, so check it out.

After that I continued chatting to Julian for while, particularly about policy development which was great given his experience. We discussed how policy development can mean a lot of different things, and how successful policies usually involve not only logical points but also an understanding of broader social and political context. As we were chatting he came up with an interesting idea. He said that the development of policy could be compared to code development, and perhaps we could purposefully apply the processes of code development to policy development. It’s an interesting thought that needs more consideration before further blogging

After a lovely ladies lunch at a great vegetarian place on Cuba St, I got ready for Rusty’s talk.

Rusty always gives very entertaining talks, and this was no exception. It was great not only for it’s humour factor, but because so many of our geek peers are having children (and Jeff and I look forward to having children someday) so getting Rusty’s experience in trying to introduce his young girl to programming was fantastic!

It was wonderful to see video of Rusty’s child (who is now around two years old now) using the different wrist bracelets and software Rusty developed for her. After many experiments with writing software she might like, Rusty hooked up a drum machine to an application he wrote, and it was an interesting experiment because when she hit the drums on the outside she got the best physical feedback (sound) and when she hit it in the middle she got software feedback (more eyes on the screen), which wasn’t nearly as satisfying or understandable for her. So at this point he decided to simplify:

he went with the best wristband design
he wrote two very simple programmes that are fun to use, one to smear paint and one to bounce a ball around the screen

This has been quite successful, so nice work Rusty, particularly for being the world’s first kernel developer focused on the pre-school market.

Favourite saying of the speech about introducing children to programming -> “Brainwash early, brainwash often”.

And as for what I eluded to yesterday, I played the part of a 2 yr old child for Rusty’s talk to demonstrate his awesome user design hacking for children. It was a lot of fun!

As a side note, I really want Rusty’s shirt, it said “Video games ruined my life, good thing I have two extra lives. <3 <3”.

I had a great discussion with Nat Torkington, again about open government where we brainstormed what government does, is meant to do, and what it would look like if it was designed by geeks.

We talked about open data, and how there are many stages to achieving openness. In the first instance, it is just about getting the data publicly accessible in useful formats and with permissive licences. The second stage is automation of the data (so it is machine readable and continually updated), then interactability wherein the APIs to the data is all open so that people can create systems thatfully interact with the systems and thus the data. Finally achieving read/write public data means that government data can be updated by citizens.

We also spoke about trust, and how trust is beginning to trump statements made regardless of the logic or verifiability, because many people will believe a statement from a trusted source even if they can’t verify it. Access to data is one thing that can help with verifiability, however often data by itself is not enough and data needs to be presented in an understandable and if possible interactive way for people to get the best outcomes.

In terms of interacting with government directly, using open API’s would lower the cost of business transactions and ultimately service delivery for government as well as potentially making goverment better at partnering with others. This would be particularly useful in emergencies as a great example.

We also had a bit of a thought experiment about how would we build a government department from scratch. More on that idea in a later blog post I think.

The conference closing was great. Lots of love and thanks all round. They announced the competition outcomes, and the QR code commpetition was nicely explained by Glynn.

Gopal (T3rminat0r) was the runner up for the photography competition with this, which is an amazing shot, and Andy Fitzsimon said we should all set it as our backgrounds for “at least two months”

Mike Beattie took the great winning photo:

linux.conf.au 2011 was announced to be in Brisbane! Hooray!

I didn’t get to the Penguin Dinner, which was a real shame but I wasn’t feeling well and had to stay home and sleep a bit more.

Other cool stuff I saw today:

Biella pointed me to the Triple Canopy Journal, an academic journal that incorporates online media and publishing tools
Budget Hero
Kete — FOSS platform for sharing stories
How to crowd source an IT strategy - shared by Nat Torkington

Some linux.conf.au media coverage I’ve enjoyed from this week so far:

Angus Kidman

NZ govt trials Linux desktops in Feb (ZDNet)
Linux.conf.au 2010: Photos (ZDNet)
New Zealand gov’t agencies to begin Linux pilot (ZDNet)
TeachingOpenSource.org Explains Open Source Programming (Life Hacker)
Linux.conf.au, FOSS and the Joe Blow job (ITWire) - some people will not like this article, but I think Gus has a great point that we - as people in the FOSS community - need to take our responsibility as pioneers and custodians of the information age seriously, and engage with the general public rather than just take cheap shots and laughs that make us feel special.

Computer World — Stephen Bell

CIO — Rodney Gedda

Open source under threat from ‘grey’ IP laws

Linuxworld — Trevor Clarke

Tech Eye — Nick Farrell

Most Linux coders are paid

Computerworld — Georgina Swan

Linux.conf.au: Birds of a Feather

Computerworld — Kathryn Edwards

Kernel contributer says Linux community can be intimidating

There’s a bunch more, I’ll try to do update the media list tomorrow, right now I need to go sleep some more.

linux.conf.au 2010 – Day 4: elephants & emergencies

2010-01-21T12:35:43+00:00

Early this morning I went to Yoga which was great! It was my first time, and a really wonderful class. The class was pretty full and the exercises were really interesting. Thanks very much Francois for organising it and to the lovely teacher for the illuminating class.

Afterwards I was feeling a little shaky and so I watched the keynote stream from another room. I enjoyed Glyn Moody’s talk immensly and really want to try to catch up with during the few remaining days at lca.

I had one interesting discussion today with Mako where we discussed the impacts of risk management and liability policies on innovation. It’s an interesting area and I’d love people’s comments or any examples they can think of.

Jeremy Allison gave a talk called “The Elephant in the Room” which discussed Microsoft and it’s relationship to the Free Software community. He spoke about several strategies Microsoft have attempted over the years:

De-commoditisation — their move to de-commodotise their software through proprietary standards, media formats, closed integration of their products and other behaviours that locked out other software. In the long run they were made to open up a lot of their standards (through the SAMBA team’s great work).
The OOXML fiasco — which ended up with the ISO standards process being quite dramatically corrupted. One blogger commented that it was effectively one company against everyone, and they won, which is a bit worrying. Industry, governments, community and many others around the world rallied strongly against OOXML. This ended up being a loss of Microsoft because although the standard was passed, there was a lot of frustration and global awareness of the issues resulting, and now Microsoft have adopted ODF support anyway.
Corruption of the Open Internet — through rather particular implementation of standards as an example. Jeremy said that Firefox has been a great boon for openness. This is an ongoing battle, however Jeremy felt they would ultimately have a loss in this strategy too.

