After listening to Shot of Jaq's first review episode Review of Nexus One I felt there were subtle adult undertones to the episode. After no one believed me I finally found the time to piece together clips to accentuate my point -- Cassetteboy style, although not as good.
Aq pretending to be Bacon [Ogg only]
Update:
Sorry, should have mentioned, these audio files are licensed under the same license as the original Shot of Jaq episode CC-BY-SA. That is all.
After a heated discussion I decided to create a test to prove whether the HTML5 <audio> (and probably <video> tag) support streaming.
I've temporarily created an Ogg based Icecast Streaming server and hooked it in to the <audio> tag here so you can test whether it works in your browser too.
Why don't you try it out for yourself.
Again, I haven't posted in a while, I'm sorry for that. But I have an excuse.
I've been waiting for Fab to put my blog on the outlawpla.net, but I know he's very busy at the moment, and he hasn't gotten around to it yet.
I have about 3 posts waiting in the wings to celebrate my addition, and they're good ones too, but in the mean time you're stuck with this post.
I wanted to alert everyone anyone who reads this blog to OggCamp 10, this year hosted in Liverpool, UK the home of Dan from the Linux Outlaws -- next year I'm hoping it will be in Germany.
It will have been barely 7 months since the last one, at that rate it could almost be biannual. I'll be, of course, going, and with some ingenious planning from Dan, it takes up a bank-holiday weekend.
It starts off late on the Friday with the Rat Hole Radio event on the Friday, which should be amazing. I plan to take that day off work to travel up, either by car or train, and see a friend who is studying in Liverpool University, probably buy him dinner and drinks and see if he wants to see some music.
OggCamp itself takes up the whole weekend, I would be impressed if they can fill a whole two days, I expect the Saturday will be more of an exhibition, like Lug Radio Live 2009 and then an un-conference on the Sunday like OggCamp'09. The Monday, a bank holiday (so no work,) is then to do with as we wish, and I hope that Dan and Fab will record another episode -- although that might be two episodes in two days.
There are possibly plans to take out an entire hotel. It was amazing last year having everyone in one place, but there is nothing concrete yet. It would be nice to at least have a recommended hotel so that we all end up at the same place. If not, I might take the initiative and suggest to people a particular hotel or B&B.
I really intend to help out this year, but I don't want to be crew. I'll help out in getting people interested in the event and offer help and advice where possible -- more esoteric help I guess. It's kind of what I did last year, but I am hoping I'll be less sporadic about it.
I am also anticipating that it will an expensive event, 3 night in a hotel, eating out, drinking beer, donating money, and travel but I know it will be worth it. I am properly earning this year (as opposed to last year where I had only just stopped being a student), but also trying to save, events like this work out as a cheap holiday for me, so it is well worth going, if not just to interact with people who have similar interests to myself.
I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again this year, although I can understand if the people who are very far away will find it difficult to go to the UK twice in a 12 month period.
See you guys in May.
Recently my Mum came back from San Francisco after visiting a W3C conference on web usability (I am very envious). Of course she came away with lots of free goodies which I thought I would share with you.
This stylish canvas over the shoulder saddle bag in a fetching #00F (blue), also has a funky W3C stencil on it.
But the really clever part is that after a quick bit of unzipping, and some overly dramatic music:
It turns in to a snazzy sports bag. It also folds up much more easily than it looks by reversing the unzipping process.
Cool huh? I thought you would agree. It's a great piece of engineering, it's just a shame it's so ugly.
Another thing my Mum got was this classy W3C phone ring (not sure what it's exact name is). I think the idea is that you hook it to the corner of your phone and that makes it easier to find in your handbag or pocket.
The underside I think looks nice, but the mobile accessibility logo is an ugly thing. I'm starting to think that maybe the W3C don't really know how to do graphic design -- which is very worrying. It also looks a bit like a sperm.
