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 sustainable future for TeleIRC.

Download TeleIRC v2.0.0 now! 🔗

If you want to skip the text and get to the software, head to the GitHub v2.0.0 release for more info. If you want the story behind this release, read on!

Eight months later… 🔗

The conversation started in a university hallway after the first RIT Linux Users Group meeting in the Fall 2019 semester. Together, Tim Zabel, Nicholas Jones, and Justin Wheeler set out to rewrite TeleIRC from NodeJS to Go. This was done to address a growing backlog of challenging feature requests on TeleIRC, but also a way for us to gain more experience working with Go. Along the way, we also ended up facilitating an agile-inspired software release process adapted for open source.

So, what happened in the eight months after the first conversation? The team meet for weekly meetings each Saturday afternoon (at first in-person, later virtually), two new core contributors joined the team, and some drive-by contributors provided feedback andf added code to the new release. There were charts, whiteboards and dry-erase markers, and lots of Blue Jeans video calls. But after all this time, we made it to release day!

Thank you amazing volunteer contributors! 🔗

This endeavor was a shared commitment by our volunteer committer team. All five of the volunteer core maintainers spread patience and sustained effort over time. At the end, we made something really cool to show for this work.

A huge thanks to our core maintainers and all current and past contributors to TeleIRC. You have all contributed to the success (and motivation!) for this project. It is fun to work on cool projects with friends!

A proper shout-out goes to the core maintainers who joined the team over the last eight months working on this release:

• Kennedy Kong
• Kevin Assogba
• Nicholas Jones
• Tim Zabel

“I found a bug in TeleIRC v2.0.0!” 🔗

If you run into a problem, check out the TeleIRC documentation and open an issue if it does not answer your questions.

Get in touch! 🔗

If you have questions, get in touch with the developer community. You can find us on Telegram and on IRC (#rit-lug-teleirc on chat.freenode.net).

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 you through the major changes and differences for TeleIRC v2.0.0. Read on for the highlight reel of this release.

Full rewrite to Go 🔗

TeleIRC v2.0.0 is a complete and total rewrite. With the lessons learned and best practices of the NodeJS v1.x.x releases under our belt, the team set out in September 2019 to rewrite TeleIRC in Go. The rewrite was motivated by fun and personal interest, but it was also intended to make the future of TeleIRC more sustainable.

The rewrite makes TeleIRC simple, fast, and lightweight. TeleIRC is unique from other chat bridge software, which usually focus on extensive configuration and supporting many chat platforms.

Additionally, the success criteria in order to release was feature parity with v1.x.x releases. The team accomplished this almost completely, with one exception. TeleIRC v2.0.0 does not include Imgur image upload for IRC; however, a v2.1.0 feature release will include Imgur support.

To summarize, TeleIRC v2.0.0 is written to be a simple and excellent Telegram <=> IRC bridge. No more, no less.

Run TeleIRC v2.0.0 as a compiled binary 🔗

The new release is available as a standalone 8 MB binary. The only deployment assets needed are the binary and a config file. Other pathways, including build from source and Ansible Roles, are also available.

This is a departure from TeleIRC v1.x.x releases, which required a NodeJS run-time and installing project dependencies. TeleIRC v2.0.0 does not require a Go run-time on the host.

Improved TeleIRC v2.0.0 documentation 🔗

End user feedback shaped and improved documentation during development.

Thanks to feedback collected during the pre-release process, the documentation is simplified and written to be easy to understand. We hope you find the TeleIRC Quick Start page a helpful introduction to getting TeleIRC running in little time.

Future roadmap for containers 🔗

Because of v2.0.0 design decisions, there is a planned future for container and container orchestration use cases. At release time, a Dockerfile is available, but it is not yet tested or documented.

In future releases, the TeleIRC Team will continue to test the container image and iron out bugs. Future deployment assets and documentation will offer pathways to run TeleIRC in Kubernetes or OpenShift v4.x.x.

