stillhq.com : Mikal, a geek from Canberra living in Silicon Valley

Got Something to Say? The LCA 2013 CFP Opens Soon!

Sun, 20 May 2012 20:44:00 PST

The call for presentations opens on 1 June, which is only 11 days away! So if you're thinking of speaking at the conference (a presentation, tutorial, or miniconference), now would be a good time to start thinking about what you're going to say. While you're thinking, please spare a thought for our web team, who are bringing up the entire zookeepr instance so that the CFP will work properly.

We've been getting heaps of stuff done over the past few months. We've had a "ghosts" meeting (a meeting with former LCA directors), found conference and social venues, and are gearing up for the Call For Presentations.

We've signed a contract for the keynote venue, which I think you will all really enjoy. We have also locked in our booking for the lecture theatres, which is now working its way through the ANU process. For social events, we've got a great venue for the penguin dinner, and have shortlisted venues for the speakers' dinner and the professional delegates' networking session. We're taking a bit of extra time here because we want venues that are special, and not just the ones which first came to mind.

The ghosts meeting went really well and I think we learnt some important things. The LCA 2013 team is a bit unusual, because so many of us have been on a LCA core team before, but that gave us a chance to dig into things which deserved more attention and skip over the things which are self-evident. We want to take the opportunity in 2013 to have the most accessible, diverse and technically deep conference that we possibly can, and there was a lot of discussion around those issues. We've also had it drummed into us that communications with delegates is vitally important and you should expect our attempts to communicate to ramp up as the conference approaches.

I'm really excited about the progress we've made so far, and I feel like we're in a really good state right now. As always, please feel free to contact the LCA2013 team at contact@lca2013.linux.org.au if you have any questions.

Tags for this post: conference lca2013 cfp canonical
Related posts: Call for papers opens soon; Taking over a launch pad project; LCA 2006: CFP closes today; Slow git review uploads?; Further adventures with base images in OpenStack; Wow, qemu-img is fast; Reflecting on Essex; Are you in a LUG? Do you want some promotional materials for LCA 2013?; Announcement video; linux.conf.au Returns to Canberra in 2013; The next thing; Folsom Dev Summit sessions; Openstack compute node cleanup Comment

Catching Fire

Thu, 10 May 2012 04:55:00 PST

ISBN: 9781407109367
LibraryThing

This is the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy after the first book of the same name. This book is very similar to the first in terms of style, although I think the start is a lot slower. Once you plow through the first 150 pages or so the book rapidly improves though, and I was happy with where it went overall. Good teen fiction.

Tags for this post: book suzanne_collins combat hunting post_apocalypse hunger_games
Related posts: The Hunger Games; Death Bringer; Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow ; East of the Sun, West of the Moon; Canned hunting; Bolos 1: Honor of the Regiment; Iron Master; Cloud Warrior; Amtrak Wars; Earth Thunder; First Family; Emerald Sea; Body Armor: 2000; Without Warning; Blood River; Against the Tide; The Stars Must Wait; Bolos 2: The Unconquerable; There Will Be Dragons

Comment

Jupiter

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 19:37:00 PST

ISBN: 9780812579413
LibraryThing

This is the first book of Ben Bova's that I've read. Before that I've only read "The Nonmetallic Isaac or It's a Wonderful Life" in Foundation's Friends. I bought this book randomly because I had run out of things to read on a business trip, and I don't regret it. The book is well paced, interesting and fun to read. It also explores alien life in a way which is particularly believable (unlike many other SF books I encounter). This book reminds me of Dragon's Egg without being so hard-SFy. A very good book.

Tags for this post: book ben_bova alien aliens jupiter exploration religion
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Comment

The Hunger Games

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:04:00 PST

ISBN: 9780439023528
LibraryThing

I picked this up in the US really cheap because I had run out of books to read on this trip. This book is pretty heavily hyped at the moment, but that's also why I got the book for $6 at a book store, so I can't complain. The book is an easy read, and fun. Its obviously aimed at teenagers, but I don't mind teen fiction as a genre and I read this book in a little over a day. The story line is similar to The Survivor in Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow, but is distinct enough to not be plagiarism. I enjoyed this book.

