Well, the [MythTV controversy continues to rumble on](https://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/dev/171985), with opinion on mythtv-dev much more divided as a number of people have stepped forward and identified with the various issues I raised. I am also pleased to see that this crazy demand of running the Subversion version as a pre-requisite to contribute feedback has been greeted by many of the developers as a rather unreasonable request. Currently at 60 messages, it is a pretty big thread.

## The state of advocacy

When I set up [Planet Advocacy](https://planetadvocacy.jonobacon.com/) last night I was under the impression that there are a number of Open Source advocates who have blogs that I am unaware of and it would be useful to aggregate them. After doing a bit of hunting around earlier, it seems there really are not that many people blogging about advocacy. The odd thing is that there are plenty of people out there actually *doing* advocacy, it just seems they are not reporting it on their blogs. I really hope the planet can help push this.

Although I have not used Usenet for some years now, I figured it could be useful to ask for blog suggestions for the planet from [comp.os.linux.advocacy](https://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy). I have not been in there for years so I had no idea what the general mood was like, but I was absolutely astonished to see that it seems to be just a playground for bickering and mindless backchat. I posted a message which you can [see here](https://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.advocacy/browse_frm/thread/e70588bfe41a13d9/104909a2fe398e61#104909a2fe398e61). I was expecting to have a few responses and some emails, and the first nugget of genius came back from Peter Kohlmann as:

> BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! From ‘ere – Advocacy? You’ll be fucking lucky! ROFL

> Idiot.

Next, Malware Magnet responded with:

>

> Bleating like typical wintroll sheep.
> Careful, DFS may try to romance you.

What an earth is a *wintroll sheep*? And what or who is DFS? I assume not [this DFS](https://www.dfsonline.co.uk/). 😛

Guess what, Peter came back with a cutting retort:

> ROFL

> Is that your idea of “Advocacy” then?

Oh dear.

The thing I don’t get is that people must be reading that group to do some useful advocacy work but then just getting wrapped up in their own unimportance. There are clearly bodies out there who want to do advocacy, it just seems we need to get people back on track. Looks like I have my first goal for 2006 – try and straighten some of this out.

## Small things that make you smile

Recently I have been nattering away over email with [Pat Finch](https://blogs.sun.com/patrickf) from Sun about advocacy, OpenSolaris and everything else. He works at advocating Open Source and OpenSolaris. I am going to stick his blog on the planet.

Anyway, while discussing these bits and bobs I suggested he issue the following press release:

> SUN BEND TO PRESSURE FROM LUGRADIO TO OPEN SOURCE JAVA

> The Internet, World. In a shock move today, Sun Microsystems, creators of the popular Java and OpenSolaris product lines announced plans to Open Source their Java platform. The move comes as a surprise to the industry, in which much speculation has arisen about Suns plans for the environment.

> Patrick Finch, head of hub cap theft at Sun said, “The pressure was incredible. We knew that our LUGRadio overlords demanded us to Open Source Java, but we were unsure exactly how to approach it”. He continues, “we just did it for the women, really”.

> Jono Bacon, voted the worlds sexiest man with a a long goatee beard stated, “It was just a case of waiting. I knew Pat would come through. He is my bitch”.

Today he sent me an email and added as a postscript, *ps. forwarded your press release internally -nearly gave someone a heart attack (they thought it had been published)”. Nice. 🙂

What an interesting 24-hours in the world of discovering MythTV development. After I [wrote-up my MythTV usability comments](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/viewcomments.php?id=617) I also [posted them](https://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-dev/2006-January/043362.html) to the mythtv-dev list.

Shortly after posting them I mentioned in #mythtv on Freenode about the comments. A member of the channel called Chutt, who turns out to be Isaac Richards, the founder of MythTV responded in a rather intolerant fashion. In most Open Source projects that I have been involved in, the typical response to user feedback is thankful and if the information is not in a structure or format that is useful, the developers typically guide the user to provide feedback about specific things and possibly in more detail. In this case the response from the outset was negative and just inferred that he didn’t give a shit about what I was saying. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not expecting the MythTV developers to bow down and listen to the holy words that spew forth from my mouth, but I think the response could have been far more constructive and just simply friendlier.