My Mum also got a cool selection of different accessible business cards from different people in the industry including Microsoft and W3C, some of which had QR codes on them, and some of which had Braille on them, and some of which had both. I'm not too sure how well the QR codes work with Braille all over it, but I couldn't test it at the time. Of course I can't show you these because they have private information on them, but trust me when I say they look cool.
Finally there is this handy guide which of course everyone will want this Christmas.
It's a list of useful things to remember when designing an accessible website.
Not the most exciting list of goodies ever, but I thought the bag was clever. I really have to get myself to one of these conferences sometime.
* All things emphasised were written ironically.
So I was thinking about how you would go about implementing an entirely Linux system in to an organisation like a school or government office where they already heavily rely on Windows software. Lets say the school has some specialist software that will won't run under Wine.
The solution I came up with was a shared environment.
Lets say all the legacy Windows terminals are replaced with Ubuntu or perhaps some Thin clients that run from a virtual machine server. It will have as much of the software that will allow it to run as a replacement version of Windows, so Open Office, e-mail client and as much of the Windows only software running in Wine. But it will also have a shortcut to a virtualised Windows service.
This shortcut opens up a remote desktop session to a Windows machine in the virtual machine server running a finite amount of Windows guests. It would make the user think that the client machine they have just loaded up is a normal Windows session, you just have to go through Linux to do it.
You will of course, have to encourage your users not to use Windows. So before you load up this Windows session they will be given a friendly box that suggests the Linux way of doing things. It could perhaps suggest that rather than Microsoft Office they should use Open Office, and direct them in how to use it. Rather than IE they should use Firefox. Both of which are cheaper for the organisation and more easily available to the user.
The other thing getting the users to use Linux is the limited amount of Windows machines and licences. When all the Windows machines are used up, you have to use the Linux interface. This should encourage the users to avoid using the Windows environment in case they hog up the finite Windows resource, or for fear of not being able to use a Windows machine and having to suddenly learn the Linux client at a crucial time. There should also be lessons in using Linux and how to make the switch, and why.
During the solution design phase as many of the Windows applications should be tested to see if they work under Wine.
The amount of Windows licenses could also be calculated to a fraction of the required licenses for an entirely Windows environment (say 30%), this will keep costs down and make up for the extra hardware needed, since the Linux cost is close to free.
Essentially you turn XP in to a shared elastic resource like most network licensed software is these days. It's when you think of Windows in this way that you suddenly realise how costly it is to have hundreds of machines not being used for 2/3rds of the day.
Of course you now have to manage two environments, but if the XP machines are reverted to the same snapshot each time the user logs off you only need to consider the addition of new apps as a service. Of course you should shy away from implementing new Windows apps so that there is no requirement for a deployment system. Open Source alternatives should be sought at all times.
We all accept that a lot of people won't change to Linux immediately, and there is a lot of data locked up in proprietary formats. This system gives you the ability to bring Linux to an organisations - keeping costs down - and still keep the legacy Windows component. It also allows users to have their own personal phased switch over, going at the speed they want.
Eventually everyone will be working on Linux.
On the weekend I went to the last ever Lug Radio Live, and the first ever OggCamp in Wolverhampton. I arrived from Woking at 10pm after a 3hr drive at the pub for pre-event drinks on the Friday. But I only stayed for only an hour before going back to the hotel because I had been up since 6.30am. LugRadio kicked off on Saturday morning where I turned up at about 10.30am after a good sleep.
LugRadio was a podcast that stopped broadcasting last year. It featured four guys from the Wolverhampton Lug, who berated each other in the funniest way possible. For the last 5 years they have also run an annual live show full of talks by interesting and fun people in the community. This is a list of who I went to see:
After all that everyone turned up in the main room for the show at the end. This was the last ever LugRadio show with all of the main presenters from the podcast. It was nostalgic, and incredibly funny, but sad it was the last one. I actually had to leave at one point so that I didn't wet myself it was that funny (I had a few beers). Aq also decided to put a Twitterwall behind the stage. This meant whatever you tweeted with #lrl2009 it appeared in giant letters above their heads. Aome fantastic messages came up that the presenters weren't aware of, and by the time they realised we were laughing at them because of a message, and looked around to see the message, it had gone. Here is some of my selection of messages, my favourite was smells ☟. This appeared as a very drunk/tired Adam Sweet sat with his face in his hands underneath the arrow. I doubt it's on any of the videos because the show hadn't started yet but it got a big laugh.
