November 19, 2008
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Jonathan Hitchcock (Vhata)Job Satisfaction (and openings at SynthaSite) |
Last year, I was talking to a friend of mine who was in his first job after university, and was really not enjoying it. His company managed him badly, making him spend time on pointless activities and downplaying his real skills, and he felt like going to work was having no real effect on anything. He sent me a link to this video - a clip of an aquarium trainer and a walrus dancing together to Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal - and he said: I want to enjoy my job like she enjoys hers. That in itself is fine, but what he said after that was not. He asked me if I thought it was possible that he would ever have a job that he enjoyed like that. He wasn't even sure that that sort of job existed. Do other people have fun at other companies?
A while back, I wrote a long post about implementing ideas, but there was one thing I said in there that I think is worth repeating. If your job is your only source of income, you will start to consider it essential to your survival, and you will be less and less inclined to consider leaving it. You become tied to your job, no matter how unpleasant it becomes, and you start accepting more downsides because you feel that nothing would be as bad as being left out in the cold.
In this post, I want to say two things. Firstly, if your job sucks, leave it. You will find another one. If you don't find one immediately, you won't die - something will turn up in the end. And who knows, it may actually turn out that being truly adrift might make you realise what you actually want to be doing with yourself. But I promise you, nothing that happens to you will be worse than the soul-destroying grind that is going in to an unrewarding job where you feel you are making no difference, where you just take the corporate shafting without complaint, because you're worried about not getting a paycheque.
The second thing I want to say is to my friend from the first paragraph. Yes, there are jobs that are genuinely enjoyable.
- It is possible to have a job which you look forward to going to in the morning, and which leaves you satisfied that you are getting real stuff done, and making a real difference.
- There are companies that listen to their employees, where everybody can actually make a difference and be heard if they have an opinion, or want to be part of the process.
- There are bosses that guide you to work more productively on tasks that are suited to your abilities, instead of "managing" you as a "resource" that can be applied to some situation in the hopes that it will go away.
- There are companies whose management realise that the small cost of keeping you happy, and making your work environment a pleasant place to spend time, is more than made up for by the enthusiasm you have for the products and work which you do, and that you will be more productive and a better employee as a result.
On a completely unrelated note, there are some openings available at SynthaSite, where I work. The one which I want to talk about is the Systems and Service Engineer position. This is actually the position I currently fill at SynthaSite - they liked me so much that they're hiring two more just like me. The job-spec linked above actually describes the position quite well, and Neil also describes it pretty well, so I won't try to outdo either of them. Suffice it to say that I have never enjoyed my job more, the work is exciting, and the problems are always changing and interesting. Finally, I think one of the most attractive things about working for SynthaSite for me is that it truly fits into the "world wide" part of the web. This is not a small company that is only relevant to one part of the world. We have a global userbase, and even our offices stretch 16000km across borders. Not a month ago I got back from visiting our San Francisco offices - something that we, as employees, will have the opportunity to do once a year. This new, global perspective on things is really exciting to me in a way I find it hard to convey.
To conclude, if you're interested and fit our requirements, please: send your CV to careers@synthasite.com (with a cover-letter telling us why you think you're good for the job). We'd love to hear from you.
by Jonathan Hitchcock at November 19, 2008 09:43 PM
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Morgan Collett (morgs)Comparing files in Nautilus with diff-ext |
I spend a lot of time at the command line so my fingers can run diff commands faster than reaching for the mouse, but I was interested to see Ben Martin’s article on linux.com on doing a diff without touching the command line. Since Ubuntu Intrepid already has a package, enabling this is as simple as:
sudo apt-get install diff-ext
killall -15 nautilus
diff-ext-setup
(or you can install diff-ext using Synaptic, and log out and in again, and click on Applications > Programming > Diff-ext to configure it.)
The third step is to select a diff program to be launched by Nautilus - I use meld which supports 3-way diffs.
The article describes its usage:
Now you should be able to select two files in a directory in Nautilus, right-click to bring up the context menu, and notice a Compare entry toward the bottom of the menu. Selecting Compare will run your preferred diff utility on these files as shown in the adjacent screenshot.
If you have only a single file highlighted and bring up the context menu you will see “Compare later” in the context menu. Selecting that option places the path of the selected file onto a stack. The next time you select a single file you will see both “Compare later” and “Compare to ‘/…/first-file’” in the context menu.
f you select two files, you will be able to compare those two like before, but also have the option to run a three-way comparison with a file from the “Compare later” stack. Although I mention a compare stack, currently gdiff-ext only lets you compare with the very last thing you added to the “Compare later” stack.
If you select two directories and choose Compare, then both directories are passed to your nominated diff tool.
by Morgan at November 19, 2008 01:36 PM
November 18, 2008
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Jonathan Endersby (nlt)The Knife Rack Represents Progress |
A few months ago, before we had moved into our new house, I decided that one of the small things I couldn’t wait to do was to install a knife rack.
Needless to say I grossly under-estimated the amount of critical work (cleaning, fixing etc) we had to do before we got to the luxuries like curtain rails and knife racks.
Anyway, last night I fitted the knife rack. It definitely feels like we’re making progress.
