Planet Ubuntu Women

Catherine Devlin: new baby

Catherine (sam18xgy4fz@liquidid.net) — 2009-01-05T12:23:53+00:00

Items shipped on December 30, 2008:
Delivery estimate: January 6, 2009
1 package via USPS

1 of: One Laptop per Child XO Laptop (Give a Laptop, Get a Laptop)
Sold by: OLPC Foundation (seller profile)

Before or after I leave for CodeMash? I MUST KNOW!

Well, even if the new baby doesn't arrive on time, I'm very much looking forward to CodeMash. It's very hard to decide what to do, though, particularly with the Precompiler day. I like the CodeJam idea best, but I'll have to see if the particulars of the project appeal to me - and I'd want to do it in a platform I don't yet know, and I'm not sure whether I could be effective that way. And a whole day of absorbing Ruby from Jim Weirich would certainly be an entertaining alternative. But maybe I should do the .NET tutorial... knowing some .NET would really help me get going in IronPython. Decisions, decisions... what a nice dilemma!

Akkana Peck: Garmin Vista Cx on Ubuntu "Hardy"

2009-01-04T23:31:00+00:00

I got myself a GPS unit for Christmas.

I've been resisting the GPS siren song for years -- mostly because I knew it would be a huge time sink involving months of futzing with drivers and software trying to get it to do something useful.

But my experience at an OpenStreetMap mapping party got me fired up about it, and I ordered a Garmin Vista Cx.

Shopping for a handheld GPS is confusing. I was fairly convinced I wanted a Garmin, just because it's the brand used by most people in the open source mapping community so I knew they were likely to work. I wanted one with a barometric altimeter, because I wanted that data from my hikes and bike rides (and besides, it's fun to know how much you've climbed on an outing; I used to have a bike computer with an altimeter and it was a surprisingly good motivator for working harder and getting in better shape).

But Garmin has a bazillion models and I never found any comparison page explaining the differences among the various hiking eTrex models. Eventually I worked it out:

Garmin eTrex models, decoded

C: Color display. This generally also implies USB connectivity instead of serial, just because the color models are newer.
H: High precision (a more sensitive satellite receiver).
x: Takes micro-SD cards. This may not be important for storing tracks and waypoints (you can store quite a long track with the built-in memory) but they mean that you can load extra base maps, like topographic data or other useful features.
Vista, Summit: These models have barometric altimeters and magnetic compasses. (I never did figure out the difference between a Vista and a Summit, except that in the color models (C), Vistas take micro-SD cards (x) while Summits don't, so there's a Summit C and HC while Vistas come in Cx and HCx. I don't know what the difference is between a monochrome Summit and Vista.)
Legend, Venture: These have no altimeter or compass. A Venture is a Legend that comes without the bundled extras like SD card, USB cable and base maps, so it's cheaper.

For me, the price/performance curve pointed to the Vista Cx.

Loading maps

Loading base maps was simplicity itself, and I found lots of howtos on how to use downloadable maps. Just mount the micro-SD card on any computer, make a directory called Garmin, and name the file gmapsupp.img. I used the CloudMade map for California, and it worked great. There are lots of howtos on generating your own maps, too, and I'm looking forward to making some with topographic data (which the CloudMade maps don't have). The most promising howtos I've found so far are the OSM Map On Garmin page on the OSM wiki and the much more difficult, but gorgeous, Hiking Biking Mapswiki page.

Uploading tracks and waypoints

But the real goal was to be able to take this toy out on a hike, then come back and upload the track and waypoint files.

I already knew, from the mapping party, that Garmins have an odd misfeature: you can connect them in usb-storage mode, where they look like an external disk and don't need any special software ... but then you can't upload any waypoints. (In fact, when I tried it with my Vista Cx I didn't even see the track file.) To upload tracks and waypoints, you need to use something that speaks Garmin protocol: namely, the excellent GPSBabel.

So far so good. How do you call GPSbabel? Luckily for me, just before my GPS arrived, Iván Sánchez Ortega posted a useful little gpsbabel script to the OSM newbies list and I thought I was all set.

