I’ve seen references to the Society of Geek Advancement for several months but haven’t been motivated to mention it until tonight when I saw Peter Black post this same video on his blog.

Initially I wasn’t really sure what the “I am a Geek” thing was all about, but reading into this a bit further, it appears that the motives behind the movement are several fold.

According to the Society for Geek Advancement about page:

“THE SOCIETY FOR GEEK ADVANCEMENT was founded upon the principles that we should all embrace our inner and outer geek and have fun while doing it. As individuals who love learning, innovating and believe in possibility as well as change, the second step of responsibility is to “be the geek that keeps on giving”. As a member of SGA, we work together as a global community to provide the tools and help others realize their true potential too!”

If the above video is any indication, a core component to the movement is old fashioned fun and togetherness. I don’t know about you, but I for one felt a tremendous amount of Geek Pride after watching the clip and am no longer the least bit self-conscious of my social deficiencies and fashion ineptitudes. Social skills or no, geeks sure know how to have a good time.

Wikipedia defines geek as:

“A person who is interested in technology, especially computing and new media… who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who passionately pursues skill and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.”

Room To Read

Reading into this further, the objective of “giving” through the pursuit of fundraising and charitable donations. Proceeds from sales of of “I am a geek” T-shirts go to a charity known as Room to Read, which builds libraries and schools for children in developing countries.

So in addition to the Society acting as a networking hub and congregation point for a proverbial cornucopia of geeks of all shapes and sizes, it also seeks to make the world a better place. Not bad for a network of fringe-dwelling technophiles.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been plagued by an irritating computer issue in which use of apostrophes and double quotes was producing foreign language characters like é, ý, ç and í. For the life of me I just could not determine how to resolve it.

In what felt like a desperate ploy for assistance I did a quick screen cast demonstrating the issue I was having, uploaded it to Seesmic as a new conversation, and had the post distributed via Twitter, thus circulating the message to two different communities.

In a matter of moments I received a reply from both @kittyburgers and @leogaggl, both of whom offered several suggestions I could investigate. Ultimately the entire process of reporting the issue, uploading screen casts, response, discussion and resolution took less than 45 minutes. Considering the fact this relied solely on volunteer participants, the speed with which the issue was dealt was just incredible.

This experience has re-inforced several factors for me – the enormous capacity of new media to connect people and span regions; the altruistic, giving nature of the culture and people; and the fundamentally disruptive implications both of these factors have for existing structures and systems.

Call me an uber geek, but I just finished setting up Compiz on my Ubuntu box tonight and wanted to share a screencast of where I’m at so far. Compiz is a brilliant piece of work that I highly recommend taking a look at. It definitely keeps things visually stimulating.

My daughter (nearly 4 years old) has grown up with a father who is glued to technology for ridiculous amounts of time each day – be this a desktop, laptop, iPod, mobile phone, digital camera, web camera, or myriad of different software packages and operating systems.  Not surprisingly she has developed an acute interest in exploring these technologies herself.  Over time we’ve begun to look at a variety of different things together; some of which she’s found interesting, some of which not.

NOTE: Her recreational activities and learning experiences certainly don’t all involve technology mind you – nor should they – but for the purposes of this post, they’re considered out of scope.

Fairly early on though I realised that I was trying to lead the way – through instruction – and she was clearly not interested in that.  She wanted to explore and experiment.  So we began to afford more and more control and opportunities to her to do so.  Our role now – at least in this area – is to act as a reference guide and model use; act as collaborator, photographic subject, suggester of ideas, or co-learner, and only rarely to provide instruction.  Given the online nature of much of her exploration, the role of safety filter is there as well, but so far it hasn’t been necessary.

Digital Cameras and Mobile Technology

We’ve given her one of our old digital cameras and she’s been experimenting with photography.   This typically leads to experiments with downloading and processing the images on the computer, and printing them. Many of these photographs also end up being used in self-motivated craft projects, where they’re incorporated into a wider artistic creations.

Her use of mobile technology so far has revolved around the iPod, and has ranged from viewing videos, to listening to music, and with the arrival of an iPod touch, the use of software and games.  These include basic strategic games like Tic-Tac-To and Connect Four; drawing and colouring programs; and to a lesser degree geographic-spatial programs like the Sydney Traffic web-cameras and Google Earth (though her interest in the latter is fairly minor at this stage).  She is also aware of the fact we can download and install additional programs through the iPod.