One of the major complaints with my comments from Chutt and on the mailing list were that I was not offering comments about the bleeding-edge developer version of MythTV that lives in the Subversion repository. Their view is that my comments are about an old version of MythTV and are therefore considerably less valid. I totally, totally disagree here. I am running the *latest*, stable version of MythTV and I am simply providing user feedback. I am not a developer, and never claimed to be a developer, and I think it is both naive and counter-productive to demand that any user feedback comes from a user who compiles and runs the Subversion version. Totally locking of feedback from users of the stable version is just insane – there is so much we can learn from our users. I could understand if my comments were based around an older version such as 0.16, but to complain about comments about the *latest* official, stable release is crazy.

Unfortunately my experience of the MythTV development fraternity seems rather typical, and others have sympathised and also experienced a similar response. I have also seen IRC logs of people who have popped into #mythtv to offer help or constructive comments and being responded to in a rather unwelcome way. I just don’t see the need for it. I have been involved in a few communities over the years such as Linux UK, KDE, GNOME, Blender, LUGRadio and others, and none of them have been anything like this.

Anyway, I have tried responding to the comments in the thread on the mailing list, but there seems to be a problem with my email getting through. This is the email I want to send:

> Hi all,

> Hopefully this will thread OK – for some reason I could not send replies to the list, so this is another email address.

> Thanks for the comments. I have a few thoughts on what you have been saying.

> Firstly, I don’t agree with the views of “send comments about the SVN version”. Sure, in an ideal world, I would be running the SVN version on my machine, but I am not for these reasons:

> 1. I am not a developer.
> 2. I have one MythTV and it is a production box, so SVN bugs and problems will get in the way of using my normal TV and piss my girlfriend off.
> 3. I can’t run it on another machine as I would need to buy additional hardware such as DVB cards.

> As such I am running the most recent stable version, like most other MythTV users.

> I could fully understand if I was running a much earlier version such as 0.16 and gave you a bunch of comments, but I think demanding that any feedback from users is from the SVN version is rather naive. I am just a typical user, but where I can help is in usability. By ignoring or flaming users of the most recent stable version for providing feedback seems counter-productive.

> Much of my background is in usability. I have been studying it for the last five years or so, I founded the KDE Usability Study and I write about it for the O’Reilly network, in magazines and do usability consulting as part of my work as an Open Source consultant. I figured that some comments about usability would be useful for the project and although some of my points have been fixed (and a few were ones that I missed in the manual), much of my suggestions still remain as they are in the SVN version.

> I want to be utterly clear here – I think MythTV is a superb piece of software and a huge achievement for everyone involved. Certainly don’t take my notes as a slight on your development. Everyone can contribute their own skills in different ways and I was just throwing in my comments as a usability guy.

> A few comments on RTFM:

> My views are summed up by what Myles said – users really should not need to read the manual where possible. Let me be clear what I mean by users here – I don’t mean the techie dude who set up the box, but I mean the moms, dads, girlfriends, boyfriends and hangers on in the living room. There is no reason why the person holding the remote control should need to know anything other than the basic set of keys – everything else should be discoverable. It is fine for them to learn the buttons, but they should not need to refer to documentation to learn how to save a playlist, configure their recordings and such like – the interface should aim to intuitive and usable.

> Much of this is about discoverability and learnability – laying clues throughout the interface so that actions and tasks can be picked up easily. This is easier in applications such as MythTV with a restricted input model (the remote control) and a modular framework that tucks functionality into specific areas.

> Achieving this is largely about tiny little changes and improvements that cater for slights in the design. From my initial research MythTV seems 95% of the way there, but some of these small issues could really make it more usable for everyone.

> So, I would love to help with some of these usability bits and pieces, but the hostility on this list concerns me. I *really* do think that some usability and design research and re-evaluation could be a huge boon to MythTV.