But once I actually had the Vista in hand, complete with track and waypoints from a walk around the block, it turned out it wasn't quite that simple -- because Ubuntu didn't create the /dev/ttyUSB0 that Iván's script used. A web search found tons of people having that problem on Ubuntu and talking about various workarounds, involving making sure the garmin_usb driver is blacklisted in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist (it was already), adding a /etc/udev/rules.d/45-garmin.rules file that changes permissions and ownership of ... um, I guess of the file that isn't being created? That didn't make much sense. Anyway, none of it helped.

But finally I found the fix: keep the garmin_usb driver blacklisted use "usb:" as the device to pass to GPSBabel rather than "/dev/ttyUSB0". So the commands are:

gpsbabel -t -i garmin -f usb: -o gpx -F tracks.gpx
gpsbabel -i garmin -f usb: -o gpx -F waypoints.gpx

Like so many other things, it's easy once you know the secret! Viewing tracklogs works great in Merkaartor, though I haven't yet found an app that does anything useful with the elevation data. I may have to write one.

Update: After I wrote this but before I was able to post it, a discussion on the OSM Newbies list with someone who was having similar troubles resulted in this useful wiki page: Garmin on GNU/Linux. It may also be worth checking the Discussion tab on that wiki page for further information.

Elizabeth Krumbach: Pink Electronics :)

pleia2 — 2009-01-04T18:33:12+00:00

Yesterday I headed down to Microcenter to pick up a new camera that I bought through their “buy online, pick up in store” option. I’ve had a 3 megapixel PowerShot A70 for ages, but these past few months it’s been dying, and now most photos end up with green lines or other issues. I was able to snag a PowerShot SD1100 IS Digital ELPH in the color “Pink Melody” for pretty cheap - woohoo! It’s a great compact camera, plus, like all modern Canons it has a great interface, gorgeous screen and works flawlessly in Linux.

Oh and it’s pink, so I get to add it to my pink electronics collection!

Nintendo DS, camera, phone, mini9 and remote… for my pink dvd player.

Romana Branden: links for 2009-01-04

timelady — 2009-01-04T10:01:46+00:00

Future Schlock - The Atlantic (December 2008)

In the 1950s, Disneyland thrilled visitors with its imaginative House of the Future. Now Disney has opened a new House, with a new vision of future domesticity. Our correspondent looks in—and finds that what’s to come will be tough on the stomach, relentlessly beige, and, in every sense, subprime.

(tags: future design technology culture innovation usa pjorourke houses housing predictions disneyland disney)
New Year's Deal: Get 24 Months of Hosting + Domain for $11

DreamHost is running a New Year's promotion right now. 95% off a 2 year hosting agreement which works out to $10.47.

(tags: web dreamhost)
The Pill 'polluting the environment' | Health & Lifestyle | News.com.au

# Vatican says The Pill polluting the environment
# Claims it is responsible for male infertility
# Scientists reject Vaticans claims

Irrelevant, outdated, and dangerous. The Roman Catholic religion is struggling in its death throes, dangerously influencing the lesser educated.

(tags: religion idiots ignorance catholic dangerous morons)

Phone Different Podcast 32 | The iPhone Blog

podcast on iphoney goodness:)

(tags: iphone podcast)

Akkana Peck: OpenStreetMap mapping parties

2009-01-03T20:00:00+00:00

Latest obsession: mapping with OpenStreetMap.

Last month, OpenStreetMap and its benefactor company CloudMade held a "mapping party" in Palo Alto. I love maps and mapping (I wrote my own little topographic map viewer when I couldn't find one ready-made) and I've been wanting to know more about the state of open source mapping. A mapping party sounded perfect.

The party was a loosely organized affair. We met at a coffeehouse and discussed basics of mapping and openstreetmap. The hosts tried to show us newbies how OSM works, but that was complicated by the coffeehouse's wireless net being down. No big deal -- turns out the point of a mapping party is to hand out GPSes to anyone who doesn't already have one and send us out to do some mapping.

I attached myself to a couple of CloudMade folks who had some experience already and we headed north on a pedestrian path. We spent a couple of hours walking urban trails and marking waypoints. Then we all converged on a tea shop (whose wireless worked a little better than the one at the coffeehouse, but still not very reliably) for lunch and transfer of track and waypoint files.

