Paris Buttfield-Addison and I co-presented a talk at Linux.conf.au in Ballarat recently. The topic was on designing mobile apps that don’t suck on Android. The talk was pretty well received, the audience attentive and engaged (as evidenced by the fact that they heckled), and it was probably one of the better talks that Paris and I have co-presented.
The video of the talk is available as an ogv movie file, alternatively, the YouTube version is embedded below.
I went to Japan and Korea over Christmas for a bunch of reasons. In short it was really, really awesome.
I stayed in 2 different capsule hotels. Capsules are two to a column (one top, one bottom). They come with a TV and you close them with a blind (but if people snore you can still kinda hear). It costs around $35 a night.
The first was aimed solely at Japanese businessmen and I probably couldn’t get in without asking in Japanese. This was quite good but annoying that lockers were not reserved during the day so I had to transfer my stuff to a different coin locker and back. The second was more touristy, bookable in english, had westerners but in return was louder, more expensive, and weirdly slightly smaller so I didn’t quite fit. There’s only public baths at both. Male only.
I found a banana vending machine.
Bananas.
I filled in some gaps in Tokyo from my last trip, where I walked all the way around the edges of central Tokyo. I walked to Yotsuya, in the center of that. It feels like the middle of nowhere though – as much as inner Tokyo can. Only 3 hours walking this time -_-.
Some of my friends from Tasmania were going to a comic, anime, and cosplay event in Tokyo called Comiket which attracts about half a million people. This turned out to be really awesome. I wasn’t brave or dedicated enough for the 5 hour lines for popular items, but I still found it really awesome wandering around taking pictures and searching for things.
Me + a small part of Comiket
Cosplay!
I got to try working at a Tokyo office, stayed at a Japanese home (my friends are awesome), went drinking with other foreigners in Shibuya, caught up with many friends, met new ones, missed out on meeting some I really wanted to, did much karaoke, saw Mount Fuji from the center of Tokyo, caught a single whiff of falling snow in Andong, got through some basic conversation in Korean, and had a bunch of other unforgettable experiences.
Frozen stream in Korea
Yoyogi Park, Tokyo
Kamakura, near Tokyo
Kamakura Shrine
Email Scammers are getting cunning,
This one almost got me the other day and I consider myself to able to spot a fraudulent email from a mile away.
To prevent others falling into the same trap I thought I would write a short piece on the events that almost got me.
This attack started with a Facebook instant message.
Friend –
Hello
How are you doing??
Me –
yea, getting there.. yourself?
Friend –
Glad you are here luke
Am in some king of deep mes here
Me –
huh?
Friend –
Facebook is acting up here…Please can i have your email
Me –
–insert email address here–
Friend –
I will send you an email now and explain what am going through
OK?
Friend –
My email is blue_green00998
Ok?
Me –
ok, about to leave work, will read it soon though
This is what the email said..
Hi,
How you doing?my family and I made a trip to Philippine unannounced some days back,Unfortunately for us we got messed up in another country,stranded in Philippine,fortunately passport was back in our hotel room. It was a bitter experience and i was hurt on my right hand,but would be fine.I am sending you this message because i don’t want anyone to panic,i want you to keep it that way for now.
our return flight leaves in a few hours but we are having troubles sorting out the hotel bills, wondering if you could loan us some money to sort out the hotel bills and also take a cab to the airport about (1,550 dollars).
I have been to the police and embassy here,but they aren’t helping issues,I have limited means of getting out of here,i have canceled my credit cards already and made a police report,I won’t get a new credit card number till I get back home! So I really need your help.
You could wire whatever you can spare to my name and location via Western union:
Name: –Removed For Privacy–
Location :Location :54B Banawe Street:City:Manila:Country:Philippine
Amount:(1,000 pounds)
Get back to me with the details,would def refund your money once i get back you can count on that,below are the details needed for me to pick up the money with my passport
MTCN:
Amount Sent:
I await your prompt response.
After checking out the exchange rate and starting some background checking, I was about to ring a few people to see if the story held any water when I received another message from Facebook.
Friend –
hey mate.
wtf is going on here? looks like my page might have got hacked or something. disregard anything that was said in this. weird as.
hope all is well otherwise tho.
So what do you do when you have a scammer on the other end..
Well I though I would have a bit of fun..
So I email him back..
Me –
Hi mate,
I have transferred the money into your bank.
It should arrive instantly as we are with the same bank of course 
Have a safe trip home..
Him –
Luke thanks for the mail I need you to go to the western union to get the money transfer How soon as you get the money done you can email me the western union details (MTCN)
Me –
Can you transfer the money back then?
I will create a transfer when it arrives..
Cheers
Him –
Thanks for the mail. Luke i have not getting any Money here I can get any money through bank here is only transfer they do here in Manila
I will refund your money as soon as i get back tomorrow.
I owe you a lot Luke
Ok so by now I think he has wised up a bit (one would hope) and he wont be getting my money..
If you do get something like this, report it..
Though I lost nothing besides time someone else could fall for the same trap.
Here are two links that I used to report the case to the authorities..
https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/content/index.phtml/tag/reportascam/
http://www.consumerfraudreporting.org/reporting_to_ISPs.php
Take Home Message.
