The Fringe

What: Larry the cow t-shirt graphics contest ...

Where: irc.freenode.net, #gentoo-artwork

Starts: Wed, Sep 01, 2010

Ends: Sun, Oct 31, 2010

Introduction:

Larry the cow is our prized mascot and he is not getting the respect he deserves. Just about every other Linux distribution, their mascot is adorned on t-shirts and other types of schwag, but not our Larry, he cannot even decide his gender. Please help up fix this terrible injustice by entering our contest and provide Larry the graphics he deserves. For more information visit this Forum Post.

The top 3 contestants will receive three t-shirts in their design, donated by the Gentoo Foundation. The judging panel includes Dawid W?gli?ski, Alex Legler, and your host David Abbott.

Requirments:

Preferred format is scalable vector graphics (SVG) but any of the industry standard vector graphics formats will be accepted.

How to Enter?

Please email your graphics to artwork@g.o

1. By making a submission to the contest, you agree to give unlimited, non-exclusive rights to the Gentoo Foundation for your submission.
2. This may include relicensing or trademarking the content the if required to protect it from unfair commercial usage.
3. You may, at your own discretion, also provide the content to any other party under some form of open license (including, but not limited to the full range of Creative Commons licenses, including re-sampling)
4. The Foundation needs to be informed of any future licensing.

Greetings! Today we have an excellent interview of two fine gentlemen, Mr. David Gallo and Mr. Cassius Adams from SevenL Networks Inc., conducted by our very own Joshua Saddler.

For those of you that have been around awhile, you will recognize the company represented in this interview. SevenL Networks Inc. has been an infrastructure sponsor for over six years now. David and Cassius took some time to fill us in on their use of Gentoo throughout their extensive operations. We hope you enjoy reading the complete interview which you will find here.

Discuss this!

What? Free and Open Source Software Conference (FrOSCon) - 5th year

When? 21st, August 2010 - 22nd, August 2010

Where? Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg | Grantham-Allee 20 53757 | Sankt Augustin, Germany

FrOSCon 5 is almost here, and Gentoo will be there!

Free Software and Open Source – these are the topics of FrOSCon. Many exciting programs with talks, workshops and an exhibition, supported by LUUSA and FrOSCon e.V. The Saturday night social event gives you the opportunity to exchange opinions with other visitors, speakers or volunteers.

Whether you're a developer, user, or simply curious, be sure and stop by our Gentoo booth. We will have Gentoo and Larry t-shirts, plus much more! See you there!

Long live Gentoo! As the quantity and quality of this year's entries will attest, Gentoo is alive, well, and taking no prisoners!

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest. There were 103 total entries using 7 different window managers and desktop environments.

The Winners

1. Nickname: Chopinzee. Desktop: E17 built from the official EFL overlay.

2. Nickname: whtwtr. Name: Shawn H. Desktop: Compiz window manager with the Xfce panel.

3. Nickname: GentooApologetin. Desktop: Custom Xfce.

4. Nickname: shpaq. Name: Micha? Laszuk. Desktop: Gnome with the Gant icon theme.

5. Nickname: nm. Desktop: dwm (simplicity is elegance).

For all the specifications and cool details please visit the main Gentoo screenshots page. Make sure to check out all the entries!

discuss this!

LinuxTag 2010 runs from June 9th to June 12th in Berlin, Germany. With more than 10,000 visitors last year, it is one of the biggest Linux and open source events in Europe.

You will find the Gentoo booth at Hall 7.2a, Booth 203a. Come and visit us! You will meet many of our developers and users, talk with us, plus get some of the Gentoo merchandise you have always wanted.

Discuss this!

Alex Legler contributed the draft for this announcement.

After the success of the 2009 Screenshot Contest the Contest Team is doing it again!

Gentoo Users, Developers, and Staffers are encouraged to submit their sweetest screenshots. Please head over to the 2010 Contest Page for all of the details.

You can visit this forum post for comments and suggestions. OK enough talk, get started tricking out that desktop.

On June 26th we again invite you to take part in this year's bike ride: "Gentoo White Nights in Russia". Gentoo White Nights is a nighttime bike ride along the most beautiful city in the world - St. Petersburg - in the most magical time - the White Nights.