Please excuse the shoddy mobile pic!
by arbitraryuser at November 18, 2008 08:45 AM
November 17, 2008
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Izak Burger (plonk)The so called true story of David Johnson |
I spent a lot of time trying to explain to these poor misguided soul how this is not only unlikely to work, but in the much greater scheme of things it does an incredible amount of harm.
So here, once and for all, are the reasons why you do not want to be involved in this scam.
The scam claims that it is perfecly legal, while this is not the case. These schemes are against the law in South Africa. It should come us no surprise that the scam claims not to be a scam. But even if there were no law outlawing this practice, good old common sense should still tell you that there is something very wrong with this. As the saying goes: if it is too good to be true, it usually is.
This scam essentially relies on asking people to give you something for nothing. That means that it fails the number one test: you are not selling a real product, and the buyer does not get a product or a service worth R150 (some versions have been adapted to three times R70 rather than R50). After you've paid your investment, this will supposedly entitle you to receive the same favour from others.
This would be all fine and dandy if you could always find someone to invest more money, that is, you had an infinite supply. This is effectively how many legal types of insurance funds work. A medical aid, for example, is a little like a big "stokvel" or savings fund: it relies on finding young healthy people to sustain the fund. This is perfectly legal, since they sell a real product, and a new supply of young people joins the work force every year, giving you an endless supply of new investors.
This is not the case with this scheme. Whoever started the scheme made no contribution, and it doesn't take a genius to see that it has to end somewhere since you cannot breed people that fast. That means you are effectively limited to the number of economically active people in the country.
How fast will it run out? Well, lets take the numbers from the three step recipe: You can make 3.2 million if everyone sends it to 200 people, of which at least 40 responds on each level. That means that you've passed this note to about eight million people, or 16% of South Africa's population. That means that this recipe will work for about five or six people in this country.
The scheme warns against breaking the rules and quotes a couple carefully selected bible verses for "legitimacy". The bible verses are quoted out of context, but it is an angle that admittedly works quite well. Despite these warnings, there is no way in which the rules can be enforced. The scheme almost begs to be abused, since there are some opportunists who realise that it is advantageous to break the chain. You have no way of knowing whether someone has followed the rules or not.
Time for some more maths. The growth of the investor pool can be calculated through a simple geometric series. To make this more practical, lets assume that each investor manages to sign two more. This means that every layer in the pyramid has double the number of participants. As anyone who's had the good fortune of receiving tertiary mathematical education should know: the bottom-most layer always has more participants than all the upper layers put together. That means that half of the participants are at the bottom. This scam relies on cash being injected from the bottom-most three layers, which means that 87.5% of all participants are affected. When the scheme runs out of new investors, 50% will lose out on the deal, and anything between 50% and 80% will fail to make any profit at all.
The upper limit for the pyramid would be about 26 levels, since that exceeds the population of South Africa. Since a substantial part of the population is either unemployed or too young to be economically active, you will likely run out way before that. The example above assumes double the investors, but in real live way more people fall for this, which means the pyramid has way less height and consumes investors a lot faster.
The fastest way to make a million using this method is when the three layers below you sign 28 investors each. That would pull 21952 investors into the pool, and create a void of three million rand. When those people manage to recover their investment, it creates a void of 9 million. And so on and so forth...
In the end this is in fact a moral decision. Even if it costs you only R150, it does so much damage that you should avoid, even fight this scam.
by ispburger (noreply@blogger.com) at November 17, 2008 07:50 PM
November 15, 2008
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Jeremy ThurgoodBroken brains and me |
WARNING: Some of what follows is pretty personal. If I wasn't OK with it being public it wouldn't be here, but if you're uncomfortable with that kind of thing (or perhaps just don't know me well enough to care) you may want to skip this post.
At the end of October, certain things about me were brought to my attention in a way I could not ignore. These were things that I kind-of knew all along, but not really. The biggest was that I'm not really very good at getting things done or following through on my grand ideas. I also have an abysmal short-term memory.
This impetus finally got me to do something I should have done years ago: see a psychiatrist and figure out if there's a medical problem that can be dealt with or if I'm just lazy and inattentive. I think, given the title of the post, that you can figure out which it was.
I have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, which is both medically and psychologically treatable. There is, however, a lot of controversy and misinformation about ADD. I won't attempt to clear all of that up here (there are better resources for that than this blog), but I will describe my particular flavour and how it differs from the popular image.
Hyperactivity is very common, especially in children with ADD. So much so, in fact, that the symptom is right there in the new name, ADHD. Since my version lacks this entirely, I'm sticking to the term ADD.
So, on to what I do have. I am very distractible. In fact, while writing this post, I have spent at least half the amount of time since I started wikidiving (while getting the link above), replacing my mouse pad (because the mouse was a little bit jerky), repeatedly checking my IRC client (no activity) and choosing music (settling on Bach). This is what causes me the most trouble.
Combined with this, I have a frustratingly poor short-term memory. I can literally forget, while spending two seconds switching to another workspace to see if I have email, what I was working on. Combine this with the above, and you start to get a picture of my life.
