Pictures!!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

It was anticipated that 12hrs is not enough time to develop anything from scratch to end. But yeah, it was enough time to thrash down the ideas, think over it fully and come up with a basic structure. It was also enough time to meet the people around. That was the main beauty of the event. I was teamed up with 2 other NUS students and it was great to see some bonding and idea development. We are surely following up on the stuff that we developed in those 12 hrs.

The people who attended the event -

Ruiwen and Luther – HackerSpace Membership management system in Django.

Angad, Bryan and Shanmugam – A picture with a descriptive related story CMS. [PHP and AJAX]

We also came up with another idea – A Past year papers questions/answers database for Primary, A Levels and University students. We will surely follow up on this one and if anybody is interested in helping out, please contact at coreteam[at]linuxnus[dot]org.

Shanmugam was highly interested in Rooting his HTC Magic and upgrading to 2.1. He received great guidance from the android geeks at the place and we wish him luck with his ventures with Android. He is also a newly recruited member of linuxNUS.

Martin – OpenMoko Bootloader. He was totally immersed into his two Green geeky OLPC XOs and was developing a bootloader on the Open Hardware phone - OpenMoko.

We had a guest who dropped in around 3pm – Nelson,  from Dominican Republic. He is a passionate Ruby Developer and did a great show of some cool stuff such as http://www.hashapass.com/ and some Ruby process on his Mac. His blog can be found here – CopyPastel

Tomithy – a peer from the module CS3216 also dropped by and took part in the discussions around. He is a Social Entrepreneur, embarking on NOC next semester to UPenn. Good Luck to him!

The event was ended by a show and tell from everybody present and an enlightening discussion about typed and un-typed languages.

And finally it was great to eat the specially cooked food – low temperature and longer time cooking (sous vide) from Meng Weng. The eggs were really nice with pepper. Moreover, the location of HackerSpaceSG is a great one for good food outside.

Looking forward to organising more such events. We really needs such places and such groups to come up with loads of ideas and execute them with a high spirit. This would surely induce better understanding of – how an idea can be converted effectively to a final product, team work spirit and the start-up environment. Its ultimately all about hard-work and working smart

This time great ideas come together at a single place. You have 12hrs to develop anything, either with a team or individually. Share your ideas with others, form great teams and meet different people. You are free to develop anything, any idea that you have in mind – Android, iPhone, Web2.0, linux etc.

Have a blast with coding, designing and developing a business idea, straight from idea >> execution. Start your idea with awesome people around and <geek> out.

The last 2 hrs will be devoted to a short discussion of ideas that everybody is working on.

So Come over, grab a corner and JFDI!

The event starts at 9am and ends at 9pm.

9am – 11am Form team, discuss idea.

11am – 8pm – JFDI!

8pm – 9pm – Show-and-Tell & Makan

Please register here. Please note that places are limited for the first 30 registrants. You will be informed by email

http://bit.ly/9FNeyq

Please feel free to drop by the IRC Channel or email us at contact@linuxnus.org

My favorite sections in the NUS Central Library is the TK5I05.885 and QA76.76 – all catering to the latest and old books on various Computer technologies. Last semester, I had to write an essay for the USP application on a topic that talks about my interest. And guess what, I wrote about  Open Source. I had to keep it non-technical as mainly Arts Professors would evaluate that. (Disclaimer : I did not get through USP ).

So I looked up some books regarding the topics, and for that I had to look up in the above shelves of QA76.76. And there, sitting on the old shelves were the immense bundles of knowledge talking about the various aspects of Free and Open Source Software. I will be providing a list of books and locations at the end of this post so that any geek, passing the library can have a look at the areas.

Though, almost all these books are available freely over the Internet under the GNU license, getting some to read in the comfort of your bed is a boon in itself. And why not use the vast library that is full of smelly books, untouched for years, waiting for geeks?

I try to make it up to a habit that I have always craved for and sometimes achieved – “a book a week”. But a busy semester and less sleeping time pulls the habit down.

The most important aspect of FOSS that has inspired me is the point that reeks out from all the books that talk about history of Open Source – The way the eminent personalities coded day and night with huge motivations. I mainly refer to the “Rebel Code” by Glyn Moody. He gives a comprehensive insight into how the Hacker movement transformed into a highly organised rebellion – giving birth to GNU and Linux, as we know them today.

I think its better to read the books altogether, rather me giving brief reviews about each (I am still reading some of them, if you cant find them on the Book shelves, ping me, I will return those books back to the library).

You can get a simple list of all the books with the Keyword – “Open Source” at LincNUS -

http://linc.nus.edu.sg/search/Y?SEARCH=open+source&searchscope=16&SORT=D&submit=Submit

Other Books, pertaining to FOSS, I will list :  There are even more in the above link, and more that I am looking out for. Will update the list soon.

P.S. There are perhaps thousands of books that cater to the technical aspect of Open Source technologies such as PHP, Apache, Ruby etc. I talk only about the non-technical ones here.

Crisis Camp!

The GNOME.Asia Summit is one of the top Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) events for developers, enterprises, officials and general users in Vietnam. The event brings together FOSS projects from Asia and around the world.

The event will feature keynotes, sessions, lightning talks, exhibitions, and a hands-on lab. Topic areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• GNOME 3.0
• Localization & Internationalization
• Mobile platforms and thin clients
• GNOME Communities
• GNOME library and application development
• Desktop deployments
• School software

The event takes place from Nov. 20-22, 2009, in Ho Chi Minh City.

