Be the signal » justblamepia http://bethesignal.org where we're going, we don't need roads... Wed, 01 Sep 2010 06:57:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Thank you, Cheese! http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/08/31/thank-you-cheese/ http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/08/31/thank-you-cheese/#comments Fri, 31 Aug 2007 02:18:55 +0000 Jeff Waugh http://perkypants.org/blog/2007/08/31/thank-you-cheese/ Pia & Jeff say thank you to Daniel for Cheese! :-)

Cheese 2

Cheese 1

]]> http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/08/31/thank-you-cheese/feed/ 4 Linux for… Ladies? http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/08/20/linux-for-ladies/ http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/08/20/linux-for-ladies/#comments Mon, 20 Aug 2007 05:42:34 +0000 Jeff Waugh http://perkypants.org/blog/2007/08/20/linux-for-ladies/ Continue reading →]]> “If you want to sound like a creep, add the word ‘ladies’ to the end of things you say: Thanks for coming to my show… ladies.” — Demetri Martin on his hilarious comedy album, These Are Jokes

Linux for Ladies

All kudos to Canonical for selling women’s form-fitting t-shirts at their new online store — they’re smart enough to know that their brand recognition rises faster on Pipka‘s ample bust than mine — but why the cutesy variation on “Linux for Human Beings”?

]]> http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/08/20/linux-for-ladies/feed/ 21 Speaking with customers http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/06/18/speaking-with-customers/ http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/06/18/speaking-with-customers/#comments Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:23:03 +0000 Jeff Waugh http://perkypants.org/blog/2007/06/18/speaking-with-customers/ Continue reading →]]> Today, Pipka came home with a story about a customer who was considering moving to a 100% Windows environment because he was merely unfamiliar with Linux.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend the strategy she used in the general case — in fact, I’d find it hard to recommend it under many circumstances at all — but here’s how she began her successful save today:

“Have you seen the film, Independence Day?”

Update: That’s not an IMDB or Wikipedia link… :-)

]]> http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/06/18/speaking-with-customers/feed/ 3 Pia vs. MECHA-CAMERA http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/02/11/pia-vs-mecha-camera/ http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/02/11/pia-vs-mecha-camera/#comments Sun, 11 Feb 2007 08:45:19 +0000 Jeff Waugh http://perkypants.org/blog/2007/02/11/pia-vs-mecha-camera/ I’m really enjoying the new camera. Of course, that means Pia isn’t enjoying me enjoying the new camera!

Pia Waugh, joyful Ooh! Driving! Pia Waugh Pensive Pia Pia Waugh

But she can’t be too upset, with beautiful pictures like these. :-)

]]> http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/02/11/pia-vs-mecha-camera/feed/ 1 Business Cards + Hackergotchi = Awesome http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/01/09/business-cards-hackergotchi-awesome/ http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/01/09/business-cards-hackergotchi-awesome/#comments Mon, 08 Jan 2007 15:36:38 +0000 Jeff Waugh http://perkypants.org/blog/2007/01/09/business-cards-hackergotchi-awesome/ Continue reading →]]> I was looking for something zesty to personalise our 2007 business cards, and stumbled on the idea of putting hackergotchis on them. At first I thought it would suck pretty badly, but on changing the effective DPI of the image (meaning no interpolation or lossy scaling), I discovered that the average hackergotchi will be about 8mm² at 300dpi. Perfect!

Has anyone made hackergotchi-powered business cards before?

My ugly mug…

Waugh Partners Business Card 2007 - Jeff

… and Pia’s beautiful wedding hackergotchi:

Waugh Partners Business Card 2007 - Pia

… and someone asked if we put anything on the back…

Waugh Partners Business Card 2007 - Back

]]> http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/01/09/business-cards-hackergotchi-awesome/feed/ 9 Ubuntu Videogram Screentest http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/01/06/ubuntu-videogram-screentest/ http://bethesignal.org/blog/2007/01/06/ubuntu-videogram-screentest/#comments Sat, 06 Jan 2007 05:41:07 +0000 Jeff Waugh http://perkypants.org/blog/2007/01/06/ubuntu-videogram-screentest/ Continue reading →]]> Some amusing Ubuntu history for you…

A few weeks back, Matt Zimmerman — who must be aiming for a world record in “dude, you so need a blog” demands — reminded me about a bizaare video created early last year as a test for a potential Ubuntu feature, so I thought I’d share one of the stranger historical footnotes in Ubuntu’s grand repertoire of… strange historical footnotes.

In early 2005, Mark decided that he wanted to deliver a surprise, three-minute video message in the upcoming Ubuntu 5.04 “hoary hedgehog” release, so tasked me with figuring out the details. It had to be small, so it would fit on the CD, but could be delivered in any format we could play out of the box… a great opportunity to make a statement about Free formats.

To test the entire production, we needed a few minutes of test material from a DV camera to encode into Ogg Theora/Vorbis… which resulted in the aforementioned bizaare video, starring Pia and I:

While the test was mostly successful (we still had some problems with playback reliability), I don’t think Mark ever recorded the final videogram message, so we didn’t ship it with Ubuntu 5.04 “hoary hedgehog”. If it does happen to exist, it might be amusing to publish it for the interest of Ubuntu history geeks.

The idea resurfaced in May 2006, when Mark published the mysterious “Plan M” for Canonical-internal testing. You’ll know Plan M as the video included with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, in which Nelson Mandela describes the meaning and spirit of ubuntu, the concept that inspired the project’s very name… But I might leave that story until next time. :-)

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