mooooooo

On 5/8/06, achumakov@gentoo.org <achumakov@gentoo.org> wrote:

>
>
>

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Xavier Neys [mailto:neysx@gentoo.org]
> > Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 3:23 AM
> > To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org
> > Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Heritage
> >
> > Larry asked me not to top-post...
> >
> > Josh Saddler wrote:

> > > In fact, I'd say it's _udderly_ disturbing.
> > >
> > > . . . *vanishes*
> > >
> > > Anyway, yes, our mascot has been along for the ride longer

> > than most

> > > of us have been on the project. I'd like to see him stick around.
> > >
> > > Thomas Cort wrote:
> > >>> On Sat, 06 May 2006 21:22:56 -0700
> > >>> Joshua Jackson <tsunam@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > >>>
> > >>>> I've noticed a disturbing trend with the website

> > redesign. Larry is

> > >>>> disappearing from the site.
> > >>>
> > >>> That is utterly disturbing! I too enjoy Larry the cow,

> > and would like to keep him around and improve his visibility
> > on the site. I think he makes a nice mascot for Gentoo.

> > >>>
> > >>> ~tcort

> >
> > The rumour has it that an ALF activist decided to free Larry
> > because it had to be as free as our code.
> > The truth is I found it alone in a pasture, it had lost its
> > appetite and felt very lonely. It begged of me to be allowed
> > back into Gentoo Land and asked me what it had done wrong to
> > be cast away like that. My friends, it was in tears, and I
> > joined it, I could not help it.
> > I decided to take it back home.
> > While we walked back, it mentioned it liked the text around
> > it very much, even though it can't read English very well.
> > Its language only has one vowel, the o, mostly used in pairs.
> > It wondered whether the Council should take care of this nice
> > aboot.xml page as well as the Social Contract and the Philosophy.
> > It also wondered why it had been given a male name because
> > Larry is a she.
> > I told her I didn't know the answer and she was not the only
> > case in Gentoo Land.
> > Larry is now resting in her stable and will be entertaining
> > you as soon as she has digested her first meal in more than a week.
> >
> >

>
> That's really wonderful, Xavier!
>
> -achumakov
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

I've been around since the beginning and have fond memories of Larry
just like the rest of you. I wasn't planning on getting rid of him.

In fact, I was planning on using him a little more for other things. I
already used him for a custom error page[1] and was planning on working
him into other places on the website. Presently the only place Larry is
mentioned in any way shape or form is in that stupid (Yes, *STUPID*)
poster on the about page.

So, since Xavier bothered I will keep the stupid poster up....for now,
but it is going away eventually and will be replaced with something
better. What that "something better" is I don't know yet but .....
"something".

Just like everything else Gentoo related, it all takes time. So please
be patient and don't get overly excited about little changes like this.
It will all come together and be professional yet *still* be the wacky
website that we all know and love. I promise.


--Curtis


[1]http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org/error.html


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Curtis Napier posted <445FBB45.1030606@gentoo.org>, excerpted below, on
Mon, 08 May 2006 17:42:29 -0400:

>
> I've been around since the beginning and have fond memories of Larry
> just like the rest of you. I wasn't planning on getting rid of him.
>
> In fact, I was planning on using him a little more for other things. I
> already used him for a custom error page[1] and was planning on working
> him into other places on the website. Presently the only place Larry is
> mentioned in any way shape or form is in that stupid (Yes, *STUPID*)
> poster on the about page.
>
> [1]http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org/error.html

I wondered about the "stupid" poster, myself. I don't quite have the
sentimental value some seem to for him, but use in an error page and the
like seems at least logical -- connected to something.

However, I tried the above link and to my great disappointment, saw no
Larry. Just a more or less normal 404 page. I surf with images off by
default, so I thought that was it and turned them on, to no avail.

Ahh... Turned off my filters that enforce light on dark, and tried again.
There he is! Maybe he showed up the first time, but as I had enforced a
dark background (and light text), I couldn't see him.

