Michael Davies' Blog

LinuxSA May 2008 - the Village Telco/Mesh Potato

  Hi all,

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

  The usual details:

   When:   6:30pm-8:30pm on Tuesday, 19th May, 2009
   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 talking about the Village Telco/Mesh Potato:

     The Village Telco is an easy-to-use, scalable, standards-based,
     wireless, local, do-it-yourself, telephone company toolkit.

     The Mesh Potato is a 802.11bg mesh router with a single FXS port.
     It is designed to provide telephony via VOIP while simultaneously
     facilitating a mesh cloud. It is an open hardware and open
     software design. It will run off a nominal 12VDC, from either a
     mains supply or solar PV system, and be priced in the range of
     currently available Wifi routers (sub US$100).

   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 access to 
   Room G05/G06 is only available from Capper Street; there is no
   access to these rooms from any other entrances in the College.  On
   Capper Street, Room G05/G06 is 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
   the 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 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

LinuxSA April 2008 - Awesome Things You've Missed in Perl

  Hi all,

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

  The usual details:

   When:   6:30pm-8:30pm on Tuesday, 21st April, 2009
   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:

   Paul Fenwick will be presenting "Awesome Things You've Missed in
   Perl":

     Awesome things have been happening in Perl recently; so many that
     even if you've been paying close attention, you may have missed a
     few. In this talk we'll examine some of the coolest recent
     technologies for Perl programmers, including:

     - Overhauling Perl's Object Oriented framework with Moose.
     - Making everything a first-class object with autobox.
     - Slashing your error handling code with autodie.
     - Building fast, readable and reusable regular expressions with
       Perl 5.10.
     - Bundling and building stand-alone applications using PAR, the
       Perl Archiver.
     - Astonishingly good profiling with Devel::NYTProf.
     - Playing MineSweeper automatically with App::SweeperBot.

     Knowledge of Perl is nice, but not essential to appreciate the
     contents of this talk.

   Paul Fenwick is the managing director of Perl Training Australia,
   internationally acclaimed speaker, and long time contributor to 
   Perl. He's an author for The Perl Journal and The Perl Review,
   technical editor of Perl Best Practices, and co-managers the very
   popular Perl Tips newsletter.

   In his spare time, Paul's interests include security, mycology,
   cycling, coffee, scuba diving, and lexically scoped user pragmata.

  Getting to the Venue:

   Prince Alfred College faces Dequetteville Terrace, but access to
   Room G05/G06 is only available from Capper Street; there is no
   access to these rooms from any other entrances in the College.  On
   Capper Street, Room G05/G06 is 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
   the 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 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

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie...

What can be done with an Apple iPhone and a telescope on a clear night?

Crude Astrophotography.

Billion Modems and Gigaset C470IP compatibility

Seems like there is an issue with Billion ADSL modems (such as the Billion 7404VGO) and independent VOIP telephony devices (such as the Siemens Gigaset C470IP) where the Billion, even though it's not configured for VOIP, grabs traffic on the SIP/RTP ports and doesn't let it through to the VOIP handset. The solution? Move the SIP port to 15060 and RTP to 15004-15020.

And how's the Gigaset C470IP working out? Fantastic! Easy to use, configures easily, looks good, passes the WAF test, and the audio quality is very nice.

Update: The easier solution is to turn off the Billion 7404VGO's 'SIG ALG' setting, which is found on Configuration->Firewall->General Settings. Thanks Peter for the tip...

iTiVo

Just discovered iTiVo - extract recorded TV from your TiVo. Works very nicely indeed.

Having a go

A dangerous video for a software developer to watch: Damian Katz on CouchDB and Me. The story behind doing something great.

Living the dream, making a go of it, stepping up to the plate, having faith in your own abilities. Being successful by taking risk.

I think that inside some developers[0] is an urge to do this. One differentiation between those who succeed and those who don't is that only some try. Talent and opportunity are other important differentiators, but without the 'try' it can't happen.

Note to self: Must keep trying.

More info on CouchDB and Damian Katz.

[0] Is developing software a job, or is it something you'd do even if you weren't paid?

97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know

Soon to be released book: 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know. An open collaborative wiki, these are the 97 things that will make the printed edition. The whole site, especially the selected 97 axioms, is a fantastic resource. So many people claim the title, but so few walk the walk or even talk the talk. Technical leadership is so important, but so badly done in practice.

Best item: Communication Is King.

The Magic Minutes

"Magic Minutes": The number of minutes after passing the 40 minute mark when running. They are the only minutes that count. They are only minutes that affect weight-loss and gains in cardiovascular fitness. You cannot skip straight to them, you need to go through the "useless" 40 minutes of running that has little impact first. This definition is neither scientifically proven, nor dependable in all circumstances for all people. Your unique situation may affect your results. Please talk your doctor before embarking on any exercise program :)

Stock Market: Why shorting is wrong

Here is an article about how to short the stock-market. Shorting is selling stock you don't own, hoping the price will go down, and buying the stock at the lower price to cover your previous sells, hence making money. While within the law, it's just plain wrong.

