Real-world use for MD5 Collisions

Practical implications of weak cryptography - Creating a rogue CA certificate. What does this mean? If this approach is generalised, you can't trust secure websites at all -> every single secure website may not be who you think they are, even if your browser happily presents the "little green tick". So who uses secure websites? ecommerce (Amazon, eBay, your bank), the tax office, many government departments, social networking portals, software update sites, software download sites. Scary, yes, but highlights the need to build seemlessly upgradable cryptographic software solutions - and we need to do this now before public confidence in our virtual world is eroded.

tech/code | 31 Dec 2008 | #

LinuxSA December 2008 - Christmas Dinner

  Hi all,

  As is the tradition, for the December meeting of LinuxSA we go
  somewhere for dinner (no meeting topic, no speaker).  Please register
  (see below) so we can let the restaurant know how many are coming.

  The important info:

    When:   6:30pm on Tuesday, 16th December, 2008

    Where:  Seacliff Beach Hotel
            http://www.seacliffbeachhotel.com.au/
            221 The Esplanade, Seacliff

    Who:    Any Linux-minded people who want to eat with us!

    RSVP:   ASAP (it'd be good to get numbers for the booking in the
            next couple of days)
            http://www.linuxsa.org.au/meetings/

  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 Dec 2008 | #

Apache blocking based on IPs

When will people start securing their Windows boxen? I've had to start blocking http connects based on IP address due to for a few servers around the place getting hit with buffer overruns aimed at Microsoft IIS. Sheesh.

Quick and easy guide to doing this here: Blocking Apache Attacks.

meta | 09 Dec 2008 | #

Python 3.0 released!

Python 3.0 is released into the wild. Download now...

tech/code/Python | 04 Dec 2008 | #

Meme #42

Following on from the lead of others,

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

Result: “Re vera, cara mea, mea nil refert.”

from Latin for all occasions (Beard).

(Interpretation is left as an exercise for the reader :-P)

tech/books | 14 Nov 2008 | #

LinuxSA November 2008 - Wesnoth: A Free Software Strategy Game

  Hi all,

  Time for the November meeting announcement (note that it's one week
  later than normal this month).

  The usual details:

   When:   6:30pm-8:30pm on Tuesday, 25th November, 2008
   Where:  Room G05/G06 Gerard Innovation Centre
           Prince Alfred College
           Capper Street, Kent Town SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   Rusty will be presenting on Wesnoth: A Free Software Strategy Game:

   Wesnoth is a fun strategy game for Linux, Windows and MacOS.  Rusty
   joined the development just after the 1.0 release; he'll demo the
   game, then talk about how he got started, a bit about the community
   and cover some of the improvements he made.

  Getting to the Venue:

   Prince Alfred College faces Dequetteville Terrace, but you need to
   enter from Capper Street, closer to The Parade West than to
   Dequetteville Terrace.  Parking is available on-street or maybe
   off-street (adjacent to the Sports Centre).  Look for the two storey
   stone fronted building with sign "Gerard Innovation Centre".  Enter
   through the double doors, first room on the right hand side of
   corridor (ground floor).  The external door automatically locks at
   night. Should it not be propped open please be ready to knock
   loudly.

   There are buses that go along Dequetteville Terrace, with a stop
   adjacent to Capper Street.  The 143, 145, and 146 buses leave from
   North Terrace, and the 141 and 142 buses leave from Currie Street
   and Grenfell street.

   If you are in the city, you could also catch the 99C bus to East
   Terrace, then take a 10-15 minute walk to the College.

  Pizza:

   After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Georgios (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 | 11 Nov 2008 | #

Mind Rot

Charles Petzold on Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?. For some reason I hadn't seen this before (Thanks Kevin for pointing it out). It raises some very important questions about code automation, programming productivity, maintainability, data driven software and the importance of naming things right. It's very interesting as an opinion piece circa-2005 for comparison against where we now are at 3 years later.

tech/code/C-Sharp | 27 Oct 2008 | #

What unit tests aren't

Andrew Bennetts comments on what a good unit test is not in this post and this followup.

Thanks for that.

tech/test | 24 Oct 2008 | #

LCA2009 Registartion

Have you registered for linux.conf.au 2009 yet? Get in now while the huge early bird discounts are active!

LCA - conference nirvana.

tech/linux-australia/lca2009 | 20 Oct 2008 | #

LinuxSA October 2008 - Building an Electric Car

  Hi all,

  Time for the October meeting announcement.

  The usual details:

   When:   6:30pm-8:30pm on Tuesday, 21st October, 2008 
   Where:  Room G05/G06 Gerard Innovation Centre
           Prince Alfred College
           Capper Street, Kent Town SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   David Rowe will be presenting on Building an Electric Car:

     Until recently I had never worked with anything over 5V and 1A or
     welded or held a spanner in anger. Building an Electric Vehicle
     (EV) has changed all that! Over the past 12 months I have taken a
     Daihatsu Charade and converted it to run purely on electricity.

