My roomba tried to commit suicide today.
It managed to line up the two shoes and box you see here trapping itself, then went around in circles until it’s battery died.
Sadly, this Roomba has hated life from the very beginning. The day after I got it, it forced it’s way under my couch scratching it’s self up and eventually getting stuck.
I had a great time at SCALE, here’s a wrap-up of some of the things that went on:
While I absolutely had a great time, I found that very few people hadn’t heard of GNOME, and there wasn’t all that much to say to most people about it. Common questions were people wondering what’s coming in the next release, how to properly pronounce “GNOME”, and of course, why choose GNOME over KDE.
Running a booth and being involved in projects is absolutely the best way to get the most out of conferences, and I look forward to having a project of my own to show off at future expos. We were also tossing around the idea of having a hacker booth with bean bags chairs, music, and soft lighting, etc. where people can work on stuff and learn about open source software development.
I’m heading down to LA tonight for SCALE, the Southern California Linux Expo. I’ll be volunteering at the GNOME booth in the Exhibition Hall, so if you’re in the area, stop by and say hi!
(All photos credit whoever they link to, I don’t have a working camera right now, sadly.)
Yesterday was opening day for the new South Lake Union Streetcar line in Seattle, WA. This is not to be confused with the first stretch of light rail, scheduled to arrive late 2009.
I met a group of friends downtown at the Westlake station to join in on the festivities. After collecting a bags worth of streetcar swag, we piled into the inaugural run of the purple train along with probably 200 other people. It was crowded. Sadly amidst all the chaos, only one out of the five people in our group got a golden ticket.
I think I see the back corner of my head somewhere in this picture.
For some reason - probably to be absolutely sure that there would be no accidents on the first day - they were running the streetcars at a maximum of 12mph (they are governed for 30mph, but will unlikely be run over 25mpg according to a City representative). Because of this, it was a slow ride, and left many people unimpressed. The city probably should have told everyone about the speed cap in advance.
One of the things that was being handed out was a “passport” containing a list of retailers, restaurants, and other businesses along the streetcar line. These participating businesses would stamp their name in your passport if you stopped by, and if you got 10 stamps, you could drop the passport off to enter into a drawing for prizes. Many businesses were also giving discounts to streetcar riders.
We got off the streetcar the North end of the line, popped open our passports, and found a nearby participating restaurant for lunch. Afterwards we set off, by train and foot, to explore. The passport served as a guide - getting enough stamps to enter the contest was really just a secondary goal. We all had a great time walking and riding around a neighborhood that none of us have spent much time in, and discovered new coffee shops, parks, expensive-yet-amazing condos, and a very cheap and tasty happy hour menu. The city did a great job with this program.
Throughout our travels, we bumped into a reporter for the Seattle PI. Both Andrew and Jessika were quoted in an article about the streetcar.
Three blocks from the streetcar line, near Fairview Avenue North, the streetcar’s debut brought busy sales of the SLUT T-shirts at the Kapow Coffee shop, where entrepreneur Jeremiah St. Georges has been selling them.
Outside the shop, Andrew Filer called the line a “small start” toward developing density that will support it — “a good idea in the long run. I like it.”
But Jesika McEvoy, sporting one of St. Georges’ T-shirts, was unconvinced. “Why spend a lot of money on something that doesn’t go very fast and stops at every stoplight? It seems like Paul Allen should have funded this exclusively … the only ones benefiting are him and a couple of retailers.”
The day ended with 11 stamps, a streetcar ride back downtown, and a bus ride home.
I’ve been to a lot of conferences over the past few months, here’s a short summary of them:
May ‘07: Toorcon Seattle (BETA)
I wrote a separate post about this, see here.
July ‘07: Ubuntu Live
I took the train down to Portland with Andy, which is so much more enjoyable than flying, I don’t even know where start. Unfortunately, Amtrak’s trains on the west cost are quite slow, and at least between Seattle and Portland, don’t have priority on the track. The trip home was delayed over two hours because the freight company was using the tracks, so we were stuck in the middle of nowhere for a while.
My happiness with mass transit continued after getting off the train, when I walked a few blocks from the Amtrak station and hopped on Portland’s light rail, which is absolutely wonderful. It dropped me off right in front of my hotel, across the street from the convention center where the conference took place. And best of all, this was all within the free ride zone. Chris and Steve arrived from California by air and also were impressed with the continence of the rail system, which took them from the airport right to the hotel, for under $3.
Fortunately, the first leg of light rail starts operating here in Seattle in 2009, and will eventually stop a block and a half from my apartment. More information on that here.
Onto the conference itself, there were some excellent keynotes, including Mark Shuttleworth (founder of Canonical/Ubuntu) and Eben Moglen (from the SFLC). Eben Moglen’s talked about GPLv3, and also encouraged everyone to shift their thinking from “open source” to “free software”. He had a very positive response from the crowd, which I think is great news.
There was also talk about the effect “web 2.0″ has on software freedom, specifically about how we’ve been moving from proprietary software on the desktop to proprietary software on the web. This time however, we loose control of who controls and has access to our data, not only the file format it’s stored in.