Once the show had finished we all went back to the hotel for the after event party. This involved making Aq sing karaoke. Apparently the event was sponsored by Microsoft, but there was no open bar and it finished at midnight. We however snuck some last drinks in, and the awesome Philip Newborough of crunchbang fame kept us supplied up with beer until gone 3am. During that time we had a great chat with Fab who was somewhat worse for wear and I got some cool bits of information, like how the Linux Outlaw theme came about.
OggCamp was set up by the Linux Outlaws guys in combination with the UUPC guys, in response to most people having a free day on Sunday after LugRadio Live.
They arranged it like a bar-camp/unconference where at the start of the day, people who wanted to talk wrote their names on a central piece of paper. There was a huge queue for entry, which I would have been stuck in for ages if it wasn't for a bug in the queueing system that meant that the lift to the 3rd floor put you right in the first 3rd of the queue. I made no apologies and decided to make use of the exploit. I'll file a bug in Launchpad at some point.
Once we had made our way to the front of the queue I got my £5 OggCamp mug which you can see at the top of this post. Bargain in my opinion for such a fine mug.
This was the obligatory starting welcome. Dan and Fab from Linux Outlaws as well as the guys from UUPC. They introduced us to the concept of the unconference and then left us to it.
The people that were on at OggCamp that I saw:
The end show was fantastic. It was recorded live to be included in the respective podcasts. However UUPC has a strict no swearing policy, where as Fab from Linux Outlaws has a strict swearing policy. Safe to say Fab didn't last 30 seconds. What was nice was that at the beginning they played their respective theme tunes and Linux Outlaws, despite having their theme played second, got a rapturous applause.
Once the live show had started the conversation topics weren't all that great to be honest. Niche areas of media editing from the Linux Outlaws guys and a controversial single distro topic from the UUPC guys. Even my girlfriend disagreed with popey, which is a very good reason to love her.
After the show ended I went up with all the Linux Outlaws main guys from IRC and the forums, redbrain, NYBill, Windigo and Davey Speedstar to get our photos taken with Dan and Fab. It's a shame none of us were looking in the right direction at the right time.
Since the LugRadio guys are adamant that this will be the last LugRadio Live ever, is the new contender on the block OggCamp? It could well be. First there were some problems with last weekend's format. It becomes a much more challenging environment, as 3 groups are there; the LugRadio guys, LinuxOutlaws guys and the Ubuntu UK Podcast guys. This kind of creates boundaries, not necessarily very obvious ones, but enough to divide people in to groups rather than one big community. Without the LugRadio people next year these boundaries should be easier to manage.
What is great about having both though is that OggCamp and LugRadio have a very different style, and an un-conference is less likely to bring in the big names, but more interesting topics. Whilst a fully organised conference like LugRadio Live brings in big names with less interesting topics. The atmosphere from both groups are fantastic, and the new format along with the younger uptake of Linux users since means that the OggCamp style should keep things fresh.
Also, let's not forget the LugRadio guys said they would turn up next year, as long as someone else organised the event.
There are far to many bits to list them all here, so I've created a short list of what I can remember.
It was a great weekend, but there is definitely something that stood out for me as the worst bit. That was after the LugRadio Live after-party, I had stayed up until 3am (including the daylight savings change) I went back to my room, drunk and very tired. I switched the lights off before walking to my bed, and smacked my head really hard in to the eves of the window. It was agony. I woke up the next morning with a headache, not because I had a hang over, but because I had a massive lump on my head.