     My Electric Charade is faster than the petrol version, has zero
     greenhouse emissions and costs a few cents a day to commute all
     over Adelaide.  Best of all my fuel is made right here in South
     Australia.  No more 80 million year old fossilised plant liquid
     from the Middle East for me!

     This presentation will talk about how I turned from geek to
     mechanic, how electric cars work, how much it costs, what it is
     like to drive, and even some business ideas based around EV
     conversions.

     David Rowe has 20 years experience in the development of DSP-based
     telephony and sat-com hardware/software.  David has a wide mix of
     skills including software, hardware, and project management
     including a PhD in DSP theory.  He has held executive level
     positions in the sat-com industry (www.dspace.com.au) and has built
     and successfully exited a small business (www.voicetronix.com).
     However he has decided he is better at debugging machines than
     people so currently chooses to hack telephony hardware and software
     full time.

  Getting to the Venue:

   Prince Alfred College faces Dequetteville Terrace, but you need to 
   enter from Capper Street.  Parking is available on-street or maybe
   off-street (adjacent to the Sports Centre).  Look for the two storey
   stone fronted building with sign "Gerard Innovation Centre".  Enter
   through the double doors, first room on the right hand side of
   corridor (ground floor).  The external door automatically locks at
   night. Should it not be propped open please be ready to knock
   loudly.

   There are buses that go along Dequetteville Terrace, with a stop
   adjacent to Capper Street.  The 143, 145, and 146 buses leave from
   North Terrace, and the 141 and 142 buses leave from Currie Street
   and Grenfell street.

   If you are in the city, you could also catch the 99C bus to East
   Terrace, then take a 10-15 minute walk to the College.

  Pizza:

   After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Georgios (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 | 13 Oct 2008 | # 


Python 2.6 released!

Awsome news!  Python 2.6 has been released! Here's a list of what's new.




tech/code/Python | 02 Oct 2008 | # 


Back running

Just finished my first 7km run in 3 weeks - everything feels good.  Awesome!




exercise | 01 Oct 2008 | # 


Photoshoot September 2008



 

Out on a photoshoot with Adam, a fellow Canon DSLR affectionado.  We met before dawn and walked through the eastern side of the Adelaide parklands, discovering many wonders and treasures.

Surprisingly, I was only a little jealous of his new 50mm f/1.4 :-)

Also of note, this week I started a new photoblog, Learning To See, in an attempt to force me to keep shooting regularly.

 




photos | 27 Sep 2008 | # 


A hard week

Last week was pretty hard.  All was going well until Thursday when things turned pear-shaped - I was completely out of my depth with the unexpected news.

It's times like these when you think about life, your loved ones, and what's most important to you.  Priorities become very clear at times like these, and you find out how wonderful your friends are.  I have been so blessed by the love and support I've received by good friends.

Thank you for supporting me and my family, and thank you for your kind words, thoughts and prayers.



tech/misc | 15 Sep 2008 | # 


Google Chrome

Google Chrome sounds awesome!

Launching tonight.




industry | 02 Sep 2008 | # 


Corporate Cup 2008 - Day 1

Today was the first day of the Adelaide Corporate Cup - which means running 7km every Wednesday fortnight for 7 fortnights.

The weather wasn't kind.

Adelaide: Showers. Small hail and possible thunder developing during the afternoon. Cold with fresh southwest winds.  Maximum: 13C.

But thanks to the humourous conversation with Trev it all went well.  A slow run but understandably so given that it was so cold and we were completely drenched through.

Squish, squish, squish.




exercise | 06 Aug 2008 | # 


Le Tour 2008

Well, Le Tour de France 2008 is coming to a close this weekend, and I've really enjoyed following it seriously this year for the first time.

This year's tour has almost convinced me to enter Amy's Ride or the Tour Down Under's Challenge Tour.  Running might be enough pain for me for now, but we shall see.

But can Australia's own Cadel Evans overcome the 1:34 deficit and take victory via Stage 20 (aka the 53km time trial) on Saturday night?  Hope so - it's been great to watch, although the late nights combined with the early morning starts have been a killer :-)



exercise | 25 Jul 2008 | # 


LCA2009 CFP Closing Soon

So, you contribute to Open-Source?  Got something to say?  Want to recruit others to your project?  Want to spread the word about cool stuff?  Looking for recognition for your contribution?  Then you should consider responding to the Call For Presentations for linux.conf.au 2009!

