Take a Deep Breath and Cough
Although some of the urgency has died down, bushfire smoke continues to permeate where we live, work and play. As a chronic asthma and allergy sufferer, personal necessity has prompted me to research air quality extensively. What follows is a quick guide to what you…
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How to Create a Venn Diagram with Independent Intersections in PowerPoint
A Venn diagram can be a great way to explain a business concept. This is generally not difficult to create in modern presentation software. I often use Google Slides for its collaboration abilities. Where it becomes difficult is when you want to add a unique…
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New LinkedIn Interface Delete Your Data? Here’s How to Bring it Back.
Over the past few years it has seemed like LinkedIn were positioning themselves to take over your professional address book. Through offering CRM-like features, users were able to see a summary of their recent communications with each connection as well as being able…
read moreCareerNexus: a new way to find work
The start-up that I have co-founded, CareerNexus, is looking for job seekers to take part in a product test and market experiment. If you, or someone you know, wants to know more and potentially take part, message me. If we can help just a fraction of those people who…
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A Complete Literacy Experience For Young Children
From the “I should have posted this months ago” vault… When I led technology development at One Laptop per Child Australia, I maintained two golden rules: everything that we release must ‘just work’ from the perspective of the user (usually a child or teacher), and…
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Interview with Australian Council for Computers in Education Learning Network
Adam Holt and I were interviewed last night by the Australian Council for Computers in Education Learning Network about our not-for-profit work to improve educational opportunities for children in the developing world. [youtube…
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Published in Engineers Without Borders Magazine
Engineers Without Borders asked me to write something for their Humanitarian Engineering magazine about One Laptop per Child. Here is what I wrote. The school bell rings, and the children filter into the classroom. Each is holding an XO – their own personal learning…
read moreInterviews from the field
Oracle, a sponsor of OLPC Australia, have posted some video interviews of a child and a teacher involved in the One Education programme.
read moreHTML5 support in Browse
One of the most exciting improvements in OLPC OS 12.1.0 is a revamped Browse activity: Browse, Wikipedia and Help have been moved from Mozilla to WebKit internally, as the Mozilla engine can no longer be embedded into other applications (like Browse) and Mozilla has…
read moreXO‑1 Training Pack
Our One Education programme is growing like crazy, and many existing deployments are showing interest. We wanted to give them a choice of using their own XOs to participate in the teacher training, rather than requiring them to purchase new hardware. Many have…
read moreXO-AU OS 12.0 Release Candidate 2 released
Release Candidate 2 of the 2012 OLPC Australia operating system, XO-AU OS 12, has been released. We hope to make a final release in two weeks, in time for the start of term 2 of school in Queensland and Northern Territory. To get started, visit our release notes page.…
read moreOLPC Australia Education Newsletter, Edition 9
Edition 9 of the OLPC Australia Education Newsletter is now available. In this edition, we provide a few classroom ideas for mathematics, profile the Jigsaw activity, de-mystify the Home views in Sugar and hear about the OLPC journey of Girraween Primary School. To…
read moreOLPC Australia training resources
Underpinning the OLPC Australia education programme is a cache of training resources. In addition to our Online Course and Learner Manual, we have a set of help videos, hosted on our Vimeo channel. I have updated the OLPC Disassembly instructions for the top and…
read moreOLPC Australia Education Newsletter
Editions 7 and 8 of the OLPC Australia Education Newsletter have come out in the past few weeks. In each edition, we will provide news, tips and tricks and stories from the field. To subscribe, send an e‑mail to…
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Creating an Education Programme
OLPC Australia had a strong presence at linux.conf.au 2012 in Ballarat, two weeks ago. I gave a talk in the main keynote room about our educational programme, in which I explained our mission and how we intend to achieve it. [youtube…
read moreOLPC Australia XO-AU OS 12 beta 1
The OLPC Australia XO-AU OS 12 has reached beta 1. This is based on OLPC OS 11.3.1 and Dextrose 3. We’d really appreciate some testing. Please direct your feedback to the OLPC Australia mailing list. Here is the notice I sent out to teachers: ———- Forwarded…
read moreAre you sick of highly paid teachers???