The flip side is that ADD comes with the ability to "hyperfocus" on occasion. I sometimes (rarely) get stuck into something so completely that an entire day can go by without me noticing. The last time I did this, I was updating the code for my website. (It has yet to be deployed and it doesn't change much on the outside. It's much cleaner and more functional behind the scenes, though.) It's what lets me pick up a new programming language in a day or two, when it happens. Sadly, it doesn't happen as often as I'd like.
Over time, I have developed some tools to deal with a lot of this. I incessantly check that my pockets have the right things in them, which stops me forgetting my wallet, phone or keys. I set alarms and reminders on my phone and tend to leave for things early so that I'm not late.
I mentioned before that ADD is treatable. I'm just starting the process of figuring out the right medication, but I'm already seeing results. I'm currently on Concerta, which is basically 12-hour slow release Ritalin. It makes a huge difference, in that I'm able to concentrate on something for more than a minute or two at a time.
Methylphenidate hydrochloride, which is the active ingredient, has two major side effects that are hitting me. I knew both of these (and some of the other that I'm not seeing) going in.
The first isn't so much a side effect as a primary effect. Since the drug is a central nervous system stimulant, it affects sleep. I've had a little more than my usual trouble falling asleep since I started, but I've also been awake and alert before 06h00 every morning. While three data points isn't really conclusive, it's enough of a difference from my usual routine that I think it's significant. It's nice to be up and functional early, but it means I'm sleeping less. It hasn't been long enough to tell if this is a problem, but I'm cautious.
The other is appetite suppression. While this strikes me as something of a bonus, since I really could stand to lose a few kilos, it does mean I have to be better about eating a proper breakfast than I usually am. A morning meal is even more important when you're not going to be hungry for most of the rest of the day.
Aside from the drugs, there are a bunch of psychological treatments. These basically consists of structure and external tools to help keep track of things that most most people do automatically. Calendars and reminders are a big one, and Google is very helpful in this regard.
Probably the most successful tool I'm using at the moment is the humble daily todo list. Having tried various computer-based things in the past, I've settled (for work stuff, anyway) on a notepad and a pen. Part of the reason is that it sits on my desk between my keyboard and my tea, so is always visible. The other part is that the physical act of drawing a line through a task I have completed produces a surprisingly strong endorphin release.
An important thing to realise (and I like to think I'm less guilty of this than many) is that a reason is not the same as an excuse. I now know why I'm so horrible at getting things done, but it doesn't absolve me of the responsibility to actually get things done. It does, however, give me the understanding necessary to build the support structures that will help me deal with it more effectively.
That's about all I have brainspace for at the moment, and this post is certainly long enough already. It hasn't been an easy couple of weeks, but it has been necessary and long overdue. The future is looking better than it has in quite some time, but the short term adjustment period is likely to be fairly rocky.
I shall leave you with an amusing analogy I keep attributing to the wrong person (it was about him, not by him): The ADD Stove.
November 14, 2008
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Jonathan Hitchcock (Vhata)Dynamically generating files for periodic secure copying |
Here is the situation:
Machine A needs to periodically fetch MySQL dumps from machine B, process them, and produce some report. A fairly trivial problem, and I could think of a number of ways do this, but they were all slightly inelegant:
- Periodically create the dump on machine B, and have A fetch it periodically and process it. I didn't like this because the fetch is not triggered by the dump, so there's no sequentiality - you're not guaranteed that A will fetch it immediately when, and only when, B has finished creating the dump.
- Periodicially create the dump on machine B and push it to machine A, which then periodically processes it. This has the same problem - the processing is not triggered when the data arrives on A. I really needed the dump, the transfer and the processing to happen sequentially, triggered by each other.
The obvious thing to do is:
- Have machine A ssh to machine B and run a script that creates the dump, and then scp the dump back and process it.
However, since I'm automating this to run periodically, I need to set up a passphrase-less key for machine A to ssh to machine B, and I don't like having those lying around unrestricted. Fortunately, ssh has a mechanism to restrict a key: you can add the 'command=""' option to a key, which means that when using that keypair to ssh to a machine, you will only be able run that specific command. So, having written a script to perform the database dump on machine B, I restricted machine A's key so that it can only run that script when it connects to B.
But now we have a further problem: since machine A can only run the dump script when ssh'ing to B, it can no longer scp the dump back to itself (since 'scp' runs over ssh, it won't be able to do its thing, because it is restricted to running the dump script only). We could of course, set up another keypair with a different restriction, although it's not trivial to work out what "command" to allow in order to accept scp - the normal way would be to create a new account, and give it the 'scponly' shell, but now we have a whole new account, and... Do you see where this is going? It just gets more and more complicated and basically inelegant. It's easily doable, but it's just messy.
I was discussing this with Michael Gorven, and realised that even though the command restriction means that machine A will always run the dump script when it connects to machine B, that doesn't mean I can't put stuff in the dump script that lets machine A also do the scp. When a machine tries to run a different command using a restricted key, the original command is just run anyway, but the attempted command is passed in, via the SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND variable. So, I thought, I could examine that, see if it was an scp command, and manually run it if it was. This was going to cause security problems, though, because I would have to check exactly what the command was, and might miss some devious ways of getting around my checks and running some other command.