Jeremy see patents as the biggest current issue. He posed the Tom Tom lawsuit as “the first openly aggressive use of Microsoft’s patent portfolio against Free Software”.

His core messages came down to what we can do about the elephant in the room, and it came down to:

Ignore it — continuing creating awesome software and demonstrating the value of openness. He saw this as the most effective long term strategy.
Coral it — keep up pressure on governments and organisations to adopt open, uncorrupted standards and investigate monopolies. I think there will always be a small minority of our community committed to doing this, but I think we can all within our own lives drive education in our peers, workplaces, families and other networks around the importance of openness and software freedom.

I have always been quite firmly in the camp of not attacking individual companies. I do believe people and organisations should be held to account for disruptive and destructive actions, and unfortunately for them, Microsoft often come up due to many of their behaviours. But it is a mistake for people in our community to assume companies are “evil” or “good”. They’re just companies and we need to encourage open and collaborative behaviours whilst keeping our eyes open to bad behaviour, so to speak.

I then had a great lunch, catching up with some friends we haven’t seen for ages. We had a great discussion about gender, sexuality & culture. We were comparing social norms, good/bad behaviour, and how to actually drive social progress without excluding or blaming any person or group. It was a really fascinating conversation, and I personally believe that treating issues of negative bias or bad behaviour as a community problem, rather than a problem just of the target group is the way to draw everyone in to creating the best community we can.

I went along to the Sahana talk, but couldn’t stay long as I was helping Rusty prepare for his talk tomorrow. I’m a big fan of Sahana, it is disaster management (in the Tsunami sense) software, so if you are interested in FOSS for saving lives, you should check it out and get involved.

My role in Rusty’s talk is top secret, so you’ll have to come along to see.

I caught the Q&A from Jon Oxer’s talk — “Tux on the Moon: FOSS hardware and software in space” — which I’m going to make sure I watch once the recordings are put up as it sounded very interesting.

After that I thought I’d take advantage before it rained again to go out kayaking for an hour. Kate Olliver had said she was keen to go so off we went. I was feeling dizzy as we walked over but ignored the sensation and went kayaking. The kayaking was a lot of work but a lot of fun, and we saw amongst many other cool things a baby starfish which made me wish I’d risked bringing a camera. It was very cute.

Now the story gets a little more exciting. On the way back from kayaking I felt much more dizzy and had to sit down rather suddenly about half way back. We got back and I accepted I was actually a bit sick, so I wanted to figure out whether I had the same bug Andrew and Susanne (the core organisers) had suffered. I went into the NOC to ask and their symptoms didn’t match. I felt quite dizzy and sat down, then lay down, then had some muscle and body spasms which were quite unpleasant and at times painful. Got taken to the hospital where anti-inflamatories, a drip and bed rest calmed down the symptoms, and now I’m home feeling like I’ve been hit by a truck. Turns out muscle spasms are a pretty good form of exercise.

Anyway, thank you very much to the lca2010 team, especially Steve Walsh, Susanne Ruthven and Jayne Foster for putting up with and helping me out, and I’m sorry to everyone for causing a fuss.

Other cool stuff I came across today include:

The Art of Manliness — this was suggested to me as an interesting insight to issues facing men in the context of a discussion about feminism. I’ll be looking through it later.
Wendy Seltzer — a cool legal geek and hacker recommended as a contact.
Kim Stanley Robinson coming to Melbourne this September for AussieCon4.

UPDATE: Friday morning I felt a lot better. Massive headache, stiff neck. sore muscles, but still fine to attend lca. Hooray for panadol and anti-inflammatories.

What’s Your StatusNet 2.0 (Updates like Identi.ca)

2010-01-21T02:33:23+00:00

I’m in Wellington right now at LinuxConf2010 in Wellington presenting, hacking with @andyfitz and many more of my developer friends. I gave a presentation yesterday updating my StatusNet 2.0 presentation and then having a StatusCheck meetup with about 30-40 people and several getting free StatusNet t-shirts! I have some more for this Saturday’s openday here in Wellington, then I’m back to SF.

If you are in Wellington, lets meetup and talk StatusNet and other projects!

Here is the presentation abstract:

What’s Your StatusNet? (Updates like Identi.ca)

StatusNet is a hosted service for setting your status updates (aka, microblogging), is free software (licensed under the GNU AGPL), and is the software that powers the popular Autonomo.us Free Network Service, Identi.ca. This presentation looks broadly at these three parts of the StatusNet, how to setup YOUROWN.status.net, installing your own instance, and the company which supports the community. As a bonus, this talk introduces StatusNet’s business and how to apply to under-represented free network services. Since this conference is more technical, we will dig deeper into the LAMP-powered StatusNet software, the updated OpenMicroBlogging standard that allows distributed federated microblogging, and will explore the basics of free network services through the eyes of the Franklin Street Declaration.

Here are the slides as a PDF, on Scribd, and then Slideshare.

