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Archive for March, 2008


Posted on March 31, 2008 - by jono

Rambling Brit in TV Shocker!

A few months back I did an interview with the Sun Developer Channel and it was released today. The interview covers Ubuntu, MOTU, community building, developer communities, extremists, LugRadio, LugRadio Live USA 2008 and more:

Can’t see it? Click here!

You know what, I have done interviews before, but in this one I found it pretty nerve wracking. Something about a video camera poked in your direction in nerve wracking enough, let alone a full-on studio, like the one buried away at Sun’s Silicon Valley campus. Thanks to Barton for the interview. :)


Posted on March 31, 2008 - by jono

KVery KCool

Wow, looking at this just goes to show the incredible work the KDE team have done with KDE 4.x. Free software in action. Stunning. :)


Posted on March 29, 2008 - by jono

LugRadio Live USA 2008 Flyer – spread the word

I was asked to knock up a quick flyer for LugRadio Live USA 2008 with details of the event. This flier is scaled to US letter size, and I would love to encourage anyone who wants to do a good deed, to take this flyer, print it out and go and hand it out to people who might be interested – particularly those locals in San Francisco. If you get people to the event, a pint and incredible admiration will be waiting for you. :)

Here is the full US Letter size image.

Two weeks to go! Remember, you can win prizes by pre-registering!


Posted on March 27, 2008 - by jono

LugRadio Live USA 2008 Gong-a-thong Host Announced!

Just when you thought that LugRadio Live USA 2008 could not rock any more, with 35+ speakers and 40+ exhibitors, well….we have confirmed a key part of the show – who, is going to be presenting the legendary, and now world-famous Gong-a-thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza.

For those not clued into this, the Gong-a-thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza is a collection of very short five minute talks in which a bunch of people get up and talk about something interesting. The original idea, when I was chatting to Aq one night on the phone was to have a small gong that was hit to mark the end of each five minute talk. And then…in what I would like to consider a rare moment of brilliance…I remembered those old Rank movies with the guy, baby-oiled up, hitting a huge gong, and we knew that we needed someone, in a tight pair of undies, with a large gong.

Well, last year, we did it for the first time, and it was oodles of fun. The man in the hot seat…erm underpants, was our very own Adam Sweet:

Pasty white Brit seeks companion for fun and friendship…

I can’t tell you the special sense of pride that Aq and I felt, stood at the side of the stage, seeing Adam come running out from the back of the hall, to the Rocky theme music in a robe with ‘Sweet’ written on the back. There is a special sense of satisfaction seeing such an insanely ludicrous idea realised before your very eyes. It went down really well, and everyone had a blast watching it. :)

This year for LugRadio Live USA 2008, we thought very carefully about who to get in the thong, and one name kept popping up. Some say he never ages, locked in a constant state of being 12 and 3 quarters years old. Some say that when he grows up he is going to drive a train. And some say that he can put away more alcohol than a small country. We all know him as this guy:

Thong, thong, thong, thong, thong…

Ladies and Gentleman, boys and girls…I present the LugRadio Live USA 2008 Gong-a-thong host, Aaron Bockover, the lead developer behind the popular Banshee media player. If you look at the schedule you will see that Aaron will be hosting the gong-a-thong at 2pm on Sat 12th April, with his main Banshee talk at 3.30pm, in which he and Gabriel will be showing off some of the brand new work the awesome Banshee team have been beavering away at.

35+ speakers. 40+ exhibitors. A small man in a thong. All for $10. What more could you want? Go and pre-register and win prizes if you refer people to pre-register. :)

LugRadio Live USA 2008 – 12th/13th April 2008 – The Metreon, San Francisco.


Posted on March 26, 2008 - by jono

Coundown To Cool

I have a few exciting Ubuntu related things to talk about in this post, so, without further ado…on with the good stuff. Mmmmm….

Hardy Countdown

Like with the last release, we have produced a rather cool countdown doobry that you can put on your website that counts down each day to the glorious day of wonder that will be the Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron release day. It looks like this:

To add it to your website, just plonk this line of code on your page:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.ubuntu.com/files/countdown/display.js"></script>

Simple as that, and you will be doing your bit to help spread the good word of Ubuntu. :)

5-A-Day and Teams

With the on-going rollercoaster of fun that is 5-A-Day, we now have Team Support added as part of the grandiose plan. This means that your LoCo or other team can work together and become Bug Royalty and show off how much you are contributing to Ubuntu. Our excellent 5-A-Day tools make the whole thing as easy as cake, and you can see the current team leaderboards over on this page.

