Hoewel ik zelf helaas één van de redenen ben voor de tussentijdse verkiezingen, wil ik toch opnieuw iets betekenen voor Ubuntu Nederland. Daarom stel ik mij kandidaat voor de gemeenschapsraad. Op de stemwebsite heb ik de volgende motivatie gegeven:

Ondanks mijn misstap eerder dit jaar wil ik toch iets blijven betekenen voor Ubuntu Nederland. Dat denk ik te kunnen doen door mij kandidaat te stellen voor de gemeenschapsraad.

Als gemeenschapsraadslid hoop ik mee te kunnen denken bij de verschillende uitdagingen van onze lokale gemeenschap: de herkeuring, het oprichten van een stichting en het zorgen voor een aanwezigheid op zoveel mogelijk plekken on- en offline.

Ik heb veel ideeën en meningen en een duidelijk beeld van wat in mijn ogen een goede richting zou zijn voor de toekomst: professionalisering van het bestuur en versterking van de banden binnen de gemeenschap. Alleen dan kunnen we er zijn voor elkaar, alleen dan kunnen we naar derden Ubuntu uitdragen.

Met meer dan vijf jaar ervaring in de internationale Ubuntu-gemeenschap en grote betrokkenheid bij de organisatie van Ubuntu Nederland zelf, kan ik mijn weg goed vinden in de wereld waarin de lokale gemeenschap zich bevindt. Canonical Ltd. heeft mij in 2010 voor beide Ubuntu Developer Summits gesponsord en toen GUADEC in Den Haag was, was ik betrokken bij de organisatie.

De kennis en contacten die ik opgedaan heb met die activiteiten komt goed van pas bij een functie in de gemeenschapsraad. De mix van technische en bestuurlijke activiteiten geven mij een brede basis.

Denk jij dat je ook bij kunt dragen aan de organisatie? Je hebt nog een week om je kandidaat te stellen voor de gemeenschapsraad van Ubuntu Nederland. Heb je al stemrecht, ga dan naar de stemwebsite en geef je op. Heb je nog geen stemrecht? Vraag het dan eerst aan bij de gemeenschapsraad.

Teken van leven

Beste raadsleden,

Het is lang geleden sinds ik voor het laatst mijn Ubuntu-mail geopend heb. Het zal ergens in de laatste week van april zijn geweest dat ik mijn IRC-cliënt voor het laatst afsloot en vanaf dat moment heb ik alles van Ubuntu zoveel mogelijk genegeerd. Het heeft nu ongeveer vijf maanden geduurd.

Dat is onacceptabel.

Gezien mijn duidelijk vertoonde ergenis over de afwezigheid en onbereikbaarheid is mijn eigen gedrag hypocriet en slecht. Ik wil dan ook mijn oprechte excuses aanbieden aan de gemeenschapsraad en aan de gehele gemeenschap van Ubuntu Nederland. Ik hoop in deze mail wat uit te kunnen leggen en dingen te kunnen regelen. Ik hoop dat ik nog een paar dingen recht kan zetten. Over mijn eigen positie heb ik wel mijn twijfels. Dat ik verdween was al erg genoeg, maar dat ik dat deed zonder iets te zeggen was onvergefelijk.

Het is best wel raar dat net nadat ik verkozen was tot voorzitter van Ubuntu Nederland volgens het door mij uitgedokterde organisatievoorstel, ik plotseling verdween. Waar sloeg dat op? Het proces werd in gang gezet door school: in de laatste week van april namen we afscheid van onze middelbare school, de eerste twee weken van mei waren een vakantie die we gebruikten om te leren voor de eindexamens die in de tweede helft van mei waren. Daar was ik erg druk mee en het was op zichzelf niet raar om vanwege de eindexamens een tijdje wat rustiger aan te doen bij Ubuntu Nederland. Maar dan had ik dat natuurlijk wel aan moeten geven.

Er speelde echter meer. Ik ben actief geweest voor Ubuntu vanaf het begin van 2006. Tot begin dit jaar ben ik actief gebleven voor de internationale gemeenschap. Gedurende die tijd wisselde mijn motivatie sterk, maar ik bleef wel steeds actief. Mijn eerste echte betrokkenheid bij Ubuntu Nederland kwam pas relatief laat, toen ik met Sebastian Schauenburg en Jan Claeys sprak over onze nationale LoCo tijdens de UDS in Brussel, in mei 2010. Ik ben vanaf dat moment steeds meer betrokken geraakt bij Ubuntu Nederland, omdat ik werk zag liggen en dat oppakte, want ik vond dat bepaalde dingen beter konden en heb over veel dingen wel een mening. Terwijl ik zo steeds verder betrokken raakte bij de organisatie van UNL negeerde ik wel steeds een knagend gevoel dat het mij aan motivatie ontbrak.

