Hello, this is a hookah coming to you once again from Lovely South East Michigan, a memorial
day as it happens here in the United States, so I'm not at work and it is beastly hot out
there.
But what I want to do is I want to give a little report on an event called Penguin
Khan that I had the pleasure of attending about a month ago, Penguin Khan is kind of
an interesting event.
I think a little different from many others in that it combines a science fiction convention
with a Linux fast.
Quite a few examples of each of those separately, but Penguin Khan is the only one I know
of that actually attempts to combine both of them.
So it makes for a very interesting weekend and I want to tell you about my weekend just
to give you a flavor of how I spent my time, but the thing you have to bear in mind with
all of this is that in any decent convention conference, what have you, every time slot is
going to have a bunch of different things you could be doing, so you're constantly trying
to decide which thing do I want to go to.
And that's a good thing.
I mean, it's a much better problem than looking at it and saying, you know, this all sucks
I don't want to go to any of it.
Fortunately, that was not a problem that I had on this particular weekend.
Now, the 2012 edition of Penguin Khan took place the last weekend in April, so the
2007 through the 29th, the science fiction author, Guest of Honor, was John Scalsey, who
is probably most famous for the old man's war series.
Oddly enough, I never attended any of his panels just peppers to be that way, and then
the tech guest of honor was Jim Gettis, and I'm not trying pronouncing that right,
G-E-T-T-Y-S, so maybe it's Gettis or Gettis or whatever.
But the thing that he might be famous that you might know about is he's to fellow who diagnosed
the whole problem of buffer bloat, which is getting a lot of attention now.
And it's a pretty serious problem on the internet.
Might be worth a show in and of itself one of these days to talk about what's involved
with buffer bloat.
But it's for another time, this is this is Penguin Khan.
So as I said, there's a bunch of things going on.
I have tended most years to spend most of my time in the Linux and technology stuff.
Even though I'm actually a science fiction fan, if you're into science fiction, particularly
some of the older science fiction, and you take a look at my domain name, ZWIL and ik.com.
You might recognize that that comes from science fiction.
It's a reference from a series of novels by author named I.E. Doc Smith, called the Lensman
Series.
And so I took that word from there and discovered no one had used it for a domain.
And it's now mine, all mine, yay.
So what happened here?
Penguin Khan starts on Friday afternoon.
I managed to take a little time off, leave the office a few hours early that day so that
I could get down there in good order.
And I got there about five o'clock, probably a little before five, but at five o'clock there
was a presentation by a friend of mine, Ryan Cather, talking about juju charms.
I didn't know a lot about juju charms.
I knew I had seen George Castro from canonical talking about it a lot without quite understanding
what it was he was talking about, but it looks like apparently juju charms is a way of
scripting how you can deploy, install, stand up, software platforms in the cloud.
It's kind of interesting, and in my new job, that is something that we're doing, so it was
kind of interesting to hear a little bit about how that works from Ryan.
And then right after that, it was my talk, which was on the Linux directory structure.
That seemed to go well, I might do see if I can adapt some of that for a hacker public radio
one of these days, and it was nice because I had a good turn out.
The talk was well received, and the fact that I got my talk out of the way really right
at the beginning meant I can kind of relax for the whole rest of the weekend and just do
whatever I felt like, and that's nice.
After my talk, I went over to the Ubuntu release party put on by the Ubuntu Michigan
loco, which I am a member of, and my friend Craig Maloney, who will come up again,
is the president, chairman, whatever of the loco, in other words, he's the poor bastard who
got stuck with having to do all the organizing work.
So we went to the release party, I did not have the Ubuntu 1204 installed at this point,
and actually, if I've mentioned before, I used the KDE version Cubuntu, but one of the firm
resolutions I've made is never to a platform upgrade right before you're supposed to give
a talk.
That way lies potential disasters, so I decided that was something I'd take a look at later.
In fact, when Penguin Con was over late Sunday, I started my first install of the 1204.
So after the release party, it was time for dinner, went out with Craig, his wife,
Jody Baker, Rick Harding, who is a developer who works for Cononical, I believe on launch
pad, lives in the area, and Rick and Craig do a podcast together called the lococast.
URL is in the show notes, it's kind of irregular, they might go a month or two without
doing anything, and then put out a couple a few weeks apart.
And see James Heiss, who was part of the Penguin Con, staff was with us, and there were
a few other people, I'm sorry if I'm drawing a blank on some of the names, I can even
picture one or two people, and I just don't remember their names.
We had a nice dinner, the Chinese food, and then I decided to go home.
So Saturday, Saturday is the day-long extravaganza, and it started off with a bang.
Bruce Schneier was speaking, and at any time I can go to here, Bruce Schneier, I'm going
to take advantage of that, for I assume most of you know that he is one of the top
people in the whole area of security, and if you didn't know that, then start checking
out, he's got books, he's got an email newsletter, a blog, well worth following this
guy.
