mikal – Page 22 – Made by Mikal

Technical Topics weekly update, week starting 5 September

Post author:mikal
Post published:September 6, 2016
Post category:Events Technical Topics TT December 2016

(This got emailed out to registered attendees yesterday). Oh you few, you glorious, trustworthy and foolhardy few! Thanks to all of you who have registered for Technical Topics. I think it is cool (and a bit bonkers) that we’ve gone from idle idea to a conference with a venue, delegates, speakers and insurance quotes in a week. I think a lot of that is because of you super great people who went out on a limb to register early. So far we’ve announced three talks, which leaves us with four more to announce. I assume now that the schedule is a bit firmer and venue confirmed we’ll start to see registrations pick up. That said, I’m happy if we make it to 50 people -- this doesn’t have to be an event for thousands. A few things you should know: You should have been emailed out a wiki URL, username and password automatically as a side effect of buying a ticket on eventbrite. If that thing hasn’t happened let me know and I’ll fix it for you. The basic idea here is that people can self-organize as much of the event as they want -- for example I am not…

Technical Topics in Computing, December 2016

Post author:mikal
Post published:August 31, 2016
Post category:TT 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. I am therefore running a simple weekend meetup in Canberra on Saturday 3 December and Sunday 4 December. The Saturday of the event will be organised talks, with the goal of the talks being to inspire attendees to have a hack on a new project on the second day of the weekend. The second day would be an unstructured hackfest to explore whatever is interesting after the talks of the previous day. I think reserving the Saturday evening for board games and general “hanging out” sounds like fun too. More details can be found at the conference wiki, with tickets being sold at eventbrite for $20. These talks are currently signed up: Richard Jones, Hacking Minecraft in Python Alastair D'Silva, Getting started with MQTT and the ESP8266 Michael Carden, Introduction to radio Tim Ansell, Using FPGAs with Python ...and more to come!

Minecraft skeleton battle

A Technical Topics Status Update

Post author:mikal
Post published:August 30, 2016
Post category:Events Minecraft Projects Projects with the kids Technical Topics TT December 2016

(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 my original goal of 50 tickets, which is pretty impressive for a conference with no venue or agenda. Thanks to everyone who has made a leap of faith and done that thing. One of the things that I need to sort out is public liability insurance, and I am chasing quotes for that at the moment. Its hard to tell how many tickets I need to sell to cover the cost of that as I have no idea what the insurance will cost yet. In other positive news, a surprising number of people have offered to present as well. The current plan is to try and focus on talks which have a good chance of leaving people to want to have a hack on the Sunday. I'd love to be in a place where people have to make hard choices about what to hack on…

Technical Topics in Computing, Canberra December 2016

Post author:mikal
Post published:August 29, 2016
Post category:Events Technical Topics TT 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 conference died a natural death when linux.conf.au got big, but I think maybe it's time to bring that back. So, I'd like to propose a simple weekend meetup in Canberra. I would make it free, but I feel like the no-show rate is lower for events which charge a token amount. I'm thinking something like $20 is small enough not to be painful, but enough that people will value their tickets. Any profit would be donated to some form of community group at the end, but I haven’t picked one yet. The Saturday of the event would be organised talks, with the goal of the talks being to inspire attendees to have a hack on a new project on the second day of the weekend. The second day would be an unstructured hackfest to explore whatever is interesting after the talks of the previous day.…

Oryx and Crake

Post author:mikal
Post published:May 28, 2016
Post category:Book

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 very little to like about the future society that Atwood posits here, but perhaps that's the point. Despite not being a happy fun story, the book made me think about things like genetic engineering in a way I didn't before and I think that's what Atwood was seeking to achieve. So I'd have to describe the book as a success.

Potato Point

Post author:mikal
Post published:May 23, 2016
Post category:Diary

I went to Potato Point with the Scouts for a weekend wide game. Very nice location, apart from the ticks!

High Output Management

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 24, 2016
Post category:Book

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 past those minor things there is a lot of wise advice here. I'm not sure I agree with 100% of it, but I do think the vast majority is of interest. A well written book that I'd recommend to new managers.

Bad Pharma

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 21, 2016
Post category:Book

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 are routinely bribed with travel, training and small perks. Overall I'm left feeling like things haven't improved much since this book was published, given that these behaviors still seem common. The book does offer concrete actions that we could take to fix things, but I don't see many of these happening any time soon, which is a worrying place to be. Overall, a disturbing but important read.

Exploring the Jagungal

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 12, 2016
Post category:Diary

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 tour and take a look at our hiking options in the area. The first challenge is getting to the area. The campsite we used for the first day is only accessible to four wheel drive vehicles -- the slope down to the camp site from Nimmo Plain is quite rocky and has some loose sections. That said, the Landcruiser I was in had no trouble making the trip, and the group managed to get two car style four wheel drives into the area without problems as well. The route to Nimmo Plain from the south of Canberra is as follows: [kml: 20160411-writeup-1] We explored two areas which are both a short drive from Nimmo Plain. We in fact didn't explore anything at Nimmo Plain itself, but as the intermediate point where the road forks it makes sense to show that bit of route first. From…

Downbelow Station

Post author:mikal
Post published:March 17, 2016
Post category:Book

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 -- wordy and kind of goes nowhere. There's an interesting idea here, but the book needs to be half its current length. I got half way through and gave up. A disappointment.