Tijdens het laatste jaar van de middelbare school veranderde ik als persoon ook behoorlijk. Met die veranderingen verschoven ook mijn interesses en Ubuntu verdween daarbij meer en meer naar de achtergrond. Toen ik eind april dus ineens mijn volle aandacht richtte op school en op de sociale dingen daaromheen, had ik ook al een motivatieprobleem. Eigenlijk had ik mij al liever niet kandidaat willen stellen voor het voorzitterschap, maar omdat ik vond dat er niemand anders was die het stokje op zou pakken zoals ik dat wilde, besloot ik er toch voor te gaan. Dat wreekte zich, want toen ik eenmaal een tijdje de Ubuntu-mail gesloten hield, voelde dat eigenlijk best wel goed. Een rust daalde over mij neer en ik bleef het maar afstellen om naar de mail te kijken.

Omdat ik het zo wegduwde en omdat ik druk bezig was met school, verdween het uit mijn hoofd. Voor ik het wist waren er zo een paar weken voorbij. Op dat moment wist ik dat er een hele dikke stapel mail op me zou staan te wachten wanneer ik terug zou komen. De rust van een Ubuntu-loos bestaan trok me ook nog steeds en ik bleef het maar afschuiven. Uiteindelijk kon ik mijzelf er niet meer toe bewegen mijn mail te openen. Ik had er geen zin in en ik schaamde mij. Toen was het zomaar september.

Ik schaam mij nog steeds. Ik heb mij gedragen op een manier die in gaat tegen wat ik wil zijn. Ik bied nogmaals mijn oprechte excuses aan.

Hoe nu verder? Ik heb de logs van de vergaderingen vluchtig doorgelezen en ik moet zeggen dat ik erg blij ben met hoe het toch nog gaat. De gemeenschapsraad laat zien dat ze zich goed kan redden zonder de voorzitter. De dingen gaan gewoon door en volgens mij zijn we inmiddels zelfs succesvol van hoster gewisseld. Mijn complimenten. Het regelmatig vergaderen binnen een vaste structuur lijkt zijn vruchten af te werken. De gemeenschapsleiding is echter onzichtbaar zonder hoofd, dat verrast me niet, want dat is het gevolg van de natuur van de leiding. Daarnaast valt me op dat het vooral Thomas lijkt te zijn die aan dingen trekt. Dat is geweldig van Thomas, maar het zou gezonder zijn wanneer meer mensen de kar trekken.

Ubuntu Nederland kan dus prima zonder mij. Nu is de vraag, wat moet er gebeuren met mij? Het organisatievoorstel dat ik zelf geschreven heb is niet mild over wat ik gedaan heb: jullie hadden mij 10 juni al er uit mogen gooien. Toch is Ronnie slechts vervangend (interim?) LoCo Contact gemaakt en Thomas voorzitter van de vergaderingen. Op Launchpad sta ik nog als voorzitter.

Ik vind dat ik het recht verspeeld heb om zelf te beslissen of ik in functie wil blijven. Dat is aan de gemeenschapsraad, misschien zelfs wel aan de stemgerechtigden. Ik vraag dus aan jullie wat jullie willen met mij. Ik twijfel of ik het in me heb een actieve voorzitter te zijn die overal aan trekt, ook bij promotie e.d.. Ik zou best willen blijven bijdragen aan de organisatie van Ubuntu Nederland in de gemeenschapsraad of gemeenschapsleiding of misschien als digitale voorzitter. Door mijn studie informatica aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen heb ik mijn motivatie nu wel weer herpakt. Maar ik zal wel iemand zijn die misschien minder hard achter evenementen aan zou rennen dan bijvoorbeeld Thomas, ik zou dat aan anderen over laten. Maar goed, dan moeten jullie mij nog wel willen. Het ligt bij jullie. Ik zou het begrijpen wanneer jullie het vertrouwen in mij verloren hebben.

Het spijt me.

Met vriendelijke groeten,
–
Sense Hofstede

http://www.sensehofstede.nl/

You see, I wrote that blog post in a very short time, directly after the idea came up in my head. Without doing any fact-checking, without even proofreading, I had written a piece on a sensitive issue and published it without making sure I wasn’t talking complete crap. Not smart.

First of all, I should have realised when writing that blog post—and previous pieces on the Canonical-Banshee issue—that I am a mere external commentator who has only circumstantial experience with the events surrounding the issue.

I should have also known that you should never say something you cannot prove. I stand corrected on my assumption, which became an allegation when I published it, that GNOME is a USA-dominated project. I confused company/project culture with human culture, as one commenter on the flawed post pointed out correctly. There are in fact many, many Europeans at key positions in the GNOME community, just as much as there are Americans fulfilling pivotal roles for the Ubuntu project. I could have learned that only by going to GNOME’s Wikipedia page.