So he did a talk on security and trust that I thought was pretty interesting, that he
started originally from the standpoint of computer security, and then looking at the whole
issue of trust as it happens in our society, and you know, what he points out is that
we trust all sorts of things all the time, he was talking about, you go to a restaurant,
you trust that no one has put poison in the food, right?
If you're walking down the street, you're trust that no one is going to drive their
car into the sidewalk and try and kill you.
So there are all sorts of things that we trust all the time, it's just a normal part of life,
but by the same token, it can be in the interests of individuals to violate that trust,
and try and take advantage of you in various ways.
So how does that work?
Where is the balance?
And he did a little bit of game theory, nothing terribly heavy, but I think intuitively you
can see that there has to be a balance there.
You cannot abuse trust unless trust is there to begin with, but if too many people abuse
the trust, then the trust disappears.
And so we develop social institutions to try and moderate and regulate all of this activity.
Then I went to a presentation on Beagle Board by a fellow named Jason Kridner, and I think
many people are familiar with Beagle Board, it's a nice open platform, runs Linux, it's
a good hobbyist kind of thing.
Then to a panel on libraries and librarians in the information age, and it was kind of interesting.
We had a couple of people who were professional librarians who were talking about how everything
is changing.
And there's copyright and digital restrictions and things moving into the electronic
realm, et cetera, it was very interesting to get their take on all of that.
Then there was a panel on Heinlein, and the panel was put on by Eric Raymond, who you
may know is the author of the Cathedral in the Bazaar, and Jim Gettys, who is the tech
guest of honor, the Buffer-Blood Guy.
He's done a lot of other things, that's just what is currently in the news.
So that was mostly just a bunch of geeks geeking out with occasional references to Heinlein.
Then I went to a panel by Jody Baker, and Jody is the life of Craig Maloney of the Ubuntu
Michigan logo, and I think I'd matter once or twice, as the first time I actually heard
her speak, very good speaker, she learned some things I didn't know, she teaches physics.
Seeing by the way, she did the talk, she's probably a darn good teacher too.
So this was about some of the things you can do, as a private citizen, to help advance
science, and so a lot of these are things that I think people listening to this podcast
would know about, like, setty at home, and those kinds of things are some of the genetic
stuff.
Then Craig did a talk on what's new with Ubuntu 12.04, and basically the focus of what
he was saying is, look, this is a long-term support release.
The focus is on stability, and they've really made it very stable, very usable.
I don't know if people have already made their minds up about all of this.
I know when Unity first was introduced, a lot of people just didn't like it, and I'm not
sure it was fully baked when it was introduced, but Craig made a pretty strong pitch that
in fact, it really is a good usable system, and in fact as a result of his talk, I decided
to install it on one of my machines, which I have been using for various things, just
sort of kick in the tires and getting them out of it, and I'd have to tell you, I don't
find Unity all that difficult to work with, it does some things really well, is it
going to be my full-time operating system, not at this point, but, you know, who knows?
Something might happen.
So after that presentation, it was time for dinner.
I went out with a lady named Katherine Devlin, who was very active in the Python community
here in the Midwestern part of the United States, Katherine and I have been running into
each other at these kinds of events for years now, and so we went out for some Middle
Eastern food, people who don't know Southeast Michigan might not be aware that there's
such a large Arabic and Middle Eastern community here, it really is quite large.
So if you're into that kind of food, this is a good place to go.
One after dinner was back for the last presentation that I attended of the evening, which
was on IP version 6 software, and this was a presentation by Michael Mall, and it was interesting
to learn more about that.
IPv6 is something that is on the horizon, you know, how fast we're all going to be converting
over to it, you know, that's a different thing.
The plans right now, as far as I know, are that IP version 4 is not going to stop anytime
soon.
If that's what you're working on, you can keep working on it, but they're running out
of addresses.
So, you know, at some point, people are just going to find if you're trying to get
an address, IPv6 is all what they offer.
I thought, you know, let's try and get a jump on that.
I don't have to do anything immediate, but I thought it was a good idea to get a little bit
of education.
By the time that was over with, I was tired, so I went home and went to bed.
These conventions can be very tiring.
Sunday, I started the day off with a presentation on sustainable engineering and developing
economies, put on by Christy Currier, a very interesting presentation, and there are two
things that you, when you talk about sustainability, you know, it has to be inexpensive
and it has to be something that can be maintained in the field, right?
You can't have technology that requires you to ship something back to the manufacturer,
that just isn't going to cut it in a developing economy.
And the problem that she talked a lot about and it really is a very big problem in the developing
world is water.
How are you going to get access to clean, potable water?
There may be water there, but it's very dirty, it has diseases, what have you.
