It’s another Sunday afternoon and that means I’m sat with my laptop typing away as usual. Not what most people would call a relaxing Sunday, but it seems to work for me. I’m preparing for another Rathole Radio tonight and doing a few other things. Allow me to update you with recent events in my life. Here comes Weekly Rewind number 48.
It began as weeks often do for me with a live Linux Outlaws show on Monday. Much fun was had, much geeky talking was done and I’m pleased to say many people joined in. I also did more ringing around and emailing as Oggcamp organization carried on apace. I’ve been doing a lot of Drupal hacking and coding for a website project this week too. I finally got past chapter 2 of my Drupal Pro Development book after about a year, and I’m starting to understand writing your own modules as well. I’ll try to write more about that as time goes on. On Tuesday I processed the audio from Linux Outlaws and sent it back to Fab for editing. He released that as episode 132 “The Denty Dent Client” on Thursday. I also sorted out my vote for the Open Rights Group board elections and posted that off. Any other members should have a read through the candidates information and get their ballot papers in before February 15th.
I wrote about my trials with the N900 in great detail and published that on Tuesday. It seems the information has helped a couple of people and I’m very glad too hear that. I finally got the Oggcamp hotel booking site sorted with the Tourist Board but sadly the results aren’t as great as I’d hoped. The hotel rooms seem quite expensive and I found I could bring up many more options just by searching myself. They have been helpful, but I think perhaps they’re expecting a more corporate conference where everyone stays at expensive hotels and bills it to their employer. Oggcamp is a community event and our attendees are different. I’ve spent time researching and compiling travel and hotel information for the website myself. I’ve also put a nice image of the venue on the front page. You can see all that at oggcamp.org of course. If anyone has problems finding somewhere to stay or they need travel advice I’m happy to point you in the right direction. My email address is on the website. I’m taking my self-appointed role as “Open Source Ambassador For Liverpool” quite seriously. The big tray of Fererro Rocher is on order.
Despite organisational work and PHP code I’ve also moved my mobile from Orange to O2 this week. I have a much better contract and data allowance to use with the N900 now, and as soon as I switched to the O2 SIM I got a full 3G connection. It seems the best option where I live. Orange weren’t happy obviously but I found their tone and attempts to dissuade me a little insulting. The told me that they could offer me a massive 50mb of data per month for £15 and proceeded to tell me how massive this allowance was and how I would never use it all. That’s one podcast to me or a few big email attachments. I’d already told him I was Linux journalist and I’d been sent this phone by Nokia to test. Despite this he seemed to think I didn’t know what a megabyte was and could educate me. It was very condescending and didn’t help his cause. I’ve been a loyal Orange customer for nearly 10 years, never missed a bill, ever. In return I at least expected not to be treated like I’d just had a lobotomy. He didn’t even know what Linux was, which led me to wonder just who the computer expert in this conversation actually was. Anyway, enough complaining it’s done now. The PAC code arrived in the post after a couple of days. I expected it in an email or SMS instantly as other companies do, but at least they sent it in the end.
I’ve been collecting tracks and preparing questions for tonight’s Rathole Radio most of the weekend. I’ll be joined live by Jono Bacon of Ubuntu and Severed Fifth fame. I plan to chat to him about Creative Commons and the options available to musicians online. There’ll be plenty of metal in the show of course but I also have some electro, some baggy indie and even some ragga music to keep it varied. It’s gonna be good. To round the week off yesterday I heard that my interview with Def Net Media had been published, and it came out really well I think. I rambled on as I normally do, why use 2 words when 15 will do hey. Let me know what you think if you read it.
Coming up:
There’ll be more Linux Outlaws live tomorrow night which you should come and join us for. I’ll also release the Rathole Radio podcast from tonight and write a long review of the N900. There’s much to talk about. I also expect there’ll be more OggCamp news, Drupal hacking and other shenanigans going on. I’ll report back next week. Till then, take care of yourselves.
Dan