I learned my lesson and I would like to sincerely apology to my readers for breaking their trust by publishing such a badly founded piece. I assume that no one was insulted by incorrectly being called American or European.

The year 2010 has been a tumultuous one for me. On 2 February I finally became an Ubuntu Member, in May and October I attended the two UDSes, and in July I helped the organisation of GUADEC 2010 in The Hague. In October I also became the LoCo Contact of Ubuntu Nederland.

The year 2010 was also the year that my final year at secondary school started. An important transition in anyone’s life. It is very important for me to score high on my exams, but apart from the need for more focus on school I’m also changing as a person.

When I joined the Ubuntu community I was in my first year of secondary school. As someone diagnosed with a mild version of Asperger’s syndrome and ADD in an unfamiliar environment, I didn’t make a lot of contact on school right away. In a new social environment it takes a while before I learn what to do.  The Ubuntu community was an open, welcoming place where I could find company and kind people to talk to, without the fuss that accompanies real-life conversations.

During the years I contributed to Ubuntu I learned a lot and met many kind people. It has been a wonderful experience to have the privilege to work together with such great persons. However, the last five years have been my puberty years, so it would be strange if those would have left me unchanged. As my social skills improved and my school life started to become busier and busier, I felt less and less need to be present in the Ubuntu community.

My lack of time and the decreasing need for community aggravate an increasing lack of motivation. Often I sit behind the computer, feeling bad about myself because I feel I ought to be contributing to Ubuntu, while I’m not. This makes me associate feelings of guilt and dissatisfaction with Ubuntu. I do not want to associate negative feelings with Ubuntu.

I do not want to waste energy and time that I need so much for my final exams. I do not want to turn my great memories of Ubuntu into something bad. I do not want to disappoint people who expect me to do things. Therefore, I have decided to retire from the Ubuntu community and stop before things go wrong. I feel a kind of melancholic sadness while writing this, but, to be honest, also some kind of relief.

I will stop all my work for Ubuntu in the international community. I will not quit as Ubuntu Nederland LoCo Contact. My work for that community will continue as usual for now.

Jorge, the Unity Places API still looks awesome to me, and probably will be playing with it when it becomes public. Now I’ll feel free to do just what I want, so I may be playing a bit more with code. Writing a Unity Place would be a fun exercise.

To all those countless people who I met in the Ubuntu community, I want to say: thank you for being there. Ubuntu was fun because of you. Thank you so much. There are many people who helped me out, but I want to especially thank – in alphabetic order – Carlos de Avillez, Jorge Castro, Jan Claeys, Laura Czajkowski and Dr Vish for their patience with me and for their indestructible enthusiasm, which has been my source of motivation during those years.

I am sorry if I disappoint you by leaving. I do not think that this leave will be forever, maybe I will see you again later, when I come back.

This cycle I will probably be giving most of my attention to my role of LoCo Contact for Ubuntu NL, which I assumed Saturday 30 October 2010, while waiting for my plane in the Caribe Royale lobby. I aim to strengthen the structure of the LoCo, making sure we finally get a clear organisation and can act decisively.

That is my most important goal, but there are more. I want to work together with Vish to make sure the One Hundred Paper Cuts project will be a success for Natty, just like it has been for the past few cycles.

The Bug Squad Mentorship programme will see some experimenting to test ways to improve this vital project. It is my goal to help to make the programme ready for starting to deliver good new triagers to the Ubuntu community.

My last goal is to contribute more to the Ayatana project, especially to Unity and to help Unity Places gain traction. I’m not exactly sure how I will contribute to Unity, but it is a great, fun way to learn something new.

These are my main goals and this is what I will be focussing on. I will probably do something to previous areas I contributed to, but not as much as I used to. Since this is my last year in secondary school, I have less time to spend and I also want to spread my contributions not as thin as before.

In half a year I will review my goals and see if I succeeded!

Mijn vorige rol was die van ‘internationaliseringsteam’. Ik moest toen zorgen dat er meer uitwisseling plaats zou vinden tussen de internationale gemeenschap en Ubuntu NL. Nu ook wil ik graag die rol blijven vervullen.

Wanneer mensen vragen hebben over Ubuntu NL, over de internationale gemeenschap, of hulp nodig hebben bij het verkrijgen van Ubuntu Membership, dan kun je zo met mij in contact komen:

• Mail naar sense AT ubuntu PUNT com;
• Ping sense in het #ubuntu-nl-team IRC-kanaal;
• Stuur me een PB op het forum.

Geef deze informatie door aan iedereen die er belang bij heeft! Ik wil graag iedereen helpen die een vraag heeft, wees niet bang om er een te stellen.

