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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: As pointed out by a friend at work; Christmas morning; 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

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: Dragonsinger; Dragondrums; On home sound systems; Dragonsong; The Ship Who Sang

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; 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

    It seems to me that it might be time to document my database of test PDFs and various parsing results that I have had online for quite some time. This entry is an attempt to do that for the current state of play.

    Adding a PDF to the collection

    You'll need the pdfcollection code (tarball). This is all the code I used to manage the database.

    Run the addpdf script to add a new PDF to the collection. Here's an example: 

    mikal@lapel:~/opensource/pdfcollection$ ./addpdf /home/mikal/pdfa/This\ is\ a\ sample\ PDF.pdf
Where is the PDF database? /home/pdfdb
Publish? (y/n) y
Adding /home/mikal/pdfa/This is a sample PDF.pdf
New object id is 649 (000649)
Moving PDF
Processing PDF
Extracting pages
Number of pages: 0
Extract info
mikal@lapel:~/opensource/pdfcollection$


    The text in bold above is what I typed. The local copy of the PDF database on my machine is in /home/pdfdb/. This command relies on ghostscript, imagemagick, ghostview, and pdfinfo (from the xpdf utilities package) being installed, so make that happen. It displays the PDF with gv, makes sure you really want to add it (i.e. you own enough of the rights to the document to do so), and then does it's thing.

    In this example, ghostscript failed to extract any pages from the document, which is a little sad.

    But I don't want to view the document before adding it

    Then use the --force flag to addpdf and all will go well. Use a command line like this: 

    ./addpdf doc.pdf --force


    Recreating the page count and thumbnails for existing documents

    A lot of the PDFs have been in the database for several years, and in that time I assume that ghostscript's ability to view PDF documents has hopefully improved. You can therefore easily regenerate the page count, thumbnails and metadata for a PDF document with the processpdf command. This command was actually used by addpdf under the hood. Let's give it a go: 

    mikal@lapel:~/opensource/pdfcollection$ for item in `ls /home/pdfdb/ | grep 0`          
> do
>   ./processpdf /home/pdfdb $item 
> done


    This simple script regenerated all of the metadata for all of the PDFs in the database, and hammered my machine while doing it. The command line arguments are the location of the PDF database, and the id number of the PDF to process.

    This command has basically the same dependencies as the addpdf command.

    Conclusion

    I've run out of things to say for now, but later I'll show you how to rerun the pdfomatic regression tests.

    Tags for this post: pdfdb pdf database test document
    Related posts: PDF/A; PDF/A sample documents?; Expect to see some sample documents soon; Trying out the Apress e-book system; Random fact for the day; Thinking about IDL style descriptions of document formats; Recovering lost MythTV recordings; Unjustified fun making; CD ROM; Random idea; This is a pointer; Interesting technique for finding leaks in code; MythBuntu 8.10 just made me sad; Open Source document management from Alfresco; Converting a bunch of TIFF images to a PDF using ImageMagick

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: 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

    The book has been written for a while, along with the technical editing and review. The copy edits have been done since last week. There are only two chapters left for page layout. The process has been interesting, educational, and in some parts long.

    The hardest part though? Ironically, it's filling in the marketing questionnaire. I've never done anything approaching sales before, although I have done customer facing work.

    Some parts of the questionnaire are easy... The target audience for instance, a short pitch for the book, that sort of thing.

    What about things like which magazines to ask to do a review? What about people who might be willing to do reviews?

    Got suggestions? Reply in a comment?

    Tags for this post: imagemagick book marketing review
    Related posts: More reviews; Book reviews; Working on review comments for Chapters 2, 3 and 4 tonight; Review; The Wild Palms Hotel

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

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

    I'm very proud of myself at the moment... For the first time in a very long time my TODO list is short enough to fit vertically on a 17 inch LCD monitor. This might not sound like a big deal to other people, but it is to me.

    Normally what I do is I have all of the things I need to do in tasks on my iPaq, and then have a classification called "today" which is all the stuff I should try to work on today. I do this because otherwise it is too easy to become daunted by the seemingly endless list of things to get done.

    Things have two ways to getting onto the today list... If I am in interrupt mode, as I have been recently, then it is a list of things which really truly need to be done today. If I am in polled mode, then it is the four of five things I can reasonably expect to get done today.

    I often don't manage to clear the list out daily, but it gives me a more manageable feel for what needs doing.

    Tags for this post: blog time management todo list
    Related posts: Life hacking; PDF/A; Historical revisionism; Perl sample source code; Average build time for a PC; Open Source document management from Alfresco; Scott Adam's blog: the boner theory of management

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; A filesystem which will resize over more than one disc whilst being reliable; Large inodes = faster samba; 14 November 2003; My first interview; LCA CD continues; Mirror traffic during the last day of LCA 2007; We're getting there; Thanks for the kind word Pia; Mirroring the Linux Update podcast; The Linux Australia mirroring project; SMART and USB storage; 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: Trying out the Apress e-book system; Interesting quote; C sample source code; 14 November 2003; clusterssh; Building my new disk array; SMART and USB storage

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

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: Sony Reader (an ebook reader); MythIPTV Beta 2; MythNetTV beta 4; MythNetTV release 1; MythIPTV Beta 2

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


Sick still

    I thought I wasn't getting any better, but I feel a little better this morning. I'm really hoping to be up to work on Monday. Meh.

    If I haven't answered your email, please be patient, I'm trying to get through them all.

    Tags for this post: blog health
    Related posts: Australian Health Insurance; Non-budget funded work

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

    I've come down with a cold, so I'm going to go quiet for a bit... Somehow I don't think I'll be going to work tomorrow. Exciting topics to be more fully explored when I feel better include: my exciting adventures with a broken laptop; more on that standards riff; how I've just finished the last chapter of the book and now just need to do the front matter and an appendix; and whatever else I think of.

    And now I'm going to bed.

    Tags for this post: blog sick
    Related posts: I didn't realize that the US was a third world country; A little story from my sickness

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: Thinkpad x41 tablet PCMCIA IO; r51 update; New laptop; ThinkPads return to bricks and mortar retail in the US; 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: Thinkpad x41 tablet PCMCIA IO; r51 update; New laptop; ThinkPads return to bricks and mortar retail in the US; Alan Cox's IBM ThinkPad explodes; So, that was me tempting fate apparently

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; PDF/A sample documents?; Should small ISVs be involved with the standards process?

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

    I always find that when I have to work with documentation, that I do it better somewhere quiet. It's hard to think about prose when you have someone else waffling on in your headphones. We don't have enough meeting spaces at work, so I am working from home today... I must admit it is also nice to eliminate the hour commute from my day once in a while.

    Tags for this post: work home telecommute
    Related posts: JJJ's hack; On home sound systems; Dell e310 upgrade; What are we doing with the pets?

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

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

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

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?

    So, to summarise from my previous post about Apple service, I called the store I bought my iBook from 13 days ago. They said they weren't interested in helping, and gave me the Apple tech support number. I called that number and waited 15 minutes on hold. I was then told that I should try booting off the OS X cds, which were of course at home, despite the fact that the machine didn't boot at all.

    My wife drove the CDs in. The machine is so broken that it wont even suck the disc in when the machine is powered up, so I called Apple again and said so. The dude on the phone said that I am now allowed to take the machine into the nearest service center. How good of him. The nearest service center is of course the store I bought it from, so I jump into the car and off I go.

    When I get there, I'm told that there is in fact no service center there, and the nearest one is 30 minutes drive away (in the other direction of course). I wonder why Apple thinks there is one there then? Anyways, they say that they can ship it to the service center for me, but it will take two weeks for them to decide whether or not to fix the machine. Did I mention the machine is 13 days old?

    I check the machine in for the service, which involves signing this disclaimer:

    Please carry out at my cost as soon as you conveniently can the repairs listed on the job sheet with the corresponding number to this slip and any other work you consider to be undertaken at your current rates for the parts and labour used. You will not be responsible for the loss or damage to the equipment, its accessories, software or data however caused. ...


    I've skipped the rest of the disclaimer, although it did also say that there was a minimum fee of $99 for the service. The emphasis above is mine.

    So, this is my first Apple computer, and it's 13 days old. It's going to take then 14 days to decide what to do to the machine, which is dead, in which time they may also lose the machine, jump up and down on it, or whatever they like.

    This is my first Apple purchase, and I'm thinking it will be my last. This level of service for a brand new machine is simply unacceptable, and I'll be going back to IBM. No wonder Apple doesn't have many corporate customers -- would you put up with this?

    Tags for this post: blog toys apple service
    Related posts: Let the Apple service ranting continue; Apple update; More on Apple service; Apparently terrible warranty service is par for the course with Apple; The excitement of Apple service; Buy Toshiba!; Excitement in the office; Apparently I should pay more attention to pingomatic

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

    I bought an Apple 12 inch iBook G4 from the ANUtech Apple Center less than two weeks ago. Last night the machine locked up, so I rebooted it with the power button. After booting, the machine would crash after about a minute with what looks a lot like a kernel panic, saying something about bad RAM. I wondered if I had done something to cause it, but it would consistently happen when I booted the machine and left it at the login screen, without me touching anything.

    I gave up and went to bed.

    This morning, I was hoping the machine was magically fixed, so I tried to turn it on. It didn't boot. So I tried again, and this time it booted, but with a mouse that didn't work. So I tried booting again. It didn't work at all.

    I rang the Apple Center, thinking that a two week old machine is simply a case of swapping the machine over or something. The guy basically told me to go away and call Apple. Something like "Oh, well we can't do anything for you -- ring Apple". This is very disappointing to me, I would expect a lot better from a retailer. Anyways, so I rang Apple.

    15 minutes on hold. Some simple questions. The machine still doesn't boot. Booting with Apple-Option-r-p doesn't help. Now apparently I need to boot with the OS X CD I left home. So I get to call back later after being on hold for ages.

    Two week old machine doesn't make me happy.

    Tags for this post: blog toys apple service grumpy
    Related posts: Let the Apple service ranting continue; Apple update; More on Apple service; Apparently terrible warranty service is par for the course with Apple; Did I mention that Apple service sucks?; Buy Toshiba!; Seriously pissed someone off?; Excitement in the office; Apparently I should pay more attention to pingomatic

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

    ...I'm not sure if I should join in the clapping. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It would be a big life change. But I'll always wonder if I should if I don't. Meh. Worst case I can always stop clapping if I don't like it. Ok, I formally accept your offer of clapping.

    /me claps

    Tags for this post: blog weird
    Related posts: Random fact for the day; Hamster powered mobile phone charger

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.

    I didn't pay any attention to Cameron's press release on the Australians in the top 500 bloggers for August 2005 at first, mainly because it's not the sort of thing I normally pay any attention to. It's not like I'm likely to win any popularity contests or anything. Then my Google Alert for stillhq.com (yes, vanity, all is vanity) went off last night and sent me email. It turns out that I'm on that list of top 500 bloggers.

    Yes, that's right. I am your god. You may commence worshipping me now.

    I'm the 201st blogger in the list. Right after Groklaw. So, I beg that you all link to me gratuitously so that I can overtake them.

    Meh. Just thought I'd gloat. Thanks Frank for pointing this out.


    Update: Feedster isn't linking to the most commonly used form of my RSS feed. You should use one of the links at the bottom of the sites main page if you want to subscribe.

    Tags for this post: blog blog blogger vanity gloat
    Related posts: Gloat

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?

    I've always wondered where the SUV proliferation in the US came from. This article assures me that it's because the US federal government tried to make cars more fuel efficient. Interesting, if it's correct. Nick Hac.

    Tags for this post: link america usa suv

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

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: Chapter seven of the shop manual; When I go to Vegas, I should stay here; Mark is right; Interesting technique for finding leaks in code

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

    My little 16 year old sister is doing the World Vision 40 hour famine to raise funds for people who have famines a lot more often than on a weekend. To spur her one, the rest of the family has been eating in front of her, and making skeleton jokes. Here's an artists impression of what she'll look like at the end of the weekend:



    Tags for this post: blog xray charity famine

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

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

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: PDF/A; Time to document my PDF testing database; Sony's CD DRM acts like spyware on Windows; Writely.com is cool; PDF/A sample documents?; Online aggregators; This is a pointer; Expect to see some sample documents soon; TechTalkBlogs; Why does every man and his dog put man pages online?; Converting a bunch of TIFF images to a PDF using ImageMagick; Recursive linkage zen

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

    Pascal asked in the comments to a previous post about the book about how I was going about writing the book and how the publication process works. It's a good question, and something I meant to cover here anyway, so now seems like a good time.

    I'll start from the beginning with a brief summary of how I got started with this writing thing. I started off by writing a number of articles for IBM DeveloperWorks. DeveloperWorks are actually really good to work with, all I did to start writing from them was fill in the proposal web form within a couple of hours we'd sorted out what was happening, and off we went.

    The ImageMagick articles I wrote turned out to be quite popular with the ImageMagick people. I suspect that's why the editor for Apress, a lovely guy named Matt contacted me. He pitched the book to me, and I was originally hesitant. He spent a fair bit of time (a month?) discussing the project with me, and I ended up deciding that because it's fairly closely aligned with the imaging work I'm doing for my PhD, I ended up saying yes.

    Along the way I wrote a table of contents with Matt's guidance for the book, which is what the contract with Apress is based on, and wrote a chapter of the book to determine if the timing estimates that Matt had provided were believable. I was also a little less scared of the process given I was on the review team for a Jeremy Wright's upcoming blog book.

    So, no. The book isn't self published. I have Apress doing that for me.

    The book is written in a Microsoft Word template provided by Apress. This has to happen that way because that Word document plugs into Apress' publication process. I am not aware of a non-Word format option for this at the moment. It's not a big problem though, as OpenOffice's support for the Word format is quite good. The entire manuscript has been written in OpenOffice, with the exceptions being the insertion of images into the document, and the dealing with change tracking and comments from the editorial and technical review team. Both of those tasks I do in Microsoft Word, as the OpenOffice support for image insertion seems to be buggy (I can't get it to work for me), and the change tracking is significantly nicer in Microsoft Word.