Finally, Michael suggested that I not bother making the distinction between ssh'ing in to do the dump, and connecting in to retrieve it via scp. Just put both steps in one, assume machine A is trying to scp the file, and create and pass back the dump over scp. The way to serve a file over scp is "scp -f $filename" - normal users never see this because it is handled behind the scenes by scp. So here is the final script (with certain details left out):
#!/bin/bash
FNAM=/tmp/dump.$$.sql
mysqldump DB1 Table1 > $FNAM
mysqldump DB2 Table2 >> $FNAM
bzip2 $FNAM
scp -f $FNAM.bz2
rm $FNAM.bz2
Now, no matter how machine A connects to machine B, this script will be run, and unless machine A is running its side of the scp protocol, the dialog will fail. An amusing extra is that no matter what file machine A is trying to retrieve, my database dump will be generated on the fly and sent to it:
$ scp -i mykey_dsa machineB:something.txt
dump.2835.sql.bz2 100% 6909KB 1.2MB/s 00:03
I thought that was cute, and I wanted to share it.
by Jonathan Hitchcock at November 14, 2008 10:20 AM
November 13, 2008
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Jonathan Endersby (nlt)Obama 2008 - Hope > Fear |
by arbitraryuser at November 13, 2008 03:08 PM
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Raoul Snyman (superfly)Compiling Qt 4.4.3 on Mac OS X 10.4 |
Development of the next version of openlp.org, "my" open source lyrics projection application, is underway and gaining speed. We're wanting to make it cross-platform, and so we've decided to use Python and Qt4 (by way of PyQt4).
Since openlp.org 2.x is to be cross-platform, what better way to test it out than to install Qt4 on my Mac at work? Unfortunately this proved more work than I thought.
First I decided to download and install the pre-compiled binaries. They installed fine, and Qt Designer was defintely using Qt 4.4.3. However, when I went to install PyQt4, it's "configure" step could not find the Qt installation. Hmph.
After some extensive googling, I couldn't figure out how to get rid of that problem, short of compiling Qt itself. Hoping not to have to revert to that step, I sent an e-mail to the pyqt mailing list, and shortly thereafter got a reply saying that there were issues with the pre-compiled binaries and that I should just bite the bullet and compile.
Seeing no way of avoiding compiling, I set about to do so.
After downloading all 100-and-something megs of the source code, I extracted it and ran the ./configure command. This chugged away merrily for about 20 minutes, and then announced that everything was complete and there were no errors. Great, I thought, now to compile!
And then I ran into another error.
bindings/js/JSHTMLOptionElementConstructor.cpp:21:44: error: JSHTMLOptionElementConstructor.h: No such file or directory
bindings/js/JSHTMLOptionElementConstructor.cpp:32: error: 'JSHTMLOptionElementConstructor' has not been declared
bindings/js/JSHTMLOptionElementConstructor.cpp:32: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of 'JSHTMLOptionElementConstructor' with no type
bindings/js/JSHTMLOptionElementConstructor.cpp: In function 'int WebCore::JSHTMLOptionElementConstructor(KJS::ExecState*, WebCore::Document*)':
bindings/js/JSHTMLOptionElementConstructor.cpp:33: error: only constructors take base initializers
[...]
make[2]: *** [.obj/debug-shared/JSHTMLOptionElementConstructor.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [debug-all] Error 2
make: *** [sub-webkit-make_default-ordered] Error 2
After a bit of Googling, I came across a forum post that said that the file in question was incorrectly named. So I navigated to that directory, and sure enough, it was. A quick mv command, and I was back to compiling...
And then error number 2 struck.
make[2]: *** No rule to make target `platform/network/AuthenticationChallenge.cpp', needed by `.obj/debug-shared/AuthenticationChallenge.o'. Stop.
make[1]: *** [debug-all] Error 2
make: *** [sub-webkit-make_default-ordered] Error 2
Reading further in the previously mentioned forum post, I found that the user has experienced the same error. In the end he simply cut out WebKit, and Qt 4.4.3 compiled successfully. Unfortunately, that's not going to cut it for me. Further Googling did not help either.
So here I sit, trying to figure out how to get Qt to compile. Since the previous error forced the compiling to stop, I've cleaned the directory and I'm configuring and compiling again from scratch, and I'll see if that works. Unfortunately it's almost time for me to leave work, so I'll leave it compiling over night and I'll see what tomorrow morning holds for me. I'm hoping it's not more errors.
by raoul at November 13, 2008 02:44 PM
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Neil Blakey-Milner (nbm)On using an iPhone for just under a week |
The SynthaSite Cape Town office recently surprised its staff with iPhones. We're predominantly an office of people who work weird hours and work from home or wherever we happen to be frequently, so there probably is some sort of justification possible if one were looking for one.
I'm not all that much of a gadget person. I've never owned an iPod (although I've borrowed one for international plane flights), a PDA, or any other sort of portable electronic device. Well, except my Nintendo DS and DS Lite, which is part of my gaming addiction. I've never been one to use a cellphone for anything beyond making phone calls and sending a few messages. As such, I had no real expectations going in.
