Blogs

This blog post summarizes the discussions and action items from the Infrastructure and Release Engineering workshop held at Flock 2024 in Rochester, New York, USA. This post is also an experiment in using AI generated summaries to provide useful, …

To all Outreachy May 2024 applicants to the Fedora Project, Today is May 2nd, 2024. The Outreachy May 2024 round results will be published in a few short hours. This year, the participation in Fedora for Outreachy May 2024 was record-breaking. Fedora …

This year, I am mentoring again with the Outreachy internship program. It is my third time mentoring for Outreachy and my second time with the Fedora Project. However, it is my first time mentoring as a Red Hat associate. What also makes this time …

A short poem that I was inspired to write after a short drive running errands, and I was absorbed momentarily into the beauty of the natural world around me. Read more of my poetry on my blog. The media report this season is warmer, The scientists …

A poem to describe love from a constantly suspended state of waiting and wonder. Read more of my poetry on my blog. The air carries a breeze, In from the eastward-facing window. The breeze carries whispers and secrets of the night, Into the ear, …

2023 is almost over. It was a busy year. When I was a student, I used to write about what I was learning. But after finishing my studies, I stopped writing regularly. Now I want to focus on the future and adopt a storytelling theme for 2024. This …

My musing this time is an underdeveloped thought about diversity, equity, & inclusion; allyship; and being a white person. Last year in October 2022, I attended the excellent Inclusion & Diversity in Open Source summit at All Things Open 2022. There …

Read more of my poetry on my blog. Ctrl+Alt+Delete, wired and tied, My threaded process: splintering and fragmenting. Ctrl+Z, nostalgic and longing, The memory buffer: flooded and overloaded. Ctrl+F, buried and lost, The information needed: but …

Friend, are you okay? How are you? Is it going well? Or is it a tough time? You can tell me, brother. My ear is yours at this moment, sister. Friend, if I have things you need to borrow, please ask me. I appreciate you. I appreciate the person that …

Trust is a word and a concept that is on my mind lately. Trust is an idea that permeates all levels of our waking consciousness, and impacts how we build connections and relationships with other human beings. It is something impossible to ignore, yet …

The answer suddenly appeared that the only way to solve my dilemma of two split worlds was to find the middle path. This thought emerged to me, as I stood under the warm stream of water in the same shower I had used countless times over the last ten …

In my daily reading, I came across three product roadmaps from Proton, developers of several open source, privacy-centered products. These include products like Proton Mail, Proton VPN, and Proton Drive. The product roadmaps shared by Proton play a …

This thought was pressed into my mind as I looked over all that I had created. Facing the inevitable end of one life chapter as it transitions into a new one, I recognized one possible way to improve our individual impact through documentation. …

Recently, my team with the CHAOSS Project had a data concern emerge when I was working on a project to run a community survey. This community had never run a survey before, and it was the first notable event where the project made an explicit, …

Since February 2021, the CHAOSS Project is conducting a funded, long-term review of its governance, practices, and processes in a diversity, equity, and inclusion (D.E.I.) “audit.” I originally joined as an internal community liaison and initially …

Originally published on 27 September 2022 via unicef.org. This year, the UNICEF Venture Fund celebrates five graduating companies from a recent investment round. For the first time, many of these companies are exiting from the Venture Fund having …

Read more of my poetry on my blog. one, two I fell in love with you Caught me by surprise three, four My focus was on you There was me, you, & the road five, six I took each breath Felt each beat of my heart seven, eight I realized Your rhythm Pulled …

It is with a sad heart that I share that the crystalcraftmc.com forums are permanently retired as of 6 February 2022. Nearly ten years ago, in August 2012, I founded a Minecraft multiplayer game server. It would eventually become known as …

How do we understand value when we talk about sustainability? What does investing in open source mean? The meaning is different for many people because of an implicit understanding of what open source means. This post is a reflection on the past year …

I was visiting the Fedora Council ticket tracker when I noticed this ticket up for discussion. The ticket’s purpose is minor and appears inconsequential. It involves adding some legal text to the Fedora Accounts system. The change is related to …

Open Source is a means to collaborate and solve common problems; during the COVID-19 pandemic, open data and tools proved useful in quickly tailoring and deploying life-saving services. How has the UNICEF Innovation Fund kept up with latest Open …

