Content here is by Michael Still mikal@stillhq.com. All opinions are my own.
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Fri, 30 Dec 2005


Python DNS modules

posted at: 17:07 | path: /python | permanent link to this entry


Talk about a support life cycle...

posted at: 17:04 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 26 Dec 2005


Figures from chapter 1 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 1 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 1-1
    Figure 1-2
    Figure 1-3
    Figure 1-4
    Figure 1-5

    Figure 1-6
    Figure 1-7
    Figure 1-8
    Figure 1-9
    Figure 1-10

    Figure 1-11
    Figure 1-12
    Figure 1-13
    Figure 1-14
    Figure 1-15

    Figure 1-16
    Figure 1-17
    Figure 1-18
    Figure 1-19


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 11:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Figures from chapter 2 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 2 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 2-1
    Figure 2-2
    Figure 2-3
    Figure 2-4
    Figure 2-5

    Figure 2-6
    Figure 2-7
    Figure 2-8
    Figure 2-9
    Figure 2-10

    Figure 2-11
    Figure 2-12
    Figure 2-13
    Figure 2-14
    Figure 2-15

    Figure 2-16


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 10:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Figures from chapter 3 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 3 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 3-1
    Figure 3-2
    Figure 3-3
    Figure 3-4
    Figure 3-5

    Figure 3-6
    Figure 3-7
    Figure 3-8
    Figure 3-9
    Figure 3-10

    Figure 3-11
    Figure 3-12
    Figure 3-13
    Figure 3-14


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 09:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Figures from chapter 4 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 4 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 4-1
    Figure 4-2
    Figure 4-3
    Figure 4-4
    Figure 4-5

    Figure 4-6
    Figure 4-7
    Figure 4-8
    Figure 4-9
    Figure 4-10

    Figure 4-11
    Figure 4-12
    Figure 4-13
    Figure 4-14
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 4-15

    Figure 4-16
    Figure 4-17
    Figure 4-18
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 4-19
    Figure 4-20

    Figure 4-21
    Figure 4-22
    Figure 4-23
    Figure 4-24
    Figure 4-25

    Figure 4-26
    Figure 4-27
    Figure 4-28
    Figure 4-29
    Figure 4-30

    Figure 4-31
    Figure 4-32
    Figure 4-33
    Figure 4-34
    Figure 4-35

    Figure 4-36
    Figure 4-37
    Figure 4-38
    Figure 4-39
    Figure 4-40

    Figure 4-41
    Figure 4-42


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 08:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Figures from chapter 5 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 5 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 5-1
    Figure 5-2
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-3
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-4
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-5
    (Click to see all the images)

    Figure 5-6
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-7
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-8
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-9
    Figure 5-10
    (Click to see all the images)

    Figure 5-11
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-12
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-13
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-14
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-15
    (Click to see all the images)

    Figure 5-16
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-17
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-18
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-19
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-20
    (Click to see all the images)

    Figure 5-21
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-22
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-23
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-24
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-25
    (Click to see all the images)

    Figure 5-26
    (Click to see all the images)
    Figure 5-27
    Figure 5-28
    (Click to see all the images)


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 07:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Figures from chapter 6 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 6 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 6-1
    Figure 6-2
    Figure 6-3
    Figure 6-4
    Figure 6-5

    Figure 6-6
    Figure 6-7
    Figure 6-8
    Figure 6-9
    Figure 6-10

    Figure 6-11
    Figure 6-12
    Figure 6-13
    Figure 6-14
    Figure 6-15

    Figure 6-16
    Figure 6-17
    Figure 6-18
    Figure 6-19
    Figure 6-20

    Figure 6-21
    Figure 6-22
    Figure 6-23
    Figure 6-24
    Figure 6-25

    Figure 6-26
    Figure 6-27
    Figure 6-28
    Figure 6-29
    Figure 6-30

    Figure 6-31
    Figure 6-32
    Figure 6-33
    Figure 6-34
    Figure 6-35

    Figure 6-36
    Figure 6-37
    Figure 6-38
    Figure 6-39
    Figure 6-40

    Figure 6-41
    Figure 6-42
    Figure 6-43
    Figure 6-44
    Figure 6-45


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 06:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Figures from chapter 7 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 7 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 7-1
    Figure 7-2
    Figure 7-3
    Figure 7-4
    Figure 7-5

    Figure 7-6
    Figure 7-7
    Figure 7-8
    Figure 7-9
    Figure 7-10

    Figure 7-11
    Figure 7-12
    Figure 7-13
    Figure 7-14
    Figure 7-15

    Figure 7-16
    Figure 7-17
    Figure 7-18
    Figure 7-19
    Figure 7-20

    Figure 7-21
    Figure 7-22
    Figure 7-23
    Figure 7-24
    Figure 7-25

    Figure 7-26
    Figure 7-27
    Figure 7-28
    Figure 7-29
    Figure 7-30

    Figure 7-31
    Figure 7-32
    Figure 7-33
    Figure 7-34
    Figure 7-35

    Figure 7-36
    Figure 7-37
    Figure 7-38
    Figure 7-39
    Figure 7-40

    Figure 7-41
    Figure 7-42
    Figure 7-43
    Figure 7-44
    Figure 7-45

    Figure 7-46
    Figure 7-47
    Figure 7-48
    Figure 7-49
    Figure 7-50

    Figure 7-51
    Figure 7-52
    Figure 7-53
    Figure 7-54
    Figure 7-55

    Figure 7-56
    Figure 7-57
    Figure 7-58
    Figure 7-59
    Figure 7-60

    Figure 7-61
    Figure 7-62
    Figure 7-63
    Figure 7-64
    Figure 7-65

    Figure 7-66
    Figure 7-67
    Figure 7-68
    Figure 7-69
    Figure 7-70

    Figure 7-71
    Figure 7-72
    Figure 7-73
    Figure 7-74
    Figure 7-75

    Figure 7-76
    Figure 7-77
    Figure 7-78
    Figure 7-79
    Figure 7-80

    Figure 7-81
    Figure 7-82
    Figure 7-83
    Figure 7-84
    Figure 7-85

    Figure 7-86
    Figure 7-87
    Figure 7-88
    Figure 7-89
    Figure 7-90

    Figure 7-91
    Figure 7-92
    Figure 7-93
    Figure 7-94
    Figure 7-95

    Figure 7-96


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 05:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Figures from chapter 8 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 8 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 8-1


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 04:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Figures from chapter 9 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 9 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 9-1
    Figure 9-2


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 03:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Figures from chapter 10 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 10 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 10-1
    Figure 10-2
    Figure 10-3
    Figure 10-4


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 02:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Figures from chapter 11 of ImageMagick, the definitive guide

    Here are the thumbnails for the figures from chapter 11 of ImageMagick, the Definitive Guide:


    Figure 11-1
    Figure 11-2
    Figure 11-3
    Figure 11-4
    Figure 11-5

    Figure 11-6


    Tags for this post: imagemagick book figures

posted at: 01:00 | path: /imagemagick/book/figures | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 25 Dec 2005


How come I don't blog any more?

    It's not intentional, I think it's more that I haven't had anything interesting to say since I moved to the US -- all of my time has been devoted to training at work, moving into houses (two now, no more of that please), and sustaining the other two activities by going shopping. I promise now that most of that is done that I will be 100% excitement from now on.

    In fact, I'll take my camera to Andrew and Sarah's Christmas lunch, and then post some pictures online... Promise.

    Tags for this post: blog christmas quiet
    Related posts: Christmas morning; As pointed out by a friend at work; I like Christmas

posted at: 10:13 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 20 Dec 2005


First commute to work

posted at: 09:21 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 19 Dec 2005


Back on the road again, nearly

    Andrew and Sarah's air freight arrived on Saturday, and thanks to their kindness that means my bike arrived too. I reassembled it on Sunday, and went for a short test ride, which was a mistake as it reminded me how much fun riding is. Now I need to find time to ride here, despite the fact that it appears to want to rain all of this week.

    I'm considering bike commuting and just getting wet.

    Tags for this post: bike

posted at: 13:11 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 16 Dec 2005


About to resize my LVM

    When I created my USB2 mirrored LVMed disk array I go asked a few questions about performance of the disks, how long it took to setup, and stuff like that.

    At the time it was too late to get that data as I already had things I cared about on the disk array. Now it's time to grow the array so I've picked up two more disks. I've collected some data, so I now have data on the setup process for a new LVM from two USB 2 disks, and bonnie results for the filesystem on those disks. I don't have the date with me though, so I will write it up in the next few days.

    Is there anything else people would like to know before I put these disks into action?

    Oh, and yes this does mean that there is now a terrabyte of disk in that array. That brings the total amount of storage I have online at my house to 1.2 terrabytes. That doesn't include the old disk array still running in Australia either. Fun fun fun.

    Tags for this post: linux md lvm raid filesystem
    Related posts: Building my new disk array; Adding space to the disk array; Large inodes = faster samba; Linux USB quandary

posted at: 09:28 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


The environmental friendliness of shrimp trawling?

posted at: 09:22 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 11 Dec 2005


Update on the Dell

posted at: 14:21 | path: /diary/toys/dell/e310 | permanent link to this entry


I like Christmas

    I spent some time this morning wrapping the presets for the kids. They get two Christmases you see -- the one in Australian, and then another smaller one when they get to the US. Now, it might be the nostalgia speaking, or the fact that I haven't seen my family in nearly a month, but it occurred to me that I really like Christmas.

    Or to be more precise -- I really like giving my kids stuff. Although, it turns out that I am crap at wrapping. There is something really cute about the kids being excited to be moving to the US -- because daddy said there were presents waiting for them. That's cool.

    Oh, and next time I'm only going to buy rectangular presents so I stand a chance of being able to wrap them. Ever tried to wrap a stuffed toy?

    Tags for this post: christmas

posted at: 10:06 | path: /christmas | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 09 Dec 2005


Installing Linux on a Dell Dimension e310

posted at: 22:06 | path: /diary/toys/dell/e310 | permanent link to this entry


Errata from the book

    The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick arrives in bookstores 26 December 2005, but Apress has already started sending out PDF versions of the book to some reviewers (let me know if you're interested in doing a review and I will see what I can do), and there is a sample chapter available for download from the Apress site.

    We worked hard to make the book as good as we could, including having a technical review team, several layers of editors, and me reading all of the chapters more than I would like to admit. That doesn't mean that it's impossible that errata slipped through though, so if you see something like that then please send either me an email, or even better send an email to the address reserved for such things.

    Each error found, if I agree with it, will result in a thank you email, the error being corrected in any future editions, the error being listed online (I don't know where yet though), and a credit in future versions of the book.

    Tags for this post: imagemagick book errata
    Related posts: Errata: Tweak to homework, new VMWare image

posted at: 07:38 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 02 Dec 2005


Building a stack of images from thumbnails

    I have a directory full of thumbnails of the rental tour I went on the other day while looking for a new apartment, and I want to put them online. Instead of putting each photo online, which I thought might be boring, I wanted to build a stack on images on a background.

    I'm not really describing the effect well, so here's the output so you know what I mean:



    This was remarkably easy to create with a simple script that uses ImageMagick. Here's the code: 

      
#!/bin/bash

# Setup the random number stuff
LOBOUND=1
HIBOUND=600
RANDMAX=32767

# Create a white image to start with
convert -size $HIBOUND"x"$HIBOUND xc:lightgray output.png

for img in img*jpg
do
  echo "Processing $img"

  # Rotate the image if needed
  rotate=""
  if [ `exif $img | grep Orientation | grep bottom | wc -l | tr -d " "` -gt 0 ]
  then
    convert -rotate -90 $img img.png
  else
    convert $img img.png
  fi

  imgwidth=`identify -ping img.png | cut -f 3 -d " " | cut -f 1 -d "x"`
  imgheight=`identify -ping img.png | cut -f 3 -d " " | cut -f 2 -d "x"`

  # For more information on bounded numbers with bash, see
  # http://www.stillhq.com/bashrand/
  x=$(( $LOBOUND + (($HIBOUND - $imgwidth) * $RANDOM) / ($RANDMAX + 1) ))
  y=$(( $LOBOUND + (($HIBOUND - $imgheight) * $RANDOM) / ($RANDMAX + 1) ))

  # Put the image on top of the accumulative image
  mv output.png input.png
  convert -draw "image atop $x,$y $imgwidth,$imgheight img.png" input.png output.png
  rm img.png
done


First the script creates an empty image to place the thumbnails over. Then for each image it checks if the image needs to be rotated, and what size it is. I use the size of the image to determine what the maximum value for the two random values I need are (the random values from the coordinates of the top left of the thumbnail image, and I don't want any images falling off the edge of the new image). The the image is placed on top of the accumulating image.

It's just a little ImageMagick hack I thought I would share.

Tags for this post: imagemagick thumbnail stack effect
Related posts: Solar panel reflection effects in satellite imagery

posted at: 17:25 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 28 Nov 2005


Sin City

    I'm in a temporary apartment at the moment, and the nice previous occupant appears to have DVR'ed Sin City for me from Comcast pay per view, so Andrew and I sat down and watched it last night. I must say that I liked it, in a Pulp Fiction kind of way.

    Put it this way -- I wont be able to take Rory in the Gilmore Girls the same way any more.

    Yeah, I liked the movie a lot. Now I need to decide if I will recommend my wife see it...

    Tags for this post: blog movies sin city

posted at: 11:40 | path: /diary/movies | permanent link to this entry


Example 2.1 from Dive Into Python

    I've just started working through Dive Into Python, so I don't really have an opinion of the book yet. I did notice that Example 2.1 produces different output on my machine than from the example...

    The example says I should get: 

      server=mpilgrim;uid=sa;database=master;pwd=secret


    I get: 

      pwd=secret;database=master;uid=sa;server=mpilgrim


    It's interesting that this is exactly the reverse of what the book says I should get. I have no idea why, as I can't read Python yet, but there you go.

    Tags for this post: python diveintopython string order

posted at: 11:16 | path: /python/diveintopython | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 24 Nov 2005


Adventures in Ubuntu Breezy Dovecot

    I mentioned the other day that I am having problems with Dovecot on Ubuntu Breezy. Now's the time to debug it, and here are my notes...

    No inetd.conf 

      sed: can't read /etc/inetd.conf: No such file or directory


    This first error is because of this poorly implemented test: 

      # The init script should do nothing if dovecot is being run from inetd
for p in `sed -r "s/^ *(([^:]+|\[[^]]+]|\*):)?(pop3s?|imaps?)[ \t].*/\3/;t;d" \
  /etc/inetd.conf`
do
  for q in `sed -r "s/^ *protocols[ \t]*=[ \t]*(([^\"]*)|\"(.*)\")/\2\3/;t;d" \
    /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf`
  do
    if [ $p = $q ]; then
      exit 0
    fi
  done
done


    You can see from the comment that the intention is that the init script doesn't do anything if dovecot is running from inetd. The error message is kinda bogus though, in that the code keeps executing after that failed line with the sed call in it. If you find the error annoying, then make it go away: 

      touch /etc/inetd.conf


    In a perfect world, you'd hope that the packager would change the script to do something more like this: 

      for p in `sed -r "s/^ *(([^:]+|\[[^]]+]|\*):)?(pop3s?|imaps?)[ \t].*/\3/;t;d" \
  /etc/inetd.conf 2> /dev/null`


    Moving right along...

    It doesn't start the service

    I had enabled the imap_listen variable in the dovecot.conf file, but not put it in the protocols variable. The init script checks this, and bugged out without an error message. I would think an error message would be nicer.

    And now it works.

    Tags for this post: linux ubuntu dovecot
    Related posts: Ubuntu Breezy and Dovecot hate me; Dovecot index cache problems

posted at: 20:40 | path: /linux/ubuntu | permanent link to this entry


Stuffit expander for linux, but open source

    I've been working with publishing people recently, and they're all Macintosh users. There is a trial version of Stuffit expander for linux, but they really want me to give them money after 15 days... I've googled for an open source alternative, but can't find one. Is that because one doesn't exist?

    Tags for this post: linux stuffit

posted at: 14:30 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


On home sound systems

posted at: 13:25 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Mikal, the massive domain squatter

posted at: 12:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


What do you do on days as a bachelor in a strange country?

    Well, for me it was a cooked breakfast before getting the house work done. Instead of writing an exciting blog post about the fact that the bed here comes up to my belly button and it's sheets needed washing, I thought I would comment on American bacon.

    As the people who I hang out with will know, my wife is allergic to all forms of pig. In a no longer breathing way. I happen to love pig, so when she's not around I tend to go a little wilder with it than I probably should. So, when I went shopping for the first time here the other day I picked up some eggs and some Safeway bacon just in case my arteries needed hardening.

    It was a good thing too, because I have a medical need to eat bacon to help me with the after effects of the Coronas this morning. I'd already done one cooked breakfast here, so I have already discovered that American bacon (based on my extensive sample of one) appears to be 50% fat. It took me about ten minutes to trim off enough fat to approximate Australian bacon quality.

    After that it was quite nice. The point of this post though? Is all American bacon so terribly fatty, or is the Safeway stuff just terrible? Is this why Americans seem to eat Canadian bacon instead (think ham steak)?

    Tags for this post: travel usa bacon
    Related posts: Its a good sign that they're already making fun of me, right?

posted at: 12:09 | path: /travel/usa | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 23 Nov 2005


Ubuntu Breezy and Dovecot hate me

posted at: 14:54 | path: /linux/ubuntu | permanent link to this entry


Learning Python

posted at: 14:37 | path: /python | permanent link to this entry


New laptop

posted at: 09:16 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 22 Nov 2005


JVC utilities for changing the images and movies on my head unit

posted at: 10:53 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 20 Nov 2005


Australian's say the darndest things

posted at: 05:51 | path: /travel/usa | permanent link to this entry


Top resale value cars

posted at: 05:42 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Hybrid buyer's guide 2005

posted at: 05:38 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Jet lag

posted at: 05:35 | path: /travel/usa/california/santaclara | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 19 Nov 2005


The book

posted at: 16:32 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


Arrived yesterday

    So, Andrew and I arrive in Santa Clara from Canberra yesterday. It took about 24 hours of travelling, and a lot of queueing to make that happen, but we're here finally. I must admit I'm really liking things so far, I was a bit worried about the expense of rent until we went and saw am apartment complex this morning, and I'm not worried about that now.

    The mall is nice (the local one that is), the temporary apartment is nice (photos soon), and the rental car is crap, but that's ok.

    On a musical note I only just recently discovered the Black Eyes Peas, so I picked up Elephunk this morning. Damn that's a good album -- it's rare for me to find a disc that I like every track on, but this is one of them.

    Anyways, here. Alive. In Santa Clara for now. Must wander off now...

    Tags for this post: travel usa california santaclara music
    Related posts: Mood affecting music; Testing 123; The Ship Who Sang ; Stop! Hammer time...; Dragonsinger; Dragondrums; On home sound systems; Dragonsong; Whatever happened to MC Hammer?

posted at: 16:17 | path: /travel/usa/california/santaclara | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 16 Nov 2005


Recursive linkage zen

posted at: 15:00 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Procrastination

posted at: 04:59 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Packing

    Someone at university once told me that you remember things best when you're in the state that you learnt them in... You recall things about driving best when in a car, how to yell at your boss when stressed, and how to code while highly caffinated.

    That's why he always showed up to exams in the same state as he had studied for them -- stoned.

    I guess this means I'm going to have to unpack (and remember where I put everything and why) when tipsy. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

    Tags for this post: blog chemical mind trigger stoned alcohol

posted at: 03:31 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 15 Nov 2005


Stilly, the lump of meat

posted at: 14:00 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 14 Nov 2005


Giving Google Analytics a go

posted at: 02:43 | path: /google | permanent link to this entry


I should quit TOWER more often

posted at: 01:57 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 13 Nov 2005


Linux USB quandary

posted at: 02:07 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 12 Nov 2005


Building an answering machine using a $10 winmodem

posted at: 21:51 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


At least I wont starve

posted at: 19:52 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


SMART and USB storage

posted at: 00:27 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 11 Nov 2005


Unemployed Bum

    So, I am an unemployed bum by the way. Yesterday was my last day at TOWER, today is our family's meta-Christmas, and then I have a little under a week to pack my stuff and help start packing everyone else's stuff before I fly off the Americania to start work with the G thing. So, now I just need to slot some good solid panicking into my schedule, and all shall be well.

    Tags for this post: work

posted at: 23:33 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Adding space to the disk array

posted at: 21:21 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Packing

posted at: 21:14 | path: /travel/usa/california/mountainview/relocation | permanent link to this entry


Working on the site layout again

    Test 1... 2... 3...

posted at: 16:18 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 09 Nov 2005


Test 1... 2... 3...

    Twiddling page layout style...

posted at: 16:13 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 08 Nov 2005


TrackBack pings

posted at: 22:47 | path: /blosxom | permanent link to this entry


Ok, where does one buy PCs in the US?

posted at: 22:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Microsoft Australia's profit

posted at: 21:47 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 07 Nov 2005


Underground Kent

posted at: 01:53 | path: /travel/uk/kent | permanent link to this entry


People sneak into Google for lunch?

posted at: 01:52 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Gordon get's quoted by the Fortune blog

posted at: 01:52 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 04 Nov 2005


ThinkPads return to bricks and mortar retail in the US

posted at: 01:51 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 03 Nov 2005


Giving bloglines a try

posted at: 19:03 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Life hacking

posted at: 16:26 | path: /lifehack | permanent link to this entry


All racehorses descended from 28 horses

posted at: 16:17 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


What's happening with frozenchicken.com?

    Gordon at work asks me what is happening with www.frozenchicken.com. If you hit the site, then you get the Google search interface. This is because of the DNS configuration for the domain: 

      challenger:~# host www.frozenchicken.com
www.frozenchicken.com is an alias for www.google.com.
www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com.
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.147
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.99
www.l.google.com has address 66.102.7.104
www.frozenchicken.com is an alias for www.google.com.
www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com.
www.frozenchicken.com is an alias for www.google.com.
www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com.


    You can see that www.frozenchicken.com is an alias for www.google.com, which in turn points to what is presumably my local cluster.

    So why do all the links of the Google page then point via www.frozenchicken.com? Well, because they're relative URLs, they use the hostname from the browser.

    Tags for this post: google frozenchicken.com alias dns
    Related posts: Compendium of TLD domain access agreements; Parked domains; Australian domain names being snarfed?; Talk about a support life cycle...; Python DNS modules

posted at: 15:21 | path: /google | permanent link to this entry


Bike crash

posted at: 15:12 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 01 Nov 2005


This is a pointer

posted at: 22:25 | path: /pdfomatic | permanent link to this entry


Time to document my PDF testing database

posted at: 22:21 | path: /pdfdb | permanent link to this entry


Coffee and beer in one glass

posted at: 21:47 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Expect to see some sample documents soon

posted at: 21:42 | path: /pdf/pdf-a | permanent link to this entry


What's that grinding noise?

    Dad I were riding a week or so ago, and I had just come down a nice hill where I had been going over 50 kilometres and hour... Towards the end the brakes on the rear wheel started to make a grinding noise as I slowed down. I'm a bit of a bike newbie, so it seemed to me that there were a couple of options: my brake pads were worn out; the brakes had over heated; or there was grit stuck under a pad.

    We stopped and had a look, and the pads seemed to have heaps of rubber left on them, so we went for the grit theory. This was reinforced by the ride home, where the grinding stopped after a little while.

    Time passes and I have the same experience last night. Except this time the grinding happens all the way home, so I decided to take the brakes apart when I got home.

    It turns out that the brake pads were worn out, and that I had been damaging the rear rim. I don't think the damage is too bad - -I've probably reduced the life of the rim a little, but it's still usable. The problem was that the break pad has these metal spikes through it to hold it together, and the amount of usable pad is much smaller than it looks from the outside.

    I suspect that the grinding went away the first time because the metal spikes in the pad changed shape as it heated up going down the hill, and then changed back as I rode on.

    So, new bike brake pads today, and you live and you learn.

    Tags for this post: bike brake pad grinding noise
    Related posts: Cubicle rearrangement; Tick of death

posted at: 18:41 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


CD ROM

posted at: 15:34 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 31 Oct 2005


Sony's CD DRM acts like spyware on Windows

posted at: 15:57 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Destinator 3 GPS navigation for the PocketPC

posted at: 03:22 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Status of the book

posted at: 02:50 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 30 Oct 2005


Second beta of linux.conf.au 2005 CD ROM

    There is a second beta of the linux.conf.au 2005 CD ROM, including an ISO image this time, available at http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2005/. If people could have a poke around and point out any errors to me, that would be mightily neighbourly.

    I don't have time to take the CD ROM project much further than producing the image, due to imminent buggering off from Australia, but it is my fond hope that we'll have the CD out before this year's yuletide festivities.

    (I've been watching Firefly, and I think it's affecting my language style. Why on earth did Fox cancel that series, and worse than that, why did it gross so badly at the cinema?)

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 cdrom proceedings conference opensource linux
    Related posts: First beta of the LCA 2005 CD ROM; CD ROM

posted at: 23:05 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Two more weeks to go

posted at: 22:28 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


TODO list pride

posted at: 22:24 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 29 Oct 2005


Extreme Machines: Eirik Raude

    I'm watching the Discovery channel as I am occasionally want to do, this time instead of working on page layout review for the book, and I am quietly amazed by the commentary. This is a documentary about the world's most advanced oil rig -- the Eirik Raude. It's meant to be complimentary. It's about how cool this thing is...

    The commentary starts "Everyone needs power. Our insatiable desire for oil forces the oil companies to drill in stupider and stupider places." (or something like that). The Eirik Raude is built to drill in deeper water than before, in rougher seas.

    Given that there is general consensus that we're using too much oil, as shown by even this pro oil rig commentary, you'd think we'd start doing something about it. But no...

    Tags for this post: environment oil rig
    Related posts: New Orleans and sea level; Kern County oil wells on I-5; What is the point that people's morals evaporate?

posted at: 21:36 | path: /environment | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 25 Oct 2005


Building my new disk array

    I have an opportunity to build a new disk array for when I move house. I made a few mistakes when I built the last one (although perhaps they were because it was the best that could be done at the time), and I don't intend to repeat those mistakes. I put out a call for suggestions a little while ago, and now I've built an array I'm pretty happy with. Let's walk through it.

    First off, let's start with a reminder of the requirements. Here's what I said in the previous post:

    • Reliable: be that mirrored or RAIDed
    • Expandable: I want to be able to drop in a new disc when I run out of space. I don't mind needing to add two identical discs if that makes point 1 easier
    • Rethingable: I want to be able to remove unreliable discs from the set. If there are paired discs, then I can handle having to cycle out both at the same time.
    • Non-sucky


    The hardware

    I now have two identical USB 2.0 external hard disk enclosures, each with a 250gb Seagate Barracuda drive in it. I picked USB 2.0 because I want the disks to be easy to move, and I picked external enclosures in the hope that this would ruggedize the disks for the trip to the US just a little. They'll be travelling in my carry on luggage.

    The mirroring

    Both of the disks are part of a MD mirror pair, and I must say that MD is a lot nicer than last time I played with it. Here's all I needed to do to set it up (sdb2 and sdc2 are the partitions with the MD on them): 

    mdadm --create /dev/md1
      --raid-devices=2
      --spare-devices=0
      --level=1
      /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2

mdadm --detail /dev/md1


    No config files in /etc like you used to. No need to do more configuration. It just works. What happened to the first partitions on the discs? They're each an 8 megabyte FAT partition with nothing in it but a meaningful name. This is so that I can tell which disk is which no matter what if they end up falling out of their labelled cases or something.

    So, we have redundancy... Let's make it expandable and shrinkable

    Then I used LVM to create a volume group and a logical volume on md1, which is where I will store the data. This is so I can expand and shrink the filesystem as my storage needs grow and disks fail. I currently get a disk failure per year with the current disk array (which is currently four disks), and I currently consume a little over 230gb. Yes, I know I'm going to need to buy more disk real soon, but I thought I would wait until I am in the US.

    Creating the LV: 

    pvcreate /dev/md1
vgcreate data /dev/md1
lvcreate -L<size> -ndatalv data
vgdisplay data

mkfs -text3 /dev/data/datalv


    And we're done. Any comments?

    Tags for this post: linux md lvm raid mirror storage filesystem
    Related posts: About to resize my LVM; Adding space to the disk array; 14 November 2003; LCA CD continues; Mirror traffic during the last day of LCA 2007; Life skills; We're getting there; Mirroring the Linux Update podcast; SMART and USB storage; A filesystem which will resize over more than one disc whilst being reliable; Large inodes = faster samba; My first interview; Thanks for the kind word Pia; The Linux Australia mirroring project; Linux USB quandary

posted at: 00:49 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 23 Oct 2005


All airline tickets now booked...

posted at: 22:59 | path: /travel/usa/california/mountainview/relocation | permanent link to this entry


Hacking a webcam to be an IR camera

posted at: 18:59 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Paul Graham pages on startups

posted at: 18:51 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


That's it. HP support rocks

posted at: 17:28 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 21 Oct 2005


TECRA M4 P-M 770 and Ubuntu live CDs

posted at: 04:11 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 20 Oct 2005


So, how am I getting to the US?

    Well, I just booked my flights to the US... The flight there is on 18 November 2005, and goes from Canberra, to Sydney, to Los Angeles, to San Francisco with Qantas. At least I get club access along the way.

    Tags for this post: travel usa california mountainview relocation

posted at: 23:18 | path: /travel/usa/california/mountainview/relocation | permanent link to this entry


I feel a little vindicated

posted at: 18:30 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


HP iPaq GPS FA256A

posted at: 18:01 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 19 Oct 2005


A filesystem which will resize over more than one disc whilst being reliable

    Given I'm moving, I had a great opportunity to sort out my home disc storage. Here's what I want:

    • Reliable: be that mirrored or RAIDed
    • Expandable: I want to be able to drop in a new disc when I run out of space. I don't mind needing to add two identical discs if that makes point 1 easier
    • Rethingable: I want to be able to remove unreliable discs from the set. If there are paired discs, then I can handle having to cycle out both at the same time.
    • Non-sucky


    So what are my options? I'm currently leaving towards two identical discs, with a meta disc that is mirrored between them, and the some sort of filesystem over the top. I suspect that LVM offers something here, but I need to learn more about LVM before I can give it a go.

    I want to have something sorted out by the end of the weekend. I don't mind building something to play with and then tearing it down later it if sucks, but it must be ready to roll within the next two weeks for real.

    So, thoughts people?

    Tags for this post: wanted disc storage file system non-sucky
    Related posts: Interesting quote; C sample source code; 14 November 2003; Life skills; SMART and USB storage; Trying out the Apress e-book system; To continue the installation fun, let's now install Max OS X; clusterssh; Building my new disk array

posted at: 21:30 | path: /wanted | permanent link to this entry


Clothing status update

posted at: 17:36 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


What are we doing with the pets?

posted at: 17:31 | path: /travel/usa/california/mountainview/relocation | permanent link to this entry


Posting of private email is fun

    I just got this from a work mate:

    What's going on with you lot?

    I've sat down at my desk for about 15 minutes, and there are NO new blog posts, and no mail.

    You all need to pick up the pace. If you have a blog, you should post to it every day, so that I don't have to start doing any work until AT least 10 o'clock.

    (If you don't have one, well get one, so I can read it.)

    I don't care what crap you post - It's important to my general getting-slowly motivated morning routine

    Now I'm going to have to start 'work' earlier.

    Grrrrrrr.

    That Is all. Thankyou.


    Sorry. I'll work on some sort of inane post now. (Well, it's done in fact.)

    Tags for this post: blog

posted at: 17:14 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 18 Oct 2005


Two weeks of being sick

posted at: 01:44 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 17 Oct 2005


Meet the life hackers

posted at: 22:45 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Spike, skateboards and geckos

    Photos from a recent trip to Sydney with Spike, the kids getting skateboards, and a gecko that Catherine found.