2010 starting full speed

2010-01-20T14:07:42+00:00

I hope everybody had a great time over Christmas and the new year festivities. It’s not really my preferred time of the year for various reasons, but that doesn’t mean other people can’t enjoy ! So I have been focusing my time and energy on Open Source stuff, namely RUR-PLE, some GNOME.Asia related stuff, Greenboard of course, our pilots in migrant schools and Software Freedom Day planning for 2010.
On top of those activities I will start blogging for ZDNet Asia about Linux and Open Source in China, most likely organize the Beijing chapter of the Global Ignite Week with O’Reilly and the cool guys from the Beijing LUG, while trying to get a Hackerspace started in Beijing with a few other enthusiasts from various communities (but mainly from the BLUG though for now).
And finally I am happily providing hosting space for two open source projects, the Phnom Penh LUG, a growing Linux community in Cambodia, and moonOS, a lightweight Ubuntu based distribution (using Enlightenment) started by a cool Cambodian guy with whom I chat almost daily nowadays as we’re working on other open source stuff together. I’ll probably come back to all of those but for sure it’s more than enough to keep me away from writing here…

linux.conf.au 2010 – Day 3: freedom, games & Bruce Campbell

2010-01-20T10:39:14+00:00

Day 3 of lca2010 and I had 3.5 hours sleep last night but got up early anyway and did some stick and pole weapons training with Ian Beardslee which was great fun.

This morning Benjamin Mako Hill gave the keynote. I met Mako years ago and he has always been a massive inspiration. He’s spoken, written and hacked on software freedom for many years, a freedom fighter from way back.

In his keynote he talked about empowerment and autonomy rather than licences. “Who controls the technology, controls how I get to use it. So the question of who controls software is a profound and political question.” He spoke about “antifeatures”, features that users hate and would even pay money to have removed. Mako holds that these antifeatures are very common and everyone deals with them. He gave four key categories of antifeatures:

Protection money - pay us so you are kept safe. For instance Gator, which was spyware installed on 35 million Windows computers that replaced banner ads with other ads. It shipped with other software so many users didn’t even know they had it. DivX for instance had a free download that had Gator, or you could get the “premium” version for $19.95 which was exactly the same software but without the Gator spyware. Wow.
Market segmentation (price discrimination) - for example Windows NT Workstation 4.0 vs the Server product. The workstation was basically artificially limited (although the actual code was identical) by a single registry key that identified whether the machine was a server or workstation. The differences were very limiting, for instance the workstation version could only have 10 TCP connections. Another example of market segmentation in this way is different versions of Windows even today will allow different limits of RAM, which again is a completely artificial limitation aimed at “segmenting the market” to charge different amounts. Vista Starter for instance apparently limits you to 3 graphical applications running simultaneously.
Securing monopolies - Panasonic released a firmware update for their cameras, which would identify whether the camera was third party and prevent the camera from turning on unless it was a genuine battery. Other camera companies have written similar firmware updates to make third party batteries not use power saving and so appear to be worse quality than a brand name battery.
“Protecting” copyrights (“from whom?”) - an example is that unskippable track at the beginning of DVDs.

He talked about how network services are creating new and interesting roadblocks to personal empowerment and autonomy and a bunch more. It was a highly informative and entertaining talk, so watch it! Also check out his Unhappy Birthday website.

Then I went to Richard Jones’ Games programming Tutorial, which I was really excited to see as I’ve always wanted to develop games, but had only got as far as some Battle for Wesnoth campaign development, which is more like marked up creative writing (but loads of fun).

I took a bunch of notes about games development, but it would be most useful to actually watch the tutorial and check out of Richard’s slides and material. It’s a great tutorial for all ages

My notes on collision detecting were:

Most common way of collision detection is the use of axis-aligned bounding boxes (squares). For example, one around the character, and then one around the ground and then when the boxes overlap they are colliding. Much faster than pixel-perfect collision detection. We used circle-circle collision detection, however there are also hash maps for more complications collision detection such as used in “bullet hell” games. This defines a grid on the screen and detects where in the grid each items are to determine what is overlapping.

By the end of the session (which just flew past) I had a basic but working Asteroids game! Now I just need to learn more Python and I intend on taking up the recommendations and get into more study. Thanks Richard!! He recommended the “Invent with Python” online book to check out, even though it was written for 12 yr olds Also check out PyCon Au.

I then spoke to Pamela Fox about applying Wave to a Public Sphere government consultation. I’m not sure how yet, but I have the feeling there could be some very clever way too do this. I need to think about it more.

I attended Matthew Garrett’s talk on “Social success in (and for) the Linux community”. I always enjoy Matthew’s talks, just the right mix of dry humour and cutting cynicism — very British.

First he spoke about who the Linux community is:

Developers - people who make it
Users - people who use it
Anyone who cares enough to participate and count themselves in the community

Matthew observed “As a community we are very hostile”. He talked a bit about how obvious people are about minorities in the community, and gave a great example of women. He said that pointing out to people that they are in fact quite obviously different is not endearing. He posed the question “what is acceptable?”:

“The idea that we should be nice to each other does not mean that we can’t have fun.” Completely agree. I get so sick of inappropriate humour that marginalises people in the community. Great point! It’s much better to create a community where everyone feels comfortable and enthused to contribute and make the project rock! Matthew pointed out that as a community we often value code above all else, but this isn’t necessarily a good thing, and we should be thinking about what we want our community to be and then make a choice.

Matthew said in Q&A that he used to be very abusive and got a lot of attention for that, however he’s realised over time that he can earn respect through his contributions to the community and doesn’t need the other sort of attention. This was a very useful and personal insight to this kind of behaviour in projects.

I watched Andrew Tridgell and Bob Edwards give a great talk about “Teaching FOSS at universities”. Basically they ran a course last year as a bit of an experiment to see whether it was feasible to teach people the technical and community methods of FOSS in the context of a university. Tridge says it was a resounding success and encourages us to suggest this kind of course to other universities. They are repeating the course in April 2010 and it looks very interesting. It would be great to get this kind of courseware into schools as it would help all students understand how to engage online, how to contribute to an online project and how to apply FOSS principles to other areas.

The final talk I attended today was Paul Fenwick’s “Worst inventions”. He compared leeches in glass bottles from one 18th Century invention with social networking, because the inventor said *glass* bottles were used so the “little comrades… were not in social isolation”.

He described some rather terrible inventions over the years, a few are below:

“Cabbage Patch Snacktime - Eats Human Flesh
Bindeez which as it turns out got children high as the water activated soluble when made wet would create GHB, otherwise known as Ecstasy.
The “Atomic Energy Lab” for the budding nuclear physicist which had actual uranium, and a comic book called “Learn how Dagwood splits the atom”. Hilarious!

