Friday, January 29 — Day 1

Gathered at Red Hat’s main office, we brainstormed in a manual ‘tag cloud’ kind of way.  Mel had us all take sticky notes, write upon them based upon a few words on the white board and then, stick them to said white board appropriately.  This got our minds going about what a FUDCon or FAD should be, why it was important and the things that could really be improved.  I felt very happy about the amount of ideas that were shared on these sticky notes.  it was quite cathartic to get out the things that always had bugged me or I thought needed improvement in our Events.  I have a few pictures of us doing this process, enjoy them.

After spending about 1.5 hours doing this and discussing it, we broke into separate groups, the FUDCon 2.0 folks (upstairs) and FUDCon Live folks, aka me, Yaakov, and the freeseer folks online (downstairs).  My main target was to get the freeseer application working with completely free software and build the AV Kit from components I had, plus the ones that Mel had purchased for this project.

After getting downstairs with Dennis Gilmore (he was my helper for the first hour), we quickly discovered that one component, the Epiphan vga2usb device, was not working.  After a bit of digging, we also discovered that it had a non-free driver and that it would likely not be easy to find a free driver alternative.  We did, however, attempt to build the binary they provided, but kept getting errors.  More on this later on (or in another post), so stay tuned.

I spent the next few hours trying to get everything else up and running, doing research to find a different alternative for video output from a VGA source to USB input.  heffer joined us on IRC and gave me some good links as to where I might look for a Scan Converter and a easyCAP device.  While a little lower quality, the Linux drivers for it are completely open and free, so I set out with a plan to find one in Raleigh.

At 4pm, Max and I headed out on the town, hunting down several items, including firewire PCMCIA adapters (for our miniDV camera) and the Scan Converter components.  We needed to get a screw driver and some other firewire adapter stuff too, we headed to CompUSA. Though normally I wouldn’t go there, but this CompUSA had actually been converted from a Tiger Direct, so I thought we had a chance.  After about 1.5 hours of failure, we ended up with two firewire cards and some audio cables, we headed off to see Avatar in 3D.

Saturday, January 30 — Day 2

After leaving Avatar, we discovered a nice big blanket of snow had come down in Raleigh.  Just 2-3 inches, and in Utah, we’d think nothing of this, but here it’s quite a bit different.  First off, North Carolina doesn’t seems to have the infrastructure, no plows or ice melt, to really deal with something like this kind of storm.  There were news reports of it on every station, the Governor called for a state of emergency, and I just thought it was odd.  Because of this, it was determined that we would not leave the hotel for Day 2 of the FAD.  Instead, we reserved a room in the hotel and worked from there.  Luckily, the hotels infrastructure, plus the Days Inn next door provided us with our networking needs, while Max stayed at his apartment and called in using Fedora Talk.

My work was to spend as much time with the FreeSeeR folks and do tons and tons of testing of their code, plus provide feedback and gstreamer pipelines to get us closer and closer to our eventual goal.  Thanh had spent a lot of time while we were at Avatar to turn FreeSeeR into an API.  He also altered the code to put the gui into a more sensible tool, with both Qt and Gtk implementations.

About half way through the day, I discovered that I had accidentally left my power adapter for my audio mixer in Max’s car (he was 15 minutes way with no snow and at least 25 with), essentially eliminating my high quality audio testing.  Luckily Chris Tyler had a headset with a microphone and Dennis Gilmore had a webcam we could use because the firewire cards were a bit flaky and kept crashing my kernel.

By the end of the night, with some tweaking by Dennis and I, we had FreeSeeR working with DV input, USB video input, 1/4″ audio input and were able to output to an ogg file with reasonable quality and consistency.  A lot of testing later, and we were able to determine that we still needed to tweak some of the code to provide for a better way to adjust audio and video settings prior to recording.  All in all, the FreeSeeR software is coming along very nicely.  Andrew Ross and Thanh Ha have been doing an amazing job and I really appreciate their help working on getting this working.  The new version of FUDCon Live thanks you as well, because without this, we won’t be able to provide our users with a good quality remote experience.

Sunday, January 31 — Day 3

The sun is shining, but for some reason, the roads are still not that clear.  Several cars are still having difficulty climbing the incline out of the Best Western to the main road, which is now melting, but still very snow covered.  Today, we discover that we’ve met one major part of our goals, the Fedora Pony has been created!!  We must thank Robyn Bergeron for creating, Frank, the Fedora Pwnie.  Now mind you, Francis is really her name, but she’s such a tomboy that, well, you just can’t call her that, she doesn’t enjoy it too much.  So we call her Frank.