Do some research, call friend and relatives to see if the message holds waterSuss out the spelling and grammar. Look at the example above it’s all over the placeDONT transfer money to unknown places or Bank accounts.KEEP YOUR PASSWORDS PRIVATE! – Dont type your password into a box that looks like Facebook for example, this is a easy way for scammers to gain access to your account. Creating a fake facebook login page is easy and they gain access to your username and password. If you find you did type your password in a unknown site, PLEASE PLEASE change your password.I have become a bit more wiser with this scam, I hope people can learn from my experience and become wiser with online security..
The account running this scam is
blue_green00998@yahoo.com
I have found out by talking to the scammer that he uses the same account but changes the name frequently to match the person his impersonating..
In case you missed the news, PyCon Australia is being held on August 18th and 19th in Hobart, Tasmania. Like the first two PyCon Australia conferences, 2012 hopes to be full of presentations, tutorials and panel sessions from experts and core developers of the Python programming language, as well as the Python libraries and frameworks that you rely on for your work.
It’s time for us to start shaping the conference programme for 2012, and we need your help. We want to know what topics you want to see covered at PyCon Australia, or which presenters you think can help make our conference perfect for you.
If you’re already convinced, pop over to http://tinyurl.com/pyconau2012-cft and fill out our Call for Topics form. If not, read on!
Oh, still reading? Let see…
PyCon Australia is running a Call for Topics. This is like the reverse of a traditional Call for Proposals: instead of proposing a presentation, you can propose a topic that you’d like to see a presentation on at the conference, or possibly a presenter that you really want to see present. PyCon US have been doing this for a long time, it helps ensure that their conference attracts the best possible presenters. There’s a couple of reasons why you should help us out:
We’re planning on putting out our usual call for proposals in February 2012, but we need to make sure that the best possible presenters submit proposals to PyCon Australia. Our delegates, like you, want to enhance their skills in Python with every session that they attend. Our CfP can’t reach everyone, and even then not everyone who sees the CfP will think that they’re good enough to present at a conference — getting an invitation to present can be a pretty good motivator!
One great reason to come to a Python conference is to increase your skillset in the tools and frameworks that you use in your day-to-day work. Perhaps there’s a new library that you’re considering using? Nominating it as a presentation topic for PyCon Australia will increase the chances it being covered in the conference. If you don’t know of an expert in the field, don’t worry. We can find one.
Great! We can’t want to hear your suggestions. Just head over to our call for Topics form, and send in your ideas. Every idea can help make this conference perfect for you.
Exhaustion of resources has got to be the most annoying facet of having All Of The Irons In The Fire.
Things I want that are at a premium right now:
That’s mostly it. Health is back up, and I have good feelings about future romance.
Here’s how I propose to acquire space: spend time shedding belongings. The less I have, the less I have to move around and care for. The other half of the equation is time. I can spend the time now, it seems, because of imminent criticality: not so much imminent travelling as imminent desire to grab a hold on the reins of change yet again.
So what to do with all my old stuff?
Garage sale? Donations? Storage?
How could possibly I do that to my precious belongings?!
These things have history. Everything. Every tiny scrap of paper, every useless outmoded electrical component, every sidelined project and every broken thing that’s not too broken for me to bin it in a fit of sensibility. These aren’t just objects, possessions or belongings. They’re Objects With Souls. Especially the heavy, bulky, cumbersome, fiddly, irregular, broken, storage-challenging, fragile, or delicate items. Annoyingly, they seem to have the most character of all.
Perhaps there’s some kind of Hoarders Anonymous I could go to. But alas, I’m out of time. Publish!
So one thing I forgot to mention on this blog is that I’ve taken over the reins of PyCon Australia for the 2012 and 2013 conferences. After spending two formative years in Sydney, under the direction of Tim Ansell, Richard Jones et al., we’re taking the conference south to Hobart, Tasmania. We’ve got a great team, consisting of myself, Joshua Hesketh and Matthew D’Orazio, and our papers committee is being led up once again by Richard Jones.
So, what can you look forward to? Well, here’s what we know so far.
We’re holding PyCon Australia around the weekend of August 18 and 19 2012. Our venue is the Wrest Point Convention centre in Sandy Bay. We’re really excited about our choice of venue — as well as offering us perfectly-sized rooms for our conference, the wide variety of spaces in the complex allow us to bring all of the traditional PyCon Australia events — CodeWars, the sprints and the conference itself — under the same roof for the first time.
Wrest Point is situated on the shoreline of the River Derwent, and this not only admits excellent views from the conference venue, but will also enable us to run some truly memorable social events, including the conference dinner, which we hope to share more details about shortly.
Our venue also lets us offer accommodation across a very wide range of budgets (starting around $124/room/night) to our delegates — this is not just a nominated conference hotel, it’s in the same building complex as the conference venue. This means that delegates can stay on-site for the entirety of the conference. We think this will prove very popular, especially amongst delegates sticking around for the conference sprints.
For students and those travelling on a budget — we plan on keeping the conference affordable: there’ll still be heavily discounted student tickets, and we’ll announce budget accommodation options when registration opens.
Finally, you might be wondering how you can help make PyCon Australia the perfect conference for you? Well, in the coming week, we’ll be opening a Call for Topics. This is an opportunity for you, as a potential PyCon Australia delegate, to nominate both topics and presenters that you’d like to see at the conference. By nominating presentations, you can help ensure that PyCon Australia can help you enhance your skills and increase your knowledge of Python.
