Utah Open Source Planet

Richard K. Miller
no nic
Richard K Miller

» 3 Uses for iPhone Screenshots

For all the iPhone users out there: You probably know you can take a snapshot of whatever you see on your screen:

Briefly press the top and front buttons at the same time.
The screen will flash white and you’ll hear a “snapshot” sound.
A picture of your screen is now in your iPhone “Photos”.

I’ve found it extremely helpful to make screenshots, and I do it all the time. Here are a few reasons:

Remember an Interesting Part of a Podcast

If I’m driving and hear something I like in a podcast, I make a quick screenshot of the playback screen. When I get back to my computer, I can return to that spot in the podcast and take notes.

Save a Point on a Map

Sometimes I want to “bookmark” a location on the map before looking up something else. A screenshot is a fast way to do this.

Save a Website Address Without Interrupting Your Reading

Sometimes when I’m reading in Google Reader, I want to save the location of an article to read later. (I don’t want to leave Google Reader immediately because it has to entirely reload when I return.)

If you hold your finger on a link for a few seconds, a menu will popup with the address of the link. Sometimes I simply save a screenshot of the link, then hit Cancel and go back to my reading. Later I read the items I saved in my screenshots.

Screenshots can help you practice “ubiquitous capture” — capturing all notes, thoughts, and ideas, as they come to you, so you don’t have to keep them in your head.

by Richard K Miller at 7:31 AM under apple , getting things done , iphone , mac , main , tech , tips (Comments)

Marc Christensen
no nic
Mecworks

» SLLUG meeting: Wed. June 17, 2009: Blender 3D content creation suite!!!!

The June 17, 2009 Salt Lake Linux Users Group meeting will be on Blender a free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GPL presented by Christian Horn.

Enlarge image

This meeting is going to rock! Christian will be covering the VSE and the image editor, then show the game he’s been working on followed up by some questions and answers.

More info on blender can be found here:

http://www.blender.org/
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/features/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)

Enlarge image

Time/Date:

Wednesday, June 17, 2009 7:10pm p.m.

Place:

Room 101 or 103 in Lower Warnock Engineering Building

Directions/Parking: Directions - [http://www.map.utah.edu/index.jsp?find=62] Parking can be found just East of the WEB building and there is a big lot just North of the Merrill Engineering building (MEB). Parking is free after 6:00 (Based on the signs posted. Always check in case this changes.)

Special thanks go to: - U of U for providing the meeting room. - Various Volunteers

by marc at 4:16 PM under linux , tech (Comments)

Clint Savage
herlo

» Congrats: SLLUG celebrates 15 years

I wanted to personally congratulate the Salt Lake Linux User Group on 15 years of Linux education and community. It’s exciting to see such a strong following! Thanks for all the hard work everyone has put into making SLLUG such a great group.

Here’s the email from Marc Christensen:

The Salt Lake Linux Users Group started its humble beginnings sometime in May of 1994. A few weeks later we officially incorporated as a non-profit on July 28, 1994. That makes this month our 15th year soft-anniversary with the official one coming up in July. It also makes SLLUG one of the oldest and most established Linux user groups in the world!

Congratulations to everyone one for making SLLUG a success and contributing to such a great Local Linux community. We have members of our group that have greatly influenced and contributed heavily to Linux over the years. We make up a diverse group of individuals of varied backgrounds and depth of knowledge.

We rock! :) Thanks to everyone who has helped make the Salt Lake Linux Users Group such a success over the years and here’s to many many more!!!!!

–
Marc Christensen
http://www.sllug.org

Again, congratulations to the Salt Lake Linux User Group and all of its members for 15 great years. Here’s looking forward to 15 more.

Cheers,

Herlo

Now: Life has been hectic, but there’s still some silver lining

I’m currently sitting on a plane headed to Seattle for the Linuxfest NorthWest, where I will give my Fedora Remix presentation again. I’m hopeful that many people will desire to build their own remixes of Fedora. I am certain that there are many potential ideas out there. I’m still working on a kiosk system :)

I’m also interested in meeting with the folks who organize LFNW and talking about some new programs I think will be very beneficial to all Linux/Open Source community conferences. This is where I think the value of collaboration will really help us grow our respective regions into a much bigger/better way to promote free software.

One idea I have going is better collaboration on a conference management system. I sure hope the everyone at LFNW are as keen to helping as they were at SCaLE (hey gang!). This is something that I will be announcing very soon and hope to get a good sized community around.

OLPC: Starting a hacking group

This past Wednesday was the first UTOS-XO hackfest. We spent about 2 hours discussing the new partnership between Utah Open Source, Fedora and the One Laptop groups. The plan, set in motion by my good friend, David Nalley, was to obtain a bunch of XO’s, distribute them across North America to those who would volunteer a few hours a week to develop a fourth grade math curriculum.

We had 11 attendees, with 2 new who volunteered to spend some time developing activities along these lines. To be truthful, I think the UTOS-XO group will really shine and bring forth a good set of activities. We were able to identify 3 different activities to develop with a goal to bring the code back next month so we could ’sugarize’ them and include them in the XO for fourth graders.

I wanted to mention that two of the volunteers in the room were quite young. Christian is 14 years and Ethan is 11. These two seemed quite capable of creating activities. Before we separated for the evening, Christian already had one component built and was showing me how he had written an activity to add 5-digit numbers together. How exciting!

Feel free to check out the pictures.

UTOS: Growing the Community

In addition to the OLPC hackfest, my role at the Utah Open Source Foundation has been expanded to focus more on the community. I’ve been able to hand off much of the conference planning to a trusty fellow, Will Smith. I’m excited to see what ideas he has in store for this year’s conference.