> Cheers,

> Jono

Well Bill, it [seems you were right](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/viewcomments.php?id=617#comment2). How disappointing.

## Planet Advocacy

In other news, I have set up [Planet Advocacy](https://planetadvocacy.jonobacon.com/). There seemed to be a gaping hole for a planet aggregator for advocacy related fun and games. If you want to be added, do get in touch with me. There are not many people on there at the moment but I am just deciding who put on. If you have any suggestions do let me know. We obviously don’t want Marketing people flogging commercial products, but people who advocate free and Open Source software. 🙂

For a while now I have been noting down little quirks and oddities in MythTV. Although MythTV is incredibly usable and works very well, fixing these problems would make it more intuitive and easier to use. This list is certainly not exhaustive and although I have been meaning to do an exhaustive usability assessment, I have not had the time. As such, these are major usability issues I have confronted.

I [posted these findings](https://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-dev/2006-January/043362.html) to the MythTV developers list so hopefully they can fix them. 🙂

I have put a code at the beginning of each issue for easily referring to it.

### General

* G1 – When watching a show, you should be able to hit the record button to record the entire show if it has been watched from the beginning and as such the live TV buffer contains the show.
* G2 – If you schedule a show to record, you can only watch the show at the same time as recording it by first selecting Media Library->Watch and then selecting a show. This is unintuitive – you should just be able to watch TV like normal and be able to view the channel while the show is recording.
* G3 – Switching between channels is far to slow – this slowness makes skipping through channels rather laborious.
* G4 – The term ‘Optical Disks’ in the menu is not particularly clear – I suspect most people know its a Disk, but not optical.
* G5 – In the Upcoming recordings screen, the use of dimmed and non-dimmed entries in entirely unclear – what do they signify? It is certainly unclear to me and my other half. The other problem is that many of the entries listed in Upcoming will not actually be taped because it says the recording will be taped at a later time. If it is not going to be taped, why is it still in the list?
* G6 – Many of the screens in MythTV (such as Upcoming and Set Priorities) have specific letters in each entry. These letters obviously refer to something specific, but there is no legend displayed on the screen to say what they mean.
* G7 – There seems to be no simple way of cancelling all recordings for a show other than finding it in the EPG and changing the recording option to not record the show. The ideal solution would be to have a list of shows that are being recorded and then when you select a show, there are options such as Cancel this recording, Cancel all recordings etc.

### Electronic Programme Guide

* EPG1 – When watching TV you will often want to view the EPG. Currently you do this by pressing Menu and then selecting Program Guide from the on-screen menu. This two step process needs to be instead bound to a single key so that you can press one button and access the EPG while watching TV.
* EPG2 – When you access the EPG from the main menu, there is no TV feed on the top right-hand corner, whereas when you access the EPG when watching TV by pressing Menu->Program Guide, there is a TV feed in the EPG. This behaviour needs to be unified – I would suggest always having a feed of the current TV channel.
* EPG3 – The EPG should not be inside the Manage menu, for a few reasons. The first is that you don’t really ‘manage’ your program schedule, and secondly because you need to reference the EPG regularly. Why take two steps to access the EPG when you likely want to access it on the main menu?

### MythMusic

* MM1 – When in the main playback screen, there are a number of different artists in a long list, but there is no way of jumping from artist to artist.
* MM2 – If you have not created a playlist, or you have just cleared you active play queue, MythMusic by default has no songs loaded. This is totally unintuitive. The default functionality should be that when no no queue or playlist is available, *all* of your music should be available to play. It seems crazy that All My Music needs to be consciously ticked in the Edit Playlist area to actually hear some music.
* MM3 – There is no way to create a playlist based on genre.
* MM4 – When playing back a song it lists encoding details (eg. 128kbps 44.1khz) – this information is of no interest to most users and therefore should not be displayed.
* MM5 – There is copious room in the bottom third of the screen, and this should really be used to display guidance notes about creating a playlist. Creating playlists is not very intuitive and this space could be usefully used for notes.
* MM6 – There is no obvious way to save a playlist that you have just constructed. I still don’t know how to do this.
* MM7 – When creating a playlist, the icons on the left (such as the CD icon when you have inserted a CD and it appears below the All My Music line) are not clear at all. This need to be much bigger or use the space at the bottom of the screen to show a nice big icon. On my 28″ TV, they just were not clear enough and look like bullet points.
* MM8 – When in the main music playback screen and at the top of the list of songs, you can’t press Up to go to the bottom of the list. I assume the same problem happens at the bottom of the list – you should be able to press Down to go to the top of the list.

