noogzblog

More from Bruce…

2012-05-12T10:45:32+00:00

Hello! Have you missed me? It’s been a while since I’ve updated you all on what’s happening in the world of PyCon Australia, so I figure it’s probably about time we did that. And it’s good that I’m doing so, because a lot of things have happened since the last time I did so!

Talks, talks, and more talks

Our Call for Proposals closed its doors on Friday 4 May, and we’ve been absolutely blown away by the level of response that we’ve got from Python developers around Australia and the rest of the world. We received 59 proposals to speak, across three categories of presentation, which is far and away the biggest response this conference has had in its short history. So, to all of you who proposed presentations, give yourselves a pat on the back.

To put this into perspective — we have approximately 30 positions that we can fit presentations into. Our review team (who are, by the way, doing an incredibly awesome job) have the mammoth task of figuring out which talks will actually make it into the conference: they’ll need to cull approximately half of the proposals that we’ve received. It’s something that we really weren’t expecting, but I think the review team are up to the task.

With this in mind, it’s going to take us a few days more than expected to sort through the proposals, and we won’t be meeting our deadline of 18 May for sending out notifications. It won’t be too much later than that, but we still apologise for the delay. If you did submit a talk, don’t worry too much about missing out on Early Bird registration rates — we’ll be extending Early Bird pricing through to June 30 for everyone who has submitted a talk. I hope this is OK by you!

We want you to come to our conference

And the best way to make sure that you can actually come to the conference is by signing up for our Early Bird registrations! These have been open for just over two weeks now; and with three weeks left to go, just over a third of our available early bird tickets have been sold. Our early bird registrations represent a substantial discount on our normal registration rates, and they also guarantee you a spot at our conference dinner (which is both space-limited, and is seriously not to be missed).

Early bird regos are available for the first 60 Enthusiast or Professional tickets sold; all the relevant info is at our website.

… and that means all of you!

We’ll be reprising the very successful gender diversity grants programme that PyCon Australia launched with Google last year; in a much-expanded form. Last year these grants helped many deserving women attend the conference with subsidised registration, and some travel allowance. This year, the grants programme will offer travel assistance to many more deserving female delegates. We’ll reveal more details later, but needless to say, we’re very excited.

fin.

Well, that’s it for now, I hope you’re as excited about the conference as I am. It’s shaping up to be really quite special, and I can’t wait to share more of our plans with you. See you in August, and get registering!

PyCon Australia early bird registrations now open!

2012-04-26T05:59:12+00:00

For fear of spamming EVERYWHERE with the news, I include just the tl;dr:

tl;dr: PyCon Australia early bird registrations are now open! Find out more at http://2012.pycon-au.org/register/prices, including details of our accommodation programme.

The full media release on the opening of registration can be found at http://2012.pycon-au.org/media/news/15

Hope we see you all registered soon!

Talk — Android: The year of Linux on the palmtop?

2012-04-19T07:38:48+00:00

Here’s my talk from the Hobart TasLUG meeting yesterday (18 April 2012) on the features of Android from the point of view of a Linux user — both from a technical perspective, and issues arising from Android’s unique status as an Open Source OS for cellphones. If you want to download the video, you can download it, or watch it in the embedded format later in this post… Enjoy!

OMFG! OSCON!

2012-04-11T00:03:22+00:00

Since I enjoyed presenting on Android development at last year’s OSCON in Portland, it seems as though I shall be returning to do it again this year!

I’m presenting Android-Fu: Awesome apps for Ice Cream Sandwich and beyond at OSCON 2012. It’ll be on Tuesday 17 July at 9:00am, and will be a comprehensive look at things that modern Android tutorials should teach you, but tend not to.

On a related note, I’ll be travelling through the USA a bit on either side of OSCON. I’ll be in New York from (late on) Monday 9 July through Friday 13 July, and Seattle from Saturday 21 July through Monday 23 July. So if you happen to be reading this and would like to direct me at coffee whilst I’m there, let me know!

More pontification on alcohol at conferences

2012-04-08T02:11:17+00:00

This post started off as a reply to a comment (by “Alan”) on my previous post on this topic, but it got a bit long-winded, and raised a few clarifications of my own viewpoints on this matter. So it’s turned into a post of its own.

So, before I start this, nothing against the organisers or team surrounding OSCON. I loved my experience speaking, and attending the main conference event, and I’m coming back to OSCON to speak again this year. The reason why I pick on it is because it’s the one large American conference that I’ve been to, and it provides a nice contrast to the grassroots-style conferences that I’ve been involved with back home. It also exhibits some very specific examples of fostering that “culture of exclusion” that could be fixed with a few minor policy changes.

So, without further ado, here’s me addressing the points in Alan’s comment.

Could it be that this and the “brogrammer” culture is a problem that is more present at JSConf and Ruby conferences than Python?

I certainly agree that this culture does peak around various types of communities — for instance, Ryan’s post on the “Culture of Exclusion” speaks very specifically of JSConf and various Ruby groups, and in my own experience this sort of culture doesn’t seem to be prevalent at PyCons. However, to say that it’s attached to a small subset of communities is probably quite unfair — OSCON is very much a multi-community conference, but there’s still quite the drinking culture attached to it. Likewise, it seems to me that the Ruby community in Australia isn’t quite as drinking-centric as the examples that Ryan put forward.

You don’t hear anything about sexist COBOL programmers or late night binging at Java conferences from what I can tell. Even PHP seems to have grown up.

I think the likelihood of these sorts of things to occur really does depend on the level of “community” that is attached to a given language or technology. As an example here, people doing Java coding are almost certainly doing so because they work for in a corporate environment. Ruby and JS people are doing so because they work in a “startup” environment, or they’re doing it for fun. The companies that form the founding groups around a conference will often bring their culture along with them. It’s interesting to consider why this doesn’t happen so much at Python conferences. I don’t have any particular answers here — indeed, it’s quite the paradox, because I’d have considered Python to be more of a “startup” type language, and one would assume that would bring the “startup” culture into it. Perhaps it speaks of the values of those who started gatherings for Python coders?

Are these excesses a problem at conferences in general? Is this an American thing? Or even a Ruby/JS thing?

Is it a problem with conferences or communities, or is it a much more widespread cultural issue (as in e.g. American youth culture) that has just become more visible for us recently?

Excess is something that needs to be managed — it’s very easy for a conference organiser to say “yes, you can provide an open bar at this event” to a sponsor, and sponsors get quite an amount of good will from it (free alcohol doesn’t upset people, non-drinkers won’t speak up). It’s also pretty clear to me that if an open bar is offered, there’ll be a group of people who will take it up, regardless of the community that centres around the conference.

So the conferences that suffer from this sort of problem are the ones which either don’t have a policy of limitation of alcohol sponsorship, or those that actively encourage a culture of drinking (the sort of things that Ryan Funduk talks about in his article). I doubt there’d be open bars at any conference if there weren’t sponsors who were willing to fund them.

The onus is therefore on conference organisers to make sure that they don’t encourage binge drinking. In particular, this involves limiting the amount of alcohol sponsorship a conference is willing to accept — we at PyCon Australia are doing this by only providing tokens for drinks at our alcohol sponsored events (with the exception of at the dinner, where the open bar is time-limited, and comes with food and other entertainment).

What distinguishes conferences and communities that have this problem from those that do not?

Conferences can send out a message about this culture: For example, offering OSCON offers free attendance to the drinking events, but not to the main content of the conference; this can be compared with Linux.conf.au, where you have to pay extra to attend the drinking session. The contrasts between these arrangements provide quite the subtext between the values of the two conferences — intentional or not. In my view, OSCON providing such a ticket says that the “base level” experience of the conference is one where you go to all the parties, and the talks and tutorials are the “added extras”. For LCA, it’s the other way around.

So in summary, there are plenty of factors that surround the discussion of alcohol at conferences. I think it’s an important discussion to have, not least because it presents as a diversity argument in very much the same way as the gender diversity argument has presented itself over the last few years — conferences should always be looking at the messages they send out about the communities they wish to foster, and ensuring that they’re inclusive towards everyone in that culture.

Do Australian tech conferences suffer from “A Culture of Exclusion”? How do we avoid it?

2012-04-06T07:06:05+00:00

I spotted this interesting article by Ryan Funduk, on the culture of exclusion generated by piss-up parties at tech conferences — primarily at conferences in America, but the issue is certainly prevalent in other places.

I attended OSCON last year, and whilst OSCON is clearly not as bad as the type of events that have been highlighted in this writeup, there were still plenty of events that were promoted by the conference and their sponsors, but clearly served only as an opportunity to booze up some delegates. In fact, there was at least one such party advertised in the conference schedule each night — peaking on the Wednesday where there were three such conference parties advertised on the conference schedule, cleverly paced for two hours so that delegates could move on to each of the parties as the previous one wound up.

