Jem Mawson’s blog

Sorry, I thought Vox could satisfy my blogging needs. They are quite mild needs after all. But I've come to realise that people need to join Vox before they can leave comments. (Or I just can't figure out how to allow unfettered commenting). In any case I'll follow my friend Abi's lead and head over to WordPress.

I promise to stay there for at least a little while!

Now, grab your huskies and your snow shoes and follow me to Mawson's Hut...

http://icanhascheezburger.com/. I haven't laughed so hard since the YouTube video of the crazy laughing man. Thumbs up!

Please enjoy two more t-shirt designs of mine

The Singing Magpie

and

The Wary Breakfast

^_^

Every 6 months Canonical makes a new release of Ubuntu. Each release is codenamed with an adjective and an animal. Both words begin with the same letter of the alphabet and the given letter more or less progresses with each release. It's a great naming scheme.

For example, there was Warty Warthog, Hoary Hedgehog, Breezy Badger, then Dapper Drake. Edgy Eft has been release for 6 months now and Feisty Fawn was released just yesterday.

Names are chosen from suggestions put up by ubuntu wiki members on this page. Late last year I added a few proposals (heres my diff), including the adjective Lampooning and the animals Lagomorph and Gibbon. And recently it was announced that the next release would be codenamed Gutsy Gibbon! I'm stoked, they chose gibbon!

I'm very happy because, in some small way, I've helped out. Now this 5 seconds of fame is over, maybe I 'get some skills' and help the product in a more meaningful way. ;)

If you've ever wondered about Ubuntu (or Linux in general) and thought you might give it a try, the Feisty Fawn release of Ubuntu (due on 19 April) is definitely the right distribution to go with.

With a Windows Migration tool and 3D windowing (apparently one-click to setup) Feisty gives Vista a big run for its money. This is especially true when you consider that its free and doesn't need big end butch systems to run on.

Read more about it in this article at softpedia.com

This is my first t-shirt. I'm so proud! RedBubble now lets people upload t-shirt designs for sale. This particular one is a dedication to a most wonderful movie - "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou".

Today I looked through a box of old stuff! Aside from all of the fading photos and sketches and short stories and birthday cards I found a lot of letters (all from before email was pervasive). A lot of these letters are from people I'd forgotten, or in most cases, remembered but had no idea where they are or what they're doing.

So I thought ... I should at least try to find them! Here's a shot at finding the first of them ... a wild Japanese cat (my first of many Japanese friends) Akira Sawasato ...

I am looking for a lost friend, Akira Sawasato.

Akira travelled to Australia in 1992. I met him in Brisbane, he was walking the streets looking for a supermarket (going completely the wrong way). I gave him a lift and, afterwards, dropped him off at his backpackers. I took the next day off work, picked him up and took him to Lone Pine Koala sanctuary, where we met up with his friend Masa (they had met on the plane from Japan to Australia).

Over the next few months Akira, Masa and I were good friends. I helped Akira find rental accommodation.

In April 1993 I received a letter from Akira. He was living in South Yarra, Melbourne and was working at "the opal shop". By the time I replied he had moved onto another city with no forwarding address. I never heard from him again.

In his letter he said he intended to visit New Zealand for 3 months. Then he would try to be a ski instructor in Canada for 6 months.

Akira said he was a motorcycle racer in Japan. He often described himself as "the Japanese Wayne Gardner" (an Australian who was the world motorcycle champion of the time). I think he told me he was from Yokohama, but I can't be certain.

If this sounds like anyone you know please contact me via this board or at my blog http://seine.vox.com/

Thank you!

Recently I've discovered redbubble.com and uploaded my best photos to my profile at http://www.redbubble.com/people/seine. RedBubble is a great site for publishing works for sale. Please take a moment to have a look. There's some fantastic work there!

Has anyone heard of the RepRap self-replicating 3D printer? I wonder if its for real. They claim to have control software and instructions for making a self-replicating 3D printer, all protected by the GPL. It sounds pretty fantastic.