Archive for September, 2006

Posted on September 24, 2006 - by jono

Meet up confirmed for Saturday in Orlando

OK folks, the meetup on Saturday is now confirmed. Details:

• WHERE: Bennigans, 6324 International Dr Orlando, FL 32819 (near Wet n’Wild water park) – in the bar
• WHEN: 2pm, Saturday Sep 30th

To find out details of the Bennigans, call them at 407-351-4435.

It would be great to meet Ubuntu, LUGRadio, Jokosher people and anyone else.

Posted on September 23, 2006 - by jono

In Florida on holiday, possible meet up

Homies, I am on holiday in Florida for two weeks. Back October 6th. I will be checking my jonobacon.org mail address occasionally.

I may be meeting up with a few Open Source people on the afternoon of Sat 30th Sep at International Drive in Orlando. I am still waiting to see if this is confirmed. If anyone else is interested in coming along to meet up, let me know.

Posted on September 21, 2006 - by jono

Kicking the Ubuntu LoCo engine up a notch

As I alluded to in my rather cheesily titled previous post, Ubuntu LoCo teams are important to me as a core way of building our incredible Ubuntu community up, and better hooking it together. Well, its been a few weeks since that post, so I figured I should fill you in on what I have been up to.

When I first started looking at the LoCo teams, it seemed we had a bunch of teams that were really keen and excited, but didn’t really talk to each other or collaborate effectively. With such an organised and tightly knit Ubuntu community, it seemed to me like we need to get people talking more, so I first tried to get the loco-contacts mailing list crunching some more traffic and getting people to share some experiences and stories with each other. While this was going on, I was particularly keen in getting the ubuntu-uk team up and running, and helping to develop that team into a really strong team, not only because I want to see a strong UK team, but also because they have a lot of potential to be a leading LoCo team. So, I have since organised a LinuxWorld booth for them, and sent a few mails out about local meetings, and we now have four proposed local meetings across the UK. I also managed to source a vendor for free Ubuntu stickers in the UK – the excellent Linux Emporium. Oh, and check out Planet Ubuntu UK.

When I started looking at the LoCo teams, it was evident that some teams are naturally much stronger than others, and as part of the effort into helping the LoCo community to communicate together better, I wanted to have certain teams mentor other teams. I was chatting to the ever delightful Melissa Draper from the Australian Team and asked if the Australian team would be interested in helping to pilot this, as the Australian team has a particularly good reputation. She was keen to get involved, and she mentioned that this pilot could be useful to help out the New Zealand Team who have been struggling a little to get going. So, after a very constructive meeting in #ubuntu-nz, the mentoring agreement was forged, and the Austrialian/New Zealand mentoring partnership is going to be an interesting trial to see how it works out. A trial really does make sense here because mentoring is not something anyone can do. It demands a very specific, outgoing, pro-active, understanding personality, and Melissa has all of these traits and a whole lot more. She really is a credit to the Ubuntu community. Melissa is maintaining a blog reporting her progress, so do keep your eyes on that.

While this has been going I have also been helping some other teams with various issues and problems, much of it pertaining to leadership, and I will be helping to develop some notes, and processes for easing leadership problems in LoCo teams. There is no singular rule for leadership, and every team is different, but I think we need to focus less on leaders and more on role models.

Finally, today I have been working to refresh the LoCo pages on the Ubuntu wiki. Information about LoCo teams was rather scattered and unorganised, so I spent some time today getting some structure in place and starting to develop some new resources. So, now see the new home page for LoCo teams, find out how to join a team, see the LoCo Team HOWTO for details of starting a team and also see the new LoCo FAQ for common questions. I am really keen in making these resources a solid library of information about getting Ubuntu LoCo teams running perfectly.

This is just a start, but its nice to see the wheels starting to turn. Various other ideas about centralising resources, identifying conflict issues, and developing additional LoCo concepts are all on the drawing board. As these resources develop, I am hoping to get more of the new teams moved to approved teams, and get everything a little more ship shape. The LoCo community have been fantastic in helping to get this in shape, and there is a real, pure enthusiasm there bubbling under the surface. It is an exciting future…

Posted on September 17, 2006 - by jono

I screamed aloud to the old man…

…I said dont lie dont say you dont know

Erk…27 years ago today I was born. Nuts. 27 years!

Bonus points for those who know the origin of this post’s title.

Posted on September 16, 2006 - by jono

New Song: Little Coal Nose

I am pleased to announce the release of my latest song – Little Coal Nose.