There are moments I reflect back on my life when I met someone who interacted with me in an impressive way. Though unknown to me then, I feel now that they perceived my authentic, true self when I was still searching. In those moments, I think about …

Community participation and engagement in corporate Open Source projects is valuable, yet difficult to foster. Many companies supporting popular Open Source projects develop diverse communities across different employers, nationalities, genders, …

For a long time, it was a “yes”. For a few years, I was pulled in by the fiscal lure. There are no manuals for someone who grows up having less to suddenly land at a juncture of having more. So I had to be my own guide. While I was saying “yes”, I …

A part of me holds nostalgia for this aspect of the Internet I grew up with. Back when blogs played a bigger role in shaping and developing the Internet culture, and being the exemplar way of how we sought to express ourselves online (or, perhaps for …

I often wonder how to best measure and communicate Open Source value. The collective focus of the industry goes into quantifying dependencies; that is, how one software relies on other software in order to complete its primary function. The …

Language is powerful. Words are subtle building blocks to how we imagine the world around us. So, with the goal of pursuing more equitable language, I propose the end of accommodations. Accommodations move us closer to equality but not equity. The …

Përshëndetje nga Tiranë, or in Albanian, hello from Tirana! I am residing for a short time in Tiranë (pronounced Ti·ra·na), Albania. After a previous visit in June, I decided to make Tiranë my home for part of my remote work contract. I moved in this …

This post was co-published on the UNICEF Innovation Fund blog. 2020 saw the launch of a formalized Open Source Mentorship programme for the UNICEF Innovation Fund, built up on two years of work from RIT LibreCorps expertise and consulting. The Open …

Recently a Spotify playlist curated into my feed. The playlist was a perfect match for my soul when I needed it most. This led me to wonder, who or what curated this playlist? What caused it to appear in my feed that day? The era of disc jockeys and …

This first appeared on the Open Source Initiative Wiki. In light of the election update this year, I am republishing my statement of intent on my personal blog. No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive. Mahatma Gandhi I believe in the value …

When I first saw the letter asking for Richard Stallman and the FSF Board of Directors resignations with merely five signatures, I knew I had to sign. Not because I knew it would be the popular thing to do. But because it was what was true in my …

Read more of my poetry on my blog. I put on our playlist, Pure poetry to untrained ears. My heart taken by the hand, But led back to the Atlantic blue, Wondering if I am singing your tune? Will I continue to wait here, Under the early April showers? …

Four years ago, on March 13th in 2017, I woke up for breakfast in the city of Sarajevo in Bosnia & Herzegovina. As I ate breakfast on the morning of March 14th of 2021 in the seemingly eternal era of COVID-19, it struck me. Bosnian coffee. Balkans …

When I launched my blog, I always envisioned writing cute snapshots of insight into my life. As much as I would publish them for the Internet, I was also publishing for myself. Or so, it started off this way. But over time, I blurred the lines …

From January to May 2020, I completed an independent study at the Rochester Institute of Technology on Business and Legal Aspects of Free/Open Source Software. This was the final credit for my completion of the Free and Open Source Software and Free …

In May 2018, Mozilla and Open Tech Strategies released a 40-page report titled, “Open Source Archetypes”. This blog post is a recap of how this report influences the Open Source Mentorship programme I lead at the UNICEF Innovation Fund. I joined the …

The bookmark was creeping on my browser’s toolbar for months. “Cryptographic Autonomy License” CAL-1.0 on the Open Source Initiative webpage. But today, I decided it was time to do my first amateur license review. This is a fun exercise (for me). …

October is here! If you contribute to Open Source projects, you might know that October is the month of Hacktoberfest. DigitalOcean teams up with different partners each year to send a t-shirt (or plant a tree on your behalf) for anyone who makes …

Trigger warning: Grief, police violence, death. This blog post was first written on August 28th, 2020. Today is a sad day. Chadwick Boseman is dead. At 43 years old, he lost a terminal battle with stage IV colon cancer. As his great light dims, I am …

This El Ten Eleven article is part of my Tervigersate column on my blog, where I review albums by musicians spanning multiple genres. Articles introduce an album and give my interpretation of their meaning. El Ten Eleven is a duo consisting of …

Trigger warning: Grief, death. Two years passed since we last met in Bolzano. I remember you traveled in for a day to join the 2018 Fedora Mindshare FAD. You came many hours from your home to see us, and share your experiences and wisdom from both …