Personal Computer

The main area of her technological experimentation so far – and the area she’s excelling in – is on the personal computer.  While there were basic concepts we worked through together initially, such as using the left mouse button instead of the right, and how you sometimes need to click, hold and drag the mouse to move things around – she’s learned largely learned through self-motivated exploration, and observation.

The number of programs and websites currently in use are many and growing, but there are several worth noting.  These span a range of communicative, creative, visual and cognitive activities:

Communication

• Skype, MSN – Synchronous video communication with Grandparents and me at work
• Seesmic – Asynchronous video communication with me at work and her peers
• Gmail – she can’t write yet but understands the concept of email and its purpose as a communicative medium

Creative

• Tux Paint – open source drawing and painting program for children
• Photo Booth – Apple image/video capture program with filters for image distortion/manipulation

Visual

• QuickTime, VLC – Local/offline video viewing
• YouTube, TeacherTube – online streaming video viewing

Cognitive

• History Explorers – educational game where players navigate through history to gather artifacts
• SesameStreet.org – educational games and videos
• PBS.org – educational games and videos

Developing a PLE
In the interests of affording her even more opportunities for empowerment and exploration I’ve begun to experiment with the design and development of a customised environment.  This is also borne out of the fact much of the initial access of programs and websites does not appear to be clear to her at this stage.

While this project is still in the early stages, the notion is to rely heavily on desktop icons and recognised gateways to provide easy access to her desired activities.  If her computer profile does not require a login, she would ideally be able to click on the icon associated with her name, login to the system, and then use the icons to immediately engage in the exploratory process.

Through use of recent innovations like Prism and/or Google Chrome in particular, I will also be able to quickly create web site specific links that can be added to the desktop.  Clicking on these icons then loads the browser and takes the user directly to that specific page.

Once logged into familiar sites she is already able to proficiently navigate around.  For example, she’s discovered that the related clips option on sites like YouTube and SesameStreet.org enable her to view similar subject matter.  She’s therefore able to explore an entire series of video clips without having to ask me to perform a text-based search for her.  This has led to her ability to articulate with greater detail the nature of what she would like to watch, since she has grown accustomed to using thumbnails as an indicator of content.

Use of menu navigation icons on many children’s websites is a fairly standard activity as well, so she’s able to navigate across sections – from video clips to games to stories for example – and not just within individual sections.

The Platform
I am currently investigating a Linux Distribution known as gOS as the potential base platform for Maddie’s PLE.  The OS is designed with web-based usage in mind and features a launchpad very similar to the Dock found on the Mac platform.  This enables commonly used programs to be set aside from those included on the main desktop, thus theoretically providing easier access.  The OS also supports embeddable Google Widgets, which could provide access to additional dynamic and/or interactive functionality.

The additional benefit of an open source platform lay in the access to many free educational programs through the central repositories.  We will be able to browse through a list of available software and very quickly download and install it.

The primary drawback of a Linux-based distro at this stage is the fact my web camera won’t work on them as the drivers aren’t recognised by the system.  Given the regular usage of video-based communication tools like Skype, Seesmic and MSN, this may pose a problem in the long term.  The machine is currently dual-booted with Windows XP however, so we’ll try similar set-ups on both platforms and see which she prefers.

Part One: Overview of Virtualization and Installing the VMware Player

Part Two: Setting up a Virtual Machine

I’ll expand on this more tomorrow, but it’s late now.

In the meantime here are the links referenced in the videos:

VMware Player: http://www.vmware.com/products/player
Appliance Library: http://www.vmware.com/appliances

According to a post yesterday on the Canonical Blog, Ubuntu MID “has been built by the Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded community that is sponsored by Canonical and in co-operation with Intel Moblin.org community…” and is based upon the highly successful desktop version.

In the product description, Canonical indicates this release is “redefining what can be done in mobile computing” with supported functionality including “Web browsing, email, media, camera, VoIP, instant messaging, GPS, blogging, digital TV, games, contacts, dates/calendar, simple software updates… and lots more.”

