Words For The Taking

Hello Everybody,

I missed the blessing of IRC chats. Yep, I have been MIA but stayed in a Ubuntu state of mind. Most of my efforts is taking the culture of open source.

I took some much deserved pride in posting my PGP key in launchpad. I know, for there are people that has long past there teething and it might not mean that much anymore. This was my first solo attempt to do discover the complexities of Ubuntu. Gotta be honest here, most of my motivation is bragging rights. I love to get underneath the hood of an O/S. Ubuntu has been my greatest frustation but my greatest accomplishment. I think it’s part of the indoctrination. I lost about 3 days of sleep and a lot of google and you tube. On the 3rd day, it suddenly clicked and it didn’t get it from just once.


Hello Everybody,

I missed the blessing of IRC chats. Yep, I have been MIA but stayed in a Ubuntu state of mind. Most of my efforts is taking the culture of open source.

I took some much deserved pride in posting my PGP key in launchpad. I know, for there are people that has long past there teething and it might not mean that much anymore. This was my first solo attempt to do discover the complexities of Ubuntu. Gotta be honest here, most of my motivation is bragging rights. I love to get underneath the hood of an O/S. Ubuntu has been my greatest frustation but my greatest accomplishment. I think it’s part of the indoctrination. I lost about 3 days of sleep and a lot of google and you tube. On the 3rd day, it suddenly clicked and it didn’t get it from just once.

I remember my first experiements with Ubuntu and most of the terminology of the day was “Noobie” or “RTFM.” There seemed to be this defined chasm between the seasoned to the less seasoned. Tonight I understand part of the process and I think it’s there to seperate the men from the boys. This might not be the fairest of processes but it helps a person understand more fully.

3 days ago, I couldn’t tell you what PGP key was. I didn’t know nothing encrypting and decrypting and forget about computer security in general. I admit I was drawn into this with visions of James Bond dancing in my head. This had a lot of coolness attached to it. As I digged deeper, the coolness was replaced with the practical applications of it. It’s kinda how funny how we are lured into learning in that fashion. It’s was nice to go into a corner and do it myself, I knew at point I had reach a point where understanding Ubuntu was reachable. This was only instance in many more where I will connect the dots but I do this with the promise that I will never tell anybody else the things that were said to me initially.

I had a vision of producing a set of free videos dealing with the more intricate aspects of Ubuntu. The pay off is that I can take all of this bits of information and assemble them. I have also doing some work with Alice. Alice is a program that teaches programming basics through visual 3D interface. I think in order to further open source software we have to make learning more accessable. I had considered shelling out 99 dollars to get a DVD of training for Ubuntu. WTF?

I am a visual learner and I was thinking how to make it easier to train others. To be honest, I didn’t care for the elitest attitudes of the forums in the earlier days. This is a Windows world and while that might leave a bitter taste in your mouth, it is a fact nonetheless. People are intimidated by this and most of the fear is rooted in the lack of centralized and user friendly information that caters to a myriad of learning styles. Some can just read and get it, others have to see it then mimic them and some can do both. I doubt if people in this economy would shell out 99 dollars to learn something if they just have to add 50 dollars more and get a OEM of Windows and be assured of there success.

I would like to use Alice programming enviroment to teach Ubuntu but I want to enjoy learning it first. For all the Noobies, I really feel for you but consider yourself blessed. Noobies have a greater hunger to learn and so never stop being one.

Education is a great asset because it foster choices that you wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

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