Submissions close in about a fortnight, so you need to get your skates on and read up on making a submission, and then submit your proposal.  You won't regret it - being a speaker at linux.conf.au is very worthwhile :-)

linux.conf.au 2009 - Monday January 19 to Saturday January 24, 2009 - the conference you want to go (and be a speaker at if you've got the stuff to say!)



tech/linux-australia/lca2009 | 24 Jul 2008 | # 


LinuxSA August 2008 - Interesting stuff to do with MySQL and Drizzle
  Hi all,

  Time for the August meeting announcement.  Note that everything has
  changed: date, time, and location...

  Arjen Lentz is in town for the SAGE-AU conference, so we're going to
  run the meeting one week earlier than usual so we can fit him in.

  Ian Pilkington has organised for space at Prince Alfred College
  (Dequetteville Terrace, Kent Town) for us to meet at (thanks Ian!).
  Car parking should be easier than EXCOM, and it's not far from the
  city.  There are buses that go from the Adelaide train station to
  right outside PAC for people who were training it into town.

  And, we're going to try a 6:30pm start this time.  The start times
  people wanted ranged from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, so there's no way we're
  going to make everybody happy, but 6:30pm seems like a reasonable
  compromise of balancing too-early vs. too-late.

  The usual details:

   When:   6:30pm-8:30pm on Tuesday, 12th August, 2008
   Where:  Room G05/G06 Gerard Innovation Centre
           Prince Alfred College
           Capper Street, Kent Town SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   Arjen Lentz was employee #25 at MySQL AB (2001-2007), and then
   founded Open Query in September 2007 which focuses on modular MySQL
   training (developed in-house) and consulting in the Australia and
   New Zealand region.  Arjen also co-authored the 2nd edition of the
   new O'Reilly High Performance MySQL book.  Originally he was a C
   programmer, with coding experience going back to the early 80s.  In
   his spare time, Arjen likes to cook, walk, read, grow herbs/veggies,
   and explore RepRap.

   Arjen will be talking about interesting stuff to do with MySQL and
   Drizzle.

  Getting to the Venue:

   Prince Alfred College faces Dequetteville Terrace, but you need to
   enter from Capper Street.  Parking is available on-street or maybe
   off-street (adjacent to the Sports Centre).  Look for the two storey
   stone fronted building with sign "Gerard Innovation Centre".  Enter
   through the double doors, first room on the right hand side of
   corridor (ground floor).  The external door automatically locks at
   night. Should it not be propped open please be ready to knock
   loudly.

   There are buses that go along Dequetteville Terrace, with a stop
   adjacent to Capper Street.  The 143, 145, and 146 buses leave from
   North Terrace, and the 141 and 142 buses leave from Currie Street
   and Grenfell street.

   If you are in the city, you could also catch the 99C bus to East
   Terrace, then take a 10-15 minute walk to the College.

  Pizza:

   After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Georgios (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 | 24 Jul 2008 | # 


LinuxSA July 2008 - Linux & FOSS Adoption: A case study, road map and story
  Hi all,

  Time for the July meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm on Tuesday, 15th July, 2008
   Where:  EXCOM Education
           Ground Floor
           191 Pulteney Street
           Adelaide SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   Piers Rowan will be giving a talk on "Linux & FOSS Adoption: A case
   study, road map and story":

   Many people use Linux as their preferred desktop. Many web sites
   are hosted on Linux. But why would a "run of the mill" business
   adopt Linux across desktops and servers alike?

   Just over two short years ago Extrastaff had two offices with a
   dependency on Windows systems for desktops and servers. Today
   Extrastaff has nearly 10 offices in two countries and a big part of
   this growth has been partly due to Linux and FOSS. Any business can
   benefit from the lessons learned in this process.

   This presentation will cover the various stages of the process,
   including:

   * The background decisions and objections
   * How to talk to management about adoption issues
   * Change management from the user perspective
   * Roll your own: making your own rules & a point of difference with
     your customers
   * Making the System Administrator's job easier
   * What went wrong, what to do when things go wrong
   * Capturing innovation

   The areas which Extrastaff uses Linux & FOSS

   * Desktops
   * Internet Kiosks 
   * CRM
   * Web site hosting
   * Candidate management
   * Document storage
   * Domain controllers
   * Content filtering
   * Email / Webmail / etc
   * Payroll
   * Billing system
   * Messaging Services

   The presentation is aimed at being interesting to everyone
   interested in Linux, and also owners and managers who would like to
   hear about how they can benefit from this excellent business tool.

   About Piers Rowan:

   I am a Director and shareholder in Extrastaff Recruitment.
   Extrastaff is a 2nd generation family business which my brother and
   I purchased a little over two years ago. Previous to holding this
   position I was split between the roles of Marketing & IT Management.
   Coming from the technical side I am always keen to tinker and get
   something up and running and having the marketing background means
   that I am always focused on what benefit the tinkering will have on
   the customer or business.

