Agrégateur de flux

Previously i’d talked about how we use GNOME technologies in the Moblin Myzone. Now i’m going to talk about another component that i’m responsible for, the People Panel.

An important aspect of the Moblin user experience is about communicating with others and this panel provides quick access to do this. The core of the content is provided by an abstraction, simplification and aggregation library called Anerley. This provides a “feed” of “items” (an addressbook of people) that aggregates across the system addressbook, powered by EDS, and your IM roster, powered by Telepathy. You have small set of actions you can do on these people such as start an IM conversation / email / edit them with Contacts. The core of our IM experience is supplied by the awesome Empathy. We’ve been working with the upstream maintainers to accomodate some of the needs of Moblin into the upstream source. This included the improvements to the accounts dialog and wizard that landed for GNOME 2.28.

One of the biggest problems with the IM experience in Moblin 2.0 was that it was easy to miss when somebody was talking to you. If you were looking away when the notification popped up, whoops, it’s gone. With our switch to Mission Control 5 I was able to integrate a Telepathy Observer into Anerley and the People Panel. An Observer will be informed of channels that are requested on the system. This allows us to show ongoing conversations in the panel and by exploiting channel requests and window presentation allow the user to switch between ongoing conversations. This wouldn’t have been possible without the assistance of the nice folks in #telepathy and at Collabora: Sjoerd, Will, Jonny and countless others.

I've added epub support to Debian developers reference 3.4.10 (see /usr/share/doc/developers-reference*/*.epub), so you can read it with your favorite ebook reader like kindle, sony reader or something that NetBSD folks uses for porting ;-)

Debian Edu / Skolelinux is an operating system based on Debian intended for use in schools. It contain a turn-key solution for the computer network provided to pupils in the primary schools. It provide both the central server, network boot servers and desktop environments with heaps of educational software. The project was founded almost 12 years ago, 2001-07-02. If you want to support the project, which is in need for cash to fund developer gatherings and other project related activity, please donate some money.

A topic that come up again and again on the Debian Edu mailing lists and elsewhere, is the question on how to transform a Debian or Ubuntu installation into a Debian Edu installation. It isn't very hard, and last week I wrote a script to replicate the steps done by the Debian Edu installer.

The script, debian-edu-bless in the debian-edu-config package, will go through these six steps and transform an existing Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu (untested) installation into a Debian Edu Workstation:

1. Add skolelinux related APT sources.
2. Create /etc/debian-edu/config with the wanted configuration.
3. Install debian-edu-install to load preseeding values and pull in our configuration.
4. Preseed debconf database with profile setup in /etc/debian-edu/config, and run tasksel to install packages according to the profile specified in the config above, overriding some of the Debian automation machinery.
5. Run debian-edu-cfengine-D installation to configure everything that could not be done using preseeding.
6. Ask for a reboot to enable all the configuration changes.

There are some steps in the Debian Edu installation that can not be replicated like this. Disk partitioning and LVM setup, for example. So this script just assume there is enough disk space to install all the needed packages.

The script was created to help a Debian Edu student working on setting up Raspberry Pi as a Debian Edu client, and using it he can take the existing Rapbian installation and transform it into a fully functioning Debian Edu Workstation (or Roaming Workstation, or whatever :).

The default setting in the script is to create a KDE Workstation. If a LXDE based Roaming workstation is wanted instead, modify the PROFILE and DESKTOP values at the top to look like this instead:

PROFILE="Roaming-Workstation" DESKTOP="lxde"

The script could even become useful to set up Debian Edu servers in the cloud, by starting with a virtual Debian installation at some virtual hosting service and setting up all the services on first boot.

The DebConf13 registration deadline for developers requesting sponsorship has been extended up to Sunday, so for those still undecided or anybody else thinking about a visit to .ch, I'm sharing some more pictures today.

The Matterhorn is one of the iconic symbols of Switzerland's natural beauty and appears on many postcards. The car-free town of Zermatt is at the bottom and is the final stop on the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn railway, so it is really easy to get there with one or two trains every hour of the day.

One of the most exciting places to view the Matterhorn is from the nearby observatory at Gornergrat, which is 3,089m above sea level. It is great for a single day trip of hiking and there is a convenient train station there too.

The scenic train to Zermatt is included in any of the Swiss rail passes, but the train up to Gornergrat is a private railway and a special ticket must be purchased. Discounts are sometimes offered at rail stations in Swiss cities or online or it is possible to hike up and down.