                                           

    See more thumbnails

    Tags for this post: events pictures 20050925 photo

posted at: 16:42 | path: /events/pictures/20050925 | permanent link to this entry


For Christmas

posted at: 04:03 | path: /wanted | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 16 Oct 2005


Matthew on his bike

    Matt has been angling to go on a bike ride with me on the street for a while, so we negotiated to taking a ride on the basketball court at the local school, as I wasn't too keen on being on the rode with a two year old. He's really go and I'm much impressed... He can't handle hills yet, but he can steer and peddle really well.

    All I need to do now is teach him how to use the brakes, which might require some modifications as they're so stiff that I can't use them, and then I can take the trainer wheels off.

    I'm very proud of him...

                 

    Tags for this post: matthew pictures 20051015-mattbike photo

posted at: 16:59 | path: /matthew/pictures/20051015-mattbike | permanent link to this entry


Lake Tuggeranong

    One of the things I've been liking about my riding is going around Lake Tuggeranong, and the little lake near Point Hut Crossing. I haven't had much of a chance to ride in the last couple of weeks because I've been so sick, but I took these photos before I got ill. They'll have to do to fulfill my lake fix for now.

                                   

    Tags for this post: events pictures 20051015-laketuggeranong photo

posted at: 16:24 | path: /events/pictures/20051015-laketuggeranong | permanent link to this entry


Grumps, Catherine, Andrew and Matthew came back to Floriade with me

posted at: 16:17 | path: /events/pictures/20051015-floriade | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 15 Oct 2005


Apple's Safari javascript implementation

posted at: 04:13 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


The Cotter dam and Tidbinbilla deep space tracking station

    I hear that the Cotter dam is 100% full, which is something which hasn't been the case for quite some time, so dad and I ventured out to have a look. Unfortunately the path to the top of the dam is now closed, which we didn't know until we got there. On the way back we dropped in on the Tidbinbilla deep space tracking station, which is a NASA facility. All of this is about a 20 minute drive from my house, not that I timed it.

                                           

    Tags for this post: events pictures 20051015-cotter photo

posted at: 02:05 | path: /events/pictures/20051015-cotter | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 14 Oct 2005


Bad blog, bad bad blog

posted at: 03:48 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Backing up a disc partition

posted at: 00:10 | path: /wanted | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 13 Oct 2005


Great Googly Moogly

    (As the Ferocious Beast would say). I just resigned my job, and have accepted a position with Google in Mountain View, California. I should be there in about five weeks.

    I know it's a great opportunity, but I still feel kinda weird about it. More on all of this later.

    Tags for this post: work resign google

posted at: 19:27 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 08 Oct 2005


A little story from my sickness

posted at: 01:20 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 07 Oct 2005


The book process continues

posted at: 17:11 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


A first taste of Google blog reader

    So, Google has released a beta of their bloglines equivalent service, and given that Liferea crashes about four times a day for me I thought I would give it a go. Login et cetera is easy, and the user interface is nice and AJAXy. It's fairly intuitive as well, although when I was importing my OPML file from Liferea I missed the message at the top saying the import was in progress as first.

    That said, it's been 30 minutes and it still says it's importing my 460 line OPML file. I just refreshed the page for the import, and the import stopped and said that I now had 54 subscriptions. So, I guess that means I should wait longer for the import. I'm now going to try importing over the top and see if it's smart enough to squelch duplicates.

    Tags for this post: google blog reader beta
    Related posts: MythNetTV beta 4; MythIPTV Beta 2; Sony Reader (an ebook reader); MythIPTV Beta 2; MythNetTV release 1

posted at: 14:35 | path: /google | permanent link to this entry


Sick still

posted at: 13:38 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 05 Oct 2005


Photos from the Allete Pro Junior

posted at: 05:29 | path: /events/pictures/20050925-freshwaterbeach | permanent link to this entry


Matthew playing on some swings

posted at: 05:29 | path: /matthew/pictures/20050925-freshwaterbeach | permanent link to this entry


Andrew playing on some swings

posted at: 05:29 | path: /andrew/pictures/20050925-freshwaterbeach | permanent link to this entry


Winchester Mystery House

posted at: 04:26 | path: /travel/usa/california/sanjose | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 04 Oct 2005


Sick

posted at: 02:20 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


100km week

posted at: 02:18 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 03 Oct 2005


r51 update

posted at: 00:14 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 02 Oct 2005


So, that was me tempting fate apparently

    So, apparently I tempted fate, just as the CVS commit of the work on the final chapter of the book finished, and I got around to writing the blog post about the machine, it locked up again. What happens is that the screen goes blank (except for some random red and blue dashes this time), and the power and disc lights stay on. The machine doesn't respond to any input.

    I'm wondering if it's temperature related, as the machine worked ok until I went out into the sun to do some work. The machine is out of warranty, and having played around with the memory, and knowing that the disc isn't the problem that really leaves the logic board, which probably means it's not worth repairing.

    I've got an older ThinkPad without a working battery that I can use for now, but I guess it's time to start thinking about a new machine. I really want to get the book out of the way before getting distracted on that kind of stuff though.

    Tags for this post: blog toys thinkpad broken
    Related posts: ThinkPads return to bricks and mortar retail in the US; Thinkpad x41 tablet PCMCIA IO; r51 update; New laptop; Pain with the ThinkPad; Alan Cox's IBM ThinkPad explodes

posted at: 18:09 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Pain with the ThinkPad

    I have no problems with my various ThinkPads -- in fact I love them greatly. They're by far the most reliable and well built laptops I have ever owned. That didn't stop my R51 from stopping working on Saturday. I woke up in the morning having had a bad night with Matt who has an ear infection. Anyways, the machine was locked up when I finally got out of bed, which has like the third time in the last couple of days. Repeated attempts to reboot the machine resulted in a laptop which wouldn't power up at all (apart from the disk and power lights turning on).

    To cut a long story short, disassembly and a good solid clean with aerosol freeze spray (the only non-conductive aerosol I could find) seems to have fixed the problem. Odd.

    I'll keep you posed on if it keeps working...

    Tags for this post: blog toys thinkpad repair
    Related posts: ThinkPads return to bricks and mortar retail in the US; So, that was me tempting fate apparently; Thinkpad x41 tablet PCMCIA IO; r51 update; New laptop; Alan Cox's IBM ThinkPad explodes

posted at: 17:48 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Frank Arrigo discovers Steve Walsh's free wireless

posted at: 16:54 | path: /travel/australia/canberra | permanent link to this entry


This looks handy, subway maps for mobile devices

posted at: 16:50 | path: /travel | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 29 Sep 2005


What do you do when you care about a standard...

    ...but your employer doesn't? Well, the answer that I've come up with is that standards do matter, and that they shouldn't be controlled by companies for corporate gain. So, I'm going to pursue membership of the standards committee as an individual (which means that I wont be going to any of the meetings I guess), and advocate what I honestly think is the right solution, instead of what nessesarily makes things easier for my employer to implement.

    I'm kinda keen to find some time to implement some tools around the standard too, especially as I am not aware of any implementations online at the moment...

    Tags for this post: work standard committee
    Related posts: PDF/A sample documents?; Should small ISVs be involved with the standards process?; PDF/A

posted at: 15:21 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Robert Scoble is right, Microsoft has abandoned a lot of their developers

posted at: 15:15 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Mont 24 hour race

posted at: 03:32 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 27 Sep 2005


Working from home today

posted at: 15:50 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 26 Sep 2005


75 kilometres last week

posted at: 03:53 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 25 Sep 2005


ImageMagick bug?

posted at: 20:43 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry


Floriade 2005

posted at: 20:16 | path: /events/pictures/20050925-floriade | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 22 Sep 2005


Should small ISVs be involved with the standards process?

posted at: 16:58 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Extended Stay Hotels -- shame on you

posted at: 16:50 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 21 Sep 2005


Did you know...

posted at: 16:22 | path: /tech | permanent link to this entry


First beta of the LCA 2005 CD ROM

posted at: 00:33 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 19 Sep 2005


ImageMagick book - Chapter 4: Other ImageMagick Tools

posted at: 14:18 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 18 Sep 2005


Writely.com is cool

posted at: 16:44 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Samba and MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger)

posted at: 14:16 | path: /samba | permanent link to this entry


Sounds like Andrew's cat is allergic to something in it's food

posted at: 02:57 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 17 Sep 2005


A 50km week

posted at: 22:16 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


My first interview

posted at: 03:01 | path: /enclosures | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 15 Sep 2005


If I'm famous, then people have to be nice to me, right?

posted at: 03:48 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Overflow rooms

    (This is only tangentially related to linux.conf.au 2006, I have no idea what they're doing for room allocation). For linux.conf.au 2005 we discussed the use of overflow rooms to deal with having too many registrations. In the end we decided against it, the crux of the logic being sheer logistics, and value for money (if people pay to attend, they should be able to be in the same room). Anyways, Microsoft's PDC has sold out, and they ended up using overflow rooms. It seems to be working for them so far, and the infrastructure sounds interesting.

    I'm thinking this should be seriously considered if we end up with a sellout situation for a linux.conf.au in the future.

    Tags for this post: linux conference opensource lca2006 overflow

posted at: 02:24 | path: /linux/conference/opensource/lca2006 | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 14 Sep 2005


Feedster has lost interest in it's top 500 already?

    Each month, Feedster brings you a list of 500 of the most interesting and important blogs. Enjoy browsing to see what people are reading, to find feeds that will bring topics of interest to you on a regular basis, and to discover new voices in the Blogosphere.


    If Feedster is updating the top 500 monthly, why is it still displaying the August results halfway through the month of September? Don't they care about the whole thing any more? If so, it only took them a month to get bored with it...

    Tags for this post: blog feedster top500 blog ranking
    Related posts: Eat my dust, Groklaw!; Feedster Top 500; Spank me, I've been bad

posted at: 23:35 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


LCA CD continues

posted at: 17:24 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


I can't hold it in any longer

posted at: 00:46 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


Learning Ruby

posted at: 00:42 | path: /ruby | permanent link to this entry


TUF 18 conference dinner

posted at: 00:15 | path: /events/pictures/20050908-tuf18dinner | permanent link to this entry


20050908-tuf18dinner

posted at: 00:15 | path: /diary/pictures/20050908-tuf18dinner | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 13 Sep 2005


Well, that's Google blog search live then

posted at: 23:59 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


My first keynote presentation

posted at: 17:07 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Comparison shopping for books

posted at: 16:12 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 12 Sep 2005


The LCA 2005 conference CD

    I'm bored, so I'm making a LCA conference CD. Given that we have no audio, and that the corrupt video is quite big and will be online soon (I just need to wrangle the data across), I'm looking for other things to fill the CD with. So far I've decided that photos of the conference would be cool. So, if you have some photos which you wouldn't mind being on the CD drop me an email and I'll see what I can do. I'm happy with stamp the images with a domain name like I do here if that makes people happier.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 conference opensource linux cd
    Related posts: LCA CD continues; TECRA M4 P-M 770 and Ubuntu live CDs; Why is a CD the length it is?

posted at: 18:33 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Around Guilford

    Guilford is about a 20 minute drive from the Vines golf resort in the Swann Valley just outside Perth. Again I had a dirty CCD, but some of these shots are quite nice.

                                           

    See more thumbnails

    Tags for this post: events pictures 20050910-guilford photo

posted at: 05:32 | path: /events/pictures/20050910-guilford | permanent link to this entry


Mirroring the Linux Update podcast

posted at: 05:25 | path: /mirror/opensource/linux/australia | permanent link to this entry


We're getting there

posted at: 02:29 | path: /mirror/opensource/linux/australia | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 11 Sep 2005


Shots from around Fremantle and Perth

posted at: 18:41 | path: /events/pictures/20050910-fremantleperth | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 10 Sep 2005


TUF18 Swann Valley, outside Perth

    TUF 18 (the TRIM User Forum, our user conference) was held at the Vines Resort, in the Swann Valley outside perth. The resort is nice if your into golf, which I was for a little while, but haven't been recently. High lights include rain, a lake, more rain, Gordon and Anthony in Felicity's spa, and so forth.

    Unfortunately the CCD was dirty for many of these shots, and I didn't realise until it was too late.

                                           

    See more thumbnails

    Tags for this post: events pictures 20050908-swannvalley photo

posted at: 20:11 | path: /events/pictures/20050908-swannvalley | permanent link to this entry


Back from Perth

    The Vines resort (where the Jonny Walker Classic is played) is nice, if you like early 1990 architecture, and golf. Just don't try to have a shower in your unit, as the hot water system is the size of a thimble. Hire cars are good, because they take you away from the Vines. Freemantle and Perth are both good, with the Halo resturant in Perth being the producer of one of the best meals I have had in a long time. Photos online soo...

    Tags for this post: travel australia perth vines golf resort
    Related posts: Back in Phoenix; Arrived at Disney World!

posted at: 19:43 | path: /travel/australia/perth | permanent link to this entry


Thanks for the kind word Pia

posted at: 06:37 | path: /mirror/opensource/linux/australia | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 05 Sep 2005


CVS digital cameras and handy cams

posted at: 18:22 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Google Pizza Program

posted at: 16:20 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


I like screen oopsies

posted at: 01:40 | path: /travel/usa/airlines | permanent link to this entry


Tour of San Francisco

posted at: 00:10 | path: /events/pictures/20050714-sanfrancisco | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 04 Sep 2005


Perth for a conference

    The TOWER Asia-Pacific annual conference is later this week in Perth (Wednesday to Friday). I have a couple of free hours here and there, mostly in the evening. If there is anything interesting happening in Perth later this week, could people drop me a line and let me know? Failing that, if you have a free day in Perth, what would you see? Rottnest Island?

    Tags for this post: travel australia perth

posted at: 23:50 | path: /travel/australia/perth | permanent link to this entry


The Linux Australia mirroring project

    Some of you might be aware that Linux Australia recently agreed to support a trial open source mirror project for Australia. This mirror is being run by a sub-committee of Linux Australia, on hardware owned by Linux Australia. The purpose of this post is to remind people of the project, and give a quick status update. It has to be quick, as I'm really busy this week.

    Our hardware arrived several weeks ago, and having been kindly configured by Andrew Pollock was ready for deployment about a week ago. This deployment was held up with some illness amongst various players, but the hardware was deployed to the data center last week by Steven Hanley and myself. We're currently finalising network ACLs for the machine before we can work on finishing off the software configuration.

    At this time I would like to ask for suggestions of projects which would benefit from mirroring. Preferably there would be a clear benefit to the community in Australia from such a mirror, and support from the people being mirrored for the concept. Bandwidth isn't a problem, and disk isn't a big deal as long as the suggestion doesn't need hundreds of gigabytes.

    I'll keep you posted as things progress.

    Tags for this post: mirror opensource linux australia

posted at: 23:23 | path: /mirror/opensource/linux/australia | permanent link to this entry


X.org doesn't support dynamic resize of the screen?

posted at: 18:14 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


LCA 2006: CFP closes today

posted at: 17:16 | path: /linux/conference/opensource/lca2006 | permanent link to this entry


Alcatraz

posted at: 17:07 | path: /events/pictures/20050714-sanfrancisco-alcatraz | permanent link to this entry


Pacifying New Orleans

posted at: 14:07 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Why does every man and his dog put man pages online?

posted at: 01:28 | path: /google | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 03 Sep 2005


Photos from the San Francisco gardens

    We only saw a tiny part of the big gardens in San Francisco (which includes a whole bunch of gum trees!) because the tour didn't stop there very long. What we saw was pretty cool though...

                                           

    See more thumbnails

    Tags for this post: events pictures 20050714-sanfrancisco-gardens photo

posted at: 22:57 | path: /events/pictures/20050714-sanfrancisco-gardens | permanent link to this entry


A Saturday ride

posted at: 04:16 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Apple update

posted at: 03:51 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


New Orleans and sea level

posted at: 03:36 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 31 Aug 2005


Hetherington, 82, created Mr Squiggle in 1959 - a decade before men without strings landed on the moon

posted at: 23:26 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Addiction?

posted at: 20:05 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Pictures of Mountain View, San Jose and Oakland

    Well, the backlog is getting smaller at least. This photo set includes some more Mountain View, pictures taken when Andrew went on a flying lesson with Marc Merlin (I was elsewhere at the time), pictures from "The Tech" Museum is San Jose, including Segway rides, and some random pictures around Oakland (I think that's where we were...) on the way to and from the Bay Area Debian meeting.

    I like Segways by the way...

                                           

    See more thumbnails

    Tags for this post: events pictures 20050713-siliconvalley photo

posted at: 16:33 | path: /events/pictures/20050713-siliconvalley | permanent link to this entry


The cafe downstairs made me a little flat white

    The cafe downstairs at work make me a little flat white with my burger, so I didn't feel left out of the espresso drinking crowd...

                   

    Tags for this post: blog pictures 20050712-siliconvalley photo

posted at: 00:38 | path: /diary/pictures/20050712-siliconvalley | permanent link to this entry


First photos of Mountain View and surrounds

posted at: 00:38 | path: /events/pictures/20050712-siliconvalley | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 30 Aug 2005


Some pictures of Andrew

posted at: 22:42 | path: /andrew/pictures/20050723-pollockwedding | permanent link to this entry


Photos from Andrew and Sarah's wedding (finally!)

    It's taken a while to get around to putting my copies of the pictures I took at Andrew and Sarah's wedding up, although Andrew has had copies up for a while. It took so long as I wanted to rewrite the way these images are generated, which I have finally done.

                                           

    See more thumbnails

    Tags for this post: events pictures 20050723-pollockwedding photo

posted at: 22:42 | path: /events/pictures/20050723-pollockwedding | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 29 Aug 2005


Blogging fire alarms

posted at: 17:25 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Ssssh, I'm hunting customers

    Scott is a random TRIM customer in Canada, who a couple of us found by having technorati watch lists for the name of our product. I have a policy of subscribing to blogs of users when I find them. It's been educational reading Scott's blog -- not just for us developers, but for the company as a whole working through how to deal with customers having a much more public voice for their thoughts.

    Scott mentions that now TOWER machines are about a third of his subscribers... Let's work out who those people are for a second:

    • Liferea: that one's easy. It's my Thinkpad R51 running Debian Unstable. As an introduction, I'm a senior software engineer in the research and development section of TOWER, and am currently in charge of the TRIM Connectivity Toolkit development.
    • Sharpreader: that will be Little Headed Simon, who is a developer on the TRIM Connectivity Toolkit project. Oh, Simon also prefers the moniker "Normal headed Simon", but that doesn't have the same ring to me.
    • Newsfire: will be Lindsay on her Macintoy (which appears not to have broken Apple like me, not that I'm ranting about Apple service at the moment or anything). Lindsay basically runs our marketing section's day to day operations, but leaves the company tomorrow.
    • And Onfolio: is Gordon, the project manager on the TRIM Context ICE web product team. And apparently Grant, our lead DBA as well.


    Hi Scott.

    Tags for this post: work customer blog
    Related posts: On customer support; On customer service

posted at: 16:42 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Let the Apple service ranting continue

posted at: 15:24 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Average build time for a PC

posted at: 13:59 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


More on Apple service

posted at: 05:23 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 28 Aug 2005


Apparently terrible warranty service is par for the course with Apple

posted at: 21:30 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Did I mention that Apple service sucks?

posted at: 19:51 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Some pictures of Andrew

posted at: 18:42 | path: /andrew/pictures | permanent link to this entry


The excitement of Apple service

posted at: 17:13 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Weekend riding

posted at: 05:22 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 27 Aug 2005


LCA 2006 Call For Papers closes soon

posted at: 18:03 | path: /linux/conference/opensource/lca2006 | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 25 Aug 2005


Hamster powered mobile phone charger

posted at: 16:00 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


If you're decisive and you know it, clap your hands

posted at: 14:42 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 24 Aug 2005


A lunch time ride

posted at: 20:48 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Worst timing evar!

posted at: 16:32 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


I wonder if that paraglider has any drugs?

posted at: 16:30 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Hackathons again

posted at: 16:27 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Rides last week

posted at: 05:02 | path: /bike | permanent link to this entry


Interview with Adam Savage

posted at: 01:32 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Must. Overtake. Groklaw.

posted at: 00:59 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 23 Aug 2005


Unjustified fun making

posted at: 17:58 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Alternate queries on results pages making it easier for future evilness?

posted at: 01:17 | path: /google | permanent link to this entry


Dovecot index cache problems

    I'm getting:

    challenger dovecot: IMAP(test): Corrupted index cache file /home/test/mail/.imap/netfilter.lists.netfilter.org/dovecot.index.cache: field header points outside file


    In my logs, and Googling doesn't return anything. Does anyone else get this? I'm going to try upgrading to see if that helps.

    Tags for this post: dovecot

posted at: 00:49 | path: /dovecot | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 22 Aug 2005


Where did SUVs come from?

posted at: 18:30 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Want to be an acquisitions editor on Open Source topics

posted at: 05:00 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


The channel seven defence

posted at: 04:55 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Hackathons

posted at: 04:53 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 21 Aug 2005


Small file open and save dialogs

posted at: 23:02 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Clarke, you need to look into things a little before mouthing off

    Clarke Scott (who once applied for a job as a Microsoft evangelist, although we should note that I don't hold the Microsoft job application moral high ground) blogs about repeats verbatim without verification a post from a Microsoft evangelist based in New Zealand about Linux Australia's support for Linus' trademarking of the Linux trademark in Australia. He ignores of course that Linux Australia has been running one of the most successful Linux community events in the world for the last four or five years, or that Linus is genuinely behind the trademarking effort. He doesn't look into how the Linux Mark Institute (the international body behind the trademark) is structured. Or what their goals are.

    He just comments that the community is less free as a result.

    Windows is a trade mark too. How does having Linux trademarked any more restrictive that Microsoft owning the Windows mark?

    Update: Clarke commented on this post to mention that I had missed that this was a quote from another site, which I am happy to concede. He also suggests the post was tongue in cheek, despite the fact that I can see no indication of that having re-read the post.

    Update: Fixed broken link

    Tags for this post: dotnet linux trademark
    Related posts: Trademarking colours

posted at: 22:57 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Podcasts and iTunes 4.9 on Mac

posted at: 03:00 | path: /macintosh/osx/tiger/itunes | permanent link to this entry


Automator and iTunes hates me

    I can't see a way to get Automator to change the track rating (called "My Rating" in the iTunes user interface) in a workflow. This makes me very sad. I can't even see a way of running AppleScript as part of a workflow. Am I going blind? Is this possible?

    Tags for this post: macintosh osx tiger automator itunes applescript

posted at: 02:51 | path: /macintosh/osx/tiger/automator/itunes | permanent link to this entry


Sydney Australia in Google Maps

posted at: 02:24 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Interesting technique for finding leaks in code

posted at: 02:04 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 20 Aug 2005


One thing about Microsoft Tablet PCs that Scoble didn't mention

posted at: 07:14 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 18 Aug 2005


Rave in a village

posted at: 03:45 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Ministry of re-shelving

posted at: 01:33 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 17 Aug 2005


Getting ASP.NET working on Windows XP Tablet PC edition

posted at: 23:34 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Code better with a new monitor

posted at: 22:55 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Conference papers now online

posted at: 17:45 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 16 Aug 2005


Excitement in the office

posted at: 23:49 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Feeling lucky

posted at: 18:21 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 14 Aug 2005


Random segue: how I came up with the original table of contents

    One of the problems I grappled with early on with was how do you come up with a table of contents for a book? It's a complicated process, and it's really important. If the book doesn't flow, then people are left confused about what goes where, and the book is a lot less useful. Additionally, when you sit down to actually write, then you need to know what is covered where so that you can refer the reader to the right place to find out more about a specific topic -- even if you haven't covered that topic yet.

    So how did I come up with the first cut of the table of contents for the ImageMagick book? Well, I started by looking at all of the command line options to the various ImageMagick commands. I wrote this down on a stack of old business cards, and then distributed those cards in logical sounding piles on the floor. Those piles pretty much became the chapters that I originally submitted.



    That's the card mound. Anyway, once that was done, Matt (the editor) and I sat down and worked on the table of contents description until it flowed nicely, covered everything we could think of, and had approximate page counts. It turns out in hindsight that the table of contents wasn't completely correct, but that's ok because I've been tweaking it as I go along, and it was more of a help than a hindrance in that it tells me stuff like which chapter to refer the reader to for certain kinds of information, and that sort of thing.

    So what's the point I'm trying to make here? When you're writing something big, it's important to have a feel for where you're going in the document, the point you're trying to make, and how you're going to get there.

    Update: Fixed my spelling in the title line, as per the helpful comments from Peter.

    Tags for this post: imagemagick book table of contents technique writing
    Related posts: Mature age students continued; Mark is right; Interesting technique for finding leaks in code; Chapter seven of the shop manual; When I go to Vegas, I should stay here; Going to Jeff and Pia's wedding after party? So am I and I've got a minibus; Region free out of the factory

posted at: 16:03 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


The Apress page for the book

posted at: 04:06 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 13 Aug 2005


So proud

posted at: 18:59 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Inflation through stealth

posted at: 18:34 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Working on review comments for Chapters 2, 3 and 4 tonight

posted at: 04:25 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


Sensis Australian search

posted at: 01:26 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 12 Aug 2005


ImageMagick book - Chapter 3: Compression and Other Metadata

posted at: 18:32 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


Teaching teenage girls to diet

posted at: 03:30 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 11 Aug 2005


Why Debian?

posted at: 02:54 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry


ImageMagick book - Chapter 2: Basic Image Manipulation

posted at: 02:04 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


I didn't get my shirt!

posted at: 01:09 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 09 Aug 2005


Bye Grant and Lindsay

    Last week I had a brain wave on the way home, and decided that I should write some remarkably eloquent post about Lindsay's resignation from my employer. I had a draft paragraph floating around in my head and everything (as these things sometimes happen for me). But I realised I couldn't -- Lindsay had been offered the position at her new employer, but the contract wasn't signed, and she certainly hadn't announced her departure in the office.

    Grant's departure is similar. There's more going on than meets the eye, in my opinion, but it's not my place to comment on these things.

    Let me try to remember what I wanted to say about Lindsay's departure at the time -- it also applies to Grant. It went something like this...

    I am deeply saddened by Lindsay's and Grant's departures from work. When I started four years ago I think I ended up as being more of an acquaintance than anything else, but over the last couple of years they have become very good friends. They're the reason that we acquired Spike the Labradoodle. They're the people who supported me the most apart from my direct family when I interviewed with Microsoft, and while I try to work out what's happening with some changes that are happening in my life at the moment (more on that another time perhaps).

    But at the same time I am so very happy for them. I think they've made the right decision, and my sadness is mostly selfishness. They need to do what's right for them, and I think they're doing that.

    So, how do you manage happy and sad at the same time? All we've done so far is promise to keep in touch...

    Tags for this post: work departure employment
    Related posts: Two more weeks to go; Googling for job candidates; Leaving Google; Microsoft recruiter makes a good point; Lindsay googles for herself

posted at: 17:15 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Audio from linux.conf.au 2005 continued

posted at: 02:58 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 08 Aug 2005


Nice introduction to Fourier Transforms

posted at: 23:40 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


PDF/A sample documents?

posted at: 17:32 | path: /pdf/pdf-a | permanent link to this entry


Funny

posted at: 14:14 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 07 Aug 2005


Audio from linux.conf.au 2005

    I've been asked quite a few times as to the status of the audio from the 2005 linux.conf.au conference, so I thought I would grapple with the issues involved here, so that everyone knows. The short answer is that there doesn't appear to be any audio... Read on for a summary of why.

    Speex

    The linux.conf.au 2005 committee did have machines record speex in every lecture theatre at the conference. These were the same machines which were displaying those slide shows when the project wasn't in use. It would appear that there was a hardware issue on those machines, as they all have recorded fairly large amounts of garbage data. I can't comment much further than that, as I wasn't involved with the setup of the machines, or the diagnosis of the problem.

    Video recordings

    But wait. There were all those video machines in the back of the theatres (or at least the big three). They'd be recording video wouldn't they? Well, they were. It turns out that the audio streams generated from those cameras and their audio system hookup are corrupt. Apparently, and again I haven't looked into this myself, the time stamping in the files is bogus, so the audio data can't reliably be extracted. It would seem that about 25% of each talk can be extracted.

    So where to from here?

    Well, all of that is a bit of a bummer really. Our current plan is to put the dodgy ogg video files online for people to download and try to help us out with the extraction of the audio. The problem with this is that we're talking about a fair bit of data here -- 25 gig to be exact. Linux Australia has recently rolled out a mirror project which I am associated with which will be able to host these files, but it's a case of actually getting the hardware (it's on order), configuring it, testing it, and then deploying it. I would expect this to take around another month from now.

    I've put a random sample of the ogg video on my site if people want to have a poke before then and see if they have suggestions. This video file, assuming I have worked out the file naming convention properly, should be the start of Eben Moglen's keynote presentation. The file isn't too big (around 30 megabytes) so feel free to download it and give it a try.

    I do apologise for the inconvenience the loss of data has causes, despite there really being nothing I could have done about it. I do find it a little embarrassing that this has happened. If you could please refer further comments to the conference organisers list that would be nice.

    Update: One of the guys at work thinks "I can't comment much further than that, as I wasn't involved with the setup of the machines, or the diagnosis of the problem." sounds self righteous, so I thought I should clarify and point out that I didn't mean it that way. What I am trying to convey here is that I would have liked to supply more technical detail as to what happened, but I don't know any.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 conference opensource audio corruption data loss
    Related posts: Audio from linux.conf.au 2005 continued; Breaking: Zap2IT turning off guide data for the US?; Generally poor audio quality on pod casts?; MythBuntu 8.10 just made me sad; Why is a CD the length it is?; On freely available guide data; ImageMagick book - Chapter 3: Compression and Other Metadata

posted at: 20:49 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Leon, my point remains

posted at: 19:01 | path: /vista | permanent link to this entry


PDF/A

posted at: 18:55 | path: /pdf/pdf-a | permanent link to this entry


Trying out the Apress e-book system

    Full disclosure: I am currently writing a book for Apress.

    As an Apress author Apress asked me to check out the Apress e-book online catalog thingie. They threw in a free e-book as an incentive, so I thought I should give it a try. I've done a fair few book reviews for AUUG / Woodslane over the last couple of years, so it seemed like a good idea to look further into this e-book thing anyway. Especially as I have a garage full of books that I occasionally need as references, but don't have the space to store in the house, especially with two small kids who like to draw in books around.

    So, I picked a book in their online catalog, and said I'd like to buy it. I entered the discount code, and was good to go until they noticed that I didn't have an online account in their system. So, I had to stop my "purchase" and make one. Which meant that my place was lost in the purchase, as I had to wait for a confirmation email to arrive, and then click on a link in that email which didn't have the stage I was up to embedded into it.

    The email by the way set off my somewhat aggressive spam filtering, by not having any of my addresses in the delivery headers. I had to go digging in the probably spam folder to find it. You can read about my mail list filtering rules over here if that kind of thing excites you.

    So a couple of warts. After all of this I went and found the book again, entered the discount code, and "bought the e-book". What this gives me is an entry in the list of books I have access to on the Apress site, which means I can download the e-book more than once (if for instance I delete it in error or something). The book is a PDF file, with the slightly annoying name of "book143.pdf". The book in question is quite long, and is about a nine megabyte download.

    Oh, all of this webby stuff was with Firefox on Debian Linux, which all worked fine. The PDF file opens fine with xpdf, with a password on the file which matches the email address I signed up with. This just means that you need to remember the email address that you used when you signed up with Apress, which seems reasonable in a world with fairly permanent email addresses now. It also means that if I put the e-book up on kazaa or something, that they can tell which account did it I suppose.

    xpdf seems to think that printing works by the way, although I don't have a printer configured to actually test with.

    Overall, I think it's quite good. The e-book was very cheap ($15 US if I'd paid), I can download it lots, I don't have to remember a crappy password, and the PDF doesn't seem too crippled. Cool.

