The WEA Logo

Hello all, it’s been a really long time and looking back over the last few posts I’ve hardly written anything all year. Apologies for that. I would say I’m going to change, make a concerted effort to post more, turn over a new leaf and treat you better baby, but you know what? I’d probably be lying, with the best intentions, but still unlikely to come true. I’ve promised to get back on the case so many times now it’s getting embarrassing so I’ll skip that part. If it happens it happens, and I hope it does.

Life has been fairly busy for me this year. First there was teaching work, learning about lesson plans, schemes of work, registers and all the other exciting (not so exciting) stuff involved. I ran 3 courses a week for WEA from January to now. Two in IT skills, one in online radio and podcasting. I enjoyed it and liked helping the students wherever possible, but damn the paperwork is a killer. For every teaching hour I seemed to spend another one or two planning and doing paperwork, and you only get paid for the teaching hours. All my courses have now finished for the time being. I may do more in the future but I’m in no rush. I got some teaching qualifications and that’s always useful to have. Well I say I got them, apparently the certificate is still in the post. During my time teaching with WEA I got more and more involved in the office stuff back at HQ, eventually developing into a new part time job with them. One that involves overhauling and redeveloping their website, looking after social media accounts, community building, producing video and audio, marketing, event organisation and much more. It’s all very cool and I’m enjoying the new role very much so far. I’ve only been doing it a few weeks officially but it means spending 3 days a week at the Cotton Exchange in Liverpool. A pretty nice building to work in and only 15-20mins walk from my flat. I used to work from home most of the time and I’ll still be doing some of that, but a change of scene and gaining a little separation between work and home lives is doing me good.

All of this leads me to the point of this update. I realised as I started digging through the PHP code on the website that I’m becoming a “proper developer” again. I’ve done some Drupal development in recent years and put together some interesting projects, but I never quite felt like a true programmer. Not like I used to be, not like the old days. If we wind back 10 years I was just leaving university having done Java, ASP, PHP, Python, Perl and many other things. I went straight into a job as a .NET developer and sysadmin at a large hospital. In my free time I was geeking out with Linux and other Open Source projects, actually contributing back as much as I could. My geek credentials were more than safe and my technical knowledge was right up there. Through various life changes since those years I’ve done less and less development and always felt a bit like a charlatan when speaking to real hardcore programmers. I wrote some fairly good code in my day but I let my skills get rusty, very rusty.

Now I have to learn MODx and redevelop the WEA North West region website. I may also be developing other in-house systems, mobile apps and doing server deployments. I’m hoping to convince them to let me use Django for some of the new custom systems and build the servers with Postgres instead of MySQL. I’ve already set up Debian 7 on a couple of test machines in the office to show off. Maybe I can convince the boss to let me release any decent new code under a proper license like GPLv3. That’s a battle for down the road though, let’s see if I come up with anything worth releasing first.

I never really dropped programming completely, but it’s been firmly on the back burner for a long time. I hope this new job will let me get back into it properly and regain geek cred. Something I’ve wanted to do for a while but never had time or motivation for. So as Michael Corleone says in The Godfather… “Just when I thought I was out… they pulled me back in!!”

Stay tuned and I’ll try to update you more often on my journey back into developer-land. Wish me luck.

See ya,

Dan

GTA V Artwork

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time you’ll probably know that I don’t talk about gaming much. It’s really not a big part of my life these days. I should be clear before we go further that I’m talking about computer gaming here, not gambling, which I know is sometimes referred to as the “gaming” industry. I don’t have any secret gambling problems. At least not that I know, unless I’m sleep gambling.

As a kid I enjoyed computer games like any other normal child of my era. When I was little in the 80′s I watched my older brother connect his ZX Spectrum to the TV in the living room and a whole new world of opportunity seemed to open up right there. Later I got a Nintendo Entertainment System or NES after seeing my friends play them for a while. I loved that thing to death, playing Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt, Legend Of Zelda and many more classic games. I also played PC games as they began to take off in the early 90′s. The first Prince Of Persia was a favourite and later Doom 2 also. But as I got into my teens video games just didn’t seem to factor so much. They increasingly became less a part of my life as other things took over. Going out, seeing gigs, playing in bands, social life and all the things you do at that age. I briefly got into the odd game here or there, but it’s not been a big part of my life since childhood.

