Planet ubuntu-uk

Indicator Applet & libnotify support for Thunderbird

Thunderbird Preferences

I’ve never really got on with Gnome’s Evolution (the default mail client in Ubuntu) and so always install Thunderbird, Lightning and other great extensions for the Mozilla family of products on my Ubuntu desktops and laptops. Since the new notification tool (9.04?) and then the Indicator Applet (9.10) were introduced however, Thunderbird hasn’t been able to avail itself of these useful tools. Until now.

Ruben Verweij has created a small Thunderbird extension that seems to fix this limitation. Simply follow the very clear and easy instructions on his blog post to create the .xpi package and then install it in the usual manner. I had to install the Ubuntu package libnotify-bin to get the notifications working but that was easy: sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin.

You can then turn off Thunderbird’s internal notification tool as shown here. This stops the old-fashioned opaque pop ups that usually appear in the bottom right of the screen.

As Ruben is clear to point out this is still experimental so all the usual rules apply and YMMV.

Libnotify Preferences

It has worked for me so far and was easy to install and set-up. In fact, I only just noticed, whilst I was writing this, that there is a “preferences” dialogue for the extension. Short and sweet:

Thanks Ruben, this is a great addition.

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In which I turn 29

Today is the 29th anniversary of my birth. I can provide Paypal account details if you want to send me money.

Anyway, I appear to have caused some confusion by stating on twitter that I have now started my 30th year, and that my 29th year has ended, so I feel I should explain. Here comes the working:

Birthdays are zero-indexed. On the day of my birth I was 0 years old (please, don't tell me that I was 9 months old. I can't be bothered to argue with you).
My first birthday came at the end of my first year of life, from Feb 9^th 1981 to Feb 9^th 1982. My second came in 1983, after my second year of life, and so on.
Therefore, the year from Feb 9^th 2009 to Feb 9^th 2010 was the twenty-ninth year of my life.
Therefore I am now 29 years old.
Therefore, my 30th year of life runs from now until 9^th Feb 2011.

I hope that's clarified it for everyone. Yes, this makes sense.

Categories: birthdays planet ubuntu uk

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

International Women’s Day Comp: Get Your Entries In!

Look at this lovely bag of swag:

Image courtesy of Melissa Draper.

Want to own all this goodness, including Ubuntu Backpacks, women’s t-shirts, key chains, 1 year digital subscription to Linux Pro Magazine or a 1 year print subscription Ubuntu User, and a copy of the The Art of Community by some beardy community guy?

On January 10, 2010 the Ubuntu Women Project announced an International Women’s Day Competition; an awesome effort to gather wonderful stories of how women have discovered Ubuntu. From the announcement:

Ubuntu-Women has tried in the past to find some way to celebrate this event, but as far as I can remember it has never really amounted to much other than some chattering on IRC. So let us try a bit harder for 2010!

We have all come to Ubuntu in our own special ways — every single one of us differently to the next. Yet one of the most common questions we get asked is “How can I get $woman to use Ubuntu?”.

Obviously we cannot really answer that question, but we would dearly love to have a collection of stories by women about how they discovered Ubuntu. Such a repository would allow us to demonstrate that there’s no one definitive answer, and at the same time maybe provide the gift of inspiration to women who are interested — showing them that it’s really not so unusual to be Ubuntu fans after all.

We are not expecting any particular length, but do remember that these stories should be suited to perusal at leisure and not require someone to allocate hours of their day to read. Anywhere between a few paragraphs and a OO.o Write page is ideal.

Two prizes up for grabs. One prize pack will be given to the story that the community votes is their favourite. One prize pack will be given to a randomly drawn entrant. I have been given the pleasure of drawing this entrant in a videocast, and announcing both winners to the world on March 8th. Thanks to the Ubuntu Women project for asking for to do this.

So, get your entries in to ubuntuwomen.competition at gmail.com by 23:59UTC on 22nd February 2010. Rocking!

Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week: Call For Participation!

In the continued interests of helping to make Ubuntu rock as a platform for scratching itches and making awesome apps, I am putting together a new online learning event: Ubuntu Opportunistic Developer Week, happening online between 1st – 6th March 2010.

The week will be just like our previous online learning events such as Ubuntu Developer Week and Ubuntu Open Week, but instead providing a week jam packed with awesome sessions about writing applications that scratch your itch, and predominantly focusing on Python tools and frameworks, Bazaar, Launchpad and infrastructure. The goal for the week is give attendees a head start on a given technology useful for applications.

So, I am looking for volunteers. If you feel you could give a tutorial about a given Python module or associated technology (e.g. Glade, Launchpad, Bazaar etc), please drop me an email at jono AT ubuntu DOT com and I will liaise with you to get it scheduled. I am also look for some showcase sessions: stories about how you put together an application, how it scratched your itch and what tools you used. Thanks to everyone who contributes to leading a session!