   I have been using/breaking computers since the ZX Spectrum and did
   my time in the Windows 98 trenches. I'm running Ubuntu at the moment
   but have used Fedora on my laptops quite a bit. For servers I've
   used Red Hat 9.0, CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora and the occasional Solaris
   and BSD. Most of my "productive" time is spent writing software that
   is critical to my business. I first started using Linux in 1999.

  Pizza:

   We'll order in pizza to have at EXCOM after the presentation.  Bring
   $8 if you are hungry.

  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 Jul 2008 | # 


Very Sad

It's a very sad situation when whinging leads to other people asking for their feed to be removed from ploa.

Think before you post.  The world is listening.




tech/linux-australia | 10 Jul 2008 | # 


ploa poll on which Mikal feed to use :-)

To answer one of life's toughest questions - Should ploa use Mikal's blather or non-blather feed? ploa is now running an on-line poll :-)

Vote now!

[Aside: I'm using yourfreepoll because it's the first one I found when googling - but be warned, there's a google ad over there so if you're sensitive to such things don't go there]



tech/linux-australia | 04 Jul 2008 | # 


NextGen Broadband delivery in Australia

Great article about the Australian government paying for fiber installation - asking the question whether it is good stewardship for the government spend $4.7 billion to deliver a slower than ADSL2+ broadband solution that will cost consumers more than they pay for ADSL2+ today, and in the process giving Telstra another monopoloistic position - http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/FTTN---piracy-and-porn-G7SM4?OpenDocument

Can we have some common sense, please?




tech | 04 Jul 2008 | # 


Perl's CGI is broken

  use strict;
  use warnings;
  use CGI;
  use Test::More qw( no_plan );

  my $cgi = new CGI;

  $cgi->param('foobar', 6);
  ok( $cgi->param("foobar") eq '6', "6 is a magical number" );

  $cgi->param('foobar', 4);
  ok( $cgi->param("foobar") eq '4', "And 4 is a favourite" );

  my %hash = ( "random_key" => '13' );

  $cgi->param('foobar', $hash{'randomKey'} );
  ok( $cgi->param("foobar") eq '13',
      "but a simple typo in a hash key shouldn't be so hard to find" ); # Fail
  ok( $cgi->param("foobar") eq '4',
      "so it hasn't changed but there's no complaint" );

  $cgi->param('foobar', $hash{'random_key'} );
  ok( $cgi->param("foobar") eq '13', "The key is to get the key right :-)" );


What sort of deranged API silently ignores calling a setter with an undef?  Surely a warning or exception could have been thrown?  Or perhaps setting the value to undef, or to the empty string, or even "You messed up, Idiot!".  But quietly swallowing the error and leaving the value unchanged is really bad form.

This sort of thing doesn't rate well on Rusty's API design advice: How Do I Make This Hard to Misuse?.  Grrr.





tech/code/Perl | 20 Jun 2008 | # 


Zookeepr - Hearding the Elephants

Awesome! - Zookeepr is seeing some open-development lovin'.




tech/linux-australia/lca2009 | 16 Jun 2008 | # 


LinuxSA June 2008 - Open Street Map (OSM)
  Hi all,

  Time for the June meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm on Tuesday, 17th June, 2008
   Where:  EXCOM Education
           Ground Floor
           191 Pulteney Street
           Adelaide SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   Adrian Billiau will be giving a talk on Open Street Map (OSM), a
   free editable map of the whole world, made by people like you.

   The presentation will include:
   - about the OSM project
   - tools used by the project
   - advice on contributing, collecting data, uploading data, and using
     JavaOSM
   - a demonstration

   Adrian is a 3rd year Surveying student at the University of South
   Australia.

  Pizza:

   We'll order in pizza to have at EXCOM after the presentation.  Bring
   $8 if you are hungry.

  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 | 11 Jun 2008 | # 


The Barossa Half

Today I was able to tick off another *huge* life goal - completing the Barossa Half Marathon in Tanunda, SA - I wish I knew ahead of time about that hill that I had to run up 3 times!  Ouch - they didn't provide an elevation guide online.  Despite that it was a perfect day out - cloudy, overcast, not too hot, with friendly country folk running the event.  And what was a wonderful surprise was being able to complete the event in 1:59:50 - just shy of the magical 2 hour mark.

The scary thing is the next tick.  I'm not sure my knees and ankles will allow what my mind wants to do :)






Update:Thanks Stoyan for the photo :-)



exercise | 27 May 2008 | # 


LinuxSA May 2008 - LinuxMCE
  Hi all,

  Time for the May meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm on Tuesday, 20th May, 2008
   Where:  EXCOM Education
           Ground Floor
           191 Pulteney Street
           Adelaide SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   David Wolverton will be giving a talk on LinuxMCE.  LinuxMCE is a
   free, open source add-on to Kubuntu including a 10' UI, complete
   whole-house media solution with PVR + distributed media, and the
   most advanced smarthome solution available. It is stable, easy to
   use, and requires no knowledge of Linux and only basic computer
   skills.