The night finished with a Girl Geek Dinner with about 30 attendees. We had an amazing dinner at the Little India restaurant and Amber the dinner organiser also managed to coordinate heaps of prizes which was fantastic, thanks Amber! I managed to score an awesome KiwiCon tshirt from Joh which has Bruce Campbell on the back, and being a big Army of Darkness fan, I’ve been quoting Ash all night. It’s always great to catch up with a bunch of other technical women to just chill and not be the odd one out for a little while.

Other cool things I came across today include:

Robots & Dinosaurs
Matt Zimmerman’s blog commentary on lca2010
Richard Feynman and his lecture series on the character of physical law
Jennifer Government — a book by Max Barry
Guide to Pirate Parenting - a book I bought for Jeff (no, I’m not pregnant) for Christmas and wanted to point it out to Brenda who was asking about it today

Below are a couple of photos I’ve taken this last week to keep it interesting

linux.conf.au 2010 – Day 2: paradoxes & open government

2010-01-19T12:01:40+00:00

Firstly I should say that the Martial Arts Bof last night was awesome! We had about 8 linux.conf.au people, plus a few locals. We had many styles represented and it was a fantastic night of knowledge sharing, training and loads more. Paul Wayper came along as a Martial Arts newbie and did a good write up that was fascinating as he was observing all of us with fresh eyes.

Day 2 of linux.conf.au was just amazing. The day started with the brilliant Biella Coleman who gave a keynote talk about the history of IP rights, which included some really interesting reflections on hacker culture and the paradox of the “global politics of IP” vs the free software (and broader open culture/knowledge/source) movements. One insight was about TINC (There Is No Cabal), and how it is a joke in most hacker circles, she reflected that the joke is actually a constant subtle reminder to project leaders and other people in positions of responsibility to maintain openness and transparency in the governance and process of their project. Had never thought of it that way. She’s about to release a book called “Coding Freedom: Hacker Pleasure and the Ethics of Free and Open Source Software” which I’m looking forward to very much. The amazing thing about Biella is how she has observed and participated in hacker culture for many years, and so many of her observations are an integral and internally unnoticed part of hacker culture, but very interesting to muse upon and communicate. Thanks heaps Biella! Great work and please keep it up!

Biella’s blog is well worth checking out. I first met her in Brazil at DebConf a number of years ago, and she has done a lot of interesting research. One paper I really enjoyed explored female hackers in the early days of computing when the machines were room size. Her research showed that it was mainly women coding because “typing” was seen as women’s work, however whenever there was press or announcements made, photos would be taken of the computers without any of the women. I’ll find the link later (as I am trying to blog this tonight so I get a post in every day ).

Finally, Biella made a fascinating comparison between the Free Software/Open Source movement and “clear-sighted irony”, watch her talk to see more.

The rest of today I spent in the Open in the Public Sector miniconf where there was an amazing lineup of speakers from NZ, Australia and the UK. We also had attendees from all over the world, who participated in the conversation! It was an incredible day and I recommend anyone interested in government, politics and/or open government to check out the presentations once the video is made available. I’ll be helping Daniel Spector (the awesome organiser) to put up all the slides in the coming day.

Below is a quick wrap up of each talk. Please note I’ve linked where possible to their Twitter accounts so you can followup with them later:

Keynote from Andrew Stott, Director of Digital Engagement, UK. Andrew gave, as usual a fantastic talk however due to bandwidth and me stupidly using wireless he was very difficult to understand. His slides were quite thorough and they’ll be linked through from the miniconf website in the coming day or two so check them out.
Keynote from Lisa Harvey, representative of Australian Govt 2.0 Taskforce. Lisa gave a great talk outlining the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce project and outcomes. I wanted to link to some of the cool stuff she mentioned:
- The Taskforce Final Report was made publicly available December 22nd (2009) and is a great read. When the draft was posted a few weeks before that they had Gov 2.0 giants in the UK and US commenting on it within a few hours which was cool. It’s been a huge project to undertake in the 6 months the Taskforce was running, and the whole team should be very proud of their work as well as their commitment to public engagement, and for making the process of creating this report a sterling Gov 2.0 case study in itself.
- She gave a shout out to the Public Spheres that I designed and ran with Senator Kate Lundy which was cool. Lisa said the Gov 2.0 Public Sphere was a vital contribution to the Taskforce which was great!
- Lisa gave a huge thank you and recognition to Nicholas Gruen, the chair of the Taskforce and a powerhouse for open government and Gov 2.0.
- Mashup Australia was a major Taskforce project wherein a bunch of data was made openly available for public mashups as well as some events coordinated to create places for hacking and knowledge sharing. Check out the projects and datasets.
Stephen Boyd (Aus) IT Security Adviser Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage & the Arts; Why hasn’t the year of the linux desktop arrived in Canberra? Stephen’s talk was a bit controversial for a few attendees as he outlined the issues and assumptions facing government departments in Australia.
Laurence Millar, How can Govt procurement better support Open? Laurence gave a great talk about open data, and the assumptions underpinning government decision making. He was, as always a wonderful presenter.
Pia Waugh, ICT Policy Advisor to Senator Kate Lundy (Aus); Open Government: Getting the core policy and technical principles right! I spoke about why getting basic principles is important to avoid falling off cliffs, and how every government department/office should have a FOSS geek to help them due to the open instincts they develop from our awesome community.
Panel Discussion: The Politics of Open: Moderator: Nat Torkington Panel: Clare Curran- Labour MP, Pia Waugh, Andrew Holmes, Principal Clinical Advisor, Health Information, National Health Board Business Unit, Ministry of Health. The panel was interesting and dealt with some questions about how geeks can engage politically, the challenges facing departments, the blockers to adoption of open standards and much more. Clare also announced that she will be running an open consultation on the NZ Labour Open Government policy which was cool to hear.
Steven Schmid, A/NZ Open Source Sand Pit; Implementing an authoritative repository of public sector Open Technologies for Government agencies. Stephen gave a great talk and followup Q&A about the OTF which he has been working on for 2 1/2 years as well as the possibility of creating a global repository of government knowledge and experience with open technologies like FOSS, open standards, etc. He talked about it being federated and in collaboration with global projects, but also part of a broader project to create real government support for adoption of open tech which is awesome. Great work Steve! Check it out.
Panel Discussion: Creative Commons, Open access/ licensing, and NZGOAL. Panel Professor Anne Fitzgerald - QUT Law Faculty, Keitha Booth - Open Government Information and Data work programme at NZSSC. Anne and Keitha both gave great short talks about copyright in government, where things are at and where they are going in New Zealand and Australia.
Jason Ryan, Manager, Communications & Records Management, NZ State Services Commission. Jason Ryan did a fantastic job of wrapping up the miniconf, reflecting on all of the speakers, their core messages, and allocating themes to each talk. Stephen Schmid got “The Matrix” for his talk on the Open Technology Foundation, and Laurence Millar was compared to “In the Name of the Rose”. It was hilarious! Jason gave me the “oscar of the day” for one of my suggestions for government: “open source geeks, get one”. He reflected on how important that was and useful regardless of the topic area. Definitely check out his talk!
The final comment from the day, from Jason, was that government is a bit like when he first played with Slackware. There’s hundreds of dependencies all all you need is a great package manager, and then he suggested all of us (at the open gov miniconf) were like the package managers for open government. Great comparison!

