Come along and say hello!

One of the problems I’ve been mulling over is that of originality. Our Ubuntu Podcast is a successful show by most metrics, but we’re not the only Ubuntu/Linux/FLOSS podcast, not by a long stretch. Some are very different, stylistically, from our own. Others are more similar and I have found myself wondering if there’s any point in having several shows that share similarities. If podcasting really is radio that anyone can do, then what is the point of you doing it? If you’re not doing anything original, anything different, if other people can do it, why continue? Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

The same thing applies to photography. I’m not a professional photographer, but I’ve enjoyed developing my skills over the last few years. I went on my first photo walk at the weekend, and couldn’t help feeling that twenty photographers walking them same route would come out with pretty much the same photos. Similarly, taking photos of well-known views or places seems pointless when you can find high quality images of the same thing on Flickr. There seems little point or challenge in taking photos which others can easily take too. If there are people making better photos of the same subject than you, why carry on making them?

Is this just trying to avoid being judged and found a failure? To compare your photographic efforts with those of someone who had access to the same scene and come out second best can’t be a nice feeling. If someone starts an Ubuntu or Linux-related podcast, rather than seeing them as a kindred spirit, I can’t help but feel it is a threat or increased competition; that they might do what we do better than us, that our listeners prefer the newcomer.

All this leads me towards the question of motivation. Why do I continue to work on the podcast and spend my time trying to take better photographs? If one can’t make something original, why make anything at all? A lot of my interest in learning how to do something new. The idea of doing a live podcast appeals because it’s a new experience. I’d like to photograph more and varied subjects; to feel I have acquired some new skills. If one finds the process rewarding or fun, or it serves a bigger, grander purpose then that on its own should be enough. Like anything worth doing, it’s difficult to be good at it. If you happen to strike on an original idea on the way, you’re very lucky.

What do you think? Please leave your comments below.

I posted a short message on my Facebook status when I found out he had died and soon a collection of comments amassed from ex-classmates, each of whom had their own memory of Geoff to share. Although there is a memorial service is being held at the school in September, getting together for an evening of memorial drinks felt like a fitting tribute for the man who treated his students like his cast, who was always a teacher but felt like a friend. So on Saturday 7th August we’ll be getting together in Reigate for some drinks and, I’m sure, a fair bit of reminiscing. There is a Facebook event page, but it would be great to see anyone who remembers Geoff with affection come along. Please pass the details on to those others who knew Geoff too.

1. Downloaded the Ubuntu i386 desktop ISO.
2. Turned it into a bootable USB stick using the “Startup Disk Creator” program in System Tools.
3. Booted the MPC-L off the USB stick. (N.B. It will only boot from USB sticks inserted into the rear USB sockets.)
4. At the splash screen, selected the advanced boot options, and appended pnpbios=no noapic acpi=off to the boot options.
5. The system then booted to the text-based installer. I didn’t tell it to use this installer rather than the graphical one, it just did.
6. Followed the installer process through, noting an error about not being able to install a suitable kernel. I think this is because the Lucid kernels are compiled for i686, whereas the MPC-L is essentially an i586 CPU (AMD Geode).
7. At the end of the installation procedure, at the “reboot” prompt, I selected “Go back” and chose to start a terminal session.
8. In the terminal session I set up a chroot to install a suitable kernel:
   # mount -o bind /proc /target/proc
   # mount -o bind /dev /target/dev
   # mount -o bind /dev/pts /target/dev/pts
   # mount -o bind /sys /target/sys
   # chroot /target
9. Then I installed a kernel: apt-get install linux-386
10. Once the kernel had installed, I exited the chroot and terminal (type exit twice). This returns one to the installer menu.
11. Then I selected the reboot option from the installer menu.
12. After a reboot, the system came up just fine.

As ever it’s worth noting that running GNOME on the 400MHz CPU of the MPC-L is quite hard work, but can be done. Check out Xubuntu or Openbox for more suitable desktop environments though.

Oh, and the bug wasn’t present in Lucid.

Laura and I set off for Liverpool early on Friday morning, via Basingstoke and Hammersmith. We were collecting bits of equipment for the event on the way, adding to the assortment of raffle prizes and other boxes which were already packed into the car. I had arranged to collect the kit as, at the time of booking it, we weren’t sure how much sponsorship money we’d have. Collecting kit in person saves on a day’s hire and a delivery charge. It added a few hours to the journey time though. The Hammersmith location was a small recording studio in a town house, of which I was immediately jealous. It looked like the perfect place to record podcasts. Goods all safely gathered in, we set off for the north.

