Fuzzy feeling
You know, things like [this](https://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/2006/10/21/kids-say-thank-you-edubuntu-team/) make it all worthwhile. 🙂
Ton in London
[Ton Roosendaal](https://www.blender3d.org/cms/Ton_Roosendaal.460.0.html), founder of [Blender](https://www.blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html) and a good friend will be wandering around LinuxWorld London for a while. He will be there for the awards. Looking forward to hooking up with him.
New Song: Voices Of Freedom
I am pleased to present my brand new song – [Voices Of Freedom](https://www.recreantview.org/blog/?p=68).
I wrote this song while on holiday in Florida, and it is a nice, bouncy, acoustic song that I think is fairly catchy. A different style for me, so a bit experimental. I am quite pleased with it though. 🙂
I actually wrote this song about free software and the people who make it happen. It is about taking a stand and having an impact on the world. The lyrics are all written about the ethos and spirit of the free software community.
Oh, and incidentally, with each new release I would love to see any suggested art for a CD cover to go with the track. I am also interested in musicians who fancy transcribing the music so other people can play it. I can imagine this song would be a good tune to sing around campfires with a bunch of geeks sat around, so the chords and tab would be useful. 🙂
Download the [Ogg](https://recreantview.org/songs/jonobacon-voicesoffreedom.ogg) or [MP3](https://recreantview.org/songs/jonobacon-voicesoffreedom.mp3).
Ha!
Small things in life amuse me greatly. Dave Morley sent this mail:
> how can you list hardware on an isa bus please?
The rather amusing Chris Procter replied with:
> Dear Mr. Morley,
> Can we have our hardware back please?
> Yours sincerely,
> The 1980’s
Arf.
The London Jokosher stand needs YOU!
In a few weeks is [LinuxWorld London](https://www.linuxworldexpo.co.uk/) and there will be a [Jokosher](https://www.jokosher.org/) stand there. This stand was being manned by Chris Brown and John Green, but unfortunately Chris has had to pull out. As such we are now on high alert looking for volunteers to help John with the stand.
The event is on *Wed 25th* and *Thur 26th October 2006* at *Olympia 2 in London*. Running the stand would involve:
* Representation one of the coolest Open Source projects out there. A sure fire way to attract a mate.
* Working with John to demo Jokosher.
* Answering questions.
* Chatting with people, making new contacts and having a good laugh.
Its not a tough job, and don’t worry if you are not a Jokosher expert – John will be able to show you the ropes on the day. We are looking for all volunteers who can either help whether it is for part of the event or for both days.
If you can help, and are therefore a king among men or queen among women, mail me at jono AT jonobacon DOT org. Your life will be observed with favour by the gods of Rock and Roll. That can’t be half bad, eh?
See you in Sydney in 2007
Well, in January I will be heading over to Australia for the first time as my paper *How to Herd Cats and Influence People* was accepted for [linux.conf.au](https://lca2007.linux.org.au/). I was pleased to get accepted, particularly with the much publicised huge number of submissions and the rather rigorous decision process.
For you abstract-junkies:
> When talking about free software, the word ‘community’ comes trotting closely behind, and has become a Fully Buzzword Compliant (FBC) term. Although bandied around by those with and without whispy beards, there is often confusion and misunderstanding about how exactly community works and how we can improve our different communities. Clearly different people see community in different ways, but surely there must be an underlying structure common to all communities? Surely we can draw some parallels with different communities?
> In this entertaining and anecdote driven talk, Jono Bacon takes a stroll through the meaning of community, how the free software community has developed from the early days, and how the business world have handled open communities in good and not-so-good ways. The presentation also delves successful communities in action, and the techniques involved in creating communities that are exciting, productive and fun to be part of. Finally, Jono will share some thoughts and experience of how the Ubuntu community works, where it is moving forward and what challenges lie ahead.
> If you are curious about how to build better communities, or are just befuzzed about them, be sure to come along to this interesting and amusing presentation.
So, I will be there from *15th – 20th January 2007* in Sydney, Australia. I am looking to organise plenty of Ubuntu LoCo stuff while there, and I am keen to meet as many of you as possible. Should be fun. 🙂
Headset shooters?
