Trusty DVD parcels

I am just getting the parcels of DVDs ready. I will take them to the post office this week sometime. Thanks to everyone who is willing to be a distribution point.

Spur of the moment Saucy Salamander Release Party pics

So good to meet face to face. Thanks to everyone who made the effort to drive through to Stellenbosch from various areas around Cape Town. So good to hang out with techy people and chat about stuff that makes non-techy people yawn.

Spur of the moment release party of Saucy Salamander 13.10 at Gino's 26/10/2013 at 11am.

Super impromptu release party. Let's meet at Gino's Saturday 26 October at 11. I'll have the isos and my laptop so we can make startup disks for those that want.

Hello from ubuntu-za to ubuntu-fr

Thanks YoBoy for organising an impromptu ubuntu hour in Paris. It was great to meet fellow ubuntu people. Also interesting to hear some comments from the point of view of the largest and oldest LoCo in the community. Amongst other things ubuntu-fr provides french support for ubuntu users. This is a mammoth task involving a wiki and forums. Even though we have 11 official languages in South Africa we are lucky that the English support and tools provided by Canonical and the community is accessible to a lot of our ubuntu users in South Africa. ubuntu-fr bridges the gap for French speaking ubuntu users.

I have to say I am envious of the size of their LoCo. There is a different energy when there are more participants. Having said that it is so great to see people in ubuntu-za step up and take on tasks without any formal prompting. Thanks ubuntu-za, keep up the good work. This is what the LoCo communities are about.

Global Jam CT Raring - the stats

Stefano provided a list of things the group accomplished at the Global Jam last Saturday. Thanks again to Julian Taylor and codebridge for sharing their space. Here is the email Stefano sent to the ubuntu-za list:

Follow up (as requested my Miles): * General documentation for people getting started in Ubuntu Development: - http://developer.ubuntu.com/packaging/html/ * Graham finished the SRU [0] uploads for the CUDA stack in quantal [1, 2]. These were prepared beforehand, but I hadn't got around to reviewing them before the jam. * Raoul, Grant, and I had a look through the packages that are failing to build in raring, but didn't see any obviously easy ones to fix. The list from the most recent archive rebuild [3] is littered with multi-arch python fallout, which has been fixed [4] * We then reviewed the RC bug fixes from Debian [5]. I cleaned up a bunch of spam on that page We reviewed the bugs for accessodf, elilo, hamster-applet, imswitch, rawstudio and found that they didn't affect Ubuntu. The clang bug seems to affect Ubuntu but was far too complex for our jam. The ncpfs bug affects Ubuntu. It's already been synced [6] but isn't installable in Ubuntu [7] because it depends on a newer initscripts version. The libticonv bug affects Ubuntu, but the libticonv package in Ubuntu has a totally different ancestry to the Debian package. It should probably be merged but that'd be a non-trivial job. * Reviewing Debian RC bug #700315 [8] for rawstudio pointed us to flickcurl 1.23-1 which we synced [9] from Debian experimental, to fix Debian bug #700050 [10]. * I updated my build failure report for precise [11], for Graham, to see what other CUDA related things hadn't built yet. * Julian Taylor (a MOTU who happened to be around on IRC, during our jam) suggested that Graham look at SRUing bug 1113356 [12]. Graham prepared a patch, which Julian sponsored for him. * We were about to start writing some autopkgtests [13] for some of my packages in Debian, but decided we were hungry, and went to Hudsons for beer, burgers, and coffee. Thanks, Graham, Grant, Raoul, and Maia! SR

Cape Town Global Jam Raring

We looked at Debian bugs that needed to be added to the release or not, as the case may be. Thank you Stefano for organizing,  mentoring and driving the coffee machine. Thanks to everyone who donated a couple of hours to make ubuntu better. Thanks codebridge for having us.

Jam Jam Jam - Raring

We have two events planned for Global Jam week. One BugJam in Cape Town. Thanks Stefano for getting the ball rolling with this one. Sat 2 March, 10:00-15:00 at Codebridge in Cape Town.

The second event is an Ubuntu Hour in Centurion with a specific focus on checking out what an Ubuntu Jam could be so we'll call it Jumpstart to Jamming. Thanks to Dewald for organising this one and for reading up on possible Jam activities. Sun 3 March, 12:00-14:00

If you want to print or re-mix these banners you can find them at spreadubuntu.org Cape Town here and Centurion here.

For those ubuntu-za people who aren't near a Jam location, you can hang out with us on #ubuntu-za on irc while you help make ubuntu better. Some ideas for people who aren't in the mood to fix bugs: Why not help to translate your favourite application? Maybe answer or improve an answer on askubuntu.com or see if your hardware is ubuntu friendly. Have a little bit more time, you could help test such as doing an iso test.

Parcel in the post: Stickers!

Thank you, Marius for making these stickers. So nice to get a parcel in the post. If anyone in ubuntu-za wants to get stickers from Marius at a small fee, put a request on ubuntu-za mailing list.

