Anatomy Of A Debian Package
Google engEDU
56 min - Jul 21, 2006

Google TechTalks
July 21, 2006

Jonathan Oxer is the founder and technical director of Internet Vision Technologies in Australia, as well as the current president of Linux Australia, the national organization for Linux users, developers, and vendors. He is one of the authors of O’Reilly’s Ubuntu Hacks.

ABSTRACT
Learn about the internal structure of Debian/Ubuntu packages and how to create them, starting with disection of a binary package and then going through the process of creating your own package using various build helper scripts to automate much of the process. Read the rest of this entry »

Dasher: information-efficient text entry
Google engEDU
54 min - Apr 20, 2007

Google Tech Talks
April 19, 2007

ABSTRACT

Keyboards are inefficient for two reasons: they do not exploit the redundancy in normal language; and they waste the fine analogue capabilities of the user’s motor system (fingers and eyes, for example). I describe a system intended to rectify both these inefficiencies. Dasher is a text-entry system in which a language model plays an integral role, and it’s driven by continuous gestures. Users can achieve single-finger writing speeds of 35 words per minute and hands-free writing speeds of 25 words per minute. Dasher is free software, and it works in all languages, and on many platforms. Dasher is part of Debian, and there’s even a little java version for your web-browser. http://www.dasher.org.uk/ Read the rest of this entry »

Hardware/Software Hacking: Joining the Real and the Virtual
Google engEDU
1 hr 6 min - Jul 31, 2007

Google Tech Talks
July 31, 2007

ABSTRACT

Software developers usually confine themselves to working entirely within the runtime environment of a computer just pushing around bits and pixels. Even virtual worlds such as Second Life exist only in the confines of our CPUs.

On the other hand, hardware hacking has really taken off in recent years and there are now magazines such as MAKE devoted to modifying everyday objects. It’s a lot easier than software jockeys may expect, and this talk will begin with an entertaining exploration of simple ways to get started with linking a computer to real-world objects.

But what happens when you knock down the boundaries between the real world and a virtual world? The talk goes on to show specific techniques and examples for linking real-world objects into the Second Life environment so that changes in the real world can be reflected in SL and vice versa.
Jonathan Oxer is founder of Internet Vision Technologies, author of "How To Build A Website And Stay Sane" ( www.stay-sane.com) and "Ubuntu Hacks" (www.ubuntuhacks.com), is currently President of Linux Australia, convened the last 5 Debian Miniconferences, and sits on various boards and advisory panels for groups including Swinburne University and the federal e-Research Coordinating Committee. Read the rest of this entry »

Anatomy Of A Debian Package
Google engEDU
56 min - 21-Jul-06

Google TechTalks
July 21, 2006

Jonathan Oxer is the founder and technical director of Internet Vision Technologies in Australia, as well as the current president of Linux Australia, the national organization for Linux users, developers, and vendors. He is one of the authors of O’Reilly’s Ubuntu Hacks.

ABSTRACT
Learn about the internal structure of Debian/Ubuntu packages and how to create them, starting with disection of a binary package and then going through the process of creating your own package using various build helper scripts to automate much of the process. Read the rest of this entry »

Edubuntu Setting Env Vars in BashRC: Where’s Apache in Debian?
Dennis Daniels and Demostudio and VNC
10 min - 19-Jan-06

In this screencast you’ll see how to set environment variables in the bashrc file. And you’ll see me thrashing around looking for the apache folder.

The Edubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Edubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit.–http://www.edubuntu.org/

I made this video by VNCing from my XP machine over to my Edubuntu machine on my network. I recorded the VNC session using Demostudio. If there was an equally easy to use and powerful screencasting tool for Linux that offered mpeg recording then I’d use that instead. Please post your own screencasts on how to use Linux! There are so many curious people about Linux but many have never seen it in action! Make a screen cast and post your own successes, and failures, under Linux.

keywords: software, training, tutorial, evangelism, screencast, OSS, network, education, Linux, Debian, ubuntu, Gnome, desktop, productivity, LTSP, thin client, server Read the rest of this entry »