  Pizza:

   We'll order in pizza to have at EXCOM after the presentation.  Bring
   $8 if you are hungry.

  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






 | 15 May 2008 | # 


LinuxSA April 2008 - One Laptop Per Child
  Hi all,

  Time for the April meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm on Tuesday, 15th April, 2008 
   Where:  EXCOM Education
           Ground Floor
           191 Pulteney Street
           Adelaide SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   Joel Stanley will be talking about his Adventures working for OLPC:
   baking laptops in a pie warmer, an impromptu weekend trip to
   Romania, being interviewed by Red Symons and making the front page
   of Slashdot.  After the talk there will be XO's for all to play with
   -- the best way to get a feel for the collaborative software they
   run.

   Joel is an undergraduate Computer System Engineering student at the
   University of Adelaide. He has a passion for microelectronics,
   embedded systems, open source software and cool toys.  In 2007, he
   spent 10 weeks working for One Laptop per Child (OLPC --
   wiki.laptop.org) at their offices on MIT's campus in Cambridge,
   Massachusetts.

  Pizza:

   We'll order in pizza to have at EXCOM after the presentation.

  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 | 09 Apr 2008 | # 


No going back

Well, there's no going back now - I went and registered for the Barossa Half Marathon today.  47 days to go.  Can someone tell me why I'm doing this to myself? :-)





exercise | 07 Apr 2008 | # 


LinuxSA March 2008 - Games games games!
  Hi all,

  Time for the March meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday).  Please
  note that the venue has changed.

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm on Tuesday, 18th March, 2008
   Where:  EXCOM Education
           Ground Floor
           191 Pulteney Street
           Adelaide SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   Tim Ansell will be talking about Games, Games, Games!:

   Come and find out about some of the cool and interesting things that
   are happening with FOSS and computer games. Including but not
   limited to, commercial game companies dirty secrets, FOSS games  
   which are better than commercial games and how FOSS gaming is the
   final step to taking over the world.

   Tim is an avid FOSS game developer, founding the Thousand Parsec
   project 7 years ago in 2001. Originally getting involved in FOSS
   development via a game project called WorldForge, he now believes
   that games are a very important part of the FOSS ecosystem.

   Tim has given talks about FOSS gaming at a number of conferences and
   organised the Gaming Miniconf at Linux.conf.au 2007 and 2008.

  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 | 12 Mar 2008 | # 


The Ghosts of Conference Past, 2009

This past weekend was The Ghosts of Conference Past meeting at the location of linux.conf.au 2009 in Hobart, Tasmania.  For me it was a chance to meet with Ben Powell and Leah Duncan, the lead organisers of next year's conference, along with the rest of their team - Garry, Josh "A", Josh "B", Michael E, Kevin and John  (I think I got that all right).



Boy!  Was it a busy weekend!  I flew in on Thursday night, and was met by Michael E at the airport, and took me off to the hotel - via Mt Wellington.  If you ever get some free time in Hobart, it's worth having a look.  I hear that there's running and cycing tracks leading up the mountain - something some of our regular LCAers might indeed be interested in doing come next January.



The rest of the crowd came in late that night, but I had already hit the sack.  Next morning over breakfast the postmortem of Melbourne's conference began - with lots of reminiscing of all the fun we had only a few months ago.

We then met with Ben and Leah and the crew for a facilities tour around University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay where the conference proper will be held.  The usual checking out of keynote venue, lecture theatres, tutorial rooms, "secret conference business" rooms, eateries, networking points etc etc etc was had, along with the unravelling of some of the wonderful secret plans lca2009 will hold for us.



After that it was onto accommodation of various grades and costs, walking between the various options to trial run what it will be like in January.  We then had some lunch and time to get to know the Tassie team a little better and to start dumping conference knowledge to the team.   We continued face to face discussions all afternoon that then continued into the night over food and a few drinks, making for a tired Michael at the end.

The alarm clock rang far too early on Saturday morning for my liking, although it was entirely necessary as we had an early start - lots to get through on the agenda.  Breakfast with the other ghosts was highlighted by Steve's talk of deep frying baby ducks, and Donna's excessive coffee consumption.



Saturday was an all-day meeting as we went through the conference line item by line item, with plenty of hints, tricks and tips from previous conference organisers.  We talked through things that worked well in the past, things that bombed, and encouraged the Hobart team as they shared some of their plans.  By Saturday night we all were simply exhausted - we broke off into a couple of groups with some heading out for curry and Open Day discussions, while others stayed at the hotel and called it a night early on.  Both the curry and the conversation was flavoursome, leaving our brains and bellys full.