### MythWeather

* MW1 – When loading MythWeather and it says it is retrieving weather data, it takes a long time to grab this information. It would be better if it just went away and grabbed it periodically in the background, this giving little or no delay.
* MW2 – Unlike other modules in MythTV, MythWeather does not display information in the LCD panel on the front of my case.

### Ideas for features

* Reminders – there should be a feature to allow you to set a reminder to watch a particular show, even if you are not recording it. MythTV would then pp up a box to say the show is on and allow you to change the channel. It would also be useful to possibly pop up a small OSD with a countdown to when the reminded show starts.
* A module to go and grab National Lottery numbers and display them.

Today is another glorious day for the MythTV box. Since the start of the project I have been dogged by a rather noisy machine. The time I built a machine before the MythTV box was years ago and there really was no solution for noisy fans. As such, I grit my teeth and vowed to buy some special fans to fit on the back of the machine to lower the noise. I never really planned to do that and instead just turned the telly volume up. 😛

Anyway, tonight while on the phone to my brother, we were talking about noisy fans, and he told me that he solved the problem on his Athlon 64 box by using a feature on his motherboard called *Cool n’ Quiet*. While on the phone I toddled off to take a look inside my motherboard box to see if it mentioned this. Luckily it did. Woo! Cool n’ Quiet basically controls the speed of the fans dependent on the temperature of the computer – the colder the machines, the slower the fans, the hotter the machines, the faster the fans.

My motherboard is a *MSI K8N Neo* and you enable Cool n’ Quiet in the BIOS. To do this, press *Del* to enter the BIOS and then enable `Cool n’ Quiet` in the `Cell Menu`. After this, take a look at the `H/W Monitor` menu and find the `Current NB temperature` and the `Current CPU temperature`. Also note down the NB and CPU fan speeds.

Before I used this fan control malarkey, these were the stats:

Current NL temperature: 31c
Current CPU temperature: 43c
NB fan speed: 3169rpm
CPU fan speed: 5672rpm

In the `H/W Monitor` menu, now enable the `Smart NB Fan Target` and `Smart CPU Fan Target` options and set them to the nearest temperature. I set the NB to `40c` and CPU to `50c` – these values take into account fluctuations in heat.

When I saved the BIOS settings and reboot, I heard the fans drone down slowly and got the following readings:

Current NL temperature: 31c
Current CPU temperature: 43c
NB fan speed: 800rpm

[Jorge](https://www.whiprush.org/2006/01/on_music.html), interesting choice of music there, with an evident bay area thrash theme running through it. I am also hugely into music, both listening and also gigging and recording with Seraphidian and [my solo stuff](https://www.recreantview.org/).

A few thoughts on your comments:

* As for Yngwie Malmsteen, sure he is arrogant and cocky, and his music is rather convoluted, but *Trilogy*, *Marching Out*, and *Rising Force* are classics. Just don’t ask him if he wants a donut (see the *Pantera 3* video to find out why)
* Kirks solo on *The Struggle Within* is awesome, but I don’t particularly rate him as a good lead player. The greatest solo ever recorded is without a doubt the dual attack of Glen Tipton and KK Downing in the title track of the *Painkiller* album by Judas Priest.
* If you want to get an Iron Maiden album, I really recommend getting *Live After Death* – its a great collection of tunes. Otherwise, get *Somewhere In Time* and *Powerslave*.
* *Rust In Piece* and *Master Of Puppets* are awesome albums. When I first got into thrash, *Rust In Piece* remained my favourite album for years – it really captured the kind of thrash that I love. Nowadays my fave album is either Cannibal Corpse’s *Gore Obsessed*, Decapitated’s *Nihility* or Overkill’s *Killbox 13*.
* New Metallica album is St. Anger and it is awful.

