Support the Japanese Ubuntu LoCo

Ok its a while since I have written anything here but something has happened recently that means I have to write this down.

A few months ago back in December of 2010 I started to use Askubuntu.com can't remember why might have been a blog post or just noticed it when on the stackexchange main site. Either way I have become part of the community there maybe not as much as some but I work from home and have a daughter to look after so you have to have priorities.

Maybe its because I have family of my own but I felt all of the talk about how cool Unity is and this new bit of eye candy etc... didn't sit well at the back of my mind knowing what is happening right now in Japan. Especially as part of our community is from Japan and are possibly being affected directly by the tragedy that is unfolding before our eye's .

So I and a few of the regulars in the AskUbuntu general chat started a chain of events that has ended in the creation of a site thats sole purpose is to send a message to the Japanese Ubuntu LoCo to show them that we as a global community are thinking about them and hope that we will see them again when things have returned to something near normality.

We could have sat back and did nothing about this, but we decided to do something it may not be enough but as long as it reminds people that there are members of our own community in the middle of this disaster that is enough you can decide for your self what you want or can do about that. As long as you are asking your self that question I believe we will have accomplished half of our objective.

We have not included any way of donating money as 1. we didn't have the time or experience to do so and 2. There are so many other better ways of donating money, skills or just time to help that anything we could do would be a waste of time and only cause confusion. So instead we wish only to send a message pure and simple of support to our friends in Japan.

If you agree visit the site here and add your name to the list http://ourfriendsinjapan.com/

And as a final note this is my own views on the subject I do not speak on behalf of anyone else.

A New Project?

While rummaging through OMG and web update I found a comment by the admin of okieubuntu blog. Advising that there are a lot of missing screen shots from the Software Centre so a challenge has been proposed which is possibly even worth a paper-cut (small but annoying bug) especially if it is going to improve much by the time Natty Narwall is out. It is very easy to do this so anyone else who feels like joining in can jump right in. A list of the guide lines is below.


Guidelines for taking screenshots

• Screenshots are published under the terms of the packaged software itself.
• Your screenshots must be in PNG format.
• Due to legal reasons screenshots for non-free packages aren't accecpted.
• Images larger than 800x600 pixels will automatically be reduced to that size (retaining the aspect ratio of course). So if you like to control the exact result of what you upload then make sure your image size is no larger than that.
• Your screenshot should contain a typical scene when working with it. When snapshotting a browser load the debian.org home page. A screenshot of a graphics program should have a drawing loaded. Of a game please make a screenshot while you are playing and not of the start screen.
• Nice tools for taking screenshots are shutter, ksnapshot (KDE), gimp, xwd or scrot. See the Debian wiki for more information on how to make screenshots under Debian.
• You need not artificially switch off your window decorations.
• Please set your language to english so that everybody understands it. If you don't use english by default please start your application from a shell using after setting "export LANG=C".
• Please only take a screenshot of the respective application and not of your whole desktop (unless the screenshot is meant for a window manager).
• Interlaced PNG files cannot be processed currently. Please use non-interlaced images.

They also say that if you check your own software centre you should see your screen shot almost immediately however this doesn't mean that it has been accepted. Also as they are manually checking the screen shots if a large number are added at the same time it may be a while before they accept or deny your submission and you see it any were else.

My first attempt for xSMBrowser