Tags for this post: book suzanne_collins combat hunting post_apocalypse hunger_games
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Comment

The Android's Dream

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 13:48:00 PST

ISBN: 9780765348289
LibraryThing

This is a Scalzi book, so its clever and funny, and has possibly one of the best first sentences I have read ever. It is a light read, and I finished all of it apart from the last 50 pages or so on a single flight. Scalzi also plays again with the idea of transferring consciousness, which is something which he deals with a lot in the Old Man's War series. I liked this book.

Tags for this post: book john_scalzi genetic_engineering aliens
Related posts: Cyteen: The Vindication; East of the Sun, West of the Moon; The White Dragon; Runner; Cyteen: The Betrayal; Rendezvous With Rama; Logos Run; Emerald Sea; Nerilka's Story; Dragonsinger; There Is No Darkness; The Dolphins of Pern; Dragondrums; Dragonquest; The Renegades of Pern; Dragonsdawn; Cyteen: The Rebirth; Against the Tide; The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall; The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern; Dragonsong

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Logos Run

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 13:45:00 PST

ISBN: 0441015360
LibraryThing

This is the continuation from Runner, and continues the story of the attempt to re-enable the star gates. It has the comicly incompetent Technosociety once again, as well as series of genetically engineered protagonists. I am bothered by why the star gate power supplies cause people to fall ill -- you'd think in a highly advanced society capable of building star gates they might have spent some time on shielding. Or did the shielding somehow fail on all the power sources sometime over the thousands of years of decay? The has a disappointing ending, but was a fun read until then. I find it hard to suspend disbelief about how the AIs present themselves, but apart from that the book was solid. This one is probably not as good as the first.

Tags for this post: book william_c_dietz religion combat space_travel decay courier engineered_human genetic_engineering runner_series
Related posts: Runner; The Accidental Time Machine ; Rendezvous With Rama; Friday ; Cyteen: The Vindication; Battlefields Beyond Tomorrow ; East of the Sun, West of the Moon; The White Dragon; The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress; The Last Colony ; Zoe's Tale; The Ship Who Sang ; Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom; Cyteen: The Betrayal; Starbound; Patron saints; Buying Time; Marsbound; Red Mars; Emerald Sea; Snow Crash

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Folsom Dev Summit sessions

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:25:00 PST

I thought I should write up the dev summit sessions I am hosting now that the program is starting to look solid. This is mostly for my own benefit, so I have a solid understanding of where to start these sessions off. Both are short brainstorm sessions, so I am not intending to produce slide decks or anything like that. I just want to make sure there is something to kick discussion off.

Image caching, where to from here (nova hypervisors)

As of essex libvirt has an image cache to speed startup of new instances. This cache stores images direct from glance, as well as resized images. There is a periodic task which cleans up images in the cache which are no longer needed. The periodic task can also optionally detect images which have become corrupted on disk.

So first off, do we want to implement this for other hypervisors as well? As mentioned in a recent blog post I'd like to see the image cache manager become common code and have all the hypervisors deal with this in exactly the same manner -- that makes it easier to document, and means that on-call operations people don't need to determine what hypervisor a compute node is running before starting to debug. However, that requires the other hypervisor implementations to change how they stage images for instance startup, and I think it bears further discussion.

Additionally, the blueprint (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/nova/+spec/nova-image-cache-management) proposed that popular / strategic images could be pre-cached on compute nodes. Is this something we still want to do? What factors do we want to use for the reference implementation? I have a few ideas here that are listed in the blueprint, but most of them require talking to glance to implement. There is some hesitance in adding glance calls to a periodic task, because in a keystone'd implementation that would require an admin token in the nova configuration file. Is there a better way to do this, or is it ok to rely on glance in a periodic task?