Given its beginnings in the Ubuntu Desktop framework and importantly within the FOSS community, the offering is going to be highly customisable, with the Canonical Blog indicating:

“Developers may want to hack their favorite application from Ubuntu Desktop Edition onto Ubuntu MID to match screen size and touchscreen requirements so that they and other owners can use it. Developers are encouraged to share and have their work reviewed within the UM&E and Moblin.org communities.”

Given its early status not much information is currently available on the realities of the project, however the Ubuntu wiki indicates the Preliminary Roadmap for the project includes:

• A focus on “mobile devices which tend to have a touch screen, generous amounts of flash storage and RAM, and wireless Internet connectivity.”
• Use of “existing open source applications where it is feasible to do so, packaging them for Ubuntu where necessary. We will fill in some of the gaps by developing new applications if nothing suitable exists.”
• Development of a suitable kernel build by the Ubuntu kernel team, with additional drivers incorporated “where necessary”

The Canonical blog post indicates there “are two installable images, and one runnable KVM image”, adding the easiest way to familiarise yourself with Ubuntu MID is via the KVM image.

I’m downloading the KVM image as we speak and will report back on anything interesting.  In the meantime I recommend visiting the following links for more information.

References:

• “Ubuntu MID Edition 8.04 achieves its first public release“, David Mandala, Canonical Blog, 24 June 2008
• Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device (MID) Edition (Product description) – accessed 25 June 2008
• “Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded“, Ubuntu Wiki, accessed 25 June 2008

I’m hoping the discovery I just uncovered will resolve that long-standing hole in my suite of programs.  Known as Dia, the program:

“…is roughly inspired by the commercial Windows program ‘Visio’, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.”

I’ve only just downloaded and installed the software within the last 5 minutes and therefore haven’t come to any firm conclusions as of yet; but as soon as I have I’ll post my thoughts here.

I’m not a hardcore Visio user, so even a basic replacement should be more than enough for me.  The main consideration though will be the option to import and export documents in the native Visio file format.  I’m well and truly open source oriented, however many of my colleagues are not and I need to be able to work within the constraints of the proprietary crowd.

Update: I’ve had more of a play with the software and have experienced mixed results.  By and large the program does everything I need it to in terms of functionality, however the options for exporting Visio-compatible file formats seems to yield somewhat rudimentary results.

I created a basic flowchart in Dia using very basic shapes, saved the file, and then exported it as a VDX file (Visio XML format).  The file was recognised as a Visio file and defaulted to Visio, however before displaying the document a warning message appeared indicating “There is some XML data in the document that Visio does not understand.”

After clicking through the message the document was displayed and contained noticeable formatting changes, some of which rendered the text (such as the first step in the workflow) unreadable.

The implications: From the standpoint of individual usage I can see myself using Dia instead of Visio.  The program’s tool conventions are quite similar to Visio and easy to pick up quickly.  Functionality-wise it’s more than sufficient for my basic needs.

However from the standpoint of collaboration I’ll have to continue using Visio for now.   My colleagues are well and truly Visio users, and any alternative to Visio will need to facilitate complete interchangeability with no degradation or compatibility problems.  Based on what I’ve seen with Dia so far the program isn’t there just yet.  I do think it will be in time though.

References:

• Dia Website – http://live.gnome.org/Dia

For those of you not familiar with the concepts, Virtual Machines or vmware and parallel installations are two different methods of running multiple operating systems from a single computer. This can be done either on a desktop or on a laptop and has both open source or proprietary options.

The ultimate decision of which option to go with will depend greatly on the individual’s usage habits and preferences. In my case I’ve grown to appreciate the advantages offered by parallel installations over vmware.

VIRTUAL MACHINES

Virtual machines, or vmware, are an innovation that enables you to run one operating system within another. This process relies on the presence of a vmware program, such as VMware Fusion for Mac, or VirtualBox for Linux, and creates an instance of a “guest” OS that can be booted from within the “host” OS.

In the case of both proprietary and open source options, you begin by first installing the virtual machine software. Once this has been done you create a new virtual machine within the Vmware program. The steps to add the guest OS will depend on the Vmware software, but generally speaking there will be a few steps involved in which you identify what the host machine will be (Linux, Mac, or Windows) and designate how much RAM you wish to make available.

