Adventures In Open Source

Wow, we're finally here. The 100th Weekly Rewind. It's been a long road and by my calculations longer than it should have been. If I'd managed an update every single week since starting this series in early 2009 we'd have hit triple figures some months back. But you know what? I firmly believe quality ...

Wow, we’re finally here. The 100th Weekly Rewind. It’s been a long road and by my calculations longer than it should have been. If I’d managed an update every single week since starting this series in early 2009 we’d have hit triple figures some months back. But you know what? I firmly believe quality is more important than quantity in all parts of life. Often I’ve just been too busy and it reminds me of one of my favourite quotes. I believe it was John Lennon who said “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans”, or words to that effect. Anyway, the last couple of weeks have been interesting and eventful, so let’s talk about them. Continue reading →

We're almost there, almost at number 100 but not quite. This is Weekly Rewind 99, which I think should be alternatively titled "Would you like a flake with that?". I don't know how well that joke translates Internationally but here in Britain a 99 Flake is a type of ice cream you often get ...

We’re almost there, almost at number 100 but not quite. This is Weekly Rewind 99, which I think should be alternatively titled “Would you like a flake with that?”. I don’t know how well that joke translates Internationally but here in Britain a 99 Flake is a type of ice cream you often get on trips to the seaside. It usually comes served with a chocolate flake and costs 99p, hence the name. To be honest, with the state of the economy and inflation right now I wouldn’t be surprised if they no longer cost 99p. It’s been a while since I bought one. Perhaps it’s a 1.99 now or something. Anyway, enough ice cream discussion. Let’s talk about recent events…

Update: After some searching it seems the name of the 99 is not due to the price and the real reason is unconfirmed.

I’ll begin with last Tuesday (October 4th), when I released another episode of Rathole Radio. Number 62 to be precise and you can grab it from the website now. Speaking of the website, we will soon be upgrading to a newer and much better version. I have to thank Anna for all her help and encouragement with this. Tuesday was a busy podcasting day actually as there was another live Linux Outlaws in the evening. We’d moved the show to Tuesday and it was great fun as always. Fab released that later in the week as episode 232 “This is Not Going Anywhere”. There’s more Linux Outlaws talk to come but I’ll keep things in chronological order.

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Hello everyone and greetings from a ridiculously hot Liverpool. It's almost October and for some reason the weather just got really hot here for a few days. Maybe Al Gore was onto something after all, apart from his private jet, who knows. It's nice though and the influx of new students in town certainly ...

Hello everyone and greetings from a ridiculously hot Liverpool. It’s almost October and for some reason the weather just got really hot here for a few days. Maybe Al Gore was onto something after all, apart from his private jet, who knows. It’s nice though and the influx of new students in town certainly seem to be enjoying it. The volume levels around my flat have gone up lately. I live in the University area so it’s been late night parties and loud music for a couple of weeks. I don’t mind it actually, it makes me feel young. They’ll run out money soon and calm down probably. Anyway, there’s lots to reflect on, so let’s do that…

I’ll begin with Friday September 23rd. I loaded my guitar and other bits into the car then set off for Coventry. I think I chose a bad time to leave as I hit the road at 4pm on a Friday afternoon. It took me almost an hour just to get onto the motorway and fight through Liverpool traffic jams. Once I hit the motorway though it was pretty smooth sailing all the way to Coventry. Google Maps got me to the hotel and I made good time, arriving about 7pm. I’d been asked to speak and perform music at PyConUK. The annual meet up for UK Python developers which is partly organised by my friend John Pinner of The Linux Emporium. He’d asked me to do an after dinner speech and also suggested I bring the guitar. I really wasn’t sure what wisdom (if any) I could impart to a group of people as clever as this, but I’m always up for a challenge. I checked into the hotel and actually bumped into John in reception. He was looking for Allison Randal who’d flown over from the US and was giving the opening keynote. I know Allison through Linux Outlaws and I said I’d find her and get her to the party. I rang her hotel room, tried sending some messages online but pretty much failed in that mission I’m afraid. John phoned to tell me Allison was already at the party so it was panic averted anyway. I joined the rest of the conference attendees at the bar nearby. As I walked in I wondered how many people I’d know there and bumped straight into my friend Ross Jones from the DoES Liverpool office. He’s an accomplished Python developer and I shouldn’t have been surprised he was there really. It was just funny that we’d both made our separate ways from Liverpool. The party was great fun and we had a curry on the way back to the hotel. My stomach regretted that slightly the next day but it was fun at the time. Continue reading →

Hello and welcome to another Weekly Rewind. A slightly overdue one at that. Apologies for missing last week but it slipped under the radar. When I originally conceived of these updates I thought they'd be a nice Sunday afternoon activity. As life has gone on though I actually tend to be more busy on ...

Hello and welcome to another Weekly Rewind. A slightly overdue one at that. Apologies for missing last week but it slipped under the radar. When I originally conceived of these updates I thought they’d be a nice Sunday afternoon activity. As life has gone on though I actually tend to be more busy on weekends now. So I plan to continue the mid-week pattern I’ve fallen into. Right, I’m sure that bit of information makes fascinating reading. So let’s talk about what’s happened in the last 2 weeks…

I left you on Wednesday September 7th as I was about to do another live FLOSS Weekly with Randal. We interviewed Tomaz Muraus about Libcloud, a Python library for accessing cloud services, storage and so on. It was an interesting discussion and you know I love Python, even if I don’t get much free time to write code these days. You can download that show now as FLOSS Weekly 181.

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O Hai! Welcome to another Weekly Rewind. Yeah I made a Lolcatz reference, so what? Some people may not like Lolcatz but I bloody love them. Simple things for simple minds and all that. Don't worry I'm not going to write this whole post in "lolzspeak" though. My spell checker is already going mad ...

O Hai! Welcome to another Weekly Rewind. Yeah I made a Lolcatz reference, so what? Some people may not like Lolcatz but I bloody love them. Simple things for simple minds and all that. Don’t worry I’m not going to write this whole post in “lolzspeak” though. My spell checker is already going mad at those couple of references. So, it’s been an eventful couple of weeks and there’s plenty to report. Let’s get into it…

I’ll pick up with last Wednesday (Aug 31st) when I joined Randal for another FLOSS Weekly on the TWIT Network. It was episode 180 but I resisted the temptation for darts jokes, you know I love darts. Anyway, our guest was Adam Armstrong of the Obeservium project. It’s a network monitoring tool and the philosophy behind it interested me. Adam kept telling us he was a network engineer and not a programmer but I think Randal put paid to his protestations in the end. It was a fun show and you can download it now in video or audio format.

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