This has been making the rounds lately and is an absolute gem: Teachers’ hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do — babysit! We can get that for minimum wage.…
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OLPC Australia talk at OSDC 2011
Update: my talk has been covered by OLPC News. Here’s the video of the talk I said I’d be giving at OSDC 2011, titled Australia’s Toughest Linux Deployment: In…
read moreSpeaking at OSDC 2011 on OLPC Australia
I am speaking next Thursday at the Open Source Developers’ Conference 2011 in Canberra. The title is Australia’s Toughest Linux Deployment. Yes it’s a play on the ruggedness and flexibility of the XO’s design to meet the needs of remote communities. Here’s the talk…
read moreXO-AU OS 10.1.3‑au3 and XO-AU USB 3 released
I’m pleased to announce two important software releases from OLPC Australia. XO-AU OS 10.1.3‑au3 is the latest iteration of our operating system for XO‑1.5 hardware. It continues our process of refinement on top of OLPC OS 10.1.3, to better suit Australian educational…
read moreCannes Lions award for OLPC Australia
OLPC Australia have been awarded a Bronze Lion at this year’s Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the advertising counterpart of the Cannes Film Festival. I think this is fantastic recognition for a Free Software project, especially one that is focused on…
read moreHTML5 in Sugar
In my last blog post, I made the suggestion that Sugar integrate HTML5 more closely to allow for the creation of activities in standard Web technologies. The Karma Project has since been pointed out to me, and the demos look impressive. Unfortunately, its progress…
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Why ‘Free and Open’ matters
Adobe is dropping Linux support for their Adobe AIR development platform. To be honest, I don’t really care. Why? Because I’ve been careful enough to not tie my efforts to a proprietary platform. I’ve had several groups offer to write applications/activities for OLPC…
read moreThe OLPC Australia programme in action
In honour of OLPC Australia’s second anniversary, we have produced a video revealing some of the success we have achieved. Feel free to spread it far and wide…
read moreInstalling Skype and Java on XOs
We had a query about running Skype and WebEx on XOs. Getting Skype to work is quite straightforward. WebEx requires Java, which is trickier. Note that I only tested to the point of being able to run a test applet in Firefox. If anyone wants to try WebEx, please let me…
read moreDocumentary about OLPC Designer Yves Behar
SBS television recently screened a documentary about Yves Behar, the person behind the distinctive industrial design of the OLPC XO laptop. It’s a fascinating insight into the mind and influences behind one of the most influential designers around. The documentary was…
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Video of linux.conf.au talk
The video of my talk at linux.conf.au is online. You can watch/download it online (OGV format). Overall, I think it went quite well. A personal criticism is that I need to seriously cut back on my use of ‘um’ and ‘ah’ sounds. Suggestions on combating this problem…
read morelinux.conf.au and XO-AU 10.1.3‑au1 release
I’ll be at linux.conf.au flying the OLPC Australia flag. In addition to giving a talk, I have plans for a whole range of other things, including: running a Birds of a Feather session hosting a stand at Open Day contributing XO‑1.5s to win as door prizes Any assistance…
read moreSpeaking at linux.conf.au about OLPC Australia
I will be speaking at linux.conf.au 2011 in Brisbane about OLPC Australia, with a focus on the technical side. We have been doing some amazing stuff, but thus far we have been very quiet about it in the technical community. It’s time to fix this oversight. My talk is…
read moreXO‑1.75: cutting through the nonsense
There’s lots of talk going on about the OLPC XO‑1.75 now. A lot of it is inaccurate. I’ll quote John Watlington, VP of Hardware Engineering at OLPC: Disclaimer: I’m VP of Hardware Engineering at OLPC ARM processors powerful enough the support the user experience we…
read moreOLPC Australia documentary on the teevee
OLPC Australia has a documentary airing on Channel 7 this Sunday, 5 December at 11.00am (AEST), entitled “Ideas for Good – the One Laptop per Child initiative”. The documentary showcases our reach into Far North Queensland, and captures footage of celebrities…
read moreOLPC support from the Prime Minister of Australia
We at OLPC Australia celebrated our first birthday with a massive bang — a black-tie gala event held at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Sydney Harbour. It was a wonderful night of celebrating Australian Indigenous art, music, culture and food. Corporate sponsors…
read moreOLPC Australia in East Arnhem Land
I am writing this from Dhalinybuy School in remote Australia. What’s even more impressive is that I am typing this on a production-model OLPC XO‑1.5! For those who don’t know yet, in March I started full-time as the Technical Co-ordinator at One Laptop per Child…
read moreLew Zealand
Yes, this is quite belated. I’ll explain why in a subsequent post. linux.conf.au this year was in Wellington, New Zealand. It just keeps getting better! It’s always great meeting people you otherwise only know online. I was especially impressed by the OLPC NZ team.…
read more“Linux” support
Carla Schroder from Linux Today repeats a question that I’ve heard asked many times: “Here we go with another round of Linux Today reader comments. Let’s start off with an issue that has been on my mind: Vendors who boast of the their Linux-based devices, but they…
read morevrms meme
I’m not usually one for blog memes, but what the hell 🙂 A downside of vrms is that it can only look at packages installed via the OS packaging system. I know I have the Adobe Flash Plug-in installed (manually) as well. Nevertheless, the result isn’t too bad, and I…
read moreBimbo and the Nerd?
