Not the first

D'Oh, AfC just told me he covered this first.

| 03 Jun 2005 | #

Echo

Echo... echo... echo... echo... "Rapid Application Development with PyGTK and libglade" at GUADEC looks like a simpler python version of my talk, "Rapid Application Development using C# under GNOME" which I gave at linux.conf.au 2005.

Good to see cool GNOME stuff getting talked about... Just wish I was there in Germany to hear it :-)

Note to self: Must get slides and software up on web.

| 02 Jun 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.

| 01 May 2005 | #

RAD with gnome talk

Sorry Colin that my talk was too basic for you. I was trying to cover too many bases in too little time. Perhaps a hands-on tutorial next year would be good...

| 27 Apr 2005 | #

qotd-20050421

"...when you move out of your parents' basement."
            -- Jeremy Allison to Leon Brooks

| 21 Apr 2005 | #

Day Three

So today is day 3 of the conference. Perhaps I'm getting old or something, but I'm weary already. Today is the official conference opening, with the last 2 days being the "unofficial" miniconfs. Earlier sjh approached me about doing him a favour - and this morning it all came to light - someone had to be Tux.

So despite my best efforts I ended up featuring in the conference opening for the second year in a row, albeit in disguise this time. At least sjh wasn't able to convince me to ride a mountain bike down the stairs while wearing the tux outfit, carrying the Linus cutouts. You just have to draw the line somewhere :-)

So the conference proper was opened by sjh well, and the first of many surprises were announced. Speakers are able to hand out one 1Gb USB memory key device each lecture to whomever they wish. And it appears there are daily prizes of IBM laptops for conference attendees, drawn randomly - you just better mke sure you are in the room when your name is read out - unlike some unfortunates this morning :-(

Tutorials were next and I was stoked to do the kernel hacking one. Unfortunately my laptop wouldn't mount filesystems loop-backed, so I was stuffed as this would be something I'd have to do regularly in the tute. Most disappointed. But at least this meant I could drop into Malcolm's pygtk talk, which looked a pretty good choice as well.

Someone was faking DNS replies today, making life difficult for wireless users. Why they'd do this I can't understand.

The jra quiz show was next - which went down very well. Jeremy is a character. This is something we should do, perhaps over conference dinner, in future years.

Afterwards off to dinner with the Bennett's - both types.

| 20 Apr 2005 | #

Photos take 2

After putting up the first days photo on my personal domain and having it flattened, a new solution had to be found.

Thanks to Andrew, conference photos are now available at http://friends.andrew.net.au/mrd. Right now that's only Monday's, but yesterday's and today's should be up soon. The permanent home will still be michaeldavies.org, but only after the conference finishes and interest returns to regular, manageable, levels.

| 20 Apr 2005 | #

Day Two

So Day Two (Tuesday) went well. The GNOME.conf.au miniconf went all day, and was pretty cool. Got to hear Luis Villa speak for the first time which was great. Lots of good ideas flowing around, in addition to the usual call for more people to get involved and also to get involved in grass-root evangelism as well.

Much better write-ups here and here.

Tuesday night was the Speakers Dinner. Nice spot, good food and great company. Utterly exhausted and to sleep quickly. Conference proper starts on Wednesday.

| 20 Apr 2005 | #

Day One

Started the morning at the Debian Miniconf, with Jon Oxer opening up and Bdale giving us the "State of the Ntion" talk, suggesting that Debian needs something better than SPI and should consider the Foundation model used elsewhere. Bdale also talked about scaling problems in Debian - the number of developers increased, but so has the packages. Add in the multiplier effect of platforms and there's a problem. At least insome people's minds. The other thing that surprised me is the almost anti-Ubuntu feeling amongst many Debian developers.

Lunch was at the Pickle along with Bdale and hangers on. General technology chat.

After lunch was keithp's talk on Twin at the Embedded Miniconf. Very interesting talk. Eye Candy crack in 100k. I should play with an ARM processor device sometime again soon. Afterwards sat thru Russell Coker's NSA SELinux stuff - still not convinced it's not a too overcomplicated solution.

By this stage my brain hurt and I decided to do a dry run of my talk for Friday. That went well, althuogh I just realised I've got one more diagram to draw still. Perhaps on Wednesday :-)

Nighttime saw a bunch of us go into Civic to some pub. Nice chatting to some New Zealanders - next year's organisation is coming along well.

| 19 Apr 2005 | #

Photos pulled

Pulled my lca2005 photos from the web - my webserver was flattened by the load.