This is the story about the facilitation of the Principles of Authentic Participation. This post does not describe what the Principles are (click that link to learn more about them). This post describes the story behind the Principles, and how our …

TeleIRC v2.0.0 is the latest major release of our open source Telegram <=> IRC bridge. Download the latest release and read the release announcement for the full story. There are several new and noteworthy changes in TeleIRC v2.0.0. This post walks …

After almost eight months of work, the TeleIRC Team is happy to announce General Availability of TeleIRC v2.0.0 today. Thanks to the hard work of our volunteer community, we are celebrating an on-time release of a major undertaking to make a more …

In this brave new COVID-19 world, we have to watch out for each other. These times are unusual and not normal. This year in 2020, I challenge you to join me and others in the Happiness Packets Challenge from Monday, 27 April to Sunday, 3 May! This is …

This post is a follow-up to FOSDEM 2020, pt. 1: Play by play. This post summarizes the talk given by me and my colleague, Mike Nolan, at FOSDEM 2020. FOSDEM 2020 took place from Saturday, 1 February, 2020 to Sunday, 2 February, 2020 in Brussels, …

[tw – death, grief, gender discrimination] Grief is a strange emotion. One text message read early in the morning can send your day into a long walk down the beach of your own memories. Memories flood back, making us conscious that these lost moments …

The Free Software movement is rooted to origins in the 1980s. As part of a talk I gave with my colleague and friend Mike Nolan at FOSDEM 2020, we analyzed how the Free Software movement emerged as a response to a changing digital world in three …

CopyleftConf 2020 took place on Monday, 3 February, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium: This will be the second annual International Copyleft Conference. Participants from throughout the copyleft world — developers, strategists, enforcement organizations, …

Once upon a time, when I was a teenager, I volunteered in the Minecraft open source community. I volunteered as a staff member of the largest open source Minecraft server today, called Spigot. Spigot is a fork of the Bukkit project. This blog post is …

Since September 2019, the RITlug TeleIRC team is hard at work on the v2.0.0 release of TeleIRC. This blog post is a short update on what is coming in TeleIRC v2.0.0, our progress so far, and when to expect the next major release. What’s coming in …

This blog post is an essay response from a class I took at the Rochester Institute of Technology, WGST-357: Communication, Gender, and Media. This course was taught by Dr. Nickesia Gordon. The essay prompt encouraged us to reflect broadly on the role …

FOSDEM 2020 took place from Saturday, 1 February, 2020 to Sunday, 2 February, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium (shortly after Sustain OSS 2020 and CHAOSScon EU 2020): FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event organized by the community for the community. …

CHAOSScon EU 2020 took place on Friday, 31 January, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium (the day after Sustain OSS 2020): Learn about open source project health metrics and tools used by open source projects, communities, and engineering teams to track and …

The 2020 Sustain Open Source Summit took place on Thursday, 30 January, 2020 in Brussels, Belgium: Sustain Summit events are led by a facilitator. There are no keynotes, talks, or sponsor demos. Your undivided attention is required. Phones and …

DevConf CZ 2020 took place from Friday, January 24th to Sunday January 27th in Brno, Czech Republic: DevConf.CZ 2020 is the 12th annual, free, Red Hat sponsored community conference for developers, admins, DevOps engineers, testers, documentation …

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1967) I never intend to adjust myself to injustice. “I’m proud to be maladjusted.” https://t.co/TFBiWBy6Xc — Be A King (@BerniceKing) December 12, 2019

On December 13th, 2006, author Bruce Byfield reflected on why he thought Free and Open Source Software (F.O.S.S.) was not on activist agendas. My interpretation of his views are that a knowledge barrier about technology makes FOSS less accessible, …

Recently, I worked on an interesting project to evaluate different container run-times for high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. HPC clusters are what we once knew as supercomputers. Today, instead of giant mainframes, they are hundreds, …

Sometimes the people we exclude are the ones we did not realize were there. Screen readers are an essential tool for blind and visually-impaired people to use software and browse the Internet. In open source projects and communities, Markdown is a …

May is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Awareness Month. Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, abbreviated as EDS, is a genetic disorder that affects 1 out of 5,000 people across the world. It is considered an “invisible illness” since its symptoms are not always visible to …

On April 20th, 2019, the TeleIRC development team released TeleIRC v1.3.1, the latest version after the final development sprint for the university semester. This release introduces minor improvements in order to accommodate heavier work-balance …