This part didn't work all that well. It turned out the units we were using (Garmin Legend HCx) can transfer files in two modes, USB mass storage (the easy way, just move files as if from an external disk) or USB Garmin protocol (the hard way: you have to use software like gpsbabel, or the Garmin software if you're on Windows). And in mass storage mode, you get a file but the waypoints aren't there.

The folks running the event all had Macs, and there were several Linux users there as well, but no Windows laptops. By the time the Macs both had gpsbabel downloaded over the tea shop's flaky net, it was past time for me to leave, so I never did get to see our waypoint files. Still, I could see it was possible (and one of the Linux attendees assured me that he had no trouble with any of the software; in fact, he found it easier than what the Mac people at the party were going through).

But I was still pretty jazzed about how easy OpenStreetMap is to use. You can contribute to the maps even without a GPS. Once you've registered on the site, you just click on the Edit tab on any map, and you see a flash application called "Potlatch" that lets you mark trails, roads or other features based on satellite images or the existing map. I was able to change a couple of mismarked roads near where I live, as well as adding a new trail and correcting the info on an existing one for one of the nearby parks.

If you prefer (as, I admit, I do) to work offline or don't like flash, you can use a Java app, JOSM, or a native app, merkaartor. Very cool! Merkaartor is my favorite so far (because it's faster and works better in standalone mode) though it's still fairly rough around the edges. They're all described on the OSM Map Editing page.

Of course, all this left me lusting after a GPS. But that's another story, to be told separately.

Romana Branden: links for 2009-01-03

timelady — 2009-01-03T10:06:23+00:00

Dancing on Temple Tops · the on-going adventures of a seamstress in Kyoto

beautiful stunning work!!!

(tags: blog art japan kimono seamstress)
Predictions for 2009? - Engadget

i LIKE the asimo one:)

(tags: gadgets tech new 2009)

Akkana Peck: Firefox Tip: Save tabs just once

2009-01-03T05:31:00+00:00

I've been offline and unable to update the blog for a while (technical glitch, long story) but I'm back and have several stories to polish up and post, beginning with this helpful (I hope) Firefox tidbit:

I've often wanted a way to get Firefox to save the current set of tabs without actually bookmarking them -- the way it does when you install an extension and need to restart. But I'd never found a way to do that through the menus.

But then I realized that I could use the same trick that I use for landscape printing:

Edit user.js in your Firefox profile directory, and add this line:
```
user_pref("browser.tabs.warnOnClose", false);
```
This will ensure that normally, it doesn't give you the confirmation box, only when you ask for it.
In your running Firefox, go to about:config and search for tabs
Look for the browser.tabs.warnOnClose line and doubleclick it (change it to true)

Now you'll get the confirmation dialog when you quit this session.

Leigh Honeywell: 25C3 Day 3

hypatia — 2009-01-03T04:22:52+00:00

Paul and I turned in pretty early on Day 2 and managed to make the first talk on Day 3, though not without the assistance of Club Mate and Starbucks. Day 3 was where things started to get really hairy in terms of being able to get into rooms to see the talks I wanted to see; I ended up missing the RFID talk I really wanted to see in favor of getting to the room for the Storm talk half an hour early. But that’s what conference recordings are for, isn’t it!

As before, be sure to also check out Security4All’s post on Day 3 for a more Belgian perspective on things.

BYOGSM

Running your own GSM network

We’re really excited about the results from this talk at the hacklab, as we’re hoping to get a couple of cells (pending investigation of the appropriate Canadian licensing requirements) in order to build something awesome and shiny for Hacking At Random next summer.

the big “why”: they wanted to demo known (theoretical) security issues with GSM networks
the network authorizes mobile devices using their sims, the devices don’t do any sort of authorization against the network
copious “don’t try this at home” warnings - use a good dummy load, and don’t interfere with other operators, particularly military
like all telco / ITU protocols, the intelligence is in the network not the endpoints, protocols described as a “TDMA nightmare”
the base station they obtained (in 2006 on eBay, then bought the whole lot of 74 when they got the one working) is a Siemens BS-11 microBTS
there are a bunch of specifications of the base station in their slides, as well as a hierarchy of needed components
the documentation is available under NDA but 99% of the specs are available
they were able to get in touch with others running the same BTS
they got it basically working using an E1 card hooked up to a Linux PC, and you can too! (With the proper licensing of course)
fun fact from the talk: phones have code in them implementing “Egypt detection” as GPS is illegal in that jurisdiction; the phones detect that they are on an Egyptian network and disable the GPS in software
they also did an awesome demo which I won’t describe here - feel free to ask me about it offline

Stormfucker: Owning the Storm Botnet

As far as I could tell, the talk didn’t contain any new information that I hadn’t seen in other talks about Storm. The researchers had thoroughly reverse-engineered the Storm bot and were able to control the remains of the botnet; it’s mostly or totally dead these days, however.

