Memoirs of a Roadie

Video Killed The Radio Star

Posted on 7th July 2007

Today is the first day of LUGRadio Live. Well actually it could be considered the second day, as many of the attendees were assembled in Wolverhampton last night. I had to miss the festivities last night, so I'm hoping I can make up for it tonight :)

Several local user groups will be attending, so I'm hoping to see a lot of familiar faces. I'll be taking lots of photos, and this year I hope to have them online soon after the event, not nearly a year later!

File Under: conference / linux / lugradio / opensource NO COMMENTS

I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide

Posted on 5th July 2007

Finally got the time to sort through my photos from last week. From over 2,000 photos, I've got them down to just over 700. There are still a few in there that aren't quite as good as I'd like, but then until I can freeze people in time before taking the shot, I'm going to struggle with the current camera. I'm looking at to getting a DSLR at some point, so hopefully I won't get so many blurred pictures then. Still I'm pleased I managed to get quite a selection that I did like.

For those who discover this entry by searching for YAPC::NA, here are all the photos I have online:

• YAPC::NA 2007 - The flight from Newark to Houston
  
• YAPC::NA 2007 - The early arrivals
  
• YAPC::NA 2007 - Day One
  
• YAPC::NA 2007 - Day Two
  
• YAPC::NA 2007 - Day Three
  
• YAPC::NA 2007 - NASA Space Center
  

I also took some videos of Luke Closs and the Lightning Talks, so once I've converted them I'll get those online too.

Last week was a lot of fun, and I'm glad I got to go. Looking forward to YAPC::Europe now :)

File Under: conference / houston / opensource / perl / photography / space / technology / yapc NO COMMENTS

Heaven, Hell or Houston

Posted on 3rd July 2007

Last week saw me attending the 2007 YAPC::NA Perl Conference in Houston, Texas. Well not just attending, but speaking too. I did 3 regular talks, hosted one BOF and took part in another. You can read the full gory details over on my technical journal.

The conference is a grassroots affair, and is now traditionally hosted annually by the local Perl Monger user group. This year it was a joint effort by Houston.pm and BrazosValley.pm, and was an admirable effort considering that none of the organisers had been to a YAPC before. A number of people had said they weren't attending because it was Houston, but seeing as the town is famous for Lyndon B Johnston Space Center and ZZ Top, I couldn't believe it was that bad, and indeed it wasn't. Though I didn't get a chance to wander around the town, as the University is quite a distance from the town centre, and the local transport system consists of taxis.

I have lots of photos to get through, including a trip to the Space Center, which I'll be posting soon, and I'm getting better with my camera. I seem to have taken several good photos, but having said that there were the fair share of blurred or out of focus ones too. At a conference like this, it gets frustrating when I think I've taken a good shot, then later view it on the laptop and discover it isn't as good as I thought. You never get a second chance. But I am getting better at holding the camera still and taking some nice closeups.

Since I bought a 2GB xD memory card, I can now take 30 minutes worth of video. It meant I was able to video a few talks, but it also meant I discovered more of the limitations of the camera. The camera's main function is to take pictures not video, so some aspects are understandably lacking when taking video, such as being able to zoom in/out. Although you can adjust zoom before videoing, once you press record it's fixed. I assume this is because the problems with auto-focusing. Still it did mean I got to watch the talks again later :)

While Houston was hot, it was pouring with torential rain when I arrived, and did so during my stay there too. The humidity was high and occassionally felt like I was breathing in water, but for the most part we were inside in the air-conditioning, so it wasn't really that much of a problem. Apparently the cockroaches are much more of a problem, though I only saw a few on the pavements. Those staying in the dorms seem to see them at every turn. We even joked that Jose was taking a family home with him. What I saw of Houston I liked, but had they had a decent local train or bus service I might well have visited more of the town.

The conference itself was good, and I got to speak to several people, both familiar faces and newcomers. It meant there was quite a difference in the expectations and the response to talks. I think most got something out of the event, but I can't help think that the beginner type talks were a bit thin on the ground this year. I'm going to see whether I can change that and plan to work on some new material to have a go at for next year. If nothing else, it'll provide plenty of material for the 2008 Birmingham Perl Mongers World Tour :)

File Under: conference / houston / opensource / yapc 2 COMMENTS

Breaking The Habit

Posted on 21st June 2007

I spoke at the OpenAdvantage Open Source Showcase yesterday. It was intriguing to see how some other speakers took the brief of "introduce why you use open source" to mean "a free 10 minute marketing exposure". While I certainly have nothing against small businesses trying to promote themselves at these sort of events, it would have been nice for them to better explain why they chose to use Open Source Software. Some did, albeit briefly, some explained the benefits they've gained (Birmingham Friends of The Earth was certainly a good example), but most took the time to explain how big their client portfolio was. The people in the room largely were small businesses and were looking to understand why they should consider Open Source.