I personally feel as though these sorts of events have no place being actively promoted by the conference schedule. There are several good reasons for this that are all detailed in the parent article, but they all boil down to the fact that not everyone drinks. Parties where the key attraction is drinking only attracts those who drink. By advertising such events as part of the programme, they create cliques within the conference community that aren’t defined by the community that the conference serves to support.

Worse still is when such events are not run with alternatives available, because this strongly promotes the subtext that drinking is the only way to socialise at the conference. So a delegate who doesn’t drink will not fit in to any part of the conference, because there is no well-established way for non-drinkers to find each other.

As an active participant in tech conferences in Australia, it’s important to reflect on criticisms of such conferences in other countries, as well as here, to make sure that we’re providing a culture that actively encourages any delegate who chooses to attend — regardless of age, gender or lifestyle choice.

In the case of conferences run in Australia, I don’t believe that the issues of Alcohol-driven events are near as much of a problem as they are in America.

At Linux.conf.au, since the demise of the Google Party (an event very much brought over by American employees of Google), I don’t think I’ve seen a single event associated with the conference where drinking was the sole purpose of the event. One exception of this is the Professional Delegates Networking Session, however, I have always seeked to run a non-alcohol driven alternative against it. As a non-drinker for most of the LCAs I’ve been to, I don’t think I’ve lost out by not participating in the drinking.

At PyCon Australia, we’ve been careful to not offer up any events with an open tab — companies who want to sponsor alcohol have to do so in a way that ensures that the amounts provided are limited, and any foray into dangerous territory comes at the expense of the delegates. There is no conference event planned without a defined activity, and in every case, the presence of a bar at the event is clearly a distant second in terms of priorities for the organisers.

One of the great successes over the past few years in Australia has been ensuring that toxic cultures within the tech community aren’t tolerated. I think it’s imporant that we look at everything we do with a critical eye. I’m sure that our record on avoiding the fostering of an alcohol culture at our events isn’t spotless, and it’s one that we should look over with as critical an eye as we use to look over issues of gender or sexuality.

It’s definitely my intention to do this as I continue to put together PyCon — constantly looking at what we can do as Australian-based conference organisers do to ensure that the culture of alcohol doesn’t take over from the culture of the technology that we’re gathering for?

Update: I’ve written a further post on this topic. Do try it.

Talk: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Java!

2012-04-01T06:24:18+00:00

Hark! My TUCS Tech Talk for this semester is an attempt to show the connections between Java as a programming and software technology, and the technology that followed it.

You can view it at the TUCS Blip.tv page or in the embedded player above. It even works with youtube-dl

A personal history of TUCS

2012-03-13T10:01:59+00:00

After three years in the job, I’ve finally relinquished the role of President of the University of Tasmania Computing Society (better known as TUCS). The years I spent as President spanned the last year and a half of my time at uni, and the first year and a half outside of that life — it’s something that’s been a pretty constant thread over the past few years, and it’d be a shame if I didn’t take a moment to dwell on my time in the role.

My first year representing TUCS was 2008: I’d come back to uni having attended my first Linux.conf.au in Melbourne, fresh with the knowledge that it would be held in Hobart the following January. The previous computing society at UTAS, the Internet Developers Society had elected to change its name at the previous year’s AGM, and with that new start, I decided to run for the exec of the society. I didn’t really have any aims at the time I ran, save for making the Uni computing community closer to the Open Source movement that I knew and loved at the time.

It was with that that I decided to organise the first of the TUCS Tech Talks. It was a talk by myself on introductory Python. I think I spent the best part of two weeks writing, tweaking and rehearsing that talk, and learning how to get screen recordings going. To my astonishment, the talk was amazingly well-recieved: the room was packed, lots of questions were asked. But much more than the success of my own talk, what astonished me was that people at the barbecue after the talk were telling me about how they wanted to present their own. And a few weeks later, so it was. And the following semester, we had talks every other week, on topics ranging from StarCraft strategy to iPhone development — the advent of tech talks at TUCS exposed a strong enthusiasm for sharing knowledge with others, and it brought our society into great stead with students, staff and the broader tech community in Hobart.

It was at the end of that year that I nominated as President, and happily, I was elected so. And when January rolled about, Linux.conf.au came to our home campus. Whilst TUCS wasn’t really involved with the event as much as I’d have liked, I did spot an opportunity for TUCS to contribute a small part — we ran a barbecue for student and hobbyist delegates to LCA as a way to help our members to engage with the rest of Australia’s tech community. This ended up being the first Unprofessional Delegates’ Networking Session, and it’s an event that I have continued to run at LCA ever since — for the 2012 conference in Ballarat, we brought the UnPDNS format back to the format that we ran for the first time in 2009, and the mood was as good this year as it was in 2009. It’s an event that I’m proud of starting, and the event happened because TUCS members contributed so much to getting that first UnPDNS organised in 2009.

Our Tech Talk schedule improved substantially that year, too. We had the first of our talks from then-Ph.D student, Jonathan Adamczewski on development for PS3 devices. He’s presented almost every semester since then, and his topics have been both diverse and exceedingly in-depth on whatever topic he chose to cover — my personal favourite was a talk showing how “Hello World” programs actually work on Linux systems. We also had the first of our talks by Paul Fenwick — that year, he packed out the tiny seminar room we were using for tech talks with his fascinating insight into the info you could glean from the Facebook API.

The other great discovery that arose from the talks series at TUCS was our frequent series of Lightning Talks — once per semester, students came to share three minutes of whatever insanity they decided they wanted to talk about. We’ve had talks on everything from Alex Berry’s experiments with the postal service; to self-devised esoteric programming languages; to buyers guides for headphones. These talks turned out to be a lot more fun than I could ever have hoped for, and they’ve been a great show of the minds that the society has attracted over the years.

And so it was that last year, I found myself away from Hobart on a very frequent basis, and I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t contribute to TUCS on the level that I had in previous years. Though I tried to give up the post last year, with nobody to replace me, I found myself in situ for a third year. The time I did have to contribute to the role of President last year was spent finding and preparing suitable replacements to come on board the next year. Thankfully, new members with huge amounts of drive started to appear — we ran end-of-semester events for the first time since 2009. We ran an end-of-year Quiz Night, which was a huge success for the society, and showed that the society had strength and enthusiasm to continue on for years to come.

Of course, my own contribution as President over those years did not a society make. The execs who I served with over the years made the society great. The treasurers, Michael Ford, Luke Hovington and Matt D’Orazio all helped make sure that the society was profitable every year I was involved, and keeping on top of grants from the Union. Matt, along with Tim Nugent made sure that the LAN parties that IDS had run for years before continued on well into the TUCS era. Luke Hovington, our tireless sysadmin, kept our old box alive on duck tape and twine, and is overseeing the transition to a new server box with Matt. And Eloise Ducky, who went from being the squeaky year 11 student who showed up on societies day in 2009 to being the person whipping me and the rest of the society into shape as 2011 came to a close.

And so, my term in charge of the society has come to an end — I feel that my hope of creating a community in which students could share their love of computing with others was met; along with keeping the society as bridge between students and university staff, and the IT industry more broadly. They’re goals that a Computing Society at a university should hold at the forefront of what they do, and I think it’s the reason why TUCS is held in high regard.

I hope the years that I spent in the society have changed it for the better — it’s been a lot of hard work, but it’s work I’ve enjoyed, and it’s a role that I’ve greatly relished filling. And thanks to all of the TUCS members who elected me to the role in the first place, but saw enough in me to re-elect me to the role for the following two years. I hope you think it’s been worth it.

Whilst I wasn’t the first President of the society, I was the last. The AGM last year removed the roles of President and Vice-President in favour of holding two Co-Presidents’ offices. I’m sure Eloise, along with Ben Lea will fill these roles with great enthusiasm and with the goal of making the society the best it can be for its members (take care of my baby for me, OK?). Whilst I’m staying on in the executive as a general representative for the rest of this year, it’s going to be interesting to not be in charge of the place.

Photo credits: Adam Harvey, various photos by myself.

Speak at PyCon Australia 2012

2012-03-03T03:21:53+00:00

February was a pretty big month for PyCon Australia organisation, we finally got our new website up and running, and our Call for Proposals is finally open. We’ve even got our first keynote presenter lined up (hush hush).

Of course, opening a Call for Proposals doesn’t make a conference just happen. We need people to submit talks now. In particular, we’d like for you to submit something. Even better, our Call for Topics (which has been open since January) has turned up some great trends for what people want to see. Perhaps you have something to say on one of these topics? We want to hear from you!

In-depth techniques with common Python libraries

Have you done interesting things with Python Libraries? Perhaps you’ve solved a difficult application design using Django; or maybe you’ve done awesome hacks with SQLAlchemy? Our delegates want to know just what can be done with those libraries that are out there in the wild — help them take the next step in enhancing their skills.

