Hotels, gatherings and the usual affairs...

[tcpip]

caseopaya has been staying at the Crown Plaza hotel during the Melbourne Boat Show, allegedly a 4.5 star place which overlooks the Yarra. Personally, I think the place is pretty average to say the least. A very bland building, average food, a billing and card service that's obviously broken. At least the view is good.

Tuesday night managed to attend the LUV monthly meeting, where kattekrab presented a discussion on Open Document Format (hooray), Jacinta Richardson spoke on the OSDC conference and Rusty Russell, spoke about anti-circumvention legislation; this is very important

Friday night attended a documentary film hosted by Earthsharing on the Narmada Dam project and the attempted relocation of indigenous people who preferred to face the rising dam waters rather than move.

Attended damien_wise's wonderful birthday dinner with fine conversation and fine company on Saturday night; following eve after my Cybernoia game (which was dealing with multiple levels of virtual reality, not including the game itself) dined with the gaming crew as horngirl who was in town for a flying visit from Canberra. Yesterday managed to catch up for a quick beverage with severina_242.

Went to a service industry networking group bright and early on Wednesday morning. Find myself thinking "I don't need a personal trainer, I don't need an immigration specialist, I don't need a home loan broker... But they all need websites and IT systems administration." There is an advantage in belonging to a ubiquitious industry. The disadvantages can be truly frustrating. Then imajica_lj told me he has encounted a similar experience among managers twice!

Gideon Levy says the right things about the Gaza seige (hat-tip to angel80. Meanwhile four out of five Israeli's want their government to assasinate Hamas leaders. A little closer to home, my old bose Jose Ramos-Horta has become Prime Minister of East Timor. John Martinkus has a few questions on what is a sort of coup. Damien Kingsbury gives the event a weak cheer.

Comments

[damien-wise.livejournal.com]

Glad you had a good time...I might have an eclectic mix of friends, but they do rock. :)

BTW: I was enthusing abount Ubuntu with a mate over lunch today and it got me inspired. He said it's very Debian/Gnom-ish...like that's a problem. ;) Is aptget the best widget of all time, or what?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Glad you had a good time...I might have an eclectic mix of friends, but they do rock. :)

Indeed! You clearly have an army of minions at your command (and you probably didn't realise it)


BTW: I was enthusing abount Ubuntu with a mate over lunch today and it got me inspired.

Good! I'll send you a brief later today...

[decrypt-era.livejournal.com]

I'v been hearin bout this Ubuntu thing for awhiles now,
this finally sent me to check it out.
The idea rocks!
I'v been using Debian as my main OS since 99,
usually th testing distro,
but there's quite often something broken on my system
because i lack th time to find out how to fix it,
so Ubuntu seems just what th doctor ordered.
This'l at least double Debian's userbase,
if not quadruple it!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ubuntu has a few nice methods for getting around proprietory codecs and the like. Plus, the community support is enormous. It really is "Linux for the Desktop" user.

[damien-wise.livejournal.com]

You clearly have an army of minions at your command (and you probably didn't realise it)

I wouldn't describe them as minions, but they are a nice/thoughtful/generous bunch. Between cluelessness and poor perception on my part, I probably don't notice all the time...still, I'd like to think I don't take 'em for granted. Guess I'm lucky. :)

PS: have asked Ubuntu folks to mail me disks.