End of the Road

5:00, Bellingham Airport
Eyes drooping like a Basset Hound's, I sit in the Bellingham, WA airport with that weary confusion that comes with waking far too early.

Last night I hung out at the April Brew's Day festival with a guy from Intel named Jeff, a student named Andrew, and a guy from Postgres (Pervasive) named Decibel. (Sorry, Decibel, the name "Havoc Pennington" still out-cools yours. And his is genuine. [said the "reverend."]) The four of us pretty much just yukked it up most of the night. It went a little later than I had planned on an evening before a 4:00 am wake up. How old am I again?

Anyway, this puts the last stop on a couple weeks of relentless travel.

This week I have to apply myself to getting some new editions of Novell Open Audio recorded.

I also have a meeting with my manager and Novell's CMO John Dragoon coming up this week. It's my opportunity to lay out some ideas on developing the Novell user communities program a little further. So, if you have any thoughts, please get in touch with me.

From Birmingham to Bellingham

Last stop on this round of event and user group visits is Linuxfest Northwest 2006.

Two presentations:

• Desktop Innovation at Novell
• Securing Systems with Novell AppArmor

If they still have open slots, I may request to add in my wildly popular (in my mind, see?) session from the Desktop Summit, which covered how to configure and use Xgl, Beagle and Banshee.

Explorer Destroyer

I picked this up from Wired, Explorer Destroyer gives you some scripts to embed into your website to encourage use of Firefox a little more aggressively…

Now, whether to use it on this blog…

Gnome Search Reported Wrong

I posted this comment (no link for trackbacks) in response to Jason Brooks' article "New GNOME Does Search Right."

Mr. Brooks,
You seem to overlook that the Beagle search tool was largely driven by people at Novell. From the initial specification of requirements by many Ximian engineers, to the Mono framework that Beagle uses, to the seamless integration of search into the GNOME desktop, search has been largely lead and driven by people at Novell. Yet you cite Ubuntu and Fedora, with no mention of Novell? Proper attribution is part of the community process. Perhaps you can participate by starting with that.

–Ted Haeger
http://reverendted.wordpress.com

Welcome LugRadio Listeners

Looks like the LugRadio boys (liberally including Aq) linked to this here blog.

Since you followed the link to get here, here's a special tip off for you…at the beginning of the "Novell Client for Linux and News from Support" there's some special coverage about whether the "Sandals and Ponytail Set is holding Linux Back" featuring brother Jono. You may not find the whole episode personally relevant, but the opening segment includes some down-home community fun.

ATI and Xgl: together at last

San Diego, CA, Desktop Summit:
Just before dinner with Guy Lunardi and Nat Friedman last night, I finally got around to putting the latest ATI video drivers (8.24x) on my ThinkPad.

Happy to report that Xgl now works like a charm.

Ahhhhh….if only having dinner with Nat was so pleasant.

[Apr 26 Update: Actually, the compiz "water" plugin locks up X.]

[Oh, yeah...and at dinner the following night, Nat has asked me to be "less edgy" with him. So I'll note that dinner was very pleasant with Nat.]

Some new Xgl Screenshots

Xgl/Compiz Cube Rotate

My love affair with Xgl continues. Having seen Jono Bacon use a slide containing the Xgl screenshot from the Novell press release, I decided that we need some better proofs out there. So,
On the trip home from the UK LUG Tour, I decided to make some new screenshots.

I set up the cool Xgl wallpaper, inserted shameless promotion for Novell Open Audio, added a skydome background, and put an image on the top of the cube.

Also for your pleasure, some other plugins to Xgl/Compiz:
Switcher

Scale before and during

And David Reveman's new Water plugin

UK LUG Tour, Day 5: Grand Finale

It was an excellent final day of the UK LUG Tour.

Oxford-Brookes University
Jono and I presented at Oxford-Brookes University to a bunch of students and staff. There were maybe 35-40 people in the room The cool surprise was the guys who came down from Oxford University because they had heard that Novell was speaking there. One of them used to be the NetWare administrator at Oxford-Brookes, but fled to Oxford when OBU moved away from Novell. So, naturally he tossed out several set-up questions about Novell’s impressive technology history. They invited us to hit Oxford U. if we do another tour. We said that it would be a lock-in if they could get us a meeting with Richard Dawkins.