Testing

Few things are more important in the application development process. Thorough testing means that you can be confident that your code works, and well-written tests ensure that things don’t break when you make changes. But talks on testing have been sorely lacking at PyCon Australia in the past. Help show our delegates how to make code that’s testable using the best tools available to Python developers.

Alternative implementations

Sure, CPython may be the reference implementation of Python, and it may be what nearly everyone coding python uses, but it’s not the only version of Python out there. The PyPy project is working wonders at making Python code run fast (so that it can compete with state-of-the-art JavaScript VMs), and the Jython and IronPython projects are helping to bring the world of Python to Java and .NET developers. Show PyCon Australia that the Python world doesn’t stop at CPython.

Live Code Reviews

One of the best ways to learn about how something works is to take it apart and see what’s inside. Open source projects let us deeply study the internals of the tools and libraries that we use every day. Show our delegates just how their favourite Python tools work, suggest improvements, and perhaps find new contributors to your projects.

Forward-porting to Python 3

Currently, two incompatible versions of Python are competing for your development time — Python 2, which is the old version of Python with flaws you’ve come to know and accept; and the all-new Python 3, which is easier to code with and more consistent. The problem is that all the code you depend upon is written in Python 2. Help speed up the migration to the new version of Python by showing how to forward-port libraries to Python 3.

Now, submit something!

So, now that you know what people want to see at PyCon Australia 2012, perhaps you have an idea about what you can present. Head over to our Call for Proposals and submit a talk for us. The call closes on Friday May 4.

If you still need more ideas, PyCon Australia 2011 presenter, Daniel Greenfeld has a list of Python conference talks he’d like to see. And if you have more ideas that you’d like someone else to present, our Call for Topics is still open.

Can’t wait to see your proposals coming in!

LCA2012: “Android is Not vi – User Experience for Geeks”

2012-01-24T23:04:08+00:00

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.

PyCon Australia 2012 – Call for Topics now open

2012-01-10T22:38:38+00:00

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:

See the presenters you want to see

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!

Learn about the tools that you want to use

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.

Heard enough?

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.

PyCon Australia 2012 starts here

2012-01-10T03:00:08+00:00

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)

Linux.conf.au 2012

2011-11-04T06:08:14+00:00

Miniconf: organised
Talk: accepted
Attendance: confirmed
Accommodation: booked
Ferry crossing: reserved

See you in January, Ballarat!

Google Reader obit.

2011-10-31T21:48:00+00:00

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

RIP Dennis Ritchie

2011-10-13T10:22:23+00:00

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.

Linux.conf.au 2012 Open Programming Miniconf — Call for proposals now open

2011-08-29T03:57:43+00:00

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:

Recent developments in Open Source programming languages (“State of the language”-type talks)
Tools which support application development
Coding applications with cool new libraries, languages and frameworks
Demonstrating the use of novel programming techniques

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).

San Francisco Streets

2011-03-26T19:41:35+00:00

I really like this shot — looking up Pine Street in San Francisco, with a B&W conversion done by punching a bunch of buttons in *cough*iphoto*cough.

I’ve been told it makes a good background screen for a certain 2:3-ratio mobile device, too.

Update: actually identified the street that the photo is of.

Time Flies! (Adventures in the San Francisco Bay Area, part 1)

2011-03-26T19:26:42+00:00

… When you’re completely distracted by all manner of things! So, as promised, here are a bunch of pretty photos of the things that I’ve done whilst here:

Wandered around San Francisco, looking at the awesome architecture…

Had fantastic coffee, brewed with SCIENCE^w SIPHONS! (Thanks to @bluebottlemint for that…)

Caught the Caltrain between San Francisco and Mountain View far too many times.

Visited clichéd tourist attractions (actually, the bridge is pretty spectacular, and I’m very glad I went to have a look at it!)…

Other things not featuring photos:

Doing a cross-city trek to a Best Buy to purchase some Nexus S phones for friends back home.
Getting an Uber cab to pick us up from this Best Buy (LOL!). Actually, Ubers are pretty damn cool — it’s a mobile app used to hire private town cars (think private drivers for expensive hotels). The cars are all Lincolns (high-end sedans), and the service is incredibly convenient.

Since then I’ve been based in the lovely city of Mountain View, which appears to be the epicentre of much of the tech industry — it’s home to such notable companies as Mozilla and Google, and the coffee shops are full to the brim with people sporting laptops… and there’s ubiquitous free wireless internet provided thanks to Google. I’m spending a lot of my time at Red Rock Coffee, who I’m eternally grateful for, as they helped me to discover that the variety of espresso drink known as “Caffe Latte” in Australia is known as “Cappucino” over here [1]. They have an OK rotation of single origin espressi here, though they taste a bit over-roasted at times… it beats the crap out of everything else in the area though…

Downtown Mountain View, including Red Rock (on the right of the shot).

So that’s the short wrap-up of what I’ve been doing of lately. Hopefully I’ll have some more to report on in the next week or so. Or earlier. I’ve no idea.

Oh, and thanks to Paris Buttfield-Addison for showing me around the area, and also to Jon Manning, who occasionally emerged whenever Paris would let him

Until the next post,

–Chris

[1] Ordering a “Latte” here appears to get you three weak flat whites served in a bucket.

Movements

2011-03-12T21:19:32+00:00

And once again in the flurry of action that occurs during and after LCA, I have completely neglected to update my blog.

So since then, I’ve been doing various bits of development work for my benevolent mad scientist overlords at Secret Lab; this Thursday I’m off to the San Francisco Bay area to do three weeks of onsite work with my next client, which should be thoroughly enthralling.

I suspect the most reliable place to find any evidence whatsoever of my recent activity will be my Flickr stream, though I may take Jethro Carr’s lead and just post regular blogs with lots of pictures every other day (at least it *looks* like he’s had regular activity…).

Until the next post, whenever that may be!

–Chris

LCA2011 Starts Here!

2011-01-22T20:05:20+00:00

Oh hey, I appear to be in Brisbane!

Linux.conf.au 2011 starts tomorrow, which means that today is the fun day of hanging around at the conference accommodation and watching the comings and goings of LCA people, and registering for the conference. Registration opens from 16:00 at the QUT Kelvin Grove Campus*, I personally intend to get to the venue sometime around 17:00.

As I understand, Rusty Russell’s usual newbies’ session is being held today, and that’s on at 18:30, also at QUT Kelvin Grove. If you’ve not been to LCA, this session comes highly recommended — I should know, I’ve been to all of them! (wait, what?) The session helps explain what LCA is all about to people who haven’t been, contains important advice about what sessions to show up to, and how to read the schedule.

Well, that’s it for me. Maybe another update later today?

–Chris

*Kelvin Grove being the QUT campus where the conference was originally scheduled NOT to be at. The conference organisers have done an awesome job at making sure that the event is going ahead at a new venue, especially given the conditions in Brisbane of late. Kudos etc!

BSc(Hons) Graduation mk.3

2010-12-14T23:19:41+00:00

On Monday, I had the wonderful opportunity to walk through my third graduation ceremony for what is effectively the same degree! So a bit on how that happened, maybe?

Well, I completed my Bachelor of Science with Honours degree in June, from which I graduated with First Class Honours in August. Just on two weeks ago, I received a further letter, suggesting that I attend another graduation to collect a University Medal. The University Medal is the highest award that can be awarded to an Undergraduate Student at the University of Tasmania, and my friend Josh Deprez did an exceedingly thorough writeup of the dimensions etc of the Medal itself when he won his last year.

I note with some amusement the comment that I wrote on that post:

Hmmm. Not so convinced I want to aim for a uni medal now. Really really worrying about the number of opportunities the dean would get to mispronounce my name.

Luckily for me, they paid attention to this and solved the problem by awarding two other Medals in the same ceremony (one to a Maths/Physics student, Paul Stack; the other to my colleague from Computer Science, Theo Wadsley, both of whom thoroughly deserved their awards). This resulted in the script detailed in Josh’s post being altered to something resembling:

Naturally, my name still needed to be read out, so I made the requisite alteration to my card in the hope of something resembling the correct pronunciation appearing (this is primarily due to the Dean at my BSc graduation in 2009 pronouncing my surname as ‘Nee-ge-boa’):

The result wasn’t that bad (Something along the lines of ‘Neu-bauer’, which I’ll accept as a pass ).

Since Josh’s graduation last year, they’ve made slight variations to the process of handing out Testamurs, instead of having blank scrolls handed out, the testamurs are now handed out in envelopes at the ceremony. In this case, like every other student, I was handed an envelope reading “Your Graduation Certificate”, bearing a large UTAS Lion on it. Unlike every other student, mine did not contain a testamur (I collected mine at my proper graduation in August), but instead a blank piece of cardboard — this naturally led to jokes about the worth of my degree…

Finally, here’s a photo of me with the medal, and its obverse, just in case you were at all interested:

LCA2011 Anti-Harassment Policy

2010-12-06T10:08:48+00:00

Further to a post made by Rusty Russell earlier today, LCA2011 have just published a detailed anti-harassment policy on the conference website. Well done to the LCA2011 team for promptly and publicly preparing such a policy.