    Tags for this post: books ebook system apress online pdf drm
    Related posts: Time to document my PDF testing database; New name; My thesis worries are over; Sony's CD DRM acts like spyware on Windows; PDF/A sample documents?; Openpdf 0.1; This is a pointer; Expect to see some sample documents soon; Why does every man and his dog put man pages online?; Recursive linkage zen; PDF/A; Writely.com is cool; Online aggregators; Adobe announces Acrobat Reader 7 for Linux; TechTalkBlogs; Wanted: PDF documents; Converting a bunch of TIFF images to a PDF using ImageMagick; Updated pdfdb

posted at: 18:32 | path: /books/ebook/system/apress | permanent link to this entry


More riding

posted at: 18:15 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Some details about the publication process

posted at: 17:55 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 06 Aug 2005


Bad server, no donut for you

posted at: 19:21 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Leon, get with the program

posted at: 18:13 | path: /vista | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 05 Aug 2005


Riding

posted at: 19:12 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 04 Aug 2005


And now the book is on Amazon.com

posted at: 02:17 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 02 Aug 2005


This morning I was pondering the origins of the goose step march

posted at: 23:21 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 30 Jul 2005


More on burial methods

posted at: 03:53 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Chapter seven of the shop manual

posted at: 00:05 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 29 Jul 2005


Wow, Amazon UK is listing the book

posted at: 17:42 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 26 Jul 2005


Seriously pissed someone off?

posted at: 22:07 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Converting a bunch of TIFF images to a PDF using ImageMagick

posted at: 04:19 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry


JJJ's hack

posted at: 04:04 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Do you think there is something wrong with my FFT?

posted at: 01:09 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


ImageMagick book - Chapter 1: Installation and Configuration

posted at: 01:06 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


die() in a CGI

posted at: 00:43 | path: /perl | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 25 Jul 2005


On my site layout

    Steven, you're completely off track. I'm not asking what you think of the layout of my site. I really don't care. I was more asking if anyone had thoughts about the potential proliferation of blog tagging services. There is no CSS involved with the tag painting, so I'm not sure what he's referring to there.

    Tags for this post: blog

posted at: 21:35 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


New server

posted at: 19:30 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Blog tags

posted at: 18:56 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sarah's favourite aunt

posted at: 17:29 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Andrew's Wedding

posted at: 15:24 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


The architecture of PerlMagick

posted at: 05:24 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry


Dear robot authors

posted at: 04:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


ImageMagick slowness extracting EXIF information from JPEG files

posted at: 02:54 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 24 Jul 2005


Young Achievers

posted at: 18:10 | path: /young_achievers | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 23 Jul 2005


Sixty five roses (Cystic Fibrosis)

posted at: 19:18 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 19 Jul 2005


Use the phrase "circle jerk" in a corporate memo today!

posted at: 21:34 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Andrew's CSS is disturbing?

posted at: 21:27 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Microsoft TechEd flair

posted at: 21:17 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Mellow

    I took last week off and spent a week in Silicon Valley, as readers here will be aware. It's interesting how big an effect a week off has had. I feel remarkably mellow and unusually happy now, and there's no particular reason for it. It just happened. Even the kids stepping on my glasses and being two hours late for work because of having to get them panel beaten back into shame hasn't been able to adversely affect my mood.

    They call me mellow yellow... Quite rightly.

    Tags for this post: blog mellow mood happy
    Related posts: Choosing to be happy, and interested in your job

posted at: 18:11 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


A mystery solved

    For some time there has been a raging battle in the corridors of work. Heads have rolled, careers have been destroyed, and whingy complaints have been made. What has this battle been over?

    Whether the white residue on the dishes when they come out of the washer is normal, safe (or unsafe), or an attempt my management to control our thoughts and crush our wills to live. Many hours have been spent on these issues.

    It's all be resolved now. The repair guy was in to work on other bits of the dish washer (it's a major piece of infrastructure here, and involves a highly redundant design. Really, think of it more as a cluster -- there's raised flooring, forced cooling, and a tribe of gnomes to keep it running). It turns out that someone put dish washing liquid into the rinse aid orifice, and it's become permanently clogged. Clogged enough to need the rise aid doodad to be replaced.

    Mystery solved. Clearly management was trying to control our minds by clogging the rinse aid doodad.

    (Yes, this post was a vain attempt a humour. No one has been fired over the dish washer. Until my boss reads this that is. Oh, but it does have forced air cooling.)

    Tags for this post: blog dishwasher rinse aid residue dish
    Related posts: Dishwasher Trout

posted at: 17:53 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


MacOS X Tiger and Samba borked?

posted at: 00:31 | path: /samba | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 18 Jul 2005


The state of Microsoft certification

posted at: 15:20 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Names for longhorn

posted at: 15:15 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Using an Intel PCI modem as a FXO card

posted at: 03:50 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


A book on ImageMagick?

posted at: 02:21 | path: /imagemagick/book | permanent link to this entry


A day at the zoo

posted at: 00:00 | path: /events/pictures/20050718-zoo | permanent link to this entry


Shared birthday party

posted at: 00:00 | path: /events/pictures/20050718 | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 17 Jul 2005


Unique elements in a perl array

    I want to have an array in perl with only unique elements. My current hacky way is to misuse a hash, is there a nicer way of doing this? 

      # This function is similar to the above, but returns a list of the
# directories containing at least one image.
#
# Pass in the path to the parent directory
sub getdirectories{
    my($path) = @_;
    my(%directories);

    find(sub{
	# Again, this needs to be tweaked if other image formats are
	# to be supported
	if($File::Find::name =~ /\/([^\/]*\.jpg)$/i){
	    # This is a horrible, horrible hack
	    $directories{$File::Find::dir} = "yes";
	}
    }, $path);

    return keys %directories;
}


    Tags for this post: perl unique array item
    Related posts: I am uniquer than my brother

posted at: 22:04 | path: /perl | permanent link to this entry


Getting married is a pain in the arse for Women

posted at: 18:06 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Back in AU

posted at: 18:03 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


It's always the way, isn't it?

posted at: 17:17 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 12 Jul 2005


Microsoft now requiring a valid version of Windows to install their anti spy-ware beta?

posted at: 17:06 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


LCA2006 -- CFP opens soon!

posted at: 06:58 | path: /linux/conference/opensource/lca2006 | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 11 Jul 2005


On hotel Internet that sucks

posted at: 22:57 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Google maps used to map US casualties from Iraq

posted at: 22:11 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Andrew is a loony

posted at: 22:04 | path: /travel/usa/california/mountainview | permanent link to this entry


Hotel Avante

    Well, I got here. Nice hotel, nice staff on check in. Easy drive from the San Francisco airport for us foreigners. The San Francisco airport seems a lot nicer than the one in Los Angeles as well.

    Tags for this post: travel usa california mountainview hotel, avante

posted at: 12:56 | path: /travel/usa/california/mountainview | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 10 Jul 2005


Flattering

posted at: 02:25 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 07 Jul 2005


London bombs

posted at: 13:14 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 06 Jul 2005


Ubuntu and a machine which does APM not ACPI

posted at: 23:38 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Old languages

posted at: 22:42 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Martin retires from his work netball league

posted at: 21:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sorry to those commenters

posted at: 21:52 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Or, a gelatine urn sounds cool too

posted at: 21:47 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


On pitching products to bloggers

posted at: 21:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


When I die...

posted at: 18:38 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Gilmor Gang

posted at: 17:09 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


NLA web crawling

posted at: 15:37 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Drugs

posted at: 14:09 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Internet access in Perth

posted at: 03:50 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 05 Jul 2005


Installing wine on Ubuntu Hoary

posted at: 22:28 | path: /wine | permanent link to this entry


Pandora

posted at: 18:00 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


When I die...

posted at: 16:04 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 04 Jul 2005


In Sydney

posted at: 00:59 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 03 Jul 2005


Dinner

    I'm thinking about cooking dinner soon, and I've just looked in the fridge and discovered that the only meat we have is sausages because of a clerical error. I did discover a whole bunch of packet mixes in the pantry though. Here are my dinner options -- which one should I pick?

    • Creamy Potato sausage bake
    • Beef sausage and black bean
    • Thai Chicken Sausage
    • Creamy mushroom chicken sausage
    • Cheesy cauliflower sausage supreme
    • ...and so on


    I'm thinking that Thai sausage, with a side of creamy sausage bake and cheesy sausage supreme is a clear winner. Thoughts?

    Tags for this post: food sausage

posted at: 00:16 | path: /food | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 02 Jul 2005


On caching of websites

posted at: 23:46 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 01 Jul 2005


Make Magazine: Building a Myth TV Box part 1

posted at: 06:11 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 30 Jun 2005


AJAX

    Byron, AJAX was first used commercially in the Outlook Web Access product. Microsoft will support AJAX because:

    • They need it to be able to compete
    • They use it themselves
    • Their developers demand it


    Tags for this post: blog ajax microsoft
    Related posts: Ajax; Writely.com is cool

posted at: 17:59 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 29 Jun 2005


Life skills

posted at: 21:23 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


How to get your podcast into the iTunes store

posted at: 03:24 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Pingomatic outage

posted at: 01:10 | path: /pingomatic | permanent link to this entry


Speech recognition hardware

posted at: 00:51 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Exceptions in Web Services

posted at: 00:31 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Hiring good people and FinalBuilder

    Mitch comments on hiring the right people and the process that Readify uses. He mentions that it's important to have a balance between the points on Tate's hit list, which is of course right. Based on my two Microsoft interviews now, I must say that they focus a little too much on the theoretical problem solving skills, instead of looking for raw talent, or an ability to talk to customers, or read existing code. They've really focused on one of the things on that list.

    It's kind of a self fulfilling prophecy, in that people seem to assume that the process that hired them is by definition the best process to use to hire a new person (presumably who will be like them).

    Oh, is there a way in FinalBuilder to send an email when a build step fails but has "ignore failures" checked?

    Tags for this post: dotnet hiring finalbuilder microsoft
    Related posts: Collect the whole set; Calling Tate Needham, or, Hiring in Canberra; Troubles hiring people

posted at: 00:24 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 28 Jun 2005


iTunes 4.9 and podcast support

posted at: 18:18 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Microsoft TechEd 2005 flair

    In a blast from that restaurant in Office Space, Microsoft has been providing "flair" for peoples blogs when they attend their events for some time. For example, here's the proposed flair for the TechEd 2005 conference:



    Apart from the fact that flair seems like a good idea and perhaps should happen more often, I thought it might be time to do some re-mixes of the TechEd flair. Here's the one for my Windows based workplace:



    And here's the one so that my nerdy friends don't make fun of me:



    Tags for this post: dotnet microsoft teched conference flair
    Related posts: Microsoft TechEd flair; Funny; I didn't get my shirt!; That's one way of doing it...

posted at: 17:58 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


I'm glad I've turned on comments here

posted at: 00:55 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sydney next week

posted at: 00:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Bingo!

posted at: 00:35 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


My new toy


    Andrew needed a nap before we could play with the camera     		Much like Simon I purchased a new camera last week, although I have owned three over my career. I picked up the Canon EOS 350 Digital, and am totally in love with it. It's just a great camera. It's the first time that I've owned an SLR though, and it's nice to have a digital camera for once which turns on instantly (0.2 seconds to be precise), takes photos when you press the button, and has a good rapid fire mode. I've taken 700 shots since I picked up the camera, and the battery meter still reckons it's on full charge.


    Andrew and I thought we should test out the new camera, so we had Catherine stalk Matthew with the cool telephoto lens (90 - 300 mm Canon ultrasonic to be precise). The photo turned out really well, although it's a shame that you can see where Spike ate the couch in the background. You can't tell we fixed it with duct tape can you?
    Matthew with a halo.
    There is a first and last time for everything.



    Mummy's flower     		Then we thought we should try out the macro mode on the 18 - 55 mm Canon ultrasonic lens. We think that the flower came out all right too, don't you think? This is the flower that Andrew bought Catherine the other day when she wasn't feeling well.


    I got distracted by playing with focus as well, and ended up taking more pictures of the flower than any normal person would have. For example, checkout the one on the left...
    Nice bud



    I'm glad this woman loves me
    otherwise she might break my legs     		Thankfully, Catherine didn't mind doing some housework while we were testing the camera. She understands that they're both important parts of having a well running family.


    Andrew's opinion of the camera was that it did quite well. I didn't even have to prompt him to make that gesture.
    The camera passes



    So now we rest     		It certainly was a lot of work testing the camera out, so then we had to have a little rest. It's a hard life, but someone has to do it...


    Update: Changed formatting to work on dodgy browsers and aggregators.
    Update: Fixed grammar error

    Tags for this post: blog toys camera digital slr canon eos 350d andrew
    Related posts: Canon EOS 350D; Build your own cables; CVS digital cameras and handy cams; Free on demand from Comcast; ov511 hackery; Destinator 3 GPS navigation for the PocketPC

posted at: 00:11 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


The Snowy Hydro Southcare Rescue Helicopter 2005 fund raising dinner


    The beach buddies hopefully
    have fulfilling alternate careers     		Saturday night was the second Snowy Hydro Southcare rescue Helicopter fund raising dinner that Catherine and I have been to. What normally happens is that one of our board members signs us up, and then the staff battle it out to work out who gets to go to the dinner. Last year there was an an Elvis impersonator, and this year it was people who though they looked, acted and sounded a little like the beach boys. I hate to be the one to tell them, but they we're wrong.



    Lindsay is considering hitting me
    or the band. It is hard to tell.     		Heck, Lindsay was pretty open with her opinion of their attempts at harmony, but they simply didn't ask her opinion, which is probably good for their self esteem. To be fair though, I actually enjoyed the night and had a good time. They started well with Sushi, which is always a favourite of mine, even if Catherine hates it. The dinner itself was ok too, although I wasn't too keen on the entree (appetiser for the Americans amongst you).



    Max Walker discusses the size of
    his wacking stick.     		The master of ceremonies for the evening was Max Walker, who is a biggish guy in Australian sport. He showed a remarkable aptitude for hurling little round objects at men who have only flattened sticks to defend themselves with earlier in his career, as well as playing Australian Rules Football, hosting a sports show on commercial television, and writing enough best sellers to build a raft and float out of the dining hall on them. I know this, because he told us about it. A lot. Max gave a stirring introduction to the dinner, which would have gone quite well at the Sydney Olympics, which was what it was about. Most of the people in the room were left a little bemused as to it's relevance to the rescue helicopter.


    I should be fair though. Max is a big name, and did well at extracting money from drunk people. The helicopter is a good cause, and who can blame them for failing to get a better band in a city with only a population of only 300,000. I certainly hope the copter is around when I need it. Like I said, Catherine and I had a good time.


    Update: Twiddled to resolve issues with broken browsers and aggregators.
    Update: Learning to spell.

    Tags for this post: blog southcare helicopter rescue fund raising charity dinner
    Related posts: Steven Colbert, will you marry me?; Teaching teenage girls to diet

posted at: 00:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 27 Jun 2005


This is a test

posted at: 20:08 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Ok, I've finally snapped

posted at: 17:46 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 24 Jun 2005


Over-analysed Friday comments on Half Nekkid Thursday

posted at: 03:01 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 23 Jun 2005


Friday afternoon quiz question

posted at: 23:35 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


No no no no

posted at: 20:57 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Region free out of the factory

posted at: 17:54 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Traffic based linkage spam?

posted at: 16:59 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Note to self: if hiding heroin, don't use cocaine

posted at: 16:20 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Troubles hiring people

    Ryan, we have troubles hiring senior developers as well though. My current theory is that the educational system built around information technology is fairly broken. I wouldn't hire many of the people I graduated with for instance, and there are a lot of other graduates I meet who seem to be missing basic skills from my perspective -- understanding of memory allocation at a basic level, understanding how how a machine actually works, that sort of thing. Universities seriously need to have a long hard look at themselves and the value they're offering their undergraduate students.

    So, does anyone have good hiring techniques they would like to share?

    Tags for this post: work hiring
    Related posts: Collect the whole set; Calling Tate Needham, or, Hiring in Canberra; Hiring good people and FinalBuilder

posted at: 15:34 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Project Aardvark unmasked!

posted at: 00:09 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Calling Tate Needham, or, Hiring in Canberra

posted at: 00:05 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 22 Jun 2005


Random thing that freaks me out

    People who try to have conversations in the rest room with me. I'm just somehow not emotionally prepared to enter into conversation with people other than my wife without my pants on. Get back to me when I step outside.

    Tags for this post: blog restroom freak out

posted at: 00:21 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 21 Jun 2005


How come...

posted at: 17:26 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 20 Jun 2005


Starting a startup? Announce it now!

posted at: 23:18 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


ABC News Podcasts

posted at: 22:48 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


The new way of converting JPEGs to MPEGs

posted at: 17:20 | path: /jpeg2mpeg | permanent link to this entry


Steven will be so proud of me

posted at: 15:09 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Yum

    Bombay chicken, with fresh home cooked pappadums. Next time to try to make the pappadums from scratch. Does anyone have a recipe they care to share?

    Tags for this post: food indian pappadum

posted at: 03:43 | path: /food | permanent link to this entry


US tax withholding for W-8BEN

posted at: 00:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 19 Jun 2005


Canon EOS 350D

posted at: 21:53 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


MelbourneIT are into search engine optimisation?

posted at: 17:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 18 Jun 2005


On customer service

    I'm going overseas in a couple of weeks and in a fit of panic I applied for a new credit card for the trip last week, as the credit limits on our other cards have always been deliberately low. I filled in the web form on the Virgin Credit site, and sent it off. I got a confirmation email from something pretending to be a human, and thought nothing more about it until lunch time yesterday when I though that perhaps I should ring the company and work out if the card was going to arrive in time. I didn't bother, because just as I was about to ring them, Catherine called and said the cards had arrived. That's impressive. From go to whoa it took a week.

    Today I rang up to activate the card. Let's talk a little about that shall we? The person on the other end of the phone answered within a couple of rings. She gave me her full name (which was surprising). She was helpful, polite and casual. When I had another call come in, she offered to go onto hold so I could take the other call. I'm at home, and the lady in the call center is offering to go on hold! That's never happened to me before. It took a total of 8 minutes to setup the card completely, including doing all the security stuff.

    I told the lady that I was going overseas, and asked if the card would work in the US. She said it sure would, but that they would put a note on my file for the length of the trip so that the fraud department wont freak out that my location has changed. That's fairly standard, Amex did the same thing for me. What was cooler was that she pointed out the international version of the call center number on the back of the card, and let me know that if I had questions I could call reverse charges and they would accept the call. Did I mention that the call center is open 24 hours?

    Perhaps it's different in other parts of the world, but a fast, efficient, polite, 24 hour, reverse charges accepting bank is unheard of in Australia. I'm very impressed.

    Oh, there's other little things too. I got to chose the colour of the card (a little thing), they have great graphic design, and best of all they have a sense of humour -- the small print is clearly labelled "small print", and the terms and conditions booklet is labelled "our legal guys asked up to put this in". It might be a boring document, but at least the title made me smile.

    Coincidentally, I flew down to Melbourne on Virgin Blue. It was my first trip with the discount carrier which is the sister company to Virgin Credit. No mucking around. No attempt to pretend it's a religious experience like Qantas does. Brand new plane. Clean. No mucking around. The same sense of humour -- they boarding announcements all started with "hi ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls". They even let the plane empty from both ends in Canberra, which is unheard of for Qantas. Oh, and the flight was on time, unlike many of the Qantas flights I take where the planes seem to break all the time.

    Over all, I'm very impressed with the Virgin services I've used this week. Keep up the good work.

    Update: Did I mention humour? I just used Virgin Credit's online form to let them know how happy I am and got this message in return: 

      	Thanks Michael for your cry for help/advice/general rant.

	We will be sending you an email response as soon as we can!


    Again with the making me smile.

    Tags for this post: blog virgin credit bank blue discount airline customer service
    Related posts: Buy Toshiba!; Ssssh, I'm hunting customers; What US address should I give?; On Virgin Atlantic premium economy; Apple update; More on Apple service; Apparently terrible warranty service is par for the course with Apple; The excitement of Apple service; Westpac suck too; Qantas; Andrew is a loony; On customer support; FAA Considering Passenger Ban; Exceptions in Web Services; Let the Apple service ranting continue; Web Servers, Web Applications, Web Services, Web Parts and maintaining your job security through naming conventions incomprehensible to the innocent public; Apparently I should pay more attention to pingomatic; Did I mention that Apple service sucks?; Oh, and no affection of SouthWest flights!; The worst user interface I have seen in a long time; Prior art needed: Microsoft patents XML Serialisation

posted at: 04:56 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 17 Jun 2005


Michael Jackson

posted at: 18:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Another random post

    I was looking back over what I've said here in the last week, and it's been pretty random. It's also been a quiet week because of travelling. Anyways, I'm now chained to my desk and meant to be writing, so I guess this counts as procrastination or something...

    Tags for this post: blog procrastination

posted at: 18:31 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 16 Jun 2005


Wanted: Someone who knows enough about ImageMagick to do some reviewing for me

posted at: 20:56 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry


I'm getting fed up

posted at: 04:54 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Picking a new head shot

posted at: 04:44 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Pingomatic down?

posted at: 04:33 | path: /pingomatic | permanent link to this entry


Back from Melbourne

posted at: 04:30 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 12 Jun 2005


Chocolate fudge self saucing pudding

    I've talked before about cooking here, for example by my barbecued salmon recipe turned out ok. So here's the dessert I've been meaning to write up for a while:

    Ingredients for the pudding:
    • 1/2 cup of self raising flour
    • 1/2 teaspoon of salt (I usually just use a pinch)
    • 1 tablespoon of cocoa
    • 90 grams of sugar (I usually use raw sugar)
    • 1/4 cup of milk (62.5 ml)
    • 1 tablespoon of melted butter


    Mix all of those in a bowl. The mix will look pretty dry when you're done, but don't panic.

    Ingredients for the sauce:
    • 1/2 cup of brown sugar
    • 1 tablespoon of cocoa
    • 210 ml of hot water


    Mix those in the oven container. I use a casserole pot. Pour in the other mixture. Chuck in the oven for 45 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. You know it's cooked when a skewer comes out dry (except for any sauce which might get on it from the bottom. Take out of oven. Put into your bowl. Pour cream on. Eat.

    This version serves two.

    Tags for this post: cooking food dessert chocolate pudding recipe
    Related posts: Dinner; Dishwasher Trout; Yum; 14 November 2003; Food recommendation; People sneak into Google for lunch?; Qantas; Dinner at Rock Salt Cafe; Holy bread emergency Batman!

posted at: 03:08 | path: /cooking | permanent link to this entry


Video4Linux, ov511, and RGB24 palettes

posted at: 01:13 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 11 Jun 2005


A first taste of Fedora Core

posted at: 21:49 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Pingomatic down?

    When I connect to pingomatic.com I get: 

      WordPress

Error establishing a database connection

This either means that the username and password information in your wp-config.php file is incorrect or we can't contact the database server at localhost. This could mean your host's database server is down.

    * Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
    * Are you sure that you have typed the correct hostname?
    * Are you sure that the database server is running?

If you're unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.


    Tags for this post: pingomatic ping wordpress blog
    Related posts: Pingomatic down?; TrackBack pings; MySQL User Camp 2006; Apparently I should pay more attention to pingomatic

posted at: 19:58 | path: /pingomatic | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 10 Jun 2005


Collisions in MD5 sums

posted at: 19:31 | path: /crypto/md5 | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 09 Jun 2005


Now that it's booked it's official

    I'm going to be in Melbourne on Tuesday and Wednesday for meetings, which means I'll be out of email contact, and the hotel the company has booked me into doesn't have any networking. Cest la vie.

    Tags for this post: work travel

posted at: 20:29 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


New toy: automated driver stalking for linux device drivers

posted at: 04:45 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Wow, people are already talking about hacking the Xbox 360

posted at: 03:57 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


ov511 hackery

posted at: 03:51 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Recumbent bikes

posted at: 02:52 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Your first computer?

posted at: 01:08 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 08 Jun 2005


New ImageMagick uploaded to Debian Unstable

posted at: 23:51 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry


Herm. Jeremy Wright's book eats my printer driver

posted at: 02:45 | path: /books/untitled | permanent link to this entry


The differences between stress and depression?

    (This is a little out of left field and a lot more open than I am normally here. That might be a good thing, it might be a bad thing. If you're more interested in discussions on computing, cubicles, children, or crayons I recommend you skip this post. In fact, perhaps I should ask for feedback about whether this kind of post will make me unemployable or something.)

    So, I've been feeling kinda depressed recently, or so I thought. I went and saw Patrick my doctor recently and he suggested that I'm not depressed, just under too much stress. The symptoms I've been exhibiting are:

    • I'm more irritable than normal
    • Needing a lot more sleep than I used to, and am still always tired
    • Finding it hard to get motivated
    • Loss of appetite


    Or at least there the ones I can remember at the moment. Now, I don't have a lot of reason to actually be depressed when I think about it rationally: the PhD is doing well, I have a face to face interview with Google soon, the kids are doing great, I have interesting work to do at work (even if I don't agree with everything which happens there), I have this random skunk works project which I can soon mention. I'm busy, but not being trampled.

    On the flip side, I really feel like I'm getting older. Bits of me that I don't like hurting hurt more. I'm going gray. I'm no longer the youngest guy in the section at work (I was for a long time). Heck, I have two kids and two house loans!

    Perhaps that's an argument as to why I am just stressed -- I can't actually think of anything more wrong in my life than battles over whether I need to pay for a parking space at work or not.

    Then again, it's pretty compelling that I just feel that the world is getting me down.

    Bah. Whatever. I have work to do so I better get on with it. Just ignore the grumpy old man.

    Update: Oh, that's the other thing I forgot to mention. How does one go about actually decreasing their stress levels? Do you try to care less about things? Do you do less? What?

    Tags for this post: blog stress
    Related posts: Interesting technique for finding leaks in code; Recumbent bikes; Addiction?

posted at: 02:22 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wrapping a COM IStream into a .NET Stream

posted at: 01:05 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 07 Jun 2005


Mental note: Avoid this airline

posted at: 21:29 | path: /travel/usa/airlines | permanent link to this entry


20040710-nph

posted at: 05:23 | path: /matthew/pictures/20040710-nph | permanent link to this entry


20040710-nph

posted at: 05:23 | path: /diary/pictures/20040710-nph | permanent link to this entry


20040710-nph

posted at: 05:23 | path: /events/pictures/20040710-nph | permanent link to this entry


20040710-nph

posted at: 05:23 | path: /andrew/pictures/20040710-nph | permanent link to this entry


Huffman coding

posted at: 00:47 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Random learning for the day

posted at: 00:06 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 06 Jun 2005


Spank me, I've been bad

posted at: 23:38 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


I totally accepted Jesus into my soul

posted at: 17:37 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


A first attempt at punditry: Apple switches to Intel CPUs

    I figured now was a good time to give my first attempt at industry punditry a go. If you're impressed with what you read below, then you really should interview me for your paper, send me a brown paper bag full of money, or make me a director of your company. It's how people say thank you in the corporate world, and as such is only polite.

    "I felt something, a disturbance in the network, as if a million mac zealots cried out in horror and were suddenly silenced."


    First off, I imagine that there are some fairly sad engineers at IBM today, and I feel for them. It must be horrid to have your baby taken by a guy in a turtle neck sweater and thrown into a garbage compactor. I know it wont help much, but I happen to have a lot of beer at home, and if any of you would like to drop in to help me drink it, then I'm sure we can sort something out. I'll even call a taxi to get you home afterwards.

    We all need to remember that Apple is a very smart company, even if they don't have the Power PC engineering team at IBM's best interests in mind. Steve Jobs wont have done anything he thinks will put Apple at risk, and he knows what he's doing. Remember, Apple has done this once before...

    Why didn't they switch to Sun hardware?

    Jonathan Schwartz proposed that Apple move to Sun processors, but tieing your platform to a hardware manufacturer with historical difficulties making a profit doesn't seem like a particularly brilliant idea to anyone apparently. Including Steve. Additionally, Apple is probably jumping away from IBM for one of two reasons -- they didn't like being beholden to someone who was their only option for the processor (does Motorola still make Power PC chips?), and price. Sun is unlikely to have a price advantage over Intel, given that Sun itself uses x86 chips for it's low end machines.

    Oh my God, we all have to re buy our applications!

    Yes, yes you are. Then again, this has always been the way that Apple plays the game. They sell you a machine, support you for a couple of years, and then sell you a new machine. Running OX 9 on your imac from 5 years ago? I feel your pain. Basically, Apple just wants you to go out and buy a new machine. So, get on with it. That new machine will ship with new applications compiled for the new architecture, so for the 99% case things will just work, which is what Apple wants.

    The sky is falling!

    No.

    Now they have to compete on a platform controlled by Microsoft!

    I was initially startled that Apple would move from a platform that they control and which is tightly defined by them to one which is basically controlled by Microsoft (as shown by the pain that other people have implementing things like ACPI, when most BIOSes are coded to work around bugs in Windows 95 or 98 which mean that the Linux folk end up having to try to be bug for bug compatible with old Windowses or have some other workaround). Thinking about this some more this morning, this simply isn't the case.

    IBM supplies the CPUs in current Macintosh machines, but that doesn't mean that they exert a lot of control over the architecture. Apple still makes the mother board, controls what is in the chip set, and can make reasonable assumptions about what else is in the machine. This is still the case when they jump to an Intel CPU -- I imagine that they'll still make their own mother boards and tightly control the chip sets that they use so that they only have to code for the well controlled case. Apple is also big enough that if they find a bug in a chip, they can have the manufacturer fix it, which makes their job easier than the Linux people.

    This view is confirmed by Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller who says that Apple has no plans on supporting other manufacturers' hardware.

    They want to sell a beige box like we all have in the corner?

    Raible Designs suggests that Apple should stay in the hardware game, and he is right. Apple has always had it's biggest strength in it's excellent industrial design, and I can't see that changing any time soon. The beige box in the corner simply isn't an interesting machine to the people who buy Apples -- because they want a well integrated machine which looks good and makes other people jealous. They'll get that in their new Intel based Apples, and wont even notice the change.

    Tags for this post: mac pundit intel cpu powerpc switch
    Related posts: Using an Intel PCI modem as a FXO card; Am I really the first?

posted at: 17:19 | path: /mac/pundit | permanent link to this entry


To continue the installation fun, let's now install Max OS X

posted at: 02:33 | path: /mac | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 05 Jun 2005


Australian public service announcement

posted at: 22:04 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Old ImageMagick packages in Debian and Ubuntu

posted at: 20:57 | path: /imagemagick | permanent link to this entry


Generally poor audio quality on pod casts?

posted at: 18:57 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Gday world pod cast with Jeremy Wright

posted at: 17:45 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


An internal work email

    Perhaps this is a breach of some sort of corporate rule, but I think it's relatively innocent...

    In the weekly informational bulletin that goes around the company to tell people what various areas are doing was this gem from the human resources department: 

      Generation X

Born between 1965 - 1979

    * Often had both parents working, often known as latch key kids
    * More resourceful, individualistic, self-reliant and irreverent
    * Focus in the workplace on relationships, outcomes, rights and skills
    * Not interested in longterm careers, corporate loyalty or status symbols
    * Easy to recruit but hard to retain
    * Like to be told what needs to be done but not how
    * Enjoy variety and setting priorities
    * Have a need for their opinions and reactions to be valued
    * Enjoy informal recognition such as flexible work arrangements


    So, it would appear that I am a generation X member. I think most of the points listed above are fairly believable for a characterisation of my entire generation, if such a thing is ever a valid thing to do. For example, it seems only logical to me that you would have employees who have a need for their opinions to be valued -- surely that's a basic human trait?

    In fact, perhaps most of that rings true because it's true for all humans? (Kinda like those horoscopes which are simply always true, and therefore mysteriously correct for the intended recipient?)

    I do have one point there that I definitely object to. "Not interested in longterm careers, corporate loyalty or status symbols". Sorry, surely there are some people in that 14 year span who care about their career?

