Ubuntu-ZA Launches New Website
Some of you might have noticed that our old wiki has been down for some time. Well yesterday I officially changed dns over to point to our new improved website. We tried to keep some of the most active links alive and we are still in the process of adding content and tweaking the theme a bit but see how awesome it is.
It is a little squashed but you can see an overview or simply go to the main ubuntu-za website.
This is just a standard drupal theme which will be released on Launchpad as an ubuntu-za project. It borrows some aspects from the official Drupal theme which is still under construction. This theme was created by Raoul Snyman.
Our server also changed hosting to make shared use of the clug VPS server that was sponsored by frogfoot.
Thanks to every one that made this migration possible, I know it was a lot of work but I do think the reward is already visible with our great new shiny Lucid matching themed website 
Open Application for EMEA Board Membership
Last week Daniel Holabach announced on the ubuntu-news-team mailing list that there were going to be some restaffing within the boards more specifically the EMEA board which would mean need of new members.
I would like to give my thanks to the current members stepping down. I wish you all the best for your participation in other aspects/teams in the greater Ubuntu community.
- Alan Pope
- Dennis Kaarsemaker (Seveas)
- Mark Van den Borre
- Mathew Helmke (forumsmathew)
- Stephane Graber
- Szilvester Farkas (phanatic)
I thought it was worth mentioning those 3 irc nicks because they were the board members that along with Joseph Price(Pricey) accepted me into Ubuntu Membership on the 2rd of March 2009.
Here goes nothing.
If I have learnt one thing about what makes Ubuntu so great is the openness. So rather then sending this application just to the mailing lists I thought it was best to send it to the Ubuntu community via the planets that be. (A copy of this has been forwarded to the appropriate board)
I when I first read this announcement on planet Ubuntu I first thought was finally Africa could have the possibility of having a representative on the board it is a pity Jonathan Carter beat me to it by just a few months don’t hold this against me.
A answer to a few of the main questions.
Tell me about yourself.
I am currently a 23 year old Mobile Developer. I am into any thing technical related I guess you could call me geeky. I have a passion for Open Source software for reason that go far beyond a simple GPL licence and spread into the communities that open source thrives on ie Ubuntu.
My activities in the Ubuntu community; I am currently the loco contact for the South African team. I am also a moderator on a relativity quiet forum. I have also been a member of the beginners team for +-1.5 years and very recently I have been driving a project to rebuild website which was lost during a failed migration of hosts.
“David doesn’t judge you by the colour of your skin, the car you drive, clothes you wear, but rather by the operating system you choose.” — To quote from a friend of mine
Tell me about your best and worse qualities?
I would think one of my greatest qualities is being able to motivate others. I have an abundance of energy and when I put my mind to something I give it 110% and this seems to flow into other people. I guess you can’t really expect people to do things if you cant be bothered to do.
I speak my mind. To quote paultag ‘David has an ability to “cut” right to the case’. While I don’t necessarily think this is bad it something that is definitely worth noting.
If I were to ask someone to describe you, what would he or she say?
David kind, caring, considerate, and generally think of others over himself. I also think they would mention. He is always willing to try and help and should he be unable to do so he will either know where to point you for better information. He isn’t scared to simply say he doesn’t know the answer but will try to help where ever possible.
—-
Any how I am pretty sure most people will have stopped reading by now so I am going to simply end off by saying I would greatly appreciate if the council would consider my application kindly and this would be my official self-nomination.
For those of you that know me and are willing to sponsor my application please feel free to at my wiki
David Rubin| https://wiki.ubuntu.com/drubin | https://launchpad.net/~drubin
Fixing Xmonad Enter Bindings
So I switched over Xmonad during the Ubuntu-za jam with the help of Vaughan I say help but it was more like me copying his configurations over to my machine with very minor tweaking.
