Nottingham GNU/Linux Users Group

A few bits of Ubuntu news for you all.

Firstly, I am pleased to announce the next Ubuntu Developer Summit which will take place from Monday 8th - Friday 12th December 2008 at Google in Mountain View in California. We wanted to get the dates up ASAP so you can begin booking time in your calendar. We were at Google a few years ago for a UDS and it was excellent, and we expecting this to be a busy and productive UDS. Oh, and the food is incredible, but that is documented well enough already. Seriously though, reserve those dates in your diary. We will have more details about registering your attendance soon.

See the Ubuntu Developer Summit Wiki Page for more details.

Secondly, I uploaded another video to the Ubuntu Developer Channel. In this video Daniel shows you how to patch a package; a common skill used in Ubuntu packaging.

Can’t see the video? Click Here.

We have one more video left in this collection of Learning MOTU videos which I will put online in a week or so.

It’s now the trendy thing to write an essay about why Twitter is doomed, or why it’s not doomed and all its competitors are doomed instead. And god knows I wouldn’t want to break the back of that trend.

I’ve been playing with Identi.ca, a Twitter clone written in PHP. Lots of Twitter people are becoming frustrated with seeing the famous Fail Whale on Twitter’s “we are currently down” page, and people are starting to look elsewhere. There are lots (and lots and lots) of alterni-Twitters (which is a problem I’ll come back to in a moment), but identi.ca is attracting one of the communities I operate in, open source people. This is because identi.ca is entirely open source: the codebase is called Laconica. This is a nice idea.

First things first, though: I don’t want to update two places at once. Identica* doesn’t have an API (yet), but I wanted to post things to Twitter and have them appear on Identica too. So, I present the Twitter Identi.ca Reflector. Download as a tarball or check it out from Subversion or browse the source. The README tells you how to set it up. It uses Jabber to post to Identica, which isn’t ideal, but (as mentioned) there’s no API. So now you can send Twitter posts to Identi.ca, which is helpful.

Now, why Twitter is good, why Identi.ca is good, and why everything else isn’t. If you just wanted to post Twitter comments to Identi.ca then you can stop reading now.

Twitter looks like it ought to be easy to clone, and it isn’t. This is why there are lots of Twitter clones, and why none of them have taken off. The basic principle of microblogging is indeed an easy one, I agree. But all the other Twitter-alikes are missing something. They don’t have SMS sending, or SMS following, or they don’t have an API, or they don’t have lots of desktop clients, or they have one desktop client that doesn’t run on everyone’s machine, or they don’t do IM. What makes Twitter good is two things: the first is that you can get at it in so many ways. And because there are so many ways, people can build lots of things on top of it. For example, if you want to do the reverse of what the above reflector does (post your messages to Identi.ca and have them show up on Twitter) then you don’t need an extra program, because it already exists: Twitterfeed. Simply sign up at Twitterfeed, and use it to send posts from your Identica feed to Twitter, and it’s all done. That’s the power of having an expressive and complete set of APIs. It can’t be underestimated.

The second reason Twitter is good is that everyone’s already there. They got first-mover advantage. There’s no point going to an alternative because none of your friends are there. This is also the reason that Twitter has fifty desktop clients and that things like Twitterfeed exist; it’s worth the investment. It does mean that if people leave Twitter they’ll all leave together and the bottom drops out of their market, but that’s the way the internet cookie crumbles. Photo sharing sites have the same issue — it’s difficult to build a Flickr competitor because everyone’s already at Flickr, so none of the “social” stuff happens elsewhere because you never hit a critical mass of people.

So, what’s good about Identi.ca then? Well, for me, the big things are open-sourceness and federation. The underlying codebase being open source is a huge win, from my perspective. It means people other than the Identi.ca team can work on adding new features, it means that we can see what’s going on, and it means that there are more open source programs in the world. I like this. Other people may not, but what the hell.

The other advantage is federation. This is all about the OpenMicroBlogging specification; it basically blows away the “all my friends are at Twitter so I must be too” point. It means that you can subscribe on one microblogging service to people on other microblogging services. I could be at Identi.ca, you could be at Twitter, someone else could be at Jaiku or Pownce or wherever else, and we all read one another’s messages, happy as Larry. It levels the playing field. I can subscribe Identi.ca to Twitter without problems. This is a great idea which is rather hampered by the fact that basically no-one has implemented it yet. It’s in Laconica, though, so Identica has it. It helps get around the scaling problems that Twitter are having, too: you don’t need one centralised Twitter service any more. There can be lots of little islands, all of which talk to one another. No more scaling problems. No more Fail Whale. People who need the extras that Twitter provides can use Twitter quite happily (as I’m doing; I like SMS!), people who don’t need that but do need other services can use something else that provides those other services.

