Source Guru

So, a few years back, I started playing around with some photos, and started my own mini “An Insight into the mind” series, which was basically me taking photos of my friends, and adding captions to them, a la…

After looking over Aaron’s new Webcomic I decided that it might be a fun idea to start doing the same for a few of the random “Conference” Photo’s you find around.

You can find my first (5 mins) attempt here

I apologise in advance to Zack and Aaron.

So yeah - who think’s I should, who thinks I shouldn’t - answers on a postcard (or just comments will do)

Radio Amarok is looking for a design for their new website.

As a community project, we’re opening up the design as a competition to the general public, so if you’re an arty type, want to contribute to Open Source, and want your work out there, then please do enter the competition.

Requirements

Minimum requirements for a submission are as follows

• The design must be released under a Creative Commons licence
• We must receive the minimum of a PNG mock-up, and SVG/PSD sources
• All entries must be made before the 31st October
• All submissions to be made to submissions@radioamarok.com

After the 31st, the top designs will be picked out by the Radio Amarok team, and a vote will be put out for one week to the general public to decide which design they want for the site.

So, get your virtual paintbrushes out, and get designing - we’ve had some great entries already, and haven’t even announced it yet!

More information will be available soon at http://www.radioamarok.com/

Generally, I’m pretty lax when it comes to Firewalls in Linux, for the simple fact that I use kubuntu/ubuntu, which opens no ports by default. So any open ports on the system, I generally know about.

Anyway, as I’ve recently had a new server setup for Radio Amarok (many thanks to BitFolk for this, who have provided this service for us) and I knew that it would be something that’s going to be in the public eye, I thought that I better get a firewall up and running

So yes, I’ve been learning how to use Iptables correctly, and having to learn more about how TCP/IP works. I knew the basics, but actually sitting down and learning more about it is definitely interesting. Though, I’ve still not much idea on some issues, like why Aaron Krill’s ISP can’t route him to the Radio Amarok server (Andy Smith tried explaining - but I still had no idea what was going on!)

On another note, Radio Amarok is still looking for help. So if you have anything to offer (we’re looking for sponsors, artists, DJs, and web developers/designers (and at some point we’ll be looking for a sysadmin)), so if you have anything to offer us, feel free to pop into IRC (irc.freenode.net #amarok.radio) or email me (mez AT radioamarok DOT com)

Yep, that’s right - We need you!

Radio Amarok is currently in it’s Research and Development phase, and we’re looking for Artists to showcase on the station.

Radio Amarok will be broadcasting live 24/7 - and dedicated to playing the best in free music! So if you have a band and want to get yourselves out there, then please get in  contact!

You can find us in #amarok.radio on freenode, or you can email me on mez .AT. radioamarok .DOT. com

Please note that we will not accept artists who are not willing to do one or more of the following

• Release their work under a Creative Commons Licence
• Sign a Waiver for Royalty + Dubbing Fees for use on Radio Amarok
• Sign with Magnatune

So if you’re a new and upcoming artist, or know of someone who is, the please do get in contact! (and feel free to pass this onto your musical friends!)

Also - the Easter Egg at the Easter Egg Archive

Ok, now it seems that I can play videos in Xine.. but not in kaffeine I managed to do this by switching to openGl mode ni Xine itself… however, kaffeine won’t allow me to do that.

Any ideas? (It’s good, I can now watch my movies!-  but I prefer Kaffeine’s GUI!)

It seems that since I’ve started using gutsy, my PC does not want to play (well, display) any video files played through xine. Which is very very very very annoying. It worked fine originally in fesity, then, when I upgraded to gutsy, the video I wanted to watch decided not to play (and OGG/Theora video)

Then, due to issues, It still won’t play. I’ve tried everything, adn xine itself isn’t thtrowing up anything in the log that’s making me think it’s an issue with that.

Does anyone have any ideas, or would anyone be able to tell me where to look to sort this out? I’ve been all over my xorg.conf, the Xine settings, all to no avail.

Any help would be muchly appreciated! This seems to be one of the only problems I’m, having with gutsy atm!)

Ok, so recently, I thought that my status as an ubuntu developer had expired, as I’ve had emails about my membership to ubuntu-dev expiring, and when I tried to send an email to a list in ubuntu (kubuntu-devel) it got bounced back to me. Now of course, I thought that the bounce was because the list was restricted for posting to developers only (as is ubuntu-devel)

I finally got a hold of a member of the Ubuntu Technical Board (thanks keybuk!) who explained to me..

<Keybuk> ubuntu-dev is a dead team
<Keybuk> rather than reject everyone, we’re just letting the membership expire naturally
<Keybuk> motu is the active “universe upload” team

So I then went to look what was going on with my email.

As my ubuntu email recieves a HUGE amount of traffic. (I dread to think but just checked and it seems I’ve had ~15000 emails go through it since march… a lot less than I’d expected) I have it setup in launchpad to go through a gmail account which means that I don’t overload my own server (as I was doing before when I hadn’t learnt to tweak my mailserver so it’s settings didn’tput my server into swap death!)

I was also sending outgoing email from my ubuntu email address through gmail’s smtp service.

However, it seems recently, that gmail will now rewrite an email address if it isn’t the one you’re sending through. If I send an email as if it’s coming from mez@ubuntu.com, then gmail’s smtp server will rewrite it so that it comes from mez.ubuntu@gmail.com…

I’ve now changed my email setup to use my server for all outgoing mail.

Ok, so for years, and years, I’ve used Mozilla Firefox (Firebird, etc etc!) as I’ve always liked that it was more secure, it was FLOSS etc etc.

Well anyway, after having spent a lot of time recently at Omega Sektor where I’ve had to use Opera (simply because their Firefox install is broken and I hate Internet Explorer!) I’ve come across a few features I’ve liked in it.. (Speed Dial - the fact that a popup without a URL bar has a lil thing giving the web site address across the top)… so I’ve decided to try it at home…

The install was smooth (sudo dpkg -i opera*.deb) and It’s working nicely.

I’ll probably end up either loving or hating it in the next few days, but we can only see how things go!

I just found this on the register.

While I agree that the punishment is fair, it just shows how nowadays it seems too many people are unaware of the impact of Free Software in today’s community.

To be fair, I’d rather be offline than be forced to buy/use windows on a permanent basis. Espescially seeing as having to get used to a whole new system would be hell for me.

Though, he could always wait for KDE4 to be Windows Compatible and fully released and run that