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Join Kyle Hofmeyer, Joe Shindelar, Blake Hall, and Greg Dunlap to talk about the somewhat mysterious concept of entities, which was introduced to Drupal in Drupal 7. We explain what entities are, why we have them, and what the future may hold for them in Drupal 8.

• Lullabot DrupalCon Party!
• Working with Entities in Drupal 7 video series
• Drupal 8 Entity API improvements issue
• Entity API module
• Core Entity documentation
• Contrib Entity API module documentation
• Examples project
• DrupalCon Portland Sprints
• DrupalCon Session: Status of the New Entity API and Typed Data
• DrupalCon Session: The Old and New Field API in Drupal 8
• DrupalCon Session: Rest and Serialization in Drupal 8

Figuring out Entities for Drupal 7 — and 8

We're pleased to announce Drupal Face to Face, our joint initiative with the Drupal Association to promote Drupalcon and Drupal Association membership. The purpose of the project is to capture the exuberance and authenticity of the Drupal community and invite others to join. We expect to bring Drupal Face to Face to Prague and other large or important Drupal events as an ongoing project. We hope you'll participate.

Drupal Face to Face is:

Episode Number:  140 Post Topics:  Drupal Taxonomy Contrib Drupal Commerce Drupal 7 Drupal Planet

In this episode we continue learning about Drupal Commerce and begin learning how to set up Drupal Commerce Product Attributes.

In this episode you will learn:

• How to set up Drupal taxonomy vocabularies and taxonomy terms to use as product attributes.
• How to add Taxonomy term reference fields to Product types to create Drupal Commerce product attributes.

DDoD Video: 

I previously wrote a post with some calculations about the power supplied to laptops from a car battery [1]. A comment on the post suggested that I might have made a mistake in testing the Voltage because leaving the door open (and thus the internal lights on) will cause a Voltage drop.

So I’ve done some more tests:

Test Voltage battery terminals 12.69 front power socket with doors closed 12.64 front power socket with doors open OR ignition switch on 12.37 cigarette lighter socket with ignition switch on 12.32 front power socket with doors closed and headlights on 11.96 front power socket with engine running 14.38 front power socket with engine running and headlights on 14.29

In my previous tests I recorded 12.85V inside my car (from the front power socket which although having the same connector as a cigarette lighter isn’t designed for lighting cigarettes) and 13.02V from the battery terminals – a 0.17V difference. In my tests today I was unable to reproduce that but I think that my biggest mistake was to take the reading too quickly. Today I noticed that it took up to a minute for the Voltage to stabilise after opening a door (the Voltage dips after any current draw and takes time to recover) so a quick reading isn’t going to be accurate.

My car is a Kia Carnival which has two sockets in the front for power and for actually lighting cigarettes. The one for lighting cigarettes has a slightly lower Voltage and only works when the ignition is turned on. The car also has a power socket in the boot (the trunk for US readers) which delivers the same Voltage as the power socket in the front.

Also one thing to note is that today is a reasonably cold day (16.5C outside right now) and my car hasn’t been driven since last night so the battery would be quite cold (maybe 12C or less). My previous measurements were taken in summer so the battery would have been a lot warmer and therefore working more effectively.

Conclusion

The Voltage drop from turning on the internal lights surprised me, I had expected that a car battery which is designed to supply high current wouldn’t be affected by such things. Certainly not to give a 2% Voltage drop! The Voltage difference from reading inside the car and at the battery terminals might be partly due to the apparent lead coating on the terminals, I pushed the probes of my multimeter beneath the surface of the metal and got a really good connection.

The 14% Voltage increase when the engine was running was also a surprise. It seems to me that if you are running a power hungry device (such as a laptop) it would be a good idea to disconnect it when the engine is turned off. A 14% higher voltage will give a 14% lower current if the PSU is efficient and therefore less problems with heat in the wiring and less risk of blowing a fuse.

Also it’s a good idea to be more methodical about performing tests than I was before my last post. There are lots of other tests I could run (such as testing after the engine has been running for a while) but at the moment I don’t have enough interest in this topic to do more tests. Please leave a comment if there’s something interesting that you think I missed.