The basic concept of microblogging has been commoditised thanks to OpenMicroBlogging — it’s become a simple thing to implement anywhere. Microblogging services can now compete on which extras they offer.

That’s why I like Identi.ca. Oh, and they let you create your account with OpenID, which I did. It’s a win all round. Development’s going on at a fast pace on the Laconica codebase, so expect to see more and more appear over there. Blizzard’s already added identi.ca support to Whoisi, so things are moving quickly. I don’t know whether the trickle of Twitterites in Identi.ca’s direction will continue, but thanks to the reflector code above, I’m now on Identi.ca without putting in any extra effort. That’s identi.ca/sil for those of you who want to track it.

This is a bit of a placeholder, since I linked to this post from another post before I'd actually written this one. There should be a longer review along soon - no more than a few days.

Like most people, I've been through a bunch of mobile phones in the past few years, keeping at least somewhat up with technology - when I was in the UK, it was funded by subsidies from the operator once I signed a contract, but I've been buying phones retail in HK and been quite happy on a no-minimum-term contract, in particular one which gives me a decent amount of included voice minutes and unlimited GPRS. I don't actually talk on the phone that much, since most of my communication is either online or face-to-face nowadays, but having an always-on connection terminating at a smart device in my pocket is quite nice.

It's small, it's sleek, it's got a smaller but brighter screen than my Treo 680. The interface is a little slow, but the individual programs are fine. The world of UIQ3 software seems very small, even compared with the sadly shrinking PalmOS world. The built-in email software is usable, even if it behaves slightly strangely - Chatter Email for PalmOS is nicer, but that's a dead end now anyway since the author was hired by Palm. The signing thing complicates things a bit and probably contributes to the shortage of third-party software, as does the UIQ/S60 split. The built-in media player is quite nice, even if it doesn't do Ogg - or for that matter, AVI. Getting used to handwriting recognition and a phone-type keyboard rather than a qwerty keyboard is taking a bit of time. The battery life is almost certainly longer than the Treo, but I haven't really stress-tested that yet. I wish they'd just use a USB connector. Full Java support is nice, and makes the software situation a little less disastrous. I'm waiting for the first OS update for what is a pretty recently-released phone, which will apparently have some Flash support - I don't care too much for Flash, but it would be nice if it gets delivered with a newer version of the Opera Mobile browser. Alternatively, there is some work going on to put together a webkit-based browser, which should be able to handle most/all iPhone-targeted sites, which would be nice. I might do some hacking at some point to remove the Chinese support, which might make some of the input quicker. I wish it had the hard soft buttons of the G700, rather than the soft soft ones, but I think the wifi and better camera are fair exchange. Wifi on a phone is nice, but I haven't really had a chance to use it on a public network yet, rather than at home. My mobile network are offering access to their affiliated wifi network for almost nothing if you are already paying for a data plan, so I've signed up and will try it out sometime soon. It's a 3G phone, but my (current) phone network is 2G-only, so I can't comment on 3G at all. It cost me $3780, standard Hong Kong retail price, but I've got a year's interest free credit so I'm paying around $315 per month and the shop threw in: (deep breath) spare battery and charger, screen protector, SE gym-sized bag, a voucher to get some crappy stickers for the phone, a 2GB memory card, a couple of pads and fridge magnets in the shape of the phone, two cans of Coke Zero and a large metal retro-style Coke thermometer. They call it dark brown, but it's really just a slightly 'warm' black.

How's about that for a brain dump then?

I live in a medium-sized apartment, in Hong Kong terms. We've got a reasonably large living room, two comfortable-but-not-roomy bedrooms and smallish kitchen and bathroom. During the change of flatmate, I moved from one bedroom into the other, because the new one is slightly larger and has more storage. Our broadband connection comes into the living room, where there's a file server in the corner and an 802.11n wireless router box thingy, but unfortunately, that puts the bathroom between the wireless box thingy and my bedroom. The bathroom which has thick concrete walls which do a pretty good job of blocking 2.4GHz signals, apparently. In the bedroom, there's a weak, slow and unreliable signal from the wifi box which is only really a few meters away. I'm not entirely happy about this - I've got quite used to having wireless in my bedroom for things like watching TV in bed, late-night IM and so forth, particularly with the EeePC and my new wifi-enabled phone thrown into the mix. Incidentally, a little testing shows that my GSM signal strength also drops significantly between the living room and the bathroom.