    It would be nice to give a presentation at LCA 2006 on what it's like to write a book in OpenOffice at the OpenOffice mini-conf (if there is one), but we'll have to wait and see if the papers committee accepts my real talk proposal, and what happens with some personal stuff I am dealing with at the moment (nothing bad, I'll tell you all more about that when it's more public).

    Anyway, so there's my book publication brain dump. Any more questions?

    Tags for this post: imagemagick book author process apress
    Related posts: Trying out the Apress e-book system; The book; "Other than the fact our child will be bright, text-based and sarcastic, we will otherwise be a normal family."; The Apress page for the book; Ruby sample source code; The book process continues; Color ebook!; Mark is right; State of the computing book market; Should small ISVs be involved with the standards 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

    I just got this question in email, and thought I should answer it publically to help other people who might be wondering: 

      I used following commands to convert

D:\>convert -adjoin scanImage_1.tif -adjoin scanImage_2.tif -adjoin scanImage_3.tif three.pdf

This didn't work.

And I use

D:\ >convert -adjoin scanImage_1.tif -adjoin scanImage_2.tif -adjoin scanImage_3.tif three.tif

And convert three.tif three.pdf

Did not work.

Then I use

D:\ >convert three.tif three.pdf

Did not work

How do I create single pdf  file?


    As far as ImageMagick is concerned, a PDF file is simply a format capable of storing more than one image in a file. TIFF files are another example, as are animations. Therefore, to turn multiple TIFF files into a single PDF, you just need a command line like this: 

      convert scanImage_1.tif scanImage_2.tif scanImage_3.tif three.pdf


    Too easy. Obligatory advertising: you can find out more about this in chapter three of my upcoming ImageMagick book, which is slated to be released around Christmas.

    Tags for this post: imagemagick convert tiff pdf
    Related posts: Trying out the Apress e-book system; PDF/A; JPEG 2 MPEG howto; Time to document my PDF testing database; PDF/A sample documents?; This is a pointer; Expect to see some sample documents soon

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?

    I'm no genius, but I don't think FFTs are meant to look like this:



    Tags for this post: phd fft gnuplot

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

    I've made the mistake of asserting that Sarah's favourite aunt snorted cocaine during the wedding reception. I of course have no evidence that snortage occurred, but it would sure explain why she was so funny... She had my entire table in stitches for most of the event.

    Sorry Sarah, she was quite funny. I'm sure she's a lovely person and all...

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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

    Steven comments on the slowness of PerlMagick in the EXIF tag extraction case. I'm pretty sure that it's not forking a process though -- ImageMagick is now a set of libraries which are wrapped to make the command line utilities we all know and love, as well as PerlMagick. So, I don't think a fork is involved.

    I think what is happening here is that ImageMagick is suffering from it's own generic (and therefore very powerful nature). In return for being able to do heaps of things with heaps of image formats, you get a block of code which simply as efficient as possible in all cases. I haven't done a code audit to determine if this is the case in this specific incident however.

    So, I think PerlMagick is innocent here.

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


Dear robot authors

    Gigabot is an example of a crawler which is trawling my site but doesn't bother to put a URL with information about it in the user agent string. Dear robot authors -- please be polite about what you're doing on my site.

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


ImageMagick slowness extracting EXIF information from JPEG files

    For the book I've been working on a PerlMagick example which takes a directory of images, lets you rotate and label the images, and the publish them to a list of different possible publication directories. It's basically an automation of what I've done with the image publication for this site for some time, but also deuglificated. It also does some nice stuff like display relevant EXIF information for the JPEG files in the HTML pages that it generates, which will be nicer than the igal stuff I currently use.

    Yes, I am aware that gallery does a lot of this now, but I need an example for the book, and this gives me a chance to write up exactly what I do now in a nicer form, and make it well documented so that people have a basis for something to hack on in the future.

    One of the things that the script does if it hasn't been told how to rotate an image, it tries to guess by looking at the EXIF tags for the images. This presents a problem with the beta version of the code, which I am testing with the photos I took from Andrew's wedding. PerlMagick takes about a second per EXIF tag lookup, which means the the HTML request times out while the CGI script is trying to work out the 312 EXIF tag reads it needs to do to make this happen.

    So, I suspect that I'm going to either have to do something ugly to make this all work, or I'm going to need to roll in a different EXIF tag reader.

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


Sun, 24 Jul 2005


Young Achievers

    My employer has for some time sponsored Young Achievers, a business skills development for kids in Australia. There is now a tertiary version, and given that I have pondered starting my own business down the track sometime I figured I'd volunteer as a mentor. The humour of me mentoring people on good business practise has not been lost on me.

    I haven't done any of the reading for tonight yet, which I need to catch up on today. I do suspect that there is an unrealistic amount of startup paperwork, more on that later.

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


Sat, 23 Jul 2005


Sixty five roses (Cystic Fibrosis)

    My back neighbour, Sian, has Cystic Fibrosis, so listening to the 17 year old girl on the ABC Radio National Science Show discussing the topic is something which is close to home. Her name is Emma Money, and she lives in Adelaide. If you're n the ACT and want more information, you should contact The CF Association of the ACT.

    Interestingly, the radio show mentions that the gene defect first appears 15,000 years ago in Celtic stock, and that all the current sufferers are related in some what. I hadn't really thought about it before, but that certainly makes sense.

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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.

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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.)

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


MacOS X Tiger and Samba borked?

    I have a Samba box which was nice and happy until Lindsay tried to connect to it with her Os X Tiger machine. She leaves me with this error message in the log: 

    [2005/07/19 10:42:32, 0] rpc_parse/parse_prs.c:prs_mem_get(537)
  prs_mem_get: reading data of size 2 would overrun buffer.
[2005/07/19 10:42:32, 0] rpc_server/srv_pipe.c:api_pipe_bind_req(919)
  api_pipe_bind_req: unable to unmarshall RPC_HDR_RB struct.


    There's references to this online, of which the most helpful appears to be this mailing list message. I'm running the latest samba packaged by Debian -- which appears to be 3.0.14.

    Has anyone else seen this? Got a fix you want to share?

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


Mon, 18 Jul 2005


The state of Microsoft certification

    You know someone's going to make a comment like this when a story about a nine year old girl gains Microsoft certification comes out. There have been a few over history.

    I'm sorry, but if a nine year old can get certified, regardless of country, gender, or overall geekiness, then the certification is to easy. Well, perhaps Doogie Howser should be allowed to get certified, but the reality is that certification should also be about real world experience and the ability to apply knowledge to the problem in hand, not just rote learning from a book. A nine year old can't have had a long consulting career yet -- can she?

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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?

    I've been sitting on this for a little while, and a couple of people I've met in the flesh have heard about it, but I think the time is right to start talking about it more in public. A little while ago Apress asked me if I would be interested in writing a book on ImageMagick, presumably based on my having written two articles on ImageMagick for IBM DeveloperWorks. You can find those articles here and here. The book is a complete re-implementation of that content, despite my contract with IBM allowing for reuse, because that basically has to be done to make the book coherent and flow.

    Anyway, the contract has now been signed by myself and Gary Cornell (recent interview). The first three chapters have been written and are currently undergoing review. I have a table of contents and a schedule, so I know what else I'm going to cover.

    Why Apress? Well, apart from the fact that they approached me, which is flattering, they're also a pretty awesome technical publisher. They're the publisher of Nick Weinholt's .NET books, Joel Spolsky's software development books, and heaps of other stuff. Checkout they're site for more information.

    I've got a bunch of notes on the whole book process which I am going to write up and post over the next few months until the book is released for Christmas. You'll see them here when they're ready. Let me know if you have questions about what it's like to be a first time book author for an open source project when working full time, studying and having a family, and I'll see what I can do.

    Aren't I doing a PhD? Well, yes. Then again, the book hasn't actually distracted from that much at all, because of the massive amount of time freed up by the end of linux.conf.au 2005. The PhD is meant to consume 20 hours per week, which it still is.

    Got questions? Comments? Let me know in the comments to this post... Oh, and no, the book wont make me rich. Unless you buy a copy...

    Update: I should make it more clear that the book covers a lot more than those articles did. What I was trying to say here is that the content of the articles wont just be reprinted, but has been reworked, and woven in with the rest of the content. The book should be around 350 pages, so you can see that I need to write a whole bunch of other content too.

    Update: Oh, and there is another interview with Gary here.

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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;
}


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


Getting married is a pain in the arse for Women

    Sarah had her hens night the other night and now I have some great blaackmail photos on the camera (Catherine took it with her). I remember Catherine's fun when we got married. Changing your name in the thousand places that it is used in with a modern society is a pain in the arse. You'd think there could be some sort of service that sorted it all out for you...

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


Back in AU

    In case it isn't obvious by the way, I'm back in Australia and happy and well and all that. I have heaps of photos from the trip, some of which Andrew has put online, but I need to write some code before I can put them online here. How's that for a geek excuse?!? Anyways, I'll be sure to let you know when they end up online.

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


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

    So, I get back from the US in time to discover the ZipIt, a $99 US IM hand held doodlydadilly. I so need one of these for Catherine, so keeps her PC on the whole time just so she can see IM messages. Heck, I'd probably get one for me as well.

    I wonder if they ship to Australia?:

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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?

    I've installed Microsoft's beta anti spy-ware tool on a number of machines before, and I just had a need to install it on one of my own machines. I have Windows on my laptop you see, and I needed to boot into Windows for some work I am doing at the moment -- this is fairly rare, but I still figured that I should run Windows Update, the virus checker update and install the anti spy-ware thingie while I was there.

    This time I had to lean under the machine and write down the Windows product key before the installer would work. At least the validation process worked in Firefox.

    Does Microsoft think that stolen copies of Windows don't get infected with spy-ware or something? It doesn't make the licensed Windows user's life any better if they're still surrounded by infected machines trying to hammer them. Surely the solution is a universal one, rather than something more exclusive?

    Technorati tags for this post:

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


LCA2006 -- CFP opens soon!

    So, the informational stuff for the LCA 2006 conference is up now and submissions open really soon. I guess that means we should start thinking about what papers to put in now, and they they'll be ready when submissions open...

    Update: The submission mechanism now works too, so you can even put in your paper proposals now. Go forth a proposificate!

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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

    A map which shows US casualties by home town. That's a lot of people, and it's a lot less than the Iraqis have lost. I have a lot of sympathy for America, and for the people of Iraq I guess to. What is this whole conflict improving?

    Technorati tags for this post:

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


Andrew is a loony

    He hasn't slept in something like 48 hours now. He's a loony.

    On of the funnier parts of the trip over was listening to the Channel 9 "from the flight deck". Before they could take of the United plane insisted on burning off 1,000 pounds of fuel. How long did it take? 5 minutes of idling and driving around in circles. The airline was fairly ordinary though -- no screens in the back of seats. 5 inches of extra leg room for premium economy, but that only put them about 2 inches ahead of Qantas. Catering was nothing special. No little care package for during the flight. No face mask.

    I'd fly United again, but only if I didn't get to chose the airline.

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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.

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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

    Apparently my brother, his fiance, and our UK office are all ok, which is all I will comment on this whole thing.

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


Wed, 06 Jul 2005


Ubuntu and a machine which does APM not ACPI

    Dear lazyweb. How do I tell Ubuntu to not load the ACPI modules because my machine only does APM, and how do I get it to load the APM modules instead?

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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

    It turns out offlineimap was punishing me for my faith, and hadn't been syncing the IMAP folder that comments waiting for approval go into. I'm working on approving the non-spammy ones now (about 50%) and they'll appear on the site in about an hour. Sorry guys.

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


Or, a gelatine urn sounds cool too

    A commenter to one of my"> previous posts on death mentions that in his area you can now get urns made out of gelatine. That's cool too, and probably something which people could make for me in the kitchen if needed. So, you now have three options for environmentally friendly body disposal...

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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

    Chris and Steven comment more on the National Library crawling happening at the moment. I'd like to think that the National did listen to my whois suggestion -- I sent them a quite detailed email at the time, but I haven't actually gotten any feedback from them.

    I do know that at the time that dad was lobbying to have stillhq.com included as a site of historical significance (which it clearly is), they were intending to use Australian IP addresses and domains ending in .au. Thinking about it, all of the machines we're talking about have Australian IP addresses of some form -- svana.org, stillhq.com, and Chris' ADSL redirect are all hosted in Australia.

    I still think the whois solution is the best, although I imagine that getting the data out of a registry might be hard. Anyone at the National care to comment on what is actually happening?

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


Drugs

    I'm off to the US for a week next week and I am lucky enough to have Sinusitis. This has resulted in me going off to the doctor last night for the provision of some mighty fine chemicals. I feel a little better this morning, so they must work.

    Better living through chemistry, I always say.

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


Internet access in Perth

    The company annual conference is at a place called the Vines Resort in Perth this year. The resort website doesn't list Internet access as one of the facilities, which is a bit of a bummer as I really need to be contactable that week for Skunkworks project 42.

    I know I have some Westralians reading this -- what's my best bet for casual dial up access for a week without breaking the bank? Alternatively, doesn't anyone know that the Vines does have Internet access before I call them tomorrow?

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


Tue, 05 Jul 2005


Installing wine on Ubuntu Hoary

    So, to get wine to work I needed to install the Microsoft MSI installer. First, install the fonts as documented on the Wine website, and then follow the instructions here, which took a while to find.

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


Pandora

    Chris mentions that he's being archived by Pandora at the moment, which is the National Library's attempt to archive all of the "Australian" Internet. I'm being crawled at the moment too, which was probably helped by dad having worked at the national for 20 something years, and having lunch with the right people.

    Once every few years, the national attempts to archive all Australian sites. They do this by assuming that Australian sites are in the .au TLD, which is a little bogus. I've suggested to them that they use whois information to determine the location of the author instead. It will be interesting to see if they have listened.

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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

    For today and tomorrow. What is it about Cooper Minis here? I've seen 10 so far...

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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?

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


Sat, 02 Jul 2005


On caching of websites

    Mitch talks about an article about moving from an IBM Websphere based weather.com to a Linux and open source based environment. He makes a passing comment about cachability, and that caching would improve the performance of the site.