In addition to our major goal above of a Pony, the FUDCon Live team has done some amazing work.  Yaakov has been working on the FUDCon Live document with Mel, while I was working with the FreeSeeR guys to get their git repo moved over to fedorahosted.org, which is awesome!  I’ve been given commit and sponsor rights to the repo, so we’ll start getting more developers involved right away.  Have a look at the screenshots of the GUI if you’d like to see what FreeSeeR can do.

Jon Stanley and I discussed the possibility of moving fedorahosted.org over to gitolite, and discovered that Jesse Keating has been experimenting with it himself, so this might be something we can do in the near future.  While we currently appear to use gitosis, gitolite gives us the ability to set ACLs on a particular branch, which then can help keep the master branch cleaner.  To help illustrate this, there’s a very great article on nvie.com which explains a git branching system which can really make development and commits very clean and easy to track.  Gitolite can help with this, so I’m going to be experimenting with it this coming week.

I spent the rest of the day writing up the AV Kit wiki page along with Mel.  I stubbed it out, and she added a big section regarding the modules in the AV Kit.  I then rewrote much of that to cover the two styles of AV Kit we’ll be building over the next month or two.  In fact, I plan to have one complete in time for the Marketing FAD in March, where they can use and test it out.  I really hope to get some good feedback on it and improve FreeSeeR some more using these upcoming events as testing grounds.

Currently, I’m on a plane which I didn’t think would take off tonight, headed home for Salt Lake City.  I’m excited to see my sweetie and get some much needed sleep.  As much as I enjoy hanging out with my Fedora friends and working on projects like this, it really wears me out.  I’m ecstatic at the amount of work we accomplished though, and am very appreciative to Paul, Jon, Chris, Denis, Dave, Mel and Max, plus all the folks online for their hard work this weekend.

FUDCon 2.0 is alive and kicking, FUDCon Live will make it just that much better.  Watch for upcoming posts in the near future regarding FreeSeeR and the Fedora AV Kit and how everything is going to work.

Cheers,

Herlo

It’s clear that Mel has done some incredible work, getting a good number of people to Raleigh this weekend.  I’m looking forward to giving my input and listenting to others as we come up with better ways to handle such things as the EventBox, recording and streaming different presentations, encouraging users to join Fedora and the overall professionalism we portray at each of our events.  There are so many things to get done this weekend, I’m looking forward to seeing what comes out the other side.

As for what I will be doing most of the time.  While I plan to help with the initial brainstorming on FUDCon, external events, etc., I really plan to spend most of my time focusing on improving the way that we record and stream our events.  These events can be as simple as a Local User Group (LUG) meeting to something bigger, like the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE), the Ohio Linux Fest or Pycon, and of course, somewhere in there, is the Fedora FAD and FUDCon.

Now mind you, I can see hundreds of other uses for this concept of recording and streaming.  Including live video podcasts, recording for redistribution, ad-hoc collaboration sessions, troubleshooting a problem with code and many, many more use cases.  However, I think I’m going to try to limit my use cases to those specifically around our events.  Things where we can easily set up our recording equipment and share it with those interested, whether in real-time, or making it available later on to the general public.

The software we plan on using to get the recording and streaming off the ground, is called freeseer.  It’s been put together by some folks who help organize and run FOSSLC.  Andrew and Thanh have been hacking hard lately, altering their code to move from the patent encumbered ffmpeg, to the more open and free gstreamer library.  They’ve also been busy moving from a gui with a command line behind it, to using the python gstreamer bindings.  Much cleaner, much easier to manage and alter in real time.  I’m very excited to see how we can improve freeseer over this weekend.  I actually think we’ll be able to do quite a bit with freeseer to improve external participation in Fedora.

Well, the pilot just announced that we’ll be landing in Raleigh in about 20-30 minutes, and that I need to pack up my electronics.  I’m looking forward to seeing all of my Fedora friends and making an amazing events solution.  I’ll try to keep you updated, with pictures and text, over the next few days.

Cheers,

Herlo

Everything Just Works(TM).

I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to have a system working with great sound, awesome graphics and very usable GNOME and KDE desktops.  I really like the new NetworkManager features and the ability to tether any device, vpnc and other easy-to-configure options.  KVM support is much improved with the new libguestfs improvements.

