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O'Reilly Authors Get Jolted
O'Reilly authors won three of four Jolt Product Excellence Awards. The winners are:
- Prefactoring, by Ken Pugh
- The Art of Project Management, by Scott Berkun
- Producing Open Source Software, by Ken Fogel
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Donnie Berkholz speaks with LinuxCrazy
Developer Donnie Berkholz, who is a council member, the X maintainer and PR team lead, spoke with David Abbott of LinuxCrazy. Download the podcast.
He described how he became a developer as well as his work on X, the council, the public relations team and the Summer of Code project he's mentoring for. Donnie also recommended the best video cards if you support open source. He saw the Linux desktop's future as increasing integration and security. Here's how Donnie described how Gentoo makes progress and where to go from here:
"The more time I spend in Gentoo, the more I realize that it's the individual developers who really drive most of our innovations. They don't happen because the council makes a decision. They happen because the developer, or a few of them, think that it sounds like a cool idea, and make it happen. ..."
"Making Gentoo great is my biggest goal right now, and greatness is a process. It's not a place. So you can't get somewhere and say you're great. You always have to keep striving for it. For a while we've been content to stick with the status quo instead of striving for greatness, but we have to change that and to always improve Gentoo."
If you would rather read it, forums user dch24 created a transcript of the interview.
Gentoo Monthly Newsletter -- 26 May 2008
The May issue of the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter has been released. In this month's issue: Gentoo Foundation status, Summer of Code interview, network monitoring, and more!
Foundation officially reinstated by New Mexico
If you're interested in the legal standing of Gentoo, you can relax because in the past week, the State of New Mexico declared that the Gentoo Foundation Inc has returned to good standing and is free to do business. This accomplishment allows other aspects of the foundation's work to proceed again. The foundation takes care of Gentoo's intellectual property (copyrights, trademarks) and money. It ensures that nobody violates our copyrights and trademarks, serves as a place to hold money, and decides where to devote that money.
Thanks to everyone involved with returning Gentoo to good legal standing, and thanks to our community for your patience!
Joshua Jackson and Josh Nichols contributed the draft for this announcement.
2008.0_beta2 released
2008.0_beta2 is here. Thanks to you, our community, for testing beta1 and filing many bugs. You can help make 2008.0 amazing! Test out this beta and report any functionality issues you encounter. Since this is still a beta, we're looking only for bugs in functionality, not bugs in appearance such as desktop backgrounds or other artwork.
This should be the last beta and will be followed by the final 2008.0 release after further bug fixing.
Get 2008.0_beta2 from the usual places.
Gentoo Monthly Newsletter -- 24 April 2008
The April issue of the Gentoo Monthly Newsletter has been released. In this month's issue: Summer of Code, Interview with Hyves, Speedup your boot time... and more!
Council member speaks with LinuxCrazy
Council member Mike Frysinger, one of the most experienced and most active Gentoo developers, talked to David Abbott of LinuxCrazy. Download the podcast here.
Mike described his work on the toolchain (gcc, glibc, binutils) and embedded Gentoo, and he explained the short- and long-term goals of the Gentoo Council.
He also told a story about how and why he got into Linux and shortly after into Gentoo, explained the origins of both his nicks, vapier and SpanKY ("I came up with SpanKY because I needed something people would fear"), and described his typical day ("I wake up and keep programming until I fall asleep").
If you would rather read it, Marc Murphy created a transcript of the interview.
?ukasz Damentko contributed the draft for this announcement.
OpenRC and baselayout 2 will reach ~arch soon
OpenRC, the replacement for Gentoo's current services system (known as baselayout), will soon reach ~arch on all platforms. It replaces the previous bash-only rc system in baselayout with an rc system that has a C-based core and uses only POSIX-compliant shell code.
OpenRC runs natively on a wide variety of systems. Out of the box, it's compatible with Gentoo Linux, Gentoo/FreeBSD, Embedded Gentoo, and Gentoo VServers. It also works with FreeBSD and NetBSD and, once some installation problems get fixed, will be added to their package repositories, ports and pkgsrc.
Before upgrading, read the OpenRC Migration Guide so you update your system properly once OpenRC and baselayout 2 are installed.
Doug Goldstein contributed the draft for this announcement.
Foundation trustee speaks with LinuxCrazy
Roy Bamford, the newly elected President of the Gentoo Foundation's trustees, spoke with David Abbott from LinuxCrazy. You can download the podcast.
He talked about recent challenges the Gentoo Foundation faces, among other topics. You can learn about the reinstatement of the foundation, short- and long-term plans, a possible move to the Software Freedom Conservancy and answers to some common questions, like how you can contribute to Gentoo. On a more personal note, you can hear about Roy's long Linux and Gentoo experience, his hardware and the origin of his nickname, NeddySeagoon.
If you would rather read it, David Hubbard created a transcript of the interview.