Article format inspired by Ryan Lerch’s format for “What’s new in Fedora Workstation”.

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 teaches the language of design to IT students. For an introductory exercise in the class, students are tasked to visualize any set of data they desire. Students David Kim, Jathan Anandham, Justin Wheeler, and Scott Tinker used the MusicBrainz database to look at how five different Queen songs went mainstream in different ways.

Five factors of Queen 🔗

Our mini data science experiment decided to look at five unique data points available to us via MusicBrainz Works:

• Number of recorded covers
• Number of artists who covered a song
• Release year
• Year of last recorded cover
• Time elapsed between release year and year of last recorded cover

Originally, we looked at songs from different artists, but decided to look at five recordings from the same artist. With Queen being a notoriously famous band, there were several data points to work with in terms of how often a song was covered.

Making sense of the data 🔗

A few explanations are necessary for some of the data, especially the difference in number of covers and number of artists. Don’t Stop Me Now, Fat Bottomed Girls, and We Will Rock You had the same number of recorded covers as number of artists who have covered the song. Why were Another One Bites the Dust and Bohemian Rhapsody different?

As it turns out, Another One Bites the Dust had more covers than the number of artists who have covered the song. This happens because some artists have covered the song twice (e.g. once on a studio release and another on a live recording release). On the other hand, Bohemian Rhapsody had more artists covering it than number of covers because some recordings featured multiple artists on the same cover (e.g. the 1992 live performance with Elton John and Axl Rose).

The data opens many interesting questions. Why have some songs persisted longer than others (in terms of recent covers)? Have these songs impacted culture and society in different ways? How have they permeated culture? Is there geographical bias in the data?

This exercise was an exploratory assignment, but we had fun visualizing it and ended up learning an interesting pattern in music data.

Check out the presentation and paper 🔗

If you’re interested for the full details, the slides and a short paper about the presentation are available online. They provide deeper context for the research and the visualization details based on different design concepts.

You can see what else David Kim, Jathan Anandham, Justin Wheeler, and Scott Tinker are up to on LinkedIn. Thanks for tuning in to this adventure into music data analysis, powered by MusicBrainz!

Photo by Matthias Wagner on Unsplash.

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, and instead of only using the software, they also support projects financially or with developers. Facebook’s open source program encourages others in Facebook to release their code as open source. They also work and engage with the community to support the projects too.

Christine Abernathy, a Facebook developer advocate and member of the open source team, visited the Rochester Institute of Technology on November 15, 2017. She gave the November edition of the FOSS Talks speaker series. Her talk explained how Facebook approaches open source and why it’s an important part of the work they do.

Facebook and open source 🔗

Abernathy explained that open source plays a fundamental role in Facebook’s mission to create community and bring the world closer together. The ideological match was a motivational reason for Facebook’s participation in open source.

Additionally, Facebook has unique problems and challenges to solve for their infrastructure and development. Open source provides a platform to share those challenges and help others avoid similar mistakes.

Open source also provided a way to accelerate innovation and create better software. It helped engineering teams produce better software and work more transparently. Today, Facebook’s 443 projects on GitHub have 122,000 forks, 292,000 commits, and 732,000 followers.

Lessons learned 🔗

Abernathy emphasized that Facebook has learned many lessons from the open source community and hopes to learn many more. She identified the three most important lessons that Facebook took from open source:

1. Share what’s useful
2. Highlight your heroes
3. Fix common pain points

Christine Abernathy visited RIT as part of the FOSS Talks speaker series. Every month, a guest speaker from the open source world shares wisdom, insight, and advice about the open source world with students interested in free and open source software. The FOSS @ MAGIC community is thankful to have Abernathy attend as a speaker!

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 post continues a habit I started last year with my 2015 Year in Review. One thing I discover nearly every day is that I’m always learning new things from various people and circumstances. Even though 2017 is already getting started, I want to reflect back on some of these experiences and opportunities of the past year.

