Weekly Rewind #41

It’s the forty first Weekly Rewind, and this update finds me sat on the couch in the studio. It’s a Monday afternoon and my feet are freezing, I’m sure all this additional information is fascinating to you. It’s been quite a fun week with lots to report. I’m a day late again but hopefully not a dollar short, as the saying goes. So let’s get into it.

Last Monday we recorded and streamed another episode of Linux Outlaws after a massive delay and some technical failures. Luckily most people stuck around and bore with us, which we appreciate. It’s great to have such amazing people supporting you, I never forget that. We finished very late and I was knackered by the end, but I wouldn’t miss it for world, it’s always fun. On Tuesday I began editing the recordings and I’ll talk more about that in a minute, but something else happened on that morning. I got a new battery for my trusty Dell XPS m1330 laptop. I bought a brand new Dell original 9 cell off eBay. Getting computer parts on eBay can be risky at times but I can’t fault this seller at all, it’s straight from the factory by the looks of it. The 9 cell version is a bit bigger than my old 6 cell and sticks out the back on the machine quite a bit. Is that a 9 cell battery or are you just pleased to see me? See the pictures to get an idea of what I mean. It gives me a lot longer run time though and I can now go about 4 hours without plugging in. Cool hey? I’m pleased anyway.

Back to the podcast. It was a mammoth edit at over 2 hours of raw recording, and it took me most of Tuesday night and a good deal of Wednesday as well. I’ve worked out a rough formula over the time I’ve been doing this podcasting lark. I find for every 15mins of finished show time I can add an hour to the editing time usually. That’s just the way I work anyway, but it seems to predict editing time quite accurately. We had our big distro shoot out in this edition and it worked out really well. We compared OpenSUSE 11.2 and Fedora 12, both recent releases. You can hear the result in episode 123 (what a great number) which was released on Wednesday night, after much more hard work tagging, encoding and show noting (if that’s a legitimate term) by Fab. I hope you enjoy the show, the final running time after my intense editing is 1 hour 48mins. Not bad going.

On Thursday I got down to more research and began writing my monster OpenSUSE 11.2 review. I also attended Chester LUG in the evening and had good fun catching up with friends. It had been a while since I attended and it was a good job I did, there was only one people there when I arrived, the group grew as things went on. I think the winter months and Christmas approaching have an adverse affect on attendance. Still, we had a great time and it was well worth the trip. Even if parking in Chester is a challenge around the Christmas shopping season. That city really wasn’t designed for cars, I think they’d only just invented the horse when the Romans founded it back in god knows when. I did a lot more writing and some other web work on Friday, getting all the text written for my review. I spent a lot of time sorting out screen shots, installing Fedora 12 (not related) and formatting the text before finally publishing in the early hours of Sunday morning. That was with a trip to the neighbours birthday party inbetween on the Saturday night. What can I say, I have a strange way of working. I don’t like early mornings much but I’ll happily work till the wee hours and regularly do. I guess it depends which direction you’re approaching the morning from hehe 🙂

After some sleep I spent most of the rest of Sunday doing preparation for Rathole Radio. Sorting the playlist, editing tracks and processed them, practising the live songs, adjusting the website and so on. This was all sandwiched with watching a sweet (but incredibly lucky) win for my beloved Liverpool FC over local rivals Everton. I did the show in the evening and despite another liberal helping of technical fail at the start, things went very well. Everyone seemed to enjoy it anyway and was we speak I’m in the process of releasing the podcast.

Upcoming:

Another interesting week is just beginning. We should be doing Linux Outlaws live as usual tonight. I’ll release another Rathole Radio before that, I’ll continue to test Fedora 12 and get writing on that. I also have some social engagements to report. Liverpool LUG is on Wednesday night as usual and we’ll be having a talk on LVM and ZFS for anyone interested. I can’t wait to hear about those, though I’ve seen ZFS demonstrated before. Then on Saturday night it’s the Liverpool LUG 5th Birthday Party at the Everyman Bistro in Liverpool. We’ll be there from 8pm and if you’d like to help us celebrate your more than welcome to come along for drinks and food. It’s on Hope Street right under the Everyman Theatre. Hope to see some of you there. We’ll have fun. I’ll report back on all that next week. Till then, take care of yourselves and wrap up warm, it’s bloody freezing out there. I’m off to warm my feet up…

See ya,

Dan