Notes from the Mousepad

I have been coordinating the ISO testing for Xubuntu since February of this year, and while it has really helped me to learn more about the release cycle, I am going to be changing jobs soon, and will not have as much free time. I’m also trying to contribute more to Xubuntu documentation, and that takes up my time, too. With those things in mind, I’m looking for someone who would be available to coordinate pre-release ISO testing for Xubuntu.

The good news is that this is technically a very easy task. It just requires an interest in testing and some time immediately prior to a release. Things can get hectic on the days leading up to milestone release day, but it is otherwise not too difficult.

A couple points:
- I will still test, but I just won’t be able to coordinate testing
- It’s not happening immediately. My new job starts on September 24th.
- I’ll help transition things to whoever wants to take this over. You won’t have to learn things from scratch.

Who would be good for this role? Here’s a few qualities and attributes that would be helpful for someone interested in being the ISO test coordinator:
- An interest in testing pre-release versions of Xubuntu
- A basic knowledge of the overall Xubuntu release cycle
- A computer with a cd burner and a decent (i.e., not dial-up) internet connection
- A spare computer, hard drive, or disk partition on which they would be willing to perform a test installation of Xubuntu
- Preferred: I think it’s easier for a test coordinator to coordinate things if they live in Europe (UTC-200 to UTC+500). This isn’t a requirement, but a person in Europe would be at home in the evening when test coordination activity is ramping up, and it’s much easier to coordinate activity from home than from the grocery store or your job.
- Optional: Test coordination could even be shared amongst a few people.

If you’re interested in heading ths up, please let me know. If you aren’t interested in leading things yourself, please mention this to your appropriate local community teams in case someone else may be interested.

After thinking things through for a while, I finally got around to making a few updates to j1m.net. Previously I had everything over on j1m.net/chi-ubuntu, but I’m moving my posting activities over to the root page of my site. I’m still working on Xubuntu (quite a bit), and I’m still a member of the Ubuntu-Chicago Local Community Team, but I just thought that it would be better to have a more general web presence. After all, what if I ever have to move to Florida or something? I wouldn’t want to have to change my site’s main url to be j1m.net/fla-ubuntu, so it’s best to make this change now.

As for the site’s appearance, I’m using a modified version of the Misty Looks WordPress theme. I liked the layout of Matthew East‘s page, so I’ve taken a fair amount (okay, alot) from that, and have otherwise mostly worked to make the page a little wider, and (in case you haven’t noticed) to give it the colors of Xubuntu. I’ll be tweaking the CSS to clean up a few elements eventually (the vertical spacing between the blogroll links is a little wide for my taste, and the way I’ve removed the header image is a bit of a hack), but the site looks good enough for now. It’s pretty straighforward in appearance, but I’m just really getting to know CSS, and hopefully I will learn more as I go along. If the site renders strangely on your computer, please let me know.

As for FOSS-related activities, we had an in-person meeting of the Ubuntu-Chicago Local Community Team last weekend. It was held immediately prior to the Chicago GNU/Linux User Group meeting, so there were a number of Chicago Lug members present, and at least one person from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s LUG was there, too. Although we frequently collaborate with members of the Chicago Lug, it’s good to see some opportunities to work with members of the UIC Lug, too. We’re going to be working up some educational sessions, and some informal hackfests with folks from UIC, and I’m looking forward to it.

Xubuntu Gutsy Gibbon documentation is coming along. I’m going to be doing some more work on it today. It’s my first foray into documentation, so it’s been fun trying to learn the ins and outs of docbook. Because we’ve used the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn documentation (thanks, Ubuntu!) we’ve had to remove or change Ubuntu-specific elements to suit Xubuntu, and we’ve had to make sure the documentation is current for this release. It hasn’t been too challenging, but I think we’re still trying to wrap our heads around the .ent files. I think we’re close, though.

Well, this is all for now. I hope the new site works well. Thanks for visiting.