Category: Video Entry

Being a part of the digital Aristotle

by doctormo

Digital Aristotle: Thoughts on the Future of Education!

CGP Grey has a video linked above that you should go watch. It explains the future of education and the direction that it’s already moving.

What I’m interested in is how Free Software and especially Ubuntu can be a part of that educational story. Currently the Ubuntu desktop is targeted towards desktop use, office productivity and social networking. While it’s true Edubuntu takes care of much of the thin client school deployment strategy; that’s not what the above video is pointing to.

Is being a college student or adult learner better on Ubuntu? The wikipedia lens would seem to suggest that we do have better integration at least of online services. But do we have better software? There’s nothing smart, yet, about the desktop that allows it to focus educational material or read-more type links towards individuals. We even struggle delivering help and guidance about the software itself directly to users, instead requiring a web browser to do these things.

But perhaps I’m getting way ahead of myself. Ubuntu could just be a simple job of delivering a web browser, with smarter and smarter servers. But somehow, a lot of this software is going to have to be on the desktop. And at this point we get to decide if that means turning the browser into a desktop and depreciating all our existing desktop APIs or building enough web enabled desktop extensions to our APIs. I just don’t know.

For now, I’m going to consider if any of the projects I’m involved with will play a part in this grander human project and how best the designs can align with that great story.

What are your thoughts?

Audacious CSS Desktop Programming

by doctormo

Take a look at this video, here I show an awesome new technology for using Clutter/Gtk with Cascading Style Sheets.


Audacious Video

You can test this out for yourself with Ubuntu 12.04 (Beta) using the following:

sudo apt-get install gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-clutter-1.0 gir1.2-gtkclutter-1.0 gir1.2-gconf-2.0
bzr branch lp:csslavie
cd csslavie
./netbook-launcher.py

Note: default clutter/cogl has a bug which prevents the background’s opacity setting, so you won’t get as cool an effect. But a fixed version of those libraries should be available eventually.

Please comment below what you think.

Ubuntu TV a Case Study

by doctormo

Hello Community, I’ve put together a video to show my existing Ubuntu TV; the one I’ve been using with XBMC for the past year or more.


See Video Here

If you’re using a similar setup, I’d love to know how you manage your content library and do remote access. If you’re interested in my fall-over easy python modules for accessing the XBMC library database you can find the code on launchpad and the librarian code too.

More Issues Than You Can Shake a Kernel at

by doctormo

Today I made a video about my System76 laptop (COMPAL CL90) and it’s disastrous functioning with modern Linux kernels and the urgent need to get this bug fixed by the right expert. To help people understand the issues, I’ve created a video. It’s rather cute, check it out.

View Video Online, MPEG4 Video

  • Hardly working Power On
  • No Suspend
  • No Hibernate
  • Error causing virtual terminal
  • Hibernating battery detection

Do you have any ideas?

Ubuntu Community Center Guided Tour

by doctormo

I’ve been really wanting to show all you lovely internet based friends the exciting and totally awesome Ubuntu based community center I’m setting up. So I created a video where I show off the login/registration greeter and the rest of the physical space.

Check out the video, it’s only about 4 minutes long: To play this video see the source mpeg or go here for flash player.

Post your comments below.

UOW: Making Posters to Spread Ubuntu

by doctormo

Hey guys, I like experimenting with the IRC classroom format; especially as my classes as normally graphical and hard to explain unless you can see what’s going on.

For today’s session I created a full screen video showing you where to get source material, putting together the poster, some notes on copyright and then uploading to the spread Ubuntu website.

Check it out: Making Posters to Spread Ubuntu Video

Comment below if you’ve made something cool you’d like to show.

What are you Ubuntu, a Platform or a Product?

by doctormo

For today’s video blog I’m tackling the ideas behind Ubuntu the platform and Ubuntu the product, courtesy of Ayatana Mailing List. Nobody doesn’t like good Ayatana! Basically I dig into the problems between a One and Only vision and the more flexible, but harder to do, platform model of design.

With visual aids thanks to Inkscape!

Video Problems: Go directly to the video on blip.tv here and download the source ogv here.

What are your thoughts?

Video: Why Free Software Matters

by doctormo

This is my response to some very good comments on my last video entry which I felt should be addressed with another vlog entry.

I’ve attempted to explain why Free Software is politically important, as much as open source is important to creators; we must be supportive of Free Software for user reasons and not just consider our own hacker culture issues.

Video Problems: Go directly to the video on blip.tv here and download the source mp4 here.

Personal: The reason for begging your indulgence with the video blogs is that I’m inspired to practice my speaking skills in order to further eliminate my stammer. From a young age I was bullied and called names and I have gotten much better since, but seeing The Kings Speech really brought it all back for me.

GroundControl Videos

by doctormo

I have finally managed to get the fabled groundcontrol instructional videos uploaded and linked into the website. For all those who are curious as to exactly what the point of groundcontrol is or didn’t quite know how to use it; I invite you to watch me explain and show how everything works:

http://ground-control.org/videos.html

Your comments are welcome.