Just letting you know, we do have a Podcast planned for some point this week. We couldn’t get one done for a few reasons over bank holiday (Matt is away, I was ill, Stevie was fully booked with his one man tour of Stevie) so we couldn’t fit it in.
But don’t worry, we will have ‘something’ resembling people talking into microphones, just not entirely sure when yet!
Steam for Mac has been released and according to Phoronix:
Those enthusiasts within the Phoronix community even managed to get the unreleased Steam Linux client running up to a partially drawn UI and other modifications, but now that work can stop as Valve is preparing to officially release the Steam Linux client from where they will start to offer Linux native games available for sale. For all those doubting our reports that Source/Steam would be coming to Linux, you can find confirmation in the UK’s Telegraph and other news sites. An announcement from Valve itself is imminent.
And the last paragraph from the Telegraph:
Valve has also confirmed that it will make Steam available to Linux users in the coming months.
What can I say, it was just going to happen.
Read on to discover why I have posted this sugary, boiled, strawberry flavored sweet on this post...
We probably should be recording a episode of Ignition today, but thanks to a variety of circumstances, it’s not happening until Monday Night, but again, the nature of not having a permanent location to record sometimes means these things happen. In the mean time, it’s a relatively nice Saturday here, so, as per the rule book, I’ve been playing on a game console inside.
If only I was doing a Podcast, such a convenient excuse to leave the house. But, there is a very good reason why your not going be hearing us over the weekend. Matt is off “down South” to not take part in the Virgin London Marathon, however, his sister is and is raising money of St John’s Ambulance, who provide important first aid and medical assistance in the UK, everywhere from Football Matches to Theatre Performances (I was helped when I was younger after choking on a Campino in the middle of Doctor Dolittle, TRUE FACT). So if you want to donate (don’t forget if you’re in the UK, click the gift aid button), go to this website and do without that downloadable game. After doing that, read on to discover what I’m up to on this subdued sunny Saturday.
Over the internet wire it has been announced that Ubuntu will be using Google as it’s default search provider in it’s newest version, 10.04, instead of Yahoo. This comes as a shock as Ubuntu and many other projects (Firefox being a prime example) are apparently ditching the April-Foolhardy Google and switching to Yahoo.
It is not clear from the announcement the reason behind the change although, from it’s wording, it seems they have chosen Google over merit and not laziness. This could mean Ubuntu will be continuing to use Google in future.
The question that comes from this announcement is if the Mozilla project will also make good on their decision to default to Yahoo or to keep with the Goog’. Only time will tell.
The logo for Quickly, a Ruby-on-Rails like application framework.
Well, I mentioned on Sunday that this week I would be (and hopefully you too) taking part in the Ubuntu Opportunistic Developers week. I thought it would be awfully bad form not to show some of my progress (and my overly embarrassing bugs).
A quick word of warning though: I haven’t been able to catch as many sessions as I would like because of school and Game-Engine commitments and the stuff I have knocked together is very buggy. That said, the underlying concept of the program works it’s just the PyGTK programming that’s annoying me.
My First App: FeedMe
The basic idea behind FeedMe is simple. It’s just a couchDB application that fetches all the links from a HTML or XML file and puts them into a nice list. It borrows heavily on concepts and code from Dive into Python, a book for programmers with loads of great source code, documentation and online tutorials for Python and Quickly.
Despite the fact that, under Game-Engine law, it is illegal to post on a Sunday it would really defeat the point if I didn’t post now. The reasoning behind this is because the start of next week (1st March) marks the beginning of the Ubuntu Opportunistic Developers week.
Essentially, the motivation behind it is to teach and encourage new developers to make quick applications for the Ubuntu platform that fill a specific niche. Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s because starting to develop for the Linux platform is confusing and the sessions offered at the developers week will give you the skills to become a GUI developer. I am certainly taking part, I already have an idea for an application knocking around in the back of my head and, after playing with some of the development toys, I am really looking forward to it.
The week will teach you how to use Quickly, PyGTK and the Python programming language to build your apps with elements such as persistent databases and graphics with PyGame.
For the sake of irony, I'm really hoping this image doesn't 404.
There are some words today that are synonymous with the history of computing. These words may include Linux, GNU, BSD, Mac OS X, Darwin, Solaris, System V, etc. However, what these words have got in common is that they all include, or are related to in some way, the word UNIX. Linux is word play for ‘Linus’, the Linux kernels father, and UNIX; GNU is an acronym for ‘GNU is not UNIX’; BSD and System V were the first UNIX systems; Darwin and Mac OS X are UNIX system-like operating systems and the same is so for Solaris.
Unfortunately, people may know that the words are related to but what they don’t know is how the words are related. The current standard of the UNIX naming system are almost as confusing as the court battles that have been fought over it. The lines between what is and what is not UNIX is no longer over who made the system or what the system performs like but by certification.
We are going to be still putting out our murder madness video series, we’re just in the process of changing the format for next week!
Before I get started, a little admission to the reader: Before writing this post, I was dreaming what to put in a column where I put, well, anything I want and my mind was creativity death valley. Now, in the same vein as many of the ventures in my life that have proved to be a little bit difficult, my mind instantly adopted the “fuck it, I’ll do it later (ergo, never)” approach. Laziness, ladies and gents. Laziness.
So, like the self-proclaimed genius that I am, my mind started thinking of how I can factor in my extreme talent for procrastination into a fully blown blog entry. So, after a long (short) deductive process that I have named 2and2 syndrome, I came up with an idea that even rivals the concept of putting ninety-nine red balloons in the same space: write a blog about laziness. More precisely, how it benefits society.
