Memoirs of a Roadie

Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?

Posted on 20th February 2008

LUGRadio Live 2007

LUGRadio Live UK dates have been announced as the weekend of 19th/20th July.

At the moment the guys are busy preparing for LUGRadio Live USA, so expect more details for the UK event after next month. The US event will be the first time the LUGRadio experience will have been seen on such a major scale outside of the UK. The guys seem suitably excited and I'll be keen to discover if the American event has the same manic and mayhem feel as the UK event. The UK event is very definitely about getting the Linux and Open Source communities together, to hopefully provide an opportunity to meet and greet with fellow developers or just people you meet on IRC or the forums. It doesn't have that corporate feel is much more laid back, thus having a much more social nature about it than many traditional conferences. Not to diminish the value of the talks and presentations, but the atmosphere is much more conducive to discussion, questions and feedback than more formal events. For me that has perhaps more value as I like to get feedback and ideas from others and some more corporate events often don't encourage that atmosphere.

In the meantime, if you're in the US and can make it to the West Coast over the weekend on 12th/13th April, checkout LUGRadio Live USA2008 and try and get along to The Metreon, San Francisco. As a tempter, watch the video trailer created by Tony Whitmore, AV coordinator for the UK event.

I shall be at LUGRadio Live UK, although whether that's as a speaker, attendee or member of the crew remains to be seen. I'm thinking of submitting my Understanding Malware talk, but seeing as it's about an hour long, and I definitely DON'T want to be on the main stage, I'm hoping the guys will agree to hiding me in a smaller room. They guys always manage to put me up against big names (Mark Shuttleworth and Chris Di Bona for the last two years), so this might be my chance to steal some of the audience back for the little guy ;)

As I don't specifically talk about Linux stuff, but more general Open Source stuff, I've often felt a bit of an outsider as a speaker. The Malware talk is again not about Linux specifically, and some aspects are not Open Source (for justifiable reasons), but the content, particularly for anyone interested in understanding what malware is and eager to gain some very basic hints and tips to protect your inbox, it's ideal. Seeing as most of the attendance for LUGRadio are knowledgeable Linux people, I'm hoping the talk will be of interest to a wide variety of people. I've now done the talk twice, for Leicester LUG last week and Coventry LUG last night. Both presentation went down very well and generated lots of interesting discussion afterwards. Seeing as some of these guys are very clueful sysadmins and developers, as a benchmark, I think the LUGRadio audience will love it. We'll see ;)

The UK event will be returning to Wolverhampton University Student's Union, the venue for the 2006 event. Personally I liked the Lighthouse, the venue for 2007, but I know the guys got heavily criticised for a variety of issues, that meant they had to reconsider the venue for the 2008 event. The SU venue is smaller than the Lighhouse too, which might cause some problems, as I can see the event getting a bigger attendance this year. For the past 3 years the attendance appears to have been increasing anyway, but in the last year, I am noticing more and more articles, blogs and posts about LUGRadio. I just hope there is enough space for everyone.

BTW if you're attending LUGRadio Live USA2008, please take a camera and post your photos publically. My site always gets a lot of hits for LUGRadio, and I'm sure the thirst for photos for the US event will be just as popular.

Maps And Legends

Posted on 18th January 2008

On the Birmingham LUG mailing list recently there was an announcement about the Birmingham Mapping Party, which is being organised by some of the guys at OpenStreetMap. Previously Alex has been over to Birmingham.pm to gives up a bit of background about GPS and mapping, and seeing as round where I live there is a distinct lack of mapping data, I thought it might be a good idea to find out how to get involved.

First off was to check whether I had the right requipment. I have a Nokia N95, and although it has GPS, I had no idea whether it could record data and allow me to upload to OpenStreetMap. Reading the notes, the N95 does indeed have the capability to record the mapping data, however it needs an additional (free) app to do it. I headed off to the Nokia Research Labs website and read up on Sportstracker, an app that allows joggers, etc to monitor their progress. As a by-product it also records the route you take in the GPX format, which can then be uploaded to OpenStreetMap. Using my local Wifi network, I logged onto the website and installed the software directly onto the phone. Having only had a quick look at the app, it does look quite cool.

