The Technology in Education (TIE) conference takes place each year in June in the mountains of Colorado. The conference is mainly aimed at Colorado educators, but there are always attendees from elsewhere as well. This year’s conference is June 24-27 at the Copper Mountain Resort.

Last year I presented a session on using free software and Ubuntu as solutions to some of the main problems with technology in education - namely lack of computers and lack of something to use them for (i.e. software). The session was a great success. Canonical also ponied up the cash to sponsor an Ubuntu booth in the exhibition hall. Approximately 5 members of the Colorado Loco Team helped at the session and the Ubuntu booth. There are a couple write ups on the CoLoCo website here and here, and one appeared on page 11 of Issue 5 of Full Circle Magazine (and my additions to that article).

This year I will be running two session. One will focus primarily on using free software on Windows. Because most schools are Windows-centric, I believe we need to help teachers discover and access free software on their default platform before trying to introduce a new platform. That being said, we do plan to introduce Ubuntu via a virtual machine and some software that is not available for Windows to run in the VM. The second session will focus on the installation and setup of an LTSP thin-client server using Edubuntu.

Instead of a booth in the exhibition hall this year, we are going to set up an Ubuntu table in one of the main hallways. We have a conference pack from Canonical and will set up a couple of demo boxes.

For more information, please see the planning page - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TIEColorado08.

We are in need of volunteers to help man the table and assist in the sessions. If you would like to spend a bit of time in the beauty of the Colorado Rockies and advocate for Ubuntu and free software, please check out the wiki above and add your name. You may also contact me if you are interested. You can find my contact info on my Launchpad page (linked on the About Me page).

Before you flame me, I’ll admit that if you really know and love iTunes (and maybe are tied to the iTunes store) then perhaps iTunes isn’t totally a waste of time. However, for me it is complete garbage. Allow me to tell you a little story.

I was having problems with the CD burner on my Hardy desktop so I thought I’d give one of the macbooks from work a try. I am trying to make some MP3 compilation discs for the car and a mac should totally rock for that, right? I first had to rip some CDs. I discovered that dragging and dropping onto iTunes would rip but not into MP3. That had to be changed. Easy enough. Then it wouldn’t download any track info on the CDs unless I had an iTunes account. Okay, what they hell, I’ll register. How hard can it be? Then I find out that I have to buy a subscription. Well, I have no interest in an iTunes subscription so I decided I could do without the info. After all, I’m using a mac and should feel very privileged so the fact that I can’t do things the way I want doesn’t matter. I’m sure the OSX folks know more than me, and I should just do it their way and be happy they let me. So I finally get some CDs ripped. Now it’s time to burn. Hmmm, how do you make an MP3 disc and how do you mix up the tracks? Oh, I see. I have to make a play list first. Silly me for just wanting to burn the tracks. Oh wait, I have some MP3s stored on some CDs that I want to import first and add to my compilations. Hmmm, drag and drop doesn’t work. The files import but no metadata. That won’t work. I can’t have bunch of files named Track 1, Track 2, etc. Okay, maybe if I copy them to the iTunes folder the data will be preserved. Hmmm, They are in the folder but not in iTunes. You know what? Screw you Jobs.

/me tosses the macbook aside, swaps the CD burner in my Hardy box and does things the right way.

Fire up Banshee and insert the CD. It’s recognized automatically and track data instantly downloaded. Set it to burn MP3 (stupid stereo won’t do ogg). Wow, lame is already installed. I wonder when I did that. Oh well, press import and kick back with a cold one. Oops, no time to drink. It’s done. Insert next disc and before long - Presto! All done. Files are added to my music folder, properly named and ready to play, burn, whatever. Oh, wait, I need to import the other tracks off the old MP3 CD. Drag - drop to my music folder. Perfect. Now to burn the MP3 CD. Open Brasero, choose Data CD, add files and burn. Ah, cool. Brasero wants to verify the burn. Wow, that was fast. Done. Pop into car stereo and enjoy. No problems. Sorry Apple. Linux wins again.

