Team Reporting

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Hello everyone,

At Nick Ali’s request, I will now be be managing the Team Reports [1].
I would like to take this time to mention a few things other things
concerning the reports. First, as the month of May comes to an end, it
is time to update your team’s report page. Be sure to also update the
collective team report page [2] for May.

In an effort to make it easier for teams to maintain their report
pages, I am proposing moving towards a new reporting style that takes
advantage of the ‘Include’ feature on the wiki. Details about how to
use this new style can be found at [3]. If you switch to this new
style, it will no longer be necessary to update the collective team
report [2] each month.

Thanks,
Nathan Handler

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamReports
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamReports/May2009
[3] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BuildingCommunity/TeamReporting/HowTo
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New GnuPG Key

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Sun, 10 May 2009 15:15:15 -0500

Because of the recently announced attack [0] against the SHA-1 digest
algorithm, I finally decided to move away from my old 1024-bit DSA
OpenPGP key, landing to a shiny new 2048-bit RSA one.

[0] http://eurocrypt2009rump.cr.yp.to/837a0a8086fa6ca714249409ddfae43d.pdf

The old key will continue to be valid for some time, but I prefer all
future correspondence to come to the new one. I would also like this
new key to be re-integrated into the web of trust. This message is
signed by both keys to certify the transition.

The old key was:

$ gpg –with-fingerprint –list-keys 57F795E8
pub   1024D/57F795E8 2008-04-25
Key fingerprint = 2CA5 1131 578D 9175 0A54  B0E8 4BB3 6254 57F7 95E8
uid                  Nathan Handler <nhandler@ubuntu.com>
uid                  Nathan Handler <mrcheatr@gmail.com>
uid                  Nathan Handler <nathan.handler@gmail.com>
uid                  Nathan Handler <nhandler@kubuntu.org>
uid                  Nathan Handler <nhandler@nubuntu.org>
sub   2048g/B980FFDC 2008-04-25
$

And the new key is:

$ gpg –with-fingerprint –list-keys 3933A7CE
pub   2048R/3933A7CE 2009-05-10
Key fingerprint = F30E EA8C 3446 F59E F0DB  433C 2335 FB3F 3933 A7CE
uid                  Nathan Handler <nhandler@ubuntu.com>
uid                  Nathan Handler <mrcheatr@gmail.com>
uid                  Nathan Handler <nathan.handler@gmail.com>
uid                  Nathan Handler <nhandler@nubuntu.org>
uid                  Nathan Handler <nhandler@kubuntu.org>
$

To fetch my new key from a public key server, you can simply do:

gpg –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –recv-keys 3933A7CE

If you already know my old key, you can now verify that the new key is
signed by the old one:

gpg –check-sigs 3933A7CE

If you don’t already know my old key, or you just want to be double
extra paranoid, you can check the fingerprint against the one above:

gpg –fingerprint 3933A7CE

If you are satisfied that you’ve got the right key, and the UIDs match
what you expect, I’d appreciate it if you would sign my key:

gpg –sign-key 3933A7CE

Lastly, if you could upload these signatures, I would really appreciate
it. You can either send me an e-mail with the new signatures (if you
have a functional MTA on your system):

gpg –armor –export 3933A7CE | mail -s ‘OpenPGP Signatures’ nhandler@ubuntu.com

You could also use caff(1) from http://pgp-tools.alioth.debian.org/
(signing-party package on Debian GNU systems):

caff 3933A7CE

Or you can just upload the signatures to a public keyserver directly:

gpg –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com –send-key 3933A7CE

Please let me know where you upload your signatures, if there is any
trouble, and sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards,
Nathan Handler
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Ubuntu Open Week Reminders on identi.ca

Ubuntu Open Week is off to a great start. If you are an identi.ca user, you can subscribe to @udscommunity to receive reminders as each session begins. A special thanks to Greg Grossmeier (@greg) for hosting the script. This is the first time that we are using identi.ca to send out these Open Week reminders, and we would appreciate any feedback that you might have.

Introducing wallDent

I would like to introduce my latest project, wallDent, to everyone. wallDent is a script that turns your desktop wallpaper into an identi.ca or Twitter timeline.

wallDent currently provides support for both Twitter and identi.ca. It also allows you to choose whether to display a timeline of all the messages from people you subscribe to, or to only display replies to your messages. Another nice feature is that wallDent will display any message that contains your name in red. You can also choose how often wallDent updates (defaults to every minute).

Right now, the script still has several bugs in it. However, I wanted to open this project up to the public in order to get some feedback on it. The script is currently available in a bzr branch on Launchpad: https://code.launchpad.net/~nhandler/walldent/trunk. Please read the whiteboard, as it provides important information about how to use the script. I will be adding a proper README file later.