An intriguing offer came through to the SLUG-chat mailing list a few weeks ago: an Australian version of Beauty and the Geek is in the works, and they’re looking for geeks. I’ll be honest and admit that I’m a fan of the US version of the show. The ‘geeks’ feel like…
read moreWindows 7 netbooks in NSW schools?
I was asked by a journalist to comment on the NSW government decision to distribute Windows 7 “mini notebooks” across schools. Here’s my reply: I used to work with satellite networks, providing Internet access to most of NSW before wired broadband was widely available…
read moreEnergy conservation for security
I was having a discussion at work, and it occurred to us that a simple way of improving our data security is to turn machines off (or suspend, hibernate, etc.) when they aren’t required. Now this isn’t exactly rocket science, but what I found most interesting is how…
read moreInstall 64-bit Java plug-in
The OpenJDK plug-in that comes with modern distros is usually very good at handling Java in Web pages, but some applets are just stubborn. Thankfully, Sun have finally (after over six years!) released a plug-in for x86_64 Web browsers. I managed to get the JDK version…
read moreA bit of corporate indulgence…
Apologies for pimping my employer, but I became the subject of the inaugural ‘Meet the Team’ portion of the BizCubed newsletter. It’s a good feeling knowing that you work for a company that actually cares about open source and open standards. For example, we sponsored…
read more‘Heritage’ is relative
I live in a country where even buildings less than 100 years old can be protected as ‘heritage’. Yet in India they can demolish a 700-year-old mosque without even batting an…
read moreWill it be Domesday or Doomsday for our information?
The ABC have a piece from National Library of Australia web archiving manager Paul Koerbin, about the importance of digital records preservation. Of equal importance, how can we be sure that we can actually read those archives in the future? Literacy of Egyptian…
read moreInstall Adobe Flash 10 and Reader 9.1 on Ubuntu 9.04 x86_64
The ability to run in a completely 64-bit environment is a major benefit of Linux over the competition. With everything open source, the community can port and compile applications to new architectures with ease. On Windows, you have to suffer from the fact that just…
read moreSimply ingenious
This is the most clever thing I have seen in a long time. The equation is simple: 2(cardboard box) + black paint + aluminium foil + acrylic cover = Kyoto BoxThere’s an image of the final result over here. Attributes include: costs just $US 5 to produce amazingly…
read moreWhat’s the big deal?
I don’t get it. In a community where openness is prized, some have seen it fit to criticise that very tenet. In the world of FOSS, bug trackers are laid open for all to see (and contribute to), and mailing lists are a hive of discussion and innovation. So why is it…
read moreParticipation in the Nation
It looks like I’ve opened up a can of worms. Last week I bemoaned about the low voter participation in Linux Australia (LA) elections. I spent considerable energy at linux.conf.au (LCA) in Hobart publicising the issue and canvassing opinion from community members.…
read moreWhat is Linux Australia?
This is a follow-on from my last post, where I announced my candidacy for Linux Australia Council. I’ve posted this to the linux-aus mailing list, but thought it wouldn’t hurt going here as it raises issues that I feel are fundamental to Linux Australia’s existence.…
read moreShameless plug
The Linux Australia Council elections are in full swing, and I thought it only fair to abuse my blog to pimp my candidacy for an Ordinary Committee Member position. You’re an LA member (it’s free!), drop in and exercise your democratic right (i.e. vote for me :p ). My…
read moreFOSS Pack exists! (well, kinda)
Last month I proposed that the FOSS community create an integrated software installer for Windows and Mac OS that only included FOSS applications. If Google can make Google Pack, I opined, why can’t we make a FOSS Pack? As I had expected, my idea was already realised,…
read morePacking FOSS
Just for a second, put yourself in the shoes of an average PC user. You use the software that came with your computer, plus perhaps some others that you downloaded, bought in a box or ‘borrowed’ from a friend. You’ve heard some good things about something called “open…
read moreHuawei e169 3G modem on Ubuntu 8.04
I recently bought myself a Huawei e169 3G modem as part of a service with Exetel (based on the Optus network). There are a few guides online on how to get it to work with GNU/Linux, but either they didn’t work as advertised or I wasn’t happy with the approach they…
read moreThink different
So the Pope is coming to Sydney, and the New South Wales Government is scrambling to protect him. What better way to shield an absolute monarch than with despotic legislation? We can bitch and whine about it. We can blatantly flout these laws and hand out free…
read moreGreat start… but the hard work is just beginning
Donna Benjamin rounded a small group of us together to write a letter to Julia Gillard, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education. The result was widely syndicated, hopefully building some mindshare in the process. The Education Expo proved to me more than…
read moreEducation Expo report
Two weeks ago, we had the Education Expo. Here’s my report, as co-ordinator of the Linux Australia stand: Education Expo Sat 14 to Sun 15 June Rosehill Racecourse, Sydney The Education Expo is an annual trades show targeted towards the K‑12 educational space. Visitors…
read moreBill Gates and the importance of source code
Bill Gates was interviewed by the BBC’s Money Programme. As he prepares to significantly reduce his direct work for Microsoft Corporation, Bill reflects upon what got him started in the first place and what kept him ahead of the ‘competition’. The video provides a…
read moreEducation Expo, this weekend!
