Argh! I pop the CD in, boot from it and get the Ubuntu start screen. I press Enter for the default install. Some lines breeze by, lots of dots and then the screen clears and I'm left with: "Uncompressing Linux Ok, booting the Kernel" That's where it gets stuck.

Hmm, I wonder if there's something wrong with the CD. (Thought the ISO burner didn't give me any errors.) Does Ubuntu not love my Acer Travelmate 4650?

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Time to put my laptop where my mouth is and start using an Open Source operating system to run my open source tools. Thus begins my (belated) journey into Linux. My companion for the ride will be Ubuntu Linux 5.10 (Breezy Badger). Nat is terribly passionate about Ubuntu and sold me on it after last month's d.construct conference.

In this series of posts, I'll chronicle my experiences in setting up Ubuntu for open source Flash development and more.

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I'd been meaning to lighten up the wonderful OSFlash web site design donated to us by Niko for some time now to improve readability, etc. and finally got some time today to do so. Take a look! I have to say that I was more than a little inspired by the clean layouts of my Brighton buddy Andy Budd (of Clearleft) and the work of folk like 37 signals. Of course there's a huge difference between being inspired and creating something even half as good ;) The links are still signature Sean Inman :) More updates to come as I find time...

We finally have a Flash conference of our own in Europe. Spark Europe was a blur of old friends and new, passionate presentations and community, community, community; Open Source Flash, Open Source Flash, Open Source Flash!

I'm on the train to the airport from the wonderful playground that the speakers were staying at; the hugely original Lloyd Hotel, and I still can't comprehend how quickly the past week has flown by and how exciting it all was. I was personally involved in events throughout the conference: Hosting the Open Source Flash workshop on the first day in which leading names in the Open Source Flash community gave presentations on their projects -- John Grden and Luke Hubbard on Red 5, the open source server for the Flash Platform, Francis Bourre (Tweenpix) on his new open source AS2 framework (Pixlib), Edwin van Rijkom on his hugely popular (and recently open-sourced) tool for creating Rich Desktop Applications (Screenweaver).

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Oooh, bad one, I know... Hey, how about this: I thought I was going on vacation until I had a look through Richard Legget's very cool Flashlite Spark app today (soon to be released to the hungry masses from what I hear) and realized that I'm MCing the Open Source Flash workshow, giving two talks and chairing the Open Source Flash panel -- umm, and making an appearance at MMUG NL where the topic will be... drumroll... Open Source Flash! (Do you guys see a pattern here?!) Vaca-wha'? Seriously though, it's so exciting to see the Open Source Flash movement causing such waves in the community and I'm psyched that I'll get to see some great friends in Amsterdam and bitch about usability and stuff too in the process.

So if you want to catch me live (no guarantees I'll be kicking), here are some events that I'll be in various levels of awakeness at:

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