13:32:38 #startmeeting 13:32:38 Meeting started Tue Sep 13 13:32:38 2011 UTC. The chair is mchua. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 13:32:38 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 13:32:41 #chair heidie 13:32:41 Current chairs: heidie mchua 13:32:42 * heidie waves to dneary as well. Wonderfully helpful comments on TOS list 13:32:48 heidie: feel free to go ahead and chair your students if you like as well 13:32:52 * dneary waves back 13:33:00 * mchua waves to Biomech360 and CGodon 13:33:06 hi heidie 13:33:19 Sean, that you? 13:33:23 Hi mel! 13:33:32 Great to see you again! 13:33:44 mchua, not everyone has laptops, but I'm projecting the conversation on the screen 13:33:50 Okeydokey, worksforme. 13:33:54 :-) 13:34:08 mchua, not everyone has read your blog about differences between Cheese and Ekiga 13:34:12 dneary: we're doing http://blog.melchua.com/2011/09/12/cheese-vs-ekiga-for-software-engineering-class-responses-to-student-notes/ btw -- your *infinitely* greater amount of GNOME expertise may be uberhelpful. 13:34:23 heidie: Oh, that's totally cool, I posted it yesterday so I thought most people would probably not have seen it. 13:34:25 However, I've given an assigment for folks to read and blog on what they learned from your blog. 13:34:33 Oh gosh. Er... wow. 13:34:34 mchua, I'll do my best 13:34:37 dneary, Yes! Please chime in! 13:34:40 Hello Mel 13:34:41 :-) 13:35:18 OK, we're a go on this end Mel. 13:35:35 Right. You say some really good things on your post. 13:35:59 You folks caught some great things on your first look at those two projects, so writing the post was easy. :) 13:36:02 mchua, The Cheese guys are wonderfully helpful 13:36:27 oh -- dneary, we may want to introduce ourselves, I'm not sure if Heidi's students know who we are. 13:37:00 dneary: (also as a side note -- I tried explaining the Dreyfus model to FOSS hackers in 5 minutes, http://opensource.com/education/11/3/i-cant-bake-croissants-fable-project-documentation -- in case it's helpful.) 13:37:15 #link http://blog.melchua.com/2011/09/12/cheese-vs-ekiga-for-software-engineering-class-responses-to-student-notes/ 13:37:32 mchua, I'm not *really* here, but I'll try to be available if pinged 13:37:36 #topic Differences between Cheese and Ekiga projects 13:37:45 dneary: gotcha, thanks Dave! 13:38:09 mchua, we can assume that we all have a basic understanding of the two projets. 13:38:17 * mchua is Mel Chua, http://blog.melchua.com, Red Hat's resident education geek and also a grad student at Purdue University (where I'm sitting in my wee office right now.) 13:38:18 I'm Dave Neary, long-time GNOME contributor, not so much developer (I was a GIMP hacker from 1999 to 2004 or so, including release manager in 2003-04) 13:38:45 And now I consult in helping people (typically professional software developers) work with free software community projects 13:39:11 * heidie Asks students to introduce themselves 13:39:24 Hi, i'm Sean Normoyle from Western New England University. My favorite project that I've worked on was with mchua and heidie this past summer, called "DevilE" 13:40:31 Hi, am Anthony Hajec and am from WNE. I like learning how things work. 13:40:32 aubreyja_: Hey, Jason -- we're hanging out with Heidi's students in Software Engineering right now. 13:40:40 * heidie Urges students to jump in! 13:40:49 hi my name is Anthony, I am an Computer Engineer from Western New England College. I have done coding for the micro processor. 13:40:50 Hello, I am Devin Houde. I am a senior at Western New England University and this past summer I helped Heidi with the SoftHum wiki. 13:40:55 Great to meet you folks! 13:40:56 I'm David Descoteaux, and the most complicated project I've done is a simple flash game. 13:41:09 Hello, I am Carl Godon from Western New England. I work for desktop support at the college 13:41:23 Twan_: Ooh, microprocessors. Which platform? 