‘Til All Are One

It’s a wonderful feeling when you receive recognition - no matter how small - from people whom you respect and admire. That’s why I was stoked to be accepted as an official Ubuntu member. To be eligible, one has to be able to prove that they have contributed substantially to the Ubuntu community. I know serveral good people who were turned down on their first application, so I was nervously biting my fingernails in the leadup to my approval.

Being present at the IRC meeting was a whole task unto itself. I had to wait until one was scheduled at a time which I could attend. When I discovered that one had been announced for 10PM (in my timezone), I pounced and added myself to the agenda. The discussion was fascinating, but the meeting itself blew out far beyond its scheduled time frame. They only got to me at around 1:30AM. I am very grateful to the Ubuntu-Au members who stayed on until then to cheer me on. Isn’t community a wonderful thing?

Within ten minutes, I had approval from the Community Council members who were present, but I had to wait for the votes of the absent members. The following evening, I received a nice e-mail from Ubuntu Launchpad:

Subject: Launchpad: Your membership status on team Ubuntu Members was changed
Date: Wednesday 18 October 2006 21:03
From: Launchpad Team Membership Notifier

Hello, The status of your membership on team "ubuntumembers" (Ubuntu Members) was changed from Proposed to Approved.

The comment for it was:

approved 18/10/06 by sabdfl, elmo, jono, for superb contribution to en_GB and related effort

Once again, thanks to everyone who provided support, both moral and actual.

For some reason, I’m reminded of the title of a 1980s sitcom. No, my name is not Charles, thank you for reminding me.

My manager arranged to go on leave over the fortnight school holiday period, and in his pre-holiday euphoria he decided to leave the responsibility of performing his duties with myself.

Almost immediately after his departure, things began to go beserk. A rash of strange and urgent issues cropped up, and that was on top of the unfinished business he had left us with (although to his credit, he did his best to minimise that). Things which were seemingly complete reared their ugly heads once more, and I was left to tidy the mess.

I took the role most seriously, to the point of putting in one or two extra hours of work per day. I was stressed to levels that I had not experienced in years. I’m so incredibly grateful that this leadership stint coincided with TAFE holidays, otherwise I don’t know what I would have done.

An important skill is an ability to juggle many tasks at once. I am not terrible in that respect, but you could not exactly call me adept, either. Had I had more experience (lower context switching latency, etc.), I might have completed tasks more quickly, but we were so overworked that I don’t think the difference would have been significant.

I was painfully aware that once my fortnight was over, I would have to revert to my previous status and once again work on an equal level with these people. I certainly did not wish to burn any bridges. This forced me to walk a tightrope when it came to weilding authority.

Communication is certainly the key to effective management. I would not have gotten anywhere without constant liaison with my co-workers and other managers in the company. On the whole (and despite a few stressful incidents), I was well supported by everyone else in the company. As a caretaker, I did not consider it to be my place to make any policy changes, but certain circumstances forced us to adapt. Under advisement from above, I implemented a few tweaks to our procedures, hopefully for the better.

My manager has been back for three days, and only today do I feel like I’m back doing my old job and not his. There were a few odds-and-ends to tie up even after his return, and it took him a little while to get back into the groove as well. I think we have both re-found our respective places, though. The feedback I have received has been very positive, and I have been asked to consider taking on certain duties on a permanent basis. I’ll have to take some time to reflect upon the past couple of weeks before I can give an appropriate answer.

They say that the first step towards dealing with an addiction is admitting that you have one. For that purpose, I have a confession to make: I am addicted to Open Source On The Air. For the uninitiated, OSOTA is a weekly Internet radio programme hosted by James and Karin Purser. Being based in Australia, this podcast focuses mainly on issues affecting the Australian FLOSS community. It is broadcast live on Wednesdays from 21:30 (UTC+1000). Besides being a great show in its own right (even if downloaded afterwards), I love how I can hang out in #localfoss on irc.freenode.net and provide input while the show is running live. It is this sort of interaction that makes free software so great.

A few weeks ago, Karin decided to announce a competition. The question was simple: to suggest a question for a future competition. An idea sprung to mind fairly quickly, and I mentioned it over IRC to James. I neglected to e-mail it, however, and when Karin announced the following week that she had not received any entries, I realised that I had completely forgotten my idea. The ephemeral nature of IRC meant that I couldn’t just look it up (my logs were only short-term - curses!). I spent a day and a night wracking my brain before it resurfaced. I posted it to James, and the following week it was announced that I was a winner! Mind you, there were only two entries, and both were deemed to be winners

The following week, I received my loot: a plush Tux penguin and an O’Reilly Linux Anatomy poster. At the request of James, I sent him a photograph of myself with my new penguin friend. Fittingly, it was taken just prior to a SLUG meeting, and in it I’m wearing my Software Freedom Day 2006 T-shirt.

So what was my entry? It’s probably best that I don’t spoil the surprise. Stay tuned for it to be announced on Open Source On The Air!

This is quite disturbing:

A 2006 Gallup survey of American public opinion found that "many Americans harbour strong bias against U.S. Muslims".

• 22% say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbour.
• 34% believe U.S. Muslims support al-Qaeda.
• Only 49% believe U.S. Muslims are loyal to the United States.
• 39% advocate that U.S. Muslims should carry special ID

The fact that such a large percentage of the population harbours resentment against Muslims may explain much of America’s aggressive Middle East policy from Israel to Iraq. It’s a lot easier to play with the lives of millions of people if you don’t think of them as civilised human beings, but terrorist supporters.

This appears to be consistent with other studies:

The Media and Society Research Group of Cornell University conducted a survey in November of Americans with respect to their attitudes towards Muslims. Nearly half (44%) of respondents favoured restricting the civil rights of Muslims in some way.

Such attitudes often stem from ignorance. It is exceedingly easy to dehumanise a race/religion/culture if you know nothing about them:

A survey commissioned and published by National Geographic shows that a large majority of young Americans between the age of 18-24 are geographically illiterate.

Less than 15% of the subjects could locate Iraq or Israel on a map. Only 17% could locate Afghanistan, even though the survey was carried out after the war. 11% could not locate the U.S. on a map.

Now, I am not posting this to pick on Americans. In fact, I feel that at least to some extent these results also apply to Australia and other Western countries (e.g. the UK). We like to think of ourselves as ‘enlightened’ societies, yet the ignorance many people appear to exhibit is astounding. There is much in the way of misinformation and FUD being spread around, intentional and otherwise. The solution, I feel, is education. For instance, I bet that the average Australian knows very little about Islam: its beliefs, its history and the cultures surrounding it. It is all to easy to judge people and events by our own values, the principles by which we were raised. People need to understand that what may look like ‘common sense’ to them is in fact a cultural construct, and that other cultures may see things differently. This diversity is what makes the world interesting, and this abundance of different views is what has propelled human development since the very beginning.

Those who like to argue that Islam is a backwards religion or that its people celebrate an anachronistic culture ought to investigate the 1001 Inventions Web site:

A unique UK based educational project that reveals the rich heritage that the Muslim community share with other communities in the UK and Europe.

1001 Inventions is a non-religious and non-political project seeking to allow the positive aspects of progress in science and technology to act as a bridge in understanding the interdependence of communities throughout human history.

Pia has very eloquently indicated the divide between religion and culture, and in doing so I feel she has demonstrated how truly close many world religions are in their core beliefs and values.