Kicking arse is fun, kicking arse together, is oodles of fun. :)


Posted on March 25, 2008 - by jono

Hardy Beta: Ooh La La

For a while now I have been running hardy in VMWare and on my secondary laptop, and I generally migrate my main work machine to a new Ubuntu when the beta comes out. An Ubuntu beta is a great opportunity to really test Ubuntu and ensure it is as bug free as possible, so go and check it out. Think of it like building a huge wall, if we each put in one brick, together we can make something pretty darn solid. :)

I just wanted to highlight a couple of my fave features in the new release that I am digging:

  • Evolution – despite the common trend of pouring derision on Evolution, I really like having my email, calendar and TODO together in one application, and I think Evolution does a pretty good job, and importantly, integrates with the desktop. So far I have been using Google Calendar for my calendar, but the new Evolution includes support for Google Calendar. This means you can use Evolution as a UI for adding/removing and viewing events. This solves the calendar side for me, and for Tasks, I am just looking for a nifty way of syncing up my TODO lists now with something like rememberthemilk. I keep fleeting between different TODO methods – I was using a wiki, then TomBoy, but I like the idea of having it all in Evolution so I can do things like highlight a sentence in an Email, right-click it and select Convert to Task. It is integration that I am looking for, both inside the application and with the desktop, and Evolution takes a pretty good shot at it – keep up the good work Evolution bods. :)
  • International Clock – click the time and you can add a bunch of international clocks that appear just under your calendar. This is rather convenient as I spend a lot of time working with people across timezones. It even shades the clocks based on which parts of the world are in daytime and which are in nighttime. Oh, and it also rather nicely shows weather reports in that region – slightly pointless, but nice nonetheless.
  • Compiz works – On this Dell M1330 with the Intel graphics, compiz was blacklisted due to some video issues. Well, now it works. :)
  • Fingerprint scanner works – My fingerprint scanner is working great too on this laptop now. There is something rather cool about scanning your finger – next up I want an iris scanner that makes a red line go up and down my eye. :)
  • CD burning – we now have a much nicer solution for burning discs with Brasero. Very cool.
  • Firefox integrates much more nicely – Blizzard wasn’t wrong, Firefox 3 feels much nicer. Good work there, folks. :)
  • Pulseaudio – its in there, and it offers a lot more functionality for musicians. Good to see it land in Ubuntu. :)
  • Projector support – I haven’t tested it yet, but it seems Hardy is going to rock a lot harder with regards to projector support, which has traditionally been a royal pain in the ass before.
  • More… – there is clearly lots more in there that is rocking and a rolling, but these are the main things I picked up on in the first few days. :)

We are getting there people, kicking one arse after another. Now…get out there, upgrade to the beta and when it doesn’t work quite right report bugs. Together we can really make a difference. :)


Posted on March 24, 2008 - by jono

LugRadio Live USA 2008: Oh yes.

There has been a lot of talk about LugRadio Live USA 2008 on this blog and elsewhere, and I just wanted to write a single post that summarise everything that is on offer right now as the event of the year. Yes, it is indeed the event of the year, as voted by the LugRadio team and our close friends.

First things first. It is on the 12th and 13th April 2008, thats just a few weeks away! It takes place at The Metreon, 101 4th St, San Francisco, California, 94103. If you are coming, do please go and pre-register although tickets are available on the days.

Things to see and do

With three stages and a large exhibition area, in which we encourage all of our exhibitors to have things to see, touch and play with, there is a huge amount going on at LugRadio Live USA 2008. First up is our incredibly diverse range of speakers, representing a huge range of areas such as Linux, the desktop, digital rights, power management, usability, the web, kernel development, multimedia, online communities, distributions, databases and much more.

