The Weekly Rewind

Hold on a minute, did another week pass already? Damn, I think it did. You know what that means, it’s Weekly Rewind time again, so here goes nothing.

On Monday we recorded Linux Outlaws 79 and also streamed it live. This is only the second time we’ve streamed the show via Ustream but people seemed to enjoy it. Still no sign of a web cam on my end sorry but you can all tune in to watch Fab and listen to us on Monday evenings if you like. He’s even set up linuxoutlaws.com/live which shows how committed he is to this whole thing, seen too much TWIT if you ask me It’s all part of our new plan to record and stream the show on Mondays and get the podcast out on Wednesdays. It works out better for both of us as we have more time to edit earlier in the week and we can keep the lag between recording and release down, that’s important I think. In true Outlaws style we haven’t set a regular time for recording on Mondays yet but keep an eye on our Identica account for announcements. Exciting stuff.

On Tuesday I had hoped to go to Geek Up in Liverpool but wasn’t feeling too well and I also discovered I had to attend a funeral on Wednesday morning. I was disappointed to miss yet another Geek Up, I’ve been threatening to attend one for a couple of months now but I will manage it one day, I’m determined! I also found the time on Wednesday to finish and publish my Sabayon 4 review which has had an interesting response. 42 comments last time I looked.

Les Talking About ZFS

On Thursday I went to the first technical meeting of Chester LUG at one of my old stomping grounds, Chester University. It was actually called Chester College (and part of Liverpool University) when I was there studying computer science but it’s now a bone fide university in it’s own right. The meeting was great. Les Pritchard talked about Git, ZFS and OpenVZ and Stuart Burns also talked about Crunchbang Linux. I really enjoyed the topics and I’m going to have to  look into ZFS and OpenVZ a lot more I think. I’m a little concerned that Crunchbang is stalking me lately, it’s everywhere, I can’t get away!! Hehe I’m happy for Phil though and it’s a really great project. Les posted the details of the meet on the LUG Blog.

On Friday I edited the next episode of the Software Freedom Law Show for my friends at the SFLC. I’ve sent the files back to Bradley and you can expect to hear them on Tuesday when it’s released. This time Bradley and Karen discuss choosing the right open source license for your project and it’s well worth a listen for any developers out there. On Friday evening I got a bit worked up about copyright in the EU after watching the excellent video by the Open Rights Group, so I posted a piece about the situation which I’ve had a lot of nice responses to.

Stuart Demos Crunchbang

What Lies Ahead: Over the weekend I’ve been playing around with Debian Lenny some more and making notes. I’ll write up the review and release it sometime in the coming week I hope. I’ve been running Lenny for almost 2 weeks now since it was released actually and I have a lot to say about it.  Keep and eye out for that.  I’ll be going to Liverpool LUG on Wednesday night at our new location of the Liverpool Social Centre at 96 Bold Street. It’ll be starting from about 7pm I think and should be a lot of fun. If you’re in the area come along and say hi, you can ring the bell on the door and someone will let you in, we’re a friendly bunch. I’ll recording Linux Outlaws tommorrow and I’m also scheduled to do a talk about podcasting at Think Visibilty in Leeds on Saturday. I’m gonna be pretty busy but I’ll report back next Sunday and hopefully find time to post some other stuff throughout the week. So until then take care of yourselves and who knows I might even see you at once of these events, I hope so.

Dan

P.S – All this talking about my week reminds me of the classic sketch from the 90′s UK comedy programme The Fast Show.  “This week I are been mostly eating… Borbon Biscuits!!”

My Hastily Made Logo

Hey folks, it’s pretty late on Sunday night but I just realised I’d almost forgotten about my new series. I’m calling it the Weekly Rewind, it’s just a round up of my week really which hopefully contains some interesting and funny bits and pieces for you. I tried it for the first time last week (all be it a day late) and asked for title suggestions when someone said I should call it the Weekly Rewind and I like the sound of that, I can also use an old cassette tape as a logo, retro mmm So here goes…

Early in the week I finished off testing Sabayon 4 and doing research on that. I had hoped to have the article finished and published by now but as usual that didn’t go to plan. I’m about 800 words through at the moment. I expect to have it out tomorrow or Tuesday but if you want to hear a sneak preview of my thoughts check out Linux Outlaws 78. I talked about the distro for about 15mins. It’s after the Microwatch section, about 40mins in if you want to skip through. I won’t be upset but of course you should try out the rest of the show as well if you’ve never heard it before, you never know you might even enjoy it, shock horror.

I’d downloaded Debian Lenny on the release day last weekend and decided it would be my next stop so installed that on Wednesday. I’ll be writing a full report on it which you’ll be able to read in the next week or so but here’s some quick initial thoughts. Getting the wi-fi working was easier than I expected and even installing the freedom hating nVidia drivers I needed on this laptop wasn’t too hard. Overall it’s a very stable release as you would expect but I have experienced a few weird issues now and then. You’ll have to wait for the actual review to get all those juicy details though. Not long I promise.

Thursday night we recorded Linux Outlaws 78 and for the first time actually streamed it live as well. It all came together at the last minute in true Outlaws style but Fab set up his eeePC to broadcast through Ustream. We had some trouble with the web cam freezing but the audio stream stayed up I’m told and about 35 people listened in live, not bad considering we never really announced it. It was something of a trial but the feedback has been good and we’ll try to improve on it next time. The listeners could hear me over Skype but I didn’t have a web cam set up at the time. People have asked me but I’m not so sure I wanna be filmed all the time. I’ve always known I have a face for radio but perhaps in future I’ll get something set up. For now we’ve hit on the solution of just sticking a picture of me in the corner. Fab can change it every 10mins to one with a different expression and we’ll just pretend it’s a live feed but the lag is really bad, nobody will know, unless they read this hehehe Some people on the Linux Outlaws blog have helpfully suggested I wear a mask but I have no desire to become the Phantom of the Podcast thanks very much. We’ve had requests to stream the recording process live for a while. It’s a weird experience getting instant feedback from people in the chat room as you talk but kinda cool too I have to say, a nice buzz. Unfortunately we’re not set up to do the full radio thing at the moment and mix in all the music and sound effects as we talk, most of that is done in post. I’ve been playing around with my mixer tonight though and experimenting, so stay tuned there may be developments on that front. I’ve toyed with the idea of streaming a live music show for quite a while using something like Icecast but as with most of my plans I’m too busy plotting new things to ever actually finish them all. I edited the show over the weekend (on Lenny actually) and it was released tonight if you want to hear the results.

Next week I’m off to Geek Up in Liverpool on Tuesday night which is something I’ve been told I should attend for ages by my friend Adrian from LivLUG. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of crowd turn up, I’ve been to many LUG meetings but this is open to all tech types not just freedom crusaders and might be a different experience, I’ll let you know how it went next week. Thursday night is Chester LUG which will be at the University for the first time with technical talks, slide shows and even perhaps refreshments, which are the main topic of discussion on the mailing list at the moment it seems, don’t get between a geek and their snacks. If you’re in range of Chester in the UK then come along by all means. It would be nice to see you there, I’ve included a map below.

View Larger Map

Right that’s it. Over 750 words in the end, not bad for an impromptu post, hope some of them were worth reading. Take care everyone and I’ll see you soon, remember to stay tuned for those Sabayon and Lenny reviews.

See ya

Dan