Episode: 1088
Title: HPR1088: Penguicon 2012
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1088/hpr1088.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 18:43:45

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Hello, this is Ahuka coming to you once again from lovely southeast Michigan on 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 Pengwakan that
I had the pleasure of attending about a month ago.
Pengwakan 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 vest.
Quite a few examples of each of those separately, but Pengwakan 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 Pengwakan took place the last weekend in April, so the 27th through
the 29th.
The science fiction author, guest of honor, was John Scalzi, who is probably most famous
for the Old Man's War series.
Oddly enough, I never attended any of his panels.
Just happens to be that way.
And then the tech guest of honor was Jim Gettis, and I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right,
G-E-T-T-Y-S.
So maybe it's Gettys or Gettis or whatever.
But the thing that he might be famous that you might know about is he's the 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.
For another time, this is Pengwakan.
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, z-w-i-l-n-i-k-dot-com,
you might recognize that that comes from science fiction.
It's a reference from a series of novels by author named E-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?
Pengwakan 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 ju-ju charms.
I didn't know a lot about ju-ju 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 ju-ju 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's
kind of interesting to hear a little bit about how that works from Ryan.
And then right after that 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 turnout.
The talk was well received, and the fact that I got my talk out of the way really right
at the beginning meant I could 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, actually, if I've mentioned
before, I used the KDE version Ubuntu, but one of the firm resolutions I've made is
never do 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 Panglecon was over late Sunday, I think 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 canonical.
I believe on Launchpad lives in the area.
And Rick and Craig do a podcast together called the loco cast.
The 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 let's see, James Heiss, who was part of the Panglecon 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 any time I can go to hear Bruce Schneier, I'm going to
take advantage of that.
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.
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.
If you're walking down the street, you trust that no one is going to drive their car
under 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's the balance?
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 you know, there's copyright and digital restrictions and things moving into the electronic
realm, etc.
It was very interesting to get their take on all of that.
Then there was a panel on Highline.
And the panel was put on by Eric Raymond, who you may know as the author of the Cathedral
in the Bazaar in Jim Gettys, who is the tech guest of honor, the buffer bloat 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 and with occasional references to Highline.
Then I went to a panel by Jody Baker, and Jody is the wife of Craig Maloney of the Ubuntu
Michigan logo.
And I think I'd met her once or twice.
It was the first time I actually heard her speak, very good speaker, I learned some things
I didn't know.
She teaches physics.
Judging 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 just 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, setting at home and those kinds of things or some of the genetic stuff.
Then Craig did a talk on what's new with the Ubuntu 12.04, and basically the focus
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 kicking the tires and getting them
to know 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 who knows, something might happen.
So after that presentation, it was time for dinner.
I went out with a lady named Catherine Devlin, who was very active in the Python community
here in the Midwestern part of the United States.
Catherine and I have been running into each other at these kinds of events for years now.
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.
Then after dinner, it was back for the last presentation that I attended of the evening,
which was on IP version 6 software.
This was a presentation by Michael Maul, and it was interesting to learn more about that.
IPv6 is something that is on the horizon.
How fast we're all going to be converting over to it, 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 at some point, people are just going to find if you're trying to get an address, IPv6
is all they offer.
I thought, 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 Courier, a very interesting presentation, and there are two
things that you, when you talk about sustainability, it has to be inexpensive and it has to be
something that can be maintained in the field.
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.
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.
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't
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.
We got to hear, first of all, some, they played recordings of interviews, talks, what
have you with people like Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clark, Lester Del Rey, and so on.
Some of the real great figures in the history of science fiction, obviously Asimov, 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 cold here.
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 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 Soule, who is an employee of Red Hat, and I first heard
Ruth speak at Ohio Linux Fest last year.
I knew she was a good speaker, and she had a talk called the Pop Culture Guide to Open Source.
Very interesting.
They're drawing some parallels between open source software, open culture, pop culture,
how all of these things interrelate.
She's a good speaker, so if you get a chance to go to one of her talks, we'll worth doing.
Afterwards, I got a chance to chat with her and with 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.
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 one out, but it's a company called Hurricane Electric that offers IPv6 accounts that
anyone can get, so that can give you access to IPv6.
You can start working with it to see how it's going to work with what you're doing.
One more interesting than the fact that they offer IPv6 accounts is that they offer a free
training and certification program in IPv6.
If you're looking to just get your feet wet, add to your skill set or whatever, I encourage
you to take a look at it in URL in the show notes.
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.
This is just one person's report, but it's kind of interesting.
If listening to this sort of thing, gee, I wouldn't mind going to an 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.
Previously, it's been in Romulus or Troy, I mean, these are all suburbs of Detroit.
Whatever hotel is big enough to handle all of the activities, really.
It's an event I really enjoy.
I encourage you, if you can arrange to be in the area at the right time.
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.
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'd 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 weekend in September, submit a proposal.
Well, you know, 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.
You're pretty broad about that.
And you know, we're looking for men and women, young and old.
It's 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 Ahuka signing out on another hacker public radio presentation.
See you later.
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