13:41:25 * heidie wonders if there is anything simple about flash... 13:41:35 CGodon: You'll find that sort of sysadmin experience quite valuable in FOSS. 13:41:37 Hi, my name is Tin Nguyen from Western New England, and I am in the Computer Science Major. 13:41:54 the 8088 microprocessor mchua 13:41:55 Biomech360: Flash isn't simple, imo. :) Welcome! 13:42:06 AHajec: Hopefully we'll be able to help you pop the hood and see how more software works, then. 13:42:31 dhoude: thanks for your work on the softhum wiki -- I sometimes point other profs to it so they can see what it looks like when a school does open source, it's a great example. 13:42:40 dang, just missed dhoude. 13:42:42 heidie mchua: It was a single screen game for a project in high school. 13:42:43 Hi, I'm Sean D. I am a senior CS major at WNE. The most programming I have done is for class at college 13:42:51 And the wiki happens to be down right now (SoftHum) 13:42:56 Aww. 13:43:04 Greg is hoping to fix it today. 13:43:04 Hi, my name is Tom Galica and i'm a computer science major at WNE 13:43:15 OK, I think we can jump in. 13:43:28 mchua, from your perspective, what do you see as the major differences between Cheese and Ekiga? 13:43:34 I'm back. Mel, I saw your last post 13:43:35 Your perspective as a FOSS person 13:44:00 Well, they're apples and oranges to some extent -- you're looking at two programs that do completely different things. 13:44:38 Unless someone has a burning desire to work specifically on a webcam app or a softphone app, I'd look a little less at the *static* version of the code 13:44:45 and more at the... first derivative of the code, if you will. 13:44:47 Ah, let me provide some background. 13:44:55 How fast it's changing, who's working on it now, how likely they are to mentor. 13:44:58 * mchua listens 13:45:01 The need to look at cheese is driven by a request for a video magnifier. 13:45:10 heidie, Ekiga is a considerably "bigger" application 13:45:24 heidie, And adds an extra constraint - the SIP server 13:45:35 The A11y community requested a video magnifier that does more than Cheese. That would be able to do high contrast B/W and also to provide a "guideline" 13:45:48 ndnear, Ah, thanks, that is very helpful. 13:46:05 It's not that complicated, but in terms of the amount of code in Ekiga + its dependencies, the learning curve will be bigger, I think 13:46:14 Ok, so you have end customers for Cheese -- which is a big plus there. Have they offered mentoring and testing help and that sort of thing? 13:46:42 They have offered testing help and Joanie and API from A11y have offered mentoring help. 13:46:46 Oh, that's fantastic. 13:46:53 Joanie has been really, really helpful. Have you met her? 13:47:00 How about from within Cheese itself, have you gotten to talk with any of the Cheese developers? 13:47:05 heidie: Nope, I haven't had the pleasure yet. 13:47:22 Not yet. We wanted to do a feasibility study first and see if the project might even fit. 13:47:54 Oh, and I posted my VirtualBox question to the Cheese list and got four replies within half a day. So they appear to be helpful and active. 13:48:09 mchua, I'll introduce you to Joanie when we next get a chance. 13:48:13 awesome. 13:48:22 I saw the Cheese list activity and that looked great. 13:48:35 #note Cheese additions specifically requested by GNOME a11y, who have offered to help with testing 13:48:39 #note Cheese mailing list responsive to questions 13:48:46 And Ekiga -- where did that come from? 13:48:57 If I could also suggest a potential candidate for a project to contribute to: Shotwell is awesome, and improving (so opportunity for improvements), and is written in an easy to learn language (Vala) 13:48:59 * heidie thinks that students should join the Cheese mailing list. 13:49:00 #link http://mail.gnome.org/archives/cheese-list/2011-September/thread.html 13:49:10 ...ooh, Shotwell. 