The RITlug TeleIRC developer team celebrated the v1.3 release on March 3rd, 2019. Looking ahead, the team is mapping out next steps for quality-of-life improvements in v1.4. What’s coming in TeleIRC v1.4 🔗 TeleIRC v1.4 is the next feature release of …

This is an unfinished draft of a blog post I wrote at the end of my study abroad semester in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was originally written in May or June 2017. It captures some of the perspective and feeling as my semester abroad finished. As I …

Recently, I reviewed my unfinished blog posts to see what was left. This post is my oldest draft, last modified on April 19th, 2016. I drafted this near the end of my second semester of freshman year in college. This was a pivotal time for me for …

On Saturday, February 2nd, 2019, the TeleIRC community in Rochester, NY held the first developers’ meeting. Starting this month, weekly meetings are held to discuss blocking issues and plan ahead for the future of the project. Current project lead …

For the ISTE-430 Information Requirements Modelling course at the Rochester Institute of Technology, students are asked to analyze an example of a failed software project and write a short summary on why it failed. For the assignment, I evaluated the …

Do you write documentation with the Sphinx tool chain? Do you want to encourage more people to write Sphinx documentation in a distributed organization, but worry about maintaining compatible workflows? Introducing sphinx-docs-opinionated-quickstart, …

This year, I attended the second edition of the Sustain Open Source Summit (a.k.a. Sustain OSS) on October 25th, 2018 in London. Sustain OSS is a one-day discussion on various topics about sustainability in open source ecosystems. It’s also a …

I was reviewing one of my old journals this morning and re-read an early entry from when I was studying abroad in Dubrovnik, Croatia. The entry was a time when I learned more about a man named Seth Vidal by chance. Reading this entry again the week …

Originally published on the MusicBrainz blog. Making graphs is easy. Making intuitive, easy-to-understand graphs? It’s harder than most people think. At the Rochester Institute of Technology, the ISTE-260 (Designing the User Experience) course …

Originally written as an essay response for ENGL-450 Free and Open Source Culture at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Growing up with easy access to the Internet grants the privilege of experiencing effortless knowledge and high availability of …

Recently, I started to use Vagrant to test Ansible playbooks on Fedora machines. I’m using the Fedora 28 cloud base image. However, when I tried to provision my Vagrant box, I was warned the Python binary is missing. $ vagrant provision ==> default: …

I can’t help but feel this period in history is significant, if only for what is yet to come of this global political climate. Each day I read the news, a mix of positive and negative connotations blurs through my subconscious: paragraphs of words …

This article was originally published on Opensource.com. Managing an open source project is challenging work. The challenge grows as a project grows. Eventually, a project may need to meet different requirements and span across multiple repositories. …

Similar to last year, I am putting forward a note of planned absence from the Fedora Project community from May to August 2018. Transparency is important to me. I wanted to make this announcement ahead of time to set clear expectations for the …

Six months ago, I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts. Beyond data privacy concerns, social media became a virtual band-aid applied to moments of weakness and sadness for me. I became more aware of the effects of social media on my mood and …

This article is part of my Tervigersate column on my blog, where I review albums by musicians spanning multiple genres. Articles introduce an album and give my interpretation of their meaning. The next album to spotlight in Tergiversate is Abysma by …

One of the most unusual but wonderful experiences happened to me on a return trip from Europe to the United States. A series of heavy noreasters hit the US east coast over the last couple weeks. This coincided with my travel dates back to Rochester, …

Scale is a critical part of how we develop applications in today’s world of infrastructure. Now, containers and container orchestration like Docker and Kubernetes make it easier to think about scale. One of the “magical” things about The potential of …

Originally published on Opensource.com. Open source becomes more common every year, where it appears at government municipalities to universities. More companies turn to open source software too. However, some companies try to take it a step further, …

In December, I received the happy news of an offer for a internship position at UNICEF in the Office of Innovation. The Office of Innovation drives rapid technological innovation by rapid prototyping of new ideas and building full-stack products to …

I can’t remember how writing an annual reflection became a tradition, but after writing them for the last two years, it is now a habit. Every time I look back on all that the last year brought into my life, it is surreal. Many things that happened, I …

The first album to début in my Tergiversate music column isn’t a new album, but it’s an album with a meaning that evolves and changes over time into something new. Demon Days is the second studio album released by Gorillaz in 2005. Demon Days is …