The Education Expo is on this weekend. I’ve sent a couple of missives to our helpers. The second one contains some advice that would work well in many situations regarding FOSS (especially where marketing is concerned), so I’ll reproduce it (slightly edited) here:…
read moreOpen CeBIT
The second Open CeBIT in Sydney ended last week. Forming a section of the much larger CeBIT expo, Open CeBIT focused on open source technologies and solutions. I was involved in three stands: BizCubed (my employer), Linux Australia and Open Source Industry Australia.…
read moreMarketing FOSS
Lately, I’ve been thinking more than ever about ways to promote free and open source software to a non-technical crowd. This has largely been prompted by the Education Expo in Sydney, for which I am co-ordinating the Linux Australia stand (Stand F9). Currently on my…
read moreIRC on the run
Those who remember my ancient quest for the perfect IRC solution might be interested in these posts by Aaron Toponce explaining how to couple a remote irssi session with GUI notification. I’m still quite happy with my current Bip + Xchat combination, but I’ve always…
read moreOpen Source software is the software establishment!
Note: This post is about a news article I was interviewed for. My comments are below. It can be amusing when news articles or blogs are written about a report/study that has only been released or read in excerpt. Small snippets can be extremely controversial on their…
read moreA Different Kind of Interview
Every now and then I’m invited to provide media commentary on an issue regarding technology, particularly when it is to do with (GNU/)Linux or other free and open source software. On this occasion, the questions took a slightly different turn with the news that…
read moreAnnoying by design
Microsoft claim that their UAC security prompts in Vista are designed to annoy you. I’m trying hard to take them seriously and to not laugh them off… but did they really think it’d work? OEMs and users have been disabling it in droves. Other users have probably…
read moreWhere’s the video?
I promised way back in January that we’d release a video of that month’s SLUG meeting — our up-close-and-personal with Microsoft. We did just that a month ago, but I totally forgot to mention it here. I know, I suck. Anyway, you can get the video and slides here (the…
read moreMass music tagging: Picard
Simon and Lindsay: EasyTAG is indeed a useful tool for tagging many music files at once. While EasyTAG does automate a lot of the work, it is still quite a laborious process. This really grinds when you’re trying to manage a large music collection. What if your tagger…
read moreA fabulous fortnight
The last two weeks have been quite eventful. Each of these probably deserves its own blog post, but since I don’t have the time to write them all I’ll just give a summary. Document Freedom Day, 26 March The first annual Document Freedom Day (inspired by Software…
read moreWhat if… Windows went open source?
Sam Varghese over at iTWire asked me a couple of days ago for input on whether FOSS would be affected if the Windows source code was released. I started drafting a response, expecting to be finished quickly, but the ideas just kept flowing. The end result was a touch…
read moreDo you dare open the Necronomicon?
As promised, Microsoft have released documentation on their old binary formats by February 15. I haven’t taken a look yet, but the comments on the article don’t look too encouraging: some people contend that elements are missing and incomplete. It’ll be interesting to…
read moreA Licence Odyssey
My last post made me revisit an internal debate that I’ve been having for a number of years: what licence should I publish my works under? There has been plenty of work done on this with regards to software, but what about documentation and other works? What licence…
read moreTreasured
I’m a little late on this, but Marco Ostini has done a fine job of creating a submission [PDF] to the Federal Treasurer for Linux Australia. I feel especially stoked to see that it includes some of the explanation of FOSS that I maintain for Linux Australia. Nice to…
read moreA win for the People… or Pyrrhic victory?
I mentioned in my write-up of the Microsoft visit to SLUG that Microsoft are going to release the specifications to their binary file formats. I wasn’t aware at the time that this had already been announced: the specs will be released on February 15. Groklaw has…
read moreDancing with the Devil in the pale moonlight
Last night, SLUG’s monthly meeting played host to four representatives from Microsoft: Sarah Bond, Platform Strategy Manager. Sarah was present to talk about Microsoft’s current position with OOXML, especially with regards to the interoperability with Linux. Amit…
read moreMegahertz marketing
Stuart Corner at iTWire succumbs to our old nemesis, corporate marketing. Intel have for years pushed the line that megahertz (MHz) equals speed. Apple used to call this the ‘Megahertz Myth’. Intel competitors AMD and Cyrix were for many years forced to resort to…
read moreSoftware Freedom Day 2007: Sydney report
It’s been indicated to me that I never put out a report on Software Freedom Day in Sydney. Well, better late than never 🙂 Advocates of free software celebrated at the University of New South Wales on 16 September for the fourth annual Software Freedom Day. Members of…
read moreWill Linux succeed on the desktop?