Sunday was rinse, lather, repeat with more face to face meetings, followed by looking at more venue options.  After that it was off to the airport for the trip home, via Melbourne.  I slept on both flights, only waking up as the aircrew prepared for landing.  An exhausting weekend with little sleep, but a very exciting time seeing what lca2009 will bring - hopefully the weekend helped the Hobart team in their preparation to bring us one fantastic conference in January 2009.



tech/linux-australia/lca2009 | 11 Mar 2008 | # 


LinuxSA February 2008 - The Winter of my Disconnect - Operating Autonomously in an ever more connected world
  Hi all,

  Time for the February meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 19th February, 2008
   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:

   Mike Taht will be talking about "The Winter of my Disconnect -
   Operating Autonomously in an ever more connected world".

   Mike Taht has worn all sorts of hats in the computer industry - he's
   been a systems programmer, system administrator, oil boy, serial
   entrepreneur (co-founding an ISP in 1994), database programmer
   inside Borland and Sybase, embedded Linux hacker for places like
   Montavista and Timesys, voip dude (various), and works on the Linux
   DAW, ardour.org, in what remains of his spare time.

   On the side he plays piano and chases women, and has even written a
   song about the GPL.

   Currently, he's recovering from working at one too many startups,
   traveling the world, and recoiling from what the web is becoming.

  Finding the Venue and Parking:

   You can park either beneath or next to the SSABSA building.  If you
   are driving west along Greenhill road, you can turn left into the
   driveway if you are going slow enough to notice the sign and turn in
   time :-), or you can turn left at the next road, and left again to
   go along the street behind the building to access the carpark that
   way.

   If you try to enter the building from street level but the doors are
   locked, walk down the stairs and use the lift in the below-ground
   carpark.

  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






tech/LinuxSA | 13 Feb 2008 | # 


LCA2008 Days Four and Five

Thursday

The morning started with Stormy Peters' keynote on Would you do it again for free?. It was a thought-provoking keynote on the motivation behind OSS development.  Do open-source developers lose motivation once companies pay them?  Once they leave that job, do they continue doing open-source development?  Stormy suggests they don't lose heart, but suggests that hackers may move to another of their itch projects if they no longer are paid to hack on the original.

Then it was onto Clinton Roy to talk about Antlr.  This was useful for the fact that using YACC and Bison can be black magic, so having another tool in the toolbox is great.  Would have been better if we'd gone as far as generating a grammer and hooking it up to show the ease of building something real end-to-end.  Tutorials are best if they kick-start usage.

After lunch was the usual high-quality Tridge talk on ctdb.  Interesting to see the scaling of Samba instances being almost linear after this work, as well as various tridge hack discussions.

Next was Leslie Hawthorn on the Google Summer of Code program.  While being an interesting talk in and of itself, what I really liked hearing about were the developers who were bootstrapped by the program continuing into open-source contribution afterwards.  This is a wonderful outcome for OSS.  Thanks Google!

Next was Michael Smith with Gstreamer followed by Dtrace by Peter Karlsson.  This last one was more of a vendor talk, and would have been better if the presenter didn't spend 20 minutes trying to get video output working on a Solaris/MacBookPro combination, followed by failing to get OpenOffice to display his slides full-screen.  That and the 15+ typos in the slides  didn't reflect well on Sun or on Dtrace.  The talk had so much potential, but the most useful part was the questions by SystemTap developers in the audience - hopefully both projects will benefit was better understanding of each other.

Dinner with Mikal and Steve tonight out at some random Italian place - quite nice food to go with the excellent company. Of course, after dinner on Lygon Street there is no better thing to do than to follow up with sorbet from Casa Del Gelato ice-creamery.  Walking down Swanston found us Andrew Chalmers with friends Sam(??) and Amanda.  Good hilarity followed, along with a kind offer from Sam and Amanda to bed down on their lounge room floor to save me from the backpackers.  Some people are just genuinely kind - I'd never met them before, so their offer was very unexpected.  Thank you for your offer and all the best for your trip Europe bound soon.

Friday

Wonderful keynote by Anthony Baxter on Python 3.  Anthony presents well, and the confirmation of a supported 2.X series during the early days of 3.X deployment was appreciated.  Glad to see that the Python project is taking the opportunity to clean up the inevitable cruft that accumulates in the language and reduce it so hopefully it stays small.  Of course I'm biased with python being my favourite language right now, but I found this the best of the keynotes this year.

I went to Ralph Giles talk on Ogg Design Internals, followed by Paul McKenney on efforts to put concurrency into C and C++.  Paul is a clever cookie, and did a great job of explaining how the C/C++ standards don't guarantee sequential execution as most people subconsciously assume, with the result being pain and suffering where you don't expect.  Fortunately Paul has been there at the standards meetings representing our community's interests well.

