IRAF (Re: [OT]: Sort-of. What's the best way to contribute)
On Thursday 17 October 2002 00:10, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my case, I'm trying to wed my rediscovered interest in astronomy to my desire to push myself in the realm of programming/Linux/Unix. Just making sure you are aware that IRAF is packaged in Debian... :-) IRAF is _the_ data reduction software in astronomy, everyone is using it. I found it to be in contrib, but I really don't understand why, because I thought it was under a BSD-style license, and I can't remember it depending on non-free software. Hm, I found a point in the FAQ: http://iraf.noao.edu/iraf/web/faq/FAQsec01.html#1008 Anyway, integrating IRAF with more popular astronomy software would be absolutely great. I think many advanced amateur astronomers would appreciate that. Really, I find it weird that companies such as Meade has not yet freed their software. They're making a living from hardware and not software, and besides, they are releasing some as freeware. Go figure. At the same time, there exists tons of free software for telescope control and data reduction, also developed specifically for Meade telescopes, developed by professional astronomers. Well, I guess dropping them a note about it is a good idea. Many astronomers use IRAF with IDL, but IMNSHO IDL sucks bad, so the only reason anybody would use that is the number of lines of code for it. I'd really like to see IRAF working nicely with R, which is free software (and nicely packaged . Doing that would be a huge undertaking, though. But I think many professional astronomers would appreciate it eventually... :-) Best, Kjetil (astrophysicist) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[OT]: Sort-of. What's the best way to contribute
Since my posts usually get ignored we'll see what happens with this one. :-) Since I don't have a great deal of money yet (When I win the lottery I promise to send big checks to Debian and Samba!! :-) ) what is the best way to contribute to the open source community? I've poked around on sourceforge to see if I could lend a hand but many of the projects that I found are probably a little over my head at this juncture. The initiative here is two-fold. One is selfish. I figure by contributing that I can continue to expand my knowledge. The other being that I find the whole open source community fascinating and I would really like to contribute. Unfortunately, at this point I am a newbie so I may be jumping the gun here a little but I like to dive in. I would really like to dive into the programming aspect (specifically in C) but don't have a great deal of C experience either. I have done quite a bit in VB, VBScript, JavaScript, a little RPG, Fortran, Cobol and so forth but not much in the C realm. I also hope it would help me on my road to Linuxdom. We don't run Linux boxes here at work ( though I am trying to set up a HylaFax server on Debian ) so I don't get a great deal of exposure there, and there is only so much to do on a home machine and I don't get much out of reading, I like to lay my hands on things and tear them apart to learn. My apologies for the rambling but any advice would be appreciated!! Thank you, Barry deFreese NTS Technology Services Manager Nike Team Sports (949)-616-4005 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Technology doesn't make you less stupid; it just makes you stupid faster. Jerry Gregoire - Former CIO at Dell -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]: Sort-of. What's the best way to contribute
On Wednesday 16 October 2002 14:58, deFreese, Barry wrote: Since my posts usually get ignored we'll see what happens with this one. :-) Since I don't have a great deal of money yet (When I win the lottery I promise to send big checks to Debian and Samba!! :-) ) what is the best way to contribute to the open source community? I've poked around on sourceforge to see if I could lend a hand but many of the projects that I found are probably a little over my head at this juncture. The initiative here is two-fold. 1) submit useful bug reports. 2) read existing bugs reports and offer help, suggestions, etc. Often developers are unable to reproduce a bug and it is much harder to solve a bug you can not see. 3) write tutorials, howtos, web docs, etc. Write a puff piece for freshmeat, slashdot, etc. 4) join mailing lists and help out those just starting. Read what other people say. You can learn a lot this way. 5) find a bug that is bothering you and try to fix it. Focus just on it. If it is obviously too hard of a bug see if you can find a smaller one. Alternatively try to add in a feature you are missing. Again start small. I always tell people on this list that a few helpful bug reports more than pays a new user's entrance fee into Debian. Same goes for upstream software. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]: Sort-of. What's the best way to contribute