Because of this change, my role has started to become more involved with marketing and budgeting areas. I’m also very interested in growing a few of the programs UTOS has been doing for a while. For instance, I’m interested in streaming screencasts of the meetings (both video and audio) in the very near future on a limited basis. This is experimental, but should be great. I’ve been able to get gstreamer to stream vnc connections and audio mostly working and streaming to our server. It should be just a matter of time before I have a fully working application to show off.

This past week, three of the great folks who run the Utah Open Source Foundation and Conference were interviewed on Technometria, a podcast by Phil Windley. It’s among the highest rated podcasts on IT Conversations. We spent a good chunk of an hour talking about the Utah Open Source Conference and just building a community in general. It was really exciting being interviewed and sharing our opinions. I look forward to the feedback.

Another great component is the Utah Tech Events Calendar. As of March, I’ve been sending out an email near the beginning of the month with all of the tech events on our calendar. I’m excited to see this grow and continue. One highlight I’ve been seeing is the Geek Lunches and Geek/Blogger Dinners. These once a month activities give those who don’t have a ton of time otherwise, an opportunity to participate in the Utah tech community.

If you are interested in helping out the Utah Open Source community in any capacity, we’d love to have your help, desire and excitement. Please send me an email (clint@utos.org) explaining your desire and we’ll get you working on the things that interest you the most. It’s always a good resume builder even if you will learn how to be a good system administrator, programmer or designer. We need your help!

Cheers,

Herlo

Give a Presentation

If you are interested in helping us out with a presentation on anything related to Fedora or Free Software, we’d love to see it in the Fedora Classroom this weekend. If you are not familiar with the MediaWiki syntax, just add a note on the wiki page or contact Kevin Fenzi (nirik) or me (herlo).

New MC

In addition, we have a new Master of Ceremonies for this session. Max Spevack will head this up and help keep things on time. We’d like to thank him for performing this vital service.

More Volunteers Needed

If you are interested in helping out with the IRC logs
We need you help us to spread the word about upcoming Fedora Classroom events.
- Blog about it
- Tell your friends
- Invite someone to teach a class

If you can help or know someone who can help, feel free to contact either Kevin Fenzi (nirik) or me (herlo) and we’ll give you the low down.

Cheers,

Herlo

Here’s the rest of the details:

Conference room A on the lower level of the Salt Lake Library has been reserved. Head down the stairs, make a left turn (essentially a U turn). The conference room is directly under the foyer area (the area with all the shops on the 1st level) If you aren’t clear, ask the information desk. A map is available here of all floor plans of the library.

Also, our meetings should be posted on the Electric Signs by the entrance to the library on the first floor.

Meeting Days & Times:

All meetings will be held from 11:30am - 1pm on the Second Wednesday of each month.

Wednesday, February 11
Wednesday, March 11
Wednesday, April 8
Wednesday, May 13
Wednesday, June 10

Feel free to add this and other Utah Tech Events to your calendar by adding the ‘Utah Tech Events’ feed to your calendar.

Traxx

You can get off 2 blocks west of the Library. If you get off at the ‘Courthouse 500 South’ stop
There is also a University Train that stops right next to the library, but you’ll have to transfer at Gallivan Center.

Parking

Parking is recommended to be one block away from the Library as they have reduced the meters in front of the Library to only 30 minutes. However the meters directly east (on 200 East) should still be 2 hours. Make sure to check the time you allow yourself is plenty.

See you all there.

Herlo

herlo	I asked a couple days back about kids at scale and pricing or whatever. I forgot to take #scale-chat of ignore, what is the rules on children?	13:49
Gareth	Kids are definitely allowed to attend.	13:49
herlo	sure, and I think it’s encouraged no?	13:50
Gareth	We generally dont charge for them if they’re under 16 or so.	13:50
Gareth	Definitely!	13:50
herlo	cool, that’s what I was after	13:50
Gareth	We had quite a few last year….they all seemed to have a good time.	13:50
herlo	the Fedorans will be sporting a few young’ns around is all	13:50
Gareth	Good to hear!	13:50
lcafiero	+1 Gareth	13:50
herlo	yeah, we have the wii lined up to be used all day if they get bored	13:50
herlo	I’m sure we’ll have other activities for them. I plan on bringing scissors and some fedora media boxes for them to build	13:52
lcafiero	Orv_work may want to do something with this, press-wise. Some of the other events — especially Linux World — are kid unfriendly, and it doesn’t allow those of us with kids to attend.	13:52
herlo	maybe we should also bring some skulladay.com pages too, that’ll entertain them	13:52
Gareth	yeah. he wrote something up last year too…I’m sure he’ll write something up this year.	13:52
herlo	we’ll watch for it	13:53

Instructions:

Open Audacity, then Audacity Preferences. In the Audio I/O section, change the Recording device to Core Audio: Soundflower (2ch).
Open Skype, then Skype Preferences. Under the Audio tab, change Audio Output to Soundflower (2ch).
Open Soundflowerbed in your menu bar, then under Soundflower (2ch), select Built-in Output. Soundflowerbed allows you to monitor the audio passing through Soundflower, like having a window into the laundry shoot to watch clothes that fall past.
Back in Audacity, click the Record button to begin recording.
In Skype, make a call to your cell phone. When your greeting begins playing, press the sequence of keys that accesses your voicemail (probably the asterisk key followed by your password.) Listen to your voicemail as you normally would. Then hang up.
Switch back to Audacity and click the Stop button. You should see the zig-zaggy waveform of the message you just recorded.
Click the Audacity cursor directly before your message. (You can find out where this is by using the Play and Stop buttons.) From the Edit menu, choose Select then Track Start to Cursor. Push the Delete key on your keyboard. This will remove extraneous audio before your message.
Click the Audacity cursor directly after your message. From the Edit menu, choose Select then Cursor to Track End. Push the Delete key. This will remove extraneous audio after your message.