Having said all of this there’s one, and only one, BIG exception to that rule. One series of games I will do anything to play, cross the road just to hear about and give me left kidney for. Grand Theft Auto. I’ve said this many times before but offer me the chance to be a wizard, an elf or some kind of mythical dragon warrior from space and my answer will most likely be “piss off”. Nothing could sound more boring. But give me the chance to be Tony Soprano or Al Capone and I’ll bite your bloody arm off Luis Suarez style before you’ve finished the sentence. I just love the characters, the humour and the rich worlds they build in the GTA games. GTA 4 was the whole reason I got a PS3. I got the console just to play that game. Many years before that I bought a PS2 pretty much so I could play Vice City, San Andreas and the like. It says something about the power of this franchise that it can still drive someone totally disengaged with video game culture like myself to buy a console.

Right now the clock is ticking and Grand Theft Auto 5 is due out in September of this year. Rockstar games have just released 3 new trailers introducing the main characters and I can’t wait. It’s so damn exciting!

Is it September yet? Why the hell not?!

Dan

Fixture List

Hello everyone, it’s been a while hasn’t it? Life has been very busy lately and finding time to blog is difficult. It’s all going pretty well though and I don’t have any complaints. I like being busy. I just feel I’m slightly neglecting certain things, such as this blog but also writing for Seven Streets and others. I’m currently teaching 3 separate courses per week, taking a teacher training course myself on Mondays, trying to get an album recording with my band, producing 3 podcasts, running many events and also overseeing Jelly Liverpool every other week. No rest for the wicked eh? It seems like maybe all this running around has caught up with me as I’ve come down with a bad cold this weekend. I’ve made some amendments to the podcast schedule in light of that. So without further ado let’s get into this week’s happenings.

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Monday March 18th @ 9pm UK – I’m postponing Rathole Radio from Sunday to Monday this week because of my cold. With Linux Outlaws moving back a bit I can do RR tomorrow night instead. Join us for an hour of live rambling and eclectic music with yours truly. You can also chat and get involved live via IRC.

Wednesday March 20th @ 8pm UK – Live Linux Outlaws episode 303. It’s hard to believe we’ve done that many episodes but yes, it’s really true. Join us for the live broadcast via Youtube and comment in our IRC channel. We love hearing what you think about things and it makes the show more fun to do.
Thursday March 21st @ 9am-5pm – It’s Jelly Liverpool this Thursday. I’ll be there all day upstairs in the lovely LEAF tea shop on Bold St, Liverpool. It’s an informal co-working day for freelancers of all types. We have free WiFi and also complimentary tea/coffee on hand. If you’re a freelancer in Liverpool or nearby and you’ve never been to Jelly you’re missing out. Come and join us.

Friday March 22nd @ 10am-5pm – There’s a 2 day event called CodePool 2013 for students, hackers, developers and many more. It’s right in the heart of the city at The Quaker Meeting house near the Bluecoat Chambers on School Lane in Liverpool. I don’t know how many tickets are left but they cost £5 if you’d like to join us. One of the speakers is some bloke who claims to know about Open Source licensing and engaging with existing Open Source projects… oh and it’s me by the way. No idea what time I’m speaking but it will be Friday. The event is also running on Thursday.

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That’s all I can think of for now but in between all this I’ll be running my courses, doing my teacher training qualification and much much more. Maybe I can tell you a bit about that in the future.

Until next we meet, take care,

Dan

Ignite Liverpool

Greetings all, it’s been a bit quiet here on the blog lately as life outside has gotten more busy and taken over. I’m still involved in lots of events around town though and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about today. We run Ignite events every 3 months or so. Before all you pyromaniacs get too excited there’s no actual flames involved. We have a strict health and safety policy, honest. It’s a global movement started by O’Reilly, the book publisher.

Presenters have 5 minutes each to talk on any subject they’re passionate about. They get 20 slides which automatically advance every 15 seconds. That way when the slide run out so does your time. It’s always eclectic and fun, with diverse topics from Wimpy restaurants, to the space race, to organic gardening. Anything you care about and can enthuse others with in 5 minutes. The best thing is if the current topic doesn’t do it for you then you’re only ever a maximum of 5 mins away from another.