Thanks to the wonder of Google Latitude we could see that we were going to reach the M6 at almost exactly the same time as Alan and Laura Czajkowski. We arranged to meet at the next services, where we enjoyed a quick break and a catch-up. Driving into Liverpool around 5pm, we were overtaken by Ciemon on his motorbike at some traffic lights. Laura and I went straight to the Black-E to drop off the kit from the car. We met up with Dan and Dan’s mum, Agnes, and helped them unload their car too. This was my first chance to look around the venue – Dan had seen it many times and Laura had visited a couple of weekends previously. I’d seen photos of course, but there’s no substitute for being there in person. It was immediately clear that this was a very cool venue, with just the right vibe. It was a real shame that the refurbishment work hadn’t been completed as this took quite a lot of the shine off. The main stage was just massive. With two hundred seats set out, there was still plenty of space round the outside for people to stand. There were two balconies right around the space, giving the whole thing the feeling of a roman gladiatorial arena. At least, to my slightly nervous and overwhelmed mind.

After checking in at our fairly minimal hotel, we had a quick brush-up before heading back to the Black-E for a photo-shoot. That’s right, someone actually wanted to take some photos of us. Graham Binns was taking photos during the OggCamp event but wanted to take some photos of the UUPC mob as a separate project. Although there was some confusion about where we were shooting, we had access to the venue for half an hour, where he shot some portraits. After that, we were whisked off to the beaches with Antony Gormley’s Another Place installation for some brief and cold photos. Graham has blogged about the process and whilst I agree with some of the areas for improvement, the results are very pleasing. We wrapped up just as the light faded.

UUPC on the beach - Graham Binns

After getting back from the photo-shoot, we went to find something to eat. Always the gastronomic adventurers, we ended up in Pizza Hut with Andy Stanford-Clark, Simon Phipps, Roger Light and Laura Czajkowski. One of the lessons I learnt this OggCamp is that not having a designated hotel is a pain! People end up staying all over the town and something as simple as getting together for a meal can become a much more protracted and involved operation than I’m comfortable with. After eating, most of us finally made it to the Rathole Radio gig, an arrival which was delayed by my poor map-reading in the darkened alleyways of Liverpool. We arrived just in time to get a beer in before Dan and his band took to the stage and played a great set. The venue was great, reminiscent of the Cavern Club with its low vaulted roofs. Seeing people gathering helped build the sense of anticipation for the following day. Weary from our travels and aware of the early start the following day, we left around midnight.

We arrived at the venue at 8am, beaten to it by a few ever-eager crew members. Those who had stayed up later at the Rathole gig rocked up some time after the designated start time. A whirlwind of activity ensured that exhibitors were loaded in, signs stuck up, projectors configured and PAs set up. The fantastic banners heralded the event outside the Black-E and there was a crowd outside well in advance of the doors opening. In what seemed like no time at all, we were on stage welcoming everyone along and introducing the first speaker, Simon Phipps. Fortunately lots of people had come along ready to give talks, so I missed Simon’s talk to help Laura set up the schedule for the rest of the day. Unfortunately we were rather surprised by the number of people putting forward half hour talks rather than hour long ones. Worried about not having enough talks to keep everyone occupied, we chickened out and only scheduled a single round of talks before lunch. In hindsight I’d have preferred to pack that time slot out more as it felt like a bit of an anti-climax. Being stuck up on the balcony looking after the sound desk, oblivious to the fascinating talks going on on the other two stages, it all felt like a bit of an anticlimax and I crashed hard.

After a lunch break the afternoon schedule kicked off with another round or two of talks. Dan did a great job of chairing a panel session, keeping our very chatty panelists in line with ease. All the panelists were great, but it was especially good to see Brad Pearce being part of it. Brad came along to OggCamp and offered a talk on neuroscience. During the talk it was clear that he was an articulate and intelligent speaker, so we just asked him to join the panel! It was also great to see my friends Ade Bradshaw and Chris Procter, former LugRadio presenters, taking part. Both had come along to support the event, but it was nice seeing them spout forth a bit. Saturday concluded with the wonderful raffle, with a range of prizes donated by various generous companies. Dave showed his salesman instincts, flogging loads more tickets just before we got underway. I really enjoyed the raffle, it was exciting, a little bit tense and very funny. Oh, and it helps us cover the costs of the event too.