So how to solve this problem? I tried moving the wifi router box thingy around a bit, which didn't make much difference, so I decided to throw a bit of money at the problem. I went down to Wanchai and bought a couple of no-name cheap Homeplug boxes for $500 the pair (approximately £32 or US$64). There are more expensive brands and more expensive standards - there are three generations of the technology in use, analogous to 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11n for wifi. There are strict warnings in the short documentation for the homeplug boxes saying that you must only ever plug them directly into the wall, not into power strips, but that simply wasn't going to happen - I'm a techie living in a flat with a real paucity of power sockets and it would be impossible to dedicate two of them to networking. So, I plugged the boxes in and they work - really not that much more to say that that. They are pretty slow, comparable to 802.11b, but that's okay because that's all I paid for. They have some support for on-the-wire encryption, but you need to load up some Windows management tool to do that, so I'm running them unencrypted.

Phase 1 complete - I have a working network connection in my bedroom.

Unfortunately, I'm greedy. I don't just want a working wired connection, I want a working wireless connection. The next thing I tried was to repurpose my old Dell laptop, which has been almost completely replaced by the Eee, as an access point. That was... not a great success. Without a wifi card and driver which supports running in Master mode, you're stuck with an ad-hoc network, which is a lot less reliable than Infrastructure mode, particularly in a dense urban environment where any channel is going to get interference from other wifi devices, not to mention microwaves, TV signal senders and so forth. One notable thing I did find while trying to get this to work was parprouted which does virtual bridging between networks using ARP, rather than actual bridging which doesn't work with wifi interfaces. Parprouted does seem to work, but the network itself let it down.

I finally (?) solved the problem last night. One thing which most techies have is a drawer/box/room/large warehouse filled with spare bits and pieces which were useful in the past and might be useful again in the future, and which are being stored against that possible future use. Deep in one of my storage vats was an old Apple Airport Express, possibly the first 'travel router' designed for use in places like hotels, which might provide a wired connection but not wifi, or would charge extra for it. It can also do streaming audio and run as a printer server, but I've never used those - I have used the wireless bridge before, however. After a lot of faffing around trying to get a copy of Windows XP running under kvm/qemu to see the little AE box on the physical wired network, I configured it up, plugged it all in, and I seem to have a nice reliable wireless network in the corner of my room now. It is even happily acting like a real bridge and routing between the networks, over the virtual cable supplied by the homeplug boxes, rather than doing NAT and running its own DHCP server, which is the usual mode. In the end, I've got two little boxes lying on the floor in the corner of my room, and all is well!

There's also a bright blue network cable running right across the middle of my living room, but there are always sacrifices...

Wow. That is the only way of describing how we all feel in the LugRadio team regarding the response to Monday’s news that we are wrapping up LugRadio. I have been, in a word, stunned at the incredibly generous and kind comments that we have been receiving. It was incredible to see so many comments on that blog entry, as well as Aq’s write-up, the LugRadio forums thread that announced the news, and the mountain of email to the show email address.

I have read every one of those comments, posts and emails and I am stunned at the incredibly kind things people have been saying. Some of the things that people have said have really made us all feel incredibly proud of the show. I love the fact that many of you said that LugRadio helped you get enthused about free software and the community, and many of you said that you feel part of something with LugRadio. A long time ago, Bruno, a LugRadio community regular said “LugRadio is my LUG“; it seems he is not alone in that sentiment based on many of the messages we have received.

So with all the thanks we have received and well-wishes for the future, I want to use this as an opportunity to say thanks to every one of you too. As some of you will know, I am rather fond of communities, and I am incredibly proud of the LugRadio community. It has demonstrated all the traits of a good community; it is a friendly, welcoming environment, and one that has never been short of people enthusiastic about getting involved. Heck, the foundation of LugRadio is a testament to this, with every single show being mirrored by a large number of contributors - this was a conscious decision that we made from day one to help make the show possible, and low-and-behold the community once again stood up and helped. Not only that, but had community contributions with sys-admin work, the planet, the facts database, the clan, the forums, the IRC channel, at LugRadio Live, with ideas for the show, emails and more.