The week has already been added as a Lernid event and I am going to encourage session leaders to create slides for their sessions. As each session is confirmed it will appear in Lernid and on the wiki page. Rocking!

Master Of The Situation

I had a crack at creating some electronic music. I know, not metal. I figured I would share this, and I have never done this before, so be gentle.

Check out Master Of The Situation in MP3 and Ogg format.

Created in Cubase with Halion One, a KeyRig and Drumkit From Hell.

I Support Same Sex Marriage

I love being married, it has opened up an incredible sense of commitment and security in my life and my wife’s life. Love is love, and I would never want to prevent anyone from enjoying what I am afforded the privilage of enjoying. This includes gay people. As such, I have joined this Facebook group to get 1,000,000 who support same sex marriage. I usually hate these kinds of groups, but I think it could be interesting to visualize the support behind this issue. Worthy, methinks.

Interesting news of the week: Open-touch

Thought I would do another blog post with lots of exciting tech news. So, here is what I’ve been seeing over the past few days.

Amazon buys “TouchCo”. Touchscreen kindle in the works? One might wonder if they are going to be using this company for just that. The other question, however, is “If it is made, when will it be available in Britain?”
Symbian is officially opensource. Symbian^2 (previously S60) is now open-source. It turns out the #symbiancountdown was the number of packages left until Symbian was totally open source. Well done Symbian. Now you need to step up and make sure than Symbian^3 is amazing and it better really step up and do what Symbian^2 hasn’t done. It needs to do a lot to be any good.
JooJoo near launch. Fixes lots of problems that would make you not want an iPad (except the price).
With or without you: Arm Ceo to Microsoft. The market will grow with or without Windows arm support. Good news for linux?
Sonic 4 in production. A blast from the past, in high definition. Thats right, Sonic 4 is being made and will be available in the summer on PS3, xbox and wii. On PS3 and Xbox it will be in 1080p. Thats great!!!
Apple yet again show how pathetic they are, by turning down an app because it is “not interesting enough”.

So, theres just a few bits of random news that I thought I would share with people. Have a great weekend guys!

Shaping young minds

I'm off to CMU at the weekend, in order to do a couple of talks on Monday (the 8th). I'll be giving an introduction to ACPI to the operating systems class in the morning, and an open presentation on Fedora, some of the challenges we face and how to get involved in Linux in the afternoon. This is as a result of our cooperation with CMU, which has led to things like the request on the right. How could we refuse?

Idiot goes Open Source

It seems that even the cat is using Ubuntu… the kids have seemingly seamlessly adapted to Open Source Software. My computer has also taken sides and is so slow it’s definitely trying to tell me something. Finally I’ve admitted defeat and have had to ask Al to make the change, with one caveat – that I can still use iTunes. A robotic sounding “virtual machine” is apparently the answer – it will pretend to run Windows in a little bit of Bill-space and iTunes will be none the wiser that I’ve actually left the Dark Side at last.

I know my new look will take some getting used to and I just have to get familiar but it definitely feels quite different. The icons look more home-made and the whole thing seems less slick. I keep repeating “Kill Bill” and “It’s Free”. I know I will get used to it but at the mo I could almost say I felt sad although probably remembering the “helpful” paperclip will remedy that – Yes, that’s done it – I will give it a chance.

=============================================================

This is an excerpt from my ramblings on going over to Open Source Software. My husband (The Open Sourcerer) has persuaded me to put it on here but I’ve really no idea why. He said “people will be interested, you’ll be surprised.”

….surely they have better things to do??? I’d be interested in the work/chore that is so bad you’d rather read this than do it.

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Video of the Week: Sonic 4

What is there to say about this video? Except – roll on summer!!! If this isn’t a reason to finally get a PS3, I don’t know what it.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Project Awesome Opportunity

In the continued interests of making Ubuntu a rocking platform for opportunistic developers, today we formulated the plan for Project Awesome Opportunity. The goal is simple: build an opportunistic development workflow into Ubuntu. You will install one package from Universe and your Ubuntu will be hot-rodded for opportunistic application development, making development more fun and more accessible for a glorious itch scratching smackdown.

At the heart of the project is Ground Control by Martin Owens and Quickly by Rick Spencer and Didier Roche. I have been thinking about the challenges of how we build a great first incarnation of a platform optimised for opportunistic developers, and it struck me that we can divide the first set of tasks into three broad areas:

Creating a Project – we need to help opportunistic developers ramp up as quickly as possible: they feel the itch and they are ready to scratch right away.
Collaborating on a project – it should be really simple grab code, create a contribution and submit it to the project.
Fixing a Bug – bugs are at the heart of software projects, and we should optimize the bug fixing process making it a doddle for opportunistic bug fixing developers to grab some code and make it work.

