Category: Articles
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What you can do for Ukraine
The invasion of Ukraine affects everyone. There are people reading this who have been deeply affected on a very personal level, and people who are removed, who see it on the news but simply can’t relate to what others are going through. There are people reading this who are fueled by what is happening, driven…
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SMEs, sustainability, and digitalisation
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/docsroom/documents/46062 page 71 onwards The European Commission (EC) released their ‘ANNUAL REPORT ON EUROPEAN SMEs 2020/2021’ in July. I got my hands on it for work and found it very interesting. In the spirit of openness I thought it might also be interesting for you. This is a write up of the sections regarding…
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BBC Wales climate change communication criticism
The idea that ‘Wales is lagging significantly behind the rest of the UK’ in climate change is nonsense. And the headline ‘Wales has a “duty” (to address climate change) due to coal mining history’ is only as true as the fact that all highly polluting nations have a duty to address climate change. I only…
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Introducing South Pole
I’ve been at South Pole for almost two months now, so I’m overdue writing about it. It’s been a whirlwind; drinking from the firehose onboarding, and making decisions at the same time. But it’s been fun. Maybe I’ll talk more about life at South Pole another time but for now I want to talk about…
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Take time off
I was giving my little brother some advice that I’ve been given and have given out many times before. Take a break. You should always know when your next break is and you should always take it. “Burn-out” is almost as much of a buzz word as ‘big data’ or ‘crypto’ or ‘block chain’. It’s…
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Leaving Canonical
Almost exactly two years ago I started my first job after graduating from University. I turned 22 and became a Product Manager in the space of 2 months. Two facts that I have kept under wraps as much as possible. I started as the Product Manager for robotics. The number of Products or initiatives I…
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Scenius
Otherwise known as communal genius. This is a new term that I came across in Austin Kleon’s book “Show your work!”. I don’t read a lot of non-fiction but I think it’s great and will likely write about it again, but what stuck with me most was this word “scenius”. It’s not technically a real…
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UbuntuOnAir update
It’s been a couple of months since we restarted UbuntuOnAir. We had a few ideas, and lots of aspirations, but we wanted to be realistic and work our way up. You can read about why we brought it back and why we didn’t use the more mainstream channel “Celebrate Ubuntu” elsewhere. Here I talk about…
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Why businesses should build communities
The value of an active community can not be understated. There are countless examples throughout history of communities being amazing. Here I talk specifically about the value a community can bring to businesses. Recently I noticed a number of organisations that I think would benefit from investing in building a community, and upon investigating, I…
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Ubuntu Documentation Issues
Over the lifetime of the Ubuntu project documentation has been written by thousands of people. From technical specifications, to meeting minutes, to translations in dozens of languages. But with such extensive contribution it has become fragmented, disjointed, and confusing to parse, even for the most diligent community members. I’m here to give the state of…
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Open source principles in the pandemic
Dr Yang Zhang’s lab does genome structure sequence modelling and analysis. Over the past year and a half they have been involved in generating new knowledge of proteins encoded by the genome SARS-CoV-2, also known COVID-19. Zhang lab, along with numerous other organisations have been using what we call ‘Open Source Principles’ to improve, to…
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My Linux App Summit (LAS) presentation
The linux app summit is a global event to learn, collaborate, and talk about the Linux application ecosystem. I was lucky enough to have my presentation accepted onto the LAS 2021 slate. I knew going in that I would be one of the least savvy people in the room. But being new and not being…
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UbuntuOnAir
We (the Ubuntu Community team) are delighted to invite you to the UbuntuOnAir YouTube and Twitch channels! Woo. These particular air waves will hold community focused Indabas, office hours, highly requested community interviews and will deliver Ubuntu/Open Source related workshops, host special events and, hopefully, yes, play games. You can go over there right now…
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What is virtualisation? The basics
Virtualisation plays a huge role in almost all of today’s fastest-growing software-based industries. It is the foundation for most cloud computing, the go-to methodology for cross-platform development, and has made its way all the way to ‘the edge’; the eponymous IoT. This article is the first in a series where we explain what virtualisation is…
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Learning Linux
Five years ago I barely knew what Linux was. I knew it was a thing and I think I knew it was an operating system, but that was about it. Two years ago I used Linux knowingly for the first time during a University course for OpenFOAM. A little over a year and a half…
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Why I quit my job during the pandemic.
I made peace with the fact that I would resign without something new lined up. I knew it was a risky move. I knew my chances of finding something else were slim (I’d been looking for long enough). And I knew the likelihood of being hired by a company that I believed in the way…
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Where to start with RISC-V
How to get started, where to contribute, and what to do next RISC-V made the news recently when BeagleBoard.org revealed the BeagleV (Beagle Five) SBC (single board computer). The first affordable, highly available SBC that uses the RISC-V architecture. The board isn’t yet commercially available but you can register to be considered for the first…
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How to Read More Than 50 Books a year
Only read what you want to read. What you’re interested in. This might sound easy, but it’s not, or you would have done it already. But it is simple. These are the key rules I follow to read all the books I want to read in a year. They’re all important, so in no particular…
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Do I Have to Be Technical to Be a Product Manager?
Not necessarily. That’s the wrong question. The right question is: What do I need to be a good product manager? The answer to this question is much more helpful, more widely agreed upon, and actually actionable. Q: What do I need to be a good product manager? A: Learn the story of the product. You…
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Marketplace Ethics: App Stores and Amazon
There are three types of people in a marketplace; customers, suppliers and the venue. The venue hosts the suppliers, the suppliers get to sell their products, and the customers get what they want. Simple. It works because of a fundamental amount of trust placed on the venue. Customers get to browse more products, trusting that…
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Arm: Apple and NVIDIA
This is an article about Arm, the latest in Apple’s Arm relationship, NVIDIA’s Arm acquisition and thoughts about what’s going to happen next. Level select: What is ‘Arm’ exactly? Okay, but why should I care? Fair play. So what’s going on? Apple’s Arm Macs NVIDIA acquisition Interesting, what does this mean? What is ‘Arm’ exactly?…
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Surgical robotics success
Make solutions to problems, not what sounds cool … Robotics is a type of technology, not a product. Robots as products could be a good idea if the problem they are solving, the services they provide, truly warrant them. They usually won’t. This article by David Cox for WIRED quite nicely tells the story of…
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Building a Raspberry Pi cluster with MicroK8s
The tutorial for building a Raspberry Pi cluster with MicroK8s is here. This blog is not a tutorial. This blog aims to answer; why? Why would you build a Raspberry Pi cluster with MicroK8s? Here we go a little deeper to understand the hype around Kubernetes, the uses of cluster computing and the capabilities of…
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Why upgrade from Windows 7
Windows 7 reaches end of life (EOL) tomorrow, January 14th, 2020. If you continue using Windows 7 after that you are inviting hackers to take your data. EOL means that Windows 7 will stop receiving any security updates, and dedicated tech support will stop. Anything still running Windows 7 tomorrow, could potentially become a security…
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How I made my first snap
Snaps are a way for you to package your software so it is easy to install on Linux. I figured, as a new member of the advocacy team at Canonical, I better start snappin’. I learnt how to do this using the snapcraft documentation, and a couple of blog posts by Alan Pope (popey). If…
Open cognition 