As last year's experience showed, it's possible to ride in the rain, so the event will take place regardless of weather. The event will take place during the night from 26th to 27th June this year. The starting point is the Moskovsky railway station at 10:00 PM. If you'd like to join the Gentoo White Nights, contact Andrey Surganov or Alexey Shetsov.

Andrey Surganov contributed the draft for this announcement.

Bookkeeper, Accountant, or CPA

And that means? We are looking for help from the Gentoo Community to help us in Accounting/Finance. We are in the process towards the goal of tax-exempt status with the United States Internal Revenue Service as a non-profit corporation. If this is your background, we could really use your help.

Please contact trustees@gentoo.org or visit Gentoo Foundation for details.

Today we have an interview with Andrzej Wasylkowski, and since August 2005 he has been a PhD student at the Software Engineering Chair at Saarland University, Saarbrucken, Germany. His research field is software engineering, with strong focus on program analysis techniques and their application to automatic defect detection.

One of the projects he is involved in is checkmycode, which is a service that allows you to compare your code with the "wisdom of the crowds", over 200 million lines of C code from the Gentoo Linux distribution.

Please continue on and read the complete Andrzej Wasylkowski interview and learn all about the project and its use of Gentoo!

Gentoo has been accepted for its 5th consecutive year in the Google Summer of Code! GSoC pays college students $5000 to work full-time on an open-source project for a summer. Check out our GSoC 2010 homepage if you are interested in this year's GSoC for Gentoo. We particularly encourage applications from students who aren't already involved in Gentoo development—many of our students become Gentoo developers after a successful summer.

Interested students can browse Gentoo's project ideas. Student applications will be accepted starting March 29.

Developers, if you'd like to apply to be a mentor, you can do so on the webapp. Please read the mentoring guide before applying.

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

It's time again to fire up the ol' grill. Check out this itsy bitsy BBQ grill made out of an Altoids Sours tin. Instructables user vmspionage was inspired to build the little guy after seeing the eBq. [via Slashgear]

More:

• How-To: Spruce up an old BBQ
• USB BBQ
• How-To: Make your own BBQ sauce

Being on a train would not normally be worthy of a diary entry. However, I'm travelling not as part of my heretofore stable academic enquiries, but as a mostly-fledged member of the high-flying technological startup community. No, I haven't quite sold out; as of yesterday, I work four days a week for a bright-futured company in the general area of mobile and wireless broadband; the other working day will continue to be spent at Goldsmiths, where I retain most of my responsibilities (but not the management of the music-informatics OMRAS2 project, which finished at the end of August); this arrangement with Goldsmiths will continue for a year.

So, why? A number of factors came together to make this a very attractive opportunity. Firstly, as I've already mentioned, the research project whose technical side I was responsible for came to an end last month; although the project itself was interesting, and its existence was at least partly responsible for me having a permanent academic position, I think it's fair to say that there were all sorts of wetware headaches as a result. The end of the project was therefore a natural point to start afresh — and in particular, to try to focus on aspects of work that I enjoy. Secondly, my PhD students are largely getting towards the end of their studies; most should be submitting their dissertations in the next few months. While PhD students are usually an asset to an academic, it is true that they can take up significant amounts of time, particularly in the early stages; not having to guide any in the early stages of their research next year gives me the freedom to investigate other activities, and to try to broaden my experience. Thirdly, when the person who comes calling is as awesome as our CTO, and when the rest of the gang is full of names I recognize, well, I expect to learn a lot. (I already have!)

And of course, the fact that some of the underlying technology used in the company uses is software that I'm fairly familiar with is attractive; it would be good to show the world that there are more SBCL-using companies with a healthy business than just the poster child. If I'm lucky, the Free Software and Lisp-related content on this blog should noticeably increase, because although the academic life gives a huge freedom to think, it doesn't actually give a large amount of time to do very much with those thoughts; in this newly-acquired business role, as well as the inevitable all- hands pitching in until the small hours to make the demos work with bits of string and glue, I hope that there will be time to implement and reflect on interesting things.

Spotted on the MAKE Flickr pool, this funky-fine Morse code straight key made with a Two Pence piece.

2p Straight Key

More:
Sew a cute Morse code key leg strap

bookofjoe: 8 Circles. 1,000 Efforts by Tony Orrico.