Links

Here are some links to other projects that I have spent some time on. This usually boils down to doing some testing, submitting bug reports, enhancement requests, and discussing ideas on mailing lists, IRC etc. Occasionally I submit a patch or get into some code too.

Operating Systems (yes, I like UNIX-like OSes!):

Gentoo Linux. Despite accusations of being cumbersome and impractical, I find Gentoo to be an excellent distro. It's true that it takes an age to set up - compiling everything (including the compiler) from source is not quick, and does take a lot of fiddling to have everything running smoothly. However I have found other distros don't give me the fiddle power I crave. I also put quite a lot of value in the ability to easily generate new ebuilds. Given the source code of a project not already in gentoo, I can create an ebuild in a few minutes, install it and have portage manage the installed files properly. I know it's not so hard to create debs or rpms, but it's not as convenient as making a new ebuild, IMO.
Ubuntu Linux. The folks at LugRadio waxed lyrical about Ubuntu so much that I thought I'd give it a try. It's nice to see a distro becoming consumer friendly without getting infected with corporate gimmickery. Well done Ubuntu! Ubuntu "just works".
FreeBSD. I thought I better have a representitive of the BSD's here just to show I'm not a total penguin fanatic. I still have some issues with weirder laptop hardware, but generally speaking there is something about FreeBSD that feels right. Things in the right place etc.
Knoppix. Linux Live CD. Knoppix is bloody amazing. The amount of stuff that's crammed onto this Live CD is astonishing. Just try it!

Applications:

Gaim. Gaim is a very competent multi-protocol instant messenger. Despite their near-fanatical hatred of Gentoo, they might be forgiven. I did some work on plugins and such, but sort of ran out of steam after trying to re-design the whole permissions system. My interest in gaim waxes and wains depending on how tired I'm getting with taunting religious nutters in the religion chat rooms of Yahoo... ;)
Stellarium. This is a real "wow" application to show off F/OSS to people who think it's all vi and emacs.
Inkscape. Inkscape is a great example of how good an application can grow with out of open standards and some F/OSS enthusiasm. It's a vector graphic editor, with capabilities designed around the open Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) standard.
Scribus. For a long time, Linux really needed a decent DTP application. Well, here it is. Scribus is already a pretty complete application with enough functionality to suit the serious amateur DTP user. Interestingly it's still accumulating sophistication and could be a competent competitor to the commercial boys in the near future.
QGIS looks to become a digestible introduction to the satchel-carrying, pipe-smoking, chord-wearing world of GIS software. GIS seems to be steadily moving from academic complexity to commercial importance, and looks to be a great opportunity for F/OSS. Commercial offerings seem to be astronomically expensive, and the academic offerings seem staggering confusing...
QCAD is a great 2D CAD tools. It's simple enough for non-specialist to grasp pretty easily, and has enough depth to be really useful. I spent some time carefully mapping out my flat with QCAD, right down to the shape and size of the window handles. Hands up if you are a nerd!
OpenOffice.org. While I have some reservations about the wisdom of mimmicking Microsoft Office, hats off to the OO.o team for creating something that has such a potential positive impact with respect to Linux Desktop adoption. I almost feel sorry for the MS Office people - it must be annoying to see OO.o go from zero to very serious rival in a short time.
The Open Dynamics Engine (ODE). This is a library for physics modellning for games, simulations and the like.
Ogre 3D is an open source graphics engine for use with games and other 3d graphics-heavy applications.

Web Applications:

MediaWiki is the software that runs the amazing Wikipedia. I use this for WikiWikiWalks. Some people criticise MediaWiki as being bloated. It's true that there is a lot to it, and it's not going to win any awards for being compact, but there is a lot of useful functionality in there which you won't find in lighter wiki's, so I don't accept the bloat accusation. The lack of CamelCase is great too.
The Open Media Lending Database. This is such a nice idea. Users list DVDs, CDs, books, tapes etc. that you own, and can browse what other users have. Users can then make requests to borrow items from one another, and the application keeps track of who has what and when they should return it. There's no fee payment system - this is for casual, friendly groups only, not for commercial lending businesses, which appeals to me too.
phpGedView. By far the majority of traffic that porpoisehead.net gets is for the installation of phpGedView that contains the genealogy data for the Gates Family Tree. There seems to be a lot of interest on the net in genealogy, and from a broad range of people. phpGedView is a nice way to publish and share genealogy data, and as such is an excellent advert for F/OSS.
Coppermine. This is a natty little picture gallery sort of thing. It seems to me it is losing popularity to Gallery, but it's good-looking and flexible. It's also easy to administrate and install.
PHP Gift Registry. This is a really useful little project. Users list gifts they'd like to receive, and may elect to buy items from other people's lists. This can help avoid two problems at Christmas: 1. "You're impossible to buy for", and 2. Telling people you'd like some book or CD, and then getting more than one copy of it. Anything that can reduce the stress of present buying is OK by me!
Drupal. A nice little CMS. Nuf said.

Sites & Content:

The Open Clipart Library (OCAL). To me OCAL really represents some level of maturity for open source platforms. A clipart library is so far away from core functionality that it puts the state of open source application software in context. It makes me feel that we're nearly there. Despite pretty poor artistic ability, I found it possible to contribute a few pieces of clipart myself.
Wikipedia.
Project Gutenberg. Books that fall out of copyright are indanger of falling off the planet, forever to be lost. This is a catastrophie. PG is like a digital museum whose goal is to save out-of-copyright books, and make them freely available to everyone with net access, and it's a brilliant success. There are over 6000 books available, and the number is growing all the time.
Project Gutenberg Distributed Proof Readers. This is an innovative use of the Internet and thousands of volunteers to add new books to Project Gutenberg. Basically, books are scanned and OCR software is used to make an electronic text. Users proof read the OCR'd text, comparing it with the scanned image of the page. It's a really nice thing to do if you have a few minutes - it's possible to dip in and do one page only, or take a whole bundle. It's fun to read extracts of weird old books you'd not usually consider reading.
No Paste. A great utility when using IRC or some other chat tool. Large sections of text or code that would be impolite to paste into a chat room may be posted here - you just paste the URL. The site does colourisation and formatting for various programming languages, which distinguishes it from some of it's rivals.