Howdy folks. Apologies for missing an article last week. It was a very busy weekend and I just didn’t get the time, I’ll tell you about that in a minute. I was surprised to learn this week that some friends of mine actually read this blog. It’s odd because although I write this stuff and publish it, I never really expect anyone will bother to read it. It’s nice to find out they do. I’ve got almost 2 weeks worth of stuff to catch up on, so let’s get into it.

I’ll begin on Wednesday 18th of August. The day was mostly taken up with Drupal hacking and various bit’s of CSS. Whisper it quietly, but I finally feel like I’m starting to make some sense of CSS. I’m far from a master but I’m getting somewhere at last. I received a last minute call to appear as a co-host on FLOSS Weekly again just the night before. One of the hosts dropped out and Randal asked if I could fill in. Of course I was happy to. We interviewed Stephen Hemminger about Vyatta, a Linux-based network gateway. My first appearance on FLOSS a couple of months back went ok but was dogged by technical problems. I’m glad to say the delay was sorted this time and the HD camera sent to me by Fab was a big improvement. I used my studio kit and the audio sounded a lot clearer. People seemed to enjoy the show and it was released as a podcast a couple of days later. Read the rest of this entry »

AMP

Hey folks, just a very quick post to let you know I presented the AMPed podcast this week. It’s the weekly round up from the Association Of Music Podcasting which I joined quite recently. The show contains music submitted by some of the various member podcasts. It’s only 37mins long but still had plenty packed in.

You can download it here if you’re interested.

Should have mentioned it in my last Weekly Rewind but forgot. Now you know

See ya,

Dan

Time for another Weekly Rewind and although it’s already Tuesday I’m not half as late as last week. I had a lot of stuff to talk about with the camping trip and man did I go on, nearly 2000 words in the end. I don’t think this write up will be quite so long but I hope it’ll still be fun and fact packed… ok maybe not, but I can try Let’s get into it.

Last Monday I was really screwed after the camping trip and all the other events of a busy weekend, so I took it a bit easier. I tried to catch up on jobs around the house, did a bit of tinkering on my web server and various other things. I also took Fab up on his kind offer to postpone Linux Outlaws till Tuesday, I needed a rest. So on Tuesday night we did the live show at the usual time, all be it 24hrs late as I joked.  It went well and afterwards I  synced up the audio before shipping it back off to Bonn for final editing. It’s quite a process but it’s become second nature to us now I think and we’ve been talking about updating the podcast we recorded about show production. Back in episode 19 we documented our set up and although things haven’t completely changed, they have evolved enough to warrant another show on the subject. Fab has gotten himself a new microphone and a rather lovely valve (or “tube” if you prefer) compressor. This means the audio can be a lot more polished on recording and doesn’t require quite so much attention in post. I’d loaned out my compressor/limiter/gate to a friend but I’ve got it back and set that up now as well. We’ve got quite some kit and it’ll be good to share the information with the world. It’s probably the question we get asked more than any other, “how do you make the show?”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Note: This was written 11th Aug, but didn’t get a chance to post.

Will you still need me? …Will you still feed me? …When I’m 64. Yes that’s right folks it’s Weekly Rewind number 64 already, feels like it’s come around quickly but I suppose really it hasn’t. I started blogging in earnest somewhere round the beginning of last year so it’s taken 18 months. I’m pretty late this week with the update (even later posting it) and I’m going to try and recap what’s been an exciting and busy time recently. Strap yourself in and let’s get this show on the road…