The iPhone is just plain intuitive — things are were I expect them to be and work the way I expect them to. Perhaps having used OS X for the past year has helped, but I think it should be relatively universal. Convincing iTunes that I didn't want to register it was about the hardest part of the start-up process. Using iTunes already probably helped, but my MacBookPro life synced over to the iPhone readily enough (had to prune my 10+ GB of podcasts a bit to fit, admittedly). The default mail application works fairly decently for my Google Apps For Your Domain mail — archiving in GMail terms means moving the mail from the Inbox to the All Mail folder.
Would have liked to see my MacBookPro's wireless networks transferred to the iPhone. Wish there was something that could handle my Google Apps For Your Domain calendar by default. The contact import from my Google contacts created hundreds more entries than I expected it to — most imports from Google contacts don't import every person who has ever sent me email. Can't make ringtones from my existing music, or just use any old MP3 as a ringtone. The built-in Maps application is pretty useless, since Google Maps are pretty useless in South Africa, and no sane option seems to exist to use the decent OpenStreetMap coverage that exists in at least Cape Town. The GPS also seems to take its time to figure out where I am.
The biggest irritation, however, is the iTunes Store/App Store. The South African store is crippled. Besides the relatively understandable (ie, not entirely in their control) total lack of music, TV series, and movies, it also lacks podcasts, games, and some fundamental applications. A few "must-have" applications my iPhone or iPod Touch-wielding friends use elsewhere don't appear. For example, the Google Mobile App. I can't see Google being behind not having the Google Mobile App available to South African users. So, it seems Apple is being weird.
Still early days, but I'm pretty positive about the whole thing. I'm especially enjoying having a portable mail reader and web browser from my couch at home, so I don't enter that "at a computer" mode in front of my MacBookPro. Time will tell if Apple's restrictive application environment will increasingly get to me, or if I'll find a killer app that will make the iPhone invaluable.
by Neil Blakey-Milner at November 13, 2008 11:22 AM
November 12, 2008
David Rubin (drubin)Pigs Can Fly |
Php is so loosely typed that true==false in php.
$a = ‘foo’;
$b = 0;
if ( $a == true && $b == false && $a == $b ) {
echo “Pigs Can Fly”;
}
Produces “Pigs Can Fly”.
Strings are considered true if they are not empty or null. so ‘foo’==true would be true==true ie true
Numbers are considered false if they are 0. so 0 == false is false == false ie true
As for the last point this still fascinates me.
Because there are no numbers in variable $a, is set to 0, therefore int 0 == int 0.
by drubin at November 12, 2008 07:17 PM
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Neil Blakey-Milner (nbm)Jobs for Systems People at SynthaSite Cape Town |
SynthaSite offers one of the very few opportunities to work in South Africa on truly large-scale Internet application problems, and I think we offer one of the best work environments in South Africa at the same time. Great kit and cool gadgets, daily lunch and a well-stocked pantry, flexible hours and location where it makes sense, an agile (and Agile) environment, awesome people (me, for example), and more challenging work than you thought possible.
There are two positions open in the Systems department at the SynthaSite Cape Town offices. The Systems departments helps in pretty much every part of the company, but our main focus is on delivering a reliable experience to every user, no matter how many happen to arrive at a particular time, by providing a robust and scalable platform as well as guidance to the engineers on how to take advantage of it.
You know your stuff, and you're passionate about it. You favour doing some stuff up-front to save time later, since laziness is a virtue. But you also believe that "You Ain't Gonna Need It" should always be kept in mind. You'll fight for a simpler solution that solves the underlying problem — simple is better than complex. And you'll keep your sense of humour during periods of high pressure.
You'll be maintaining infrastructure for developers, developing RESTful web services, crafting scripts to transform legacy data, diagnosing all sorts of problems quickly and accurately, and writing tests, user stories, reports and graphs, and whatever else that comes up that you think you can help with.
Compensation is attractive, from base salary through money-saving perks to company shares. There's also a good chance you'll visit our San Francisco offices and attend international conferences at least once a year.
Send your CV to careers@synthasite.com with the subject "Application for Systems and Service Engineer position in Cape Town" (aren't job titles hard to come up with?).
by Neil Blakey-Milner at November 12, 2008 09:57 AM
November 11, 2008
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Morgan Collett (morgs)Ubuntu-ZA reapproved |
As Nick Ali mentioned, the Ubuntu South Africa LoCoTeam went through the (now annual) review process with the LoCoCouncil and got reapproved.
As Nick says,
The yearly review gives LoCos a chance to take stock of how a LoCo is doing, what can be improved, and make plans for the future. The LoCo Council is here to make sure LoCos have the resources and help they need to support their areas.
I’m really energised by the increasing participation in ubuntu-za, and I’m looking forward to the coming year. Doing these reviews definitely helps put the focus on sustained activity.
by Morgan at November 11, 2008 08:02 AM
November 10, 2008
 |
Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)Lolbuntu |
LOLcats
Some of you may be aware of LOLcats. It’s a site where pictures of cats are posted with funny captions. The language used has evolved into it’s own little language, and there’s also a LOLcode programming language. LOLcats have become very popular, and there are many references to it in popular culture these days.