We’re doing another Ignite in the lovely surroundings of LEAF tea shop on Bold Street, Liverpool. This Wednesday 27th of February at 6pm. Everyone is welcome and it’s free to attend. There’s also a great social atmosphere as we all tend to hang around for a chat afterwards in the bar.

If you’d like to attend please head to the website page and sign up via Eventbrite. We hope you’ll join us for a great evening.

See you there,

Dan

o hai

Hello folks. Last month I posted about a 1 day podcasting course I was supposed to run at FACT Liverpool on Jan 25th. It was postponed in the end and now it’ll be on Friday 22nd of Feb, 10am-5pm. All the other details still apply apart from the date obviously.

Have a look at the previous post to read more about it. Basically it’s a full day of training for £99 and you’ll produce your own podcast by the end. Plus, have the skills to go off and make more podcasts on your own.

Sign up via Eventbrite if you’re interested and let’s do this

Dan

Hmm?

It asks me if I work for Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu Linux (for the uninitiated). I don’t. Not a company I am either for or against to any great degree. They do some great stuff I like and other stuff I don’t so much They know how to ignite some angry beards though, which are a bit like Angry Birds only more hairy. Just thought this was quirky enough to share with you.

Goodbye for now,

Dan

We Aim To Misbehave

Some of you may already know but I’m the co-host of a weekly podcast called Linux Outlaws. My colleague Fabian Scherschel and I look over the weeks releases and news, then discuss all the happenings in the Open Source world. Sometimes we get things wrong, sometimes we get them right. C’est la vie, as they say. We’ve been doing it since 2007 and it’s frightening to think just how long ago that actually is now. Once we were the new kids on the block (not the pop group) and now we’re long in the tooth veterans. In the last five and a half years we’ve gained a dedicated listener base of nearly 30,000 weekly followers. Hard to believe isn’t it? We’ve also won the odd award or two from magazines and other outlets, not that we’re boasting about it. Honest.

Our 3ooth episode is just around the corner and we really want to do something special to mark the occasion. To that end we’ve invited all our friends to join us for a live event. Linux Outlaws Live, we didn’t call it that jut for the LOL acronym but it certainly doesn’t hurt. On Sunday February 17th at 5:30pm we’ll be recording the 300th edition of Linux Outlaws in front of an audience at LEAF On Bold St in Liverpool. This is your chance to get on the show and be a part of it. Get your voice on this landmark recording. Ask questions, shout abuse at us, whatever you want really. All for the princely sum of 5 English pounds. All proceeds go to charity so you can even feel good about it. We’re supporting the good work of the Software Freedom Conservancy in New York.

So what are the vital details again? I’m glad you asked.

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 17th, 5:30 – 7:30pm @ LEAF On Bold St, Liverpool.

You can book tickets via Eventbrite for £5 and join us for a party afterwards in the beautiful venue. There is also an Eventbrite banner on the blog sidebar to the right there. Click that if you prefer.

Come along and join the party, you don’t want to miss it. Also, please tell any friends or contacts you have who might be interested too. The more the merrier. We’ll have a laugh and kick off the post episode 300 era in style, we promise.

Hope to see some of you there,

Dan

Firing up Turpial

If you’re a Linux desktop user like myself you may have experienced problems finding for a decent Twitter client. In many distributions the default client is Gwibber, it’s even integrated into the Unity desktop for Ubuntu. I’ve used it on and off for years now and I’m not one to throw harsh criticism around if I can help it. However, in the case of Gwibber I think it’s well deserved. It’s monumentally slow, buggy and unstable. Even after all these years. I have no idea how it’s become so popular. Whenever I try Gwibber it hangs and I get the classic Compiz grey window while I wait for the machine to stop having a panic attack. Often all I’m trying to do is refresh my messages. You may think this is due to my machine being old or slow. Not so my friends. I last used Gwibber in Ubuntu 12.10 on an Intel Core i7 3.5ghz quad core machine with 8 gig of RAM and an SSD. Hardly a low spec PC I’m sure you’ll agree. Well capable of running a Twitter client, I’m not asking it for the meaning of life here. Being an app that relies on loading messages from the Twitter (and in my case Identica) you could easily assume it must be the API causing the slowness. Perhaps even network lag. My guess would just be poor design and coding. An application that locks up so badly and frequently that it affects the performance of your whole desktop is totally unacceptable. I persevered with Gwibber for a long time for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I hoped i would improve and performance would be refined. Secondly because none of the alternatives I tried were much better, if they were any better at all that is.