13:49:26 #link http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/cheese-list 13:49:52 heidie, For mentoring projects I suggest starting with a chat to the maintainers... trying to learn a project with maintainers you can't work with is really hard 13:50:13 Yes, that is definitely next step. 13:50:20 mchua, and "shotwell"? 13:50:41 Shotwell is a photo management app. 13:51:04 I don't use it much myself, but sdziallas adores it. 13:51:23 It's also a GNOME project. 13:51:28 #link http://yorba.org/shotwell/ 13:51:31 Oh, got it! 13:51:54 So, question -- we're slinging a lot of things at you right now, I think... has anyone in the class gotten to have a realtime conversation with any developers from any of these projects? 13:52:00 heidie, I'd be happy to introduce you to Raphael and daniel from Cheese 13:52:04 Nope, not yet. 13:52:17 dneary, Thanks! I'll take you up on that. 13:52:19 mchua, heidie, The Yorba guys are really great too, and very helpful 13:52:34 I don't know about the infrastructure of Cheese or Ekiga, but Shotwell has a plugin infrastructure that might be a good place to start. 13:52:49 So you can concentrate on a small bit of functionality that hooks into a bigger thing, instead of gaping at thousands of lines of code on day 1. 13:53:08 Also, something about Cheese: They've mentored a fair number of developers between Google SoC and Women's Outreach 13:53:10 mchua, Ah, thanks! Joanie and I had talked that a plug-in architecture would be good. 13:53:18 It would be worth having a chat with former students 13:53:25 Oh, I didn't know that (re: Cheese) -- that's great! 13:53:27 Ah, good idea dneary! 13:53:37 Example: http://live.gnome.org/RalucaPodiuc_Cheese_Empathy 13:54:24 * mchua tries to figure out how to be most helpful 13:54:52 #item heidie look at Shotwell 13:55:00 heidie: not sure what your next assignment is, but one thing I might suggest is trying to have students track down a live dev and have a half-hour chat with them or so, possibly in groups or with you or an experience FOSSer shadowing them. 13:55:06 #item Revision, heidi have students look at Shotwell 13:55:07 from each of the three projects. 13:55:14 Yes. good idea! 13:55:33 I noticed that some of you discovered the IRC channels for Cheese and Ekiga. 13:55:38 #item Have students track down a live dev from Cheese and Shotwell and have a half-hour chat with them or so, possibly in groups or with you or an experience FOSSer shadowing them. 13:55:40 What are they? We should note them here. 13:55:55 (y'all have been a bit quiet, holla up :) 13:56:02 Actually, Luciana, one of the Cheese maintainers, was a Women's Outreach graduate from 2010 13:56:29 * heidie asks students to find Cheese IRC link and post 13:56:51 Another thing that you could do, as a "dive-right-in" sort of miniproject... some of you mentioned having trouble installing stuff, getting through documentation? 13:56:59 That the docs were pretty good, but not necessarily perfect. 13:57:14 That's a *great* first fix to have in hand when you walk into a community. "Hey, I fixed your installation docs." 13:57:16 mchua, As for the linux box, I was looking at the eeepc 1021 with 1.8Gz dual AMD processor and 4G (8G?) of RAM. Does that sound about right? 13:57:32 Because experienced developers almost never ever look at those and realize they're out of date (because they've had the dev version running on their machines since forever.) 13:57:44 * heidie Nods in strong agreement 13:57:56 heidie: Oh, that should be more than fine -- the only thing I'd make sure of is webcam compatibility. 13:58:10 Right, that is why I went with the 1021, but I'll double check. 