A key part of this workflow which I designed yesterday is the Fixing a Bug component, and this is something I am really passionate about us trying to deliver in the Lucid timeframe. This is not a formal project that my team is working on, this is something that I am focused on in my spare time and coordinating with Ground Control author and rock star, Martin Owens.

Let me explain how it works:

Opportunistic development lives in the Projects/ directory in your home directory. When you load this directory in Nautilus, you see this:

Ground Control places three buttons that identify the key use cases we are keen to satisfy. When the user clicks the ”Fix Bug” button the following dialog box appears

For the first cut of this feature a bug number is required, but the feature could also include a search box for finding bugs and even potentially have an option on the Launchpad project page saying ”Fix a bug on your desktop” (or some other descriptive term) and when you click that link, Nautilus opens up and is fed the bug number.

When a bug number is submitted, Ground Control will create a branch that the bug affects (typically trunk) into your Projects/ directory. You can then go and hack the code:

When a source file in the branch is changed (and ultimately the coder fixes the bug), we now see an ”Upload Fix” button:

At this point the branch has the fix committed, so the coder clicks the button and then sees this dialog box:

This dialog box asks for the following:

The first box is the content that goes into the commit message.
The second box is the content that goes into the merge proposal.
The third box is optional additional characters for the branch name.

When the user clicks the OK button, the following process occurs:

Bazaar commits to the local branch.
The branch is pushed to the branch location specified.
The branch is added to the bug report.
A merge proposal is made.

So, I fleshed this idea out over the last few days and documented it and had a chat with Martin Owens who created Ground Control, and he has committed to finish off the current feature set of Ground Control and creating the Fix a Bug feature in the next two weeks. Martin has volunteered to invest a significant amount of time and effort into solving this problem in Ground Control, and I am going to be working to grow awareness of the project, handle the packaging in Universe, and help to get more people involved in testing and translations. See the Create a Project, Collaborate and Fix a Bug blueprints for this feature. Feel free to subscribe to them to track progress.

For this feature to flourish and for us to rock the socks off opportunistic developers everywhere, we are going to need your help, particularly with testing and where possible bug fixes. Here are the main ways in which you can help:

Fixing Bugs – Martin is largely a one man band on this project and he needs help fixing Ground Control Bugs. If you are interesting in helping, see the bug list here and get involved. He will love you and I will hail you.
Testing – Testing is critical to this project. We have a tight timeframe on this, so we need you to help. How do you test? Simple, grab the dailly PPA of Ground Control set up by the awesome Nathan Handler, test it and report bugs.
Moral Support – Martin Owens is doctormo on Freenode. Ping him and tell him he is awesome. He and I hang out in #ubuntu-community-team: buy him a virtual beer.

So that is the goal. Let’s see if we can rock it and fire up more opportunistic developers.

Birmingham Rugby Round-Up

This week Brian Dick and the Birmingham Post released their first 'Rugby Round-up.' Though the quality of the recording is obviously lacking, it's a great format and it's nice to see Birmingham Post experimenting with more online media for keeping Rugby fans updated.

If you're watching this on my site, the Video should be seen under this text, if not click here for a bit of Brummie Rugby News.

Arduino and Easy Radios

A few days ago I received a pair of Easy Radios to help with a project I’m working on. Since I’ve never used these before (having only got my first arduino a couple of weeks ago) I had a dig on the net for information on how to use them. Since this information was quite sparse, I thought I’d put up my experimental rig to show it working. This setup requires 2 arduinos, an easy radio transmitter and an easy radio receiver. First, the transmitter layout.

Transmitter Layout

Now the receiver layout.

Receiver Layout

and finally the code.

#reciever code

void setup() {
    Serial.begin(19200);
}
void loop() {
    if (Serial.available()){
        Serial.print(Serial.read(), BYTE);
    }
}

#transmitter code
void setup() {
    Serial.begin(19200);
}
 
void loop() {
    Serial.write("Hello\n");
    delay(1000);
}

This should result in the receiver outputting “Hello” over and over across the USB serial in the arduino environments serial monitor. If you have any problems, feel free to give me a shout! Oh, make sure you unplug the easy radio receiver from the arduino before flashing it, it’ll throw nasty errors otherwise. (Simply unplug digital 0 pin on the arduino board)

Portland Ubuntu Platform Sprint

The Ubuntu Platform team (the people Canonical employs for Ubuntu) is having a sprint in Portland. Portland is a nice city where you can be wandering down the road and come across 100 tweed wearing cyclists coming the other way.

My how they've grown

Kees' collection of every shipit CD ever nears completion

Voodoo doughnut, a local speciality. I got half way through eating this before gaining diabetes

iPad? What actually is it???