Re-approval: a loook back on 2 years of ubuntu-za

I am preparing the re-approval page for ubuntu-za. To do this I am looking back at past activities and events for this LoCo. When I organised my first Ubuntu Hour, I expected no-one to notice. David sat down at the table and ordered a latte and now he has become such a good friend: someone who I can call if I if I am sick or if my software has a memory leak and someone who I can drive to the doctor if his neck goes into a spasm from repetitive stress. The second Ubuntu Hour I met Dewald, an equally dear friend now, who is organising ubuntu hours and release parties in Johannesburg. There are many more, Stefano who mailed me from UDS because he knew I wanted a hoodie and lugged the hoodie back in his suitcase. Henk who organised a super awesome chocolate plated cake which almost made us pass out from sugar overdose. Rauol who sorts the website, organises ubuntu hours and brings his wife and son to the release parties. Werner who helps out with meetings and drives to a guest house to pick up CDs so I don't have to post them. Miles-Miles&Maaz: Miles makes anyone who comes into the irc channel feel at home by offering virtual coffee, rusks and maybe even biltong. Miles trains Maaz. There are many more some I have met, some I have on the adress list to send a package(Leon Gert, Jan, Nhlanha, Frans, Marvel, Wayne, Nico, Tim, Vincent, Chris) , some I only see in irc (nuvolari magespawn and more). What a community! We are separated by miles but so close on the internet. I feel like I am giving a speech at a wedding and I am sure I am missing someone. If I missed you, I'm sorry, it isn't intentional. This community cannot exists without you. This is why I am so happy that different people, all over the country, are doing something, small or big, to be part of this community. Thank you everyone for being a part of ubuntu-za!

And they're off - quantal ubuntu dvds to regional contacts

The parcels with the ubuntu dvds to the regional contacts are on their way. Thanks to shipit for using the magic words "not for resale"  and "promotional material" which made the parcel fly through without customs slowing things down. Queery already has the Jo'burg and Pretoria dvds. This helped as it saved me postage for 3 parcels. So, regional contacts of ubuntu-za, it's over to you now.

Ubuntu 12.10 Release Parties, Durban first, more to follow

The ubuntu-za people in Durban had a release party/birthday party yesterday. You can see what they got up to on Google+ .Thanks everybody invovled for organising and for capturing the event in pixels.

The Pretoria/Johannesburg release party is scheduled to happen next Saturday, 27 October at 10 at House4Hack. Find more info about the event on the loco.ubuntu.com page.

Free Particle Webjay performance on ubuntu at the Wits Art Museum

I was part of the Free Particle Digital art exhibition. One of the events was a webjay performance with 6 other artists in collaboration with Anne Roquigny. In previous collaborations I find myself having to span multiple operating systems each with their own idiosyncrasies. This time, to my delight, Anne's entire system runs on ubuntu. The webjay system has a master which connects to multiple client machines. The client machines connect to a projector each. On the master you load a playlist of links and then you can control which links are presented on each client machine and projector. The performance projected images on the windows of the Wits Art Museum.

Successful Ubuntu Hour in Jo'burg today

Thank you queery1985 for sharing CDs and for organising the Ubuntu Hour. Here are the pics.

Ubuntu Hour in Joburg, 11/8/2012

queery1985 will host another Ubuntu Hour for the Gauteng Geeks. Excerpt from his email to the ubuntu-za mailing list.

I am organising another Ubuntu Hour for next week Saterday (11/8/2012) for
all the Gauteng Geeks.

It will be held at the Rosebank Mall Mugg&Bean again, which is right next
to the Rosebank Gautrain station. www.gautrain.co.za

Please come and join us for a coffee and/or a muffin, bring your toys and
your kids. There is also 30min free wifi.

http://ubuntu-za.org/news/2012/08/03/ubuntu-hour-jhb-11082012

Please RSVP: http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/ubuntu-za/1886/detail/

I will also try and remember the Official Ubuntu CD's, so that will be the
spot to collect if you want any CD's.

Jo'burg Ubuntu Hour and CDs across the country

Thank you queery for organising an ubuntu hour in Joburg. Three people at the first one is a fantastic start. 

Each LoCo has it's own environment and culture and in ubuntu-za land we struggle with huge distances among members and expensive bandwidth. To alleviate this we have set up a network of 14 enthusiastic volunteers in all the major centers who are willing to help people get a copy of an iso. Last week I sent CDs to all the volunteers. The idea is that you find someone closest to you on the ubuntu-za website and get an iso from them. We still need to get the latest info of the volunteers on the website but you should also be able to ask on the mailing list and discover who is closest to you.

Pretoria Precise Pangolin Release party with steak

I wasn't there but it looks like fun. Lots of laptops in a restaurant. Thanks to Nic and Marius for making this happen and also Queery for the photos.

Cape Town Precise Pangolin Release party with cake

Henk did a sterling job hosting the Precise Pangolin Release party in the Shuttleworth Lab at UCT. We had a fair turnout for a public holiday which was also the first day of the 5 day weekend. Note too that this was the AfrikaBurn weekend. We also had a super delicious, home-made, Pangolin cake which was creatively decorated with chocolate scales. Thanks to Henk's friend. We planned to demo some games and we did, in an informal way. Mostly it was just an install fest. We also made some live CDs and liveboot USB disks for people. Thanks also Stefano for nursing the non-standard upgrades.

Poster for Pangolin Release Party

A quick Poster for the Pangolin release parties. This is the web version. 

Print poster at spreadubuntu
Web Poster at spreadubuntu

Pangolin Release parties - we have 2 - any more?

We have 2 release parties so far. One in Cape Town and one in Pretoria.

Cape Town : Friday 27 May 10-13:00 Shuttleworth lab UCT - LoCo Detail

Pretoria: Saturday 5 May 10-13:30 Karoo Land and Cattle in Irene - LoCo Detail

I am hoping to organise a casual Ubuntu Hour/ after party in Stellenbosch too so I can catch up with the everybody who was in holiday.

An insert snack of choice, a refreshing beverage of choice, a friend and a laptop upgrading to pangolin also counts as a release party.

Stellenbosch ubuntu hour March

It is university vacation so a rather quiet ubuntu hour.