A few recommendations of some amazing thrash bands and albums you may want to check out:

* Overkill
* Annihilator
* Xentrix
* Kreator
* Exodus
* Flotsom and Jetsom
* Onslaught
* Iced Earth
* Judas Priest
* Primal Fear
* Anthrax (a band that we supported once, which was *amazing!*)
* King Diamond
* Mercyful Fate
* At The Gates
* The Haunted
* In Flames
* Soilwork
* Blaze
* Blind Guardian
* Bruce Dickinson’s solo stuff
* Dearly Beheaded
* Destruction
* Witchery
* Sinner
* Shadows Fall
* Killswitch Engage
* Sepultura
* Pantera
* Running Wild
* Posessed
* Mortel Sin
* Machine Head
* Incubus
* Heavens Gate
* Mortification
* Halford
* Grave Digger
* Glenn Tipton
* Helloween
* Gamma Ray
* Masterplan

Hope this helps unveil some more great tunes. 🙂

Went to the LUG meeting last night and it was fun, despite feeling tired all day. I always feel knackered when I get back to work after some time off. The reason is simple. When I am at home, I love staying awake late at night and sleeping in. This is of course, totally incompatible with work hours.

## Windows and Windows people

I use Linux all day everyday and rarely need to use Windows, and as I have stated before, you can sometimes forget the relative ease of installing this or that software. Well, over the last couple of days I have been battling to get Windows onto a Sony Vaio VGN-TX1XP. You would think that a new laptop the latest MSDN version of Windows XP Professional would go together nicely. It seems not.

Aside from the fact that Windows would not install (due to an odd error in the second stage install), it made me realise just how icky Windows is these days. Not only do you get badgered left, right and center about registering this and activating that, but in Windows itself you have to sort out anti-virus software, get loads of additional software and it is all just such a hassle.

The interesting point here is the perspective that a lot of Windows people take on Open Source. Many of these users complain that Linux is really complicated and that you need a lot of pre-requisite knowledge to understand how to configure it. I think that for many users the reality is fairly similar on both platforms – Windows is as much of a maze to ultimately configure as Linux is. The difference of course is that most Windows users have probably only ever used Windows, whereas most Linux users have no doubt used Windows and possibly Mac OS X too. As such, just seeing something other than Windows on their computer is a real culture shock. This isn’t about dramatically more complex software in Linux – it really is about something that is just new and different.

## The VideoCam Look saga continues…

I had a response from my email asking about Linux drivers for the Genius VideoCam Look:

> It’s right that we use this chip. But, as I know, there is no Linux driver for this chipset.

> We regret to inform you of this news.

Bugger. So I replied:

> Thanks for the reply.

> I am sure that someone in the Linux community would be happy to support the camera by writing a device driver. If I can find someone who would happily write a device driver, would you be interested in sending them a free Genius VideoCam Look?

We can hope. 🙂

## Peoplewatching is taking over

I noticed that the [LimeBlog Podcast #7](https://www.lgt2.com/limeblogbeta/2006/01/03/limeblog-podcast-007/) references [People watching for fun and profit](https://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5499) and he seems to be getting his listeners to engage in some people watching and send in their findings. Cool.

## LUGRadio Live 2006

I updated the [LUGRadio Live 2006](https://www.lugradio.org/live/2006/) site today and added a new [Features](https://www.lugradio.org/live/2006/index.php/Features) page and added details of the [coach travel offer](https://www.lugradio.org/live/2006/index.php/Travel_Information). Its gonna be a great event.

