Here I Am (Meme)

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

You’ll excuse the messy look, I just rolled out of bed.

-eddie martinez

Chicago Hardy Party, part 2

Hi All,

As a way to celebrate the efforts of all of us during the Hardy Heron release cycle we’ll be gathering at the Goose Island Brew Pub (1800 N. Clyborn, Chicago, Illinois) this coming Saturday, April 26th.  The release party will start at 2pm, and we have the room reserved until 6pm (one hour later than previously indicated).  You do not have to be 21 to part-ay at this part-ay.  It will be a family-friendly affair unless someone brings a bunch of skateboards and large boomboxes. Note: very likely to happen. Although at that point, fiasco is more likely to be the applicable word than part-ay.

Please come hungry.    We will be able to order food from Goose Island’s bounteous menu, and may also request and consume one or more of Goose Island’s ‘ultimate drinkability’ beers or finely crafted sodas.  This is good stuff.  Charlie Trotter comes here for tips on how to make good Buffalo Burgers and Wolfgang Puck has been known to inquire about how they make their vegetarian chili.  That is what I’ve been told.

For those individuals who may be using pre-civilization technology (i.e., something other than a Hardy Heron release – ha ha . . .  I kid, I kid . . .), We’ll also have a set of K/X/Ubuntu Hardy Heron CD’s available to help upgrade your laptops to the latest 8.04 release of 8.04 awesomeness.  (Just please be sure to back up your data beforehand if you wish to upgrade your machine at the partay.  Upgrades and beer/soda don’t always go well together.)

Some folks are RSVP’ing on the wiki (thanks!) but if you don’t have a wiki account, just let us know and I’ll add your name to the list for you.  For others, the wiki is here:  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ChicagoTeam/Meetings As my mom used to say, RSVP yourself before you wreck yourself. ubuntu-us-chicago@lists.ubuntu.com

The Hardy Heron development cycle has been a good one, so let’s celebrate our efforts!  I look forward to seeing everyone there.

-Eddie Martinez via Jim Campbell’s announcement to the Mailing List and a blatant copy and paste…

Ubuntu-Chicago Hardy Heron Release Party

Hi All,

I’m glad to report that we have reserved a room at Goose Island Brew Pub (1800 N. Clyborn, Chicago, Illinois) for Saturday, April 26th.  The release party will start at 2pm, and run until about 5pm.  You don’t have to be 21 to enter.  We can do something else afterward if there is interest, but that is our plan for Goose Island.

We will be able to order off of the menu (so people can get buffalo burgers if they want them :-)

Please RSVP on the wiki if you intend to make it.  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ChicagoTeam/Meetings

The Hardy Heron development cycle has been a good one, so let’s celebrate our efforts!  I look forward to seeing everyone there.

-Eddie M.

ps. EXTRA EXTRA EXTRA big thanks to Jim Campbell for helping setup this meeting and all off his Hardy work this release. He is aiming for Ubuntu membership in the near future, so anyone who reads this should be aware that without his help on this meeting, I would be in major trouble.

Good Software Ideas

I’d like to share some ideas that I believe work. Here is my list:

Programming Tonight:

A pun from the ‘Chicago Tonight’, it is an informal grouping of the Chicago Gnu/Linux Users Group. The general idea is to get together at a cafe, hookah house, etc. and code for a few hours, or just talk. If someone is having a problem with a tricky subroutine, or needs wifi access to pull the latest subversion branch of a project, this is the place to go.

Linux or Lunch:

That’s right. LoL. See also: Linux Lunch, Linux or Lunch, Free as in lunch, etc. This basic idea is to get together and have lunch for those of who live/work in the general area of downtown Chicago. Very fun and the variety of food is splendid. Sushi, Inidian, Chinese, American (hot dogs and hamburgers ), the list goes on and on.

2Drunk2Code (2D2C):

A more formal version of PT, which meets earlier in the week (Monday or Tuesday, versus Thur./Friday), this is meant to handle larger projects. It is more group oriented, instead of individual minded.

Quad-Loco Team:

An expansion of the original Tri-LoCo team idea, it is a venue for Midwest teams to get together and discuss various projects, ideas, etc. This covers Ohio, Chicago, Michigan and Indiana. Our next meeting is March. 16th, at 20:00 Central time in #ubuntu-us-in.

Ubuntu-Us meet & Greet

This is basically the same idea as a company outing, or going out for drinks after work. It’s a chance to get out and meet the various people working in your area. This meeting is Thursday March. 13th aat 20:00 Central time in #ubuntu-us, as far as I know.

Barcamp

We all know what Barcamp is. An unconfrence of food and hacking, the whole point is to get together with people and go wild with technology. Very few rules and everything is left to the individual. Drinks, scheduling of talks, talk topics, etc.

With that list, I ask you. What are some good software ideas that you would like to see spread out into the general world, or which ones do you partake in that are missing from this list?

-Eddie M.

Hello World?

If all went according to plan, I somehow or another managed to make myself onto the Planet Ubuntu webpage. Excellent! If not, then I fail at v i+ bzr + cp/mv commands. The first two are new technologies I’ve recently started using, and the last two reflect my recent obsession with dropping away from a GUI into a shell and really exploring the depth and power of the Linux kernel. I am madly in love.

I would like to briefly introduce myself. I have been using Ubuntu Linux since December 2006 when my brother (more on him later) came home and more or less told me outright that Windows was banned in our household. My Win(ironic name, i think)dows partition breaking helped move things along. I became involved with the Ubuntu-Chicago group, as well as the local CHIGLUG group, and switch schools to a private technical institution where I am pursuing a B.S. in Political Science, and a minor in Computer Science. I also work by day at a company handling their computer systems, uploading content to the website, mapping network drives, and other such small tasks. In the long term, I hope to graduate with a solid understanding of societies and the political forces surrounding them (influencing policy is one area I am particularly interested in), as well as a technical understanding of the technologies which surround social change, as a precursor to my goal of pursuing a degree in law. With that in mind, I want to work with OSS companies and softwares, to better mankind through work in Intellectual Property law.