iTnews rehashes the old refrain of ‘Why Linux won’t succeed on the desktop’ articles. These sorts of articles come out all the time, and they are always written by people who have not used Linux much and therefore don’t understand how it works and how it is developed.…
read moreSoftware Freedom Day: a ‘press release’
Whilst codifying the plans for Software Freedom Day in Sydney, I decided to put together a mock press release. A little of the content is lifted from the SFD Web site. Feel free to modify it for your needs (localised to your city, etc.) and redistribute. SYDNEY…
read moreComing up next… Software Freedom Day!
Tighten your belts and buckle your shoes, for Software Freedom Day is just around the corner! This year, the Sydney team is hosting their event one day late (on Sunday instead of Saturday), to take advantage of the computer fair at The University of New South Wales.…
read moreHas it been worth it?
I am still trying to understand the benefit to local residents of hosting APEC in Sydney. Sydneysiders have been effectively told that they won’t be welcome in their own city for over a week — so thoughtfully extended by two days by our good friend George W. Bush (God…
read moreI swear to god that I didn’t cheat!
Two different tests, one same outcome. Things that make you go hmmmm… Which Transformer Are You? You are Optimus Prime! Take this quiz! Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code I AM 64% OPTIMUS PRIME Take the Transformers Quiz LotD: …
read moreTipping point
Reading this KernelTrap article, I came across an interesting quote from Linus Torvalds: “Really early on when I was making Linux, one of the things I was really doing was reading Internet news from the university computer. I was dialing up to the university, I…
read moreFour legs good, two legs bad!
George Orwell’s classic allegory, Animal Farm, presents many perspectives on human behaviour and society. One of these is how people can be led and manipulated through the control of information. In the story, the Seven Commandments formed a de facto constitution for…
read moreOptimus Prime lives!
“Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.” — Optimus Prime This one throwaway line in the new Transformers film is in fact homage to the original Transformers series. As observant readers of this blog may have noticed, I am quite a fan of the Transformers…
read moreManic May
Things have certainly been crazy as of late. Being elected onto the SLUG Committee (at the March AGM) has given me a greater appreciation of local community issues and of what it takes to co-ordinate a group. At the same time, managing the Linux Australia stand at…
read moreHappy Tamil New Year!
It’s New Year’s Day in the Tamil calendar, so happy new year! I didn’t know about this until only a few days ago, and coincidentally I concluded my job yesterday. Also coincidentally, yesterday was Friday the 13th. So it looks like I might be at the mercy of two…
read moreWhat’s wrong with my script?
Are you receiving syntax errors when running a shell script on Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft)? If so, you might want to check what shell you are using. While testing scripts for the LCA A/V Team a few months ago, I discovered that the Ubuntu developers decided to symlink…
read moreEh-Oh!
I have been completely floored by Ubuntu’s new Migration Assistant. It’s certainly something that we have needed in the FLOSS world for a long time. Anything we can do to reduce migratory hurdles is by all means welcome.To play devil’s advocate, however, I’d like to…
read morePickle me grandmother! (AKA: The January Chronicles, Part III)
When I was little boy In Grammar schoolAlways went by the very best ruleBut Evertime the bell would ringYou’d catch me playing with my ding-a-lingThus goes Chuck Berry’s classic, ‘My Ding-a-Ling’.At the ripe old age of twenty-five, I have been the lucky recipient of…
read moreIt’s about education, stupid!
There appears to be much confusion amongst the press and the general populace regarding the One Laptop Per Child Project, which I blogged about earlier. This article in the Murdoch press, for example, has stimulated some of these misconceptions. They stem from the…
read moreOne Laptop Per Child (AKA: The January Chronicles, Part II)
There was enough at LCA to be excited about to give you heart palpitations. If I was forced to single out one thing, it would have to be the One Laptop Per Child Project (OLPC). One of my primary interests has been the interactions between people and technology, and I…
read moreCensorship?
What do you do when you’re in the city and need to kill some time? Watching a film sounded like a fair option to me. The cinematic masterpiece (!), ‘Epic Movie’, caught my eye. I wasn’t expecting much from it at all, so I placed myself into Low Expectations Mode™,…
read morelinux.conf.au (AKA: The January Chronicles, Part I)
Is it already February? January must have been the busiest month of all time for me. My birthday was on the 6th, and I still haven’t been able to do anything about it. My family and friends have been bugging me about it since December. If any of them are reading this,…
read moreHow much would you give for your freedom?
