Matthew Revell

The world’s foremost Linux and free software podcast is one notch higher in the quality stakes this week. In a neatly circular reversal of roles, I stood in for Adam Sweet on this week’s LugRadio.

It was good to be back in the studio with the blokes and was my first show with new boy Chris Proctor.

OpenReach (BT’s arms-length network operations division) rang yesterday. I get my line for the 21CN trial Monday.

Welcome to tha futures.

BBC Watchdog - the consumer programme - said tonight during a piece on con artists using a psychic front:

“…because of course there are genuine psychics out there.”

What?! Come on. Surely, even if you’re being kind, this is debatable. I thought Watchdog’s purpose was to help viewers avoid getting ripped off.

Yesterday I stumbled across the Google Code Syntax Highlighter.

If you have Javascript enabled, it prettifies various types of code and markup:

<h1>Matthew is cool</h1>
<p>You should listen to Marillion.</p>

Adding it to Wordpress is pretty simple, through a Wordpress plugin.

Over the past year and a bit that I’ve worked at Canonical, I’ve been working pretty much full-time on Launchpad.

From time to time, though, I’ve also worked with the Bazaar team. I’m pleased to say that from now on I’ll be working with the Bazaar team one day per week. I’m hoping to continue the great work that Ian Clatworthy, and other members of the Bazaar community, have done on the user guide, as well as working on the wiki and command line help.

I’m really keen to hear from you if you have ideas on how the Bazaar docs, command line help, wiki and interface text might be improved. Please join us on the Bazaar mailing list. I’m also mrevell in #bzr on Freenode.

I love a good logo. The best find the simplest way to communicate a brand’s values.

Take a look at our very own Ubuntu logo, for a great example.

It’s recognisable whether it’s tiny or huge, black and white or in colour. With just three curves and three circles, it conveys Ubuntu’s commitment to community, humanity and cooperation.

Now, we - the Launchpad team - have been wondering if there might be a better logo for Launchpad. Whether it’s another interpretation of the rocket ship or something entirely different, we’re holding a competition to see what ideas other people have.

So, here are the details:

Closing date: 31 March 2008
Rules and all that: https://help.launchpad.net/logo
Prize: one of the snazzy new Ubuntu messenger bags.

You can submit as many entries as you like, although the competition isn’t open to Canonical staff or vendors. The Launchpad team will choose the winner by majority vote. If you want to see our current rocket logo in situ, take a look at the Launchpad project page.

Any questions? Find me (mrevell) in #launchpad on Freenode, leave a comment or send us a mail to feedback AT launchpad.net.

One of the goals we have for Launchpad is to offer different ways to get data in and out.

For example, in addition to the web interface we have an email interface for the Bug Tracker. For many people, the quickest way to file a bug is to fire off an email. Of course, it also provides a full range of options for editing and commenting on existing bugs.

In Launchpad 1.1.12 we introduced bug feeds. Now, each bug, person, team, project and distribution in Launchpad has an associated Atom feed. I’ve used my bug feed on the home page of my website to give a flavour of what I’m working on. As I use Wordpress, which has built-in support for MagpieRSS, this was supremely easy.

Upgrade to the latest Wordpress

Before you begin, you should upgrade to the latest Wordpress. Previously, I was running 2.2.2 and it had some trouble with the Atom feed.

Pulling in the feed

First off, you need to pull in MagpieRSS, which is distributed with Wordpress.

I’ve created a sidebar specifically for the my site’s home page and I’ve got the following at the top of my home-sidebar.php template file:

<?
include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
$myBugs = fetch_rss("http://feeds.launchpad.net/~matthew.revell/latest-bugs.atom");
$myBugsItems = array_slice($myBugs->items, 0, 4);
?>

The first line includes MagpieRSS and the next creates an array of the feed’s posts in $myBugs. I don’t have too much room in my side bar, so I use the last line to cut it down to the top four entries.

Displaying the feed

Actually displaying the feed is simple:

<ul>
<? foreach ($myBugsItems as $item ) {
	$title = $item[title];
	$url   = $item[link];
	echo "<li><a href=$url>$title</a></li>";
}

?>
</ul>

I’m looking to seeing how other people, in particular projects, use these new feeds.

Please post a comment or
contact me if you’re using Launchpad’s feeds or you have a suggestion for how we can improve them.

Update: two suggestions of easier ways to achieve the same effect. Dave Murphy suggested Wigitize.com (hat-tip Joey) and Jeremy Visser commented that Wordpress has a widget to embed a feed into your page.

Something I forget to put in the original post was that I’ve also used straight MagpieRSS (i.e. without Wordpress) to create an ugly but functional page at http://launchpad.understated.co.uk/. The code is pretty much exactly as shown in the Wordpress example above.

It’s almost a month since a signed up for the Enta 21CN trial.

So far, nothing’s happened. We - i.e. m’self and Enta’s reseller Vivaciti - are waiting for BT to confirm an installation date for the new line. Apparently communication from BT Wholesale has been virtually non-existent so neither I, Vivaciti nor Enta know what the hold-up is.

I’ve spoken to a couple of broadband industry watchers and they’ve given the same story: Enta have found it very difficult to find trialists. BT’s lack of communication isn’t really helping: I’d be more than happy to encourage my friends in the trial area to sign up, if only I had a positive experience to relate to them.

I’m almost at the end of the third chapter of Dive Into Python. The first time I considered learning Python, my pal Stuart persuaded me to blog my experience. He was interested to know what might trip me up or what I felt could be better explained to people from a non-development background.

First time round, I dismissed Dive Into Python because it seemed to be aimed at people who were already familiar with code. The first page of chapter 2 - Your first Python program - reminded me why I felt that way. The first example starts with a comment and then this line:

return ";".join(["%s=%s" % (k, v) for k, v in params.items()])

Python fans talk about its readability. While I’m not disputing Python’s readability - I’m in no position to - that line means nothing to me and, in a weaker moment, would have sent me scurrying for something with a greater relevance to my experience.

I’m enjoying Dive Into Python. I’m surprised not to have dived into anything just yet - it’s all a bit abstract so far. However, its reasonably straightforward approach makes a refreshing change from Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby which, although amusing at first, seemed irritatingly determined to avoid the subject.

A few years back, I toyed with learning Python. At the time, though, I had more pressing demands on my time and, reluctantly, gave up pretty soon in the process.

I’m not a natural developer. My mind seems to work more like the broad sweeps of an oil painting, rather than the fine watercolour detail necessary for thinking through algorithms. However, I’m pretty sure that with some work and practice I can retrain myself to think in the right way.

In the past, I’ve toyed with Basics (Spectrum, Jetsam and AMOS, mostly), learnt the bare bones of C, was mildly productive with PHP and, more recently, have been impressed by some aspects of Ruby. However, any coding I’ve done has always been lazy and, largely, cobbled together from examples.

So, armed with a link to Dive into Python and offers of support from my colleagues, I’m hoping to do it properly this time. Wish me luck