It seems like in the last month or so, I had to explain to several people, several times in a couple of venues why Dan and I do not immediately release a version of the show once we are finished recording. I thought I should repeat the explanation here for everyone’s benefit.

Linux Outlaws was never meant to be a news show. When I came up with the concept, I was modeling it very much after MacBreak Weekly and to some extend This Week in Tech itself. That is to say LO is designed to be discussion of and reflection on the Linux and open source / free software news of the week in a friendly, often lighthearted atmosphere. It should not be your primary source of these news. As such, LO was never designed to present a comprehensive, authorative or even reliable selection of what has happened in the last week and because of that I had never thought it to be a big issue that we have a pretty long lead time with the show (usually at least three days from recording to release). You could say that Linux Outlaws isn’t optimised to bring you information quickly, instead we concentrate pretty hard to maximise the quality of the show. This extends to content (both serious and humorous) and also audio quality and general listenability (cutting out the uhms, ahhs and pauses) which is especially important to both Dan and I. This takes time and we know that. The whole concept of the show is build around it. We realised pretty early into it that some people rather prefer the show very raw and quickly delivered. That is why we started experimenting with streaming it live and have kept that arrangement up since then. We now provide you with exactly the recording of it all as it happens live, both in video and pretty high quality audio formats. I even save the video to the Ustream site when I don’t forget to record it. This is our compromise for those of you who want the show immediately and/or in its raw state. We are, however, not willing to sacrifice the quality of the actual podcast because of this. There will be no raw, TLLTS-style, fresh-off-the-tape release of Linux Outlaws. The editing and releasing of the podcast will always take time and I am acutely aware of the fact that it has been taking longer lately. I will take steps against this (more on that in a minute) but I will not compromise the core values of our show for it. As long as this is still a hobby for both Dan and me, there will be no way that I can release the podcast much faster than we have done in the past couple of years. If you want it faster, either pay me to do the editing or watch the live show.

As the show has been getting longer and longer, and with the original mission in mind, I have come up with a plan to re-focus Linux Outlaws a bit to adjust for this. Starting with the next show (#136), we will stop listing all distro and software releases that we pick up on. We will only talk about the ones we find noteworthy for some reason or another. You are of course still free to send us feedback (which we always appreciate a lot) and tell us if you think we missed something important, but please respect our decision if we do not mention stuff you send us. By now, we are getting a lot of email and everybody has something else that he or she finds important. In the same vein, I will take it upon myself to more radically cut down the actual news items we talk about. I always do this in some kind of fashion or another, but I will try to be more ruthless with it now since I think we really need to focus on the important things and make the show a little less complicated again. If I do this correctly, chances are you won’t even notice but if you do, please remember: we are human too and humans make mistakes. With any luck, this will speed up the release of the show again and keep it fresh for many, many more episodes to come. Our purpose always has been and always will be to produce the most relevant while still entertaining Linux podcast in the highest quality possible out there.

Again, by all means send us feedback on all of this, we are always interested in what you think and how we can make the show better for all of you. Just one more thing: Before you send us email, think about what you are doing. Maybe read it over again before you push that “send” button. As I said, we are starting to get a lot of email and we take a chunk out of our personal free time to read it all (and we do read all the mail we get) — so please make it worth our while. If you do that, I am happy to read all of your feedback, a lot of it warms my heart every week and totally makes it worth it to do this show. We are grateful for all the intelligent rants, funny insults, well-worded criticism, witty jokes and random “I really like your show” comments we get. Please keep that up!

Just in case you haven’t read my original announcement, I just wanted to let you all know on here as well that OggCamp 10 will be taking place in Liverpool in the UK on the weekend of May 1-2 this year. The second ever OggCamp (10 being binary for 2, get it?) will be even bigger and more awesome than the inaugural event last year. The whole thing is preceded by Dan’s Rathole Roadshow gig on the evening of April 30 featuring himself, David Rovics, Attila The Stockbroker and many more live in concert. For OggCamp itself, we have a much bigger venue this year and we have a lot of plans how to use it to its full potential, so keep an eye on the OggCamp site as details emerge over the next few weeks and months. The event will of course feature a live recoding of a combined Linux Outlaws / Ubuntu UK Podcast show again and there is the possibility of the LugRadio crew getting involved as well.