The line-up of rock-stars includes:

  • Miguel de Icaza (Mono / Novell / Co-Founder Of GNOME)
  • Ian Murdoch (OpenSolaris / Founder Of Debian)
  • Robert Love (GNOME / Google)
  • Aza Raskin (Mozilla / Humanized)
  • Benjamin Mako Hill (Ubuntu / Debian / FSF)
  • John Buckman (Magnatune)
  • Val Henson (Kernel / VAH consulting)
  • Christopher Blizzard (Mozilla / GNOME)
  • Mike Linksvayer (Creative Commons)
  • Alex Graveley (VMWare / GNOME)
  • David Schleef (GStreamer)
  • Matthew Garrett (Power Management / Kernel)
  • Danese Cooper (Intel / OSI)
  • Aaron Bockover (Banshee / Novell)
  • Liana Holmberg (Second Life / Linden Lab)
  • Emma Jane Hogbin (Hick Tech)
  • Joe Zonker Brockmeier (OpenSuSE / Novell)
  • Kristen Accardi (Kernel)
  • David Lefty Schlesinger
  • Joe Born (Neuros)
  • Selena Deckelmann (PostgreSQL)
  • Stewart Smith (MySQL)
  • Dan Kegal (Wine)
  • Ben Collins (Ubuntu / Kernel)
  • Jason Kridner (Texas Instruments)
  • Jeremy Allison (Samba / Google)
  • Christian Hammond (VMWare)
  • Ian McKeller (Songbird)
  • Alison Randall (Parrot / Perl / OSCON)
  • David Huffman (LVM)
  • Brian Will (Pigeon)
  • Belinda Lopez (Ubuntu)
  • Ilan Rabanovich (SoCal Linux Expo)
  • Eddy Mulyono (Packaging)
  • Matthew Walster (Demo Scene)

In addition to this, we have an incredible collection of exhibitors, showing off a range of different projects, and at LugRadio Live we have always endeavored to ensure the community projects share as much of the megaphone as companies. I think you would agree that the following list shows a nice balance between the commercial and non-commercial sides of Open Source and technology:

  • Google
  • Dice
  • GNOME
  • PostgreSQL
  • O’Reilly
  • OpenSuSE
  • Magnatune
  • Neuros
  • Sun
  • Texas Instruments
  • South California Linux Expo
  • Komputers 4 R Kids
  • San Francisco LUG
  • BytesFree.org
  • Ontario Linux Fest
  • Frets on Fire
  • OpenNMS
  • One Course Source
  • Haiku
  • Hyperic
  • BitNami
  • OpenStreetMap
  • FreeBSD
  • Ubuntu
  • Inkscape
  • Mandriva
  • One Laptop Per Child San Francisco
  • KDE
  • Linux Pro Magazine
  • San Francisco Community Colocation Project
  • Indamixx
  • Untangle
  • SF Hardware Hacking Community
  • The Digital Tipping Point
  • San Francisco Perl Mongers

Fun and Games

LugRadio has a very unique atmosphere. The main priority for the show is fun. We absolutely want to provide a fun, social, relaxed, entertaining and inspiring atmosphere. Our goal is to make everyone who comes feel like they are in a room of friends. Our atmosphere is unique, and often referred to as a rock-conference – it is not your typical dry computer conference, it has all the elements of a computer conference, but wrapped up in a fun and loose atmosphere where every feels part of it.

In addition to the oodles of speakers and exhibitors, we also have some more fun things:

  • Gong-a-thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza – in this hour, a collection of people will get up and talk for 5 minutes about something they are involved in. If you like quick-paced summaries of cool things, this is for you. We have slots open for talks for this hour – if you want to get up for your 5 minutes of fame email us.
  • The Mass Debate – we get four luminaries of the Open Source and technology world together onto the main stage to answer your questions. Go in prepared to grill them…they love it.
  • LugRadio Live And Unleashed – we will be recording a live recording of LugRadio in front of a raucous audience, which is always a lot of fun for everyone involved.
  • Evening social events – on both the Friday and Saturday evenings, specific venues will be selected for drinks, schmoozing and more fun.
  • Win things – we will be giving plenty of prizes away throughout the weekend, and you can even win some incredible prizes by recommending people to pre-register and come to the event. See below for more.
  • Nutsacks – every visitor who comes to LugRadio Live USA 2008 will get a special visitor bag with a raft of rather cool freebies, one such example being an incredible Neuros shot-glass. Believe me, when we go after schwag, we try to do it right. :)
  • Lunch – a light lunch is provided, as well as drinks and snacks to keep your energy levels up throughout the weekend.
  • Lazy Areas – everyone needs space to chill out, relax and maybe do a spot of hacking. We will have bean-bags aplenty, ready for your relaxing pleasure.
  • Low cost enough for everyone – $10. Ten measly bucks. Thats all it costs for the full weekend, all talks, all exhibitors, all events, everything. Do go and pre-register, and you could win some prizes (see below).

