The Weekly Rewind

Another week, another dollar. Ok so that’s not the exact saying but you get the idea. It’s been quite a packed and interesting few days; there’s much to report and reflect on, and I hope you’ll find some it interesting. So here we go:

Monday we recorded and streamed Linux Outlaws episode 83. Nothing unusual about that you might say but you’d be wrong. It was the first time we did live video broadcasting from both ends, a “double-ender” if you will; regular podcast listeners will get that joke. It’s fun doing the show live but there’s a definite adjustment with the live element because it’s easy to get distracted while talking in IRC, talking (audibly), getting music lined up to play next and also monitoring the video as it goes out. We held it together well I thought and everyone who participated said they enjoyed, so that’s the main thing. If you’d like to join us it’s Monday evenings over at linuxoutlaws.com/live and you’re more than welcome. We don’t have a set time at the moment but we’re working on that, so it’s easier for people to plan around. Last time it was 7pm in the UK and it will usually be something similar. Come see us and for the first time ever, I do actually mean see us.

I mentioned our new poster campaign and also wrote a quick post on the Outlaws blog. It basically involves downloading the PDF, printing one off and sticking it up somewhere for us. If you’d like to help out with that we’d both really appreciate it. Thank you!

Arch Linux

I’ll gloss over Tuesday and most of Wednesday because frankly, it wasn’t that interesting and we have a lot to get through. On Wednesday night I attended the Small Steps To Sustainability meeting at FACT as promised. It was hosted by Richard Smedley of M6-IT whom I know well from many local LUGs, he works a lot with FLOSS in education and business. I missed some of the talk but did get involved in the discussion afterwards, hijacking it a little when talk of the GPL came up; I apologize to any other attendees bored ridgid by that. Let’s just say it got a bit geeky and a bit political, which is often the case when I’m around. Had a great time though and managed not to scare everyone off so hopefully some of them enjoyed it too.

Thursday shall hence forth be known as “Arch day”, dun dun dun!!! I finally got down to my Arch install and it took me about 5 hours to get a working desktop up and running. I fully expected this as Arch has a steep learning curve and at times you feel almost like you’re actually building your own Linux distribution. I have everything sorted now though after some serious research, reading and tweaking. I also spent a lot of Friday on this but did manage to get some work done editing the next Software Freedom Law Show too.

Christina's Talk

…and so we come to yesterday, Saturday.  I travelled across to Manchester for the Oekonux conference on Free Software and Peer Production. Not the snappiest title I’ve ever heard if I’m honest but I’m told it’s a German word and was advised to pronounce it “ukk nukks”; I did so a few times and nobody slapped me for it so either it was close enough or they were just scared of me. Could be either, I do get a wild look in my eye some times. I’m sad to say I missed the start of Christina Haralanova’s talk on Women In Free Software. I was late because I managed to get lost (once again) in Manchester’s lovely one way system; I swear it’s my nemesis, and you thought Gary Neville was the most annoying thing at the other end of the M62. My dad had offered to lend me his sat-nav but I refused worrying that it might get stolen. On reflection though the money I’d have saved in petrol would probably have paid for a new one anyway, oh well. I’m seriously digressing here, we should get back to the conference.

I watched the last 20mins of Christina’s talk and really enjoyed the open discussion at the end. We recorded an interview together later which was a lot of fun. Hopefully you’ll hear that on a future episode of Linux Outlaws soon but if not I’ll post it here; it needs some editing. Overall, I met some very interesting people, got a nice chance to hang out with some friends from Manchester Free Software, and watched another great talk about Key Signing parties and their social implications by Silke Meyer. I also ended up buying a book of essays by Richard Stallman. So it was definitely a Free Software filled afternoon and I had a great time.

ScriptFrenzy

I then sped back down the M62 on my way to the Script Frenzy meeting at the Everyman Bistro, a favourite haunt of mine. What is Script Frenzy you ask? Well, essentially it’s a challenge I’ve somehow goten myself into where I have to write a 100 page script in 30 days. It lasts for the whole of April and I’ve joined the Liverpool group. Over the next month I’ll be attempting to complete this feat while fitting everything else into my life at the same time. I’ve never written a script before and have no idea what I’m doing but having such nice people to hang out and share experiences with is great. I have a rough idea of what I want to write about and even some characters already formed in my head, it’s a start. I’ll keep you updated on that over the coming weeks and may even post the script if I get it finished.

Upcoming:

I’ll be doing Linux Outlaws tomorrow of course and also editing it this week while Fab attends a Bob Dylan concert, alright for some hey? On Wednesday I’m gonna be busy with Liverpool LUG again in the evening where I plan to break the habit of a lifetime and actually turn up early; not having to negotiate Manchester traffic or Gary Neville should help I hope. We’re expecting some folks from Sound Network to join us which will be great as we normally spend a lot of our time talking about music anyway. Unfortunately I have to leave the LUG early to attend a memorial concert for a friend of mine who died recently, I may even end up playing but we’ll have to see about that. There’ll be plenty of other stuff to report next week and I hope at some point to write up my big Arch Linux review. So stay tuned for that.

Till then, take care everyone, see you on the flip side

Dan

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