    I think that the IT industry has lost something over the last couple of years, and I think it's time for it to come back. That thing is static content. I see no reason that a largely static site such as weather.com (people read the weather, don't change it, and the content updates regularly, but nowhere near as frequently as once per click).

    So, why not write an engine to generate the entire content of the site from templates, and then dump the output into a bunch of files on disc to serve? In fact, when you update the data, just change the file on disc and let the new file get served out when it's good and ready. This keeps processor load as low as possible while serving, and in fact probably makes the whole thing easier to debug. It's how my site is done too, and it makes the box that's hosting it much more responsive than it used to be under a dynamic workload.

    Everything should be static, unless you can't possibly do it without some runtime code.

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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


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


Wed, 29 Jun 2005


Life skills

    One of the guys at work needed to pick his brothers car up from a car park at lunch today, and it presented an opportunity to learn something important about life...



    A lot of cars have a really short exhaust pipe, and then the muffler. Keys are really hard to get out of mufflers.

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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

    On my talking to Mitch kick, I should comment on his post on how to report exceptions from Web Services. Mitch is right. The classes of error we return from the TRIM Web Service are of the form:

    • Input error
    • Transient error
    • System error (call your admin)


    You get rollbacks from us for free, so that's ok. The only one I've added to this list is the system error. It's possible that the server is experiencing system administrator errors, such as being out of disc, not having a dataset configured, or so forth. These really should be reported separately from the input errors and transient errors. They're not caller input, and they're only transient if the admin realises he should fix them.

    We also return a unique error code for each error, which means I know exactly where in my code the problem happened, which is a feature I'm really liking from a support perspective. The Soap Fault supports an error code, so that maps nicely there.

    I should point out that we don't use the Soap Fault though, we use a different Soap'ed object. Perhaps we should consider using the fault, but we didn't want to have to abandon execution of other jobs for an error in some cases.

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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?

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


Tue, 28 Jun 2005


iTunes 4.9 and podcast support


    The workbench in my office at ANU     		So, I downloaded iTunes 4.9 for Windows for my work machine and thought I'd do something nicer with pod casts that liferea does at the moment (I simply can't get it to work in liferea). Anyways, it amuses me that two of the three podcasts I have started testing with have their websites down. It's kinda like iTunes is a massive denial of service attack tool or something.

    Adam Curry and Dawn and Drew are off line. What am I to do?


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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:



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


I'm glad I've turned on comments here

    I'm really glad I wrestled Blosxom into having working comments here, because there have been some real gems of comments recently. I apologise to those people I don't individually reply to. Would people like to have an option of being sent an email for comments added to a post they have commented on?

    One example of the quality of comments: Some comments on the history of DVD region coding

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


Sydney next week


    This picture has nothing
    to do with this post     		So, it looks like it's Sydney's turn to have me visit customers next week. This was worked out again, so I guess that means that we'll be booking the travel sometime this week. I think that now makes it four trips lined up in the Qantas frequent flyer doodagilly thing. Hurrah for jet setting me, or something.


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


Bingo!

    So, the code for YUV420 to RGB24 conversion now works, which is good. It's a little embarrassing that this took a couple of hours. At one point I mistook y for Y, and had a sign error. Oh well...





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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

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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.

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


Mon, 27 Jun 2005


This is a test

    ...of the picture tag I just wrote:
    Like father like son


    Isn't that a nice shot?

    Update: This post has been updated, as most browsers and aggregators seem to choke on the CSS I was using.

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


Ok, I've finally snapped

    I was just writing some code to manipulate a bitmap, something I need to do for my PhD (specifically, I'm converting YUV420P to RGB24). Anyhoo, the image isn't looking right, so before I go to sleep on it I thought I would dump the YUV values next to the RGB ones and see if I could eyeball the problem.

    I swear that as I was writing this I was thinking -- "I'll let the compiler optimise and write for readability". Do you think I succeeded? 

      for(x = 0; x < 320; x++)
    {
      for(y = 0; y < 240; y++)
	{
	  raster[((y + 480) * 640 * 2 + x + 640) * 3] = 
	    realfile[640 * 480 + (y * 320 + x)];
	  raster[((y + 480) * 640 * 2 + x + 640) * 3 + 1] = 
	    realfile[640 * 480 + (y * 320 + x)];
	  raster[((y + 480) * 640 * 2 + x + 640) * 3 + 2] = 
	    realfile[640 * 480 + (y * 320 + x)];

	  raster[((y + 480) * 640 * 2 + x + 640 + 320) * 3] = 
	    realfile[640 * 480 + (320 * 240) + (y * 320 + x)];
	  raster[((y + 480) * 640 * 2 + x + 640 + 320) * 3 + 1] = 
	    realfile[640 * 480 + (320 * 240) + (y * 320 + x)];
	  raster[((y + 480) * 640 * 2 + x + 640 + 320) * 3 + 2] = 
	    realfile[640 * 480 + (320 * 240) + (y * 320 + x)];
	}
    }


    Here's the image I get at the moment:



    See how the RGB image on the left isn't colorful enough? That pen there is lime green. Anyways, if anyone can see the problem and wants to give me a hint, that would be cool too.

    Update: It would seem that the terms YUV420, YUV420P, iYUV, and I420 are all interchangeable, to add to the fun.

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


Fri, 24 Jun 2005


Over-analysed Friday comments on Half Nekkid Thursday

    So, Half Nekkid Thursday was introduced to me by Ian, who happens to be some sort of manager of me or something. It's pretty hard to take a manager who spends more time looking like this:



    Than the pointed haired boss. I really think the big innovation at work recently was the Balinese hot tub in the break out area. Don't have one at Microsoft, Red Hat or Novell? How can you possibly hope to keep up with us?

    Anyways, Ian pointed a this half nekkid post:



    Now, it should be pointed out that this transformation is completely reversible. I know. I wrote the code to do it today.

    I am however too polite to post the mostly naked lady to the Interweb.

    Now, to roll into a different tangent for a second, I picked up my new camera on Wednesday, and the first thing I saw when I went to ANU to do some PhD stuff was my mate Steven. Naked. At his desk. And I had a camera in my hand. So, here's the transformed version of totally naked Steven (except for shoes) with my new camera:



    Code online soon. Maybe.

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


Thu, 23 Jun 2005


Friday afternoon quiz question

    So, here's a quiz question for you... Think of a project that requires a high bandwidth connection (as in lots of traffic served) that would benefit the open source community in Australia, and pitch it on your blog. Convince me that there is any interest in having a way to host interesting large traffic projects without going bankrupt. Here's some examples I can think of off the top of my head:

    • Australia currently lacks a Source Forge mirror
    • A Linux in Australia podcast anyone?
    • Serving video of LUG meetings
    • Serving a video archive of LCAs
    • Offering static content hosting to popular Australian sites -- perhaps sites getting over 1,000,000 hits per month?
    • An Australian distro of some form (why do we need another distro though?)
    • ... you get the idea


    If you don't have a blog and want to contribute, then comment on this post and I'll publicise it for you (some moderation will occur). If you do have a blog and aren't on Planet Linux Aus, then please link to this post so I can see what you're suggesting.

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


No no no no

    Michael is ambiguous in his wording. I never claimed all DVD players in Australia are region free. I know this is certainly not the case.

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


Region free out of the factory

    The other Michael comments on his new Yamaha DVD player being region free out of the factory. It think most DVD manufacturers faced up to commercial reality here some time ago and have been doing this for a while. I know that my Pioneer DVD player which I bought about six years ago was region free out of the factory, and I wouldn't buy a DVD player which wasn't.

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


Traffic based linkage spam?

    Increasingly I get personal offers of linkage with my site, or of selling text ads to people. I've probably fielded four of these in the last month. My current process is just to ignore the email and mark it as read, which is perhaps a little rude. I do have a query though -- how are these people finding me? Is the fact that they're much more common now than they used to be because my site is more popular, or is it because this style of internet based advertising desperation is more popular now?

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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?

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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.

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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

    I wrote the JPEG to MPEG howto a while ago, and used the best tools that I could find at the time. It was a complicated, evil process, but people still email me a couple of times a month and thank me for it. I think they'll like this way even more.

    For my PhD, I'm taking large numbers of images and displaying them one after another on a monitor so that I can capture the images with a webcam. The reason is a little convoluted, so let's settle for I'm trying to see what sort of image distortion the webcam will impose. I figured that the best way to do this was to simply have a MPEG2 movie that was the images, play it on the machine, and then point the webcam at the monitor. At about this time in a twist of wonderful fate I discovered I could do this in a simple command line with ImageMagick. Let's see how (all of these instructions are based on Debian unstable, but should work anywhere):

    Install ImageMagick 

      apt-get install imagemagick


    Install mpeg2vidcodec

    This isn't packaged for Debian, but I've put a request for package bug in. Do this: 

      wget ftp://ftp.mpegtv.com/pub/mpeg/mssg/mpeg2vidcodec_v12.tar.gz
tar xvzf mpeg2vidcodec_v12.tar.gz
cd mpeg2
make
cd src/mpeg2dec
cp mpeg2decode /usr/local/bin
cd ../mpeg2enc
cp mpeg2encode /usr/local/bin


    Do the thing

    So, now we can do the thing. In this instance we have a bunch of TIFF files we want to turn into an MPEG2 video. 

      convert *.tif foobar.mpg


    And we're done. Nice, isn't it?

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


Steven will be so proud of me

    As I have mentioned here before, I never learnt to ride a bike as a child in fact, when I got my first bike for Christmas three years ago, I immediately fell off and hurt myself (I was fine until I hit some loose gravel on the road and slide sideways, luckily it was within a couple of hundred meters of home and I could limp there relatively easily. Since then I haven't ridden the bike at all except for a few minutes in the back yard because I've been too busy with Andrew and Matthew to find the time.

    Dad, my little sister Jasmine and I changed that on the weekend and when for some riding practise. Initially I started out on a school oval, but because of the general lack of rain here until recently it was pretty bumpy and hard to steer. I was surprised with how much easier the asphalt basketball court was. I even ended up going up and down some concrete ramps and in between benches and stuff -- all without falling off. I only rode for about 30 minutes, but after that I was wasted, which probably means I am a lot less fit than I thought. My abs still hurt last night, which was two days later, so I must have used them somewhere in the process.

    It was surprisingly fun. I'm thinking I might have to make some time next Saturday to give it another go, assuming it's not raining. I reckon that I need to have a fair bit of practise before I give going on the road a go, as I don't really want to die.

    Now Jasmine, Dad and Catherine all want bikes, as is the way with these things. Does anyone know a good bike store in Canberra? Mine came form whatever the bike store at Kambah shops is called. Also, are there traded in bikes generally available? Are they any good?

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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?

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


US tax withholding for W-8BEN

    Can I just say that this form is insanely complicated? Explanatory notes, two treaties and their technical descriptions later (about an inch of paper), I think I'm nearly ready to send the single page, single sided form in. Now all I need to do is apply for a US tax identification number. Don't start me on that. I have to get a bunch of original documents and visit the embassy before I can even send in that form.

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


Sun, 19 Jun 2005


Canon EOS 350D

    I'm within about 3 millimetres of buying this camera. Does anyone have any comments on it, or how it compares with other 8 megapixel digital SLRs?

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


MelbourneIT are into search engine optimisation?

    What?!? MelbourneIT (the registrar for one of my domains) spammed me last week trying to sell me SEO assistance. To me that's just bizarre, MelbourneIT used to have their stuff together, and they just seem to be desperate for cash, any old kind of cash now. I feel dirty for having dealt with them, and will almost certainly move away from them when renewal comes.

    Did I mention they're expensive too?

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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.

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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...

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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

    I'm writing some stuff about ImageMagick at the moment, and it would be nice to have someone do some technical review of the stuff I'm writing to make sure I'm not a big liar or anything. There's a possibility of being paid, but you need to know about ImageMagick, Linux and imaging in general. If you're interested, then you should mail me.

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


I'm getting fed up

    Does anyone else find that liferea crashes on them all the time? I'm finding that it's falling in a heap about three times a day at the moment (not including the string of five crashes in about a minute just then when I tried to import another OPML file). What are other people using on Linux as they're aggregator? I've tried straw, and now liferea. I did think about Mozilla Thunderbird, but I need OPML import support first.

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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?

    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.


    Again. This is the second time this has happened to me in the last week or so.

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


Back from Melbourne

    The Melbourne trip went well in my opinion. Five customer sites and one user group in two days didn't leave a lot of time for mucking around though. I'm pretty tired after the trip. I didn't have much connectivity or time during the trip, and still don't feel too crash hot today, so I'll work through my blog and email backlog another night.

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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.

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


Video4Linux, ov511, and RGB24 palettes

    The short answer is that they're not supported by the driver. You'll get this error message when you try to set that palette value via the ioctl: 

      Could not set picture information: Invalid argument


    So, I'll need to twiddle my code which works with ov519s to also do the YUV to RGB conversion.

    Update: I originally thought I was confused and that I had never used this video4linux code with an ov511, but I've just been looking at the scripts which call it, and I definitely had. This implies to me that video4linux has dropped support for RGB24 with the ov511 somewhere between 2.4.something and my current 2.6.11 machine. I think this deserves some further digging...

    Update: It seems to me that the support for RGB24 was dropped in 2.5.30. Which is odd, as the IBM webcam driver still supports it for instance. Perhaps the difference is that the ov511 driver had to convert to RGB24, whilst the ibmcam can do it in hardware?

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


Sat, 11 Jun 2005


A first taste of Fedora Core

    The skunk works project needs an install of Fedora core as well, so I did one of those last night. The installer isn't nearly as nice as Ubuntu, and I would say that it's not really as nice as Debian. It tries to give you control over the process by asking lots of questions, but some of the questions are kinda annoying. Perhaps they should either assume that I'm a power user, or assume I'm a gumby, not some sort of awkward middle ground.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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.


