Bat Out Of Hell

Posted on 21st July 2008

So while several people I know have been telling everyone that they'll be at OSCON this week, I thought I'd mention that I've just been to LUGRadio Live, probably the best Open Source event ever :)

The event was originally billed as the last event LUGRadio event. The reason being that the presenters were finding it harder to prepare for the radio show recording, and have the time to edit and put it out, when they have work and family taking up more of their time. It was sad to hear that they were stopping the show, though understandable, but it was an even bigger disappointment when there was the prospect of no more LUGRadio Live. The event is more than just a conference, it's a great way for the UK community (although there are plenty of European and further afield attendees) to get together and catchup. As such a few of us behind the scenes had already suggested that something should happen. I'd suggested that another UK LUG take up the challenge and hold the event somewhere else in the UK. However, Dave Morley and Ron "BigRon" Wellstead had ideas to just do it themselves, seeing as most of WolvesLUG were on the crew and had been working behind the scenes for the last few events. Either way I would have been happy.

So it was with some relief that during the Live & Unleashed recording on Saturday, that Jono said that after the Friday night party, he was so overwhelmed with the comments from people, about how much they were going to miss the event, he was moved to discuss with Aq about doing the event again. Thankfully, they were both in agreement that is was worth doing. So even though the podcast will be no more, LUGRadio Live event will continue, which is great news.

This weekend was great fun, and I manage to take over 2,000 photos over the two days (and Friday night party), which I now have the pleasure of whittling down to a more manageable number to post here. I hope to get throught them all this week, so stay tuned for news of when they are uploaded. It was great to see the Bytemark gaming rig, which was a great success, and also to be able to say personal thanks to Matt Bloch for helping Birmingham.pm sort out their server. I'm also very grateful for the guys for the 1 or 50 special LUGRadio tshirts that I got as a thank you for yet again being their unoffical offical photographer for the event :) It was great to catch up with Josette and Sylvie for O'Reilly, as well as John Pinner from Linux Emporium (BTW thanks for the tshirt John), who had some ideas for an interesting conference next year, and Andy Robinson from OpenStreetMap. Novell (Ethne loves Geeko the chameleon), RedHat, Efficient PC, Beagleboard and the Open Rights Group all had great stands too, and all helped to make it probably the best exhibition area they've ever had at LUGRadio Live.

Also in attendance in the exhibition area were the Linux Outlaws, another Linux podcast, that are looking like they could fill the void for all those LUGRadio fans. I've only heard them being mentioned on LUGRadio, on recent episodes, so haven't had a chance to listen to them yet, but having had a chat to Fabian, they seem like really sound guys, and I'm looking forward to hearing all the back issues. They were also hoping to record an episode of their show at LRL, but I don't know whether they managed that.

This year, thanks to Tony and Laura, this event is probably the most filmed LRL too. Having organised an AV crew well in advance this year, pretty much the whole event was filmed in some form or another. I'm sure it'll be a while before the videos appear, but judging from the effort they put into it, it's going to make fantastic viewing. Also thanks to all the crew, and especially Mez and Chris for helping me out during my talk. The crew have become and invaluable part of LRL, and without them it really wouldn't be the kind of event that it has become. Remember these guys are doing it all for free, because they love being part of the whole experience and want to help put on the best show possible. It also helps that they are a great bunch of guys and gals.

But the biggest buzz about the whole event was Chinny. Thanks to Xalior, who had the outfit custom made, a lifesize Chinny Raccoon featured in much of the events over the two days. Big thanks to MrBen for being a great sport in the costume and generally putting on a great show. It's no surprise he is considered a lifetime LUGRadio Community Hero. Although after seeing the pictures from the Gong-A-Thong, his wife Heather is not so keen to let him out of the house for next year!

My photos will be online soon, so check back soon for them, in the meantime enjoy the tasters I've added to this post. There are plenty more to come :)

Some other blog posts have started appearing around the web, so it'll be interesting to read what others make of the weekend. I plan to write a little more later too. However, the one post that really says more about LUGRadio Live than anyhing else, is the one Laura posted about her and Tony filming the last ever studio recording of LUGRadio, and includes some of her highlights from the past LUGRadio Live events. Sums it all up for me too.

File Under: community / conference / lugradio / opensource / wolverhampton
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Dead Fish Don't Swim Home

Posted on 21st July 2008

If there is a karaoke at some party or other, which I happen to attend, please note that I won't sing THAT song! No matter how much blackmail or incentive you offer. It's also worth reminding the culprits (Alex and Steph), who I work for. Revenge can be very sweet. As I mentioned to Alex afterwards, "how good is your spam detection?"

And if you're wondering what THAT song is, then you really need to think of the blindingly obvious.

File Under: community / conference / lugradio / wolverhampton
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In The Clouds

Posted on 1st July 2008

My photos are finally online from the YAPC::NA Conference in Chicago. Although many of the outdoor photos have come out well, many of the indoor ones haven't. For the conference itself, the main room was too dark on stage to really catch the speakers well, and all though the other two rooms were well lit, the speakers always seemed to move at the wrong moment. I think it might have helped if I';d have used my tripod a bit more, but I really do need a good digital SLR.