Suggestion: Both he and the UFO guy have some value in Gentoo history,
agreed. It's not always obvious to a new user what that might be,
however. Whenever they are used, it might be a good idea to have them
link to a history page explaining a bit about them, what they mean to
Gentoo, how they became a part of Gentoo, etc. That would be a very good
place IMO to put the traditional Larry with text and the like. As it is,
the error page with just the Larry icon again leaves one with the question
of just what it has to do with anything. Also, maybe a caption on the
page. Larry is confused! Or something similar. If there's such a
caption now, I missed it too.

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/...interview.html


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Monday 08 May 2006 17:42, Curtis Napier wrote:

> In fact, I was planning on using him a little more for other things. I
> already used him for a custom error page[1] and was planning on working
> him into other places on the website. Presently the only place Larry is
> mentioned in any way shape or form is in that stupid (Yes, *STUPID*)
> poster on the about page.

i guess your only criticism is that it's stupid ... that's pretty easy to
quantify
-mike
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

060508 Curtis Napier wrote:

> I've been around since the beginning and have fond memories of Larry
> just like the rest of you. I wasn't planning on getting rid of him.

I hadn't noticed Larry before this thread got started,
but now my attention has been drawn to the 'About' page,
does anyone else see the Gentoo logo as I do,
ie a tin heart with a hole shot through it (smile) ?

Can't we find something better ? Besides the well-known penguin,
other projects have a devil, a puffer-fish & seabirds.
Perhaps Larry's mate Hilda the Bull ? An ant ? A wasp ?

But maybe everyone else just loves that little bit of bent metal ...

--
========================,,======================== ====================
SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb : purslow@chass.utoronto.ca
ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Centre for Urban & Community Studies
TRANSIT `-O----------O---' University of Toronto
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

I stopped being a vegetarian and ate the cow. Sorry about that.

On Sat, 2006-05-06 at 21:22 -0700, Joshua Jackson wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I've talked about this multiple times but its fallen on death ears so
> I'm going to bring it up to the everyone who reads this mailing list.
>
> I've noticed a disturbing trend with the website redesign. Larry is
> disappearing from the site. Most noticeably from the about page. The
> Larry looking for something different in a OS poster is no where to be
> found. This is quite disturbing to me because I know a lot of the
> users and developers enjoy the wackiness having a cow as a mascot
> instead of a penguin to be one of the things that make us unique.
> Gentoo has four main things that define us as a whole just for
> appearances sake. Those are: the color purple, the signature G, Larry
> the (transgender via lots of debate over if a bull can be a cow, and
> why a bull would have udders) cow, and the little alien floating guy.
>
> Even within bugzilla there are references to Larry like the following:
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100001 . We've never had a
> penguin like most other distro's that help define their distro. Even
> our freebsd port is the Gentoo G in red with the horns and tail.
>
> Curtis has said he doesn't want to remove then entirely, but that is
> exactly what is happening. I just don't want to lose what gives us
> visually and jokingly personality. I just can't sit by any longer and
> not bring it up, as I feel that its just getting rid of the heritage
> that has been around longer then a lot of us have been developers.
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--
Ned Ludd <solar@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Linux

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Duncan wrote:

> I wondered about the "stupid" poster, myself. I don't quite have the
> sentimental value some seem to for him, but use in an error page and the
> like seems at least logical -- connected to something.
>
> However, I tried the above link and to my great disappointment, saw no
> Larry. Just a more or less normal 404 page. I surf with images off by
> default, so I thought that was it and turned them on, to no avail.
>
> Ahh... Turned off my filters that enforce light on dark, and tried again.
> There he is! Maybe he showed up the first time, but as I had enforced a
> dark background (and light text), I couldn't see him.

Well, I doubt we can do anything about that. Turn off your filters :P

> Suggestion: Both he and the UFO guy have some value in Gentoo history,
> agreed. It's not always obvious to a new user what that might be,
> however. Whenever they are used, it might be a good idea to have them
> link to a history page explaining a bit about them, what they mean to
> Gentoo, how they became a part of Gentoo, etc. That would be a very good
> place IMO to put the traditional Larry with text and the like. As it is,
> the error page with just the Larry icon again leaves one with the question
> of just what it has to do with anything. Also, maybe a caption on the
> page. Larry is confused! Or something similar. If there's such a
> caption now, I missed it too.