Ops pain points (nova other)

Apart from my own ideas (better instance logging for example), I'm very interested in hearing from other people about what we can do to make nova easier for ops people to run. This is especially true for relatively easy to implement things we can get done in Folsom. This blueprint for deployer friendly configuration files is a good example of changes which don't look too hard to implement, but that would make the world a better place for opsen. There are many other examples of blueprints in this space, including:

What else can we be doing to make life better for opsen? I'm especially interested in getting people who actually run openstack in the wild into the room to tell us what is painful for them at the moment.

Tags for this post: openstack canonical folsom image_cache_management sre
Related posts: Reflecting on Essex; Further adventures with base images in OpenStack; Openstack compute node cleanup; Managing MySQL the Slack Way: How Google Deploys New MySQL Servers; I won a radio shark and headphones!; Conference Wireless not working yet?; Taking over a launch pad project; Off to the MySQL tutorials; Links from Rasmus' PHP talk; Got Something to Say? The LCA 2013 CFP Opens Soon!; MySQL Workbench; Slow git review uploads?; Thoughts on the first day of the MySQL user's conference; MySQL cluster stores in RAM!; Wow, qemu-img is fast; Registered for MySQL User Conference 2006; Are you in a LUG? Do you want some promotional materials for LCA 2013?; Announcement video; linux.conf.au Returns to Canberra in 2013; The next thing; MySQL Users Conference Comment

Reflecting on Essex

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:19:00 PST

This post is kind of long, and a little self indulgent. However, I really wanted to spend some time thinking about what I did for the Essex release cycle, and what I want to do for the Folsom release. I spent Essex mostly hacking on things in isolation, except for when Padraig Brady and I were hacking in a similar space. I'd like to collaborate more for Folsom, and I'm hoping talking about what I'm interested in doing in public might help with that.

I came relatively late to the Essex development cycle, having never even heard of OpenStack before joining Canonical. We can talk about how I'd worked in the cloud space for six years and yet wasn't aware of the open source implementations at some other time.

My initial introduction to OpenStack was being paged for compute nodes which were continually running out of disk. I googled around a bit and discovered that cached images for instances were never cleaned up (to start an instance, an image is fetched from glance, possibly has its format converted, is resized, and then an instance started with that resulting image, all those images were never being cleaned up). I filed bug 904532 as my absolute first interaction with the OpenStack community. Scott Moser kindly pointed me at the blueprint for how to actually fix the problem.

(Remind me if Phil Day comes to the OpenStack developer summit that I should sit down with him at some point and see how what close what was actually implemented got to what he wrote in that blueprint. I suspect we've still got a fair way to go, but I'll talk more about that later in this post).

This was a pivotal moment. I'd just spent the last six years writing python code to manage largish cloud clusters, and here was a bug which was hurting me in a python package intended to manage clusters very similar to those I had been running. I should just fix the bug, right?

It turns out that the OpenStack core developers are super easy to work with. I'd say that the code review process certainly feels like it was modelled on Google's but in general the code reviewers are nicer with their comments that what I'm used to. This makes it much easier to motivate yourself to go and spend some more time hacking that a deeply negative review would. I think Vish is especially worthy of a shout out as being an amazing person to work with. He's helpful, patient, and very smart.

In the end I wrote the image cache manager which ships in Essex. Its not perfect, but its a lot better than what came before, and its a good basis to build on. There is some remaining tech debt for image cache management which I intend to work on for Folsom. First off, the image cache only works for libvirt instances at the moment. I'd like to pull all the other hypervisors into line as best as possible. There are hooks in the virtualization driver for this, but no one has started this work as best as I am aware. To be completely honest I'd like to see the image cache manager become common code and have all the hypervisors deal with this in exactly the same manner -- that makes it easier to document, and means that on-call operations people don't need to determine what hypervisor a compute node is running before starting to debug. This is something I very much want to sit down with other nova developers and talk about at the summit.

The next step for image cache management is tracked in a very bare bones blueprint. The original blueprint envisaged that it would be desirable to pre-cache some images on all nodes. For example, a cloud host might want to offer slightly faster startup times for some images by ensuring they are pre-cached. I've been thinking about this a lot, and I can see other use cases here as well. For example, if you have mission critical instances and you wanted to tolerate a glance failure, then perhaps you want to pre-cache a class of images that serve those mission critical instances. The intention is to provide an interface and default implementation for the pre-caching logic, and then let users go wild working out their own requirements.