Now, you may be thinking “Man alive…no posts for days, and now a post about that iPad thing.”. Well, yeah, I know, it is shocking. Sadly, there hasn’t been much for me to blog about. I’ve been trying to think of something else, and my mind has been mulling over whether or not to blog about this “iPad thing” constantly for the past week. So…I decided that I would hurry up and post about it so I can free my mind to think about other things. So, I’m just going to talk about random things about the iPad.

What the iPad is not:

E-book reader

The iPad is not an e-book reader. At all. Why would you buy an e-book reader rather than a laptop/netbook? The e-ink screen. It is nice to read, and it is very low power. Weeks of battery life and no strain on the eyes are the main reasons why you would buy an e-book reader. Now lets look at the iPad. No e-ink screen, wouldn’t be good in sunlight (I’d imagine) and would cause strain after reading lots. And battery life – 10 hours. That is not even a full day. It has less battery life than my phone, but it has a similar processor. Therefore, the iPad is not a replacement for an e-book reader. Don’t buy it to read books.

Netbook

The iPad is not a netbook. Why would you buy a netbook? It is cheap, and almost as functional as a laptop or desktop computer. The iPad is not cheap, and is not as functional as a laptop or desktop computer. There is no advantage to an iPad over a netbook. Expecially if you get one of the new netbooks that can turn into a tablet with a keyboard dock. Yeah, sounds good. £200 please instead of $600. Eeesk.

Problems

Ok, so I have gone over what the iPad is not. Now, lets go on to say what is wrong with the iPad.

No multitasking.

Yeah, I know, it has been beaten to death, but it is a HUGE issue. Why on earth don’t they have multitasking? Is it Job’s normal speech of “It isn’t powerful enough to run more than 1 app at once.”. Come on Steve, don’t be stupid, my Nokia 5800 can run 3 apps before it starts complaining and it has 128MB of ram. And you are telling me the iPad can’t run more than 1 app because of hardware? Seriously? Well, in that case focus on putting more in it. If you have built something that size that can only run 1 app on it then you need to do more than that. People need multitasking. Want to listen to music and browse the web? Tough… Have a twitter app running while you are reading your email? Nope…

Steve, please listen to people, if my device can only run a certain number of apps, that is fine, let me find out for myself. Don’t say “It isn’t possible.” just let me open as many apps as it is able to. The Palm Pre Plus can run over 50 apps. Are you saying your tablet is less powerful than the Palm Pre Plus? Ok, useful piece of information.

No camera

Ok, we all know why this has no camera. It is so they can release the iPad 2 at Christmas. Not much they have to change and suddenly everyone who buys the first one will buy the second one as well. And a bunch of other people who didn’t buy the first because it had no camera will then buy it and they will suddenly have more than twice the number of sales they would have to have. If they put a camera in this one, then SHOCK HORROR they would have to innovate for the second iteration of the device. No way…innovation…

O wait, sorry, there is a camera, but it is an external camera you connect via the dock…spending another £30. Wooooooooo!

Keyboard

Lets be honest, that is a rubbish keyboard. I want to hold it up and type on it. Nah, not gonna work. Unless you hold it with one hand and type with 1. But, that is rubbish. Ok, well lets put it on the table and type. But that won’t work either. Because it has a curved back. So, it’ll just rock backwards and forwards. So, the only way to type on this is to have it on your lap, or connect the keyboard dock (ok, that is another £30 spent). And the keyboard dock looks like it is going to break off…

Homescreen

Why, when you have a screen that is nearl 10″ instead of 3″, do you then keep the same number of homescreen buttons? You would at least have a few more. The homescreen just looks stupid.

iPhone apps

You can run your iPhone apps on the iPad! That is great! Except that you get a wee iPhone-sized app running in the middle of your screen. Or you can maximise it, but then it looks like rubbish. So, the iPad has 140000 apps that look like rubbish…

Also, you can only install apps that Apple let you install. Such as firefox, google voice, google maps, kindle e-reader app. Oh, wait, no you can’t. Ok, Yeah, some of those apps don’t exist yet, but the point is that if they were to be made, I would very much doubt they would get into the app store. Hence why they haven’t been made.

Conclusion

So, I have ranted for a while about the iTampon. And I will leave you with a few thoughts. What would you think is the best web-browsing experience? A 10-inch ipod touch, or a core i7 machine with a 30″ monitor, and really nice keyboard and mouse? What would you think the best e-reading experience is? A 10-inch ipod touch, or a kindle-like device? (See my thoughts about them at the top of this). Why are Apple giving statements that have no basis in fact at all?

My final thought is…I’m not buying one of these. I may buy a tablet in the future, but not this device.

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February 09, 2010