Shorting allows day traders and the like to continue to make money while the market drops, but by doing so they are encouraging the market downwards hurting 'long' investors - aka your super fund.

Shorting should be banned permanently. The ongoing greed in the market is disgusting - step up the plate governments of the world! It's time for some regulation.

What tripod do I have?

So when planning a photo trip overseas I keep on forgetting what tripod I'm currently using. It's embarrassing. So once and for all - the tripod I use is a SLIK U9000.

At least now it's on my blog so I can find it without having to go back into my Amazon account and looking up past orders from 5 years ago.

Oh, and by the way, I'm soon off to Wellington, NZ.

LinuxSA February 2008 - Chumby

  Hi all,

  Time for the February meeting announcement...

  The usual details:

   When:   6:30pm-8:30pm on Tuesday, 17th February, 2009
   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:

   Chris Iona will be presenting a talk on Hacking the Chumby.  This
   will be an introduction to its OS, hardware, and how to program it.
   See http://chumby.on.net/ for some general information about the
   Chumby.  Chris is a senior member of Internode's Content Services
   Group, with a strong web focus.

  Getting to the Venue:

   Prince Alfred College faces Dequetteville Terrace, but access to
   Room G05/G06 is only available from Capper Street; there is no
   access to these rooms from any other entrances in the College.  On
   Capper Street, Room G05/G06 is 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
   the 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 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

ack and pv

The latest additions to my shell toolbox are ack and pv. Very cool indeed!

Resuming normal activities

So it appears the back has been broken on our heatwave - we "only" had a 39C day yesterday meaning that we only equaled and did not break the record for longest run of > than 40C days.

The good news is that the nightly temperatures have dropped below 30C too, meaning that I could get back running in the early morning. Today was only a brief 6.5km, but boy did it feel good to get back on the road! Next step, do that 4 days a week; then get that back up to 12km and the marathon dream might get back on track.

linux.conf.au 2009 Day Minus Three

So the story of linux.conf.au 2009 starts like this...

On Sunday I caught the only Virgin Blue direct flight from ADL to HBA along with most of the South Australian contingent (the red-eye earier in the day was cancelled no doubt frustrating those who got to the airport before dawn). It seems that VirginBlue has cemented itself as the carrier of choice nowadays, despite having to pay for both checked luggage and food - says a lot about Qantas and JetStar. Caught a cab with a couple of guys to the accommodation, quite amusing was the fact that we ended up looking up a map and using Google Maps over GPRS to find the university accommodation as the taxi driver had no idea.

Getting to the accommodation gave us the first wonderful surprise - modern, spacious (and cheap!) rooms with wonderful views over Hobart. The best LCA accommodation yet in my opinion. Met the other guys in the 6 bedroom complex, all from SA but I only previously knew one of them. Network access just worked - congratulations to Steve Walsh and his team.

Wandered down to the registration area via The Steep Hill just prior to the 5pm close and found a well-organised team and area ready to serve the open-source commnuity. Re-established some relationships from Ghosts and found a group of old friends "checking email" which we all had to do. Good to catch-up.

Then from there it was a nice stroll to a restaurant to eat with some other ghosts. A very nice time again talking substantionally with some good friends, finally took the offer of a lift back to the uni after comtemplation of the The Steep Hill. Got some sleep, knowing that I'd need it for the week ahead.

planet.linux.conf.au 2009

planet.linux.conf.au 2009 is now up and running! That also includes Atom and RSS 2.0 feeds.

Any issues can be sent mailed through to planet at linux dot org dot au.

See you all at linux.conf.au 2009 in 6 days time...

linux.conf.au 2009 coming real soon now

linux.conf.au 2009 in Hobart, Tasmania is only 13 days away. Have you registered yet? Flights blooked? Bags packed? Mine are ;)

Why come?

One awesome week of technical, brain-numbing input during the day and party time, catching-up with the free software community in the evenings. And they'll be ducks with lasers! Don't miss it - register before you'll regret it.

iPhone Cellular Data: Just Say No

So I got a 3G iPhone for Christmas, a closed proprietary platform, but a fun one :-) We just need to get a python runtime on there :-)

A frustrating thing with this device is the lack of control over its network interfaces. You can explicitly control 3G data and wireless, but not 2G data - this was a retrograde step moving up to the 2.0 firmware. What this means is that if your wireless connections drops, you skip back to cellular data - and even if you have 3G off, you're still unexpectingly racking up 2G data bills. Urrghh.

There is a very easy solution though - which strangely doesn't seem to get mentioned out there on the web that I've discoverd in my brief searches so far. To turn all cellular data connections off, but leave wifi on, just turn on "Airplane Mode", then after that turn "Wi-Fi" on. That gives the desired result.

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.

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

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.

Python 3.0 released!

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

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)

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Python 2.6 released!

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

Back running

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

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.

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.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome sounds awesome!

Launching tonight.

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.

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 :-)

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!)

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

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

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.

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]

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?