I am now on Identi.ca.
http://identi.ca/tonywhitmore
I am also on Twitter.
http://twitter.com/tonywhitmore
I have thus far failed to get Aq’s reflector working so find me on which ever suits you most and take your chances. I am really interested to know if there are any people I know from outside the FLOSS/geek community who use either service. I have lots of non-geek friends on Facebook but I suspect there won’t be many on twitter or identi.ca which limits the charm of both services. However twitter has been getting some mainstream press attention recently so perhaps I’ll be proved wrong.
Don’t worry, I’ll blog about LUG Radio Live as soon as I’ve recovered enough to do so. It was brilliant though. 
Now, on to business.
One of the things we’ve been trying to do with the Ubuntu UK Podcast is make it a collaborative effort. Both in terms of where the content comes from (the UK Ubuntu and Linux community, not just four presenters) and how the podcast is produced. For the first few shows I ran the mixing desk, edited the segments and mixed the show, but this was never the long term plan. More recently, Ciemon and Alan have both been editing away on segments, meaning that I don’t have to spend the equivalent of two days editing the podcast segments for each episode. 
The next step was to get other people mixing the show for release.* This involves inserting the music, fading, adding filters and generally trying to iron out the bumps which cause us to get so many e-mails in the first few releases.
This process is basically impossible to describe over a medium like IRC. We had talked about having some tutorial sessions after a recording session, but frankly at the end of a recording sessions we are all just about ready to collapse and it never happened. So I took a leaf out of Alan’s book and created some screencasts of how I mix the podcast. It was pretty easy to do, technically and Alan persuaded me to let him put them online for public consumption. Now, these screencasts were designed for internal consumption only, so I wasn’t worrying too much about fluidity and energy in the commentary. However, with that caveat stated, you can get the first part (of thirteen) of Mixing A Podcast In Ardour.
* Actually, I plan to do screencasts of the editing process too, it’s just that it’s a bit easier to play around and find out what works with editing than it is for mixing.
This day is call’d the last of LUG Radio.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Jono.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Procter, Sweet, Langridge and Bacon’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on LUG Radio’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Ben the Hero, Bruno and Neuro,
Revell and Roger, Morley and Goodwin-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And July nineteenth shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of geeks;
For he to-day that spills his beer with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in Wolverhampton now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That drank with us upon LUG Radio’s end.
With apologies to, well, everyone.
The Ubuntu UK Podcast has actually gone and hit that watershed of reaching double figures! In one way it seems like we’ve been going much longer. Our presenting style is maturing and we’re spreading the load of editing and mixing the show through screencasts. In fact, I edited very little of the last two episodes, which was great! Highlights of the first ten episodes for me are (in no particular order):
- The FOSDEM material and the Becky Hogge interview in particular. And Dave posing for a photo.
- Dave’s pronunciation in the pronunciation segment.
- Interviewing guests in the studio (i.e. my front room)
- Interviewing guests on the phone thanks to the wonder of VoIP.
- The Mark Shuttleworth special.
- Interviewing all those people at UDS!
- Piling up CDs in a pub car park.
- Getting all sorts of stuff to give away.
Which brings us to what is in episode 10 itself:
In this episode:-
- Discussion:
- Watching video content on Ubuntu
- Podcast now available in transcribed form!
- Sarcastic News
- Selling Ubuntu without using ‘Freedom’ in the sales pitch
- Competition:
- We announce the winner of the Canonical Store Voucher this month
- We start a new competition where we give the Wraith PC from Efficient PC! Just answer the question set out in this weeks show, and you could be the proud owner of this PC!
That’s right, the Ubuntu UK podcast episode count is almost in double figures! After a very late episode 8, due partly to me having a general anesthetic we’ve pulled out, well, a stop and got episode 9 out only very slightly late. Actually, this episode and the last one have mostly been edited by Alan, although I’ve still mixed both shows. It bodes well that we’re able to distribute the workload of producing the show across multiple people. Hopefully it will mean that everyone gets to relax occasionally. There’s still a way to go though, and to that end I’ve made a series of screencasts to educate my fellow Ubuntu UK Podcasters on how I go about mixing the show in Ardour. They’re not polished, but I wonder if there would be interest in releasing them to the wider community?
No Ciemon in this episode, so Laura deps. In this episode:-
- Discussion:
- Competition:
- The competition from Episode 8 is still open. It will end on the 12th July. (we have extended the competition due to the last episode being late).
Go and get it!
I was going to write a post about this, but I discovered that the brilliant Bruno had said it all already. All I can add is that I’ll miss the show, it’s been a big part of my spare time for the last four years, it’s taken me to Wolverhampton and San Francisco, given me some of the most random experiences of my life and above all it’s introduced me to a lot of people I now regard as friends. And that now the news is out I haven’t got to stop myself from saying something stupid and accidentally letting it slip early!
Discussions in #lugradio suggest that I’m a member of a pretty exclusive club of people who have been to all the LUG Radio Live events (including the US event earlier this year and the one coming up in the next couple of weeks). The list seems to be: Jono, Aq, Adam, Chris, Matthew Walster and me. Or have we missed someone?
[Update] The ever angry Matthew Garrett is also on the list.
I’ve been off work for a week having had two teeth removed under general anesthetic and popping pills which have left me somewhat dazed and confused. Yes, more than normal. I’m back to work tomorrow though, and one thing is clear - LUG Radio Live UK 2008 is going to be a blast! Laura has been talking to Emma who it will be great to hook up with again, having met her at LRL USA. Plus lots of British and European people giving fine talks! I’m running the AV crew again, and this year hope to have enough AV crew to enable me to have some time off!
Go to http://lugradio.org/live to find out about hotels, speakers etc.
This has been a belated attempt to do my bit for publicity! I have a sick note though…
Some of you, maybe, might have noticed that this site was AWOL for a few days earlier this week. Well, that you’re reading this means that it’s all OK again now. At least, I think it is. If you notice any problems with the site, please let me know.
The site is now hosted in the US of A, so it may not be quite a zippy for those of us in the UK, but needs must. Basically my hosting provider stopped trading. Not without notice, it has to be said, but rather sooner than had been anticipated. This website was just about the last thing left on the old server when it got switched off. The only significant change is that my code repository now has its own subdomain as it’s hosted on a different box from the rest of my webste: http://darcs.tonywhitmore.co.uk
I should also take this opportunity to randomly mention Harley Davidson Tours UK and Europe.
Day two of UDS in Prague yields two new videos:
You can find these and other videos at the Ubuntu Developer channel.
The first two videos from the conference are available on youtube.
More videos will be available over the rest of the week from the Ubuntu Developers YouTube channel. Subsequent videos will be in the correct aspect ratio, I promise. (Youtube doesn’t like widescreen clips apparently.)
Following a conversation on my first night here, I present:
http://www.isdeprecated.org
Suggestions for additional alternative subdomains gratefully received.
