Daveydweeb.blog

Disclaimer: This post is blatantly copied from my post on the Wikipedia Weekly blog. Sosumi.

I presented for the second time yesterday, but instead of a five minute lightning talk I was given an hour to give a summary-style tutorial on audio production using Audacity. The talk was recorded, both by the organisers and by Andrew, so I’ve encoded the footage for publication and it’s on the way up now.

Unfortunately, the sound is terrible, but it’ll have to do. Encoding on a 1.33 Ghz iBook G4 is not fun.

On another note, Adam from FLOSSManuals.net spoke up at the end of the talk to point out the existence of the Audacity manual from that site. The manual is a wiki, so I’ll be adding a section on voice editing when I have the time, hopefully before the next printing (which Adam tells me is next week).

The slides for this presentation are now online, under a Creative Commons license.

Tonight was the Wikimania party. Lots of free beer, lots of small children (who, I’m told by sources close to the story, make up the bulk of the Hong Kong Wikipedia community), and lots of very strange electronic music. A lot like Merzbow, but without inducing actual, physical pain.

So, at the end of the night, I may or may not (can neither confirm not deny, for fear of incriminating myself) have walked away with a five-foot tall, foam effigy of the Wikipe-tan. Someone suggested I fold her to get her back to Australia (which is not to say that I actually have her >_> ), and I believe Angela suggested that I cut her into a puzzle for reconstruction on the other side of the world.

The fatal flaw being that I suck at puzzles.

Not that it would matter, since I don’t have the Wikipe-tan. Right?

Right.

The sad thing is, I can’t use her as a sockpuppet, since User:Wikipetan is taken at Wikipedia. I suppose I’ll have to make do with the fact that a thousand drunken Wikipedians of varying repute would happily support her for adminship. If only she had more edits to the Template namespace.

Quick update: Yesterday I gave a lightning talk to introduce the Wikipedia Weekly podcast, which is the whole reason I’m at the conference. YouTube finally decided to accept it, so here it is.

I also gave a tutorial on audio production today, which was reasonably well attended and accepted. Here’s a photo of it (I believe there’s video, too, but I don’t know if that’ll be going online):

Here I am, giving a lightning talk about Wikipedia Weekly:

It went quite well. Youtube video to follow.

I don’t have a camera, as I said before, but the important thing is that everybody else does. So, courtesy of the wider public — specifically, Andrew Lih — here’s an inside look at the workings of Wikipedia Weekly at the Wikimania 2007 Conference:

Yes, that’s a suspiciously large number of Apple laptops.

Oh, and here’s Liam looking calm and in control as he checks out Ward Cunningham’s new iPhone, with Ward looking vaguely bemused in front of him:

Liam and I went to the night markets to find something for dinner tonight. We were originally going to go with some people from WikiTravel, but they left a few minutes before us so we weren’t able to catch up.

We wandered around the markets for a few hours, and noticed that pretty much all the stores were selling one of only three things: deep-fried food, knock-off clothes, or DVDs. Oh, and mopeds. Lots and lots of mopeds.

Speaking of which, walking back Liam saw a moped get T-boned while my back was turned. Nobody was seriously hurt, but given that traffic in Taipei is only somewhat more polite than in India, I’m really not surprised that we saw a crash on our second night here.

I’m sad enough not to have a camera, but fortunately, this is a very geeky sort of conference: there is a lot of technology floating around, including about eight million cameras.

The best part about this? Checking out the photos as people upload them. Be sure to keep an eye out for photos of the giant rotating Wikimedia Foundation sphere, and for the mess of cables on the Wikipedia Weekly Podcasting Desk.

I just arrived, and I’m impressed. No time for description, just take a look at this:

Now, imagine one of them that’s eight feel tall and revolving. <3

We wants one, we wants one bad.

Woo! *\o/*

I’m sitting with Liam in Hong Kong airport (which is huge), using their free wireless internet on my iBook (which is tiny). Things I have noticed: first, the wireless is slow, but somewhat faster than the _nonexistent_ free wireless in Sydney (*shakes fist at Telstra*); second, it’ll suck to be wearing boots all week (average daily temperature is ~32°C); third, people don’t know the value of free t-shirts.

Almost time for the next flight.

^ The tag probably gives it away, really. So much for the element of surprise.

Wikimania 2007 starts soon, and we’re revving up for the conference right now. The official dates are 3-5 August, but I’ll be flying out of Sydney with Liam on the first in order to arrive a day early and get our stuff sorted.

We have plans for a fairly exciting array of Wikimania-related content. Depending on the time we have available, the phase of the moon and our aggregate weight in drams, we’ll be releasing two short episodes on each day of the conference, hopefully with the help of some of the other attendees (off-topic: anybody want to learn to make a podcast?). We’ll be working mostly in the Lounge, with its vast tracts of land wide open spaces and friendly atmosphere, so - and let me emphasise this - if you happen to see us, come along and say hi!

Enough jibber-jabber for the moment. I feel a pre-Wikimania episode coming on.