jonathan carter

If I were superstitious…

// July 28th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // Free Software, Jonathan

A few weeks ago I moved to Québec, Canada. Today I bought this car from a colleague at Révolution Linux, he doesn’t need it anymore since he’s moving to Montréal. He bough it just a few months ago from another colleague who moved to France.

It doesn’t have a CD player, instead, it has a tape deck, which plays analogue magnetic tapes. They’re horribly obsolete now but this was how I listened to music way back when I was a kid. Another college that lives down the street from me has a hi-fi with a CD player AND a tape deck. I was planning to go there to write the Offspring Smash album to tape, it’s one of my favourite driving albums and I never tire from it.

All the tapes from 2 owners back was still in the car. I decided to remove them when I got home this afternoon. The *first* tape I took out happened to be this one:

I was amazed and delighted! Then I removed the next tape:

It had “High voltage” written on it, which is very close to my IRC/Identica/Twitter nickname, “highvoltage”. If I were at all superstitious, I’d take it as a very good sign that this car will serve me very well!

Canada!

// July 4th, 2010 // 5 Comments » // Free Software, Jonathan

After a long wait for my travel documents I finally arrived in Montréal, Canada on Friday afternoon!

Sherbrooke will be my new home from now on. I have lots to say but if I do that now this blog entry will never get finished, I’ll do some subsequent posts instead

So far everyone I’ve met here have been super nice, I’ve met quite a few of my colleges at Revolution Linux over the weekend and tomorrow is my first day actually at the office (already had a tour yesterday ). It’s certainly taking some adjustment being here but I’ve already had Poutine and learned some important local words so I’m already on my way to becoming an official Québécois!

I’ve been more or less absent from everything the last two weeks, but that should also be better now. Have a good week!

Then and Now Meme

// April 24th, 2010 // 9 Comments » // Free Software, Humour, Jonathan

Maybe it didn’t exactly start out as a meme, that doesn’t mean I can’t make it into one

My Very First Time

My first GNU/Linux desktop was installed in 1999 on a 486DX4-100 with 16MB RAM. It was Red Hat Linux 6 (Hedwig). I still have the CD, it has “Linux 6.0″ written on it which sounds extremely futuristic considering I’m on Linux 2.6.32 now in 2010. I don’t have any of my original screenshots, but I found this one which is a typical RHL 6.0 desktop:

Today I run Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my desktop, laptop and netbook:

Not too much to see though since I generally keep my desktop clean. I usually use my desktop to store some files temporarily while I work on a task, afterwards they are stored somewhere safe just in case I need them again. I also keep my window list on the top panel, it saves some screen space especially since I only have 2-3 windows open on a desktop space. The space saving is also great on my netbook, since I don’t use the Ubuntu Netbook Remix on there.

Then and Now Edubuntu Edition

Earlier this week, I posted about new futures available in Edubuntu 10.04. This evening I put together a wiki page showing some of the artwork differences in Edubuntu between Karmic and Lucid. I also added some additional information that might be useful to the website and marketing teams similar to what the Ubuntu branding page has done. It’s still early work but I’ll copy and paste it in a page for Maverick and continue to improve on it there. For now I’m getting some sleep since I have a CTWUG meeting early in the morning, seems like blogging just before 2am is becoming a habit

Happy 2010

// January 4th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Free Software, Jonathan, Motorbiking

Happy 2010 everyone!

I’m not sure how I’ll ever top the 2000′s, it was quite an action packed decade for me, it’s sometimes hard to believe that in 2000 I was still in school

I haven’t made any big goals or plans for 2010 yet, I guess I’m happy with the direction things are going at the moment,  in short I plan to:

• Stay in Canada for a few months (probably over 2 visits)
• Get my motorbike license (appointment is for 1 March)
• Up my Ubuntu involvement more. Revolution Linux gives me at least a full workday a week for Ubuntu related stuff so this shouldn’t be hard
• Continue getting fitter- been doing great at the gym recently and I’ve been going 3-4 times a week for the last 2 months

I feel very good about this year, hope it turns out great for everyone!

