Clare’s Writing Wall

Just in case you have not checked out the latest xkcd comic…

The description of this comic is “I hear this is an option in the latest Ubuntu release”. Is any of the features discussed in this comic true in Ubuntu 8.04?

Update: This comic reminds me of a group of final year undergrad CS students in my university investigated how many openwireless networks in a well-to-do neighbourhood in town around 2000. Those students stroll slowly, with a wireless-enabled laptop, and detected numerous open wireless networks. Some of them reminded the homeowners to secure their wireless networks but were ignored.

P.S. Since I am living in a geeky city, I don’t dare to use WEP to “secure” my wireless network.

GNOME Summer of code (GSoC) is finally coming! Congrats to all students who have been accepted in GSoC’08. It’s nice to see the students are not shy when introducing themselves in the soc mailing list. If you are a GSoC’08 student and has not introduced yourself in the mailing list, please do so. The GNOME community is interested in knowing you. (Wow! Munich rules GSoC’08!)

Students, don’t forget to offer your mentor a beer/ice-cream if you and your mentor live in the same city. And don’t be surprised by local GNOME users and developers inviting you to one of their parties. You would be pleased to learn that some GNOME community members live near you. If you don’t live close to any GNOME members, don’t forget to hang out in some of GNOME’s IRC channels. You can perhaps get/give virtual beer/ice-cream. We are friendly people - Don’t afraid to speak to the any of us if you have questions or concerns.

If your GSoC application was not accepted, don’t feel discouraged. Please continue to support GNOME in different ways including the following:

• Use GNOME for your daily computing needs!!!
• Hang out in some GNOME IRC channels (Example: #gnome-hackers, #gnome-love)
• Subscribe to GNOME mailing lists (Example: foundation-list)
• Volunteer your time and talent to other projects such as documentation and translation
• File bugs if you see any

The first item is fundamental if you want to support GNOME! The second and third items let you to know the community better. If you use Ubuntu, check out Launchpad for the last two items. You may be amazed that non-coding projects need help, too.

These suggestions are just my two cents….

Aside: I can tell GSoC is coming because the snow is melting as well. Here is a pile of snow in Waterloo, Ontario early March:

Here is the same pile of snow/dirt a week ago:

The pile of snow outside of my home gets smaller because the temperature has been climbing. And yes, I am convinced that Summer of Code (SoC) is coming!

The GNOME SoC admins have been trying to improve the documentation for this annual event. It would be nice if potential mentor and student applicants can search for GNOME-specific SoC information in a standard place (live.gnome.org). I and Marco Barisione have been working on the student applicants doc with the help of GNOME SoC admins. Feel free to have a look here. Much of the information on this page is from past SoC or GHOP.

Could some past student applicants tell me what GNOME-specific information is missing from this page? It is hard to think of any missing information while working so close to the document. You can either leave a message in this blog or edit the page in live.gnome.org yourself (if you have an account there).

P.S. I won’t be working on this doc very much since I will be singing St. John Passion with the Grand Philharmonic Choir on Good Friday. But I will try my best to have a look at the changes at least once a day before the student application opens.