There has been a lot of debate lately about the issue of binary drivers in Linux. Most of these discussions centre around the nVidia graphics driver. What many of these debates under-emphasise or even overlook is the importance of the Nouveau project. Nouveau is an…
read moreHappy feet
The penguins are on the march in India. It’s wonderful to see the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu taking their future development seriously by adopting free software on a wide scale. My parents are from Tamil Nadu, and most of their families still live there. Some of…
read moreSingle IRC login from multiple locations
Lucas Nussbaum has posed an eerily familiar question: what is the best way to maintain a single and constant IRC presence, accessible from multiple locations? After some experimentation with different solutions (including Irssi + Irssi-Proxy), I finally settled upon a…
read moreIt’s the LCA key signing soirée, and you’re all invited!
Jonathan Oxer, President of Linux Australia, is making a valiant effort to better organise the often chaotic passtime known as a key signing party. If you are attending LCA2007, head over to the page for instructions on what to do with your key. So far, there have…
read moreSymbols of Wisdom?
I’ve recently been pondering the question, what truly constitutes wisdom? Can it be determined by age, your intelligence quotient or how many people read your weblog? It is a question that shall probably forever elude me.What prompted me to philosophise over this is…
read moreSydney Moodle Conference
I wrote this back in October, and for some silly reason I forgot to post it. Better late than never, I say. It seems that every couple of weeks I’m at some kind of FLOSS-related event. You just can’t keep me away from them! They may require a lot of work, but it…
read moreInterviewed
The unholy combination of work and study have devoured me over the past month.One point of mention is an interview I had with James Purser for Open Source On The Air. Having never been interviewed before, I was rather nervous. I was also waiting to be accepted or…
read moreUbuntu membership
It’s a wonderful feeling when you receive recognition — no matter how small — from people whom you respect and admire. That’s why I was stoked to be accepted as an official Ubuntu member. To be eligible, one has to be able to prove that they have contributed…
read moreCharles in Charge
For some reason, I’m reminded of the title of a 1980s sitcom. No, my name is not Charles, thank you for reminding me.My manager arranged to go on leave over the fortnight school holiday period, and in his pre-holiday euphoria he decided to leave the responsibility of…
read moreTeh winnar!
They say that the first step towards dealing with an addiction is admitting that you have one. For that purpose, I have a confession to make: I am addicted to Open Source On The Air. For the uninitiated, OSOTA is a weekly Internet radio programme hosted by James and…
read moreDiscrimation against Muslims in Western societies
This is quite disturbing: A 2006 Gallup survey of American public opinion found that “many Americans harbour strong bias against U.S. Muslims”. 22% say they would not like to have a Muslim as a neighbour. 34% believe U.S. Muslims support al-Qaeda. Only 49% believe…
read moreSoftware Freedom Day 2006
Another year, another Software Freedom Day…Scrub that. That sounds far too mundane.Software Freedom Day rocked!!!*ahem*I could not attend last year (since it coincided with my mum’s birthday), but this year I dived in head-first as an official helper on the A/V…
read moreMicrosoft: Brown is the new White
Microsoft have announced their Zune music/video player to take on Apple’s iPod. Like Apple, they consider colour to be an important differentiator in the marketplace. With white having been co-opted by Apple, and black being the generic (and hence indistinctive) hue,…
read moreMaintaining a constant IRC presence
The following is an e‑mail that I posted to the SLUG mailing list: Subject: [SLUG] Maintaining a constant IRC presenceDate: Sunday 03 September 2006 13:07From: Sridhar DhanapalanTo: SLUG list I am in a situation that I’m sure a lot of SLUG members are in. I am a…
read moreDo you have RSI?
Unlike my last post, this one is serious. One of my favourite podacsts, The Linux Link Tech Show, interviewed RSI expert Deborah Quilter. The phenomenon of RSI has risen to prominence in recent years, largely in response to increasing computer use. That puts tech…
read moreDo you have SSTT?
Are you aware of the condition known as Service Support Termination Trauma (SSTT)? View this Novell Public Service Announcement to find out more.
read moreMost significant trend!