After a pit stop at the hotel, (oh, alright, we watched Doctor Who) we headed off to Studio2 for the evening session. Studio2 is a fantastically cool venue, perfect for an event centred around two podcasts. It’s a recording studio, complete with sound booths and large studio monitors in the walls. Thanks to yet more poor navigation on my behalf, Laura, Andy Stanford-Clark and I took far longer to get there than we should, so we missed last orders for food. We had to make do with a nearby restaurant in Chinatown instead. We were finally able to let our hair down a bit at Studio2, knowing that tomorrow would not be an early start. But before too long it became clear that the day had taken its toll and we headed back to the hotel, leaving others knocking back baby guinesses.

The Live Show - By Lorna Jane Mitchell

Sunday was quieter than the Saturday, which was the case at LugRadio Live too. I’d love to know why people only attend on the one day – do they have family commitments on the other day, or just called in on the Saturday on the off chance? Nothing wrong with just coming on one day of course, but I’m curious. Again, I was in the main stage for most of Sunday, catching Alan Bell’s interesting talk on VoteGeek and Andy Stanford-Clark’s twittering house talk (for the third time!) This year we had provided a clip radio microphone for speakers and they all seemed more comfortable with it than the handheld radio microphone. Definitely a win over last year. But before we knew it, the live show was bearing down upon us. Popey had squeezed some ideas out of us and ensured that we all knew roughly what was going on, but the combination of nerves and having seven people on the stage meant that we were tripping over each other a bit during the recording. Although Fab and Dan are used to working together, and the UUPC presenters are too, we’re not used to working with all of us at once so we didn’t do as good a job of second-guessing what we were going to do as we could. That said, the show picked up pace in the second half and the last few minutes were really funny. We had to edit it a bit for the Ubuntu Podcast version of the show to stay family-friendly, but the Linux Outlaws released the unexpurgated version for those who aren’t of a sensitive disposition. (I’m very pleased that something I said became their episode title!) It’s always difficult to know how it went immediately after recording, but we had lots of great feedback. Then within an hour we packed up all our stuff and got out of the venue. A quick stop at the hotel to drop all the boxes off preceded another meal in China town, this time with Laura Czajkowski: a chance to mull over how we could make the event better in future. Yup, despite all the stress, pressure and work, it looks like we’re doing it again next year. We rounded off the weekend with a few more beers at Studio2, though once again tiredness hit before too long.

We drove home at a leisurely pace the following day, reflecting on the event and how all these amazing people come together from around the country, work hard, play hard and then disband, scattering across the globe. Events like this are essentially ephemeral, but not being able to speak to everyone and viewing the whole thing through a fug of tiredness is slightly disappointing. I don’t blame those who steer clear of volunteering for things. That said, I’m already looking forward to getting stuck into organising next year’s event. Once we’ve all unwound and properly put OggCamp10 to bed, we’ll think about “next year”, but please give us some time to get over this one first!

In the last week or so, things have really started to come together. Equipment is booked, ready to be collected or delivered, kit lists are being checked and double-checked, travel plans calculated and all the last minute details being sorted. Unfortunately, the venue staff have told us that lift to the first floor, where main stage is, won’t be finished in time for OggCamp. The lift to basement is OK, and the exhibition is on the ground floor. The crew will help any wheel-chair users to get up to the first floor, but we’re really sorry for the inconvenience.

On a happier note, the mugs have arrived, looking all shiny and lovely:

If you donate £5 to support the event, you can get your hands on one of these bad boys. Be the envy of geeks everywhere! Our exclusive t-shirts are also being printed as I type. From what I’ve seen so far they look fantastically cool and they are a “thank you” for everyone who donates £10 to support OggCamp.

The banners which will be hanging outside the venue have also been printed, and look like this:

I’m sure they are going to look great hanging outside the Black-E and, like all the design elements of OggCamp, are the result of Fab’s skills.

We’ve also had a flood of cool donations to our raffle. This was a highlight of last year’s event for many people. This year’s prizes include:

• 3x Viglen MPC-Ls
• An assortment of books from Wiley
• Two Aluetia PCs
• Books and ebook vouchers from Apress
• Some swish Ubuntu backpacks from Canonical
• An O2 joggler
• A 1.5TB USB disk from ebuyer

That’s a seriously nice collection of goodies, any of which I’d be happy to get my hands on! Every day new talks and activities are added to the OggCamp ideas wiki. I just hope I get time to enjoy some of them! With our Saturday night shin-dig now confirmed (Studio 2, from 7pm, a suitable venue for a podcast party if ever there was. ), and the volcanic ash being kept at bay, it looks set to one hell of a weekend. If you’re as excited as we are about OggCamp, join us in #oggcamp on the Freenode IRC network or our facebook page.

