LUG Radio Live 2006 (LRL06)

For those that don’t know LUG Radio is a podcast issued (now fortnightly) by a group of men mainly from Wolverhampton LUG. They have a professionally amateur attitude to the show with the production quality being second to none and the presentation unique for such a dry subject. The ‘Live’ event is a social gathering of all the fans and the objects of their fan-dom. In only two years they have doubled the time the event takes place and had plenty of luminaries of the Linux / Open Source movement. To put it in perspective it is geeky fun at its best.

pre–LRL or how I missed the Friday social

Being the only one in The Family that really gives a fig what operating system is running our computers my obsession with going to this event was seen as another of my geeky episodes. I had done the LinuxWorld Conference in London (easy as it was only about an hour away) and so it shouldn’t have been totally unexpected. However The Wife and The Non–Geeky–Friend (NFG) still looked at me in a way that said I was heading for Nerdsville when I told them of my plans for this weekend away.

Getting to LRL06 was going to be a big challenge in every respect. First it was in Wolverhampton. I had only once been further north and that was to have a go at snowboarding with The NGF (much more socially acceptable ;-)

Secondly my financial situation is hardly rosy so lashing out even the couple of hundred it would cost in total (travel, accommodation, food, beer, bail money) would have been a little selfish to say the least. Hence it became a family camping trip (images of ‘Carry On Camping’ should be inserted here or ‘National Lampoon’s Vacation’ if not from the UK).

Organisation is a little alien (or was that ALF? — Ed) for middle–aged hippies like me and so even though this event had been on the calendar for months Friday came and the campsite was unbooked, no–one was packed and the camping gear was still cosy in the loft. Strangely I was stressed–out and not stressed–out all at the same time — I’d got as much as I could done and then left the real work to The Wife (she loves packing) while I took The Girl to her end of (school) year (2) disco.

The final preparations: Garden watered (I’m sure they were considering building an ark next door) and The Guinea Pigs fed we set off around 7ish and got as far as the local Chip shop. Food was eaten en route (god bless the culinary wonder of real fried potatoes). The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful — a couple of stops and the odd wrong turn and we were at the campsite: Penkridge Farm, near Cannock, about 10 miles north of Wolverhampton.

Word to the wise: pitching a tent at 1:30am Saturday morning is not ideal for a happy start to a long weekend. The campsite was basic but acceptable for a weekend and as cheap as chips (you already know what I think of them). I challenge anyone that attended LUG Radio Live to have got accommodation for 3 people for two nights for less than £12!

Saturday

Later that morning the fraught faeries were paying me a visit and perhaps understandably I got there a bit late on Saturday and so missed the opening salvo by The Large Gentlemen. After paying my five pounds I got a (very useful) programme of events (although it would have been more useful still if it had had a room–plan) and a very endearing Blue Peter–ish name tag.

After my first pint of cider my initial impressions were of a well attended well organised event. It had a great home–brew feel to it and worked as well, if not better, than the other more heavily financed techie events I have attended. For those not used to the Linux crowd there were a few ‘average’ looking people and a lot of ‘colourful’ characters; it was like a cross between an Indie night at the local club and a organic horticultural club square dance. It wasn’t exactly ‘stereotype busting’ but there were far less beards and sandals than even the pro–Linux media would have you expect. The age group seemed to range from ‘Seb’ (just out of nappies sorry School) to older than me which was nice! There was a friendly social atmosphere considering that a lot of the people there probably feel more comfortable communicating in binary / their own language. Speaking personally (in my first and only language) I felt a tiny bit uncomfortable as I seemed to be speaking with people that obviously had a brain the size a planet when it came to this stuff. I see myself as an absent–minded amateur geek when it comes to Linux (even though I have worked in the IT world for at least 8 years).

The speakers were very good and on the presentations that I saw didn’t dry up. Technically the presentations flowed well too with only one exception that is mentioned in Sunday below. As with a lot of the LRL’ers I found Bruno’s talk the most entertaining of those I saw (uncanny considering it was mainly statistics).


Presentation #1 I saw: My Society / Pledgebank

A nice man, Matthew Somerville [thanks Aq] took us through how this site had come about from the success of FaxYourMP etc. Quite interesting.

Presentation #2: Stephen Lamb (from Microsoft) how to securely integrate Windows and Linux.

The talker that everyone loved to hate (for the uninitiated there is quite a kerfuffle between those of the true faith (FLOSS) and those of the super–software monopoly (Microsoft)).

I’m glad to say that he held his own and that LRL’ers didn’t get the smell of fresh blood. In fact it was all a bit of an anti–climax. It seemed to me that Mr Lamb generalised his talk to that of security as it effected programmers in general — though specifically mentioning Vista [spit] etc as this was his main knowledge–base. I quite liked him by the end of the talk and others also gathered around to give the man the benefit of an open source mind–set when it came to Microsofts security failings. He diligently noted it all down.


Saturday Lunch


Sadly I missed the Mass Debate as I, along with a dozen or so others, was in the the Varsity for an enforced long lunch (the power of LRL to make too few bar staff sweat was impressive). At least it gave me a chance to put faces to a few names that I’d seen posted on the forum etc. Thanks to Phated and the others for making a complete unknown feel welcome.


Presentation #3: A Lawyer on Open Source.

