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Escaping Questnet 2016
Jul. 9th, 2016 06:39 pmSpent the previous two days at Questnet 2016 at the aforementioned open air luxury prison known as Royal Pines. Managed to escape for a while to visit the Botanic Gardens, which was pleasant enough, but apart from that it was conference, conference, and nothing but the conference. It was just as well that the events were very well catered, and the vendors had plenty of interesting items to view and discuss, as the quality of the talks were certainly among the worst I have encountered.
To give a summary of the issues, some (especially the keynotes) were so high level the ground level of operations. Others were delivered as if the attendees were primary school children. Those that had worthwhile content, did so with insufficient attention to implementation. One informative presentation was by Cisco on their Digital Network Architecture, although it filled me with fear and loathing. The major exception to the rule was a dual Dell/Nvidia breakfast presentation which included a great deal of information on developments in machine learning and the hardware and software implementations. It included a little but of Dell spruiking, which they acknowledged, but that was tolerable under the circumstances.
In any case have returned to foggy Melbourne. Two upcoming events include an address tomorrow at the Unitarians on The Abolition of Crime: New Principles in Criminology and Justice, and next Saturday, presenting at Linux Users of Victoria on An Introduction to GNU Cobol. Tomorrow will also run a session of Eclipse Phase where the characters will be engaging in one of the more terrifying activities - Gatecrashing to an alien planet. Also, have made a solid start on a semi-secret project that will be officially announced at the end of the month.
To give a summary of the issues, some (especially the keynotes) were so high level the ground level of operations. Others were delivered as if the attendees were primary school children. Those that had worthwhile content, did so with insufficient attention to implementation. One informative presentation was by Cisco on their Digital Network Architecture, although it filled me with fear and loathing. The major exception to the rule was a dual Dell/Nvidia breakfast presentation which included a great deal of information on developments in machine learning and the hardware and software implementations. It included a little but of Dell spruiking, which they acknowledged, but that was tolerable under the circumstances.
In any case have returned to foggy Melbourne. Two upcoming events include an address tomorrow at the Unitarians on The Abolition of Crime: New Principles in Criminology and Justice, and next Saturday, presenting at Linux Users of Victoria on An Introduction to GNU Cobol. Tomorrow will also run a session of Eclipse Phase where the characters will be engaging in one of the more terrifying activities - Gatecrashing to an alien planet. Also, have made a solid start on a semi-secret project that will be officially announced at the end of the month.
Finished last night with the completion of my third Duolingo skill tree; German. I cannot pretend that I am enamoured by the sound of the language, the inconsistency of the pronoun 'Sie', the sheer range of definite articles according to declension and contraction, and especially the 