Of course, if you have something that you could present at PyCon Australia, we’d love to hear from you as well. We’ll be opening a traditional call for presentations during February.
So, that’s it for now. I’ll be sure to keep you up-to-date on our progress as we seek to put on the best Python Conference that Australia can offer. If you’ve got something to ask, feel free to drop a comment, either here, on Twitter, or on our Google+ page — we’ll get back to you as quickly as possible!
(Photos: “Wrest Point” by JJ Harrison, CC-BY-SA; “View of Hobart CBD” by Aaroncrick, CC-BY-SA)
My first Woodford Folk Festival, the shear size of the festival alone made it a worth while event!
There were many artists playing at any one time so choosing the type of music you wanted to listen to was sometimes a challenge.
Anyways I will have to go again and next time take more pics.
Here are a few I took of some of the stages and the closing ceremony (There are some weird creatures roaming around)
[Show as slideshow]
I have struggled for quite a while with XCode 4, it is excellent for Cocoa development, but if you’re trying to do anything lower level I often find myself pining after XCode 3.x or wanting to use a Makefile or something instead. However there are many advantages to an IDE, like code completion and integrated debugging tools, so it’s always nice to use things how they are designed. However there are some things XCode 4 does not do nicely, this article describes one such thing and the solution I’ve come up with. I don’t think XCode 3.x did this particular thing well either, so perhaps my solution might actually be useful to someone else.
Often I want a bit more control over how I compile and link things than XCode allows. Tools like llvm-config allow you to get the compiler settings for your local build of llvm api, which is very useful. If I run something like:
llvm-config --ldflags
Then the command will output something like:
-L/usr/local/lib -lpthread -lm
To use this with XCode what you might consider doing is setting the OTHER_LD_FLAGS environment variable (“Other Linker Flags” in the Build Settings) to something like this:
`llvm-config --ldflags`
However if you look in the build transcript (Expanding the link section in the Navigator Log, command+7), you will find that it puts double quotation marks around the space separated parts of the command and ld is forced to interpret it as a file. I have tried for hours to fix this, on many different occasions, but I could not find a satisfactory portable solution. That is until now.
The solution in short is to create an Xcode Configuration file from a script build phase and then set that as the base configuration for all of your targets dependent on the build settings. You can do this in “5 Simple Steps”!
This script will create the xcode configuration file in your project directory, place it in a script build phase in your project. Make sure that you do this before the “Compile Sources” phase so it is made before the settings are needed.
Automatically Generating the XCode Configuration File
Of course this script only applies to llvm, but I will put it here in case anyone wants it:
LLVM_XCCONFIG="llvm.xcconfig" LLVM_CFLAGS=`/usr/local/bin/llvm-config --cflags` LLVM_LDFLAGS=`/usr/local/bin/llvm-config --ldflags`" "`/usr/local/bin/llvm-config --libs cbackend jit x86 linker` echo "// Configuration file for LLVM settings, generated as a build phase." > $LLVM_XCCONFIG echo "LLVM_CFLAGS = $LLVM_CFLAGS" >> $LLVM_XCCONFIG echo "LLVM_LDFLAGS = $LLVM_LDFLAGS" >> $LLVM_XCCONFIG
Build the project and the XCode Configuration file should be created, add this file to the project. If you’re not sure how to do this you can find it in Finder and then drag it into the project’s file navigator (Or by pressing command+option+a, and selecting the file).
Add the XCode Configuration file to the project
Now you have to set this configuration file as the base configuration of each target that uses it, to do this select the project in the file navigator. Selecting the project if the target is selected and then go to the Info tab. Within the info tab set the configuration file to the file you just added for each relevant target.
Setting the Target's base Configuration File
Now all you need to do is use the new environment variables in your project settings, of course you could have called them OTHER_LDFLAGS or similar to avoid this step, but I thought it was cleaner to do it this way.
Using the new Environment Variables in the the Build Settings
Build your project and hopefully everything is working as you wanted it to.
Ordered this early in 2011.. Finally arrived today, it's an awesome model. I think it's the biggest WETA have produced so far.
Hello, Internet.
I’m back! I’m forcing myself to blog on a regular schedule. I’m also starting a PhD progress blog to document my final year-ish on my PhD work at UTAS.
Expect more tomorrow,
Paris
The How to speak Wookiee book is cute, it has 10 Wookiee phrases to coincide with sections in the book, eg number 6 is for Wookiee phrases to use when at a restaurant ("ahhh argh wha" is "are you going to eat that?")
Today I walked 1/2 way around West Lake in the last free day I have here. A common sight on the city side is to see and hear groups of people singing operatically, doing Tai Chi and then there are people doing calligraphy on the pavement with large brushes and just water.
It's obviously autumn, the leaves have turned, everyone's rugged up (except me, quite comfortable in just a tshirt). The lake has several man-made causeways and islands (from dredged silt) created in some places during the first millennium. The lake's famous (in China) for ten poetic scenic places such as one island called 3 ponds that mirror the moon, two others are Two Peaks Piercing the Clouds, and Orioles Singing in the Willows.