Last Monday night we recorded Linux Outlaws 161 and broadcast it live as usual. I had great fun chatting and worked on syncing up the audio later, before shipping it back to Fab for editing. He released that show later in the week with the title “The Operating System Is Called Windows”. I kept busy during the day with Drupal work and other things most of last week, so I’ll gloss over that as we have a lot to cover. Sadly I didn’t make it to Liverpool LUG as my friend’s brother was rushed into hospital at the last minute and obviously he had to be there. In truth although I found out late I wouldn’t be getting a lift I could have made it if I’d driven myself. I felt pretty wiped out though and needed some rest. I hope everyone at the LUG will understand. I got an email off Nokia on the Monday saying “can we have our phone back please?”, or words to that effect. It was a bit of a surprise after 8 months with the N900 but I could hardly say no. It was collected by courier on the Thursday and they didn’t waste any time. I’m sorry to see it go as I liked the N900 a lot and as a pure hacker device I still think it’s unrivalled. As an everyday phone though it’s probably lost the battle already, a lack of clear direction and support from the company hasn’t helped. I think Meego has an uphill battle against the strongly embedded Android and iPhone options (that’s almost a pun). You never know though, I hope they’ll surprise me. I sincerely thank Nokia for the chance to play with this device and I find it really odd that some people seem to think I should be pissed off they want it back. There was never any indication this was anything more than a loan and besides, that would seem pretty ungrateful to me. So long N900, but I did get to keep the funky box they sent it in. I just need to find a purpose for the Arduino inside now.

Liverpool Ignite 3

On Thursday I shot over to the Static gallery in Liverpool to help out with Liverpool Ignite 3, and it’s a good job I did. They had a large PA in the main room and nobody who knew how to make it work. I wasn’t familiar with the particular kit, but I’ve never met a sound system I didn’t like so I got it all fired up. There was a weird mains hum at times but I managed to EQ it out for the most part. I think someone had put a stack of power cables and live connectors in the roof truss alongside the signal cable. A cardinal sin in the theatre tech world! I manned the mixer through the show and had great fun doing it. I was reminded of my former life as a full time “noise boy” and I felt a bit nostalgic. Hopefully some day I’ll get back to that, who knows. Everyone had a fun evening and by the end I was certainly ready for bed. A good sleep sorted me out though.

On Friday I did some more hacking during the day and then packed up my stuff and hit the road at tea time. I was due to camp in North Wales at the Hoofer Doofer festival. It’s a dance festival set on a remote farm and some friends of mine run it. Despite this being the 3rd event I’d not made it to one and decided I should change that. I picked up Gary from the band and we set off in the car. We then promptly got lost as I took the wrong turn off the main road, but found our way back after 15mins of driving around small country lanes looking at sheep. In hindsight this was an omen of things to come later that night. We drove through towards Bangor and actually passed the camp site where we could see everyone else, this past at least was deliberate. We were planning to go to the large Tesco to stock up for the weekend and I was assured it was “just at the next big turn off”. We took that turn off and got even more lost but not for an 15mins this time, more like an hour. We drove around one place to the next searching in vain for this mythical Tesco until eventually we gave in and asked a local, terrifying him and his family as we followed them up their driveway to the front door. After getting directions from the very helpful man we finally made it to the supermarket and stocked up. I’ve seen some big supermarkets in my time but this was like a Tesco department store, they sold everything and even had different floors. We spoke to some friends on the phone to check whether we needed to buy extra tents or not, remember this as it’s important later. They’d taken tents and set them up for us so we were told there was no need and headed back to the festival. We were so late that is was almost dark by the time we hit the site and to top it off it was beginning to rain. A quick inspection of the two tents we were supposed to sleep in left us both unimpressed. They were knackered and I couldn’t even fit in mine, I know I’m big but I’m not that big. With a snap decision it was back off to Tesco to buy new tents, luckily a 24hr store. We managed not to get lost this time and returned within 30mins in the now pitch black and driving rain to erect our new canvas homes. With the help of a head torch and some perseverance I got the tent up and was very pleased with my effort. I’m not a hardened camper by any means so it wasn’t easy putting that thing up in the dark. Thankfully it looked ok the next day in the light and crucially it was dry inside. Ray Mears eat your heart out.

