My Hastily Made Logo

Hey folks, it’s pretty late on Sunday night but I just realised I’d almost forgotten about my new series. I’m calling it the Weekly Rewind, it’s just a round up of my week really which hopefully contains some interesting and funny bits and pieces for you. I tried it for the first time last week (all be it a day late) and asked for title suggestions when someone said I should call it the Weekly Rewind and I like the sound of that, I can also use an old cassette tape as a logo, retro mmm So here goes…

Early in the week I finished off testing Sabayon 4 and doing research on that. I had hoped to have the article finished and published by now but as usual that didn’t go to plan. I’m about 800 words through at the moment. I expect to have it out tomorrow or Tuesday but if you want to hear a sneak preview of my thoughts check out Linux Outlaws 78. I talked about the distro for about 15mins. It’s after the Microwatch section, about 40mins in if you want to skip through. I won’t be upset but of course you should try out the rest of the show as well if you’ve never heard it before, you never know you might even enjoy it, shock horror.

I’d downloaded Debian Lenny on the release day last weekend and decided it would be my next stop so installed that on Wednesday. I’ll be writing a full report on it which you’ll be able to read in the next week or so but here’s some quick initial thoughts. Getting the wi-fi working was easier than I expected and even installing the freedom hating nVidia drivers I needed on this laptop wasn’t too hard. Overall it’s a very stable release as you would expect but I have experienced a few weird issues now and then. You’ll have to wait for the actual review to get all those juicy details though. Not long I promise.

Thursday night we recorded Linux Outlaws 78 and for the first time actually streamed it live as well. It all came together at the last minute in true Outlaws style but Fab set up his eeePC to broadcast through Ustream. We had some trouble with the web cam freezing but the audio stream stayed up I’m told and about 35 people listened in live, not bad considering we never really announced it. It was something of a trial but the feedback has been good and we’ll try to improve on it next time. The listeners could hear me over Skype but I didn’t have a web cam set up at the time. People have asked me but I’m not so sure I wanna be filmed all the time. I’ve always known I have a face for radio but perhaps in future I’ll get something set up. For now we’ve hit on the solution of just sticking a picture of me in the corner. Fab can change it every 10mins to one with a different expression and we’ll just pretend it’s a live feed but the lag is really bad, nobody will know, unless they read this hehehe Some people on the Linux Outlaws blog have helpfully suggested I wear a mask but I have no desire to become the Phantom of the Podcast thanks very much. We’ve had requests to stream the recording process live for a while. It’s a weird experience getting instant feedback from people in the chat room as you talk but kinda cool too I have to say, a nice buzz. Unfortunately we’re not set up to do the full radio thing at the moment and mix in all the music and sound effects as we talk, most of that is done in post. I’ve been playing around with my mixer tonight though and experimenting, so stay tuned there may be developments on that front. I’ve toyed with the idea of streaming a live music show for quite a while using something like Icecast but as with most of my plans I’m too busy plotting new things to ever actually finish them all. I edited the show over the weekend (on Lenny actually) and it was released tonight if you want to hear the results.

Next week I’m off to Geek Up in Liverpool on Tuesday night which is something I’ve been told I should attend for ages by my friend Adrian from LivLUG. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of crowd turn up, I’ve been to many LUG meetings but this is open to all tech types not just freedom crusaders and might be a different experience, I’ll let you know how it went next week. Thursday night is Chester LUG which will be at the University for the first time with technical talks, slide shows and even perhaps refreshments, which are the main topic of discussion on the mailing list at the moment it seems, don’t get between a geek and their snacks. If you’re in range of Chester in the UK then come along by all means. It would be nice to see you there, I’ve included a map below.

View Larger Map

Right that’s it. Over 750 words in the end, not bad for an impromptu post, hope some of them were worth reading. Take care everyone and I’ll see you soon, remember to stay tuned for those Sabayon and Lenny reviews.

See ya

Dan