Chairing this event is none other than Mario Behling, President of the LXDE Foundation, and a close friend of Singapore’s FOSS community.

If you are interested in attending this event yourself or know of attendees from Singapore, please kindly indicate in the comments below. It will be great to have a strong Singaporean representation at the event

We’ve come a long way since then, of course. From a single humble mailing list, we then set up our main site, linuxNUS.org, our wiki – Opensource@NUS, forums and our IRC channel, #linuxnus on irc.freenode,net (which you can join by clicking “Chat” at the top of this page).  We’ve ridden the recent social wave as well, turning up on sites such as Facebook and Twitter!

In this time, we’ve never stopped trying to promote, advocate and educate people about the use of open source software, organising activities that hopefully brought value to all involved. We organised Installfests, workshops and Hackfests, and even brought in external speakers to share their pet projects with us,  such as Mario Behling on LXDE, Ole Tange on OpenMoko, and Harish Mallipeddi on developing Facebook applications with Django. linuxNUS also produces a podcast, where we talk about stuff related to open source in Singapore. The linuxNUS Podcast has covered groups and events like the Free and Open Source Alliance of Singapore (FOSA), Software Freedom Day 09, and we even managed to squeeze in an interview with Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, when he was in Singapore.

It’s been a blast for us so far, and for those of you reading who have been part of activities, we really hope that you enjoyed the experience, and more importantly, gained something from it.

With that, we leave you know with a little something to mark our journey through the years

linuxNUS Welcome Teao 2009 - By Ruiwen

Future FLOSS sardines - By Gaurav

It’s really heartening to see such strong support for FLOSS (Free, Libre, Open Source Software) in NUS, and we’d really like to do more to help everyone learn and grow as much within the community as possible. Many have said mentioned to us that they’d really like to get more involved with the FLOSS community, but feel like they aren’t yet up to snuff. If you feel that way, don’t! The great thing about the FLOSS community is that all you need to do is ask, and someone usually has a handy solution waiting. Even better, tell us which activities you think will be most beneficial to you and we’ll absolutely try our best to get it done!

Oh, and we were talking about contributing right? A few kind souls have mailed us expressing great interest in being part of the organising team (or Coreteam) for linuxNUS. We’re always happy to have see new faces, of course, so if you’re ready to be part of one of the most active and diverse group of open source advocates in Singapore, join us (if you haven’t already)!

The Welcome Tea might be over, but we’re definitely not putting our feet up! linuxNUS has a few great activities lined up, and we really hope you’ll be able to be part of them!

In there coming weeks, stay tuned for the Installfest, and Hackfest (details to be confirmed). We will also be at Software Freedom Day Singapore 2009, Booth #7.

With that, I’ll leave you now with some pictures taken at the Welcome Tea, held Thursday, 9 Sept 09, at SoC COM1. Enjoy! (Pictures after the jump)

The audience packed out the door

Luther a.k.a elfgoh, explaining how he got into FLOSS

"Ooh, can I see?"

Happy FLOSSers!

More happy FLOSSers!

The rest of the photos can be found here: [1] [2].

It’s the time of  year again! It’s time to raise your hands in cheer to celebrate Free and Open Source Software! Go shout it from the mountain tops! Go dancing in the street!

Or… maybe not the dancing, shouting bit.

Software Freedom Day is here again though, for sure, this time round spearheaded by the newly formed Free and Open Source Alliance. We speak to Tom Goh and Darrel Chua, founders of FOSA to find out more about what Software Freedom Day is all about.

SFD 09 will be held at the National Library at Bugis on September 18 (Friday) and 19 (Saturday). If you’re a business person, manager or systems integrator looking to include open source technology in your tool set, make time for the talks on Friday (Possibility Room, 5th Floor, National Library). Otherwise, if you prefer it slightly more technical, check out the technical track, to be held on Saturday (2nd-floor seminar rooms, SMU School of Information Systems, SMU).

Get the podcast here in: [MP3][OGG][Shownotes]

Or play it live, if you have a decent browser (eg. Mozilla Firefox 3.5):

–

Have feedback? Leave a comment, or drop us a line at podcast [at] linuxnus [dot] org! Or join us on IRC, at #linuxnus on irc.freenode.net

Credit for intro music goes to the kind folk at the NUS Electronic Music Lab. Credit for the drum loop used at the end of this podcast goes to Bill Ray on ccMixter . The track used was No Better Time .

The linuxNUS Podcast is licensed under Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike

linuxNUS is hosting an Installfest at on 17 Sep 2009, Thursday, 745pm, at COM1 SR2.

During this community building event, people get together to do mass/Free installations of Linux Operating System and other open source software. The event is open to everyone, from the complete newbie to the expert. Novices can bring their computers along and learn from experienced users in Installation and troubleshooting problems.

Through this event, linuxNUS hopes to strengthen and build the community of Linux and Open Source users in NUS and Singapore.

For the purposes of instruction and coordination, the session will focus on the installation of Ubuntu 9.04. However, users are free to try their hand at installing other distributions during the event. Please bring the Ubuntu Live CD given out at the Welcome Tea, if you already have one as limited CDs will be provided at the event. You can download the ISO file from an NUS mirror and burn the image with CD burning software such as InfraRecorder.

If you are interested to attend the event, please kindly RSVP at http://linuxnus.org/register/installfest so that we can estimate the headcount for light refreshments.

See how our previous Installfest went here.