Linux.conf.au 2011 Miniconf Timetables etc.

2010-12-04T23:34:53+00:00

I’m pleased to announce that the two miniconfs that I am involved with at Linux.conf.au 2011, the Open Programming Miniconf and the FOSS in Research & Student Innovation Miniconf have published their draft schedules:

Unfortunately, you’ll also notice that both Miniconfs lack a complete schedule at this point in time. If you have a talk that would be of interest to either miniconf, we’d love it if you could submit a proposal as soon as possible so that we can publish our completed schedules! The CFPs for each miniconf are available from:

I look forward to seeing you at either of these miniconfs, presenting or otherwise!

30 Days of Geek: 18 – Most cringe-worthy geek moment

2010-11-18T10:46:36+00:00

Ooops, I’ve missed days 16 and 17. Meh.

Nothing in particular, but I do have a couple of counts I could make:

Various occasions in High School computing classes where I found myself correcting my teacher.
Any time when someone uses Comic Sans when they should know better.
Seeing Jethro’s selection of the word ‘cringeworthy’. (:D)
The Oracle Sales guy at LCA2008, giving the same speech about their RHEL support programme on no fewer than 3 occasions, all of which I happened to make it to. Hrnnngh.

I’m sure I could come up with more if pressed, but right now I’m not! See you at the next post!

30 Days of Geek: 15 – A geek experience that changed your life.

2010-11-15T02:00:03+00:00

So the original topic for this was “Earliest geek experience”. I really couldn’t identify with that one, so I’m going to do something completely different. I’m sorry if this one’s a bit heavy, but it needs to be written.

I’d like to tell you about one of the worst times in my life. The year was 2006 — it was early January (early enough that I was still coming to terms with the fact that it was 2006…). The last term of school in 2005 was fantastic — I’d had one of my most successful periods academically, was successful in programming competitions, and I had a number of excellent friends who I shared many interests and experiences with. In the new year, that changed. I had a massive falling out with a very good friend, which caused me to question every aspect of the identity that I had built up over the past few years. I became unsure of personality traits, which I though were an important part of who I was, and which I thought were endearing to those around me. I questioned my interests in life. I questioned the validity of every relationship I had come to value over those late years of my schooling.

It is one of two times in my life that I had seriously felt suicidal. I guess this is one of the inevitable results of constantly questioning one’s identity. With each aspect of my personality that I felt needed to be changed to be worthwhile to people, I questioned the effort that would be needed to make that change. Thought after thought permeated my brain, and the weight of it all brought me to the conclusion that faced with the mounting “evidence” (in that state of mind, burden of proof is extremely low) that it probably wasn’t worthwhile to make such changes. At the end of it all, and after all of the changes that I would have to make, the person that I would have had to have been would have been unrecognisable to the person that I was then.

I still have no idea why I survived that week.

I made it through to the Sunday of that week, and was welcomed with open arms onto a flight to Sydney to attend that year’s National Computer Science School. It was during that week I properly discovered Python for the first time — it’s since become my favourite programming language. More so than that, it was a week of hanging around with geeks from all around Australia (and one from New Zealand), each of whom had different areas of interest and inclinations, and each had different skill sets. The tutors were smart uni students apparently studying interesting thing. The week gave me an insight in what it meant to be involved with IT and Computer Science. By the end of the week, I’d made heaps of friends (some of whom I still keep in contact with) who I shared interests and abilities with, and it was a fantastic revelation that there could be so many people around the country who I could just talk geek with. By the end of the week, things had resolved themselves back home — I’d forgiven and forgotten whatever it was that caused my friend and I to fall out, and I had a renewed drive to be awesome with my life.

I have no doubt, however, that I was saved by that week at NCSS. I’ve never had severe depression since, and I’ve been proud of my identity as a computer science-loving geek ever since.

Two years later I returned, this time as a tutor of the group that I had taken part in two years earlier — partly because I wanted to pay back a debt, and partly because I really really wanted to. Returning in 2008 led to me forming even more lasting friendships with people, not only tutors but students as well. I communicate with many of them every day, in one way or another. It’s where I first saw a Google office and decided that I really really wanted to become an intern there. Just afterwards I attended my first LCA in Melbourne, and have found, both there and in other geeky circles around the country, that my ties with NCSS are shared with geeks around the country — the line “I saw the girl on the hill with the telescope” is a wonderful calling card (if you ever hear James Curran lecture you’ll know what I mean by that).

So thanks to James, Tara and Michael (and everyone else from that week in 2006, you are too numerous to mention) — you have made something to be truly proud of… You may even have saved a life

30 Days of Geek: 14 – Favourite Computer Conference

2010-11-14T06:08:48+00:00

Oh. You probably won’t be surprised to hear this one, but the answer is Linux.conf.au the Australasian Free and Open Source Software Conference. I’ve been attending since Melbourne 2008, and have since “been” to Hobart in 2009 and travelled to Wellington to attend in 2010.

LCA is a great conference because it gives people in the broader FOSS-using community in Australia (people like me) the opportunity to meet the people who put together the software that we used on a day-to-day basis. It turns out that they’re an entirely friendly bunch of people, who are all too willing to share their experience: in 2008, Andrew Tridgell spent 20 minutes one-on-one with me explaining how a particularly awesome piece of code he’d written worked.

In 2010 I ran one of the short single-day conference streams (known as “miniconfs”), on the topic of Open Programming Languages. This was a fantastic opportunity to give back to the LCA community, and help bring more of the topics that I was interested in to LCA — we had a fantastic lineup of presenters, and the day went awesomely. I’m glad to have the opportunity to do this again: I’m running the Open Programming miniconf at LCA2011 in Brisbane, and along with my friend Peter Lyle, will be running the Research and Student Innovation Miniconf. Both of them are shaping up to be excellent miniconfs.

So yes, LCA is in Brisbane this January, and I thoroughly recommend you get along if you can!

30 Days of Geek: 13 – How did you become such a geek? Career? Personal interest?

2010-11-14T00:14:58+00:00

I can’t remember not having the traits that I described on day 1, so I guess that means that it’s a combination of personal interest and lifelong obsession. Not much that can be said here

30 Days of Geek: 12 – What area do you want to expand your skills into?

2010-11-12T09:10:54+00:00

I can’t really think of much to say here, other than that I’d love to continue expanding my skills. As a soon-to-be Ph.D student, I’d love to expand my researching abilities (papers papers whoo!) — hopefully resulting in an excellent thesis topic, and potentially an excellent thesis too. As a coder, I want to learn more skills and techniques to help achieve my ends quicker. But really, I’m pretty happy with the direction my geekery is headed, and expanding out in those directions is going to continue to be useful.

30 Days of Geek: Days 10 & 11

2010-11-11T08:49:52+00:00

So yesterday I was in the air, and unable to do day 10′s post. Luckily they make enough sense combined to combine into a single post.

Picture, screenshot and specifications of your primary computer.

Apologies for the blurry photo. I’ve shown this one because it contains both of my primary computers.

The desktop is a generic Athlon 64×2 of some specification, with some RAM and some hard discs in them, it also has an nVidia (HRRRRRNGH) graphics card of some description to drive my two monitors — I honestly don’t care much beyond that, as it serves its purpose. It runs Debian “testing”. The keyboard is a Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000 — I first used one of those during my internship at Google. I liked them so much that I bought one the moment I got home, and I haven’t looked back

The laptop is my general purpose on-the-road device. It’s a black MacBook from 2008, with an Intel Core Duo 2.4GHz in it. It also has RAM.

Favourite hacking environment – music, light, seating, etc

Turns out you’ve got all of the clues you need in there as well — the corner of my bedroom where my desk is serves as my primary hacking area. It’s softly-lit, and has plenty of working space when I can be bothered cleaning it up

As for music, well, it really depends on my mood whilst hacking on something — sometimes it’s nothing at all, but other times it’s something from my extremely esoteric and varietous music collection.

Oh, and if I get bored/stuck on a problem, I can always look out the window!

30 Days of Geek: 09 – What OS/distribution do you run?

2010-11-09T05:10:48+00:00

I’m a user of UNIX-like operating systems of different persuasions. On my laptop I run Max OS X 10.6. I’m not hugely attached to the Mac platform, for example the vast majority of applications I run are Open Source, or sufficiently generic that I can find Linux-based alternatives at the drop of a hat.

