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The speaker selection commitee for Ohio LinuxFest 2006 has made their final pick of presentations, and (I think) all of the selected speakers have now confirmed their attendence. All of the submitted presentations were interesting, and it was a real challenge to select just a few. We really wished we could have selected all of them! We're working hard to expand the scope of the conference for next year, in order to accomodate more great presentations.

We worked extra hard to ensure that the selected presentations were education- or community-focused. One of the complaints I (and many others) had about last year's event was that some of the presentations were little more than commercials for the sponsoring vendors. We're all pretty confident that the presentations won't be overly commercial this year.

Chris DiBona from Google will give the opening keynote, discussing Google's interactions with the Open Source community. A brief discussion of Google came up during this month's COLUG meeting, and it was generally agreed that even though Google doesn't open source many of their products, they still do an awful lot to support the open source community in general. Heck, most of the Subversion development team is on Google's payroll.

Jon 'maddog' Hall will give the closing keynote for the day. His presentation sounds really worthwhile:

It may have been from any number of evangelical speakers with grey hair and even greyer beards, but now you are ready to plunge ahead and yell 'Yeah Brother!'....but you don t know where to start.
It really is not that hard, and this talk will show you the path to enlightenment. You may come away, as most pilgrims do, with the thought 'That was so simple!', but to have the path illuminated with a bright light may keep you from stumbling in the darkness.

In a follow-up email to a question I asked maddog, he elaborated: "I was tired of telling people WHY they should be using free software, and I thought I would try telling them HOW to do it. A lot of the talk is common sense, but in a lot of ways we have not had any of that for the past 20 years or so. :-) So the talk is relevant." maddog gave an excellent closing keynote at OLF 2004, so I'm excited to hear what he has to say this year.

Other presentations include:

• Jorge Castro's "The Integration Holy Grail", which focuses on GNU/Linux in a Windows Active Directory environment. I'm doing this very thing at work now, so I'm eager to see how someone else is tackling these issues.
• Rich Bowen's "20 things you didn t know you could do with your Apache Web Server". He promises that this will be the first ever public demonstration of mod_pony -- you can hardly afford to miss it!
• Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier's "Are you Linux compatible?", which is an interesting twist on GNU/Linux advocacy.
• Ed Montgomery's "The Future of Education is Open!" will examine the role of Free Software in education. This, too, looks to be an interesting presentation.
• Jay Pipes' "MySQL Performance Tuning Best Practices" should be good for the database crowd. I attended a presentation Jay gave at OSU: he's a terrific presenter, and was able to succinctly discuss a lot of nitty-gritty stuff. I suspect this will be one of the more technical sessions of the day, and not necessarily for the database newbie.
• Christopher Browne will go on immediately after Jay with "PostgreSQL - What's New?", to give us the inside scoop on the other major player in the Free Software database arena.

In addition to a handful of other great presentations, there will also be a two-hour moderated panel on virtualization, with speakers from HP, IBM, Parallels, and possibly others (I'm not sure if Xensource or VMware have confirmed yet). This is likely to be the most commercial of all the presentations, but given the number of participants on the panel I'm hopeful that it'll focus on the issues related to virtualization, and not so much any specific product or why you should buy it.

Registration is still open, so hurry over to the OhioLinux website if you're interested in attending!

PS: be sure to arrive early for a special surprise!

I called my sister in Kiev this morning. We used the Gizmo Project softphone for the call, and it worked great!

My sister has been using Skype for some time, and she's been reasonably happy with it. Most of her friends here in the States use Skype, too. Skype is good enough for most folks.

I've never been terribly keen on Skype. It worked on my Ubuntu laptop, but it seemed like a complete resource hog. Ultimately I decided not to use it for three main reasons:

1. Skype is not Free Software.
2. Skype uses a peer-to-peer mechanism to make every Skype user a relay point for Skype traffic
3. Skype only talks to Skype

The first issue isn't a huge deal, though I do prefer to use Free Software alternatives when they exist. The second issue is a real problem, for me. The p2p mechanism allows Skype to work regardless of the home network configuration in use, but it's not made entirely clear to end users that a) their calls will be routed through other people's computers; and b) other people's calls may be routed through their computer. I'm not entirely comfortable with that arrangement.

