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Tue, 01 Nov 2005
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Sun, 30 Oct 2005
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Wed, 21 Sep 2005
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Wed, 14 Sep 2005
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Mon, 12 Sep 2005
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Wed, 17 Aug 2005
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Tue, 09 Aug 2005
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Further to the previous post on the linux.conf.au 2005 audio, a gentleman named Matt kindly wrote in with these thoughts:
Hi Michael,
Prompted by some of the other Fluendo guys, I took a look at the sample
ogg file you uploaded of the LCA streams. We think we've figured out
roughly what the problem was, so I thought I'd let you know...
We think the machine doing the DV reading/encoding was falling behind
(possibly due to too high CPU usage, but possibly because of an issue in
the dv grabber gstreamer component - we're discussing what we might do
to solve some of these issues in the future.
Unfortunately, the result of this is that the raw DV data is simply lost
- the remaining data was encoded fine (there are no errors in the vorbis
data according to my validation tools), but there's no possible way to
recover the bits that went missing. There are a couple of minor muxing
problems in the actual ogg files, which can be fixed easily enough (I've
written some tools to help with this, and Conrad Parker has some too,
let me know if you want to know how to fix these up - they confuse some
players a bit), but the talk in that sample file is still pretty much
incomprehensible due to the missing data after repairing the ogg-level
errors.
Mike
So there you go.
Tags for this post: blog( ) lca2005( )
posted at: 02:58 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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Sun, 07 Aug 2005
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I've been asked quite a few times as to the status of the audio from the 2005 linux.conf.au conference, so I thought I would grapple with the issues involved here, so that everyone knows. The short answer is that there doesn't appear to be any audio... Read on for a summary of why.
Speex
The linux.conf.au 2005 committee did have machines record speex in every lecture theatre at the conference. These were the same machines which were displaying those slide shows when the project wasn't in use. It would appear that there was a hardware issue on those machines, as they all have recorded fairly large amounts of garbage data. I can't comment much further than that, as I wasn't involved with the setup of the machines, or the diagnosis of the problem.
Video recordings
But wait. There were all those video machines in the back of the theatres (or at least the big three). They'd be recording video wouldn't they? Well, they were. It turns out that the audio streams generated from those cameras and their audio system hookup are corrupt. Apparently, and again I haven't looked into this myself, the time stamping in the files is bogus, so the audio data can't reliably be extracted. It would seem that about 25% of each talk can be extracted.
So where to from here?
Well, all of that is a bit of a bummer really. Our current plan is to put the dodgy ogg video files online for people to download and try to help us out with the extraction of the audio. The problem with this is that we're talking about a fair bit of data here -- 25 gig to be exact. Linux Australia has recently rolled out a mirror project which I am associated with which will be able to host these files, but it's a case of actually getting the hardware (it's on order), configuring it, testing it, and then deploying it. I would expect this to take around another month from now.
I've put a random sample of the ogg video on my site if people want to have a poke before then and see if they have suggestions. This video file, assuming I have worked out the file naming convention properly, should be the start of Eben Moglen's keynote presentation. The file isn't too big (around 30 megabytes) so feel free to download it and give it a try.
I do apologise for the inconvenience the loss of data has causes, despite there really being nothing I could have done about it. I do find it a little embarrassing that this has happened. If you could please refer further comments to the conference organisers list that would be nice.
Update: One of the guys at work thinks "I can't comment much further than that, as I wasn't involved with the setup of the machines, or the diagnosis of the problem." sounds self righteous, so I thought I should clarify and point out that I didn't mean it that way. What I am trying to convey here is that I would have liked to supply more technical detail as to what happened, but I don't know any.
Tags for this post: blog( ) lca2005( )
posted at: 20:49 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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Sat, 23 Apr 2005
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Davyd has some more feedback to go along with his incredibly helpful commentary on why it is a vital part of the conference to be allowed to float coke cans bearing liquid in a lecture theatre instead of say, outside.