At home, I run Debian GNU/Linux’s “Testing” distribution. I like Debian, firstly because of APT/Aptitude, which makes delivering updates reasonably easy. However, these tools are available in a great many distributions now. The reason I use Debian over, say, Ubuntu is that Debian’s quality control protocols ensure that updates work correctly enough of the time that updating packages on a daily basis is not usually a dangerous process.

The “Testing” distribution’s policy with respect to release-blocking bugs means that the distribution is stable enough for everyday non-critical use, and that updates are reasonably timely.

Bring on the Red Hat/Gentoo trolls!

30 Days of Geek: 07 – Preferred smartphone platform. And which do you use?

2010-11-07T02:00:42+00:00

Android.

I like Android for a couple of reasons. The first is that it slots into the Google Apps ecosystem that I built much of my online life around prior to getting an Android phone — an excellent Gmail app for starters, but also my use of calendaring has improved significantly since getting my ADP1.

The second is that it’s Open Source. This means that (provided you have a suitable handset), it’s possible to obtain or write your own custom firmware which lets the phone do more than what its manufacturer intended. This, for me at least means running later versions of Android well past the support of the manufacturer.

30 Days of Geek: 06 – Primary geek fuel (snacks/drinks)

2010-11-06T02:00:33+00:00

This is a delayed post which is likely to show up as I’m several kilometres above New Zealand. The next few posts may/may not be delayed.

Nothing particularly fixed as far as food is concerned. I’ll eat whatever I can find (that I’d actually like to eat). Drinks, however, are a different story.

Firstly, I’m a second-rate coffee snob. I’ll only drink arabica-type beans, usually as a caffe latte, however, if circumstances dictate, I’ll have a plunger coffee au lait. If I have coffee out, it’s only acceptable if it’s better than the typical coffee that I have at home. This means I don’t drink that much coffee out.

Preferred soft drinks include a rotation between coke and lemonade, which is what usually powers me through a day’s coding/writing.

30 Days of Geek: 05 – Quick nifty hacks you’re proud of.

2010-11-05T04:03:32+00:00

As it turns out, probably about 90% of the coding that I do these days is in the form of nifty hacks. This is particularly because in research the impetus is not necessarily to have code that is reusable in a lot of situations, but rather to try out an idea quickly and then throw the code [1].

For example, just today, I needed a couple of images to put into my research poster for the conference I’m presenting at in a couple of days’ time. This involved drawing some rectangles over photos were faces had been detected by some other software. Basically, by having sufficient data in a format I had documented (in the form of other code) this was easy to extract. There are countless other things in my Honours thesis which looks somewhat like this — lots of experiments done with a tiny bit of Python code tying other big packages together.

The hacks that I’m proudest of are the ones which provide me with sufficient useful output that I can reuse their results, and not necessarily the code.

[1] Obviously, no code should ever be thrown away. When I say ‘throw away’, I mean something more along the lines of ‘ceasing maintainence’. This is because you can never know when a piece of code you’ve already written could be useful.

30 Days of Geek: 04 – Greatest application written to date.

2010-11-04T02:00:30+00:00

When Jethro proposed this topic, he was probably thinking of computer programs. I’m going left-field. My greatest application to date was my application to become an intern at Google.

I applied for my internship in July of 2009, and heard nothing back from them until late October; I finally got accepted in late November, just a week out from when I was due to start. Despite the difficulties involved with moving away from home, to a completely different state at two week’s notice, the experience of living in Sydney and working daily with some of the most brilliant and driven geeks I’ve ever met was one that’s affected me greatly.

Being an intern at Google taught me a lot of things. Firstly it gave me exposure to being a part of a larger team of developers — there’s a very strong culture of discussion and peer review within that company, and learning to both get my own code reviewed, and justify decisions I’d made to people who are smarter than me was quite an important learning experience. Secondly I got an opportunity to learn how coding works in a large distributed environment such as Google’s. Neither of those experiences I’d have had elsewhere, and it’s definitely put me in better stead.

Getting an opportunity to learn and apply programming techniques to an interesting problem, and getting to meet all manner of interesting people was a fantastic experience. And I wouldn’t gave got there if it weren’t for making an application.

30 Days of Geek: 03 – What does your day job involve?

2010-11-03T02:00:28+00:00

I have three things that I usually do with my day-to-day life:

First up, I’m an eternal student (or at least, I usually am). Unusually, this semester’s been spent not studying anything for the first time in most of my life; though I intend to take up a Ph.D. candidature from next year. I’ll probably be studying in the field of machine learning, since that’s what my Honours thesis focused on, and I seem to enjoy it somewhat.

Other than that, I’m an itinerant tutor at the University of Tasmania. I taught computer graphics programming (OpenGL et all) this semester, and machine learning the semester before that. I love having the opportunity to help people learn how to do things, and it’s great fun trying to convey some of my own knowledge to people who want to receive it. On the other hand, I hate having to deal with people who either don’t have the skill set to be taking the units which I teach, or people who don’t want to learn — marking assignments from people who don’t have a clue, or otherwise don’t care is a nightmare.

I also accept short-term contract coding whenever I can be bothered. The most unusual thing I’ve done in that respect is implementing a piece of installation art for a roller derby match. That was bizarre

This invariably changes, depending on what work I can be bothered doing at the time, so what I’ve said now probably won’t be the case in six months time.

30 Days of Geek: 02 – Preferred programming language?

2010-11-02T02:00:54+00:00

Python. Need you have asked?

I use Python because it’s expressive, contains enough functionality out of the box to solve most substantial coding problems I have quickly; for everything else, there’s a fantastic array of libraries and frameworks for doing everything from image manipulation to statistical analysis. As a researcher, Python is an invaluable tool, and that’s why I use it.

30 Days of Geek: 01 – Why do you consider yourself a geek?

2010-11-01T02:00:42+00:00

Right, so for those of you who missed my announcement a couple of weeks ago, I’m taking part in the 30 Days of Geek blogging challenge throughout November. This is the first of those posts.

So this first of those posts. So, why do I consider myself a geek? I could list any number of stereotypical character traits, which I do see quite obviously in myself, but instead I’m going to go with just the one which sums up the most important issues nicely: Unhealthy obsession.

Let me explain. As I see it, the most important path to geekery is having a knowledge and understanding of a topic that exceeds that of other people you know. It tends to help if there is more than one such topic of which one has such a mastery.

I’ll start with the obvious first topic: I have an unhealthy obsession with computers. I learnt to program for the first time when I was 11 (MS QuickBasic 4.5 if I recall correctly) and I had a fascination for playing with settings on my family’s first Win98 machine (which resulted in doing a format/restore three times in the first six months of its ownership). Such tinkering left me in good stead for learning Linux a few years later: on the machine I had at the time, getting anything to work at all required hours browsing forums to find people with similar problems. Further to that, I could take the knowledge of how to solve these sorts of problems in Linux and apply them to new situations, frequently in an unrelated area of my system. I don’t think I’d have got anywhere near as far as I did without the unhealthy obsession with Linux I had at the time — this enabled me to spend weeks (when I had schoolwork to go on with) with a not-entirely-working computer, but fixing its problems.

So that’s probably the answer you expected to see. But it’s not just being good with computers that makes me a geek. This unhealthy obsession applies in other areas of interest. For example, I’m a keen follower of the Formula 1 motor racing series [1]. Whilst other people are content with just watching the races as they pop around, I spend ages learning the details which apply to each race — if I’ve a game where I can drive around a circuit to learn its layout I’ll do so. I’ll read Wikipedia so I can find out why people frequently crash at a given point on a track; and then I can relate the knowledge I’ve learnt from reading and gaming to the commentary of the race — which in turn feeds into a greater understanding of the race, which feeds into further learning about the event. Without the unhealthy obsession which comes with being a geek, I doubt I’d have the same level of interest (nor enjoyment) that I have.

So there, two examples of applied geekery, and how they relate to the my preferred reason for being a geek.

Up next, more in-depth questions. If I remember.

[1] Shock horror! I follow sports! Sorry if you think this disqualifies me.

Academia, gogo!

2010-10-21T10:36:18+00:00

In today’s exciting post I describe a rather amusing series of events and the end result of it:

The events:

In August I submitted a paper to a Computer Vision conference being held in New Zealand in November. This is entirely sensible because my honours research received a first-class grade and was in the field of computer vision.
In September, a large earthquake occurred in the Christchurch region, causing much pandemonium amongst organisers of said conference.
On Tuesday this week, my paper got accepted. Naturally, the conference was organised by people in Christchurch, and they were disrupted by several weeks due to the earthquake.

So the conference is on November 8 and 9 in Queenstown, New Zealand; this leaves me just over two weeks to:

Arrange travel
Revise the paper based upon reviewers’ comments
Prepare a poster to present at the conference
Get there

Hrrrnght.

30 Days of Geek challenge

2010-10-17T06:32:29+00:00

My friend Jethro Carr has just suggested another 30-day blogging challenge, and unlike the last one, this one doesn’t require me to be highly introspective and emotional, which I can gladly cope with . Instead, the topic this time around is 30 days of geek.