Sending a message with Turpial

At this point I should give Choqok an honourable mention. It’s a KDE microblogging client which I’ve used intermittently over the last 2 years. It is much better than Gwibber in performance but as I don’t use KDE on any of my machines it requires the QT libraries to run. All that is installed for you with the main package and it’s not a major hassle, but it does add extra overhead. I found the layout and UI a little confusing at first but gradually got used to it. Not exactly a lightweight client but considerably more so than Gwibber. Worth a look if you’re on KDE but not the application I want to tell you about today.

The status quo (not the band thankfully) with microblogging clients on Linux continued for quite some time. The lack of a decent native Twitter client was getting embarrassing. Then I discovered a wonderful little app called Turpial completely by accident. I was fed up with Gwibber locking up for the 15 millionth time one day so began searching online for ways to make it faster or fix it. I came across a forum post responding to a similar question containing the words, “the solution to Gwibber’s performance problems is installing Turpial and moving on”. I can’t credit this statement to the right person as I should because I lost link and it was all quite a blur. So whoever that mystery poster was, thank you! I searched my package manager for “turpial” and sure enough found the application nice and quickly. Once I got it installed I was amazed by the speed and usefulness of this client. That was a couple of months ago and I haven’t used anything else since. I’m not looking back.

The main thing I like about Turpial is the speed, it really is a lightweight app and runs very smoothly. Especially when you consider that it’s all written in Python, a language often wrongly accused of being slow. If you switch to wide mode in the preferences you can add columns and use it like Tweetdeck, the ever popular Twitter client. See the image below.

Turpial in wide mode

You can fine tune the refresh settings for replies, direct messages and your main Twitter stream individually in the preferences. Also note the “wide mode” check box if you want multiple columns.

The Preferences dialogue

Apart from the speed perhaps my favourite thing about Turpial is that it comes under GNU GPL version 3 or later license. My personal favourite as a copyleft proponent.

Turpial uses GPLv3

There’s only one drawback to Turpial that I can see really. It doesn’t let you use multiple accounts or services with one instance of the application. It supports Twitter and Identica but you can’t do both from one window. As it’s so lightweight it’s no hassle to fire up another instance of Turpial and sign in with your Identica details. I’m guessing you could also do the same if you wanted to monitor multiple Twitter accounts. It still performs really well and doesn’t seem to add any strain to my system. In this case an Intel Core i3 laptop. Not a high end one either. Identica will be closing fairly soon and when it does that’ll take care of one of these dilemmas for me categorically. For now if you’re an Identica fan and not a Twitter user, of which there are some, you can use it as an Identica only client with all the same features. Plus if you’d like to add features or get involved there’s a Github repository for the project. You can check out the code and play around with it if you have the skills. The beauty of Open Source.

The profile page

So if you’re looking for a sane alternative to Gwibber and you’re tired of pulling your hair out (I haven’t got much left) give Turpial a spin. If you have any other suggestions for Linux microblogging clients I should try also please free free to add them in a comment on this post. Since Adobe AIR no longer comes for Linux I’ve left Tweetdeck off the list. I never quite understood all the fuss over Tweetdeck anyway. It’s not FOSS and I prefer to use open solutions wherever I can.

So there you have it, Turpial is well worth a look. Happy tweeting and/or denting!

Dan

Fixture Lis

Hey hey hey! That was my Fat Albert greeting, in case you couldn’t tell. Doesn’t work quite so well in text form I’ll admit. It’s almost the end of January. How did that happen? We’ve had some snow in Liverpool over the last week and the news has gone crazy over it. Advising people not to leave their homes, stock up on canned goods, prepare the nuclear bunkers etc. You’d think it was the end of the world. I wonder if perhaps it was a slow news week and that’s why we needed a special extra half hour news program on prime time BBC One just to tell us there’s been snow. Look out the window, you could tell that pretty quickly for yourself. The hysteria that surrounds snow in this country mystifies me. I did like the MET office advice that building more snow men could help guard against flooding though. No science or logic behind that but a nice dose of humour, something to keep the kids busy. Anyway, enough snow ranting. Let’s see what’s coming up this week.