Not quite as boring as it sounds — come on it would be hard to make it THAT boring. It was mainly concerning every Linux geeks worst nightmare: the threat of Software Patents. For those that don’t know these nasty little policies are there to keep very rich commercial entities rich while giving the impression that they are there to help the quirky, inventive, ‘little’ man in his quest not to be ripped off. Just remember kiddies, keep saying no to Software Patents In Europe. Thanks to Des Burley for the low–down.

— General walking about —

The exhibitors were few but worthwhile — as usual O’Reilly’s French(?) lady was selling a good selection of the famous techie books. By the end of the weekend she had run out of those featuring Python (the next big language?). The Debian crowd were there as were Novell (very understated in comparison to LinuxWorld), Ubuntu / Kubuntu, MythTV, FSFE (Free Software Foundation Europe). In the main bar was the man selling all the soft Tux’s, T–Shirts & mugs. Tux Games also seemed to have a number of people interested (though this might have had to do with the free game they gave away each hour).

Presentation #4: The OpenDocument Fellowship.

Good stuff regarding prevalence of open source thinking getting there before the propriety big–guns. Apparently the OpenDocument standard is actually an ISO standard in comparison to Microsofts ‘open’ offering for Office Vista. He also gave an indication what this would mean within the educational sphere.

Presentation #5: Bruno Bord — This Talk May Contain Swearing

Bruno yet again surpassed himself as one of the funniest Linux geeks around. To a packed ‘Beard’ Room he put together a tour de force of stats on a selection of 11 LUG Radio Live episodes. He concentrated on the important aspect of the Large Gentlemen’s vulgarity of language (swearing to you). Jonno [Beard] ‘won’ the most swearingest trophy and it was noted that there was a surprising Jake Blues (John Belushi) moment of clarity when they had the Rev. Ted Haegar on the show (i.e. no foul language).



Saturday Nights Alright For Fighting


Sadly I couldn’t make the Disco though it sounded like I should’ve made the effort. The Wife and The Girl were needing some JL-ness for the evening and after scoring some Chinese takeaway and it pouring down with rain for about 30 minutes we were all in need of a chill–out session with the neighbourly nice–doddery–old–couple in their caravan.

Sunday

This time I made the Large Gentlemen’s opening and felt better for it. Jonno [Beard] had by now lost the wispy bits that made up for a real beard and looked less inscrutable. Matt [Angry], Ade [Bald], Aq [Ging] all looked like they were enjoying themselves (bless).


Presentation #1: Django: An Open Source Case Study

I found this very interesting as I enjoy anything that has a web–based bias. Simon Willison spoke well for an hour on the newspaper–originated, python-based CMS. He managed to put across the point that Django was a great project and that Open Source did help the original stake–holders rather than just make the code publicly available and screwing them over.

Presentation #2: Mark Shuttleworth: N Big Challenges (n=15?)

I saw my hero (Mr Shuttleworth) at close quarters — though I’d admit to being a little underwhelmed with his presentation — not that it was bad, just a little woolly. A list of 15 things that we need to think about to beat Redmond / conquer the world would have been different for every person sitting in the audience. Not to say that his vision wasn’t equally applicable — just that it was a little light on ideas/solutions for these challenges.

Presentation #3: The Hour of Power

On to the embarrassing technical ‘hitch’. On the Hour of Power presentation(s) which genuinely seemed well received (I liked all of them) one very clever but embarrassed geek (Malcolm “pepsiman” Parsons) was attempting to show how he had got Linux to run on a couple of Nintendo DS ‘gameboy’ gadgets. This was obviously an impressive feat but the 5 minutes he was up there must have seemed eternal as the Large Gentlemen attempted to get the tiny screens of these units on the projection screen. This was obviously another technical conundrum and even with a few crew members joining in it was finally agreed to pass this man’s treasured DSs around the audience!

The best part of the Hour of Power for me was the brilliant Michael Erskine, AKA msemtd who built a ‘free’ Arcade machine. The cabinet was beautifully crafted and I could almost understand why he had decided to travel it from his home to the event (it looked very heavy). He used a games emulator that obviously runs on Linux and apparently had acquired quite a few ROMs much to the pleasure of the audience as they shouted out their favourite arcade games of yesteryear (bet you haven’t got Volton).

The other Hour of Power presenter had a very interesting Linux Demo demo. No he wasn’t demo’ing Linux he was running a ‘Demo’ on Linux. Yes I was confused as well but the entertainment value of this piece of coding was indisputable. It was simply amazing. Once compiled (which did take a little while) this audio and video spectacle was like the next generation of magic carpet screen-savers on the BBC micro with a breakbeat / electro soundtrack. The man, known as dotwaffle, said that parties were organised for these things. After a demo of two Demo’s I could understand why.

Presentation #4: Women in Open Source

Not a lot of girls outside in a rich, delicious condensed liquid but a presentation on why the start of this sentence might be a little dodgy (other than the fact it’s not a good pun).

We had an excellent discussion from the girl geeks on why they were a subset within a clique and what they might be able to do about it so that they didn’t get so e-harassed by newbie pr0n–obsessed pro–Linux geeks. For my two–penn’orth these social things tend to change slowly — the idea is to get them to change in the right direction. The hard part is finding how to steer the thing in the first place. Obviously the more women that get recognised in the FLOSS movement the more difficult it will become to come up with good sexist put-downs ;-)


Another couple of drinks and a farewell from the Large Gentlemen and that was it. In short this was the best techie event I have ever been to and I’ll be back next year.

Finally I would like to publicly thank The Wife and Child for putting up with the 30 minute (each way) journey to the venue, it was much appreciated.

Posted on 19/09/06 09:15 PM by Jack Large

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