Monday, May 21, 2007

Tux500 is in the 91st Indy 500!

As some of you may know I love open collaborative efforts! I find that no matter what the project is when you put like minded people together you can end up with some new friends and sometimes some amazing stories to tell.

The Tux500 project has been yet another one of these amazing projects! No matter how you feel about the subject it has been wildly successful in terms of monopolizing on the larger media coverage provided for the Indy 500. Immediately after this footage appeared on television the number of Google searches for Linux skyrocketed!!!


There were some scary moments though. The original driver Stephan Gregoire was caught by a large gust of wind while qualifying for the main event! The back end of the car was whipped into the side of the race track Gregoire was amazingly able to control the slide and walked away from the accident. We later found out that he had fractured his spine and was not going to be able to drive the "The Blue Car" in the big race. It was amazing the out pouring of get well wishes that came pouring in. Get well soon Stephan. :) The whole project was on pins and needles. It was one of those moments where I felt like holding my breath. Stephan is going to be fine he is recovering and is not in too much pain. Mr Tom Chastain the car owner immediately started looking for a new driver. Stephan came through once again by personally recommending Roberto Mereno. What a recommendation that has turned out to be!

Robert and Tom decided to take a bit of a risk in order to ensure that the car would be in the main event. They removed the first qualifying speeds for the car and decided to requalify. 220 mph later we were in the # 11 slot for the 91st Indy 500!

The donations are going through the roof!!! We still have time to brand the side pods of the car. If you were waiting to see if the car would qualify for the race your wait is over!

I can not really explain how cool it has been to be part of this project. There has been so many doors opened by this project. It has really brought a lot of like minded people together. I am getting really excited to see what comes next!

VRRRRROOOOOOMMMMMMMM! VRRRRROOOOOOMMMMMMM!

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Tux500.com

Landy(land0) and I have been working with the http://tux500.com project recently. We have been pitching in by setting up merchandise shops via the REVELinux Gear project. While we were setting up one of the new shops for them I realized that the REVELinux Gear project has been going since 2004! We started with a Cafepress shop in late 2004 then moved over to Spreadshirt in April of 2005 where we created two shops one for the EU and one for the US. The EU shop has sold a total of 239 items. The Us shop has come in second with 213 items. The thing that is so cool to me is that all of these items are being worn by people who love the various projects enough to represent them in their everyday life. (like Aseigo our most famous model) ;) It has been pretty exciting to contribute to and promote the F/OSS projects that we love. We really appreciate all the developers that make F/OSS what it is.

We had a rough few months this year and Landy just recently got back on his feet literally after a frightening experience that landed him in the hospital for a bit. But as he always likes to quote "I got better..." Landy is really looking forward to getting back involved with all of the projects that he has been contributing to. It has really been very refreshing to both of us to work with the tux500 team. They are all really great people who are like minded about promoting Linux. It reminded me of all of the wonderful people that I have had the joy of working with on various projects all around the globe.