I left pretty soon after OggCamp finished. I had work the next day and I needed to get home in a reasonable time so I could have a decent night sleep. On the way home I chatted to my girlfriend about what she had learnt from the weekend. My goal was for her to understand why I do what I do. But for her it went further than that. I'm not exactly an expert, but I was a power Windows user before I came to Linux. She is an intermediate Windows user, and now wants to switch to Linux on her EeePC.
Marie also echoed some of the statements that I have said to the community in the past. It boils down to the rough edges are the things that are holding Linux on the desktop for new users back. Something that Ubuntu has started to work on, and also something I had made a push on about a year back. It was nice to hear my own statements echo'd back to me, and reminded me of how I used to feel about Linux. I now intend to work in this area much more strongly and have plans for a more consistent Office environment in Linux, supplementing features for better usability. I shall write on this area soon.
I am currently writing this on a Windows machine, I use one for work. I keep getting reminded about how irritating Windows is because I can't customise stuff. LugRadio Live and OggCamp are a great forum for the sharing of ideas and how to progress Linux. Looking back at the last 5 years I can really see that there has been a lot of progress, and that that progress is accelerating, so the next 5 years are going to be incredible. For now though, I'll settle for next year, and see if we have another un-conference.
If there is anyone else I met there I've forgotten to mention you, I apologise profusely, let me know and I'll add you.
By the way, I'm going to make some changes to the design of my blog over the next few weeks. Let me know what you think in identi.ca or the comments below.
It's about bloody time I did another blog post.
I wanted to catch you all up with what's been happening in my life. In short:
So, as you can see I've been keeping busy. It has eaten in to virtually everything except tweeting which you can keep track of on the right of my blog. It's a bit weird not being in touch with the Linux community as much as I am used to. My job saps up most of my time, and I am wary of using IRC in work. Yesterday I installed the brilliant OpenSSH for Windows, essentially SSH in DOS, you can use it like normal SSH:
C:\Windows> ssh me@example.com
or even:
C:\Windows> scp notepad.exe me@example.com:~
and once you are in, you are using Linux. I am very excited about it, I can use Linux even in a heavily MS environment like my job. Screen/WeeChat works alright on it, as long as you are only typing. Moving the scrollbars or window size messes things up, might be an OpenSSH issue though.
You can view some example images of it working here:
Another thing that has helped is my new Samsung i7500 Galaxy, an Android based mobile phone, which was finally released to the shops a couple of weeks back. TwiDroid has been brilliant for me, allowing me to keep on Twitter.
I realised I don't really dent enough, TwiDroid has multiple accounts but only in the Pro version. I'm going to have to consider whether paying for it is worth it. I'm not sure if it's quite what I need either because I like to keep my tweets and dents separate. I can't tell if TwiDroid allows you to do that unless I buy it.
Well thats enough of me for now. Plenty of stuff to talk about, but plenty of stuff to do too. Hopefully, now I'm settled I'll be able to keep you more informed.
I thought I would use this space to announce that I will be at Lug Radio Live 2009 and OggCamp. I'll look forward to seeing you there.
To help promote OggCamp I have attached the audio trailer here in wonderful HTML5 standard.
You can't disagree that Alexie Sayle looks like Dan Lynch from Linux Outlaws but 10 years in the future. Alexei Sayle, if you don't know is a semi-famous writer/comedian from Liverpool. He is probably most well known for the (very irritating) song "'Ullo John! Gotta New Motor?", which then lead to the much more widely recognised "Hello Tosh, got a Toshiba?".
For reference here is the best photo I could find for Dan:
Yeay! This blog is now picked up on google under the word Localhosy.
The content is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
Recent comments
2 days 22 hours ago
1 week 6 days ago
2 weeks 14 hours ago
2 weeks 15 hours ago
15 weeks 4 days ago
18 weeks 4 days ago
18 weeks 5 days ago