Ubuntu Pennsylvania Planet

Snow!

2010-02-07T20:23:47+00:00

Yup, we got a ton of snow. And look - Hannah's walking! Now that was a good first birthday present!

We've been trapped inside a lot due to weather and colds but we've been making the most of it! Both girls like coloring...

And Zoe has memorized enough books to "read" to Hannah...

Sometimes the girls trade places...Hannah got a big kick out of rocking "baby" Zoe in her car seat!

We've also spent a lot of time at Target...what? There's cheap popcorn and lots of stuff for kids to look at. Anyway, we bought Zoe this dress for a mere $2.

And (from hearing me joke to Kevin about it) now says, "I want to wear my Mrs. Roper dress."

I just think this is hilarious...a wick with a day's worth of food stuck in it never dies! Bath time!

Cosmetic carbon copy: The opposite of blind carbon copy

2010-02-07T05:40:16+00:00

I propose a new feature for email software: Cosmetic carbon copy. CCC works very similarly to today's carbon copy feature: If you put an address in the CCC: list, when the recipients open the message, they can see the address. The one difference is that with "cosmetic" carbon copy, the CCC:d address never recieves the message.

An example might illustrate the situation. Let's say someone (Alice) wants to invite Bob to a movie but doesn't want Charlie to come. She might send this email:

From: alice@example.com
To: bob@example.com
CCC: charlie@example.com
Subject: MOOOVIEEE!

Hey all my friends, join me for a movie tonight!

When Alice sends the email, Bob recives a copy. Bob thinks that Charlie received a copy, as he will be in the CC list. But Alice's mail software never sent Charlie a copy. So Alice can relax, knowing that Bob won't forward a copy to Charlie, since Bob thinks he already received it.

Alice and Bob will meet up without Charlie, and Alice will quietly sigh in relief.

How can this work?

Cosmetic carbon copy works on the same principle as blind carbon copy: the contents of the message are fundamentally independent from the recipients.

Saavy email users have used the "blind carbon copy" feature for years. When you place an address in the BCC list, that address will receive a copy of the email even though other recipients won't see the address listed. This allows for a form of privacy between the sender of the email and that hidden recipient.

This works because, like postal mail, email messages are delivered using an "envelope" that contains the actual recipients. When you compose a message in Alpine, Gmail, or Thunderbird, you are writing the contents of the envelope. When you hit send, the mail software looks for email addresses that should receive a copy. It creates one envelope per address, stuffs the letter inside, and sends the whole thing on its way through the Internet using a protocol called SMTP. When the recipient (Bob)'s email system receives it, the letter is pulled out of the envelope and placed in an inbox.

Which means the envelope is entirely invisible to Bob, the recipient. Most mail software puts information about the envelope in email headers. Since each email recipient gets a separate envelope, In the case of cosmetic carbon copy, Alice's letter claims that Charlie was on the CC: list. But Bob can never learn that Charlie's copy was never sent.

So to implement cosmetic carbon copy, Alice's mail program must understand this rule:

For each address in the CCC list, copy the message to the CC: list in the email message.
Create no new envelopes when sending the message.

Because of the last bullet point, this "carbon copying" is purely cosmetic rather than functional.

A possible privacy problem

You might wonder, what happens when Bob hits reply-all to say "Yes, I'm coming"? Then (oh no!) Charlie might see the invitation.

Not a problem: Most of my friends use Gmail, and Gmail users almost always hit Reply instead of Reply-All. Gmail used to have an experimental option called "Reply All by Default", but thankfully they removed that option.

A future version of this specification might suggest mangling the last "." in the BCC:d email addresses with the ONE DOT LEADER character, which looks like "." but isn't one. That way, even if Bob clicks "Reply all," Charlie's email address is subtly incorrect and will bounce.

Future work

The story I've told here is marginally simplified so it's understandable to a less-technical audience. Those who want a more technical version can request I submit an RFC. Perhaps in two months?

