Linux Conf Part II and Sunny New Zealand
Feb. 4th, 2006 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipReturned from New Zealand last night and have spent the last twenty hours or so getting my life back into a modicum of order. Holidays, conferences and travel do things like that.
Linux Conf continued at a high standard. Damian Conway explained why Perl 6 had taken so long to develop and why it was all worth it (Perl 6 is telepathic). John 'Maddog' Hall (the person responsible for introducing me to Linux) gave an amusing tale of open source projects in history (including the piano!). Van Jacobson really stole the show however; his modest proposal to speed up the Linux networking stack received an encore and a standing ovation. How often do you see that at a technical conference? For the technically inclined slides of his presentation are available. Also worthy of note was Mark Shuttleworth's presentation on collaboration in the open source world; a call for a more disciplined process and in particular attention to translations.
Whilst I was being an extremely deep nerd,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya was enjoying the excellent partner's programme, which included tours of Cadbury World, a trip to Lanarch Castle (a place full of Scottish tragedy!) and a rail journey along the Taieri Gorge. We stayed at the allegedly haunted (former private hospital) Chalet Backpackers and dined one evening at the delightfully deco Etrusco.
OK, so Dunedin was a magnificant place, the conference was excellent, the weather was constantly in the high twenties and even pushed the mid-thirties one day and I'm scouting real estate there. ;-)
Following Dunedin we made our way to central Otago and spent a couple of nights at Wanaka. Normally an Alpine ski resort, in these unusually warm conditions it became a sea-side (or rather lakeside) playground for water-skiers, paragliders and swimmers. One unusual discovery, which perhaps the biological scientists reading this could explain, is what sort of stupid fish eats a hedgehog whole? And what was a hedgehog doing swimming in the lake?
From Wanaka it was a journey to the West Coast, notorious for the rain and cold. We had blue skies for the entire journey. Even at the Franz Josef Glacier, tourists were seen in bikini tops and short shorts! Continuing up the coast it was up to Hokitika, the most famous location in New Zealand for greenstone and related carvings and then onwards to the beautifully complex Malborough Sounds. Then it was across the strait, to spend a day in Wellington and then back to cold and grey Melbourne ;-)
Other stuff has been happening in the world apparently. Including a wheat-for-guns scandal involving the Australian Wheat Board and the Hussein regime. I must do some reading up on this ironic tale. Oh, and Hamas was elected in Palestine; well that's an ironic tragedy.
Linux Conf continued at a high standard. Damian Conway explained why Perl 6 had taken so long to develop and why it was all worth it (Perl 6 is telepathic). John 'Maddog' Hall (the person responsible for introducing me to Linux) gave an amusing tale of open source projects in history (including the piano!). Van Jacobson really stole the show however; his modest proposal to speed up the Linux networking stack received an encore and a standing ovation. How often do you see that at a technical conference? For the technically inclined slides of his presentation are available. Also worthy of note was Mark Shuttleworth's presentation on collaboration in the open source world; a call for a more disciplined process and in particular attention to translations.
Whilst I was being an extremely deep nerd,
caseopaya was enjoying the excellent partner's programme, which included tours of Cadbury World, a trip to Lanarch Castle (a place full of Scottish tragedy!) and a rail journey along the Taieri Gorge. We stayed at the allegedly haunted (former private hospital) Chalet Backpackers and dined one evening at the delightfully deco Etrusco.OK, so Dunedin was a magnificant place, the conference was excellent, the weather was constantly in the high twenties and even pushed the mid-thirties one day and I'm scouting real estate there. ;-)
Following Dunedin we made our way to central Otago and spent a couple of nights at Wanaka. Normally an Alpine ski resort, in these unusually warm conditions it became a sea-side (or rather lakeside) playground for water-skiers, paragliders and swimmers. One unusual discovery, which perhaps the biological scientists reading this could explain, is what sort of stupid fish eats a hedgehog whole? And what was a hedgehog doing swimming in the lake?
From Wanaka it was a journey to the West Coast, notorious for the rain and cold. We had blue skies for the entire journey. Even at the Franz Josef Glacier, tourists were seen in bikini tops and short shorts! Continuing up the coast it was up to Hokitika, the most famous location in New Zealand for greenstone and related carvings and then onwards to the beautifully complex Malborough Sounds. Then it was across the strait, to spend a day in Wellington and then back to cold and grey Melbourne ;-)
Other stuff has been happening in the world apparently. Including a wheat-for-guns scandal involving the Australian Wheat Board and the Hussein regime. I must do some reading up on this ironic tale. Oh, and Hamas was elected in Palestine; well that's an ironic tragedy.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-04 02:21 am (UTC)But who would possibly want to stare at my chest? ;-)
no subject
Date: 2006-02-04 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-04 03:01 am (UTC)um....
Date: 2006-02-04 03:29 am (UTC)Re: um....
Date: 2006-02-04 03:37 am (UTC)