It’s Weekly Rewind time again and it’s been something of a quieter week, but still an interesting one. I’m sat here on the couch watching England play Australia in the cricket. A sport that a lot of people despise I know and yes it can be boring at times, but when you know what’s going on it’s also a game that can completely turn on it’s head in just a few minutes. No honestly. In this match though they’ve lost 2 days to rain already, which does make me question the wisdom of trying to play a sport that relies on good weather in England. Anyway, I’m rambling. Let’s get into the events of the last 7 days:
On Monday I processed and released the latest Rathole Radio from the night before. We also recorded and streamed Linux Outlaws 104. Sadly due to a last minute rush by me we had no live Icecast stream, and in the heat of the moment I couldn’t work out why. It had worked perfectly less than 24 hours earlier. I guess the old saying “can’t see the forest for the trees” applies here. After the show I realized we weren’t getting any audio on the stream because my USB interface had changed names since the last show. My Darkice config file was using /dev/dsp2 and now the correct audio device had changed to /dev/dsp1, the joys of hotplugging I suppose. Now that I have this figured out we should – and I emphasize the should – have our live audio stream for you next show. I’ve been looking at solutions to give the the external audio card a consistent name with Udev, so far my custom rules haven’t worked. I’ll keep working on it.
On Tuesday I began the job of editing together the show and spent a fair bit of time processing the audio and syncing things up, before beginning the main edit. On Wednesday I continued editing the show but unexpectedly ended up spending most of the afternoon sorting out flights and hotels in Portland, Oregon for LinuxCon 2009. I’m really excited about going to that event and meeting some of the most important people in the Linux world. I ended up finishing the edit late on Wednesday night and shipping it to Fab for release the following day. On Thursday I installed Crunchbang 9.04.01 and began doing some research for an upcoming distro review. I also attended Chester LUG in the evening and had a really good time. I met some new members of the LUG and we discussed an as yet still secret Linux event in the city for later in the year. It was a record turnout I think with at least 20 people in our corner of the pub talking Tux. In my last few meetings at LivLug, Chester and also Manchester Free Software there seems to be a healthy upturn in attendance. That’s satisfying to see.
On Friday I edited the next Software Freedom Law Show which you’ll be able too hear on Tuesday, and caught up with a few other jobs. Yesterday I took it easy mostly and watched my newly arrived copy of Watchmen on Blu-ray. I was apprehensive beforehand as I’m a massive fan of Alan Moore’s graphic novels and usually they do a poor job of making them into films. So much so that he wanted nothing to do with the latest Watchmen project I believe. It’s a good film though and looked amazing in full HD. They’ve stuck largely to the text and that’s a great improvement I think.
Upcoming:
So next week I’ll be doing another Linux Outlaws tomorrow night at 7pm UK time. You should be able to find the live stream here if you want to tune in and also get involved in the IRC channel. I’m going to write up my experience with Crunchbang and then get onto Pardus Linux 2009 which is waiting on my desk. It’s LivLUG on Wednesday night which I’ll be attending as always, come along and say hi. Next Sunday I’ll also be doing Rathole Radio again at 9pm, but I hope to write another Rewind before that. Till then, take care all and I’ll see you soon 🙂
Dan