Revolution

// November 2nd, 2009 // 6 Comments » // Free Software, Jonathan

One Year of Independence

A little more than a year ago I wasn’t very happy, I managed to get myself stuck in a job I didn’t like working for a company I didn’t like in a city I didn’t like. It had compound effects that caused me more problems, I decided to take the plunge and start my own company, giving me the freedom to work on the things that I want to work where I want to and when it makes sense to do so. Yesterday it was exactly a year since I’ve done that when I founded Zanix, and looking back it’s been the single best decision I’ve ever made so far. I won’t deny that it was incredibly risky, but I don’t have any dependents or very big responsibilities (well, beseides perhaps my homeloan) so it turned out a good time in my life to do so. There’s been some rough spots especially with the accounting side and in some cases payments taking long to get to me, but I’ve learned a lot and it’s been a great experience so far, so far 2009 has been one of the best years I’ve ever had.

Revolution Linux

Over the next year I think things will be even better, over the last few months I’ve been talking to the nice people at Revolution Linux, and we worked out something that will allow me to run my current business and work for them almost-full-time. From my perspective I think it’s a best-of-both-worlds scenario, I don’t have to drop any of my projects and have a steady job working on things I really enjoy at the same time. My job title is literally “Ubuntu Developer/Analyst”, and I’ll be working on all kinds of Ubuntu and LTSP related things. Their head office is in Sherbrooke, QC which is close to where the LTSP hackfests happen so I’ll be spending lots of time up there. You don’t have to live long in Canada to be able to apply for a residency, so I might even go live there for a while, it will certainly make traveling around easier than on a South African passport. Sherbrooke is also driving distance from NYC so perhaps I might even go to Debconf next year. I’m not sure exactly how much time I’ll be spending everywhere yet, but I’ll know more myself once I stay there a few weeks after my work visa is approved.

Changes in involvement in CLUG and Ubuntu-ZA

I’m stepping down from the CLUG committee and also as co-leader of the Ubuntu-ZA loco team, since I’ll be traveling a lot next year and probably won’t be around that much, I’ll still be around virtually on the lists and on IRC and contribute here and there, but I’d rather leave the leadership roles to people who are active locally. Ubuntu-ZA elections are currently taking place on Launchpad and the CLUG AGM is taking place later this month where a new committee will be elected.

Some Updates

// August 21st, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Education, Free Software, Jonathan

• Had flu the last month or so, finally been getting over it this week, starting to feel human again. I thought I had H1N1, but I had it checked and it turns out it was just a nasty flu. My concentration was just gone the last month so I ended up watching a lot of old Star Trek Voyager and Third Rock From the Sun episodes.
• Kind of bummed that the rest of the world gets to see District 9 already, and in South Africa, where the story actually plays off, we only get to see it in a week from now on the 28th of August.
• Attended the Obstreperous Olive Geekdinner at the Pasta Factory. Staff was very friendly, food could have been better for the price. Talks were a bit too markety and “done”, as a result I’m volunteering for a more geeky talk next month. Overall it was very good and I got to catch up with a few people I haven’t seen in way too long.
• I got my first few packages in Ubuntu, I’ve been working on LTSP cluster (packages.ubuntu.com seems to have some trouble currently) packaging and 5 out of the 6 packages are currently in the archives. ltsp-cluster-pxeconfig is next, it’s in REVU at the moment, it should make it in before feature freeze next week. Thank you to Stéphane Graber who has been mentoring me on this, he’s also the upstream for LTSP Cluster and sponsoring my packages. Also thanks to Jordan, Oliver and Anthony for reviewing my packages on REVU.
• Ubuntu-ZA is having monthly meetings now, I was kind of dazed at the last one due to flu and medicine, but it’s refreshing to see the energy and enthusiasm, we’ll have the first of our monthly reports ready within the next week or so.
• Edubuntu is in a bit of a squeeze. The good news is that a DVD install disc and enabling universe packages for the builds have been approved, unfortunately the Edubuntu seeds need work and need to be finalised within the next week or so, and our two core-devs have had other urgent issues to tend to. If there’s a core-dev available to give some guidance and sponsorship over the next week, it would be much appreciated.
• Some other nice things in my feed reader from the Ubuntu world:
  • 100 Paper cuts is at round 7, I think David Siegel is really cool for taking it on and sticking in there with it.
  • Daniel Holbach blogged about the Ubuntu Global Jam, some of us in CLUG considered doing a package jam for a CLUG talk, but due to time limitations and the recent threads on the CLUG lists where users are requesting more intro-level talks, I’m wondering whether we should have a kind of tips-and-tricks jam, where a bunch of us show how we use Ubuntu to be more productive.
  • Ubuntu Developer Week is kicking off in a bit more than a week, be sure to be there if you’re interested in contributing to Ubuntu!