Preface 🔗

When I started writing this in January, I read freenode’s “Happy New Year!” announcement. Even though their recollection of the year began as a negative reflection, the freenode team did not fail to find some of the positives of this year as well. The attitude reflected in their blog post is reflective of the attitude of many others today. 2016 has brought more than its share of sadness, fear, and a bleak unknown, but the colors of radiance, happiness, and hope have not faded either. Even though some of us celebrated the end of 2016 and its tragedies, two thoughts stay in my mind.

One, it is fundamentally important for all of us to stay vigilant and aware of what is happening in the world around us. The changing political atmosphere of the world has brought a shroud of unknowing, and the changing of a number does not and will not signify the end of these doubts and fears. 2017 brings its own series of unexpected events. I don’t consider this a negative, but in order for it not to become a negative, we must constantly remain active and aware.

Secondly, despite the more bleak moments of this year, there has never been a more important time to embrace the positives of the past year. For every hardship faced, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Love is all around us and sometimes where we least expect it. Spend extra time this new year remembering the things that brought you happiness in the past year. Hold them close, but share that light of happiness with others too. You might not know how much it’s needed.

First year of university: complete! 🔗

Many things changed since I decided to pack up my life and go to a school a thousand miles away from my hometown. In May, I officially finished my first year at the Rochester Institute of Technology, finishing the full year on dean’s list. Even though it was only a single year, the changes from my decision to make the move are incomparable. Rochester exposed me to amazing, brilliant people. I’m connected to organizations and groups based on my interests like I never imagined. My courses are challenging, but interesting. If there is anything I am appreciative of in 2016, it is for the opportunities that have presented themselves to me in Rochester.

Adventures into FOSS@MAGIC 🔗

My involvement with the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community at RIT has grown exponentially since I began participating in 2015. I took my first course in the FOSS minor, Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development in spring 2016. In the following fall 2016 semester, I became the teaching assistant for the course. I helped show our community’s projects at Imagine RIT. I helped carry the RIT FOSS flag in California (more on that later). The FOSS@MAGIC initiative was an influencing factor for my decision to attend RIT and continues to play an impact in my life as a student.

I eagerly look forward to future opportunities for the FOSS projects and initiatives at RIT to grow and expand. Bringing open source into more students’ hands excites me!

I <3 WiC 🔗

With a new schedule, the fall 2016 semester marked the beginning of my active involvement with the Women in Computing (WiC) program at RIT, as part of the Allies committee. Together with other members of the RIT community, we work together to find issues in our community, discuss them and share experiences, and find ways to grow the WiC mission: to promote the success and advancement of women in their academic and professional careers.

Also, hey! If you’re a female high school or university student in the Rochester area (or willing to do some travel), you should seriously check this out!

Google Summer of Code 🔗

Google Summer of Code, abbreviated to GSoC, is an annual program run by Google every year. Google works with open source projects to offer stipends for them to pay students to work on projects over the summer. In a last-minute decision to apply, I was accepted as a contributing student to the Fedora Project. My proposal was to work within the Fedora Infrastructure team to help automate the WordPress platforms with Ansible. My mentor, Patrick Uiterwijk, provided much of the motivation for the proposal and worked with me throughout the summer as I began learning Ansible for the first time. Over the course of the summer, my learned knowledge began to turn into practical experience.

It would be unfair for a reflection to count successes but not failures. GSoC was one of the most challenging and stressful activities I’ve ever participated in. It was a complete learning experience for me. One area I noted that I needed to improve on was communication. My failing point was not regularly communicating what I was working through or stuck on with my mentor and the rest of the Fedora GSoC community. GSoC taught me the value of asking questions often when you’re stuck, especially in an online contribution format.

On the positive side, GSoC helped formally introduce me to Ansible, and to a lesser extent, the value of automation in operations work. My work in GSoC helped enable me to become a sponsored sysadmin of Fedora, where I mostly focus my time contributing to the Badges site. Additionally, my experience in GSoC helped me when interviewing for summer internships (also more on this later).