Dear Lazyweb. One game I love playing on my PS2 is [SOCOM Navy Seals](https://us.playstation.com/Content/OGS/SCUS-97474/Site/main.asp). I enjoy it for two reasons:
* It is a network multi-player first-person shooter with free online server access.
* You can use the USB headset to talk to other plays on your team to create strategic plays.
Does any similar game exist for Linux? I would love to have an equivalent with the headset functionality – it really makes the game for me, and it makes me feel like Brittany Spears…which ain’t a bad thing. 😛
Say NO to winky smilies
As someone who spends a large chunk of his life on IRC, mainly due to working with the various communities on IRC, my quality-of-IRC (QoIRC?) is pretty important. Although typically blissful in my day to day bumblings, one increasing trend seems to be sweeping IRC communities like a dose of diarrhoea at a festival…
…winky smilies – 😉
They annoy me. IRC has enough ambiguity without someone deliberately enforcing it. Some people use winky smilies *all the time*. Now, translate this into the real world (that’s the point of smileys). Imagine winking that much. Imagine walking to the bus stop and saying *”cold out today!”* ;). Imagine going to a shop and responding to a question with *”no I don’t want cash back”* ;). People would think you were nuts. It is just isn’t normal, and we need to put a stop to it. The world of online emotions is perfectly supported by 🙂 🙁 😛 and :D.
Jokosher Hackfest
Well, today the growing Jokosher team met in `#jokosher` on `irc.freenode.net` and hacked on some of the remaining features planned for 0.2. There was lots of great work done today, and here are some of the highlights:
* Laszlo worked on the audio fade GUI and it is now pretty damn usable. Still not hooked up to the audio yet (more on this later) but you can add, edit, delete and move volume points. Today it really started feeling solid – this is going to be a really nice and simple way of performing volume curves.
* More work on the Extension API. We have a pretty nice API forming where third-party developers can hack on additional chunks of functionality that fit right into Jokosher. John has been hacking on Egg file support so now Extensions are self-contained units. This is going to be a killer feature for 0.2 and I can’t wait to see what kind of stuff people will hack on.
* Luke has been hacking on an Extension Manager that will provide a simple and easy to use interface for installing and removing extensions. In the future this will download extensions and perform upgrades from jokosher.org too.
* Aq has been hacking on his Freesound Extension which is probably the best example of the Extension API. When Jokosher was firm forming as a design, this was one of the number one things I wanted to see, and a feature that really demonstrates what Jokosher is about – integration. With it, you can search Freesound from Jokosher, view the results, preview them and then drag the audio into Jokosher to use. This is a really awesome way of getting audio into Jokosher easily and cuts out the process of browsing Freesound in a web browser, downloading and then importing. Here you just search and drag. This is shaping up really, really nicely and Aq is working to get it ready for 0.2 so it shows what the Extension API can do.
* Chris made some commits to make accessing instruments easier, and to change an instrument when it has been added.
* Elleo fixed up some ALSA device related stuff.
…and I mainly worked on fixing up bugs in the effects code, looking into other bugs and writing test scripts for GStreamer problems. I have also written prototype code that can be dropped in when some things are fixed, most notably when a few gnonlin bugs are resolved, I can merge in the code to hook the audio fades GUI up to GStreamer. At that point Jokosher should be usable for making real music and podcasts as you will be able to record, edit, mix, adjust volume and mix down. Exciting times! 🙂
We have around two weeks to fix this lot up before we hit our feature freeze. It is critical that we get some GStreamer bugs fixed, essentially:
* #362399 – [Default sources broken](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=362399)
* #356707 – [Suspected caps neg problems cause horrifically broken audio](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356707)
If some kind GStreamer hackers want to resolve these, you will help make all our efforts today usable even sooner. 🙂
For you screenshot junkies:
*The current recording view where you are editing volume levels. Not that the big buttons will be replaced with nice small icons.*
*The mix view, complete with VU faders, panning controls, master faders and more.*
The common cure for the boring Sunday afternoon
Its Sunday…its fun…its exciting…its the Jokosher hackfest today!!
Head to #jokosher on `irc.freenode.net` today and get involved! 🙂