Genetic Wallpapers Now Available to Test!

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?

Random Genetic Wallpaper

I’m breaking my two week blog holiday early to bring you a super cool genetic wallpaper video:

View Video on Blip

As I show in the video, once you have a nice svg (manually edited of course) you can use the script to nudge elements in it. Comment here if you think this is cool.

Google Doc Mount

I was bored and made this video and this gtk gui for mounting google docs as a folder on your computer.

Anyway, please watch my video, mute the sound it’s nothing but static.

View Video on Blip

[1] PPA: ppa:doctormo/ppa
[2] Package: gdocs-mount-gtk

Now be warned, if you try this, remember that it’s not a supported piece of software, bugs aren’t likely to be fixed (unless you fix them of course) the code is available and it should work on Lucid. It won’t be ported to any other versions (at least by me) but it should be easy to recompile everything for other versions anyway.

I will answer questions here or by email. Your thoughts?

Ubuntu in one Minute

In Wednesday’s Jono Bacon speaks, a really interesting idea came up. That we should try and describe what Ubuntu is, but only in one minute.

This is my entry into the competition:

[blip.tv ?posts_id=3232350&dest=-1]

I hope you like it, it’s quick and dirty and it’s only 40 seconds instead of a full minute. But I think it gets my point across about ownership.

Video: Money is Socialist

As promised here is my video on crazy off base subjects, this week, why Money should be considered socialist:

[error uploading video, check back soon]

Ground Control 1.0 – Demonstration

Hey everyone, I’ve released version 1.0.6 of ground control into my PPA, this is a fairly stable Beta which I hope everyone will give a good testing.

For new users: Ground control is a project that hopes to bring the collaboration of launchpad and bazaar branches to every day users abilities. It does away with the need for a command line and has removed a lot of the complex distractions leaving a simplified workflow for users to follow. It uses all the existing libraries and practices of the community, so if you need to move back to the command line you can continue were you left off.

It’s also flexible enough to allow you to manage your existing bazaar checkouts via nautilus. If your want to.

To show you what it can do I have done a video (you have to click into my blog article to see it):

[blip.tv ?posts_id=3161227&dest=-1]

What I need now is more testing and perhaps a design review to make it easier to use. Let me know your ideas, thoughts and if you think this will be useful for getting course writers into the Ubuntu Learning project, comment below and bug reports here.

If you do have a problem and it crashes at some point, do create an empty file in your home directory called groundcontrol.log this will quickly fill up with a useful log of what’s going on and you can attach it to the bug report.

Update: I’ve made sure it’s available for both Karmic and Lucid releases.

Ubuntu's Internet Connection Sharing

I was doing a bit of a search for internet connection sharing this evening, you know like you do. And what I found was a bit of a mish-mash.

Plenty of people on the forums are currently or have in the past advised a method which is highly complex and involves a great deal of custom configuration. Take this thread: Howto Share internet connection in the Tutorials and Tips section of the forum. You get to this when you do a search for “Internet connection sharing ubuntu” and this forum post is from 2005.

To correct some of this misinformation, I’m posting here this evening a quick video guide for how you deal with sharing from one ethernet port to another. I’ve asked my good friend David Edwards to record his first video, he uses WindowsXP for all of his own work and doesn’t use Ubuntu normally.

So to share any internet connection method to your ethernet:

  1. Connect to your internet connection via WiFi, Ethernet or GSM as you usually do.
  2. Right click on the network manager icon
  3. Select “Edit Connections…”
  4. Go to your “Wired” connection tab.
  5. Click the “Add” button
  6. Enter the connection name “Shared Internet”
  7. Select the IPv4 tab
  8. Under Method, select “Shared with other computers”
  9. Click “Apply”
  10. Click on the network manager again, this time with the left button
  11. For the target ethernet port, select the new “Shared Internet”.
  12. Now plug in your computer via ethernet.

If you want to share your internet connection via wifi, then you need to use the “Create new wireless network…” to make a wireless network that other computers will be able to connect to. This automatically shares your internet connection.

Launchpad Nautilus: Sneak Preview

Hey Ubuntu Land, some of you guys who are not developers but would still like to be able to edit various none coding parts of projects might be interested in this.

I’m developing it for the Ubuntu Learning project, since we’re going to need normal folks to be able to get involved, and the best way to do that is to increase the usability of the tools we use. My main focus here is not on replicating the functionality of bzr or launchpad at any fundamental level, it’s about producing functionality which follows a prescribed workflow. those who need a different workflow will obviously use the command line tools, but for all other people, this kind of integration will be used (hell it was even useful to me).

So watch the video and tell me what you think.

[blip.tv ?posts_id=2638378&dest=-1]

Code can be found on launchpad here.

Ubuntu: Network Installs Video

I decided to do a demonstration video, to show off a more refined design and some of the features I’ve added to the PXE booter:

Note: The sound recorded very low, turn your sound up to hear it.

Video is here: http://doctormo.blip.tv/file/2559710/
Code can be found here: lp:~doctormo/us-ma-pxe/trunk