After walking to the far northern shore, I took a ferry boat (45RMB, ~$10) to the 3 ponds mirroring the moon island. This basically is an island in the lake which has lakes (ponds) inside it. After that, back to start. Ok, here's the food bit: on the island I bought some meat-on-a-stick ($1) from a vendor on the side of the path. It was ok, but I don't know what the meat was (maybe pork). It reminded me of "cut-me-own-throat Dibbler" from Terry Pratchett's discworld novels. :-P
One of several student dining halls from the outside and then inside at the University I am teaching at. This is one floor (of 3) in one building (of many). I tend to eat here at night during teaching, simple, tasty meals (usually including some form of wok-fried spiced vegetables) with a very generous helping of rice costs about 5 yuan, about $1.
Snacks I have bought: I was hoping for mint Oreos, but realistically settled for green tea flavour (yep!). Corn chips (think unflavoured Cheetos) covered with a chocolate shell, surprisingly tasty. Kumquat and lime drink with a touch of honey, and a very cute looking mini cheesecake.
Finally, a sheep with lamb statue. Sadly, no squirrels.
Today I decided to walk an entirely different way, so I headed away from west lake toward the (massive) Qiantang river (see map). This is a good 5k away from my hotel. Along the way there are several public spaces, rivers and viaducts, along with the remnants of an old wall. There's a huge amount of development, ginormous skyscrapers going up everywhere you look. There also seems to be a great multitude of apartment blocks. "Angry birds" has obviously made a mark here, apart from every second market item being devoted to them, I noticed quite a few junction boxes had angry bird murals on them.
Before the river I found a relatively large modern shopping mall ("MIXC"). It only had upmarket designer fashion shops eg Versace, and top end consumer electronics eg Bose. I thought things were reasonably cheap in China but not here - I could probably only afford some socks. Hmm.. better make that one sock. Actually, maybe one dirty sock... with holes... that's already been used as a rag on the Tag Heur shopfront window. I doubt most locals could shop here either but there must be enough rich locals (and I mean rich) to sustain the place. With > 4 million (?) people in the city there's probably enough of the rich to keep the place in business.
The saving grace of the mall (it even has an ice skating rink - see pic!), was that it contained a IMAX theatre and I was just in time for a showing of Tintin in 3D IMAX.
I loved every second of it. I loved reading the Tintin books from my local library as a child and .. ahem.. I collected them as an adult. The film won't disappoint. Without over hyping it too much.. it was brilliant. Look out for the hawk chase scene...
Continuing along the road I was following to get to the river.. it just ended. This also happened following another road on the way back. This one turned into a tunnel with no pedestrian access, so the only way forward was suddenly a muddy track leading into what seemed like a war zone. Think 6 lane highway disappearing. I was now in a major, major development area, row after row of new, and 1/2 complete empty apartment block buildings. Finally after much uncertainty, I reached a normal road again and finally got to the "civic" area. Think municipal offices on an extremely grand scale. One building looks like something out of the film Contact - (the accelerator machine), or a spaceship out of Stargate. The big gold ball building in the pictures is the Intercontinental hotel and convention centre. Another building is Hangzhou Grand Theatre.
Had buffet dinner at the Hyatt on the one weekday night I have free. It cost 384RMB, which is about $75 - that's VERY, VERY expensive for here. One of the best meals (and filling) I've had. The quality of the food was very, very good. The only odd component was one dish I tried was cow's stomach. Tasted like beef. In contrast, lunch today was beef with rice (~$3), a hot chocolate with oatmeal (! - $1.50) and a cute puppy vanilla and raspberry cake ($2) from a franchise called "Free Mori".
Towering above Wusheng square, the city god temple is an inspiring site. On the way I saw an interesting window... To nowhere. I can see why they put a window to complete symmetry, but why then let you see the brick wall behind?
Inside the temple is an incredible model which uses faux 3D, carvings, models etc to show a town scape from the golden era, the southern song era. The antiquity of the (recently rebuilt) temple is marred a bit by the expo mascots out the front, a leftover from the world expo in Shanghai.
Finally, delicious "beef salad" and Miso soup at a "Japanese Cuisine" cafe.
I had to do some prep work this morning, but after that I went for a walk to an Indian restaurant ("Omar's Cafe") for lunch, after which I perambulated around part of West Lake. The tandoori chicken was very hot, more than I am used to. The restaurant has some very roman-esque columns next door.
Around a large portion of the lake are exquisite parklands, leafy nooks and water features. I can see why the entire district is famous and popular with tourists.
The golden buffalo was rumored to live at the bottom of the lake. When the lake ran dry, the buffalo would appear and spew out water to refill the lake.
Lastly, a squirrel. All holidays need a squirrel. (I wish I was on holiday!)
The massive central library. Like most buildings on campus, inside there is a generous amount of space eg very wide corridors and large foyers on every floor.
Every student has a bike to get about campus, they're ubiquitous and colorful. Finally the toilet in the international college - takes a bit of getting used to, and you have to bring your own toilet paper. The men's toilet floor on level 4 of my building needs a clean (it *is* the end of the day 💩)
Time to kill before today's lectures so I strolled down southern song imperial thoroughfare on to Hefang rd. Very pretty but full of tourists.
That's one big coffee.. A gingerbread cookie latte, and a Christmas chocolate mousse.
I'm pretty confident this is grape juice (given that's written in the side!), followed by what I assume are prawn flavoured somethings, what I hope tastes cool in cucumber chips and finally raspberry and blueberry Oreos.