13:58:15 #note Heidi's looking at the eepc1021 with 1.8Gz dual AMD processor and 4G RAM 13:58:23 #action sdziallas sanity-check that for webcam-fu 13:59:04 * heidie thinks I confused "item" with "action" for the meetbot 13:59:26 it's okay. :) 13:59:59 (Just to put some names on Ekiga, Cheese, Shotwell radar: Ekiga maintainer: Damien Sandras, Cheese maintainers: daniel siegel & Luciana Fujii, Shotwell maintainers: Adam Dingle, Jim Nelson, Lucas Beeler) 14:00:19 I've just started lurking on the #ekiga and #gnome channels on irc.gnome.org. 14:00:26 dneary, Very helpful. 14:00:27 Students -- do you know how to do that? 14:00:30 mchua, Try #gnome-hackers too 14:01:01 dneary: joined. 14:01:08 mchua, #gnome depopulated because of trolls a few years ago and has never really regained its past level of helpfulness 14:01:32 dneary: I'm trying to think of a way to give the students a way to lurk on these channels without needing consistent connectivity themselves... are there logs, perchance? 14:01:46 dneary, this is what I had observed as well. 14:02:02 #link irc://irc.gnome.org/ekiga 14:02:19 mchua, Not that I know 14:02:30 mchua, That's my #1 pet peeve with over-using IRC 14:02:40 I tend to recommend against over-reliance on IRC 14:03:03 Esp in MeeGo, time-zones often keep me from meetings that I think are important 14:03:06 #link irc.gnome.org/#cheese 14:03:14 But the topics never get discussed properly on MLs 14:03:20 dhoude and Biomech360 -- awesome, thanks! 14:03:23 dneary, are you anywhere close to Springfield MA? I'd love to have you come talk to my class. I can offer travel funding and chocolate chip cookies... 14:03:45 dneary: Yeah, the asynchronous vs synchronous communications issue is... an unsolved one, I think. 14:03:48 heidie, Lyon, France :) 14:03:59 * mchua is sad she can't make it to Paris next month 14:04:00 darn classes. 14:04:03 mchua, It's been solved a long time ago 14:04:06 Hmmm, that might be a bit far, but sounds like more fun than Springfield MA :-) 14:04:12 Or... did I inadvertantly create a channel? 14:04:19 No async except when absolutely necessary 14:04:22 mailing lists 14:04:37 dneary: "if it didn't happen on the list, it didn't happen"? 14:05:16 * heidie notes that Mel needs to go to class soon. 14:05:27 heidie, I'm sure Springfield is fun 14:05:43 dneary, And I'm sure that it isn't as fun as Lyon. :-) 14:05:54 Although we do have the BBall hall of fame. 14:06:08 Yeah, now I'm confused as to if the channel was there. 14:06:09 The BBhall of fame is *awesome.* 14:06:15 Biomech360: are you the only one in the channel? 14:06:21 "fun" isn't the word that comes to mind when i think Springfield 14:06:48 Twan__: I have a video of my (then) 4-year-old brother repeatedly attempting to make the lowest basket at the BBall hall of fame. 14:07:04 It's fun. :) 14:07:10 Right! 14:07:13 Gotta go! 14:07:20 thats awesome! That is fun tho 14:07:21 Biomech360: You may have created the channel on the Freenode network -- GNOME uses a different IRC server, irc.gnome.org 14:07:29 (instead of irc.freenode.org which is what we're all on right now.) 14:07:40 * heidie Learned how to connect to two different servers on Chatzilla 14:07:42 heidie, You have my email address - can you drop me a line re introductions, please? 14:07:48 mchua the URL is irc://irc.gnome.org/cheese at the top 14:07:56 mchua, He used the right server 14:08:01 Not too many people there 14:08:22 dneary, Sure. Do you mean introductions to all students? 14:08:46 ahhh, okay -- missed that part of the url. 14:08:51 heidie, How about I start with you, and we go from there? :) 14:09:07 dneary, Sure, thats fine :-) 14:09:24 * Biomech360 could have sworn there was an official one on the server 14:10:05 mchua, dneary, given the focus of our project on video magnification and your understanding of the communiities, do you see Cheese and Shotwell as the two top options? 14:10:46 mchua, dneary, and if so, do you have a preference for one over the other? 