    Technorati tags for this post:

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


Fri, 10 Jun 2005


Collisions in MD5 sums

    This is kind of a big deal. Cryptographic has functions are used in a lot of computer science circles to take a large document and turn it into a relatively small description of the document. The transformation has a couple of interesting properties:

    • It's one way -- which means that I can know that I have your document, without checking the contents. There are secure file systems out there that when you give it a file give you back the ID for the file, and that's how you access it in the future. Don't know the ID? You can't possibly have seen the file.
    • They're meant to be unique -- you can't possibly have no overlap between bazillions of documents and the comparatively few IDs available, but it's meant to be very hard to get two documents with the same ID. This is commonly used for CD downloads for instance where people want to be sure that you got the file intended completely, or to make sure that you're not storing information twice. EMC for instance has an email storage system which only saves an email if the MD5 ID is new, otherwise it must be a duplicate.


    It turns out that reuse of IDs (called collisions) might be a lot easier to find that people thought. There's an interesting paper which shows a trivial example of a collision. Bruce Schneier has some thoughts on the issue.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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


New toy: automated driver stalking for linux device drivers

    So, it turns out I care about the ov511 driver for Linux. I've been suffering from what I suspect is bit rot in the driver for the last couple of hours, so I thought that perhaps I should stalk the driver and see what has changed over time and if perhaps some recent change is punishing me.

    So, I give you the ov511 linux driver stalking page. If you've got suggestions for improvements or other drivers to stalk, then drop me a line.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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

    I just had to disassemble my Genius ov511 based web cam to get it working again. I suspect that the USB connector on the machine side of the cable is starting to get a little flakey, as shown by the discolouring in the picture below:







    Anyhoo, here's a dump of the colour coding for USB cables in case it comes in handy: 

     USB cables

A standard USB cable has 4 wires in it, plus shield:

    * red: VCC (5Volt, max. 100mA/500mA)
    * black: Gnd
    * white: D0-
    * green: D0+ (I've seen a blue wire used instead here by some USB cables)
    * shield: Drain-wire (usually connected to the case) 

The power wires (red and black) are usually a bit thicker, than the data ones (white and green). 
The maximum current without anything done before is only 100mA, but the device can request the 
host to "give more power". If the host confirms this request, a maximum current of 500mA is possible.


    That's stolen from the Xbox USB Cable Howto.

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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?

    So, it turns out that Rory and Gordon want to talk about how cool they are for having crappy computers in their childhood. Well good on them... 

    shimmery dissolve in

"Jones! What's the furthest away on the map?"
"Um. This pointy thing. Says 'Australia' on it."
"Right. Do they have television or radio in Ostralia?"
"Er. I don't know. Google hasn't been invented yet sir, it's only 1984"
"Right. Let's dump them there, I hear they're a bit backwards. 
Get the guys in marketing to replace the case with something black, 
add some stuff from the Japanese thingy and get them out of here!"
"yessir"

dreamy dissolve out


    It's nice to hear stories of how the rich kids grew up... We didn't get our first machine until 1992, when a family member had to die in order for us to afford it. Before that I'd used machines at school -- Apple II's specifically. I have fond memories of those simple days when all I had to worry about was what text should be in the thought bubble between Garfield and Odie in that silly drawing application. Perhaps what I need in my life is a Garfield drawing application, and to be paid to do that all day. People say you should do what you love after all.

    Depressed? I'll tell you about depressed. Brain the size of a planet, and no Garfield drawing applicationy doo dad.

    Anyways, I guess that's why I have so many machines now. I'm compensating for extreme deprivation in childhood or something. I'm off to stroke my laptop now...

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


Wed, 08 Jun 2005


New ImageMagick uploaded to Debian Unstable

    So, it appears that a new version of ImageMagick has been uploaded to Debian Unstable. Is this in relation to my previous complaint? Probably not. Anyways, 6.2.3 is there, but appears to have troubles building. My Debian insider tells me that you can track the progress of the package from the package's status page. I assume this means that Ubuntu will magically get a newer version soon?

    Technorati tags for this post:

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


Herm. Jeremy Wright's book eats my printer driver

    Windows Server 2003. Epson Stylus CX3100. Microsoft Word. Page 9 of Chapter 6 consistently eats my printer driver and causes all print outs until the printer is rebooted to be bogus. Strange.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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?

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


Wrapping a COM IStream into a .NET Stream

    Our SDK returns a COM IStream when you ask it nicely. This is cool because it means that users can ask for just the parts of large documents that they want, without having to download the entire document first. Now that I'm working mainly on .NET code though, the COM IStream causes me pain...

    Let's start with the fact that the COM IStream interface is nowhere near as rich as the .NET Stream. For instance, there is no way that I can see from the COM IStream to ask how long the stream is. Worse than that, the seek and position offsets use a type which is not exposed in .NET.

    Does anyone have a nice solution to this problem before I write code?

    Technorati tags for this post:

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

    So, I didn't realise that Group 3 Fax Compression, probably the most common compression applied to those little bits of paper a lot of people transmit around the planet, is just run length compression. I always assumed it was better than that, especially as the libtiff implementation differentiates between the two.

    No matter where you go, there you are.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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


Mon, 06 Jun 2005


Spank me, I've been bad

    In order to fix the broken links that Feedster was using to link to me (all of which 404'ed), I had to break the GUIDs for these blog posts (only if you're using the RSS 2.0 or RSS 2.0 with ICBM feeds though). Sorry about that. The hot tip -- Feedster interprets that GUID as a URL and tries to link to it, or at least it did for me.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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.

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


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

    Catherine is going to give OS X a try, as her Windows box has broken yet again... Out comes the old G3 400 MHz slot loading imac.

    Update: Oh my god. I need to install OS 9.1 before I can upgrade the firmware, before I can install OS X 10.3. Sweet lord.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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


Sun, 05 Jun 2005


Australian public service announcement

    These just got mailed around the office (it's a work email blogging kinda day):





    (Does anyone know the original source of these images?) But we all know that the last one does happen, now don't we?



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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?

    So, I note that Adam Curry's pod cast seems to have vastly superior audio quality than the G'Day world pod casts I've listened to today. It actually makes the G'Day world stuff really hard to listen to, which is a shame as they have a fair bit of good content. I wonder if there is documentation online for what sort of configuration options people are using for their MP3 encoders?

    Technorati tags for this post:

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?

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


A first taste of Ubuntu

    For the skunk works project I had a need for a Ubuntu box, so I did an install on an old piece of c**p Pentium two box I had lying around. It's my first time installing Ubuntu, and I must say I'm impressed:

    • The installer didn't ask me for partition sizes, it just went with reasonable defaults once I had told it to blow away all of my whopping 4gb disc
    • It automatically checked the checksum of each package on the CD, although I imagine that doesn't help much if the entire CD can't be trusted
    • It then went off an did it's thing with no more prompting except for host name and a user account
    • I wonder id the installer changes the list of packages it installs based on the size of the target filesystem. That would be cool...
    • Anyways, after a bit you reboot and apt magic happens without prompting
    • They even overwrite /etc/apt/sources.list with Internet sources and do an apt-get update so it's ready to fly
    • I was impressed over all


    No, if only they had ImageMagick in the base install...

    Technorati tags for this post:

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

    Information Week has an interesting article about Google search appliances for inside corporate firewalls. The Google dude, Eric Schmidt, talks about this being an opportunity for Google to do better ad placement inside the corporate firewall, to a better educated, better paid victim group.

    That seems like a really weird strategy to me. If corporations find something like a Google appliance useful, why on earth would you fund it through advertising to your staff? Especially as that advertising encourages them to view sites which are not part of your corporate network whilst they're meant to be doing work related stuff. Surely an appliance like this would be better off being funded by a metric spank-load of cash being paid out.

    Money. A traditional model for the payment of goods and services.

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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.

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


Ok, hand up if you're a CEO

    Robert Scoble comments that CEOs of Google, Apple, and so forth appear to be reading blogs. If you're a CEO, it's time to cast off your shame and come forward. I'll be gentle...

    Technorati tags for this post:

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.

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


Sunk cost

    Mark Cuban is a bit of a dude and explains Sunk Cost on his blog. Anyone who owns their own basket ball team must have done something right... Anyways Sunk Costs are costs which have been incurred and can't be recovered. For example, the laptop I am typing this on cost me $4,000. By the time I get around to selling it, I might get $200 for it if I'm lucky. Therefore, the value of the laptop now is whatever I could get for it if I sold it now, not what I paid.

    The people who don't understand this are the ones selling old machines for more than a new machine costs because they once paid a lot of money for it.

    I've always used the term "depreciation" to refer to this. Depreciation is the reason that I've kinda gone off buying hardware and cars. I'm just bored with paying a lot of money for something which is intrinsically worthless fairly soon afterwards. I still buy those things, but my purchasing choices are now based on complex concepts like "do I really need that?".

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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

    I mentioned my pain with blog spam before here. Now Joseph comments on his problems with the same occurance.

    If anything, there is more blog spam here than were was when I wrote that last post. Here's the statistics. The first line is all blog comments and the second is the count of how many of those are spam: 

      mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ find . -type f | wc -l
239
mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$ find . -type f -name "*.no" | wc -l
150
mikal@daedalus:~/blog-comments$


    150 out of 239 are spam. Now, you'll never see these on the site, as I moderate all comments, but it's pretty annoying to have to moderate these. An interesting aspect is that almost all of these have been on two blog posts. Perhaps the spammers' scripting isn't all that good or something? They're all about poker games as well, so I suspect there is one culprit here for my problems.

    So, should I close comments on those two posts (which would require writing the closing a comment code, which isn't too hard), or should I be patient and leave them open to see how long they continue to try in vain for?

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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.

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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

    That LCA 2006 dude comments on Qantas losing his bag. It's probably because the baggage handlers misplaced it while stuffing it full of drugs or something. I have to disagree with you though Mike -- Qantas has never lost my bags, and I've flown a lot. The only airline to have had that honour is Alaskan, who lost my bags somewhere in LA airport for a day.

    When you compare Qantas to the American carriers, Qantas rocks. American sells you the headset to listen to the radio on, and if you use your own headset breaks your fingers. United served me dog food with gravy as a meal, but at least had the pilot's radio on channel nine. Alaskan lost my bags and had planes which consistently broke down. Qantas is average, but the planes work, they have a great safety record, the food is edible, and they don't hit me with sticks.

    In this environment of airlines sucking more and more each day, and even then going out of business, we should be glad for what we have.

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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

    I was once a student member of the Institution of Engineers Australia, which has now been re-badged as Engineers Australia. When I stopped being an undergrad student and was asked to join as a full member, I sent an email and asked what their value proposition was, given that they seem largely as irrelevant as the ACS.

    You see, they're really aimed at traditional engineers such as civil, mechanical, structural and to a lesser extend electrical. They have no content related to computer engineering in their newsletter, offer no services relevant to computer engineers in the local area, and generally don't add a lot of value apart from occasional land grabs for certification of an industry they clearly don't service.

    Anyways, at the time that they asked me for lots of money to join, I emailed them and asked them what they're value proposition for computer engineers was. They never replied.

    What prompted this blog post? They just sent me this year's membership renewal. It includes last year's amount as an opening balance. The pitch for me to rejoin appears to be that they're going to keep billing me by stealth, and perhaps I'll just accidentally pay one day.

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


Fri, 27 May 2005


Is it just me

    ...or at coffee pod machines an incredibly wasteful way of making coffee? What's the big attraction?

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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.

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posted at: 01:22 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Thu, 26 May 2005


Heathrow

    "Heathrow has all the facilities of a small city. Shops, child care, health centre, public transport...

    Even its own airport.


    Via Lindsay who has clearly been on a plane for too long.

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posted at: 05:15 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


26 spammy blog comments in one day

    Ok, so 53 spams in comments here since I started with comments, and 26 of them have been today. Almost all of those are for dodgy poker sites.

    Very annoying.

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posted at: 05:12 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


On the slowness of xmlto again

    I thought I should sit down and do some timings for how slow xmlto really is compared with docbook2man. What I did was take my script which extracts all the man pages from the Linux kernel, and run it with both versions. You can see the Linux kernel man pages if you want to see sample output.

    Anyways, with xmlto first: 

    real    344m17.487s
user    168m54.811s
sys     12m57.683s


    And now with docbook2man: 

    real    49m45.189s
user    21m51.419s
sys     4m9.021s


    This is to build around 4,000 man pages in total. So, I guess docbook2man really is faster.

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


Wed, 25 May 2005


My thesis worries are over

    Google has once again saved the day:



    I can buy a thesis from at least five places, including the quite reputable Ebay!

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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?

    It sends the invite. No messages about wallys at all. Oh, and you can invite yourself too.

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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.

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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

    They're one of the companies who was given the opportunity to quote for mechanise for linux.conf.au, and they now feel that this gives them the right to spam me for the rest of my life. I can suggest one merchandise vendor I wont be using again.

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posted at: 05:39 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Playing with an email to RSS gateway

    It sounds useful to be able to have an email to RSS gateway, so I'm playing with some code now... I'll let you know how I go if I get something sexy happening.

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posted at: 00:56 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Please be gentle

    I just submitted the first draft of my first academic paper to my PhD supervision team. I hope their gentle...

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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...

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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

    Appears to work just fine too, although I only got three link lights on the bridge, and it seems a lot more sluggish than before. I'm about halfway into the lounge at the east end near the food survery.

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


iBurst: Four points Sheraton, Sydney

    Herm. Unreliable here in the foyer. There are big windows pointed skywards, and the modem reports 5 lights for connection strength, but I can't keep a connection alive for more than about 30 seconds, which is a shame. It's probable that this would work better if I was in a better location, but I'm limited by what is available by way of AC outlets.

    Hey! It just got better with a new modem location. I just managed 90 seconds!

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posted at: 21:38 | path: /iburst | permanent link to this entry


iBurst: Ibis Darling Harbour

    I'm in a room facing away from the harbour, and the connection seems to be fine. I get five lights again and the connection hasn't dropped on me yet. This makes me think that if I had been somewhere better than the foyer in the Sheraton, then things would have worked out better, because they're only about a five minute walk over the harbour from each other, with no real obstructions in between.