Chris and I are both irritated by all the attention web applications have been getting recently. We both hope developers will start writing great free desktop software again some day soon. The linux desktop should be innovative, NOT just the best shell to the web.
The sessions weren’t as technical as we had hoped, but we all certainly learned something new. Sadly, the BoF I arranged was a non-event, and I was completely blown off by everyone from Canonical.
Someone from OpenMoko had a booth at the vendor area showing off the Neo1978, and I have to say, I don’t like it. It’s rather big and bulky, but more importantly, the screen is inset from the case, which I find to be very unappealing. The lack of EDGE or WiFi is also a big deal breaker, and software is very unintuitive and clunky, but I see there’s good progress being made there.
July ‘07: OSCON
I didn’t pay for any sessions at OSCON, but the exhibition hall was HUGE, and I spent almost half the day there. Intel dominated the floor with people demoing their new Thread Building Blocks framework (which looks very cool), as well as their new Moblin hardware platform (which doesn’t interest me at all).
Mozilla also had a solid presence there. Chris and I had a good chat with someone about XUL, which I still need to follow up on.
Sun was there, but I hope nobody else tried to use any of the computers they had on display, some very pissed off looking woman yelled at me and scared me off. Fortunately, I did manage to get some OpenSolaris DVDs before running away. I need to find time to install Nexenta and see what all the ZFS fuss is about.
July ‘07: Facebook Developer Garage
At work, we developed a Facebook application, so I figured I’d show up and represent.
There were three people from Facebook who talked a bit about the platform and took questions/feedback from the crowd, but were all very careful not to talk about future plans.
The Facebook Platform is interesting to startups because it provides instant access to a huge user base, and has already proven to be a successful way to bootstrap a product.
Overall, most people were extremely excited about the platform, but at the same time, had complaints about functionality and features. The representatives from Facebook acknowledged everything that was brought up, but because of their policy to not speculate on the future, they made no commitments, and I don’t think anyone left feeling confident that specific things would change. I suspect a Windows developer would feel the same way having run into problems or limitations with their proprietary platform.
Although they claim otherwise, Facebook is a closed, proprietary platform, much like Windows or OS X. As a developer for this platform, you’re limited to a small set of functionality that could change underneath you any day, and may not work as documented.
Facebook is about more than social networking, they are creating a new type of operating system, much like Google has been doing with their online web-based applications.
Personally, I’m not ready to loose the freedom to tinker with applications that I use, or have my data stored online (and possibly owned) by a third party. If this is the case, I’ve lost my freedom, and might as well go back to using Windows.
August ‘07: DEFCON
I’ve been saying I’d go to DEFCON for a few years, and this time I actually made it! Just about everyone I know was there, so it would have been a very boring weekend in Seattle had I not. Generally I enjoy the social aspect of conferences more than the talks themselves, and DEFCON offers plenty of other things to do besides attending talks all day. Some friends got second place in the aCTF contest, next year I look forward to being more active in both that and the badge hacking competition.
I’ve been working with a few other people to resurrect GSLUG, the Greater Seattle Linux User’s group.
The next meeting is this Saturday (September 1st, 2007) at 12:00pm, here’s the announcement that Ian sent out on the list:
The September 2007, inaugural meeting of the Greater Seattle
Linux Users Group (GSLUG) will be held on Saturday, September 1st,
starting promptly at 12:00 PM on the North Seattle Community College
campus.
We are confirmed to use room IB 3319. (Yes, the same room we've
had in the past)
Parking is free on weekends.
For directions and complete details, please visit the meeting's Wiki
entry:
http://wiki.gslug.org/index.php/Meeting_2007-09-01
(Links to: http://www.northseattle.edu/maps/ for directions)
Please feel free to forward this announcement as appropriate.
This will be the first meeting GSLUG has had in quite a while, and
things have changed. The presentation format will be that of Lightning
talks (Several talks from 5-10 minutes in length, with open Q&A
afterwards) instead of the traditional hour or so long presentations.
Microsoft might be right on the other side of the water, but Linux and Free Software is alive in Seattle! If you’re reading this and in the Seattle area, I hope to see you there! (Also, I’m giving a talk!)
I’ll be heading down to Portland tomorrow afternoon for Ubuntu Live! and OSCON. I’m really looking forward to meeting up with Chris and Steve, both of whom I haven’t seen in over a year.
Hacking BoF
I’ve organized a “hacking session” BoF at Ubuntu Live, anyone interested in improving Ubuntu and GNOME is invited to attend.
Here’s the official description:
Do hackers of a feather flock together? Let's find out at Ubuntu Live!
Anyone interested in hands on experience improving Ubuntu is invited to come by
to share ideas, bugs, code, or whatever else is on your mind.
Agenda may include (and is certainly not limited to):
* Overview of technologies that make up the modern GNOME/Ubuntu desktop
* Problem solving/debugging tips
* Brief introduction to launchpad.net (reporting bugs, suggesting features,
etc.)
* Going through the Ubuntu Desktop team TODO list and working on small
tasks.