Am now getting to bed, past midnight, but importantly before midnight Australian time so I’m counting this as being on track to blog every day at lca, which has been my challenge this year!

linux.conf.au 2010 – Day 1

2010-01-18T03:52:22+00:00

Day one of linux.conf.au 2010 started with a fantastic video introducing Wellington in a very tongue in cheek fashion:

It turns out that Andrew and Susanne Ruthven, the core organisers of the conference are actually quite sick today, which must be heartbreaking for them given how much they have put into the conference. On the flip side, the rest of the team are doing really well, with Glynn Foster doing all the welcome and introductions this morning. So don’t worry Susanne and Andrew, it’s all going well! We miss you and hope you get better soon!

Glynn asked the audience members to stand up for previous lca’s they’ve been too which was interesting. There were only about 6 of us who stood us for the very first lca (CALU) in 1999 (although I didn’t actually get to 2001 and 2002 ) . The numbers gradually grew, but it turns out about half the audience are attending lca for the first time, which is awesome!

40% of this years attendees are from Wellington, 40% are from Australia and 20% are from the rest of the world. Another interesting statistic is that 15% of attendees are women. I’m not sure, but I think it’s the highest percentage yet which is great!

Everyday there are podcasts happening from linux.conf.au so I’ll try to make sure I link to them all.

Radio NZ podcast on the linux.conf.au opening

The wireless here has generally been good, although I’ve had to reconnect a few times, so thanks very much to the networking team for keeping the juice flowing

Today we even had a few hours of sunshine, which was the first I’d seen in Wellington (I’ve been here since Wednesday). Yay!

Below are some thoughts about the talks I attended:

Haecksen & Linuxchix miniconf:
- Sara Falamaki — “Happy Hackers == Happy Code”. Sara gave a great talk about some best practises, cool tools and other things that make hackers happy.
- Elizabeth Garbee (ebeth) — “Through the Looking Glass - Free Software through the eyes of a teenager”. Elizabeth shares her experiences with FOSS, particularly as a teenager in the US public school system. “It turns out that any Unix-based machine brought into the school meant immediate expulsion, so we had to get that rule fixed!”. She also discussed how she is breaking the stereotype misconceptions held by her peers and teachers. Go Ebeth! Also, a funny quote from Bdale, “a GLUI is a GUI I’m stuck using”.
- Joh Clarke — “Hackers, Crackers and Things That Go Bump in the Night”. Joh gave a great talk about security, things you can do to minimise your risk, and a bunch more. I’m going to go back and check out the slides later When asked what her favourite security tools were, she said there isn’t one, but experience is important. She also gave out a great poster with the title “Hackers don’t give a shit:” and then listing all the things hackers don’t apparently care about, like “About your Return on Investment” and such. It’s from KiwiCon 3
I had a lovely lunch talking about open government, and the challenges facing government, politicians, and the public sector.
Business of Open Source miniconf:
- Nic Steenhout — “Accessibility and FOSS”. Nic discussed the challenges around accessibility for people with a disability, as well as for people involved in FOSS who want their projects to be successful. In terms of reaching the major markets (government, education and medium/large business), accessibility support is mandatory, so if you want your project to be successful you must consider accessibility in your planning and development. He talked about what makes software accessible with examples like keyboard only options, alternate text, no dependence on a particular sense (eg - sound, colour, images).
Lightening talks:
- Pamela Fox - Practical uses for Wave. Pamela gave a good talk about ways you can use Wave. Main points were event planning, learning new (programming) languages and collaborative documentation. Personally I can see that Wave gadgets could (and probably already do for many) make it something quite unique and useful, however I’m still struggling with it. I’ll continue experimenting and see where it goes At this point I kind of prefer IRC for chat, Twitter for microblogging, Wordpress for publishing and sharing and wiki’s for documentation collaboration. The collaborative doc devel in Wave is certainly much nicer than a wiki, but it also requires a Google account which simply isn’t open enough (nor publicly transparent enough) for most of my uses.

And now I’m off to the lca Tweetup, and then the Martial Arts BoF, both of which I’ll report on tomorrow.