The past year was a busy for Fedora. The community released Fedora 26 and 27. Different sub-projects of Fedora give their share of time for the overall success of Fedora. But in a project as big as Fedora, it’s hard to keep track of what everyone is …

This article was originally published on Opensource.com. The Rochester Mini Maker Faire is an annual event at the Joseph A. Floreano Riverside Convention Center in Rochester, NY. Each year, makers, creators, artists, and more from all over upstate …

Music is a key part of my life. I spend a lot of time listening and analyzing music. However, music is as much a personal experience as it is a social one too. In music, an artist shares their perspective and experience with the listener. The …

This post is part of a series of posts where I contribute to the ListenBrainz project for my independent study at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the fall 2017 semester. For more posts, find them in this tag. This week is the last week of …

This article was originally published on Opensource.com. On November 7, 2017, members of the RIT community came together for the annual Election Night Hackathon held in the Simone Center for Student Innovation. This year marked the seventh …

This post is part of a series of posts where I contribute to the ListenBrainz project for my independent study at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the fall 2017 semester. For more posts, find them in this tag. My progress with ListenBrainz …

It’s 2pm in the afternoon and the weather is becoming cold after so long. On this brisk November day, an old professor steps out in the corner lobby of the college. The golden rays of the sun cast a warm, radiant glow, leaving a bright, inviting air. …

Over the summer, I migrated my desktop environment to i3, a tiling window manager. Switching to i3 was a challenge at first, since I had to replace many things that GNOME handled for me. One of these things was changing screen brightness. xbacklight, …

This post is part of a series of posts where I contribute to the ListenBrainz project for my independent study at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the fall 2017 semester. For more posts, find them in this tag. Last week moved quickly for me …

Since I became a Fedora contributor in August 2015, I’ve spent a lot of time in the community. One of the great things about a big community like Fedora is that there are several different things to try out. I’ve always tried to do the most help in …

This post is part of a series of posts where I contribute to the ListenBrainz project for my independent study at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the fall 2017 semester. For more posts, find them in this tag. One of the first rites of …

A unique opportunity of attending an open source-friendly university is when course credits and working on open source projects collide. This semester, I’m participating in an independent study at the Rochester Institute of Technology where I will …

This article was originally published on Opensource.com. Open source software has come a long way since the turn of the century. Each year, more and more people are embracing open source technology and development models. Not just people, though ­– …

Article originally published on Opensource.com. The needs and demands of infrastructure environments changes every year. With time, systems become more complex and involved. But when infrastructure grows and becomes more complex, it’s meaningless if …

This article was originally published on Opensource.com. Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, is one of the oldest chat protocols around and still popular in many open source communities. IRC’s best strengths are as a decentralized and open communication …

This is a short series to introduce Kubernetes, what it does, and how to experiment with it on Fedora. This is a beginner-oriented series to help introduce some higher level concepts and give examples of using it on Fedora. In the first post, we …

A new release of Fedora makes headlines this month. With every release, it also means a new round of the Fedora community leadership elections. On 24 July 2017, the call for nominations went out for candidates. The Fedora Engineering Steering …

This is a short series to introduce Kubernetes, what it does, and how to experiment with it on Fedora. This is a beginner-oriented series to help introduce some higher level concepts and give examples of using it on Fedora. In the first post, we …

This article was originally published on Opensource.com. Open source software is nothing new in 2017. Even now, big tech giants are exploring open source. More and more companies allow employees to contribute to open source software on company hours, …

This article was originally published on the Fedora Magazine. This is a short series to introduce Kubernetes, what it does, and how to experiment with it on Fedora. This is a beginner-oriented series to help introduce some higher level concepts and …

This article was originally published on the Fedora Magazine. This article is part of a short series that introduces Kubernetes. This beginner-oriented series covers some higher level concepts and gives examples of using Kubernetes on Fedora. The …

The past few months have brought many changes for me. I traveled throughout Europe to experience some of the open source conferences and communities across the continent. Along the way, I met incredible people with powerful stories about their own …

Originally published on 19 April 2017 at Medium.com. Republished on 25 October 2021 at jwheel.org/blog. Many times, I’ve sat down to write this. The same number of times, I never finish and delete it all. Many times, I’ve wondered how to say the …

This article was originally published on the Fedora Community Blog. Team picture of the Diversity Team members (left to right: Brian Exelbierd, Amita Sharma, Radka Janek, Jona Azizaj, Bhagyashree Padalkar, Justin Wheeler) The Fedora Diversity FAD …

