First Jokosher recorded podcast
Well folks, today is a first for the Jokosher project, and I present the very first podcast show recorded in Jokosher! To test the current state of Jokosher, I decided to record [The State Of Jokosher](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/stateofjokosher-1.ogg) one morning in Sydney while nursing a hangover (so forgive the rather tired, croaky, monotonal voice). This was recorded on my Thinkpad with a little cheap external microphone and a sock used as a McGyver style pop-shield.
The entire show was recorded, mixed and exported in Jokosher. This gives you a taste of the kind of stuff you can do with Jokosher. Recording this show has unveiled a number of quirks that I am going to report for us to fix. Real world tests like this really does help improve the project.
Do let us know if you have recorded anything in Jokosher, and post your work in the [Finished Work discussion forum](https://www.jokosher.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=3).
So, download [The State Of Jokosher](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/stateofjokosher-1.ogg) right now!
Crikey mate, LCA is done
Back from LCA, and I had a great time. The conference is very well run, captures just the right spirit and has a good range of things to do and people to talk to. Hats off to the organisers. Well, literally hats off, I lost my damn hat while at LCA… 😛
One of the fun things about my job is visiting conferences. I love getting out to new places, meeting old friends and new and generally doing the conference thang. Conference life has been particularly good recently as I don’t really need to report or photograph conference stuff as much – you just know that some dude with a ridiculously large camera will be pumping up Flickr and bloggers will be filling up planets. This leaves me to concentrate on having a good time and getting the most out of the conference…oh, and having the odd tipple here and there. 😉
Some conferences I love and some I don’t, and I have been thinking about what criteria defines it. *Personality*. That’s the key ingredient. Some conferences have a pulse and some don’t. The conferences I particularly enjoy not only have interesting and fun events planned, but also attract a certain subset of people. Personality has always been the key ingredient we have tried to plough into LUGRadio Live – good conferences don’t feel sterile and overly-formal, they feel vibrant and interesting.
The real deal though is that conferences really are just building blocks that get cool people together to talk about and collaborate on cool things. There are lots and lots of different groups of people who make an appearance at certain shows, and it is their individual and combined personalities that make a conference what it is. This was in abundance at LCA, and as a speaker, the organisers really treated all of us like rockstars. It was above and beyond the call duty – particular thanks to Lindsey.
While at LCA I got to meet some incredible people, and it was particularly cool to meet so many new people – I knew a bunch of the speakers and attendees already, but its always nice to meet and greet new folks, so thanks to everyone who came over and said hi. Also, thanks in particular to Miguel Ruiz who brought me a few excellent little gifts from Chile – a small wooden boat and a small statue which has a hidden surprise. 😛
Some of you have mailed in to ask how the talk (*How To Herd Cats And Influence People*) went – it went pretty well for its first airing and I got some great questions, discussion and feedback after the session. The video for it should be online soon when the organisers have got it encoded and uploading. Making talks is always an iterative process, and I always try to mature and improve them based on feedback, and thanks in particular to Nat Torkington for some particularly excellent thoughts that are sure to add some more kick to the talk. I can’t wait to get the talk out to the other conferences that I have lined up, and to future ones.
Despite 22 hours of bleak misery on a plane, I *will* be back to LCA next year, hopefully speaking again and most certainly being a part of this excellent event. 🙂
LCA Talk #1: Done
Just did my first talk at LCA, this one about Jokosher. An updated version of my GUADEC 2006 talk, it covers the history of Jokosher, how it came about, thoughts on UI design and where we are going. I banged through the presentation and then topped it off with a demo and questions at the end.
Nice responsive audience, some good questions and some good discussion at the end of the session. Feel the Jokosher love people. 🙂
One thing Laszlo asked me to do in the talk was to really encourage more testing – the point of the current release cycle is to hammer out the bugs and get it rock solid. So people, head over to [download it](https://www.jokosher.org/download/), test it and [report bugs](https://launchpad.net/jokosher/+filebug). 🙂
Mmmm…update
The man, the legend, Chris Procter has written up [another Jokosher report](https://www.jokosher.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=860) on the [Jokosher Forums](https://www.jokosher.org/forums/). Chris is writing regular reports to fill you folks in on the specifics of whats going on with the project.
Speaking of which, for you LCA bods – I am speaking about Jokosher tomorrow (Tue 15th Jan) at the GNOME miniconf – its the first slot. Be there for a shot of GNOME multi-tracking goodness.