Anyone who has been to Hangzhou, or indeed elsewhere in China, would be familiar with the CRAZY death-defying merchants of translocation terror, the green taxi. The taxi drivers drive like madmen, and every time I get in one the first thing I do is desperatley hunt for the seat belt, the buckle for which, unfortunately, is buried most of the time under the seat, which is now the pit of despair. Clinging to the loosly flapping belt, wrapping it around your arm like a hard tourniquet gives some semblence of security, but I do actually have the utmost respect for their amazing driving skills, the way they're able to navigate with millimeters of precision around other vehicles coming from the other direction at 100km/h (and I suspect, laughing maniacally on the inside at the sheer look of terror on their victim, sorry, passenger). It's mandatory to use the horn, in fact, I think it's an insult to the other vehicles if you don't. [this last said only slightly tongue in cheek]. The last driver, knowing my Mandarin is limited to hello, thank you and receipt, insisted on asking me highly complex questions just to invoke my look of stupidity and pantomining I don't understand (which caused him no end of laughter). Still, I'm alive and relishing the 18 or so more taxi rides I have to take whilst here...
I had a slightly bizzarre episode with the hotel reception. I wanted to get some milk to have with instant coffee when in my room (there's a kettle, instant coffee, spoons etc, but no milk). Most other hotels I've ever stayed in usually either have a small carton of fresh milk or something like long-life (eg UHT) milk in one-serve-portions. The reception clerk looked at me strangly and then conferred with her colleague. "Have you had breakfast?" err.. yes, I just came from breakfast from across the lobby. "ah, so you have had breakfast?" ... yes, I had breakfast. I just want some milk to have in my room with coffee. Quizzical looks. Gestures that there's milk in the restaurant to have with cereal. A 5 minute phone call to someone and they tell me it costs 35 RMB for milk (~$7) and they'll bring it up. Feeling stupid and not wanting to refuse it now for the fuss I caused, I go back to my room. 20 minutes later, a porter knocks on the door and hands over a shopping bag with a litre of milk (UHT!) in it. They sent someone out to a nearby supermarket to buy the stupid crazy westerner some milk. oh dear.
Slightly pointless but I'll keep posting pictures of slightly unusual food..
Pumpkin Danish, red been Danish, green tea bread, chocolate bubble tea with "pudding"
View from hotel - the city is vast. "west lake" is far to the left of both photos.
See you in January, Ballarat!
Google Reader’s just announced that they’re turning off reader sharing progressively from today. I wrote the following in my share stream a few moments ago, and realised that this was massively counterproductive — it will probably disappear in a few hours anyway.
So on the off chance that you subscribe to my feed and haven’t read this:
Hey all,
Reader sharing starts dying today. I’m pretty sad about that, I’ve loved reading the things all of you have shared over the past few years — I’ve discovered new things, built up new interests, learnt a lot and have had a lot of fun doing it. I’m going to miss reading what you have.
So what am I going to do? Well, I’ll be seeing if the ‘plus’ features actually replicate reader sharing in any useful form. Who knows, it might actually be a useful feature.
If not, we’ll see what manner of useful *external* sharing appears (share by e-mail looks particularly useful) — shared feeds don’t seem too hard to re-implement, and we could theoretically have something useful up and running over a weekend. I’m seriously considering doing this. Let me know if you’re interested!
So yeah, if you’re not already following me on twitter, that’s probably the most useful place to find me: I’m @chrisjrn. My blog is at http://chris.neugebauer.id.au. Keep in touch! I still want to read your stuff!
Thank you, and goodbye!
–Chris
Although I did not know the man, the contributions of Dennis Ritchie have have a profound effect upon my life and the community with which I associate. I interact with systems inspired by the first versions of UNIX, and write code in languages that owe their design principles to C, almost on an daily basis.
Dennis Ritchie was a giant on whose shoulders many of those in technology, including myself, can feel proud to stand on.
Here are a few pics of the Fireworks in Brisbane 2011..
I have always been a sucker for fireworks 
These pictures were taken aboard the MiCat, the fireworks (the part that we saw) was taken of the Story Bridge.
Youtube clip here
[Show as slideshow]
Here are a few pics of the Fireworks in Brisbane..
They call it River Fire cos well all the fire is on the river!!
TL;DR — submit a proposal at http://tinyurl.com/opm2012-proposal
before the first round closes on Friday 7 October.
I’m pleased to announce that The Open Programming Miniconf, a fixture for application developers attending Linux.conf.au since 2010 is returning as part of Linux.conf.au 2012, to be held in January at the University of Ballarat. The miniconf has been an opportunity for presenters of all experience levels to share their experiences in in application development using free and open source development tools.
The Open Programming Miniconf for 2012 invites 25-minute presentations on topics relating to the development of excellent Free and Open Source Software applications. In particular, the Miniconf invites presentations that focus on sharing techniques, best practices and values which are applicable to developers of all Open Source programming languages.
In the past, topics have included:
Past programmes can be found at http://lca2011.linux.org.au/programme/schedule/monday and http://www.lca2010.org.nz/wiki/Miniconfs/Open_Programming_Languages
To submit a proposal, visit http://tinyurl.com/opm2012-proposal and fill out the form as required. The CFP will remain open indefinitely, but the first round of acceptances will not be sent until Friday 7 October 2011.
OPM2012 is part of Linux.conf.au 2012, being held at the University of Ballarat on Monday, 16 January 2012. Further enquiries can be directed to Christopher Neugebauer via e-mail ( chris+opm2012@neugebauer.id.au ) or via twitter (@chrisjrn).
