JediMoose

OK – it’s been a bit late coming, but I thought I really ought to pen some words about LRL this year.

This was originally billed as the end of LugRadio. However, while the podcast has now finished, it was announced at the event that there will be an LRL 2009, which is brilliant. The only downside was that it meant that I completely failed to mourn the passing of LR properly.

If I was to sum up this years event in one word, it would be FUN. This was the most fun I have had in a long time. Not that the other LRLs weren’t fun (quite the contrary), just that this year was, well, “funner”.

I didn’t get to many talks this year, but I was involved in a fair few bits and pieces. The only talk I saw was Bruno’s “Baguette on Snails” talk, which was, as expected, hilarious, but also conveyed a serious point. I did my own talk on Saturday afternoon, which went well, and seemed to get some good response. I also got commissioned into the “Mass Debate” on Sunday afternoon – sitting on the stage with Jeremy Allison, Matthew Garrett and Max Spevack was, I admit, a little daunting. While they probably wouldn’t see it, I would regard them as “celebrities” of the open source world, and I felt a little, well, insignificant beside them. I managed to say some stuff – hopefully it was insightful

My main occupation during the weekend was to stroll around while dressed in a large chinny raccoon suit. It was swelteringly hot, but I had a brilliant time. It was like being Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. I was originally worried that it would be a 1 joke wonder, but it seemed to be immensely popular with everyone, and I got my photo taken loads. Oh, and got involved in a little stunt during Neuro’s talk

Socially, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights were all great. The Karaoke on Saturday night was much better than I expected, and everyone seemed to have a good time.

I suppose I had better say a quick word about the Gong-a-Thong Lightbulb Talk Extravaganza this year, mostly because I ended up presenting it. I’d say that I would leave it to your imagination, but there are enough photos on the internet should you wish to corrupt your innocent young minds. There isn’t a proper explanation for this bizarre aberration in my otherwise normal behaviour, other than I was asked on the Thursday before, and agreed when it became obvious that they needed someone and it would require a hero to step forward. And I guess that’s the ultimate thing – the LR community has always made me _feel_ like a hero. The fact that it was, apparently, the funniest one ever (sorry Drinky and Aaron) was an added bonus. Oh, and the raccoon puppet on the front was there for additional coverage – the large, furry, stripey penis effect was just an added bonus.

A few thankyous need to go in here too – a number of people really made the weekend work for me:

• Heather – for letting me go in the first place.
• neuro – for driving me there and back
• Jono – for letting me sleep on his sofa/floor over the weekend
• MrsRon – for giving the crew breakfast and lunch
• Steph (aka babyRon) – for helping me in and out of my costume, and keeping me hydrated through the day
• Xalior – for buying the Chinnysuit, and helping out with the display stuff

(Hopefully I’ve not missed anyone)

Roll on LRL 2009

mrBen

I’ve been a long time user of the irssi IRC client, and for a while now I’ve been wondering if I could log all my private messages without having to log all the channel history as well. I log all my instant messaging in Pidgin, because it often has useful information that I want to check back for, but I’ve lost a lot of stuff by not having logging in irssi.

So here’s how you do it, in 2 simple commands:

/set autolog on
/set autolog_level MSGS -crap -clientcrap -ctcps


This will set up a log structure something like this:
~/irclogs/<network>/<nick>.log
for instance ~/irclogs/freenode/mrben.log if I had PMed you on the Freenode network (where I hang out).

Anyway – I thought this was really useful, and not as easy to find on Google as it should have been. Enjoy.

mrBen