Linuxart

Another Hack Week @ Novell / SUSE has come to an end. I think I’ve been pretty productive, as I took on and accomplished three pretty successful mini–projects.

Redesign the one-click installer

I walked through the current one, taking screenshots and notes. My goals were simple: make it simpler, and reduce the number of clicks (at least 6, depending on what happens) down to 1, as the name implies.

When I had a mockup ready–to–go, I showed it to Benjiman Weber, who happened to be visiting the SUSE office for hack week. He thought it was good overall, but suggested a few changes. I iterated over it a few times and came up something much simpler than the current design, and got it down to 1 click if the repository is already trusted, and an additional click if the repository needs to be trusted.

Here’s the final (for now, at least) design:

If you’re interested, also check all of the mockups, including the previous two as well.

WallaWalla, a from-scratch font (which looks quite a bit like the SUSE font)

Jakub had a great idea; initially I wanted to help out, but I basically wound up making my own SUSE derivative font. Most of it was done on Monday. I spent today (Friday) tidying i up and redoing a lot of the glyphs, as well as quickly adjusting the space between letters (kerning).

Download version 0.1 of the WallaWalla OTF (OpenType File) …or if you want to play around in FontForge, you can download the SFD also.

Ubiquity command for quickly performing a software search

This week, Ubiquity was all the rage. It’s a quick launcher for the Web, served up as a Firefox extension. I decided, on a whim, to whip up an extension for the extension—basically make a new command for it called “software-search”.

Basically, it lets you search the openSUSE software search engine all from a selection on a page (or whatever you type, optionally). It displays the results of how many hits there are (if there are), which provides a quick glance to see if you can do a one-click install from the software search to install whatever software you want, without even needing to visit the page (until you know there’s something available of course). To see the results, just hit enter, and it will open up a new tab with the software you’re seeking.

(It’s great for all of those pages that lists random software for Linux, or whenever you feel like quickly searching to see what is available in the software search.)

Here’s a demo screenshot:

Interested in trying it out? First install Ubuiquity in Firefox, then visit my page for the software-search command.

This week is “Hack Week” @ SUSE / Novell… and Tuesday is my birthday, too!

I posted about this on twitter already, but I hacked together a quick user theme for the excellent whoisi service.

It works with either stylish or greasemonkey (there are two versions on the theme’s page, one for each excellent Firefox extension).

I was intending on going to this year’s GUADEC in Istanbul, Turkey… but, unfortunately, I’ve been having an amazingly horrid apartment experience.  I call it “the flat fiasco”.

As always, I have lots more photos I need to post (and some on Flickr that I haven’t pointed out here), but here are a few photographs to share with you of my travels around the world in the past couple months.

I visited Jakub in Liberec, CZ

…then went to Wroclaw for LGM

After that, I went to Savannah to visit family,and rode 1/2-way across the USA in a packed van.  (This is a shot from our hotel room in Little Rock, at Sunrise.)

We ended up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for my cousin’s wedding, and a family reunion. (This picture is from Tulsa, but obviously not the wedding.)

After getting back to Nürnberg, I went to Munich for the weekend.

Nat, Stephanie, James, and I went hiking around the foothills of the Alps on a Saturday.

…Then we visited Regensburg on Sunday.

Now I’m back in Nürnberg, taking this weekend off from travel (and don’t really have a photo to illustrate this last point).

Hope you enjoyed this little blog post! (You can see more of my photos on Flickr.)

Today is Firefox Download Day, and the release of Firefox 3.  Go get (and install) Firefox (it’s available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows too), and be counted as part of a world record!

Ich finde es lustig, dass die Leute sich beschweren über andere Sprachen als Englisch auf Planet GNOME… und dass sie tun es in englischer Sprache. Threfore, ich bin dieses Posting nicht auf Englisch, aber einige Google Übersetzt Deutsch.

Pour le mélange encore plus, je pourrais ainsi poste dans d’autres langues. Ce paragraphe est en français.

كما احب العربية ، على الرغم من انني لا يستطيع القراءة او الكتابة ، الا من خلال صور سحريه للترجمة. ومن جميل عندما تبحث اللغة المكتوبة بها على الرغم من ذلك انه سيكون من العار ان لا تدرجهه

自UTF-8存在，我们可以张贴的东西在网路上以多种语文，我可能会以及不会离开了中国。

…または除外日本語、のいずれかです。

Надеюсь этого блога не будет катастрофы в браузере.

Αν σας λέει, “Λοιπόν, δεν μπορώ να διαβάσω όλα αυτά!” Αυτό είναι εντάξει. Αν μπορείτε να διαβάσετε ένα ή περισσότερα, τότε αυτό είναι μεγάλη. Για τα υπόλοιπα, ίσως να λέει, “Αυτός είναι ο Έλληνας που μου!”

Si está ofendido por esta falta de Inglés correo, entonces me siento.

Echter, als je echt wil weten wat ik heb geschreven, kunt u gebruik maken van Google Translate.

क्या एक अच्छा दिन है . मैं आपको डाक से भविष्य में फिर से अंग्रेजी में है .