Czajkowski

I used to listen for a very long time to the rantings and ravings of Jono Bacon and Stuart Lanngridge on the lugradio podcast with the other lads. That finished up and really I stopped listening to podcasts for a while bar the UUPC one as there wasn’t really an alternative I wanted to listen to.

Last year the two lads started up Shotofjaq, short and sweet podcasts which are designed to encourage discussion on the topic they’ve recorded. The difference I can see from this podcast and others is, discussion is predominantly via the web, twitter, identi.ca and leaving comments on the page where the episode has been released. This is great and seems to be working very well.

The downside for me is I use IRC a lot more than twitter and other means as I run a screen session and I can read back threads and folks can leave me comments. I miss the discussion happening on IRC. So has twitter/identi.ca blogs killed discussion on IRC I’m not sure. But it does seem that the podcast has a more web 2.0 following than previous podcasts I’ve listened to.

Saying all of that, the podcast is a worthy listen, covering many aspects on technology not just open source. There is a lot of interaction so much so you can suggest topics that you would like the two lads to cover. It’s easy to listen as it’s short and a bonus for me is I can have it in the back ground on and dad chimes in as it’s a some what tehci podcast delivered in a banter style chat and not always about open source so win win.

So go listen!

I’m not sure where all of the time is going on me, it seems to be vanishing into some deep dark black hole possibly with the missing socks that have  left their other halves behind!

In the last three months I’ve been involved in 3 largish events, OpenJam, OSSBarcamp and this weekend coming Oggcamp.  It’s been kinda hectic and exciting at the same time, though mental note, 3 events all starting with O gets very confusing fast! I’m looking forward to the weekend in Liverpool as I’ve never been there before and a chance to meet more new folks and hear what people are working on.

It’s been a crazy two weeks working one day and the next day being laid off it’s given me a chance to work on some other things and see what roles are out there. Took a few days off to myself and went home home to chill relax and walk and it’s amazing what fresh air does to help your focus and it’s all good then again.

Onwards and upwards.

I had a very boring lunch hour today, made yummy scrambled eggs with ham on toast and a large mug of tea.  Now what, not in the mood to go out side as I may not come back in it’s so sunny out there.

I was curious on the Yahoo V Google search so decided to have some fun at lunch, though as one of the charming folks in the #ubuntu-uk channel “If that’s what you call fun … sheesh”. Anyway I chose 4 things very simply Laura Czajkowski, Ossbarcamp and something not related to me but I enjoy Ubuntu UK Podcast and finally I asked in channel for a topic any topic, “Pubs” was the final one. The reason behind the first two topics was I was curious what the results would be and had an idea already what Google would return.  The final two were just random ones that I could compare the results from.

I’m a little shocked over the disparaging results returned.  At present I run Karmic, and once I get a chance will upgrade my laptop run lucid and  then switch to Yahoo for a while as long as results improve as at present the results aren’t great for yahoo compared to Google.

Laura Czajkowski Google Results

Laura Czajkowski Yahoo Results

Ossbarcamp Google Results

Ossbarcamp Yahoo Results

UUPC Google Results

UUPC Yahoo Results

Pubs  Google Results

Pubs Yahoo Results

All of the results in a larger form are HERE

I had a pretty amazing weekend down home last weekend.  I was asked back to give  a talk as part of a weekend of talks that took place at my old University. It was a great honour and rather amusing at the same time.  Years ago I had set up the Skynet talks, where you’d invite a Skynet member back and members of the Industry.

Friday night kicked off in the stables, a flash back from my college days. We have two pubs on campus and a small bar. Walking into the Stables bar it was a flash back to the 90’s music.  All of the cheesy head wrecking songs that you know once your heard them the lyrics were going to be in your head for the night.

Clearly my age showed as I couldn’t hear myself and moved out to the courtyard to have conversations, albeit it was a bit chilly I could hear the music and have a conversations so worked out better.

Saturday morning, I was up in time to go into the Market for breakfast and collected Matt Zimmerman who kindly agreed to come over and take part in the days talks.  After a cup of tea in the what looked to be someones kitchen and listening to a Trad Session at 11am we were fed and set up for the day headed to UL for the talks.

1. “Talk 1″ - Paul O’Connor
2. “Google Summer of Code” - Jimmy O’Regan
3. “So you want to build a Hackerspace” - Jeffrey Roe
4. “Ubuntu Inside Out” - Matt Zimmerman
5. “To Ubuntu and Beyond – Where individual participation can take you” - Laura Czajkowski
6. “An introduction to CouchDB” - David Coallier

This time I was a little less nervous talking, but not by much! I gave a similar talk to the one last month but this time was a bit slower and updated slides as I knew the target audience had a clue about Ubuntu and Open Source.

Matt gave his talk with such ease and clarity and it was very enjoyable. All of the talks during the day were interesting and nice to bring people together. they covered a range of topics so there was something there for most people. Students came from Cork, Dublin and Galway so that was great that it wasn’t just one college having these talks. It was a nice way to spend an  afternoon. David and his entertaining ways gave his talk on CouchDB, and very nicely obliged to get us to the pub for the last half of the Ireland V England Rugby game.

It was great to be back again and I had a lovely weekend. glad I gave the talk, and I believe it was recorded and will be up at some point.  Here are the slides at least.

I was curious and tweeted how do people name their machines, is there logic behind or just random.  I tend to chose characters or themes in movies/shows. It started out with cypher being my login on skynet my computer society back in college.  I’ve had Enigma, Matrix, Bigbox, currently my toshiba is Cypher which is running Karmic, and Gorgamon which is the mini 9 running Hardy.

Some of the answers that came in were:  from Daniel darkstar and sunlight, JD chose his from Egyptian gods Isis on 8.10, sekhmet on 9.04 & baal as a win7 vm, and Mikkel chose his from List of Roman Emperors.

How do you do yours