Hotels and Travel

Our Travel page contains a lot of details about how to get there by plane, rail, car, hoverboard or otherwise.

There are also some hotel deals available:

  • From $169/night – The Marriott – right across the street from The Metreon – book on line directly at www.sfmarriott.com. No codeword needed.
  • From $119/night – The Pickwick Hotel, 85 5th St. San Francisco, CA 94103 – ask for the “Metreon Meeting” rate.

San Francisco has a huge range of hotels for a variety of prices. If you have any travel questions or problems, do get in touch with us.

Pre-register and win prizes!

Asus EEPC, Neuros OSD, O’Reilly books and limited edition LugRadio t-shirts up for grabs. Read on folks.

You can win an Asus EEEPC or a Neuros OSD and some O’Reilly books for yourself as well as LugRadio t-shirts and O’Reilly books for your friends, while all the time helping to make LugRadio Live USA 2008 on the 12th and 13th April at The Metreon in San Francisco an awesome event.

The idea is simple – we want to encourage as many people to the event as possible, and we would like to reward you for spreading the word about LugRadio Live USA 2008. With this in mind, we have some rather nice prizes to give away. All you need to do is to encourage people to come to LugRadio Live USA 2008, ask them to pre-register and when they pre-register they will be asked for the name of the person who recommended the event to them. In that box they should enter your name.

The person who refers the highest number of people will win themselves their choice of an Asus EEEPC or a Neuros OSD, two O’Reilly books of their choice and a limited edition LugRadio t-shirt. In addition to this, the people that the winner referred will each receive an O’Reilly book and a limited edition LugRadio t-shirt. The next highest number of referrals will win either the Asus EEEPC or Neuros OSD that remains. Thanks to efficientpc.co.uk for providing the Asus EEEPC and to Neuros for providing the Neuros OSD prizes, and thanks to O’Reilly for providing the books.

So, to re-iterate, getting involved is simple. Follow these easy steps:

  • Talk as many people about coming to LugRadio Live USA 2008 as possible – spread the word, blog it, hassle your friends and colleagues and encourage them to come.
  • Ask them to go to this page and pre-register. Tickets for the event cost only $10 for the full-weekend with full access to all the talks, exhibition and activities and a light lunch is provided.
  • While pre-registering, they will be asked who referred them. Ensure they put your in your name in this box for it to be counted.

The winners will be announced at LugRadio Live USA 2008. Please note – only those people who actually attend LugRadio Live USA 2008 will count as referrals and all names must have a matching ticket – no trying to stooge the system folks.

Good luck and we look forward to seeing you at the awesome greatness that will be LugRadio Live USA 2008! :)


Posted on March 24, 2008 - by jono

Stunning

If you meet these people from Google:

  • Leslie Hawthorn
  • Cat Allman
  • Kynan

Go up to them and hug them. Seriously. They rock, big time. They are helping make LugRadio Live USA 2008 happen in San Francisco on the 12th and 13th April. They have been a huge help, and are doing a stunning, stunning job. They are on the Christmas card list. Yes indeed.

Thats all. It just needed to be said. :)


Posted on March 20, 2008 - by jono

Rawk

Rock and roll. These guys are awesome, and this album is awesome. Sure, it is incredibly influenced by AC/DC and bits of Free, but has a real Slash’s Snakepit feel and a bit of Mötley Crüe thrown in there too. Good time rock and roll done right. :)

Airbourne’s MySpace page


Posted on March 19, 2008 - by jono

You got more rabbit than sainsburys…

(bonus points for those of you who know where the title of this post comes from)

I am really pleased to see that the Peach team (who are producing an animated movie using entirely Open Source tools, specifically Blender, and licensing all the content under a free license) have released their first official trailer of their new flick:


Big Buck Bunny – Official Trailer from Andy Goralczyk on Vimeo.

They are doing an incredible job over there, and I can’t wait to see the final version. This just goes to show that Open Source is not only an incredible collaborative environment, but a real enabler for creativity too. Good stuff. :)