Weekly Rewind #80

Hello everyone, it’s been a while hasn’t it? I haven’t written a new post in almost 4 weeks now because I’ve been so busy. There’s a lot to update you on, it’s difficult to know where to start really. I’m writing this update from my lovely new flat in the heart of Liverpool. That’s certainly a development worth mentioning. I’ve been in for a good couple of weeks and I even have curtains, so I guess that makes it official. They’re not as precious as the Internet connection to a geek like me, but they do a far better job of keeping out the light. I’m going to summarise a lot of what’s happened recently otherwise we’ll never get through it.

I traveled home from Brussels, where I last left you on February 7th. It was a largely uneventful but enjoyable journey. I then went straight to band practice from the train home (rock and roll!!) as we prepared for our gig on the Feb 11th. There were a lot of events in Liverpool that week with Ignite and Social Media Cafe followed by the Social Media Social on Friday. It’s so long ago now that I can’t think of a lot to say about them, other than the events happened, we made the technical side work in our usual scrambling fashion and people seemed to enjoy it. I suppose the most memorable part of the week for me was playing with my band 20lb Sounds. We had a great gig upstairs at LEAF in Bold St. There’s also some video footage which will slowly be appearing (song by song) on our website. So if you couldn’t make it along at least you can get some of the atmosphere. I think we played well and doing mostly our own material was great. The downside is that nobody knows it, but the upside is that they might get to know. We’ve also written some new songs in the weeks since and we’re recording them at the moment. My hope is to have a decent EP if not album’s worth of material available for the Rathole Radio gig on April 24th at The Masque.

Speaking of Rathole Radio, let’s summarise what I’ve been up to in that field. There’s been 2 new episodes of RR. You can find them here and here. I’ve been working on the gig arrangements, ordering tickets, playing with Google Checkout and many more details. It’s all coming together and there’ll be more on that in the next few days. In other podcasting news Linux Outlaws has steamed on as it always does. There’s been a 3 episodes since my last update and we recorded a 4th last night (March 7th) which isn’t yet out. Here’s a quick list:

• Linux Outlaws 194 – Nuclear Chicken
• Linux Outlaws 193 – Comments Are Off
• Linux Outlaws 192 – De Lamentation of der Women

We’ve been running our competition draw for the Meego netbooks I was sent by Intel and it’s been going well. We’re using a Bash command on the actual netbooks themselves and I came up with the idea of them picking the people they want to go to. So far one listener in Canada has won and another in Australia, so it’s a truly global giveaway.

I did another two shows as the main host of FLOSS Weekly. The first (number 152) was particularly dramatic because our guest didn’t show up. I talked to Simon Phipps about FOSDEM instead, where we’d actually spent some time together. We managed to get so much content out of that the show was made into a FOSDEM report anyway. It’s good to know we can pull a show out when we really need to. I also did another FLOSS on February 16th about TonidoPlug with Aaron Newcomb. That was released as number 153. Randal returned for the next 2 shows but as I write this on March 8th I’ll be taking the wheel again tomorrow, Wednesday March 9th. We’ll be talking to Dan Walsh about SELinux, provided he turns up this time 😉 Sticking on the theme, I hosted AMPed 272 on behalf of the Association Of Music Podcasting and enjoyed it a lot. It’s a weekly review of tracks sent in by all the member podcasts and there’s often some gems to be uncovered. Finally in podcasting news I edited a couple of editions of Free As In Freedom for Bradley and Karen. You can find them at the show’s website.

Along with all that I’ve played an acoustic gig at LEAF, I say “gig” but it was really just some songs during their open mic session. I hope to do more of that in future. I’ve broken and then fixed more computers and websites for various people. I’ve been to LivLUG, but most importantly as I said at the top, I’ve moved home! I got all my furniture moved after returning from Brussels and I’ve been in almost a month now. Time flies. It feels so different to live in the heart of the city, the heart of Liverpool, which for some reason has always drawn me closer. It’s great. There’s more noise yes, mostly thanks to the trains that rumble past my flat from Lime St station, but there are so many positive things that outweigh that. I’m living in the University area not far from the Cathedrals (we have two) and it’s very comfy. I can walk to band practice and also walk to gigs and other things in no time. I’ll let you know how that develops over time. My legs will have to get used to a lot more walking but it’ll probably do them good.

There’s obviously tons of information lost from the last month as I ran through it so fast. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back on track with blog updates soon. There’s always lots to talk about. That just about brings us up to date.

Upcoming:

I’ll be presenting FLOSS Weekly 156 tomorrow as I’ve already said. It’s live at live.twit.tv from 17:30 UK time, you’ll have to work out the time differences sorry. I’ll be doing more recording with the band, shouting about the Rathole Roadshow ticket sales and also going to see a star of the last roadshow, David Rovics, as he plays a concert in Kirkby, where I have a lot of family. I’m also going to be speaking about Linux in Chester on Wed 16th March at a BCS meeting. I’ll post more details on that when I have them at the weekend and also report back on everything else that’s going on.

Take care of yourselves until then,

Dan