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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

    The Swedish ice hotel seems pretty cool (no pun intended), and is a lot cheaper than I expected. Mental note -- if I ever end up in Sweden looking at the Northern Lights, then I should stay here.

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posted at: 21:11 | path: /travel/sweden | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 20 May 2005


Why document management is good

    Morgan Stanley was fined $1.45 billion US for not being able to hand over corporate emails to a Judge fast enough. Financial institutions in the US are required to keep all email and IM messages for three years, but it looks like that might be extended to other public companies as well soon under Sarbox.

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


Product feedback center

    I had a simialr problem to Darren where I raised a bug with VS2005, and it was closed as not being able to be reproduced. Microsoft had posted a comment to the bug (not emailed me), and when I didn't notice within some number of days declared the bug to not be reproducable. In the end I demoed the bug for them while I was in Seattle, but I have no idea if it was actually fixed or not.

    Perhaps these are more flaws in the bug tracking system -- surely posting a comment should result in email being sent, and surely you shouldn't be able to close a bug as not reproducable without all parties consent?

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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

    So much for challenging Robert Scoble... He challenged me right back. Here's the email I just sent to Kensignton's PR contact address (which was surprisingly easy to find). Perhaps if others have more to add they should send their own too.



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posted at: 05:16 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


xmlto very slow?

    The kernel build now depends on xmlto to build the kernel man pages. I've given up on having a build target in the kernel source which makes all the possible man pages, and have opted for an external script which I will run for each release from now on and host the output of. This is mainly because I don't think people are going to accept a build target that takes six hours (and still going) to build all of it's output.

    I suspect that a lot of the slowness is that xmlto, which was introduced by someone else in the 2.6.12-rc4 release to fix the broken mandocs build target I introduced into 2.6, is a bash script and is therefore causing pain when I call it 5,000 times. I'm going to try to find the time to look into this more on the weekend.

    I'll put the new man page output here when it's done building.

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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

    Good taste kicked in...

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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

    The AUUG 2005 call for papers closes in a week. Have you put your paper proposal in yet? AUUG is an interesting conference in that it's smaller and more personal than linux.conf.au, and aimed at a corporate world where proprietary software is still a reality.

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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

    ...and had a really light load average. I got curious, so I explored the process listing a bit. Nothing there interested. Then I noticed... top claimed I had no swap, despite there being a two gig partition on this machine and it being in /etc/fstab. For some reason it wasn't mounted on boot. I've done a mkswap on the partition again just in case, and used swapon, and all is good again.

    This is Debian unstable. I must remember to see if it still happens when I reboot.

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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?

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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?

    According to the Dr Karl pod cast military satellites fly north-south, whilst everything else flies east-west. I can't find anything online to support this assertion. There is commentary that military satellites tend to orbit lower (for obvious reasons), and that polar satellites use a north-south orbit, but nothing else. Does anyone have any pointers on this? You'd think commercial imaging satellites would use a similar orbit at the very least...

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


The ABC Rock

    The ABC, Australia's national broadcaster, rock. They've dropped the 7 day license for pod casted material that I commented on a day after I commented. Thanks guys...

    Technorati tags for this post:

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?

    There was an interesting chat on the ABC Science Show of which I am currently listening to the pod cast for 15 May about the possible use of lemon juice as a tool for battling AIDS. Whilst the ABC has asked me not to link to the pod cast feed, which is fair enough as it is only a limited trial for the moment, the scientist whose name I immediately forgot suggested people go to www.aids.net.au to find out more.

    He also mentioned that he only gets 4,000 hits a day. AIDS is an important topic, so it would be nice for him to be affecting more people than that.

    (It's great to see the ABC embracing pod casting for shows I would otherwise miss by the way... Now, if I can only convince them that they should drop the 7 day license for the content and provide a nice big archive instead...)

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


Food recommendation

    The "Slip Inn", just down the road from the Four Points Sheraton in Sydney does a great Pad Thai. It was really good, and made me want to learn to make something that wonderful at home.

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posted at: 00:08 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 16 May 2005


Another quote

    "The demo we are going to show of the work we have done and the results achieved may be the most boring demo you've ever seen, but that's what users want." -- Steve Ballmer

    Via Good morning Silicon Valley

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posted at: 21:31 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Quotable quote for the day

    "One of my early managers once shared with me the following piece of advice: if you dont get your hand slapped at least twice a year, you arent pushing the boundaries hard enough." -- Sam Ruby.

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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

    Or at least it does from the bench seat near the window that I'm using. I'm on the Black Mountain Tower side of the airport lounge, with the aerial right near the window. I'm getting a signal strength indicator of three dot thingies on the front, and it seems perfectly usable.

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posted at: 15:23 | path: /iburst | permanent link to this entry


In Sydney for the day

    What does one do with a free evening in Darling harbour? I guess I'm about to find out...

    Technorati tags for this post:

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

    So, imagine you're DVD Jon and your patch to the USB sound driver is being ignored by the developer. You want to have your patch happen, but recompiling is too much pain. What do you do:



    Herm. I wonder which?

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posted at: 01:31 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 14 May 2005


Well, there he goes

    Peter has headed back to the UK with his fiance Jasmine for another stint, having been home for three weeks. We tried really hard to see him off from the airport, but Qantas and their mechanical failures made that impossible. The kids were simply too ratty after an hour and a bit of waiting and we had to give up. Hopefully they have a good flight...

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


Thu, 12 May 2005


Warning!

    A recent Department of Foreign Affairs email has warned the unwary that Perth is a dangerous place. It's good to see we're keeping the innocent informed.

    About 8,000 subscribers across Australia and overseas were sent the one-line message on Wednesday night, which read: "This is a message to let you know that Perth is dangerous at this time of year. xxx."


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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?

    There's a 4:30 in the morning now too? I have proof. That is all.

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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.

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posted at: 02:09 | path: /clug | permanent link to this entry


Linux kernel cset patches

    I have a script which grabs the latest kernel cset from here. I assume based on the fact that the latest cset there is from the 4th of April, and is against a release candidate which is two candidates old, that the yanked Bitkeeper license has resulted in all my scripts being broken.

    Is Linus still doing csets? If so, where does he hide them?

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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.

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


Linux kernel manual pages

    A while ago I submitted a patch to the Linux kernel which re-implemented the manual page stuff which was dropped early in the 2.5 development stream. At the time I posted about it. Anyways, it turned out that the patch wasn't optimal, as it didn't include documentation comments which are in source files but are not included in any of the SGML documentation files. I wrote a patch which addressed this, but never got it to be fast enough to be included in the kernel.

    I have an automated regression test system for kernel patches on one of my machines at home, and it's been testing the mandocs build target and the new patch (which no longer applies) for ages without my intervention. It even pushes the html and man page output to the Internet in case people find it useful.

    I was procrastinating today and noticed that between 2.6.10 and 2.6.11, there have been 755 man pages dropped from the mandocs build target. That's a lot, which makes me sad. Now I just need to find the time to get around to investigating why this is the case and seeing what can be done about it.

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


Fast Fourier transforms for gnuplot

    Does anyone know of a good way of doing Fast Fourier Transforms with gnuplot? I can't find anything online which implies that it's possible, so I'm feeling a bit sad at the moment.

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posted at: 00:12 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 11 May 2005


American visas for all!

    When I interviewed with Microsoft last time one of the issues discussed was whether I could get a visa or not. Now, Microsoft didn't seem to think it was a big deal, but then again the recruiter at the time said that they had "very good lobbyists" should it come to that. Part of the problem is that there are only 65,000 new H-1B visas available a year, and they generally run out very quickly.

    That appears to have been largely fixed for us Aussies:

    More than 10,000 Australians will have the chance to work in the United States each year under a new visa that eases restrictions on working in America.

    The special E-3 visa will allow 10,500 Australian professional or business people to temporarily work and live in the US - more than 10 times the current number.


    This is lifted from an article in the Age newspaper here about the new form of visa, which is only for Australians which has just been introduced. Given how supportive we've been of the US recently (for better or worse), it's nice to see that we really are getting something in return.

    They were saying on the radio that the visa will allow the spouse and children of the person with the visa to work in the US as well, and that the visa is good for six years, both of which are well in excess of what is allowed by the H-1B (which I believe is no working for family members, and only good for three years if I recall my research from earlier this year correctly).

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posted at: 03:07 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Profiling your code in mono

    Is it just me, or is profiling your code with 
    mono --profile
    incredibly slow. I'll present some metrics later when the damn thing has finished running on just how slow.

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posted at: 03:00 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Puppy excitement

    So, Spike the Labradoodle puppy just ate some water saving crystals (think the same stuff they put in diapers to absorb water). We got him X rayed and they think he'll be ok, but he's not allowed anything to eat or drink for the next 24 hours. A bit exciting for a little there...

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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.

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posted at: 00:45 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 10 May 2005


So, is this spam?

    There was an extended thread on the work research and development mailing list about hardware needs and the reliability of the hardware we currently run. Strangely, the reliability of the operating systems we run wasn't mentioned at all, and I suspect that some of the freezes we see are bad drivers at the very least. Anyways, one of the main contributors to the thread claimed at one point that the entire thread (except for his bits) are spam.

    So now someone else is forwarding his spam to the mailing list to prove otherwise.

    Anyone for a procmail script?

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


Regulator

    So, I needed to work out a tricky regular expression problem. What I wanted was a simple way to visualise what was going to match and what wasn't, so here's what I ended up with: 



      using System;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

class MainClass
{
	public static void Main(string[] args)
	{
		Console.WriteLine("Enter the line of text you would like to match on:");
		string line = Console.ReadLine();
		
		while(true)
		{
			Console.Write(">> ");
			string regex = Console.ReadLine();
			
			try
			{
				Regex re = new Regex(regex);
				Match mtch = re.Match(line);
				if(mtch.Success)
				{
					Console.WriteLine("Match: ");
					foreach(Group grp in mtch.Groups)
					{
						Console.WriteLine("\t" + grp.Value);
					}
				}
				else
				{
					Console.WriteLine("Didn't match");
				}
			}
			catch
			{
				Console.WriteLine("EXCEPTION");
			}
		}
	}
}


    Do as you will.

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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.

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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

    The linux.conf.au 2005 team (well, most of them) went out for dinner at the Rock Salt Cafe last night. Nice venue, nice people (except for a much up with spilling some food on an expensive jacket which they promised to correct), good food. It's not a very kid friendly venue, but that's ok as no one brought any children along. If you don't have kids and have some spare cash, I'd recommend giving it a try...

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posted at: 18:46 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sun, 08 May 2005


Dead IBM DeveloperWorks

    The IBM DeveloperWorks site has been dead for two days, which makes it kinda hard to get to the article I really want to read...


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


The greatest IRC chat evar! 

      (21:07:44) borius [~apa@h130n1fls31o806.telia.com] entered the room.
(21:07:53) borius: so what's this chan about?
(21:09:18) jedi: slug.org.au
(21:10:01) borius left the room.


    Yet another undoctored humorous blog post brought to you by cut and paste, GAIM, and my index finger.

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


New name

    I'm renaming openpdf to pdfomatic to resolve an unintended name clash with another project. Sorry for any confusion.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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.

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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

    So, I have a folder in liferea which is the Planet Linux Australia OPML. Now I'd like liferea up update the list of subscriptions in that folder from the OPML at http://planet.linux.org.au/opml.xml auto-magically.

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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.

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posted at: 03:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Looking for web form state management

    Imagine that I have a bunch of web forms that need to be wired up in varying ways depending on the task at hand. Assume that I want a generic engine which can take lists of these forms, call them in order, and then submit the information, probably using redirects a lot. Does something like this exist already?

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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.

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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.

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posted at: 23:54 | path: /phd | permanent link to this entry


Microsoft hiring foreigners because it's cheaper than locals?

    Sean, you make the assumption that Microsoft wants to hire foreigners because their cheaper than locals. I think that assumption is flawed. I suspect what they're wanting is a certain skill set their finding it hard to match with their own citizens. Just like Google. Just like the various Linux companies recruiting foreigners. Just like everyone else.

    That is all.

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posted at: 23:37 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


What the heck are you talking about?

    I just got this email... I thought I'd post the reply here as well, so that other people will know what I am muttering about too:

    Sir


    Hey! I'm a sir!

    What are you talking about.


    Well, I know that this is really an introduction to your other questions, but it's worth commenting on itself too. This site is a blog. A blog is a fancy schmancy web diary. It's my various thoughts for a given day, written down and on the web and published for all to see. I started doing this a long time ago as a form of lab notes, so I could remember how I did stuff previously when I need it again. It's a bit more general than that now, but that's still the underlying concept.

    What is scobleizer


    Robert Scoble, also known as the Scobelizer, is a Microsoft technology evangelist. He also happens to be a fairly famous blogger, and occasionally says things that I feel the need to respond to. You can find more about him on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble.

    What is engadget


    Engadget.com is a a technology news website.

    What is aggregate


    In a geological sense aggregation is the process of taking small rocks and forming them into a bigger rock. This often happens because of temperature, pressure, or super glue. Aggregation in a blogging webby sense is the process of taking content from lots of sites and joining it together. Lots of people run applications called aggregators which display only updates to web sites. It's much more convenient than checking hundreds of sites for updates yourself each day.

    Are these made up words? Who are you talking to and what is all this about.


    So, no, they're not made up words, but they are industry specific. Who am I talking to? My thousands of adoring fans of course. :) All of this is about communication, transparency, and being able to find information when you need it later.

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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.

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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.

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posted at: 05:04 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 03 May 2005


A productive day

    So, I spent the day working from home. I like working from home when I have lots that needs getting done because even with two small children floating around I find that I get a lot less distracted than I do when I am in the cubicle farm at work. I find my new position worse than the old one to be honest -- this might have something to do with it being in a corridor, next to the boss' office, which means that it's a high traffic area.

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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.

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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...

    Technorati tags for this post:

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.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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.

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posted at: 16:48 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Notice how all the organisers looked glassy eyed?