A rant, by Dave:
The LEGO extortion tax. Super Star Destroyer, just released. $400 US dollars from the US LEGO store website. The Australian price? (which invariably comes direct from the same Danish warehouse) is $700AUD from the Australian LEGO store website. With the AUS $ above parity with US (1AUD$ = 1.05US$), even allowing for freight costs, economies of scale etc etc It should not cost $300 more! Factor in an additional $100 postage and it's just a plain ripoff. A form letter when I queried LEGO in April:
I would like to explain that the Company has not historically changed retail prices as local currencies fluctuate, and recent developments with the value of the dollar have not dramatically altered the fixed costs of doing business in other areas. With headquarters in Europe, the LEGO Group reports its financials in Danish Kroner, and maintains a manufacturing cost base fixed in Euros. The prices of LEGO products vary around the world, and are determined by careful evaluation of local factors such as government taxes, transportation costs, exchange rates, market conditions and the cost of doing business. It is, therefore, inaccurate to look to U.S. pricing as a means of measuring anticipated price equivalencies.
Again, thank you for contacting us about this situation. I want to assure you that the LEGO Group does everything it can to deliver the best possible quality, value and play experience to our consumers at competitive prices in all of the 130 countries where we do business. We wish you many more happy hours of creative building with LEGO brand toys in the years to come.LEGO Direct Consumer Services
Im in the process of making a sensor node to dot around the house.
It has been coming along but very slowly, the first revision on the board was a HUGE failure! Well ok not huge, the ATMEGA chip on the board worked and was programed but I made a bit of a mistake by putting a positive rail underneath the radio and Temp Humid chips 
It was my first time making a PCB and using SMD components (Hand soldered), I was properly setting my self up for failure for the first design. Im thinking of trying solder paste for the next one.
So after spending a few weeks debugging the electronics a idea came to me, why not build a housing for my final product! The design was easy, I floated the idea around with a few friend and refined the design using google sketch up (which is awesome for beginners and FREE).
The images below are the second revision of the housing, a few things to point out
So thats my house, please leave comments below and I might post some more when the new boards come in!
I always mean to blog more, but usually it’s one of these thoughts that comes up in a conversation, or while I’m on a bus, or … so yeah. This time I’ve remembered all the way home, so let’s go!
I’ve now started at my new job at Google in Sydney (yes, free food!). It’s been pretty good so far. Sydney has been pretty welcoming, although everyone is really busy and I don’t have a circle (!) of friends to hang out with every day. After travelling for months in Asia (and many months of solo work with long hours before that) I guess it’s not that different though!
I have found some awesome new friends in Sydney though, which has been great, but perhaps that’s another story.
So what have I done … well. I came to Sydney about a week after I got back from Malaysia, and stayed out in Willoughby with a childhood friend. It looks something like this.
Starting work was full of things to learn but it was really a pretty welcoming experience. Pretty quickly I learnt that I was supposed to go to the US for training sometime, so I uh … did! That was 2 weeks in. In the US, in addition to working I biked up and down the Bay Area (near San Francisco), went to the Independence Day fireworks, and ate at at least 10 of the free cafes.
I also learnt that planning simultaneous movement of a bike and two travel bags is a difficult task. And that taxis in Mountain View can take 30 minutes to come or not turn up at all. And that the wind just loves blowing south when you’re biking north. And that I should act immediately on my thought “I should buy sunscreen sometime”. And that you should always take the first bus, even if it’s not an express.
Plus I played a bunch of Starcraft, joined the Google AHGL team (it’s a pretty awesome, friendly Starcraft 2 league between tech companies), and ran into a heap of interesting people.
I had 2 weeks of cloudless warm summer days in California. So when I got back to Sydney on my flight , it looked like this:
I got soaked on the way back to work that day, stubbornly refusing to take a taxi. But I did so in my nice new black Google jersey from the Mountain View store 
.
After that is a new story, and it can wait until a bit more of it has unfolded.
So yeah, I’ll try to cover both the good and bad things I’ve skipped over in the last few year or so. It will span several languages and areas of thought, so it might be hard to follow, but … よろしくね！
In Tokyo there’s one railway line which circumnavigates central Tokyo, visiting a lot of the largest cities which have built up around the huge stations which drive Tokyo’s multi-million person daily commute. It’s called the Yamanote line. I decided to walk around it. Here we go!
I started out there at 9:20 after a densely packed train ride. To make it official, I made a rule that I had to visit every station. The first was Shibuya.
Oh, also, this blog is long. If you like, just skim read and look at the pictures. There’s more interesting stuff at the end. No need to read it all.
Shibuya is famous for its main street crossing where a huge crowd of people gather to cross every time the lights change. It’s also home to a lot of shopping and dining.
Shibuya in the morning
First, breakfast. Or at least walking under, around, and through the massive Shibuya Station looking for the right way to go. And then breakfast.
Wrong way! There are 6 major road directions and it's hard to work out which way the station points
I think I've mentioned it before, but green tea lattes
Harajuku is a more laid back and stylish district backed by a large area of park. It has a lot of specialty shops for cosplay and fringe clothing styles. It’s pretty close to Shibuya, hardly worth calling a walk. I wandered about a bit, found the bubble tea shop was closed : (, and carried on.
