The evils of aggregation

The problem in aggregating all your feeds together is that you miss out on the wonderful artwork some people put into their blogs. Worse, cool skins like the latest on http://planet.gnome.org slip under the radar because I aggregate aggregators for display on my personal planet. The Planet GNOME page rocks. Simple as that.

Perhaps some sort of skin change notification is needed.

tech/GNOME | 31 May 2005 | #

Why I will never travel to Indonesia

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1378650.htm

Locked suitcases are now a must for travelling, and maybe even video tapping the contents before you leave. Something has to be done to stop this sort of stupidity.

tech/misc | 27 May 2005 | #

Rain

First rain at home since the end of March (and probably earlier). 10mm overnight and now spitting. We really are the dryest state in the dryest country.

tech/misc | 27 May 2005 | #

Krispy Kreme Konvenience

One thing that made the long trip home from DUD->ADL better was the discovery that Krispy Kreme have at least 2 outlets in Sydney airport.

No more flights through MEL or BNE for me :-)

tech/linux-australia/lca2006 | 24 May 2005 | #

Google Id

Some recent mismatches while looking for people - it appears Leon does the blues in addition to free software.

Rusty also does photography, Mikal has his fanboys in Illinois :-) but there's no mistaking AJ - has the whole front page of google to himself.

And in _my_ spare time, it appears I am a controversial catholic.

BTW, this all come about because a work colleague pointed out my newly improved google ranking, which which I'm very happy with right now.

tech/misc | 24 May 2005 | #

Ghosts of conference past

So tomorrow at 0540 the taxi arrives for Ghosts of conference past 2006. ADL->SYD->CHC->DUD. I arrive in Dunedin at 1950 or so, stay for 2 days and reverse the trip home. 2 days travelling, 2 days in meetings. Now that certainly is two-double-oh-sux.

But the travel will be worth it to see what Mike Beatty and his team have already organised for linux.conf.au 2006. I feel really privileged to be able to have a (small) hand in this great conference for the 3rd year in a row. LCA is one of my highlights of the year. Cool!

tech/linux-australia/lca2006 | 19 May 2005 | #

Pia muppet

Go you little Pia muppet.

For the uninitiated, this is an attempt to support one variant of Mikal madness.

tech/projects | 18 May 2005 | #

Dell I5K and Suspend

Good News! Ubuntu Hoary properly suspends shadowfax, my aging Dell Inspiron 5000.

That is, suspend to disk using ACPI works. Suspend to RAM hangs the machine still :-)

Thanks Ubuntu - much appreciated. Finally having suspend is great.

tech/projects | 17 May 2005 | #

incompetence

Incompetence is not a rare quality nowadays.

This is unfortunate.

tech/misc | 13 May 2005 | #

Sage - RSS Aggregation

Started using Sage, a plugin for Firefox, for RSS feed aggregation. That's only for my Windows desktop - under Linux I'm still deciding between Blam! and Liferea.

tech/windows | 11 May 2005 | #

RHEL Purchase

So a project I worked on about 4 years ago resurfaced in the past week - the customer needed a new deployment and wanted us to do it for them.

The install had been running on Red Hat 7.2, but given the lack of security updates I suggested we move it to the closest enterprise-supported equivalent - Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4.0

That's when the problems began.

Finding an Australian distributor that could get us the software in reasonable timeframe at a not-too-greatly-inflated price is not easy. Adding to that the slow approval mechanism of purchase requests and invoices, means that it's going to be the end of next week before I get the shrink-wrap in my hands.

If RHEL were freely downloadable I'd slurp a copy, and start validating our software while I waited for the shrink-wrap box. Alas it isn't, so my only choice is to go to a friendly local supplier who re-badge RHEL (following Red Hat's artwork removal guidelines to make it all legit) and use that while I wait for the "official" version to arrive.

Hoping to start the validation process tomorrow. In the mean-time, I'm testing our application against Hoary :-)

tech/linux | 11 May 2005 | #

LinuxSA Apr 2005 - LDAP Overview

Hi all,

Time for the LinuxSA May Meeting announcement...

The usual details:

  When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
          Tuesday, 17th May, 2005
  Where:  Senior Secondary Assessment Board
          of South Australia (SSABSA)
          Boardroom (1st floor)
          60 Greenhill Road
          Wayville SA
  Cost:   FREE
  Who:    Anyone and everyone.
          No pre-registration necessary.

Presentation:

  Matt Geddes will be giving an overview of LDAP directories under
  Linux:
  - what they are,
  - how they can be used, and
  - a bit on configuring the service and using administration tools.

  Matt enjoys having his Linux and Unix powered minion hordes do the
  bidding of both himself and his customers.

Pizza:

  After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
  Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).

For more information:

  Email:        organisers@linuxsa.org.au
  Web Page:     http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
  Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
  IRC:          #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net

tech/LinuxSA | 10 May 2005 | #

Police State

Seems the USA is about to become a police state - mandated nation ID with RFID. All the benefits of being able to control your citizens, with no chance of improving security.

As reported by Schneier, Miguel and rml.

Any bets on how long before Australians are similarly hoodwinked by a similar attempt at improving "security"? (better known as controlling your citizens). I'm just glad this wasn't attached to the AUSFTA as a condition of treaty or other similar misconception.

tech/misc | 10 May 2005 | #

Fair Use in Australia

In case you haven't seen it, Fair Use is finally on the agenda here in Australia.

This is something interested parties need to be vocal on - here's our chance to speak up and talk about things that are broken.

What things need fixing?

• Having the legal right to format-shift music from a music CD to an Apple iPod (especially important since you can't legally buy music for an iPod right now in Australia. Aside: Why then are Apple selling them if they don't expect people to illegally format-shirt their music collection onto these devices?)
• Having the legal right to time-shift broadcast content. I should be able to legally record a TV programme or radio broadcast for later viewing.
• Having the legal right to play a DVD on my Linux computer. This is sort-of format-shifting, but also delves into the area of DMCA-style obligations from the AUSFTA. I should be able to legally create and use a player to view my purchased content if one isn't readily available (i.e. create and use a media player to view my DVD under Linux)
• Having the legal right to backup content (i.e. backup my DVDs to protect them from accidental damage), not just have that right for only software.

Big important issues for all content consumers. Speak up now - copyright was last reviewed in a serious way in 1971.

tech/IP | 06 May 2005 | #

Bookmark Management

Started using del.icio.us today to do cross-computer bookmark management. I was sick of finding interesting things at work, and not being able to find them later at home. I could just do a link blog, but this way I can more easily share the love :)

tech/blog | 04 May 2005 | #

A Good Football Weekend

It was a nice football weekend - Norwood beat Port in the SANFL, the Crows hold on and win, and Port are humiliated.

tech/misc | 02 May 2005 | #

More linux.conf.au 2005 photos

Finally uploaded the remainder of my linux.conf.au 2005 photos - doubling the number of photos available online :-) Thanks Andrew for the bandwidth :-)

Find the second half of the conference here.

tech/linux-australia/lca2005 | 01 May 2005 | #

Platform Evolution

Edd comments on the need for platform evolution in GNOME. Whether you agree or disagree with Edd on this issue, the questions he asks are very important.

tech/GNOME | 01 May 2005 | #