I have had a couple of interesting emails through since [The Reality of Advocacy](https://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/8898) went live. I thought a couple of these may be of interest to the greater community, so I have reproduced my responses here.

One mail came from Kayvan Bahador:

> First and foremost I would like to say kudos! on your recent article “The Reality of Advocacy”. It gave me more clearer perspective and approach towards advocacy of FOSS and GNU/Linux. It absolutely makes sense and that the article serves as great “guide” for people like me who wish to heavily engage in FOSS advocacy.

> Now, my question(but moreover seeking advise) is that, what is the safe and good way to tackle the many F.U.D’s surrounding FOSS? will the culture or other factors of the community here in our area be a great consideration before tackling it or those can be disregarded and there’s a general way to tackle it?

I think the important thing to remember about FUD is that it is a natural response to competition, and it is something that afflicts any competitive platform. Although Microsoft are criticised for spreading FUD left, right and center, the Open Source community are just as guilty for spreading their own FUD.

There is no silver bullet to stop FUD, and the only real option you have is good, solid education. As an example, yesterday I was on the phone to a Microsoft Reseller who was quoting me for a SQL Server licence (more on why I was asking about this later in the week). After we had been through the rigorous licensing discussion, I claimed ignorance and said I had heard of a database called [MySQL](https://www.mysql.com/) and asked him how it compared. He told me how MySQL was not as good because it was free and SQL Server was far better because it is a commercial product. He also told me that SQL Server was used by people such as Friends Reunited, inferring that MySQL was not used by any large sites or enterprise type organisations. This is classic FUD, no doubt pumped down the lines from above into his trough.

The trick here is how you respond. Instead of just getting angry and telling him he is wrong, just point out the following things:

* MySQL 5.0 provides a range of enterprise grade features such as Triggers, Views, Stored Procedures, High Availability Clustering, multiple storage engines and more
* MySQL is actively used by Yahoo!, Ticketmaster, Powell’s books, Google, Lycos Europe, University of California, Berkeley, Lloyds TSB Bank, Deutsche Post, NASA, U.S. Census Bureau, UNICEF, Epson, DaimlerChrysler, Braun, Yamaha, CNET Networks, Slashdot, Wikipedia, Suzuki, Dell, Sega Europe Ltd, Novell and [more](https://www.mysql.com/customers/)

The key point here is that you don’t just say *no, that’s wrong, I know its a good database*, but instead say *well that’s wrong because of x, y and z*. giving specific, referenced articles to back up your claims. Now his views seem a lot more watered down.

Another writer (who will remain anonymous) wrote in to say he is involved in a popular Open Source project that is subject to much controversy:

> Any sage advice for how to undertake the advocacy role in an environment that is at best challenging, and at worst, hostile?

These kind of situations are fascinating because you not only need to advocate the merits of your software, but you also need to advocate a degree of peacemaking. Here you not only need key advocacy skills but also community building and teamwork skills. It is important to remember that advocacy does not work in a vacuum – on larger software projects there is a need to work with other people (such as other advocates, getting information from developers, getting translations etc). It is essential that all contributors read from the same page.

For a team to work well you really need to write out a detailed, clear specification indicating what you want to do, what you want to achieve, what resources you have available and who wants to work in which area. With a clear specification of goals (which can be written on a Wiki or something), you can at least head in the same approximate direction.

The next part of the question covers the public perception of this controversy. Certain projects will always have a degree of public cynicism surrounding them due to specific incidents or agreements in the past. As an example, read the following projects:

1. Mono
2. Cedega
3. Xfree86
4. Gentoo
5. OpenOffice.org

If you have been following the Open Source community for a few years, many of these will signify certain issues and problems with their products.

1. Mono – Possible IP problems with Microsoft technology
2. Cedega – Issues with contributing code back to the community
3. XFree86 – Problems with people being able to contribute to the project due to beaurocracy
4. Gentoo – High degree of technical capability requires and it takes an eternity to compile
5. OpenOffice.org – Large and bloated, and doesn’t open Microsoft Office files very well

For all of these projects, these afflictions are singular, isolated problems don’t affect every user. Identifying problems such as the ones above are part and parcel of the advocacy package – you should ensure that you don’t spin the issue, but instead provide re-assurance. Hell, most of us love that kind of re-assurance your parents give you when you saw something you didn’t like as a kid. This re-assurance needs to again be validated by external reports and verification.