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Monday January 28th @ 8pm UK – Episode 297. Live Linux Outlaws for 2 hours via Icecast and YouTube streams. Join myself and Fab as we record the latest show. More details at – http://sixgun.org/live

Wednesday January 30th @ 4:30pm UK – Live FLOSS Weekly is on once again. This week I’ll be joining Randal Schwartz to interview the people behind Auphonic, a tool to automate post production of podcasts and radio shows. Obviously something right up my street. Taping is streamed live via – http://live.twit.tvWednesday January 30th @ 8pm – Mellowtone gig @ LEAF. Rue Royale , Silent Sleep , & special guest. + DJ Richie Vegas. I’ve been doing some IT stuff for the Mellowtone guys recently and they put on really good gigs. I’m particularly interested in hearing Silent Sleep who I’ve been told a lot about. Grab a ticket and join me if you like. It’s only £5.

Sunday February 3rd @ 9pm – Live Rathole Radio from my studio. It’s the fortnightly live dose of music and musings. You can chat via IRC, listen in via Icecast and get involved. Last time I played a live rendition of a TV theme tune and perhaps that will continue. Tune in to find out.

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There’s plenty else going on but I decided to spare you the full details of my schedule. I’m doing more training for WEA this week, recording with the band and more. Our album recording has been much slower going that we’d hoped but we press on. I still want to get it out in Easter. We’ll see how that goes.

Hope to see some of you soon, take care,

Dan

Fixture List

Well well well, it looks like 2013 is just determined to stick around doesn’t it? If you were hiding under the covers hoping it would go away you’re out of luck, sorry. On the upside though the Mayans were wrong about the end of the world. For what it’s worth my 2013 has kicked off reasonably well. It’s early days but things are shaping up so far. Finally my festive chest infection seems to be lifting and I can sing again, not quite at my best but getting there. Good news considering I’m supposed to be recording an album at the moment with my band 20lb Sounds. As you’ll see from this weeks fixture list I’m also trying to get back into doing some acoustic gigs around Liverpool this year. For a while I was posting little acoustic performances on YouTube every Friday but it very quickly fizzled out as I got distracted and busy. I hope to revive that soon and share more videos with you here. As you can probably tell I couldn’t think of anything particularly witty or amusing to say in this opening, so this will have to do. Let’s see what’s coming up anyway…

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Monday January 14th @ 8pm UK – Live Linux Outlaws for 2 hours via Icecast and YouTube streams. Join myself and Fab as we record the latest show and chat via IRC. We love to hear you comments about how wrong we are. More details at – http://sixgun.org/live

Tuesday January 15th @ 10am UK – It’s the second week of my WEA online radio course at Toxteth TV. I promise I won’t mention it every week as that could get boring, but the second session is the last chance to come along and enrol. If you’re interested leave a comment or drop me an email. It’s been very busy so far already and places are limited.Tuesday January 15th @ 8:30pm UK - LEAF Open Mic night – I’m usually busy with the band on Tuesday nights so it’s been a while since I played at the LEAF Open Mic night. This Tuesday I’m finally free and I’m planning to head along and play a few acoustic tunes at one of my favourite stomping grounds. Come along and join myself and host with the most Johnny Sands for a great night.

Thursday January 17th @ 9am-5pm – It’s Jelly Liverpool again. I’ll be there all day upstairs in the lovely LEAF tea shop on Bold St, Liverpool. It’s an informal co-working day for freelancers of all types to get together. We have free WiFi and also complimentary tea/coffee/whatever’s you poison. If you’re a freelancer in Liverpool or nearby and you’ve never been to Jelly you’re missing out. Come and join us! It’s free and you’ve nothing to lose.

Sunday January 20th @ 9pm – Live Rathole Radio – Another episode of Rathole Radio is taping live this Sunday night and you can join me for an hour of eclectic music and waffling. Chat via IRC and get involved. We have a friendly little community and you’re most welcome.

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There’s some other stuff going on of course that I neglected to mention. On Wednesday we’ll continue recording sessions for our 20lb Sounds album and I posted a quick update to our website yesterday. I’ll also be trying to get to grips with Modx, the Open Source PHP content management system. I’ve been asked to do some work on an existing Modx site and I’ve never even looked at it up till now. I do know some PHP and have done plenty of Drupal work though, so hopefully it won’t be too difficult to grasp. I’ll let you know how I get on.

In the meantime take care and I hope to see you at one of the above events, ciao,

Dan