Note to OSX lovers: if iTunes works for you then great. Enjoy. I guess I’m just to old and thick-headed. I’ve never used Banshee, Brasero or iTunes and despite Apple’s claims of simplicity the Linux tools proved superior for my needs.

The Colorado loco team celebrated its Hardy release party on April 26. It was a big success by all accounts. In addition to a lot of good beer, good food and good Ubuntu discussion, our host, Simon, went over the highlights of the Hardy release. We had a presentation on Launchpad from Canonical’s Joey Stanford and I begged for volunteers to help at the Ubuntu table at the upcoming TIE conference. In addition we had representatives from System76 talk about why they chose Ubuntu for their laptops. We also did an impromptu install of Hardy for someone who couldn’t imagine any use for vista. Unfortunately his HP laptop has the infamous Broadcom wifi. One would think companies which seem to support Linux would avoid using hardware from companies that don’t. I wonder how fast Broadcom Corp would release open source drivers if HP, IBM and Dell dropped them until they do.

Anyway, here are some of the obligatory pics…

Simon shows his stuff.

Joey introduce a little know project called Launchpad.

Yours truly shows how to count to 10.

Carl Richell, founder of System76, explains why Ubuntu rocks for his business.

Goodbye vista. Hello Ubuntu.

Subject yourself to the rest of the photos if you wish.

Dang it. Joey beat me to it - but mine is prettier :). Non-Coloradoans welcome! Free Ubuntu laptop to whomever treks the furthest.* Artwork courtesy of our own local Ubuntu loving artist who still uses a mac and really needs to do something with her site.

More great posters here and here.

*Free laptop is neither free nor real but you will have the exclusive right to imagine one as such.

I had the opportunity today to view this error message…

So is “unexpected shutdown” the sterilized way to say “crash”? And I didn’t know that MS had decided to officially call a “Problem Event” a “BlueScreen”. Although I think they should have added “of death” to be fair. Hmmm, maybe that’s a copyright infringement…

When I first started to use Ubuntu, one thing that I thought was really cool was the shipit CDs. In case you are not familiar with this program, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, will ship a free CD or two to anyone who asks. Even the shipping is free. When I wanted to introduce teachers to FOSS and Ubuntu I was able to place a special order for a large number of CDs which Conical shipped and we passed out. Loco teams can also get large numbers of CDs to hand out at various events. The CDs come in slip covers with professional graphics and the CDs themselves have a very professional look. This is important when passing out CDs to the general public. CDs burned at home would not send the same message as these professional CDs do.

Shipit CDs for Hardy are not yet available but should be soon. Check https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ for more info.

It’s probably human nature to collect things, and I am sure many people out there have their own collection of shipit CDs. I have 32 and 64 bit versions for every version since Breezy (except edgy as I don’t think they did shipit with those) as well as some random Kbuntu and Edubuntu CDs. However, I’m missing CDs from the early versions Warty and Hoary. If anyone would be willing to ship me one of these old versions, I’d be happy to PayPal you the cost of shipping, etc. I also have extras of Breezy that I’d be happy to send out to anyone wanting one (or more). Leave a comment or email me. My contact info is on Launchpad.

On a loosely related note, the Colorado Loco Team will be hosing it’s Hardy release party on April 26. See the team page for more info.

I’ve always been rather anit-microsoft so when I became aware of the FOSS movement a few years back I jumped in. I continually dumped proprietary software until I was left with a 100% Linux and FOSS home. This has worked well for me and my family. Free (as in beer and freedom) software has made computing a joy. I love doing a quick apt-get to install a new program to tackle a new problem without the hassle of Googling for something that is both free and safe. However, I have some frustrations at the moment with Open Office that I hope are cleared up soon.