Loldebian
A while ago, Debian started posting loldebian pictures, which are similar in format:
Lolbuntu
Towards the end of last year, I thought of starting something for Ubuntu and related projects called Lolbuntu. I poked a few people about it but there wasn’t too much interest at that stage. It was never really announced anywhere either, I wanted to get timing right. I played around and made a few posts which you can find at lolbuntu.org:
I might end that site if it ends up redundant. I’ve been complaining about how boring the Fridge is again. It’s supposed to be cool and fresh and weird and exciting, but it’s become too formal and more of a generic newspost than anything else. I talked to the Ubuntu news team briefly tonight, and suggested that we could perhaps make Lolbuntu part of the Fridge instead. I hope that it would bring in some fun and it could give better exposure to activities within your local Ubuntu team. If you have photos of local Ubuntu users doing something funny or captionable, then please e-mail it to me with the following details:
- Caption (or you can add it yourself if you want)
- Who’s in the photo
- Where and when it was taken (if you have that information)
Remember that we want good pictures to post on the Fridge, any picture you send through should comply to the Ubuntu Code of Conduct.
by jonathan at November 10, 2008 08:22 PM
November 09, 2008
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Jonathan Endersby (nlt)Function vs Creativity |
I could go on a bit about how we spent the weekend being all domestic; doing garden work, making jam and oat cookies, fitting new bathroom fixtures and an extractor fan, but I won’t. Because none of those things matter really.
What matters is what you do, not what you have… and yes, installing an extractor fan is important, but it’s not the kind of “doing” that matters.
Compare “installing a mould reducing extractor fan” to “pouring bright coloured paint onto a large canvas”:
One is pure function while the other is pure creativity. I don’t want to get stuck in a trap of functional “doing”. I need to find some other thing to “do” with my life or little johnny will become a duller boy.
ps. The place is coming along beautifully… And I’m really enjoying the process.
by arbitraryuser at November 09, 2008 09:15 PM
November 06, 2008
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Jonathan Hitchcock (Vhata)Yes. We did. |
You've all heard by now. I hope you watched (or at least read the transcripts of) Obama's victory speech, and McCain's concession speech - they are both very moving, and McCain's especially highlights his dignity and grace in defeat - attributes that not a few commenters have pointed out might have gained him more votes than the silly political shenanigans he thought he was forced to play during the campaign.
I don't have much to add to the "Yay Obama won" posts that are already clogging up the blagospherimoboweb, but I do have one or two thoughts.
Firstly, although America did well to vote the big guy in, that choice was an obvious one - it was almost impossible to screw that up. There were some other decisions that needed making, perhaps not as obvious to them, or maybe just not as publicly discussed. Running a quick eye down the ballot measures should make it clear that America may have chosen the rock star to lead them, but they still need to do some hard thinking about what freedom really means. (Also, way to take a firm grasp of the issues that matter, Maryland.) I think Antoine van Gelder's usual succinctness puts it best about the presidential elections and proposition 8.
Secondly, in watching the coverage of the election results, there was a rather disturbing amount of bile and vitriol forthcoming from McCain supporters, who didn't heed their candidate's plea to unite behind their new President-Elect. They lost no time in putting this little gem up, for instance. And for the first time, the bigots hate more than just their president(-elect)'s policies, which makes me worried that they might take more drastic action this time round (instead of just sinking back into apathy as they've always done before). And things likes this don't assuage those fears. Well, roll on January 20th - we'll see where we go.
Now, let's turn our eyes inwards.
by Jonathan Hitchcock at November 06, 2008 03:44 PM
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Morgan Collett (morgs)Ubuntu South Africa release parties |
Jonathan Carter already wrote about the Johannesburg release party. Here are his photos from that event.
I went to the Cape Town event which was held at Camps Bay High School’s tuXlab - an Ubuntu-powered school lab. We had about 30 people attending, which was awesome, considering that only a few signed up on the planning wiki page.
We distributed CDs, talked about hardware issues, and did several installs. I took some photos, and Reenen Laurie has posted his as well.
Thanks to:
- Eleanor Lenders of Inkululeko for arranging the venue, posting signs, fetching pizza and going in search of balloons!
- Rob Burger, the sysadmin of the CBHS tuXlab for spending the whole of Saturday upgrading machines to Intrepid so we could have some freshly installed machines to use - and for burning CDs.
- Andy Rabagliati for organising the event and handling the complaints about bluetooth so well…
- Everyone who attended! This community is about you!
It was great to have the event at a tuXlab, and it’s definitely worth holding our release parties at the same, or similar, tuXlabs in the future.
On that note, these school labs are largely supported by volunteers, so if you are available to help, please speak up on the ubuntu-za mailing list.
by Morgan at November 06, 2008 02:37 PM
November 05, 2008
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Raoul Snyman (superfly)Re: An Open Letter to Mr Maphanga, CIO of the IEC |
Oh look, I got a reply to my e-mail:
Dear Raoul Snyman
The real problem is that this has turned into a campaign and not an honest concern about our difficulties, such that it is trivializing the problems we are having.
Do yourself a favour look beyond appearance, understand the problem and stop the pretence. Your 5 minutes solution is naïve to say the least.
I know what we are dealing with, while concerned what led us to this situation but I am convinced that the interim measure we have implemented and the remedial action we are developing is correct.
Regards
Libisi Maphanga
Chief Information Officer
And this is my reply:
Dear Mr Maphanga,
The real problem is that this has turned into a campaign and not an honest concern about our difficulties, such that it is trivializing the problems we are having.
