Recently I have been blogging about a project I have been hacking on called Ubuntu Accomplishments.
This is an accomplishments system that can be used to identify when people have accomplished various things in the Ubuntu project and reward them with trophies. The plan also makes additional skills and accomplishments more discoverable and provides better help for people to get started. While designed for Ubuntu, the system can be used for other projects and also for local applications (e.g. completing Level 1 on a game). Accomplishments in community projects are verified for their integrity so people can’t fake their trophies.
I wanted to present a video demo of the system working so far:
Can’t see it? See the video here!
You can find out more about the project here and the code is available in the following branches:
Now, this is really early in the stages of development. If you grab the code you will find various bits that are not yet implemented, but the core idea works.
Things we need to do next:
I plan on writing a longer blog entry about how the system works later for those who are interested in contributing.
I’ve had a number of people suggest Gwibber could use a new logo, but nobody has actually stepped up and designed anything. Recently I had the good fortune to chat with Abi Rasheed on IRC who volunteered to help. He has put together a couple of great concepts, and we would like to gather some feedback.
I’ve posted the concepts on the wiki, please check them out and provide some feedback.
Thanks!
As I mentioned in a recent post, gedit snippets can help you write code more quickly, and with fewer errors, than writing all of your code manually. Snippets work by expanding small chunks of text into complete combinations of code boilerplate and variable/attribute placeholders. Using these pre-configured combinations of boilerplate and placeholders frees you to focus on the bits of code and text that are materially relevant to your work at hand.
You can enable the gedit snippets plugin by selecting Edit > Preferences > Plugins > Snippets.
There are four components to using snippets: confirming the language or syntax setting, entering the snippet ID, activating the snippet, and completing the snippet by entering the appropriate attributes or variables into the placeholder text areas.
The first thing is to make sure that the file type is set to correspond with the type of file you’re working on. If you’re starting from an existing file, gedit will attempt to set the file type for you automatically. If you’re starting a brand new file, or if gedit hasn’t correctly identified the file type, you can also manually set or change the file type.
Once you have that in place, the most difficult part is actually remembering the snippets that are available. You can view, edit, and create snipppets using the Manage Snippets window (see Tools > Manage Snippets). Once you know the relevant snippet IDs, all you need to do is type a snippet ID, and press the tab key. The tab key is what activates the snippet.
After you press the tab key, gedit converts that brief snippet of text into a combination of boilerplate text and appropriate variable or attribute placeholders. Pressing the tab key again will move the cursor to the next placeholder area.
Here’s an example. I’m starting from a blank page, and am writing a new Mallard XML file. The snippet ID to start a new Mallard page file is just the word, “page.”
Simple enough! Just enter the snippet ID, press the tab key, watch as gedit inserts the boilerplate text, and then use the tab key to maneuver through the placeholder areas.
There are currently snippets for numerous languages and syntaxes, but coverage of each language varies, and some snippets may not include the most recent language features. Give gedit snippets a try. If you don’t see a snippet feature that you’d like to use, file a bug in the gedit bug tracker.
As a teenager, I ran a small poetry and short story magazine. It had a suitably overwrought title, was lots of fun and put me in touch with a whole load of people who’ve influenced who I am today.
One such person was Geoff Stevens who ran another, far longer established, magazine called Purple Patch. I didn’t realise at the time but Purple Patch was one of the best respected and widely known small-press poetry publications in the UK. Both Geoff and Purple Patch were based in West Bromwich, and for a little while, Pebble Mill. These were far off and exotic lands to the teenage me, living in a windy ex-pit village in the north-east.
When, a few years later, I found myself living in the West Midlands, I had a go at getting in touch with Geoff; no more than a couple of answerphone messages. Then other things got in the way and, well, now it’s too late.
I was sad to read, today, that Geoff died a few days ago. So, thanks Geoff for your encouragement and I’m sorry I didn’t try to call again.
Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.
TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?
DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.
Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine.
I read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder! Worldlabel.com, a manufacture of labels offers Open Office / Libre Office labels templates for downloading in ODF format which will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels
A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was "Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for". His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of entertainers in Perth, a company set to use Drupal to take over the world with Entertainers.Biz.
Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!
More and more people are discovering free software. Many people only do so after weeks, or even months, of using it. I wonder, for example, how many Firefox users actually know how free Firefox really is—many of them realise that you can get it for free, but find it hard to believe that anybody can modify it and even redistribute it legally.
When the discovery is made, the first instinct is to ask: why do they do it? Programming is hard work. Even though most (if not all) programmers are driven by their higher-than-normal IQs and their amazing passion for solving problems, it’s still hard to understand why so many of them would donate so much of their time to creating something that they can’t really show off to anybody but their colleagues or geek friends.
Sure, anybody can buy laptops, and just program. No need to get a full-on lab or spend thousands of dollars in equipment. But... is that the full story?