Once this has been done the the bulk of the process is extremely similar to that of a standard installation on a brand-new machine..

When you want to login to the guest OS, it’s just a matter of loading the Vmware program and selecting the operating system from the list of available options.

Advantages: Virtual machines give you access to two operating systems at once, and therefore expand the available functionality you have access to. Often times software is not available for all platforms, so use of virtual machines would enable Mac Users to run Microsoft Outlook for example; or Linux users to run Adobe Photoshop, or RPG games.

Virtual machines can also be moved or deleted exceptionally quickly because from the perspective of the host machine they are just one large file. The Instance of Windows XP I had previously installed on my MacBook was a single 25 GB file for example.

A Note on WINE: In the case of Linux there is a third option that I haven’t discussed here, and that is WINE. To the best of my knowledge WINE stands for “Wine Is Not an Emulator” and enables you to run Windows software without actually installing the operating system itself. Like virtual machines use of WINE requires the installation and configuration of the software, but once this has been done you can run a variety of different software packages from within Linux.

VMware for evaluating new systems: One of the key benefits of virtual machines – which I continue to use – is as a quick way to evaluate new operating systems and Linux distributions.  I am constantly tinkering and test driving new distributions in a never ending quest for new and interesting features.  By installing new OS test beds as virtual machines I’m able to quickly and easily explore them without making any fundamental changes to my system.

If I decide I don’t like the OS, I can delete the virtual instance without any adverse impact to the host machine.

Disadvantages: Due to the nature of the technology, use of Vmware represents extra burdens on your system than exist normally because you are using the same limited resources to run two operating systems. As a result programs on the host machine will not run as quickly.

Drivers are another big issue – particularly for Linux/Windows installations. Many hardware manufacturers do not produce drivers that support Linux-based operating systems the open source community has had to develop them themselves. In some cases – particularly webcameras – drivers are still being developed; and the versions that are currently available require more advanced computer skills to get running.

In my case the expertise required to implement the drivers is above my skillset, so I’m not able to use my Logitech Webcamera while logged into Ubuntu.

In the context of the discussion on VMWare, guest machines get their drivers and hardware information from the host. So despite the fact drivers are widely available for Windows, if you’re running XP as a virtual machine within Ubuntu you’re not going to be able to use the webcamera. This isn’t the case with parallel installations because the extra layer of the host-guest relationship doesn’t exist.

PARALLEL INSTALLATIONS

With Parallel Installations or Dual-Booting, you are running two completely separate operating systems on one box. In this case when you first power-up the computer you are prompted to select which system you wish to log into. Once logged in you will only have access to the software components that you’ve installed on that specific OS, and not both (as is the case with virtual machines).

Historically setting up a dual-booting system has been fairly complicated – especially for new users. However increasingly software companies have begun to ease the process.

Mac’s new Leopard release for example (OS 10.5) comes with a utility known as Bootcamp, which vastly simplifies the set-up process for installing Windows machines in parallel. The set-up is largely wizard based and takes you through the process of re-partitioning the harddrive to make way for the new Windows instantiation, and then rebooting into the Windows install process.

Additionally Ubuntu has gone one step further by enabling insterested parties to test drive the OS without actually installing it, to install an instance within Windows, or dual-boot the machine.

Advantages: One of the main advantage of parallel installations is the fact you can dedicate 100% of your system resources to the host machine. As a result programs and the operating system in general run much more quickly.

Secondly, and equally importantly, is the fact that you don’t face the same driver issues in dual-booting that you do in vmware.  For example, if Linux is your OS of choice you can use Ubuntu as your primary default OS, but revert to Windows XP for web conferencing.  (That said there are of course existing open source options for Linux users; this option is just one possibility.)

Finally though perhaps trivially, you won’t face issues of keyboard shortcuts with nearly the same frequency as virtual machines.

Disadvantages: Unlike virtual machines which are housed within single large files within the host machines folder heirarchy, parallel installations require dedicated partitions to function.  So the process of setting up a dual-boot machine requires additional steps that change the landscape of your harddrive rather than working within the pre-existing conditions.

These changes can be undone later to a degree; but re-partitioning of a harddrive is never to be taken lightly.  So this factor should be borne in mind (e.g. back-up first!)