• 
• Free Ubuntu Books for approved loco teams, also a copy of Art of Community. Ubuntu-ZA applied for the first 2 books that will be hosted at AIMS in Cape Town and available for anyone who wants to drop by and read it. We’ll probably keep the Art of Community book in Johannesburg somewhere under a similar arrangement.

UDS Sessions attended today

// May 25th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Free Software, Games, Jonathan, Politics

The sessions are quite short, most of them just under an hour which works quite well, most sessions have follow-up sessions planned. Refer to http://summit.ubuntu.com/uds-karmic/ for further details.

Improving LoCo Team Events

This was the first session I attended today. We discussed package and bug jams and how it could be improved. Also the possibility of introducing marketing jams where users would get together to produce local marketing content such as posters, CD covers, etc in local languages. A requirement was identified for a Facebook-like events engine. Currently loco-teams are finding Facebook a handy tool for this, and something similar may be included in Launchpad for all Ubuntu related events based on the current sprints scheduler. The community directory is 98% complete, Jono will provide us with more details soon when it’s just about complete.

Refocusing The Ubuntu Spirit

This was mostly a discussion that went into various different directions. The Ubuntu Code of Conduct came up and it was discussed how new users sometimes are a bit too diligent trying to enforce it on everyone else in the community. It was agreed that the CoC is a guideline on how people should conduct themselves and that it shouldn’t be used to through books at people, so to speak. Keeping users and developers motivated was also discussed, and the possibility of some kind of showcase of success stories from users around the world.

Free Culture in Ubuntu

Getting free culture on the Ubuntu discs is hard due to the lack of free space. Free culture could be provided in Ubuntu via links and default subscriptions in Firefox, Liferea, Miro etc.

Tutorial on Upstart and How to Convert to it

Scott James Remnant did an introduction on Upstart. Upstart replaces Init on Ubuntu and migration for all init scripts to Upstart is planned for Karmic. Upstart is quite nifty and replaces lots of duplicate and error-prone work that package maintainers had to implement in init before. You can specify environment variables or put entire scripts into the sections before, during and after a process is started. Upstart also keeps an eye on the list of PID’s that it spawned and won’t break when a user does something like execute “apache2ctl stop”.

Meet Your Users

This was a workshop/discussion about personas, archetypes and stereotypes and how personas are used to define the edges of our user universe. We wrote down who we think our users are and they were posted up the board and sorted in to different groups. I think this was the first BoF I’ve ever attended that was led by a women. Speaking of which, there are much more women attending this UDS than previously. One of the results seem to be that there’s some more attention given to some of the more softer issues in Ubuntu. Hopefully it also means that our community has built a good reputation of being welcomming and mature.

Edubuntu Session Tomorrow

Tomorrow at 9:00 UTC (11:00 in Barcelona) we’re having the Edubuntu session where we’ll discuss the Edubuntu stategy document, it’s been in draft for a while and we will hopefully have it finilized very soon (maube even tomorrow if we’re lucky). Some people couldn’t make it, so we’ll try to keep #edubuntu in sync with discussions if the Internet holds up.