This song is written about and dedicated to our little dachshund Banger who many of you will know unfortunately passed away recently. The song is a upbeat rock/metal song and I sing in it (no growling). One of the things I loved most about Banger was his little black nose that looked like a lump of coal….hence the song. I didn’t want to create the typical morbid, sad dedication song, but something that remembers the good times.

I am quite pleased with it, and it is not my usual brand of death metal or ambient acoustic music. It hails back to songs such Jacks Playing Ball (which is now immortalised as the LUGRadio theme) and Free The Free, albeit my recent efforts have much better production than those earlier days.

Download: Ogg : MP3

As ever, keep an eye on my music site – Recreant View.

Posted on September 14, 2006 - by jono

Dear Lazyweb: Real-time kernels

I just don’t get them. I really don’t. For years, the perceived wisdom has been that if you want to record audio on Linux, you need a low-latency kernel, real-time kernel. The technical description is a kernel with real-time pre-emption, and the stock kernel that comes with most distros does not have this lovely goodness included. So, you need to grab a vanilla kernel, apply some real-time patches and then you should be up and running. Now, this begs the questions:

• Why does the kernel that comes with most distros not include the patch?
• If the real-time patch conflicts with other things (I have been informed it could conflict with RAID), why can’t the support be switched on at boot?
• If both of the above don’t apply, why can’t I just install kernel-realtime and it installs something that hot-rods my kernel for real-time pre-emption or even an entirely new kernel with the patch?

So, after reading into this a little, I learned that the real-time patch could conflict with other parts of the kernel sub-system, such as the RAID example I gave above. Then, I read this and it seems that the stock kernel is going the real-time way anyway. Oh, the confusion.

While musicians have to even know what a real-time kernel is, it just makes Linux harder and harder to push as a system for producing audio with. We are building Jokosher to make the multi-tracking experience easier, the GStreamer team are making the multimedia framework side easier, now it is the turn of the kernel hackers – please, please solve these problems!

Posted on September 14, 2006 - by jono

LinuxWorld Shazaa

Here in the UK, the Ubuntu UK team have been forming nicely. A relatively new group, there is a huge amount of interest in the team to help push, promote and support Ubuntu where possible in the UK. The team live on the ubuntu-uk mailing list and on #ubuntu-uk on irc.freenode.net.

I have been helping the group out recently, partly because its another awesome LoCo team in the making, and partly because I myself live in the UK and I rather selfishly want a great UK LoCo team! As part of my work going on in Ubuntu UK, I managed to organise the team to exhibit at LinuxWorld London on the 25th and 26th October at Olympia 2 in London. The ever-amusing Nik Butler is leading the way in organising the booth, and recently posted about their progress. Nik will be joined by Adam Bagnall, Alan Pope, Alan Helmore-Simpson, Stuart Parkington and Ashley Hooper at the day. They are doing a great job in creating what promises to be a killer Ubuntu UK booth!

I have also organised a Ubuntu UK meet and greet on Day 1 of the event. The aim of the meeting is for the team to get together, flesh out some ideas, get to know each other and make plans for the team. The meet will happen at 2.30pm on Wed 25th October 2006 at the Ubuntu UK booth.

Naturally, the chaps will be blogging, taking photos and reporting on the event, but do try and get down and see them if you can make it!

In other news, the enormously gifted, amusing and slightly wacky Chris “snecklifter” Brown will be leading the way in exhibiting Jokosher at the very same LinuxWorld event in London. With some awesome new features in 0.2 such as effects, extensions and low latency recording, Chris is sure to wow you with his nimble guitar playing skills as he records and wows the world with Jokosher. Chris is looking for people to help run the Jokosher booth, so if you can help, do let him or me know.

Oh, and I will indeed be at LinuxWorld in London. I am speaking on the Thursday and will also be helping out with the booths and meeting community people. I should then hopefully be along to the awards on the Wednesday evening.

Posted on September 13, 2006 - by jono

Words of wisdom

I have come to the realisation that you really find out what your friends and family think of you when you get birthday cards. I am worried there is going to be an international shortage of the words ‘fart’, ‘poo’, ‘turd’, ’stud’ and ‘chortle’.

I hit 27 on Sunday and there is still time!!!

UPDATE: A few people have been a bit confused as to which Sunday I hit 27. It is Sunday 17th September – this coming Sunday.

Posted on September 11, 2006 - by jono

Season 4 is out

Season 4 of LUGRadio is now officially out. Here we go…

Posted on September 11, 2006 - by jono

Never forget

This blog gets syndicated round the houses these days, and I am sure some of you were touched personally by 9/11. My sympathies, and thoughts are with you all.