The Gunmen's Set Up

After that we sat around, chatted and chilled out for the evening. The next day I was awoken by my mate H shaking the tent quite enthusiastically. He was due to play at midday and needed a laptop from my car to do the show. He and Gary did a drum n bass set as The Lone Gunmen and I became the self appointed roadie. I had to make tea in the cafe at one point because all the staff were “too wrecked” from the previous night. I just made brews for the 3 of us and left some change on he counter, then settled in to watch the guys play live. It was really good and the music was excellent I thought. Sadly there were only about 10 people there because everyone was still asleep. Midday is a stupid time to put that sort of thing on at a festival anyway. I’m convinced if the lads had played later there’d have been a massive crowd. I hadn’t had anything to eat and neither had anyone else, so once again it was back off to the loving bosom of Tesco for a warm meal. I joked we’d spent more time in the Tesco and should have pitched the tents there, it must have been close to the truth. I’d originally planned to come back home on the Saturday night but ended up staying as the weather improved and I didn’t feel like I’d really seen anything on the first night. It was a Sci-Fi fancy dress theme which I didn’t know, but thankfully I wasn’t the only one without a costume. It was humbling to see the effort some people had gone to though. Ghostbusters, Star Wars characters and also Futurama seemed the most popular themes. We went around the rooms checking out the music, chatted to friends, drank, chatted some more and generally had a good time. I awoke on the Sunday sweating like crazt as the sun had finally come out. It was still muddy in the fields but nice to get a bit of warmth. I discovered later this brief bit of sun was enough to burn head, but at the time I was in ignorant bliss. We packed up and headed home about tea time and stopped at the Little Chef on the way for food. Little Chef is a chain of road side restaurants in the UK and my dad always calls them “Little Thief” because they’re really expensive. When you’re on the road you don’t have a lot of choice and I really enjoyed my £10 rasher of bacon and piece of toast (mild exaggeration). I made it home at about 6pm and realised I’d done no preparation whatsoever for Rathole Radio that evening. Despite sun burn and tiredness I managed to pull off a show, even if it was a little late starting. People were very patient with me and we had good fun in the end. I’ve released that now as Rathole Radio 32 if you want to hear it. I’ll leave the rest of the information till next weeks report as I’ve gone on long enough.

Upcoming:

So, what else is coming up this week. It’s Wednesday as I write this so there’s not a lot of time left. I’m getting a HTC Desire (paid for) to replace the N900 and I can’t wait to try that out. I’ll let you all know the juicy details as soon as I can. I’ve got much more Drupal hacking to do and hopefully there’ll be a chance to make some noise with the band again. I’m supposed to be presenting the next episode of AMPed, the round up show from the Association of Music Podcasting. I’ll record that at the weekend and I hope it goes well. I’ll let you know. For now take care of yourselves and I’ll see you soon. Remember, clouds can give you sun burn too apparently so wear a hat or something

Enjoy the music to play us out.

Dan

Hello… hellooooo… is this thing on? It’s finally time for another Weekly Rewind. You could be forgiven for thinking it should be called the Monthly Rewind, or even the Annual Rewind of late. I’m sorry it’s taken so long to write something substantial. The limited spare time I’ve had off has mostly been spent with the band or on other endeavours, but I intend to fix this ASAP! There’s still been regular episodes of Rathole Radio and Linux Outlaws to keep you company so I’ve hardly been off the radar. Looking at the blog calendar I see I only managed one solitary post in the whole of July, how sad. Rather than try to remember everything that’s happened to me in the time since then (cos frankly I can’t), I’ll resume the story a week ago with the events of Saturday July 24th.

I practised with the band in the afternoon and we had a really long session, it went fairly well but we were all tired and it showed a little. I then hot tailed it home to record an interview with Tom and Doug from the Music Manumit podcast. We talked for ages and it was great fun. I love to talk, as most of you have suffered, but the guys were very accommodating and gracious. The recording has just been released and you can download it here. I spent the whole of Sunday listening to tracks and making selections for Rathole Radio that evening. I left it a bit late but managed to get everything sorted in time for the show. It was a rush job. You wouldn’t think listening to some music and making a set list is that hard would you? I didn’t either before I starting doing it on a regular basis. I never repeat tracks and I try hard to vary the content of the show. It takes time to track down the real hidden gems in the online musical wilderness, I could never play a track I didn’t honestly think was good. I was really happy with the selection in the end and other people seemed to enjoy it too. Lots of folks joined me in the chat room and that makes a massive difference. You can get instant feedback and it’s good to know somebody is actually out there. I got to sing my rendition of American Pie by Don McLean after it won the song vote. It came out well, if a little too shouty in some places, I was overexcited. If you’d like to judge for yourself check out Rathole Radio 31, which I released on Tuesday evening. I’d been told there were some problems with the last release on iTunes and I think I’ve tracked it down now. Somewhere in the maze of connections between Libsyn, Feedburner and my own website, the media enclosures we’re getting messed up. The new release seems to work and I’ve fixed the previous one too. If you’re an iTunes user you may want to download number 30 again manually. Sorry for the mix up. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello everyone. This week’s update finds me sat enjoying a sunny Sunday evening and unable to move after the delights of my home made beef Cannelloni. Ok not completely home made, I have to admit the Cannelloni was bought from a shop but the sauce and other things are original. It was delicious and I’m now stuck to my chair with a full belly. Putting this fascinating information aside though let’s talk about what happened this week.