Barry - I'm in a similar situation, I guess. I too have been hanging around Sourceforge, but in my case have hooked onto a couple of projects, even if I feel I can't contribute what I want to contribute, yet - in the hope that it will push me where I want to go. In my case, I'm trying to wed my rediscovered interest in astronomy to my desire to push myself in the realm of programming/Linux/Unix. Another thing that has helped has been landing a couple of freelance editing gigs. I've worked on books I probably shouldn't have been working on, but my luck has been good: they've been -really good books- and that has helped push me to get the knowledge I needed to be a good editor. Me, I need to have an 'ulterior motive' to help get me through the stuff that, on it's own, ain't that much fun to learn. That's what spurred me in learning human languages ... I'm hoping it will work with computer languages! Maybe not the best answer, but I didn't want to ignore your post! ;-) Glenn Becker On Wed, 16 Oct 2002, deFreese, Barry wrote: Since my posts usually get ignored we'll see what happens with this one. :-) Since I don't have a great deal of money yet (When I win the lottery I promise to send big checks to Debian and Samba!! :-) ) what is the best way to contribute to the open source community? I've poked around on sourceforge to see if I could lend a hand but many of the projects that I found are probably a little over my head at this juncture. The initiative here is two-fold. One is selfish. I figure by contributing that I can continue to expand my knowledge. The other being that I find the whole open source community fascinating and I would really like to contribute. Unfortunately, at this point I am a newbie so I may be jumping the gun here a little but I like to dive in. I would really like to dive into the programming aspect (specifically in C) but don't have a great deal of C experience either. I have done quite a bit in VB, VBScript, JavaScript, a little RPG, Fortran, Cobol and so forth but not much in the C realm. I also hope it would help me on my road to Linuxdom. We don't run Linux boxes here at work ( though I am trying to set up a HylaFax server on Debian ) so I don't get a great deal of exposure there, and there is only so much to do on a home machine and I don't get much out of reading, I like to lay my hands on things and tear them apart to learn. My apologies for the rambling but any advice would be appreciated!! Thank you, Barry deFreese NTS Technology Services Manager Nike Team Sports (949)-616-4005 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Technology doesn't make you less stupid; it just makes you stupid faster. Jerry Gregoire - Former CIO at Dell -- +-+ This is not a signature +-+ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]: Sort-of. What's the best way to 'contribute'
deFreese, Barry said: Since my posts usually get ignored we'll see what happens with this one. :-) Since I don't have a great deal of money yet (When I win the lottery I promise to send big checks to Debian and Samba!! :-) ) what is the best way to contribute to the open source community? I've poked around on sourceforge to see if I could lend a hand but many of the projects that I found are probably a little over my head at this juncture. The initiative here is two-fold. I think one of the best ways someone can contribute is to learn the system well, help others where you can, and promote it where you work and with people that you know(I don't mean buying linux bumper stickers and T-shirts). E.g. at my last company I started and almost all the production servers were redhat, nobody in the company knew debian the closest they came to it was corel linux(the company bought a division of corel which is why they knew it). A year later perhaps 75% of the production servers were debian, 2 years later about 90% were. Many people knew what it was, and a good deal of the developers started using it on their own systems(either at work or at home or both). I'm pretty happy with the results.. the company itself isn't in the best of shape, but at least the IT department contributed to a lot of cost cutting by using open source / free software(example: we avoided a $10k ticketing system by using WebRT, we avoided having to have a dedicated NT webserver to generate FlexLM/win32 license keys by using wine(and it is rock solid!)) And of course I learned a great deal in the process. If your up to it, contribute bug reports, patches, documentation but this isn't my thing. Another possiblity is to purchase(or encourage your company) to purchase commercial versions of (otherwise) open source software e.g. staroffice vs openoffice. Or donate to some of the various projects. don't rush though. there's no rush.. take your time and learn the system. nate -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]: Sort-of. What's the best way to contribute
