DoctorMo's Blog

So you’ve just downloaded an awesome poster from Spread Ubuntu and now you’re trying to edit the svg so you can provide a localised version or mash it up for your own needs.

But there’s a problem… svg files don’t store the fonts used so you’re stuck looking at an ugly ill-fitting set of font defaults in inkscape and the dozy submitter didn’t specify what fonts he used. Good news! there is a command that can get for you a list of fonts used in any svg file:

`perl -lne “foreach(/font-family:(.+);/){print $1}” < foss+creative-commons3.svg | sort | uniq`

Using foss+creative-commons3.svg you can see an output like this:

10.15 Saturday Night BRK
Automatica BRK
Bitstream Vera Sans
DejaVu Sans
Fatboy Slim BLTC 2 BRK
impact
Loma
Ubuntu

Not all of these fonts have been used, since it’s easy to save a file in inkscape without using the Vacuum Defs process to clear away cruft. But you do get a nice list of all the fonts you should have to see the poster the way it was intended.

Thoughts?

The 10.04 release of Ubuntu was supposed to be a stable and useful release which we could depend upon for 3 years, or at least 2 years until we get the next LTS release.

This Christmas I’m visiting a bunch of in-law family up in Vermont and a friend of a family member happened to be visiting and was interested in this Linux thing. He said he’s tried it last year and it failed to work well because of the broadcom wireless driver issues. This year he’s had the proof of Linux’s shittness thoughrally reinforced by the complete failure of Ubuntu’s 10.04 release to work from the CD in any way.

Black screen of death. After the CD boots and there is a stopping of activity there is then nothing. No input, no output, the cd can be ejected (even though it shouldn’t be) I suspect the issue is because of the intel graphic cards which I also had to deal with on another machine where I had to force the upgrade of the kernel to 2.6.35 (maverick) to stop it crashing horribly with the white bars of death.

This is horrible! I now know of no machine that didn’t require some new kernel to work. My own laptop doesn’t work with Maverick at all and needs to use the lucid kernel in order to function. (pci memory is unaddressable) and the makers of the computer (system76) and been unable to replicate the issue in any material way despite it being reported by several users.

I’m depressed this Christmas about the progress or lack of progress, or regression of basic functionality in Ubuntu. Why are we spending so much time and money on usability when so much more money needs to be spent on testings, qa, automation and fixing of bugs as a priority?

The number of printers that don’t work, the number of scanners that do work at all, the failure of wacom and wizardpen tablets and the terrible support for all sorts of hardware is just as depressing as the terrible support for intel graphics.

Please comment if you think differently.

In my previous videos I showed off some scripts which modified some svg files and made the desktop background shift and move randomly and with determination towards pre-set patterns.

In this video I show you how to install the new packages for testing and how you can make your own:

View Video on Blip

Your thoughts? have you ested my new packages and do they work for you?

Why today did I make an Edubuntu clock?

Well it looks nice on my wall as a replacement design for the boring old default design the clock came with, but other than that I haven’t the faintest idea, perhaps you do?

Hey weekenders, fancy cheering up after the week long roller coaster ride that was Coronation Street? Did you watch Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders impassioned fillerbuster against tax breaks for the super rich and can’t seem to get your blood pressure to go down? Have you got a whole spare case of frustration at the treatment of Wikileaks creator Julian Assange?

Then let me cheer you up with a bit of comedy for the holiday season:

And before you start,this was made completely with Ubuntu using Inkscape, totally vector based and is excellent practice for making Ubuntu training and advertising materials.

This poster has been in the works for a while, but I’m happy enough to finally publish it today:

It’s available in source form from Spread Ubuntu here and on the deviantArt page you can order a print if you can’t make your own prints.

If you think the work I do to make our cultural ideas more easily understood, consider dropping a few sheckles¹:

What do you think?

Update: I put in fresher text which should help some of the older stale text be more understood.

I was somewhat disappointed with the poll and article by Raphaël Hertzog concerning the use of flatr buttons on the debian planet. This was also posted to Planet Ubuntu and although I would dearly like my views shared with Planet Debian, this post can only reach Planet Ubuntu.

The poll is somewhat negative and doesn’t really have a ‘I think this poll is silly’ option.

Those who like reading my blog will be aware that I’m a fan of economic prosperity for people who perform a useful job. This means any job which takes time and is useful to more than just the performer is in justification to be paid somewhat by the beneficiaries.

This doesn’t guarantee any payment of course. Even making Free Software that benefits the entire worlds economy worth billions can see you destitute through bad positioning and sale of your trade. So Flatr, one of the few micro payment systems I’ve seen flourish in the foss world more than just as an experiment is under attack from an anti-payment mentality.

I understand that there would be some fear about someone earning money from the backs of someone else’s work. But having a flatr link directly on your work, even if your work is a blog post about someone else’s work, is precisely the most direct form of invitation to be rewarded for the act of publishing useful information. If you don’t agree then you don’t have to pay the writer. What I wouldn’t want though is a ban on making money, money isn’t a danger it’s misappropriation and misrepresentation that are the usual gremlins.

In this case I find neither. Your thoughts?

Hey all, several people have now asked me how I do the mock-ups like this one on the wiki:

These are great because they’re wire-frames which show what is a part of the design (blue) and what is a comment on the design (black) and they have a sort of style which I like. I use Inkscape to compose the mock-ups and I use my Drag and Drop method to put each of the elements I want to play with.

I use some basic primitives as well as some compiled shapes to make them as quickly as possible and if you’d like to have a go you can download my collection of ui wire-frame elements here.

Do you do design? if so what awesome programs or workflows do you use?

Way, way back in the history of Ubuntu I remember hearing a speech by Mark Shuttleworth about how Ubuntu can invest small amounts in key places to cause large changes for the better. I thought it was very hopeful and forward looking as we did have a lot of interesting technologies that weren’t being used or simply not delivered to users in the best way.

But lately the easy wins are all won and it seems at least to me that what we have to look forward to is a much more serious investment into infrastructure projects, design projects and other large projects involving a lot more developers than anyone can even now afford to work on Ubuntu to push it further.

Of course the fact that Ubuntu has been trying it’s best to invest the smallest amount to achieve the largest positive outcome might have given us a reputation with other groups (ahem, fedora/red hat) of being abusive and not really big enough to live up to the name we’ve hyped up for ourselves. But then what to do other than take the awesome work done by the whole free desktop community and combine it together into something for your target audience? Well that was the plan while we were all skint in the Ubuntu community and the people doing most of the work just happen to be over there in fetching red hats.

But perhaps that’s all over, we’ve pushed all the easy stuff and now it’s hard work. I sometimes question the logic on Canonical’s part of investing so much in Launchpad, landscape and other ancillary projects which don’t seem to make much of a difference to Ubuntu development or deployment and yet investment into infrastructure is starving for more attention, more testing and more core development.

The only other thing the community could do is working less on ui playthings and more on interesting core development. But that’s asking a lot considering most gnome, fdo and kernel developers tend to use Ubuntu and yet avoid the community (not a bad thing if that’s the best way to get things done).

Thoughts?