And so she was talking about how they were trying to develop technology that used just
your basic PVC piping that you can get in any plumbing supply store and a little bit of
ingenuity and a way you go with clean water coming out, and that is the sort of thing
that can be maintained in the field, so it's a very interesting technology there.
Then I went through, went to a presentation called the Past Through Digital Audio.
This was put on by a group called the Science Fiction Oral History Association.
And this was really the first I had encountered this group that I knew of, but they've
been around for a little while anyway.
And we got to hear, first of all, some, they played recordings of interviews, talks,
what have you with people like Isaac Azimov, Arthur C. Clark, Lester Del Rey, and so on.
You know, some of the real great figures in the history of science fiction, obviously Azimov,
you know, I think all three of them have passed away.
So these recordings are really all that we have left.
So it's important that they be preserved.
These were made with tape recorders originally, but part of what they're doing now is saying
we want to digitize all of this stuff, and I got excited about all of that, so I volunteered
to help with that.
I have really all the equipment, and I know what to do to digitize cassette tapes, which
is what they're working with, excuse me, getting over a bit of a cool term.
The other thing they're trying to do is to add to what they have, and they can add by
going out to conferences and making more recordings, and they're doing that now, they're
going to science fiction conventions and conferences, and what have you, and making recordings
with, of course, the permission of the speakers, they're very scrupulous about getting
release forms and all of that.
Interesting stuff.
If you're a science fiction fan, check them out.
Now, the URL is in the show notes, I'm not going to keep mentioning the URL is in the show
notes for all of these, just know that I have put them there.
Then there was a birds of a feather session on Raspberry Pi, that was rather subdued.
Due to the fact that nobody there actually had a Raspberry Pi, so there was mostly people
sitting around talking about what they thought they might do with it if they ever got it.
Then I went to a talk by Ruth Suhl, who is an employee of Red Hat, and I first heard Ruth
speak at Ohio Linux Fest last year.
So I knew she was a good speaker, and she had a talk on, called the Pop Culture Guide to Open
Source.
Again, very interesting.
Drawing some parallels between open source software, open culture, pop culture, how
all of these things interrelated.
And if she's a good speaker, so if you get a chance to go to one of her talks, well,
worth doing, afterwards I got a chance to chat with her, and with the Spot Callaway, who
works for the Fedora Project.
Trying to recruit them as speakers for Ohio Linux Fest, but apparently they have a schedule
conflict.
So I failed, but it was still nice talking to them.
And the last talk I attended, Michael Mall, again, on IPv6 for the home.
One of the things that Michael talked about is that you can get, I don't know if this
is available internationally or just in the United States, I may have a chance to figure
that went out, but this company called Hurricane Electric, that offers IPv6 accounts that
you know, anyone can get, and so that can give you access to IPv6.
You can start working with it, see how it's going to work with what you're doing.
Even more interesting than the fact that they offer IPv6 accounts is that they offer a free
training and certification program in IPv6.
So if you look at it, just get your feet wet, add to your skill set or whatever, I encourage
you to take a look at it, again, URL in the show notes.
So that was the last of the presentations, after that they had closing ceremonies, and
I discovered that my friend Chris Krieger is apparently getting more involved in this, but
that's for another day.
So this is just, you know, one person's report, but it's kind of interesting.
If listening to this sort of thing to you, I wouldn't mind going this event like that,
it happens every year, usually around like the end of April or beginning of May, in
Southeast Michigan, this year was in Dearborn, which is a suburb of Detroit.
Obviously, it's been in Romulus or Troy, I mean, these are all suburbs of Detroit, you
know, whatever hotel is big enough to handle all of the activities, really.
It's an event I really enjoy.
So I encourage you if you can arrange to be in the area at the right time, you know,
this is worth going to.
I'm already looking forward to 2013.
And with that said, I'm going to mention once again, that Ohio Linux Fest, which I have
the great honor of being the publicity director for, is looking for speakers.
Our call for talks is wide open, and we're still trying to get more people to submit
talks.
The more submissions we have, the better for everyone, you know, if we have a lot of submissions,
we can have a lot of high quality talks, and that's really what we're trying to do here.
So I've put the URL in the show notes, and I encourage you, if you're anywhere around
the middle part of the United States, or can arrange to be around the middle part of the
United States the last week and did in September, submit a proposal.
We're looking for all kinds of talks, we're looking for every level of expertise from
beginner to advanced.
We're looking for things about free software, open software, open hardware.
It doesn't have to be Linux, anything that's free or open is of interest to us, so it could
be BSD, it could be applications, it could be any number of things, we're pretty broad
about that.
And we're looking for men and women, young and old, the more variety, the more inclusive
we can be, the better we feel about it.
So a lot of opportunities here for people to give talks, I encourage you to do that.
And with that, this is Huka signing out on another Hacker Public Radio presentation.
See you later.
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