Present Perfect

Fedora

So, we merged with Red Hat. After those strange weeks of preparing for it, and those months of arguing and setting up things, this is a nice positive turn of events. I hope it stays positive. Red Hat developers, please protect our integrity :)

mach

Didn't get too much feedback on the 0.4.0 release, but the feedback I did get did matter and helped a lot. Some people are interested in working on a yum back-end, and some are interested in using vserver instead of chroot. We'll see what happens.

I've deliberately held off working on it for some time, to force my self to use the released version for a while. Apart from one silly bug where the root stays locked after a successful build, it works fine.

Radio

A short recap: I quit my job at the national radio, and at this moment I'm doing some things for the college radio I've helped out at the last eight years.

I've started writing some software for playback using Python/GTK/GStreamer, and it's turning out great. All the things I read about developing in python really are true (both good and bad). At the moment I'm reaping the benefits. I hope to keep it structured well enough and release the whole project as well. How does pyrate-radio sound ?

On the administration side, we had six new computers to install. I set up a local Red Hat mirror, then I mirrored bits of the XD2 ftp site. I got the go-ximian script, modified it to use the local installer, and then made the GUI installer use the local repository, and it all worked out fine at the first try. Then I set up a PXE boot on the server, hid all the clients behind a switch connected to the server, and now all of them should be able to install from the server cleanly.

After having struggled for more than two years with RIS on Microsoft at work, it is refreshing to see how easy it is to put the bits together on Linux.

Music

Too much good music all at once. Saturday, Spiritualized. After anxiously waiting for their new album (which has some very good moments, but isn't as perfect as any of their previous ones), I was hoping the concert would put me in my place. But it was too short, and he didn't play any of my favourite songs at all. That, and the lack of added instruments (like, say, background singers, or trumpets), made it a bit of a letdown. On a bad day, Jason Pierce is still very good. But knowing what it could have been makes it a letdown anyway.

The highlight of that night was one of the opening bands, Mew. They're Scandinavian, and their sound has echoes of My Bloody Valentine. Very strong songs.

Sunday, Elbow. Can you believe it ? They confirmed this concert a week before, I didn't even know about it until I went to the festival site. So I immediately bought tickets on the spot. Apparently the concert was actually for An Pierlé (a Belgian singer) who was concerting with a 20 piece orchestra and a 50 piece youth choir. While I'm not particularly interested in her songs, the concert was very very good. A nice appetizer for Elbow, who got on stage at 11.30.

Having had so little announcement, we were able to move to the front of the venue (which had seats) easily, so we shared a nice quiet intimate evening with Elbow. I remember thinking Elbow was just a "new acoustic wave" novelty act, until I got their first album and gave it a few good listens. There is no other band that likes them has mastered the art of being so minimalistic and so rich in song texture at the same time.

This was exemplified in songs like "Grace Under Pressure", where the singer plays chords instead of notes for one of the two lines of lyrics the song has, while the rhythm guitarist takes his job quite literally by playing one chord only all through the song. In "Switching Off", the drummer only used one hi-hat and, once in a while, one other part of the drums.

They served me a triplet of my favourite songs, and it all sounded sublime. If you ever get the chance, and you like some class and intelligence to your music, but all the while have it kept simple and beautiful, go see Elbow. and get their second album !

And yesterday night, Tom Mc Crae. Again at the same venue. I'm not yet tired of seeing him live, and yesterday was another fantastic gig. His voice was crystal clear, and the sound was perfect all the way through. For his first encore, he did the coolest thing I've ever seen someone do at a concert. He refused to let his guitar get plugged in, and explained without a microphone that he loved the venue so much, and since it was the last gig of the tour, he wanted to try and do the next song completely acoustically.

So there he is, in a room with 2000 people, singing at the top of his voice. You could hear a lighter getting drawn from fifty meters away, that's how quiet it was. A very brave stunt for a performer to pull, and it paid off nicely. He got four standing ovations in a row :)

So cheers Tom... As for oncoming gigs, loads and loads. Heather Nova, Grandaddy, Arab Strap, Maximilian Hecker, Ed Harcourt, Six By Seven, and more and more to come.

Fedora So, we merged with Red Hat. After those strange weeks of preparing for it, and those months of arguing and setting up things, this is a nice positive turn...