    Tags for this post: work generation x horoscope characterisation career
    Related posts: Blogging essential to a successful career; Being Geek; It seems to me; X.org doesn't support dynamic resize of the screen?; MacOS X Tiger and Samba borked?

posted at: 17:23 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


A first taste of Ubuntu

posted at: 02:57 | path: /linux/ubuntu | permanent link to this entry


Have I mentioned that I'm a big Smithsonian fan?

posted at: 02:26 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 04 Jun 2005


Dishwasher Trout

posted at: 05:14 | path: /food | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 02 Jun 2005


Marketing versus being well

posted at: 17:43 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


The JPEG still picture compression standard

posted at: 02:11 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Advertising inside the firewall

posted at: 01:23 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


So much for the Kensington lock controversy

posted at: 01:02 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 01 Jun 2005


Adventures in Blinis

    The David Jones half yearly sale was on the other night, and my dad brought Catherine, the kids and I along like he normally does. It was probably the worst sale I've ever been to: things were really expensive; there wasn't much discounted; and the vibe was all wrong. Anyways, it looked like we weren't going to buy anything until I ended up in the pots and pans section. There I saw it. A thing of beauty. It was:



    The Blinis Pan. What's a Blinis Pan I hear you ask? Well I had no idea. The pan looked useful though -- it is just the right size to cook the single egg that Matthew likes on his toast on a Sunday morning with a liberal serve to tomato sauce (called ketchup in the US for some reason). Anyways, the nice old lady rocks on up to me while I'm holding one of these pans and asks what a Blinis is. I tell I have no idea, but that I think the first stage in finding out is to catch a Blinis and skin it. She laughs and wanders off.

    I can't stand not knowing what a Blinis by now. It's consuming me. I simply must know. So off to the counter I go. I ask Sarah, the lovely young lady who is staffing the counter. She has no idea. The other lady behind the counter (who has a few more miles on the clock) has no idea either, but tries to bluff with "it's a bit like an egg, a bit like herbs and spices, and a bit like a fried nut". She eventually admits to not knowing either.

    We end up buying the pan, but I have to Google when I get home. Wikipedia to the rescue -- a Blinis is an Anglicized version of a Russian word. It's a traditional Russian mini pancake. Problem solved.

    Tags for this post: blog blinis david jones shopping sale pan wikipedia
    Related posts: This would be me pimping tcmalloc; Mi Pueblo; Random facts for the day; Two things

posted at: 23:33 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Ok, hand up if you're a CEO

posted at: 21:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Microsoft recruiter makes a good point

    A Microsoft recruiter makes a good point:

    "My latest tirade revolves around Hiring Managers (and Im referring to Microsoft Hiring Managers but I know this problem exists in other companies) not getting the talent landscape. Not only do they not seem to understand that brilliant software engineers don't grow on trees (you don't, do you?) but they cant seem to get it through their heads that 1) Microsoft isn't the only place hiring, 2) Working at a big company isn't everyones dream, and 3) Redmond is not the first place people say they want to move when they wake up in the morning. (Unfortunately, I don't think the slogan .Where do you want to go today? Redmond, of course! would fly.)

    So I guess Ive just been really tired of (pardon my bluntness) the entitled, spoiled whiners lately. So much that its made me question my desire to continue working in a Recruiting function for this company. I don't know how many times I can have the same conversation like, yes, Monster.com is a one place to search for candidates but its not the only place, and no, Mr. Hiring Manager, you don't need your own account. We've got it covered. Thanks though.

    Quite honestly (maybe here is where my tirade kicks in), Im sick and tired of the Hiring Managers around here not trusting their recruiters. Hi there news flash. Guess what? I probably have a higher IQ than you (yes, I just went there), and I get it. Trust me. They pay me the big bucks to be an expert on hiring for the company. You do your job; Ill do mine. Plus, you don't see me getting in your business every time some Microsoft program crashes on me, do you?"


    I think there's a lot to be said for trusting the people delegated with knowledge of a certain problem space. Us engineers tend to be pretty angry when people without technical knowledge tell us what code to write. Sure tell us what you need, but don't tell us how to write each line. We'll get back to you with a suggestion which you can ok. You wouldn't for instance tell your mechanic how to change a tyre -- you just trust them to get the job done.

    Then again Mini-microsoft argues that if you can't hire exactly the right person for a job, don't hire anyone.

    Tags for this post: blog microsoft employment recruit job
    Related posts: Two more weeks to go; Googling for job candidates; Leaving Google; Bye Grant and Lindsay; Lindsay googles for herself; Google? Sydney?; I can't hold it in any longer; Microsoft Australia is looking for a new developer evangelist; Microsoft hiring foreigners because it's cheaper than locals?

posted at: 18:30 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sunk cost

posted at: 18:14 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 31 May 2005


20050601

posted at: 18:14 | path: /events/pictures/20050601 | permanent link to this entry


20050601

posted at: 18:14 | path: /diary/pictures/20050601 | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 30 May 2005


Prior art needed: Microsoft patents XML Serialisation

posted at: 21:36 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Blog spam continued

posted at: 17:06 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


I was quiet on the weekend

    So, I didn't blog as much as normal on the weekend. To be honest I was pretty distracted with a little skunk-works project I have going at the moment. I wont say any more about it until I'm a little more sure that something is going to come of it than I am now...

    I did see the Hitchhikers movie though. I thought it was fantastic, and Catherine, who was previously unexposed to the genre enjoyed it too.

    Tags for this post: blog skunk-works

posted at: 16:43 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Illinois man sets own house on fire so guest will leave

posted at: 16:21 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Qantas

posted at: 15:54 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Quite motivational

posted at: 15:49 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Engineers Australia -- ignoring their members since 1919

posted at: 02:54 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 27 May 2005


Is it just me

posted at: 18:34 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Microsoft not rewriting their products in .NET?

    "Of course I still find this incredibly ironic. Microsoft insists on re-using it's own source code, and even given the ease with which they can step into Managed C++, they still preserve their existing code rather than go through the time and expense of shifting to .NET. Yet for their customers, millions of VB developers, they abandon them and leave them no choice. Funny how there's one rule for Microsoft's source code and yet another for their customers."
    Quoting Bill.

    I see the same push from Microsoft to port for us C programmers as well. As best as I can determine Microsoft has no intention of porting their own code away from unmanaged C / C++, but they are certainly applying a lot of pressure onto ISVs to do just this. The other thing that an ISV has to bear in mind is that a port makes you inherently less competitive -- you end up spending a bunch of engineering effort to recreate your current product, instead of adding those new features that the customers have been asking for.

    Tags for this post: dotnet microsoft unmanaged managed .net port
    Related posts: Getting ASP.NET working on Windows XP Tablet PC edition; Profiling your code in mono; SQL Down under; Open sourcing WinForms code?; A small example of how to find all the properties on an object using .NET reflection

posted at: 01:22 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 26 May 2005


Heathrow

posted at: 05:15 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


26 spammy blog comments in one day

posted at: 05:12 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


On the slowness of xmlto again

posted at: 00:49 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 25 May 2005


My thesis worries are over

posted at: 16:54 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Live journal mission statement

posted at: 16:50 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 24 May 2005


What happens if you invite a gmail email address to join gmail?

posted at: 21:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Ahhh slang, how will we tame thee?

posted at: 16:25 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum

posted at: 16:22 | path: /travel/usa/washington/seattle | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 23 May 2005


First to publish, academic articles, and blogging

    So, I've been wondering about this for a little while. Where do I draw the line between blogging, and putting in jeopardy the first publication date for my academic papers? My understanding is that my thesis needs to be unique and original at the time of publication, but that if I blog bits of it before then, then I put that at risk because someone else might write a paper about it and publish it before me. Then again, how does blogging differ from progress seminars?

    Discuss.

    Tags for this post: phd publication blog
    Related posts: What is the definition of publication?; First paper published

posted at: 18:18 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Gordon is disturbed

posted at: 16:42 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


20050513-hotairballoon

posted at: 06:07 | path: /diary/pictures/20050513-hotairballoon | permanent link to this entry


20050513-hotairballoon

posted at: 06:07 | path: /andrew/pictures/20050513-hotairballoon | permanent link to this entry


20050513-hotairballoon

posted at: 06:07 | path: /events/pictures/20050513-hotairballoon | permanent link to this entry


Beware of National Promotions

posted at: 05:39 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Playing with an email to RSS gateway

posted at: 00:56 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Please be gentle

posted at: 00:18 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 22 May 2005


Web Servers, Web Applications, Web Services, Web Parts and maintaining your job security through naming conventions incomprehensible to the innocent public

    There has been something for a while which I have been meaning to discuss. It's posted here in the work category because it's related to a conversation I've just had here, but my concern is a lot wider than that. I have seen this behaviour in many places...

    There seems to be a lot of confusion about the differences between Web Servers, Web Applications, Web Services, and Web Parts. The only people who can be blamed for this are the people who felt that similarly naming things because they're conceptually in the same ball park was a good idea. Whoever you are, you should be ashamed.

    Let's try to dispel some of the myths about all of these things:

    Web Servers

    Web Servers were the first on the scene. It's a piece of software that sits on your machine, and answers requests from client machines for web pages. That is all. At a most basic level this is really a pretty simple thing to do. I know that as a first year computer science undergraduate I had written one of these, and I assume that most other undergrads have at some stage or other written one. There are really two contenders in this space at the moment, the Open Source Apache, and Microsoft's IIS. So, remember, Web Servers just hand out files to people when they're asked to. Nothing more.

    Web Applications

    Now things get more complicated. Someone out there had the brilliant idea that the files that are handed out don't actually need to exist on disc on the server. For example, the bank balance screen of your online banking thingie isn't actually stored on disc. The Web Server runs a Web Application to generate that file, and then send it to you. The file is never stored on disc, and needs to be regenerated each time you ask for it, which is why you can see changes to your bank balance in real time. This is all that a Web Application is, it's a choose your own adventure through a series of dynamically generated files. The files are called pages by the way, for a reason I don't actually know now that I stop to wonder why.

    Web Services

    On a completely different topic for a second... Imagine that you want to do something which your local machine can't do for some reason. For example you have a machine on the other side of the room hooked up to a cola dispenser, and you want it to eject a can just in time to trip the manager of your research and development section up, causing much hilarity in the office. Your client machine can't do that, because it's not connected to the cola firing machine -- it's on the other side of the room on your lap (all the better to look innocent). What you need is some way to ask the other machine to do it's thing. Luckily we're not in the stone age any more, so there is a network in between, so you have a method of communication with the other machine.

    Hundreds of years ago (in the 1990's) you would have done this by doing something called a "Remote procedure call", which is just a way of asking the remote machine to do something for you and get back to you with the result. In the cola example this would just be a simple yes or no, and you'd need to use your eyeballs to experience the extreme pleasure that is a tripping manager. Now, these stone age remote procedure call techniques used lots of random ways to communicate over the network, and were generally not firewall friendly. The former was because the vendors had locking you into their product in mind instead of what is best for the consumer (being able to use products from more than one company for instance). The latter was because most firewall people fear what they don't understand and didn't want people to be able to do useful things with their computers (this is of course a gross simplification -- some firewall people are simply not gifted enough to understand that the network is there to support valid business processes, whilst other firewall people had valid concerns with the underlying technology. I have been a firewall person in a past life, so I do have a little sympathy here).

    Anyways, ranting about network support people aside, the vendors of the remote procedure call mechanisms got together and decided that they'd sort out both of these issues. It's merely a coincidence that the urge to inter-operate came directly after one of the bigger vendors got convicted for monopolistic behaviour in the US. They decided that Web Servers and Web Services were pretty cool, and noticed that most firewall people let the traffic through, and decided that they'd come up with some standard way to talk to each other via Web Servers.

    The finished product was called a Web Service, which is an interesting quirk of history given that they talk a protocol called SOAP to each other, and really have very little to do with the Web. Apparently SOAP RPC might have tipped those darn firewall people off or something.

    So, Web Services are related to Web Servers in that they need them to work, and are similar to Web Applications in that they generate responses in real time based on things other than just a file on disc (like the status of the can firing mechanism). It should however be noted that Web Services have no user interface, are not Web Applications, will not be replacing Web Applications, and are only useful to programmers, and other similarly geeky people. The next person to ask if they can use my Web Service in Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox will be presented with my grumpy face.

    (Heh. Can you tell this is the most common question I field from non-technical people?)

    Oh, and the firewall people? Now they're not even aware that an RPC call is occurring, because it looks just like you surfing for your favourite muppet site. There is an arms race happening here, with the firewall people trying to get back their control of what's transiting the firewall. Interestingly they don't really appear to have learnt from the experience.

    Web parts

    So what of these web part things? Well, some brainiacs once noticed that people don't like having banking applications and other such Web Applications that can't be customised, so they came up with a way of breaking those pages up into little nuggets of user interface goodness, and instead of calling them controls or widgets like the rest of the industry, felt they should be called Web Parts. So, some Web Applications are composed of Web Parts, which run inside of a Web Server, to return virtual pages back to users. They have a user interface, because that's what they are there for. It's entirely possible that they use Web Services, but by no means mandatory.

    Conclusion

    A Web Server is something which answers queries form Web Browsers. A Web Application can run inside a Web Server if the server is setup that way. Perhaps the Web Application is composed of Web Parts. The Web Parts might also call a Web Service which also runs inside the Web Server but isn't a Web Application, but only perhaps. Web Services can also be called by things which aren't Web Parts of Web Applications, but you need a programmer to make it all happen.

    Clear? I'll leave WebDav for another day...

    Tags for this post: work web server application part service browser computer jargon explain
    Related posts: Apple's Safari javascript implementation; Exceptions in Web Services; Prior art needed: Microsoft patents XML Serialisation; Buy Toshiba!; A simple tutorial on creating firefox extensions; Video4Linux 2 webcam applications?; Apple update; iTunes replacement; More on Apple service; On caching of websites; Initial SMTP survey poster results in a pie chart; Car engine diagnostics; Apparently terrible warranty service is par for the course with Apple; The excitement of Apple service; New server; Your first computer?; X.org doesn't support dynamic resize of the screen?; Looking for web form state management; They all use MySQL...; Water, wheels, tyres (tires?) and computers; Gloat

posted at: 22:56 | path: /work | permanent link to this entry


Les Catacombs

posted at: 20:30 | path: /travel/france/paris | permanent link to this entry


More urban tunnelly goodness

posted at: 20:27 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Disused London Tube stations

posted at: 16:17 | path: /travel/uk/london | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 21 May 2005


iBurst: Coverage in Canberra still sucks

posted at: 21:43 | path: /iburst | permanent link to this entry


iBurst: Qantas Club Sydney domestic terminal two

posted at: 21:40 | path: /iburst | permanent link to this entry


iBurst: Four points Sheraton, Sydney

posted at: 21:38 | path: /iburst | permanent link to this entry


iBurst: Ibis Darling Harbour

posted at: 21:38 | path: /iburst | permanent link to this entry


Ice hotels again

posted at: 21:13 | path: /travel/canada | permanent link to this entry


Ice hotel

posted at: 21:11 | path: /travel/sweden | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 20 May 2005


Why document management is good

posted at: 22:16 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Product feedback center

posted at: 21:52 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Penguins can be gay?

posted at: 21:47 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


A letter to Kensington

posted at: 05:16 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


xmlto very slow?

posted at: 05:02 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Theorising on Kensington lock insecurity

posted at: 04:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 19 May 2005


The last post went away

posted at: 21:52 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Ajax

posted at: 19:31 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


AUUG 2005 Call for papers closes soon

posted at: 18:02 | path: /auug | permanent link to this entry


Russian scavengers life off abandoned space junk

posted at: 02:50 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


My machine was thrashing a lot

posted at: 02:46 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


PhD night

    My loving and very patient wife Catherine decided after the conference was finished that I should continue to use the organising night (Thursdays) to hang around university, but this time for my PhD. I liked the idea, so here I am on my first night in the office at ANU plodding away. I'm actually being fairly productive, which is nice.

    For my PhD I agreed to do 20 hours of study a week. To be honest I do more some weeks, and less others, but I'm pretty sure without having tracked it at all that I'm doing more than the 20 hours. This evening will just mean that I can spend some more time with the kids on the weekends, which will be nice.

    I suspect that one of the reasons it doesn't feel like I'm progressing a lot at the moment is that I am in a writing up stage, and I'm working at approximately half the rate of a normal PhD student. I'm a little over a year in, which means that I've done the equivalent of six months for a full time PhD student. I wonder how much they've got done within their first six months?

    Tags for this post: phd progress
    Related posts: Book status; We're getting there; Estimating the progress of queries on MySQL; Time for a status update?; We're 80% complete. If only we could get the code to compile we would be done!; Done and done

posted at: 02:28 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 18 May 2005


Why is a CD the length it is?

posted at: 18:22 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Military satellites fly north-south, commercial satellites fly east-west?

posted at: 18:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


The ABC Rock

posted at: 00:07 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 17 May 2005


Brazilian police to old lady: "Please sue us!"

posted at: 20:48 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Loyalty

posted at: 20:22 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Has anyone else noticed that the Planet Linux Australia page is a bit sad?

posted at: 16:17 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Need more page rank?

posted at: 16:15 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


And Pia is now the top hit for "Pia Muppet"

posted at: 00:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Lemon juice as a cure for AIDS?

posted at: 00:27 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Food recommendation

posted at: 00:08 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 16 May 2005


Another quote

posted at: 21:31 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Quotable quote for the day

posted at: 18:33 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 15 May 2005


iBurst: Works just fine in the Qantas club at Canberra airport

posted at: 15:23 | path: /iburst | permanent link to this entry


In Sydney for the day

posted at: 13:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Pia's wedding present worked...

posted at: 05:08 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Linux presence at Education Expo

posted at: 05:00 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Anyone for a little light WEP cracking?

posted at: 03:04 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


You're DVD Jon, and your Linux patch is being ignored

posted at: 01:31 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 14 May 2005


Well, there he goes

posted at: 22:47 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 12 May 2005


Warning!

posted at: 22:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


So, what on earth was I doing up at 4:30 am anyways?

posted at: 21:38 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


More on the new E-3 Visa

posted at: 20:39 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Did you know?

posted at: 11:59 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


At pub SIG

    Some time ago, the programmer's SIG became the pub user's SIG. We're not at the pancake parlour using the pub. That is all.

    Tags for this post: clug opensource linux drunken pub

posted at: 02:09 | path: /clug | permanent link to this entry


Linux kernel cset patches

posted at: 01:05 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Jesus

    Steven just tried to shock me with his Jesus dress up game link. He of course failed because I am unshockable. Did I mention that I have a Jesus action figure that my brother bought for me from the US somewhere at home? Anyway, the game is fun though.

    Tags for this post: blog

posted at: 00:59 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Linux kernel manual pages

posted at: 00:55 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Fast Fourier transforms for gnuplot

posted at: 00:12 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 11 May 2005


American visas for all!

posted at: 03:07 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Profiling your code in mono

posted at: 03:00 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Puppy excitement

posted at: 02:57 | path: /diary/puppy | permanent link to this entry


Argh! CVS!

    So, after fighting CVS for the afternoon I now have all the data back into a consistent state (most of the data is generated on my research machine in my office at university, whilst the editing of reports is done on my laptop where it happens to be). Now I'm seriously considering changing from CVS as it was a total pain... Then again, there are a lot of tools that I have hanging off CVS now, so perhaps I'll wait just a little bit longer.

    Tags for this post: phd cvs
    Related posts: CVS digital cameras and handy cams

posted at: 00:45 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 10 May 2005


So, is this spam?

posted at: 22:21 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Regulator

posted at: 21:13 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Thunk

    That's the sound of me dropping in new data for my PhD report that I am working on. I discovered that a bunch of my colour data wasn't being generated properly, which put a bunch of my conclusions into doubt. I've spent a bunch of time regenerating gigabytes of images so that I can rerun my analysis scripts, and now I just need to make sure that I am still making conclusions which are justified. I'm hoping to have a first draft of some form to my PhD supervision team by the end of the week. Famous last words.

    Tags for this post: phd

posted at: 16:51 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 09 May 2005


I am uniquer than my brother

posted at: 20:27 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Dinner at Rock Salt Cafe

posted at: 18:46 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 08 May 2005


Dead IBM DeveloperWorks

posted at: 23:26 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


The greatest IRC chat evar!

posted at: 04:17 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


New name

posted at: 03:50 | path: /openpdf | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 07 May 2005


Weird

    Does anyone else think it's weird that first thing in the morning when I get in my car to drive to work, the loudest background sound is that of hundreds of car tyres running against the main road about a kilometre from my house? That's a lot of friction.

    Tags for this post: blog

posted at: 23:59 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


I do delete comments, but only some

posted at: 17:06 | path: /site | permanent link to this entry


Wanted: Live updating folder subscriptions in liferea

posted at: 05:40 | path: /wanted | permanent link to this entry


Update on the chickens

    It's probably time for an update on the chickens. We had to return three of the previous four to the manufacturer (some friends in a group house called Smithfield) because their gender had been mis-determined and they were in fact male. We worked this out because of the complete lack of eggs, and the crowing at 4am. Now we're getting an egg a day consistently, which is good given the little darlings that we have now are technically still too young to be laying.

    Factoid for the day: male chickens like to sleep outside on a perch, whilst female chickens sleep inside the chicken house I built.

    Tags for this post: blog chicken run
    Related posts: Chicken run; No eggs yet; Anyone for chicken?; Random learning for the day

posted at: 03:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Looking for web form state management

posted at: 02:43 | path: /www | permanent link to this entry


So, now I know what it is...

    I've been short of breath for about four or five days now. It feels like I've just run around the block a few too many times -- I feel winded and my sternum hurts. Breathing in hurts too. Anyways, there have been a couple of theories expressed as to what is happening. I thought perhaps I was just old and my body had packed it in finally. Lindsay suggested it might be a reaction to all the stress that Gordon imposes on me. Someone suggested it was just the world's slowest heart attack.

    All wrong. I finally went to the doctor, and I've been having an asthma attack for the last week. I didn't consider myself an asthmatic, and purloined ventolin from the kids hadn't helped, which is why I had ignored this possibility. In the blowy outy into the thingie test I scored 350... I'm normally more like a 650 to 700 kind of guy.

    I'm on bronchitis drugs now, and hopefully ventolin will start working too.

    Tags for this post: blog asthma sick
    Related posts: Home sick; I didn't realize that the US was a third world country; A little story from my sickness; Sick; Drugs

posted at: 02:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 05 May 2005


20050123-wellington

posted at: 00:34 | path: /events/pictures/20050123-wellington | permanent link to this entry


20050417

posted at: 00:28 | path: /events/pictures/20050417 | permanent link to this entry


20050420-lca

posted at: 00:25 | path: /events/pictures/20050420-lca | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 04 May 2005


Getting back into it

    Realistically I lost about four months of this year on my PhD to running linux.conf.au. Now I need to get back into things. I currently in the process of writing up my first academic paper, and need to make sure that my results, and more importantly the analysis of those results is correct. So, back so staring at a monitor I suppose.

    Tags for this post: phd

posted at: 23:54 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Microsoft hiring foreigners because it's cheaper than locals?

posted at: 23:37 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


What the heck are you talking about?

posted at: 18:20 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Giving the ACS the benefit of the doubt

    I decided that despite basically everyone I know being down on the ACS, I'd give them a go. I sweet talked the Canberra chapter into a free attendance at this months meeting (which wasn't very hard if other people want to give it a try), and went along.

    I thought the topic of the evening was a pretty sweet match as well -- it was on Service Orientated Architectures. It should be good too I though, as the speaker is being paid to tour the country and give the presentation a total of nine times.

    Let's be blunt. I was disappointed, although the learning about the ACS was worth while.

    What did I learn? Chicks dig the ACS. Specifically middle aged chicks in suits. There were way more women at the ACS meeting than I am used to at these things. I've been to lots of LUGs (including my local LUG), and quite a few Microsoft technical events including user groups, training days and courses. There are always never very many women. Somehow, the ACS seemed to muster double digit women attendance figures. That's about 10% of the attendees. That's by far the best gender equity I've seen from one of these things.

    In fact, come to think of it, basically everyone but me was in a suit. The meeting format was ok -- it was held in a local club, with 20 minutes of finger food at the start instead of the seemingly ubiquitous pizza that you get the from local Linux lads and Microsoft. Then there was a 30 minute presentation which was meant to tell you what a SOA is, and then about another 30 minutes of questions posed to SOA experts.

    The problems? The presenter for the first 30 minutes wasn't very well prepared. She expected us to all read the large amounts of text on her slides, whilst she provided a terse commentary. If you couldn't read the slides, you missed most of the content. We kept diverging on seemingly random tangents (the history of blues music anyone?), none of the terms seemed adequately defined. She also claimed that the days of people writing much code are over, which set of my bogo filter. Oh, and lots of seemingly meaningless diagrams lifted from web sites.

    The experts on the panel didn't seem overly expert either, and the conversation focused extensively on bespoke services, with basically no mention of vendors until I asked if there was a place for vendors in this landscape. The conclusion was there was, and that interfaces needed to be standardised between vendors, but there was no conclusion as to who selects these standards, and what's in it for the vendors.

    Overall, I give it a 3 out of 10. I might go along to the one next month if I can score another freeby and see what my opinion is then.

    Tags for this post: blog acs computing society meeting
    Related posts: Melbourne; Looking for Women studying computing in Australia; Supporting more than one browser for your website, or does Firefox really make my life harder?; Further adventures with base images in OpenStack; Should small ISVs be involved with the standards process?; Engineers Australia -- ignoring their members since 1919; How Microsoft can encourage Tablet PC applications, and therefore platform adoption; Marketing versus being well; Whereas I only reboot computers when I have to; Why is it so amzing when things get done?; Openstack compute node cleanup

posted at: 05:19 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Not blogging ten things a day any more

    Well, not deliberately. I think that having a week off might have broken the bloggy bits of my brain... I'm having troubles thinking of things worth saying here. Perhaps this week as been generally boring in a commentary on life sense, or perhaps I'm now out of practise.

    Tags for this post: blog writers block
    Related posts: Blocking hotmail.com; Comment spam again

posted at: 05:04 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 03 May 2005


A productive day

posted at: 04:28 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 01 May 2005


Introducing Matthew Alexander Still

    I just noticed that there isn't anything here documenting the story of Matthew's birth. I thought I should correct the historical record there, so here's the email I sent to family members at the time. 
      From mikal@stillhq.com Sat Feb 22 23:40:41 2003 +1100
Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 23:40:41 +1100 (EST)
From: Michael Still <mikal@stillhq.com>
X-Sender:  <mikal@localhost.localdomain>
To:  <matthew-announce@stillhq.com>
Subject: Introducing Matthew Alexander Still
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.30.0302222247530.14246-100003@localhost.localdomain>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY="98048-1851301983-1045917641=:14246"
Status: RO
X-Status: 
X-Keywords:                 
X-UID: 108

--98048-1851301983-1045917641=:14246
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


[The technical accuracy of this hasn't been verified yet, I thought
timeliness was more important. Dates and times are likely to be off].

Some of you might have noticed that I have been a little poor at answering
email in the last month or so (sorry Matt and April!). This is because I
was scheduled to attend a conference in the Middle East over the next
week or so (http://www.e-ducation2003.com).

I left for this conference on Wednesday the 19 of February, leaving behind
Catherine seven weeks from being due with our second, and Andrew our first
son. Catherine had been having intermittent vision problems and stomach
cramps for the last few days, but the specialist and general practitioner
were unconcerned. I arrived in Abu Dhabi where the conference is about
29.5 hours later. This included:
 - a one hour flight
 - a five hour layover in Melbourne
 - a fifteen hour flight to Dubai
 - a seven and a half hour layover in Dubai
 - a one hour flight to Abu Dhabi

I had been in Abu Dhabi for about an hour when I got a variety of SMS
messages from various members of the Still clan informing that Catherine
was not well. It turns out that the vision loss and cramping are symptoms
of extreme high blood pressure, which is very rare.

Catherine was taken to maternity, and had a Matthew Alexander Still
delivered by emergency Caesarian section at just past midnight on Friday
the 21st. He weighed 2.1 kilos, and has not been measured yet. He feels a
_lot_ smaller than Andrew did. There was serious concern for Catherine's
life as they had a lot of trouble controlling her blood pressure.
Catherine was taken to intensive care, and Matthew was admitted to the
special care nursery (baby intensive care).

I had left Abu Dhabi after a three hour stay, and was back in Canberra
26.5 hours later:

 - a one and a half hour drive to Dubai at about 150 kilometres per hour
 - a four hour layover
 - a 15 hour flight to Melbourne
 - a record setting three hour stay at the airport Hyatt to get some sleep
 - a couple of hours mucking around and checking into flights
 - a one hour flight to Canberra

I went straight to the hospital.

Catherine was released to the normal maternity ward at about lunch time,
and Matthew is under UV lights for jaundice as of mid this afternoon. I'll
endeavour to keep you informed of what happens, and will put something on
the website when I get a chance. I have attached some pictures for your
edification.

In summary, no one's life is at risk at the moment. Catherine is in a
standard maternity ward now recovering from her surgery, Matthew is still
in intensive care (and will be for about four to six weeks they're
saying), but isn't at risk at the moment.

Cheers,
Michael, Catherine, Andrew and Matthew


    It should be noted that Matthew is of course a big fine two year old now, although things were exciting for a while there.

    Tags for this post: matthew

posted at: 17:28 | path: /matthew | permanent link to this entry


Going bright again

    Just thought I should write something brief to say that I'm ready to go again at my normal red hot blogging pace. Now I've just got to think of something to say...

    Tags for this post: blog

posted at: 17:22 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 26 Apr 2005


20050425

posted at: 04:41 | path: /diary/pictures/20050425 | permanent link to this entry


20050425

posted at: 04:41 | path: /matthew/pictures/20050425 | permanent link to this entry


20050425

posted at: 04:41 | path: /events/pictures/20050425 | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 25 Apr 2005


20050422-lca

posted at: 21:30 | path: /events/pictures/20050422-lca | permanent link to this entry


Going dark

    I'm going to go dark for a week or so. I'm a bit burnt out after LCA and have a lot of mail and life to catch up on. If something important comes up here, then I'll blog it, but I expect to be real busy with other things for a week or so.

    Tags for this post: blog

posted at: 19:09 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 23 Apr 2005


On feedback about the conference

    Davyd has some more feedback to go along with his incredibly helpful commentary on why it is a vital part of the conference to be allowed to float coke cans bearing liquid in a lecture theatre instead of say, outside.

    I'll comment a little more generally than is justified by Davyd's comments, as he is actually an extreme member of an entire class of comments we have recieved this week. I suspect this is because people with negative opinions always feel that they're more important to express than those with positive opinions. I'm going to assume that the 490 people who haven't expressed an opinion are largely happy with the conference.

    Well, I was going to say nice things about linux.conf.au, as really there was only a few tiny problems that I had issue with in what was otherwise a great conference. However, it seems that one particular organiser (who I will not link to) who I had not made a personal attack at (I was referring to someone else) has decided to get a little petty.


    Let's go back and look at what Davys actually said:

    "So, as well as the class of geek I have classed as the Adrians, there is a class of geek we will now refer to as the Alexes. These are the anally retentive geeks who won't let you experiment and play with things because it might possibly be a little silly. Commonly identified as stick in the muds. They spend so long thinking something through, that they never actually get to do it. They like to populate positions of pseudo-power, like being conference organisers. Resultantly, when you have developed a neutrally buoyant helium balloon and aluminium can rig, they sulk when you try to test it out. It seems that this species of geek has either been burnt in the past, and refuses to get back on the horse, or lacks the lateral problem solving skills to work out how to undo any unforseen side effects."

    That's the entire first paragraph of his previous blog post which is linked above. I take that as a personal attack. He didn't focus on the one issue at hand, adequately describe the circumstances, and then drew conclusions as to the entire organizational setup of the conference based on that flawed foundation.

    In rebuttal

    It seems that doctored IRC conversations (I can't find this conversation, verbatim, in the channel logs, if it did exist, someone mail it to me) are the order of the day. I mean, what the fuck? This is no way to prove that you're not a moron yourself now, is it? The doctor recommends a chill pill, a skin thickener and perhaps a nice lie down.


    The IRC log was not doctored, as comments from others in Davyd's blog has pointed out. It was a simple cut and paste from my Gaim session. Now, Davyd should either show the diffs between his logs and the one I posted, and therefore prove his case, or shut up. You'll note that both of Davyd's posts on this issue have involved making wild assumptions about the situation without verifying facts.

    Sure, perhaps floating things off balloons got a bit out of control (however, floating a wineglass got pretty classy) but I think perhaps you're reading much too much into this. This particular organiser is not an Alex (Alex doesn't act like a tool) and in general only proves something I've long thought about a large part of the free software community.