There is though one little story though which I would like to share with you that really demonstrated to me what the LugRadio community is capable of. Back when we were organising LugRadio Live 2006, we spent months preparing for the event. It was twice the size of 2005, two days instead of one, three stages instead of two with more talk slots, had far more activities and events going on and involved a lot more coordination, sponsorship and more. We worked our respective arses off to get everything in shape, and the community was psyched up about it. People had booked flights from all over the world to attend, hotels were reserved and we were a few weeks away from the big weekend. Then, one evening while doing some recording, I logged onto the LugRadio Forums from my studio computer and noticed a comment that a rail strike was scheduled for the weekend of LugRadio Live. Crap. I can safely say that in 28 years of being on this planet, I have never been so angry as I was in that moment, and was fuming at not only the incompetence of the people who run the rail network but also the union deciding to throw their toys out the proverbial pram. Who the hell did they think they were? Did they not consider other people who rely on the rail network? Were they aware of how disruptive this was going to be? I stood there and envisaged all of our hard work slowly going down the drain as people could not get to LugRadio Live.

In all the commotion, the LugRadio community…unasked…and unprompted, jumped right into action and started organising car sharing, investigating alternatives and getting a plan in place. Discussions happened, wiki pages were created, capacity was developed. We even had someone volunteer to pay or a nationwide coach service out of his own pocket. When I went to work at OpenAdvantage the following day with a black cloud hovering over my head, I was touched by just how much the community had pulled together. In my mind, this is the definition of what this is all about - we are all coming together to not only do incredibly cool things with technology, culture and new perspectives, but there is a noticeable atmosphere of people looking out for each other. The greatest communities in the world are not just places where you feel empowered, they are places in which other people empower you.

…oh and for the curious, the conclusion of this tale was that when I got into OpenAdvantage that day I called the rail network officials and the union and gave them equal doses of my derision. Fortunately, said strike was called off and everyone lived happily ever after. I even shaved off that insane beard at that LugRadio Live. Retrospectively, that was a deeply wise move.

So in conclusion, thanks everyone for everything you have been saying to us, we really do appreciate it.

So everyone, with the show wrapping up, you absolutely, utterly have to come along to LugRadio Live UK 2008 on the 19th and 20th July 2008 for our farewell LugRadio Live. Of course, its not just our last recording of a show - there will be three stages of speakers, a full exhibition, parties and other fun for the weekend. Its only a few weeks away, so get booked into a hotel and come and join us.

For those who aren’t already sick of hearing me talk about it, I bought (or rather, my dad bought) this (photo behind the link):

2001 Seat Toledo V5

Packages built from source use the prefix /usr/local by default which is not set up in the in the Fedora system and library paths. The majority of the documentation on the net seems to suggest Fedora users just pass –prefix=/usr to configure scripts but this can obviously cause problems in the long term (writing over the distributions provided binaries) and I decided it would also be much more useful to me to investigate what needs changing so that applications and libraries built in the default prefix will work.

If you are only building programs using the Fedora provided -devel packages you just need to modify your PATH so that /usr/local/bin is in there. In your .profile, .bashrc, whatever add:

Easy enough and very familiar!

It gets slightly more complex if you are building libraries. First off you will need to configure the dynamic linker to look in the default libs prefix, create a new file in /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ (custom.conf, perhaps) and add the line:

Every time you install a new library you will need to run ldconfig to regenerate the dynamic bindings cache, you’ll need to run this as root:

Finally you’ll need to tell pkgconfig to also look in your new library directory:

Of course, none of this is particularly revelationary but I enjoyed the opportunity to learn more about the tools and thought it was probably worth sharing.

Whilst skating tonight at Arnold I got competitive with some youngsters and ended up having a gnarly crash. I fell backwards onto my front arm - I was coming back in from a feeble that was overcooked and my right arm was straight out behind me (I skate goofy) and it broke my fall but I was a bit shocked to find my arm was sort of hanging off an feeling really wrong! I grabbed it and it just crunched and clunked back into place with stomach-turning agony. I was able to get up pretty quickly but soon got the shakes and then I had to drive the car which was interesting! I got some ibuprofen from the local co-op and had to do a bit more driving (picking one of the kids up from karate) before getting home to the arnica. Now it just hurts. I've never dislocated a shoulder before. Cycling to work will be interesting in the morning :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dislocated_shoulder

read more

I needed to be able to control Banshee from another application, and it turns out it has a lovely D-Bus API.

