Made by Mikal – Page 29

In A Sunburned Country

Post author:mikal
Post published:June 2, 2015
Post category:Book

This is the first Bill Bryson book I've read, and I have to say I enjoyed it. Bill is hilarious and infuriating at the same time, which surprisingly to me makes for a very entertaining combination. I'm sure he's not telling the full story in this book -- its just not possible for someone so ill prepared to not just die in the outback somewhere. Take his visit to Canberra for example -- he drives down from Sydney, hits the first hotel he finds and then spends three days there. No wonder he's bored. Eventually he bothers to drive for another five minutes and finds there is more to the city than one hotel. On the other hand, he maligns my home town in such a hilarious manner I just can't be angry at him. I loved this book, highly recommended.

The linux.conf.au 2016 Call For Proposals is open!

Post author:mikal
Post published:June 2, 2015
Post category:OpenStack

The OpenStack community has been well represented at linux.conf.au over the last few years, which I think is reflective of both the growing level of interest in OpenStack in the general Linux community, as well as the fact that OpenStack is one of the largest Python projects around these days. linux.conf.au is one of the region's biggest Open Source conferences, and has a solid reputation for deep technical content. Its time to make it all happen again, with the linux.conf.au 2016 Call For Proposals opening today! I'm especially keen to encourage talk proposals which are somehow more than introductions to various components of OpenStack. Its time to talk detail about how people's networking deployments work, what container solutions we're using, and how we're deploying OpenStack in the real world to do seriously cool stuff. The conference is in the first week of February in Geelong, Australia. I'd be happy to chat with anyone who has questions about the CFP process.

Square Rock and Mount Franklin

Post author:mikal
Post published:May 29, 2015
Post category:Diary

I'm not really sure why it took me so long to write this set of walks up -- I think I just got lost in preparations for the most recent OpenStack summit and simply forgot. That said, here they are... Tony, Steven and I mounted an expedition to Mount Franklin, which is one of the trigs I hadn't been to yet. Its right on the ACT border with NSW, and despite not being a super long walk its verging of inaccessible in winter (think several feet of snow). So, we decided to get it done while we could. [kml: 20150426-4] We also tacked on a trip to Square Rock based on the strong recommendation of a good friend. Square Rock has amazing views, highly recommended. [kml: 20150426-2]

Ancillary Justice

Post author:mikal
Post published:May 7, 2015
Post category:Book

I loved this book. The way the language works takes a little while to work out, but then blends into the background. The ideas here are new and interesting and I look forward to other work of Ann's. Very impressed with this book.

Coding club day one: a simple number guessing game in python

Post author:mikal
Post published:May 1, 2015
Post category:Coding_club

I've recently become involved in a new computer programming club at my kids' school. The club runs on Friday afternoons after school and is still very new so we're still working through exactly what it will look like long term. These are my thoughts on the content from this first session. The point of this first lesson was to approach a programming problem where every child stood a reasonable chance of finishing in the allotted 90 minutes. Many of the children had never programmed before, so the program had to be kept deliberately small. Additionally, this was a chance to demonstrate how literal computers are about the instructions they're given -- there is no room for intuition on the part of the machine here, it does exactly what you ask of it. The task: write a python program which picks a random number between zero and ten. Ask the user to guess the number the program has picked, with the program telling the user if they are high, low, or right. We then brainstormed the things we'd need to know how to do to make this program work. We came up with: How do we get a random number? What…

Tuggeranong Trig (again)

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 25, 2015
Post category:Diary

The cubs at my local scout group are interested in walking to a trig, but have some interesting constraints around mobility for a couple of their members. I therefore offered to re-walk Tuggeranong Trig in Oxley with an eye out for terrain. I think this walk would be very doable for cubs -- its 650 meters with only about 25 meters of vertical change. The path is also ok for a wheelchair I think. [kml: 20150415]

One Tree and Painter

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 13, 2015
Post category:Diary

Paul and I set off to see two trigs today. One Tree is on the ACT border and is part of the centenary trail. Painter is a suburban trig in Belconnen. Much fun was had, I hope I didn't make Paul too late for the wedding he had to go to. [kml: 20150412-1] [kml: 20150412-2]

Thinking time

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 10, 2015
Post category:Diary

I've had a lot of things to think about this week, so I've gone on a few walks. I found some geocaches along the way, but even better I think my head is a bit more sorted out now. [kml: 20150408-1] [kml: 20150408-2] [kml: 20150409-2]

Bendora Arboretum and Bulls Head trig

Post author:mikal
Post published:April 5, 2015
Post category:Diary

Prompted largely by a not very detailed entry in a book, a bunch of friends and I went to explore Bendora Arboretum. The arboretum was planted in the 1940's as scientific experiments exploring what soft woods would grow well in our climate -- this was prompted by the large amount of wood Australia was importing at the time. There were 34 Arboreta originally, but only this one remains. The last three other than this one were destroyed in the 2003 bush fires. This walk appears in Best Bush, Town and Village Walks in and around the ACT by Marion Stuart, which was the inspiration for this outing. The only thing to note with her description is that the walk is a fair bit longer than she describes -- its 2km from the locked gate to the hut, which means a 4km return walk before you explore the arboretum at all. The arboretum has received some attention from the ACT government recently, with new signage and a fresh gravel pass. Also please note this area might only be accessible by four wheel drive in winter, which is not mentioned in the book. We also did a side trip to Bulls Head…

A quick walk through Curtin

Post author:mikal
Post published:March 24, 2015
Post category:Diary

What do you do when you accidentally engaged a troll on twitter? You go for a walk of course. I didn't realize there had been a flash flood in Canberra in 1971 that killed seven people, probably because I wasn't born then. However, when I ask people who were around then, they don't remember without prompting either, which I think is sad. I only learnt about the flood because of the geocache I found hidden at the (not very well advertised) memorial today. This was walk inspired by one from Best Bush, Town and Village Walks in and around the ACT by Marion Stuart. I was disappointed that the guide book didn't mention the flash flood however, and skips the memorial. [kml: 20150323]