I never tried to trivialise your problems. A site that is as broken as yours *is* a major problem. Having been in the web development business for a long time, I know and I can understand this. All I was suggesting is a small, quick fix for the moment, so that you can stop excluding all non-Microsoft systems, and make a whole lot of people happy.
If I wasn't concerned for your difficulties, I wouldn't have offered you a simple but effective solution, for FREE (yes, I'm not charging you R3 million for this).
Do yourself a favour look beyond appearance, understand the problem and stop the pretence. Your 5 minutes solution is naïve to say the least.
Please do not insult me by saying that my solution is naïve. How long did it take to add the Google Chrome browser to the text on your page? 5 minutes? And that browser came out only a few months ago! So which is naïve, since they both take 5 minutes to do? If someone can take the time to add text to a page, they can just as well take time to remove the browser checking mechanism.
And if you doubt my knowledge (as you seem to), I will have you know that I am a seasoned web developer. I have been in development for 10 years, and I've been on the Internet for 12. I currently work for one of the busiest and most popular web sites in South Africa. I am fairly well versed in the technologies surrounding the Internet, and I can tell you for a fact that your site could be constructed for less than R100 000.
I know what we are dealing with, while concerned what led us to this situation but I am convinced that the interim measure we have implemented and the remedial action we are developing is correct.
Your interim measure is to make a little page where someone can check if they're registered or not. I know I'm not registered, and I've moved 3 times since the last elections. I want to know where my ward is, so that I can go and register this weekend. Your "interim measure" does not help me in the slightest.
However, since you're convinced that your interim measure is fine, would you please tell me where my registration office is? I live in Capricorn beach, Muizenberg. Thanks.
I have a few more thoughts I'd like to convey to you. Let me quote a comment from one of our local news sites, Tectonic:
The main problem with the IEC is that their IT decisions are made for them by Accenture. I have known Libisi for many years and have a great deal of respect for the man, but unfortunately he isn’t the master of his own destiny... Well that part of his own destiny which impacts on IT systems at the IEC.
Most of the IT contract resources at the IEC are currently only comfortable with Dot Net. Of course these contract resources also happen, in most cases, to be Accenture resources.
I was told a few weeks ago that a team was busy working on a new IEC web site, but on deeper investigation I found out that nothing was actually happening. Someone is apparently investigating various CMS solutions, but as far as I know, nothing more is happening.
In response to the "CMS solution investigation", I have made a suggestion that Drupal, Joomla and/or Mambo be considered. Of course these solutions make the Accenture resources uncomfortable because a) They are open source and b) They are not Dot Net.
It is my very firm belief that Accenture's main interest in the IEC is to milk them (And subsequently the South African tax payer) for as much money as possible.
Mr Maphanga, I have to say that I'm sorry to hear that you are not in a position to actually direct your own IT systems, and that you're willing to listen to a company that DEFINITELY doesn't have your or the public's best interests at heart.
Here I have another comment, from someone who has worked at Accenture, someone who is well respected in technical circles in South Africa:
Ok, I can understand the problem. The website *was* steamrollered into place by fast-talking, highly paid consultants (who actually knew little about coding and the web and non-Microsoft environments). The bits of code done in VB *are* crucial - if I remember correctly, during the last elections, a view of the site in IE yielded very different results to when viewed in Konqueror or Mozilla.
Now, when you have a 'website', and you ask for money to rewrite it, chances are you won't be popular with your boss. And the budget of R3m? Those are the figures when you get a big consulting firm to come in and make your problem go away. Of course you could get a smaller company in, but then you would need to assess them to see whether they can do the job adequately, manage them (because they don’t have the smooth partner-types with Powerpoint slides to keep your boss feeling comfortable).
It's a sick world, I know.
So Mr Maphanga, I can see your dilemma. You have 20 e-mails a day in your inbox from people complaining about the site, and then your supposedly trusted advisors are telling you that these people who are complaining don't know what they're talking about.
Thank you for taking the time to read my e-mails and respond to me. I know you're a very busy man, and I'm really honoured to see the speed in which you are replying, as it shows me that you're making time in your busy schedule for dealing with my e-mails.
Kind regards,
Raoul Snyman
by raoul at November 05, 2008 08:17 AM
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Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)Landslide |
Or alternatively titled, “Yes you did”. Thank you America, this was a great speech to wake up to. I hope that it’s just the start of many great things to come.
PS: On CNN they just interviewed a political analyst (didn’t catch his name but I’ll try to get the video), who talked about the Cathedral and Bazaar, and he talked about the Open Source movement and compared Obama to it!
UPDATE: Thanks to Meneer R who provided the link to the YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-4afdMalVA
by jonathan at November 05, 2008 05:30 AM
November 04, 2008
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Raoul Snyman (superfly)An Open Letter to Mr Maphanga, CIO of the IEC |
Dear Mr Maphanga,
Thank you for your reply to my earlier e-mail. I was a bit concerned, however, with your reply, because it showed me a lack of knowledge of the situation. I would like to offer some insight on how you could address the situation, both in the short term, and in the long term.
