Web design & FOSS

My brother lectures in music performance and technology at SERC in Bangor, Northern Ireland. We had a discussion the other day about the joy of simple programs that get beginners going, and onto the act of creation rather than the faff of configuration. He was very positive about AudioMulch, an “interative music studio” (though alas it's not Open Source).

I installed Tux Paint at the local youth centre, and it was a joy and very interesting to the young teenagers creating work straight out of the box (see above photo). The attention span seems to last about 5-10 minutes, up to a half hour session before they wandered off to eat crisps or kick a ball somewhere else.

Much to be learned about easy-to-use-tools and feedback...

A last minute heads up: OpenLab is “a meeting place for London based artists who use and develop open source software as their creative tool”.

They are running a series of monthly workshops, the first of which this Tuesday 30th June at The Roebuck.

The evening's subjects are:

1. Introduction to SuperCollider with Dan Stowell £10
2. Hardware Noise Hacking with Ryan Jordan £5
3. Processing for Visual Artists with EvanR. £10

Each session costs from £5 to £10, or the whole evening for £15.

More information on the wiki OpenLab workshops page.

In past blogs, I looked at working in the Cloud, and then syncing data in the Cloud. Today, it is how to sync your email across different computers.

By far the easiest method that I've come across is setting my preferred email client, Mozilla Thunderbird, to check your email using IMAP. With IMAP, your email is stored online (whereas with POP, your email is normally downloaded to your machine).

For the Double Cloud Whammy, I can recommend using Google Apps to host your web site's email. This way, you can check your email using Google Mail via a web browser, or an email program on your PC. Because you can sync your data using something like Ubuntu One, there's not a problem if you have multiple machines. Currently I have 3 computers. But I'm not bragging.

So, these are the steps required for The Google Mail-Hosted IMAP Email Anywhere Experience:

1. Sign your web site up for Google Apps Standard.
2. Get your web host to recognise you're hosting your email with Google Mail. With DreamHost, there's an easy checkbox option. With Rochen (who I host all my business sites with) I had to use cPanel (Mail -> MX Entry) to add the MX Entry aspmx.l.google.com.
3. Configure your email client to work with IMAP. It's pretty easy with Thunderbird, and there's some handy instructions over at Google Help.
4. Set up Ubuntu One or grsync to synchronise your .mozilla-thunderbird folder, so that everything works across all your PCs.

If you are using Thunderbird as your email client, you can download mail using File -> Offline -> Download/Synchronise Now, so that can look business-like and not have to talk to anyone on the commute into work.

That concludes my meagre offerings to working with the Much Hyped Data Cloud. Next up, some good old-fashioned and opinionated polemical pieces ;)

This is a big thank you link for Ubuntu1501, an Ubuntu guides, tweaks and hacks blog.

I have my first workshop under the aegis of my new business, and I'm running the Windows-based PortableApps on USB memory sticks, to get around the sticky problem of how to demonstrate software that isn't installed.

My problem was that VirtualBox wasn't recognising my USB ports, and Ubuntu1501 came to the rescue with an elegant, short and useful tutorial. Thank you again :)

Next up, I'm using Partimage (which has a command line GUI interface, if you know what I mean) to duplicate the USB sticks.

Free Software, Rock On...

A while back, I looked at the lie of the land for setting up a way of working seamlessly between two laptops running Ubuntu linux.

Originally I was going to use grsync to backup all my common application data and work files, on my personal web host. I came across a good rsync backup tutorial, plus details on syncing with Dreamhost on their personal backup server.

However, and there is always an however, I couldn't get grsync to work :( Maybe I could if I had spent another couple of hours figuring it out. But I didn't want to.

Luckily for me and my lazy ways Canonical, the commerical operation that sponsors Ubuntu, now has a service named Ubuntu One that “helps you store, sync and share”.

The service is still in beta, and I've been using it for about a week now, primarily to sync my files. There isn't an option to specifically do this, and because the freebie service is limited to 2 gigabtyes, I have had to rearrange my home folder.

Firstly, all my big files (disk images, photo archives and the like) I've put into a folder named "Offline". This, kind of obviously, doesn't get backed up.

Secondly I moved all the program settings and work data that I want to sync into the /home/username/Ubuntu One/My Files/username/ folder.

Finally I "Made Links" and put these symbolic links into my home folder /home/username/

From the sounds of it, Canonical will probably be making this process a lot easier for Joe Public. In the meantime, I'm alright Jake. I can now sync my Acer Aspire One with my ThinkPad all the night long.

Sign up for the beta program and give it a go yourself.

In next week's thrilling instalment of Head in the Data Cloud Pt.III, I'll go through how to set up Thunderbird to use GoogleMail IMAP. Oooh...