I did want to add lots of tags and things to all the photos, but that's just going to have to wait until I have more time. In the mean time, enjoy.

For those that only want to see the conference related photos, these are they:

For those who just want to see the sights of Chicago, then you'll more likely want to see these:

As an added bonus I'm piecing together some of the photos I took during the Speakers Party, where we were able to get a grand view of the city. At the moment I have only uploaded 1, but hope to get the other two sorted soon.

File Under: chicago / community / conference / opensource / people / photography / sightseeing / yapc
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A Farewell To Kings

Posted on 30th June 2008

The guys over at LUGRadio have just released the latest edition of the show. They also reveal a rather big announcement, in that LUGRadio Live Live & Unleashed will be the last ever show by the team. This also mean that LUGRadio Live in a few weeks time, will also be the last ever LRL. I'm gutted as the show and event has become a staple part of my life for the past 5 years. As I knew the guys before they started the show, I was fortunate enough to be a fan from the very first show. And from such humble beginnings it's been amazing to see what the team have created. It is a credit to everyone who has been involved in LUGRadio, and the whole community that has built up surrounding both the shows and the events, that they have played a notable part of promoting Linux and Open Source. The quality of guest, discussion and inspiration has been excellent. It has always been fun and entertaining, but it has also strived to educate and pass on their passion for the projects, and communities they have introduced us to.

I'm glad I had the opportunity to play even a small part of the experience, and it has always been a joy to listen to the shows. I shall miss them. I'm fortunate in that I live not too far from the guys, so hopefully I will stay in touch and see them at Wolves LUG events in the future. But I will miss the all the LUGRadio Live events, where I get to meet so many other Linux and Open Source enthusiasts from around the UK and the World. Thanks guys, it's been a blast.

File Under: community / conference / linux / lugradio / opensource / wolverhampton
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A Light In The Black

Posted on 5th January 2008

Now that I'm looking to another year of the Birmingham.pm World Tour, with visits to a number of UK LUG and Perl Monger groups, LUGRadio Live (UK not US), the UKUUG Spring Conference in Birmingham, YAPC::NA and YAPC::Europe, as well as possibly a few European Workshops too, I need to start think what I'm going to present. I like the fact I can go to Linux based groups and conferences and talk about a variety of Perl topics, as although I might not be an expert, I know enough to give an introduction in several areas at least. But for more Perl specific technical events, I really need to stick to what I know.

The problem is that I feel I've done enough with CPAN Testing, Phrasebooks and Selenium for the time being, and it does get a bit boring for both me and the audience if I'm repeating myself every year. I may do some update on CPAN Testing, as there are likely to be changes in the coming year, a lot of which is being worked on currently, but what else is there that I could present that would be of interest to somebody?

One talk subject that has crossed my mind has been to do something like 'Labyrinth - A Perl Success Story'. It's been commented a few times that within the Perl community we talk a lot about the possibilities (particularly with frameworks) rather than getting to the finished product. While Labyrinth might not be for everyone, it might possibly be something that works for some, and as a consequence might interest people who have been asking me what it is and why I wrote it. However, although it is related to web and content management it isn't the next Catalyst or the new Jifty. You might be able to draw similarities between them all, but there are also many differences. Labyrinth isn't a framework as such, it's not meant for high-availability websites, and it also doesn't have the large development team knocking out code and fixing bugs that the others have. It's just me. But it might have just enough functionality and usability for someone to pick it up and get a site running how they want it to work, without having to understand the magic internals of frameworks like Catalyst and Jifty. I wouldn't be talking about the internals anyway, as I would prefer to give examples of how I solved problems and interesting asides that led me to learn something new about web design. I'm just not sure enough people would find it that interesting.

Further topics that come from the guts of Labyrinth, and are things that I have been keen to see how other people solve the same problem, are user input validation and content output correction. At the moment Labyrinth handles these within the same codebase, and it works rather well. However, it seems rather the wrong thing to do, to present a talk where the code to do the job isn't on CPAN and is embedded in another system. As a consequence I've been thinking about abstracting the code out of Labyrinth and releasing it separately. It might make for an interesting discussion and may provide people with an reasonable example of how they can use one solution to treat their input and output.

I've also started thinking about doing a short talk along the lines of "My Favourite CPAN Modules". A number of people have done this in the past and at one London.pm meeting several years ago, Leon presented one that got me looking up a few modules I'd not really heard of before. It's probably a talk better aimed at local group technical meetings and maybe a Workshop if appropriate, but I've also been thinking it might be better to actually to structure several talks of this style, but with a theme. So one talk would be "The Web Edition" and feature several modules useful for website development, another "The Test Edition" feature several useful Test modules, and perhaps also "The Mail Edition" with a selection of useful email modules. I've made an attempt at this style of talk before, but got too involved with the mechanics, when really all you need is a quick flavour of what the module can do, with enough references for you to go and find out more yourself.

I still need something more concrete for LUGRadio and the YAPCs, but at least I have some ideas to work with now. If anyone has other suggestions, please let me know.

File Under: community / conference / labyrinth / linux / perl / yapc
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