14:11:01 I would see them both as good potential options -- the codebase looks workable-with for a class of this type, it's possible to break out little tasks that you can get done. 14:11:16 The preference relies on data we don't yet have (but sounds possible for both projects) 14:11:18 Sorry about keep coming back in, I have a very bad IRC client 14:11:20 which is the direct code mentorship (imo). 14:11:28 Yes, thank you. 14:11:31 heidie, Hmmm 14:11:38 Sounds like I'm missing some context 14:12:06 From dneary it sounds like both those projects have potentially great mentors, so my next question is "and which one(s) can you actually arrange to check in with on a regular basis"? 14:12:11 heidie, What is your end goal? 14:12:29 Ah, there are 11 Software Engineering students at Western New England University and they need to experience the major stages of software engineering in a real context. 14:12:46 OK 14:12:48 So requirements, design (not necessarily original, can reconstruct existing one), implement (minor), test, etc. 14:12:56 Right 14:13:04 We've been working with accessibility community as they are so very welcoming. 14:13:12 And some kind of video aspect is compulsory? 14:13:16 And we had a request for software to magnify video feed. 14:13:27 Oh 14:13:28 OK 14:13:31 No, it isn't. It is just the project that was suggested. 14:13:33 That's what I was missing 14:13:49 So we have been evaluating Cheese and Ekiga as perhaps having a codebase that we could use. 14:13:54 I believe that Ekiga allows/enables scaling of video already 14:14:03 Sorry, should have filled you in more completely at the beginning. 14:14:06 (I may be wrong of course) 14:14:25 Ah, so we should look at the feature request and map it to Ekiga existing functionality. 14:14:30 Cheese can capture video, so having a magnification aspect there makes sense 14:14:53 #action Look at Ekiga and map video magnifier feature requests to existing functionality. 14:14:58 Shotwell downloads media from cameras, and stores them in a catalog - so fewer opportunities there, I would guess 14:15:08 Ah, thank you, that is helpful. 14:15:29 If you try to plan a video from Shotwell, I think it launches the video player Totem 14:15:38 Ah, thanks. 14:15:50 Shotwell is sort of like... Adobe Lightbox is the closest common equivalent I can think of. 14:15:57 (Lightroom? Lightbox?) 14:16:06 #action Get more concrete set of use cases for project. 14:16:14 * mchua tinkering with http://openetherpad.org/introduction-email-wne 14:16:20 lightroom 14:16:31 AHajec: Thanks -- see, I'm not a photographer myself. :) 14:16:35 * mchua tends to write more than photograph 14:16:53 So, I think we need to get you folks in touch with the actual maintainers as fast as possible. 14:17:35 * heidie Thinks that introducing students to the community could have been done last week (week 2/15) rather than this week. 14:17:44 mchua, iPhoto is close enough 14:17:51 Ah, thank you. 14:18:07 heidie: It's good to get background context before launching into a conversation -- this does take a little time and a lot of guts. :) 14:18:09 It is now 10:17 and Mel needs to go to class and I need to cover some stuff with my students. 14:18:15 :-) Yes. 14:18:41 mchua, dneary, I very much appreciate all of the input and your time. It is very helpful! 14:18:50 Thank you 14:18:55 Thank you. 14:18:57 Gracias 14:18:58 Thanks for your time 14:18:58 Thank you for the input. 14:18:59 Thank you 14:19:02 mchua, thanks for all the help 14:19:10 heidie, Thank you, and you're welcome 14:19:14 :-) 14:19:20 and dneary too 14:19:25 We'll be blogging on our progress and keep you posted! 14:19:38 awesome! 14:19:40 Thank you for all your help :) 14:19:43 mchua, happy class! 14:19:46 Thank you all for taking the plunge! 14:19:47 * heidie waves bye... 14:19:49 #endmeeting