On Monday I released a new episode of Rathole Radio. Episode 29 to be precise, the one I pre-recorded before England’s dismal World Cup defeat to Germany. I had to put the media files for this show on my Dreamhost account because I’d hit my data limit for the month on Libsyn. I can host up to 250mb of files on there which might seem a lot for a fortnightly podcast but in reality it works out at 2 episodes of the show. It’s released at 128kbit quality so the music is listenable, if not pristine, and also there’s an ogg and mp3 version for each one. I usually scrape in at about 240mb a month. It seems that because months are not exactly 4 weeks long over time you end up with 3 episode release dates falling in one calendar month. I could up my Libsyn account to the next level but it seems pointless for the odd time this happens and besides it would be expensive. All fascinating stuff for you I’m sure but this is really a long winded way of explaining why you might experience a slightly slower download for this show. It should all still work fine though.

Static Gallery, Liverpool

On Tuesday I got to work on one of my first custom Drupal modules. It’s been a bit hit and miss so far, but I’m attempting to use the hook_user function to log visitors to a site into an external forum at the same time. This is done via SOAP messages and web services. Once (if) I get it all working I’ll explain the process. I needed to do this for one site and decided it would be good to make it a reusable module with some simple settings in the admin area. It’s got some way to go but I’ll let you know how it turns out. In the evening I went out to see the band and we worked on more new material. We should be recording some of the songs soon to share with the world. I really hope people will like them as much as I do. Time will tell. Wednesday saw the inaugural meeting of Social Media Cafe Liverpool at the Static Gallery in town. I headed over to see some friends there and ended up operating the sound desk and also performing the crucial and highly skilled job of pressing the button to change slides for one speaker. We had a talk about data analysis from Liverpool Daily Post Digital Editor (that’s a title and a half isn’t it?) Alison Gow up first. Alison helped me promote OggCamp and my gig earlier in the year. She’s a great speaker and everyone enjoyed it. There was an interesting talk about Foursquare followed by WordPress guru Dave Coveney which the crowd seemed to appreciate. I stood behind the bar for the talks and even ended up serving drinks at one point. I actually quite enjoyed being barman for a brief moment there. I was even asked by someone later on if I “owned the bar”, which was funny. I wish. There were about 70 people in the venue which doesn’t sound a lot but it was packed and also a really hot night. I was sweating like mad. The whole event was a success and the plan is to hold them every month I believe with interesting speakers and guests. I look forward to it.

On Thursday night we did the first live episode of Linux Outlaws in 2 or 3 weeks. It felt amazing to be back in the saddle, if you’ll pardon the pun. We recorded for about 2 hours and chatted to people in IRC as we went along. It made me realise just how much I’ve missed doing the show during our short break. I’m still working on editing that but it should be out very soon I promise. On Friday I nipped over to a printing shop in Liverpool to pick up some Linux Fund posters for Barcamp Blackpool. I was asked if could take them with me and being the nice chap that I am I agreed. That brings us neatly onto Barcamp Blackpool actually.