So now I'm ready to record. However, I've previously mentioned to JJ about the GPS connection taking ages to triangulate my position when I switched on the GPS, and he mentioned A-GPS, which is also mentioned on the Nokia website, so I figured I ought to try and upgrade that too. Another download of the latest Software Updater, this time to the PC, and I'm ready to update. When I first tried a month ago, I had problems connecting to the Nokia website, this time around it connect without a problem. It also detected the phone and detected correctly that it has the 11.0.026 version of the firmware. The lastest version listed on the website is 20.0.015, and for A-GPS support version 12.0.013 or newer is required, so I was expecting a download and upgrade. Unfortunately, it would seem the Software Updater doesn't agree, as it is claiming that the firmware is up to date with the latest version 11.0.026. This is a bit annoying and have yet to find any way to update the phone to the latest firmware. I've now email Nokia customer support to see whether they can shed any light.

JJ did mention previously that I could go into any Vodafone shop and they would upgrade for me, but I doubt they would do anything that different from what I've tried, unless they complete wipe the OS and reinstall with the latest version. Just in case I do have to take this back to the shop, I've also downloaded the Nseries PC Suite to backup my data. I don't have too much on there, but the phonebook and messages I would rather keep, but then I should back them up every so often anyway.

Although I've had the phone for several months, this is the first time I've actually looked at it from a lower level. I'm starting to look at other possible applications, such as using as a laptop input controller, and really get the most out of the phone. Seeing as it has all these gadgets installed, it would be a shame not to use them ;)

Incidentally, I'm not planning to be at the Mapping Party, but I do hope to contribute to the mapping effort once I've figured out how to use SportsTracker. And maybe I'll be able to do a bit of Gloucestershire too seeing as I work there.

New Europeans

Posted on 16th September 2007

Back last year I was invited to EuroFOO. Having never attended this type of event I was a bit wary of what to expect. As it turned out it was rather an interesting couple of days. For those who never been, the event is a mini conference with the scheduled more or less decided after the welcome session, on two large whiteboards, with the attendees themselves allocating themselves to the available timeslots. To a degree it is a free for all, but there are enough clever people here, including several who were well prepared, who were able to pretty much fill all sessions within a few minutes.

The sessions themselves were a complete mixture of ideas. Some were an opportunity to show off cool apps, some focused on "mashups", others were discussion forums and several others were just whatever seemed like a good idea. Although there were a few sessions that stood out as worth attending for me, there were plenty of others that I could drop in or out of and either enter discussions or just play the part of observer. From a personal point of view I took a lot away with me, but I think if I'm ever invited next time, there are a couple of presentations I could bring with me. I'd certainly feel more confident about suggesting a session next time. When it's your first expereince of something like this, it's a bit daunting to stand up in front of so many talented people.

One aspect of the event I enjoyed was spending breakfast with Allison Randal and Gnat Torkington, and being introduce to Tim O'Reilly. Being quite a quiet person, I'm not the sort to stand out at something like this, but it was nice to realise that I did know quite a few people. On the last evening it was also great to meet Robert Lefkowitz, as it gave me the opportunity to say how much I enjoyed his talks that I heard via IT Conversations, on "The Semasiology of Open Source".

I also got time to chat to Damian Conway, Piers Cawley and Mark Fowler, which was great as I don't often get to see them these days, and when I do they're often busy preparing for talks or only standing still for a short amount of time. The weekend for me was a great success and if you're ever invited, I heartily recommend going along.

• EuroFOO 2006 - Day One
  
• EuroFOO 2006 - Day Two
  

Light Of Day

Posted on 25th August 2007

Back last year, I went to LUGRadio Live and was extremely impressed, as most people were, with the plasma screens around the building, particularly with the imagery they were displaying. It turned out that Aq had written it as a quick PHP/HTML hack. It certainly did the job and impressed me so much that I asked if I could use for the YAPC::Europe conference we were hosting in August. Aq was delighted.

The original code was written in PHP, but seeing as I don't do PHP, I rewrote the whole thing in Perl. I simplified some of the HTML and CSS, but essentially it was still the same concept. We lauch the code for YAPC::Europe and again people were suitably impressed.

Since last August I've been meaning to package up the code and release with a proper Open Source licence. I asked Aq whether he minded me using the Artistic License as used with tradional Perl libraries, and he was happy to release it. So here it is ... The Plasma Application.

All being well the guys in Vienna might be using it for YAPC::Europe 2007, but we'll have to wait and see.

Dreams Never End

Posted on 8th August 2007

After promising a while ago to upload some of my code, I've created a new section on the site. Click the Code tab on the menu at the top and you'll see what I've done.

My first launch is the latest version of my dbdump.pl utility. I use it to backup my databases to remote servers. It supports MySQL and PostgreSQL at the moment, but potentially it could support others. At some point I'll get around to packaging other utilities too. If you find the code useful, please let me know.