    Well, it turns out we all had the flu. I could hold posters up with what has been coming out of my sinuses the last couple of days. I have a theory that it's all Tim Potters fault, but I could be wrong.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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...

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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

    Hey Grant you could have said no to running the Open Computing in Government co-conference. I merely recommended you as a lean, mean, conference organisational machine. Thanks for doing such a good job though.

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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.

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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

    For a while the ABC has been podcasting Dr Karl's JJJ Science talk show... It's very cool. Now ABC radio national is considering podcasting some of their shows (the Science Show is very good for instance). Perhaps you should take the survey.

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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?

    I remember when Catherine and I got married. We were worried about paying for the wedding, making the flight to the honeymoon, and how on earth to pay for that house we had just bought. Apart from that the day is a blur.

    What was Pia Smith worried about? The fact that she'd lost all of her google foo, and needed to get started with a Pia Waugh as her new name. Pia, my gift to you is some of my google foo.

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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

    When I was in year 12, an disconcerting decade ago, I ran the year 12 revue theatrical thingie. Being young and fairly dump, I didn't delegate much to anyone, which was mainly a combination of trust (or lack thereof) and a commensurate lack of experience.

    It's interesting to look at LCA this year, where basically everything is delegated... I'm in fact not aware of anything that Steven is directly responsible for. He's more the connector who holds the rest of us together.

    It works well. The secret is to have a group of people you trust running the event, which is of course the hard part. I must say that Steven seems to have lucked out with the group of people he has helping him this year... There's no one on the committee I don't trust, and we all appear to be doing our jobs.

    Anyways, what's my point? Management lesson 101 -- find people to delegate to that you trust, and then delegate everything you possibly can. then sit back and take the glory like a good manager.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

    Michael Davies is excited about the kernel hacking tutorial at LCA... Hopefully he'll have done his homework:

    Please do some preparation if you are attending the Kernel Hacking Tutorial

    If you are planning on attending the Linux Kernel Hacking Tutorial, you will need to bring a laptop, which has been prepared with the source code, and emulator. These are available at http://linux.conf.au/kernel-tute/ . The preparation depends on some Linux experience: if you have trouble with the preparations, you will have even more trouble in the tutorial, so I suggest Rasmus' excellent session next door.

    If you have not done the preparation, we will not wait for you!

    So yes there is some homework, however this should make the tutorial more interesting and rewarding for you, if you do the preparation for the tutorial you will get a lot more out of the day. Anyone whining in the tutorial that they are not ready or do not know how to use 'make' will be ignored or possibly even made fun of (Rusty likes a good scapegoat for the easy humour points that can be accrued)


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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.

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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

    So, I've run out of LCA things to be stressed out about, so I've created some extra things to worry about. After the LCA early registration slot on Sunday (Manning Clarke Center 3pm to 5pm), I'm going to drive straight to Yass for the party. I'll be leaving Yass and coming back to the ANU via Burgmann College at around 11pm, which should get us into Canberra at about midnight.

    I'll be doing this in the LCA minibus, which seats 12 including the driver. If you'd like to scam a ride, then email me or give me a call on 0419 286 329.

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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.

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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.

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posted at: 14:26 | path: /linux | permanent link to this entry


GetOpt# 0.1

    I'm in need of something like getopt for C#, and couldn't find one Googling. getopt provides standard Unix style command line parsing, which is what this version does as well. This version is very simple and only implements the short version of command line options. I'll implement long command line options later...

    Here's a sample usage: 

      bool verbose = false;
string input = "";

if(args.Length == 0)
{
	Console.WriteLine("Usage: openpdfdescribe -v -i <input pdf>");
	return;
}
		
GetOpt options = new GetOpt(args, "vi:");
Arg a = options.NextArg();
while(a != null)
{
	switch(a.Flag)
	{
		case "-v":
			verbose = true;
			break;
			
		case "-i":
			input = a.Parameter;
			break;
					
		default:
			Console.WriteLine("Unknown command line option: " + a.Flag);
			Console.WriteLine("Usage: openpdfdescribe -v -i <input pdf>");
			return;
	}
	
	a = options.NextArg();
}
		
Console.WriteLine("Verbose = " + verbose);
Console.WriteLine("Input = " + input);


    This code is released under the terms of the GNU LGPL. You can download the code from here.

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posted at: 00:30 | path: /getopt | permanent link to this entry


Naming products

    Lindsay laments finding a good name for the Tremble product which is to be released in July.

      Aside...
      Research and development picked particularly crap product code names this time around to stop marketing types from using them in public. It clearly hasn't worked, but oh well. For example, Tremble is the new thin client, webby, works with any newish browser (got PNG support?), and is nice and funky and stuff. Yes, it even runs on a Mac. It uses my Web Service as it's access to TRIM, for which the first version the code name was War Room, and the version that Tremble relies on is called Muffley.

      In fact, the standard directory for use Web Service types to checkout Tremble / Muffley code to is Tremley.


    Anyways, she's lamenting product naming. The name we ended up with for the War Room code base was the "TRIM Connectivity Toolkit". Why? Well, we started off calling it the, get this, "TRIM Web Service". Radical I know... It turns out though, that explaining the differences between a Web Server, a Web Application, and a Web Service, all of which we now sell is too hard. I basically gave up, and Lindsay and I ended up sitting down one afternoon and brainstorming the best name we could think of. It's not perfect, but it's clear what it does, and is good enough.

    No someone just has to do the same thing for the Tremble code base. "TRIM Road Warrior Edition" anyone?

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posted at: 00:02 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 13 Apr 2005


app.config for mono

    In .NET on Windows, you can configure configuration information in an XML file called app.config, which lives in the same directory as the executable. In mono, use the filename .config. For example for a project I am working on at the moment, I have the following configuration file: 

      <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
<appSettings>
<add key="TraceMode" value="true" />
</appSettings>
</configuration>


    Which is in openpdfdescribe.exe.config. I use this with the following code: 

      internal static void TraceLine(string message)
{
	if(ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings["TraceMode"] == "true")
	{
		Console.WriteLine(message);	
	}
}


    Interestingly, us Visual Studio developers call this file app.config, but the IDE is actually renaming it to appname.config before running the application.

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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

    This article has to have headline of the headline of the century. Wife is having affair. Lover moves into the closet. Husband finds him cause he snores. Gets killed for his trouble.

    The immediate questions raised in the office by this:

    • If you're a lover in a closet, are you required to be naked the whole time?
    • Did he have a TV in the closet?
    • Did the affair start when the wife opened the closet looking for a shirt?


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


Openpdf 0.1

    Release early, release often! I'm pleased to present you all with version 0.1 of openpdf. What is openpdf? It's an opensource PDF parsing and generation library, written in C# using mono. This might sound familiar to some of you who know me well, as I wrote a set of PDF libraries a few years ago. Why are I reinventing the wheel? Well, openpdf really solves a different set of problems, is written in a different language, learns from all the mistakes I made along the way with Panda, and is written with parsing in mind, not just generation.

    So far, parsing is implemented, although it doesn't decode page descriptions, just the structure of the document. You can see the latest regression test results in the PDF database. Generation is not implemented yet at all.

    The ultimate goal is to write a PDF editor which is open source, runs well, and doesn't suck. I'd like to emphasis the doesn't suck a bit more. One of my current problems is that I don't have much free time to work on the project, so we'll have to see how we go. I'm more than happy to accept code contributions though.

    You can download the code from here:



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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

    I work for a Microsoft Windows ISV. They occasionally make fun of me for having a background in "real" operating systems. Apparently this photocopy has been on my cube wall for a week and a half and I haven't noticed until now...



    You need to click on the picture for a bigger version (which is quite big) to see the caption on the unicorn. It reads "The Last Unicle".

    Update: Apparently I missed the point, which is that mine is the last in a row of one person cubicles, or unicles. Oh well. Apparently the sign has also only been up since this morning, and I'm not going insane for not noticing before now...

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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?

    So, this post about hammertime got me wondering whatever happened to that guy I remember from year 7 socials. The answer? Well...

    "Hammer is now an evangelist, his shows now consist of prayer, preaching and gospel singing. He lives in a four-bedroom home in Northern California with his wife and 4 children."


    This description doesn't totally mesh with the Wikipedia write up for MC Hammer, which is really quite complete, but it's close enough to make me comfortable with it.

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


A mini-slashdotting

    There are a few images on my site that cause people to have a wild uncontrollable desire to deep link. One of them is a picture of a rose, which I don't actually think is my best work. Another is:



    A user of British celebrity gossip site found this photo last night and used it in a forum post. When I went to bed the machine was serving a copy of the picture per second, and has now served 10,336 copies with that referrer. That's the vast majority of the 10,949 requests for this file in the last week.

    Sure, it's not a slashdotting like a couple of Christmases ago to twinkle tux, but it's still an interesting lesson in why unlimited traffic hosting is a good thing.

    I should point out before it's too late that the picture is of my oldest son Andrew, and was taken on a hot day in the botanic gardens when Andrew was teething. He's chewing the bottle because it's cold and hard, a common criteria for teething kids. Please don't take my kids off me!

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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.

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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.

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


If I write a Gnome# application, am I tied to Gnome running platforms?

    For example, will the code still run on Windows if I ever feel that way inclined? Is there a port of the Gnome# namespace to Windows, or is it all already written in Gtk#, which runs there anyways?

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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?

    I'm playing more with mono in my free time at the moment, and now I want to build a C# user interface with Glade, as per Mono: A developer's notebook, unfortunately Debian has 12 billion glade packages. I'm currently installing glade-gnome-2. Is that the best one? What are my other options?

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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.

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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


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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...)

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posted at: 16:40 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wanted: PDF documents

    Have a way of generating PDF documents? I would be much appreciative if you could whip up a PDF document with your way, and email it to me. It's important that the document be something you own the copyright to, and be something which you're happy seeing on the web.

    I'm after donations to my PDF database so I can regression test some PDF code I'm working on. Lots of other PDF developers use this resource as well, so you're helping make PDF a better place for us all. Thanks.

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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?

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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

    If your .NET application doesn't catch a throw exception, then the exit code of the application will be 1. Otherwise, a normal termination is 0. This follows nice standard Unix semantics for such things. I wonder what happens on Windows?

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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?

    So, I'm working on some open source .NET code at the moment, and the next step is to add a suer interface to it. Now for my quandary. Do I use the microsoft widgets, which means that when running on Linux you need to use Wine, or do I use the GTK# widgets, which work on Windows, but need an extra installer?

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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.

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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.

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


Tue, 05 Apr 2005


Lost Pocket PC Active Sync license key

    Argh! I just noticed after rebuilding my laptop at work that the license key for Outlook on the little sticker on the back of the device has warn off! I'm clearly licensed, because I have the device. How do I get the number back?

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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...

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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.

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posted at: 14:39 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Chicken run

    I've spent the last couple of nights building a chicken run in the back yard. This was prompted mainly by a friend letting us know that they had too many chickens, and some of them being scheduled for execution. We figured we wanted some, and now I have to build something to house them. It's funny though, Andrew's favourite movie is chicken run, and his favourite food is chicken patties. He hasn't put two and two together and come up with the fact that he is personally eating the entire Canberra population of his favourite animal one at a time. With tomato sauce, carrots and beans.

    When we told him we were getting chickens, he said "and sauce carrots and beans"? So guess what we're naming them? That's right: Chicken; Sauce; Carrots; and Beans. Perhaps he'll be traumatised. Perhaps not. It was only when we reminded him about the movie that he realised there are alive chickens as well.

    When the chickens die or escape, I'm going to tell him they built a little plane and flew away to a life of luxury.

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


Internet outage

    Heya, if you're trying to contact me then I would ask you to be patient at the moment. Work has had a hardware failure which means the Internet connections are effectively off line (and have been since Monday). I am getting work and personal email, but only sporadically for work, and only when I'm at home. I'll reply to everything as soon as I can...

    To add to the fun, my ADSL home connection will probably go off line sometime on Thursday for a churn. Telstra isn't reliable enough here to know an exact date, but hopefully the outage will be small.

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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.

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posted at: 14:32 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Problems with feed when I increases it's size?

    Liferea seems to have problems with my syndication feeds since I increased the number of posts in the feeds to 100 from 20. Are other people seeing these problems? That will indicate to me if it's a bug in liferea, or blosxom. I suspect it's liferea, as the dates for the posts shouldn't have changed.

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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

    Ted sums it up I think:

    The way that I deal with this from a personal point of view is to remind myself that non-free is supported by Debian-the-organization, even if it is not formally "part of the Debian distribution". Semantic games, but unfortunately Debian seems to be more focused on flame wars about semantics than actually shipping code and documentation that meets the needs of its users.


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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.

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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.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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

    A few people have commented recently that I should blog about my procmail filtering rules. Basically, I subscribe to quite a few mailing lists, and have for a long time. I used to add a procmail rule for each list as I joined to filter the list traffic into a folder. I stopped doing that a year or two ago, and I now run these procmail rules: 

      ##########################################################################
# Mailman

:0:
* List-Id:.*<\/[^>]*
$MATCH

:0:
* List-Post: ]*
$MATCH

##########################################################################
# Majordomo lists (sometimes don't have <>'s around the address

:0:
* X-Mailing-List:.*<\/[^>]*
$MATCH

:0:
* X-Mailing-List:.*\/.*
$MATCH

##########################################################################
# Ezmlm

:0:
* Mailing-List: .* \/[^ ;]*
$MATCH


    These rules basically handle all mailman, ezmlm and majordomo lists I have encountered and filter them into a folder with the same name as the mailing list. Hopefully someone out there finds these useful as well.

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posted at: 20:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sorry for futzing with the RSS feed so much recently

    I want to get my RSS feed just right for some stuff I have lined up for a couple of weeks from now. To do that I needed RSS 2.0, enclosures, commenting, and more posts in my feed. All of that is done now and I think I'm pretty much ready to go... Sorry for any inconvenience.

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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.

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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.

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posted at: 01:58 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Open Computing in Government Co-Conference

    The best blog entry title of the week has to go to Grant for his announcement of some government stuff. The title? "Oz government gets a clue about Open Source"...