The topics that Jethro’s suggested are:

Day 01 – Why do you consider yourself a geek?
Day 02 – Preferred programming language?
Day 03 – What does your day job involve?
Day 04 – Greatest application written to date.
Day 05 – Quick nifty hacks you’re proud of
Day 06 – Primary geek fuel (snacks/drinks)
Day 07 – Preferred smartphone platform. And which do you use?
Day 08 – Preferred method of communication with humans
Day 09 – What OS/distribution do you run?
Day 10 – Picture, screenshot and specifications of your primary computer.
Day 11 – Favourite hacking environment – music, light, seating, etc
Day 12 – What area do you want to expand your skills into?
Day 13 – How did you become such a geek? Career? Personal interest?
Day 14 – Favourite computer conference?
Day 15 – Earliest geek experience
Day 16 – First computer you’ve ever owned & your favourite ever.
Day 17 – Post a useful HOWTO to solve a challenge you’ve come across recently.
Day 18 – Most cringe-worthy geek moment
Day 19 – Most hated computing environment.
Day 20 – Where do you stand on Internet Censorship?
Day 21 – Favourite thing & worst things about working in IT?
Day 22 – Release some software under an open source license that you haven’t released before.
Day 23 – Post a review of an application that you use.
Day 24 – How do you feel about Open Source vs Proprietary software?
Day 25 – Microsoft – friend, foe or other?
Day 26 – Apple – friend, foe or other?
Day 27 – Fix a bug in some open source software and commit the patch
Day 28 – How many computers lying about the house?
Day 29 – Looking back (at geek life), would you have done anything differently?
Day 30 – Where do you see technology advancing in the next 20 years – and where will you fit in?

Hopefully by the end of this you’ll have a good insight into my geekiness — posts will start showing up on November 1st.

One week left for LCA2011 Miniconf proposals

2010-10-15T05:17:33+00:00

In case you’ve missed it in other channels, the linux.conf.au 2011 miniconf CFPs close on Friday October 22 (for the most part).

For my part, I’m still looking for more presentations for the Open Programming and Research & Student Innovation miniconfs. The descriptions are as follows:

Open Programming Miniconf

The LCA2011 Open Programming Miniconf helps bridge the gap between the low-level developer and the end-user by bringing the topic of tools and techniques for application development to Linux.conf.au.

We invite 25-minute talks on a wide range of topics, tools and languages with the aim of bringing together open source developers with presentations that share techniques, best practices and values amongst users of all open source programming languages.

If you know something about a topic of interest to the LCA Developer community, please read our call for presentations and submit a proposal!

To submit a proposal for the Open Programming Miniconf, you can find the CFP at http://blogs.tucs.org.au/opm/cfp

Research & Student Innovation

The FOSS in Research and Student Innovation Miniconf brings together researchers and students with an active interest in Free and Open Source Software with the broader Linux.conf.au community to highlight exciting work taking place within the often esoteric world of academia and educational institutions.

We invite 25-minute presentations on topics in two streams: “FOSS in Research”, which provides an informal outlet for those pursuing topics of interest to FOSS communities in their studies; and “Student Innovation”, which brings the perspective of the student delegation to the forefront, by allowing them to share their experiences of FOSS with the broader LCA community.

To submit a proposal, visit the CFP at http://blogs.tucs.org.au/frsi/cfp

CRUST PIZZA USES FAKE MEAT

2010-09-09T22:26:34+00:00

According to their ingredients listing, which is available from their website, Crust Pizza use flavour-enhanced meat.

For those who can’t read it, their “bacon” contains: Pork (93%), Water, Salt, Mineral Salts (451, 450), Sugars (Sucrose, Dextrose (Maize)), Antioxidant (316), Sodium Nitrite (250), flavour enhancer (621), Natural Wood Smoke, water added.

Seriously, for less than than $20, you can buy high-quality pizza, with real flavours, and not MSG (Flavour Enhancer 621).

Until they pick their act up, never again.

A Miniconf for Researchers and Students

2010-09-07T13:16:42+00:00

Because my insanity knows no bounds, I’m helping out with a second miniconf at Linux.conf.au 2011 in Brisbane.

It’s called the FOSS in Research and Student Innovation Miniconf, and I’m running it with my fellow ex-UTAS Honours Student, Peter Lyle. Here’s how we describe it in the CFP:

The FOSS in Research and Student Innovation Miniconf brings together researchers and students with an active interest in Free and Open Source Software with the broader Linux.conf.au community to highlight exciting work taking place within the often esoteric world of academia and educational institutions.

The Miniconf is part of Linux.conf.au 2011, being held at the QUT Gardens Point Campus in Brisbane, Queensland in January. It’s being organised by Peter Lyle of the Urban Informatics Research Lab at the Queensland University of Technology and Christopher Neugebauer from TUCS, the University of Tasmania Computing Society. You can e-mail them at frsi2011@googlegroups.com

The CFP is now open at the Miniconf web site, so if you’ve got something to say, please do submit a proposal!

Open Programming strikes again

2010-09-03T11:22:49+00:00

I’m very pleased to announce that the LCA2011 organisers have accepted my proposal for the Open Programming Miniconf to be run at Linux.conf.au in Brisbane in January. This is a new, improved, shorter-titled successor to the wildly successful Open Programming Languages Miniconf that was held in Wellington earlier this year.

From the proposal:

The Linux.conf.au Open Programming Miniconf is a single-day mini-conference about application development with Open Source tools.

Featuring talks on a wide range of topics and programming languages, this miniconf aims to bring together open source developers with presentations that share techniques, best practices and values amongst programmers of all open programming languages. OPM2011 will be held at Linux.conf.au 2011, at the QUT Gardens Point Campus in Brisbane in January.

Whilst the miniconf is yet to be officially announced, the proposal submission system is online at the miniconf website. I look forward to seeing some awesome presentation proposals coming through in the coming weeks!

Two-What preferred

2010-08-31T00:13:12+00:00

Thanks to Antony Green of the AB (friggin’) C (emphasis mine):

The reality of forming government in the newly elected House of Representatives depends on those eight elected members, but the AEC’s total of 2-party preferred vote currently excludes all votes cast in these eight electorates, the eight electorates whose elected members will determine who forms government.

Based upon the published information currently available, the ALP trail the coalition by less than 2,000 votes nationwide, including four seats where the coalition obtained considerably less than 25% of the primary vote. It’s disappointing that the AEC has published such misleading data, but it’s utterly shameful that the nation’s news outlets are pouncing on this. In this situation, a two-party preferred vote is meaningless, and misleading two-party preferred vote even more so.

And now back to your regularly-scheduled programming.

AUC /dev/world/2010 — I’m Presenting!

2010-08-20T10:34:57+00:00

AUC /dev/world/2010, the Apple University Consortium’s conference for developers working on or with Mac or iOS devices is on again this year, on the 28th and 29th of September, in Melbourne. Last year I presented a talk, and ran the conference’s lightning talks; the conference was fanstastic: the content was easily-accessible to staff and students from across the country, and catered to a very wide range of skill levels and familiarity with Apple frameworks.

This year, I’ll be presenting Awesome Things You’ve Missed in Python, a fast-paced, code-heavy recap of interesting features to hit the Python Programming language in the past few years. My talk is not specific to Apple development, but will have a strong focus on techniques which are applicable to development with the PyObjC library.

If you’re on staff or are a student of an AUC member university (most Australian Universities are, as are a few Kiwi ones), registration is cheap ($100 for students), and all flights and accommodation are subsidised (to a generous limit). If a fun two days of meeting interesting people and learning about development techniques with the latest technology available on Apple devices interests you, get in contact with your local AUCDF coordinator to register!

A Manifesto

2010-08-19T12:03:32+00:00

I believe:

That I have no right to tell you who to vote for.
That I have no reason to tell you who to vote for.
That my opinion is just that: an opinion.

That everyone’s vote counts.
That voting informally puts your decision in the hands of others.
That voting informedly makes your decision count for more.

That who you vote for is not the same as who you believe should form government.
That all policy deserves the scrutiny of many viewpoints.
That our parliament works best with a diverse senate.

That there is no party who supports all of the ideals of any individual, even those who are members of the party.
That no party knows how to best allocate your vote.
That no party knows who their best candidate is.

That you should question your ideals before you select your candidate.
That you should select your candidate before you select your party.
That your second and third preferences matter just as much as your first.
That you should vote below the line.

That my enemy’s enemy is not always my friend: to be my friend, I need a reason to support you.
That blanket negative policies do not deserve the right to be enshrined in appropriation bills.
That the previous government was deposed for a reason.

That a long-term view is not rewarded by our short-term electoral cycle.
That three-year electoral terms favour fiscal conservatism and that Australia is worse-off for it.
That there is often merit to policies which do not result in an immediate return.