The vast majority of problems and criticisms of a project are likely to be:

* Edge cases – the problems only affect users with specific, unusual requirements or with knowledge that is not atypical of the user base
* Isolated – individual incidents that are resolved

When approaching criticism, identify if it falls into these two categories. If so, you need to provide re-assurance. If the problem is not isolated and is a fundamental social or technical problem with the project, you will need to take more expansive action or re-consider your commitment to the project. If you feel there are fundamental problems, the project may just not be for you. Imagine a KDE developer joining the twm community and you can see what I mean – two vastly different perspectives on the graphical interface.

## Google Schmoogle

More hints and tips for Google:

* To get the VMWare 5.x kernel module to compile on Ubuntu Breezy, you need to install `linux-headers-2.6.12-10-686` and `gcc-3.4` (the kernel was compiled with gcc 3.4). You should also run `export CC=gcc-3.4`.
* Dapper Flight 2 does not seem to boot the second stage install in VMWare.
* When using the NAT networking option VMWare you can just use DHCP to grab an IP address. Make sure however that the VMWare modules are loaded *after* you have a net connection, otherwise it seems to screw up.
* If you installed [NetworkManager](https://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager/) on Breezy with the Ubuntu package and had some off problems getting connected to the net and not being able to shut down GNOME, just un-install it. It seems quite buggy.
* If you can’t access `/dev/dsp` in VMWare, kill `esd` and restart VMWare.
* Second Life does not work in Cedega 5.0.

Well, it seems [Havoc speaks the truth again](https://log.ometer.com/2006-01.html#3.2) and he makes some important and interesting points. The point he makes about focusing on user goals as opposed to the tools to construct those goals is one of the key problems with effective advocacy and marketing. The example given in the article is both succinct and enlightening to the point where it stares you in the face. We need people like Havoc, we really do.

Speaking of advocacy, [The Reality of Advocacy](https://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8898) seems to be spreading, and was [picked up on OSNews](https://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=13149).

## Eye candy and usability

So, it seems that [Xgl](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fXgl) is coming out of the closet and being merged into X.org. This has been a long time coming, and rather ironically, Xgl was the runner-up in one of the LUGRadio Awards showcased in the new episode which should be released any second now. I am also pleased to see this because it backs up one of my predictions on LUGRadio for 2006 – that the Linux desktop will become substantially more attractive.

Although this seems rather exciting from the outset, the infrastructure needs to solidify soon. I am getting sick and tired of constantly hanging around waiting for this advanced X infrastructure to set in place so that developers can make use of it to create truly beautiful interfaces. For the last few years many developers have been waxing lyrical about how the Open Source desktop of the future will look more attractive – let us please stabilise the platform and put some of this into action. Otherwise, Apple will keep on eating our lunch.

Speaking of beautiful interfaces, the legendary [mpt](https://mpt.net.nz/) has provided us with an update on how his [Ubuntu shitlist](https://mpt.net.nz/archive/2006/01/01/breezy) is getting fixed. This is really great news.

## Webcams

With the Myth box running in the living room, I want to set up a webcam so I can spy on the dogs when away from the house. So, I took a look at the PCWorld website and saw a few cams that work out of the box – we were heading there anyway so I figured I would pick one up and get it working last night.

I got to the store and none of the cams I wanted were stocked. I did however spot a managers special for the [Genius ViewCam Look](https://www.geniusnet.com.tw/product/product-1.asp?pdtno=527) cam. Noting it was made in Taiwan and looked rather budget, I figured they would use a cheap chipset such as the [OV511](https://alpha.dyndns.org/ov511/) and I would be rolling. No luck it seems. When I plugged it in and did a quick `dmesg` it seems the camera bridge is recognised and the `sn9c103` module is loaded, but the image sensor chip is not loaded.