The best performances came from a group of Labour back benchers, including Tom Watson who spoke spontaneously and passionately. He said he felt “physically sick” after having voted against his party for the first time. He has a deeper understanding of the issues than most who spoke in the debate and was prepared to stand up and voice his concerns about both the text of the Bill and the manner in which it has been progressed. Kudos. Some back bench Tories were good too, particularly William Cash. (John Redwood, who spoke very intelligently on the subject in the second reading, wasn’t there for the third and didn’t vote either. Neither was SNP MP Pete Wishart who spoke against the Bill in the second reading.) Don Foster represented the promised LibDem opposition to the Bill. It was good to hear MPs who had created video games and written software speaking up in opposition too, including a BPI member! All said that the Bill had not been subject to proper scrutiny and should be left for the next Government to deal with. It wasn’t and the Government got the result it wanted thanks to support from some Conservatives, whose formal objections melted away following negotiations with the Government to remove some clauses over the proceeding 24 hours.

If I were using this Bill to decide my vote in the election, how would I react? Our incumbent is a Liberal Democrat. Whilst they did what they could in the Commons, my MP, Sandra Gidley, was absent so couldn’t support her party or represent me. More than half of all MPs were already out on the campaign trail, not representing their constituents in Parliament. If all the LibDem MPs had been present and voted against the Bill, it would have been tied. But of course the Labour whips would have ensured that more Labour MPs stuck around for the vote if they had seen the Liberal MPs around Westminster. A “West Wing” style subterfuge of hiding MPs in offices might have worked, but clearly real life isn’t that exciting. If I was in the constituency for the back benchers who were vocal in their objections to the speed with which the Bill was rushed through, I would give them credit for it. I will certainly be paying close attention to the statements of the PPCs in the area and their view on the issue.

This is the first time that I’ve played really close attention to the progress of a Bill through Parliament. I’ve watched the debates in the Lords and the second and third readings in the Commons. The arcane rituals of the House are confusing – apparently the second reading of a Bill is traditionally passed without objection. I had no idea what a probing amendment is. I was saddened by the front benches using the debate to score party political points and the boorish behaviour of some Members ribbing each other. I kept saying to myself “Take this seriously – this is important!” I think everyone in the country should watch a Commons debate on a subject about which they are knowledgeable – shipbuilding, finance, medicine, whatever. They will, I suspect, be shocked at the attitude of Members and the apparent levity with which some treat the laws they are debating. It is no wonder that people don’t understand the process by which laws are made and have no confidence in it when most of the MPs who voted last night had not even heard the arguments and just voted the way the whips wanted them to.

A bad Bill has been passed with the vague promise that it will be fixed later. If you are concerned, then find out what you can do by visiting the Open Rights Group website.

UPDATE: Rewritten some sections and clarified some of the voting details.

There were only 40 MPs in the House when the debate started and it’s now down to about 18. That’s 2-5% of our elected representatives present. It is disappointing that with tens of thousands of messages being sent to MPs (some say 20,000, others 80,000) so few of them have turned up for the debate. The rest are presumably hitting the campaign trail – certainly my MP, Sandra Gidley, is. (It is telling how many of the MPs speaking in the debate are Scottish – I guess it is too far for them to go back home to start campaigning before having to attend Westminster for the last couple of days before the dissolution. The more southerly MPs are mostly absent.) I have written, e-mailed and tweeted Sandra about this issue, so it’s disappointing to see only one member of her LibDem party in the House – their spokesperson on the issue, Don Foster.

The Liberal Democrats have said they will object to the Bill going through the “wash-up” process, but I’m not alone in suspecting they will change this position as the evening goes on. Much of the debate about the more controversial elements of the bill seems to be about “creativity” versus “Internet freedom,” the two being seen as mutually exclusive. I am a podcaster and Internet freedom helps me be creative. I am a photographer and Internet freedom doesn’t stop me being creative.

Meanwhile, the #debill tag is trending worldwide on Twitter. That means more people are talking about the Bill on twitter than just about everything. In the entire world. Not even the tags for the General Election are trending globally. I would like to know the following:

• The number of constituents represented by MPs present in the House for the debate.
• The number of people representing themselves on twitter during the debate.

I suspect that the latter far outnumber the former, an example of the ability of the Internet to give everyone a voice. Free speech and open discussion online could be curtailed through sloppy legislation like this.

