Known Element Enterprises Corporate Blog

I have always wanted to organize an install fest. I went to one in Santa Monica a couple months back, and it was a lot of fun. Helping people get Ubuntu running on their systems and being able to realize fully unlocked computing. No more spyware/viruses etc to deal with. Etc etc.

Anyway I recently got my chance with the latest Ubuntu Release (Gutsy Gibbon).

So how did I go about organizing the install fest?

Step 1. Secure a venue.

The LUG I run ( LiLAX @ http://www.lilax.net) already uses the sun lab at CSUDH. So I contacted our host and asked for use of the room out of cycle from our normal meeting. He agreed.

Step 2. Coordinate with the Ubuntu California Team.

Through IRC and the e-mail list, we worked out the details of the install fest presenters and who would bring blank CDs and a burner. These are vital details to take care of. Also two people volunteered to give presentations. I think its very important to have presentations so new users can get a taste of what Linux is capable of.

Step 3. Send out an announcement.

Here is the boiler plate text I am using in the announcement e-mail:

—————————————————————————–

All,

I would like to make a formal announcement of the upcoming Ubuntu Gutsy
Gibbon Install Fest.

When: Saturday November 3rd 2007 10am to 2pm
Where:
Cal State Univ Dominguez Hills ( http://www.csudh.edu/ )
1000 E. Victoria Street
Carson, California 90747
(310) 243-3696

What: An install fest and presentations on open source software (which I
will be filming for a screen cast)

Hope to see you all there!

————————————

Nice simple and to the point.

I am in the process of sending out the e-mail to the following groups:

UUASC (Unix Users Association of Southern California)
SGVLUG (San Gabriel Valley Linux User Group)
SFVLUG (San Fernando Valley Linux User Group)
SCLUG (Simi Canejo Valley Linux User Group)
LiLAX (Linux Users of LAX/South Bay [the LUG I run]
SDLUG (San Diego Linux Users group)

I want to make sure it goes out far and wide.

I will also send a follow up e-mail with parking details etc.

Step 4. Setup signs directing people to the meeting place.

This is a vital step. Once people have found the facility you want to make it as easy as possible for them to find the room you are holding the event in.

I like to download content and consume it later (for example while on the bus etc). A number of good pod/video casts exist out there. Podcasts are easy enough to download and put onto my mp3 player. I use Rhythmbox to do that.

Videos are a bit harder. Sometimes a download link is provided (most open source conferences allow you to download an MPEG or AVI). However a lot of good talks (like the ones given at google) are put up on youtube.  Now watching the typical youtube content (short funny videos like diet coke and mentos experiments) is easily done while online. However longer content (video casts) are for various reasons not something I want to consume while connected.

Fortunately my good friend Dallas Legan has written a program to solve this problem. It is called usnatch and can be downloaded from his website at:

http://www.lafn.org/~aw585/usnatch.html

It works great! I downloaded the VmWare Fusion Talk found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJPq_8ULpRg with the following command:

./usnatch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJPq_8ULpRg -i

It prompted me for the file name I wished to use. This isn’t necessary.  Leave off the -i switch and it will download to a default name.

Go Dallas!

I have removed the internet access via phone item from my TODO list. The blackberry pearl doesn’t have the dial up profile available via blue tooth.  Ah well.  All is not wasted however, as I now have a much better understanding of how blue tooth works.

I will be working on getting my blue tooth head set working tonight at SFVLUG. 

Yesterday I did a good amount of work regarding backups:

1) Provisioned 100G of storage on my file server.
2) Setup samba shares for all the server systems which will be backed up (vmware and bare metal)
3) Ran a backup in my test environment.

Rsync complained about not being able to preserver permissions. This is due to the target directory being a samba share most likely.

Looks like I need to use

-vaPx --numeric-ids

instead of -vax.

I found that at: http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba/2005-November/113800.html

So I will make that change and test it then roll out the script to all my linux vmware servers later today.

I will then need to implement something for Windows clients (probably using Unison http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/) and customize the excludes file for Patti and my laptop.

I will post again when I have made progress against those items.

This is so cool. http://www.startuplaevent.com/ is at the end of the month. Definetely going to to. Buying the ticket now….

Launch a startup in 3 days: http://startup.eventbrite.com/

The weekend after BarCampLA.

By the way BarCamp doesn’t mean booze. Its a joke name. Often when example code is given in a book, the variables foo and bar are used.
Just so people don’t think I am leaving Information Technology and going into the bar business or something

I just came across a cool event:

http://barcamp.org/BarCampLA-4 and http://barcampla.org/ are the sites with details.

A los angeles gathering of geeks.

I am so going to this.

So recently, my wife posted about our planned purchase of a recreational vehicle and my dad posted a comment about internet access.

Allow me to address this issue.

Several different methods of accessing the internet while mobile exist.

1) GPRS/EDGE

Pros:
Is available just about everywhere. (I was up in Mammoth earlier this year, and had full EDGE coverage the entire time).
Cheap (20.00 a month for all you can eat data plan).
I already have it

Cons:
Somewhat slow but usable. (GPRS is 64k and EDGE is 128).

2) EVDO

Pros:
Relatively fast (10 megabits or so).
Good coverage in urban areas.
Available from the big 3 (Verzion, Sprint/Nextel, AT&TCingular).

Cons:
Somewhat expensive
Weird terms of service and mystery data caps.

3) WiFI
Pros:
Readily available (often for free)
Easy to use
Supported by all my devices

Cons:
Requires devices to be in range of the access point
Not really designed for mobility (outside of the access point). No good hand off between nodes for example (in most deployments)

See the Wikipedia link for a better coverage of the advantages / disadvantages.

4) WiMax
Pros:
High data rate

Cons:
New and unproven

I need to do more research on this topic. I will most likely be using an EVDO solution but am also interested in WiMax. Certainly I will have my EDGE/GPRS for emergency use. Also now that the HAM license no longer requires learning morris code I might as well get a license and pickup a hand set. Never know when thats the only communication system that will be available to you.