Je kunt natuurlijk ook nu hier een reactie achterlaten.

In my luggage I didn’t make room for any laptop or netbook, so for the duration of the two weeks I will be offline. This will severely limit my capabilities to respond to email, comments and IRC conversations.

The UDStream-based WordPress plugin I’m developing, Sociaal, will not be updated during those two weeks, despite its lack of doing the tricks it says it learned. Updates to fix this will arrive after I return.

My partial fix for the Application Indicators bug I was working on will probably be finished by someone else.

If there is anything else: feel free to mail me, but from Friday 6 August up to and including Friday 20 August I will be unavailable.

/away

Fortunately, after a tip from someone on IRC I had already managed to get hold of the ‘sense’ nickname on Freenode. Despite the fact that now I have to cope with everything that makes sense on Freenode, I’ve decided to move mostly towards the nickname ‘sense’. There is a pending request on Launchpad from me to get the person who’s currently using ‘sense’ robbed of his nickname (inactive since registration), and I’ve already moved my wiki page from Qense to SenseHofstede.

In case ‘sense’ isn’t available, like on Twitter, I moved to ‘sehof’. On Identi.ca I’m also using the same username for the sake of consistency. On social networks, where the length of the username doesn’t matter, I am now using ‘sensehofstede’.

Summary

• Mostly: sense
• Twitter and Identi.ca: sehof

Blog

I’ve also registered a new domain name: sensehofstede.nl, and set my blog over. The new theme is completely own work, and a bit of an experiment. It’s still very much Work-In-Progress, and any feedback would be very welcome. I’m keeping the ‘qense.nl’ domain name, but it redirects to the new domain name.

Activities

Most people know me as a member of the Ubuntu Bug Control team, which I fist applied to in 2006, first joined in 2007 and then rejoined in 2008. That last year was the year I started to really contribute significantly to Ubuntu and slowly started to show my face at more and more different places. I’m a bug triager, foster-parent of Nautilus, and a Brainstorm Idea Reviewer.

Ubuntu Wanted is also a project I’ve started, but it’s really behind schedule for something that was discussed during UDS-J in Barcelona. I apologise for that; the Drupal module just grew too big and Launchpad integration was too hard for it to become something satisfying. However, I’ve restarted the project and am currently working on writing an implementation with Django when I’ve got some time on my hands. The code can be found in lp:ubuntu-wanted, but please bear in mind that I’ve already got something completely different on my own work-station. However, I wait with committing it until it works and doesn’t throw errors with everything you do. At the moment most work is going into writing Django Middleware that injects a connected and authenticated Launchpad object in the request object.

As you can see on the Classroom wiki-page there are two sessions planned about Adopt-an-Upstream; I will do the first at 4 March and Jorge Castro will do the second at 18 March. If you’re interested in working on a specific area or with a certain upstream, but would like to know more about it: come to the session!

Names
In spite of what (too) many people seem to think, is my first name not English nor a nickname. My full name is Sense Egbert Hofstede, but I usually just use Sense Hofstede, which should be pronounced like this: [ˈsɛn.sə ˈɦɔf.steːdə]. The first name derived from the Germanic derivation Sint and changed via Sent and Sens to Sense. It means ‘sent’. My last name is the Dutch word for ‘homestead’. I’m the sixth Sense of the family, ‘Sense’ is common in my progeny.

My first name is often already taken whenever I need to pick a nickname, so in the end of 2005 I came up with ‘qense’. It’s close to my real name, but since the first letter is replaced with a not-so-common letter  usually available. At least it’s not used as the name for graphical interfaces, sexual education campaigns, margarine, companies, charities or bands.

In the morning there was more snow than expected already, but transportation was still — somewhat — possible. However, it snowed a lot during the ample hour — just a few minutes slower than usual —  it took me to get from my home village Veenwouden — actually Feanwâlden, since the Frisian names have been made the official ones in our municipality at the beginning of this year — to the city of Leeuwarden, which is where my school is, and when I arrived at school I was one of the few people that had made it. Inside there was tea and coffee and outside students were throwing snowballs at each other.

It quickly became clear that it was not doable to give lessons and therefore the day was cancelled. A lot of the buses didn’t show up, or were very slow and the trains had delays as well — later on the day the public transport would be almost completely stalled — but a few friends and I were able to catch a train back home. I left my bike at school, where it will have to stay for the Christmas Holidays because today has been cancelled as well; the Christmas breakfast, the Christmas Service and the Christmas ball.

The morning rush hour was one of the five worst rush hours ever, with more than 670 kilometres of traffic jam in a country with 16-17 million inhabitants, 116.500 km of road and an area of 41.528 km² — 18% of that is water. Many people decided not to show up at work, take a day off or go home early.

