Edward Andrew Robinson

It has been ages since I last posted, and for that I am sorry, but I have kept up with my twitter and identica accounts. Things have been moving really fast for me of late and as a result my blogging has slipped. So whats new in the world of earobinson?

1. I am now working for CAE, more precisely CAE PS out of Toronto, and I am loving every moment of it. They have a very open culture and encourage the use of open source tools when appropriate. I have been able to use Ubuntu to host some of the websites I have developed in Django. This has kept me very happy. I can honestly say that I think that my Ubuntu, and Open Source knowledge set me apart.
2. I have been getting more and more into photography with my new Canon EOS Rebel T1i, you can follow me on flickr.
3. I have been ramping up my fitness (and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu skills) at Toronto BJJ.

This brings me to my goals for the future, I am falling in love with Django and as a result I want to play with it more and more, now my current hosting provider 1and1 has served me very well up to now. But now that I want to start playing with Django more I need to get a hosting provider that can support Django (because I want to show off my work of course). I would hope that any new hosting provider I use could support both Django, and ruby on rails (as I may want to play with it in the future). So dear lazy web what do you recommend? And I know I could use Google app engein but I like the idea of pure Django, not some hack, I have also looked at djangohosting.org but would love some recommendations from actual users of hosting plans.

Any advise lazyweb?

Hot off the press, get yours now at the Ubuntu store. Congratulations to everyone on the release of the Karmic Koala (late I know but I wanted to wait till I got my shirt)! And here is a picture of me modeling my Ubuntu shirts (and I know I look grumpy I was focusing on my new camera and tripod to keep the backgrounds aligned)

Left (Jaunty Jackalope) Middle (Karmic Koala) Right (Hardy Heron)

Looking forward to the Lucid Lynx. You can also check out all the Ubuntu code names here!

Well yet another meem on planet ubuntu, and so without further ado:

earobinson@MinusOne:/media/data/personal/hackergotchi$ vrms
Non-free packages installed on MinusOne

fglrx-modaliases          Identifiers supported by the ATI graphics driver
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.28 modules helper script
linux-restricted-modules- Restricted Linux modules for generic kernels
nvidia-173-modaliases     Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-180-kernel-source  NVIDIA binary kernel module source
nvidia-180-libvdpau       Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix
nvidia-180-modaliases     Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-71-modaliases      Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-96-modaliases      Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-glx-180            NVIDIA binary Xorg driver
opera                     The Opera Web Browser
picasa                    Image management application from Google
sun-java6-bin             Sun Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 (architecture
sun-java6-jre             Sun Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 (architecture
tangerine-icon-theme      Tangerine Icon theme
unrar                     Unarchiver for .rar files (non-free version)
Reason: Modifications problematic

Contrib packages installed on MinusOne

flashplugin-installer     Adobe Flash Player plugin installer
flashplugin-nonfree       Adobe Flash Player plugin installer (transitional pack
nvidia-common             Find obsolete NVIDIA drivers
nvidia-settings           Tool of configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
ttf-mscorefonts-installer Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts

16 non-free packages, 0.9% of 1712 installed packages.
5 contrib packages, 0.3% of 1712 installed packages.

Post yours!

I love lists, and I love open source software. Whats more I find that I am using more and more open source websites in my daily life. Without further ado here are 8 open source websites I use:

and two that I don’t:

Update: I just realized I also use tr.im as my url shortener and they will be going open source.

<rant>Yesterday Bell, my super fast ISP, started to redirect unfound urls to their own website (www.domainnotfound.ca). I have been very happy with Bell for the last few years and have been thinking of moving my cellphone subscription to them as soon as they support the android.

To Bell’s credit they do offer a way for you to opt out of the service however when you opt out instead of returning a DNS error they you get a blank page, not very useful for me. I have a habit of typing anything I am looking for into the address bar and then letting google take over. This works very well for me if I want to visit reddit I type reddit and google seems to figure out that I want to visit reddit. If instead I type “reddit bell dns hijacking” google still seems to figure out that they do not know what I am looking for and so they take me to a search results page. This is how I brows the Internet, I do everything from the Awesome Bar (the bar in Firefox that you type your url into). And yesterday Bell broke that.

NoRedirect (Firefox Extension Link) to the rescue!

NoRedirect lets the user take control of HTTP redirects. It can be used to interdict an ISP’s DNS search redirection hijacks, preview/screen “shortened” URLs (e.g., TinyURL), stop the annoying redirection of “smart” error pages, etc. — Source

This lets me set any url mattching the following regular expression http://www\.domainnotfound\.ca/* to be interpreted by Firefox as a DNS error giving me back my Awesome Bar and my ability to type anything I want into it and have google do all of the work!

I think this is an exteremly evil move by Bell and I am quite disappointed. at least Firefox + NoRedirect has saved the way I brows my internets. But this is another step by our ISP’s to erode our digital freedoms and net neutrality and another reason to move to TekSavvy. I should not have to resort to a software solution to preserve how I browse the Internet!</rant>

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!

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.

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