jonobacon@home

Archive for June 17th, 2008


Posted on June 17, 2008 - by jono

Organise your good-self a Ubuntu Global Bug Jam partay

Work continues apace on the rather excellent Ubuntu Global Bug Jam which takes place from Fri 8th August to Sun 10th August 2008. Put simply, the aim of the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam is for groups around the world to get together, fix Ubuntu bugs and have a great time. :)

Right now, we don’t want you to just look at the rather snazzy image above and admire its iconic sub-text. Right now we don’t want you to simply get excited about how much fun you can have with a bug jam. No, no, no…

…right now, all we want is for you to talk to your LoCo Team, your Linux User Group and your friends about organising a bug jam to take part in the wider Ubuntu Global Bug Jam, and joining the legions of Ubuntu fans who will be kicking arse and taking names at the same time around the world. It is a great way to get together, have some fun, fix some bugs (or learn how to fix bugs if you are new to Ubuntu) and just enjoy what we all enjoy about free software – working together.

Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Perú, Chicago, Columbia and Berlin can’t be wrong – they have already organised bug jams – go and read this guide about what is involved and add your team to the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam page.


Posted on June 17, 2008 - by jono

So very true

“To me it seems like people are taking turns at kicking arse“. — Daniel Holbach talking about some of the progress we have been making recently in the Ubuntu community.


Posted on June 17, 2008 - by jono

Ubuntu Developer Channel

Recently the Ubuntu Developer Channel has been pumping out a pretty serious chunk of content – the channel now has 22 videos with over 360 subscribers. I wanted to provide a bunch of links to the content – go and check out some of the fascinating interviews from UDS as well as our packaging tuition content – the channel is proving to be a great place to learn about Ubuntu as well as learning how to contribute to Ubuntu.

Learning MOTU Videos

A collection of videos in which Daniel Holbach shows you how to get started with different packaging tasks.

I have two more Learning MOTU videos to upload yet over the next two weeks, so stay tuned! The videos are also being made available here in Ogg Theora format.

Ubuntu Developer Summit Videos

Video interviews and content from the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Prague a little while back.


Posted on June 17, 2008 - by jono

Polycom Communicator Low Mic Volume

Dear Lazyweb,

UPDATE – READ BELOW THE SOLUTION

I am having troubles getting my Polycom Communicator for Skype speakerphone working in Ubuntu – the microphone volume is always very low in Skype, and when I try to adjust the mixer volume slider for the mic, there is no luck. This does not appear to be a Skype issue – I tried recording in Audacity and the problem exists there too.

Has anyone found a fix for this, and does this exist on other distros?

UPDATE: Solution

Much thanks to Tom Mann who left a comment to point to his forums post with a possible solution. Well, I did the following, and it worked:

  • sudo alsactl store
  • sudo cp /var/lib/alsa/asound.state /var/lib/alsa/asound.state.old
  • sudo nano /var/lib/alsa/asound.state

I then found the state.Communicator block and the sub-block with name 'Mic Capture Volume' – the value was set to 0, so I set it to the maximum value, which is 64. My block looks like this:

control.2 {

            comment.access 'read write'

            comment.type INTEGER

            comment.count 1

            comment.range '0 - 64'

            iface MIXER

            name 'Mic Capture Volume'

            value 64

    }

Then unplug the Polycom Communicator and plug it back in again. It should now work. :)