Google Summer of Code came with many ups and downs. But I made it and passed the program. I’m happy and fortunate to have received this opportunity from the Fedora Project and Google. I learned several valuable lessons that have and will impact going forward into my career. I look forward to participating either as a mentor or organizer for GSoC 2017 with the Fedora Project this year.

Flock 2016 🔗

Towards the end of summer, in the beginning of August, I was accepted as a speaker to the annual Fedora Project contributor conference, Flock. As a speaker, my travel and accommodation were sponsored to the event venue in Kraków, Poland.

Months after Flock, I am still incredibly grateful for receiving the opportunity to attend the conference. I am appreciative and thankful to Red Hat for helping cover my costs to attend, which is something I would never be able to do on my own. Outside of the real work and productivity that happened during the conference, I am happy to have mapped names to faces. I met incredible people from all corners of the world and have made new lifelong friends (who I was fortunate to see again in 2017)! Flock introduced me in-person to the diverse and brilliant community behind the Fedora Project. It is an experience that will stay with me forever.

To read a more in-depth analysis of my time in Poland, you can read my full write-up of Flock 2016.

Maryland (Bitcamp), Massachusetts (HackMIT), California (MINECON) 🔗

2016 provided me the opportunity to explore various parts of my country. Throughout the year, I attended various conferences to represent the Fedora Project, the SpigotMC project, and the RIT open source community.

There are three distinct events that stand out in my memory. For the first time, I visited the University of Maryland for Bitcamp as a Fedora Ambassador. It also provided me an opportunity to see my nation’s capitol for the first time. I also visited Boston for the first time this year as well for HackMIT, MIT’s annual hackathon event. I also participated as a Fedora Ambassador and met brilliant students from around the country (and even the world, with one student I met flying in from India for the weekend).

Lastly, I also took my first journey to the US west coast for MINECON 2016, the annual Minecraft convention. I attended as a staff member of the SpigotMC project and a representative of the open source community at RIT.

All three of these events have their own event reports to go with them. More info and plenty of pictures are in the full reports.

• Going to Bitcamp 2016
• HackMIT meets Fedora
• SpigotMC goes to California for MINECON

Vermont 2016 with Matt 🔗

Some trips happen without prior arrangements and planning. Sometimes, the best memories are made by not saying no. I remember the phone call with one of my closest friends, Matt Coutu, at some point in October. On a sudden whim, we planned my first visit to Vermont to visit him. Some of the things he told me to expect made me excited to explore Vermont! And then in the pre-dawn hours of November 4th, I made the trek out to Vermont to see him.

Instantly when crossing over the state border, I knew this was one of the most beautiful states I ever visited. During the weekend, the two of us did things that I think only the two of us would enjoy. We climbed a snowy mountain to reach an abandoned fire watchtower, where we endured a mini blizzard. We walked through a city without a specific destination in mind, but to go wherever the moment took us.

We visited a quiet dirt road that led to a meditation house and cavern maintained by monks, where we meditated and drank in the experience. I wouldn’t classify the trip has a high-energy or engaging trip, but for me, it was one of the most enjoyable trips I’ve embarked on yet. There are many things that I still hold on to from that weekend for remembering or reflecting back on.

A big shout-out to Matt for always supporting me with everything I do and always being there when we need each other.

Finally seeing NYC with Nolski 🔗

In no short time after the Vermont trip, I purchased tickets for my favorite band, El Ten Eleven, in New York City on November 12th. What turned into a one-day trip to see the band turned into an all-weekend trip to see the band, see New York City, and spend some time catching up with two of my favorite people, Mike Nolan (nolski) and Remy DeCausemaker (decause). During the weekend, I saw the World Trade Center memorial site for the first time, tried some amazing bagels, explored virtual reality in Samsung’s HQ, and got an exclusive inside look at the Giphy office.

