New tricks for the old dog, No. 439.

I participated in yesterday’s building of unit tests for pykickstart, and it was a great learning experience. Like many contributors, I’m not a coder. But I have done very simple scripts in Python and it turned out I didn’t need much more, other than a helping hand from James Laska, camaraderie from Adam Williamson, and polishing by Chris Lumens. Hm, three people to support the work of one? Maybe I wasn’t that helpful.

But the guys were nice about it, and by the end of the day I’d contributed two unit tests, one for the keyboard command and one for the reboot command. Admittedly, these are just about the easiest commands for which one can write unit tests, but I figure I still saved someone about 5 minutes of coding and 15 minutes of various other piddling around. Now if only I could write 143 more of those modules, assuming I’d need much less help by that point, that would be an entire workday saved for some poor soul.

OK, shoddy math and ROI projection there. But the point is, I felt like I was contributing to the QA team a little bit, ensuring that as Anaconda changes we can avoid breaking things here or there by accident. QA really can be fun, whether it’s bug triage or writing little unit tests like these, so I hope more and more people will continue to take advantage of the learning process.

I’m going to make a concerted effort to work on a simple instructional page on the wiki for people who want to try their hand at these unit tests. (Then I’ll cajole someone more skilled like James into reviewing it.) Some of it is actually just rote work, and the rest you can glean by reading just a little bit of Python. At this point, I’d again encourage people to install one or more of the diveintopython packages in Fedora — and buy the dead-tree book if you’re not opposed, it’s great and the author, Mark Pilgrim, deserves more than whatever royalties he gets, I assure you. It’s a lot easier than you think to learn Python, and way easier than you think to help with these unit tests.

Thanks to the pykickstart maintainers and the QA guys for letting me horn in on an hour or two of their work.

A bit of road dogging.

As Chuck Frain mentions on his blog, I’ll be travelling up to the Columbia Area Linux Users Group in Maryland in a couple weeks for an appearance, at which I’ll likely be talking about Fedora Remixes. The drive is always a bit bracing from the southern edge of the DC area suburbs to approximately the northern one, but should be well worth it. Plus, I have Pandora (ugh, Flash, sorry) to keep me company as well as my own tunes.

The little boy that learned everything.

As Joe has pointed out, the Linux Foundation is sponsoring a “We’re Linux” video contest, soliciting budding filmmakers for their take on Linux for the masses. As someone pointed out in an earlier comment here, a winning commercial is really going to have to stand out compared to IBM’s super-cool 90-second spot and the array of supporting spots.

I think the argument rages on as to whether or not it’s useful to market Linux right now to the masses. I certainly believe Linux at least solves some of the most aggravating problems regular Joes and Sallies have with home computing. On the other hand, there’s a fair case that right now, Linux comes along with its own set of head-scratchers. All other things being equal, I’ll take freedom any day, though. I certainly believe that Fedora is on the right track both to creating a less problematic Linux, and to showing off the best of what Linux can do to solve the problems created by other operating systems, in a way that promotes the principles and practices that have made FOSS successful.

Having said all that, and with the competition hopefully being stiff, let me offer some pointers for things to avoid; were I a judge, these things would eliminate entries.

• Bad production quality. Unless the production values play directly into the message of the spot, anything not shot at the quality level of 24p HD video and with good sound would be out.
• Montages of community people. I love community, and I suspect most people reading this do as well. But the masses don’t care a fig about it, so it’s not a way to market Linux to them.
• Aping other successful commercial ads. Unless the joke is really, really good, originality is what sets successful ads apart. Stand out with a new idea, not by rehashing someone else’s. Building on others’ code works wonders, but building on someone else’s ad campaign is usually a buzzkill.
• Being wordy. Wordy is for business audiences, and explaining what Linux is in 30 seconds to the layman doesn’t make for a great ad. Finding an idea that Linux exemplifies, and then magnifying that, just might.

Anyway, this is all my humble opinion and I wish all the contestants, and the Linux Foundation contest judges also, well in their efforts! I hope any ambitious filmmakers out there in the Fedora community will give this contest a shot, and I’m looking forward to seeing the results in April.

The road to redemption.

The Wii Fit is a great way to unwind. That is all.

And yes, I ran out of microblogging credit for the day.

True stories, No. 37.

Thank you to the kind folks at Neowin, particularly Matthew Hopson, for the opportunity to do a lengthy Q & A with their community about Fedora. I was able to work in a couple not-so-sneaky plugs for the Fedora 11 Alpha that’s due next Tuesday, February 3. (That just happens to be almost exactly a year since I started this job, wow!)

Savers unite.

As everyone knows by now, Microsoft is yet another in the huge roster of companies shedding jobs in 2009 — in the MS case, 5,000 of them, out of a total roster of about 95,000 employees. For a sense of perspective, that’s about twice the total number of employees at Red Hat. They’re also eliminating all merit pay increases for this coming fiscal year. Admittedly, they hired a lot more people than that during the past year, but the belt-tightening is a significant sign amidst all the talk of IT departments looking to maximize their efficiency and minimize costs. Of course, Red Hat has quite a bit to say on achieving that particular goal.