Skip to the next song*:

Start Banshee playing (this works even if Banshee isn’t running; D-Bus starts it up!):

I found these commands using D-Feet*, J5’s D-Bus browser thing, which is great. The program I’m using to call this stuff is open source Enso from the Humanized team, which is also pretty darn useful.

On Thursday evening last week just as I was about to leave work, I had a phone call from Jono Bacon to tell me that the Lugradio team had decided to call it a day. This is a great shame, but ultimately the guys believe that it’s the right choice. They’re probably right. The shows are still good and they won’t be able to go on for ever. As I said to Jono on the phone: “Remember Series VI, VII and VIII of ‘Red Dwarf’? They should have quit while they were ahead.” No-one wants to see it drag on and stagnate.

The official announcement was made today in this week’s episode and took many people by surprise: the crew had decided to give a “heads up” to long-time Lugradio ‘people’ in advance.

This means that Lugradio Live 2008 in Wolverhampton on 19-20 July will be the last recording and the last event (probably): we can go out with a shout. I will be there

Bruno describes this sad day very nicely.

Many thanks to all the presenters over the years: Jono, Aq, Sparkes, Matt, Ade, Adam and Chris. So long and thanks for all the fish. I mean, all the chin.

My Dad has had something of an interesting life. When he was very young, he was part of a large family that didn’t have a lot. He struggled at school and suffered some health problems as a kid, but his determination and enterprising nature lead him through a maze of interesting little adventures. When he was younger, despite becoming the scathe of the small Northern local town’s officials due to trying to resolve some dangerous safety problems at a local factory, he went on to prove himself as a local councillor and subsequently became mayor of the town. He went on to run a nightclub, car retail businesses, become an executive running a collection of car retail outlets in Lancashire, became a hypnotherapist, lead a multimedia project to produce interactive motor-trade kiosks as well as one of the UK’s first motor-trade websites, then retired and bought and run a country pub, campaigned and succeeded to change the law regarding women’s rights in working mens clubs, and he now has a seat as a local magistrate and runs an antiques company with my mum who trained as a master restorer and has been rated as one of the top restorers in England. Most recently he was accepted for admission into Cambridge University to pursue his lifelong love of Criminology and Law, and yesterday he received his first grade on his course and was in the top 15% of the course. His sense of grounding and background made him a touch antsy about how he would fare in his first assessment (remembering he has not been to University before, and he is at Cambridge of all places), and he stormed it.

It is common for a dad to be proud of his kids, but I am hugely proud of my dad. Part of me is proud of his patchwork of achievements and his diversity in life over the years, particularly from such humble beginnings, but I am mainly proud of who he is as a human being. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, deeply committed to his family, has told my mum he loves her every day for 28 years, and has a strong belief in working hard but also playing hard. He strikes the perfect balance in terms of being motivated and career minded, maintaining a strong and loving relationship with his wife and kids, and always retaining a grounded sense of reality. Both of my parents are funny, engaging, wise and inspiring.

He and my mum have been incredibly supportive at every point in my life - both in terms of my career and my personal life. They have always been supportive of every element of what makes me who I am - my work, my music, my viewpoints and my choices. They are my template for the perfect relationship, and they are a significant inspiration in the values that I hold important in the world. Mum, Dad, I love you both and I am incredibly proud of you.

Mucho, mucho, mucho thanks to NickG for informing me that new tickets went on sale for Iron Maiden at Twickenham on Saturday. I consequently went and snapped up two tickets for Aq and I. This Saturday, we will be watching Iron Maiden re-creating songs that I have been listening to since I was 10 years old.

Anyone going along?

I was going to write a post about this, but I discovered that the brilliant Bruno had said it all already. All I can add is that I’ll miss the show, it’s been a big part of my spare time for the last four years, it’s taken me to Wolverhampton and San Francisco, given me some of the most random experiences of my life and above all it’s introduced me to a lot of people I now regard as friends. And that now the news is out I haven’t got to stop myself from saying something stupid and accidentally letting it slip early!

Discussions in #lugradio suggest that I’m a member of a pretty exclusive club of people who have been to all the LUG Radio Live events (including the US event earlier this year and the one coming up in the next couple of weeks). The list seems to be: Jono, Aq, Adam, Chris, Matthew Walster and me. Or have we missed someone?