Please do not hesitate to let me know what you think of the script or to inform me of a bug or feature suggestion. You can add a comment to this blog post, send me a message on identi.ca (@nhandler), or file a bug against walldent on Launchpad.

At Home with Jono

Jono Bacon, the Ubuntu Community Manager, is now streaming live. You can view the stream by going to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono. There is also an IRC client on the site that you can use to chat with Jono and other viewers while watching. If you do not like the client on the site, you can connect using your normal IRC client and connecting to:

Server: chat1.ustream.tv

Port 6667

Channel: #at-home-with-jono8350

The first session just ended. Once Jono figured out how to connect to the IRC channel, he spent some time responding to comments that people were saying. Jono will be notifying us sometime this week about the date and time of the next live stream. However, it should take place about a week from now.

UPDATE: Jono has changed the URL for the live stream. It is now: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/at-home-with-jono-bacon

Hall of Fame

I think we have an issue with the Ubuntu Hall of Fame. Currently, it focuses nearly entirely on Developers. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely aware of the contributions that developers make to the community. However, we have many other great people who help out in other areas other than development. We have many people working to ensure that the documentation that we ship in the various *buntu releases, as well as our wiki documentation, is accurate and complete. We also have an amazing forum which is filled with users who have spent countless hours writing tutorials and answering questions. We also can not forget about the people who idle in numerous IRC channels in order to be able to answer any question that might be asked.

These are merely a few of the ways other than development, that a user can contribute to Ubuntu. In my opinion, these tasks help the community just as much as fixing a bug in a package. We should add sections to the Hall of Fame that acknowledges the people who contribute to these other areas. These users also deserve to be recognized as Featured Contributors.

Chicago Global Bug Jam 2009

As many of you know, I live right near the city of Chicago. Although the Chicago LoCo holds regular meetings, up until now, I have not attended any of them. However, this weekend, in honor of the Global Bug Jam, I decided to change that. The minute I arrived at the Bug Jam, I was greeted by everybody that was there. As I was being introduced to everyone, they were not only saying their names, they were also saying what name they went by on IRC. Being able to associate a face with the people I had been in contact with on IRC was a great feeling. They were no longer just a name in my IRC client, but an actual person.

After introductions were out of the way, it was bug squashing time. This is where the community feeling started to sink in for me. In one corner of the room, we had one person teaching another person how to program in C. In another corner, we had people working on a new logo for the ubuntu-chicago Launchpad page. And all over the place, we had people triaging and fixing bugs. Whenever somebody had a question, there was usually someone in the room who had the answer. However, even with all of the knowledgeable people that were present at the event, a question regarding 5-a-day came up that nobody knew the answer to. As I was preparing to ask the question on IRC, Richard Johnson pulled out his cell phone and first called Daniel Holbach, who was sleeping, and then called Jorge Castro who was able to answer the question. All over the internet, people refer to the Ubuntu Community. This bug jam really made it clear to me that we are not just a community, we are a giant family. Not only do we work together to make Ubuntu a great opperating system, but we also care and look out for each other.

Although we did not triage as many bugs as some of the other LoCo teams, I still feel that the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam was a huge success. It gave me the opportunity to meet up with many people that I had worked with on IRC. For anyone who is thinking about attending a LoCo event, I would strongly urge you to do so. You will not regret it.

Happy New Year!

As more and more countries enter the year 2009, I just wanted to wish everyone a happy new year.

GMail Sponsoring Filter

I was unable to find a way to easily keep track of the changes that I sponsored on Launchpad. However, if you are the uploader, maintainer, or signer of a package that gets uploaded to the repositories, you are sent an email. I decided to create a GMail filter to easily keep track of the changes that I sponsored. My filter looks like this:

Matches: from:(archive@ubuntu.com) “Signed-By: Nathan Handler <nhandler@ubuntu.com>” -{“Changed-By: Nathan Handler <nhandler@ubuntu.com>”}
Do this: Apply label “Sponsored Packages”

That filter looks for emails from archive@ubuntu.com that were signed by me. However, to avoid matching my own changes, I have the filter exclude emails for changes that I made. Finally, GMail applies a lable to the emails to make them easy to find.

If GMail were to add support for creating filters that look at all of the message headers, it would be much easier to create more efficient versions of this filter that sort the messages based on whether they are in universe/multiverse or main/restricted.

Hopefully, some other people will find this filter useful.

I am now a MOTU!

Today, my application to join the Ubuntu Masters of the Universe (MOTU) team has been accepted. I would like to thank my many sponsors, the MOTU Council, and the entire Ubuntu and MOTU communities.

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/motu-council/2008-December/001908.html