Fedora 12 media should be available on December 3, if you are a Fedora Ambassador in North America, start requesting media* for your events (and ambassador kits).

You can get your copy today!!

Cheers,

Herlo

*NOTE: This request page is not for the freemedia project. You must be a Fedora Contributor to request media.  Join the Fedora Project today and help us continue making Fedora the best operating system!!

This project was dreamed up by Mr. Ian Weller and he graciously let me tag along to get the thing going.  At the Utah Open Source Conference tomorrow, we’re going to be digging into a workflow and concept around the items needed to make FES work.  We’ll be hanging out from 12:30-5pm in room 209 while we work on the project, feel free to drop by and ask questions as well.

So if you are interested in FES, come join us at UTOSC or remotely in #fedora-fad on irc.freenode.net

Cheers,

Herlo

I have been looking at airfare, hotel and other travel accommodations to FUDCon, but I seem to have more options than I can count.  Maybe some of you can make recommendations?  So here’s the details of my dilemma:

Option 1: Fly direct to Toronto

Now, of course, this is the easiest of the three options; in and out of Toronto International Airport (YYZ) is a great way to go.  What’s that you say?  Oh, right.  The cost prohibitive trip of a ticket that is well over $600.  WOW! That is all I can say…

Option 2: Fly to Boston and ride the FUDBus

To me, this option is the most appealing.  While I know that I can most likely crash with someone in Boston and then ride the FUDBus up, it’s going to be a bit more painful, but it might be worth the organizational headache to make what could become an epic hackfest (8+ hours) happen for me.

In this case, I would have to fly in Thursday evening, since the FUDBus leaves at around 9am from Alewife station in Boston.  And upon return, Tuesday morning could turn into Tuesday afternoon or Tuesday evening.  A bit scarier here for scheduling return flights.  The other part of this is the actual FUDCon event is only Saturday through Monday (Dec 5-7) so I would have to miss 5+ days of work, not just 1 or possibly 2 with the other options.

The price of this flight is a mere $409 round trip, a savings of over $180, so it could be worth the extra time as long as I don’t have to get an extra hotel room.

Option 3: Fly to New York City and ride a bus to get to the FUDBus

I have a good friend in Jon Stanley, who offered to put me up at his place on Thursday night, which is essentially the same as flying into Boston.  But there are a few benefits as well.  One is that the bus from NYC to Boston has an additional 4ish hours we’d get to hack and chat.  Since I’m really wanting to join the Fedora Infrastructure team, it would be a good opportunity to get my wings.  The other is that the cost from SLC to JFK is another $50 – $75 cheaper than Boston.

The drawbacks of having to leave earlier and travel longer seem to be a mitigating circumstance and really might be something I want to do.  I’m just not sure I’m willing to awake at 4am Eastern (2am Mountain) to take the bus to take the FUDBus.

Option 4: Fly to Buffalo and ride the bus to Toronto

This option seems the most economical and has the least amount of hassles save actually flying into Toronto.  Essentially, I would fly into Buffalo on Friday afternoon, catch a bus that would drive across the border and into Toronto.  The return trip is about as simple, just hop on the bus on Tuesday morning, and fly home that afternoon from Buffalo.  The cost is great too!  At a measly $200 round trip from Salt Lake, now that’s a deal!

I think the thing I am fighting with Buffalo, is that I’ll be doing this all by myself.  While it seems economical, I really, really would like to get on that FUDBus for the hackfest I am sure will happen.  Collaborating for an additional 8 hours is really really tempting.  Going to Buffalo would pretty much eliminate that option.  While I am a bit concerned about crossing the border and such, I don’ think it’s going to be the decision maker or cause me any real heartache.

Decisions, Decisions!

So what would you do?  How would you go to Toronto?  I have the funds right now and want to get everything booked in advance so I don’t have to worry about the details later.  I think my biggest debate point has to be whether to ride the FUDBus.  Money is probably the secondary issue, but comparing that seems to put Buffalo first without question.

I’m really excited either way for FUDCon this year.  I have some really good ideas to share and want to start building out a great Ambassador portal as well.  More on that to come!

Cheers,

Herlo

Now, I’ll be there from around 9am to about 1pm, so it might be good to come and hang out.  I’ll be dropping some Fedora DVDs and CDs by (which I need more Live Media already gah!) so people can pick them up and try out the coolest operating system in the world!