One of the most important lessons I was taught growing up is to say “thank you” when someone does something nice for you. Many months ago, someone first introduced me to something called Happiness Packets. The idea is simple but powerfully effective. …

Transparency is the best policy and communication is key. This is why I felt it was important to make this announcement ahead of time to make clear expectations for the coming months. This past December, I was happy to accept a Production Engineer …

This article was originally published on the Fedora Magazine. Open source projects are built online and a lot of their community members are placed all over the world. Even though projects have people from around the world, this doesn’t stop …

This article was originally published on Opensource.com. Redon Skikuli addresses all attendees in Open Labs to kick off the hackathon. © Eduard Pagria, used with permission The local hackerspace in Tirana, Albania might be small, but they make up for …

Before looking too far ahead to the future, it’s important to spend time to reflect over the past year’s events, identify successes and failures, and devise ways to improve. Describing my 2016 is a challenge for me to find the right words for. This …

This post was originally published on Opensource.com. On Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, the FOSS@MAGIC at the MAGIC Center at RIT held the annual Election Night Hackathon. Over 140 students from across campus and across departments gathered together to …

Every year, Mojang holds the annual Minecraft convention, MINECON. MINECON is a convention where Minecraft players, software developers, content creators, and others in the Minecraft gaming world come together for a weekend of panels, activities, …

This post was originally published on OpenSource.com. More and more students are learning about the world of open source through video games. Games like FreeCiv let players build empires based on the history of human civilization while games like …

The dancer gracefully glides across the stage, with a slow but determined gait radiant with purpose. The movement is not her own, but neither is it forced. The sound uncoils itself as a rope and instructs the dancer forward, synchronizing her …

For many universities and colleges, there are many technical clubs that students can join. Some clubs focus on programming or using programming for collaborative projects. For anything involving code, clubs usually turn to GitHub. GitHub has become …

This post is published as part of a personal archival project of my poetry and other creative works. The actual publish date of this post is Friday, April 19th, 2024, but the publish date of the post reflects the original date of authorship. This …

This post was originally published on OpenSource.com. When people first think of “open source”, their mind probably first goes to code. Something technical that requires an intermediate understanding of computers or programming languages. But open …

This post is published as part of a personal archival project of my poetry and other creative works. The actual publish date of this post is Friday, April 19th, 2024, but the publish date of the post reflects the original date of authorship. This …

Over the past year, I’ve met incredible people from around the world doing great things in their local communities. At my university, the Women in Computing @ RIT program provides networking for students with faculty, staff, and alumni. They also …

This post was originally published on the Fedora Community Blog. https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/hackmit-meets-fedora/ HackMIT is the annual hackathon event organized by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, …

Earlier this month, I received the Rainbow badge in Fedora Badges. Rainbow is the fifth badge in a series for receiving “karma cookies” from others in IRC. Every time I receive a new badge in this series, I like to reflect back on the past and where …

Me (left) with Ryan Lerch (right) at Flock 2016 (https://flocktofedora.org/) Today, I am pleased to announce my new role as the Fedora Magazine editor-in-chief. After deciding to shift focus to other areas of the Fedora Project, I am receiving the …

Tomorrow, August 22, 2016, marks the end of the Google Summer of Code 2016 program. This year, I participated as a student for the Fedora Project working on my proposal, “Ansible and the Community (or automation improving innovation)”. You can read …

From August 2 - 5, the annual Fedora contributor conference, Flock, was held in the beautiful city of Kraków, Poland. Fedora contributors from all over the world attend for a week of talks, workshops, collaboration, fun, and community building (if …

This week wraps up for July and the last period of Google Summer of Code (GSoC 2016) is almost here. As the summer comes to a close, I’m working on the last steps for preparing my project for deployment into Fedora’s Ansible infrastructure. Once it …

This week and the last were busy, but I’ve made some more progress towards creating the last, idempotent product for managing WordPress installations in Fedora’s Infrastructure for GSoC 2016. The past two weeks had me mostly working on writing the …

Earlier this month, I received some of the most exciting news I have had all year. After much finger-crossing and (hopefully) hard work, I am traveling to Kraków, Poland, for the Fedora Project’s annual Flock conference. Flock is described by the …