I could draw some pointed contrasts but that might be crass.

Accursed beepitude.

John, I’ve been silencing that beep in a less drastic way — I edit the file /etc/inputrc and uncomment the line for setting the bell style to none. I’m not sure if that quiets things down for every use case though.

Fedora video bonanza.

The great thing about the Fedora community is that when there’s work to be done, people roll up their sleeves and pitch in. That’s exactly what happened at our most recent Fedora Users and Developers Conference (FUDCon) in Boston a couple weeks ago, where volunteers banded together to provide audio streaming and video recording of some of the proceedings. Matt Domsch, Chris Tyler, and Clint Savage headed up the A/V support for this event and I’m very thankful to them. You can find all the proceedings linked here in the schedule, in the totally free Ogg format. The Linux Foundation has kindly made Flash versions available of some talks as well.

But if you thought that was all the video goodness available these days, think again!

It was a couple years ago, I think, when I first met Colby Hoke, a member of Red Hat’s Creative team who specialized in videography and video production. Colby and I share a deep love of film, although I’m convinced he’d beat the tar out of me when it comes to technical trivia about cinematography or film treatment. Plus, he has a bitchin Creative Commons tattoo. That’s dedication.

Colby has a wonderfully loose and natural shooting style that informs the many videos he’s shot about Fedora over the years. His style helps emphasize the Fedora themes of fraternity and freedom. By getting naturally up close with the people who contribute to Fedora, he shows that Fedora is built by regular people who care deeply about software freedom, and about your rights as a participant in the global information society. And of course the subject matter is often the cool code on which those people are working, code that builds features you’ll see not just in Fedora but in many other Linux distributions, thanks to our upstream-friendly practices.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, hop over to our wiki and check out the list of systems and features Fedora contributors at Red Hat work on every day, and from which you and I benefit. So much of what just works in Fedora and Linux is due to the hard work and brilliance of contributors like the ones building the free software on that list. I’m amazed at the progress we’ve made and what’s still ahead for Fedora 11 and beyond, and the features we’re building now are going to be part of the pieces Colby and his teammates are creating right now.

The Creative team calls these videos a “Spotlight On” series, because they help shine a light on the great work being done in Fedora by a group of dedicated, talented engineers. These folks work directly with upstream communities so that the features produced in Fedora don’t just stay in Fedora. That wouldn’t be much of a collaboration, now, would it? Instead, we work with GNOME, KDE, freedesktop.org, the kernel, the information security community, and many others — to lead the way on features and make sure the future of open source is one of sustainability, steady growth, and participation.

If you travel over to this page, you’ll see where Red Hat has kindly built a one-stop shop where you can find all the great Fedora media Colby and the rest of the Creative team have helped us create. But that’s not the only way to check out these video feeds!

There’s also a YouTube channel where you can find “Spotlight On” videos as well as a lot of other exciting media. There’s also a playlist available if you want to drink from the firehose.

You can also see the latest videos by grabbing the RSS feed from Red Hat Magazine. We have plenty more exciting content like this on the way, so stay tuned.

The fizzy and the still.

For a few minutes it seemed like much of the world — as seen from my little vantage point in the intartubez — stood still, as the U.S. inaugurated its 44th President in customary, non-violent, and celebratory fashion. There was an enormous crowd, a stirring speech and call to action, a warm blessing and a day to remember. The inauguration of Barack Obama was momentous and at times heart-warming: a great day as with all Inaugural Days, the peaceful transition of power and the eagerness of the entire public to see what changes the new administration brings.

Today is for celebrating; tomorrow is the day to put away the sensational headlines, the sneering, the rejoicing, and the gushing. Tomorrow we put our shoulders to the wheel and PUSH. That is what the President has called on us to do, and that is where we must prove, rather than proclaim, the words “Yes We Can.” When we look back on this day years from now, let us not have squandered its significance on petty power squabbles or the pointing of fingers. Let us take the opportunity we have today to reaffirm the promise of this great nation.

Did I break your concentration?

I’m still getting used to my new iPhone but I have managed to get a bunch of freebie applications installed on it. That was an adventure in itself, thanks to the fact that one needs an iTunes account just to get free stuff. And you can’t sign up for an account straight from your iPhone, at least as far as I could discern. Design FAIL, and unexpected from a firm that prides itself on such things.

I had to dig out an old Windows XP disc to install a virtual guest machine on my laptop’s Fedora 10 system, just to install iTunes and make an account with the intention of only downloading free (as in beer) stuff. I suppose that will be amusing to people who hate the iPhone and/or Apple already. I’m pretty sure this is a casualty of the need for DRM on their revenue generating service… I just found it to be really off-putting from a usability standpoint.

Still love the phone though, I gotta admit. I’ve had a crap phone for so many years that it’s nice to finally have something with a usable interface. Something from which I can, for instance, write this blog entry!