I'll comment a little more generally than is justified by Davyd's comments, as he is actually an extreme member of an entire class of comments we have recieved this week. I suspect this is because people with negative opinions always feel that they're more important to express than those with positive opinions. I'm going to assume that the 490 people who haven't expressed an opinion are largely happy with the conference.
Well, I was going to say nice things about linux.conf.au, as really there was only a few tiny problems that I had issue with in what was otherwise a great conference. However, it seems that one particular organiser (who I will not link to) who I had not made a personal attack at (I was referring to someone else) has decided to get a little petty.
Let's go back and look at what Davys actually said:
"So, as well as the class of geek I have classed as the Adrians, there is a class of geek we will now refer to as the Alexes. These are the anally retentive geeks who won't let you experiment and play with things because it might possibly be a little silly. Commonly identified as stick in the muds. They spend so long thinking something through, that they never actually get to do it. They like to populate positions of pseudo-power, like being conference organisers. Resultantly, when you have developed a neutrally buoyant helium balloon and aluminium can rig, they sulk when you try to test it out. It seems that this species of geek has either been burnt in the past, and refuses to get back on the horse, or lacks the lateral problem solving skills to work out how to undo any unforseen side effects."
That's the entire first paragraph of his previous blog post which is linked above. I take that as a personal attack. He didn't focus on the one issue at hand, adequately describe the circumstances, and then drew conclusions as to the entire organizational setup of the conference based on that flawed foundation.
In rebuttal
It seems that doctored IRC conversations (I can't find this conversation, verbatim, in the channel logs, if it did exist, someone mail it to me) are the order of the day. I mean, what the fuck? This is no way to prove that you're not a moron yourself now, is it? The doctor recommends a chill pill, a skin thickener and perhaps a nice lie down.
The IRC log was not doctored, as comments from others in Davyd's blog has pointed out. It was a simple cut and paste from my Gaim session. Now, Davyd should either show the diffs between his logs and the one I posted, and therefore prove his case, or shut up. You'll note that both of Davyd's posts on this issue have involved making wild assumptions about the situation without verifying facts.
Sure, perhaps floating things off balloons got a bit out of control (however, floating a wineglass got pretty classy) but I think perhaps you're reading much too much into this. This particular organiser is not an Alex (Alex doesn't act like a tool) and in general only proves something I've long thought about a large part of the free software community.
The wine glass being in a room which wasn't 20 feet tall, full of electronics, and clearly marked as "no food or drink".
For the record, I was on the lca '03 committee as a shit monkey, keeping the attendees, network and vendors happy. A job that I did so well, that Sun gave me one of their internal-issue linux.conf.au polo shirts (James Andrewartha got the other one). As a result, I was manning the desk in the network room and didn't manage to get into the group photo. As you might expect, someone has to be seated behind a desk, but your desk was a barrier in which all the organisers were located, all the time. It was rare to see an organiser out on the floor, with the community, except when running an errand.
Whereas I am on the 2005 committee as someone who has actually organized things, and donated pretty much all my spare time for the last year to the conference. I object to after all that effort being labelled as a power hungry maniac because one little child couldn't play with his silly toy.
It's disappointing to see this sort of reaction from an organiser, I can only hope that it doesn't reflect too badly on the event in retrospect or on your LUG.
I'm not too concerned. I know that the opinion on PLUG and the computing club has decreased here because of your behaviour. I think people recognise that the organizers had a legitimate concern with your behaviour, that's certainly the feedback I've recieved. This is where the comments get a little more general... People seem to associate free software with the freedom to complain about, and the right to consultation about everything to do with events such as the conference. Why is having too much food at lunch such a big issue for example? It's not like the Pizza was made from clubbed baby seal or something...
What was good about linux.conf.au 2005
The venue was fantastic, this is by far the nicest facility that's been used. The addition of couches with power, wired and wireless access was a brilliant addition creating a vibrant atmosphere, although it did kill the terminal room.
The selection of speakers was quite good. Although some of the talks I went to did turn out to be brouchureware, or were ruined by the loud-obnoxious geeks having an argument and the talk having to be rushed through. There was a slight fuckup with the scheduling on the Friday, and I admit that would have been hard to resolve at the time, but I was disappointed to see two of the talks I wanted to go to scheduled against one another at the last moment. Hopefully the Theora streams turn out pretty good.