I'd also like to throw everyone in the room at a specific project, such as
fixing out-of-the-box touchpad support for laptop users, and see what we can
accomplish in a night. This will be a great opportunity for both experienced
and brand-new developers to make something cool that will (hopefully) see it's
way into a future release.
See you there!
P.S. If you're from the area and have a projector and/or whiteboard to bring,
that would be great!
The event will be taking place on Sunday from 8:00pm to 9:00pm. If things are going well, we will find somewhere else to keep hacking after they kick us out at 9.
More information at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuLive2007
See you there!
I have a Xen VM set up on my server that I give accounts to friends on, and I thought it would be nice to set up filesystem quotas, so one user couldn’t take down the server for everyone else by filling up the disk.
Enabling quotas is easy, just add usrquota and grpquota to /etc/fstab, as such:
/dev/sda1 / reiserfs defaults,usrquota,grpquota 0 1
Then, remount the filesystem:
$ sudo mount -o remount /
Finally, install and enable the software:
$ sudo apt-get install quota quotatool $ sudo /etc/init.d/quota start
After getting everything turned on, I quickly realized that the tools for actually setting quotas, while quite powerful, are not very user friendly.
I wanted to give everyone in the “users” group a 100MB quota, except for a few users who would get more. At first I thought I could set a group quota to accomplish this, but eventually figured out that group quotas apply to files owned by the group, not users in the group.
Rather than set every user by hand, I wrote a little script to make life easier.
To use, just change QUOTA_INFO at the top.
QUOTA_INFO = {
'users' => {
'eric' => :unlimited,
'jazzfreak' => 200,
:default => 100
}
}
I also thought it would be nice if users saw how much disk space they had left upon login, and after searching the web for a while without finding anything, I wrote another quick script to do just that.
I stuck it in /usr/local/bin/ and added it to the bottom of /etc/profile so it would be run automatically on login.
Here’s what it looks like:
$ ssh orion You have used 187.7 MB of 200 MB. 12.3 MB remaining. eric@orion:~$
If anyone finds either of these scripts useful, please let me know!
This past weekend was ToorCon Seattle (Beta), a weekend long free & invite-only get together of around 100 security professionals and hackers.
It was a lot of fun!
Talks were on Saturday at the Last Supper Club.
A list including slides are up on the website.
Saturday night’s party was at the Public N3rd Area, which was temporarily converted from workshop to dance club.
Sunday started off with a trip to the Museum of Communication, which was really cool.
Next it was back to the Public N3rd Area, which was back to shop mode, where people were building robots with lego mindstorms… and whatever else happened to be laying around.
The weekend ended with an almost 40 person DDOS attack on a local restaurant. Some poor family got caught in the maddness and had to be relocated to the backside of the restaurant.
See everyone at Toorcon San Diego, and hopefully at the next Toorcon Seattle!
(Photos all credit whoever took them, not me!)
Two weeks ago (Monday, March 5th, 2007 - I am obviously a bit late in posting this) Galan, Ben, and I went down to the new Sound Transit Operations & Maintenance Facility for the official dedication and the first public tour.
Seattle has been in great need of a good public transportation system for a long time, and it’s really great to see it finally happening.
The facility is located in south downtown (also known as “sodo”), across the street from the former Raineer Brewery, which is now the Tullys coffee headquartes.
The mayor of Seattle started things off. Somehow the crowd managed to restrain themselves from throwing any eggs, I was impressed.
As part of Sound Transit’s art program, they had the huge “R” that used to stand high on top of the former raineer brewery restored, and used it to write “Rail” on the side of the building, I thought this was pretty cool.
The poles that hold up the electrical wires for the rail cars in the outside lot are also part of an art project, apparently.
These are supposed to be horsetail. As the mayor said, “I always thought that the stripes were a safety thing, but it turns out that they are art!” (paraphrased). Honestly, I thought they were ugly safety stripes too, so who knew. A sound transit representitive referred to the yard as the Sound Transit Missle Defense Silo, which I thought was aptly chosen.
Painful speeches from various politicians went on for a while, I had a whole rant prepared here but decided against including it. Maybe in a future post.
Anyway, obviously no building dedication is complete without a pair of oversided scissors and a photo opt:
With the facility’s only security now lying on the ground in ruins, everyone swarmed into the building where were were greeted by cake, coffee, and lots of free swag.
Too much cake, coffee, and swag later, our tour group set off, lead by Roger Pence, a community outreach coordinator for sound transit.
The building is four stories tall. The upper floors have very nice offices, with very nice views of the city. Note that they still had not installed furnature, computers, or anything in most of the building.
This will be the command center:
The lower and ground floors are warehouse space and repair/maintanence shops.
Since the electrical system is on the top of the rail cars, each service bay has an overhead mezzanine, as well as an underground pit for working on the wheels and stuff.
To keep the cars looking nice, they have a paint room and a 2-car carwash:
And finally, we got to walk through one of the cars, they are very nice!
More photos here and here. Official press release about the opening here, website and factsheet here. The Seattle Channel also put together a video, although I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.
Light rail - finally coming to seattle for the first time in 2009!