Yesterday was day 1 of the enrichment class I’m teaching at my daughter’s elementary school. The class is elementary computer programming using Python, and has a total of six students, all fifth-graders. Actually, the first class only had five, because one went home on the bus by accident instead of …
Lately, as an extramural project I’ve been preparing an enrichment class I’ll be teaching at my kids’ elementary school in November. The class is for fifth graders, a very light introduction to software and programming concepts. The kids elect their enrichment class, which is a fantastic way to put together …
I’m a little late this cycle to move my laptop to the Fedora pre-release. (Note the web site doesn’t yet feature the Fedora 16 Beta — that should change next Monday around 10:00 US Eastern time.) I had tried some Live USBs along the way and they were generally looking …
Following a truncated workday on Thursday, I quickly packed, threw my stuff in the car, and raced up the road as quickly as torrential rain would safely allow to Reagan National Airport. I took a short flight to Columbus, Ohio, where this weekend the Ohio Linux Fest 2011 was set …
It’s not as well known as it should be, but there’s a great source of documentation for the ifcfg-<interface> files that provide network settings in some configurations. NetworkManager has the ability to interpret these settings as well. If you look in the online documentation for the initscripts package, you’ll find …
I was really happy to see that the latest round of Fedora 15 updates brought something for which I’ve been yearning. On my new ThinkPad x220, the Fn+F8 toggle for turning off the touchpad now works. YAY! My right palm often hits the touchpad when I’m typing, causing the mouse …
Bruce Byfield has published an article on burnout in community projects, to which I was happy to contribute some thoughts. Overall I believe the thoughts people shared in that article, while not surprising or radical, can help people avoid putting themselves in a burnout situation. Moreover, they can potentially help …
Short and belated post: I wanted to give some sincere and heartfelt gratitude to the sysadmins for Fedora that keep our infrastructure in tip top condition daily. Sorry I missed saying this on SysAdmin day, but you guys just rock! Thanks for all you do for us, seen and unseen.
My wife has been expressing some discontent with the fact that although we share Google calendars, we still have a standard paper calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. She dutifully replaces it every year, usually with an art nouveau themed version. But she’s been so happy with her new Droid …
Last night I was able to get into the Google+ trial and one of the pieces of the setup was a Talk plugin that includes audio and video chat support. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it works great on Fedora 15. The PackageKit browser integration pulls in other …