UPDATE: There was a great writeup of the Haecksen & Linuxchix miniconf by Helen Varley Jamieson, make sure you click through to part 2 and 3.

linux.conf.au 2010 – registration day

2010-01-17T05:20:00+00:00

Since starting my new job last April, I haven’t been blogging much because I’ve been so busy! I decided to take this week to make up for my slackness by trying to blog about each day of linux.conf.au, which is why I’m in Wellington, New Zealand all this week.

linux.conf.au, for those who don’t know it, is the yearly Australia/New Zealand Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community conference. A bit of a mouthful, but basically it is one of the best technical and geeky conferences you’ll ever go to, seriously I’m probably biased due to being involved in that community for so long. However, when you look at how competitive the paper selection process is (this year there were 69 papers accepted out of 255 submissions), the quality of conference extras (like the Partners Programme, the Open Day and that it’s in a different city every year) and the fact that many of the world’s smartest geeks attend year after year from all around the world, you have a compelling case for awesomeness!

Every year it is run by a different group of volunteers who bring their own ideas and surprises to the mix. It is a great formula for continually keeping the conference fresh and interesting — although it does mean each team usually gets pretty burnt out.

Having been on the organising team for lca2007, I can completely understand the pressure and commitment of the current team. Given we arrived in Wellington a few days early I decided to volunteer to help over the last few days, so I’ve been running around playing gopher This year’s team have done a great job already, and are super-organised, so I think this week is going to be amazing!

Today the conference registration opened so people could get in early, get their passes and schwag (thanks Grant!), and catch up with other conference goers. It was great to catch up with a bunch of people, who I usually see either online or at lca The shirts are pretty cool (and apparently the printing actually breathes properly), and the name badges are fantastic as they’ve printed a tiny book inside so you have maps, schedules and other useful information at your fingertips. They’ve also included most other material on a USB key so no unnecessary printing, nice! They’ve also included a nice hat, to keep the rain and wind off I guess

This is the first linux.conf.au not run in a University, so it’ll be interesting to see how it feels in a conference centre. I’ve checked out the building and although you’d expect a conference centre to feel a bit sterile, it is an interesting and warm building and I found it a great venue for lca. Today at registration it felt pretty chilled out and normal for an lca rego day

There are great coffee places close by, along with great shopping (clothes, games and gadgets). The conference is pretty much in the centre of town, there is plenty of sightseeing only a short walk away (if you haven’t been there yet, go to Te Papa. If you don’t have time for anything else, go to Te Papa). Check out the conference pages on Wellington for more.

Most looking forward to

I’m pretty excited about this year’s lca. Some of the things I’m most looking forward to are:

All the keynotes look great, in particular Mako and Nat.
There is a miniconf about openness in the public sector, where Andrew Stott (Director of Digital Engagement, UK), Laurence Millar (previous CIO of NZ Government) and many other interesting speakers will be presenting. I’ll also be giving a talk on the principles and practise of open government based on my experiences to date in Australia
The Haecksen and Linuxchix miniconf looks cool. Sara Falamaki’s talk is fantastic (I’ve seen a version of it before), and I’m also looking forward to Elizabeth Garbee’s talk and Joh Clarke’s one on security.
Open Day looks awesome this year, great job Jayne!
On Monday night is a Martial Arts BoF I’m really excited about! Always fun to share knowledge, particularly when there are weapons involved!
I’m sure I’ll find more things to look forward to as I finish reading through the schedule tonight

Finally, for those of you not attending linux.conf.au, you can follow it online with the live streaming, which will be linked every day from the schedule. Please note the links will be available during lca only (Monday to Saturday including the Linux Australia SGM).

Update: after some prompting, I should also add I alwayss love the Ghosts dinner where we catch up with other previous organisers of lca to share war stories

Some pre-linux.conf.au 2010 sightseeing

2010-01-17T03:54:17+00:00

At the beginning of this week Jeff and I travelled around the North Island of New Zealand with John and Silvia for a bit of sightseeing in the lead up to linux.conf.au 2010 as we drove down from Auckland to Wellington.

It was a lovely few days seeing the Rotorua mud baths and Mitai Maori culture, the amazing Art Deco towns of Napier and Hastings, and Te Mata Peak, where John surprised Silvia by proposing on the highest peak. It was a lovely moment, and one that I luckily (and accidentally) caught on camera Some photos are below. I’ll upload all the Art Deco town photos later (when I have decent bandwidth tomorrow).

We got into Wellington Tuesday night as Silvia and John were organising and going to the Foundations of Open Media Software (FOMS) conference from Wed - Fri, so I’ve been helping the lca2010 team out with their final preparations. It has been great to be in the action again, even just as a helper (I was on the organising team for lca2007) and I think this lca is going to be great!

The other great thing about an lca in Wellington is the opportunity to catch up with some friends in New Zealand, and also to do some Martial Arts training with friends and mentors. We are having a Martial Arts BoF on Monday night for anyone interested I’ll be taking a pole and some chain fire-twirlers to play with.

给Google中国献花

2010-01-13T16:23:23+00:00

今天一上班就听到Google要退出中国的消息，之后twitter上就看到有很多网友自发组织要去Google的碑前献花。

下班之后，我特意绕道去Google大楼，还没走到跟前，就看到黑压压的一片。写着Google谷歌的碑上已经放满了各种鲜花，放在纸杯里面的蜡烛。想拍张照都很难，需要挤进去。

对于Google退出中国的声明，原文写得大气磅礴。失败者退出一个战场，自然是默默无闻，不声不响，而Google即使退出了，也退得有声有色，如此有社会效应。

Google 在中国的市场作得不好，没有赚到钱，其根本原因是她不够 “土”。这个“土” 就是本土化，真正理解这个市场是需要的是什么，我们几亿网民脑子里面想的是什么。Google与baidu的竞争，就如同 ebay和淘宝的竞争， facebook和开心网的竞争， MSN和QQ的竞争一样。从前几个先例分析我们可以毫无例外地推断出Google在中国必然是要失去市场。这个必然，就在于她太阳春白雪，太不够“土”了。

