Life, Love, and Code

fabrizioceppi: join the art.

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 19:19:56 -0400

join the art.

Ondina Web Hosting

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:55:44 -0400

If you don’t know already know, Ondina is my new startup that I’ve been working on for the past four months. In a little over a week we’re moving into our Private Preview Release! Sign up now for a chance to see what our hard work has culminated to and get free hosting!

jorge's stompbox: A retrospective of the first year of Ask Ubuntu

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:18:33 -0400

jorge's stompbox: A retrospective of the first year of Ask Ubuntu:

castrojo:

Today Ask Ubuntu celebrates it’s first year in existence. Though publicly launched on the eve of 10.10.10, the site went into private beta one year ago today. At the time Evan Dandrea had seen Area 51 and had proposed an Ubuntu Stack Exchange.

I was just as confused as everyone else. It…

globalsunset: This song reminds me of my girlfriend :) “Home,...

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:06:43 -0400

globalsunset:

This song reminds me of my girlfriend :)

“Home, let me come home. Home is wherever I’m with you. Oh home, yes, I am home, home is when I’m alone with you”

awesomenesswillprevail: This picture of Abe Lincoln Riding a...

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 10:57:32 -0400

awesomenesswillprevail:

This picture of Abe Lincoln Riding a Grizzly totally made my morning.

To see more awesome art like this (including George Washington fighting off a zombie apocalypse) click the URL

Epic.

pwnlove: Pac Hero by DKNG Studios. Prints available for...

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 14:00:01 -0500

pwnlove:

Pac Hero by DKNG Studios. Prints available for purchase for $25.

[Image Source: DKNG Studios]

masonshelby: Here is a mash-up that I kept waiting and waiting...

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 09:46:20 -0500

masonshelby:

Here is a mash-up that I kept waiting and waiting for someone talented to create. It seems so obvious- the songs match up so well, I figured it would inevitably come out at some point.

After years of waiting, I decided to take matters into my own hands. For your listening pleasure, Prince Mason Presents: Hotel Holidae Inn in California.

Making a better apt.ubuntu.com (translators wanted)

Thu, 03 Feb 2011 10:16:37 -0500

castrojo:

One of the best resources we have (that people seemingly don’t use enough) is apt.ubuntu.com.

In the beginning we tried doing apt:// links, but that required websites and programs supporting it, so now we have a URL that you can just give to a person like http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/banshee, they clicky, and it fires up the Software Center and prompts them to install it.

Try it:

Install Banshee

This is way handier than telling people “apt-get install blah …”, easier to use, and very handy for tweeting, etc. Well, apt.ubuntu.com is ugly, and doesn’t work on Chrome, which is a bummer for me.

Well, Marco Ceppi has been working on this, check it out:

As it ends up, mpt has an entire specification on how this is going to work, so Marco implemented it, here’s a demo: http://apt.marcoceppi.com/

Marco’s ready to take this to the next level, but he needs translations. Luckily, the project is in Launchpad, so any help you can lend a hand would be appreciated: https://translations.launchpad.net/apturlredirector

(Oh, feel free to snag the code, submit branches, etc.)

Integrating with web apps

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:47:23 -0500

Integrating with web apps:

castrojo:

Call for Help and Ideas!

Everyone knows I love web apps. You have two extremes. Old school “native apps and in control of my data” and then the other which is basically ChromeOS; No local state, all web. Most people are in the middle. You might love Gmail but the thought of having a remote…

APT URL Redirector

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 19:29:43 -0500

Something that has bugged me for sometime is the web-based alias for the apt:// protocol. For those who don’t know what APT is - nevermind the protocol, it’s simply a web-alias for installing Ubuntu packages from the official repositories. However it’s near impossible to make a valid link in forums posts, twitter, blogs, etc like “Download Flashplayer! apt:flashplayer-nonfree” Most services don’t make the apturl a valid link.