Secondly you are restricted to the software and functionality of one operating system at a time.

MY OPINION

Having used both options on a few different machines I personally prefer dual-boot systems over virtual machines for general usage (as I said there is just no beating vmware for testbed installations).  While it is nice to have the ability to quickly access PC software from the Mac without having to do a full restart, I found it cognitively difficult to work between the two operating systems within one environment.

For one, while in XP the key-board shortcuts were a hybrid – not quite PC, and definitely not Mac.  So I was constantly making mistakes when typing that resulted in a loss of efficiency over time.  I’ve heard that you can remap keys; but to be honest I wasn’t in love with vmware enough to bother.

Having set-up the same laptop with XP dualbooting through Bootcamp on the other hand, I’m much more pleased with the set-up.  On my home machine I’ve got Ubuntu dual-booting with Windows XP Media edition AND a virtual instance of XP running within Ubuntu and have found that I never use the virtual machine.  To me there’s nothing quite like logging into the full operating system.

But as I said, it all comes down to user preferences.

Previous Posts @ TechTicker:

• “Virtual Windows XP on Ubuntu via VirtualBox”, Mike Bogle, TechTicker, 8 April 2008
• “Just Add Wine: Running PC Software on Ubuntu“, Mike Bogle, TechTicker, 24 March 2008
• “Virtual Windows XP on Ubuntu via VirtualBox” Mike Bogle, TechTicker, 8 April 2008
• “VirtualBox Runs on Hardy Heron“, Mike Bogle, TechTicker, 25 April 2008
• “VMware Delivers OS Trifecta” Mike Bogle, TechTicker, 13 November 2007

Software Sites:

• Virtual Box website: http://www.virtualbox.org
• Apple Bootcamp website: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html
• VMware Fusion website: http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/
• WINE HQ – http://winehq.org/

As ZDNet explains:

Volunteers at the tradeshow will install Linux and open source software (including Ubuntu 8.04, Firefox, OpenOFfice and more) on donated and recycled computers from the Alameda County Computer Resource Center. Most of the models will be Pentium III systems with 256 megabytes of RAM and a 20-gigabyte hard drive. The whole shebang, which could be up to 1,000 systems at the end of the fest, will be donated to local schools. Here are more details on how you can get involved if you’re going to be at the show. Hack away! If you WON’T be there, here’s a link where you can look into planning an event in your own neighborhood.”

This is a fantastic initiative that deserves as much publicity as possible. Not only does this provide needy schools with valuable computer resources, it helps keep working hardware from leeching their toxic chemicals into waste dumps.

I elaborated on this notion a few years ago on my other blog in a post called e-Waste (27 June 2006). Rather than reiterate what I’ve already said there, I’ll just republish the post in its entirety:

e-Waste

In many ways the computer age has done a lot for the environment. Innovative technologies and tools that have enabled the digitisation of information – including word processing, financial record keeping and mail correspondence – have largely reduced our reliance on paper as a storage and transportation medium. You can bank and send mail online, store and view photographs, and even read the newspaper – all without printing a single page. Handwriting has become almost a novelty.

Furthermore these points just highlight traditional day-to-day activities. The medical benefits realised through technological innovation have enabled doctors and physicians to conduct extremely complicated procedures, process complex biomedical experiments and pharmaceutical tests, and monitor minute fluctuations in the condition of a very ill person; all of which would have very difficult in the past – if not impossible.

e-Waste

However this age is not without its issues. So-called e-waste dumps are now growing at an exponential rate, and the amassing of these towering heaps of corroding hardware is becoming a huge problem. Aside from being both eyesores and harddrive graveyards, discarded computers are creating environmental issues of their own.

With technological advances occurring at an incredible rate, what was once a top-of-the-line motherboard, graphics card or monitor is now an old clunker. And increasingly these old jalopies are being hucked onto the scrap heap. The shear mountain of discarded computer hardware is no small figure either.

As a BBC article discussed yesterday (“PC users ‘want greener machines’“, Monday, 26 June 2006): “30 million PCs [are] being dumped each year in the US alone.” That’s one computer for every 10 people – every year. These dumps have to go somewhere, and that unfortunate role has been increasingly assigned to China and India.