I understand that as a CIO you are not required to understand all the technical aspects of those things you manage, but your lack of knowledge shows me that those you rely on for their technical knowledge are either lying to you, or are incompetent. Therefore I think that this lack of knowledge on your part is unfortunate ignorance, rather than lack of ability or incompetence.
Firstly, I would like to deal with a few things you mentioned in your e-mail to me.
I have noted your concerns unfortunately the website does not work on any other browser other than Internet Explorer unless you know how to fake Internet Explorer from the other browsers.
As has been pointed out by a number of people already, your site DOES work in browsers other than Internet Explorer. To be more accurate, your site does not work that well in Internet Explorer, and fares slightly worse in other browsers.
In addition to that, it is quite easy to fake a browser's user agent string (the way the browser identifies itself to web servers), and tell a site that you are using a different browser.
We are aware of the cross-browser compatibility problem and we are working on resolving it as soon as possible.
Yes, you are aware of the problem, but you are obviously not aware of a simple, stop-gap fix that can be applied. Simply removing the JavaScript browser check (a 5 minute job, at most) will open up all other browsers to your site. This will allow visitors to access and make use of your site, while you prepare a better site.
I can guarantee that the removal of that browser checking mechanism would reduce the number of complaints you are receiving to close to zero.
To us the website is but just one of the communication channels at our available, it is not the only one, it is complementary to number of other channels, so if you want to link it to your right to vote, though unfortunate but it remains your choice there is very little I can do about it.
Mr Maphanga, please don't contradict yourself. In interviews in 2004 you stated how the IEC's website was important, and now here you imply that it is not that important.
To me your site is very important. We live in the technological age, and I am one of many people who finds web sites far more convenient in our busy lives than spending half an hour on the phone waiting for a consultant to attend to our call.
According to an article on news site Tectonic:
Libisi Maphanga, chief information officer at the IEC, says, however, that the organisation is "well aware" of the problems with the website and the complaints from users and has in place a project team to rectify the situation.
Maphanga told Tectonic this morning that a "project team" had be set up to fix the problem and it was expected to have the first phase of the all-access website up and running by January 2009. A second phase was expected to add more content by April 2009, just in time for the national elections.
The project to make the website available to all users will cost around R3 million, says Maphanga. He says that because of a growing "campaign" from disgruntled citizens complaining about the website and the "disruption to our regular work" this was causing, other projects have been put on hold so that budget could be allocated to fixing the website. The IEC also applied for supplemental funding from government for the website but this was denied.
I can only say one thing: you are being taken for a ride. As a professional web developer, I can tell you for a fact that it does not cost R3 million to revamp a web site. Someone is getting rich, selling you a scam and pocketing a few million Rand.
Mr Maphanga, while you will most probably take offense at this letter, please understand that none is intended. I simply want to make you an informed CIO. That figure of R3 million is outrageous, and I cannot stand by and let my government be swindled.
Since this is an open letter, I have decided to post it to my blog, which you can access at http://blog.saturnlaboratories.co.za/. I have also e-mailed some of your peers, as well as some of the local Linux User Groups who I know have an interest in this issue. I have also posted it to a thread on the MyBroadband forums where there are other discussions on this subject, accessible at http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showpost.php?p=2232993&postcount=28.
Kind regards,
Raoul Snyman
Update: Mr Maphanga replied to this e-mail, and I replied to his in return. You can see both these e-mails on my following blog entry, Re: An Open Letter to Mr Maphanga, CIO of the IEC.
by raoul at November 04, 2008 06:05 PM
Digital Apartheid |
As Tectonic has reported, the IEC's website locks out anyone not using Internet Explorer. E-mails to "webmaster@elections.org.za" disappear into thin air, and recently a human rights complaint has been lodged against the IEC.
Today I came across a website called Digital Apartheid that has an e-mail template and an e-mail address you can use to complain about the IEC site. I duly sent an e-mail off, and a few minutes later I got a reply:
Dear Mr. Snyman
I have noted your concerns unfortunately the website does not work on any other browser other than Internet Explorer unless you know how to fake Internet Explorer from the other browsers.
We are aware of the cross-browser compatibility problem and we are working on resolving it as soon as possible.
If you need information or want to make enquiries, please feel free to call our offices or our Call Centre at 0800118000, we willingly gladly provide.
To us the website is but just one of the communication channels at our available, it is not the only one, it is complementary to number of other channels, so if you want to link it to your right to vote, though unfortunate but it remains your choice there is very little I can do about it.
Kind Regards Libisi Maphanga
Chief Information Officer
I'm trying to decided if I should reply to him, and if so, what I should say. He clearly doesn't understand the issue.
In a few articles I've seen online, he mentions how important he thinks the website is. However, in this e-mail, he implies that it's not actually all that important to him. Also, the site has looked the same for the last 5 years (at least), and has excluded non-IE users for the same amount of time.
According to his reply, they "are working on resolving it as soon as possible." However, they have been "working" on it for a long time. How long does it take to simply remove that browser check?
The site works in Firefox. It looks awful, but it works.
Update: According to a new article on Tectonic, they are spending R3 million on a project to make the site standards compliant. How it can cost R3 million, I don't know. As a commentor on the article says, they are being taken for a ride.