SWF and the Malware Tragedy

This talk discussed some theoretical and some practical vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash, as well as how to use Flash as a sidechannel or a loader for other malware to obfuscate malicious code. Flash can hide malicious code in externally referenced resources as well as internally stored objects, though fukami says that it does strange things to some kinds of media files which pre-empt their use in steganographic storage.

They also explored some behavioral analysys of ActionScript bytecode using erlswf, an ActionScript disassembler written in Erlang.

Methods for Understanding Targeted Attacks with Office Documents

Oh, PowerPoint...

Bruce Dang’s talk and the conversation afterwards was one of the highlights of the Congress for me. He went over the OLE structured storage format which these attacks leverage (in addition to PDF vulnerabilities), as well as a number of easy mitigation strategies (he didn’t mention using OpenOffice, cough cough). He pointed at a few interesting things: Technical Cyber Security Alert TA05-189A; the pythoncom wrapper for Microsoft’s COM API’s, and the MOICE tool which converts documents into the much safer Office XML. They also have a blog here.

I’m going to leave Day 4 to another post which I’ll put up tomorrow.

After chatting with Bruce and Seth for a while I had dinner and eventually made my way to c-base again. There was a hilarious auction in which I contributed to VHS acquiring the c-base server, a really great hackerspaces call-in featuring about 20 people at c-base, a bunch from the US, Canada, and around Europe, as well as a caller from the nascent space in Durban, South Africa (zomg!). Afterwards there was lots more conversation about hackerspaces in Canada and a zillion other things. It was a great night.

Leigh Honeywell: 25C3 Day 2

hypatia — 2009-01-03T01:31:14+00:00

Continuing on from my post from a couple of days ago, here are my notes from Day 2 of the 25th Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin. I’ve been slow with getting these posted - Day 2 was December 28th. Better late than never, right?

A lighthearted moment from Soviet Unterzoegersdorf

As with the previous posts, for a different perspective and selection of talks I highly recommend checking out Security4All’s blog post about Day 2 as well.

Finally, if you’re particularly interested in anything I’ve written about, you should check out the official recordings here. Most of the talks have been posted both as direct downloads and torrents. I can’t even begin to say how amazing this is given that the conference is barely over. From what I hear as well the live streams coming from the conference while it was running were also totally solid.

And now for the actual comments about this day’s talks!

Exhaustion, jet-lag, and a late night at the space station made me miss a few talks I wanted to see, but they all conflicted anyway so I’m just going to watch the recordings on my long flight home on Sunday :) I made it to these talks:

TCP Denial of Service Vulnerabilities

I feel like I somewhat still don’t understand this attack, despite having read tons about it - this probably has to do with not also reading more about TCP/IP design.
The gist is that TCP connection window scaling reduces the effectiveness of the source port randomization, which was never a security feature anyway but intended for multiplexing…
Also there was something about resource starvation by partially opening connections akin to SYN flooding.

Scalable Swarm Robotics

definitely wins the “cutest props” award for their demo of tiny robots (link to video!)
the robots they built can be made for about €15 in quantities of 25+ using off-the-shelf parts exclusively except for the tiny wheels which they stamped out of rubber
the plans are GPLv3 and CC (yay!)
the “wheels” are driven by cellphone vibration motors with the weights replaced by rubber wheels
they re-program eachother’s firmware on the fly and indicate their firmware status as well as other conditions via multi-colour LED’s
lots and lots more info at their site if you are interested: http://warrantyvoidifremoved.com/formica

Banking Malware 101, or, Stuff I Found On My Sister’s Dead Laptop And Now She Has A Mac