• [1] http://etbe.coker.com.au/2013/01/24/power-supplies-wires/

Related posts:

1. Power Supplies and Wires For some time I’ve been wondering how the wire size...
2. paper about ZCAV This paper by Rodney Van Meter about ZCAV (Zoned Constant...
3. Perpetual Motion It seems that many blog posts related to fuel use...

A new theming engine, Twig, is coming along with Drupal 8's adoption of the Symfony framework. And it's downright magical.

Instead of having theme functions that have to be overridden, everything becomes an (easy to read, easy to modify) template. Instead of having to figure out render arrays, themers can use consistent template variables. And instead of having insecure output, Twig sanitizes everything by default.

If you've ever worked on a WordPress or Tumblr theme, the approach will feel pretty similar. Here's what it looks like:

And oh by the way, it's well-documented — no small point in the Drupal community!

Sound too good to be true? Well, it almost might be, because a lot has to happen in order to get this into Drupal 8. There's a Twig-focused sprint happening right after Drupalcon, so if you think this is great, come pitch in! Because if things don't get done, Twig will be held until Drupal 9. No Drupal themer, veteran or newbie, kitten or human, wants that to happen.

I spoke to Jen Lampton (with a contribution from Fabian Franz) about how Twig will result in happier veteran Drupal themers, happier new Drupal themers, and happier Drupal kittens. Be sure to show up for their featured Drupalcon session (along with Drupal CSS innovator John Albin Wilkins), “Using Twig: The new template engine in Drupal 8,” on Wednesday at 3:45 PM.

IB: What's one thing you're most excited about with Twig?

JL: Replacing the template engine with something completely different means that we get to take a good hard look at absolutely everything in the current theme system, so we can do a clean sweep.

FF: What I love the most about Twig is the syntax, and how it cleverly makes it possible to lazy-render things. The possibilities of having an interpreted language are endless.

IB: Can theme developers start converting/creating their themes now?

JL: No! If you have the time to start converting your own themes, then please, please, please use the time to help us make the theme system what you want it to be — instead. There will be time to convert your themes later, but Drupal itself can only be monumentally improved right now.

IB: Will frontend developers and themers coming from other CMSes — like WordPress — find Twig easier to use?

JL: Yes. Front end developers coming from everywhere will find Twig easier to use. For starters, Twig looks a lot more like HTML, so if you don't know PHP you'll still be right at home. For people who do know PHP and don't know Twig, there will be a learning curve, but it's far far FAR less steep than learning about what Drupal had done to PHPTemplate.

IB: Twig sounds great! What can people do to help make sure it happens for Drupal 8?

JL: There are four main areas where we need help right now, as outlined in our Twig TODO wiki.

1. Help us test all the patches.
2. Help us fix issues with the patches.
3. Help us improve the markup in core (after being converted to Twig).
4. Help us clean up the rest of the theme system.

If people are interested in any one of these four areas, they can come to the sprint immediately following DrupalCon and get some hands-on help making Drupal better. We need all the hands we can get since we are up against some major deadlines, so please please please come help us!

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Learn about Rootwork's services for nonprofits and social change.

I’ve been part of many conference calls for work and found them seriously lacking. Firstly there’s a lack of control over the call, so when someone does something stupid like putting an unmuted phone handset near a noise source there’s no way to discover who did it and disconnect them.

Another problem is that of noise on the line when some people don’t mute their phones, which is related to the lack of control as it’s impossible to determine who isn’t muting their phone.

Possibly the biggest problem is how to determine who gets to speak next. When group discussions take place in person non-verbal methods are used to determine who gets to speak next. With a regular phone call (two people) something like the CSMACD algorithm for network packets works well. But when there are 8+ people involved it becomes time consuming to resolve issues of who speaks next even when there are no debates. This is more difficult for multinational calls which can have a signal round trip time of 700ms or more.

I think that we need a VOIP based conference call system for smart phones to manage this. I think that an ideal system would be based on the push to talk concept with software control that only allows one phone to transmit at a time. If someone else is speaking and you want to say something then you would push a button to indicate your desire but your microphone wouldn’t go live while the other person was speaking. The person speaking would be notified of your request and one of the following things would happen:

• You are added to the queue of people wishing to speak. When the other person finished speaking the next person in the queue gets a turn.
• You are added to the queue and the moderator of the call chooses who gets to speak next. This isn’t what I’d prefer but would probably be desired by managers for corporate calls.
• You get to interrupt the person who’s speaking. This may not be ideal but is similar to what currently happens.