Is there really a story behind it that can be explained? If so, I'd be
curious too, but I doubt there's a "real" story. Larry and the UFO guy
just came up at some time, people got used to them and even liked them.
Trying to explain why we have a cow's face on a 404 page or trying to
explain why we like Larry is like trying to explain a love story: You
just can't without everybody looking strange at you afterwards.

Especially the UFO guy somehow lives from the mythos around it,
explaining it would destroy it, at least that's my feeling.

I'd certainly like the 'Larry is confused!' though, makes error pages a
lot more personal.

--
Kind Regards,

Simon Stelling
Gentoo/AMD64 Developer
--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Simon Stelling wrote: [Tue May 09 2006, 06:32:48AM CDT]

> Is there really a story behind it that can be explained? If so, I'd be
> curious too, but I doubt there's a "real" story. Larry and the UFO guy
> just came up at some time, people got used to them and even liked them.

Actually, they aren't contemporaries at all. We've had "Znurt", the UFO
guy, since the beginning.
(http://web.archive.org/web/200010180...ww.gentoo.org/)
I'm pretty sure that drobbins created him, but I don't know anything
else about him.

As for Larry, my (possibly incorrect) recollection is that drobbins
swiped the image from an open-source font for that infamous poster.
I've no idea where the name came from, but after a discussion about
Larry's gender we had an e-mail from an author of a comic who had "Larry
the cow" as a character (quite unknown to drobbins) who was amused at
the coincidence. (That author also gave us permission to continue using
the name, if it were to turn out that we needed it.) I don't seem to
have that e-mail archived, so if anybody else does, please let me know.

> Trying to explain why we have a cow's face on a 404 page or trying to
> explain why we like Larry is like trying to explain a love story: You
> just can't without everybody looking strange at you afterwards.

True!

-g2boojum-
--
Grant Goodyear
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@gentoo.org
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0 9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76

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Grant Goodyear posted <20060509130830.GA5292@dst.grantgoodyear.org>,
excerpted below, on Tue, 09 May 2006 08:08:30 -0500:

> We've had "Znurt", the UFO
> guy, since the beginning.
> (http://web.archive.org/web/200010180...ww.gentoo.org/)
> I'm pretty sure that drobbins created him, but I don't know anything
> else about him.

Not that I'd know who created him, but from the posts I've seen, drobbins
did have the rights to him. Last I read, if I read correctly, he gave
Gentoo permission to use him. (Previous to that, I believe the
understanding was that we had temporary permission to use him, but that we
were to remove him in the redesign. Thus, the change, if I'm not
misinformed, is that we can now continue using him in the redesign. =8^)

> As for Larry, my (possibly incorrect) recollection is that drobbins
> swiped the image from an open-source font for that infamous poster.
> I've no idea where the name came from, but after a discussion about
> Larry's gender we had an e-mail from an author of a comic who had "Larry
> the cow" as a character (quite unknown to drobbins) who was amused at
> the coincidence. (That author also gave us permission to continue using
> the name, if it were to turn out that we needed it.) I don't seem to
> have that e-mail archived, so if anybody else does, please let me know.

See, that's the type of "history" I had in mind. Simply make the image a
link to a history page with links to the gender discussions, mentioning
the comic (the author likely wouldn't mind a link to it, if possible), the
poster (for places where just the head is used), etc.

Done right, particularly with the gender discussion thing thrown in, it
could IMO actually add to the mythos, rather than destroying it. I could
be wrong, tho. Other opinions?

Do that for both Znurt and Larry, linking each to its own page.

We should also be sure to include references to them in our logo policy,
if it's not there already, particularly mentioning that Znurt isn't ours,
but is used by permission, etc, etc (I've not looked at it for awhile,
perhaps it's already covered?). Also, just in case it ever comes up, I
don't believe we've been given /exclusive/ use of Znurt, so we /should/ be
aware that drobbins may at some time find another use for him, even if we
now have permission to continue using him.

--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/...interview.html


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

On Monday 08 May 2006 17:42, Curtis Napier wrote:

> In fact, I was planning on using him a little more for other things. I
> already used him for a custom error page[1]

that isnt the final version is it ? seems like it could use css love ;)
-mike
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