Anatomy of Banking Trojans

in all seriousness, I found three of the mentioned malware families on the hard drive of my sister’s dead machine, and she now has a Mac.
given that this is what I deal with in my day-job, I took a lot of notes on this one
what set this talk apart from your average Banking Trojans talk, which made it much more than a 101 in my opinion, was the fact that the researcher had gained access to the Command and Control servers for several variants of banking malware, and worked in conjunction with AusCERT to notify the people whose banking info he found on these servers.
all of the covered trojans affected only Internet Explorer; the only one which has thusfar affected Firefox was ChromeInject, a drive-by-installer targeting users of the Greasemonkey plugin. There’s more on it here; it wasn’t covered at all in the talk, and it no longer works.
the trojan Nethell stole cookies, usernames/passwords, stored credentials (saved passwords) and could defeat “visual keyboards”
another sample (Zeus / Wsnpoem / Zbot) could inject arbitrary HTML into forms and ask for the secondary transaction numbers in use in a number of European banks
they had some excellent sample collection and analysis automation which I’m definitely going look into more, using CaptureHPC, Honeyclient, phoneyc
they created a simulator based on AutoIT called “Simuser” which they could write behavior templates for
if you’re interested, here is the presenter’s blog post linking to the recording and talk slides.

ascii’s Tricks: makes you smile

A++ did indeed make me smile
while the speaker was a little hard to follow at times, the talk was colourful and entertaining
he showed off several small hacks involving sudo timeouts
apparently putting localhost into your server’s DNS very much breaks the Same Origin Policy… oops
he showed off a GREAT technique for fooling people into copying and pasting random things into shell prompts by using some HTML / CSS obfuscation in demo code snippets
he presented new tools to do ICMP PMTU Denials of Service and blind SQL injection
sadly, his website is down but hopefully it will reappear soon so that the tools and PoC’s can be obtained

I have five more pages of notes to write up on days 3 and 4, but I’ll try to get it out tonight.

Erin Kolp: My new Asus EeePC!

erinlea — 2009-01-02T16:39:35+00:00

It’s been a bad week for computing in our household. On Wednesday, my Toshiba M4 died unexpectedly. Faced with the need to replace my “road warrior” and not wanting another 10+ lb. beast, I opted for a shiny nee Asus EeePC 900A! It’s currently running the stock Xandros Linux and will be replaced with Ubuntu [...]

Romana Branden: links for 2009-01-02

timelady — 2009-01-02T10:05:14+00:00

one for my yankee pom;)

iphones and yoda - thanks gizmodo au!

(tags: funny iphone yoda)
YouTube - Turist Ömer Uzay Yolunda

turkish star trek bliss!!!

(tags: funny culttv startrek)

Catherine Devlin: domain name woes

Catherine (sam18xgy4fz@liquidid.net) — 2009-01-02T03:20:54+00:00

I bought the domain name for nerdstogether.org from 1and1.com, but I'm now realizing that domain name ownership isn't as straightforward as I thought.

Apparently, the Domain Name Servers of the world have not been alerted that nerdstogether.org now points to 66.35.48.8, the IP address where I'm hosting nerdstogether. Instead, they believe that it points to a server at 1and1, which then is responsible for passing the request along to my machine.

1and1 offers two choices for how this can be done.

HTTP forwarding

This simply sends the user's browser off to 66.35.48.8. There are two drawbacks:

The browser's URL bar shows 66.35.48.8; "nerdstogether.org" would be much prettier.
1and1 truncates the URL before sending it on; this makes RESTful access impossible, since http://nerdstogether.org/dayton goes to 66.35.48.8/ instead of 66.35.48.8/dayton

Frame redirect

In this case, 1and1 hosts a webpage which simply contains a single frame; the contents of this frame are requested from my server. This looks better, since the user's URL bar continues to display "nerdstogether.org". Furthermore, 1and1 does attach the remainder of the requested URL, so RESTful access remains possible.

The problem? I'd like to provide not just visible HTML access from this domain, but a JSON web service as well. JSON data should be returned raw, as "content-type: text/json", not as an HTML frame embedded in an HTML webpage. No web service consumer can digest that! So I need to distribute a separate URL, with my raw IP address, to web service consumers.