This house is For Sale!

Because all my work will be stalled for a week and a day starting tonight. Next week is the traditional ‘Classical Trip’ that is common for grammar schools, at least in the Netherlands, which is a bit in the spirit of a Grand Tour. Every year the fifth grade — the sixth is too filled with preparations for the exams — goes to either Rome or Greece. My year is going to Greece, where we will tour the country and visit most noteworthy places. We’re the tour guides.

I’m really looking forward to it. Not only is it currently 30 °C in Athens, whereas it’s 13 °C here, it’s also great to be away with friends. To the sun!

(We’ll be heading to Brussels Airport — cheaper than Amsterdam — at 23.30 this evening and depart to Athens at 6.00 in the morning. We’ll be back in the evening of Saturday the 17th.)

A good way of finding tasks to work on is the list of packages without direct subscribers — people that watch a package for new bug reports and keep it in shape — composed by Brain Murray. The packages on this list don’t have someone to look after them, so they often have a lot of ‘dead wood’, bugs that are old and haven’t been commented on for a long time. You could ask if the problem is still there, and close the bug otherwise.

There are probably also a lot of old bugs that are fixed in the Ubuntu release on which development is focussing right now. These bugs, like all bugs that are fixed in the development version of Ubuntu, should be set to Fix Released, unless they are specifically about a bug in a specific package version in a stable release. Look at Bugs/Status for more information about the meanings of the different bug statuses.

Next to the dead wood there are the normal bugs, you can handle these like you would handle any other new bug. Because these bugs are often not frequently being looked after you’ll won’t have much trouble to find one that’s easy to start your triaging career with.

Some people would like to triage all bugs for a whole package. In that case you adopt a package, which means you first triage all bugs reported against your chosen package and then subscribe to the bugmail for that package to keep an eye on it. More information about that is at BugSquad/AdoptPackage.

Triaging bugs is a very good way to help Ubuntu, get involved!

We mostly went to France to see Paris and Versailles. Next to two trips to Paris — including the Louvre, free for citizens of the European Union under 26 and everyone  under 18, €9,- for adults — and one to Versailles — huge, but I like the Louvre better — we also went to see Fontainebleau, with its huge Château de Fontainebleau, though less large than the Louvre and Versailles.
Paris is a beautiful city and the public transparent. It’s far easier to go to a train station outside the city, but within Île-de-France and take the train to the city than to park your car in the centre. When travelling through Paris by car you won’t reach the maximum speed often.

Because two weeks of Paris would be a bit too much we went to Southern Bavaria as well. This region is quite different from Paris’s region. It’s a lot more mountaineous and the traffic is less dense. We went to see the famous castle Neuschwanstein for the second time — it was still worth it — and the cities of Lindau — a nice town at the shore of the Bodensee — and to the busy and clogged city of Munich. If you’re in the Alps I also recommend to go a day on a hike in the mountains, the view is beautiful.

Since desktops aren’t that easy to take with you in your luggage, I won’t be reachable during those two weeks, apart for the lucky few that happen to know my cellphone number.

While planning this post I suddenly realized that maybe this post doesn’t have that much use. I’m not as much a part of the community anymore like I used to be. Not that I played a very important role or did a lot, but I did more for Ubuntu that I do now. Most of my contributions consist of bug reporting and an occasional suggestion or patch.

However, I would like to do more for Ubuntu. Maybe I should start working on Ubuntu Wanted again. When I’m back I’ll reconsider the project. Current options are: completely abandon the project, continue work on the current code and my favourite: examine the posibility of extending Launchpad to do what Ubuntu Wanted was ought to do.

Some of the changes to Launchpad could be:

• Extend profiles to include personal skills, both given by the user and measured on an Ohloh kind of way
• Extend team applying for moderated teams, e.g. to require certain skills, provide details about the application procedure and more
• Allow teams and people to create tasks and to assign them to projects, like the way branches already work

There is obviously much more that can be done , e.g. I didn’t include the mentoring system for example, but I will have a closer look on the possibilities and problems when I return. Meanwhile, if you have suggestions, please leave a comment. However, please refrain from spamming since I won’t be there to check if Askiment fails to filter everything.

We’ll be sailing the lakes near Grou for the next week, I won’t be reachable until Sunday. People who know me know how to reach my cell phone, but I won’t forward my bug mail to it.

For a while I also was a kind of anti-Mono. Not anymore, although I’m certainly not pro-Mono; I now see the framework as just another framework that you can use to write your application, which has, just like any framework, it’s pros and cons. However, it left me thinking why I actually didn’t like it at first.
I came with the following conclusion: because of the behaviour of some of its advocates.