Incidentally, LCA is pretty cool. Well organised, good bunch of attendees and speakers, and nice weather. Still a bit jet lagged, but getting there. 🙂
Travels Schmavals
I have just spent three days at [BETT](https://www.bettshow.com/) in which [OpenForum Europe](https://www.openforumeurope.org/) had invited Ubuntu onto their stand. BETT is an education show, and a bleedin’ massive one at that, and we have given out a lot of Edubuntu CDs there. Thanks to Stephen Aitkin for inviting us, and particular thanks to [Pete Savage](https://www.progbox.co.uk/wordpress/) for his excellent work on the booth. Pete also organised for a bunch of schoolkids to come down with t-shirts saying *I AM NOT SCARED OF OPEN SOURCE* and an Ubuntu and Edubuntu logo on the back. This worked a charm.
Tonight I fly out to Sydney. Feeling pretty tired right now after busy days and fun evenings, so I am hoping I will sleep on the plane. I have never been to Sydney before, but three or four people have told me to expect *brutal gang-jetlag*. Hmmm, thats going to be fun. Beard.
So, I will see a bunch of you in Sydney at LCA. The magic time is 2pm on Thursday Jan 18th for the very first, virgin showing of [How to Herd Cats and Influence People](https://lca2007.linux.org.au/talk/173). Be there or be square. Well, just be there… 🙂
Proof, at last
With Irish blood in my family, I always knew and assumed it was a custom to walk around with a pig under your arm. Its just the way life is. No-one believed me, and the cynics all stood afar indulged in mockery.
Well, I have proof. This has been here for some months, but I have never got round to posting it. Here I present Dave Neary, famous Irish gent and GNOME dude, holding said pig under arm:
See, I told you so.
*Postscript – what makes this particularly amusing is that at the Fluendo beach party in Spain I asked Dave to pose pretending that he had a pig under his arm, but then realised the following day that my GIMP skills were so bad that I could not convincingly GIMP-in the pig. Dave “good sport” Neary stepped in to augment a pig under his own arm. Kudos to the Neary…*
UPDATE: Sorry about the image problem, the pig has returned.
Oh dear
Just heard something amusing on one of my regular Internet metal radio stations. How on earth do people keep a straight face with [lyrics like this](https://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Mista-Bone-lyrics-Great-White/1FF0D9A8A06761D548256B9700180301) from Great White’s Mista Bone:
> And when she’s in the mood
> When she needs that lovin’ groove
> When she wants it rude
> She grooves with Mista Bone
Hilarious. 😀
Heading to Australia
On Friday 12th Jan I fly out to [linux.conf.au](https://lca2007.linux.org.au/). After 26 hours of deep-vein-thrombosis-flight-action, I will be there for the full week and will be doing two talks, one being the first showing of *How to Herd Cats and Influence People* on the Thursday and the second being *Riding By The Seat Of Your Pants: The Jokosher Story* at the gnome.conf.au event at LCA. See the [Speaking](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/?page_id=703) page for the grubby details.
First time in Sydney, and Australia for that matter. I just wanted to send out a quick message to see if any LUGRadio/Ubuntu/Jokosher/other bods fancy meeting up. So, here is my personals ad:
> Male, 27, athletic and handsome with sexy beard, likes to talk about computers and metal, drink beer and dance to either shit music or bone-crunching metal. Good sense of humour and cool hat.
If anyone fancies meeting up, either grab me at the conference or [tickle my inbox](mailto:jono AT ubuntu DOT com).
Jokosher News II: This Time Its Personal
While the [last blog entry](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/?p=856) is still smouldering with newness, I have some late breaking news that you lovely people should know about – namely about Jokosher in distributions and a brand spanking new extension.
Jokosher 0.2 is now available for *Ubuntu Feisty* and *Arch Linux*. Inside those distros, just install the package and run it. All the dependencies are there and Jokosher 0.2 is ready to roll. As usual test, [report bugs](https://launchpad.net/jokosher/+filebug) and [discuss](https://www.jokosher.org/forums/).
Secondly, the inimitable John Green has created a new extension that demonstrates the kind of stuff that Jokosher Extensions are great for. His extension solves the problem of importing audio into Jokosher and not knowing what tempo you should set the metronome click track to. with John’s extension you simply press play and tap the button in time with the music and correct tempo will be set. Sweet! As with all extensions, we encourage developers to tell us what API methods are needed that may be missing. In fact, John added the [get_bpm](https://userdocs.jokosher.org/Extensions/Reference/get_bpm), [set_bpm](https://userdocs.jokosher.org/Extensions/Reference/set_bpm), [get_meter](https://userdocs.jokosher.org/Extensions/Reference/get_meter) and [set_meter](https://userdocs.jokosher.org/Extensions/Reference/set_meter) methods to the API. As usual, the Extensions documentation is [here](https://userdocs.jokosher.org/Extensions).