This was my third time in New York City, but my first time to explore the city. Another shout-out goes to Mike for letting me crash on his couch and stealing his Sunday to walk through his metaphorical backyard. Hopefully it isn’t my last time to visit the city either!

Finalizing study abroad 🔗

At the end of 2016, I finalized a plan that was more than a year in the making. I applied and was accepted to study abroad at the Rochester Institute of Technology campus in Dubrovnik, Croatia. RIT has a few satellite campuses across the world: two in Croatia (Zagreb and Dubrovnik) and one in Dubai, UAE. In addition to being accepted, the university provided me a grant to further my education abroad. I am fortunate to have received this opportunity and can’t wait to spend the next few months of my life in Croatia. I am currently studying in Dubrovnik since January until the end of May.

During my time here, I will be taking 12 credit hours of courses. I am taking ISTE-230 (Introduction to Database and Data Modeling), ENGL-361 (Technical Writing), ENVS-150 (Ecology of the Dalmatian Coast), and lastly, FOOD-161 (Wines of the World). The last one was a fun one that I took for myself to try broadening my experiences while abroad.

Additionally, one of my personal goals for 2017 is to practice my photography skills. During my time abroad, I have created a gallery on 500px where I upload my top photos from every week. I welcome feedback and opinions about my pictures, and if you have criticism for how I can improve, I’d love to hear about it!

Accepting my first co-op 🔗

The last big break that I had in 2016 was accepting my first co-op position. Starting in June, I will be a Production Engineering Intern at Jump Trading, LLC. I started interviewing with Jump Trading in October and even had an on-site interview that brought me to their headquarters in Chicago at the beginning of December. After meeting the people and understanding the culture of the company, I am happy to accept a place at the team. I look forward to learning from some of the best in the industry and hope to contribute to some of the fascinating projects going on there.

From June until late August, I will be starting full-time at their Chicago office. If you are in the area or ever want to say hello, let me know and I’d be happy to grab coffee, once I figure out where all the best coffee shops in Chicago are!

In summary 🔗

2015 felt like a difficult year to follow, but 2016 exceeded my expectations. I acknowledge and I’m grateful for the opportunities this year presented to me. Most importantly, I am thankful for the people who have touched my life in a unique way. I met many new people and strengthened my friendships and bonds with many old faces too. All of the great things from the past year would not be possible without the influence, mentorship, guidance, friendship, and comradery these people have given me. My mission is to always pay it forward to others in any way that I can, so that others are able to experience the same opportunities (or better).

2017 is starting off hot and moving quickly, so I hope I can keep up! I can’t wait to see what this year brings and hope that I have the chance to meet more amazing people, and also meet many of my old friends again, wherever that may be.

Keep the FOSS flag high.

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 juniors and seniors. WiCHacks is a collaborative event bringing women together from across RIT, the country, and even the world (including attendees from Germany). The participants are in a supportive and empowering environment to build something awesome and present it to everyone else in the span of one weekend.

So why am I writing about WiCHacks? I signed up as a volunteer for the event this year. I would help with the setup, running the event, and packing it up. During my experience as a volunteer, I met some other awesome people, saw some really cool projects, and discovered an inviting and inclusive community on campus.

Opening the doors for WiCHacks 🔗

I was scheduled for the Saturday morning shift (8:00am - 1:30pm) and the Sunday morning shift (11:00am - 5:00pm). When I arrived on Saturday morning, the prep work was just beginning. The WiC team had breakfast pizza for all the volunteers, which was surprisingly delicious!

After grabbing a quick bite to eat, I began helping with setting up sponsor tables, moving equipment and tables around, and other miscellaneous tasks to prepare for the first influx of people, scheduled to arrive around 10:00am. After two hours of setting up, the hackers began streaming into the Golisano building and filling the atrium. As more and more people began to roll in, it was awesome to see how diverse and culturally unique the room was. There were people of all races, from all over the country and even the world, that had come here to join other women hackers in a weekend of creativity and fun. With such a wide palette of culture and ideas, I was anticipating to see some awesome creations in my time volunteering.