Why? Well, after years of hearing how bad Microsoft technologies are it can come as quite a shock to see Planet GNOME filled with posts telling you how great those same technologies are. Of course it’s non-sense that everything from Microsoft is bad by definition, but acknowledging the presence of prejudices doesn’t make them go away. This wasn’t very bad, a part of me just found it irritating.

Worse was the attitude of some people; suddenly everywhere developers started claiming their solution, Mono, was the best and demanded applications to be ported to C#, blaming people of spreading FUD when they refused. Not everyone did this, but enough to add more concerns to the natural demur.

Then there was the release of Gnote and the insulting and the incomprehensible attack from Tomboy. Those very same people who said everyone was attacking them now started to attack other people. A little bit later was an article form Jo Shields published that didn’t sound very convincing for me, maybe because of some prejudices, but also because of the slightly arrogont tone some parts had.

This all gave me a bad feeling about Mono and the convinced me that it must be a Very Bad Thing(TM) — with emphasis on the TM.

The anti-Mono crew also behaved very badly, but it wasn’t as shocking to me because they seemed to more often live in the comments, rather than in the post self. I was shocked that it was spreading itself like some kind of virus in the heads of people that played a role in the community.

Of course it doesn’t hold up for long when you give it a good thought. First of all the patent problems seem to have gone away now — although I’d also like the attitude of the Technical Council, lets see if the patent system would hold — and secondly it’s a lot of

PSYCHOLOGY

A lot of people have grown to not like Microsoft and the fact that Mono is

- based on Microsoft technology

- implementing things like ASP, an concurrent of open-source PHP

- new and strange

makes it generate a lot of fraction.

However, those things don’t make it evil and shouldn’t be the reasons for a crusade against it and its users. If you don’t like Mono, go use GNU’s own implementation of .NET: Portable.NET. Yes, you read it correctly, GNU has an implementation of C# that RMS does like.

Looking good is important for an OS — Mac OS would be a lot less cool if it wouldn’t be considered so well designed — and I think that this is where Linux stays behind. There are a lot of terribly awesome pieces of art out there on the Internet, but they aren’t always that easy to find. For example: the place to be for a good wallpaper is of course deviantART, but you have to know about it’s existence. If you want a good looking theme, go to GNOME-Look.org. There are loads and loads of elements, window borders and, the hardest part to make, icons.

I hope the promised focus on design for the next two Ubuntu releases is going to pay off. Because in my eyes Ubuntu cannot succeed on the desktop without looking good.

Enough chatter, bring on my desktop!

A quick overview of the used components:

• Wallpaper: :UntitledDocument: by ~THFM
• Iconset: GNOME-Colors, Brave
• Window borders: Si(I’m not entirely happy with this one. Any suggestions?)
• Elements: MurrinaGraphiteGentle
  (requires the Murrine engine, install it from the repository)

Conky

As you can see on the screenshot I’m using the wonderful program Conky. This program writes text on your desktop/wallpaper and can be used for all sorts of interesting things. With scripts you could even let it display the status of your coffee maker!

The configuration syntax is rich and although not that complex, takes time to learn. I wanted quick and beautiful results, so I used the CONKY-colors script — unexpectedly written in C — to generate my .conkyrc file. Have a look at it’s description for the installation instructions and make sure you read them carefully.

I used this command to generate my configuration file:

./conky-colors -c brave –cpu 1 –hd –network –weather –weathercode NLXX0012

Please keep in mind that both the resulting file and the required .scripts folder are all hidden by default. Press Ctrl+H in Nautilus to see them or copy the folder and file with terminal commands.

The translation to Dutch are done by myself, although the script does support localisation to some extend, the number of languages supported is limited. (Don’t mind the large amount of English left, that’s normal nowadays in Dutch, unfortunately.)

A lot of people add the command conky -c ‘path/to/conkyrc’ directly to GNOME’s Start-up Applications. although letting Conky start right away might work flawlessly on XFCE, it does give troubles in GNOME and KDE. Therefore you should use a script like the following one to start Conky:

#!/bin/bash
sleep 20 &&
conky -c ~/.conky/conkymain &

Dock

The dock at the bottom of my screen is Avant Window Navigator, right from the repositories. I chose this dock because its appearance is easier to configure and it’s lighter than equivalents like GNOME Do.
Install AWN

The background colours are completely transparant, the only colour is the grey in the border. Doesn’t it look great?

Banshee has always had a dedicated group of fans. In the discussions about Intrepid Ibex there were a lot of people proposing to replace Rhythmbox with Banshee. I had a quick look at Banshee at that time and wasn’t that impressed with what I saw.
Maybe I was too much used to Rhythmbox, or maybe my bad impression was caused by the Hardy Heron just including the 0.13.2 version of this musicplayer maintained by Novell. Anyway, I kept using Rhythmbox.