David Abbott plans to interview more well-known Gentoo developers. Next on the list is Mike Frysinger, a member of the Gentoo Council and many Gentoo core projects like the base system and the toolchain. We'll keep you posted.
?ukasz Damentko contributed the draft for this announcement.
Summer of Code deadline pushed back to April 7
Thanks to overwhelming support from the open-source community, Google extended the deadline for student applications until April 7. If you'd like to spend your summer being paid by Google to work on Gentoo, this is your chance. This gives you until next Monday to work on your project idea. If you haven't yet submitted an application, now is the time. Students have submitted many interesting and unique ideas so far, and there's still room for your ideas. For more details, see our Summer of Code page.
Joshua Jackson and ?ukasz Damentko contributed the draft for this announcement.
2008.0_beta1 unleashed. No joke.
When we said "soon," even we didn't realize how soon it would be. 2008.0_beta1 is here. Your support and enthusiasm are greatly appreciated—thank you.
You can help make 2008.0 amazing! Test out this beta and report any functionality issues you encounter. Since this is the first beta, we're looking only for bugs in functionality, not bugs in appearance such as desktop backgrounds or other artwork. We expect to release a second beta once your testing has helped us fix problems with this first beta.
A migration to RPM was carefully consideredagain for this release, but in the end we decided to wait for the few remaining RPM-using distributions to migrate to the superior packaging format of ebuilds.
Get 2008.0_beta1 from the usual places.
Flower Electronics
Flower electronics produces simple and trustworthy synthesizer instruments. Currently offering 2 items - Battery Powered Noise Generator, and the Little Boy Blue Standard. You may notice there's not a single LED on the Boy Blue, which makes for crazy-long battery life - but also a uniquely understated look. The 12 patch-jacks alone are enough to occupy my attention. patching = cool-->fun - Flower Electronics
[Read this article] [Comment on this article]Maker's Notebook released into the wild
The Maker's Notebook was officially released today. From the O'Reilly Press Release:
Ask tech DIY enthusiasts, backyard scientists, and makers what their ultimate workshop notebook would look like (as the folks over at MAKE magazine did recently) and you'll get a truckload of ideas, opinions, and preferences. So the MAKE & CRAFT editors and staffers put their heads together. They boiled down all the feedback, crafted a distinctive design, and devised an ideal workshop notebook for makers of all ilks.
The result? The all-new Maker's Notebook (O'Reilly Media, $19.99). Created for makers, crafters, backyard scientists, inventors, and engineers--actually anyone with a creative bent--the journal comes with engineering graph paper packed between its sturdy electric blue cover. And in true maker style, this notebook is born/designed to be hacked, inside and out.
"Clearly, lots of DIYers dream of designing their own project notebooks. We incorporated as many ideas from this Notebook Braintrust as possible," explains Gareth Branwyn, a contributing editor to MAKE.
We've also created a web page for the Notebook and will be posting Notebook mod projects there, running contests, and posting pictures of users' Notebooks that they send in. So send us pics of your book and the projects you're designing in it.
The Notebook is now available in the Maker Shed. The Maker Shed is the only place where, when you buy the book, you also get two sheets of two-color pressure-sensitive stickers and a 1/2" rubber band closure.
Order yours HERE.
Related:
[Read this article] [Comment on this article]
Steam Driven symphony
While poking around on YouTube, I stumbled upon this video of a steam symphony held at the Brighton Fringe Festival in 2005. I don't think we've blogged about it before.
Steam Driven: An audio visual symphony generated through the movements and sound of a 16 tons Corliss steam engine and interactive digital technology. [Read this article] [Comment on this article]Pressure mounts for the Arduino-photograher
Flickr user Pianoman finds himself in an usually suspenseful situation with an Arduino project - So I built this little project for a friend. The idea is to take photos of a shuttle launch at down at Cape Canaveral. He has been doing this for a long time now... the routine goes like this: Accredited photographers are admitted to dedicated sites very close to the launch pad a day or two before the launch. But you have to leave your cameras there, armed and ready to start shooting on their own when the launch happens. And you can't use a clock, because the actual launch time gets moved around all the time....
He previously used a simple box that would trigger the cameras based on a microphone picking up the roar from the shuttle engines. But that way you loose a few seconds, the time it takes the sound to travel.
So our new idea was to use seismic sensors (geophones) to pick up the vibration and trigger the cameras sooner and hopefully more reliably!
The problem is that there was no way to calibrate the system... we don't know how strong the seismic signal will be. That means, our setup could either: do nothing... or shoot 36 images of the shuttle sitting on its pad, because an alligator was walking by (yes, they do that).... *keeping my fingers crossed* . . . and? - and!? Our little geophone-duino is due back by now - gotta find out how this turned out! Guess we'll have to wait for that film to be developed first - Trigger happy
Related:
HOW TO - Take photos of the Space Shuttle and Space Station
