Weekly Rewind #47

As a great rapper (Rakim) once said “It’s been a long time, I shouldn’t ‘ve left you…”, ok so it hasn’t been that long but I did miss my last Weekly Rewind. Things have been pretty hectic lately and something had to give. It’s not a great a start to the New Year, but it is only the 2nd week I’ve missed in almost a year now. So I’m not doing too bad. Anyway, I should get on with telling you what’s actually been happening since last we met. Let’s do this.

On Monday we recorded and streamed another Linux Outlaws as usual. It was a really long show in the end but we had fun and hopefully everyone listening did too. Fab gave his thoughts on the Motorola Milestone, which he’s been sent for review. It sounds cool and I’ve had my own phone drama this week. More on that in a future post, it’s too big a story to fit in here. I was also busy making phone calls and talking to people about planning for OggCamp10 on Monday. We officially announced the date and location on the microblogs and caused something of a storm. If you didn’t see the blog announcement I also slipped out on Tuesday here’s the low down. May 1st-2nd 2010 at The Black-E in Liverpool there’ll be a weekend festival of Free Software, Free Culture and fun. There’s also the Rathole Roadshow gig that I’m planning on the Friday night (April 30th) to kick the whole thing off in style. It’s going to be epic and you shouldn’t miss this weekend if you’re within travelling distance. I know some overseas readers obviously can’t make it, I’ll try not to bore you with endless OggCamp news in the coming months.

The Black-E
The Black-E

On Tuesday I released a new Rathole Radio from the previous Sunday, did some writing for the blog and also did some work on a Drupal site. That programming and admin work has been quite frequent in the last 2 weeks and I’ll give you more details of that in good time. At the moment the site isn’t finished and I can’t really direct you to anything substantial. Soon my pretties, soon. I noticed later in the week that the Rathole Radio downloads were slow and erratic. It seems I’ve outgrown the temporary solution I used to get the podcast up and running initially. I’ve been hosting the media using Dreamhost because its cheap and easy, but the speeds are so slow now and downloads are failing mid way in some cases. I finally bit the bullet about bought some space on Libsyn, then moved over the latest episode and updated the links on the main site. We use Libsyn for Linux Outlaws and it’s always been really good for us. It also means I’ll get better stats and I can see just how popular the show is. Overall the move is a good sign really, it means enough people are downloading the show that it needs more capacity now. As problems go, it’s a good one to have I’d say. I’ll move the older episodes over too, as and when time allows.

Let’s fast forward a little to Friday. I went over to Liverpool for a meeting about the gig I’m arranging at the Bad Format Social Club in town. It went well and I also got some other business done. I visited The Black-E again and took lots of photos of all the rooms we’ll be using. I also got floor plans and other details to help us work out where things will go. I sent this information to the rest of the planning ground and in time I’ll share pictures with everyone on the main OggCamp website. Linux Outlaws 131 was also released on Friday. A little late due to the fact that both Fab and I are very busy, but he did a great job of editing as always. Over the weekend I’ve edited the next Software Freedom Law Show and done a few other jobs. I did have a major disaster where I thought I’d killed the N900 completely with a failed software update too. With a bit of hacking and some help from my friends though I’ve brought it back from the dead. It was touch and go for a while there. I won’t write all the details here because they’re too long and the story deserves its own article. Expect that tomorrow or Tuesday.

Gifts From Greece

Another thing I’d like to mention from the last couple of weeks is a package I received from Greece. It was from Rod C Johnson, a listener of Linux Outlaws and valued member of the community. As you might have guessed from the name he’s not actually Greek but an American who moved over. We affectionately nicknamed him Ramrod on the show and luckily he doesn’t seem to mind that. He sent me a package containing a bottle of olive oil made on his farm and also a load of other amazing things. I was delighted and humbled by the gift. I’ve already used a little of the oil in some cooking and it’s beautiful, so thanks very much Rod!! You can see a picture of the package to the right. I should also point out that the green stuff in the bags is tea, before the swat team knock my door down. The generosity, grace and good will of our fans never ceases to amaze me. So thanks to everyone who makes our community so great.

Upcoming:

Tomorrow there’ll be another Linux Outlaws live in the evening. Why not come and join us live in the IRC chatroom and get involved, it can be a lot of fun. Visit linuxoutlaws.com/live and hop into #linuxoutlaws on Freenode at about 7pm GMT tomorrow. I’ll write up my adventure with the N900 and publish that soon. I’ll also try and get back into distro hopping and reviewing as things calm down a little. There’ll be more hacking with Drupal and god knows what else. So stay tuned and I’ll report back. Thanks for reading and take care till next time.

Dan

P.S – The quote at the start is from “I Know You Got Soul” by Eric B and Rakim, in case you didn’t know. Listen to it, it’s a classic piece of hip-hop.

4 Comments

  1. It’s good to know there are still some people who appreciate ole school (mid 1980s – early 1990s) hip-hop.
    Since PC-BSD 8.0 is still in beta (even though FressBSD 8.0 is out), how about a review of the distro that made people notice Linux Live CD’s? KNOPPIX. It’s mainly supposed to be run as a Live CD or Live DVD with a USB stick that holds config. files or user made documents. This way you don’t have to carry a laptop around if the place you’re going has a computer you can use. You can also install it on your hard drive if that is what you prefer.
    I’m also wondering what your thoughts are on sidux.
    Happy New-ish Year! ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. @jay – Thanks for the ideas, I do indeed love old school hip hop, most of what passes for rap lyrics today is awful. I’ll keep those distros in mind and add them to my review list. Happy New-ish Year to you too!

  3. Hey Dan,

    Glad to see the package arrived safe. I was wondering if HRH Postal service had herb sniffing dogs. And even better, the oil and tsipouro did not arrive frozen. If you need any recipes, let me know.

    Rod

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