Ever wondered what goes on behind the magic of Fedora Badges? How does a badge go from being a design to an earn-able entity? This short but handy guide breaks down the entire process for you. This post is adapted from a series of notes I took while …

This week, with an initial playbook for creating a WordPress installation created (albeit needing polish), my next focus was to look at the idea of creating a WordPress multi-site network. Creating a multi-site network would offer the benefits of …

This week is busy and continues to keep the pace of previous weeks. A lot has happened this week in the Fedora Project and I’ve taken on a few new tasks too. In addition to existing work on Google Summer of Code, Community Operations, Marketing, and …

This week is the Google Summer of Code 2016 midterm evaluation week. Over the past month since the program started, I’ve learned more about the technology I’m working with, implementing it within my infrastructure, and moving closer to completing my …

As part of my Google Summer of Code project proposal for the Fedora Project, I’ve spent a lot of time learning about the ins and outs of Ansible. Ansible is a handy task and configuration automation utility. In the Fedora Project, Ansible is used …

This post is published as part of a personal archival project of my poetry and other creative works. The actual publish date of this post is Thursday, April 2nd, 2020, but the publish date of the post reflects the original date of authorship. This …

The time is nearing 2:00am on a Wednesday morning. Outside is dark, a swirling mist of rain and blurred lights. As I stare out the window, the white light from my laptop illuminates my face. Around me, a room that is as quiet as the deserted roads …

This summer, I’m excited to say I will be trying on a new pair of socks for size. Bad puns aside, I am actually enormously excited to announce that I am participating in this year’s Google Summer of Code program for the Fedora Project. If you are …

Over the weekend of April 9th - 10th, the Fedora Project Ambassadors of North America attended the Bitcamp 2016 hackathon at the University of Maryland. But what is Bitcamp? The organizers describe it as the following. Bitcamp is a place for …

On the night of April 15th, 2016, I officially became a hacker. Ever wonder what being a hacker is all about? Wonder no more. How to be hacker 🔗 You may ask yourself, how does one become a hacker? How do you become 1337? The answer might be simpler …

Last month at the Rochester Institute of Technology, BrickHack 2016 came to a close. BrickHack is an annual hackathon organized by students at RIT. Close to 300 people attend every year. This year was BrickHack’s second event. BrickHack 2016 and …

In the Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development (HFOSS) course at the Rochester Institute of Technology, quizzes are in the form of blog posts submitted during the class period. The room stays quiet, but it is an open IRC quiz, so many …

What is this? 🔗 This post serves as the project proposal for me and my team’s Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development “Final Project”. In this project proposal, we take a look at the game idea we are looking at completing for this …

The Pizzelle badge (https://badges.fedoraproject.org/badge/pizzelle-cookie-iv), in all of its crumbly, delicious awesomeness Today, I received the Pizzelle badge in Fedora Badges. I was awarded with Pizzelle after a short “karma storm” in the EMEA …

For the Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development (HFOSS) course at the Rochester Institute of Technology, we were tasked with the Community Architecture (CommArch) project. For this project, we were tasked with analyzing an open source …

Conference goers attend the FOSDEM conference in Brussels, Belgium. Yesterday, Fedora contributor and CommOps team member Bee Padalkar published an article on her blog about measuring the impact of Fedora’s participation at the FOSDEM conference in …

Two weekends ago, from February 27th to the 28th, the Women in Computing program at the Rochester Institute of Technology hosted their third annual WiCHacks hackathon. WiCHacks is a women-only hackathon open to university students and high school …

In the Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development (HFOSS) course at the Rochester Institute of Technology, quizzes are in the form of blog posts submitted during the class period. The room stays quiet, but it is an open IRC quiz, so many …

What is this? 🔗 This post serves as the project proposal for me and my team’s Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development “Community Architecture” project (shortened to CommArch)! In this project proposal, we take a preliminary look at the …

I originally began drafting this post 900 miles away from my current location. It was an hour until the New Year and I was trying to put together a rough outline of the things that made 2015 such an incredible year for me. However, for reasons I …

The XO laptop deployed by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program For the next homework assignment in my Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development (HFOSS) course, we were tasked with running a smoke test of the XO laptops we are …

This article is a further addition to the series of blog posts for my Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development course at RIT. For this week’s homework, we are tasked with finding an open source project, looking at known bugs or finding …

Open-source licensing: how does it affect your work? Today’s entry to the blog is sourced from a thread that I posted on the SpigotMC Forums. If you wish to join in the discussion about this, feel free to chime in on the thread or leave a comment on …