If you are planning to come along, as you most definitely should, I would advise you to look at booking accommodation as soon as possible since the weekend seems to be very popular because of the bank holiday on the Monday after. Dan has created some helpful hotel and travel sections on the OggCamp site to help you with this. Ticket prices for the event haven’t been announced yet and we’d really like to make it free admission again, but that depends on what kind of sponsorship we are able to get. If you can help with that, please get in contact with us via the link at the top of the page. Failing that, you can also help us by placing one of these shiny buttons on your site, blog or forum signatures. Please help us spread the word, even if you can’t attend the event yourself. We realise that many of you live in countries and on continents all over the globe, so getting to Liverpool isn’t always practical, but please help us to publicise OggCamp 10 nonetheless. If you have any ideas or suggestions for the event or if you want to be part of the crew or help us out in any other way, please also use the contact form and get in touch.

I hope to see you all in Liverpool at the Rathole Roadshow and at OggCamp 10 – if last year was any indication then it’s gonna be totally awesome! And don’t forget to superglue your hubcaps on tight if you’re planning to arrive by car…

Howdy folks, it’s been a while since we updated this blog and I thought I should fill you in on all the recent excitement of OggCamp. The event actually happened just a few days ago on Sunday October 25th, but it’s taken me this long just to catch my breath, I’m still recovering but it was worth every second. There was obviously a lot going on over the weekend with LRL 2009 and other things happening, I honestly couldn’t fit all that into this post. Instead I thought I’d give you my personal account of OggCamp and share some stories. It was an amazing experience and seemed to go really well, we’ve had some lovely feedback so far and I’m really glad people enjoyed themselves.

It all began at some stupid hour on Sunday morning as I dragged myself out of bed at about 8am. “That’s not early!” I hear you cry, but it is when you went to bed at 4am after too much drinking and partying. I was head of the crew for OggCamp and I’d set the call for 9am in a fit of optimism weeks earlier. I had a quick shower and hauled myself down to the hotel lobby. It seemed there weren’t many of the crew around at that time, so either I was late or early. For once I think I was actually on time. Maybe that’s what threw people off, I’m usually late if anything. I took the opportunity to sneak into breakfast and down as many bacon sandwiches as I could manage (about 2 to be precise). There still weren’t many people around in the lobby when I emerged so I rang Tony, only to discover he was already on the top floor setting up the room with Laura, Ciemon and others. I led the assembled crew members to the car park where we loaded all the drinks, mugs and assorted stuff in from Popey’s car. I’d just like to take a minute to mention and thank our wonderful crew. Without them we couldn’t have done this and I was amazed by their constant willingness to help and go above and beyond the call of duty. Drum roll please, in no particular order, may I present the OggCamp 2009 crew:

• Andy & Jo from LivLUG
• Kevan Vautier
• Anna Bierzanska
• Alistair Kidd
• Will Noakes
• Nathan & Katie
• Robert  McWilliam
• Jacob Hume
• Steve Bradshaw
• Matt Daubney

I have a horrible feeling I’ve missed someone off the list but it was hard to get everyone’s names while so busy. If I missed your name out let me know and I’ll add it ASAP. We appreciate you all. I know other people chipped in spontaneously on the day and we were grateful for that too. Anyway, back to the story.