    The wine glass being in a room which wasn't 20 feet tall, full of electronics, and clearly marked as "no food or drink".

    For the record, I was on the lca '03 committee as a shit monkey, keeping the attendees, network and vendors happy. A job that I did so well, that Sun gave me one of their internal-issue linux.conf.au polo shirts (James Andrewartha got the other one). As a result, I was manning the desk in the network room and didn't manage to get into the group photo. As you might expect, someone has to be seated behind a desk, but your desk was a barrier in which all the organisers were located, all the time. It was rare to see an organiser out on the floor, with the community, except when running an errand.


    Whereas I am on the 2005 committee as someone who has actually organized things, and donated pretty much all my spare time for the last year to the conference. I object to after all that effort being labelled as a power hungry maniac because one little child couldn't play with his silly toy.

    It's disappointing to see this sort of reaction from an organiser, I can only hope that it doesn't reflect too badly on the event in retrospect or on your LUG.


    I'm not too concerned. I know that the opinion on PLUG and the computing club has decreased here because of your behaviour. I think people recognise that the organizers had a legitimate concern with your behaviour, that's certainly the feedback I've recieved. This is where the comments get a little more general... People seem to associate free software with the freedom to complain about, and the right to consultation about everything to do with events such as the conference. Why is having too much food at lunch such a big issue for example? It's not like the Pizza was made from clubbed baby seal or something...

    What was good about linux.conf.au 2005

    The venue was fantastic, this is by far the nicest facility that's been used. The addition of couches with power, wired and wireless access was a brilliant addition creating a vibrant atmosphere, although it did kill the terminal room.

    The selection of speakers was quite good. Although some of the talks I went to did turn out to be brouchureware, or were ruined by the loud-obnoxious geeks having an argument and the talk having to be rushed through. There was a slight fuckup with the scheduling on the Friday, and I admit that would have been hard to resolve at the time, but I was disappointed to see two of the talks I wanted to go to scheduled against one another at the last moment. Hopefully the Theora streams turn out pretty good.


    Both of the replaced speakers went home ill. As you say, there wasn't much we could do about it.

    The giveaways were also a nice addition. USB keys (big ones) were given away at the end of each talk. This could have been slightly improved if the speakers had prepared a method for handing them out earlier (some speakers did this, some were very creative about it). The additional giveaway of an IBM X40 every day also made sure that people made it to the keynotes, something I know that Bernard didn't manage last year.

    The professional networking session was a lot of fun. That was also an excellent choice of venue, the CSIRO Discovery Centre (kinda like Scitech, but with a Government name) did manage to accomodate enough people once they spread out, and there was more then enough to eat and drink.

    I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but the network ran fairly smoothly, and was available through the entire venue (even the GNOME miniconf, once we figured it out). Significantly less crack, and associated breakage then we had in Perth, and no routing the college through an 11mbit 802.11b connection, like I suspect was the case in Adelaide.

    I alluded to the Ogg Theora streams. Flumotion powered streaming allowed us to watch the Debian Miniconf from GNOME.conf.au. It proved significantly more exciting then my talk. I am told they are going to be combined with Annodex, and all sorts of things. This could be the most exciting LCA cd-rom yet.

    Eben Moglen received a literal standing ovation. Everyone in the theatre was standing and applauding at the end of his keynote. I've never seen anything quite like it. He actually seems rather brilliant, but possibly might fanboy RMS just a little too much.

    Things that were bad about linux.conf.au 2005

    The registration desk created a barrier between the conveners and the delegates that I don't feel gave a suitable opinion. Especially as at any one time, there would be four of them in there, simply using their laptops. Much too high a number. In my opinion it is the duty of the organisers to interact with the community, to really get a feel for how the conference is going, not to palm this duty off onto a number of sherriffs.


    I saw one talk during the conference (Mark Shuttleworth's). I know what happened behind that desk. That was us making sure that everything was organized, that people had a chance to ask their questions, that the catering was sorted out, and that the feedback email et cetera was being dealt with. For example, much of my sitting behind that desk was booking and organizing free hot air balloon rides for speakers. That took hours, but a delegate wouldn't even know if they didn't make the time to find out why people were behind the desk instead of just making assumptions.

    I also fail to understand how the Penguin Dinner cost $60 (need to check the price). The lack of a bar tab, and the fact that I didn't eat very much food does not make me feel like I really got my money's worth. The venue (the ANU Union Refectory) was no comparison to last year, but then again that was organised by a gay man, and as such, pretty swanky.


    We felt that people felt uncomfortable in 2004's dinner venue and that the serves were too small. The buffet was therefore an attempt to make sure people got what they wanted, and there was enough food. The lack of a bar tab is because we got significant feedback from the non-drinkers that subsidizing a few people to get off their faces is unfair, and I agree. There was food left over after the event, so I can only assume that everyone had enough to eat.

    The dinner was cheaper than last year, with a lot more food. I was one of many who went out for pizza after 2004's dinner because I was still hungry.

    I think the lack of free alcohol really showed in the lack of enthusiasm when bidding for the T-shirt. Sober people don't do as many stupid things unfortunately. While on the shirt, there seemed to be little interest in the charity, even though it is a great charity, and incredibly relevant and a very noble act on behalf of Steve. I think had some people known why he chose it, there would have been a lot more interest, the lady they got to talk up the charity (it was SidsForKids, incidently) did not do a fantastic job.


    We got $450 less for the shirt than last year. The auction was not a failure. Additionally, you do need to remember that it was just a 100% cotton made in Haiti fabric garment. How much money do you want for it? I think there are also ethical issues with taking large amounts of money from drunk people.

    Free tip for giving exciting public speeches, don't lean down on the lecturn when you speak, and don't just stare at your laptop screen. You need to stand straight, look confident, and make eye contact with people around the room, find the ones who are nodding. It also helps if you don't put all your jokes on the slides where everyone has already read them by the time you get to them. (NB. I'm not the world's best public speaker, but this seemed like a strong contention around the con).

    Oh, and I appear to have lost my favourite jumper (sweater), but this is hardly the fault of the conference organisers.


    Did you check with lost property?

    In summary

    I don't want to appear to overly negative, because I think the organisation of this conference was actually incredibly good. Especially as those of us embittered enough were making sideline commentry about whether or not this conference would be a success or a failure. I do tip my hats to you and your organisational, regardless of what you think of me and my commentry. I look forward to 2006 in Dunedin, in the newly aquired Australian State of South Zealand.


    By the way, the IRC thing was Tony's idea.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference

posted at: 16:48 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Notice how all the organisers looked glassy eyed?

posted at: 03:27 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 22 Apr 2005


Speakers return home from LCA

posted at: 22:25 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


A tale of several Slashdottings

posted at: 21:35 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


LCA organisers do the darndest things 

    (13:56:08) davyd [~davyd@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(13:58:14) redcliffe [~david@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(13:59:19) BillShovel_ [~BillShove@CPE-144-133-95-213.vic.bigpond.net.au] entered the room.
(13:59:59) mikal: Heh
(14:00:07) Magni is now known as Alex_1
(14:00:26) sjh is now known as Alex_0
(14:00:27) You are now known as Alex_3
(14:00:30) jk- is now known as Alex_2
(14:02:50) interalia_ [~ubuntu@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:04:23) alli [~alison@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:04:39) alli is now known as Alex_4
(14:05:02) chris___ is now known as Alex_5
(14:05:06) terminus [~terminus@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:05:25) Alex_2: teehee
(14:06:05) TBBle: Uhhh...?
(14:06:34) mithro [~tim@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:07:38) pizzathief [~ilikepizz@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:08:32) mithro: so where are people atm?
(14:08:40) mithro: still eating pizza or in talks?
(14:08:50) yaknob [~tim@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:08:55) pigeon: i'm at t2 about gameboy advance
(14:09:43) sch [~shemminge@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:10:13) mithro: pigeon: hows it going?
(14:10:42) pigeon: so far so good... going thru the hardware spec atm, some introduction stuff
(14:11:50) kimlca [~kim@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:13:23) pigeon: mithro: u?
(14:13:46) Keybuk left the room (quit: Remote closed the connection).
(14:15:27) pizzathief: daniel stone only write his talk last night while suffering from the flu , I hope he's ok in there
(14:15:33) pizzathief: wrote
(14:16:25) bernard__ [~bernard@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:17:09) LapTop006: pizzathief: you've been to a danny talk before
(14:17:15) sch left the room (quit: "Leaving").
(14:17:18) LapTop006: this is probably the most prepared he's ever been
(14:17:23) LapTop006: and it's not bad
(14:18:19) mithro: i'm in the floppy disc block driver talk
(14:18:53) pizzathief: suspend2 got cancelled?
(14:19:07) davyd: it was yesterday, I think
(14:19:11) mtearle_ [~mtearle@150.203.247.9] entered the room.
(14:19:12) davyd: didn't it get moved to yesterday?
(14:19:26) pizzathief: doh
(14:19:29) Alex_3: It's on now in MCC1
(14:19:38) Lathiat: according to #lca1 its on now
(14:20:04) pizzathief: so there's 4 talks on now
(14:20:06) pizzathief: cool
(14:20:07) mithro: no
(14:20:09) Alex_3: No!
(14:20:24) mithro: everyone called freedesktop.org, fd.o
(14:20:33) pizzathief: oic
(14:20:33) Alex_3: Suspend2, gameboy, Desktop Linux
(14:20:35) mithro: fd.o is the floopy disk block driver :P
(14:20:43) pizzathief: yes, just got that
(14:20:45) pizzathief: sorry
(14:20:58) Alex_3: pizzathief: we have a job for you...
(14:21:06) Alex_3: pizzathief: go steal some pizza?
(14:21:28) pizzathief: unfortunately my stomach is full , so I can't really steal any more
(14:22:12) pizzathief: plus I've paid for it , so i can't really "steal" it
(14:22:31) Alex_3: Well, you could assume that a sponsor paid for it
(14:22:42) pizzathief: true
(14:22:46) ***mtearle_ burps
(14:22:50) ***mtearle_ was full too
(14:22:52) Alex_2: or steal pieces that someone else paid for
(14:22:53) Alex_3: The rego price is subsidised by them after all.
(14:23:06) Alex_3: mtearle: take some pizza back to perth with you? It's a long flight
(14:23:20) pizzathief: I could stick some in my pockets
(14:23:21) Lathiat: heh
(14:23:26) ***Lathiat grins at pizzathief 
(14:23:26) ***mtearle_ shudders
(14:23:38) ***Alex_2 suggests some kind of pizza sculpture
(14:23:47) Alex_3: Heh
(14:24:15) pizzathief: massive tux made out of pizza
(14:24:21) pizzathief: it won't melt this time
(14:24:29) pizzathief: er , pizza boxes
(14:24:31) Alex_1: I can see a larger than life mosaic of "tridge the saint"
(14:24:41) yaknob left the room (quit: "leaving").
(14:25:37) pizzathief: my laptop's name is "pizzabox"
(14:25:46) davyd left the room (quit: Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer)).
(14:26:03) Alex_2: ok, back to normal
(14:26:03) Alex_1 is now known as Magni
(14:26:07) Alex_2 is now known as jk-
(14:26:11) Alex_5 is now known as __chris
(14:26:12) You are now known as Mikal
(14:26:23) Alex_0 is now known as sjh
(14:26:51) Alex_4 is now known as alli


    I am so in the Alex zone.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference alex

posted at: 21:28 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Why does a Free Software...

    ...culture mean that people feel they have the right to do moronic things like try to fly half full coke cans tied to helium balloons through lecture theatres clearly marked as not allowing food and drink? Why is it that a couple of people acting like three year olds can put such a downer on all the hard work that a bunch of people have put in? Why is it that these people characterise a reasonable request as coming from "the anally retentive geeks" who "like to populate positions of pseudo-power, like being conference organisers"? Are you a moron, or do you not understand how much work goes into a conference?

    Oh, and while I'm on the topic, which is it that people feel they shouldn't put their rubbish in the bin... The organisers are trying to run a conference. Do they really have the time to clean up after people as well?

    Rant over, and I'm off to bed. Last day of the conference tomorrow.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference

posted at: 06:58 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Journalists at LCA say the dardest things

posted at: 00:59 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 21 Apr 2005


LA people say the darndest things

    LCA has ROCKED WAY HARD according to Pia. I would like to think we've at the very least wobbled a little, bit it's really hard to tell as an organiser... Heck, I haven't seen any talks yet.

    What do other people think of the conference? Are we doing ok? Is there anything next year can do better?

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference

posted at: 18:42 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Friends say the darndest things

    Doug seems to think that running LCA is a little like having small children. I think it's a little different personally... I would describe myself as very tired (I gave myself an early mark today to go home and sleep), and in urgent only mode.

    It's a bit different from small kids -- there is a lot less crying. I don't feel harassed or stressed per se. Just tired.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference tired
    Related posts: Tired; I've worked out why I'm tired

posted at: 04:02 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 20 Apr 2005


Tridge demonstrates BitKeeper hack

posted at: 22:38 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Trademarking colours

    James comments on Cadbury owning the colour purple. Four years ago I worked at the Australian Patent and Trade Mark office. At that time I was mildly surprised to discover that you can in fact trade mark colours. This is done with a pantone number for the exact shade (although I imagine being deceptively similar stops people from using the surrounding shades). You should remember as well that trade marks are for certain classes of goods, so if Cadbury does get the purple trade mark, then it will be for food goods, not say computers.

    I think it was Eagle boys pizza that used to have the colour pink protected for the lighting out the front of their stores. I can find it using the Trade Marks office online search at the moment though...

    Tags for this post: blog trademark colour ipaustralia
    Related posts: Clarke, you need to look into things a little before mouthing off

posted at: 13:59 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Who was that guy?

posted at: 13:52 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Thanks Grant

posted at: 13:50 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Steven not Andrew

posted at: 13:48 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Tired

    So, another late night last night... We got home at midnight after dropping speakers home after the speakers dinner, and I was up a six AM... This is the fourth late night in a row for me, which is quite out of character as I am much more of a morning person than anything else. If you see me looking like I might die or something, please be gentle.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference tired
    Related posts: Friends say the darndest things; I've worked out why I'm tired

posted at: 00:25 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 19 Apr 2005


Organiser quote of the day

posted at: 18:55 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 18 Apr 2005


Papal wackamole

posted at: 22:50 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


ABC Podcasts

posted at: 20:37 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


BuilderAU now reports on the conference

posted at: 18:27 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Westpac suck too

posted at: 15:30 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Australian domain names being snarfed?

posted at: 04:29 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


LHS' reaction to the first day of his first open source conference

posted at: 04:22 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 17 Apr 2005


More press

posted at: 23:43 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


If you had just got married, what would you be thinking about, and what would worry you?

posted at: 23:20 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


The first press coverage of the actual conference?

posted at: 23:14 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


On delegation and event running

posted at: 18:39 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


It's all good

    Apparently it's all good. We've had most people registered now, and we've certainly handed out the vast majority of the bags. Mini conferences are running at the moment, and people seem generally happy. I can't say that anything is broken.

    There are certainly lots of people floating around taking pictures. Hopefully these will appear sometime on the web, which will mean I can link to them. I really can't think of anything else to say at the moment, so I wont...

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference

posted at: 18:30 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Up six hours later, and let's do it all again

    Today is the first day of mini conferences, and the day we're expecting most people to register. So, Up I get after my six hours sleep (I'm an 8 hour a night kinda guy), shower, shave, and off I go in the L1n000ks P4rt44444y Buz once more.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference sleep
    Related posts: Jet lag

posted at: 14:04 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


It's leaking captain!

    Herm. Information about the LCA video stuff seems to be leaking out... I don't think that's a big problem, but it hasn't been officially announced yet. I assume that happens sometime tomorrow.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference

posted at: 07:03 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Chris' conference bag

posted at: 07:01 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Tired

    After driving people to Yass for Jeff and Pia's wedding party. The trip was good, although as a Debian victim (as opposed to developer) it was odd to be driving a bus full of Debian developers. No one died though, so it must have gone well.

    Lots of people already registered for the conference, which is good. Signage up on campus, and people seem to like the schwag. I've put some photos I took the other day online if you're interested.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference

posted at: 06:57 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 16 Apr 2005


20050417-lca

posted at: 17:39 | path: /events/pictures/20050417-lca | permanent link to this entry


Hey! I'm a champion!

posted at: 00:16 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Conference schwag?

posted at: 00:00 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 15 Apr 2005


LCA kernel hacking tutorial homework

posted at: 01:52 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Stat on the command line continued

posted at: 01:47 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 14 Apr 2005


Doh...

    So, I just found out a friend died earlier this week... Apparently the funeral will be announced in this weekend's paper, which means it will almost certainly clash with linux.conf.au.

    So, let's see. This coming weekend I have a conference, a wedding, and a funeral.

    Tags for this post: blog funeral
    Related posts: Memorial service details

posted at: 18:35 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Going to Jeff and Pia's wedding after party? So am I and I've got a minibus

posted at: 18:16 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


'Twas the night before the conference

    As far as I am concerned LCA 2005 really starts today. That makes the last organisers meeting we had last night the night before the conference. The meeting was boring. There was nothing to discuss really, which I suspect is a very good sign. Everything that actually mattered is sorted out, so we ended up talking about little things for about two hours.

    Anyways, next step for the conference for me: make some announcements today (remember those guys in N101?) and help the removalists move a billion boxes of merchandising from my garage to the conference venue.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 conference opensource

posted at: 14:53 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


LCA weather

posted at: 14:30 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Stat on the command line

    Stewart, you mean a little like this? 

      STAT(1)                                                           User Commands                                                           
STAT(1)

NAME
       stat - display file or filesystem status

SYNOPSIS
       stat [OPTION] FILE...

DESCRIPTION
       Display file or filesystem status.

       -f, --filesystem
              display filesystem status instead of file status

       -c  --format=FORMAT
              use the specified FORMAT instead of the default

       -L, --dereference
              follow links

       -t, --terse
              print the information in terse form

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

       The valid format sequences for files (without --filesystem):
...


    There is a standard stat command line tool.

    Tags for this post: linux command line stat
    Related posts: Stat on the command line continued; netcat vs nc

posted at: 14:26 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


GetOpt# 0.1

posted at: 00:30 | path: /getopt | permanent link to this entry


Naming products

posted at: 00:02 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 13 Apr 2005


app.config for mono

posted at: 21:22 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Police charge woman's lover, who was living in closet, with murder of husband

posted at: 17:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Openpdf 0.1

posted at: 05:01 | path: /openpdf | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 12 Apr 2005


Is my cat deductible?

posted at: 20:38 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Cubicle wall

posted at: 20:34 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Updated pdfdb

posted at: 20:10 | path: /pdf | permanent link to this entry


Yeah, get well Frank

posted at: 17:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Adobe announces Acrobat Reader 7 for Linux

posted at: 17:37 | path: /pdf | permanent link to this entry


Whatever happened to MC Hammer?

posted at: 17:25 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


A mini-slashdotting

posted at: 16:54 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


It's the hardware stupid

posted at: 14:24 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Blogging methods

    So, I seem to have this meta blog blogging thing happening recently (blogging about blogging). I think that's because I'm helping review a book about blogging, and it's kinda forcing me to think critically about the whole thing. I'm learning something out of the process too, so it can't be a bad thing.

    Anyways, as I sit here drinking my therapeutic beer and pondering one of Steven's posts with a somewhat cryptic title, it occurs to me that what Steven forgets to explain is the meaning of the title of his post. Steven keeps a list of things he needs to blog about in a text file, and then works through that later. Whereas, I mark things as needing followup in my aggregator, and then trawl through them later. If I find a link that needs posting, then it just goes straight into my links category.

    What is interesting about this isn't how Steven and I achieve the same thing, although that is an interesting conversation when you think about it too. It's more about the fundamental assumption that we've both made that blog posts are timeless, and that we can respond to things later. I've never really consciously thought about it, but that's the assumption I'm making here.

    That assumption is wrong. Very wrong. Imagine that you're the company with the security problem with your product (like the Kryptonite bike locks). You only have hours, to respond, even if it's inadequate. If you haven't responded by then, people will assume you don't care. It's kinda like having a conversation in the hallway, and thinking of the perfect comeback in the car on the way home. It's too late then.

    Now, there are some posts where you can reply later, and it's a great way of restarting debate if you're not happy with the current conclusion, but you need to assume that you're perhaps losing the timeliness of the information. A good example of this is that I've been meaning to response to Frank's impending hospital trip for a while, and just haven't had the time to write up all the things I want to say. I wonder if it's soon going to be too late to bother.

    Tags for this post: blog timeliness

posted at: 04:03 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 11 Apr 2005


Phones

posted at: 21:45 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Corporate networks

posted at: 17:56 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


No eggs yet

    So. The chickens arrived on Sunday, which was a good thing as the coup wasn't finished until Saturday. We haven't had any eggs yet, but apparently chickens don't lay if they're stressed, so it might take a little time for that to happen. It's all good really.

    Tags for this post: blog chicken egg
    Related posts: Chicken run; Update on the chickens; Anyone for chicken?

posted at: 15:17 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


If I write a Gnome# application, am I tied to Gnome running platforms?

posted at: 05:02 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


What Debian package to I use to get a Glade which will let me do C# user interfaces?

posted at: 03:59 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


The guys in N101...

    So, there are these guys in N101 of the Computing Science department at ANU doing stuff which hasn't been announced yet. It's going to be cool though... I believe we'll be ready to announce something in the next day or so. So why this post? Just trying to encourage you to get psyched up for LCA.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005

posted at: 00:37 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 10 Apr 2005


Cool tool of the day

    osd_cat is cool. Splatter any old text onto you monitor from a script. I'm using it now to know the progress of regression tests which scroll so much text I can't keep up. 

      echo "Hello" | osd_cat -A center


    Tags for this post: blog osd_cat xwindows

posted at: 18:57 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Stop! Hammer time...

posted at: 17:01 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


TOWER Software announces movement of their product development section

    TOWER Software today announced that they're moving their software engineering division to Russia. Rory Kleeperson, head of the division was heard to utter: "Well, they do have the best hackers which is hard to beat. We've had real troubles recruiting c++ programmers recently. Worse than that, a bunch of my current people are now blogging which seems totally unproductive. I'll be glad to no longer employ them."

    In further news, TOWER also announced today that they're changing their logo to a large blob of cotton candy on a stick.

    (Yes, this is a joke and an excuse to link to some people. I also got to use uttered in a press release...)

    Tags for this post: blog work outsource russia
    Related posts: Russian scavengers life off abandoned space junk

posted at: 16:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wanted: PDF documents

posted at: 03:56 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Patron saints

posted at: 01:22 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 09 Apr 2005


Queer eye for the straight guy quiz: which way do you shave?

    My wife Catherine is moderately into Queer Eye for the Straight Guy which means that I often end up watching it because my desk is in the same room as the TV. I'm not as big a fan I suspect, although I do like it when they take the piss at the beginning and then throw furniture out of windows. Anyway, one of the things they keep mentioning over and over is that you should shave your face with the grain, not against it. As an avid against the grainer, this is a little confusing, as with the grain results in a shave with stubble still present. I thought the idea of shaving was to remove the stubble.

    I do get a lot of ingrown hairs however, which might be because of my terrible shaving technique. I therefore have resolved the shave the wrong way (with the grain) until the conference to see what happens. Do other people have thoughts on the correct shaving technique?

    Tags for this post: blog shaving personal hygiene
    Related posts: Is yak shaving a good idea?

posted at: 16:24 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Pngtools 0.3 released

posted at: 04:40 | path: /pngtools | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 08 Apr 2005


Mono return codes

posted at: 03:04 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 07 Apr 2005


Open source .NET, should I use GTK# or the Microsoft widgets?

posted at: 21:59 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 06 Apr 2005


Working from home

    I spent three days a week for about two years working from home, so I understand where Jeremy is coming from with his comments about people assuming you've just had a holiday. I used to get the same problem, although ironically I still found myself less distracted at home with two babies than I did in the office with 70 adults.

    My answer was that I had a separate study, and when I was in there, I was working. If I wasn't in there, I wasn't. That worked really well for me, but then again I suspect I have quite a good work ethic. So, I don't think you need to have a separate building to work in, or an office in an office block or anything, you just need a designated time and place, and stick to that.

    Tags for this post: blog work home telecommute
    Related posts: Working from home today; Dell e310 upgrade; What are we doing with the pets?; A productive day; JJJ's hack; On home sound systems; Back from Melbourne

posted at: 15:19 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Is there a Western Whitehouse?

    I was watching the Agency the other day (the first series, the second hasn't been aired in Australia yet), and they made a reference to evacuating the President from Washington DC because of an anthrax scare. Where did they send him? The Western Whitehouse. This made me curious as to if there is such a place, so a Googling I will go.

    One of the first places I can across described the Western Whitehouse thusly:

    The Western White House is the private ranch home of President and Mrs. George W. Bush. Located in the remote, charming hamlet of Crawford, Texas, the Western White House is a modest and photogenic reflection of the Bush family's folksy, down-home authenticity. Completed in 1999, the Western White House was designed by President Bush himself, and is notable for its patriotic and evocative melding of architectural highlights from Baptist prayer halls, medium security penitentiaries, and antebellum tobacco plantations.


    Medium security penitentiary? I've clearly found a definitive, unbiased source here. One of the next sites I found was willing to share this with me:

    We're proud to be the world's link to Crawford, Texas, home of the Western White House. We are working hard to bring you up-to-the-minute information about President Bush's visits to Crawford, his international visitors, the Crawford community, and some outstanding photos.


    They seem disproportionately happy with Bush being reelected in 2004, so they're not really unbiased either.

    So, in conclusion, yes there is a Western Whitehouse (or is it white house). It's the Bush's mansion in Crawford, Texas, and not actual government property.

    Tags for this post: blog us western whitehouse
    Related posts: US tax withholding for W-8BEN; Ok, where does one buy PCs in the US?

posted at: 00:14 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 05 Apr 2005


Lost Pocket PC Active Sync license key

posted at: 14:45 | path: /diary/toys | permanent link to this entry


Meaty open source .NET code

    So, the work network was down at lunch, so I couldn't do my normally surf. Instead, I ended up pulling out MonoDevelop on trusty Linux laptop and started hacking away on my first substantial open source code base in .NET. I'm pretty happy with it so far, and if I ever get around to finishing it I'll release it.

    Mono is cool, cause it's the first time I've been able to write a seamlessly cross platform library in a very long time...

    Tags for this post: dotnet opensource cross platform

posted at: 14:43 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


How do you summarize ten years of your life?

    Herm. The ten year reunion of my year 12 at a swanky private school is coming up, and I was asked to wrrite a summary of what I've been up to in the last decade. I saw no harm in it, so here's what I've got so far:

    Well, I finished a Computer Engineering Degree with first class honours, at University of Canberra, having studied part time for most of it. I then started a part time PhD at ANU in Computer Science. My thesis is currently delayed by general distraction with organizing one of the three globally important Linux developer conferences here in Canberra (http://linux.conf.au).

    During that time, I worked for Aspect Computing (now Kaz, part of Telstra), IPAustralia, and then TOWER Software. I recently interviewed for a position with Microsoft in Seattle, but apparently I'm not geeky enough. I'll wear more pocket protectors next time.

    I got married in 1999, having been engaged for about two years. I now have two kids, a three year old who thinks that xboxes are used for watching streaming video over a network, and a two year old who has his own Macintosh. My wife, Catherine, is an extremely patient person, who also has a computer. At last count I had eleven computers in the house.

    You can find more about me at my website http://www.stillhq.com


    What else should I say? What else does one say in these things? They didn't provide any samples, so I'm not really sure. Let me know if you have any ideas.

    Tags for this post: blog school reunion
    Related posts: Does anyone else think its odd; Australian teachers advocate a China style firewall for Australian internet users; Performance pay for teachers

posted at: 14:39 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Chicken run

posted at: 14:37 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Internet outage

posted at: 14:33 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Thinking about packing a bag for LCA 2005 soon? Pack a jumper.

    So, I know that a lot of you come from warmer climes than are offered by Canberra. My big bit of advice for a good LCA to to pack your bag just right. Here's some of the stuff you'll need:

    • A laptop with wireless (we have lots of wireless happening).
    • A jumper (Canberra is normally quite mild in April, for Canberra. I would expect things to get down to 10 degrees Celsius.)
    • Bring a rain coat (in case the three year drought breaks).
    • Bring a camera.
    • Get ready to have a great time...


    Seriously, bring a jumper just in case.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference

posted at: 14:32 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Problems with feed when I increases it's size?

posted at: 14:28 | path: /blosxom | permanent link to this entry


Tipping point: windscreen washers

posted at: 02:12 | path: /books/tippingpoint | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 03 Apr 2005


On Debian extremism

posted at: 14:38 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 02 Apr 2005


Video casting, does it have a future?

    Robert Scoble asks if a review of RSS aggregators using video would be a useful thing, and my answer is no. Why? Well, I more need to explain why I think video casting is a technology with a lot less of a future than blogging and pod casting first. It does have a future, and we'll get to that in a minute...

    Information overload

    One of the problems facing bloggers and people reading blogs is information overload. Blogs originally happened as a way of getting around a lack of information, and it's certainly worked, to the point where it's starting to be hard to keep track of all the feeds I read. Now, I'm managing and have incidentally noticed that I'm reading a lot less email (because I'm getting less) and using my morning email hour more for blogging.

    Now, podcasting (or is it pod casting?) is good in this respect too. There can be a lot of content, but I'm using idle time to work through it -- be that when I'm hacking away with my headphones on, walking around, or in the car. After all, I spend an hour a day commuting to and from work, and that time needs to be used for something.

    Videocasting / video casting on the other hand leaves me with this problem of when to use the content. If I'm watching moving pictures in a window on my laptop, then I'm not really working as I find video much more distracting. It's not just background noise like a radio would have been in the past and pod casting and MP3s are now. Occasional videos are ok, but that's probably because people are willing to devote their full attention to them. This would explain why vendor web casts remain popular -- it's actually "work" to watch one, so people don't do anything else at the time.

    So, if video is so much more intrusive, does it have a future at all?

    As I just mentioned, I think occasional video has a future. People just need to remember that if there is a deluge of video content, then most of it is likely to get dropped on the floor. The video needs to be timely, clearly useful, and somehow justifiable as "work". So, watching you play with your dog is unlikely to get a watching out of me.

    The future for video casting

    The other obvious place where video casting has a clear future is breaking the stranglehold of the media conglomerates. I really hate the broadcast media, especially in Australia where I would have to say that they have less clue than in the US. Yes, that is possible. In Australia, you have to have humans type out your guide data for TV, because the TV stations can't comprehend non-infringing uses for automatically watching TV shows. You know what, as a result I watch fewer TV shows than I would otherwise. Nicely done.

    Use video casting to break that monopoly. Give me shows that are interesting enough to watch in the lounge room. Give me heaps of that. Convince the Daily Show to video cast the US episodes so I don't have to put up with the stupid international version that CNN occasionally gives me.

    Conclusion

    Now, a review with video as a supplementary, secondary, thing. That would be cool. Talk to me in RSS and HTML about something, and then give me the 30 second video example which I can use if I feel I need it. Speaking of which, is anyone out there aware of an app which will capture my Linux desktop and turn it into a video for me? Perhaps taking audio from the sound card at the same time so that I can add a sound track later? If it worked with ALSA (unlike Audacity), then that would be very cool too.

    Tags for this post: blog podcast videocast technology
    Related posts: If I'm famous, then people have to be nice to me, right?; Generally poor audio quality on pod casts?; Mirroring the Linux Update podcast; ABC News Podcasts; Gday world pod cast with Jeremy Wright; I totally accepted Jesus into my soul; JJJ's hack; ABC Podcasts; My first interview; A sign of the times; Michael Jackson; Should I do a podcast?; Gilmor Gang; Tech talk blogs; iTunes 4.9 and podcast support; Podcasts and iTunes 4.9 on Mac; How to get your podcast into the iTunes store

posted at: 16:22 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 01 Apr 2005


Mailing list archives for the Biztalkers list

    As per this announcement, there is now a mailing list for BizTalk users in Australia. As per the aus-dotnet mailing list, I'm going to host an archive for the list. You can find the archives here.