However, yesterday I read Banshee Kickin’ It on the planet and the screenshots made me curious. Since the Intrepid Ibex ships version 1.2 I searched for a PPA at Launchpad — long live PPAs! — and found the PPA for the Banshee Team.

Installing

In order to get the latest version of Banshee, use this PPA:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/banshee-team/ubuntu intrepid main

You can add it manually by pasting it in /etc/apt/sources.list, or do it with the graphical interface:
Go to System->Administration->Software Sources;
Go to the Third Party Sources tab and add the line using the Add button;
Close the program and press the Reload button in the confirmation dialog.

Now you’re ready to install the latest version of banshee. Use the Add/Remove program or Synaptic or press this link: install banshee.

Use

As soon as you launch the program you’ll notice the sidebar on the left, which contains more items than the one in Rhythmbox.

As you can see, it has — next to the Music Library — a Video Library, Podcast support, integration with internet radio and Last.FM and a PLaylist Generator, which is taken care of by Mirage, which is still under active development.

Settings

Under Edit->Preferences you’ll find the settings, just like you do in other Linux programs. It never really made sense to me that the other two big OSes place it somewhere else.

The default directory for the music library is the one determined by xdg-user-dir specification.
Some functions that I find very nice and can’t find in Rhythmbox are the ReplayGain option, which tries to equal the volume of your songs to make sure you don’t get surprised when Banshee plays a song that was recored with a high volume level and the option that should automatically update the folder strucutre and file names according to the File System Organization options provided below the checkbox. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work.

You can also let external media automatically be copied to your library, which I enabled, and manage the extensions. Their settings are managed via the Extra menu and/or in the extensions’ tab, which took a while for me to find out.

Music library

At first I wondered why it didn’t start to automatically import my music collection, which already was in the music directory. I couldn’t find the option to automatically add new songs, like Rhythmbox has. After searching for a while I found the scan option in Extra->Rescan Music Library. It completely goes through your music library and automatically downloads the cover art. The playlist generator Mirage also starts to scan the music, which takes a while and consumes quite some CPU time. I still haven’t finished it, since it’s interrupted when you switch user or shut down and has to be done all over again afterwards.

You can drag songs, albums and artists to the play queue to add them. Multiple albums and/or artists can be selected at the same time to filter the songs you’re browsing. At the right, above the songlist there is a small search box that you can use to search your collection.

A nice addition is that the program shows a list of recommended artists at the bottom of the program when browsing your music. You have to have the Last.FM extension configured in order to use this.

Last.FM

There are two ways to give your Last.FM credentials: use the Extra menu or press the button in the warning message at the bottom of the program when you go to the Last.FM tab. Both times you’ll get a pop-up asking you for your username and password. When you press OK it automatically checks if they are valid, so you don’t have to check the statistics to be sure that it does work, like you have to do with Rhythmbox.

You can easily add stations by pressing with the right mousebutton on the Last.FM tab in the sidebar. Every type and more are supported.

Podcasts

To add a po

dcast station, press the Subscribe to Podcast button on the right top in the Podcast section or use the context menu of its item in the sidebar. A small pop-up window will appear and the link that’s currently on your clipboard will automatically be pasted in the text box. By default only the latest podcasts will be downloaded.

On the place where you can find the album list in the Music Library, you’ll find the podcast station list. Downloaded podcasts are marked with a small blue dot in front of their entry.

MP3/4-player synchronization

Banshee makes it very easy to synchronize your MP3/4-player. If you want to it can automatically make sure that it has the same songs and videos as you have in the library on the computer and even sync podcasts. Be careful with that, it really copies all music to your player, even if it won’t fit, resulting in an error.

That error seems to have killed my Samsung T10, after the synchronization process — which I started to see what would happen — had halted because there was no space left, I deleted all songs to manually determine what songs I wanted to place on it. However, it seemed like the deletion gave the final blow and the MTP connection got lost. I didn’t find this that strange since MTP isn’t that stable on Linux, so I disconnected the device and plugged it back in. However, it now froze on the startup screen! Reset didn’t help and now I’ve got a bricked MP3-player.

If anyone knows how to solve this, please leave a message.

You can configure the behaviour of Banshee by selecting the main entry of the MP3-player in the sidebar. An overview page will show up with some information about the device and a few checkboxes. The content gets sorted by it’s kind. Please keep in mind that you can’t copy e.g. music directly to the device’s Music Library. You’ll have to drag the files to the device icon.

Make Banshee the standard music player

If you like Banshee and want to make it your main music player, you should set it to default in your system preferences. You can do this by going to System->Preferences->Preferred Applications and change the default music player to Banshee on the multimedia tab. Now the multimedia keys on your keyboard will automatically start Banshee and the music-applet also uses it by default.