This report is pretty cool. The emphasis was added by myself. The open source software phenomenon has spread far beyond Linux and is gaining enormous momentum, according to an IDC study of over 5,000 developers in 116 countries, representing 38 developer networks. The…
read moreSLUG Videofest
I must say that the SLUG Videofest on Saturday went very well. The immediate aim is to organise a video recording/editing/encoding/hosting/streaming team for Software Freedom Day (SFD) on September 16. I’ll need to squeeze every bit of performance I can out of my…
read moreMicrosoft’s “Commitment” to Apple
In January, during Steve Jobs’ Macworld keynote speech announcing the new Intel Macintoshes, Microsoft made a “commitment” to continue to develop for and support the Apple Macintosh platform. In true Microsoft style, they conveniently didn’t explain how deeply that…
read moreSLUG presentation on Galeon
Last month’s SLUG meeting (Friday 28 July) was an interesting one for me. The SLUGlets topic was Web browsers, so I decided to volunteer my services to give a demonstration of my favourite, Galeon. Its philosophy of “The Web, only the Web” felt extremely refreshing…
read moreSelling ice to an Eskimo
Steve “Reality Distortion Field” Jobs has delivered his keynote address to Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). It’s amazing what he would have us believe. Apple has apparently invented virtual desktops. What does Microsoft have to say about it, given they…
read moreTrustworthy/Treacherous Computing
Klepas pointed us on IRC to a brilliantly-done film explaining the concept of Trustworthy Computing. It concisely and clearly demonstrates why so many of us in the FLOSS world prefer to call it Treacherous Computing.Unfortunately, the producers decided to make the…
read moreGetting comfortable with Mac OS X
On the rare occasion, I find myself in front of a Macintosh. In its default state, the OS feels rather barren. The default set of applications is quite sparse, and you have to put some work into installing the software you need to get going. As a GNU/Linux user, I’m…
read morePortage: faster than ever!
Gentoo’s system for maintaining packages, Portage, has had a significant speed boost with version 2.1. Synchronising the tree (the equivalent of Debian’s ‘apt-get update’) feels several times faster. I don’t mind compiling my own apps (I leave it going overnight), but…
read moreEducation Expo
Linux Australia was very well represented at the Sydney Education Expo (24–25 June) this year. Pia wrote <a href=“http://pipka.org/blog/2006/06/26/linux-in-education-a-model-stand/” target=“_blank” title=“Linux in Education — a “model…
read moreAssortment of links
Just some entertaining links:Is this evidence that Google has lost its way?Create your own ninja message, and moreThe greatest error message of all time?What not to do in a server roomThe Daily WTFQuote DatabaseThe Bastard Operator from Hell…
read moreMust-see film
A must-see film for anyone who grew up in the ’80s. More info here. It’s a shame that the official site requires Flash 8 to run. That locks us GNU/Linux users out…
read moreMockups & KDE4
KDE4 development is underway, and users and developers are having their say on how it should look. One thing that irks me is when someone posts a mockup of some ‘new’ idea, when in fact that idea is just lifted from somewhere else. I have no problem with derivation or…
read moreIce Skating & Superman
Whenever most people go ice skating, they usually begin by clinging onto the barrier going around the edge of the rink. I am no exception, but considering that I hadn’t skated in close to ten years, I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to skate away from the…
read moreLazy Arse
I finally got off my lazy arse and set up a blog! I had been mulling over various possibilities of implementation, including setting up my own Web server, purchasing hosting and even coding the whole thing myself in Django or Ruby on Rails. There are some things I…
read moreMy arms hurt
This is one of those fables with the moral “don’t be greedy”. A couple of weeks ago at college I spied a trolley loaded with books with the label “Take me!” The library was giving away old books to make space for new ones. There were plenty of interesting titles,…
read moreMy first LUG meeting
Last night (Friday) I went to the monthly Sydney Linux Users’ Group (SLUG) meeting, after being prompted by Pia Waugh at CeBIT. Being my first LUG meeting, I didn’t know what to expect. It turned out to be great. The people there are interesting and friendly, and it…
read moreCompTIA Certifications
I have never placed much faith in the quality of CompTIA certifications. Now that I have both an A+ and Network+, I must reiterate that opinion. The exams aren’t designed to test your knowledge, they are designed to trip you up. The best way to study for a CompTIA…
read moreCeBIT Sydney
The CeBIT show was in the Darling Harbour Convention Centre this week. Computer Power were good enough to give us a leave of absence to attend. It only made sense: attending an IT show gives us a feel of the IT industry as a whole. The exhibitors covered just about…
read moreNetwork+ Certification
Network+ is now mine! Mwahahahahaha! *ahem* The day after I completed the A+ Hardware exam (Friday 1 April), I dove into the Network+ material. I’m now glad that I did the A+ modules out of order. Network+ builds upon the networking portions of both modules, but…
read moreMovie of the Year
I must nominate Hotel Rwanda as my Movie of the Year. I know that it was officially released last year, but it only came to Australia this year. I rank it right up there with two of my other favourite movies, The Killing Fields and Hotaru no haka (Grave of the…
read moreA+ Certification
