June 2006 Archives

I've spent this last week teaching at Guru Labs' local training facility in Bountiful, UT. As in the past, Guru Labs contacted me because they had one more class than they had full-time instructors to teach. I haven't been able to help the last couple of times this has happened, but this time I saw no reason I couldn't make it work, especially given that it didn't require me to go out of town for the week.

The class I've been teaching is GL 120 -- Guru Labs' introduction to Linux course. It's a five-day course that gives the students a very good knowledge of what Linux is, how to use it, and what it's good for. It doesn't delve much into system administration tasks, but it does give them a taste of how Linux systems are used and managed.

Teaching this class would have been like any other class I've taught for Guru Labs or anyone else except that last Friday, while preparing for the Utah Arts Festival, I came down with a bad sore throat. I treated it with regular doses of ibuprofen and sudafed and it seemed to subside, but it still lingered on.

On Monday, the first day of the class, my voice was pretty hoarse as I taught, but I was able to get through the day's lecturing. I told the students I was channeling Tom Shane. If you've ever heard his ShaneCo radio advertisements, you'd understand what that means.

As soon as I was done lecturing, however, my voice disappeared for good.

Now, time for an announcement. Following the announcement is some geeky news related to it.

SONS OF NOTHING will be performing our acclaimed Pink Floyd tribute on the super-sized outdoor Amphitheater Stage at the Utah Arts Festival Saturday, June 24.

Come early and enjoy the Utah Arts Festival, where there is plenty of art, entertainment, food, and more for the whole family. Then, as the sky darkens and the fog rolls in (we'll provide the fog), find a comfortable spot on the grass in front of the Amphitheater Stage on the east side the Salt Lake City Library complex and soak yourself in our special concoction of space rock and classic Floyd hits.

The show starts at 9:30 p.m. - perfect for our light show. Admission to the show gets you into the Arts Festival and vice versa.

Tickets can be purchased at numerous entrance gates:

• Adults: $8.00
• Seniors: $5.00
• Children: Free admission (12 and under)

Discount tickets can be purchased at local participating Walgreens and Tesoro stores. 4-day passes are also available. For more information, see <http://www.uaf.org/tickets.htm>.

This will be SoN's last Utah show for a while as we'll be heading out of state in July and August.

A special thanks to the fine folks at the UAF for giving us this opportunity to entertain the locals.

Okay, now the geeky news...

I'm the wizard-behind-the-curtain for this band and I'm very proud to say all the projected visuals you'll see and audio effects you'll hear are all powered by Linux. I recently overhauled, Lumen, the Linux box responsible for the audio and visual toppings for Sons Of Nothing shows. It is now running Fedora Core 5 and I've installed a new, very cool piece of open source software called freej which I will be using to supplement the long-running contingent of video clips that accompany the music.

Bring your family, bring your pets (on a leash), bring your parents, bring your hippy sibling(s) and/or cousins that haven't been out for years. It's the glorious music of Pink Floyd performed with thrill by local musical artists.