不够“土”的另外一个含义，就是不理解中国的网络文化，即使理解了中国网络的潜规则，也不会玩下去。举个例子，一个全球知名的国际女影星，非常想到中国13亿人民的市场去发展，但是该明星到了中国就水土不服，根据中国的潜规则，要想成名，必须要“脱”。要想拿到女一号的角色，必须要跟导演去房间研究剧本。最后拍出来的片子，本来是3个小时，但是所有的露点和激情镜头都被删减了，最后只有一个半小时的时长。该女影星终于不愿妥协，不愿意看到自己付出那么大代价的电影惨遭”阉割“，最后非常有勇气的说出：我要放弃中国这块市场，我要放弃13亿人民的腰包。

这需要多么大的勇气，才可以作出这种决定，才可以说服她的经纪人和投资人，放弃13亿的市场。原因则是坚持自己的原则，要让观众看到最真实，最人性的电影。

Google 一开始就具有了大明星的派头，出身学院派，以技术创新为核心驱动力，支持开源技术，不被市场左右而是走在前面，去引领市场。这一点，跟SUN的风格非常相似。 10年前的SUN，正如今日之Google一样意气风发，不可一世。 SUN的理念we are the dot of the .net , we make the net work, 就是以技术为本，以工程师为中心，这相对于IBM，以市场需求为导向的企业文化，显得如此阳春白雪，理想化主义。 Google最牛的也是技术，以技术为主导的公司经常容易犯的错误就是，太清高。

晚上在Google大楼前，一记者问一献花男子：你是为什么来献花，是为此事感到高兴还是为此事感到悲哀？那男子说：都不是，我是来感谢Google的，感谢她让我们看到黑夜中的星星，希望Google坚持自己的原则。

中国的网络环境，河蟹得过度了。就如同小孩子一样，我们的父母看管得太严，看不到事情的真相，也听不到跟我们父母不一样的声音和论调，当然就更看不到毛片了。我想几乎所有中国小孩的父母都在试图隐藏所有毛片的源头，清静小孩子们的视听。但是我想几乎所有的中国男生应该都是在18岁之前从各种途径看过了毛片，并且正常健康地成长起来。因为这就是人性，是怎么压抑，怎么封锁也不可能禁止的。

时常感慨而又时常庆幸我所处于的这个年代！
就如同我深深恨着而又深爱着我所生长的这个国家一样！

Is GAPP About To Drop The Hammer On Netease and World Of Warcraft?

2010-01-13T10:48:53+00:00

Just like the current confusion over .cn, registrations, ICP – ICP by itself let alone in combination with others. Rules in China are one thing – but this isn’t the first time that two regulators don’t agree and have a pissing match. Or the rule creation and rule enforcement depts are thinking different things.

DigiCha Link

NSC1 Neotenylabs Conference Singapore, StatusNet, Open Font Web 1.0, and MiddleEast Entrepreneurship

2010-01-11T03:27:59+00:00

I somehow didn’t post my praises towards the excellent NSC1 Neotenylabs conference in Singapore which happened in mid-December. What a great event! Great Friends all in one place! And I accumulated another huge mound of business cards to process I’ll get back to you all soon! Expect much more happening in Singapore over the next year.

Here are my sets of slides from presenting lightning talks, then I used my current StatusNet slide deck to talk about StatusNet. I don’t have any slides for the Kids2.0 that Jon, Max and I did! That happened last minute! That session was more popular than my sessions!!!

What's Your StatusNet? Lightning Talk 1.0

View more documents from Jon Phillips.

Here is the StatusNet slides on Scribd.

Here is my slide deck as well from the Open Font Web 1.0 mini-presentaiton I gave for a competition, but Joi, Cory and Sean gave me the shaft in not voting for my presentation.

Open Font Web 1.0

Open Font Web 1.0

View more documents from Jon Phillips.

Here is the non-flash version of the DOC and PDF.

And, here is another presentation that Bassel and I put together for the conference. There will be more about this in the new year as well.

MiddleEast Entrepreneurship

Here is the link to the presentation in non-flash google docs.

Bassel wrote a bit more about in arabic, and I encourage you to read his page.

The above documents were more relevant in December, but some projects have already changed hands slightly. The SAMAlab, Bassel and I are now calling the AikiLab, and these projects are actively being pursued from the IDEA2009 stack to SHARISM2010 project.

StatusCampSF in San Francisco Next Friday January 15

2010-01-08T00:34:36+00:00

I just posted over at the StatusNet blog about the big StatusCampSF next week, followed by StatusCheck drinks at Norton’s Vault at 6 PM. Here’s a bit, but please follow to the real blog post to get all the details:

Please come out to the first StatusCamp unconference in SF (#StatusCampSF) to be held on Friday, January 15, 2010 at AwesomeJar from 9 AM until 5 PM. Many of the Status.Net crew will be there including @Evan, @Brion, @Zach, @Nate and myself (@rejon). Come meet us and the many other people who will be in attendance! Since this is an unconference, try to arrive early to shape the schedule for the day including topics you are interested in. If you come only come over for a few sessions, that is ok too! Topics for this first StatusCampSF may range from technical discussions to micro-blogging standards to general software development practices in usage of Status.Net. If you have a great idea, or just want to talk shop, please RSVP to this FREE event by sending your name to http://identi.ca/rejon or email jon@status.net so that we know how much coffee and snacks we need to get.

2010 first snow in Beijing

2010-01-04T08:03:09+00:00

Yesterday, the 2010 first snow visited Beijing. I stayed in home till midnight, then went out to take some photos.

The air was so cold, I walked in the frozen wind for 1.5 hours. It was fun to see the snow covered every where, especially the houses, cars, and plants. Several fat cats appeared on my way without glancing on me. I guesses they were looking for some warm place to stay, wish they felt comfortable last night and still be okey this morning. It’s probably that cats are stronger than me, after last night’s walk and even stayed in a warm room, I am afraid I’ve caught a chill

In China, it was a perfect sign for a big snow in beginning of year 2010. Maybe this is another excited and impressive new year, if we are more diligent and optimistic, who knows ?

