I’ve never been to the US before but I’m going to San Diego this week with work.
Although I’m not sure how much free time I’ll have, as I’m there for a few weeks I was wondering if there’s anyone has any recommendations on what to see.
My son suggested Rockstar San Diego (Red Dead Redemption is very popular here just now) but frankly I’d like to see a bit more than that.
So, any thoughts?
I hope Dustin Kirkland wont mind me re-posting this but it’s so insightful I felt I must. Poul-Henning Kamp posted this concerning Free BSD development over eleven years ago…
Graham Cluley, a Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos, has a nice blog piece on the Twitter worm from earlier this week. To cut a long story short, he reminds us of the importance of sanitizing inputs.
Still, it was more productive than my week with my Open University module that starts in October – T175 (Networked living: exploring information and communication technologies). The OU can be very Windows dependent but this course seems to be pretty much delivered in Virtual Learning Environment (what the OU calls Moodle). I ran the course DVD, which is a Windows Flash standalone thing which got me to revive the OU Ubuntu Users group, sending out emails, starting a mailing list and trying to get things going again.
So why was it unproductive? Well, I haven’t booted Windows in ages – there were a million updates, one of which was for the wireless driver. Update completely borked the wireless and I wound up restoring the drive. That aside, one thing I really like about Ubuntu (and most distributions) is a centralised update manager – Windows has Adobe, Java, Windows Update, Firefox and McAfee all trying to pull updates at the same time. It makes the system completely unusable for the first ten minutes it’s on!
Any way, I decided to build a new WordPress theme. Same colour scheme, more rounded edges – should be available in the next few days.
Two things that improve my bash productivity – stopping the cursor keys inserting characters in vim and history search in bash.
Edit ~/.vimrc or /etc/vim/vimrc (for system wide) and add turn off vi compatibility:
set nocompatible
The latter can be improved by editing ~/.inputrc (or /etc/inputrc for everyone). Pressing the up key scrolls through all the commands you’ve typed but by adding:
"\e[A":history-search-backward
"\e[B":history-search-forward
You can type the first letter or two and get the command you need, so if you typed “mysql -u root -p” last Tuesday but can’t remember the options, typing “my” and pressing the up key will find it.
I was talking with someone yesterday who is hacking a WordPress theme together. If you work with web sites, being able to run a site locally allows testing, experimentation, developing new themes and even just checking that a software update isn’t going to break your site. You might want to keep a web application on a local network and away from the Internet – such as StatusNet, a Wiki or a project management application. All we need is to install a LAMP stack – Linux Apache MySQL and PHP. We’ve already got the “L”! So let’s walk through installing WordPress. Continue reading
Judging by my server logs, there are lots of people trying to use the Huawei E1550 with Ubuntu. I posted a howto around this time last year but have been getting a lot of mail on it recently so thought I’d look at it again. I was going to mention it in the system help, under troubleshooting but can’t remember if I pushed a patch or not. Continue reading
Yesterday, I posted that perhaps we should encourage new users to spend more time in the live environment before they install. I suggested that we do this by means of a welcome application.
Generally, people seemed to like the idea of a welcome application – something to highlight Ubuntu’s abilities and to guide through common issues.
Here’s some mock ups that might show more of what I meant.
An introductory video is running [1] along with some short text explaining the application’s purpose [2]. Common tasks are listed [3]. What’s missing from this is two things – a close button and an install button. I’m not sure how to work this because I am trying to encourage it being run – I think a little install tab in the top right along with a small close button might work. I want to encourage not irritate.
The user is interested in getting online and has clicked on a link to get here. The application’s checked for available connections. In this case, there is a wireless connection available, so the context sensitive hyperlink [1] has linked a video/screencast [3] showing the user how to connect. With the failure to detect a wired connection, the context sensitive hyperlink links to a troubleshooting page. Successful connection has resulted in a notification [2] and triggered the “what now” box, guiding the user to what is now available.
I can see a number of issues:
Of these, I think the size issue is the greatest. It might not be possible at all to have video or screen-casts but it should be possible to have room for images and text. It would also allow easier localisation.
Still – it’s just an idea. Oh and thanks to Pencil – rather impressive OSS mock up software.
Update: Apologies if you tried to post a comment, I hadn’t realised there was a problem with the reCaptcha.
I might well be miles off the mark (I haven’t researched anything) but I’ve a feeling most of our new users don’t spend time in the live environment before installing. Looking around the Ubuntu Forums there are an awful lot of posts which talk about hardware that isn’t working after install. Surely, if time was spent in the live environment such issues would have been noticed.
Stick an Ubuntu disc in a machine, boot it and the most visible icon on the desktop is the install icon.
When we run a live CD, we’re curious. We are looking at a screen and thinking “what do I do now”? Currently the option that draws the eye is to install – what if we replace this with something that showcases Ubuntu’s abilities? Something more than the samples folder. Ubiquity has a slideshow, I wonder if something similar but more interactive should be initiated on first run. Perhaps leading the user to confirm what works out of the box – invite them to run, say Rhythmbox then plug in an iPod. Suggest a web link, highlighting if there is a connection issue. Work in some basic diagnostics, we can have more useful information to provide further assistance.
This wonder if it would also presents an opportunity for marketing. If a happy new user wants to show off their new Ubuntu system, they are likely to draw attention to the features that interest them. We can be blinded by our perception to the needs of others. For example, I might be fascinated by a desktop cube whereas my colleague might not know that Openoffice supports Microsoft formats – something he needs. It could be taken further, allowing OEM systems displaying Ubuntu’s abilities in shops (maybe).
Just a thought.
Watching TV earlier, it occurs to me that we really need to link the next release with the unbelievably popular Compare the Meerkat adverts. I can’t be the first person to have thought this – seriously this is not a trick to be missed – Sergei’s “computermabob” could be converted to Ubuntu.
I assume this advert is just in the UK, for those missing it – it’s for a company called “Compare the Market.com” and the meerkat proprietor of Compare the Meerkat is getting nothing but hits for the former. It’s pretty funny as these things go, especially here where ridiculous stuff like Crazy Frog take off. People are buying merchandise left and right and if I’ve heard the soundbites as ringtones on one phone, I’ve heard them on a dozen.
We have Ubuntu installed on two of the machines at home and recently, after losing a Windows restore disc, I suggested installing Ubuntu 10.04 on her Dell 1545 after my suggestion.
As installations go, it was relatively painless – certainly better than reinstalling Windows. Don’t get me wrong, Dell is better than most in this respect as they gave us OEM install discs for Windows Vista, bundled software and the drivers. As strait forward as this is with Dell’s resource CD (it mostly tells you what you need), it doesn’t know any more than what model you own. This is problematic with the wireless card for example as there are two revision states and the drivers are incompatible with each other – one crashes Windows.