The crew set about valiantly sorting out the break out rooms and putting up signs all around the hotel while Tony and I rigged the PA for the event. I’d borrowed a small rig from a friend of mine and it worked brilliantly. Tony brought the mixer and various other bits, so between us we had it well covered and a few people commented on how good the technical side was. Being an audio geek comes in handy sometimes. We were kindly loaned 12 walkie talkies by Gordon Pearce. So each of the crew could run around the hotel and stay in touch, that really helped. We weren’t sure how many people would actually turn up and there had been discussions between the group beforehand, some thinking lower numbers and others high. Personally, I thought about 100 people would turn up and in hindsight even that was conservative. I’ll never forget the white look on Tony’s face when he returned from a trip downstairs looking a bit spaced out. Naturally I asked “What’s up?”, he replied “There’s people queuing for 3 floors down the stairs!”. I don’t remember my response but it was probably something incisive and witty like “fu#k me!!!”. We had about 140 attendees in total and I was a little worried we wouldn’t fit everyone into the room. It was a great turn out which we were all totally over the moon with. We did our official welcome and got the event under way. Andy Stanford-Clark kicked us off with a great talk about his Twittering house. From there I was busy operating the PA, running around eating more sandwiches and other such important stuff. I didn’t get too see many of the talks which was a real shame, they looked amazing. I particularly wanted to catch Beccy Newborough’s pig drawing analysis session, but sadly couldn’t. The schedule filled up quickly, we had some great sessions and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I was really happy with that.

There was a moment of hilarity when I got stuck in the lift with 3 other people as we headed for the top floor. We arrived at the correct floor only to find that the lift doors didn’t open. So we waited a bit, then we waited a bit more, but they just weren’t opening. One of the others was about to push the emergency call button when I remembered I had a radio attached to my belt. I picked it up and announced “#buzz# erm… guys? We’re stuck in the lift and the doors won’t open. This isn’t a joke #buzz#”, we waited another minute and then I said ” #buzz# if we don’t get out of here I might have to do the show from the lift #buzz#”. Apparently this went down a storm in the main room where everyone heard it loudly over the radio, right in the middle of a talk. Some bright spark suggested we try going down a floor and sure enough the doors opened when we reached that stop. It was something of a relief but also incredibly funny.

Safely out of the lift I joined the others for the live show at 3pm. We drew the raffle first and gave away some great prizes donated by our lovely sponsors: Bitfolk, Canonical, Tinker.it, The Open Learning Centre, The Linux Emporium, Viglen, the ever present Pokebook and Linux Format magazine. The raffle proved so popular we used a whole ticket book up and someone had to dash out and buy another. I wasn’t expecting that. The live show itself went really well, we discussed some interesting topics and got some good laughs from the crowd which felt amazing. The crew and various other good folks helped us to get everything packed up at the end and striking the PA didn’t take as long as I thought at all. We were out in well under an hour. With my hotel room stuffed with PA gear again it was time for us to join the others in the hotel bar. There were about 30 people left hanging around and Aq suggested we organize somewhere to eat if we didn’t want to lose the group. Duly inspired, I had a chat with the rather charming young lady on reception and a Chinese banquet was arranged for everyone in town. We all enjoyed the food and then headed back to the hotel for more socializing in the bar.

Fab has done amazing job of cataloging all the pictures from the event at the OggCamp site. Check those out if you haven’t already!

That about covers it I think, I’m all out of stories for now. I’d like to say thanks to the sponsors, the crew, and most importantly everyone who came along and made this event such a success. We were humbled by the turnout and the general attitude of all involved. Let’s hope we can make it bigger and better next year if it happens. We’re certainly thinking about it, but there’s no commitment yet. You’ll be able to hear the full uncut version of the OggCamp live show in the next Linux Outlaws. Complete with swearing and explicit bits. There’s already a version out in the Ubuntu UK Podcast feed, which was skillfully edited by Tony. I should also say a big thanks to Tony, Laura, Popey, Ciemon and Daviey (who sadly couldn’t join us) for being such a great bunch of people. Organizing this event with you has been such fun, both Fab and I have enjoyed it immensely. To the rest of you, if you came along I hope you enjoyed yourself. If not, there may be another chance in future and we’d love to see you then. Take care everyone, I’ll catch you soon

Edit: Our own, ultimate uncut version of the live show is now out!