The hardest bit of the pre-caching will be reducing the interactions with glance I suspect. The current feeling is that calling glance from a periodic task is a bit scary, and has been actively avoided for Essex. This is especially true if Keystone is enabled, as the periodic task wont have an admin context unless we pull that from the config file. However, if you're trying to determine what images are mission critical, then you really need to talk to glance. I guess another option would be to have a table of such things in nova's database, but that feels wrong to me. We're going to have to talk about this bit more.

(It would be interesting as well to talk about the relative priority of instances as well. If a cluster is experiencing outages, then perhaps some customers would pay more to have their instances be the last killed off or something. Or perhaps I have instances which are less critical than others, so I want the cluster to degrade in an understood manner.)

That leads logically onto a scheduler change I would like to see. If I have a set of compute nodes I know already have the image for a given instance, shouldn't I prefer to start instances on those nodes instead of fetching the image to yet more compute nodes? In fact, if I already have a correctly resized COW base image for an instance on a given node, then it would make sense to run a new instance on that node as well. We need to be careful here, because you wouldn't want to run all of a given class of instance on a small set of compute nodes, but if the image was something like a default Ubuntu image, then it would make sense. I'd be interested in hearing what other people think of doing something like this.

Another thing I've tried to focus on for Essex is making OpenStack easier for operators to run. That started off relatively simply, by adding an option for log messages to specify what instance a message relates to. This means that when a user queries the state of their instance, the admin can now just grep for the instance UUID, and run from there. Its not perfect yet, in that not all messages use this functionality, but that's some tech debt that I will take on in Folsom. If you're a nova developer, then please pass instance= in your log messages where relevant!

This logging functionality isn't perfect, because if you only have the instance UUID in the method you're writing, it wont work. It expects full instance dicts because of the way the formatting code works. This is kind of ironic in that the default logging format only includes the UUID. In Folsom I'll also extend this code so that the right thing happens with UUIDs as well.

Another simple logging tweak I wrote is that tracebacks now have the time and instance included in them. This makes it much easier for admins to determine the context of a traceback in their logs. It should be noted that both of these changes was relatively trivial, but trivial things can often make it much easier for others.

There are two sessions at the Folsom dev summit talking about how to make OpenStack easier for operators to run. One was from me, and the other is from Duncan McGreggor. Neither has been accepted yet, but if I notice that Duncan's was accepted I'll drop mine. I'm very very interested in what operations staff feel is currently painful, because having something which is easy to scale and manage is vital to adoption. This is also the core of what I did at Google, and I feel I can make a real contribution here.

I know I've come relatively late to the OpenStack party, but there's heaps more to do here and I'm super enthused to be working on code that I can finally show people again.

Tags for this post: openstack canonical essex folsom image_cache_management sre
Related posts: Folsom Dev Summit sessions; Further adventures with base images in OpenStack; Openstack compute node cleanup; Managing MySQL the Slack Way: How Google Deploys New MySQL Servers; I won a radio shark and headphones!; Conference Wireless not working yet?; Taking over a launch pad project; Off to the MySQL tutorials; Links from Rasmus' PHP talk; Got Something to Say? The LCA 2013 CFP Opens Soon!; MySQL Workbench; Slow git review uploads?; Thoughts on the first day of the MySQL user's conference; MySQL cluster stores in RAM!; Wow, qemu-img is fast; Registered for MySQL User Conference 2006; Are you in a LUG? Do you want some promotional materials for LCA 2013?; Announcement video; linux.conf.au Returns to Canberra in 2013; The next thing; MySQL Users Conference Comment

Blathering for Tuesday, 03 April 2012

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:43:00 GMT

08:15: Mikal shared: The Secret History of OpenStack, the Free Cloud Software That's Changing Everything

Nice Wired article with some history of the OpenStack project.

Tags for this post: blather Comment RSS with no blather

Call for papers opens soon

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 20:45:00 PST

It's time to start thinking about your talk proposals, because the call for papers is only eight weeks away!