Sponsor speakers to GNOME.Asia Summit 2009

2010-01-04T03:35:00+00:00

The second GNOME.Asia Summit was happened on Nov 20 - 22, 2009, Ho-Chi-Minh City in Vietnam. In order to better support this summit and bring more international speakers to Vietnam, the GNOME travel committee and GNOME.Asia committee have sponsored below speakers, they are:

Andy Fitzsimon from Guangzhou, China
Frederic Muller from Beijing, China
Pockey Lam from Beijing, China
Ray Wang from Beijing, China
Alfred Peng from Singapore
Ming-Ting Wei from Taiwan
Tobias Gruetzmacher from Germany
Louis Suarez-Potts from Canada
Fred Chien from Taiwan
Ping-Hsun Chen from Taiwan
Andrew Lee from Taiwan
Viirak Hor from Cambodia
Chanrithy Thim from Cambodia

Thanks a lot to those speakers who bring the latest technology, start the discussion, build the connection around GNOME to the Summit.

You can read some of their blog about the GNOME.Asia Summit 2009, from their eyes:

Pockey Lam

Blogs and Photos

Pockey and Emily also give presentation about GNOME.Asia Summit in the joint meeting of BeijingLUG and Beijing GNOME Users Group. See Pockey's blog from here.

Fred Muller

Fred posted an announcement on Beijing LUG website the day the event started. See here .
Fred also blog about Lemote participation as a sponsor, see his blog from here.

Ming-Ting Wei

See his blog and photos from here.

Ray Wang

His blogs with photos from here.

Tobias Gruetzmacher

His blog from here. (Link to his blog seems broken today. Will update this link soon)

Viirak Hor

He took lots of photo from here.

Chanrithy Thim

His blog post from here.

Thanks to all speakers, your talks and contribution is very meaningful for GNOME in Asian country.

Please help a Linux programmer’s daughter, she is dying

2010-01-01T08:49:06+00:00

Junting Pan, an excellent Linux programmer in Beijing, a friend of mine, his daughter is dying. I am here asking more people to save the lovely life of a little girl.

Yifan, the 5 years old daughter of Pan, has a badly lung disease in past years, she almost died on Nov 11 2009 (http://help-yifan.org/img/notice.jpg). In order to save her life, her parents must send their little girl to see some of the best specialists in the world, which means a big amount of money ($300K~$500K US dollar). This is an impossible number for a software engineer (especially in a developing country).

Yesterday, the last day of Year 2009, I visited Yifan’s family in Beijing. Her parents sold their only house to support the treatment expense, now the whole family stayed together in a small room. Yifan’s mother and father were brave and strong-minded, we talked about Yifan’s physical situation and current donation amount. The great news was, by Dec 31, 2009, help-yifan.org got 314K RMB Yuan donation (most of it was from China mainland), which was almost 1/10 of the expected donation amount. Yifan said hello to me, and looked at me with sweet smile. She looked like a small flower, to wait for the beautiful sunshine of he life. What a great miracle if she can have a blissful tomorrow, while what a pity if she has to leave us due to the lung disease.

Last week, I got the remuneration of “Linkers and Loaders” Chinese translation, and donated it to little Yifan. I wish it’s helpful, but in order to save the life of Yifan, the family needs more help from more people in the world. If you read this blog, please do not hesitate to tell Yifan’s story to your friends.

If you want to help Yifan, please visit http://www.help-yifan.org (Chinese) or http://www.yifanfund.com (English) , donation or volunteer are all helpful. Today is the first day of a brand new year. I wish Yifan to be able to have more new years in the future, wish people from all of the world can help little Yifan, to make the life’s miracle happen.

New Years Resolution #2: Simplify Online Stuff

2010-01-01T05:50:35+00:00

I have way too much stuff online (I’m talking specifically services I’m paying for). So here’s what I’m going to do:

1. Get rid of JungleDisk offsite backups (including the S3 storage). I’m using Mozy, and sticking with it.
2. Get rid of my Dreamhost hosting
3. Get rid of my Rackspace Cloud hosting
4. Move everything to Squarespace (I just want it to work)

Um, anything else?

News Years Resolution #1: Love Melanie More

2010-01-01T05:47:56+00:00

Do I need to say anything else?

Happy Holiday 2009

2009-12-30T07:54:43+00:00

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great gift from my parents to youngens but reminds me, is there a wikipedia for human genealogy? wikiroots?, originally uploaded by rejon.

Much happening. So much in transit. So much necessary to end the year. Happy holidaze #xmas2009!

I’m cleaning out my queues and killing tasks until 2010.

You may or may not see more blog posts prior, but you’ll definitely see some traffic.

NOTE: The above image is a great genealogy that my Mom pulled together with some family and gave to all grandkids on my dad’s side. Very cool!

Check out my other photos up on flickr.

Wende School Trial – Part 5 (Localized TuxTyping)

2009-12-30T03:01:41+00:00

We have been looking for an Open Source typing application for kids for quite some time. We found TuxTyping appealing and decided to localize the interface and the 43 typing exercises that come with it into Chinese. TuxTyping is an educational typing tutor for kids starring Tux, the Linux penguin. This educational game comes with two different games for practicing typing, and allows you to create exercises according to students needs. Of course we already brought this good news to Wende School. After two hours of training, Miss Liu was already mastering TuxTyping. She will incorporate it into the school program starting from 2010.

Fred is now submitting the Chinese version upstream to make it available for everybody. The TuxTyping developers have been very responsive and helpful with our translation problems and fixing minor bugs we found. We are now even working with them to make it workable for Chinese input method, as only pinyin typing is available currently. Hopefully we will have something ready to test soon.

In no time thanks to volunteers and passionate people like us, we went from nothing available in Chinese to a great looking software that will even deal with the Chinese language specificities. That’s the reason why I love Open Source; its community and its spirit definitely ROCK!

TuxTyping is an educational typing tutor for kids starring Tux, the Linux penguin.

There are four different kids of typing games for kids to practise typing.

Tux the penguin is hungry, and loves to eat fish. But Tux can only catch the fish if you type the right letters in time!

There are over 40 exercises learning the finger position of each letter and punctuation