Regarding @bryanlunduke’s comment about wanting LibreOffice for Android? If you’re willing to accept Apache Open Office… it’s there… search for AndroOpenOffice.
The downside? It starts an X server, and runs AOO in that. The font packs and dictionaries are separate and it’s not an awesome experience.
But… if you want it, it is there.
@jonobacon, @sil and @jeremy, it would have been nice to nod to the fact that @bryanlunduke wasn’t going to be there for 3/4 of the show. It was only after it ran that I remembered that he said he was going off to a measles party or something, and would be offline until they rescusitated him (or something like that… and I don’t mean my spelling issues - typing this in Firefox for Android, and I’ve not got around to asking it to spellcheck for me)
Zeetings sounds pointless tbh. Something @sil said “At least it’s not an iOS app” or something I don’t agree with. If you could just install an app and have the polls automatically pushed from the presenter to audience without having to type in a URL that would be a lot better. Where you could ask people to vote on their phones mid speech and it would just work at the touch of a button with 0 demands on the audience members, especially if it actually became successful and in a few years you could just assume everyone had it. It’s a far harder goal to obtain but I’m not convinced that Zeetings actually adds anything over having the presentation on Google Docs + having a strawpoll in there somewhere - or the mentioned legacy biological interaction methodologies.
Libreoffice… Online office suites are just more convenient for most people. I don’t think the libreoffice team are the people to produce the next generation of opensource office suites. I don’t know if I have ever even met someone who would have the first idea how to even start working on openoffice, meanwhile I’m positively beating back Android/iOS, CoffeeScript and node.js developers with a broom like its some form of zombie apocalypse.
Libreoffice trying to shift the few developers they have towards this way of working is stupid imo, just make the best desktop suite you can and let HipsterOffice.io.irony fight Google and Microsoft when something like that exists - hopefully with a product with innovative usage of all the new web technologies and presumably involving Docker in there somewhere; not just doggedly pursuing MS office like open/libreoffice always has.
Don’t really care about the audio. It’s not an FPS game or something I don’t need surround sound to react some someone creeping up behind me. Lugradio was fine with mono, Bad voltage is fine with stereo. If some listeners have a halfway decent reason to prefer mono do it in mono, don’t really care. Also based on the last hour long bad voltage and a random lugradio episode which were usually half an hour or so longer than bad voltage; the lugradio episode is half the size and sounds fine to me really and I assume there’s plenty of compression etc on the lugradio file which wouldn’t be needed with modern internet connections.
Perhaps an argument could be made for non native english speakers preferring stereo, maybe that helps them understand when you talk over each other like on Lugradio - you had endless hatemail from people who found it difficult to understand when you talked over each other but as a native english speaker it was never challenging to understand really. Also you don’t talk over each other at all really on bad voltage.
PS @bryanlunduke please convince the other presenters to allow you rant for the entire next episode about the Ubuntu Snappy stuff, cheers.
It may be more useful to, instead of choosing the audio setup that works best for the most people, create a designated player that allows anyone to customize the audio setup.
In this case, that would mean recording in stereo and adding a “mono audio” switch on the site.
About stereo: It is OK now, but noticeable. IMHO, it can be a real problem for some mobile listening scenarios. How about reducing the stereo effect by half for the next show, and also test yourself how it sounds with only one earbud?
OK, let me clarify this. I was on vacation, hence the delay.
@bryanlunduke has been traveling recently. At the last minute on our previous recording Bryan said that networking issues were going to mean he couldn’t join. Sadly, this happens from time to time with all of us - just the nature of how we record the show.
So, we recorded the show without @bryanlunduke, but were always hoping his connection would mean he could dial in at some point if his connection restored. Sadly this was not to be.
The LibreOffice segment was actually a segment from a few weeks back that we kept in the can (well more specifically, I am an idiot and left it out of the edit), hence we kept it for the show.
Now, this is where it gets nafarious.
@sil, @jeremy, and I thought it could be funny to just not mention @bryanlunduke and see if anyone freaked out about it. This is why I said “gleesome threesome” in the intro and why we deliberately mentioned the three of us a few times in the intro/outro.
Our social engineering seemed to work.
To be quite clear: @bryanlunduke is still very much part of the team, there has been no falling out: just three arseholes playing a joke on the very people that support our show.
As to mobile office, wouldn’t Canonical’s Convergence plan address this in that, one could use a desktop program? Also, could not one run Libre Office on a Microsoft Surface tablet or another running Windows?
Ok, for the later question, I know it is probably considered heresy here. Is that a stake being set up and the gathering of wood I hear?
Yep. But in both of those cases you’re running a desktop app on a touch screen, and the app isn’t designed to be controlled with touches. It’ll work, but it’s wildly unpleasant to use. There are certainly some people who think that this is fine and don’t have a problem with using it, but it’s not any approach which ordinary people in general will find pleasant!
I don’t agree about not using a tablet for Office suite. Since six months I use almost only an iPad. Yes. I was inspired by an article by Bryan about Nexus. But as Garageband is an essential app for me I went with iOS instead. However I write everything from meeting minutes to short stories and would love a Libre Office alternative. Since I got a good stylus and Fiftythree Paper I do all presentations on the iPad as well. Then transfer to a presentation application like Google Slides, Keynote or PowerPoint. Libre Office suite, yes please.
I totally agree that you can run an office suite on a tablet! There are such office suites – as you’ve said, they exist for the iPad, and they certainly do for Android tablets as well. That’s not the same thing as running desktop office suites (designed for a mouse pointer, right-clicking, a keyboard, click-and-drag) on a touch-screen tablet. It’s possible, but it’s not a pleasant experience.
Sure. I was thinking of Jono’s comment that no one would use a tablet to write larger things or create presentations, only do touch ups. I have a bluetooth keyboard but actually don’t use it much since getting the Fleksy keyboard app.
Hi all, I’m the Henrik from the feedback segment of this episode.
Just to be clear, I did not want the show to be completely in mono, just less “wide”. Some of the episodes have been a bit annoying when listened to using headphones (I use in-ear plugs at work) becase it felt like the conversation was bouncing back and forth in my head.
I listen to a couple of podcasts which use this effect, and when done right I do appreciate it.
Anyway, for this episode the audio was much more pleasant and did not distract at all. I don’t know if you did something differently, or if it was the flow of the conversation itself which helped, but I did not even consider toggling to mono.
I still think that for larger and more complex projects a mouse and clicking is required. I can imagine people knocking up quick things on a phone or tablet, but not complex documents.
Simple documents with lots of text are definitely possible, particularly with a bluetooth keyboard.
Thank you. Much better listening experience this episode. I only listen while commuting and in headphones and I was constantly checking if I was loosing an ear piece since the sound bounced.
