Being a Digital Age Missionary

Being a Digital Age Missionary

Raoul has always wanted to be a digital missionary, but is unsure of where to start, especially when it comes to raising money.

If you have any ideas on how to get things going, he'd love to hear your advice.

Getting to Know Python Better

Getting to Know Python Better

It's here! Part 7 of the ongoing Python tutorial series. Bite-sized lessons for easier digestion.

Start at part one if you haven't already, or get part seven if you have.

Not Open Source?

Not Open Source?

Can open source software ever not really be open source? What really defines open source software?

Read more on when open source software isn't as open as you think...

Should Bibles Be Copyrighted?

Should Bibles Be Copyrighted?

If you take a look inside most Bibles these days, you'll see they are copyrighted. Is this right?

Perhaps there are times that they shouldn't be copyrighted?

09 May

Ubuntu 8.04, 10.04, 11.10 End of Life

in End of Life, LTS, News, Ubuntu

Today is a fairly momentus day, in that 3 releases of Ubuntu all reach their end-of-life today. From today onward Ubuntu 8.04, 10.04 and 11.10 no longer receive security updates.

If you are still using one of these versions of Ubuntu, I highly recommend you upgrade to at least 12.04. If you're using Ubuntu on your desktop, I see no reason why you don't upgrade all the way up to 13.04. Servers should stick to the LTS releases though.

Canonical's announcements:

04 May

Quick Easy Workaround for Broken Networking in Linux

in Android, How To, Internet, Kubuntu, Linux, Network, Packaging, Phone, Tethering, Ubuntu, Upgrade, USB

Android USB

On Thursday evening I starteded the upgrade of my wife's computer from Kubuntu 12.10 to 13.04. Unfortunately when I finished the upgrade the next morning, it seemed that one of the DBus packages was broken, and not only could I not log into KDE, but there was no networking either.

Hrmph.

I tried to do one or two quick things before heading off to work, but ran out of time and had to leave it. My wife was very gracious and "endured" using her phone the whole day for Facebook, etc (she has a Samsung Galaxy S3 mini).

That evening when I got home, I proceeded to try to get the networking up and running from the command line, so that I could fix whatever packages seemed to be broken and restore my wife's computer to a working condition. I struggled for about an hour and a half trying to figure out various command line options for wpa_supplicant and what the error messages meant.

27 Nov

Defining A Digital Missionary

in Article, Computers, Development, Missionary, Open Source, Technology

Becoming A Digital Missionary

After my previous post on how to raise support, Gerv told me I hadn't been clear enough on exactly what I want to do and that it might help if I were to more specific about what I see myself doing. With this in mind, I decided to blog more about what I'm thinking of doing and how it can be construed as being missions work.

23 Nov

Learning Python - Part 10

in Article, Development, Learn, Open Source, Programming, Python

This is part of an ongoing series on learning the Python programming language. If you haven't read them yet, I advise you to catch up on parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight and nine before reading this article.

In this blog post we'll learn about tuples and dictionaries, another two data structures.

15 Nov

As a Wannabe Missionary, How Do I Raise Support?

in Article, Development, Missionary, Money, Open Source, Support, Technology

Raising Support as a Missionary

For a few years now I have had the desire to be able to use my talents as a developer and open source enthusiast to be a full-time missionary. As the project leader of OpenLP, an open source worship presentation application, I have had the desire to be able to work on OpenLP full-time in order to concentrate fully on implementing essential features that our users are asking for, as a part of our vision to support the Church.

09 Nov

Amazon Kindle Fire - Adventures Of A 7 Inch Tablet

in Android, Article, Kindle, Tablet
Android 4.1.2 on Kindle Fire

A few months ago I was given a first generation Kindle Fire, Amazon's tablet version of their popular ebook reader. Since it was a heavily Amazonified build of Android (which by itself is not a bad thing) and their own application store is only available to the USA, I decided to load a custom Android distribution called Jandycane from a developer on the XDA forums.

A few months later and I can confirm that it was a good decision. I can buy and install apps from the Google Play store, I can still read Kindle books via the Kindle app for Android, and overall I have more control over my tablet.

When I first got my Kindle I was a little disappointed with its size, compared to a friend's 10 inch Galaxy Tab, but as I continued to use it I realised how awesome the 7 inch form factor is. I'm writing this blog post on my Kindle, and I can hold it in portrait orientation with my hands on each of the bottom corners leaving my thumbs free to type. With such a large surface (compared to a phone's small screen) swipe does not work well and it is essential to type instead. The size of the tablet means that it is small enough to hold and type, something my friend cannot do with his large tablet.

07 Nov

Learning Python - Part 9

in Article, Learn, Programming, Python, Tutorial

This is part of an ongoing series on learning the Python programming language. If you haven't read them yet, I advise you to catch up on parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight before reading this article.

Like any other language, Python has support for data structures. A data structure is an object that can hold a set of other objects. Python has 3 basic data structure classes: list, tuple and dict (short for "dictionary").

30 Oct

Learning Python - Part 8

in Article, Development, Learn, Open Source, Programming, Python, Tutorial

This is part of an ongoing series on learning the Python programming language. If you haven't read them yet, I advise you to catch up on parts one, two, three, four, five, six and seven before reading this article.

Before we delve further into Python itself, at this point it is helpful to deal with objects and classes and how Python implements them. Python and many other languages are built on objects and classes and use a particular method of programming called Object Orientated Programming (otherwise known by its TLA, OOP).

23 Oct

Learning Python - Part 7

in Article, Learning, Modules, Python, Tutorial

This is part of an ongoing series on learning the Python programming language. If you haven't read them yet, I advise you to catch up on parts one, two, three, four, five and six before reading this article.

In this tutorial, we'll deal with modules. A module is a collection of objects, like functions, classes and even other modules. In Python a module is simply a file with a .py extension. This allows you to reuse those objects by including the module file with your program.

Python has a huge library of built-in modules. Whenever you use Python these modules are available to your program. To use modules or objects within modules in your program you need to import them using the import statement.

12 Oct

How To Join An Open Source Project

in Article, Contribute, Development, Open Source, Open Source Software

How To Join An Open Source Project

As the leader of a successful open source project, two of the questions I am asked the most are:

  1. How can I get involved with your project?
  2. I'm not a developer, is there a way I can help out?

While most projects have some sort of "getting started" guide, and within the open source community there is a general understanding of how to get involved, there seem to be few guides on how to do it.

This is an attempt at being a one-size-fits-all guide. Not all open source projects work this way, and this guide won't address every situation, but it should at least provide a general pointer in the right direction.

Copyright © 2009-2011 Raoul Snyman. All original content is licensed under the CC BY-SA license.