Virtual servers

Finally, both HTTP forwarding and frame redirect also make virtual servers impossible. I'd like to serve multiple unrelated websites from my machine, which I can do by configuring my webserver to react differently based on whether the URL requested was for nerdstogether.org or for a different domain name. Unfortunately, either of 1and1's options remove this information from the request before it is passed along to my machine; my machine only sees a request with its IP address. The fact that nerdstogether.org was the domain name requested is not passed along.

It's still possible to host multiple sites, by specifying a separate directory within 66.35.48.8 for each separate domain. Virtual servers would enable a cleaner separation between sites, though, with no possibility of navigating back up the directory hierarchy.

As far as I can tell, there is no ideal solution for me, aside from buying my domain name from a different provider, one who would actually propagate my domain name ownership out through the worldwide DNS network. I don't even know what the term would be for that kind of "full ownership" of a domain name.

This is my first trip through this wilderness, and I'd be delighted if I've missed some better solution that someone wise can point out to me.

Elizabeth Krumbach: Marshmallow Peep NYE

pleia2 — 2009-01-01T20:58:52+00:00

Last night I met up with Stephen to attend the Bethlehem First Night celebration, the height of which was the dropping of a big fiberglass Peep at midnight.

It was cold last night, by the time we arrived and parked in Bethlehem it was shortly after 7, and already 20 degrees out. We wandered around looking for food for about an hour, finally settling on Rosanna’s Restaurant, a pizzeria on Broad street near where we parked for the evening. They closed at 9:30, so we headed back out into the cold at that time and went down to the plaza where the peep drop was taking place.

We mostly just hung out with other people huddled by the fire pits placed throughout the square, but the two hours down there were livened up by a few things, including a friendly crowd…

…ice sculptures!

…Peep roasting!

..for Peep smores! The Peep smore kits were being given away by the event organizers, very fun.

Shortly after 11 I was getting a bit too cold, so we flocked inside town hall with a lot of other people to huddle in the warmth. At around quarter to midnight we went back outside to celebrate the new year with the rest of the crowd.

And so, at midnight to much cheering we watched the big Peep be lowered from a crane in the corner of the square.

It was so cold, did I mention that? We skipped most of the fireworks and headed back to the car at that point. The crowd was actually not that bad, and getting out of the garage (which turned out to be free that night!) and the city of Bethlehem was trivial.

A very fun night! Happy 2009! :)

Yolynne Medina: Yolynne’s Holiday 2008 Wish List

yolynne — 2009-01-01T14:16:42+00:00

My Holiday 2008 Wish List I’ll be joining Melo Villareal’s Christmas Wishlist Contest, in away I also get to reflect on the desires of my heart and wishes this coming 2009. I have 2 Categories, the Material and Non-Material Wishes. I’ll start with the Material stuff that I am wishing to have this coming year.1. Hello Kitty stuff; [...]

Romana Branden: links for 2009-01-01

timelady — 2009-01-01T10:06:12+00:00

EphPod - iPod for Windows (and Linux) :: HOME

what it is: EphPod is a full-featured, easy-to-use Windows application that connects with Apple's iPod. With a FireWire card and EphPod on a PC, it takes under 30 minutes to transfer 1,000 songs to an iPod. In addition, EphPod supports standard WinAmp (.M3U) playlists, includes powerful playlist creation features, and will synchronize an entire music collection with one click. It imports Microsoft Outlook contacts, in addition to allowing users to create and edit their own contacts. EphPod can also download the latest news, weather, e-books, and movie listings to an iPod.

(tags: tools technology software tool iphone windows utilities sync ipod transfer)

Catherine Devlin: nerdstogether.org

Catherine (sam18xgy4fz@liquidid.net) — 2009-01-01T08:21:44+00:00

Happy New Year! And a happy new name for The Application Formerly Known As Geek Event Aggregator (or geekeventfinder). Say hello to

nerdstogether.org

It's your one-stop resource for finding out, "How can I get together with some nerds in <insert place here>?"

nerdstogether.org comes with an exciting new feature: it actually works now. No, really. Go try it.

I achieved this by using some cutting-edge technology called "CGI scripting" and a "database". The problem of gathering the data has been pretty much solved for literally years, but I kept trying to find Web 2.0-ish solutions for getting the data to you: Oracle Application Express, Google Calendar, Google App Engine. All of them seemed great at first, but eventually frustrated me to tears.