For the 2013 conference, the papers committee are going to be focusing on deep technical content, and things we think are going to really matter in the future -- that might range from freedom and privacy, to open source cloud systems, or energy efficient server farms of the future. However, the conference is to a large extent what the speakers make it -- if we receive many excellent submissions on a topic, then its sure to be represented at the conference.

The papers committee will be headed by the able combination of Michael Davies and Mary Gardiner, who have done an excellent job in previous years. They're currently working through the details of the call for papers announcement. I am telling you this now because I want speakers to have plenty of time to prepare for the submissions process, as I think that will produce the highest quality of submissions.

I also wanted to let you know the organising for linux.conf.au 2013 is progressing well. We're currently in the process of locking in all of our venue arrangements, so we will have some announcements about that soon. We've received our first venue contract to sign, which is for the keynote venue. It's exciting, but at the same time a good reminder that the conference is a big responsibility.

What would you like to see at the conference? I am sure there are things which are topical which I haven't thought of. Blog or tweet your thoughts (include the hashtag #lca2013 please), or email us at contact@lca2013.linux.org.au.

Tags for this post: conference lca2013 cfp canonical
Related posts: Got Something to Say? The LCA 2013 CFP Opens Soon!; Taking over a launch pad project; LCA 2006: CFP closes today; Slow git review uploads?; Further adventures with base images in OpenStack; Wow, qemu-img is fast; Reflecting on Essex; Are you in a LUG? Do you want some promotional materials for LCA 2013?; Announcement video; linux.conf.au Returns to Canberra in 2013; The next thing; Folsom Dev Summit sessions; Openstack compute node cleanup Comment

Memorial service details

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:41:00 PST

This is what will be published in the paper on Wednesday this week:

Robyn Barbara Boland
24 April 1948 - 30 March 2012

Dearly loved and cherished mother of
Catherine and Michael, Emily and Justin
Jonathan and Lynley, and Allister.
Proud Ma of Andrew and Matthew.

Robyn took Jesus' hand and
walked peacefully
into her Heavenly Father's arms.
She was a friend to all who met her.
Robyn will be deeply missed.

A celebration of Robyn's life will be held
at Woden Valley Alliance Church,
81 Namatjira Drive, Waramanga on
Tuesday, 10 April 2012 commencing at 1pm.

Tags for this post: health robyn liver funeral
Related posts: A further update on Robyn's health; RIP Robyn Boland; Doh...; Weekend update; Bigger improvements; Robyn's Health; More on Robyn; Update on Robyn from Catherine; Continued improvement; Small improvements Comment

RIP Robyn Boland

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 04:01:00 PST

Robyn Boland passed away at around 20:15 tonight in the intensive care ward at RPA in Sydney. Emily and Justin were there, and the other kids got there shortly after. We're all upset for obvious reasons, but we'll work it all out in time I am sure.

Tags for this post: health robyn liver sydney
Related posts: A further update on Robyn's health; Weekend update; Bigger improvements; Robyn's Health; More on Robyn; Update on Robyn from Catherine; Continued improvement; Small improvements; In Sydney!; In Sydney for the day; Planes at 600 meters!; Sydney next week; Getting ready to leave Sydney; What are we doing with the pets?; Slack talk at SLUG; Don't use Jetbus Sydney if you want to catch your flight; Travel details so far; In Sydney; Sydney 1, Mikal 1; Sydney redeems itself, if only a little; Google? Sydney? Comment

Update on Robyn from Catherine

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:40:00 PST

I apologize if there are factual inaccuracies in this post. It has been written with the best information I have available at the time.

Cat sent this update out to robyn-discuss last night, but I am reposting it here for those who aren't on the mailing list.

Mum is stable condition with no real change in her condition.
She spends some time awake but is still hard to wake.

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers we really
appreciate them. Below are some specific prayer requests:

- Mum will spend more time awake (so they can safely remove her
  breathing tube which is currently there just in case) 

- Mum's kidney function will improve (they are currently taking
  a hammering due to taking over from the liver) she is
  currently on dialysis.

