Daily Archives: Saturday, November 10, 2012

  • 2nd LibreOffice Hackfest coming soon

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

    The second LibreOffice Hackfest 2012 will take place from November 23-25 in Munich, Bavaria.

    The event is being supported by Munich City Council’s LiMux project, which is migrating the council’s IT from proprietary systems to free and open source alternatives.

    LibreOffice Hackfest logo

    The hackfest is being jointly organised with the Debian community’s Munich Bug Squashing Party (posts passim).

    For full details such as venues, agenda and travel, consult the event’s page on the LibreOffice wiki.

  • Debian bug squashing parties announced

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    Debian logoDebian is a great Linux distribution. Indeed, besides being a distribution in its own right, it acts as the foundation for the very popular Ubuntu distro, as well as my favourite, Mepis, and countless others.

    The Debian Project is now in the final stages of preparing for its next release – codenamed Wheezy – and has just announced that Bug Squashing Parties (“BSPs”) will take place in several countries in the next few weeks. The main focus of a Bug Squashing Party is to triage and fix bugs, but it is also an opportunity for users less familiar with the Debian bug tracking system to make other contributions to the Debian project, such as translating package descriptions or improving the wiki. Debian developers will be present to help contributors understand how the project works and to help get fixes into Debian.

    A list of confirmed Bug Squashing Parties follows, even though the project advises checking the events page to see if any more are being planned.

    • November 10-11, Banja Luka, Republika Srpska: a BSP will be held at the University Computer Centre. More information here.
    • November 14, Helsinki, Finland: a mini BSP will be held in Kamppi. See the mail announcement for information.
    • November 23-25, Essen, Germany: a BSP will be held at the Linuxhotel. More information.
    • November 23-25, Munich, Germany: a BSP will be held at the LiMux Office, together with the LibreOffice Hackfest. More information is available on the wiki page.
    • November 24-25, Paris, France: a BSP will take place during the second Paris Mini-DebConf. More information can be found on the event page.
    • November 24, Tokyo, Japan: a BSP will be held at the Plat’Home Office. Further information here.
    • December 15-16, Mechelen, Belgium: a BSP will be held at the NixSys Office. More information on the event’s wiki page.

    If you want to organise a BSP, potential organisers can find all the necessary information on the wiki. The Debian Project invites all users and contributors to attend these events and make Wheezy ready for release sooner.

  • “Cutlass supplied”

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities

    Skull and crossbonesEvery now and again there’s a job advertisement that’s so unusual it deserves wider circulation: and there’s a great example on the tourist business website Destination Bristol at the moment.

    Bristol Pirate Walks are looking for an Assistant Pirate to join Pirate Pete.

    The Assistant Pirate should be confident and outgoing with a bubbly personality and be ready to meet and greet visitors to Bristol from across the world, from children and families to corporate groups.

    This is a part-time role with full training given on the history of this port, and would be of interest those who enjoy meeting people and leading walking groups around the harbour.

    Cutlass supplied

    As pirates are typically portrayed as folk whose speech requires little grammar, I wonder if the “full training given” will include lessons in ignoring English syntax. 😀

    Of course, Bristol, being a port city, has close associations with the sea and hence maritime crime of all kinds, including piracy, as well as having pirates amongst its sons and daughters. Edward Teach, otherwise known as Blackbeard, was born in the (now comfortably fragrant and middle class) Redland area of the city in 1680.