Both of the replaced speakers went home ill. As you say, there wasn't much we could do about it.
The giveaways were also a nice addition. USB keys (big ones) were given away at the end of each talk. This could have been slightly improved if the speakers had prepared a method for handing them out earlier (some speakers did this, some were very creative about it). The additional giveaway of an IBM X40 every day also made sure that people made it to the keynotes, something I know that Bernard didn't manage last year.
The professional networking session was a lot of fun. That was also an excellent choice of venue, the CSIRO Discovery Centre (kinda like Scitech, but with a Government name) did manage to accomodate enough people once they spread out, and there was more then enough to eat and drink.
I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but the network ran fairly smoothly, and was available through the entire venue (even the GNOME miniconf, once we figured it out). Significantly less crack, and associated breakage then we had in Perth, and no routing the college through an 11mbit 802.11b connection, like I suspect was the case in Adelaide.
I alluded to the Ogg Theora streams. Flumotion powered streaming allowed us to watch the Debian Miniconf from GNOME.conf.au. It proved significantly more exciting then my talk. I am told they are going to be combined with Annodex, and all sorts of things. This could be the most exciting LCA cd-rom yet.
Eben Moglen received a literal standing ovation. Everyone in the theatre was standing and applauding at the end of his keynote. I've never seen anything quite like it. He actually seems rather brilliant, but possibly might fanboy RMS just a little too much.
Things that were bad about linux.conf.au 2005
The registration desk created a barrier between the conveners and the delegates that I don't feel gave a suitable opinion. Especially as at any one time, there would be four of them in there, simply using their laptops. Much too high a number. In my opinion it is the duty of the organisers to interact with the community, to really get a feel for how the conference is going, not to palm this duty off onto a number of sherriffs.
I saw one talk during the conference (Mark Shuttleworth's). I know what happened behind that desk. That was us making sure that everything was organized, that people had a chance to ask their questions, that the catering was sorted out, and that the feedback email et cetera was being dealt with. For example, much of my sitting behind that desk was booking and organizing free hot air balloon rides for speakers. That took hours, but a delegate wouldn't even know if they didn't make the time to find out why people were behind the desk instead of just making assumptions.
I also fail to understand how the Penguin Dinner cost $60 (need to check the price). The lack of a bar tab, and the fact that I didn't eat very much food does not make me feel like I really got my money's worth. The venue (the ANU Union Refectory) was no comparison to last year, but then again that was organised by a gay man, and as such, pretty swanky.
We felt that people felt uncomfortable in 2004's dinner venue and that the serves were too small. The buffet was therefore an attempt to make sure people got what they wanted, and there was enough food. The lack of a bar tab is because we got significant feedback from the non-drinkers that subsidizing a few people to get off their faces is unfair, and I agree. There was food left over after the event, so I can only assume that everyone had enough to eat.
The dinner was cheaper than last year, with a lot more food. I was one of many who went out for pizza after 2004's dinner because I was still hungry.
I think the lack of free alcohol really showed in the lack of enthusiasm when bidding for the T-shirt. Sober people don't do as many stupid things unfortunately. While on the shirt, there seemed to be little interest in the charity, even though it is a great charity, and incredibly relevant and a very noble act on behalf of Steve. I think had some people known why he chose it, there would have been a lot more interest, the lady they got to talk up the charity (it was SidsForKids, incidently) did not do a fantastic job.
We got $450 less for the shirt than last year. The auction was not a failure. Additionally, you do need to remember that it was just a 100% cotton made in Haiti fabric garment. How much money do you want for it? I think there are also ethical issues with taking large amounts of money from drunk people.
Free tip for giving exciting public speeches, don't lean down on the lecturn when you speak, and don't just stare at your laptop screen. You need to stand straight, look confident, and make eye contact with people around the room, find the ones who are nodding. It also helps if you don't put all your jokes on the slides where everyone has already read them by the time you get to them. (NB. I'm not the world's best public speaker, but this seemed like a strong contention around the con).