So Ubuntu has http://apt.ubuntu.com/ which basically does just that - creates web-linkable address for the apt url. It works similar to this: http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/flashplayer-nonfree That will essential work as if you’re visiting apt:flashplayer-nonfree. Now for the problem (there are several) - this was a great idea though no one seems to maintain it.

The site does a user-agent search to ensure you’re using Ubuntu.

This is a great idea - in theory. However, in execution it falls short. Why? Because most all browsers from 3rd parties relay OS information as “X11, Linux” not “Ubuntu”. The modified Firefox package does relay the specific OS (as does Chromium now) - though Midor, Opera, Google Chrome, Iceweasel, and about every other browser I tested doesn’t. This leads to the false positive of “You are not running Ubuntu” when you really are. Bug #614590 to overcome this there is now a landing page that says “Switch to Ubuntu” with a button that says “I am on Ubuntu” which appears for all useragents that are “X11, Linux” this will create a Cookie for the site which remembers that this browser is on an Ubuntu Machine.

The site is very minimalistic - to the point where it’s not functional

When you visit just http://apt.ubuntu.com/ there are no instructions on what is going on. It’s just a blank page. You have to know the format of URL/p/PACKAGE-NAME In my code proposal the root for apt.ubuntu.com will provide instructions on how to:

Find package names
Create links for downloading packages

The site will also be styled using the Ubuntu Website Guidelines making it a fit for the current Ubuntu Website world.

You can only set one package to download at a time

This is a big hinderer for the web url since the APTURL protocol supports multiple packages by seperating them with commas - as such the web alias of the APTURL protocol should do the same.

Only available in English

As we all well know Ubuntu is available in a number of languages. This site should reflect Ubuntu’s internationalization by being available in all nationalities languages. To do this my code base is leveraging the ideas of GNU Gettext and LaunchPad’s translation tools to allow the community to contribute translations to the site and make it available in visitors language based on HTTP-ACCEPT-LANG in the browsers header.

These are the key items I hope to tackle in my codebase of this service. For technical details I’m using a home-backed MVC pattern with Smarty and php-gettext for translations. The code is available on LaunchPad and I am mirroring my development here: http://apt.marcoceppi.com/ Please feel free to comment and open bugs/feature requests on the LaunchPad site.

Photo

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 12:46:12 -0400

Sara says I look like an Anime/Saiyan - Thoughts?

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 18:30:00 -0400

Sara says I look like an Anime/Saiyan - Thoughts?

Sara and I made Origami this weekend - man we are just the...

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 18:47:13 -0400

Sara and I made Origami this weekend - man we are just the coolest. This is her snail which now resides on my desk at work :D

noahmchugh: dailylolpic: Submitted by MicrosoftFTW yes So...

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 16:36:20 -0400

noahmchugh:

dailylolpic:

Submitted by MicrosoftFTW

yes

So much win.

Color me gold - I’ve got my first gold badge (second one...

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 12:06:48 -0400

Color me gold - I’ve got my first gold badge (second one to get a gold badge on the site) for Ask Ubuntu!

Despite the hipster at the beginning I like this video a lot!...

Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:54:34 -0400

Despite the hipster at the beginning I like this video a lot! (And I think Sara will too)

Couch

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 11:13:49 -0400

So AskUbuntu may be my “Katie Holmes” it really won’t last because in the end Tom Cruise is a Scientologist and an asshole.

Sara however, is forever. She is the Paul Simon to my Chevy Chase.

... and we're live

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 14:34:18 -0400

castrojo:

Along with 10.10 here comes askubuntu.com. We’ve had a great beta where many experienced people participated and we had a nice standard of high quality answers and low noise. We’re experiencing a flood of new users and questions, so feel free to help out.

Remember people love to vote on answers with screenshots and easy to use instructions. Go get em!

SeaCrow Code

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:48:17 -0400

SeaCrow Code:

While there are no public projects yet our code repository is up! I’ll be adding several personal (and open source projects) here as well as releasing SeaCrow’s Control Panel software which will no doubt be faster, better, and smaller (in size and runtime) to cPanel.

Awake

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:08:28 -0400

ಠ_ಠ