Consilience

Dan Chen (aka: crimsun) is the guy who puts a ton of his free time into making your sound work. Yes, there are complaints about sound not working for some folks but my experience with Dan was fantastic. Seriously, check out that linked bug report.

Synopsis:

• I reported the issue on March 17th with my steps to reproduce and alsa-info.sh output.
• The same day Dan replied with a suggestion.
• What you don’t see is the communication that happened next on IRC in #ubuntu-bugs.
• Dan then built a new kernel for me to test. I tested it that night and my problem was solved!
• After my initial positive feedback he tossed that kernel out for wider testing.
• Then, based on the feedback that fix was put into Jaunty on March 28th.

Now remember what happened on March 19th; Beta Freeze. Dan got this new patched kernel in Jaunty 2 days after Beta Release. That is pretty awesome in my opinion.

My nominee for Ubuntu Hall of Fame is Dan.

I just wanted to throw a quick shout out to Spitfire (launchpad profile) for being awesome and making me more productive by getting Tasque working again in Intrepid!

Apparently to get it working in Intrepid he needed to backport mono2, gtk-sharp2, and evolution-sharp. No small tasque (HA!) I’m sure. This also shows how well PPAs can be used by projects to keep their users updated with the latest fixes.

Thanks again to Spitfire for improving my productivity; I didn’t know what to do without Tasque telling me.*

Go out there and get your Tasque working again in Intrepid and be productive. And thank Spitfire while you’re at it!

* Slight exaggeration, but Tasque is one really useful pieces of software.

Got this from Kees et al:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Here’s mine:

Pure acetic acid is completely miscible with water, ethanol, diethyl ether, and carbon tetrachloride, but it not soluble in carbon disulfide.

– Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, vol. 1, AAR-ANO

Yes, I’m sitting here at a library with nixternal before his presentation at the MUG meeting tonight. I don’t own that book, nor would I, even though it has some nice graphics and it is interesting. Most of what is in it I can find on teh intarwebs.

What are you reading?

This is a heads up to everyone in the South East Michigan area:

As you all know the next release of Ubuntu, Intrepid Ibex, is coming out at the end of this month. In recognition of all the great work that went in to making this release we are going to have a party!

What better way to thank and celebrate than heading to the local pub and toasting a few beers (or non-alcoholic drink) to everyone who made it possible?

The party starts at 7pm on Saturday Nov. 1st and will be at Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti.

Bring your significant other, invite your friends, and tell your neighbors.

Also, as is tradition I will be bringing a bunch of nice metal Ubuntu case badge stickers for everyone. You are also welcome to bring a copy or two of burned Intrepid CDs for those who might want a physical copy as I won’t be receiving our shipment of officially branded cds by the 1st.

Details:
Who: Ubuntu Michigan Local Community Team and YOU!
What: Intrepid Ibex Release Party!
When: Saturday November 1st at 7pm
Where: Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti
Why: Because we’re gonna celebrate!

An always up-to-date page for Release Party information can be found here.

(if you can’t see the video, click here, yes, flash, sorry.)

What are you going to do? Just sit there?

This just came across the email, courtesy of Nick Ellery:
——-
This week’s Hug Day will be focusing on Apt! There are currently about
127 New bug reports regarding Apt and we will be focusing on reducing
that number in addition to looking at some outstanding Incomplete and
Confirmed bugs.  We’ll do this by following up with reporters,
documenting test cases, and confirming bug reports.  The event
will be held in #ubuntu-bugs on Freenode. The list of targeted bugs
and tasks is posted at:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20080724

Our goal is to deal with all of the bugs on that list.

So on 24 July 2008, in all timezones, we’ll be meeting in #ubuntu-bugs
on irc.freenode.net for another Ubuntu Hug Day.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay
—–

So if you have some time and want to help out, come join us!

Hello all,

This is now the home for all things Greg.  I have a domain name now and a great person is hosting my activities here.

From now on you can find more about what I’m up to on this site (blog.grossmeier.net) and my homepage (empty for now) will be at grossmeier.net and I’ll have a wiki floating around somewhere (either wiki.grossmeier or just grossmeier.net).

