Archive for November 16th, 2005

Posted on November 16, 2005 - by jono

Never say never

So, it seems that jonobacon.org survived to live another day, despite my predictions of doom and disaster. Hey, with the risks of drinking too much, smoking too much, bird flu, killer mouth disease, being run over, getting bottled by an all day drinker, being blown up by terrorists or watching the pure, unadulterated bollocks that is Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, there is the outside risk that jonobacon.org may have dragged my day down too. Thanks to everyone who let me know about bugs, oddities and other examples of rushed hacking in the site. I think most things are fixed now. I do have two outstanding issues that need nailing, but we are nearly there.

For the last two days I have been locked in our demo lab teaching my PHP and MySQL course. We run these courses very regularly and they are always hugely popular. PHP and MySQL really is rocking everyones world, and it is satisfying to see people get so excited about the technology. At the end of every course there is always a bunch of people whose eyes have lit up at the possibilities that PHP and MySQL gives them. This is what Open Source is all about.

I have moved my main computer over to Breezy and everything seems pretty decent, apart from the infuriating synaptics touch pad. It seems there is no way to turn the infernal thing off. After hunting around the net, you are advised to either make a setting in xorg.conf, pass a couple of module options or apply a patch to the driver and load it. I really want to try and keep /opt on this box as empty as possible. My previous machine had gigs of of compiled, patched and generally buggered about with code in /opt. Mind you, I do want to install CVS GStreamer to poke around with PiTiVi and Diva.

Work on LUGRadio Live 2006 is continuing. The other day we went to have a look around our likely venue. It seems ideal and affords us plenty of space. We have also been in touch with some initial people to badger them into talks. We are keeping these names under our belts for now until the venue is confirmed. The date and venue are booked, but they are in the process of figuring out a price for us. While this is happening we have come up with some incredible ideas for the show. I can assure you one thing – LUGRadio Live 2006 is going to be the coolest event you can go to next year, with some incredible speakers, fun new ideas and the whole shebang is fervently for and about the Open Source community. Those of you who are gamers, go and sign up to neuro’s grand LUGRadio Live ET tournament – also check out the thread. I am also really keen to see some kind of hardware hacking exhibition at the show. If you are into hacking hardware and fancy helping to organise this, drop me a line.

In other news, I have recorded a new track called Look Right Into Me and stuck it on Recreant View. Go and have a listen and let me know what you think. We also record LUGRadio Season 2 Episode 3 tonight. It also seems that the hardest man I have ever seen has decided to do Everybody Loves LUGRadio, a spin-off of Everybody Loves Eric Raymond; a comic strip written by northern hero, John Leach.