That no party considers my electorate important enough to campaign broadly in.
That at this election, no major party deserves my vote.
That no party deserves my continued support.

That there is a time for conservatism.
That with significantly reformed personnel and policy, the Liberal Party will one day be deserving of government again.
That that time is not now.

That the current government has, for the most part, implemented fundamentally good policy.
That the next government deserves wide-ranging, informed, non-partisan scrutiny.
That this election should be all about the senate.

Worldwide Photo Walk 2010 — This Saturday!

2010-07-18T01:25:14+00:00

Around this time last year, I participated in the Hobart edition of the Worldwide Photo Walk. It was an excellent opportunity to meet other photographers from the area, to explore an area I’d never explored before, and to take photos of interesting things.

Well, the walk is on again this coming Saturday, operating in just about every major city in Australia (and in other countries as well). I seriously recommend getting along to your local walk: it’s a good opportunity to have fun with a camera and the experience is seriously rewarding.

If you’re interested, you can search and sign up for your local walk at the WWPW web site. The event is run by a Photoshop training company, I do recommend opting out of the marketing announcements they offer, as it’s quite high-volume across the year.

New Site, New Blog, New Etc!

2010-07-16T10:12:58+00:00

Those who’ve cared to look at my site in the past will know that I’ve been a pretty big fan of PyBlosxom, a lightweight filesystem-based CMS and blog engine. If you’re happy to dig around in configuration files and editors to produce your posts, it lets you do a lot with very little.

Unfortunately, recently I’ve experienced a mini-deluge of Russian comment spam which, under PyBlosxom requires far too much effort to clean up (even with the excellent Akismet spam plugin by Benjamin “Mako” Hill). I’ve used this deluge as an excuse to migrate my site to WordPress, which I’ve been considering making the move to for quite some time.

The resulting site is now up and running at my new domain name (chris.neugebauer.id.au), which is running on my new UK-based Linode 512 VPS. Hopefully this is an excellent excuse to keep it properly up-to-date, especially considering the amount of effort I’ve had to go through to get it to this stage!

Planet Flood — Sorry!

2010-07-16T05:34:17+00:00

So I’ve just migrated posts from my old blog (hosted using PyBlosxom) to my new one (hosted using WordPress). It appears as though Planet Linux Australia (and possibly others) have ignored the timestamps on my migrated posts. Fantastic!

So, if you’re seeing 10-month-old posts from my blog, sorry about that, I’ll try not to do it again!

Honours Etc

2010-07-09T20:02:05+00:00

Ooops, I appear to have forgotten to update my blog (as usual), and forgot to mention anything at all about my Thesis or my Honours work otherwise for the past four months. I truly can’t be bothered writing about it at the moment, so I’ll just mention that I submitted it a couple of weeks ago, and that I received a mark of First Class for it. I’m pretty happy about that.

More news at 11!

Welcome to Wellington (Or: Incoherent early-morning brain dump)

2010-01-17T15:43:55+00:00

I’m taking what scant morning time I have away from the conference today to let you know what I’m doing during it, isn’t that nice? Naturally, I’ve written this at 6:30AM, which is like 4:30AM Sydney Time: a fact that my body hasn’t kept from me. Still, I need to be up early, if only for today… So. Here begins the brain dump:

I landed in Wellington on Friday — as a miniconf organiser, I was fortunate enough to get picked up at the airport, and get the sights of the area shown to me. This includes Wellington’s idea of an aircraft control tower (slotted between two houses on a residential block — no photo, going too fast ), a wind meter, which kindly blocks the road in sufficiently-strong winds, and most importantly the conference centre in which LCA will be held. I checked in to UStay (the budget accommodation booked by the conference), and got a room on the 11th floor. This wouldn’t necessarily be an issue to me, save for the fact that the elevator goes up to 10 only: the remaining floor is scaled by way of a fire escape that isn’t terribly well-marked. The room is pretty comfortable (really good for NZ$21 per night), and the common room is big, with plenty of couches, allowing delegates to socialise.

This is my first time staying at conference accommodation (I’ve been to two LCA’s before), which has revealed an entirely new side of the conference: all the delegates staying here share a single common room, and there are plenty of new friends to be made just by popping over to another of the many groups that form there.

The common room, luckily, provides more than enough entertainment here, since the weather’s been pretty awful since I got here — strong wind and plenty of rain have accompanied 15-degree weather (which I am hoping will lift tomorrow). Flights for some have had to be diverted to Auckland, so it’s dubious as to whether some people will even make the start of the conference. This is apparently unusual for Wellington (despite its reputation as the windy city).

Well, it’s probably time I considered popping downstairs, and getting ready to go: I’ve got a miniconf to run today — wish me luck!

In Wellington for LCA2010

2010-01-16T00:14:28+00:00

I’m sitting on a couch in the UStay common room in Wellington: the first bunch of LCA2010 delegates are showing up. Very much looking forward to registration tomorrow, and the week that follows it.

That’s all for now. More substantial updates once things actually happen!

Summer of Etc!

2009-12-17T22:04:55+00:00

Once again, I’ve left this site for faaaaar too long without letting you all know what I’ve been up to of late (oops). Needless to say, a fair bit has happened in the past few weeks, and it’s probably worth telling you all about this.

Honours, Semester 1 (during semester 2)

Uni study’s been going quite swimmingly of late: both my units of study went pretty well (insofar as I got HDs in them); thesis on the other hand, has only really just started to take off. My research is into the computer vision task fo object detection (for example, finding faces in images), in particular, I’m working on improving the scheme built into the Intel OpenCV Library (Haar Classifier Cascades, if you’re at all interested) by having them consider colour.

One of the deficiencies I’ve discovered during my research is lack of sufficient real-world colour face datasets to perform detection upon: whilst I need in the order of 2000 faces (1000 to train upon, 1000 to test upon), the largest useful academic set is an order of magnitude smaller. For this reason I’m developing my own set. My current intention is to assemble the data set entirely from Creative Commons-licensed data (e.g. from Flickr and Wikipedia) and to release the resultant set under CC licenses too. I expect I’ll give a lightning talk at LCA on this, I’ll also dump a blog post here somewhere about what sort of data I’d like donated.

Summer of Google

One thing that’s looking like it will derail my Honours work slightly happened not too long ago. I applied for a Software Engineering Internship at Google Sydney back in July, and didn’t hear much about it. In late October, however, I very suddenly got contacted about it, and interviewed for the position, and quite happily, I was offered a job. This, amongst other things, involved dropping (almost*) everything for the summer, and moving to Sydney within two weeks, which I guess I’ve done somewhat successfully.

So I’m now working at Google until sometime during the first two weeks of semester (!). My current project involves working on [redacted], to make [redacted] do [redacted]; in related news, the new Sydney offices are pretty damn cool, the food is excellent, and the work is fun. I’m really looking forward to the rest of my time here.

*I guess the most important thing to mention here is that I’m still spending my week-and-a-bit in Wellington for Linux.conf.au 2010, and that I’ll still be running the Open Programming Languages Miniconf there. I can hardly wait!

Elsewherein’

2009-11-01T08:06:16+00:00

Just a friendly prod to interstate friends (and apologies to those of you picking who are otherwise uninterested):

I’ll be in Sydney from Wednesday evening for the AUC XGrid Workshop; I’ll be heading to Melbourne on Friday evening for the weekend. If you want to meet up at any time whilst I’m there, you can contact me through the usual channels.

LCA2010 Open Programming Languages Miniconf: CFP Closes on Friday!

2009-10-19T06:30:43+00:00

And this time we mean it!

Our CFP was extended by a month, and now you only have this week to get your presentation proposals in for the LCA2010 Open Programming Languages Miniconf!

Our call for presentations closes on Friday 23 October 2009, so if you’re planning on attending LCA2010 in Wellington in January, and have something to say about doing development with Open Source programming languages, libraries or frameworks, we’d love to hear from you!

We’re looking primarly for standard-length talks (20-25 minutes including questions), but we’ll also consider double-length talks on suitably compelling topics (that’s 40-45 minutes including questions).

Our CFP is available from http://blogs.tucs.org.au/oplm/cfp/ — if you’ve already read it, you can submit your proposal at http://blogs.tucs.org.au/oplm/cfp/submit/

ABOUT THE MINICONF

The Linux.conf.au Open Programming Languages Miniconf is a single-day mini-conference about application development with Open Source programming languages. Featuring talks on a wide range of topics and programming languages, this miniconf aims to bring together open source developers with presentations that share techniques, best practices and values amongst programmers of all open programming languages. OPLM2010 will be held at Linux.conf.au 2010, in Wellington, New Zealand on January 18.

