life at the end of the universe

Since Google Summer of Code is coming up again very soon Sven, Phil and I will be doing a short info session at the University of Karlsruhe on Thursday at 4pm in room HS -101 in building 50.34 (Infobau). We’ll be giving a short intro to GSoC and tell a bit about how GSoC works in KDE and Debian and of course answer lots of questions. If you’re planning to apply this year you should definitely show up Please drop me a short email if you want to attend at lydia at kde org.

If you’re not in Karlsruhe or anywhere near there are info sessions in other cities around the world listed in the GSoC calendar.

Right on time for for Valentine’s Day we’re releasing the beta version of Amarok 2.3. Check out the release notes and enjoy.

Oh and in case you should have missed this fantastic FSFE campaign:

It’s that time of the year again when we need to start thinking about awesome ideas for GSoC. I just prepared a page on the community wiki to collect them. The list needs to be finished by March 8th. Got a great idea for a nice project a student could be working on for the summer? Add it! If you are unsure or have any questions ping me or the team of the app you have an idea for.

We need a lot of help collecting data for the new www.kde.org that is being worked on and you can help! It is pretty easy but a lot to do. The more people help the better.

What needs to be done? Just find some simple data about KDE’s programs following a template and putting them on a wiki. We also need screenshots. The community wiki has more details. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know all the data for a certain program. Fill in as much as you know. Everything helps. If you have questions come to #kde-www on freenode or drop me an email at lydia at kde org.

Everyone who completes at least two programs gets hugs from me

It should all be done next weekend so get cracking!

This is the entry for Parley as an example:

Screenshot sent: no

Name: Parley

Description: [can be HTML or wiki markup]

<p><b>Parley</b> is a program to help you memorize things.<br> Parley supports many language specific features but can be used for other learning tasks just as well. It uses the <a href=\”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition\”>spaced repetition</a> learning method, also known as flash cards.</p><p>  Creating new vocabulary collections with Parley is easy,  but of course it is even better if you can use some of our premade files. Have a look at the <a href=\”http://kde-files.org/index.php?xcontentmode=687\”>KDE-Files.org</a> page or use the \”Download New Collections\” feature directly.</p>

Features (optional):

Different test types

Mixed Letters (order the letters, anagram like) to get to know new words

Multiple choice

Written tests – type the words (including clever correction mechanisms)

Example sentences can be used to create ‘fill in the gap’ tests

Article training

Comparison forms (adjectives and/or adverbs)

Conjugations

Synonym/Antonym/Paraphrase

Fast test setup with all options in one dialog

More than two languages (for example English, Chinese Traditional and Chinese Simplified)

Find words (also by word type) quickly

Easy lesson management

Premade vocabulary files ready to use

Share and download vocabulary using Get Hot New Stuff

Open XML file format (shared with KWordQuiz, Kanagram and KHangMan) that can be edited by hand and is easily usable with scripts

Homepage: http://edu.kde.org/parley
ID on kde-apps.org: 66741
Page on Userbase: [empty]
ID of subforum on forum.kde.org: 21
Link to handbook: http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdeedu/parley/index.html
IRC channel(s): #kde-edu
Mailing lists: kde-edu@kde.org, parley-devel@kde.org
Project name on cia.vc: kde/parley
Bugzilla component: parley

Amarok 2.2.2 “Maya Gold” is released and it brings back the last two most requested features of 1.4.x: moodbar support and custom labels. We hope this brings some smiles to people’s faces

Download it now, enjoy and rediscover music with us!

The first (and only?) beta release “Tattoo” of Amarok 2.2.2 is out!
Check the release announcement for all the nice features in it like moodbar support and help us with testing and bug reporting and fixing.

2 weeks ago I asked people to help with getting our Junior Jobs list above 100. That worked out nicely. We’re at 140 right now and reached 148 at some point in the last week \o/  200 in 2 weeks from now?