Did I miss any obvious ways for the system to react to a talk request?

Is there any free software to do something like this? A quick search of the Google Play store didn’t find anything that seems to match.

Related posts:

1. Globalisation and Phone Calls I just watched an interesting TED talk by Pankaj Ghemawat...
2. Phone Calls and Other Distractions Harald Welte has written about the distraction of phone calls...
3. Talking Fast My previous post about my LCA mini-conf talk received an...

It is common knowledge that Drupal 8 contains Views module, thanks to the work from the Views in Drupal Core (VDC) initiative.

Our contribution to the VDC initiative was working on abstracting Views UI's modal pattern into a generic modal API in core.

Recently one of the coolest pieces of this API was committed to core.

You can now load any content in a modal simply by adding a class and an attribute to any link.

Sound cool? Read on to learn more.

Due to popular demand I moved debian apt and python-apt from bzr to git today. Moving was pretty painless:

$ git init $ bzr fast-export --export-marks=marks.bzr -b debian/sid /path/to/debian-sid | git fast-import --export-marks=marks.git

And then a fast-import for the debian-wheezy and debian-experimental branches too. Then a

$ git gc --aggressive

(thanks to Guillem Jover for pointing this out) and that was it.

The branches are available at:

• http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=apt/apt.git
• http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=apt/python-apt.git.

It’s that time of year again—time for DrupalCon. Aten Design Group is headed to Portland and proud to sponsor what is expected to be the largest DrupalCon ever.

Our team is once again involved in many ways, including speaking, content selection and sponsoring after hours events. We’re also bringing our latest event-themed sketchbook and brand new "Work That Matters" posters hot off the press, so don’t forget to come by the Aten booth (#235) to pick some up for yourself.

Start off the week by having fun, meeting interesting people and doing some good at the DoGooders Happy Hour on Monday at 4 PM. We will be getting together with other Drupal community members to benefit one of the community's long-time contributors, Aaron Winborn who has been battling late stage ALS.

After a Tuesday full of sessions, the Opening Reception at 5:30 PM is a perfect time to get a sketchbook and poster at the Aten booth. Then head over to the Women in Drupal Reception at 6 PM, which we are thrilled to support.

On Wednesday at 1 PM, check out Karyn, Scott and the rest of their panel present Making Drupal Meetups & Events Rock in room C123 (Trellon). Then stick around for our lightning talk at 4:15 PM on the Day Stage, Planning and Executing Multiple Projects for Maximum Efficiency and Amazing Results. Justin and I promise to keep it short and sweet.

We've got sessions lined up for Thursday too. Ken will be presenting Design Smarter, Not Harder at 1 PM in OR 203 (Palantir) directly folowed by John and Garrett’s session, Dapper Drupal - Custom Tailored Themes at 2:15 PM in OR 201 (Phase2).

In true DrupalCon fashion, we’ll be sprinting, sprinting, sprinting on Friday. Karyn and others will be mentoring people new to contribution sprints, so everyone can come join the fun.

** UPDATED ** We're going to live broadcast everything so those who are unable to join in person can still join virtually! Keep tabs on the #pmofs IRC chan and ask your questions (moderated by Don Vandemark) and we'll post the link to view here asap wednesday morning portland time.

Now also posted on Drupalcon Portland website!

 

The PMoF's Are Happening!

Thank you to everyone who helped us put this together, to the DA (*cough* Holly *cough* Steph) for the fabulous A-V equiped room they're snagging for us, to my fellow PM's for your feedback and ideas and to our presenters who generously offered to show up and do their thang!

Below is the official schedule set for Wednesday 22nd! All those looking for some awesome Project Management content are welcome to join us but it'll be first come first served regarding spots!
 

Wednesday May 22nd Room B110 - Forum One Communications 
starting after the keynote and coffee break!

 

09:00am Keynote Karen McGrane: Thriving in a world of change: Future-friendly content with Drupal 10:15am Coffee Break in Hall C + D 10:45am The Science of Guessing: Drupal Estimation Techniques from Project Managers
Speakers: Chris Strahl, Jakob Person and Shannon Vettes 12:15pm Fixed-Bid FAILAPALOOZA: Benchmark discussion of failures and solutions 01:00pm How to incrementally integrate QA into Agile
Speakers: Everett Zufelt and Akshay Barve 02:00pm Watergile Pros & Con, A Round Table Discussion 03:00pm Walking Break 03:15pm Agile + Drupal the Four Kitchens Way
Speaker: Todd Nienkerk 04:15pm Agile Workshop & Estimation Techniques: Teaching your team to do agile

Can't wait to see you guys there, start spreading the word!