OPLM2010 is being organised by Christopher Neugebauer and Jacinta Richardson with help from the broader community. You can contact the OPLM2010 organising team at oplm2010@googlegroups.com or visit the website at http://blogs.tucs.org.au/oplm

LCA2010 — I’m registered

2009-10-10T20:00:58+00:00

Registrations for Linux.conf.au 2010, being held in Wellington, New Zealand this January opened earlier this week — I’m registered (a bit of a no-brainer, given that I’m running a miniconf this year). Have you registered yet?

Not sure if I mentioned it here, but thanks to the kind generosity of the LCA2010 team, the Open Programming Languages Miniconf has been able to extend its call for presentations by a month. This means that you can now submit your presentations up until October 23 (which is a Friday) — I look forward to seeing another deluge of presentations in a couple of weeks-ish!

AUC /dev/world/2009 and its consequences for the Open Source development community

2009-10-02T23:33:46+00:00

AUC /dev/world/2009, the Apple University Consortium’s annual student (and university staff) developer conference was held this week in Canberra. DevWorld goes for two days, and consisted (this year) of about 90 enthusiastic Apple developers learning about popular Mac technologies.

This year, as well as being my first DevWorld conference, I was a presenter: I presented a talk about the OS X scripting bridges, with a particular focus on the Python–Objective-C bridge, PyObjC. I rushed through the first half of my talk, and instead of taking ~45 minutes like I’d estimated, I took 30, which means I probably rushed through the back end of the talk as well (though it felt as though I was going pretty slowly!). I was not the only student presenter at this conference, indeed around two thirds of presenters were students at one of the AUC member universities.

As well as my presentation, I was the official photography crew for the conference (with a broken camera for half the conference, too, I might add), wrote a substantial amount of the (ridiculously hard) quiz night, and organised their lunchtime lightning talks, which in my opinion was one of the greater successes of the conference — more than half of the 11 talks were presented by people who had not presented at the conference, and the representatives from Apple Australia were suitably impressed by the quality of the talks.

Coming from an Open Source person’s standpoint, I’m very impressed with the level of developer community that the AUC are able to extract from University students. There is clearly a high level of enthusiasm amongst student Mac and iPhone developers for their chosen platform, which is something that Apple should justifiably be proud of. I am convinced, however, that this enthusiasm is not solely limited to Apple Development, and almost certainly exists for Open Source platforms as well. It is our job as Open Source people to foster this enthusiasm for Free developer platforms and Open Source technology in general amongst the student population.

Our existing conferences do not do enough to encourage students to participate in presentating at them. I will single out LCA in this case, as it is our community’s most visible local conference — what I am pointing out also applies to others. Though there has been a concerted increase in student-related events at LCA (beginning with the Google student event in 2008 and the TUCS UpDNS in 2009), and this certainly establishes ties within the student community, more needs to be done to extend these ties into the broader community.

An appropriate place to start here would be the establishment of a regular student miniconf as of 2011. Student developers make up a significant minority of delegates to LCA, but are seriously underrepresented in both main programme presentations and miniconf presentations. Referencing her experiences on the PyCon papers committee, Anna Martelli Ravenscroft lists 6 reasons why women do not talk enough at conferences, but they apply equally well to student developers at well — fear of inexperience in comparison with other delegates or presenters, fear of presenting a topic that may be irrelevant to other delegates and fear of presenting in general are all listed as common reasons why people do not present enough. Providing an allocated track for student developers would almost completely eliminates the first two listed issues, and will make significant inroads into the third by providing a supportive environment for students to present at the conference. Linuxchix has been a notable precedent and success story in this field, by providing a supportive environment for female delegates at LCA, there has been a noticable increase in attendance by female delegates since the Linuxchix miniconf was started (the proportion of which I am not sure); and from what I can tell, the standard of presentations is very high.

Student developers are currently an untapped resource for LCA and the Open Source conference community in general, but one that we must strive to harness whilst the opportunity still presents itself. The AUC have demonstrated that a student-driven developer conference is not only a feasible model, but one that can be highly informative, well-delivered, and highly successful. For as long as we are not encouraging enthusiasm amongst our own young developers this way, we are presenting further opportunities for Apple and others to fill the void, and at the moment, the void is great.

I close with a quote from Simon Phipps’ keynote from LCA2009. In reference to his presenting from a Mac laptop, Simon observed that

The greatest enemy to freedom is a happy slave.

I argue that an even greater enemy to freedom is someone who is happily being educated into slavery. For as long as our non-free competition are encouraging student development in this way, this is the circumstance that we in the Australian Open Source community are faced with. I commend the AUC for their fantastic work on producing an excellent conference, and it is something that we in the Open Source community should be striving to replicate, and not striving to extinguish.

More ACM-SPPC Goodness!

2009-09-15T02:51:49+00:00

As predicted, our third place is final! This puts us one problem clear of 4th, and tied with second place, which is kinda nice. It also means that Josh, Simon and I are in limbo until early December when wildcard world finals places are allocated — that said, it’s a nice limbo to be in, as it were.

Since Simon lacks a blog, I’m publishing his analyses of problems D and F, as well as H, where his solution TLEd at minute 295…

Problem F was obviously the hidden easy problem (it was full of pointless extra data to make it look more complicated) so I got onto that once the terminal was free. It’s BFS on a graph with vertices representing cities and a connection between two cities iff there is a road which contains both cities.

Problem D: It was very number theoretic. With this one, the months had different lengths which made things complicated unless you just took one month at a time, found the solution for each one and then gave the best solution out of all them. For each month, there was a window of opportunity where a full moon could occur such that the next full moon would be in the same month. So, again, I solved the problem for each day of the month in that window and returned the best for the month. Solving the problem for each day involved solving equations in mod Y, the number of days in a year, which can be done with the help of the extended Euclidean algorithm. Writing a Date class helped keep the thing simple enough to humanly code.

Problem H (unsolved) After getting that out, I looked at the stable marriages problem again. I remembered the algorithm in the last hour of the competition (and felt stupid since it’s simple and the name of the problem is a way of remembering it). I got onto coding it, at the same time as Josh was bashing at problem B. I actually got it working in the last five minutes but in my rush I’d made it O(n^3) instead of O(n^2) and it didn’t cut it.

I guess the last thing to mention is a round of thanks to Mike Cameron-Jones, our site director and coach, as well as Robyn Gibson (our local judge), Tony Gray (who makes everything work here), and Matt Armsby (for passing our printouts, and arranging the food on the table), amongst the many other staff who made the contest possible.

ACM SPPC (And related excitement)

2009-09-12T22:39:45+00:00

The ACM South Pacific Regional Programming Contest is done and dusted for another year. My team (The Triple Helix) scored a provisional third place with seven problems (that’s tied with the team on second, but not the team on first as was the case last year), which after talking with other teams at the top seems fairly stable. This is a really encouraging result for us, not least because I shared a team with completely different teammates from previous years, but also because one of those teammates was attempting this contest for the first time.

So of the seven problems, I solved three, being problems A, G and I, Josh solved B and E (there’s an interesting story there that I’ll leave him to tell), and Simon solved D and F (spending the last hour on H). Here’s my analysis of the ones I solved.

Problem A: The problem at the front of the pack is, as usual, a “typing practice” problem, that is, one where the trick is doing precisely what they tell you on the statement as quickly as possible. I had a working solution in 8 minutes, but a technical glitch on our local site meant that I didn’t have any pretyped test data (the sample data was very tedious and difficult to type correctly) until minute 15. A quick test and submit, and done.

Problem G: The idea of this problem is to determine if a path exists allowing you to visit all cities from a list of cities, in order, and only once. You are given a set of flights that may contain cities not from the original list, which you may visit as frequently as necessary. The observation here is that you’d like to determine if a path exists between adjacent cities on the list through the allowed intermediary cities only. By being judicious about ordering your verticies in an adjacency matrix, you can solve this using a non-standard version of Floyd’s algorithm, whereby your outer loop (the one that considers your current intermediary vertex) only considers the valid intermediary cities. Determining if the desired path exists is just a matter of stepping through the path.

Problem I: This problem involved determining if a path to a point in a grid exists, whereby the only possible moves at a given point are to go “forward” or “rotate to the right”, and determining the length of the shortest path if one exists. As a grid-based shortest path problem, a BFS is the correct method; the trick is to notice that the state space involves not only the grid itself, but actually the grid in each of the four possible orientations — once this key bit of insight is out of the way you only have to consider a few special cases: are you at the goal state already; is the goal state on a wall in the maze; and the one clarified by the judges, is your start space on a wall?

We didn’t solve our eighth problem (H), but luckily, a tiny change to our solution to B in the last 5 minutes got accepted (at minute 297, no less), which was sufficient to knock us up to 3rd.

So that’s it until after the rejudging occurs, hopefully with no drastic changes at the top

Update: Josh posted analysis of the problems he solved (a long with some ACM t-shirts) to his blog. Check it out for more of the story about this year’s contest.