JonTheNiceGuy giving his talk

On Saturday morning I set off for Blackpool in the car, only to realise about 15mins into my journey that I’d left my phone on the bedside table at home. So, after a little boomerang trip I was off Northwards again. I haven’t been to Blackpool since I was a kid and for some reason it’s always seemed like a massive journey up there in my mind. In fact it’s a lot closer than I remember from childhood, only 90mins in the car. That’s less than the average episode of Linux Outlaws. Perhaps it’s because I was a kid it felt like a longer time back then, you get bored quicker and it’s not long before the “are we nearly there yet?” instinct kicks in. Anyway, I followed my sat nav until I saw the Blackpool Tower on the horizon and I knew I was in the right place. The Barcamp was held at the casino in the Blackpool Pleasure Beach theme park. They’d arranged discount parking behind the casino itself but being predictably late I missed all the spaces, so I drove around a little bit and found a £7 all-day car park not far away. After claiming my badge and checking in I was informed that it was “pie time”. The mind boggled as to what that could mean but it turned out it literally meant free pies from a van in the car park. I know how to time and entrance. I bumped into my good mate JonTheNiceGuy (AKA Jon Spriggs) and we took our place at the back of the now massive pie queue snaking around the car park.

A sunny day at Blackpool Pleasure Beach

It was a really hot day and Blackpool was packed with tourists as you’d expect. I saw the donkeys all lined up getting their EU sanctioned 15mins break. I don’t know if it was the EU or someone else but I remember all the fuss when the law was brought in saying animals had to have a set break. It must have been a slow news week. The first session I caught after lunch was an introduction to sign language and it was fascinating. I learnt to sign my name and most of the alphabet, I say most of the alphabet because I’ve forgotten some of it now, not because they didn’t show us the whole thing. I don’t know why but learning those few signs made an impression on me and it’s definitely something I’d like to continue in future if I can. Next I went over to see another mate Les “Quarter” Pounder at his Ubuntu demo area. I also saw @heeed, another podcast listener and OggCamp survivor helping out. Les showed me his Joggler (no that’s not code for anything). It’s an O2 touch screen tablet which runs Ubuntu Netbook Remix beautifully. The only thing I can’t understand about the Joggler is why they don’t have a battery pack for it. You have to plug it in and I’ve been told that’s because it’s designed to be more like a digital photo frame than a mobile device. Next up it was Jon’s session about his Campfire Manager software in a nearby room. I really enjoyed his talk and I’m a fan of Campfire, we used it to organise OggCamp after all. It seems not everyone in Blackpool is so keen though and there’d been some heated words on the mailing list over it’s use for the barcamp. We had a good discussion, together with some of the people who weren’t as keen and I think some good suggestions we made. Later in the day I scrounged an Ubuntu 10.04 CD from Les and installed it on my laptop. Right in the middle of the main room as there was a talk going on. I’ve been so busy this year that my distro hopping has really suffered, it feels nice to be on a different distro at last. I’ve even moved the window buttons back to the right with a quick Gconf hack. Some people may think that petty of me but it really wasn’t natural having the window controls on the left. When I want to close a window I automatically click the top right corner and I’m not alone in that.

I chatted to many other folks around the venue and generally had great day. I have to say Gemma Cameron (@ruby_gem) did a great job of organising it all and it was good to finally meet her in person. They even had bars of Barcamp Blackpool rock which was a great idea. For foreign readers and anyone else who doesn’t know what rock is (in this sense), it’s a type or hard candy sweet that Blackpool is known for. It’s basically pure sugar as far as I can tell. I stayed for the evening party where we had a buffet and live entertainment from a magician, the £500 free bar didn’t last long but that was nothing to do with me. I was driving, but I enjoyed a free coke or two. So after a great day I went to see if my car was still there and enjoyed the drive back home on quiet empty motorways. I made it back in just over an hour which must be some sort of record. Sunday was a lot quieter and it needed to be, I was tired after a long week. I spent most of it getting used to the new Ubuntu.

Upcoming:

Next week we’ll have the release of this Linux Outlaws episode I’m working on right now. There’s another LivLUG (Liverpool LUG) meeting on Wednesday night at 7pm and I’ll be there. Come down to Bold St and join us if you’re within striking distance of Liverpool, details and directions are on the website. There’ll be more Rathole Radio on Sunday and much else besides no doubt in the coming days. For now though I think I’ve gone on enough so I’ll speak to you next week with more dispatches from the front line. Take care till then.

Dan