Steve Weber This blog post is part of an assignment for my Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development course at the Rochester Institute of Technology. For this assignment, we are tasked with reading Chapter 3 of Steve Weber’s “The …

FOSS @ MAGIC (http://magic.rit.edu/foss/), the program that hosts the FOSS minor This past year, I enrolled as a student at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. For me, this is quite a distance from my hometown just outside of …

This article is part of an ongoing series about how to earn specific Fedora badges. Learn more about the Speak Up! badge! “Speak Up!”: What is it? 🔗 \"Participated in an IRC meeting.\" The Speak Up! badge is categorized as a “Community Badge” and is …

This article is part of an ongoing series about how to earn specific Fedora badges. Learn more about the Vacation badge! “Vacation”: What is it? 🔗 \"Sip the lemonade away (You deserve it for remembering your responsibility)!\" The Vacation badge is …

Edit: I haven’t tried this in a while, but this is one of my most popular blog posts. If you try this and it works, please consider leaving a comment and let me know if anything can be improved. Thanks! Thanks to the power of LetsEncrypt, I recently …

This article is part of an ongoing series about how to earn specific Fedora badges. Learn more about the Science badge! “Science”: What is it? 🔗 \"You completed a run of the kernel regression test suite\" The Science badge is categorized as a …

The Last.fm logo. Source: Xfdr (http://www.xfdrmag.net/ive-had-the-last-of-this-why-the-new-last-fm-layout-sucks/) Last.fm is a web service for users to track and share their music tastes with friends in an easy, simple way. A single play of a song …

Fedora Elections are the time to impact the Project. Source: christoph-wickert.de (http://www.christoph-wickert.de/blog/2012/12/07/fedora-elections-dont-forget-to-vote/) Today, the Fedora Elections for December 2015 officially began at 00:00 UTC. …

“Extra! Extra!”: What is it? 🔗 You contributed to Fedora Magazine (fedoramagazine.org (https://fedoramagazine.org/)) The Extra! Extra! badge is categorized as a “Content Badge” and is defined in this Trac ticket. But what’s the real scoop behind the …

Mumble is back in Fedora 🔗 Mumble, a free and open-source VoIP program The popular Voice Over IP (VoIP) program, Mumble, is being repackaged again for Fedora 22 and 23. Fedora contributor fedpop unretired the package from the Fedora Package Database …

Netflix and Linux may not agree on the desktop, but they do in the cloud. Source: blockless.com (https://blog.blockless.com/how-to-switch-to-linux-without-losing-your-netflix-access/) Netflix, Linux, and 60 seconds 🔗 While they have their …

Telegraphist: What is it? 🔗 You mapped an upstream project to a Fedora package on release-monitoring.org (https://release-monitoring.org/) The Telegraphist badge is categorized as a “Quality [Assurance] Badge” and is defined in this Trac ticket. But …

Parselmouth: What is it? 🔗 \"You can speak Python and helped with porting stuff to Python 3.\" The Parselmouth badge is categorized as a “Miscellaneous Badge” and was defined in this Trac ticket. But what’s the real scoop behind the Parselmouth …

What is this?! 🔗 What is this? What is this?! Introducing a new series being published weekly on my blog - “Gotta Badge ‘Em All!” This series aims to introduce readers to the hundreds of Fedora badges that members of the Fedora community can earn. …

I’m trying to get into better habits about blogging on a semi-regular basis, as it’s a good way for me to recap about everything going on around me and to help remember how I’m spending my time. CommOps in Retrospect 🔗 Over the past few months, I …

Open Source User 🔗 I am a user of open source software. My earliest experiences with open source software was with the Minecraft server software Bukkit as a kid, when I was attempting to make a cool game server for friends. I started using Fedora in …

Communication is a pivotal aspect of our everyday lives, both in the workplace and in our personal lives. In the twenty-first century, there are more ways available to communicate than ever before thanks to the Internet. Although, as hard as it is to …

Flock to Fedora 2015 was a conference full of incredible people with incredible ideas, and it was a tough decision to decide which sessions to attend of all the good options. One that caught my eye was the “When is the year of the Linux desktop?” …

These past few weeks have been particularly exciting for me as I become more involved in the world of free and open-source software. For a long time, I’ve sat and idled in the various realms of the Fedora community, and I’ve sat on the sidelines …