I am now CompTIA A+ certified! Not that this is much to brag about. It is mostly rote-learning and is heavily Windows-focused. In fact, a major part of it is knowing how to perform tasks like set up a modem or printer in Windows, right down to memorising exactly what…
read moreAfter a week and a half
I did say I’d try to be more diligent in writing journal entries last time, but I guess I failed. Well, no matter. It’s not as if my life is a rich tapestry or anything. Suffice to say that I’ve had a few things take up my time over the past week, the most significant…
read moreBack to school
I’ve always had a passion for computing and information technology. I remember as a kid messing around with a Radio Shack computer (with 4KB RAM!!!) which my dad had bought. After this (around 1985), we purchased an IBM PC XT (with full specs as shown here, but minus…
read moreMetropolis
2011-02-02 update: Updated link. Thanks to Jack Moore. Yesterday I watched the new Kino version of Metropolis. No, I’m not talking about the anime (which I must see sometime since I’m a huge anime fan), but the 1927 Fritz Lang cinematic masterpiece. The movie is…
read morePress Release — Microsoft Innovates in New Version of Internet Explorer
I wrote this in response to a Slashdot article about the Windows spyware programme Gator: PRESS RELEASE: MICROSOFT INNOVATES IN NEW VERSION OF INTERNET EXPLORER Store all your passwords, financial data and other personal information on a central server! Never again…
read more‘X‑Men 2′, ‘The Matrix Reloaded’ and assorted sci-fi
I saw X‑Men 2 a few weeks ago. I’ve always been a fan of the comics, so I am rather sensitive to any ‘changes’ that are made just for the movie. However, I do realise that it is near-impossible to squeeze the entire X‑Men universe into a 2‑hour movie. I must conclude…
read moreSmorgasboard of whackiness
Another Jackass copycat injured ” AN 18-year-old was in critical condition after jumping from a five-storey building in an apparent imitation of a stunt from the television show Jackass. ” The youth was attempting to jump into a pool from the roof of a condominium…
read moreGaleon rocks!
I am a heavy user of the Galeon Web browser. IMHO, it is far and away the best browser available for any platform. Tabs and session support with crash recovery are brilliant features. Not only has Galeon had them for longer than most other browsers, it implements them…
read moreI made ‘The Inquirer’!
… well, sort of, anyway. Allow me to explain. Today, we had a news submission about the BSA’s new scheme to teach children about the ‘evils’ of software piracy. To make this ‘learning’ (or should I say ‘indoctrination’) more fun for the kiddies, they got a mascot.…
read moreUS says Canada cares too much about liberties
Okay, this is just bizarre. The article is based on the annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report. Isn’t it ironic that a government that claims to be the bastion of freedom across the globe is criticising another government for not clamping down on civil…
read moreNelson Mandela is dead
Haha, made you look! ” Rumors of their demise were greatly exaggerated, one could say, when CNN accidentally made publicly available obituaries of several international figures who are in fact still among the living. ” Read the article at CNN and see the obituaries at…
read moreGet your country’s economy out of the toilet and win the next election HOWTO
What do you do when you’re the government of a nation whose economy is not as good as it once was? Spend $$$ on armaments in a Keynesian spending spree. Go to war with a small, easily-defeatable nation. After winning, rebuild the nation so that it will be forever…
read moreEnglish Sans French
I came across this article at csmonitor.com. Basically, it’s pointing out how juvenile a boycott of all words and products of French origin would be, for example renaming French fries to freedom fries. Besides, they are actually from Belgium, not France. Maybe we…
read moreWar in Iraq
There’s been a lot of news in the past few months about a possible war in Iraq. I thought I should get my thoughts down on this. I initially wrote the following in response to a comment that the USA should be allowed to attack Iraq on the basis of “freedom”. I’ve…
read moreWhat’d you mean it’s 2003?!
I hope everybody had a great New Year’s Eve. I know I did. Reaper had a huge party at his place, and from his balcony we had a prime view of the NYE fireworks on Sydney Harbour. Needless to say I had heaps of fun. Reaper’s punch (i.e. of the beverage variety) was very…
read more“Summer lovin’, had me a blast…”
I love Grease, don’t you? There’s some logic in the title. It is summer here in Australia, and as many may know Australian summers are typically very hot and dry. A lot has happened over the past few weeks and I’ve been too lazy to type it out here. I’ll split things…
read moreglibc blues
I haven’t posted any articles on PCLinuxOnline over the past three weeks because I b0rked my Gentoo system. I upgraded from glibc 2.2.5 to 2.3.1 and since then I haven’t been able to run certain apps without wrecking everything else. I’ve detailed my problem here and…
read moreA New Hope
Yeah, so I ripped the title off Star Wars, so what? About three weeks ago (I think… I lose track of dates easily) on a Saturday I got a rather frantic call from my old friend Reaper. Here’s the Hollywood version (for your reading pleasure): Reaper: “Aaargh! I’ve…
read moreMelbourne
I left to Melbourne on Friday night and got back at 2am Wednesday. It’s Friday now. I wanted to write something here earlier but I got lazy.In short: I had a great time. I really needed to unwind, and now I feel much more relaxed.Now I’ve got a huge backlog of stuff…
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