- her liver function will improve so that she has a chance to
  recover either fully or at least enough to have a transplant.

Tags for this post: health robyn liver sydney
Related posts: A further update on Robyn's health; RIP Robyn Boland; Weekend update; Bigger improvements; Robyn's Health; More on Robyn; Continued improvement; Small improvements; In Sydney!; In Sydney for the day; Planes at 600 meters!; Sydney next week; Getting ready to leave Sydney; What are we doing with the pets?; Slack talk at SLUG; Don't use Jetbus Sydney if you want to catch your flight; Travel details so far; In Sydney; Sydney 1, Mikal 1; Sydney redeems itself, if only a little; Google? Sydney? Comment

Blathering for Wednesday, 28 March 2012

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:03:00 GMT

16:39: Mikal shared: Death of a data haven: cypherpunks, WikiLeaks, and the world's smallest nation

A data haven is "the information equivalent to a tax haven," a country that helps you evade other countries' rules on what you can and can't do with your bits. (Think "Swiss banking" for data.) The best-known example comes from Neal Stephenson's 1999 best-seller Cryptonomicon, whose heroes go up against murderous warlords, rapacious venture capitalists, and epic authorial digressions in their quest to bring untraceable communications to the masses and get rich in the process.

Tags for this post: blather Comment RSS with no blather

Weekend update

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 03:13:00 PST

I apologize if there are factual inaccuracies in this post. It has been written with the best information I have available at the time.

Robyn's blood test results are showing a slight decline in both liver and kidney function. She was awake for slightly longer periods this morning, but was back to being really sleepy this afternoon. Based on her ability to stay awake this morning they were talking about removing her breathing tube.

Robyn is still breathing on her own but she but they want the breathing tube to stay in place until she is more conscious and able to be roused. Disappointingly this afternoon she was back to being mostly un-responsive. Over all her condition is stable but she has a long way to go.

Tags for this post: health robyn liver sydney
Related posts: A further update on Robyn's health; RIP Robyn Boland; Bigger improvements; Robyn's Health; More on Robyn; Update on Robyn from Catherine; Continued improvement; Small improvements; In Sydney!; In Sydney for the day; Planes at 600 meters!; Sydney next week; Getting ready to leave Sydney; What are we doing with the pets?; Slack talk at SLUG; Don't use Jetbus Sydney if you want to catch your flight; Travel details so far; In Sydney; Sydney 1, Mikal 1; Sydney redeems itself, if only a little; Google? Sydney? Comment

Continued improvement

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 17:04:00 PST

I apologize if there are factual inaccuracies in this post. It has been written with the best information I have available at the time.

Here's the next status update. Robyn is awake for brief periods. She is on marginally less medication for her low blood pressure. Overall the ICU nurses say they are happy with how stable she is. It should be reinforced that she's still very ill and has a long way to go, but she has improved marginally.

Tags for this post: health robyn liver sydney
Related posts: A further update on Robyn's health; RIP Robyn Boland; Weekend update; Bigger improvements; Robyn's Health; More on Robyn; Update on Robyn from Catherine; Small improvements; In Sydney!; In Sydney for the day; Planes at 600 meters!; Sydney next week; Getting ready to leave Sydney; What are we doing with the pets?; Slack talk at SLUG; Don't use Jetbus Sydney if you want to catch your flight; Travel details so far; In Sydney; Sydney 1, Mikal 1; Sydney redeems itself, if only a little; Google? Sydney? Comment

Bigger improvements

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:48:00 PST

I apologize if there are factual inaccuracies in this post. It has been written with the best information I have available at the time.

Last night Robyn went for a CAT scan. That involved detaching her from dialysis. When she got back from the scan they didn't bother to connect her back up, and her kidneys seem to be coping on their own now. Since this morning she has also been breathing without assistance, which is also good. Robyn continues to respond to input which is also good.

Next steps are that Robyn needs to increase her blood pressure, her kidney function needs to improve, and her kidneys need to start producing urine again. The kids also need to decide at what point they're going to go back home, which is hard for them at the moment as they're all pretty tired. It seems that discussion will happen tomorrow sometime.

