Random
Just a typical axe fight outside my student bedroom with Craig. More [memories here](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonobacon/sets/72157602074539902/) for the bored and nosey.
28 Years Young
Well, today I clock the ‘ol age-ometer up to 28. It has been a hell of a year. Thanks to everyone for their birthday wishes. Also, thanks to the mystery individual who left a Ferrari with a big decorative bow on it, parked on my drive. Very generous. 🙂
Cover Songs to Live and Die By
I recently heard the abomination that is Amarillo by Brainstorm. I had forgotten how truly awful a cover it is. Then, on the flip side, take The Sound Of Silence by Nevermore. Stunning. I have noticed that metal bands seem to love doing cover songs, some taking particular pleasure in Brittney Spears and Christmas songs. So, a simple question, what would you say are the best and worst cover songs done by metal bands?
Gutsy Release Parties, Bring It On
It is great to see that the [Gutsy Release Parties](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GutsyReleaseParties) page which I threw up (put online, not vomited) is getting filled up with parties. Already, parties in New Mexico, Ohio, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Belgium, Catalan Countries, the Netherlands, Germany, Serbia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Egypt are organised.
We need **more** though! If you want to run one, see [this handy guide](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BuildingCommunity/RunningReleaseParty) and feel free to join the [ubuntu-event-planners mailing list](https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/Ubuntu-event-planners) to get help.
Lets get a worldwide blanket of parties and kick off Gutsy in style! 🙂
Jokosher recording getting stable
Today the Jokosher Hackfest happened, and we all worked on understanding and fixing some of the remaining bugs in Jokosher. I spent my time in the hackfest triaging most of the remaining *New* bugs, and testing some of the key ones. I am pleased to report that recording is working pretty solidly now due to some recent GStreamer fixes in CVS. The majority of remaining bugs are small issues in Jokosher.
We have also decided that the plan is to get a 1.0beta1 out on October 1st. We will then have a series of betas in which we want you all to rigorously test Jokosher as best you can. We want 1.0 to be completely rock solid.
Thanks to everyone who took part in the hackfest, I look forward to it continuing at 9pm UTC in #jokosher on Freenode.
Four large gents present…
…LUGRadio.
Season 5.
Monday 24th September 2007.
[www.lugradio.org](https://www.lugradio.org/)
Shaking things up.
One year at Canonical
(*I know, I seem to be in blogging overdrive today*)
I just realised that Sep 4th marked my [one year anniversary at Canonical](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/?p=737) and working as Community Manager. I just wanted to say a big thanks to everyone at Canonical, it really is a great company to work for, and thanks to the entire Ubuntu community for being so welcoming to me. I absolutely love the Ubuntu community, and feel so privileged that I get to work with you all on a daily basis. Thanks so much. 🙂
FOSSCamp 2007
Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls, I am pleased to announce [FOSSCamp 2007](https://www.fosscamp.org/) on **Sat 27th and Sun 28th Oct 2007** at The Hilton @ MIT, Massachusetts, USA!
The aim of FOSSCamp 2007 is to provide a means for Open Source projects to get together to discuss and debate how to work together and how to improve the Open Source desktop, server and embedded space. Although Canonical are providing the venue for this event, this is a vendor neutral event and all distributions, projects, vendors, and contributors are welcome to attend. This is about opening up the channels of communication between different projects to see how we can work together. Whats more, you don’t have to be a huge project like Mozilla, X.org, GNOME or KDE to attend – smaller projects are more than welcome!
The conference will be an un-conference, which is trendy-talk for “we won’t have a pre-written schedule”. When the attendees arrive, there will be a big board in which everyone can add their sessions to it. This works in the same way as a FooCamp or BarCamp.
If you would like to come along, head over to the website and add yourself to the [Attendees Page](https://www.fosscamp.org/HowToAttend). We hope to see you there!
[fosscamp.org](https://www.fosscamp.org/)
Six years. Never forget.
*Many of the victims of 9/11*
Wow. Six years since 9/11. The world has changed a lot since that day, and like other major events in the world, I will never forget who I was and where I was when it happened. Long hair, Iron Maiden t-shirt, working as a web developer at The Delta Institute in Telford. I got into work and heard about the attacks. None of the news sites worked apart from Sky News, all bogged down as people scabbled for scraps of information. It felt like the sky was falling in, and for a little while, nothing felt safe.
One of the hardest things when composing a vision in your head of an event like that is defining a scale, and trying to get an accurate hold on the sheer level of destruction and pain inflicted on so many innocent people. I don’t think I will ever understand, and I never want to cast an illusion that I do understand. I will always remain shocked, disgusted and repulsed of what happened.
Everyone pays their respects to those who were lost in their own way, and in Seraphidian we wrote a song called Act Of War which highlighted the many issues involved – the loss of life, the insanity behind it, the extremism and the senselessness. In fact, it is the only song we ever self censored on – the original version we produced in the studio had some news clips from 9/11 at the beginning of the song, but having played it to some friends, it led people to tears. We decided to remove the clips from the record and the live show.
Extremism in any form is bad, but in a world in which extremism can be the only solution to get your voice heard, more and more people resort to it. The dominance of one should never drown out the choir of reason. Lets hope this is a lesson more and more people learn.
Another brave horseman steps up
I am pleased to announce another horseman joining the ranks in my Community team at Canonical. This time it is Jorge Castro, also known as whiprush to his friends. Jorge is coming on board as the *External Projects Developer Liaison*. He starts on Monday, which is my birthday, rather conveniently. 🙂
Jorge will be working with upstream projects (read projects that are available in Ubuntu) and downstream projects (read Ubuntu derivatives) to help make their work with Ubuntu as smooth and productive as possible. I am looking forward to Jorge getting in the saddle and kicking arse with Daniel and myself. Interestingly, Daniel does DnB, Jorge plays bass and I am now playing drums in Seraphidian – we are 33% of the way to an Open Source equivilent of Slipknot… 😛
Welcome to the rollercoaster, Jorge… 🙂