Well, that's it. All the goods things must end one day. Even the things that you couldn't believe to have an end.

I'm sad, but I do understand why and how the gang decided to finish at the end of the season 5. There are tons of reasons: being tired of it, trying to end the show before people arguing about it being less interesting as time passes by, etc.
I'm fine with that. What's sad is that it's like losing a friend or something. Someone you don't meet all the time, every day, but someone you care for. You had great times with him (or her), sometimes you had arguments, sometimes jokes that made you cry out of laughter. Now the friend is gone, and you don't want that to happen.

And you struggle with the 5 steps of mourning:

• Deny: Oh come on, Jono, tell us it's joke! Aq! stop that - it's not funny!
• Anger: Fuck off, guys. You bastards, You don't have the right to stop it!
• Bargaining: Maybe if we kidnap them we can force them to record more shows
• Depression: Now we won't have the opportunity to see the lovely Wolverhampton, what a waste! - ok, this one is a lie... - How will I meet mrben, neuro, Xalior, and all the others, now? - yeah better
• Acceptance: well... c'est la vie

But what moves me is that a tons of things happened in my life just because of these 4 guys speaking in a microphone every fortnight. Unordered:

• I cried out of laughter listening to the National Lottery Rant,
• I switched to Ubuntu Linux because of their 15 seconds review of Warty (I'd probably switch to Linux anyway, but they did probably fasten this process),
• I made my first trip abroad alone
• I made my first trip in the UK,
• I could go to the EUROOSCON in Amsterdam,
• I've met / seen talks of dozens of interesting people, some famous (Jeff Waugh, Mark Shuttleworth, Matthew Garett, Simon Willison, Scott James Remnant, Bastien Nocera, Jonathan Riddell, Gervase Merkham, Mirco Müller) some "unknown" (mrben, Xalior, neuro, schwuk, resiak, davee, Aquarion, pickle, Russ and Jen, Chairmanmeow and GingerDog, Essk, Cillian, Bryn_S, popey, Treenaks, Dave Morley, Daviey and all the other bunch that makes the Lugradio Massive). There are some I may not meet again, some I had a nice chat and/or a beer with, some I can say they're my friends.
• I had so many nice advices, hints, tips, help and support while hanging on #lugradio on IRC, I can't count them.
• I massively improved my english (well, I've learned idiomatic phrases as well as more swear words),
• I massively improved my english accent,
• I drank my first (and last) sip of TVR,
• I made my first talk in English,
• I discovered that british can't make proper coffee, so that's probably the reason why they drink tea,

(and so much more)

The sum of these points led me to say loudly and I still thinks it's true: Lugradio is my LUG.

So, kudos to the whole Lugradio team: Steve, Matt, Ade, Chris, Adam, Stuart, Jonathan for these long years of happiness, fun and big mouth arguing about Free Software and Open Source.

What will happen now? There's a Freenode channel that just can't stop, there are forums that will probably slowly die. There are a bunch of people I'll be sad not to be able to visit every year, in the shittiest city in the UK (right after Cumbernauld).

Lugradio is still my LUG, will always be. The show may end, but the spirit and the people hanging around this show won't leave.

LugRadio is ending.

Yep. After 106 shows, two million downloads, five thousand emails, 134 hours of recorded material, five conferences, and fourteen presenters*, LugRadio is coming to an end. I’ve just released “More on that later”, episode 21 of season 5, which is the antepenultimate (!) episode. We’ve got one more “ordinary” episode after this, and then the live show at LugRadio Live UK on the 19th and 20th July in Wolverhampton, and that’s it.

There’ll be a certain amount of reminiscence at LRL in a couple of weeks, but this might be a good place for me to talk a bit about everything that’s gone on. It’s been a pretty cool ride, I have to say. We talked to loads of people, shone a spotlight on loads of projects, won an award for marketing and been elected best podcast in a magazine, done LRL in America and four times in the UK, and basically had a great laugh doing it. I’m really proud of what we’ve done. And now it’s ending. A sad moment.

I probably ought to say: it isn’t because we’ve had a row or anything. We want the show to go out on a high — always leave ‘em wanting more, isn’t that the showbiz mantra? — and everyone can name programmes that have outstayed their welcome by stringing it out for just one more season. I would like to keep those people who don’t think that we jumped the shark 104 shows ago to be still thinking that the show was good even after it’s over.