Tags for this post: health robyn liver sydney
Related posts: A further update on Robyn's health; RIP Robyn Boland; Weekend update; Robyn's Health; More on Robyn; Update on Robyn from Catherine; Continued improvement; Small improvements; In Sydney!; In Sydney for the day; Planes at 600 meters!; Sydney next week; Getting ready to leave Sydney; What are we doing with the pets?; Slack talk at SLUG; Don't use Jetbus Sydney if you want to catch your flight; Travel details so far; In Sydney; Sydney 1, Mikal 1; Sydney redeems itself, if only a little; Google? Sydney? Comment

Small improvements

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 17:14:00 PST

I apologize if there are factual inaccuracies in this post. It has been written with the best information I have available at the time.

I've just been told that Robyn has opened her eyes briefly and is responding more concretely to input than she was previously. Specifically she is squeezing people's hands in response to questions and moving her head around. This is more communicative than she's been for the last few days, so it seems small but it is still a move in the right direction.

Tags for this post: health robyn liver sydney
Related posts: A further update on Robyn's health; RIP Robyn Boland; Weekend update; Bigger improvements; Robyn's Health; More on Robyn; Update on Robyn from Catherine; Continued improvement; In Sydney!; In Sydney for the day; Planes at 600 meters!; Sydney next week; Getting ready to leave Sydney; What are we doing with the pets?; Slack talk at SLUG; Don't use Jetbus Sydney if you want to catch your flight; Travel details so far; In Sydney; Sydney 1, Mikal 1; Sydney redeems itself, if only a little; Google? Sydney? Comment

More on Robyn

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 19:44:00 PST

I apologize if there are factual inaccuracies in this post. It has been written with the best information I have available at the time.

I have just got off the phone with Robyn's kids at RPA. My understanding is that if Robyn's health doesn't improve they can no longer do a transplant. If she doesn't improve within a couple of days the doctors want to start talking about turning off life support.

Tags for this post: health robyn liver sydney
Related posts: A further update on Robyn's health; RIP Robyn Boland; Weekend update; Bigger improvements; Robyn's Health; Update on Robyn from Catherine; Continued improvement; Small improvements; In Sydney!; In Sydney for the day; Planes at 600 meters!; Sydney next week; Getting ready to leave Sydney; What are we doing with the pets?; Slack talk at SLUG; Don't use Jetbus Sydney if you want to catch your flight; Travel details so far; In Sydney; Sydney 1, Mikal 1; Sydney redeems itself, if only a little; Google? Sydney? Comment

Rage of a Demon King

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 15:58:00 PST

ISBN: 0006482988
HarperVoyager (1998), Paperback, 656 pages
LibraryThing

I've been reading this book for ages, but finished it last night. It feels a bit trivial to be writing this now, but I tend to read more when I am stressed, and I finished this while waiting for the kids to go to bed last night, so I may as well quickly write it up.

This book is the Kingdom war promised in Shadow of a Dark Queen and Rise of a Merchant Prince. I was a lot more comfortable with this book, because its mostly not about Roo wanting to shag every woman on the planet. In fact, a lot of people get their comeuppance, which is nice. However, heaps of people who don't deserve it also die. Its almost like a A Hymn Before Battle or Legion of the Damned, which are both books which stick in my mind as being ones where most everyone dies. Overall a good book, which a good ending which I think is a little rare for large scale combat novels.

Tags for this post: book raymond_e_feist midkemia combat crime fantasy sword_and_sorcery serpent_war
Related posts: Shadow of a Dark Queen; Rise of a Merchant Prince; Daughter of the Empire; The King's Buccaneer; Servant of the Empire; The Riftwar Series; Silverthorn; A Darkness at Sethanon; Mistress of the Empire; Prince of the Blood; Magician: Master; Magician: Apprentice; Raymond E Feist's Empire Trilogy; Polar City Blues; Dawnspell: The Bristling Wood; Caves of Steel; Currency; Tipping point: windscreen washers; You Can Be The Stainless Steel Rat; Belgarath the Sorcerer; The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat

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