Gloucester
We had a big turn-out in Gloucester as well. Great gang of folks there. Based on the questions they asked, I’d say that they were probably the most technically savvy LUG we hit. That could have been because the event was hosted by Message Labs, and the crowd was suspiciously stacked with their people. They were cool enough to tell me to put on their SUSE caps for the photo, though.

The presentation went a little bit long, and I missed the train out of Gloucester. So Barbie and Andy from Message Labs look us to the pub. (BTW: When you’re going to meet someone called “Barbie,” you expect a bit more of the “female, blonde, and buxom” rather than a mellow dude named is Paul.) Jono and I ravaged a plate of cheese, Jono dodging the bleu as if it were a salad.

The Return: Trains, Planes and Automobiles
Jono dropped me at New Street Station in Birmingham at around 1 a.m. I stayed in a tiny, cold hotel room–the kind of place sometimes referred to as a “stepover hotel.” The next morning, I was up at 6, but not awake. I caught a train back to Manchester and made the airport with comfortable spare time before the flight. I stayed awake working the whole 15+ hours. When I got home, I posted a couple emails and approved a couple blog comments, then made for the Land of Nod.

UK LUG Tour, Day 4: Powys LUG

POWIS, Wales, Thursday, April 20, 2006
After a bullet ride over winding backroads into Wales in Jono’s micro 4×4, we arrived in Powis. Powis is a gorgeous town, the kind of place that would appear in a dictionary next to “idyllic.”

After a short wander about asking people where things were, we supped on curry (at long last! Curse you and your hidden mile-long row of curry houses, Manchester!), and then toddled over to the Powis LUG venue.

For being in a small town, the Powis LUG was a great bunch of folks, with almost 20 people filling the small room. Once again, a couple women were attended, which marks a difference from what I have seen of LUG’s back in the States.

Also, I was well pleased to see SUSE Linux 10.0 on all the machines in the PC training center where the LUG meets.

My favorite comment from one of the attendees after we finished and milled about the lobby was “I almost didn’t come, but I’m glad I did. I was extremely entertained.”

Goal met: extreme entertainment delivered. (Ted makes checkmark on list.)

Midnight, Rhayader, Powis, Wales
For the want of petrol, Jono and I followed terse instructions from Jono’s TomTom GPS unit to three different Texaco stations, each one progressively more shut than the previous. We ended up calling the British Automobile Association–something like AAA but for some reason they don’t call it American–and after an hour wait, “Frank” supplied us enough petrol to get out of Wales.

Hint taken, we departed, making Wolverhampton at nearly 3:00 AM. (At least this will offset the jetlag when I reach the Desktop Summit in California.)Petrol. I think we Americans need to look further into this alternative fuel source that seems to have taken over all of Europe. Perhaps it will work as an alternative to our American addiction to gasoline.

Last Hurrah
Today we head to Oxford Brookes Computer Society, and then off to Gloucester (apparently two syllables) for our final two matches.

Even if these go badly, dear Jono, we’ll always have Powis.

More from GLLUG

My only complaint about Teds talk was that is was impossible to get a decent photo of the guy talking. I had the camera set to sports mode for capturing Olympic sprinters and racing cars and it still didn’t get a decent snap. He was in full “anti-sniper” mode bouncing around the stage

Uh, yeah…did I mention that I’m seriously ADD? I can’t recall…

UK LUG Tour, Day 3: Manchester, England, England

Still over here, across the Atlantic sea touring the UK Linux User Groups. Last Night, Sir Jono Bacon and I drove from Wolverhampton to Manchester.

Wires got crossed somewhere and turnout was small. Oddly, three people travelled in from elswhere (over an hour drive in both cases) to attend, which meant that a full third of the audience were not even from Manchester.

Jono presented on “Building the UberDestktop,” to much delight. I flexed my new AppArmor knowledge for the first time. I think it went quite well, but I also get the idea that most of the attendees would have liked my “Desktop Innovation” presentation even more.

Jono nags me about needing to get on the road to Wales for our presentation to Powys (pronounced Pah-Wiss) LUG. Much joking about “Twavelling to Powis in the Spwingtime” to follow.

UK LUG Tour, Day 2: Greater London Linux User Group

Great bunch of folks at the Greater London Linux User Group. And I say that not just because LUG leader Simon Morris bought me a pint after the show. I linked the headline of this post to Simon’s review of our presentations.