Furthermore, the presence of all this corroding hardware in one place has begun to present additional problems in the form of toxic waste. As a UN University report discussed: “making the average PC required 10 times the weight of the machine in chemicals and fossil fuels.” This includes Lead, Arsenic, and Mercury. When you consider the volume of these chemicals leaching out from 30 million corroding computers every year, their implications for local public and environmental health are worrying.

As the article mentions, there an increasing demand for greener PC’s coming from both consumers and IT companies alike who are willing to pay extra for a more environmentally-friendly machine. Dell, Hewlett Packard, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have all made commitments to either remove completely or phase out hazardous chemicals.

I am personally glad to hear about this trend; yet I also propose that more is required.

‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle’ in the Computer Age

We have reached a staged in the computer age in which technology for most is an integral component of our daily existence. Computers are everywhere; so too are the chemicals used to create them. And while some consumers may be willing to pay a little extra for a greener PC, many will not. Some PC makers may begin to adopt greener practices in their manufacturing, many will not. Furthermore, even if every computer manufacturer decided to immediately elminate hazardous chemicals from their computers and computer hardware there would still be literally ten’s of millions of existing machines that contain them.

So the dilemma is both in the present and future tense. What do we do with our existing machines, and how can we can we make the transition to a Green Computer Age?

In terms of the future tense it appears as though we’re moving in the right direction. Consumer demand does a lot in the business world, so the more buyers voice their interest in green technology the more likely it is that we’ll begin to see it. This leaves the present tense.

What needs to be done here is the implementation of wide-scale Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle programs for computers and other IT components. We have been well and truly taught to Reduce our reliance on petrol and fossil fuels by car pooling, taking public transportation and even riding our bicycles; Reuse or re-purpose materials that aren’t necessarily broken, but don’t serve their original purpose anymore; and Recycle our aluminum cans, plastic and glass bottles and newspapers. Why could the same campaign not be implemented for computers?

We could in fact kills two birds with one stone, and help to combat the growing chasm between computer have’s and have-not’s that characterises the Digital Divide.

Combating the Digital Divide

The Digital Divide is a trend in which poorer demographics are increasingly being left behind in the endless race to build bigger, better and faster hardware. Schools are being forced to use hardware that has long been obsolete (some don’t have any at all); students are being left behind in the trend towards eLearning and other online educational projects; and jobseekers are being placed at an obvious disadvantage when they can’t upskill on technology that is becoming a required ability in the workforce.

If it’s not broken, don’t replace it; if you have to replace it, give it so someone who needs it, don’t throw it away. Your old computer can help a child to learn, a jobseeker to gain valuable skills to make them more employable, or it can contribute to a growing public health and environmental problem. Which would you prefer?

Relevant Links:

• PC users ‘want greener machines’
• Dell to unveil new recycling program Wednesday

References:

• “Linux green activisits unite!“, ZDNet, 27 May 2008
• “e-Waste“, Mike Bogle, The Peasants are Revolting, 27 June 2006
• “Installfest for Schools“, LinuxWorld Conference and Expo
• National Installfest for School website and wiki

What this means is you’d have the ability to carry a portable operating system with you wherever you went.  All you’d need to use it is a physical computer to plug in to that would recognise the USB Flash drive and whose BIOS supported booting by USB devices.  Effectively you could then use any computer and yet still have immediate access to all your favourites, settings, and programs.

Furthermore, the increasing utility of suites of web applications like those provided by Zoho and Google (not to mention blogs and wikis) enable you to greatly reduce the storage demands of your system.  If most of your images, documents, spreadsheets, and other files were stored online there would be far less of a burden on your HDD.  So barring any unique file formats that required specialised software to run them you could theoretically house most of your information online and rely on the USB flash drive to provide you with access to your favourite programs.

In Adrian’s example the hardware requirements are a copy of the Hardy Heron ISO file (for installation) and a Flash Drive with minimimum of 4 GB space.

Unfortunately the drive I just got is 2 GB’s, so I can’t test this process.  If any of you feel curious and can get it working I’d love to hear your thoughts on things.

References:

• “How to … install Ubuntu 8.04 on a USB flash drive“, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet, 16 May 2008
  
• Download Ubuntu Hardy Heron