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.
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’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…
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.
All the videos from LUG Radio Live USA 2008 which are ever likely to be available can be found via the schedule.There’s an streaming Flash video version and OGG and WMV download versions.
http://lugradio.org/live/USA2008/schedule
I’m in Prague next week for the Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) Intrepid. Say hello if you want to!
The anticipated fourth episode (yes, really, apparently) of the Ubuntu UK Podcast is out now. In this episode:
- Unix/Linux Malware & Security precautions,
- Interview with Ian Ozsvald from Showmedo,
- A short phone call from Mark Shuttleworth,
- Plus the sarcastic news,
- And a competition to get money off Ubuntu schwag.
Download it from:
http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/2008/04/23/s01e04-such-an-easy-question/
This episode started recording within two hours of touching down at Heathrow from San Francisco, so I was pretty jetlagged during the recording. Yet again I’ve tried something new with the sound, but unfortunately the raw recording was distorted in places. I’m blaming that on the jetlag. It was also our first phone interview, which I think went pretty well thanks to Daviey’s SIP phone. People who have moaned about the levels should be happier with this episode, but there’s still more to do to get things sounding even better of course.
The third episode of the Ubuntu UK podcast, “Help me”, is now out and available from:
http://podcast.ubuntu-uk.org/2008/04/07/s01e03-help-me/
In this episode we talk about the command line versus GUI, Mythbuntu, podcast production (by popular request) and give our take on recent FLOSS-related news.
What was different about this episode? Well, we recorded it at a different location. We had a different cake. (Carrot, and very nice it was too.) Some of us forgot our microphone technique. The builders outside started a generator during the first segment. There was a problem with the signal levels onto the recorder, which means some peaks are bit distorted. I’ll pay more attention to this next time and hopefully provide a permanent fix soon. And one of the channels was inverted for some reason which caused a few extra hours hassle and brown trousers!
For those of you following my trials and tribulations with the audio, I’m not as happy with this one as episode 2. But where the audio is a bit dodgy it’s only as a consequence of trying to make it better. So that’s alright.