(File under "games to play with email.")

Camden Aquarium and The Abbaye

2010-02-06T22:48:16+00:00

Last weekend I met up with waltman and we headed down to Camden to go to Adventure Aquarium. Unfortunately it’s winter, so the ferry isn’t running, but the trip over the bridge and through a bit of Camden was not a big problem.

First stop at the aquarium was to head out to see the seals and penguins!

But the weather was too cold for their African penguins, so they were off exhibit, how disappointing!

The seals were up for doing their show though, showing a bunch of different behaviors as kids volunteered to help out the woman presenting. It was fun, but I was glad to get out of the cold and back into the aquarium after it was over.

One of the most interesting things this aquarium is that they have hippos, and an African porcupine in their West African River Experience. What fun! We got to watch the porcupine being fed (it’s favorite food is bananas) and then the hippos enjoying a meal (snack?) too.

Also great? We got to touch a shark! And some other animals in their touch exhibits, I was able to pet a Moon Jellyfish and a Fresh Water Sting Ray.

I was also very impressed by their shark exhibit. Not only did they have one of those tubes you could walk through and see sharks (video below), their viewing windows were huge and varied which made for lots of great shark viewing.

The rest of the aquarium was really nice too, lots of great exhibits, interesting fish and things. I am very impressed, and a bit sad that I’d never made it over the river to see the aquarium before.

After the aquarium we walked outside and I was able to take some pictures of Philly. I am going to miss it!

Then it was off to dinner! We ended up eating at The Abbaye in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia, which I’d never been to but waltman recommended. My dinner started with a Yards ESA (extra special ale), a great Philly beer! Then was on to dinner, which was one of the most amazing cheese steaks I’ve ever had – chunks of steak marinated in Chimay, with Gruyere cheese, grilled tomatoes, onions, and roasted garlic aioli. I am going to have dreams about this cheese steak. The frites were also really great, some of the best I’ve ever had. In all, I was very impressed with dinner there.

One Year!

2010-02-05T19:15:38+00:00

Today was a horrible day and at the same time it was a great day.

One year ago today I left PA and moved back to Canada. I haven't seen my children since that day. What a rough day emotionally. I couldn't stop thinking about them, I miss them more then I can ever put into words.

For the past year I have been very depressed, feeling sorry for myself and all that. I haven't worked all year. So I have been dependent on my parents. I have to thank God that I have parents that would help me as much as they have.

BUT! and this is a BIG but.

I also started a new job today :-) exactly one year from the day I quit my old job making pizza. I enjoyed working in restaurants, besides the fact the hours suck, the pay could of been way better. Don't get me wrong I made decent money but now at my new job I will be working half the hours and making right around the same amount of money. Going from 75-80 hours a week to 40 hours a week is freaking awesome! I mean, I had forgotten that normal people have normal hours.

I now work for a very large tech company. Not going to name names. let's just say it isn't Microsoft and it isn't FOSS related but still a great opportunity to learn and gain experience. Who knows maybe in a year or two I'll apply at Canonical :)

It was a bitter sweet day though, I'll have the money to send to my kids and I have the time to spend with them but I can't because of the distance. I am hoping that this summer they will come up here for at least a couple of weeks if not the entire summer.

This is a new start for me. I feel good, not great mind you but hell if sure feels good to not feel miserable anymore.

I am, because you are!

P.S. I love you my babies

International Women’s Day stories about Ubuntu and the computing longevity meme

2010-02-01T19:23:43+00:00

The latest initiative by the Ubuntu Women Project, is a contest to collect “How I discovered Ubuntu” stories written by women. The winner will be announced on March 8th, International Women’s Day.