Conclusion

I really like Banshee and feel it’s better than Rhythmbox. Although Rhythmbox isn’t bad, it just doesn’t have as many functions and doesn’t look and feel as good as Banshee. The progress bar at the left bottom of the program is one of those small things that makes a program look better and smoother. I find it also easier to configure and more extensive.

If the dicussion of what music player should be default is started again, I’d vote for Banshee.

The reason why you didn’t hear much of me was that school was consuming a lot of my time. Even though I did have a holiday, I didn’t have much time to spend on the project. Next to that I had problems with reinstalling Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, which turned out to be caused by a badly burned CD.
Overall, UW didn’t got as much attention as it deserved and should have gotten. The theme MadsRH created from the original Brainstorm theme hasn’t been applied yet and the promised task-admin-queue hasn’t been committed to the Bazaar repository.

This is currently the rough planning for UW: first I want to finally finish the admin queue, resulting in a system that theoretically could work.

After that the ‘browsing experience’ needs to be improved, which I first want to do by creating overview pages for each skill. These pages are going to have three lists, for each level of experience. Under these lists there can be a link with the text ‘more…’, pointing to a page with just tasks of that level of experience.

When that’s done I can have a look at the theme and the improvement Hugh Brant suggested. But I’m not sure if I’ll give that a higher priority than a search function, which seems quite important to me.

I can’t give a real ETA for all parts of UW, although I estimate that the admin queue is going to be finished in the weekend — if nothing unexpected is going to happen. I just have a rough planning in my head.

If you are interested in helping out, either by suggestions(is there a usuabillity expert around?) or coding and theming, you’re very welcome. Just send a mail to the ubuntu-website mailinglist, come to #ubuntu-website @ Freenode, or contact me.

Since a year or two it’s mandatory in the Netherlands for all students at the secondary school to do a social work placement(maatschappelijke stage). This means they should work at a company or organisation that is a kind of social, like schools or companies involved in health care. It lasts one week and needs to be done sufficent, which is determined from the logbook everyone needs. It’s part of the so called action part(handelingsdeel) of the school exam — which makes up 50% of the overal mark, together with the central written exam. The action part doesn’t use marks, but instead you have to do it sufficent.

I worked for a week at two locations of Talant — a company that provides work and living for the mentally disabled. I decided to help here because I already know a bit about this since both my parents work for the same company. But there’s still a lot you can’t get to know from occasional visits. Another reason was that since my father is the manager of those two locations I could stay for a week with him; normally I’m just at his place every second weekend.

Altogether it was a great week. It was completely different from school. You have to think very different and constantly be aware that the level of each ‘client’ is different. The group of people working there(both employees and clients) are very nice people and I’ve found it a great experience.

I did take my computer with me because I found one week without my data a bit too much. However, apart from the weekend it turned out that there was little time left to check mail. The computer didn’t get booted at all days. Currently I’m reading and answering my mail and I hope I didn’t miss anything important.

Again, my apologizes for the delay.

See you soon!

• nott My main computer, a convential desktop system. ItShe’s named after Nótt, the Norse goddess of the night.
• nott-vm The latest version of Ubuntu, virtualised with the help of libvirt. Rarely used.
• nott-server A virtualised Ubuntu server, the only one of the two virtual machines I’ve got installed that doesn’t have access to the network.
• delling My BlackBerry, named after Delling. It is said he was the father of Dagr and the husband of Nott. Not a very distinctive god. I also recall he was the god of twillight, but that’s not very clear either.
• dagr My father’s computer is named after the Norse god of day: Dagr. He is the son of Nott and Delling, which doesn’t make much sense, actuallly.
• Sense The name of the person controlling all those devices. A boy named after his grandfather, who is named after his grandfather. He is the 6th Sense in the family. The name derives from ‘sint’, which is Dutch for saint. Sint -> Sent -> Sens(e).
  It is not pronounced the same way as the English word. Written in phonetic symbols you get this: /”sensɜː”/.

The following jokes have already been made, do not use them again:

• “My/Your parrents made Sense.”
• “Sense makes sense!”
• “Sense doesn’t make sense!”
• “Who made that?” “That made Sense.”

While browsing the internet for tools to integrate GMail better with Thunderbird I got the idea that it could be even better to move all my emails to GMail and just use the web interface as email client. GMail also allows you to retrieve mails from another POP3 email address and send it using that email address as ‘From:’.

Now I’ve moved my complete archive to GMail and am using my @qense.nl address for all emails I send. This gives me much more flexibility and one address less to give to other people when they want to contact me. I did have a small problem with moving my 3500 archived emails in an Thunderbird folder to GMail, it got interupted at 2000, so I’m afraid I could have some double mails.

Have fun!