At about 3pm, I’m headed over to a friends house for boardgames.  We’re going to play ‘Arkham Horror’, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, which should be fun as I have never played it before.  Both jennifer and I are attending with some friends I’ve had for a short while now.  Should be a blast.

If it is really good, I’ll suggest playing it at the Boardgame Bash at UTOSC 2009 (you knew I couldn’t resist putting in a plug for the conference, did you?!)

Lastly, I’ll be settling in for the evening probably recovering from the hard week around 10 or 11 catch up on sleep and prep for golfing with my brothers on Sunday.

It’ll be a very nice weekend I think, looking forward to the excitement and relaxation.  I’m very excited to be semi-busy, but doing what I love.  I sure hope it turns out as well as I anticipate.

Cheers,

Herlo

Now that I am back from the SouthEast LinuxFest at Clemson University, I wanted to report on the fun we had this weekend.  I’m completely wiped out, but it was a very fun and productive weekend.  I wanted to say thanks to the gang at SELF for a job well done.  With only minor issues, they did an amazing job.  They’re first year conference had attendance of 500+, that’s great to hear!  Congratulation on such a great conference fellas!!

As far as my presentation, I was the victim of an apparent overheating of the projector.  After about 20 minutes of fiddling, the staff got it all solved with a portable projector that was waiting in the wings.  This did affect the time on my presentation though, so i wasn’t able to finish everything I wanted.  However, we did a lot of Q&A up front and helped explain some of the four foundations from the Fedora Project and talked a bit about the tools while we were waiting.  I usually show a completed customized liveusb, but ran out of time.  I hope everyone enjoyed it anyway.

The booth area was packed, and every presentation seemed full, it was a great conference.  I went to the after-party, where DualCore rapped for a while, which is always fun.  The rest of the night was drinking, socializing and having an altogether good time.  I recall eating at waffle house around 12:30am and then heading back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

On Sunday, we spent a good bit of time on the Docs Fedora Activity Day (FAD), quite productive and we made some good goals for F12.  I mostly helped by being an outsider looking in on this process, but did help Lee and Eric to understand packaging as Ian explained how packaging works.  It was great to help the docs guys get the rest of the modules for Zikula into Fedora.  I expect to see some good progress there over the next release period.

All in all, it was an awesome weekend, and if you ever get the chance, Mellow Mushroom pizza is the bomb!  I also took a lot of pictures, they are available up on Flickr.

Cheers,

Herlo

Get it here.

You can read the official release announcement and other helpful links as well.

Cheers,

Herlo

Essentially, the new idea is that we’re going to let the presenters be flexible with their schedules.  Thus presentations can happen any time in a 24-hour period (from 00:00 to 23:00 UTC time) this Sunday, May 3.

It looks to be a much simpler thing to make work for everyone.  Presentations will be available afterword on our Fedora Classroom Archive as well, so if you can’t stay up to watch it live, at least you can live it afterwards in the logs.

So you ask, who’s presenting.  Well, check out the Fedora Classroom wiki page and find out.  It looks to be fun and there should be something for everyone.

See you all there!!

Cheers,

Herlo

This was the first time I was able to meet Jon ‘Maddog’ Hall.  I was quite impressed by the stories he told in his presentation and at the after party. Maddog is an amazing character, funny, charismatic and very forward.  I really like his attitude about Free Software and am looking forward to chatting with him again.  I’m thinking that it’d be cool to get him out to Utah in October for UTOSC 2009.

The LFNW organizers are amazingly friendly and nice.  They invited us to a barbeque after the conference to unwind and enjoy their home. They purchased some salmon right off the boat that day, it was amazing.  Along with the drinks and friends, I was in heaven.  I am really grateful to my good friend, Karsten Wade, for being willing to spend a bit of time there, even on his daughter’s birthday (he had spent much of the day in Seattle with her previously, but still).

I met Adam Williamson, Jeff Sandys and Scott Dowdle who were all doing their part to help Fedora.  In addition, I got to spend a bit of time talking with Jesse Keating about a new messaging component for Fedora’s infrastructure (which he also presented at LFNW).  Oh, and did I mention the blackberry cobbler on Saturday for lunch?  You haven’t lived until you’ve had this blackberry cobbler put together by the culinary folks at the Bellingham Technical College.

With that, I suggest that next year, anyone and everyone should attend LFNW and enjoy the pictures (below).  On Friday, I’ll upload a few more since I’m limited to 100MB/month on my flickr account.

LinuxFest Northwest Pics

Cheers,

Herlo