One of the goals of this initiative is to try and answer the “How can I get $woman to use Ubuntu?” question that we often get by demonstrating that there is no single answer for it. Women get involved and interested in Ubuntu for all kinds of reasons, and without knowing anything about her there is really no way to know what specific spark will get her interested in involvement. (For what it’s worth, a much better question is “$woman is interested in $subject and is tied to Windows for $reason but doesn’t like it for $another_reason, she currently uses her computer for $thing0 and $thing1, do you have any suggestions as to how I can try and convert her to Ubuntu?”)

The contest also seeks to give inspiration to women who are interested in using and getting involved with Ubuntu. We seek to not only showing them that they aren’t the only female using Ubuntu, but that not everyone has to be a “typical male computer geek” to get involved.

Which brings me to this “I’ve been computing since…” longevity meme that is quite popular within F/OSS. Like many memes in F/OSS this is a competitive one that gives bragging rights for being the one who started with Linux or programming at the youngest age. This culture of competitiveness based on longevity has, without a doubt, been what has hurt me the most in tech. The sexist comments, the marriage (or worse) proposals upon revealing that I use Linux, the reaction of shock I receive when I tell people what I do for a living are all things I can quickly recover from (especially with a group of supportive folks in Ubuntu Women standing by!). Getting over the fact that I got into Linux in my early 20s when it seems like all my peers have been programming since they were 12 years old is significantly more intimidating and discouraging.

I’m certainly not the exception. In Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing the overwhelming message regarding the problem of women in IT I took from this book was that the traditional conditioning of girls to avoid “horn tooting” or “bragging” as compared to boys, combined with this longevity meme leaves many women who actually take the plunge into a computing degree feeling as though they’re alone, under-qualified and have little chance of success in the field. In reality, the book reports, these women work very hard and are just as qualified as the men in the class, and the ones who don’t switch degrees (a common response to constantly feeling under-qualified) go on to be successful in their careers.

So why is this longevity meme such a major problem for women in general rather than for men (where, admittedly, it still can be a problem)? As a society, at least in the United States, girls don’t tend to be pushed toward tech, and tech is frequently marketed in such a way that I don’t blame them (see: Of Geeks and Girls). While there are now several initiatives out there to get girls interested in technology at a young age, a lot of parents I know make a conscious effort to give their girls computers too, and to some extent the market is catching up, we’re not there yet. Statistically women in the industry still get involved at a later age than men and without considerable confidence the road ahead can be challenging.

So, do we try to kill the longevity meme? No way! We all enjoy a bit of bragging fun now and then. Instead we work to show that people who are involved with computers come in all kinds. This stories project seeks to be a start for addressing that for women in the Ubuntu community. I know some women who have been programming since they were 9 and relax with a pizza, mountain dew and an episode of Star Trek, I know women who work for non-profits and have whole-heartedly jumped on the F/OSS bandwagon, I know mothers who would call themselves non-technical get heavily involved in F/OSS community building, I know women who have stumbled upon F/OSS and with a background that has nothing to do with computing become highly skilled, technical contributors. It’s time to stop taking my word for it and getting these stories from the women themselves.

So, are you a woman, or do you know a woman who can submit a story? Email it to ubuntuwomen.competition at gmail.com by February 22nd!

More details on the contest are here: [UbuntuWomen] International Women’s Day — Competition!

Disclaimer: For all my talk of less geeky females here, I am a pretty hard core geek (I mean, I use a Star Wars handle! …and I just called it a “handle”!). Maybe I didn’t start using Linux until 2002, but in the 90s my mother did frequently wonder what kind of strange teenage girl I was for spending my time in my dark bedroom with pizza and a pile of 386s (oh no, I’m contributing to the meme!). My intention is not to discredit or ignore the geek females in our midst, but to acknowledge that we may be a rare breed and to really get more women involved we need to appeal to contributors from a wider population, just like the Ubuntu project itself does. I seek to encourage all women to contribute to this contest, even if they don’t feel like they have enough “geek cred” or whatever. Oh, and stories from hard core geek girls are completely welcome, those stories are inspiring too!