A Geeky Week for the Mind

[tcpip]

Last Sunday gave my presentation at the Melbourne Unitarian Church on A Unitarian-Universalist Perspective on the Economic Crisis; I got a bit ranty at the end, but it was suitable. Sent a revised copy of my ASCP paper on Lying in Politics Revisited to Parrhesia. Have also just sent off a review to Ticonderoga a review of Firmin, a sorrowful tale about a literate existentialist rat by a doctor of philosophy from Yale.

I have been spending the past few days at linux.conf.au in Hobart and have followed a fairly hectic timetable starting from Tuesday where I attended the "Free as In Freedom" and "Open Source Databases" miniconferences. From the latter I attended Monty Taylor's presentation on DRDB followed by arjen_lentz's presentation on MySQL server coding and patching. From the former, Liam Wyatt's summary of a history honours thesis on "Gratis & Libre" was excellent, and I also listened in on Jessica Coates on lobbying politicians and the powers that be to accept open access content and, at the end of the day, Rusty Russell's "Free As In Market Property and Liberty", where he compared intellectual property with the characteristics of physical property.

The twentieth (apart from Barak Obama's inauguration - nice speech, and a day after Martin Luther King Day), as I was duly reminded, my birthday and caseopaya (who is here on the conference partner's program, lucky gal) and my former Vice-Chancellor from Murdoch University, the Emeritus Professor Peter Boyce took me out to a very fine local restaurant. Was also surprised and pleased to receive a number of comments on Facebook, via email etc wishing me the best for the day. Thank you all!

With the start of the conference proper, have attended the two keynotes by Tom Limoncelli and Angela Beasley, on IT views of scarcity vs abundance and developments in Wikipedia respectively. Keith Packard spoke on developments for the Linux desktop which included some impressive eye-candy (but of little interest to me). James Turnball spoke on Puppet configuration, which is truly useful in our environment, and after that I attended a tutorial by Jacob Kaplan-Moss on an introduction to Django, which I have had some limited experience with. Stewart Smith entertained with a presentation on how to get efficient, fast, safe and portable file I/O (haha), and Chris Willing spoke on the Optiportal and Access Grid. Today I've attended Bob Edwards's presentation on using authentication and access control on websites to a database managed system and Timothy Terriberry on the development of a low-latency high-quality audio codec which looks very useful.

Comments

[txxxpxx.livejournal.com]

Happy belated birthday!!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Why thank you muchly! E and I have been saying that we should indeed catch up with you three (including Uther!)... How are you placed over the next couple of weeks?

[txxxpxx.livejournal.com]

I soooo wish I could answer that question.

That stupid woman from Walhalla is still dicking me around with dates. ATM I am loathed to put anything in concrete because I just *know* as soon as I do that, she will tell me that this is the week-end I am supposed to be down there for that meeting.

I currently have a room booked for the 7-8th AND the 28th of Feb but it's just as likely she'll call to book a different date.

The only thing I can suggest right now is we can make a date on the understanding that I might have to cancel at the last(ish) moment.

If that works for you then we can look at weekend of 31st Jan or 21st Feb? Either a Friday night or Saturday night works best for us.

And thanks soooo much for thinking of Uther. We probably wouldn't bring him because he has got very lively since his arthritis medication has kicked in. I would be worried that he might chase your beloved clan & generally just make a nuisance of himself. But thanks for thinking of him!!

*hugs*

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

If that works for you then we can look at weekend of 31st Jan or 21st Feb? Either a Friday night or Saturday night works best for us.

Let's pencil in the 21st of Feb... Saturday night would be great..

I would be worried that he might chase your beloved clan & generally just make a nuisance of himself

He's such a silly big pup! But we could hide the fur-babies away without trouble.. :)

[txxxpxx.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I didn't see this response before I posted my last update.

You'll see that this now is the week-end that the silly slapper has chosen for our meeting so I'm afraid we wound be around on the 21st.

It does however mean that the week-end of the 28th is now free if that suits?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Sounds fine by me.. 28th is is.

[txxxpxx.livejournal.com]

Done.

Just let us know what time closer to the date.

Tony will bring the wine. Anything else?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Just your good selves...

Shall we make this a luncheon or evening gathering?

[txxxpxx.livejournal.com]

Evening works better for us, if it works for you guys.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

OK, evening it is! I shall put upon my chef's hat... and get caseopaya to make the one dessert she knows :)

[darknova666.livejournal.com]

have been up in the country last few wkends, whens next rq?

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Sunday week. This Sunday coming up is Gulliver's Trading Company. The Sunday after that is RQ, a bit of a transition scenario from the last plot arc to the next..

Credo was very funny..

[taavi.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday! sorry I missed the right day.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about it, I tend to forget myself! :)