So now I am in Sydney, with Grant and Lindsay (old friends from Canberra). Newtown seems nice, in fact the house itself is very nice. However, the streets are pretty Victorian and built up, which is a bit oppressive. Then again, I am told there are a bunch of parks I haven't seen yet, so I'll delay any further comment until then. It appears it's only about 15 minutes on the train from here to work, which will be nice during the week. More news later...
Heh, he cancelled my hire car booking without my knowledge or permission. Then when it was fixed, the car company tried to bill me $100 for cancelling. It took a while to sort out...
This one took a couple of days to write up cause I am slack... I flew down to Melbourne for the night the other day to present a beta of the NSLU2 hacking talk at the Linux Users of Victoria LUG meeting. It's good that I did, because although the talk was ok, I don't think it was up to standard for a conference, and it gives me some time to work out what was wrong and then fix it up in time for the real deal. The main problem is that some of the demos took too long to work because I hadn't factored in reboot time for the devices. Dinner afterwards was really nice too, and I am actually quite impressed with the high level of clue at the LUG. There also seem to be some pretty cool MythTV hacking projects happening in Melbourne at the moment too. Oh, and thanks to Stewart for picking me up from the airport, thus saving me a $50 cab fare.
Lefty tighty, righty loosey When Frank used to drive in the US when we were on business trips, he'd mutter "Righty tighty, lefty loosey" as he turned corners to make sure he ended up on the correct side of the road. Now that I am back in Australia, I guess I need to mutter the opposite when I drive around. I was a little nervous when I drove for the first time since returning today, but it was actually really easy. It's good to know that I haven't broken my brain permanently. Or at least not on that front. Today was lunch with my mother and brother, a wander around the National Botanic gardens, and then a quick trip into the city. It's interesting that all of Civic seems to be taken over by the Canberra Center (a shopping mall), which now consumes something like three more city blocks than it used to. Met Steve Walsh for beer, and then off to my mother-in-law's for dinner. Now I am at dad's house, finishing up my talk for LUV tomorrow night. Wish me luck. [btags:]
Catherine, the kids and I have made it back to Canberra successfully. The flight from SFO to SYD was actually pretty good. I was dreading the kids screaming the whole way, but that completely didn't happen. They were a bit fidgety by the end, but so was I so that's fair enough. Met by various parental units at the airport, had a quick look around our old house (which dad now lives in), off the Jaycar for emergency electronics (power supplies for slugs and wall socket converters), and then a big lunch at my mother in laws. More details later. [btags:]
So, it looks at the moment like my travel schedule for the next month will look a bit like this: 30 September: Arrive in Canberra 3 October: Melbourne for LUV meeting 4 October: Return to Canberra 10 October: Melbourne for AUUG conference 13 October: Sydney 26 October: Canberra for CLUG meeting 27 October: Return to Sydney, SLUG meeting 2 November: Return to Mountain View Let me know if you're interested in meeting up when I am around.
I was in an unrelated meeting at work today, and it came up that the first annual Anti Borg scholarship is closing it's application window in a few days. I thought it was worth mentioning here, in case there are people who are interested in applying. The basic deal is: Dr. Anita Borg (1949 - 2003) devoted her adult life to revolutionizing the way we think about technology and dismantling barriers that keep women and minorities from entering computing and technology fields. Her combination of technical expertise and fearless vision continues to inspire and motivate countless women to become active participants and leaders in creating technology. As part of Google's ongoing commitment to furthering Anita's vision, we are pleased to announce the 2006 Google Australia Anita Borg Scholarship. Through the scholarship, we would like to encourage women to excel in computing and technology and become active role models and leaders. Scholarships will be awarded based on the strength of candidates' academic background and demonstrated leadership. A group of female undergraduate and postgraduate student finalists will be chosen from the applicant pool. The scholarship recipients, selected from the finalists, will each receive a $5,000 AUD scholarship for the 2007 academic year.…
Now that I am back on my bunker kick dad points out that there was a bunker in Canberra (my home town) as well. Some references I can see online make it public now, including this heritage list. I'm wondering if it's the same as the Bunker Theatre in the same building now. That would be cool...
The Police Academy has problems with sexual harassment, as well as people bringing random firearms to class. I guess the next step is an article about one of the students showing up with an amazing ability to do voice sound effects. Via Crap On, which I found with The Australian Index which is an aggregator for Australian blogs (yes, another one).