gundy dot org

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the positive feedback from readers of the Utah Open Source Planet. I hoped that it would be a cool place for UT’s Open Source hackers to learn something more about each other and interact a bit. It seems that it has done just that. People have taken partial ownership of the site and consider it part of the community. I think that’s great. Thanks to everyone who participates and allows their feeds to be picked up here.

It seems that the best way to get people to notice the Planet (and your feed) is to link to it from your blogs. Have a look at the top 10 ways readers get here:

1. 458 - google
2. 289 - bloglines.com
3. 277 - halls.lug-nut.com
4. 115 - blog.josephhall.com
5. 110 - blog.mecworks.com
6. 107 - pthree.org
7. 106 - fozzilinymoo.org
8. 95 - planet.gnome.org
9. 61 - blogs.gnome.org
10. 45 - gundy.org

Planet citizens are second only to google in bringing new readers to the UOSP. Please consider blogging about UOSP if you have not yet done so. Also, a blog-role is a great place to link to the Planet.

Those of you who don’t have your headshot to me, stop being shy|lazy|forgetful. We like putting names to faces. Don’t worry, I think everyone hates their hackergochi. Get me a picture with good lighting for best results.

Lastly, those of you who read and have not added your feeds - get on the ball! We want to hear what you’re hacking on (BSD, Linux, Life… whatever)! I personally know several people that are conspicuously missing from the Planet. How about the guys in southern Utah? Where are you? Where are all the Novell hackers? What about the guys at Linux Networx? How about Xmission guys? I’d like to see the Open Source centric companies show up in numbers (see Guru Labs for an example).

I guess that’s it for now. Thanks again to all those who make UOSP fun to read!

I don’t even remember how I ended up stumbling upon this, but I thought the spin was funny.

On August 20th, Microsoft announced the filing of legal actions against a Orem-area company for the alleged distribution of counterfeit software. Microsoft is taking this action to protect consumers and resellers from the negative impact of software piracy.

Why not say, “Microsoft is taking this action to protect revenues”? Why not be honest? We don’t blame you for wanting to make money. Saying anything different shows us that you think we are stupid.

Anyway, after seeing this guy, I’m glad they are protecting me.

How does that image compare to images of protected users who enjoy the benefits of genuine software?

I want to be that guy!

My dad sat at my computer and sent this IM to my brother Jordan:

Hi, this is Gary. This is my first message that I have ever sent. It could very well be my last one also. Roger-out good buddy.

I was kinda happy and sad at the same time. The worlds we live in can seem so different.

I thought y’all might like to know what people are searching for when they find the Utah Open Source Planet.
Here you go…

1. utah open source planet
2. utah perl mongers
3. open clue utah
4. preferred roaming list hack
5. centos 4.2 bootloader configuration
6. rpm download bond httpd-2.2.0-5.1.2
7. perl bot to play legend of the green dragon
8. baby blue gerolsteiner specialized bike
9. boot loader centos 4.2 configuration
10. 2006.0 network gentoo “old way” wiki
11. (brenda white utah suv)
12. twaingle
13. oss suse 10.1 rc3
14. woman chases husband through office building in utah
15. bcm43xx fwcutter gpl legal
16. merge suse 10.1 delta
17. opensuse 10.1 alacarte
18. xubuntu mythfrontend
19. brenda white
20. brenda white suv utah
21. suse-linux-10.1-rc3
22. woman drove through building utah
23. utah planet rss feed
24. isos de sause 10.1 rc3
25. opensuse 10 rpm source ipw2200
26. open source isp billing
27. open source utah
28. free phone call hacks
29. installing opensuse 10.1 rc3 over network
30. google movies on the planet looks and size
31. open source restaurant menu php script
32. phil orem boot fitting
33. dallin quass
34. this old bbs utah
35. metacity jerk 2.14
36. brenda white in utah
37. open graphics planet
38. connect to server in xubuntu
39. pastebin php src
40. centos bdc
41. poke mon ruby planet
42. configure wlan0 linus ubuntu distro
43. define denial of service attack
44. the best hacks for stick arena
45. reviews of glenn beck on cnn
46. malt o meal employee benefits
47. download zooltone
48. utah “open source” rss
49. fedora change text color bash shell blue too dark
50. tell me you didn’t read this far!

OK, the last one is made-up.

P.S. Get your worthless OpenSource buddies to join the Planet!

Well, last night I finally installed Suse 10.1. It’s the same as ever for me - there are things I love and things I hate. Foremost in the “things I hate” is YaST. I wanted to update some software and found these options under the “Software” section in YaST:

10 options is way to many. Let’s look at the choices that I would have to explore before doing the equivalent of an “apt-get update.”

• Online Update
• Software Management
• Online Update Configuration
• Online Update Setup
• System Update

I know they do different things, that’s the point. Can’t this be simplified? Make it so I don’t have to discover what is going on. I really like the “Software Management” option. Isn’t that what I’m already doing here in YaST?
Don’t worry Suse users. I’ll come out with a list of “things I love” soon.

There is this new thing called “broadband” and together with this other new thing called “bittorrent” you never have to download things at <56k again!

I love 2006!

I’m a little surprised that MySpace is getting it’s own IM service. My initial reaction was, “I hope it runs XMPP (or jabber) and not yet another protocol.” But after thinking about it for a while, I decided that some walled gardens are a good thing. Let’s hope the walls are 12 feet high and have barbed-wire to keep all the Emo Kids in.

No, I will not add sk8Rkid to my buddie list!

I’ve been busy this weekend hacking together a little something I call ZoolTone.

What is it you ask?

It’s a Firefox extension (my first, but not last) that will allow you to “Click and Dial” phone numbers on a web page. It adds a pretty little icon after every phone number it finds. When you click the icon, it sends a message to Asterisk to make the call. Asterisk then rings your phone with the caller id of the number you clicked. When you answer, it connects you to the other party. It should be pretty sweet for offices that run Asterisk.

It’s called ZoolTone because it’s written with JavaScript and XUL which is pronounced “zool.” I kept all the logic in the backend to make it easy to add Thunderbird support later. It would be so sweet to be reading a business email and call that person simply by clicking on the phone number at the bottom of page.

With real work starting on Monday, this will get neglected for a bit. I do hope to have a working version out in a week or so. Any longer would kill me.