Harajuku Station
Harajuku's fashion road
Behind Harajuku are two large areas of green, Yoyogi Park and the Meiji-jingu Shrine. Yoyogi Park is very open and spacious and has amazing cherry blossoms in early spring. I only had time to take a photo of the front. I wandered through Meiji-jingu and bought an omamori with bells (for luck, I think, they also come in various different flavors such as prevention against traffic accidents).
Yoyogi Koen
Yoyogi Park cherry blossoms, taken earlier, in April
The next station was supposed to be Yoyogi, but in the end I couldn’t find the station from the main road and before I knew it I was in Shinjuku. Time of arrival: 11:02.
Shinjuku Station South Entry
Shinjuku is centered around one of the largest stations in Tokyo, it is home to a large number of government departments and offices as well as a huge sprawl of shopping complexes. For all that, it’s quite hard to get around because the interesting things are rarely at street level. Actually, it’s often hard to tell where street level is.
Shinjuku wandering
After a painfully slow trek through traffic lights and crowded stairways I made it to the next station, Shin-okubo. This is the first of a series of nondescript residential stations between two big hubs of Tokyo’s commerce. I bought a newspaper, which was actually interesting because I could read quite a bit more than last time I tried.
You can probably guess what the front page was about
Shin-okubo Station
Next station after a long but mercifully straight walk alongside the tracks was Takadanobaba (translates to something like Highfield racecourse).
Takadanobaba Station
From here the road diverged from the track, I took a wrong turn and was pushed further and further away around a university until it became impractical to visit the next station, Meijiro. Two failures already -_-. The road was filled with shops that were still closed, I assume because some people don’t want to get up before mid-day on a Friday.
Meijiro is vaguely visible down this road
Next station, Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro is a district I quite like, it doesn’t really specialize in anything but it’s easy to get around, not too crowded, and it has pretty much everything easily accessible. The hedges on the footpaths are very recognizable. It’s another major station, like Shinjuku and Shibuya, with tracks departing for the outer suburbs.
Ikebukuro Station
An Ike street
I did some shopping here, which slowed me down a bit. The Yamanote line out of Ikebukuro is very hard to follow on foot, I tried to go in one direction but ended up in a part of town that was, um, not that way. Fortunately it was in the actual right direction. I think I’m doomed to get lost in ‘bukuro.
Actually iced coffee, not that great really
From there I got turned around constantly and started to run into issues with my navigation device, my iPhone – the compass was fairly unreliable and although I’d preloaded the right map it was hard to find roads that went in the right direction. The Maps app is not well designed for roaming without data. It constantly annoys you with messages about having no global roaming, and it forgets locations and ignores caches often unless you find the right scale again.
Some roads
More roads, twisty (this goes backwards, little did I know)
The result was that it took me 40 minutes from the closest side of Ikebukuro to Otsuka, by which time it was almost 2pm. That meant I’d been walking for well over 4 hours and gone maybe a quarter of the distance. Around then I realized I’d probably have to stop looking around and just keep going if I wanted to make it the whole way.
Otsuka Station
Getting to the next station, Sugamo, was also a bit of a pain at first because the roads were on a different grid to the tracks and you never know when they’re going to end on you. I made it to a bit where there was a road next to the track, and just kept taking that until Komagome.
Sugamo station
From Sugamo station, small shopping street in a residential area
Komagome station
The road to Tabata was another difficult one because it’s not possible to follow the tracks. I made it to the road with the station, and stopped to look at a small temple and the shrine next to it.
Temple entrance
Shoes
Shrine entrance
Tabata station, actually quite a long way down the road, across the tracks, and down stairs which I had to climb again
The next part of the walk I wanted to take the southern side, which as I’d seen from the train before is filled with greenery, shrines, and temples all the way to Ueno. This also means that it’s hard to get through to all the stations, but I wasn’t prepared to give up just yet.
Shrine entrance
Just beyond this was a room full of people performing or practicing some kind of ceremony, probably not a good idea to disturb them
Road
Nishinippori station
Nippori station
Uguisudani is a peculiar little station, I could see it from Nippori and judging by the maps I didn’t think I could get through on the south side because it doesn’t connect. I crossed over, put up with the boring commercial road instead of the temple strewn south side, and found the north part of the station. I then walked a bit further and discovered that the south entrance is a considerable distance along, perched on the cliff just touching the far end of the platform. Oh well!
Uguisudani, north entrance
Uguisudani, south entrance
The tracks
Next I passed through Ueno Park, which is a large and pretty park filled with trees, roads, and public buildings. By this time my feet were covered in blisters, and I stopped long enough to work out that there wasn’t much I could do.
Ueno park
Ueno Station
I forgot about Okachimachi, which is hidden behind the buildings and has a busy market built inside and beside the raised railway platform for several hundred metres. I walked past and made it to Akiba. Akiba is full of electronics and anime/manga/game stores, it’s competitive with buying online for many things which is very difficult to pull off when there’s so much choice.
I did some shopping, searching for a magazine that a friend wanted (couldn’t find it), and I bought a Blu-ray of a recent anime that I liked. Anime Blu-rays are incredibly expensive, if you want to buy a full series new it will cost you hundreds of dollars. I’m not sure who exactly can afford that, but I guess most people just record them.
Akihabara Station
This is close to the half-way point by distance. It was also 5:00 pm by the time I was finished in Akiba. That was kind of worrying, although I’d covered the majority of the stations I knew were interesting, I would have literally no time to explore afterwards.