So, this is it, kids. This show, one more show, and then the live show at LugRadio Live. That’s our chance to say thankyou to all the people who’ve made the show what it is, and your chance to see the last ever LugRadio recording live on stage. Drop us an email or post to the forums to tell us what you’ve liked and disliked about the last four years and what you want to see us talk about at LRL, and come and celebrate the end of an era with us. There’s going to be rather a few drinks that weekend: make sure some of them are yours. I’ll see you there.

Other comments around the place: Jono’s writeup, digg the end of the show

DIGG THIS!

Today we announced that we have decided to call it a day with LugRadio. Our last show will be LugRadio Live UK 2008 on the 19th and 20th July 2008 at The Lighthouse in Wolverhampton. We announced this in the latest episode of LugRadio, Season 5 Episode 21 - go and have a listen to the show to hear more.

In a nutshell, we have decided that LugRadio has had a good run for the last four years and five seasons, and a show such as ours has always faced the risk of getting old and tired unless the formula is changed to keep it fresh. This growth and evolution has happened to a decent degree over the seasons as we introduced interviews, musical comedy skits, points based segments, competitions, focusing on different types of content etc, but as we near the end of Season 5 we came to the conclusion that the show was nearing its natural conclusion. From the beginning, when we have discussed if and when LugRadio was to finish we were always determined to take it out on a high, and this is part of the reason we feel now is a good time. The last thing we would want people to say is “yeah LugRadio was fantastic, well apart from that dire sixth season“. We feel we have had five good solid seasons under our belt, so now is probably a good time to wrap things up.

Now, as with when Matt left, some people are bound to jump to conclusions why we are calling it a day. To clarify:

• We have not fallen out. We are all still best friends.
• Severed Fifth is not why I am leaving.
• Adam’s business dreams is not why he is leaving.
• Aq has not decided to join a travelling circus.
• Chris has not set up a cult around the Network Block Driver. Actually, that’s a lie. He has.
• We have not been acquired by the Linux Action Show and Jupiter Enterprises.

A am massively proud of what we have managed to achieve. Over 100 shows, 7 full-time presenters and countless guest presenters, 200+ hours of audio, 100+ guests, 2million+ downloads, 1000+ forums members, 40000+ forums posts, 5 live events in two countries, 5000+ emails to the show and an incredible community of people who have surrounded the show, discussed it, got involved in some way, and otherwise given us all an immense enthusiasm to keep doing LugRadio. I am also proud of every one of my co-presenters over the years - Steve “Sparkes” Parkes, Matt Revell, Ade Bradshaw and the current roster of Adam Sweet, Chris Procter and Stuart “Aq” Langridge. I am particularly proud of Aq, my best mate and someone who has been my partner in crime in LugRadio since Season 1 Episode 1.

The thing I am most proud of about LugRadio is that it shook things up. It has always been raw, unexpected and at times uncomfortable to listen to. We always set out to do a show on our terms, knowing full well it would not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we forged ahead and I am proud of how the history looks.

Everyone has their favorite moments, and I just wanted to highlight just a few of mine:

• Our many incredible guests - Nat Friedman, Jeff Waugh, Eric Raymond, Miguel de Icaza, Mark Shuttleworth, Matthew Garrett, Rob McQueen, Sacha “Sago” Goedegebure, Alexandre Juillard, Havoc Pennington, Colin Walters, Quim Gil, Greg Kroah-Hartman and many more.
• The many strong debates Aq and I have launched into on the show. We have a somewhat unusual style of debating and some people have been worried we were on the verge of falling out, which has never happened. I know, its odd, and something that started back in 2001 at LUG meetings. It never stops being fun.
• The Gong-a-thong was an idea that Aq and I concocted late one night while on the phone. The first time we did it in Wolverhampton, we both stood at the side of the stage and it was a very surreal, proud and frankly hilarious moment. We replicated such insanity in San Francisco with Aaron Bockover and it was another comedy gem. The final gong-a-thong will happen at LugRadio Live UK 2008 in a few weeks.
• Ade’s random stories, and strange expectations of life. Who can forget Ade asking if any of us looked at our arses in the mirror, expecting a fully reasoned and learned discussion about said activity. Oh, and Ade’s perspectives on women in technical roles and his idea of compliments to a lady in a nightclub (”You sit well for an old girl…“). Bonkers.
• The booting of Matt Lee and GNU/FSF on the show and his admirable efforts at retort. Oh, and RMS refusing to come on the show as we use the words “Open Source” in the description of the show.
• Theatrics and comedy skits - The National Lottery segment, musical efforts (Pigeon Street, Lion Sleeps Tonight), Mrs Mudchild appearing because Matt was late for the show, Stallman only wanting a kipper, the What The F**k Book Truck, Filthy Gamble and more.
• LugRadio Live USA 2008. Wow, what an experience - a lot of fun, and a lot of work, but well worth it.
• LugRadio Live And Unleashed - there is nothing like doing a show in front of hundreds of people. It is a lot of fun and a real buzz.
• Sparkes availing us of his many stories, particularly the girl taking the piss out of his shoes in Wolverhampton. When I was editing his best bits segment I had tears streaming down my face laughing.
• Filming the LugRadio Live 2007 promo videos. It was a lot of fun making them. Actors, we are not.
• The emails. Our emails were always eclectic. Sometimes random, sometimes wise, sometimes hilarious, sometimes deeply offensive, but always inspiring. We loved every one of them, even the ones we thought were crap.
• The competitions - Stupid Hat For Corporate Tat, Look Queer In The New Year, Pimp My LugRadio, Asa Raskin’s Hat Dilemma and more.
• Bruno’s talk at LugRadio Live 2006 about how much we all swear in LugRadio and his rather amusing delivery and graphs.
• Matt’s impressions, particularly his Irish leprechaun impression. Specifically, Matt’s leprechaun impression that he used to impersonate Lucky Charms when at Skycon in Limerick.
• The Finger Of God.

It is certainly going to be unusual not having my mates around to my house every two weeks to record a show, drinking endless amounts of tea, taking an average of 15 takes to record an intro (really), regularly ribbing each other about everything under the sun, and then releasing a show and hearing about how it was received by our community.

So, the last episode of LugRadio will be recorded in front of a live audience at LugRadio Live UK 2008 on the 19th July 2008 in Wolverhampton. Why not come and share it with us, and the Saturday night we will be toasting to four years surrounded by our friends from the community; I can’t think of a better way to get off the roller-coaster.

Also see Aq’s write-up.

Dammit! I missed out grabbing tickets for Iron Maiden at Twickenham on the 5th July. This is the tour I have been waiting years for. If anyone knows of any spare tickets I can get my hands on, please email me. I will be super grateful if someone can help hook me up with some tickets!

I love UFO reports. Mainly because I find joy in laughing at idiots. This story about a couple releasing some lanterns at their wedding, and those lanterns later being seen by three police officers in a helicopter who promptly thought they were under attack from aliens, is hilarious.

Phil Plait may be on to something when he suggests that these lanterns could be the cause of a lot more UFO sightings. Personally, I'm tempted to get a bunch of them and see how many reports I can generate.

I saw Chatham County Line on Jools Holland a few weeks ago, and immediately paused the programme and bought their newest album on iTunes. (Available under iTunes Plus, which is always nice.) I can't seem to stop playing this album -- it's 45 minutes of great bluegrass. The second track, "The Carolinian", is quite possibly my new favourite song. I've looked, but unfortunately can not find a good quality video of that song on YouTube, so here's a couple of others.

First, "Country Boy, City Boy" from their appearance on Later:

And their official video for "Let It Rock":

Alan Pope, Dave Walker, Tony Whitmore and Ciemon Dunville present the eighth episode of the Ubuntu UK Podcast.

In this episode:-

• The last of our interviews from the Ubuntu Developer Summit:
  • Matt Oquist talks about Software Freedom Day
  • KDE contributor Celeste Lyn Paul talks in depth about human-computer interaction (HCI) and enlightens us on the (KDE) human interface guidelines.
  • Utahs best export, Mike Basinger talks about his passion for the Ubuntu Forums, and his calming influence on the Ubuntu Community Council.
  • A very informative interview with Kurt von Finck about the Canonical Support operation, where to get the best deal on Ubuntu support and some stories from the trenches.
  • An interview with the "King of Bling", Mirco "MacSlow" Müller talks about lowfat, GDM, face browser, cheese, memaker, clutter, avant window navigator, mpx in xorg.
• Competition
  • We set a new competition, which will end on the 12th July. (we have extended the competition due to this episode being late).

Comments and suggestions are welcomed to: podcast@ubuntu-uk.org
Up to 30 seconds of voicemail can be left at +44 (0) 845 508 1986
Follow our twitter feed http://twitter.com/uupc