    To subscribe to BizTalkers, send an email with "subscribe" in the subject line to biztalkers@listserver.readify.net.

    Tags for this post: biztalkers microsoft biztalk

posted at: 23:40 | path: /biztalkers | permanent link to this entry


No strings attached

posted at: 21:01 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Procmail filtering mailing list traffic, by magic

posted at: 20:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sorry for futzing with the RSS feed so much recently

posted at: 14:04 | path: /site | permanent link to this entry


Why allow Microsoft to present at a linux.conf.au co-conference?

    There has been some discussion on a mailing list I have subscribed to for some time as to the presence of a Microsoft employee speaking at the Open Computing in Government linux.conf.au co-conference. Whilst the linux.conf.au committee wasn't consulted per se on the decision, we were certainly made aware that it was likely to occur. The gentleman running the Open Computing in Government co-conference is a good friend I mine, and I'm entirely comfortable with what's occurred. Here's why...

    Note: The linux.conf.au 2005 committee is not running the Open Computing in Government co-conference. AUUG is. It's their gig, and they make up their mind about stuff. I'm just explaining why I think they made the right decision. I should also point out that I have a possible perception of bias here as well, as I am a member of the AUUG Committee as well.

    Open and informed debate

    I don't know about the rest of you, but I care a lot about open source (although I suspect I'm a little more pragmatic than a few of you). I've spent a lot of time using it, administering it, and I released my first open source code in July of 2000. I also care about people choosing open source because it's actually the right decision for them. I personally believe that the world is probably more complex than any one operating system, and it would be a mistake to try and shoehorn everything into one. People can't make an informed decision without having the information from both sides of the table being presented fairly and accurately. Having a Microsoft speaker at an event like this gives delegates a rare chance to see an actual debate on the issues at hand in real time, with people having to actually justify their stances, instead of hiding behind PR companies. I like that.

    I don't want people to chose Linux because we FUD them into the ground. I want them to chose it because we're right.

    Censorship is bad, mmmmkay?

    Ummm. I can't think of any more to say than that. I don't have to agree with someone to agree that they have a right to express their opinion.

    You have to assume that the attendees have their own brain cells

    Why hold peoples hands? Is there something we're embarrassed about that no one has mentioned to me?

    Conclusion

    Come on guys. Let's win on a level playing field. It's what we've been fighting for for so long, and we shouldn't lose the moral high ground.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference microsoft

posted at: 04:54 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 31 Mar 2005


Second last linux.conf.au 2005 organisers meeting

    We're nearly there now. Just the last few issues to sort out. It's nice to work with such a dedicated, organised, and intelligent team.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference

posted at: 01:58 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Open Computing in Government Co-Conference

posted at: 01:07 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 30 Mar 2005


Mature age students continued

posted at: 22:01 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Curse my lack of facial hair

posted at: 17:23 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Peter Vogel's latest gig

posted at: 16:30 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Silent raving

posted at: 15:55 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Winners (well, most of them) for the Sun Regional Delegate Programme announced

    (Sorry this took so long. We've actually had the list of winners for a while, but there were procedural stuff which held up an earlier release)

    Linux.conf.au 2005 is pleased to announce the winners of the 2005 Sun Regional Delegate Program (RDP). As always, linux.conf.au would like to that Sun for their kind support for this programme, without which it would not be possible for the following 9 people to attend linux.conf.au.

    Read http://lca2005.linux.org.au/rdp.php for details about the RDP.

    Also another lucky person who submitted to the Regional Delegates Program will be announced as the National winner at the conference opening and be presented with a fantastic prize by Sun. This is above and beyond their seat at linux.conf.au 2005.

    The winners are:

    ACT

    The ACT winner is Burn Alting, who has been working with Unix and open source since 1978, including contributions to many open source projects and initiatives over the years, Burn is an active member of the Canberra Linux community.

    NT

    Our winner from the Northern Territory is Anthony Hornby, who is the secretary of DARLUG. Not only does Anthony use FOSS at work, but he is also actively promoting open access publishing and the creative commons amongst his librarian colleagues. Anthony is currently working on an honours degree project to implement a database to help enable indigenous Australians to preserve some of their culture electronically for future generations. This project when complete will be released under an OSS licence.

    NSW

    The winner from New South Wales is Darryl Lynch. Darryl is a member of OSIA (Open Source Industry Australia http://www.osia.net.au/) living in regional NSW. He has been working with his local community on ways to adopt open source in the local community, and seeks to make more contacts at the conference to assist with this.

    Queensland

    The Queensland winner is Ben Martin. He is the author of the libferris virtual file system project, which has recently had desktop search capabilities added as detailed in the February 2005 Linux Journal. The file system talks at linux.conf.au are especially of interest to Ben.

    SA

    The South Australian winner Kylie Willison is passionate about teaching computing and have been teaching for six years. She is a volunteer using Linux in the workplace, training people to use Linux, giving away open source software and advocating Linux for other local community organisations. The better equipped she is to teach, maintain systems and run networks the better profile Linux will gain in the community.

    Tasmania

    Ben Powell is the Tasmanian winner. As TasLUG's Southern coordinator, he has worked to improve TasLUG's profile as a focal point for learning and advocacy for the FOSS community. After working in technology roles where he advocated FOSS solutions (for example Tasmania's eGovernment unit and consulting), he began studying IP law to give back to FOSS in areas where he believes his skills to best contribute to the Linux community as a whole.

    Victoria

    Gordon Heydon, the Victorian winner is a contributor to Drupal and Debian, and other projects. He has been active within the Linux community for the last 9 years, both in the assisting of other people with open source and helping businesses adopt open source.

    WA

    The Western Australian winner, Trent Lloyd, is an excellent opportunity to encourage a younger member of the community. Over the last year or two he has been making small contributions to GNOME related projects (mostly evolution), as well as working on a multi cast DNS library. As he is a student living away from home, having Sun provide an opportunity for him to attend the conference is a significant boon.

    New Zealand

    For the first time this year we're offering a RDP slot to a New Zealander. This year's winner is Vik Olliver, who has introduced Linux and open source to a variety of companies in New Zealand. Attending linux.conf.au 2005 will improve his ability to guide these companies and others, in turn spreading open source among more clients and enlarging the base of potential developers.

    Sun were also keen to involve people from New Zealand as linux.conf.au will be held in Dunedin, New Zealand next year.

    Less than three weeks to go to linux.conf.au. See you all there.

    Steve and the linux.conf.au 2005 Crew.


    Tags for this post: blog lca2005

posted at: 15:51 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Most novel traffic jam cause goes to... Canberra!

posted at: 15:24 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Church fund raisers

posted at: 15:04 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Nine letter word for the day

    Here is today's random nine letter word for the day. Enjoy!

    uie
    ngt
    rsm


    Tags for this post: puzzle nineletterword

posted at: 14:46 | path: /puzzle/nineletterword | permanent link to this entry


Repurposing technology

    It's not often that I simply quote someone else, but this is simply too funny...

    A few years ago, I bought what I thought was a tea strainer from a Chinese restaurant supply store. Yesterday, I saw a similar tea strainer being used to filter cigarette butts and other solids in a urinal in a Chinese restaurant.

    I'm slightly worried about this. Either this restaurant has repurposed a tea strainer as a urinal filter or I have repurposed a urinal filter as a tea strainer.


    I'm now slightly worried about what I might have repurposed myself...

    Tags for this post: blog urinal

posted at: 02:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 29 Mar 2005


Planet

posted at: 23:32 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sixteen letter word for the day

    Here is today's random sixteen letter word for the day. Enjoy!

    aail
    nycg
    onlt
    tasi


    Tags for this post: puzzle sixteenletterword

posted at: 21:16 | path: /puzzle/sixteenletterword | permanent link to this entry


Stupidity

    "In any large group of people, the stupid floats to the top like cream"
    -- Simon Dugard

posted at: 20:27 | path: /quote | permanent link to this entry


Testing 123

posted at: 19:05 | path: /enclosures | permanent link to this entry


The rationale behind charging for admission and turning people away from linux.conf.au 2005

    There have been a couple of comments made on my previous posts about linux.conf.au 2005 about how Free Software events shouldn't turn people away. I thought that I'd take the time to explain the rationale behind the current situation. It should be noted that the current status is the consensus of the linux.conf.au 2005 organising team, of which I am just one part.

    Let's break the basic objections I've heard down into their individual elements and address each in turn:

    Why are we charging for admission to linux.conf.au?

    Modern conferences are generally large, complicated, expensive beasts. It is possible to run a conference for free, but what you get is a very different beast from what people expect from a linux.conf.au. The current style of conference has been the same as every linux.conf.au I've been to (my first was Sydney), and I suspect that changing the mix too much would change the people who attended the event, which is something we explicitly didn't want to do.

    Why are they expensive to run? They have invited speakers and other speakers we pay for the transport for (we don't fund all speakers, just those who couldn't make it to the event otherwise), there is a regional delegates program (although Sun kindly sponsors it), there is a conference dinner and a networking session for professional attendees. Speakers partners get complimentary attendance at the partner's programme for having donated their partner's time.

    There are venue hire costs (a five digit number), sundry costs such as signage, transport for equipment, some equipment rental. There is the cost of merchandising such as a conference bag, and t-shirt. There are some other really cool merchandising things this year which I can't mention yet, but totally rock. If I was a delegate I'd feel pretty happy with what's in the conference bag this year. Those merchandising items are an opportunity for people to start conversations about open source in their workplaces, homes, and elsewhere, so are a valuable part of the conference mix.

    There's lots of other elements of the conference I have forgotten so far, but you get the idea.

    Remember in all this that the organisers haven't been paid. Heck, organising the conference has cost us money personally (many Thursday nights, dinners at meetings, time of other forms, a lot of fuel for some of us, some of us have even paid to attend the conference ourselves). I guess we're hoping that by donating our time, we'll end up with a cool conference. I think that anyone who thinks that they're doing this because they'll have a higher profile in the community, or be hired by a multinational, or something like that is somewhat confused to be honest. We're running the conference for the love of it.

    One final monetary aspect needs mentioning. Linux.conf.au is the major funding source for Linux Australia at this time. Without this funding, LA wouldn't be able to have their meetings, do the lobby work they do, or fund open source projects in the community. The linux.conf.au committee is a subcommittee of LA, and this needs to be remembered.

    Why limit the number of attendees?

    Linux.conf.au has always been a smaller conference compared with some others. This gives the conference a more intimate feel, and keeps the conference from turning into a monster that eats organisers for breakfast. Then again, the main reason the current conference is the size it has become is that the venue's largest room can only hold 500 people, and because of fire regulations we have to assume that all attendees are in the room for conference keynotes. In fact, organisers have volunteered to not attend keynotes if the space is needed for delegates, thus letting us sneak another few people in.

    Then why not change to a bigger venue?

    Because it's two weeks out from the conference. If we had sold out weeks ago, then we would have moved, but it wasn't clear that we were going to sell out back then... It's simply too late now to book a bigger venue. Even if we could, we wouldn't have enough t-shirts, bags, catering et cetera organised for a larger number of people, and the production deadline for those items was weeks ago.

    Ok, so why not video cast to another room in the venue for overflow?

    If you had paid $600 to go to a conference, not including travel and accommodation costs, plus time off work and being away from your loved ones, would you be happy being lumped into an overflow room? I wouldn't be, and imagine neither would a lot of other people. I honestly think that's not really an acceptable solution to the problem.

    Why not let people drop in for random lectures without paying?

    Again, if I'd paid to attend and someone else was dropping in I'd be upset. Why should I be subsidising them? That might be an uncharitable view of things, but if someone genuinely couldn't afford to go to the conference, and deserved to come, then they should have entered the regional delegate program. Perhaps they would have won.

    Where to from here?

    As with the last few linux.conf.au's there will be speex audio of the talks made available after the event along with the slide decks used. There is also some work going on to deal with video, but it hasn't been officially announced yet (more on that later). If you're genuinely only interested in one talk, then you can listen to it online later.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 conference opensource

posted at: 16:57 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Nine letter word for the day

    Here is today's random nine letter word for the day. Enjoy!

    ebr
    eev
    rta


    Tags for this post: puzzle nineletterword

posted at: 15:02 | path: /puzzle/nineletterword | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 28 Mar 2005


Linux.conf.au 2005 is now sold out

posted at: 23:40 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


The registration count down continues

    There have been exciting developments in the LCA registration extravaganza! So far today we've sold 18 registrations, which is odd when you consider that I originally said we had 14 places free. What happened was that there was some conservative rounding happening in the database layer to ensure we didn't oversell, and that allowed us to release a few more seats.

    There are currently six seats remaining. To the best of my knowledge that number is real and a hard limit. Pay now!

    Oh, on a technical note, the Linux Australia DNS server has been unreliable today. If you're having troubles getting to the linux.conf.au website and are worried about missing out, then try these URLs, which are all the same site:



    Hopefully not too many people will be disappointed.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 conference opensource

posted at: 22:55 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


The many uses of the word Bellevue

posted at: 20:24 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Nine letter word for the day

    Here is today's random nine letter word for the day. Enjoy!

    yeu
    loz
    als


    Tags for this post: puzzle nineletterword

posted at: 19:31 | path: /puzzle/nineletterword | permanent link to this entry


Nine letter word for the day

    Here is today's random nine letter word for the day. Enjoy!

    oim
    peu
    rts


    Tags for this post: puzzle nineletterword

posted at: 18:38 | path: /puzzle/nineletterword | permanent link to this entry


Photo tour of the abandoned Russian embassy in Thailand

posted at: 17:20 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Ummm, make that eight remaining seats

posted at: 17:05 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Only 14 places left for LCA 2005

    At the time of writing this, there are only 14 places left for the conference. I don't think we've formally announced this, but there is a counter for remaining places on the front page of the website. Remember, that if you've entered your information into our database, but not actually paid, then you're not registered, and not coming. We will be turning people away who haven't registered and paid before we sellout.

    Why? Because selling out means there's no more seats in the theatre. Fire regulations stop us from over selling.

    So, if you're intending on coming and have not registered and paid yet, I think you might want to do it today.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 conference opensource linux

posted at: 13:22 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Welcome to my personal perl help desk

posted at: 04:23 | path: /perl | permanent link to this entry


Fined for speeding in the ACT recently?

posted at: 04:14 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 27 Mar 2005


A more efficient way of getting a directory listing?

posted at: 23:04 | path: /perl | permanent link to this entry


Comments turned on!

posted at: 18:40 | path: /site | permanent link to this entry


Recursively make directories in perl

posted at: 15:16 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Electric shadows has a RSS feed!

posted at: 03:21 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Linux drivers for the Earthmate USB GPS

posted at: 00:19 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


ICM532 webcam support for Linux

posted at: 00:14 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 26 Mar 2005


IT in churches

posted at: 22:44 | path: /link | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 25 Mar 2005


CLUG Blosxom talk

posted at: 01:23 | path: /clug | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 24 Mar 2005


Interesting morning chatting

    I think I've had the right idea for a business. The hard part is determining if the idea is bogus or not. I sat down this morning and had a chat with Catherine's god parents, who have run a series of technology incubators around south east Asia for as long as I've known them. Interesting people. Anyways, they had a bunch of suggestions about where to go from here, and have offered to hold a day long session with some people I want to have as partners and help us work out where to take the idea from here.

    Interesting times ahead.

    Tags for this post: business

posted at: 19:53 | path: /business | permanent link to this entry


Second day, and already behind

    Herm. I'm having a go at helping Jeremy review his book. Partially because of timezone differences and partially because of giving a talk on my Blosxom blogging engine at a users group last night I'm already a little behind. Time to knuckle down and do some serious reading me thinks.

    Tags for this post: books untitled

posted at: 19:49 | path: /books/untitled | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 23 Mar 2005


Tipping Point: Gaetan Dugas, the AIDS patient zero

    Page 21 of The Tipping Point mentions Gaetan Dugas, the so-called AIDS patient zero: 

      "...the French-Canadian flight attendant, who claimed to have 2,500 sexual partners in North America, 
and who was linked to at least 40 of the earliest cases of AIDS in California and New York..."


    Assuming this time line of the AIDS epidemic is to be believed, I'm surprised that the transition from monkey to human happened in 1930 (ish). That's about four decades earlier than I had assumed. I might follow that thread a little more in a separate post. AIDS was a traumatic experience as a child growing up in the very late 1970s, and through out the 1980s. I definitely remember being a quite scared 10 year old when the grim reaper advert campaign came to air.



    It rather sounds to me like Gaetan has some fairly serious psychological problems. Now, I'm not judgemental of the fact that he liked to shag people, but surely there is a reasonable limit that should be imposed on the number of partners you should have at any one time, even without imposing my Christian perspective on it all. Perhaps I'm also tainted by having grown up in a post-AIDS world, and having been told an awful lot as a child than more than one partner at a time was dangerous. Then again, even if we ignore AIDS for a second, there have been other sexually transmitted diseases for a long time, and those would have been spread just as easily by Gaetan's behaviour.

    This quote from a recent reader of The Band Played On, which is apparently a discussion of the initial response to the AIDS epidemic (I haven't personally read it, but perhaps I should consider adding it to my mound of unread books) drives that home: 

      "Shilts concentrates on a few people who were central to the AIDS epidemic. One such person was a 
Quebecker Airline Steward by the name of Gaetan Dugas, the so-called Patient Zero. Dugas was not the 
first person to be infected with AIDS (or detected as such). But Dugas was seen as the reason why 
AIDS was able to spread like wildfire across countries and continents. Calling Dugas promiscuous is 
an understatement. It is said that he would indulge in several thousand partners from the late 1970s 
until 1984. When his condition became diagnosed as GRID (Gay Related Immuodeficiency Disease) or 
more popularly known then as "Gay Cancer" (as AIDS was known as before it became obvious that it was 
not just a gay disease), Dugas continued to sleep with random partners. He would even visit clubs and 
after finishing his interludes, would turn the lights up and boast he had passed the cancer onto his 
partner, ghoulishly exposing his Kaposi Sarcoma lesions and his gaunt face and body. Dugas would 
eventually become an outcast in the gay community, moving back to Canada where he continued his 
promiscuity there."


    Now, I can't understand how conservative denials of AIDS as a problem, or pronouncements that it was a gay only problem could possible help the situation, but let's ignore that altogether as something which further examination isn't really going to help.

    It should be noted that Gaetan was not the first person to catch AIDS: 

      "We will surely never know who or how, but we can speculate. There was a great deal of conjecture in 
the late 1980's about Patient Zero, identified as Gaetan Dugas - a Canadian flight attendant who 
purportedly knowingly infected as many as 250 men a year on both sides of the Atlantic - said to have 
singlehandedly started the epidemic, but most of this is now largely discredited. Anyhow, no one ever 
believed he was the first to be infected. Computer models have estimated that the first human 
infection occurred about 1930, give or take 20 years. The earliest known infection of an identified 
human being dates back to 1959, found in a plasma sample taken from an adult male living in the 
Belgian Congo (later Zaire and now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). As to how, most of the loose 
talk on the street seems to assume sex between a human and a chimp, as the HIV-1 virus is almost 
identical to a simian virus found in chimpanzees. A human eating a chimp seems just as likely, and 
some evidence suggests that it may have occurred iatrogenically when chimps were used in developing a 
polio vaccine for humans. For more, see Annabel Kanabus and Sarah Allen's study at www.avert.org/origins.htm"
    Professor William Dunlap, Quinnipiac Univ., Hamden, Connecticut USA
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-27837,00.html


    Gaetan was merely influential in the spreading of the disease amongst the gay community. It strikes me that it could just have easily been the promiscuous heterosexual community if someone like Gaetan had been that way inclined.

    Tags for this post: books tippingpoint aids
    Related posts: Lemon juice as a cure for AIDS?

posted at: 04:15 | path: /books/tippingpoint | permanent link to this entry


Whidbey will break Share Point?

    According to this blog post, Share Point will turn to custard if you install Whidbey on the machine running it. If true, that's kinda likely to make some people rather sad, although probably only in the developer community.

    Tags for this post: dotnet sharepoint whidbey

posted at: 03:11 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Searching for a technorati search plug in for Mozilla Firefox

posted at: 02:44 | path: /firefox | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 22 Mar 2005


Kinda desperate?

posted at: 19:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Home sick

    Not in the missing the house kind of way. I've been battling with my diet recently, as I've had an outbreak of reflux and gut cramping. It's been happening for about three months I guess, and can on very suddenly. The solution is of course to lose some weight, exercise more, stress less, and eat better food. Some of those are easier to implement than others when you're busy and have two little kids.

    Anyways, so I'm at home hiding today because of gut cramping. I presume I'll one day return to work. I am still answering email though.

    Tags for this post: blog work sick lifestyle diet
    Related posts: I didn't realize that the US was a third world country; A little story from my sickness; Sick; Drugs; So, now I know what it is...

posted at: 18:20 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Cubicle rearrangement

posted at: 18:13 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Congratulations Nick

posted at: 02:17 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 21 Mar 2005


What constitutes a popular blog?

posted at: 22:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


ICBM tags for Blosxom

    So, I now have a Blosxom plug in which implements ICBM tags for Blosxom. I've had to implement it as a separate RSS feed here (see the bottom of this page) because it breaks the feed validator in my aggregator, and presumably your as well, but if it works you can subscribe to it. I'm not going to release the plug in just yet though -- I'm waiting for one last thing to work out before I unleash it.

    You'll see an announcement here when it's ready...

    Tags for this post: blosxom icbm

posted at: 03:12 | path: /blosxom | permanent link to this entry


More academic paper progress

    Well, I've been a little too slack recently on working on my first academic paper for my PhD thesis. This is mainly because I've been distracted helping run linux.conf.au 2005, but it's also been because I've been grappling with issues of style for an academic paper, of which I have not written many in the past. One of my supervisors, Tridge had an interesting suggestion -- just go with plain English. It's much easier to read, and coveys the information better as well.

    Anyways, I was strong and sat down for three or four hours this afternoon and got some serious writing in. It helped a lot, as I think I've finally broken the writers block which was holding me up. Ironically for a computer science paper, I wrote it on a piece of dead tree. There's something daunting about a big pad of blank paper which makes it much more motivational to at least get something down -- even if it's wrong. You can always change it later.

    Don't get me wrote though. I had actually written some stuff before, about eight or so formatted pages. It's just than in one day I think I'll have come close to doubling that length, and got much closer to a completed document.

    Why the first paper of my thesis? Well, I'm going for the American style of thesis, where you take a series of papers you've written during your studies and got published in peer reviewed journals, and you staple them together to produce a thesis. This is a lot safer than the more traditional style of big bang thesis, as the uniqueness test occurs at the time of individual paper publication, not later when the whole thesis comes out. This mitigates a lot of the risk of spending a big chunk of your life producing something which isn't unique enough to count.

    Tags for this post: phd academic paper author
    Related posts: PDFDB cited in an academic paper; The book; Reading recommendations anyone?; Mark is right; Stop using all the loo paper!; Some details about the publication process; Nerd link of the day

posted at: 01:38 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 20 Mar 2005


Static page titling plug in for Blosxom

    So, I ended up implementing my own titling plug in, called statictitler. It works in dynamic and static modes, and it's really rather simple. During story processing the plug in learns which is the top most story title, and stashes that for the title of the web page. If there are more stories (we're not on an individual page), then it appends some "and others" text to the end of the title.

    When the entire page has been generated, it then substitutes title in the output with the title that it decided on earlier. Very nice. Very simple. Really rather fast. No state files on disc.

    Tags for this post: blosxom

posted at: 16:28 | path: /blosxom | permanent link to this entry


Eat Preople death, Mr Arrigo!

posted at: 02:21 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 18 Mar 2005


A sign of the times

posted at: 23:43 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


My sister, the unpainted hussy

posted at: 01:39 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


My brother, the techno-hermit

    Peter, my alleged brother, is a techno-hermit I have decided. Since moving to the UK, he called me once. Once. Once in 6 or so months. Not that I'm bitter or anything. He has a phone. He has a cell phone. He's on IM. He has a website. He has a blog. He has email. But he never calls, SMSes, IMs, puts anything on his website or blog, nor emails.

    I don't think he loves me any more. My father is pretending to sob behind me right now...

    Jasmine, have you finally murdered Peetey?

    Tags for this post: blog family erstwhilebrother
    Related posts: My sister, the unpainted hussy; So proud; Well, there he goes

posted at: 01:35 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 16 Mar 2005


TOWER Software OPML

posted at: 16:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mood affecting music

    I'm in a really good mood at work this morning. I'm not really sure why, apart from that I've changed from listening to news radio during the drive into work, to listening to CDs. I like music, and some music just seems to have the magical ability to put me into the right mood for coding. Nothing seems to be able to ruin my mood -- traffic was unusually bad this morning, I have to pack up my cube for a move on the weekend, I've already debated source control and broken builds with the head of product development, all of it hasn't damaged my mood.

    Maybe I'm just a sucker for tooth enamel damaging guitar effects...

    Listening to: It's my life.

    Tags for this post: blog music
    Related posts: Testing 123; The Ship Who Sang ; Arrived yesterday; Stop! Hammer time...; Dragonsinger; Dragondrums; On home sound systems; Dragonsong; Whatever happened to MC Hammer?

posted at: 16:00 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 15 Mar 2005


Microsoft's Linux influentials summit

    It's interesting that Microsoft has invited a bunch of Java and Linux people to their campus to comment on their products. I'm aware that they've done this kind of stuff with PHP people before, and I personally think it's a good idea. The open source people do this implicitly in the other direction already I suppose -- a lot of open source happens through people scratching an itch caused by proprietary code such as that product by Microsoft.

    Is there a list of the attendees online somewhere? It would be interesting to know the methodology used -- I certainly don't recognise any of the names listed one of the attendee's blogs.

    Tags for this post: blog microsoft opensource

posted at: 23:12 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Apple Developer Conference preview session

posted at: 21:09 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Unique world not particularly trustworthy?

    Lindsay, this is the second time that I am aware of in which Unique World has presented us in what I would consider to be an uncomplimentary light for their own benefit. The last time was the MSDN developer magazine for the Asia Pacific region. In fact the line is basically the same here -- TRIM is apparently powerful, but hard to use.

    With 750,000 (ish) licensed customers, how come we almost never get feedback which supports Unique World's position on this? Specifically, we have a case study from the site in question which almost entirely contradicts this article.

    Hot tip -- bad mouthing your business partners to the customers is not a good way to run a business.

    This post is entirely my own opinion. I just think it sucks when people act like this.

    Tags for this post: blog work uniqueworld eforms

posted at: 17:05 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Gartner recommends blogging over electronic content management

posted at: 13:35 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Permalinks

    Steven, there are permalinks here. I recently changed them all to suck less, so you've got me a little worried now. I see them in my aggregator with both RSS 0.91 and RSS 2.0 though.

    Tags for this post: blog

posted at: 09:01 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Technorati porn tags

posted at: 03:37 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Technorati search results polluted by porn blogs

    Interesting. I just did a search for "records management" and "document management" and got porn results in the list returned. Specifically, [LINK NOT SAFE FOR WORK NETWORKS WITH PRUDES ADMINISTERING THEM] this one [/LINK].

    In fact, eight of the search results on the first page seem to be porn spam to me: 

      records management
Make this a Watchlist
16,681 posts matching records management sorted by most recent. Query took 2.1207 seconds

   1.
      
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MANAGEMENT 

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    The source for the page linked above doesn't have either of those strings in it, so perhaps the site is detecting technorati bots and doing something different for them?

    This is the kind of thing which will stop me from using technorati in the future if it's not rapidly fixed. The etire usefulness of their system is on the line... Oh, and this is the first time I've felt the need to use nofollow in anger.

    Tags for this post: blog technorati porn search spam nofollow
    Related posts: Technorati porn tags; Searching for a technorati search plug in for Mozilla Firefox; Scoble is right, nofollow is good; MelbourneIT are into search engine optimisation?; Historical revisionism; Blog tags; Hmmm, me no likee spam; Sorry to those commenters; Adventures in eating spam; Well, that's Google blog search live then; Westpac suck too; Google book search; 26 spammy blog comments in one day; Why does every man and his dog put man pages online?; Overall comment spam statistics; Sensis Australian search; IIS Porn remixed; Defending myself from the wrath of the Chris; An occasional rant about spam; Traffic based linkage spam?; Advertising inside the firewall

posted at: 03:20 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Commenting here, and Ian's thoughts on Multimedia

    Ian comments on my multimedia post.

      I haven't got time to compose a beautiful blog article reply, so here is a quickie, feel free to blog it yaself if it's relevant. Have you seen/used Windows Movie Maker? It is VERY good at taking a video stream, say free to air TV, and splitting it up into automatically into the separate clips. I have found that very useful for then just deleting the clips that are advertisements, and then concatenating the remaining ones into a single movie file sans-ads. Voila!


    Ian has also asked for me to turn on commenting here recently. I initially thought it wasn't possible, but I can do something involving statically generating the comment pages every time I approve a new comment. I need to do the moderation thing anyways, because I'm not interested in allowing comment spam. I already get so much referrer spam that I can't show my referrer logs, so I'm not falling into that trap again.

    Is anyone else interested in comments being turned on here?

    Tags for this post: blog multimedia comments
    Related posts: Dynamic site comments; Recent comments; Comments turned on!; I'm glad I've turned on comments here; Cataloguing meta data against multi media formats

posted at: 02:42 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Cutbacks for tutoring at ANU

    Andrew, you should also remember that the cutback in tutoring positions hurts the fledgling academics too. Tutoring has traditionally been a standard way for PhD students to supplement meagre scholarships. Then again, compare and contrast that with University of Canberra, which is so strapped for cash they have cancelled all real (as recognised by Engineers Australia) Engineering degrees.

    Note: I'm not on a scholarship, and am not currently tutoring. I did tutor last year when there was money around. Perhaps that makes me biased, but then again with LCA around the corner I didn't massively want to tutor anyway.

    Tags for this post: blog anu tutoring
    Related posts: Bunyip is dead

posted at: 02:36 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Cataloguing meta data against multi media formats

    From the not my area of PhD research, but nonetheless an interesting field department. I was having a chat with Tom Worthington, one of the visiting fellows at the Department of Computer Science at ANU, and he was talking about some students of his who are working on meta data entry and use for multi media files. This is an interesting topic as it's tangential to what I do all day at work, and an interestingly hard problem.

    Imagine that you have all the footage for a film -- for instance Mad Max, including the stuff which ended up on the cutting room floor. I've always made the assumption that you'd store that in your electronic content management system. Somehow when you entered the movie footage into your system, you'd assign little chunkettes of it meta data, which would be stored by the system.

    Well, it's not all that magical. You'd presumably have some sort of human assisted automated process to determine the meta data, and then add that into your system as well. This would probably involve something like Google's teletext indexing stuff, but would hopefully also do interesting stuff like informing the operator that the back ground of an image set had changed sufficiently to imply a change of camera shot and therefore a different scene.

    Anyways, you could then search in your electronic content management system for the meta data you needed -- "give me a close up shot of Mel Gibson from the first 25 minutes of the movie against a desert background" -- and the right thing would happen. That is, the content would be streamed to your machine, and then playback would start from that place.

    Anyways, Tom suggested that perhaps you store the information pre-carved into those little chunks and index them separately. You would of course retain information about the sequence of the snippets so you could reassemble them later. That's an interesting idea, especially as it solves a lot of the problems of moving very large volumes of data around to get the 10 second fragment you actually want. If my TiVo is any indication, medium quality video runs to about a gigabyte and hour, so I imagine movie quality is a lot bigger than that. We're talking serious amounts of data.

    Now, this approach is interesting, and has it's merits. It's not perfect however. You'd need to have some sort of re assembly algorithm with allowed for you to reassemble multiple fragments before delivery. That's probably not a big problem though, as you'd need that anyway for a system like this.

