Month: July 2006

Summer Placement, LugRadio Live 2006

Summer Placement

I’ve now been on my summer placement with Senokian Solutions for a week or so. We’re working on version 2.0 of the Enterprise Groupware System. We’ve written the basics of the framework pretty much from scratch in a couple of weeks, it follows the Model View Controller design pattern and uses ADOdb database abstraction, the Smarty template engine and Simple Test unit testing amongst other free software projects.

Now that phase 1 of the framework is complete (pending the completion of unit testing) my job will shift focus to the ERP and accounting module. I’m mainly working with Greg who is leading the development of EGS 2.0 and Paul who is another summer placement student.

The office is cool (in both the froody and air conditioned senses of the word), we have a fridge full of free drinks, coffee machine and even an office dog called Archie! The development environment is Linux/Apache/Postgres/PHP with Subversion and Trac and Ubuntu thin client workstations with Firefox, Thunderbird et. al. Perfect.

LugRadio Live 2006

It’s probably a bit late for these images but… I'm going to LugRadio Live 2006 I'm going to LugRadio Live 2006

LugRadio Live was great! Bigger and better than last year for sure. There were a couple of very dull talks (especially for lauperr who actually fell asleep) but also a lot of very interesting ones. I particularly liked the talk by Simon Phipps from Sun who articulated the changing direction of the software market brilliantly in “The Zen of Open Source”.

Poor old Jono lost his beard but raised about £600 for charity.

In other news…

I now finally have the Internet at home again (home as in temporary home in covernty) thanks to lauperr‘s cunning router configuration skills.

Summer placement with Senokian, LugRadio Live 2006, Ubuntu Dapper

Summer Placement with Senokian

After a stretch of working in the fields picking vegetables (great money by the way) and desperate job searching I’ve managed to secure myself a summer placement! It’s perfect in every way except that it’s in Coventry. Luckily lauperr happens to be renting a house in Coventry and isn’t having much luck finding a job at home so we’re both going to live there for a couple of months and work. I’ll be working for Senokian Solutions writing open source software and I assume contributing to the Enterprise Groupware System. I’ll be part of the Shell Step program, though not eligible for any awards because it’s only really meant for 2nd and 3rd years (shh!). I should be starting on Wednesday.

LugRadio Live 2006

For anyone who’s still in the Bourne area I’ll hopefully be back every weekend except next week when I’ll be at LUGRadio Live 2006 in Wolverhampton. Be there or be… not square I suppose.

Ubuntu Dapper

I’ve spent about a week using the latest (long term support) release of Ubuntu Linux, Dapper Drake. I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a bold statement.

I believe GNU/Linux is now ready for the desktop.

Dapper Drake isn’t perfect, but it’s damned good and it’s definitely easier to install than Microsoft Windows. That’s understandable when you think how many years it is since Microsoft last released an operating system, but I believe that the perpetually delayed release of Windows Vista is going to alienate a lot of people, especially the minority who actually care about things like the Windows Genuine Disadvantage. I for one can’t afford a PC which could run Vista and I’ll probably only install it if I get a free copy from University. Dapper probably isn’t as good in terms of usability or style as Mac OS X but it has its own advantages. I’m not saying that GNU/Linux is going to suddenly dominate the desktop, I’m just saying it’s ready for use by the general public in ways it perhaps wasn’t before the latest release of Ubuntu.