Once I remember how to resize a directory full of photos, I'll put them back.

| 19 Apr 2005 | #

Loser

Random Loser who decided to rip off linux.conf.au by swindling a student ticket when not a student, and bragging about it on their blog.

Loser.

| 19 Apr 2005 | #

LCA2005 Wiki

LCA has a wiki up here: http://wiki2005.linux.conf.au

| 18 Apr 2005 | #

First photos

My first photos for the conference are now available.

| 18 Apr 2005 | #

Day Zero

So after church this morning it was a quick dash home to grab the suitcases and head for the airport. Virgin Blue got us to Canberra, along with 10 or so other South Aussies who were on the same flight. Penguin t-shirts and laptops were dead give-aways. As was the Sunray someone carried in hand luggage!!!

Next to me was Tim Ansell, another conference speaker, with seat allocation entirely by chance. sjh was kind enough to pick the both of us up from the airport - the last thing I expected the lead organiser to be doing :-) He was nice enough to pre-register the both of us too.

Off to University House, dump the gear, then to Manning Clark to chat with some of the team and then back with 7 or so hackers to Woodstock pizza bar - for tales of eating live octopii, discussions on whether Buenos Aires was the future haven of free software hackers and other miscellania. Good stuff. Back to Uni House for this blog entry in the library using a Windows PC (*sigh*) and then back to the room for connectionless hacking before sleep and the big day tomorrow.

| 17 Apr 2005 | #

LCA2005 almost here

LCA2005 is just about upon me and boy, am I looking forward to it. Last year (if I don't mind saying so) was such a great conference, but as an organiser, I didn't get to see any of it really. So now that another year (and a bit) has rolled around I am so looking forward to being a geek this coming week! Cool talks, catching up with friends, meeting smart speakers who have dream jobs, and having time to just cut some code.

Woohoo!

P.S. The Kernel Hacking Tute is looking like it's gonna be very hands-on and useful. Especially with Rusty and rml running the show.

P.P.S. All the best to pipka and jdub for Sunday.

P.P.P.S. Now there's a quiz night on Wednesday night run by jra. What other wonderful surprises will sjh and team unfurl?

| 15 Apr 2005 | #

Congraulations on conference sellout

Congratulations to sjh and team for selling out linux.conf.au 2005!

| 31 Mar 2005 | #

linux.conf.au 2005 - 3 weeks to go

Only 3 weeks to go until the coolest-of-all-conferences happens - linux.conf.au - this year in the nation's capital, Canberra.

According to their webpage, there's only 22 places left. You'd better hurry if you were leaving your registration to the last minute! :-) Hope to see you there...

Personally I'm looking forward to the miniconfs, which I've missed out on seeing the last 2 years for differing reasons. Having some less formal chat and hack sessions will be great. Also catching up with people and talking about all the cool stuff that's happening, especially in the free software desktop arena. Oh, and I'm looking forward to getting this over and done with :-) Please, only ripe fruit.

| 25 Mar 2005 | #

correction

Due to popular consensus, s/Linux.Conf.Au/linux.conf.au/

| 24 Feb 2005 | #

Linux.Conf.Au 2005 only 7 weeks away...

This seat is reserved for you.

You are a geek, you want to code, you want to hear about cool stuff. You are part of the OSS community. You want the time of your life. You want to meet famous OSS people don't you ? You're looking for a project where you can give back. You're not sure where to start? That place is right here.

Register Now. Linux.Conf.Au 2005 - for cool hackers of all ages.

| 24 Feb 2005 | #

LCA2005 Abstracts and Program

Linux.Conf.Au 2005 is only 10 weeks away, but to keep us all on the edge of our seats there are now abstracts linked from the speakers bio page, and a draft conference program is available.

Initial thoughts on what I must see? Jeremy Alison's and Robert Love / Rusty's talks.

I do need some place to hide on April 22 at 1:30pm though :-)

It's gonna be cool! - Registered yet? :-)

| 04 Feb 2005 | #

Have you registered for LCA2005 yet?

Have you registered to attend Australia's number #1 Linux and Open Source conference Linux.Conf.Au 2005 yet?

If not, you should do so NOW. Why? I'll give you 5 reasons:

1) There's only 2 days left for early-bird registration and you save AUD 230 on professional registration that way;

2) Rumour has it that the conference is well over 1/2 full already (filling faster than previous years);

3) There's only 11 weeks to go until it starts;

4) Andrew Morton, Robert Love, Eben Moglen, Ted T'so, Keith Packard and Bdale Garbee are all coming; and

5) Linux.Conf.Au will not only make your brain melt from overload, it's an aweful lot of FUN!