The one nod to Web 2.0 is the very helpful use of Yahoo and Google web services for interpreting location information.

Anyway. I was so proud I actually bought a domain name for it. So go use and enjoy, and suggest missing events for it, and I'll see you at the VIC-20 club in Kalamazoo.

Catherine Devlin: Kodos for pyparsing

Catherine (sam18xgy4fz@liquidid.net) — 2008-12-31T12:01:01+00:00

"Kodos for pyparsing"

Perhaps if I say it, with earnest conviction, it will come into existence. Perhaps if I intone it repeatedly; light a candle, maybe.

Or perhaps I will get around to creating the modification to Kodos myself. It might not even be too hard - it just can't be a priority project right now...

Kudos for pyparsing, too, of course.

Mackenzie Morgan: Holiday Hacking

Mackenzie (noreply@blogger.com) — 2008-12-31T03:51:25+00:00

I haven't posted in about 2 weeks, so I figure I ought to give a quick update on what's going on. I'm with the family for the holidays, and there's no wireless at my mom's house, and things are nuts what with the whole extended family visiting. Oh, and my mother has not complained at all about Hardy (upgraded her computer from Gutsy in August), so yay. I mentioned before that I wanted to teach my little cousin Python. I gave her an old laptop I salvaged that runs Edubuntu for Christmas. She seems to love KAnagram. She was also really excited when I showed her KTurtle and helped her make the turtle draw a blue triangle. In the Python world, I've only shown her a print "Hello "+name thing so far. She looked back and forth between the line where I set name's value and that line and the output line a few times then went "oh!" so I think she understood variables.

OK so I got Hardy and Edubuntu into that paragraph. See, I wasn't totally off-topic! Anyway, the rest is about my "Holiday Hacking" project.

I like having a gradient on my gnome-panel. Consequently, every time I change my theme, I go into GIMP and make a matching gradient background image. I improved this process slightly by creating an SVG in which I can just change the color values. Blogger won't let me upload an SVG, so here's a png:

Since this gets old after a while, I'm working on adding functionality to gnome-panel so that I can pick a shadow color, a highlight color, and an opacity level for the highlight. I can't be the only one that likes the look of a gradient on a panel, so I'm sure someone else could get some use out of this.

A peek at the addition to the panel-properties-dialog:

I need to look more into how Cairo's gradients work though. One of the things I did to make the gradient on my SVG look balanced and keep the text legible was put the highlight's color stop 1/3 from the top and the top shadow color stop is actually 15% above the edge of the image. I'm not sure I can do that 15%-outside thing with Cairo. Might have to find a midway color value and set that as the top color stop. We'll see.

The status of this project is that I've modified the .glade file so there's some UI already, and I've settled on using GDK's Cairo integration because Cairo can easily paint linear rgba gradients. I think I've gone through all the functions that setup what options there are for background types, and tonight I started tying the functions to the buttons I made in Glade. Still a lot more to go (like actually writing the gradient part), but I need to have a way for the buttons and gconf to communicate before I can have any way to interact with (read: test) the gradient stuff, so I figure I ought to do that first.

I don't know if this'll make it into GNOME 2.26 or if it'll have wait until the Fall release. UI Freeze is next week, and obviously there's a UI change involved. Maybe I can submit the UI change next week and then keep working right up until Feature Freeze (19 Jan) to get it in this release.

Anyone else spending their holidays hacking on FOSS?

Romana Branden: links for 2008-12-30

timelady — 2008-12-30T10:05:44+00:00

http://mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx

Watch Neil Gaiman read The Graveyard Book on a 9-city video tour. At each stop on the tour, Neil will read one chapter from The Graveyard Book. Beginning on October 1st, we will post the video readings daily. By the end of the tour, on October 9th, you will be able to watch the master storyteller himself read The Graveyard Book in its entirety right here.

(tags: video scifi writing neilgaiman videos tour writers)
» The 13 most famous Numbers and their stories The Antic Muse

how excellent!!!!

(tags: history math fun odd weird facts education mathematics numbers)
Rap music originated in medieval Scottish pubs, claims American professor - Telegraph

Rap music originated in the medieval taverns of Scotland rather than the mean streets of the Bronx and Brooklyn, an American academic has claimed.

(tags: history music education poetry steampunk rap hilarious)