Jono delivered a solid talk about advocating open source effectively–a subject he and I discuss frequently.

I spoke about “Desktop Innovation at Novell,” the basic theme of which is that much of the really cool new stuff happening in desktop Linux is happening at Novell. I always bear some apprehension about doing this talk, because I unapologetically extol Novell’s virtues. (I also show off a lot of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, like Beagle, Banshee, F-spot, Xgl, and several usability changes to the Gnome desktop interface. These things back up the discussion very well.) So, I was really pleased at how well the talk was received. During Q&A one guy actually called out how impressed he was with everything I had shown.

Tonight, we’re off to Manchester where I speak about AppArmor, something that will be much more challenging for me.

More Sandals & Ponytails: Thoughts on FLOSS weekly

One of the people I wanted to call on my quest to find the mythical “Sandals and Ponytail set” was Google’s Chris DiBona. He is the only OSS guy I have met who actually may fit the “Sandals and Ponytail” mould. Unfortunately, I did not get around to making the call.

My friend Todd Dailey (at Apple) e-intorduced me to Chris via email, but Chris and I still don’t know each other really. I accosted him briefly before my presentation at Socal Linux Expo. Chris reacted to my sudden appearance with a confused mix of who-the-hell-are-you indifference and why-the-hell-are-bothering-me apprehension.

Note to self: Learn how to introduce myself without accosting people.

Anyhoodely-doodly, Chris finally got the Google podcast “FLOSS Weekly” online. I say “finally” with zero intent of deprecation. It took me several more months than I expected it to in order to bring Novell Open Audio to life. I just listened to the first show. It sounds like it will be an interesting tour of the tech terrain.

HOWEVER (said Ted, in a vain struggle to sound controversial), I’m still unsatisfied. What is Google’s real position on open source? I think that Novell has been pretty clear on their position. They endorse open source, but see a future that is based on a wise mixture of open source and proprietary. (To be clear, “wise” is not determined by Novell. Rather, it is determined by consumers. Businesses and individuals both will determine for themselves what their personal balance is to make a “wise” mixture. Meanwhile, Novell continues to extend its investment in people like David Reveman (Xgl), Jeremy Allison (Samba), Miguel de Icaza (Mono), and many others. Epic parentheticals are becoming my speciality. Meanwhile…) What I want to know from FLOSS is this: what’s Google’s real position on open source. Google, are you in, or are you out? Will we see future cool products like Google Earth as open source projects, or will they continue to be done as proprietary products that may be delivered for Windows only?

UK LUG Tour, Day 1

Last night I sat in with the LugRadio boys and “helped” them concoct their next batch of madness. Light thrown upon the production of LugRadio dispels any ideas that there is some well-planned method to their madness reveals the stark truth: these are just four blokes from the British midlands who just happen do what they do very well: they make talking about Linux and open source fun and entertaining. It’s extremely cool that they have managed to make such a mark from where they are located. (In case you’re not aware, I have found that the mere name of Wolverhamptom functions as a one-word punchineline that never seems to lose it’s funny.)

When I told my friend Jeff that I was going to sit in with the guys, he was dead set that I had to take video camera of the event in order to put it online later. I’m glad I didn’t. Jono’s modest studio is rather small, especially with four men and Aq in the room.

Nat Friedman stood us up on our interview. Naturally, we slandered him liberally.

Travels with Bacon
This morning I hung out with Jono on the train discussing and re-discussing the whole open source advocacy thing. It’s great to compare notes with Jono, since he does not have any built-in predisposition for a single vendor as I do.

Innovative Idioms from Brother Bacon:
Salad Dodger = one who actively avoids proper nutrition. e.g. “Most Linux User Gourp members seem to be salad dodgers.” –Bacon, 2006

Nvidia delays UK LUG Tour

Not really, but it feels like it because I should be packing right now, but I could not resist updating to beta 10 of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, which came out today, and then I noticed that Nvidia has released 8756 of their Linux driver, so I have to try to see whether it fixes a minor issue with Xgl I have been having, but these things seem to always cause me hellacious issues and yet I still cannot help but attempt the upgrade despite that every time it ends up causing me delays, near misses of flights and undue panic.