State of the Jokosher
I think its time to jam some Jokosher love into your collective pipes. Ready for an update on the worlds funkiest multi-track editor that all the cool kids are talking about? OK, here goes.
Recently the development team have been hammering on bugs, ploughing in new features and working on all of the services and community resources around the Jokosher project. We have also seen our excellent development team growing – its nice to see the project becoming self sustaining. As I [previously blogged about](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/?p=849), I have stepped away from the coding side, and I am pleased to see the slack taken up with these extra developers. Welcome to the team chaps! 🙂
So, lets get into the meat of what has been going on:
* **Help Integration** – David Corrales has added online help support, using the help written by our excellent docs team. So, click on Help and its there for you.
* **Extensions** – The Jokosher extensions world is a-rocking-and-a-rolling with a number of things going on. Firstly, we have [documented our extension API](https://userdocs.jokosher.org/Extensions/Reference) on [userdocs.jokosher.org](https://userdocs.jokosher.org/) (more on this later) and we have also added [Aq’s excellent Jokosher Extension tutorial](https://userdocs.jokosher.org/Extensions/Tutorial). Now there is no excuse to write extensions for Jokosher, and don’t forget to update userdocs.jokosher.org with any additional hints, tips and guides that you fancy ploughing in.
* **Jokosher Forums** – Our [awesome forums](https://www.jokosher.org/forums/) are really beginning to grow nicely. From the start I have wanted the forums to be a central place for Jokosher users – they are intended to be a place to get help, discuss Jokosher and show off recordings created in Jokosher. Things are progressing there nicely and more and more people are using them. It takes time, but I am sure we will get a buzzing community there as the steam builds up.
* **LADSPA Categories** – One of the problems with Jokosher right now is that there is a huge list of LADSPA effects, and *unwieldy* is an understatement for the mighty bugger. We have discussed maintaining our own LADSPA categories (most LADSPA effects don’t include categories) to make this much nicer.
* **Usability Improvements** – Jokosher *is all about* usability, and much has been made of this in the past. Recently the effects dialog has been discussed in detail, and some changes will be going into Jokosher to improve it. It is not unusual to stumble into #jokosher on irc.freenode.net and see long and drawn out discussions over usability minutia – we are proud of our usability, but there is still lots to do.
* **Bug Fixing and Testing** – This is the big deal with the next release – we want to make sure Jokosher works for everyone. As such, fewer major features and more bug fixes. We have recently seen fixes to a number of our [reported bugs](https://launchpad.net/jokosher/+bugs) and improvements to the pipeline, master volume handling and more. We **absolutely need you guys to test Jokosher!** so grab it, test it and [report your bugs](https://launchpad.net/jokosher/+filebug) and discuss any issues in [the forums](https://www.jokosher.org/forums/). Jokosher will only get better with more testing, so do help us out folks – its particularly easy on Ubuntu, with our [nifty download script](https://www.jokosher.org/download) that does all the work so you don’t have to. Well, we can do this one of two ways, you either be nice and test Jokosher or I come over to your house and give you a wedgie. Your choice. 🙂
One thing I mentioned earlier is [userdocs.jokosher.org](https://userdocs.jokosher.org) – this is our collaborative community documentation site. Anyone can edit the content on the there by registering for an account, and we are keen to see the site become a haven for tips, guides, help and other documentation. This is also the place where we work on the documentation for the next version of Jokosher – the final documentation appears on [doc.jokosher.org](https://doc.jokosher.org/). Head over to the site and help out – writing and improving documentation is a great way to help an Open Source project, and documentation is critical to the success of Jokosher.
So, its an exciting time in our camp, and we are ready kick arse and take names. If you do nothing else after reading this, just test Jokosher out and report your bugs, experiences and thoughts to us. Now is the time to get your feedback to us, so in a few words, [download](https://www.jokosher.org/download), [report bugs](https://launchpad.net/jokosher/+filebug) and [discuss in the forums](https://www.jokosher.org/forums/). If you do this your life will be better. Its true, just look at how happy the Jokosher team is. We all live in a big house like in The Waltons…