WiCHacks begins 🔗

After an opening keynote by the WiCHacks committee leader Susan Heilman kicking off the hackathon, the hackers were served a quick lunch before jumping into brainstorming and programming.

For those who had never programmed before, there was a special Newbie Track that aimed to help teach some of the basics. It helped give girls who didn’t know anything about programming a booster to also create something during the weekend.

GO HACKERS GO! There are 117 people listed as apart of teams already make sure you register your team #wichacks #soundoff

— WiCHacks @ RIT (@wichacks) February 27, 2016

After lunch, the hacking began! Teams could go into a room and have access to whiteboards, plenty of chairs, and outlets to charge devices. If needed, Major League Hacking also had a hardware lab where people could rent out laptops and other accessories during WiCHacks.

Accidentally discovering something awesome 🔗

After my volunteering shift ended, I had a homework assignment for one of my classes due at midnight. I had made plans many months ago after 7:00pm that night, so I had to work on the assignment that day to submit in time. I went up to an empty IST department lab, fired up my laptop, and began working. Suddenly, a team of five girls walked into the lab and began setting up close to the whiteboard near me.

I was curious after a while to hear what they were working on. I kept hearing the words “open source” and “FOSS” dropping, and it pulled my attention in. I learned that their idea was to make a social platform to help make it easier for girls to get involved with open source software. The plan was to collect an inventory of open source projects that need help and connect interested girls with project mentors to guide them in contributing.

There was overlap with some ideas I’ve had while working with the Fedora CommOps team towards boosting #WomenInComputing in Fedora’s community. I was anticipating hearing out their idea and seeing what they would come up with!

Their project would be known as OpenCircle. After 6:45pm rolled around, I started packing up my gear to head out for the evening. The OpenCircle team was busy hacking away on laptops or making slight alterations to the whiteboard mock designs they had drawn. It was clear that the creativity and motivation were running high when I left.

I was envious that I wasn’t there for the rest of the evening. Later on that night, Insomnia Cookies delivered to the hackathon. There was also a spontaneous dance party in the atrium of Golisano. Next year, I’ll have to make sure I’m able to stay for the entire night!

What's better than an impromptu dance party at @wichacks? @RITWIC #wichacks16 pic.twitter.com/NvvTZC4scO

— Major League Hacking (MLH) (@MLHacks) February 28, 2016

Closing out WiCHacks 2016

After a final push by hackers throughout the night, hacking ended at 12:00pm the next day. After a lunch break, the hackers returned to the auditorium in time  to present their projects. Before the deadline, all the teams added their projects to the WiCHacks DevPost. You can also find the list of projects submitted over the weekend there.

After helping with some other closing work, I wanted to listen to some of the presentations given by the teams. Some people designed some really cool apps, like Pink Planet, Resumatch (a play on Tinder but with resumes), and the ever creative Loocator.

However, the OpenCircle team was the presentation I was looking forward to the most. While they noted that they hadn’t had the time to demo it as completely as they wanted, the idea behind their product was there and it was pretty solid as a prototype.

After the weekend was over, I submitted a simple pull request and filed two issues against the project. I’m anticipating any future development the OpenCircle team collaborates on and seeing where their idea goes!

WiCHacks 2016: In retrospect 🔗

I was slightly nervous when registering as a WiCHacks volunteer as I had no idea what to expect or the type of community that it would attract. However, after spending time with the volunteers, hackers, organizers, and mentors, it was clear that the environment was inclusive, welcoming, and receptive to all people.

WiCHacks is a well-organized, powerfully motivating event and something more and more people should look into checking out on the RIT campus each year. WiCHacks empowers women interested in computer science to do something awesome in the presence of people who want to see you succeed. The mentorship and leadership at WiCHacks definitely supports this.

Great job to the WiC team for organizing this, and I look forward to participating as a volunteer again next year!