There is only one response possible - register now! :-)

| 29 Jan 2005 | #

LCA2005 Registrations Open

As sjh says, registrations for Linux.Conf.Au 2005 have opened!

So here is your action plan:

1) get time off from work between Apr 18 and Apr 23, 2005

2) Register

3) Convince your boss to pay, or just pay from your own pocket

4) Start counting the days

The only complaint I've got is that LCA2005 could do with more promotion - we've got to start telling people that LCA2005 is only 17 weeks away. Mailing lists, news groups, news sites etc all need pinging.

| 18 Dec 2004 | #

Linux.Conf.Au CFP Reviewing

As mbp says the judging of the CFP submissions for Linux.Conf.Au 2005 is well underway, and I can happily say that I've finished my bit of that.

Wow, there were a _lot_ of submissions, covering a very broad spectrum of ideas - interestingly enough there is a different slant in the topics submitted, but the quality of the submissions is just as good. Linux.Conf.Au continues to amaze me as a fun, technically strong, eclectic conference. Should be great again.

Conference opens in 21 weeks. Make sure you are there :-)

| 18 Nov 2004 | #

Ghosts completes

More meetings, today we covered the budget which is the most important check-off item for Linux Australia. Another venue tour, this time without people. Everyone wearing out from such a hectuc weekend. Good result, but a little dragged out. Rusty did well in supplying 16 coffees late in the day.

Ghosts wrapped up, now time for a f2f Linux Australia meeting at the pub late in the day. Met for an hour or so over a very belated lunch. Saw the latest revisions to the new website, to be rolled out real soon now. Pia and Stewart have done a good job to continue where I left off - thee's some things I don't like, but fortunately for me they are willing to take comments :-)

Told everyone about the Chicago trip, and clarified for blog-readers that it's only for 6 months, not forever.

Completed the day with some really nice gelato, courtesy of Rusty. Rusty continued his great hospitality by taking me to the airport, and chatting in the Qantas club lounge.

Photos from the weekend will appear here soon.

Now resuming regular programming...

| 30 Aug 2004 | #

Saturday Night

Up early with local Canberra wildlife chirping away outside the window. Different, nice, but too early.

Off to ANU for the start of the official Ghosts meeting. Lots of chatter and catchup while the inevitable network problems are sorted out. At least this year we didn't have to rely on AJ to bridge wired-to-wireless networking. Stewart showed us why he's not a morning person. We then did the standard Linux Australia thing and got off topic almost straight away but covering issues that needed to be talked about :-)

Did the venue tour of ANU - the site of LCA2005. Nice venue, lots of room, good level of excitment amongst the organising team - which is a good team of mixed skill individuals. They'll do a great job. Took lots of photos.

Lunch at the Purple Pickle was hearty, good discussion with Rusty, AJ, Agent Smith and mbp on IP issues and what we can do about it to make things fair for consumers, IT developers, artists and content owners alike (rather than the current imbalance towards content owners).

Afternoon dragged a bit, but we gained some insights into the exciting things that the Canberra LCA team will spring on the unsuspecting Australian OSS community - I've been sworn to secrecy, so don't even ask, just be here :-)

Evening off to a popular Canberran casual dining place, the Woodstock Steak and Pizza. Yes, it's named after that event, and yes there are gaudy 70's pictures on the walls.

Overall positive and producive day, still more to do tomorrow. Going to be yet another great conf! Can't wait!

| 28 Aug 2004 | #

Ghosts

Off to Canberra tonight for the Ghosts of Conference Past meeting with sjh and co to talk about preparations for Linux.Conf.Au 2005.

Also a face-to-face meeting with the rest of the Linux Australia committee.

| 27 Aug 2004 | #

Friday night ghosts

So Ghosts has started, for me this is the first time as the interrogator, rather than the interrogatee :)

First thing is that the flight from Adelaide to Canberra had one of the roughest landings ever. There were squeels from other passengers. On the flight started reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. Not impressed so far, book review to come once I finish it. The other book I've brought with me to read is Mono: A Developer's Notebook by Edd Dumbill and Niel Bornstein.

Alli was on the same flight, so I hitched a ride with Alli and Rusty back to their place to see the wonderful jigsaw and to eat sugary nuts. Then off to All Bar None to catch up with Anand, AJ (briefly), Martin, Stephane, John (last two met for the first time) and of course the Man-Who-Has-Lost-His-Life-For-Another-7-Months.

Back to sjh's house, talked LCA some more, chewed email and blogged. Time for sleep. Big day tomorrow.

| 27 Aug 2004 | #