Here Documents Magic
Check this two examples of here document in BASH.
First one, classic:
$ cat >file-sh<<EOF string="hello world" echo $string EOF
Second one, new magic I learnt today:
$ cat >file2-sh<<"EOF" string="hello world" echo $string EOF
There’s a big difference:
$ diff file-sh file2-sh 2c2 < echo --- > echo $string
First notice, and it saved my day!
Update: if you’re reading this post through your feed reader, the examples may look weird. Blame Tumblr: the way they generate the RSS it’s broken.
Getting in Touch With Local Linux Users
I’ve been doing some research to know how’s the situation of LUGs and distro-communities in Exeter and surrondings. I believe in the importance of going local (the results in Valencia were amazing, with two Barcamp Valencia in 6 months).
My results are not bad so far:
- Fedora ambassadors from UK (at least two people seem to be based in Exeter).
- South West people of the UK Team (Ubuntu LoCo, at least two Exonians).
- Devon and Cornwall GNU/Linux user group (the South West (UK) Linux User Group is closed, but this LUG it’s active!).
- Devon & Cornwall Perl Mongers (not strictly a LUG, but related).
Moreover I know there’s at least another fedorian in Exeter, and I would bet there’s a Gentoo guy too (there’s always a Gentoo guy! hehe).
That makes about 5 or 6 guys in the town that like Linux and actively use and kinda promote it. That’s great!
The DCGLUG has meetings in Paignton at regular basis. Although that’s not far away from Exeter, I wonder if it would be interesting to hang out for a beer and geek chatting with the local people.
Unpacked
Things are going more and more stable each day, and one of them arrived today: the Internet connection.
We have chosen Virgin broadband, and we have suffered the self-install kit that needs IE or Safari in order to activate the connection. Shame on you Virgin.
After some WTFs we got to activate the connection and everything seems OK, I’m pretty satisfied with the service (if you don’t take into account the non-sense of the activation process).
Tomorrow I’ll be back at work (remotely), and I hope I can resume all the halted stuff since I started moving to Exeter.
Packed
I’ve seen a photo like this, but I don’t remember where.
I no longer have a place in Valencia.
Not really, I’m leaving tomorrow, but officially today’s gonna be my last day on the Earth^W city of Valencia (and surroundings).
It’s been a good season. Valencia it’s not the best place I’ve lived ever, but it’s OK. I’m leaving a lot of friends here, what it’s sad… but awesome at the same time.
You may know I’m moving to Exeter, and I’m planning to retake my Fedora ambassador activities there.
The first step will be checking the usual suspects: Fedora UK and the UK Fedora ambassadors. It’s gonna be fun :)
Nautilus Flickr Uploader Reached 100 Authenticated Users
Yay! I just wanted to share the good news with you.
I’m planning some new stuff to add to the already full working features in Nautilus Flickr Uploader, but not now. Now it’s time to party!
Photo CC (by-nc-nd) by Nicole Hanusek.
Bugzilla for Humans
This is a very nice videocast by Johnathan Nightingale, and there’s more info (and a Vimeo video) in his blog post: Bugzilla for Humans.
Bugtracking is an important part of every open source project (well, I would say that it’s important to any software project), and I believe it’s the most nasty part of the community management too.
I have to deal with Bugzilla when I file a bug in the Fedora bugtracking system and the Gnome bugtracking system, and I agree with Johnathan that Bugzilla is scary and against the poor humans trying to file a bug. It’s even cruel, not only you found a disgusting bug, but when you want to contribute to fix it… you have to face Bugzilla!
The videocast it’s worth watching, meanwhile Bugzilla doesn’t turn into something more friendly.
Link: MongoDB and Ming; a Schema for a Schema-free NoSQL Database
Sourceforge rewrote the project pages of their hosting service to use MongoDB, a document based store (with binary JSON documents, also known as BSON), that it’s schema-free.
Today, in a SF mail, I notice that SF has released Ming, that is a Python layer over MongoDB to provide a schema for the schema-free store. So they liked MongoDB because it’s document oriented, fast and has simple, easy to use replication, but the schema-free feature can be a pain because you can’t make assumptions about document structures in your code, or at least you can’t make them easily when working with a big monster like SF.
It’s an interesting spin to the NoSQL idea: add schema to schema-free stores!
From Android and the Linux kernel community, by Greg Kroah-Hartman.
The whole post it’s worth reading, lemme quote another sentence Google shows no sign of working to get their code upstream anymore
. That’s important, IMHO.
It reminds me the complaint on the way Google is developing another open source project: Chrome (er, Chromium browser); they use several open source libraries, including them in the source tree, and forking existing FOSS code bits for Chromium like a rabbit makes babies: frequently, and usually, without much thought.
So if you want, you can find a pattern here. Google isn’t playing the open source community rules, they’re just using (abusing?) open source. Come on Google, give something back!
Please, Help Me to Be Cool!
Recently there’s a very interesting thread in Planet Perl about marketing or we suck at web design:
- Marketing the Entire Box (including the wrapper)
- More design love please…
- On Nagios, Thunk, Shinken and wrapper included marketing
I fully agree with those posts: the picture you show about your project is as important as the project itself. I think this is true in all the RoR projects I’ve seen so far. In fact, looking for a Trac substitute, I knew Redmine was a RoR application just for its appearance (well, I was lucky… it could have been a Django based application as well hehe).
How many times you have tried an application because of the screenshots? Yes, it looks cool, let’s make a try.
The problem is that not every developer has the skills or the good taste to make a cool website to support his project, and that sadly may affect the project success.
So, I bet there are good designers out there that want to contribute to the open source community. Would you adopt a project or developer?
PS: I would have liked to post a comment in the cited posts, but I don’t have an account. You guys should think about allowing comments of non-registered users.
