Recently I’ve been feeling like I’ve been missing the chance to hear about cool technical projects people are working on in a depth not possible at a CLUG meeting because of time constraints. I am therefore running a simple weekend meetup in Canberra on Saturday 3 December and Sunday 4 December. The Saturday of the event…
Author: mikal
A Technical Topics Status Update
(The featured image for this post is by hobbymb on flickr). So, its been a couple of days since I went mad and decided I should run a weekend conference. A bit has happened in that time, so here’s a quick status update… First off, people have bought tickets! In fact, we’ve sold 20% of…
Technical Topics in Computing, Canberra December 2016
Recently I’ve been feeling like I’ve been missing the chance to hear about cool technical projects people are working on in a depth not possible at a CLUG meeting because of time constraints. Many years ago, AUUG used to run a weekend “summer conference” that was almost free and addressed some of this issue. That…
Oryx and Crake
I bought this book ages ago, on the recommendation of a friend (I don’t remember who), but I only just got around to reading it. Its a hard book to read in places — its not hopeful, or particularly fun, and its confronting in places — especially the plot that revolves around child exploitation. There’s…
Potato Point
I went to Potato Point with the Scouts for a weekend wide game. Very nice location, apart from the ticks!
High Output Management
A reading group of managers at work has been reading this book, except for the last chapter which we were left to read by ourselves. Overall, the book is interesting and very readable. Its a little dated, being all excited with the invention of email and some unfortunate gender pronouns, but if you can get…
Bad Pharma
Another excellent book by Ben Goldacre. In this book he argues that modern medicine is terribly corrupted by the commercial forces that act largely unchecked in the marketplace — studies which don’t make a new drug look good go missing; new drugs are compared only against placebo and not against the current best treatment; doctors…
Exploring the Jagungal
Peter Thomas kindly arranged for a variety of ACT Scout leaders to take a tour of the Jagungal portion of Kosciuszko National Park under the guidance of Robert Green. Robert is very experienced with this area, and has recently written a book. Five leaders from the Macarthur Scout Group decided to go along on this…
Downbelow Station
As I write up comments on books I’ve read in the last little while but left lying around my desk instead of blogging and filing, I find this book sitting there taunting me. I really wanted to like this book, I was quite excited when I bought it. However, Its Cherryh at her worst —…
Killing Floor
I’d seen the Reacher movie (it was ok, but not amazing), but was trapped in an airport with a book too close to the end for comfort. So I bought the first Jack Reacher novel. I’m impressed to be honest — its well written, readable, and not trying to be Tom Clancy. Where Clancy would…