That brings us to the afternoon with Keith Packard talking on fixing various X limitations.  He started the talk with an Intel announcement surrounding their release of full developer documatation for the Intel 965.  Wonderful news!  Should mean that advancement on that platform should skyrocket even further, and hopefully spur the other graphics chip manufacturers into providing better support for the developers who generate end-user sales!  But I'm preaching to the choir now...

Last talk of the conference for me was Eric de Castro Lopo on Library API Design.  Another important topic, but I would have loved more depth.

Moving on, we went to lightening talks and conference close.  We had the usual bag of both ok and excellent lightening talks - some of the Gaming Miniconf lightening talks could have been repeated to the larger audience to great effect.  Bling bling bling.   Notable was Pia announcing OLPC Australia, hopefully making a difference here with that excellent project.

Conference close was a time to reflect on all the cool stuff that the week contained, and gave the chance to wrap up all the loose ends.  While Open Day follows on Saturday, the official conference close is Friday afternoon.  We also got to meet Ben - and found out that the conference is going to Tasmania for the first time!  Cool!  Less than 400 sleeps to go now :)

Jeff Waugh went on to announce the transfogrimifation of the Rusty Wrench Award into (hopefully I get this right) the Australian Open Source Awards.  It'll be great if the whole community get behind this and it becomes something truely representative of our community here in Australia.  Website launch occuring soon.

Finally was the Google Conference Party.  A traditional bbq stand-around and chew the fat s'more with conference attendees.  A good time was had by all - thankyou Google and Leslie Hawthorn for organising it.  Finally two old and tired previous conf organisers wandered back to Casa Del Gelato for that last sorbet of the week, contemplating with great expectations what Tasmania will do with linux.conf.au 2009 next year.

And for the absolutely final thought, a big say thank you to Donna and her team for putting on a very solid and fun conference!  Thank you LCA2008 organising team!  We know it's been hard-work, but we appreciate your sacrifices to serve the Australian Linux, Free and Open-Source Software community!




tech/linux-australia/lca2008 | 02 Feb 2008 | # 


LCA2008 Day Three

Wednesday

I forgot to mention that I had a great time last night talking to Keith Packard, Jon Corbet and Paul McKenney at the Speakers Dinner.  Talking was both technical and social - I really enjoy catching up with these guys whenevr I can get to a conference where they are.

Wednesday morning started with the Bruce Schneier keynote on Reconceptionalising Security - explaining why both the feeling of security and the reality of security are both important.  Introduced how the Lemon Market applies not to just used-cars but also to security products and technology in general.  Mary has more good stuff to say on his talk.

Actually, before the keynote we had a small issue with chairs not being setup for the keynote.  Fortunately the OSS community here in Australia came to the rescue - suddenly 20 people dropped everything to set up 600 chairs in a hurry.  Seeing Leon Brooks rolling up his sleaves and just getting the job done was inspiring - thank you Leon.

After that I went to Jon Oxer's tutorial on Second Life and hardware integration for Linux.  This was really cool - not just hardware interfacing to Linux over USB, but controlling Second Life objects via the hardware, and then triggering real-life from inside Second Life.  A talk to open your eyes to the possibilities.  I bought the Arduino kit Jon assembled and plan to play around with that s'more.   So far, this has been the conference highlight talk for me.  What was fun during the tute was getting this going on Linux running under virtualisation on Mac OS X - just another level of indirection :-)

From then it was off to Jon Corbet's talk on what's happening in the Linux Kernel, and where things are likely to be going.  Being primarily user-space oriented, it's great to get this summary at LCA.  It's interesting also to see how the linux kernel development process morphs to continue to scale - sociologically very interesting.

Then it was the OLPC report from Jim Getys.  This wasn't your usual technical talk, but rather seeing how this technology is making a difference in the lives of the world's most disadvantaged children.  I don't think anyone would have left this talk not touched.

From there I sat in on Bdale's talk on Peace, Love and Rockets (link).  Bdald was his interesting self - I have no idea how someone so busy can find the time to have such interesting hobbies.  He's building his own altimeter because the commercial offerings don't meet his needs - a standard case of scratching an itch.  Thanks Bdale for inspiring us to not accept things the way they are.

Wednesday night was the Penguin Dinner.  This was at Melbourne Markets and was the most relaxed conference dinner yet.  It also was a very cool idea.  Spent the night talking to Mikal Still and Steven Hanley - also had a good chat with a husband and wife (whose name I cannot remember) about the conference and where it has been and where it should go.  We had a good fun night.  I also ate too much sorbet, but am glad I did :-)




tech/linux-australia/lca2008 | 01 Feb 2008 | # 


LCA2008 Day Two

Tuesday

I started Tuesday by going to the GNOME Miniconf in the morning.  We had a talk about Conduit by John Stowers, which showed off the potential of having a generic mechanism to sync devices.  It's quite nice to be able to visualise data sources and sinks, and to hook them up visually.  I'm hoping that many data connectors get written so that the ease of moving data around between web2.0 applications.