The third issue is a common problem with closed-source solutions: lock-in. Skype clients can only talk to other Skype clients, or to telephones via the SkypeOut service. There are lots of Voice-over-IP solutions being developed these days, so it seems rather short-sighted to lock oneself into a single vendor.

The Gizmo Project offers GNU/Linux, Mac, and Windows clients for their softphone. Gizmo softphones do not employ p2p routing. And most important of all, Gizmo softphones can speak SIP, which means it can work with other VoIP products and providers, like Ekiga, FreeWorldDialUp, Asterisk, and more.

Indeed, I was able to iniate a test call from Ekiga (the successor to GnomeMeeting). Ekiga is Free Software, and as such will be my softphone of choice.

What a weekend!

Saturday morning I opened up the FreeGeek Columbus booth at Comfest. I spent about an hour there, talking to the dozen or so who stopped by to find out about the group. Then I had to run to the COLUG meeting, since I had the key to the facility. Due to poor planning on my part, we didn't have a formal presentation this month. Surprisingly, we had a much larger turn-out than I would have expected, and a pretty interesting discussion ensued.

After COLUG, I zipped back to Comfest, where I spent the rest of the day. I didn't see too much of the festival, preferring instead to stay at the booth. We gave away about 50 Ubuntu CDs, a dozen or more OpenCDs, and hundreds of fliers. We met some wonderful, interesting people, and I had a great time talking about Linux and Free Software.

I was surprised at the number of people who were familiar with GNU/Linux. A lot more people were extremely interested learning more about it. One fellow wanted to bend my ear complaining about spyware and adware on his PC. I smiled, handed him an Ubuntu Live CD and said, "Here. Boot your computer from this CD. You can browse the internet without worrying about viruses or spyware!" He was skeptical, at first, but after a little more conversation his skepticism gave way to enthusiasm.

The overwhelming majority of people we spoke with, though, were interested in our computer recycling program. Nearly everyone has an old clunker PC, in the closet or in the garage, and they were thrilled to learn that we'd dispose of it for them. I suspect we'll have a huge influx of donated hardware in the weeks to come! Hopefully some of the folks who donate will stick around to volunteer with us, to help disassemble and sort the donations!

Around 8 PM I left the FreeGeek booth for the Jazz Bar, where I was scheduled to serve beer until midnight. I was more than a little anxious as I walked up: the lines for beer were more than 20 people deep -- and there were at least that many separate queues! After a quick refresher of the rules, they put me on the tap, and I started pulling beers.

It was the fastest four hours of my life. I must have walked two miles total, taking two or three steps at a time. And I had a ball! The other bartenders were all good natured, and even though we didn't ever really converse at all, we had a lot of fun together, making quick jokes or just sharing amazement at the number of thirsty people. We fell into a pretty good rhythm, and we were able to work together to serve beer as quickly as possible. As we approached the tap, mugs in hand, we'd ask the person already there to leave it running so we could fill up quicker. One tap was left on non-stop for well over ten minutes, as we shuttled back and forth between it and the counter!

I did learn a few things that might not be entirely intuitive to the beer drinkers. At Comfest, they sell plastic mugs for $2, which folks are encouraged to use (in order to maximize the beer sales profit on beer sales, as opposed to beer + plastic cup sales). Clear mugs were preferred by all the bartenders, because it made it so easy to see how full the mug was, and how much foam was at the top. Folks with clear mugs consistently got better pours than those folks who had dark or black mugs.

Friendliness also goes a long way. A simple smile, or a genuine "thank you" was far more likely to get you a better pour than any of the crazy stories people concocted. The system was this: one blue drink token would get you a 16 oz. plastic cup, or half a mug, of either Labatt's Blue or Labatt's Blue Light. Two blue tokens were required for a full mug of Labatt's. A single black token was good for a full mug of Labatt's, or half a mug of Columbus Pale Ale. Two black tokens would get you a full mug of Pale Ale.

I must have had ten different people try to tell me that they "lost" their other token, or maybe they gave three the last time by mistake, and could they please get a full mug this time? It was actually quite humorous, and the bartenders all had a lot of fun laughing about these stories as we poured the beers. I usually decided to split the difference, and give them three quarters of a mug. One fellow, a soft-spoken middle aged man, complained that he had already stood in four lines just to get his beer. He handed me a single blue token, and his mug (a clear one). Taking a bit of pity on his sob story, I gave him three quarters of a mug. When I handed it back, he literally gaped at it, and then just stood there looking dejected. I explained the system to him, and he said "I just don't get this labrythin of rules you guys have." He tried -- unsuccessfully -- to weasel more beer out of me. He finally gave up and wandered away.