Keep adding Junior Jobs. As some people were unsure how to do it, here’s a screenshot:

Interested in getting involved in KDE by writing code? There are 140 bugs waiting for you

For me KDE is:

• working with great people
• good friends
• people to depend on
• a community that helps me do things I would never have imagined I would be able to do
• me going to random places around the world and having a couch to sleep on
• a team that gets stuff done
• having someone to share good and bad things with
• people who are so far away and yet so close
• a team that brings me to my limits
• a crowd that has seemingly endless energy to make better software
• so much more than just a desktop environment.

When a new contributor comes to you and wants to start coding on KDE do you have a small task to hand him or her immediately? The moment they show up in your IRC channel, email inbox, identi.ca or wherever else they find you is the moment their motivation is incredibly high. They are willing to invest time and energy right there and they likely have a few free hours to dive into a simple task. This is the moment we need to get them hooked. If they have to wait a few days, a week or even longer for a task they might well have lost that initial motivation and will be gone never to be seen again.

Now we all know that our time is limited and we can’t be there 24/7 and give out tasks to newbies. Thankfully we have a solution: Junior Jobs on bugs.kde.org. The sad thing: There are less than 50 of them at the time of writing this posting. Let’s improve this. Have a simple task you don’t have time for right now? File a bug right now (you can even skip the wizard), tag it with the keyword “junior-jobs” and be happy to have a list to give to a potential new coder next time someone approaches you.

But having this list to point to is not the only benefit. It will also be used by people looking for something to do on their own. They might be too shy to approach you for the time being, but looking at a task-list on their own and maybe trying to fix one of the bugs is possible for them.

Let’s get this list above 100 within the next two weeks together!

Now say you don’t have a suitable Junior Job for someone. There are a few things you can do to keep them involved until you have something:

• let them set up their devel environment
• ask them to test something for you
• ask them to help a little with bug triage
• ask them to go trough your websites and see where they are out-of-date and maybe get them updated
• have them check if someone needs help in the forum
• let them organize a meeting for your team if needed
• …

While Junior Jobs are used for coding tasks mainly it would be nice to have a similar system for promo for example. I am not sure Bugzilla is the best tool for that though. Are there better tools we could use for promo task scheduling?

Group Photo, originally uploaded by warthog9.

Leo and I went to California for the GSoC mentor summit to talk to lots of other mentors and admins about Summer of Code and whatever else was on our mind. In short: absolutely awesome and definitely worth the travel (which included lots of hours in airplanes and airports for me including an unplanned 6 hour stay in Salt Lake City – thank you very much border control).

The energy you get when you put that many geeks together is amazing. And at the same time it is quite different from conferences where you only have one project present like Akademy. It shows you that people working on competing projects are actually pretty cool people when sitting in a hot-tub with them *g*. (If course I knew that one before but it feels good to be reassured about it.) It shows you a lot of white spots on your personal open source map. Any idea what the Boost community looks like? Any idea how huge the Apache Software Foundation is? Now I do. It has definitely been interesting for me to see how different communities are managing their day-to-day business and especially GSoC. And the most surprising thing for me: Even pretty dysfunctional communities can release decent software I also learned that you can indeed have a session on minorities in free software and actually get useful results everyone can apply in their communities instead of getting derailed and discussing colors of random bike sheds. (They should all be blue and have pink doors of course.)

Check out the session notes (not 100% complete at the time of this post but hopefully soon), the one thing people learned at the summit and pics.

Thanks a lot to Google and everyone who attended the summit for making this happen. It has been 2 intense days and a great experience.

After the summit I stayed another 2 days with Alejandro to check out the area. Thanks so much for offering a place to crash. We went to San Francisco – what a great city – and met up with Gary and blauzahl who were great hosts. (Sorry I wasn’t more talkative that night folks but the previous days really drained my energy.) And it again showed me one of the best things about our community: No matter where I go on this world, friends are never far. I uploaded a few pictures to my Flickr page.

I’ll definitely have to return – not just for the massage chairs and hot-tub.