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TuxJam 61 – Gifts for Geeks 2017

It’s that time of year again when we suggest gifts that we you might like to find stuffed into your stocking by our partners Santa. We’ve handily organised them by price to ease the pressure on your Santa’s wallet.
Stocking fillers (under £10)

Low-Mid range (£10-25)
  • Imusic pillow
  • Take a look at their Steam account, most users have games on their wishlist. Buy the game on Christmas Eve, print off an item saying here’s your present and put it in a card.
  • Personalised glasses or a mug with their name and likes on it (make it extremely personal).
  • Stealth VR
  • VRidge FREE (10 min per session)Google cardboard £15 for one, £25 for two
  • Electronics starter kits: Sometimes are self-contained kits with pluggable components, but be aware that some of these may be intended specifically at beginners.  Other times, they are filled with various kinds of components with instructions to make a number of projects.  You may need additional equipment – like a soldering iron – so always check the product description!
  • Soldering starter kits: Usually contain a soldering iron, holder, solder reel, desoldering pump, at a minimum. These are often Chinese imports from unknown companies.  Do a search in your shopping site of choice, and make an informed decision. Or go somewhere like Maplin.
  • The micro:bit (pictured below)
  • ANENG AN8008 Multimeter
Mid-High end (£25-100)

High price (£100+)
The butterfly project as described by Dave in the show

Wow,you really love them

Festive Tunes:

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TuxJam 60 – Thrusty Spaceships

Your hosts – Kevie, Dave (thelovebug) and Andrew (mcnalu) – bring you a stellar array of software in this episode. Quite literally with Stellarium, both on the Desktop and via Google Play, which allows you to explore the stars without waiting for a dark, clear sky or enduring the cold that goes with it. We also give an honourable mention to Sky Map which debuted on the first production Android phone and is still available on Google Play and F-Droid. Also from F-Droid is the simple yet addictive, time-gobbler Critical Velocity which might be better named Thrusty Spaceships (think Flappy Birds). If retro-tradey-fighty-spaceships is more your thing then you might be interested in our wee review of Alite which is an affectionate reworking of the classic Elite for Android phones. And we then turn our attention to a First Person Shooter, giving a thumbs up (and aching index finger) to the highly moddable Cube 2: Sauerbraten. We finish up with tales from this summer’s Podcrawl Glasgow including some things that Dave didn’t want brought up.

Creative commons licensed tunes played in this episode are:

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TuxJam 59 – Revenge of the Jami

The audio-friendly tones of newish recruit Lovebug join Kevie and mcnalu‘s Scottish harmonics to bring you a symphony* of free and open source and creative commons goodness. First they do their usual tour of distrowatch, then relate their experiences of Open Box based OBRevenge. They then move on to tour task management and diary apps including Diary (Android), OSMO, Deck for NextCloud, and Andrew delves into his ancestry with a look at Persian Calendar (Android). In feedback, we are pleased to report that themightyglider author of Roguebox Adventures found our review in TuxJam 58 useful and has produced a How to Survive Your First Day video. Top marks to that developer! Finally we invite listeners to our annual podcrawl in Glasgow. For more information check out the official blog post.

OBRevenge Screenshot
OBRevenge Welcome Screen

*May be a cacophony YMMV.

Music:

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TuxJam 58 – Stuck in Qube Corner

Following Kevie and mcnalu‘s failed attempts at testing out qubes-os (as recommended by Chalkahlom) they have a bit more success with the software offerings. Being in the mood for a bit of gaming, they test out Roguebox Adventures (as recommended by themightyglider, who is also the developer). But not wanting to appear like they just playing about, they give off a false vibe of hard work, they take a look at the extremely functional file manager Ghost Commander (as recommended by r7) on the Android platform.

RogueBox Adventures

All this with the usual mix of creative commons music, the tracks included in this episode are:

 

 

 

 

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TuxJam 57 – North and South

As McNalu is MIA, Kevie is joined by Dave Lee from the Bugcast music podcast for the 57th episode of TuxJam.  But the change doesn’t alter the show content with a review of the Ubuntu based disrto LXLE.