Even some MPs who support the Bill have said there has been insufficient time to debate the it and that it shouldn’t progress through the wash-up, showing that this is a matter of parliamentary process as well as human and digital rights. Labour and Conservative back-benchers have both complained about the lack of time to debate the Bill, but only the Labour MPs have actually said they would vote to stop the Bill from progressing at all, despite the fact that it’s a Bill from within their own party. It is equally disheartening to hear Conservative MPs saying that they disagree with various clauses in the Bill but will support it “under protest.” This surely undermines the purpose of elected representatives.

UPDATE: The Bill passed to the final stages tomorrow without a single objection.

UPDATE 2 (7th April, 14:35): The Daily Telegraph is reporting that over 5,000 people were tweeting about the Bill last night (and at the time of writing #debill is still trending worldwide). That’s obviously far fewer than the constituents represented by the few MPs who attended the debate last night. The crucial vote on whether the Bill can be passed through the wash-up process after just two hours of Committee discussion (usually 20+ hours) will be later tonight, probably around 10:30pm.

To that end, I’m pleased to introduce the new home of the story of LugRadio: http://www.dontlistenalone.org

It’s the first proper comedy gig I’ve been to in a long time (apart from Eddie Izzard at the Wembley Arena – a great gig but more akin to watching a DVD on a giant screen). That I was there is a testament to the ability of twitter to engage very directly with a (potential) audience, as the Scotsman noted. Plenty of people were tweeting during the interval. Would I have been there had it not been for twitter or AIOTM? Probably not.

The venue was pretty much what I was expecting; small and warm. It seated about 120 people in unreserved seating. We ended up in the second row. That can be foolish at a comedy gig; you’re in the firing line for being picked on. However, I thought that it wouldn’t be that kind of show, and by and large it wasn’t.

My first thought was, rather predictably, that Richard was shorter than I expected. I wonder if performers go around thinking that “normal people” are all taller than they expect. Wearing a crumpled suit and sporting a masscara-darkened toothbrush moustache, he launched into a show which was funny and thought provoking, inventive and full of invective.

The venue was so small, it would have been hard to have felt more involved without being on the stage. You could notice tiny nuances which would otherwise be lost; his almost obsessive kicking of the microphone lead, the occasional subconscious check that his flies were done up and the mostly suppressed smile when he amused himself. Like all good performers he was making eye contact with the audience, particularly those in the first few rows. At first this rather put me off: I felt under pressure to look like I was enjoying myself, to laugh louder because I was being talked to. But it wore off and even added to my enjoyment.

The only downside to the gig was the hideously drunk woman sat two rows behind and across the aisle. She was clearly plastered before she came in and got worse as she tipped more drink down her throat. Her accompanying male friend seemed similarly inebriated. He didn’t display the same overly loud laugh that she unleashed at any opportunity, although he did manage to match her efforts at talking throughout most of the first half. It was as if they thought they were watching a DVD and were oblivious to the presence of the rest of the audience, who where tutting and glaring at them.

Richard used a range of put-downs to try and get the couple to shut up, but to no avail. Although she shouted out a few things, she wasn’t trying to be a “proper” heckler, she was just pissed and either didn’t realise or didn’t care that she was spoiling the show for others and disrupting the pace of the performance. So the heckler put-downs didn’t really work. In the second half he made clever use of a comic character to be incredibly rude to her. If I had been the target, I would have been mortified and left. However she was almost oblivious, despite the round of applause that the tirade received. It was only when, during the start of the climax of the show, Richard stopped and very quietly told her she was spoling the show for everyone else that she quietened down, almost until the end. He couldn’t have done anything else by that point: To have gone on a typical comedian’s rant at her would have spoiled the build-up to the end of the show.

If it had been a gig consisting of 90 minutes of assorted knob gags and swearing, I wouldn’t have minded a few heckles distracting the comedian and the heckler receiving some abuse as recompense. But this show wasn’t like that. It had a clear objective and serious topics to laugh about. The drunken women almost de-railed the denouement. It was a great show with a real structure but that structure was undermined by the simple, thoughtless act of someone blithering away a couple of rows behind.

At the end, Richard stayed around afterwards to sign programmes and flog a few DVDs. We were at the end of the queue and witnessed the hideously drunk woman having the gall to ask him for a hug. He declined. He was out packing his car by the time we reached ours and left the venue as we did.

I can thoroughly recommend the show – go and see it. Just hope there aren’t drunken, thoughtless idiots in the audience.

Laura, Richard Herring and me.

Richard also blogged about the gig. Pleasingly we agree about the impact of the drunken woman on the flow of the show.