Leaving the Ubuntu UK podcast.
September 1, 2010 by ciemon · 3 Comments
Three years ago, Alan Pope asked me if I’d like to join him and a few others in making a podcast about Ubuntu from/for the UK. My initial reaction was that I have nothing to offer; sure I’m a bit of a geek but that’s about it, I certainly don’t think I can speak from a position of authority with regard to Linux. The other thing that they possibly hadn’t considered was that, at the best of times I’m more of a listener than a speaker; if you check back to season one of the show you’ll certainly hear that that’s the case!
But I said yes, and the whole team ploughed enthusiastically into producing the show, and we had a great time. Sure it was hard work and we made a lot of changes to make sure the show was what we wanted it to be (as we do now) but it was a lot of fun.
Two and a half seasons later, I think the show is quite successful, we get a massive amount of downloads and there’s a fair sized community behind the show too. Unbelieveably we’ve been on stage twice for live shows as part of OggCamp which is an incredible buzz even though the anticipation isn’t much fun. What some people can’t understand is that we make the show just for the love. That means that every two weeks we drive for 2 hours, spend around 3 hours recording, then about another 6 hours producing the show. Pre-show preparation is continual and we’re always adding bits to the show notes so that we record what we hope is current and relevant to our wide audience.
But now after 3 years it’s time to move on, and I’ll be leaving at the end of this year.
I’m not the kind of person that wants or needs recognition, but I’m not feeling the passion anymore. That’s not just for the show, but for the whole “get involved” nature of Ubuntu. In the the last few episodes of the show I’ve spoken about getting away from the computer and doing other things; I guess that leaving the show was inevitable.
It’s been an absolute blast and I’ve learned a spectacular amount about producing podcasts, Ubuntu and the community, and possbily most importantly working with other people who only have themselves as a driving force. I don’t plan to become a recluse, but as I said at the beginning I’m a quiet chap by nature… we’ll just have to see.
A killer combination, byobu and terminator
May 22, 2010 by ciemon · 4 Comments
I was amused by someone today, specifically by their condescending tone when they suggested that byobu had nothing to offer the power user. Is there some other system that can show:
architecture, battery, cpu count, cpu freq, cpu temp, custom (user definable field), date, disk size and use, ec2 cost, fan speed, host name, ip address, load average, memory available and used, network traffic, processes, reboot required, services running, time (system and utc), update info, uptime, users and a few other things too, all in two lines of constantly updating text an example of which is below?
The other smart thing that byobu provides is multiple shell sessions from one login, which are effectively tabbed, making it easy to maintain multiple logins, sessions etc all over one ssh connection. Of course, they’re all maintained when you drop the ssh connection and you log back in to the existing byobu session.
Now, if you happen to have access to multiple servers, then terminator is also an excellent piece of software because it provides multiple terminals in one window:
Each of those terminals can be maximised (Ctrl+Shift X) whilst the others remain connected and working in the background. Zoom out, Alt-Tab to the next server and you have fast access, with an overview of everything.
One part of terminator that I don’t use is standard tabbed windows, mainly because I don’t have that many servers to work with, but it’s possible to take that image above, make a new tab, and have a similar layout with a bunch of other servers, at which point your head explodes trying to keep track of where you are.
So… can someone tell me of an alternative to this awesome combination?
The security dilemma, carrying keys on your phone.
May 15, 2010 by ciemon · 5 Comments
For at least 6 months I’ve been waiting to get a new phone; with Android being the obvious option and the HTC Desire fitting the bill perfectly, it arrived yesterday.
One thing that my HTC TyTn-II and Windows Mobile didn’t do too well was ssh; tiny screen, tiny keys, tiny text made it hard, and the fact that it mashed byobu when I did manage to log in meant that I really didn’t use it.
By there are none of those problems with the new phone.
I’ll be carrying my private ssh key on my phone, with my pgp key too, or should I say that I’m considering it. I guess that I’m not comfortable with having those keys in a un-encrypted state on a device that can be easily lost; effectively compromising everything that I use the keys with. Right, before panic sets in, what’s the risk?
I think there are two, unknown loss of the keys and known loss of the keys.
Unknown loss of the keys, done whilst the phone isn’t in my pocket, is certainly the worst case, because I’d be unaware of the compromise. If I know I’ve lost the keys then I can revoke and replace them in accordance with my plan (once I’ve written it). Of course I don’t just use my keys on personal work, and so this is a real risk, not just geek panic.
So how do I solve this problem, is there an application to encrypt my SD disk or files on it?