Along with some software KISS Launcher (Android) and Synapse Launcher (Linux, shown below). We have some feedback to discuss and we announce Podcrawl Glasgow 2017 on Saturday 29th July. Along with the usual mix of Creative Commons music tracks:

 

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TuxJam 56 – Let Me Get My Notepad Out

Cover2The duo of Kevie and Andrew return to TuxJam for the first time in 2017 and they aim to please with a show crammed with a mix reviews, music and Scottish whit.

gecko
Gecko screenshot with logo in the top right corner

noteappsKevie and Andrew take a look at Gecko Linux (with the Budgie desktop) followed by an in depth look at the Android browser JumpGo. The focus then shifts to Notepads applications for Android with a comprehensive list including: uNote, TAG Notepad, NoNonsense Notes, CrocodileNotes,Notepad.

All this with the usual mix of creative commons music, the tracks included in this episode are:

 

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TuxJam 55 – Sailing Solo

Cover2In the first TuxJam of 2017, Kevie takes charge of the ship for a solo voyage. But not wishing to disappoint the loyal listeners, he tries to maintain the regular duties.  For the new year there seems to have been a tidal wave of new releases including Bodhi, Scientific Linux, Parsix, Tails, BitKey, Vinux, AntiX, Quirky and AryaLinux.

Kevie then goes onto giving a Linux distro Debex a test to see how it fares on the wild sees.
Debex LXQtEntertainment is important to a lonely sailor, so the Zgemma H.2S satellite receiver is put to the test to see if it is fit to pass away the hours on board while a sailor can only dream of his fair maiden on some far distant shores.
Zgemma H2SMessages in a bottle are sent from Chalkahlom and Jim (aka Whistlewright), which turns out to be a hidden gem of buried treasure known as Droid Break.

R2 D2 cafetiere on ThinkGeek. is one that we failed to map and sailed by her on the previous gifts for geeks episode in December.
R2D2 coffee pressAlong with the (creative commons) sea fairing shanties:

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TuxJam 54 – Clutching at candy canes

Cover2Kevie and mcnalu have entered into the Christmas mood and recorded this show with sporrans wrapped in tinsel and kilts decked with holly (externally only). First up it’s the usual round up of lesser known GNU/linuxes on distrowatch. Next they recount their experiences with Peppermint Linux 7 and Kevie concentrates his attention on site specific browers (SSBs) with ICE .

PeppermintOS Desktop
PeppermintOS Desktop

Andrew then reviews the oldie but goldie FOSS game Pingus which offers a Christmas level-set. There’s also an extra gift for geek suggestion that we didn’t include in TuxJam 53 because it’s only just been released: the intriguing book Learning Linux in a Month of Lunch Break by Steven Ovadia of the My Linux Rig blog.

We end with some Feedback including a special shout out to Edward R Baisley Jr who has furnished this website with the newly designed TuxJam banner.

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TuxJam 53 – Gift for Geeks 2016

Why not give a geeky Christmas gift to a family member or close friend?  Even if they’re not a geek (yet), you might surprise them with something they didn’t even know you they wanted.

In this special edition of TuxJam we review a number of items that might just make the perfect gift for a geek.

Stocking fillers – under £10

USB Pet Rock

Low price – £10 to £25

Scientific Spice Rack With Spices

Mid price – £25 to £100

micro:bit Complete Starter Kit

 

High price – Over £100

Included

And finally… You REALLY love your partner price:

1015 Britannia Jukebox

Along with these Christmas themed creative commons tracks:

 

 

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TuxJam 52 – Scream casting

Kevie and mcnalu return after a lengthy summer recess, having been driven back to their keyboards by the first chill of winter to record TuxJam 52 on Hallowe’en. Your hosts kick off with the usual roundup of eclectic linuxes on distrowatch. They then recount experiences installing SteamOS with and without its eponymous controller, and, after the tiniest bit of arm twisting, use it to play games. Then comes the terror of the malfunctioning screencast software. Whereas Andrew is haunted by failure, Kevie fearlessly fights on to review all of: OBS, Simple Screen Recorder, Byzanz, GTK RecordMyDesktop, Kazam, Vokoscreen and DeathScribe… sorry DeskScribe. We end with nice bit of feedback from musician Asha Lightbearer who we featured in a previous TuxJam and send our best wishes to the LinuxVoice chaps as they move, or rather merge, onto pastures new.

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