OSEL Blog

Join us for the start of the new year!

Coming up in the near future:

•  LUG room moving
  • When: Tuesday, September 22 from 5PM until we’re done or tired
  • Where:  South Pole (BAT349) and the new room (HOV010)
  • Why: Because we must.  There will be pizza and socializing while hauling furniture and LUG boxes to the new room.  Come help us arrange and rearrange how we use our new space.
• Beaver Community Fair
  • When: Friday, October 2 from 12 to 4PM
  • Where:  MU quad
  • Who:  LUG members to man the booth - sign up on the LUG wiki
  • Why:  To tell new students about the LUG so we have more interesting people joining us in the future.  Besides, there is no joy like chasing people with our remote controlled Tux.
• Beaver BarCamp 4
  • When: Saturday, October 17 from 10AM until 7PM
  • Where:  Kelley Engineering Center – Parking is available in the lot behind Kelley
  • Why: To get together and share ideas.  Bring your hobbies, research, projects, or questions.  This BarCamp should feature an all day install fest for all your Linux needs as well as great presentations.  More details will be available in the coming in the next week or so.  If you would like to help organize BarCamp, please e-mail the OSEL mailing list.
• Weekly LUG meetings
  • When: Every Thursday at 6PM
  • Where:  KEC1007
  • What we do:  Work on projects, socialize, listen to guest speakers from the LUG or outside world, help others with their CS, FOSS, or Linux problems.  Maybe more!  If you have ideas for the LUG, contact us!

The Open Source Education Lab is hosting another fabulous BarCamp at OSU’s Kelley Engineering Center.  Saturday, April 4th from 10AM through 7PM though the end time is flexible.  Setup, for those willing, begins at 9AM followed by introductions at 10:30.  Sessions will begin at 11. For more information, check out beaverbarcamp.org and remember to register.  As always, everyone is invited.

What is a BarCamp? Unlike traditional conferences that do silly things like make schedules ahead of time, at BarCamp the schedule is created throughout the day by popular consensus. Anyone who wishes to lead a talk on any topic can do so. We have enough rooms to host a bunch of different tracks going at the same time. Pick what is most interesting at the time, jump between sessions or just run one yourself!

Curious about the new Oswald device/Fuzzy Walrus/Platform for Learning?  We’ll have 10.  Want to talk OLPC? Done. Learn more about Python web development with Django? Not a problem. Learn to juggle or crochet? We’re there for you. How about mirroring the success of our own Open Source Lab at other universities? Go for it! Anything that you want to talk about is fair game, just sign up for one of the conference rooms in the lobby and whoever wants to partake in that discussion will join. Sound fun? It is! BarCamps in Seattle, Portland and throughout the world have had phenomenal success with these “unconferences.” Their flexibility and fresh material makes for a fun, thought-provoking day.

Note:  Thank you mburns for the wonderful write up

The OSU Linux Users Group and Open Source Education Lab are hosting two Linux tutorials on Monday and Tuesday next week.

Tuesday’s tutorial will introduce Linux at OSU/Beginning BASH.  This tutorial will outline everything you need to know about our Linux engineering servers on campus (flip and flop) as well as introducing BASH.  No knowledge of Linux is required and the presentation will be aimed towards using Linux servers as a tool rather than a home computer.

In short:
What: BASH/Linux server help
Who: Anyone interested is invited
Where: KEC 1005
When: Tuesday 10/7

Topics covered:

• Command Line basics: man and –help, options/flags, parameters, how to change from the default shell to BASH
• Remote server basics:  ssh, scp
• Basic negotiating the file system: ls, cd, mv, mkdir, rm, find, grep, cp, intro to pipes
• Basic file editing/reading: less, vim, nano, emacs
• environment variables and aliases
• What shell and the engineering servers will and will not do either because of capacity, no root access, etc.

Monday’s tutorial will be aimed more towards running, installing, and working with Linux as a personal computer. Though the same content will be covered there will also be a mini install feast, more individual help, and more focus on package managers, Linux distributions, etc.  This meeting will also be in KEC 1005 at 6PM.

I hope to see some of you there! Feel free to contact me with questions or comments.
Sarah Cooley cooleys@onid.orst.edu

Portland BarCamp is coming up this weekend!  Show up (or better yet register as a camper) to partake in food, fun, and interesting tech talks.  This is also a great opportunity to get input on personal projects or hold your own talk/mini session.

Where: Cubespace
622 SE Grand Ave.
Portland, OR 97214

When: Friday May 2 @ 6PM - Sunday May 4 @ 3PM

 For people interested in going:
If you are driving to BarCamp Portland and have room for extra passengers or if you want to go but can’t get there or don’t have somewhere to stay please post either in the LUG mailing list, wiki or the BarCamp Portland wiki.

Google gave the Oregon State University Linux Users Group a visit on March 6th. The Googlers included Lori Welch, a Hardware Operations Recruiter from Mountain View, Ken Patchett, the Hardware Operations Manager from The Dalles, Josh Betts, The Dalles Facility Manager, and Trevor Sehrer, a hardware op. With them they brought a tech talk about managing large data centers, plenty of schwag, and pizza for all.

Thanks Google!

Open google maps, and take a look at 45°7′26″N 123°6′48″W. This otherwise undistinguished farm just outside Amity Oregon seems to have something interesting going on. In fact, it is the famous Firefox crop circle. Now known worldwide courtesy of google maps. In fact, if you scroll just a little bit south of the crop circle itself, you can see a number of people, including our Alex Polvi. Truly, he is out standing in his field.

On Friday October 27th in West International Hall students gathered to celebrate the release of Firefox 2 with a Firefox Party. There were conversations about new features, a demo running on a LCD TV and the plans for a Firefox logo made of blinking safety lights. Judging by the big glowing logo in the Weatherford lawn this party was a big success!