Oh, and I appear to have lost my favourite jumper (sweater), but this is hardly the fault of the conference organisers.
Did you check with lost property?
In summary
I don't want to appear to overly negative, because I think the organisation of this conference was actually incredibly good. Especially as those of us embittered enough were making sideline commentry about whether or not this conference would be a success or a failure. I do tip my hats to you and your organisational, regardless of what you think of me and my commentry. I look forward to 2006 in Dunedin, in the newly aquired Australian State of South Zealand.
By the way, the IRC thing was Tony's idea.
Technorati tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference
posted at: 16:48 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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Well, it turns out we all had the flu. I could hold posters up with what has been coming out of my sinuses the last couple of days. I have a theory that it's all Tim Potters fault, but I could be wrong.
Technorati tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference
posted at: 03:27 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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Fri, 22 Apr 2005
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One of the things I do occasionally is have a it of a look see at my web traffic logs. It's useful to know why people come here, what they're looking for, and where they're coming from. It is of course also an ego boost to know that a least a couple of people come here every now and then.
So, in chronological order let's look at some Slashdottings I have data for...
In December 2003, on Christmas day in fact, my Linux penguin made out of fairy lights was Slashdotted. unfortunately the only data which survives from the machine that hosted this site at that time is the webalizer log output:
You can see that one metric December 2003 Slashdotting is around 290,000 hits. Ignoring the fact that the box gets traffic on other days, and that therefore not all of that traffic can be attributed to the Slashdotting.
Next, the linux.conf.au 2005 box was Slashdotted several times. Here's the traffic log for the box from when it first went online to that last day of the conference. I'll try to remember to update the graphs a few months after the conference when we decommission the machine.
Herm. Are Slashdottings getting more pathetic?
Technorati tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference slashdot
posted at: 21:35 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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(13:56:08) davyd [~davyd@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(13:58:14) redcliffe [~david@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(13:59:19) BillShovel_ [~BillShove@CPE-144-133-95-213.vic.bigpond.net.au] entered the room.
(13:59:59) mikal: Heh
(14:00:07) Magni is now known as Alex_1
(14:00:26) sjh is now known as Alex_0
(14:00:27) You are now known as Alex_3
(14:00:30) jk- is now known as Alex_2
(14:02:50) interalia_ [~ubuntu@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:04:23) alli [~alison@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:04:39) alli is now known as Alex_4
(14:05:02) chris___ is now known as Alex_5
(14:05:06) terminus [~terminus@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:05:25) Alex_2: teehee
(14:06:05) TBBle: Uhhh...?
(14:06:34) mithro [~tim@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:07:38) pizzathief [~ilikepizz@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:08:32) mithro: so where are people atm?
(14:08:40) mithro: still eating pizza or in talks?
(14:08:50) yaknob [~tim@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:08:55) pigeon: i'm at t2 about gameboy advance
(14:09:43) sch [~shemminge@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:10:13) mithro: pigeon: hows it going?
(14:10:42) pigeon: so far so good... going thru the hardware spec atm, some introduction stuff
(14:11:50) kimlca [~kim@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:13:23) pigeon: mithro: u?
(14:13:46) Keybuk left the room (quit: Remote closed the connection).
(14:15:27) pizzathief: daniel stone only write his talk last night while suffering from the flu , I hope he's ok in there
(14:15:33) pizzathief: wrote
(14:16:25) bernard__ [~bernard@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:17:09) LapTop006: pizzathief: you've been to a danny talk before
(14:17:15) sch left the room (quit: "Leaving").
(14:17:18) LapTop006: this is probably the most prepared he's ever been
(14:17:23) LapTop006: and it's not bad
(14:18:19) mithro: i'm in the floppy disc block driver talk
(14:18:53) pizzathief: suspend2 got cancelled?
(14:19:07) davyd: it was yesterday, I think
(14:19:11) mtearle_ [~mtearle@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:19:12) davyd: didn't it get moved to yesterday?