On Wed, Oct 16, 2002 at 02:58:57PM -0700, deFreese, Barry wrote: Since my posts usually get ignored we'll see what happens with this one. :-) ...probably due to list volume or your posts being apolitical or not- related to beer. (muhahaha.) Since I don't have a great deal of money yet (When I win the lottery I promise to send big checks to Debian and Samba!! :-) ) what is the best way to contribute to the open source community? [snip] i've heard that a good way to give back is to reply to what you can on this list. that kind of in-kind donation can be invaluable. kthxbye. b. // -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [OT]: Sort-of. What's the best way to contribute
On Wed, 2002-10-16 at 18:10, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote: On Wednesday 16 October 2002 14:58, deFreese, Barry wrote: Since my posts usually get ignored we'll see what happens with this one. :-) Since I don't have a great deal of money yet (When I win the lottery I promise to send big checks to Debian and Samba!! :-) ) what is the best way to contribute to the open source community? I've poked around on sourceforge to see if I could lend a hand but many of the projects that I found are probably a little over my head at this juncture. The initiative here is two-fold. 1) submit useful bug reports. 2) read existing bugs reports and offer help, suggestions, etc. Often developers are unable to reproduce a bug and it is much harder to solve a bug you can not see. 3) write tutorials, howtos, web docs, etc. Write a puff piece for freshmeat, slashdot, etc. 4) join mailing lists and help out those just starting. Read what other people say. You can learn a lot this way. 5) find a bug that is bothering you and try to fix it. Focus just on it. If it is obviously too hard of a bug see if you can find a smaller one. Alternatively try to add in a feature you are missing. Again start small. I always tell people on this list that a few helpful bug reports more than pays a new user's entrance fee into Debian. Same goes for upstream software. I have to agree whole-heartedly - I've submitted a few bugs over the last while with most of the information involved in fixing the bug - a quick example being that when I installed blackhole-exim, it at first conflicted with xjokes - both had a /usr/bin/blackhole. When running Testing and Unstable, there will be hiccups arising, and if you stumble on them, checking to see if anyone else has reported it, and if not, offering your information at least gets things moving on making things work better. It is preferable to accomplish that now rather than waiting until a release freeze. -- Mark L. Kahnt, FLMI/M, ALHC, HIA, AIAA, ACS, MHP ML Kahnt New Markets Consulting Tel: (613) 531-8684 / (613) 539-0935 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: [OT]: Sort-of. What's the best way to contribute
On Thu, 2002-10-17 at 06:10, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote: On Wednesday 16 October 2002 14:58, deFreese, Barry wrote: Since my posts usually get ignored we'll see what happens with this one. :-) Since I don't have a great deal of money yet (When I win the lottery I promise to send big checks to Debian and Samba!! :-) ) what is the best way to contribute to the open source community? I've poked around on sourceforge to see if I could lend a hand but many of the projects that I found are probably a little over my head at this juncture. The initiative here is two-fold. 3) write tutorials, howtos, web docs, etc. Write a puff piece for freshmeat, slashdot, etc. Yes! More documentation. More! How about a How to setup Debian the way Barry deFreese likes it. HOWTO? Seriously. I've seen other docs like this, and although I don't follow them exactly, they invariably give me small ideas to incorporate. It's the thing that constantly amazes me about this whole chaotic development process and this 'Linux' thing that has been born. The fact that all these people are running this same OS, but all running it in completely different ways. We get so used to our own interface-streamlining, that we often forget that the guy running Linux down the road has it set up sooo totally differently, that we'd feel lost on their desktop. Its a different headscape to the closed source vendor OS (OSX, windows), where one size fits all. Without seeing how others operate within this chaos, how can we be open to new paradigms of user-machine interface? For me, recently I read that article on freshmeat (http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/581/) about running ratpoison alongside screen as an X/Shell combined desktop. This was a prime example. I tried ratpoison, didn't like it. So I gave Ion a try as a window manager. I'm running this ATM, really liking it, seeing the potential it holds, and seeing the problems it has, and thinking of features I would like. Now if I had more time, I might dive in and contribute, and perhaps I will in the next 6 months or so, but the point is, without that original article on freshmeat, I would still be a blackbox zealot with a closed mind thinking I had finally found my final resting place. As if there is such a thing... If you do write documentation, don't forget to attach a license. The FDL springs to mind. Kind Regards Crispin Wellington signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