I’ve been working on a project making some graphs in the OO.o spreadsheet in Hardy and discovered a nasty bug. I’ve reported it but so far no additional traffic. I hope someone can confirm or explain it. Because of the bug, I had to use a different computer with Gutsy still installed. Unfortunately, I found a different bug (I have not reported this one yet). With this one, after I have created a chart, I am unable to edit the text elements. I can move them, but I cannot get a cursor so I can add or remove text. So I decided to try on my computer at work (using windows). In that version I don’t have the other two bugs, but 3D columns turn into ugly 3D walls that are much too large and distracting. Getting just the columns seems impossible, though I didn’t spend a great deal of time on it.

Three different versions of Open Office and each with bugs or broken features. I was tempeted to try some “other” spreadsheet program, but I refuse to bend over for a corporate screwing. In the end I was able to get what I wanted, but it took three different computers and more time than it should have. Serenity now!

Since next week (April 3) marks my 1-year anniversary as a Launchpad member, I thought I’d take this opportunity to send out a small plea. I joined Launchpad mainly to join my loco team, but I ended up getting fairly active in the Answer Tracker. While it is nowhere near as active as ubuntufourms.org, it is nonetheless a point of entry for new users. There have been over 28,000 questions asked in the 2.5 years it’s been open. Incidently, the first question was asked by Mark Shuttleworth on Sept 15, 2005. It is marked solved.

For my part, and despite being a fairly average Linux user, I have responded to nearly 600 questions. Others have done a lot more than I. However, my casual observations suggest that there is a fairly small number of people providing most of the answers. While there are maybe 60 or so people subscribing (at least for ubuntu - there are many projects), it’s hard to know how many people are actively “tracking” questions and responding when they can. I tend to see a lot of the same people responding.

In any case, the answer tracker is getting more and more traffic and we need more people helping to answer those questions. A lot of emphasis has been put on attacking bugs lately and that is certainly an important and rather large need; the flipside, the users, is also important. Please consider helping out if you can.

Thanks.

In my 2.5 years or so of using Ubuntu I’ve been pretty lucky. I’ve never really had any real hardware issues - more by luck than by any design on my part I suppose. Of course the developers are doing wonderful work as well and it seems more and more companies are supporting Linux in one way or another. However, my luck recently ran out.

I picked up a semi-broken computer with no OS a while back that seemed a good option for the kids. Unfortunately, it had the infamous Broadcom wifi chip, but with a bit of searching I found a solution and got everything working. However, the hard drive went goofy the other day so rather than fix it I decided it was a good enough reason to put Hardy on it. All went well again but this time ndiswrapper, the restricted driver manager (now called hardware drivers) and every other fix I could find had no effect. I gave up and put Gutsy back but was disappointed. Hardy is so much nicer, and despite the ATI graphics even compiz works - which it didn’t with Gutsy. So I put my faith in the community, reinstalled Hardy and decided I would find the answer. Finally, I did. It seems there is a problem with how modules are loaded and there is a bug report on this issue with a working solution. I guess something got broken in the most recent kernel. Hopefully it will be fixed before long, but until then, the solution offered is working just fine. For convenience I’ve summarized the fix. You can  read the whole report as well as the fix (comment 9 by RedBass) on the bug report. More info on bug 188261 as well. Sorry for the funky text formatting below - wordpress isn’t very friendly with code.

• Create file /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper
  • gksudo gedit /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper
• Add the text below, save and close
  • #! /bin/sh
    ### BEGIN INIT INFO
    # Provides: ndiswrapper
    # Required-Start:
    # Required-Stop:
    # Default-Start: S
    # Default-Stop:
    # Short-Description: enable to load ndiswrapper
    # Description: enable to load ndiswrapper
    ### END INIT INFO
    rmmod ohci_hcd
    rmmod ssb
    rmmod ndiswrapper
    modprobe ndiswrapper
    modprobe ssb
    modprobe ohci_hcd

• Set file access permissions
  • sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper
• Finally, create a symbolic link call S99ndiswrapper in the folder /etc/rc2.d, from /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper
  • sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper /etc/rc2.d/S99ndiswrapper

After a reboot, you should find that Network Manager now shows wireless APs and an ifconfig should show your wifi adapter as well.

My iGoogle page gave me this. How uniquely appropriate.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe