Jul 28 2006
Now that Jeff Waugh is moving on from Canonical, a few of us have taken over The Fridge news website.
Just as proud parents tack their children’s paintings to the fridge in their kitchen, so we link to news stories and other content about Ubuntu.
If you’d like to contribute, visit https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Fridge or join us in #ubuntu-fridge on Freenode.
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Jul 27 2006
The Open CD’s Henrik Omma mailed me to say that the Ubuntu Accessibility BoF, at LugRadio Live, had resulted in the creation of an accessible Open Document Format reader.
Here’s an extract from Daniel Carrerra’s post to the Ubuntu Accessibility list:
“I met Henrik at LugRadio today (nice meeting you Henrik!). I had given a talk about the OpenDocument format, and demonstrated a simple ODF viewer. Henrik asked about making an accessible version of the ODF reader, something that would let people read ODF files right on the command-line, as plain text.”
As I understand it, the first version of the viewer was created on the day, at the venue.
I love the fact that this happened at LugRadio Live. Of course, it would almost certainly have happened anyway, but the event helped bring the right people together.
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Jul 25 2006
What a fantastic weekend! On Saturday and Sunday, we put on the second LugRadio Live and almost all my hopes were exceeded.I’ve said it many times, but here it is again: our main reason for starting LugRadio Live was to provide an event for the community. With the two (now one) London-based expos, corporate IT buyers were the focus. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the free software world thrives on the personal relationships between its members. The warmth of friendship that I felt throughout the event meant that we had succeeded; everything else was a bonus.
Friday - setup and pre-LRL drinks
Friday afternoon, the four of us met early-arrivers for lunch, then headed to the venue to set up. This year, we hired Wolverhampton University’s Student Union. With several rooms, a large stage and the promise of air-conditioning, it was a massive upgrade from last year. Seeing our very stylish new banners in place - thanks OpenAdvantage and Bytemark - was particularly exciting.
As we’d publicly requested that no one turn up to help, unless specifically asked, only a handful of people arrived unannounced 
Just in case anyone’s wondering why we didn’t want people to lend a hand, here are our reasons:
With most things in place, including many exhibitors, we headed off to meet more early-arrivers. It now appears that the beer garden (yard, more like) at Wolverhampton’s Hogs Head pub has been firmly chosen as the venue for pre-LugRadio Live drinks. In 2005, we were stunned when fifteen or twenty people turned up, including some we’d never met online. This year, it was fantastic to see between forty and fifty people from almost every habitable continent (I didn’t speak to anyone from South America).
It was so good to meet friends from the LugRadio community, and new people. I was particularly pleased to finally meet Sun’s Patrick Finch, who looks after OpenSolaris’ marketing, TMM, ScotLUG and HantsLUG guys. I’m sure I was also pleased to meet many other people, but lack of sleep and plenty of real ale have dislodged the memories.
Saturday - Day 1
Arriving at 7:30am, I was pleased to see more exhibitors already setting up and members of our yellow t-shirted crew, plus one or two international visitors whose flights had arrived at some awful hour.
The next two and a half hours passed as though they were minutes. Shifting tables, gaffering eletrical cable to the floor and answering a hundred questions meant we hardly noticed that the time to open the doors was fast approaching.
Following last minute sound checks, the crew opened the doors to a satisfyingly long queue. The venue filled quickly and, again, it was great to see some familiar faces and many new. At 10:50, we opened the show. What a fantastic feeling that was: after months of planning, and a few minutes with fears of an empty venue, hundreds of people had turned up!
Not one of the rooms looked empty. With three talk stages, an exhibition room and three BOF points, everywhere looked reasonably busy.
My highlights of the first day were:
The exhibition
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to sit and enjoy many talks. I did, though, get to meet lots of cool people in the exhibition area. This year, we divided the work of organising the event and I took on the exhibitors.
Novell’s Ted Haeger and Erin Quill (not Brokovich or Bokover) put on a fantastic show, bringing a touch of west coast America to Wolverhampton. O’Reilly did another storming trade, with Josette’s pile of books seemingly halving in size each time I visited. MythTV wowed people with their PVR wizardry, Red Hat, Debian and (K)Ubuntu met their users and many organisations that were new to me seemed to draw good crowds. It was also good to see Simon “Phippo the Clown” Phipps sitting behind the OpenSolaris stand; seems to be a normal bloke and happy to chat.
Saturday evening
As we’d hired the venue all weekend - and it was mostly bars/club area - we decided to throw a party on the Saturday night. What could be better for an event based around the importance of community?
Sharing beers and shouting over the dodgy DJ, I reinforced old friendships and made new ones. That is what LugRadio Live is all about.
As the night wore on, and the dance floor grew heavy under the weight of geeky dancing, it was great to feel that we were all one. Any laughter was with other people, not at them, even during the Macarena
Ken Fallon gave Lyne and me the wisdom of his parenting experience, Felim Whitley bought me beers and Patrick Finch gracefully listened to my ramblings.
Tramping home with MrBen and Pickle, we had a great conversation about my pet subject - marketing free software - and finally fell into bed gone 3am. What a long, fantastic day.
Sunday - Day 2
An early morning following a late night. Day 2 had a different feel, perhaps more relaxed.
We opened the show and I managed to catch a few talks. Mark Shuttleworth’s “N Big Challenges” was interesting. Over the course of 13 points, Mark outlined what he feels we need to address to ensure free software’s success.
He said a great deal that I agreed with, although talk of an immersive experience seemed rather more “movie OS” than a present concern. However, much of what we do now would have seemed like sci-fi twenty years ago, and we can’t innovate without going beyond what we now consider likely or necessary.
I was disappointed not to have been able to grab a quick chat with Mark, but he was a man in demand.
Closing the show was a sad but satisfying moment. I threw the remaining Chupa Chups from the Sun stand into the audience. I am not Christopher Biggins. We also thanked those who had helped us and the people who came.
Packing away was tiring. Thanks to Barbie and the Debian guys, it was quicker than it might have been.
Sunday evening
With many of the #lugradio crowd staying on until the Monday, and plenty of D’s champagne still to drink, we rounded off the weekend with a surprisingly relaxed and hilarious evening in the hotel bar.
This was the perfect finished to an awesome experience. Friends sitting around, enjoying each other’s company. That is what LugRadio is about and LugRadio Live is a celebration of my favourite aspect of free software - the people.
Final thoughts
My main regret is the number of people I failed to meet or have time to speak properly to. It was only after the event that I found out Canonical’s Chris Kenyon was there and came up to speak to me, but he said I looked busy.
Next year, I’d like us to make more use of the fantastic #lugradio guys in planning the event. Perhaps some division of responsibility with them would be good.
I can’t wait until we have the chance to do it all again. That’s why the #lugradio chaps are planning a social gathering in the near future. Maybe the much discussed LugRadio On Tour will also happen!
Thank you so much to everyone who came, helped out and made the weekend so cool. Sorry if I didn’t speak to you, it wasn’t intentional!
Here’s to next year!
Thanks to Seb Payne, Schwuk and smt99 for photos.
Jul 11 2006
I was pretty slow to hear about Gmail for Domains. Basically, it’s email hosting from Google.
Ordinary Gmail accounts allow you to set your “from” address. It works but results in a somewhat cludgy “from matthew.revell@gmail.com on behalf of Matthew Revell” being shown in many email clients. Gmail for Domains entirely takes over from your web host’s email service. Whenever someone sends email to your domain name, their ISP will be directed to Gmail’s servers rather than those of your web host. The result is that Gmail is now your email host and your email software.
This morning, I was pleased to receive an invite to the beta programme. Unfortunately, there are two major issues that prevent me from using it:
The first of these appears not to be an oversight but a deliberate decision. Instead, Gmail for Domains has nick names. Like forwarders, these are not mailboxes but forward on any email they receive. Unlike forwarders I’ve used, the destination addresses are limited to existing mailboxes set up in Gmail for Domains.
The only rationale for these “forwarders-lite”, that I can think of for this, is that it will help Gmail avoid having their outbound SMTP servers blacklisted for spam. Any email received by a forwarder, spam or otherwise, is sent on by that host’s outbound mail cluster. In the eyes of spam blacklist managers and other hosts, those spam emails are now sent by the provider of the forwarding service. So, if Gmail for Domains offered true mail forwarders, the Gmail for Domains outbound mail cluster would be sending out any spam received by those forwarders, and so risk becoming blacklisted.
Their crippled version - nick names - means that they only forward spam internally. If that is the reason, it’s a pretty big sacrifice to ask of domain owners. However, they appear to be targeting SMEs (based on the tone of language and limit of 25 mailboxes), who may have less use for forwarding.
Not being able to convert an existing Gmail account to a Gmail for Domains account is simply frustrating. The Gmail service works well for many and, I imagine, existing Gmail users will form the bulk of Gmail of Domains’ early adopters. Having to leave all those many megabytes of email and stored contacts is a pretty big barrier to conversion.
Oh, and here’s a get-out: if the service does have full forwarders and a conversion path, they need to communicate it more effectively
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Jul 10 2006
Dad’s pants in the middle of his roll, dad’s pants in the middle of his roll.
Vimto rocks.
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Jul 07 2006
Today, we went to the hospital for a 20 week scan.
In November, I’ll be a dad and, according to the sonographer, we’ll have a son.
Now’s the time to find a name that is distinctive but not freakish.
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Jul 04 2006
LugRadio Live is going to be amazing.
22 and 23 July at the University of Wolverhampton Student Union City Campus, we’ll be welcoming the free and open source software communities to join us in getting to know each other and listening to talks from:
There’ll also be an extensive exhibition area, featuring:
And of course, we have Birds of a Feather sessions, where you can get together with like minded types for a chat and some work.
There’s an all day bar, a party till 2am on the Saturday night and a meet-up in Wolverhampton city centre on the Friday night.
Tickets are only ?5 each and we’ve got some great deals on accommodation. You’ve nothing to lose - see you there!
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