His configuration contains a few handy key bindings, one of which is super+shift+enter which opens up a terminal. The problem was in the process of copying configs over this binding didn’t seem to work. We tried the standard things
- Absolute binary paths is /usr/bin/xterm
- Changing terminals to gnome-terminal
- Good old windows trick of rebooting
- xmonad –recompile
None of them seemed to work and we were out o luck so we just decided to remap it to super+shift+g (not 100% sure why G though). This worked but it bugged me to no end. I eventually got some help in #xmonad on freenode by vav.
Xev you can get what keycodes are emitted.
xev | grep keysym state 0x0, keycode 36 (keysym 0xff0d, Return), same_screen YES, state 0x0, keycode 36 (keysym 0xff0d, Return), same_screen YES, state 0x0, keycode 77 (keysym 0xff7f, Num_Lock), same_screen YES, state 0x10, keycode 77 (keysym 0xff7f, Num_Lock), same_screen YES, state 0x10, keycode 104 (keysym 0xff8d, KP_Enter), same_screen YES, state 0x10, keycode 104 (keysym 0xff8d, KP_Enter), same_screen YES
As you can see it see it seems to be when num-lock is on the keyevent fired for Enter key changes, I am not sure if this is a Xserver bug or not but other computers don’t seem to exhibit the same behavior?
Any how once you have that worked out fixing it is trivial just simply bind to both key events.
((modm .|. shiftMask, xK_Return), spawn $ XMonad.terminal conf ) , ((modm .|. shiftMask, xK_KP_Enter), spawn $ XMonad.terminal conf )
I hope that this might help some one Googling.
ZA Jammed Like Champions
Awhile ago I posted that Ubuntu-za and clug was planning a Jam. Well on Sunday it actually happened and +- 20 people showed up. I consider that to be pretty awesome.
Highlights
- Tumbleweed explained basic bug reporting, Debian packaging, translations and gave us a quick demo on building Hello.
- Almost every one upgraded/reinstalled to Lucid some people even did both
- Some one made a 3D render animation of Tux (I really need to find out what his name was and if we can get hold of it)
- Mythbuntu crept into peoples boot screens. See LP bug A fix has since been released
- Michiel started translating things into Afrikaans
- I started using xmonad
- Coke was drunk
- Pizza’s were eaten (Thanks Clug)
- Coffee was made (thanks tumbleweed+maia)
- Milk was spilt
- And nothing blew up
Some Pics
Ubuntu-za Is Jamming
So I guess it is about time I finally blog about it. Ubuntu-za in conjunction with Clug will be hosting a Jam. I just want to thank Stefano and Maia for all their hard work in setting it up and being so proactive.
Maia long with a few other people from -za have wiped up a pretty cool post for the even if I do say so my self.
You can find the source for both the English and Afrikaans versions on Spread Ubuntu.
As you can see from the post the event will be at the Shuttleworth Labs at UCT directions between 10am – 5pm on Sunday the 28th March 2010. If you can’t make it for the full time don’t worry just pop in at any point. We will have the full LEG mirror so even if you wont have to worry about downloading all those big packages or worrying about downloading large ISO’s just for testing.
Reasons to come
- Having fun learning from others.
- Get help installing Ubuntu
- Trying out the development release. Don’t worry you don’t need to be a developer or even an experienced Ubuntu user.
- Translations
- Want to save bandwith and come copy the repos
- Learn how to report bugs so that they might actually get fixed!
- Learn packaging
- Watch some cool pre-release demos from Lucid
In preparation for this event I went and upgraded my laptop to Lucid. I don’t really know how long it took because I did the very trusting thing and went to sleep after entering Y.
I did wake up with a nice shiny blue screen asking me if I wanted to overwrite my grub menu selected keep original and about 5minutes later I had a nice shinny purple lucid looking screen. Woohoo.
I also then reporting my first Lucid theme bug. Before I have every one goes on about oh noes not another move buttons to the right bug report this one is slightly different. It actually requests if the buttons are by default on the left can we make the theme previews or at least the default theme on the left too.