      Aside: what do you use a system like this for? I want to make a documentary about Mad Max. I could do that by building a Makefile for the documentary which took the following information and presented it to me as a finished movie:

      • An opening sequence I made especially for the documentary, overlaid with some theme music
      • A close up stock shot of Mel Gibson
      • Some footage from the movie
      • A narration sequence with some diagrams of Max's car
      • ... and so on


      This would remove a lot of the repetitive editing work from this style of production, and would make it easy to tweak the presentation when new information came to light. You can't assume that the content is for traditional broadcast either -- I'm thinking this kind of stuff could be delivered using the newer, faster networks that most academic places have today, and everybody else will presumably have in a decade or so. Heck, imagine a pod cast which could be tweaked on the fly based on delivery variables. A personalised G'Day world pod cast for instance which drops the segments you don't like for instance.


    The other place that this technique falls down in instances of "single scene" content such as the police interview after my car accident. In those cases you're still going to need to be able to store an inset into the file for the given search term.

    Interestingly, TOWER is well positioned to do a lot of this now... We can byte serve files from some beta code (which I should really mention here) that we're working on now, and there are some very sexy batch search facilities in the Connectivity Toolkit that I've been working on that would make this easier too.

    I think a hybrid scheme between the two storage techniques has a lot of promise, and that we should play with this a little more. Tom has a research project lined up, so it's just a case of pitching it to the powers that be at work now.

    On a side note, Google believes that there are no pages on my employers site that define the term electronic content management. That makes me sad. If someone would like to correct me, then I would be more than happy to donate some Google foo to the indexing of such pages.

    Tags for this post: blog work research multimedia metadata content management
    Related posts: Gartner recommends blogging over electronic content management; RemoteWorker v74; Why document management is good; Being Geek; Compendium of TLD domain access agreements; Commenting here, and Ian's thoughts on Multimedia; Measuring the popularity of SMTP server implementations on the Internet; Perl sample source code; Dear Lazyweb: how do I check SSL keys for vulnerability?; On caching of websites; What do you do when the users who generate your content revolt?; What is the definition of publication?; RemoteWorker v70; Initial SMTP survey poster results in a pie chart; Customisation of visible posts; Parked domains; Announcing early results of my survey of SMTP servers; Tangential research to my own; Interesting paper: "YouTube Traffic Characterization: A View From the Edge"; Life hacking; First paper published

posted at: 01:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Busted!

    So, I figured no one reads the darcs logs... 

      Mikal,

>> Sat Mar 12 20:45:20 EST 2005  Michael Still
>>   * I bet no one reads this log... Tweaked LPI email address.

buh-bow! :D

Jeremy


    I think I may have found the world's least efficient message passing algorithm...

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 sourcecontrol
    Related posts: Broken VSS integrations

posted at: 00:40 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 14 Mar 2005


I am a desperate housewife

    DHlynette
    Congratulations! You are Lynette Scavo, the
    ex-career woman who traded the boardroom for
    boredom, mixed with moments of sheer panic as
    the mother of four unmanageable kids.

    Which Desperate Housewife are you?
    brought to you by Quizilla

    Tags for this post: blog

posted at: 19:24 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Providing products which can merge disparate data

    The scenario described by Fuzzy isn't that different from what I imagine you find at many customer sites over the planet. People create more than one system, which grow and eventually overlap. This could be because of growth of the systems, because of the merger of departments, or because of poor design on the part of the customer. I have been on a couple of customer sites recently where they are storing data in more than one system, in fact they're storing the same information twice.

    The challenge we should really address is how we seamlessly handle that challenge. We should be capable of searching and reporting results from more than one instance of our product, and the Web Service project I have spent the last year or so one gives us a good infrastructure for that. Then we just need to handle the creation of data, and determining where new data should go. That sounds like a customer configuration problem to be. We should also come up with some sort of plan as to how to return results from non-TRIM systems. That could be as simple as publishing an integration interface specification for a Web Service which will also be searched at the time of a query.

    So really the question should be: why aren't we doing more to make this sort of scenario transparent to the user? Why do we still expect the customer to merge systems?

    Tags for this post: blog work architecture
    Related posts: Interesting quote; Go see the stilty building

posted at: 17:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Playing with page_titler

    page_titler is a plug in for Blosxom which changes the title of the page you're viewing the to name of the first story on the page. I've been playing with it, but unfortunately it doesn't work with the static generation mode for blosxom that I am running. I suspect I'm going to get to write my own one of these...

    It also has this weird cache file I don't really need...

    Tags for this post: blosxom

posted at: 15:58 | path: /blosxom | permanent link to this entry


Open Computing in Government

posted at: 12:34 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 13 Mar 2005


Why I started blogging

    I started blogging a long time ago (about 2000). Why? Well, I had a bunch of open source software I wanted to announce, and I wrote a "blog engine" (it wasn't called that) to make it easier. Updates magically appeared on the front page, and were categorised correctly.

    I introduced a diary later, mainly so that my family knew what I was up to, and as a Google backup strategy. To this day, if I know I did something a while ago and need to know the details again, I just Google and ask for only results from my domain. It's actually a really powerful technique.

    To this day that's what it's about for me. I have a complicated site with a lot of data on it, and a blogging engine helps me manage all of that.

    I think it comes down to usefulness though. Quinny, if you're not finding blogging useful, then don't do it.

    Tags for this post: blog

posted at: 17:33 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Newsflash! Working teaches you how to work

    Lindsay proffers some thoughts on why mature age students always seem so smugly organised, and I have to agree with her. The other aspect is that I suspect that working actually teaches you how to work. I look at how much I used to get done as a student in 8 hours, and how much I get done in a work day now, and I am massively more efficient than I used to be.

    It's about time management. Being organised. Knowing when the deadline is. Not spending hours and hours twattling with friends.

    School is about making a career, not fun, and I think a lot of first years end up learning that the hard way.

    Tags for this post: blog study

posted at: 17:26 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Simon needs to meet our account managers...

posted at: 15:07 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 12 Mar 2005


Robert, just ignore the Register

posted at: 15:28 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mind the veggies

    Why is it always the vegetable stand which get destroyed?



    Tags for this post: blog movies

posted at: 14:54 | path: /diary/movies | permanent link to this entry


Welcome to the exciting world of bathroom renovation

    Catherine and I have two kids Andrew and Matthew, who are both thinking seriously about toilet training. So, it's time to think about turning our very large single bathroom into two slightly smaller ones, so that we can deal with the impending throughput problems in the bathroom.

    So far Catherine has taken this on as her personal project, which is fine by me. We've got quotes from about four companies now, which range from $5,000 to about $17,000. I'm thinking that if we ignore the $5,000 quote, which is obviously wrong, then the average price is about $15,000. For that we should get a fully approved and permitted bathroom renovation resulting in having two bathrooms, each with a bath with a shower head over it, and a toilet. The en-suite version would also have a spa thingie in the bath.

    So, now we need to decide if we should spend the money or not. I'll let you know when we make a decision.

    Tags for this post: blog renovation bathroom

posted at: 14:52 | path: /diary/renovation/bathroom | permanent link to this entry


Bloggers make companies better?

    Here's another Scobelizer (Robert Scoble) response post. Robert recently shared his thesis that having bloggers on your staff makes your product better. In his words:

      "Here's my thesis: companies that have lots of bloggers will end up making better products, will end up having better marketing and PR, will end up making more profit at the end of the day, and will be more likely to have more than one "hit product" and will be more likely to last 100s of years."


    I think he's right, but he's also got things backwards. Bear with me for a second...

    Ways the Scobelizer is right
    • Someone with a strong online presence is more likely to be part of a community that's relevant to their work. Picking on a coder example, they'll be on the mailing lists relevant to this work, they'll be interacting with the community via bloggers in the same field, and they're more likely to have good contacts. Because they're part of this community they're more informed about trends, techniques, and other important things I can't think of right now. That means a better product which is less likely to be stuck out in the cold.
    • It gives customers the chance to hear of developments before it's too late. I'm hesitant to discuss what we're working on at the moment, despite it all being really quite cool, because we're not big enough to compete with people with massive engineering departments. If I was free of that constraint (and presumably a lot of people are), then they could be telling you about new features before they're written. It means that you don't make a horrific PR or design decision at release time, as you can test the water first. I imagine for companies like Microsoft this is a very good thing.
    • It creates a buzz around your product.
    • It makes your product team accessible to the customer. That means that valuable market insight isn't too filtered by the sales and marketing people first.
    • Lots of other good stuff I can't think of right now.


    How Scoble's theory misses

    But at the start of this I promised to explain why the Scobelizer has it wrong. Here's how.

    As Doc Searls says, markets are conversations. Having a companies engineering team blogging is a little bit like the dude on the soap box shouting gospel messages in the city. People can hear him, but they don't necessarily want to listen. The dude on the soapbox doesn't have sufficient insight into the marketplace he's operating in.

    Conversations are two way. For blogging to really improve a product, you want to have your engineering team reading customer's blogs. That's right -- the other way around. The Scobelizer is actually really good at this. There have been a couple of times I have felt the need to email him (although one of these was to remind him that a lot of cheeses can be frozen), and he replies. Quickly. That's much cooler than I think a lot of people realise.

    Ten years ago I hated Microsoft. I'm a Linux / Unix / midrange guy. Microsoft is the enemy. Microsoft suck. Or so I thought. If someone had offered me an interview at Microsoft 10 years ago, I would have laughed in their faces. Now, I realize that Microsoft employees are people too, worried about their mortgages, their kids who live in a different state to them, if anyone will like their new product, and all that. Sure, they want Linux to fail, but capitalism is more to blame for that than the people at Microsoft. You can't tell me that the people at Novell ne Ximian want Microsoft to succeed either.

    So, I resolved the other day to read more customer blogs. I've only found two so far, but if you're a TOWER Software (TRIM) customer, then feel free to feel free to let me know about yours so I can subscribe. I don't just want to know how our customers interact with our product, I want to know about their worlds:

    • Are they cash strapped at the moment?
    • To they have reliable or unreliable WAN links?
    • Do their servers crash?
    • What other projects are they running? Can our product help with those?
    • What technology direction are they taking?


    So, blogging is a two way street, and yes I think it can improve products.

    Tags for this post: blog microsoft corporate blogging work
    Related posts: Blogging essential to a successful career; Phones; Advertising inside the firewall; Corporate networks; Loyalty

posted at: 02:32 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 11 Mar 2005


Headache

posted at: 19:47 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 09 Mar 2005


I apologise now

    It was I who assumed that all midgets who happen to be organised enough to come packing serious llama action also stock cream. I too apologise right now. Lindsay lies a little. She was still around when we got to designing our redundant array of individual midgets (RAIM).

    My employer is an equal opportunity employer, and I would welcome the opportunity to work with a midget. I certainly don't think we were poking fun at midgets per se -- it could easily have been geeks.

    As long as they were packing llama action of some form. I once again personally apologise for anyone who now wants to litigate against me, hurt me, or never hire me.

    Tags for this post: blog work

posted at: 22:50 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


If you're a good admin monkey, then you can have one too

posted at: 22:26 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Simon has troubles with Blogger's support team

posted at: 19:54 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Lindsay googles for herself

    Lindsay, it's called ego surfing when you google for yourself. It's a slippery slope -- soon you'll be caring what other people think or something.

    Another element of why I would google for people before hiring them occurred to me while driving around running errands during lunch today. Basically it's a check for social interactions in a relevant community. If I had to chose between two equally qualified people, one of whom I could see what on mailing lists, forums, blogging, somehow involved with the community around their industry, then I would chose them over the simple nine to fiver. I want someone who loves what they do, and you get that by finding someone who is passionate about the field.

    I'd also be checking to make sure they weren't ranty or evil in some way of course.

    This possible doesn't work for all fields though. Is there an online community of receptionists?

    Lindsay, I'd be making sure that you're leaving a good impression behind you, and showing enthusiasm. Apart from that, it doesn't really matter what you're doing online. The more the merrier of course.

    Lindsay also says:

      "Now, the problem of "write something stupid on your blog and it may come back to haunt you" seems to arise only because *some* people are making an assumption of privacy. That if one's blog is read at all it's read by an anonymous crowd, whom the writer will never know."


    So true. You'd have to be pretty silly to assume that only your friends read your blog. As I sometimes tell people who are being foolish on public mailing lists -- google has a long memory.

    Tags for this post: blog work employment
    Related posts: Two more weeks to go; Googling for job candidates; Leaving Google; Microsoft recruiter makes a good point; Bye Grant and Lindsay

posted at: 19:47 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Yet more cubicle commentary

posted at: 17:03 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Revenge of the Mr Quinn

posted at: 16:46 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 08 Mar 2005


RDP winners decided

    The LCA 2005 Sun Regional Delegate Program winners have been decided.

    Now we're just working out availability, transport, press releases and other such procedural stuff. Watch this space.

    To tide you over, here are some photos of Steven, the main conference organiser. I am assured he'll be wearing this outfit for his main conference welcome...





    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 sequin rdp conference
    Related posts: RDP entries closed!

posted at: 21:52 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


RSS 2.0 here...

posted at: 21:01 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Argh!

    My brain is broken. Too fast typing just resulting in a paragraph here with exactly the wrong meaning -- I meant sensible well reasoned English, and produced complete gibberish instead. Then to round it off, I gave Little headed Simon's pay rise to Matt.

    Tags for this post: blog senile work

posted at: 20:02 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


More on cubicle life

    Gordon tips me off to Mr Quinn, an escaped co-worker (who will one day be returned to captivity I presume) referring to my comments on Chris references to comments by Steven related to my comments about it being impossible to work in a cubicle environment.

      (Yes Michael, I am trying to annoy you by linking. Then again, the Interweb is about the relationships between data as much as it is about the data itself. Showing the stream of conversation which results in my conclusions either strengthens or weakens my comments, depending on if they are justified in that context. I could just quote lots of posts, by that opens up problems of selective quotation, copyright, and being much more enthused that I actually am.)


    Mr Quinn comes to the conclusion that my level of distraction in a cubicle environment is somehow indicative of a personal weakness on my part:

      "This set of circumstances leads to the question: why do you get interrupted while Rory does not when you both work with the same people in the same environment?"


    Because we don't work in the same environment. I don't recall a single instance of anyone doing anything other than patiently waiting for Rory to notice them. That's presumably because he's older, nicer, or more senior than me. If people patiently waited for me to finish my sentence, thought, or just pause iTunes, then I wouldn't be so annoyed.

    Edit: Fixed syntactic errors which changed the entire meaning of the last paragraph...

    Tags for this post: blog cubicle work
    Related posts: Code better with a new monitor; Yet more cubicle commentary; A productive day; Further impossibility of work in a cubicle; Revenge of the Mr Quinn; Cubicle rearrangement; There's no other way to say it; Cubicles; Cubicle wall

posted at: 20:00 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Two unbearably good posts in one day

posted at: 19:46 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Simon, you're LHS

posted at: 19:24 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Googling for job candidates

    The Scobelizer (Robert Scoble) comments that the last three interviews he's had people have googled for him beforehand. He also says that people had read his blog before the interview. I don't find this surprising at all.

    I imagine that the blog was found as part of that googling process.

    Imagine you're an employer. Hiring someone is possibly the most risky and expensive thing you can do in an organisation. Imagine what it could cost if they harassed other workers, stole your code, deliberately (or inadvertently) introduced bugs into your product, defected to the competition, or sacrificed goats on the office furniture.

    You're going to want to limit that risk, and one of the most obvious ways of doing that is to know as much about the candidate before you actually hire them as possible. I certainly google for information about people before many things -- committing to working with them; applying for a job; or hiring someone as either a permanent or a contractor.

    This works both ways. It also gives people an opportunity to impress me with their skills which might not shine through in an interview. One of the things that startled me when I learnt it after interviewing a few people in the public service is that interview isn't a competition. It's about prodding the candidate to find out what they really know, and if they'd work well in your team. You might miss out on hiring the smartest person you ever met if they were too shy to express themselves without prompting in a interview, and that would be a great shame.

    In the Australian public service this was hard of course -- we were required to ask all candidates the same questions, which were pre-scripted. Then again, we could still prompt people for a more complete answer.

    Thinking about it, one of the section heads at work once commented that one of the things he liked about phone interviewing is that he couldn't let preconceived ideas about age, stature, hair colour, and presentation affect his decision to hire a technical person with no customer contact.

    Remember that blogging and your web presence can work against you though. I have another friend who runs an operations center for an online security monitoring service. There have been a number of people he has chosen not to hire because of blog posts along the lines of "I was bored at work, so I spent today porn surfing at the companies expense". Don't do that. Either the porn surfing at work, or the blogging about it. Just don't. No, I really mean it.

    Overall, bloggin can work for you. If I wanted to hire a C# programmer in Canberra with experience with the inner workings of IIS, I'd first try to find them by googling. Just be sensible.

    Tags for this post: blog microsoft scoble workplace employment
    Related posts: Scoble; Scoble, I'll buy the damn book, just put your clothes back on; ScobleShow only available as MP4?; Two more weeks to go; What the heck are you talking about?; Supporting more than one browser for your website, or does Firefox really make my life harder?; Leaving Google; How Microsoft can encourage Tablet PC applications, and therefore platform adoption; On Twitter; Well, that solves that; Microsoft recruiter makes a good point; One thing about Microsoft Tablet PCs that Scoble didn't mention; Bye Grant and Lindsay; Lindsay googles for herself; Information overload; Scoble is right, nofollow is good

posted at: 15:28 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


"Necrophilia among ducks ruffles research feathers"

posted at: 14:50 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


IIS Porn remixed

posted at: 14:36 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 05 Mar 2005


First PHP code

    I just wrote a hello world page (well, cut and pasted one) in PHP. I guess that makes me an expert... I shall have to put it on my resume.

    Tags for this post: php humor
    Related posts: This is what happens...

posted at: 03:14 | path: /php | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 04 Mar 2005


Should I do a podcast?

    Should I do a podcast? I'm not sure I have anything interesting to say. Andrew said he might be interested in helping out. Would people listen in?

    So, tell me. Would you be interested in hearing from two Australian geeks, one who hacks Windows code by day and Linux code by night, and the other who is a Debian developer who deals with commercial security products when he has to? We're helping run the coolest Linux conference in the universe, which would help us get some content to bootstrap with.

    Let me know your thoughts.

    Tags for this post: podcast blog

posted at: 16:01 | path: /podcast | permanent link to this entry


I stand corrected on Mailman

posted at: 15:53 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Essex secret bunker

posted at: 15:11 | path: /travel/uk/essex | permanent link to this entry


Why is it so amzing when things get done?

posted at: 01:06 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Further impossibility of work in a cubicle

    Chris refers to comments by Steven related to my comments about it being impossible to work in a cubicle environment. I've been noticing in the last few days that the situation is getting worse. I regularly wear headphones when I am working, which is apparently a signal not to disturb someone, and people just escalate the pain.

    They knock on the desk. The cubicle walls. Me. They throw foam balls at my monitors (as in most cubicles my back faces the oncoming horde).

    Ignoring them just makes them more intrusive.

    I think the difference is that Chris works with a relatively small number of talented, relatively considerate people. Whilst I work with a bunch of people who honestly believe that what they want to talk to me about is the most important thing in the entire universe. I'm seriously considering working from home again. At least that way I can hopefully get some stuff done, and that's with a two year old and a three year old at my feet.

    Tags for this post: blog cubicle work
    Related posts: Code better with a new monitor; Yet more cubicle commentary; A productive day; Revenge of the Mr Quinn; Cubicle rearrangement; There's no other way to say it; More on cubicle life; Cubicles; Cubicle wall

posted at: 01:03 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 03 Mar 2005


SirBillG

posted at: 17:05 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


IIS Porn, or, Another one of those posts my Linux open source friends will make fun of me for

    I need IIS Porn. I was thinking about this yesterday while talking to the lovely folks from Readify about training options for some of our people. What I want is some sort of training course in Australia which will show me IIS with it's clothes off, under the hood, with wind blowing up it's skirts. That's right -- I need web server porn.

    Why?

    Cause I've reached the point is ASP.NET Web Service debugging where actually knowing what's happening is needed. Does anyone have any suggestions for training options? Book suggestions are welcome as well, but not as useful, as I don't have a lot of spare time to read them in.

    (Why use the word porn so much? It's a scientific experiment to see if more people read this post because of it. Pron. Pr0n. Pornity porn.)

    Tags for this post: dotnet microsoft iis
    Related posts: IIS Porn remixed

posted at: 17:03 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Broken VSS integrations

    I've had a broken VSS integration with VS 2003 for the longest time. It's mainly because SCC, the API used by Visual Studio to talk the current source control implementation, doesn't handle having more than one source control provider integrated at once.

    That's an astoundingly stupid design decision by the way. I know that I would use three source control providers regularly if I could, and I imagine that I'm not that uncommon. Let's think about this:

    • There's the work Visual Source Safe server
    • There's the Source Gear Source Offsite server when I'm at home (which makes the work VSS server work over the Inter-web)
    • CVS for personal projects


    So, that's three pretty easily. Now, if VSS worked over the Internet, or Source Offsite didn't suck so much on a LAN, then I could get it down to two. Anyways, it's not a perfect world, so I'm stuck with what I've got.

    Now, I cop a fair bit of pain in the office because of this broken integration. It's mainly because without the integration it's really easy to add new source files to the IDE and forget to add them into the source control server. You only notice later when the nightly build script goes to custard because of a missing file (I have the file on my machine, so the build still works there).

    So, I've decided to simply use CVS from the GUI client instead, outside of the IDE, and go back to having only VSS integrated with the IDE. Source Offsite will go to heaven or something. Now, how on earth do I get VSS to repair itself so that it works again?

    http://www.dotnet247.com/247reference/msgs/56/281754.aspx seemed to have some useful hints, apart from the fact that I don't appear to have a ssint.exe installed in my world. Re-registering ssscc.dll did the thing for me though.

    Please $DEITY, let this be improved in Whidbey.

    Tags for this post: dotnet microsoft vss scc sourcecontrol
    Related posts: Busted!

posted at: 15:21 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 01 Mar 2005


She's breaking up Captain!

    In the words of the great Scotty (not that I am a Star Trek fan or anything), "she's breaking up Captain!" (why did they build their ships so unreliably they couldn't cope with the every day stresses of going where no one had gone before?). Here's what my long suffering admin has to say about my some people are getting a timeout trying to read this site: 

      Gee what's wrong with this picture?

daedalus:~# ps ax | grep blos
27845 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27851 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27854 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27855 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27856 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27859 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27860 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27862 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27870 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27874 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27875 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27876 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27878 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27888 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27890 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27892 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27893 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27902 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27903 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27905 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27907 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27910 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27916 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27930 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27944 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27946 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep blos
27947 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom
27952 pts/0    S      0:00 /usr/bin/perl /srv/stillhq.com/www/cgi-bin/blosxom

Methinks your website is too popular for something that spawns a Perl process
per visitor.


    It doesn't help that there is no something like five major search engines crawling here a lot -- as opposed to the two I had a couple of years ago. That's right. It's MSN's fault.

    Anyways, I guess the next step is to try modperl, and perhaps prayer. Got any other suggestions? Drop me a line.

    Tags for this post: blog perlatmywebsite perl blosxom linux
    Related posts: die() in a CGI; Static page titling plug in for Blosxom; Unique elements in a perl array; Recursively make directories in perl; I'm glad I've turned on comments here; Perl sample source code; TrackBack pings; RSS 2.0 here...; The architecture of PerlMagick; This is a test; ICBM tags for Blosxom; Problems with feed when I increases it's size?; Technorati tag support for Blosxom; Playing with page_titler; A more efficient way of getting a directory listing?; CLUG Blosxom talk; Welcome to my personal perl help desk; ImageMagick slowness extracting EXIF information from JPEG files; Email subscription to comments

posted at: 03:11 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 28 Feb 2005


There's no other way to say it

posted at: 22:11 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 27 Feb 2005


This is what happens...

posted at: 17:07 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


SQL Down under

posted at: 16:06 | path: /aus-dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Mailing list archives for the SQL Server Down under list

posted at: 16:03 | path: /sqldownunder | permanent link to this entry


LCA walk through

    I think it went well. We certainly thought of a few more things which need to be covered, but nothing major. That's a good feeling, given the conference is only seven weeks away.

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 conference opensource

posted at: 15:32 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Terminology for the day

    Flog: a fake blog (noun).

    To help with the culture boundary, "flog" is a rather uncomplimentary thing to say to someone, akin to "tosser" and "wanker".

    Tags for this post: blog flog

posted at: 15:32 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 23 Feb 2005


Pictures of Wellington

    A few weeks ago I was held prisoner in Wellington for a week. I didn't get much of a chance to go out, but here's some photos of what little of Wellington I did see:



    Tags for this post: pictures wellington

posted at: 23:56 | path: /pictures | permanent link to this entry


Firefox bug

posted at: 22:29 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


20050126-wellington

posted at: 21:57 | path: /events/pictures/20050126-wellington | permanent link to this entry


Andrew's birthday was a trip to the zoo to meet the Linux penguins

    The reason Linus chose the Tux penguin mascot for Linux is that he met some particularly cute penguins here in Canberra. Here's some pictures of them...



    Tags for this post: pictures linux tux

posted at: 19:29 | path: /pictures | permanent link to this entry


20050201

posted at: 19:10 | path: /andrew/pictures/20050201 | permanent link to this entry


20050201

posted at: 19:10 | path: /matthew/pictures/20050201 | permanent link to this entry


20050201

posted at: 19:10 | path: /diary/pictures/20050201 | permanent link to this entry


20041118

posted at: 18:55 | path: /andrew/pictures/20041118 | permanent link to this entry


20041118

posted at: 18:55 | path: /matthew/pictures/20041118 | permanent link to this entry


20041107

posted at: 18:44 | path: /events/pictures/20041107 | permanent link to this entry


Adventures in eating spam

posted at: 18:38 | path: /pictures | permanent link to this entry


20041104-spam

posted at: 18:30 | path: /diary/pictures/20041104-spam | permanent link to this entry


Experimenting with picture blogging

    I've just decided that I'm going to experiment with blogging about pictures when I update them on my website. This category will be used for such posts.

    Tags for this post: pictures

posted at: 15:46 | path: /pictures | permanent link to this entry


A linux users conference for Australia?

posted at: 15:33 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Foxtel iQ launch

    Last night I attended the launch party for the Foxtel iQ in Canberra, Australia. This is the first TiVo like product to be released commercially in Australia with an Electronic Program Guide (EPG). Overall, the presentation was pretty slick, and I was impressed with the knowledge of the sales people present -- it was only the tougher questions they needed to refer to someone else. The launch seems to have generated some interest. Anyways, here's a dump of my thoughts about the whole thing.

    Features: the box is a replacement for your current Foxtel digital set top box. If you're note a Foxtel digital subscriber, then you need to become one before you can get yourself an iQ. The box looks much like the one which Foxtel shipped me when I joined Foxtel digital, and whilst I can't find a product data sheet on the pace website, I believe that they're manufacturer. Who makes it is irrelevant anyways for reasons I'll discuss a little later.

    Much like a TiVo (and I presume Windows Media Center edition, although I haven't used that), you can fast forward and rewind programming with a variety of speeds. The iQ only caches an hour of live video, so that's as far back as you can go. I don't believe that my TiVo series one has any such limitation, but is limited by free disc capacity. I haven't explicitly tested that though. You can pause live TV, and in fact can record two incoming streams at once, which is a win over a TiVo. The presentation made a very big deal of the pause and fast forward features, which took most of the face time with the customers to explain.

    You can setup Season passes for shows with the iQ, again much like a TiVo, but the show must have been marked by Foxtel as being a series before that will work. They made comments that their EPG was still a work in progress, and that it would take some time to get all of that right. There is no concept of the device learning about genres you like, and there is no title word searching, so you can't record all of a show which is not a series that way.

    The Foxtel staff pushed the "time shifting" line very hard. They see the device as solely for that purpose, and used that to explain the gaps between features available on the TiVo and the iQ. There is also no facility to download the recorded videos to watch on another device later. This isn't legal in Australia anyway, so that's probably for the best.

    The remote is horrible. I love my peanut remote.

    Pricing: the box is expensive. Foxtel will charge $395 for you to sign on, and $100 for the install. There is no self install. You don't own the device however, and if you cancel they take it back, just like you set top box now. That makes the iQ very expensive. You can reliably get a TiVo in the US for $90 dollars, and importing it to Australia costs about the same, which means the TiVo option comes in at about half the price of the iQ.

    Foxtel also charges a monthly access fee for the device, on top of your Foxtel digital access fee for the shows.

    When pushed on why the device was so expensive, the Foxtel staff said that "you should see what we pay for them". That logic amazes me to be honest -- because Foxtel got screwed and didn't do enough research, they intend to pass the pain on. Wow. That's customer service.

    Legalities: it is my understanding that time shifting is not legal in Australia. All VCR ads certainly say things like "subject to copyright" on the adverts. I guess that Foxtel selling a box to time shift means that there is an implicit license for you to do that. That makes using a TiVo or a media center legal as well I would think.

    EPG: now that there is EPG data for Foxtel shows, I would think that Microsoft should stand a chance of getting EPG data for the Media center happening soon. That would make me a fairly happy chappy.

    Overall: the iQ feels like a bad TiVo series one clone. They talk about rolling new features out in the future, so you can hope that things improve over time. Then again, this is a big step forward for what is commercially available in Australia. Here's my buying guide:

    • Technically savvy? Can install onto a PC IDE disc from a boot CD? -- Get a US TiVo and hack it.
    • Don't mind not having guide data? -- Get a Windows media center
    • Failing all that -- Get a Foxtel iQ


    Tags for this post: blog tivo foxtel tv windows media
    Related posts: On freely available guide data; A side by side comparison of MythTV and Windows Media Center ; HP iPaq GPS FA256A; Controlling DirecTV STB via USB; Getting ASP.NET working on Windows XP Tablet PC edition; Nice touch; US Hi 5; Avoidance behaviour, or, wanted: video RSS feeds; Pundits?; Leon, get with the program; This is why I went to MythTV; Windows Vista, now with nagging; Peter Vogel's latest gig; Journalists at LCA say the dardest things; Names for longhorn; The channel seven defence; Why Australia tops the piracy list; I stand corrected on Mailman; To continue the installation fun, let's now install Max OS X; A sign of the times; I feel a little vindicated

posted at: 15:13 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 21 Feb 2005


A good latex tutorial

    Here's a link in case I forget how to typeset in the language the CS department at ANU imposes upon me.

posted at: 22:19 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 20 Feb 2005


Google, murderer of users groups

    I was attending an AUUG committee meeting the other day, and someone mentioned from across the table that Google had had a noticeable affect on many of the users groups that he knew of. This got me thinking, and he's right.

    Many years ago, lost in the mists of time, there was this thing called a users group. You went there to find out how to make products work, bitch about the bits that didn't work, and share hints and tips. People were even willing to pay money to join these things, and a community grew.

    Now, people just Google if they have a problem. People also put less effort into documenting what they've learnt about a product, although blogs help with that a little. This means that there is much less of a community spirit focused around products than there used to be. It also means that many users groups aren't having a lot of fun at the moment. The notable except here being things focused on .NET or open source, for some reason I don't fully understand.

    Anyways, that's my ten cents. Thanks Google -- killer of users groups!

    Tags for this post: blog google usergroup

posted at: 17:31 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Information overload

posted at: 14:02 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Software lust

posted at: 02:39 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 19 Feb 2005


Why Australia tops the piracy list

posted at: 20:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Andrew's SSH filtering causes me pain

posted at: 19:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


RDP entries closed!

posted at: 19:30 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Well, that solves that

posted at: 14:19 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 16 Feb 2005


The inherent boringness of group ware

    JWZ is so right. No one wants group ware -- they want their world to suck less. As someone who has recently tried to publish ICS files for a conference, and failed, I agree. By the way, Outlook can't even import an ICS file with more than one entry in it.

    Tags for this post: blog calendar ics groupware

posted at: 02:14 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 15 Feb 2005


20050210-seattle

posted at: 14:23 | path: /events/pictures/20050210-seattle | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 10 Feb 2005


Wish me luck

posted at: 07:51 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 09 Feb 2005


In a holding pattern

posted at: 17:48 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


Working at Microsoft

posted at: 17:45 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


Why American tech companies seem to get new technology better than Australian ones...

posted at: 17:42 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 08 Feb 2005


In Seattle,

    Well, I'm over here now, and nothing untoward has happened. There have been no explosions, nor pied penguins, which is a shame I suppose in one sense. I guess there's time for me to be murdered horribly later in the week though.

