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.

Feb Ubuntu Hour Rondebosch

Thank you superfly for organising this one.

Ubuntu Hour in Rondebosch this Saturday

superfly says: " Ubuntu Hour will be this Saturday at 2pm, at Lyra's in Rondebosch. It's close to the station, and it apparently has free WiFi. I'll try to get there a little before 2, and I'll be sporting one of these:"

Go superfly! The first Southern Suburbs ubuntu Hour!

Ubuntu Hour Saturday 11 Feb 14:00 UTC+2 Lyra's in Rondebosch, Western Cape

nullPointerException - it's not what you think

I am a few days away from my practical exhibition for my Masters in Digital Art. The show is titled nullPointerException. Why am I posting this on my ubuntu blog? Because it was made in ubuntu using opensource software such as openframeworks and boodler. Because each work runs from a custom live USB disk running ubuntu. Because the concept is software related. The sensing devices are XBox Kinect and I am using the OpenNI and PrimeSense drivers to do the tracking I need.
 

Doing an technical installation in a gallery space poses some reliability problems. The pieces need to autoboot. If there is a power outage they need to startup again without intervention as the PCs are often hidden and out of reach. They need to run continuously for 3 weeks without intervention incase there isn't a power outage. In my case my budget didn't allow for 4 new pcs so I had to borrow what I could. This means boot from USB and don't touch the hard-drive. Initially I made lubuntu install disks but for the final set I customised a ubuntu oneiric desktop install image with UCK. Stripped out what I didn't need and installed kinect drivers and the artworks. It has the added advantage that I can give someone a flash disk and say "plug it into a pc, plug in the kinect, reboot and press F12, choose to boot from flash disk" and it works mostly depending on the pc the person chooses.