    And today, after much behind the scenes negotiating, I got the news that the Australian Government is finally ... after much promising ... going to release the official guide to how government departments should do open source. Everything from assessing its merits against proprietary software, through to comparing TCO, examples of previous open source projects, etc. What's even better, is they've agreed to do the launch at the conference! Cool!


    Go to his site to read more.

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posted at: 01:07 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 30 Mar 2005


Mature age students continued

    Lindsay comments further on mature age students from before. She complains that she has said 10% of what she wants to say, but has already consumed a third (ish) of her word limit. Lindsay, let's face it, you're a professional writer now. Your job is to crap on for ages about nothing in particular and sound interesting at the same time. If you couldn't we would have fired you, or sold your kidneys by now.

    Also, to put it in context, I didn't really complain about her not reading my blog. I more commented that I assumed she'd read something, because we all went through such a bloggy phase the other week. I'll now know that Lindsay isn't aware of what I've been recently ranting about.

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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.


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posted at: 15:51 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Most novel traffic jam cause goes to... Canberra!

    I was driving to work today down Canberra's most major arterial road, the Tuggeranong Parkway. From about five kilometres away I could see a big blue hot air balloon really close to the road. I initially did a double take to be honest, but it wasn't that out of place given that Canberra in March and April is the hot air balloon capital of the universe, and that the lake the balloonists like doing their thing over is only a few hundred meters away from the road.

    As I got closer, it became clear that the balloon was only off the road by about five meters, which isn't all that far when you consider that most of the cars going past it were doing about 110 kilometres an hour. The occupants of the balloon were frantically trying to pack up the balloon, which probably had something to do with the traffic, and something to do with the trees that the balloon was tangled in.

    On my side of the road, there was a traffic jam for about 200 meters when I was there. It was funny -- about ten meters after the balloon traffic cleared again. Apparently about ten minutes later when a work mate tried to drive through the traffic jam spread for more like the five kilometres I originally covered from my first sighting.

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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


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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...

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posted at: 02:10 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Tue, 29 Mar 2005


Planet

    I have to agree with Jamie on planet (an aggregator for the uninitiated), although I would use less strong language. I gave up when it kept insisting on UTC as a timezone format, and respected the time stamps of people who couldn't be trusted. Perhaps it could use the time it noticed a new post?

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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


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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

    Testing enclosures here. This MP3 is real cool and licensed under the Creative Commons. If I was to do a podcast, this would have to be the theme music. Consider it bagsied then. You can find out more about the song here.

    Update: The URL for the enclosure needs to be fully qualified to work in Liferea. I don't know about other aggregators...

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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.

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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


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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.

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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


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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


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


Photo tour of the abandoned Russian embassy in Thailand

    Via Boing Boing. A really quite interesting tour of an abandoned Russian embassy. Makes you wonder what they needed to remove from all the walls. Was it the Russians who did the removing, or the Americans?

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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.

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posted at: 13:22 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Welcome to my personal perl help desk

    So far Jeremy, Stewart and Steven have pointed me at opendir, readdir and closedir. I'm mildly surprised that perl does something as sensible as implementing the syscall interface I was already familiar with. That's cool.

    What's cooler is that I appear to have a band of perl helper monkeys at my command. Never again need I google while programming! Oh, and comment display now works because of their assistance.

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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?

    You might have noticed no comments are visible yet. I've actually got four to publish, but I'm just finishing off the display side of the system now (there was an afternoon nap that got in the way of that). Anyways, my current problem is that: 

      open FH, "ls /home/mikal/blog-comments/$path/$filename/ 2> /dev/null |" or die "Couldn't get a list of files";


    Is terribly inefficient and slow. Is there a faster way of getting a listing of a directory's contents in perl?

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posted at: 23:04 | path: /perl | permanent link to this entry


Comments turned on!

    Well, it's more that I've written code to implement them now. After listening to Robert Scoble's couch, I've finally gotten around to writing the code to implement comments here. I wrote custom code because the site is generated statically to help handle the load, and it was easier this way.

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posted at: 18:40 | path: /site | permanent link to this entry


Recursively make directories in perl

    I just whipped up the following function to recursively make directories in perl (much like mkdir -p), and thought I might need it again, so here it is: 

      sub rmkdir{
  my($tpath) = @_;
  my($dir, $accum);

  foreach $dir (split(/\//, $tpath)){
    $accum = "$accum$dir/";
    if($dir ne ""){
      if(! -d "$accum"){
	mkdir $accum;
      }
    }
  }
}


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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

    I'm glad that Hugh liked my talk on Blosxom. It was done at not a lot of notice, without hours and hours of preparation, and I didn't think it was one of my best. Anyways, hopefully other people liked it.

    When I get a chance (we have a four day weekend here, so hopefully soon), I'll write up a summary of what I said for each slide and put that on the Blosxom feed here. This post is a good example of where I would like to be able to have something in more than one category... I really should get around to writing that plug in.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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posted at: 03:11 | path: /dotnet | permanent link to this entry


Searching for a technorati search plug in for Mozilla Firefox

    I decided it was time for a technorati search plug in for Mozilla Firefox. So, I hit the "add more here" menu item in the search engine drop down, and looked for technorati... It didn't look good. The search results page gave me lots of helpful information:

      Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Host 'localhost' is blocked because of many connection errors. Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in /mozdev/sandbox/data/helm/htdoc/php/include/connect.h on line 22 Warning: mysql_select_db() [function.mysql-select-db]: Access denied for user: 'petejc@localhost' (Using password: NO) in /mozdev/sandbox/data/helm/htdoc/php/include/connect.h on line 24 Warning: mysql_select_db() [function.mysql-select-db]: A link to the server could not be established in /mozdev/sandbox/data/helm/htdoc/php/include/connect.h on line 24 Search results Here are the plug ins that match your query. Click on the plug in name to install. Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: Access denied for user: 'petejc@localhost' (Using password: NO) in /mozdev/sandbox/data/helm/htdoc/mycroft/www/functions.inc.php on line 69 Warning: mysql_query() [function.mysql-query]: A link to the server could not be established in /mozdev/sandbox/data/helm/htdoc/mycroft/www/functions.inc.php on line 69 Warning: mysql_num_rows(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /mozdev/sandbox/data/helm/htdoc/mycroft/www/functions.inc.php on line 70 Nothing found.


    As long as what I was wanting to do was debug the search result page. Luckily, I found one in the end. It seems to work just fine that you very much.

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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.

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posted at: 18:20 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Cubicle rearrangement

    So, in response to consistent complains from the product development team, and a desire to mix the developers and testers together instead of having them work on separate sides of a big wall (who thought that was a god idea?!?), we've had a cubicle rearrangement over the long weekend. Whilst we don't have conference calls, it will be interesting to see if the new layout results in a reduced noise level -- there is lots of roof height glass now.

    It should of course be noted that the main proponents of open plan cubicles happen to work in offices. Oh, and one of them loves speaker phone mode. At least he's in an office in the new building...

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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?

    I note that Jeremy is selling a new round of advertising for his blog. That makes me wonder what constitutes sufficient traffic to make one some sort of pundit. Jeremy claims 250,000 visitors a month, I'm going to break (all things being equal) 700,000 hits per month. How much traffic does Robert Scoble see?

    It's hard to tell with a medium like this whether one is actually being heard, or if one should just go an have a lie down instead.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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

    Well, I've just decommissioned the Sony VCR in the lounge room. We simply never use it now that we have a TiVo and a DVD player.

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posted at: 23:43 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


My sister, the unpainted hussy

    Jasmine, my somewhat genetically associated humanoid acquaintance, says she loves me. Or at least will pretend to for the right fee. Herm, I love my family.

    Sorry, she's just read the post and decided she now hates me. I'll inform you if there is any more up-to-the-minute journalism on my family available.

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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?

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posted at: 01:35 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 16 Mar 2005


TOWER Software OPML

    Here is an OPML file of all the TOWER Software related bloggers I am aware of...

    Update: apparently I work at TOWER as well... Also, I know some of these don't resolve externally, but they're there so that the TOWER people can see them...

    Technorati tags for this post:

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.

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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.

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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.

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posted at: 17:05 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Gartner recommends blogging over electronic content management

    This one is a bit of a surprise -- Gartner is recommending blogging over electronic content management. Why is this a surprise? Well, my understanding of the two technologies is that they're completely different. Blogging is about a personal or group diary, and keeping news out there. Electronic content management is about work flow for publication, archival, data discovery, non-repudiation, legislative requirements, and that kind of stuff. I could understand how someone who completely mis-understood electronic content management could come to this conclusion, but apart from that I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to say.

    I didn't get much sleep last night as one of the kids had what us Australians call gastro, but I believe the Americans amongst us call stomach flu. I'll try to find the time to read the Gartner report, assuming that it's part of the Gartner stuff we're already purchasing or something (Lindsay?).

    I'll get back to you when I have more to say.

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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.

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


Technorati porn tags

    Heh. For some quick followup action, checkout the excellent material available on the technorati porn tag. There are some very enterprising folk in the world...

    Checkout the related tags! 

      Tag: porn
253 posts from 46 blogs match this tag. (What's a Tag?)
Related Tags: free porn, Pics, fetish, Movies, Hardcore, amateur babes, Weird.


    And the boiler plate text! 

      What's all this? This page shows all kinds of goodies from the web about porn. To contribute, just make a post to your blog about porn and include the link below.


    I wonder if tagging is doomed in the same way that meta tags in HTML were?

    Technorati tags for this post:

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

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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.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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?

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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.

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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.

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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...

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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

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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?

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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...

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posted at: 15:58 | path: /blosxom | permanent link to this entry


Open Computing in Government

    Grant just sent me the following about the Open Computing in Government co-conference to linux.conf.au 2005, which is running on our mini-conf days. I think it deserves more publicity, so here we go:

      Open Computing in Government 2005 has two days packed with a great range of topics covering areas such as evolving best practices with open source software; new case studies revealing what's really being done in Government with open standards, open source, and open formats; and shared experiences amongst public sector IT, policy makers, IT officials, interest groups and industry servicing the government sphere.

      A highlight of this year's conference is the keynote presentation by Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Thawte and the Ubuntu project, and contributor to many, many more open source initiatives. Come and hear how open source led Mark to be the first African in space!

      Registrations are open at http://www.auug.org.au/events/2005/ocg.


    So go and register!

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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.

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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.

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


Simon needs to meet our account managers...

    Simon wonders who to give client feedback to. The short answer is that he needs to meet the account managers, which for the ACT are conveniently in the same building as us. They're the ones who can offer on site support, extra training, and general love.

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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?



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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.

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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.

    Technorati tags for this post:

posted at: 02:32 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Fri, 11 Mar 2005


Headache

    I've got a migraine, but I still managed to get some gardening done. Hobbies 1, broken brain 0.

    Technorati tags for this post:

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.

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posted at: 22:50 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


If you're a good admin monkey, then you can have one too

    Andrew has been a very good boy, and deserved some reward. I hope this does it:



    Don't you wanna host my site now?

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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.

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posted at: 19:47 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Yet more cubicle commentary

    In a further attempt to have a discussion with my work mates in the most public manner possible, Ian (my nominal boss, although we have very few bossly interactions) comments on my recent comments about my work.

    He does two things. First, he misinterprets the porn surfing at work comment. I haven't porn surfed at work, and I'm certainly not bored this week (heck, I've had two meetings this morning, and an off to my third in a second, how could I possibly be bored?). That was a "quote" from an interview candidate's blog which my mate at the security company had to deal with.

    Secondly, further cubicle commentary clarification is required. I didn't mean to imply that all of my coworkers interrupt me. There are a specific couple to blame, and I certainly wasn't thinking of Ian. Then again, it does sound like Ian has a guilty conscience here.

    Finally, it's ironic that our internal technical blogging isn't as lively as I had hoped. The external blogging about each other certainly seems to be hotting up. Perhaps there is hope for us after all.

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posted at: 17:03 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Revenge of the Mr Quinn

    Mr Quinn (who was sentenced to life imprisonment at TOWER Software, but then paroled for good behaviour) kindly replied and clarified his points about the post that Gordon tipped me off to from Mr Quinn 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.

    Basically he said that he wasn't implying that it was my flaw that causes the problems with cubicle land, he was merely prodding me to think further on the issue. I apologise for the misinterpretation, and stand corrected.

    I thought of another reason why Rory didn't get interrupted. He faced the oncoming traffic. That's not possible in our current cubicle setup, so people assume that if you're not talking to them you simply haven't noticed them, and therefore more loudness is justified.

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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...





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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.

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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...

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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.

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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

    Heh, an interesting side effect of this post is that I'm currently in the top two hits if you google for "IIS Porn". Rather disturbingly, the rest of the hits seem to be discussions on which web server (apache or IIS) is better for your porn hosting needs.

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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.

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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.

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posted at: 16:01 | path: /podcast | permanent link to this entry


I stand corrected on Mailman

    I commented on mailman the other day. Steven replied in email, which is really terribly bad form, as it means that I can't link to it. It was much less embarrassing for me however.

    Anyways, Steven says something along the lines of: 

      You can now days do quite a lot of things in mailman from email

Send an email to mailman-request@somerandomdomain.com with the subject help for example
and you will find out that stuff. Also admin messages about mail to approve
or disapproval can be replied to and managed that way from email (even in
bulk from my understanding)


    I stand corrected.

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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?

    Lindsay is pleased that Grant and I can help her out with Mailman (even though Mailman is a bit of a dog, it's _way_ better than listserv, which would have looked good in about 1870). The only thing that Mailman really lacks is an email admin interface so I can administer it offline, but hey, networks are pretty common, so I can live with that for now.

    But back to my point. Why is it so amazing when people are willing to help other people? It's really a fairly damning comment on our society.

    (Aside: what is it about Windows mail software which makes it so generally terrible?)

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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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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posted at: 03:11 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Mon, 28 Feb 2005


There's no other way to say it

    It's impossible to work in a cubicle. I don't think it's a weakness in my personality either -- it's gonna be pretty distracting when people walk into your cubicle every five minutes and want to talk to you. I know that they have work to do, and that talking to them is important, but there's no way with a cubicle to mark yourself as busy.

