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 | #