Edward Andrew Robinson

Since everyone else is doing it.

In keeping with tradition the ubuntu store (well canonical store) has released a Limited Edition Jaunty Jackalope T-shirt to celebrate the release of ubunut 9.04.

Get yours now (I have and they went really fast last time), and congratulations to everyone who made Jaunty Jackalope a success!

Dictionary.com defines a form as:

a document with blank spaces to be filled in with particulars before it is executed: a tax form.  — source

and a forum as:

an assembly, meeting place, television program, etc., for the discussion of questions of public interest. — source

Ok well I cherry picked the definitions that best suited my purposes, but anyway, I have been using both of these words is a lot of code lately and I admit the words have lost all meaning to me. In speech this is called semantic satiation, where intense repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener. So what is this called when you code? Dose it happen to anyone else? I know that for me the words “form” and “forum” have lost all meaning and look completely spelt wrong now. I think its even worse that the words are so similar prompting me to write this post, however this happens to me even with one word if I use it to much in code.

Thoughts?

With all the posts on planet ubuntu lately about twitter it got me thinking about my micro-blogging habits and how I update my online status in general. I started using twitter about a year ago, and since then I have become quite the huge micro-blogger. However a while ago I stopped thinking about it as twittering or identi.caing (?) and started thinking about it as updating my online status.

To understand why let me tell you what happens when I make a tweet (I think twitter has won the terminology war). When I want to tweet something I open up gwibber (thank Jono)and fire off my update, gwibber then updates my pidgin (MSN and Google Talk) status as well as my identi.ca account (If I am not at home I go directly to identi.ca). Identi.ca then  updates my twitter account that then posts the updated to my website, and my facebook.

From Public

What I really like about this setup is that all of these services have the built in ability to update each other. I know I could also use something like ping.fm to do the job but currently I have no need, just by updating one account I can update all my online profiles status.

So what’s your tweet flow like?

Also add me on Identi.ca, Twitter, or anything else!

earobinson.org went down for a bit tonight but it is now back up. Please let me know if you find any problems.

A lot of this post could also be applied to the Ubuntu Brainstorm but since I use reddit (an open source social news site)  a lot more I will make this post about reddit, yet it could apply to any voting site.

I use mainly reddit, and google reader to get my news online. Google reader is great letting me subscribe to sites I am interested in. Reddit is great letting me see what other people think is cool and find new sites that way. In order to decide what topics to show reddit lets users vote up or down a link and the displays the top links on the front page.

reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web — personalized for you. Your votes train a filter, so let reddit know what you liked and disliked, because you’ll begin to be recommended links filtered to your tastes. All of the content on reddit is submitted and voted on by users like you.
– http://www.reddit.com/help/

I love the up or down vote system. It is much better than the star system for me (looking through my rhythmbox library most songs have either 4, 5, or zero (unrated) stars) and the up down system seems to work a lot better for me. However looking at just my liked, or disliked votes does not tell the whole story. I have 1000’s of liked votes but less than 50 disliked votes in the 2 years I have used reddit. Looking at a screenshot of my reddit homepage tells an even better story.

Looking at the above screenshot you can clear see that today I have clicked on 15 links but only liked 2 one of which I did not even click on. I feel that this is an important metric that reddit is missing from its stats, looking at the comments of a posted article tells you how many up and down votes an article has got. Maybe at least to start tracking and telling us how many clicks an article got is a good start. Why, well because if you have two sites one has 100 up votes and 100 clicks VS one with 100 up votes and 1000 clicks that info tells you something about the article. What this tells us yet I am not sure but maybe one is a niche article that a small community of people really care about as to read the article and up vote it (for example a colour blind patch for fluxbox, and yes I don’t even know what that would be), but maybe the latter is the release of the next version of ubuntu. I feel that this information could make reddit even better and as an added bonus for those of us who use reddit on more than one computer reddit could keep track of our clicked links for us.

Edit: This has been submitted to reddit. Please up vote it.

Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS), the farther of the gnu project, will be speaking in Toronto  Febuary 2nd @ 5pm, in the Bahan Center (Bahen Center, 40 St. George Street Room 1160). This event is open to everyone and you can find the original notice here (Yes it is sad that I cant find a U of T link right now… guess my google skills aren’t up to snuff).

