Ramble On

Next Events in Reading

We’ve been in Reading for 15 days yet, and we’re starting to know the city, so let’s attend a couple of events in September:

• Silicon Corridor Linux User Group: 19:30h September 8, at Back of Beyond Wetherspoon pub in King’s Road.
• Reading Geek Night: 19:30h September 14, at Copa Bar in King’s Road.

It’s quite a walk from home, but I like the idea of meeting some of the local geeky people. I bet the first couple of times we won’t notice the distance (Alex says that at least two meetings are needed to get a opinion, she may be right).

By the way, there’s a couple of events in London next week too: Linux & Open Source Expo and Cloud Expo Europe. Unfortunately I have to work and I can’t attend those, but it may be interesting if you’re in the area.

Update: seems that Cloud Expo Europe and Linux and OSS London Event have been moved to 2nd and 3rd of February 2011.

Title Editing and a New Repository

Yesterday I released Nautilus Flickr Uploader 0.07 with just one new feature: photo title editing.

It was a really easy to implement feature, that I don’t know why I hadn’t implemented until now, because it’s very useful.

In fact, I pushed the changes to GIT repo about two weeks ago, and I found myself using the development code instead the previous public version that I had installed in my personal laptop. I was used to setting the photo titles in the Filckr website after uploading, but now I feel it’s more comfortable doing it in the application.

I know it’s a very small enhancement, and I released 0.06 less than one month ago, but I really think it’s worth it, so it’s the only noticeable change.

That fast release cycle made me think about updates. Currently there are +550 Flickr users that have authorized the application, and I’m curious: which version are they running? Do they upgrade when there’s a new version?

Because of that I’ve decided to give better support to upgrades providing a Fedora repository (when I have some spare time, I’ll try to create a PPA for Ubuntu/Debian).

I know it implies certain responsibility, because maintaining a repository means that any new release will be installed automatically. Starting with 0.07 I’m going to sign the RPM packages with my GPG key (EA112704), although I expect people to have good practices such as checking the packages that are going to be installed in every update.

Using the repository it’s very straightforward:

wget http://www.usebox.net/jjm/nautilus-flickr-uploader/repo/nautilus-flickr-uploader.repo
su -c "cp nautilus-flickr-uploader.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/"

And now you can yum udpate (if you’re already using the application), or yum install nautilus-flickr-uploader if you’re a new user.

Besides that, yesterday I recorded a screencast showing 0.07 in action. It’s just couple of minutes, but anyway… it might be worth watching if you don’t know the application.

Green

I’m really enjoying our Sunday walks by the Thames.

Back Online!

It’s been a horrible week working with a 3G dongle from Vodafone UK, because we have very bad coverage at home, and it had a 10% UMTS signal at best (at worst, back to GPRS!).

Finally Virgin folks managed to enable my broadband connection, with a new shitty cable modem with WiFi access point integrated (it can filter by MAC address in a kind of parental control, because by default it trusts every device and you have to list the blocked ones). For some reason the good old Cisco cable modem I was using in Exeter doesn’t work in Virgin’s network in Reading (too bad, I don’t like that Netgear crap).

The Thames, crossing Reading

But that was Thursday evening, and before that the 3G dongle stopped working (I think it was because we used all the 3GB transfer), so I had to top it up with £15 to get it working for another month (and 3GB transfer).

The USB dongle has a SIM card on it, like any mobile phone, and it has an associated number. So I though I could go to any Vodafone shop and ask for a regular top up; but it isn’t that easy.

The problem is you don’t know the number associated to the SIM card if you don’t install the Windows application provided by Vodafone. With that dashboard application you can top up and check different things that aren’t supported in Linux yet.

I got my top up voucher, but because I didn’t have the phone number, finally I had to install the Windows application to enable the 3G again using the voucher code.

I don’t understand why they don’t put the phone number in the box or in receipt when you buy the dongle, so you can do a regular top up without bothering with a Windows application. I have the chance to access to a Windows machine, but what would happen if I couldn’t?

I must confess the 3G dongle was very useful when we arrived to Reading and (sic) got lost because I put the wrong address in the trip plan (shame on me!), but after suffering it for a whole week plus the annoying top up process… I hope I won’t use one of those evil connections for a long while!

After the problems with Virgin’s self-installation kit when we arrived Exeter (it requires Windows or Mac OS X, although it’s a web based process), I’m very disappointed with the OSS unfriendliness of UK’s telecommunication companies so far.

Nautilus Flickr Uploader 0.06 Released

This is mainly a bug fix release, with a new translation added (Arabic, that’s nine translations already in Transifex!), and I moved from the deprecated Gtk2::SimpleList to Gtk2::Ex::Simple::List.

About 6 months ago I was celebrating 100 authenticated users according to Flickr, and today I just realized that right now there are 504 authenticated users. How amazing is when someone is using something you did and shared, isn’t it?

I’ve updated the Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu packages, and you can get them all from Nautilus Flickr Uploader website (as usual).

I’ve updated the the package review request, and someone heard my call for a DEB maintainer, so the application may be submitted to Debian too. Great!

One Week Left

Six months ago we were unpacking in Exeter, and in less than seven days, we’ll be packing again. We’re leaving Exeter and Devon, and after the 15th of August we’ll be settled in Reading (Berkshire).

Our reasons to move are professional, because I have a deal with my current company to start doing business stuff in UK, and that means being near of London.

Moreover Alex is looking for a school for the next course, and for some reason, Exeter isn’t the best place to find a job. May be it’s the good weather or the high quality of life, I really don’t know.

In those six months I’ve tried to get involved with the Linux local communities in the area, going to D&C GNU/Linux User Group meetings (although we just went once, because one hour train isn’t what I call local) and E-Space meetings (in Exeter, but unfortunately not really Linux/OSS related); but I somewhat failed.

Moreover I’ve lost track with the Fedora ambassadors list, mainly because it isn’t that easy to start in a new country, and when things started to stabilize, the ambassador list got lost in my TODO list. Shame on me.

Anyway, not everything’s lost. I’ve been planing different initiatives that, because I ran out of time, I won’t start in Exeter, but hopefully I’ll manage to run in Reading.

One of them will be based in the public library. From my experience in Exeter (and I believe this applies to all public libraries in Devon), they have some spaces where you can put non-profit advertisements, and it can be a good start for a Fedora/OSS information point.

I can be in the library for one hour every week (Saturday morning, for example), and give lightning talks about Fedora and OSS to anyone interested, and it could even be a good start point for a release party for the upcoming Fedora 14.

So, I want to catch up with the list and my local ambassador activities, and get in touch with the local users group in Reading (SCLUG). I really want it to work this time, because I’m going to stay in Reading for a long while.