Then it was Martin Sevior talking about bringing Sugar concepts (from OLPC) into the desktop.  We ended up spending lots of time talking about collaboration and presence - projects like Telepathy and Empathy - to achieve our dreams.  Again very nice stuff with great potential.

In the afternoon I moved over to the Gaming Miniconf, which was a lot of fun.  Since OSDC 2006 I've been a big fan of pyget, so sitting in on a tutorial by Alex Holkner and Richard Jones on the topic was something I was very much looking forward to.  The tute was writing a cross-platform space invaders-style game in python in less than 40 minutes!  Quite amazing what can be achieved in such a short time.  It helped that Alex types very fast! :-)

Brett Nash then spoke on using Enlightenment for 2d Games.  Then it was back to Richard Jones for an intro to PyWeek.  I wish I had the time to commit a week of evenings to try it out.




tech/linux-australia/lca2008 | 30 Jan 2008 | # 


Keynotes now for your streaming pleasure!

Just a quick public service announcement - if you're not at the best technical conference in the world today, you can watch the action live streamed to your computer.  See Steve Walsh's post.

Thanks LCA and AARNET for making this happen!



tech/linux-australia/lca2008 | 30 Jan 2008 | # 


LCA2008 Days Zero and One

Sunday

Arriving in MEL at around 3pm on Sunday meant that I got to survey the lay of the land ahead of the unofficial conference opening on Monday (otherwise known as Miniconf days).  It looks like I wasn't alone, with 80 or so others wandering around the conference venue.  Rusty's & Kelly's Newcomers talk on Sunday afternoon was so full that they had to stop people going in.

But now I'm already jumping ahead of myself.  I decided this year to stay at the recommended backpackers, which I have to say is interesting.  The benefits are that I get a 25 minute walk to the conference venue each day, whereas the problems are that they don't servce breakfast until 8am (too late) and it's a bit too rowdy to get much sleep.  Mea culpa.

Back to the conference venue - Rusty led the masses off to the pub, so it was natural to follow.  Much socialising continued, including talking quite a bit to Alli, Hugh, George and Tim.  I find it really interesting to find out what people have been doing with themselves since the last conference when we chatted.

Monday

Like I said, not much sleep was had, which was a bad thing leading up to my talk on Source Code Integrity and Protection with the sample toy implementation of zign.  Fortunately it all went well except for a brown-bag bug that I showed everyone during the demo part of the talk.  Still, I got some good feedback from people, so hopefuly the talk achieved it's pupose by making people think about the unspoken assurance of the source code they release.

More catching up with people - Andrew, Grand Pajamaran Donna, Peter, Steve, Stewart, Grant, Eric, Jon and many others.  Catching up with the community from all around Australia is one of the big benefits of LCA.

The day was really a jump around the conference as I sat in on various miniconfs - Fedora for Eugene Teo's Writing System Tap Scripts which was excellent and made me realise that a whole class of difficult problems are now potentially solveable, Security  for Guy Gershoni's Security Programming in Java and Damien Miller on OpenSSH which did nothing but increase my confidence in OpenSSH's design and team that are supporting it, and Debian for Martin Kraftt's Version Control Systems for Debian packaging.  My brain is already full, and its only Monday :-)

The evening was spent out at the University Hotel with Eric, Dennis and Grant chatting about OCaml, writing yet another text editor, multi-national companies that move their software development offshore, Fourier transforms, low pass filters and music genres.  Good food and company and a good time out!




tech/linux-australia/lca2008 | 29 Jan 2008 | # 


It's not MS Comic Sans!

I can't let this accusation by Mary go.  My presentation was using Marker Felt, not MS Comic Sans :-)

Sheesh :-)




tech/linux-australia/lca2008 | 29 Jan 2008 | # 


Back In The Saddle Again

Yay!  This morning, after a 2 week hiatus, I ran a slow 10km to dust off the cobwebs.  The injury to my Lateral Collateral Ligament (LCL) in my left knee seems to have self-healed - the body feels pretty good after the run.

In the past week I did follow sjh's advice and do a little low impact cross-training, by getting back on the bike.  Of course just exercising by itself is not enough - I have to geekify things - so I fitted a GSC-10 to my mtb so I could get cadence data.  The mistake I made was to start Googling for target cadence ranges - let's just say I have some work to do in this area :-)

It's good to be back exercising again.  A 2 week break was about 3 weeks too long.





exercise | 14 Jan 2008 | #