One presentation failed to even mention Open Source or any Open Source product. It was only later I discovered that the hardware product worked with a Linux kernel. It was a sales pitch from start to finish. The presenters wife was sat next to me, and kept adding commentary to those around her, to follow up statements made by the presenter. It was a bit bizarre, and a bit out of place I felt.

My talk, using Labyrinth to provide an example, was really about why I chose Open Source and specifically Perl to implement the website application. I started by explaining my background, not in any great detail, but enough so the audience could understand that I had a history of programming and IT, long before Open Source and Free Software was consider the movement it is today. Whereas most other speakers were able to say they had been doing their particular field for 4-8 years, I was able to state that I have been a programmer for nearly 30 years. I also come from a very different perspective, that of someone who is a true developer. The only other developers were Kat and Dave, who did the presentation about PHP before me. Pretty much everyone else had a much more user perspective. With 13 presentations, it was an odd balance that only 2 were not user experiences.

If I was attending to represent my own company, then while user experiences would be very useful to prove that my business could benefit from using Open Source, I personally would like to understand what benefits that the actual developers see and the future for Open Source, which you're not likely to get from users. There was one presentation from a lawyer about licensing, which pretty much reaffirmed what most of us understand about licensing issues, which was well placed, as it is a subject that does worry some businesses. While some may be just interested in the cost aspect to begin with, ultimately the subject of support and longevity does get thought about. Users often can't explain those, so it would have been nice to have had a Linux distro developer or other Open Source software developer to give that sort of perspective.

There wasn't much Microsoft bashing, which was refreshing, but rather reasoned arguments why proprietry software didn't work for these particular business. One speaker gave a price list for seven basic development machines running Windows and another seven running Linux. The final cost compared £10,000 with £4,500. I did have to smile at the claim that they didn't need AV software on the Linux machine, but resisted the urge to note that Linux isn't virus-free. I originally did offer to speak about why MessageLabs use OSS, but Elliot from OpenAdvantage felt that the Perl talk would be more appropriate. Now having done the talk, I would have to agree.

The event was well attended, with about 50+ people in the audience, and generated a lot of discussion. I hope they get to invite me to another event in the future, and this time I might not over run :)

File Under: birmingham / conference / opensource NO COMMENTS

Rockin' the Paradise

Posted on 25th May 2007

In June 2006 I attended and spoke at the YAPC::NA Perl Conference in Chicago. It was great to meet up with several people I'd met in Toronto, but it was also a bit odd discovering that I wasn't as anonymous as I was last year. In Europe more people recognise me as I've been to every YAPC::Europe Perl Conference and have been involved in several other activities where people have got to know me. But apart from my appearance at OSCON in 2000 (when nobody bar the London.pm guys knew me), I wasn't expecting to be so easily recognised. It was good to put a number of names to faces though and it was a very enjoyable conference.

There was one downside though. On the morning of the last day of the conference I got called by work. Seeing as I was part of the CPR team, I was oncall 24/7 regardless of the fact I wasn't in the UK. Thankfully I didn't have to worry about it conflicting with my talk as I'd already done it. However, it did mean I had to disappear for a while as I set up jobs to go and do the task I needed to do. I'm rather glad that firstly I used screen and secondly that I'd got all the jobs running that I needed to. As while getting up to plug in the power cable, my laptop got knocked on the floor. Had I powered down and shut the laptop, it might not have been so bad, however, it was open and running. I managed to truly trash the laptop, as later investigation seemed to indicate the bus connector to both the DVD/CD writer and the hard disk drive had been damaged beyond repair. Despite swapping the HDD to another laptop, it also appears I complete wrecked the connectors to the HDD. There wasn't enough on the drive (apart from the photos I'd taken over the first few days) to warrant paying for it to be scanned professionally, so it got binned.

At first I thought that I'd now lost all my photos from the conference and was a little downhearted. As a consequence I didn't take the camera to the speakers dinner event that Josh and Heather had laid on after the conference, and I didn't bother taking any photos the following day either. Thankfully, JJ gave me a program to recover image files from portable media, and got back pretty much everything bar the first day of the conference, which unfortunately are now lost due to me writing over them with pictures from the last day. The lesson I've learnt is that to use multiple media to record photos and don't write over anything until you've had a chance to back them all up safely.

The conference was great though, and I did enjoy wandering around the city. On the first day Cog and I went up to the Skydeck of The Sears Tower, walked down to see The Water Tower and visited The Apple Store, where we caught quite a cool band, called The Ruse. For the Early Arrivals Dinner, we ended up near Wrigley Field, where the White Sox play, while the conference itself is close to ? where the Cubs play. Didn't get to see a game, but I do plan to revisit the city again. I never even took the time to check out any blues clubs, so I owe it to myself to go back really ;)

This year's conference is in Houston, so I'm hoping I can go and visit the Saturn rocket at The Lyndon B Johnson Space Centre while I'm there.

File Under: chicago / conference / perl / yapc NO COMMENTS