Ubuntu Wiki

https://launchpad.net/~ljl

Lorenzo uses Freenode IRC with the nick LjL. Lorenzo is an Ubuntu user from Milan, Italy. His favorite color is black.

His contributions to Ubuntu are hardly useful PHP scripts such as http://ubottu.com/ljl/apt/ and horribly dangerous superuser mode hacks such as http://wiki.ubuntu.com/AutoDeb.

He also wrote some incredibly useful free software such as can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/micsimkit, simulating a CPU that is only described in a book and nobody ever even dreamed of using, and http://sourceforge.net/projects/z80sim, simulating a quite well-known and widely used CPU that already has, like, 100 simulators of.

Other software he started writing, he never finished. Well, the above isn't finished, either.

He has recently started using Android, and decided to try blogging about software for it at http://ljlies.wordpress.com.

He lives in a world were everybody's computer runs a free version of AmigaOS with memory protection.

Ubuntu IRC

I've contributed, as well as some hopefully useful help in #ubuntu, some hacked-together but possibly interesting bots for the channel.

The FloodBots help keep the channel under control, by blocking spam as soon as possible and letting the human ops deal with it later, more within human reaction times. Additionally, it makes life more fun by banning the wrong people and entertaining everyone with gratuitous mode changes.

BestBot is a bot in #ubuntu-bots that knows about a lot of Ubuntu packages, has them in categories and lets people vote on what the "bestest" in a given category is in their opinion. This makes it possible to easily redirect "opinion polls" from #ubuntu to somewhere more appropriate, as well as providing an user-contributed database of categorized packages. In addition, people add things like what's the best cheese to it.

MetaBot tries to spot and categorize questions in #ubuntu, and posts them again in #ubuntu-meta if they are left unanswered, for helpers to have a clearer insight on what needs resolution. It's fun because the categories it guesses are never right.

More Ubuntu IRC bots can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IRC/Bots.

Application as operator for #ubuntu and #ubuntu-offtopic

I'm currently applying as an op on #ubuntu and #ubuntu-offtopic. I've been an op there previously for a period, but eventually stepped down due to disagreements, burn out, and things that happen. After that, I maintained a relationship with the Ubuntu IRC channels and ops, in a way I felt freer to express my opinion even in less subtle terms than I felt allowed to as an op. But I think now it's time for another change. To be entirely honest, I don't like the current state of either channel very much. I don't blame it on the ops, but I feel the burn out is a bit generalized and while I obviously don't expect to single-handedly change that, I do think I could now contribute better, again, as an op than as an external observer.

I think I can be relatively strict as an op, but not so much in terms of rules, rather in terms of behavior. Breaking a "rule" (they're called guidelines, to be exact) every once in a while can be okay, disregarding rules, and especially disregarding people, is not. I can also be impulsive at times, but I'll try not to be too much since that's not really too good a characteristic for an op. And for the joy of other ops and the IRC Council, let me assure you that I don't plan to stop criticizing you and being generally annoying... maybe I'll just have it less blatant

Now the above probably doesn't sound very encouraging, but it's the way it is. If anyone wants to add more - or less - encouraging things below, feel free. You know where the Edit button is, I presume.

• As with applications, not one approach (in being an OP) is "best" - You can ask BestBot if you don't believe me! I like how those differences (and a discussion about those various approaches) result in OP behaviour that generally attempts to convince users of the rationale of guidelines rather than just enforce a set of rules. I am convinced LjL already contributed to that significantly, be it as temp OP or generally annoying critic I would really like to see him and other OPs join forces to try (and succeed) in this challenge to make the channels change for the better. - oCean