Linux Conf Part II (including a rocket to the moon)

[tcpip]

Day Three (part II). denise and mark from Dreamwidth spoke on how they encouraged development of their service through encouraging participation and taking their user requests seriously. Had a chat with them afterwards about the adoption of DW/LJ for the research community. Then went to the second half of Richard Jone's game programming using Python and Pyglet, specifically recreating the classic arcade game Asteriods (source). Theodore Tso gave an excellent presentation the ext4 filesystem and was followed by claudine_c speaking on the user of various open-source software in a convict history project she's involved in. The final sessions of the day that I attended were Andrew Tridgell speaking on teaching FOSS at universities, ANU's Masters programme in particular and the ever-entertaining Paul Fenwick on the world's worst inventions.



Day Four Glyn Moody's keynote provided a general overview of the history of open source and Linux in particular. Angela Byron's 'Drupal Under The Hood' was an interesting combination of high level advocacy, a preview of Drupal7 and low-level with the creation of a "pirate translator" module. airlied gave an excellent and entertaining discussion on kernel development. After this I went to Jon Oxer's Linux-based lunar rocket project which I've volunteered to assist (I guess I want to be a rocket scientist). The afternoon consisted of two excellent, and related, low-level presentations one by Paul McKenny (Simplicity Through Optimisation, about RCU, surprise) and Peter Chubb (Interrupts Considered Harmful). That evening went to the new home of beagl and kimeros, along with caseopaya (of course), alchemon and horngirl where we downed a great deal of good champagne.

Day Five Brief introduction by Nathan Torkington and then lightning talks in lieu of a keynote on the final day. Janis Johnson spoke on developments in the GNU compiler collection, and Paul MacKerras on the perf_counter subsystem. Emma Hogbin provided another documentation related presentation, although sadly it was not sufficiently about world domination as advertised, and in more rocket-related activity Ariel Waldman provided a range of open-source space exploration technologies. The final presentation of the conference was Patrick Brennan providing an excellent case-study of a large scale and scope Linux implementation in a NZ high school.



Right, having done computing it's time to head off to KapCon and do some gaming. caseopaya is off to the Linux Conf open day (now that's a hardcore nerd) Tomorrow get to head off to Napier, perhaps the finest art deco town in the world.

Comments

[roadriverrail.livejournal.com]

I guess I want to be a rocket scientist

It must be a secret desire of us computer types. When I was a grad student at UF, I helped build the ground telemetry station for a university club's research satellite.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

It must be a secret desire of us computer types.

Sure as hell beats re-designing 80s console games for mobile 'phones. Even if that does pay better.

Either it's the things that go *boom* or it's the joy of simultaneous equations. Or both of course.

I helped build the ground telemetry station for a university club's research satellite.

That is, of course, incredibly cool. Tell us more!

[roadriverrail.livejournal.com]

That is, of course, incredibly cool. Tell us more!

The University of Florida Small Satellite Design Club was preparing the design for a research CUBESAT. Apparently, LEO CUBESATs are a hell of a contributor to orbital junk, as they die fast and then orbit for entirely too long. New rules for orbital junk management were to be put in place, and it would kill hobby satellites. UF SSDC wanted to build a CUBESAT with a compact and inexpensive air brake that would cause rapid orbit decay.

I was treasurer of the UF Amateur Radio Club at the time, and the SSDC approached us to ask for advice on making a ground tracking station, not only so they could find their satellite but also so they could track its orbital changes after braking. That basically involved a lot of equipment sourcing and red tape for requisitions, plus arguing with student government (which controls a lot of the purse strings at the university), but the go-ahead finally went through. They built the actual station after I'd already left campus, sadly, but I at least can say I was part of an amateur space program and even got to have discussions about what we could and could not do with the digital emissions window the satellite's orbit permitted.

I also had the good fortune to sling absinthe with one of the Cassini-Huygens engineers at Dragon*Con, where I tried in vain to get him to go into deeper detail about how you do digital communications with a probe in deep space, but he'd had too much absinthe by then. :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ahh, that makes a lot of sense. The second rocket related talk included quite a fair amount on CUBESAT. Interestingly there was no mention (iirc) of their contribution to orbital junk.

Alas about the discussion about deep space digital communications. Indeed, one of minor unfortunate side effects of too much absinthe!