    So far, having only flow, spent a little time in my room, and eaten dinner, I can say that there is nothing to fault Microsoft's hospitality. They arranged a hire car with GPS navigation which means I got here alive, they arranged a very nice hotel with quite nice staff, and the staff at the hotel even know what Microsoft is covering (much better than me). That appears to be basically everything I think it likely, except alcohol. Not that I feel like any at the moment after over 24 hours of travelling.

    The same cannot be said of Qantas, INS, or Alaska Airlines however. The Qantas Sydney to LA flight left two hours later because of two bent pins on a connector (apparently causing exploding cards on their on board computer -- there's an explosion!), the plane was way too hot for the first hour or so (I estimate over 40 degrees Celsius to be honest), but apart from that Qantas did ok. I must say they're still the best airline I've flown with. The INS got confused when I said yes to the ""seeking employment" question on the visa waiver, but we sorted it out in the end after about and hour. Finally, Alaska didn't have any staff in the airport to tell me which gate to go to, so the flight connection was a bit tight.

    I shouldn't complain. Overall it was about as crap as all the other international economy trips I have done. I'm sure someone will one day pay for me to fly business class... It is after all a 14.5 hour flight to LA from Sydney. Anyways, jet lagged little me is going to go and laze away on the bed with his red licorice now.

    Thought for the day -- I just noticed that the way I phrase sentences changes when I talk to Americans. Interesting.

    Tags for this post: blog building19 microsoft travel seattle
    Related posts: In a holding pattern; Hotel Max; Frys; Working at Microsoft; Well, that solves that; Why American tech companies seem to get new technology better than Australian ones...; Wish me luck; Paul Allen's Science Fiction Museum

posted at: 18:43 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 07 Feb 2005


Oh my God! I'm being lured into a trap!

posted at: 01:12 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 06 Feb 2005


Sitting in the LA AGM on IRC

posted at: 23:24 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Windows source code revealed

posted at: 15:06 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Packing for my trip...

posted at: 02:58 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


I should try to make it to then 911 exhibit

posted at: 02:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Open sourcing WinForms code?

posted at: 02:55 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 04 Feb 2005


Imaging concepts: Encrypting images

    DES in Electronic Code Book (ECB) mode is a particularly poor choice of cryptography for image files. This is because ECB mode implements a look up table between the unencrypted value and the encrypted value. This results in a known input value turning into the same output value over and over. This can have some interesting blurring effects, but wont obscure the image contents. An example will help this make more sense -- the first figure is the logo for the company I am currently working for. I took this image, and ran it through some DES ECB code and produced the second figure.





    You can see that whilst the image has certainly changed, the contents of the image has not really been obscured.

    We should note that ECB mode is not commonly used anyway. If you use something like PGP or blowfish, then you should be much happier...

posted at: 02:01 | path: /imaging | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 02 Feb 2005


Microsoft Australia is looking for a new developer evangelist

posted at: 23:17 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Imaging concepts: Anti Aliasing

posted at: 21:53 | path: /imaging | permanent link to this entry


Assumed knowledge

    There are some things which I assume you know, and which are outside the scope of this tutorial.

    C

    This tutorial discusses code. Almost all of the code discussed is written in C. It is therefore safe to assume that if you don't have a good working knowledge of C, then you're likely to get a lot less out of this tutorial as those who do know some C. On the other hand, don't worry about the more esoteric syntax, I'll explain this as we need it.

    It should also be noted that the code samples in this tutorial are not optimal. They have been written to be as readable as possible, and not necessarily the most efficient possible. Please bear this in mind before blindly copying them.

    How to compile and link on your chosen operating system

    It is outside the scope of this document to teach you how to compile and link source code into an executable form on your chosen architecture and operating system. You will need to understand this before you will be able to use any of the code in this document.

    For those of you using gcc on a Unix (or Unix-like) operating system, then the following points might be all you need to know. If you need more information, then a http://www.google.com search will serve you well.

    • Libraries are added to the link command using the -l command line option. For instance, to compile and link the source file foo, with the tiff library, you would use a command line along the lines of gcc foo.c -o foo -ltiff -lm.
    • You need to include -lm almost always. When you compile a c program using gcc without specifying any libraries, you get a -lm for free. As soon as you start specifying any libraries (for instance in this case -ltiff), then you also need to explicitly specify the math library as well.
    • You will almost certainly also need to add the library and include paths for the installed version of the relevant library to the compile command line as well. Directories are added to the library search path using the -L command line option. Include directories are added with the -I option.
    • The make files included with the samples in this tutorial a probably a bad place to look for introductory compile examples, as they use automake and autoconf to try to detect where the various required libraries are installed...


    Tags for this post: imaging tutorial
    Related posts: The new way of converting JPEGs to MPEGs; I just noticed...; Updated: linux.conf.au 2007 MythTV tutorial homework; LCA kernel hacking tutorial homework; An experiment in online authoring -- my image programming tutorial; MySQL cluster stores in RAM!; I just noticed...; Updated: linux.conf.au 2007 MythTV tutorial homework; MySQL cluster stores in RAM!; Errata: Tweak to homework, new VMWare image; Imaging concepts: Anti Aliasing; First cut of the tutorial homework is ready

posted at: 21:05 | path: /imaging | permanent link to this entry


An experiment in online authoring -- my image programming tutorial

posted at: 21:04 | path: /imaging | permanent link to this entry


A small example of how to find all the properties on an object using .NET reflection

posted at: 16:26 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Sun Regional Delegate Program for linux.conf.au 2005 

      As with previous LCAs, Sun Microsystems has kindly offered to sponsor
the Regional Delegates Program (RDP) for LCA 2005. For the LCA 2005 RDP,
there will be ten winners: one from each of the Australian states and
territories; a national winner; and a winner representing New Zealand.

Each of these winners will receive:
 - transport to LCA 2005
 - accommodation
 - professional registration at the conference (including all the
normal things which come with that)
 - special recognition as a RDP winner

Additionally, LCA provides an important mechanism for developers to
network with each other, and the RDP winners will have excellent
opportunities to further their open source projects.

This is the first year that New Zealand has been included in the
competition, which has prompted some changes in how the RDP is being run
this year. The timetable for the RDP is as follows:

 - entrants should draft a 100 word or less description of how the open
source community would benefit from their presence at LCA 2005

 - these should be emailed to rdp@lca2005.linux.org.au, including an
indication of where the entrant lives by midnight, Friday the 18th of
February 2005 [1].

 - the winners will be announced by the end of February and travel
will be arranged.

 - RDP winners attend the conference and have a great time

If a winner has already registered for the conference, then a refund of
that registration will be provided.

We look forward to many interesting entries,
The LCA 2005 team

1: The information about where you live will be used solely for judging
the competition, and will then be destroyed.


    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource conference

posted at: 01:33 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 01 Feb 2005


How Microsoft can encourage Tablet PC applications, and therefore platform adoption

posted at: 02:18 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 31 Jan 2005


Supporting more than one browser for your website, or does Firefox really make my life harder?

posted at: 15:06 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Bug fix for Technorati tags plug in

posted at: 14:26 | path: /blosxom | permanent link to this entry


Scoble is right, nofollow is good

posted at: 02:33 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 30 Jan 2005


Whereas I only reboot computers when I have to

posted at: 22:47 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


linux.conf.au 2005

    Linux.conf.au 2005 currently expects to accept 500 registrations for this years conference. We're currently sitting at 240, and we're 11 weeks away from the conference. That's way cool. If you're thinking of coming, you should guarantee your place by registering now...

    Tags for this post: blog lca2005 opensource

posted at: 22:23 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Technorati tag support for Blosxom

posted at: 02:47 | path: /blosxom | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 28 Jan 2005


Debian bugs 

      On Sat, 29 Jan 2005, Michael Still wrote:

>> Package: dovecot
>> Version: 0.99.13-3
>> Severity: normal
>>
>>
>> Having just upgraded dovecot and let it replace my config file with the
>> default it no longer starts.


Well don't do that then.  I always recommend to users that when they get
the config file upgrade dialog from dpkg, they select N or D for a diff
and not blindly accept the maintainers file.  Otherwise as you found out,
unexpected things can happen.


>> This is because there are no protocols
>> specified in the default config file, and this results in dovecot
>> silently failing to start. I can't find any error messages being logged
>> at the time, and just got lucky when starting dovecot manually from the
>> command line to find this.
>>


It's documented in /usr/share/doc/dovecot-imapd/README.Debian and
/usr/share/doc/dovecot-pop3d/README.Debian  You should always read the
README.Debian file of a newly installed package for timely information.

I'm actually not to fond of this change as it does detract from the "just
works" nature of dovecot but I had to make it for Debian policy reasons.

So I'm closing the bug.


    And I'm wondering why I bother reporting bugs. It seems pretty broken to me that the package system breaks a package, and doesn't warn you not to accept the default broken state, nor tell you that there's an file describing that broken state. It also seems pretty stupid that they can't specify a protocol by default -- that like a web server not serving web pages by default.

    And we don't have Linux on many desktops because?

posted at: 14:21 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


More on straw

    Ahhh, I understand more now. The hotel Internet feed I was using this week seems to have been issuing a HTTP permanently moved to their login page if I hadn't authenticated yet. Straw then used this to clobber my subscriptions without asking based on the bogus information. This is pretty broken for two reasons:

    • The hotel system was wrong. It hadn't permanently moved. It was a transitory thing. Hotel Intercontinental Wellington, shame on you.
    • Straw should ask before clobbering things


    I'm changing aggregator now anyways, because I no longer trust Straw, but I'm pretty annoyed, as I now need to go an reinvent a bunch of my subscriptions.

posted at: 14:12 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Straw causing me pain

    Herm... For a couple of days now straw (the aggregator I use) has refused to update about half the feeds I read. I've tried upgrading, and I would file a bug, but there are so many already tracked by Debian (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=pkg&data=straw&archive=no) that there doesn't seem to be much point.

    So there's my quandary... I need to find an open source aggregator which runs on Linux and doesn't suck...

posted at: 13:36 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 26 Jan 2005


A long day in someone else's office

    To give you an idea of how much fun I'm having gallivanting around New Zealand, here's what has happened so far:


      Friday

    • 08;00 Get to work like normal
    • 13:00 Australian time: Get out of staff meeting at TOWER and call
    • 23:45 New Zealand time: Arrive at Auckland airport

      Saturday

    • 00:30 New Zealand time: Arrive at the Centra hotel Auckland airport having cleared customs and immigration
    • 01:00 New Zealand time: In bed!
    • 06:30 New Zealand time: Up and at em! Quick shower and then get my nice work clothes, instead of my ratty office clothes together.
    • 07:00 New Zealand time: Checkout of hotel
    • 07:15 New Zealand time: Checkin at airport
    • 08:00 New Zealand time: Flight leaves for Wellington
    • 09:00 New Zealand time: Arrive into Wellington
    • 09:30 New Zealand time: Arrive at offices of customer
    • 23:45 New Zealand time: Knock off for the night
    • 00:00 New Zealand time: Checkin to the Intercontinental Hotel Wellington

      Sunday

    • 01:00 New Zealand time: After failing to get the Internet connection in my room working, off to bed.
    • 08:00 New Zealand time: Get up, feeling a little less enthused than yesterday
    • 09:00 New Zealand time: In the office
    • 19:30 New Zealand time: Leave the office
    • 20:30 New Zealand time: Having gone back to the room and checked email, wander off and find dinner. Discover there is nothing but the hotel restaurant and go there.
    • 22:30 New Zealand time: Dinner was really good (the hotel restaurant won best restaurant in New Zealand in 2001 and 2002), and the bath after dinner was even better. Off to bed.

      Sunday

    • 07:00 New Zealand time: Up again
    • 08:00 New Zealand time: Rick kindly gave me into the office because of the rain
    • 19:30 New Zealand time: Home

      Monday (a public holiday in Wellington)

    • 07:00 New Zealand time: Up again
    • 08:00 New Zealand time: In the office
    • 16:30 New Zealand time: Knock off and find food

      Tuesday

    • 08:00 New Zealand time: Up again
    • 09:30 New Zealand time: In the office
    • 16:30 New Zealand time: Knock off and find food

      Wednesday

    • 08:00 New Zealand time: Up again
    • 09:15 New Zealand time: Fire alarm!
    • 09:30 New Zealand time: In the office
    • 16:30 New Zealand time: Knock off and find food

posted at: 00:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 21 Jan 2005


LCA

posted at: 18:37 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Never sleep again?

posted at: 18:21 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


New Zealand!?!

    Yesterday was one of those days when you wake up in your home town, expect to go to sleep in your home town, but end up in a foreign country for an undetermined amount of time at two hours notice.

    I'm in Wellington. In New Zealand. Not Canberra in Australia. Which is a little odd. Why? Well, I'm currently working on finalizing the beta program for the TRIM Connectivity Toolkit, which is our .NET Web Service interface to the TRIMSDK, and one of our better partners (a contender for best partner world wide I would suspect) is having some pain with getting things to work in their particularly ambitious time line.

    Ultimately the web service product will be better if we can resolve the issues they're valid, and it will be good for TOWER as well. It happens to help them out as well, but as a product engineer I try to focus on the future of the product more than the fate of a single site. When that site is indicative of what the rest of the world is likely to do however, they become very interesting indeed.

    The beta program also explains why I haven't posted at all this week. Let's just summaries that I'm a little busy...

posted at: 18:21 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Andrew is right, ANU's parking policy does suck

    As a part time student as well I have to agree that ANU's parking policy does suck. It certainly acts as a disincentive for me to come into uni, especially when as a PhD student I don't need to attend any classes apart from those I teach anyway.

posted at: 18:15 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 14 Jan 2005


15 January 2005

posted at: 16:52 | path: /resume | permanent link to this entry


1 November 2004

posted at: 16:49 | path: /resume | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 13 Jan 2005


Language differences can be interesting

posted at: 13:18 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


A complete and utter lack of perspective

    This is another entry about sometime I heard of newsradio while driving to work. Apparently a bunch of Federal Labour MPs want to oust their leader because he dared to have a life threatening illness. The possibles symptoms of the pancreatitis that he is suffering from I have heard described on the radio as ranging from a one time episode, to chronic pain for the rest of his life. Surely he has enough problems at the moment without dealing with you losers too?

    How can I ever trust you to lead the country when your first reaction to someone who is sick is to kick him when he is down. Get a grip people...

posted at: 13:09 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


New dishwasher and stove for the rental house

    So, Catherine and I bought a new dishwasher and stove for the rental property we own yesterday. The reasons for that are twofold -- the old one were about due to fail, and we like the tenants. They're doing a good job of keeping the house in order, and they're nice people. Given that we can depreciate the cost of the items against the house, it seems silly not to get them. I pick them up from the warehouse on Saturday, and will probably get around to installing them next week sometime. The dishwasher should just plug in, the stove will need an electrician...

posted at: 13:04 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 12 Jan 2005


Ahhh, irony

    There's no iTunes store in Australia, although there are ways to work around that. It's gotta be pretty ironic that the music industry lobbied for a copyright scheme which makes format shifting and time shifting illegal (in fact, most forms of fair use as known in the US), and now can't sell their stuff online. Sure, there are other online MP3 stores in Australia, but iTunes would make them serious money. Very funny.

posted at: 19:42 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


iPod shuffle redux

    There seems to be some buzz around the iPod shuffle. If this iPod had existed a year ago, I would have bought one. I have way too much music to fit on any iPod, so I already have to face only having a subset of my music available. I only listed to my MP3 player for a couple of hours a day, as the rest of the time I'm near one of my various laptops. It's small. Hopefully rugged. And cheap. The only feature it seems to be lacking is some way to set the "My rating" value for a song, which is the way that I say whether I want to hear a song ever again, lots, or if it needs re-ripping.

    It's irrelevant though. IBM bought me an iPod mini a couple of months ago, so I can't justify spending any money on one of these.

posted at: 19:33 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Update: Link to news story about Australia lasers pointing at planes

posted at: 18:37 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


If you point a laser at a plane, you're a bloody idiot

    (Bloody isn't really a swear word in Australia)

    I was driving into work this morning a little later than normal, and caught the Australian news. It seems that some jokers are copying catting the people in the US and pointing lasers at planes about to land at an airport in Queensland. What is it with these people? Are they truly stupid or something? Hopefully they'll get arrested and thrown into jail forever or something...

    I would have provided a link to the text version of the article, but I can't find it on the ABC news page.

posted at: 15:33 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 10 Jan 2005


Perhaps this corporate blogging thing is working...

    This is from a post just added by a senior developer: 

      Whenever any of the Windows variant functions encounter a 64bit number (I8 in variant parlance), 
you get a runtime exception. That would be the functions VariantInit, VariantClear and 
VariantCopy. Perhaps we could find a way of upgrading these functions in Windows 2000, frankly 
I'm happy to give up.


    He's talking about out pain in supporting I8 (i.e. 64 bit) numbers with variants on Windows 2000. You could make him very happy by suggesting a solution... Heck, he might even see some value in the blog.

    Oh, and apparently I'll get a magnum of Australian red wine for finding the answer. All's fair, if I win the wine with your answer, I'll Fedex it to you...

posted at: 18:51 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


It's good to see that other people get frustrated with their local news station

posted at: 14:18 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 09 Jan 2005


Our experiment with corporate blogging a failure?

    Well, TOWER's product development section has been playing with internal-only blogging for about a week now. So far there's been less than 10 posts, and fewer than that comments. All of this for a section of around 40 humans. The problems I see with the blogging so far?

    • People aren't reading the blog, which results in it not being a good way of contacting people about stuff. Until people get better at reading it, you need to tell them there is new content there before they bother to go and read it.

    • People don't read the blog because there isn't enough content.

    • The first two are related.

    • People need to run an aggregator to find out what is happening, and I happen to work with a bunch of people who aren't running aggregators already (only two of the 40?).


    So, who has suggestions on how to get people to actually start using this facility, or is the whole thing destined to be a big shiny failure?

posted at: 21:46 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


The tempest, but 11 year old kids

    On Saturday night I went to the Tempest, as performed by a group of school kids. I went because Kate, Catherine and my god daughter was performing as one of the evil lords (a role I feel suited her well). Anyways, I knew nothing about the play before I went along and in fact joked that I thought it was about short term office workers. The play was excellent, especially considering that the kids involved only had a week to learn their lines. Some of them had an awful lot of monologs to perform, and got away with only minimal prompting.

    It kinda made me want to see a professional performance, or at least read the book.

posted at: 21:44 | path: /diary/theatre | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 07 Jan 2005


David and Jude

    Well, just got home from a dinner where I met my uncle David and his wife Judy for the first time. They seem like nice people, certainly nice enough that we didn't get home until quite late.

posted at: 04:56 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 05 Jan 2005


Another thing to like about TOWER

    (Further to a previous post)

    The CEO just walked around and wished each of product engineering a happy new year. Individually. When I walk up another part of the building to return something, I walk past him refilling the coffee maker in the kitchen.

    That's cool.

posted at: 19:30 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Long wires, and how my job is cooler than Gordon's

    (I struggled with where to put this post, because it's kinda diary content, but I also talk about dotnet technology. I've decided to put this one here, but if your interested in more general content than just the .NET stuff and you're only reading the .NET feed (the Aussie .NET bloggers OPML for instance only includes the .NET stuff), then you should have a look see over here).

    Gordon follows up with his first blog post with something I've never bothered to do -- that is, provide a fuller description of what I actually do 9 to 5. I might just correct that now...

    My name is Michael Still, and I work for a company called TOWER Software (yes, we really do shout it). My job title says Senior Software Engineer, and it's mostly accurate. I've heard about companies which have job titles like Distinguished Engineer for staff who have actually shipped successful product, but in a company the size of TOWER, all of our engineers do that every day, so we don't bother. We're based in Canberra, the capital of Australia. We've been around for about 20 years now, but I've only been with the company for about 3.5 years of that. You can find out more about me here if you're really interested in that stuff.

    TOWER produces an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) named TRIM. For the technical among you, that's kinda like a source control system for your office documents. Except it isn't. It tracks changes like that, but there are also about 80 search methods available, ranging from title, to other meta data, to the content of the document, to the author, et cetera. It's kinda like the big brother to SharePoint, in that we do all that SharePoint does, and much more. It's all about large organizations being able to find their information later, and conforming with whatever legal requirements there are in their locality (like Sarbanes-Oxley in the US, and the Archives Act in Australia). Oh, did I mention that we also handle all the security, the LDAP like location stuff for your organization, basic relationship management, and a bunch of other stuff? In fact, the Nova software company that Gordon speaks about is based around the realization that TRIM is really a funky engine for generating your bespoke applications, without needing to reinvent the wheel all the time for things like security and data retention. It's more complicated than that, because TRIM is also most definitely useful in and of itself, but you get the idea. If you have more questions about TRIM, then you should talk to our delightful sales people.

    Why shouldn't you ask me those questions? Because I've never sold a copy of TRIM in my life, and never will. TOWER is a global operation, and have sales and support offices scattered liberally around the world. I work for the headquarters company, which does all of the product engineering, and none of the sales. It's rare for that work to be done in Australia, which is one of the things which makes us cool from an Australian perspective. TRIM only runs on various Microsoft Windows flavors, and is developed in a combination of C++ for the core, C# for some of the newer support stuff, and VB for the older support stuff. If you're a 'lete coder in one of the those languages in Australia, perhaps you should consider dropping me a line and we can put your resume on the mound of people to consider next time we need a body.

    That gets me onto Gordon's job, which is best described by that cliche of herding cats. Internally we run a hybrid MSF methodology, which results in a bunch of project teams being formed to do specific pieces of work. Gordon is a project manager for some of those teams. His job is to make me do the boring things like getting the product done on time, and having nice Gantt charts.

    I've never envied Gordon his job, and it's interesting for him to say that he loves it. Imagine trying to keep a bunch of the smartest, most driven people you've ever met pulling in the same direction. It's hard. Especially when they're not convinced that what you're asking for is the best for the product. I'm sure that most project managers would just throw their hands up in the air and walk away if the first stage of a project was getting the engineers convinced that it is a good idea. Gordon does it well though, which is good as it's that creative tension which makes us so strong... It means that if I advocate something, then I'll d*mn well make it happen, because now it's my reputation on the line.

    (For the Americans amongst us, one of the cultural differences I really notice is that Australian's don't like telling you how smart they are. That should just be obvious, or you're not really smart at all. I'll temper the smart comment above therefore with an observation that I know lots of other smart people doing other work. For instance I always feel inadequate when talking to Tridge. That doesn't mean the TOWER bunch aren't smart though.)

    Anyway, onto the .NET bit of this post... The Nova Longwire stuff is interesting to me as someone who has spent the last six months getting a .NET Web Service version of our COM SDK happening. I'd be interested in seeing what other people have to say about it... Are there competing alternatives that people are aware of as well?

    I guess my biggest concern is that the chatty paradigm used by COM SDKs doesn't map well to the latent, slow Internet style Web Services that people are asking for. It would be ok in a LAN environment (although still slow), but wouldn't be much fun in the wild. How do these tools deal with manging the interface to not suffer from these problems?

    I'll wait for Gordon to come into the office and see if he breaks my fingers for saying all of this...

posted at: 14:19 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


You can always find something to lighten your day if you try hard enough...

posted at: 12:07 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Ipaq backup

    Steven has had a stressful time with backing up his palm. I'm surprised to hear that the palm doesn't ship with a backup to CF / SD / MMC / whatever applet. The Ipaq certainly does. I haven't been a good boy and run it recently, but I do sync my palm once or twice a day (it often spends the whole day on the cradle charging). I think I might run it now though...

posted at: 00:23 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 04 Jan 2005


Hey look, now Gordon is blogging...

    Here. That makes two people from TOWER...

posted at: 20:22 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 03 Jan 2005


Advertising different IM statuses to different groups of people

    I think Robert Scoble has a point in saying that it would be cool if you could be able to advertise different IM statuses for different groups of people (I'm at work, so tell those guys in the office, but not my drinking pals. Oh, and my family can always see me). Then again, he also misses the point I suspect -- why do you folk have so many people you don't want to talk to in your IM lists? If you want to talk to random people you have no relationship with, why not use IRC, chat rooms, forums? I'm weirded out by this trend for letting random people Skype you for the same reason. I have a phone because it's convenient to me -- if I don't want to talk to you, I'll not answer. I'll listen to the voice mail later, and reply if it's needed.

posted at: 19:43 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Threading sucks?

    What is it about the word "thread" that people find so damn sexy? Maybe it needs a name change "slow-as-hell-no-memory-protection-locks-dont-work" API might be suitable, but I suspect the standards committees wouldn't like that one.

    Heh. I suspect that Martin and Tridge have a point here.

posted at: 18:50 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Usblogdump Version 0.4 released

    And available for download from http://www.stillhq.com/extracted/usblogdump.tgz.
    New features in this version:

    • URB flag decoding
    • Started on flag parsing code
    • Support for external decoders
    • Binary output mode
    • Bulk data transfers dump cleanup
    • Fixed a silly omission in the string lookup code
    • Rolled in bulk transfers decoding patch
    • Fixed last night regressions
    • Can now parse usb stepper motor idle traffic correctly


    Let me know if you have any comments...

posted at: 16:39 | path: /usblogdump | permanent link to this entry


Distcc supports Microsoft C!?!

    I see that distcc has experimental support for Microsoft compilers. Distcc is the standard way of doing distributed compiles in the Linux / Open Source world, and is kinda cool. It's also written by quite an interesting fellow in Canberra, my home town. Does anyone know more about the support before I go digging?

posted at: 16:27 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


The difference between blog entries and articles?

    Chuck Sterling asks on the aus-dotnet mailing list: Forgive me if I am asking something from the blogging FAQ but what is the difference between blog entries versus an article?

    Well, I'd have to say that based on the articles I've written, the difference is the amount of research and editing effort. The articles I have written have generally taken a couple of weeks of real effort each, and have gone through a full editorial cycle. There's an attempt to make sure that they have a relatively complete coverage of the topic area, and are accurate. There's diagrams, references, additional resources, and sidebars.

    On the other hand, blog entries are more on the fly that that. I can whip up the three paragraphs which summarize the thing which I am working on now, and then I can leave it at that. It might be accurate, and it might be complete, but it also might not. I take blog entries with a bigger grain of salt than I do articles from sources I trust.

posted at: 16:18 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 02 Jan 2005


Ocean's 12

    Well that was a weak movie. At the point that Julia Roberts starts to pretend to be herself, then it's funny, but pathetic at the same time. The premise of the movie was weak, and the execution wasn't up to the standard of Oceans 11. Oh, and another thing. $29 is too much for two adult tickets. I could buy two DVDs for that. How do these people stay in business? (Written on my Ipaq. Gosh data entry on these things is painful.)

posted at: 14:19 | path: /diary/movies | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 01 Jan 2005


Oh, and I should stop and smell the roses more

    Further to my new year's resolution post, I also propose the following, which I forgot last time because of the ill considered nature of the post (ten minutes thinking and all that):

    • Dog food more: TRIM is actually kinda cool. I've spent some time in the last few weeks registering a bunch of paper that used to be on shelves in my garage and then boxing it. Now, I have lots of free shelving, a neat pile of boxes, and know where everything is for once. It's very cool. Along the way I've learnt a lot about our product too.

    • I should stop and smell the roses more: it occurs to me that each day is one less day I have on this earth. I should therefore try hard to enjoy each day, even if it's simple things like driving to work a different way each day, taking more photos, or spending more time with people I like.


posted at: 16:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


OzTiVo BBQ in Brisbane

    There is a small but dedicated group of TiVo owners in Australia. I'm one of them. Some of us are having a barbecue in Brisbane on the 22 January. Catherine and I are going. It's interesting, as it's also the first time that Catherine and I have been away for a day trip without the kids, and possibly the longest Catherine will ever have been away from the boys. It's also the first time I've used my Qantas frequent flyer miles -- it was surprisingly cheap at only 30,000 miles worth of points for a business class return ticket. Perhaps you should come along too? If you're not that interested in Brisbane, then there are competing BBQs in Melbourne and Sydney on the same day.

posted at: 16:41 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


New year's resolutions

    Apparently all the cool people are making new year's resolutions, so here are mine...

    • Spend more time considering my new years resolutions: I wrote this after lying in bed this morning with a headache for about ten minutes. Perhaps I should resolve to have fewer headaches as well.

    • Document my toys better: I've acquired a bunch of interesting hardware this year, and I haven't documented much of it on my toys page. The reason for that is that I have been waiting for it to all work well before documenting it. I've been so busy in 2004 that this desire results in me never really documenting anything. What gadgets are in the backlog?

      • A Siemens S55 mobile phone -- like it, but it didn't survive the washing machine very well
      • A Siemens C60 mobile phone -- hate it, it's cheap and nasty, but I got it for free with the S55
      • An i-mate SmartPhone 2 -- like it, and hate it. It's nice, but too big and the battery life sucks
      • An Ipaq h2210 -- like it
      • An xbox which is now running Linux -- Andrew loves it
      • A Think Pad R51 -- documented, but in summary, I love it


      Because of the way Australian tax law works, it's advantageous for people in the IT industry to buy a hand held and a laptop once a year, with the year starting in April. I'm thinking that an Ipaq with a GPS would be cool, especially with my desire to collect data about where I have driven around town. Bob recently picked up a Navman, which looks kinda cool, but is a bit plastic. I'll see what else is around in four months. On the laptop front, I seriously considered an Apple laptop last time around, but dropped it at the last minute because of their poor linux support, and the excellent PC hardware coming out of IBM. Now that IBM seems to have cast aside their PC hardware division, it's not so compelling to buy another Think Pad. Since then, I've discovered Bob's (yes, Bob has even more hardware than me) NEC T400 tablet PC is quite tempting, as I don't like reading large amounts of text on screen and having something like a big bit of paper might help with this. Additionally, it's nice and light.

      Mini-rant: why are light machines always low end? I want something like, small, and fast for once.

      On the documenting toys front, I've spent some time in the last couple of days hacking on usblogdump to help analyze a USB stepper motor controller, so I'll have some interesting stuff to talk about there soon.

    • Diarise more: I'm not going to call it blogging, the Scoble et al buzz is starting to get on my nerves. Then again, I've had a online diary for a long time now, and I want to put more up here. I'm thinking that I want more technical content, as well as some more stuff about life in general -- for example, I'm thinking of writing up Mikal's largely unoriginal and rather unreliable guide to personal wealth. I suspect the way to do that is to write it in full, and then dole it out over time. Thoughts?

      I've also had most of a book on open source image programming for quite some time, and I should really get around to taking it to as publisher. Then again, perhaps it should just be online content? Some of it's available on IBM's DeveloperWorks site, but not all.

    • Another trip to the US would be nice: I made two trips to the US last year, and I really like the place. I must admit that before my first trip, like the majority of people in the rest of the world (I haven't done any surveying, but that's the vibe I get), agreed with the French over the invasion of Iraq. Having been there and talked to real people has certainly helped me see their side of the story a little better, and I am much more sympathetic now. I also need to fill in some gaps, like finding out more about the Civil War than that it was a bunch of Southerns and Northerners being grumpy about slavery.

    • Be less grumpy: I've been grumpy recently. It is of course everyone else's fault, but I should try to be less annoyed by humanoids.

    • Help organize a kick arse linux.conf.au: say no more. You should checked the speakers list. I dare Robert Scoble to come along. It's a long flight, so I personally undertake to act as his tour guide, and introduce him to a bunch of the .NET people floating around here as well. Perhaps he can convince us that .NET on tablet PCs is the way of the future? Hell, I'll even show him Twinkle-Tux, my Linux penguin made out of fairy lights. The penguins which bit Linus and caused the logo (they live in Canberra). We could even assault a Koala or two. Drink beer better than Fosters (it's not hard).

    • Spend more time with my family: the kids Andrew and Matthew are growing up so fast, and I really should take more photos of them as well.


posted at: 16:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry
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