To my surprise, no one was belligerent or ill-tempered. I only saw a couple of really drunk people, and thankfully they weren't in my line. Most people were in good moods, even after having waited upwards of twenty minutes in line. One enthusiastic girl reached across the table and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek! Folks grumbled a bit when I asked for their ID, complaining that they had shown their ID when they purchased their tokens; but everyone relaxed when I explained that the folks selling tokens weren't the one who'd go to jail if I served someone underage. I only had to turn away two people for lack of identification; and one of those I genuinely felt bad for: he told me he had received an OMVI and lost his license as a result. Thankfully for him, though, his dad was there, too: I gave the beer to his dad, and instructed him to walk out of sight before handing the beer to his son.

I did have to turn away a lot of people who wanted to pay cash at the bar, rather than buy tokens. Folks had to buy tokens, as no cash was handled at the bar. The festival organizers learned a long time ago that this system helps prevent problems.

Festival volunteers were paid in beer tokens. Volunteer tokens were white. I feel bad, now, because I wasn't quite as generous with the volunteers as I learned others were. I originally treated the white tokens the same as blue: two white would get a full mug of Labatt's. Toward the end of the evening, though, I eased up a bit, and gave folks a full mug of whatever they asked for when presented with a white token.

I found out at the end of the shift that the bartenders were permitted free beer during their entire shift. We had a couple beers when we were all finished; but the reality was that we simply didn't have time to imbibe while serving! After the bar closed, we went behind the beer trucks and enjoyed our beers while some other volunteers did cleanup and some basic accounting. Our tent sold 260 kegs of beer on Saturday. We all simply stared at the line, two high and two deep, of empty kegs.

Sunday, I slept in very late, then went to Comfest first thing. I spent the afternoon at the booth again, then left for a cookout at my dad's house. Dad's cookouts are always fun: he's got a master's touch on his grill, and the friends and neighbors are wonderful people. After the cookout I went back to Comfest to help tear down our booth. I intended to volunteer on Comfest cleanup detail, but instead spent the last several hours just wandering around with one of the fellows from FreeGeek while his wife wandered around looking at jewelry.

This was, by far, my best experience at Comfest ever. I will definitely be volunteering again next year!

Today was the first day of ComFest 2006. ComFest is the Community Festival in Columbus. It's been going on every year since 1972, and is a wonderful showcase of local art, music, and business.

FreeGeek Columbus has a booth at ComFest this year:

At first, I was a little trepidatious, unsure whether we would fit well with the bulk of crowd that attends the event. Thankfully my concerns were unfounded: we had a lot of people asking us about recycling computers, GNU/Linux, and computers in general. I think we'll see a huge influx of donated hardware in the coming weeks!

Adam and Pat were also there, advocating FreeGeek Columbus, GNU/Linux, and Free Software!

Tomorrow I'll be staffing the FreeGeek booth through the afternoon; then at 8 PM I'll be serving beer at one of the beer tents. This is what I have to look forward to:

Tomorrow will no doubt be an exhausting day, but I'm really looking forward to it!

I found the iPod Shuffle Database Builder tonight. It looks like a super simple way to deal with MP3 files on my iPod Shuffle. GTKPod had worked okay for me in the past, but shuffle-db looks to be a good bit easier.

I hadn't ripped any CDs since upgrading to Dapper. The steps I took to enable MP3 encoding under Breezy seemed to have been lost in the upgrade, somehow. I read this, this, and this. I tried using the Marillat version of gstreamer0.8-lame, but it didn't work any better than the Dapper-supplied version. Sound Juicer extracted the file, but left it as a 50 meg unidentifiable "data" file on my hard drive.

It wasn't until I read CDRipping on the Ubuntu wiki that I discovered that I was missing a vital package: gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse.

If you upgraded from Breezy to Dapper, you might need to execute sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse. Then follow the instructions for adding the appropriate gstreamer pipeline to Sound Juicer, and everything should "just work".