(14:19:26) pizzathief: doh
(14:19:29) Alex_3: It's on now in MCC1
(14:19:38) Lathiat: according to #lca1 its on now
(14:20:04) pizzathief: so there's 4 talks on now
(14:20:06) pizzathief: cool
(14:20:07) mithro: no
(14:20:09) Alex_3: No!
(14:20:24) mithro: everyone called freedesktop.org, fd.o
(14:20:33) pizzathief: oic
(14:20:33) Alex_3: Suspend2, gameboy, Desktop Linux
(14:20:35) mithro: fd.o is the floopy disk block driver :P
(14:20:43) pizzathief: yes, just got that
(14:20:45) pizzathief: sorry
(14:20:58) Alex_3: pizzathief: we have a job for you...
(14:21:06) Alex_3: pizzathief: go steal some pizza?
(14:21:28) pizzathief: unfortunately my stomach is full , so I can't really steal any more
(14:22:12) pizzathief: plus I've paid for it , so i can't really "steal" it
(14:22:31) Alex_3: Well, you could assume that a sponsor paid for it
(14:22:42) pizzathief: true
(14:22:46) ***mtearle_ burps
(14:22:50) ***mtearle_ was full too
(14:22:52) Alex_2: or steal pieces that someone else paid for
(14:22:53) Alex_3: The rego price is subsidised by them after all.
(14:23:06) Alex_3: mtearle: take some pizza back to perth with you? It's a long flight
(14:23:20) pizzathief: I could stick some in my pockets
(14:23:21) Lathiat: heh
(14:23:26) ***Lathiat grins at pizzathief
(14:23:26) ***mtearle_ shudders
(14:23:38) ***Alex_2 suggests some kind of pizza sculpture
(14:23:47) Alex_3: Heh
(14:24:15) pizzathief: massive tux made out of pizza
(14:24:21) pizzathief: it won't melt this time
(14:24:29) pizzathief: er , pizza boxes
(14:24:31) Alex_1: I can see a larger than life mosaic of "tridge the saint"
(14:24:41) yaknob left the room (quit: "leaving").
(14:25:37) pizzathief: my laptop's name is "pizzabox"
(14:25:46) davyd left the room (quit: Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)).
(14:26:03) Alex_2: ok, back to normal
(14:26:03) Alex_1 is now known as Magni
(14:26:07) Alex_2 is now known as jk-
(14:26:11) Alex_5 is now known as __chris
(14:26:12) You are now known as Mikal
(14:26:23) Alex_0 is now known as sjh
(14:26:51) Alex_4 is now known as alli
I am so in the Alex zone.
Technorati tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference alex
posted at: 21:28 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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...culture mean that people feel they have the right to do moronic things like try to fly half full coke cans tied to helium balloons through lecture theatres clearly marked as not allowing food and drink? Why is it that a couple of people acting like three year olds can put such a downer on all the hard work that a bunch of people have put in? Why is it that these people characterise a reasonable request as coming from "the anally retentive geeks" who "like to populate positions of pseudo-power, like being conference organisers"? Are you a moron, or do you not understand how much work goes into a conference?
Oh, and while I'm on the topic, which is it that people feel they shouldn't put their rubbish in the bin... The organisers are trying to run a conference. Do they really have the time to clean up after people as well?
Rant over, and I'm off to bed. Last day of the conference tomorrow.
Technorati tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference
posted at: 06:58 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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Thu, 21 Apr 2005
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LCA has ROCKED WAY HARD according to Pia. I would like to think we've at the very least wobbled a little, bit it's really hard to tell as an organiser... Heck, I haven't seen any talks yet.
What do other people think of the conference? Are we doing ok? Is there anything next year can do better?
Technorati tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference
posted at: 18:42 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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Doug seems to think that running LCA is a little like having small children. I think it's a little different personally... I would describe myself as very tired (I gave myself an early mark today to go home and sleep), and in urgent only mode.
It's a bit different from small kids -- there is a lot less crying. I don't feel harassed or stressed per se. Just tired.
Technorati tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference tired
posted at: 04:02 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry
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Wed, 20 Apr 2005
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) lca2005(
)