If you have any suggestions on what wiki software to use I would greatly appreciate them.

As a part-time bug triager, I’m always curious of the new tools out there that enable people to work better and more efficiently.  One such new project, which I think has some real potential, is Stephan Hermann‘s Leonov project.

Another thing which I just read in my news reader was the fact that Luca Nussbaum added a functionality to Debian’s package overview pages which lets maintainers see what version of the package is in Ubuntu and how many bugs are reported against it in Launchpad.  This seems like a great idea and could even be expanded upon for better results.

My thought process:

A. Launchpad’s ability to watch other bug trackers for the same bug greatly improves the ability of developers to find and fix bugs.

A.1. People really like that ability.

B. Launchpad is only able to do that in a one-way direction (it can’t tell the Debian BTS that it’s bug has been marked “Fix Committed”)

B.1. Putting all of the work on the dev’s/triagers to then go back upstream and report it for every bug is a laudable goal, but as we all know, time is precious for everyone.

C. The ability to get bug data from LP and use it for enabling productivity is there, albeit a little “hacky” (screen scrapping is never fun).

D. Wouldn’t it be cool if other Bug Trackers could watch LP in the same way it watches them?

It seems to me, from both Lucas’ and Stephan’s efforts that doing D is possible right now.  Yes, it would be a ton more easy if Lucas’ and Stephan’s concerns were addressed (text/XML export etc).

I know the Launchpad developers are working right now to implement support for reporting back to other bug trackers certain information but I’m not sure of its progress.

Some Blueprints which might be related but I can not read (they are private): Bugs Remote API and Remote Launchpad Python Library (if you know of any other blueprints or bugs with more information, post them in the comments, please).

Does anyone know of any other bug trackers which are actively working on or at least discussing the ability to grab data from LP (or other BTS)  about certain bugs?

As some of you know, I am now working with Creative Commons as a Community Development Intern for the summer under the lead of Jon Phillips (of Open Clip Art, Inkscape, ccHost, etc).  Because of that, you might hear much less of me for the next 2.5 months (not that I was constantly blogging before).  Additionally, for you bug triagers out there, if you see a bug which I have commented on do not hesitate to take over the triaging process, I might not get to it as quickly as I should.  Don’t feel like you are stepping on anyone’s toes.

However, if you are thinking to yourself “I wonder what Greg is up to at Creative Commons right now?” you are more than welcome to watch the blog at CC, which is handily on the front page.  Today, in fact, I posted my first post.

Also, if you know of any cool Creative Commons/Free Culture related things going on in your area (physical or virtual), feel free to contact me.  And yeah, I already know about Jono’s new music project ;)

The release cycle for Hardy was awesome, and I definitely put more time and effort into it than any other.  But, I want to continue this momentum and increase my effort for Intrepid.  Luckily for me, next week is Ubuntu OpenWeek.

Seriously, I’m not just talking about the OpenWeek because Jorge talked about it last night at our release party.  I have recently triaged a fair number of bugs to a point where I know what needs to be changed and I could probably do it myself.  Simple string fixes are a good examples, or setting correct defaults, adding a dependency, etc.  But, to do this I should learn more about packaging.

One way to do that is to go to a Packaging Jam like what Rick put on for the Michigan LoCo.  I unfortunately was unable to make it (3 year anniversary is a good reason right?).  But, with the OpenWeek I should be able to get some basics out of the way before we do another Packaging Jam.

Also, if you’re interested in just learning how to report bugs, not even think about fixing them, there are events for you too at the OpenWeek (see schedule).  Be sure to remember that the times are in UTC, so that means subtract 4 hours for the eastern time zone (rest of you Americans can do the math from there).

I hope some of the people who attended our Hardy Release Party in Michigan last night can show up.  There was a lot of interest in helping with Ubuntu development in various ways from many people and this is the perfect place to start!

See you there!

–
My 5 today: #223230 (gnome-panel), #214695 (gnome-system-monitor), #223239 (hugin), #223262 (kdebase), #223263 (update-manager)
Do 5 a day – every day! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/5-A-Day