    What I really want is some way to say to people that I'm busy and they should email or IM me and I will get back to them when I have spare brain capacity.

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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

    As per Greg Low's post, there is now a mailing list for SQL Server 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, do the thing as per below: 

      Readify have now created SQLDownUnder - a discussion and knowledge-transfer forum for Aussie & Kiwi SQL Server professionals.

To subscribe to SQLDownUnder, send an email with "subscribe" in the subject line to sqldownunder@listserver.readify.net.


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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.

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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".

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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:



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posted at: 23:56 | path: /pictures | permanent link to this entry


Firefox bug

    Did you know if you have more tabs open in firefox than there is width on the screen to display the icons for, then you start to get some lovely paint bugs in the top right hand corner of the window. Kinda cool. I guess that means it might be time to do the annual tab cull.

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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...



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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

    So, it had to happen eventually... I bought a can of spam for lunch a few weeks ago, and we gave it a try in the office. It was a lot nicer once the smell had died down a couple of hours later. Join me, for my adventures with spam!



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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.

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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


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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!

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posted at: 17:31 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Information overload

    Darren Neimke comments on William Luu's thoughts on information overload. The thread goes something like:

      "I guess you could say the Robert Scoble is insane reading in excess of 1000 blogs."


    To which Darren says:

      "My response to a question such as this is... when do you suppose that Mr. Scoble does this activity? Does he do this on top of a job description which looks like yours or mine for example?"


    This is an interesting topic. Really what we're talking about is information overload... It used to be that I couldn't keep up with email. Interestingly that's not really the case any more. Now I just can't keep up with my blogs instead. How do I deal with this? A real quick scan through the changed items each morning (there are usually about 300), and then marking the interesting ones with a flag so I can come back to them later to actually read.

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posted at: 14:02 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Software lust

    Wow, I can't wait to get my hands on the new notepad.exe. Clearly it's one of the best pieces of software ever written, as shown by the user demand for it to be added to the list of editors for LCA people to register preferences for.

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posted at: 02:39 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Sat, 19 Feb 2005


Why Australia tops the piracy list

    Frank refers to Australia topping the TV piracy list. I would have to say that I think I understand why its happening -- we have crap TV here. For example, the Daily Show. I like the Daily Show. I want to watch it. In order to, I can either subscribe to Foxtel, watch CNN late a night, and hope they air it (they often bump it from the schedule if someone famous stubs their toe). This is only the international edition, which is a mish mash of the full US content.

    Or I could just download the show.

    People are downloading because they are presented with no legal way to get the content. I have hundreds of DVDs, so it's not like I'm too cheap to pay for content or something.

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posted at: 20:58 | path: /diary | permanent link to this entry


Andrew's SSH filtering causes me pain

    Andrew has mentioned recently that he is trying to mitigate SSH attacks he is experiencing. That's all fine and good, but I think I've found a bug: 
    foo@banana:~$ date
Sun Feb 20 14:29:52 EST 2005
foo@banana:~$ ssh mikal@anotherhost.net.au

foo@banana:~$ date
Sun Feb 20 14:30:43 EST 2005
foo@banana:~$ date
Sun Feb 20 14:31:49 EST 2005
foo@banana:~$ ssh mikal@anotherhost.net.au

foo@banana:~$ date
Sun Feb 20 14:32:28 EST 2005
foo@banana:~$ date
Sun Feb 20 14:41:04 EST 2005
foo@banana:~$ ssh mikal@anotherhost.net.au
The authenticity of host 'anotherhost.net.au (210.18.204.2)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is ...
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Warning: Permanently added 'anotherhost.net.au' (RSA) to the list of known hosts.
Password: 
The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
No mail.

Last login: Sun Feb 20 09:18:22 2005 from somehost.somewhere.com.au
foo@daedalus:~$


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


RDP entries closed!

    Thanks to all who made an entry in the LCA 2005 Regional Delegate Program. I've now collated the entries, and voting from the committee will start soon. We'll announce the winners as soon as we have them.

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posted at: 19:30 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Well, that solves that

    I got a very nice email from my recruiter in building 19 the other day which explained that I wasn't a good fit for the job they had at hand, and that I wouldn't be made an offer. This kinda defused the need for me to make a decision about whether I was willing to move to the US, and whether I wanted to work for Microsoft or not.

    Having never interviewed with an American firm before, I'm not really sure if "not a good fit" means:

    • Too stupid
    • Too weird
    • Something else sinister
    • ...or not a good fit


    I know I wasn't too expensive, because we never discussed money. Anyways, I've taken some time to put this up here because my own big purchase from the US was the flu, and I'm still playing with that and getting to know the full joy of ownership. When I'm feeling better I'll comment more. One aspect I think needs some commentary is that having read How would you move Mt Fuji? just after the interview, I think there were some fairly major difference between what the book discussed and reality.

    Am I disappointed? Not really. As I said before, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to move to the US at the moment. I guess I'll decide that one when an opportunity comes up...

    One last point. I wonder if the 5,000 vacant positions that Robert Scoble talks about are because Microsoft is incapable of recruiting anyone because of their process, or because there aren't enough skilled people. I guess Microsoft will never tell me what skills I lacked, so I'll never really be able to comment.

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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.

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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

    I'm about to leave the hotel to go off to the interview. It'll be 8am by the time I leave, which is a little earlier than I planned, but I hate being late for things, and I'm ready, so I may as well go now and read a book in the lobby or something. Am I nervous? No, not really. I have a good job with a great bunch of people back home, so it's not like I'm going to starve if nothing happens, and as mentioned before, I'm not sure if I would take a job if offered. We'll just have to wait and see.

    I'll let you know how things go...

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posted at: 07:51 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


Wed, 09 Feb 2005


In a holding pattern

    Well, basically another day lived. I spent the day before my interview (apparently they're called interview loops) remembering what virtual destructor are (I was asked in the phone interview but couldn't remember because I've been coding in c# for the last year or so), going to the mall for lunch, circuit city, the bookstore, and reading in my room. Basically a holding pattern and the first real relax I've had in a long time. Possibly since the kids were born?

    Anyways, now it's nearly dinner time. Tomorrow I figure I'll leave the hotel about 8:30 am. The practise drive took 15 minutes this morning using the route specified by the sat nav, so I figure double that to allow for traffic.

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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...

    I think it's because they're more exposed to it here. I can think of a few examples quite easily -- I've never stayed in a US hotel without free Internet access, that's still rare in Australia. The rental car has GPS navigation, that's unheard of in Australia. The front page of USA Today today mentions podcasting, which is something that I'm not even sure has hit prime time with bloggers yet.

    They just seem much more willing to embrace new technologies and run with them.

    (edit: Added tags)

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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.

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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

    Well, I'm sitting in the Linux Australia AGM on IRC. This is an interesting experience, as I feel like a bit of an outsider because of my decision to not stand for reelection to focus on LCA 2005.

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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...

    I really should be packing at the moment ready for my trip, but I'll write this first. There really is no point keeping it a secret any more, I think everyone knows anyways...

    On Wednesday I have an interview at Microsoft Seattle with the Visual Studio team.

    Will I take a job if they offer one? I honestly don't know. Microsoft simply isn't the company I grew up to hate all those years ago any more, and I think is trying hard to be a better corporate citizen. Do I want to move to the US? I don't know. Do I want to leave TOWER? No, but I don't know if I should grab an opportunity if one is presented.

    I guess we just wait and see...

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posted at: 02:58 | path: /diary/building19 | permanent link to this entry


I should try to make it to then 911 exhibit

    That Jeff mentions when I'm in Seattle this week. I have a lot of respect for the Smithsonian (he was an English man who never went to the US by the way), and have loved the stuff I have seen in Washington DC. I also suspect that as a foreigner I don't really understand the effect that 911 had on the American psyche, although some things are obvious. It's one of those things I think it's always worth learning more about.

    I have seen a small Smithsonian 911 exhibit before, out at the Dulles hangar in Washington DC they have this:



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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

    As Jason McC has suggested and Frank Arrigo had linked to, a new job has opened up for a developer evangelist here in Australia. Now, I wish Jason the best in his new role, and I quite like Frank, but I have one question after skimming the job description.

    Am I a non-favorable influencer, or not?

    Look at the goals for the job. One of them is: 

      Establish relationship with 10 influencers with at least 30% of non-MS favorable


    Perhaps I could offer to be more of less favorable to help people out with their quota if they would like...

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


Imaging concepts: Anti Aliasing

    Imagine that you are drawing a triangle across an image (or on the screen for that matter). The triangle is sometimes going to cross pixels in a way which makes them not totally turned on. Have a look at the figure below to see what I mean...



    If we only have a black and white image, then we'll end up with an image like the one in the figure below. I am sure you'll agree that this isn't a very good representation of the side of the triangle.



    Anti-aliasing is when we try to correct for this problem by inserting some gray pixels. In the figure below, we have given some of the pixels a gray value which is based on how much of the pixel is "filled" with the triangle.



    The triangle might be a little clearer without the grid lines.



    If you compare that with the triangle we started with above, then you can see the obvious difference.

    So, in summary, anti-aliasing is the process of turning on some extra gray scale pixels to improve the look of shapes we are drawing... Now, whether you actually like anti aliasing or not is another matter. A lot of people, especially those with LCD screens, complain that anti aliased text is "fuzzy" and hard to read. That's the reason you can turn anti aliasing off in more recent versions of Microsoft Windows.

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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...


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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

    I had a need to do this today, and thought I'd backup the code here... 

      using System;
using System.Reflection;

namespace DumpObject
{
	/// 
	/// An example of how to use .NET reflection to dump a list of all the properties of an object
	/// 
	class Class1
	{
		[STAThread]
		static void Main(string[] args)
		{
			// This is the DLL to grab the object from
			Assembly assembly = Assembly.LoadFrom (@"c:\t600\debug\trimsdknet.dll");

			// The object to grab, including namespace
			Type obj = assembly.GetType("TRIMSDK.PropertyDef", true, true);

			// Now iterate through the properties of that object
			foreach(PropertyInfo pinfo in obj.GetProperties())
			{
				// Output the type of the member, and it's name...
				Console.WriteLine(pinfo.PropertyType.FullName.ToString() + "\t\t\t" +
					pinfo.Name.ToString());
			}
		}
	}
}


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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.


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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

    Steve Rubel via Robert Scoble states:

      "What Microsoft needs to do here, Robert, is find non-geek influencers who will frequently evangelize the platform to others both offline and online. Microsoft should immediately identify 500 - 1000 influential business bloggers who are big thinkers and give them free Tablet PCs systems to use."


    He is of course right, but not entirely. Those people also need the compelling applications to demo to the people around them. And they don't need to all be bloggers either -- all tech vendors need a way of indentifying the influential in the community, and finding out what meets their needs, and then helping them help others. So, I propose that first Microsoft find 50 developers (perhaps individual people, perhaps companies), and give them tablets to write apps on. I know I'd take one.

    There's precedent here -- I know of companies who have been given hardware by Apple, and I know that Microsoft certainly gave away demo hardware for developers when Windows was younger.

    So, here's my proposal:

      Dear Santa Scoble,

      I've been a very good boy, and write quite a lot of code. I think you'd find I'm quite distracted by bright shiny objects, and would write less Linux specific code if I had a few devices to play on, learn about, and write compelling code for. I think I need a Tablet PC. Oh, and a Media Center. And a PocketPC with GPS (mine is too sucky to have GPS). I've got a SmartPhone, so don't worry about that unless it's better than an imate SmartPhone 2, which wouldn't be very hard.

      Coal will not be accepted.

      I'll be in Seattle next week, if that would make delivery easier.

      Love, Mikal


    Heh. I wonder if Microsoft even has a demo hardware budget these days? Does anyone?

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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?

    Some dude named Fred comments via Scoble's link blog that having more than one browser popular in the market place makes things hard for web site developers. The premise? That previously people could get away with supporting only Internet Explorer, and having people use Safari and Firefox means that now they have to do three times as much effort to develop a site which works well in each.

    There are a couple of flaws in this argument that I feel I should comment on:

    • There have been lots of browsers for a long time -- site readers for the vision impaired, mobile devices like Palms, PocketPCs and now Smart Phones, browsers on less common operating systems including MacOS, Linux, *BSD, various forms of kiosk machines.

    • Lots of people have sites which work in all browsers now -- they avoid gee whizz interface design, and design for function over form. Incidentally that means that vision impaired people, search engines, and humans have an easier time of using the site. I hate those car sites for instance which are one big flash animation. And those sites which use pop up windows. And those sites where I can't deep link. Argh!

    • Fred is describing fixing the symptoms not the problem -- if we need more gee whizz in our lives, then perhaps it's time for better standards and standards compliance. Thing of another example. How angry would you be is a new USB device didn't work with your tablet PC because it was only designed for PC 5.3.1? I'd be ropable.


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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

    Robert replies to concerns raised by the anti-nofollow crowd. I have to agree with Robert here... Isn't free speech about me saying what I want on my site? If I don't want a crawler to use my site to find your site, then that's my prerogative. I pay the hosting fees after all, and all of this is my intellectual property.

    Let's face it. There is a subset of the human race who cares way too much about this positions in search results.

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


Sun, 30 Jan 2005


Whereas I only reboot computers when I have to

    That includes Windows, and Linux boxes of various flavors. In fact, I'd love a way to be able to start Xinerama without restarting X if someone knows of one... I guess I'm just different from Mr Scoble. I would certainly say that most corporate computer users don't restart daily either. I would think that's only true of home users who don't want to pay for the extra electrons of a running machine their not using.

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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...

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posted at: 22:23 | path: /diary/lca2005 | permanent link to this entry


Technorati tag support for Blosxom

    This is my first Bloxsom plug in, it implements Technorati tag support.

    The basic format is that you use a string of the form [tags: <tags>] -- that gets over written with a bunch of tags HTML, as defined by your config.

    As a default, it also uses the elements of the blosxom path as tags as well, although specific directory names can be overridden (I use this to map my diary to the blog tag).

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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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