After a bit of digging, it seems the image sensor chip is a `soi763a`. I have emailed Genius asking if they are working on a Linux driver and to clarify if that is the chipset. I might donate the camera to the guy behind the `sn9c103` driver if it helps.

So, stuck with no usable camera for the moment, I did some hunting around the net for a suitable camera that just works. It then struck me that I have a [Sony EyeToy](https://www.eyetoy.com/) camera for my PS2. After a quick Google, it seems that the glorious chap who hacks on the OV511 driver has developed a driver in which one of the supported camera is the EyeToy. I am pretty sure the EyeToy is a shitload better than the ‘el cheapo Genius camera, so I am rather chuffed.

## VoIP

This is the week of VoIP. I will be spending most of this week playing with [Asterisk](https://www.asterisk.org/) and preparing for the [VoIP seminar next week](https://www.openadvantage.org/events/oaevent.2005-11-07.5128062565/view?searchterm=None) in Birmingham and the [VoIP FastTrack 2-day course](https://www.openadvantage.org/events/oaevent.2005-11-07.8572375284/view?searchterm=None).

## Music

Been listening to some interesting albums recently, including:

* Nile – Annihilation of the Wicked
* Dark Moor – The Gates of Oblivion
* At The Gates – The Red in the Sky is Ours
* At The Gates – With Fear I Kiss the Burning Darkness
* Exodus – Shovel Headed Kill Machine (*what an awesome title*)
* CrimsonFire – CrimsonFire
* Origin – Echoes of Decimation
* Seventh Avenue – Southgate
* XXX Maniak – Harvesting the **** Necter
* Gorerotted – A New Dawn for the Dead
* Children Of Bodom – Are You Dead Yet – complete with cover of Brittney Spears’ *Oops, I did it again* 😛

Well, here we are, first blog post of 2006. Sooz and I celebrated new year with the LUGRadio crew and much beer was consumed with great, rollocking pleasure. We played the ever hilarious Friends game, took it in turns to wear my inflatable sumo suit and debated the finer points of whether creativity can be graded and and whether chavs should be sterilised. At around 12.30am we all rolled into my studio and recorded a quick segment. Fans of LUGRadio have mailed us in the past asking if we ever record the show drunk, and we normally don’t. Well, last night we recorded a fine few minutes of drunken babble. I will probably patch it into the show when I mix the new episode tomorrow. The show is out on Tuesday.

## Clan Jono strikes again

You know, I bleedin’ love the Internet. After my [blog post](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/viewcomments.php?id=593) about mailing [Jono Coleman](https://www.jonocoleman.com/), another Jono got wind of the glorious Clan Jono and send me a mail:

> hi there!
> jono manson
> https://www.jonomanson.net

Well, when you take a look at Jono’s site it seems he is doing rather well for himself. Good to see another Jono flying the flag. 🙂

## The Reality of Advocacy

Tonight I released a new article entitled [The Reality of Advocacy](https://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/8898) on my [O’Reilly Blog](https://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/1735). The article is best described with its tag line:

> Crafting your skill as an advocate can take many twists and turns, but there some key factors that are essential to bear in mind. Are you as objective an advocate as you could be?

Go check it out, and feedback is always welcome, as usual. 🙂

## Google Schmoogle

* Running `mythfrontend` with sudo enables real-time priority and helps provide smoother video playback
* The Linux port of Second Life is coming Q1 in 2006. See [this thread](https://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=79463) for details
* USB lights are actually pretty decent

Well, before everything kicks off, I want to wish you all a happy new year. In an hour or so the LUGRadio crew are coming over to record our new year episode and then we are going to be drinkin’ until we’re stinkin’. Boy, I hope Gullivers Pizza is open at 4am on Jan 1st…

Anyway, its been an awesome year and I have met many, many good friends this year in the different communities I am involved with. Have a good ‘un!
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