Tags: project managementagileDrupalConportlandPlanet Drupal

The PMoF's Are Happening!

Thank you to everyone who helped us put this together, to the DA (*cough* Holly *cough* Steph) for the fabulous A-V equiped room they're snagging for us, to my fellow PM's for your feedback and ideas and to our presenters who generously offered to show up and do their thang!

Below is the official schedule set for Wednesday 22nd! All those looking for some awesome Project Management content are welcome to join us but it'll be first come first served regarding spots!
 

Wednesday May 22nd Room B110 - Forum One Communications 
starting after the keynote and coffee break!

9am-10:15am     Keynote with Karen McGrane

10:15-10:45am   Coffee Break

10:45-11:45am   Session      The Science of Guessing
                                                       Chris Strahl, Jakob Person and Shannon Vettes

12:15-1:00pm     BoF              Fixed-Bid FAILAPALOOZA: 
                                                       benchmark discussion of failures and solutions!

1:00-2:00pm       Session       How to incrementally integrate QA into Agile 
                                                        Everett Zufelt and Akshay Barve

2:00-3:00pm       BoF               Watergile Pros & Cons
                                                        Round Table Discussion

3:00-3:15pm        BREAK TIME Y'ALL!!!!!!!
 

3:15-4:15pm       Session         Agile + Drupal the Four Kitchens Way
                                                       Todd Nienkerk

4:15-5:00pm        BoF               Agile Workshop & Estimation Techniques
                                                       Teaching your team to do agile

 

Can't wait to see you guys there, start spreading the word!

Tags: project managementagileDrupalConportlandPlanet Drupal

It can be tough sometimes for web developers. That beautiful/exciting/inspiring new site that’s almost ready to launch looks great and works well in all browsers… except for Internet Explorer.  Menus don’t align properly, rounded corners disappear, images don’t quite fit the same… It’s a continual challenge to help IE fit in with the big boys Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Dear all,

DebConf13 sponsorship application date extended

As communicated through the debconf-announce@lists.debconf.org mailing list, the deadline to apply for DebConf13 sponsorship has been extended to the end of this week, May 19th.

If you intend to attend DebConf13 in August and would like to apply for sponsored registration, now is the time to register in Penta! After this deadline you will no longer be able to apply for sponsored food, accomodation or travel. Please refer to the announcement and to the registration documentation for details. Please contact us on the debconf-discuss mailing list if you have any questions.

DebConf12 final report

The DebConf team is also happy to announce the release of the DebConf12 Final Report. It’s a 39-page document which gives the reader an idea about the conference as a whole. It includes descriptions of talks, DebCamp and Debian Day activities, personal impressions, attendee and budgeting numbers, the work of various teams, social events and so on. If you attended Debconf12, the report may refresh some of your memories and bring you closer to the organization team work. If not, it will certainly encourage you to be part of future Debian events.

We thank the Universidad Centroamericana, the Government of Nicaragua, Google and all other DebConf12 sponsors for their support that made the event possible.

The DebConf team

The idea for this series of posts started at lunch one day when I made an off-hand comment about reading Hex numbers and making fast changes in my CSS file. I am somewhat new to developing for Drupal, but amid all the new information and terminology was something familiar, colour-space*. A sword that I understood how to put to use in elegant arcs within the rest of the coding I was learning.

read more

Prepaid ticket holders, sponsors with unredeemed coupon codes, and any unregistered person looking to not pay the onsite price to attend DrupalCon have just over 24 hours to register before online registration closes this Friday, May 17 at 5:00pm PDT.

I saw this tweet flashing by in my stream today:

What immediately caught my eye was Drupaleros, the Spanish word for Drupal User. Its such a great word and just sounds great.

Or what do you say about:

We are the Drupaleros!

Awesome isn't it?

Even better, if you know your Spanish it is unisex too.

How about adopting it as the official name for us who are passionate about Drupal?

Lets all be Drupaleros!

Read the full "We are the Drupaleros" post on www.tsvenson.com