Dan

I want to apologise for taking so long to release Episode 103. This week was a combination of long hours at work, family commitments, some unforeseen events I had to attend, and to make matters worse, Audacity decided to eat my project file for the show. With the help of Ubuntu Studio I was at least able to get Ardour running and to learn enough to edit the rest of the show using that. More on those adventures in a future show, suffice it to say for now that I will be switching to Ardour for producing the podcast from here on out. At least all of this gave me the chance to finally get my arse in gear and start learning how to use it (I had meant to do that for ages now).

I hope you enjoy the show despite the wait. The news might be slightly stale content by now but as usual, Dan and I had great fun recording this episode and if nothing else it should at least be funny. Once again, we are sorry for the inconvenience of the late release. There will also be no rest for the wicked and we plan to record 104 today at 18:00 UTC so be sure to catch the live show on ustream. If you can’t make it, Dan will edit this one so it should be out a lot more quickly then this week’s release…

As I write this, I have just release Episode 81 of the show — this one was a big shakey since we had some unforseen problems during the recording. We streamed the show live again, but discovered afterwards that Dan had lost about two minutes of the recording somewhere in the middle. I got really scared when he told me this via IM, but Dan being the audio wiz that he is, managed to sync the files up flawlessly and fix the problem by re-recording some bits and glueing it all back together with duct tape and some chewing gum. And much like travelling in the Millenium Falcon,a little on-the-fly patch job does not detract at all from the end result. In fact, you would be hard pressed to detect it, even if I told you the exact location of our little slip-up. It turned out to be a quite marvellous show in the end.

I am really glad we could recover this one, there shouldn’t be that much difference between what we streamed live and the final podcast result. I do hope you enjoy the show and rest assured that we always do our best to bring you a show every week. It should be clear that the podcast itself always has priority before anything else we do which includes the live streaming version and I hope you all appreciate that. Anyway, disaster averted, get on with your podcast listening!

Just a quick post to draw your attention to two excellent blog posts that Dan posted recently (in case you haven’t seen them already): Yesterday, he published a great opinion piece on the European Parliament’s motion to extend sound copyright even further into the future including a video of a speech given by Becky Hogge at these proceedings. This is definitely worth a read! He also finally released his mammut Sabayon 4 review which we hinted at in Episode 78 — this might be the most scathing review Dan has ever written. Well, for Dan standards, anyway.

With this, I’ll leave you to enjoy your weekend. I myself will probably spend it checking out Jaunty and playing lots of Fallout 3. We will most likely record the next show on Monday evening (CET) — so if you want to catch it live, feel free to stop by.

Last night, Dan and I did a little experiment. We attempted to stream the recording of Episode 78 live on ustream.tv — “attempted” is the right word, because I discovered that both the webcams I tried with my Eee PC would invariably cut out after a few minutes.  We managed  to stream the audio feed of the whole show though, I guess that’s something. Because this was highly experimental, we only announced it in our IRC channel (#linuxoutlaws on irc.freenode.net) and on the Linux Outlaws group on identi.ca. In the end we got about 34 viewers, which isn’t bad considering we didn’t advertise it at all before going on the air.

Streaming the making of the show live is something I wanted to do for quite some time and we had many requests from listeners to do it. I will try to get the webcam issues sorted out for the next recording session (probably on Monday) and we’ll take it from there. If people keep saying they like this sort of thing, I am definitely happy to keep doing it. As long as it doesn’t detract from the audio podcast version of the show at all — and in contrast to Leo Laporte, I really mean this. Anyway, please feel free to tell us what you think of this idea in the comments or the forums. We appreciate your feedback a lot and always take it into account.  Right now, we will only stream video from my end I think, but you can of course hear Dan’s audio over the stream. Maybe you guys & gals can persuade him to stick his mug up on camera one day as well…

Oh, and one last thing: We will be calling this little venture Linux Outlaws Live (or LOL for short). That acronym is way to tempting not to use it.

Update: I have set up a preliminary page at /live where you can watch the stream when it goes on the air. We will announce air times in our identi.ca group since we don’t have a specific schedule for recording yet.