IMHO RMS is one of the founders of free software but you don’t need to be in computer science or a geek to understand what he is talking about. Lots of people use GPL software every day without even knowing it. Wordpress, Google, Ubuntu, Wikipedia all use GPL software and so based of that I argue that RMS has been an extremely influential charter in the evolution of software (open or closed source) so it is a talk I would not miss.

Time: Febuary 2nd @ 5pm
Location: Bahan Center (Bahen Center, 40 St. George Street Room 1160)

If your going to be there and want to meet up for a beer after let me know, or friend me up.

This message was going to be on twitter but it got to long (due to links), and so this is my first post of the new year! (Happy new year everyone)

My old mouse finally crapped out on me, I loved that old school microsoft mouse, and it is the only microsoft product that I use. The size, weight and sensitivity have always been perfect for me and I don’t have to buy batteries for it.  Deciding that I did not want to spend $32.99 on my old mouse I headed to collage street looking for a mouse. I hate the idea of having to change the batteries on a wireless mouse so if I got a wireless mouse it would have to come with a charger (I think that the way my old mouse sat on my desk caused the mouse cord to pull and that’s what broke it).

I learned two things today, the only wired mice I could find are really really garbage ones or really really high-end ones for gamers (and I’m not a gamer). Secondly most (in fact all but the one mouse I found) wireless mice use batteries no charging station. WTF I don’t want to buy batteries for my mouse ever X months and no one could tell me how long the batteries lasted.

I did finally find the Micro Innovations PD955P Wireless Optical Navigator Mouse (yes its not even listed on the Micro Innovations website anymore) at Canada Computers for only $11. The mouse weight is perfect for me, the size is great, it has a charger (I am still a bit worried about how long the charge will last or if I will remember to charge it),  I am not sure sure about the sensitivity so far it doesn’t feel perfect but Ill keep playing with the settings. And yes it works perfect with ubuntu.

So far all the non gamers out there what mouse do you use?

I love writing about projects that I really like. When I do I try not to write about projects that people may know about and I definitely do not write about projects that come pre installed with Ubuntu. I love open office but it comes  pre installed Ubuntu.  Trac however does not come pre installed with Ubuntu. There are many solutions out there like trac, sourceforge,  google code, launchpad, all of these solutions however are aimed at open source code you publish on the internet. Trac, however lets you host your own website, either on the web or your intranet. That provides a lot of the same features that are provide by the options for open source projects.

The other big option I have seen to trac is dr project (they actualy forked from trac). and while I do like a lot of the things that trac is doing (mailing list intergration for one). Trac has a large comunity and may plugins a few of the plugins I would really like to see in the future for trac are a karma like system similar to the one on launchpad as well as better user tracking as well as a way to see who has read what similar to vbullitins who has read a thread.

Trac really is a great solution and I use for a ton of projects I work on.

Keep up the great work guys!

Edit Typos

Well its been ages since my last real post, but life and twitter have been keeping me busy. Ever since I started using computers every 5 months or so I get board of my current computer setup and start to look at my other options, this can be anything from replacing a program, to changing my OS. This makes Ubuntu’s six month release cycle perfect for me because I can get get tired of my current setup in 5 months start messing with my computer then reinstall with the latest release of Ubuntu. I have found many grate programs this way like Miro, and Geany, and I love both of them dearly. Well I have found a new love to add to that list: tilda.

While the tilda website sucks including unfound images on the homepage the program is great. The idea of tilda is to provide the user with a “terminal taking after the likeness of many classic terminals from first person shooter games, Quake, Doom and Half-Life (to name a few)”[1]. The great thing about this is that it lets you collapse a lot of your terminals into one terminal (I’m sure I will still have a few terminals open to monitor things that I’m running) but in general it lets you map a hot key to pull down a notebook of terminals (like the tilda(~) would do in the games mentioned above).

Before Tilda

After Tilda

I really do love this application and it gives me a neat new way to interface with my computer. It is perfect for when I am programing and I want to then quickly switch to the terminal to compile my program now instead of <Alt> + <Tab> I can use <Super> + <Space> and bring down my terminal.

For those of you still running hardy you may want to upgrade to the latest version (yes those instructions will work with the latest version) but even then there are still a few features I would like to see mostly I would like each desktop to have its own terminal’s (right now they all share the same ones).

What apps do you love?