2004-10-23 21:44
by Vasil KolevA murderous day :)
It began with an early wakeup (not without any commotions), and coming back to the real world. I had almost gotten a grip on myself, when Yovko called that he’s waiting in front of the block – I dressed with a record speed, we loaded the equipment, picked Rosi from Pliska, and arrived at the Inter Expo Center. There we placed all the machines, arranged the cabling and the internet connectivity (more about it later), and a lot of stuff like tables, camera, a laptop for the presentations, etc.
We opened with Yovko, who presented the OpenFest crew, and the people applauded us (I should see if we recorded it), then he spoke a bit, and then left the first lecturer – dr. Stoycho Katzarov (a member of the Parliament)…
(I won’t be speaking a lot about the lectures, there are video recordings, and because I had a lecture and tasks, I wasn’t able to listen to them too much… It always happens, when I’m in the organizing and participating in an event, I can’t act like a visitor, I can’t stay at one place).
The event was nice, although a bit tense at times, especially around the connectivity with Internet – it turned out that we’ve requested 512kbps instead of 2mbps, and the transmission was drowning a bit (it practically was pushing ~1.5mbps, with some drops). Of course, it took up to the third lecture to diagnose the problem, and we had some talks with the local admin (and with Lirex, to be sure that there isn’t any problem), then he contacted Orbitel, and we were able to get about 1.1 mbps, which somewhat did the job, and I lowered the bitrate of the streams. For tomorrow they promised to make something more, if there is a possibility, I hope there won’t be any more interruptions of the streaming… Because of the reconfigurations I interrupted the feed a few times, and one the cable from the came has pulled out, so we’ve lost a part of a lecture (I’m not sure which one, I still haven’t looked at the recordings).
The live feed was popular – at the peak moments there were about 48 connected people, you can see the traffic graphs at http://marla.ludost.net/stats/q?video (we pushed 12 mbps :) ). I still haven’t made analysis of the log of the ffserver, I’ll do it when I have time. The recordings themselves are at zadnik.org (I was archiving them there, not to load marla with them), and I’ll download and review them, when I have the time, there’s a lot to edit, before having the final variant.
My lecture went well, I didn’t interrupt my speaking too much, and the people found it interesting – I’m just sorry that I skipped the demo what happens when a server crashes (and I’ve found a way to do it over ssh, with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/kmem bs=4096 seek=1000000). There were a lot of questions asked, and after the end a few people wanted to talk about the subject.
After some more lectures we finished, gathered the equipment (there was a serious dispute where to put it, and in the end we put it the hall, locked and turned on the alarm. Then bu groups we crawled to “Krivoto” on “Dondukov” (Chorbadzhiyski didn’t come, he’s on a diet- there’s something wrong with him), where there were a lot of free tables, because it was early (arount 17-18), made a serious line of tables, and slowly all gathered. We drank, we spoke, spoke, spoke, ate, and I with the last of my strength went home …
Now I’m really tired, and I’ll be going to bed. I trued to hit a bit the punching bag, but mu hands start to hurt on the third punch.
And not to forget to thank Yovko, for most of the organization, to Rosi, that she was able to appear, even though she was sick, to Zhoro Chorbadzhiyski, that he was a great clock and marauderator, to Elena for her work with the camera and the filming, and to all known and unknown people, that helped to go through today. Let’s see what will happen tomorrow…