The last thing I’d planned to visit was a bookstore in Ginza with a large selection of children’s books, so I headed south as quickly as possible to try to get there before it closed.
Kanda Station
Ginza was quite a bit further than I expected, I walked along the main road, Nipponbashi (which has a more muted but similar feel) for ages without quite being sure if I had passed it or not. Similarly, it was constantly threatening to rain, without being quite clear if it would. Eventually I asked a friendly old businessman and found out that Ginza was still ahead, and it did rain.
If I’d planned ahead I wouldn’t have brought an umbrella so that I could buy one when required. But I didn’t, and already had one, so whatever.
I asked just up here
Ginza is one of Tokyo's most famous shopping districts, with a huge variety of upmarket fashion and similar shops. Best viewed when interested in fashion and when free time is abundant
Tokyo Station is that way
Yurakucho somewhere that way. You know those yellow tiles? They get pretty annoying to step on after the first thousand or so
Shinbashi Station
Shinbashi Station is the end of the Ginza style shopping, just past there I walked through a district full of busy, cheap restaurants. I was getting pretty hungry, because I hadn’t stopped for lunch and was just living off cans of drink and the odd pastry.
So the right thing to do was to stop and eat something. I should have done this. I didn’t because I felt I was later than I really was, and that I should find fast food or something I could eat while moving.
Unfortunately there was nothing of the kind on the major road which I took past the next two stations, which was longer than I care to describe. It was mostly tall office buildings devoid of people because the nine to five workers had all gone home.
Hamatsucho Station, I think ...
Tamachi Station, probably
Finally I got to Shinagawa, which is a major station and one of the two places where south-bound shinkansen (bullet trains) stop in central Tokyo.
Shinagawa Station
Outside there, I found, yay …
It didn't take me long to regret this
So I’d finally found something to eat, although I’m not sure if it counted as food. But I was pretty desperate. Shinagawa is maybe three quarters of the way around the track. It was 7:20 pm. Not looking so great. Of course, I could always just give up and take the train. But that’s not something I like doing.
From Shinagawa the track loops back around to Osaki and starts heading north after a long southern trek. This meant I could skip across some of the distance without missing a station. Unfortunately I didn’t take into account the huge network of non connecting roads, the river, and the lack of places to cross.
Normally, my iPhone would come to the rescue here and tell me which roads went somewhere. However, somewhere around Shinagawa I had accidentally opened the maps app while roaming data was still on (for twitter). This had two effects – it instantly wasted at least 5 megabytes of my very precious 10 mb per month roaming quota, and it cleared all of the existing map data so that I had exactly nothing to go on. I should just be thankful it wasn’t more data :/.
Osaki Station, I think - missing two images which I took but don't have handy, Gotanda and Meguro.
Anyway, after being pushed back onto the slow and obvious route I made it to Osaki. From here there was really nothing to do but walk, since the road follows the rails after getting past the river again.
And so I walked. I probably don’t need to mention that my legs and feet really hurt. But I could still keep going. These stations are, I think, a rather boring part of Tokyo although I didn’t stick around long enough or see enough to actually know. I took pictures of Gotanda and Meguro but don’t have them here to post.
Ebisu Station
At Ebisu there was a walkway or something.
Shibuya South Station
So I finally made it back to Shibuya! Time, 8:50 pm. But I wasn’t finished yet. Going in the south exit was not returning to where I started. In other words, I was destined to get lost one more time, and the massive Shibuya station was happy to oblige. I wandered around, over, and back through it before I found the entrance and photo I was looking for.
Passthrough
People
However, my journey was not over. I needed to get back to Yokohama, and the train ride is long at the best of times. But this was Friday night, and still a really busy time for people commuting home.
So the train looked like this
Once I somehow squeezed on, I worked out that this was a pretty big mistake. I’d been moving without stopping for several hours without enough to eat, and stopping suddenly in a train without any space to breathe had the effect of making me feel very sick. I had of course forgotten that I’d need to slowly wind down, and it took me several rather scary minutes before I remembered. Once I worked this out and got my legs moving back and forth I was pretty much okay except that I would really much rather be going to bed rather than on a train with a thousand other people.
After the 35 minute first train ride I boarded the much quieter and shorter second train, and then hobbled back to where I was staying, luckily very close.
Rain
So, as I was told afterwards by a friend, according to Japanese bloggers it’s not that unusual to walk around the line with similar conditions. Other people also got lost in Ikebukuro and had trouble with roads that don’t follow the rails. Usually it takes 12 hours, which makes my 11:40 with shopping sound ok : ).
The Yamanote line is 34.5 kilometers around. I’d estimate the actual walking distance required to get between all the stations at 40 km or more due to grid layouts, winding roads, stairs, places with no connecting roads, and stations which are accessed primarily from one side only. Now go try it next time you’re in Tokyo! Or … you can just take the train : ).
Just received the iCade enclosure for the iPad from thinkgeek.com. In essence it's an external joystick + buttons connected to the iPad via bluetooth. Only one app, Atari Greatest hits supports it at the moment, but more games will be forthcoming soon. Rating: 9/10 - the only downside is it could provide better physical support for the iPad itself, it's a bit loose. As a desktop arcade system it's brilliant!
That's where Lost got the idea
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January 28, 2012 07:03 AM
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