A great time was had by all

Neil

Now people tend to find common ground in things, this draws them together. A major power to do this can be culture. Something that most people in a certain country have in common is their shared history and a kinship. This can make interactions around other topics smoother, more productive… we are all speaking the “same language” so to speak.

What happens when you are in a country where the native population makes out only about 13% of the population, and the rest are made out of ex-patriots of just about every country under the sun? Get ready for some spicy and varied interactions because this is a melting pot of flavour.

The country I am referring to is the UAE, and the reason I write this is to give some thanks to some great Ubuntu and FLOSS enthusiasts that are slowly building up an Ubuntu LoCo right here. Passionate individuals from all walks of life originally coming from all over the world working together with a shared focus. It isn’t always easy, but the will is strong.

Here is to the future and the continued growth of our Ubuntu-ae LoCo.

Neil

PS – Working on the chocolate cake for the release party guys, so don’t miss out the 7th of November or you will be sorry
PPS – I haven’t attached more recent photo’s as these seemed like the more interesting of the ones available…

print(“Hello Planet Ubuntu”)

This is my first (test) post to the planet and if I copied and pasted successfully from the wiki this should work . If not then my embarrassment will be own as nobody else will be aware of it.

Cheers
Neil

Well this happened to me less than a day ago, good bad news.

For the last couple of weeks myself and various other members of the Ubuntu LoCo here in the UAE have been in contact with people from the Abu Dhabi University as we would like to hold an Installfest there. I am actually in Abu Dhabi right now as up to last night I was having a meeting today with a staff member at the Uni because I wanted to start fleshing out a plan and strategy that would suit the Uni and make the second ever Installfest here a sucess.

Everything seemed on course until I received the email stating that the students / staff at the Uni know all about Ubuntu and that the Uni assists if there are any problems installing it… What?! Installfest, denied! That sucks, right? Right?

Maybe not as much as I initial thought. Perhaps the mail I received wasn’t just a brush off and maybe, just maybe the Abu Dhabi Uni is the exception and Linux is alive and doing well there. I have to hope so, because nobody likes bad news that is bad.

This is the first “poem” I felt like writing since I was forced to write them in school.  It was the start of a dark time…

Kiss not, unless your lips betray your desires.
For would you have your kisses become a duty…
a choking smoke of the dying fires?
To those you ‘love’, the ultimate cruelty…?

Neil

Pangolin found in Gir Forest, Gujarat, India (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today is was the 26th of April, 2012… and the latest (and arguably) greatest Ubuntu release to date has finally arrived.  Our Precise Pangolin is now all grown up, welcome to the real world (K)(L)(X)(Ed)Ubuntu  12.04 LTS. It has been a long and hard slog by many people across the globe, who each in there own little (or big) way made this release possible.

To celebrate the release (and heavily influenced by the latest news of Steam on Linux) I removed Windows 7 from my fairly new gaming rig, and proceeded to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (I missed Unity (yes, Unity) too much!). I will not get into to much detail but some voodoo was required to make it work… thanks a little to my flaky monitor and Radeon graphics. (I will be blogging my trials and trebulations as I try and tame the Pangolin to do all I require from it, so watch this space).

Thank you Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Ian Murdock, Mark Shuttleworth and the thousands of others that help put a smile on my face when ever I use my computer.

Short and sweet will do this time

Neil

But then, like in any good story, enter the antagonist. In this case an old favourite that many love to hate, Paypal.

Introversion Software (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

To make a long and boring story slightly shorter, I had purchased the Humble Introversion Bundle when it was announced late last year (and as a side note I downloaded it for Linux of course). I didn’t get a chance to actually load it up and play until February of this year (2012). Sadly my bundle didn’t want to work and kept requiring keys (so much for DRM free it seems). Turns out that Paypal had reversed the payment as they decided I wasn’t who I thought I was, and first needed me to prove to them I was indeed myself. But being myself meant not reading e-mails from them and I never noticed. So no Bundle for me then? Wrong.

After a tentative enquiry about the problem in March I again forgot all about this issue. Remembering again about it a few days ago I sent the info that the folks over at the Humble Indie Bundle had requested and yesterday I got this awesome replay from a support ninja named Melinda;

Hi Neil,

Thank you for sending over the ID, we have located the purchase in the system and see the PayPal payment freeze and reversal. As the payment system is now closed, we can’t accept further payment, but please accept the following gift key for the Introversion Bundle: http://www.humblebundle.com/<youwouldlikethatwouldn’tyou&gt;

Please consider supporting our next bundle or giving some money to charity in lieu of payment.

Thanks for your support.

Melinda
Support Ninja
Humble Bundle

How awesome is that?! A company that gets it. That can take a customer that they have already won over and just re-cement him as a loyal supporter by taking his problem and giving him a solution far beyond his wildest expectations.

Neil

PS – It gave me great pleasure to make the first blog post about gaming with a splash of some awesome Linux goodness…