mikal – Page 22 – Made by Mikal

Game review: Guillotine

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 22, 2017
Post category:Card games Games

AJ, Matt and I have decided that we need to play more board games and that we should write up our thoughts about them as we play them. I've decided to keep quick notes here to keep us honest. We start with a card game named "Guillotine". AJ: A fun by simple game. Matt: Fun, but don't play it with people who over think things. Mikal: A fun game we've been playing for a while. It works well with younger kids -- I think the boys were about 6 or 7 when we started playing it with them. Play is relatively quick too, a good after dinner game before the kids bed time. Would play again.

Event wrap up

Post author:mikal
Post published:January 11, 2017
Post category:TT December 2016

Thanks to everyone who made Technical Topics 2016 a success. I enjoyed the talks, and I think the turnout was much better than I expected. I've also given up on convincing people to use the big boy name for the event, and have accepted that "BonkersCon" has stuck as a name. So congratulations on that! A special giant thanks to those who agreed to speak, video record the event, or flew all the way from places-that-are-not-Canberra to attend. Your commitment to a random idea is impressive to me and I appreciate your efforts more than you can imagine. I've included some photos of the event below, with almost all of these having been taken by Richard Jones, so thanks to him as well for documenting the event. Tim Ansell made some videos of the talks, and I'll put these online separately in the next day or two. Having asked attendees if they'd come to another BonkersCon, the answer was a resounding yes. So, I'm thinking mid-2017 is about the right timing, and you'll hear more details about that soon.

A Walk in the Woods

Post author:mikal
Post published:December 19, 2016
Post category:Book

I found this tale of Bill Bryson walking the Appalachian Trail (rather incompetently I must say) immensely entertaining. Well written, interesting, generally exaggerated, and leaving me with a desire to get out somewhere and walk some more. I'd strongly recommend this book to people who already care about bush walking, but have found other pursuits to occupy most of their spare time.

Leviathan Wakes

Post author:mikal
Post published:December 12, 2016
Post category:Book

I read this book based on the recommendation of Richard Jones, and its really really good. A little sci-fi, a little film noir, and very engaging. I also like that bad things happen to good people in the story -- its gritty and unclean enough to be believable. I don't want to ruin the book for anyone, but I really enjoyed this and have already ordered the sequels. Oh, and there's a Netflix series based off these books that I'll now have to watch too.

Technical Topics weekly update, week starting 31 October

Post author:mikal
Post published:November 2, 2016
Post category:Events Technical Topics TT December 2016

(This just got emailed out to registered attendees of Technical Topics). So, I went quiet for a while because I got busy with other things, but now its time to focus on getting Technical Topics [1] ready for action. There is a program of things people are currently talking about at this URL: http://wiki.madebymikal.com/index.php?title=Technical_Topics:December_2016 If people who are down for a talk can ensure that they are happy with their nominated timeslot, and have added at least some information to their linked wiki pages for each talk what would be cool. We also still have two full slots free, and some space for lightning talks if anyone else is interested in telling us what they're hacking on at the moment. I'll keep pinging people I think might have interesting things to talk about, but having other people suggest things would be cool too. Finally, it would be cool to have a few more people at the event. I'm not worried, but I figure the more the merrier, so if you haven't let your geeky friends know yet that would be cool too. Thanks, Michael 1: Or BonkersCon as some of my co-workers have named it.

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.