On my spare time I listen to music very loudly (punk, hip hop, rap, classical/romanticist, avant jazz, what I call “radio rock” and most call alternative rock, metal of course, hardcore, etc.) and I love to skateboard, take photos, read, explore the city with my best friends, and play with my dog. Oh, and my family has hosted over 15+ exchange students in the past few years, so my house is always packed.

I am actively involved in the LoCo project side of the Ubuntu community, as the lead contact for the Ubuntu-Chicago Team, and I try to talk to the US team and general LoCo team as much as possible. As such, I have many many people I am indebted to for all the time they’ve put up with me as I learned my way around the community and the CoC as well as the technology in general. You will notice how much time I spend on IRC when I refer to people by their online nicks, not their real names xD . I hope I don’t offend anyone by forgetting them and they are as follows, with explanations:

Effiejayx my brother down South for keeping me up to date on the S.American news
Tyche a great guy all around from Arizona
Greg G keeping Michigan strong
John C what more can I say?
JJesse an all around great Kubuntu and doc person
Jcastro for helping launch the midwest Quad LoCo team
Jucato for hanging out with me in #kubuntu
Manchicken who rants about free software for hours on end
boredandblogging (who has a better online handle than myself… well no, but close )
Fransisco Athens for letting me SSH into his box for IRC
Jim Campbell an all around solid guy who deserves to be on this planet more than I do.
Kevin Harris for attempting me to switch to Foresight for hours on end (and hasn’t managed it yet!)

I have two more people I want to thank for putting up with me. They are Freddy Martinez, my twin brother and fellow Ubuntu member, and Richard Johnson, KDE/Kubuntu whiz and the best LoCo leader I could try to replace. You read it first here people: twin Ubuntu developers from Chicago invade your Planet and free your computers! A million thanks to Richard for putting up with both of us and making it happen.

-Eddie M. signing off.

ps. I sure hope this works, or else my super long blog post (with too many annoying links!) was a total waste of time.

This is bad news

In a conversation with my buddy Justin, he told me that he was running Windows Vista, blah blah. Of course he got it as free as in cost.

This is from MSDNAA, the M$ project to provide M$ software to universities for minimal (reduced) cost. Then they can tweak the code slightly, but of course it is NonGPL. Worse yet, this is a partnership they have with my old college, which runs windows exclusively. I know this because their servers always failed.

My response is not a real response. It is a question. Where is the Linux/Ubuntu equivalent. Why isn’t RedHat or Canotical not setting up similar programs? If there are, and I’m not aware, let me know. I sign up for the promotion of freedom in all it’s forms.

“MSDN provides the easiest and most inexpensive way to get the latest M$ software…” Give me a break. Here is why I use Linux: It works. The architecture/commands are logical. It’s free. It’s free. The community rocks when I have an issue. It’s free. It’s free.

In other news, Flourish is around the corner and Admiral_Chicago is coming in for the conference.

Keep it free. -Eddie

Xubuntu Feisty Beta

In keeping with the tradition that Jim and I have established, though not spoken of aloud, I went to Chinatown to pick up electronics and talk about Linux with friends.

I came home armed with a 200 gig used HD for about 50 dollars, a might good find imho. I started working around 12 or so. One main thing I noticed right away was how long it took to download the .iso, in my case +30 minutes. Also I downloaded the wrong .iso the first time.
xubuntu live booted nicely, installed nicely and, much like any other Ubuntu install I’ve seen, did a perfect job.  It was my first look at migration manager, and I must say, it was pretty spiffy. The hd was wiped before I bought it, but I could tell Migration Manager was good software. As of 5 minutes ago, everything has been cake.

Feisty seems great so far.

Tomorrow, I mess around with applications and testing it more extensively. Stay tuned….

heads up chi-ubuntu

the next Chicago gnu/linux meeting is in a few weeks.

April 14th, at the institute of design. 350 n. lasalle.  3pm. It is the day before my birthday.

I will of course be reminding/bugging you all to be there in the future.

/me waves at the glug planet.

On a side note, if there are  any artists out there who want to do a few hours of work on a webcomic, with all the hilarity and sex that comes with, drop me an email. I’m looking for something past stick figures, but not too far past. white ninja style is more than enough.

eddiemartinez@gmail.com

chicagolug(.org)

Jim C. and I rocked the Chicago gnu/linux meeting today, representing Chi-Ubuntu you could say.

Needless to say, it was alot of fun, the information was overwhelming and Linux is great.

The rest of you Chi-Ubuntu Loco/Ubuntu-IL members are welcome to come.  And by that, I mean that the group is disgruntled with Nixternal’s lack of attendance.

Some Honesty…

I’ve spent the last few weeks watching House, md. with my brother, checking out all sorts of shoes, baby sitting, concerts (anti-flag killed it, Explosions in the sky tomorrow), midterms and dodging the police all day and night.

That stuff is no joke, and it’s the most serious skateboarding action you will find.

x-chat kind of sucks. I am going to the Chicago GNU/Linux LUG on Saturday with Jim, if those are the plans. Anyone else going? Anyone going to Flourish?

I’ll go back to sucking at being a geek in a few days.

“Eddie, if you’re so smart… why do you say the stupidest things I’ve ever heard?”

Will Crespo is a good buddy of mine and makes skateboarding a million times better than sitting indoors on a computer.

It’s spring! Time for the revolution!

I just installed a 50 gig kubuntu 6.10 partition, time to go play with it.