Five Minutes

A few people have asked about whether there’s a feed for Planet LCA 2008. The good news is that there is, and it’s at http://planet.linux.org.au/rss20-lca2008.xml. It just seems to have been a fairly well kept secret for some reason.

A number of people have asked, so I shall state for the record that I’m not dead. Nevertheless, I’m extremely grateful to everyone for the concern shown for me after I was taken ill yesterday, and particularly to the guys — Andrew and Brian (I think; if I’ve gotten your name wrong come find me during the conference and smack me, just not in the head) — who came with me to the hospital.

Fortunately, today’s been a much better day. Since I’d already spent the money on a ticket, I decided to go to the Big Day Out for a little while this afternoon. I got there just in time to see Regurgitator and left after seeing Arcade Fire, not wanting to push my luck too far. It’s the first time I’ve seen Arcade Fire live, and it was everything I could have hoped for and more. Against that, Flemington Racecourse was warm, very dusty, and almost totally devoid of shade. I’ll just make sure I’m back in Perth for the Claremont Showgrounds show next year.

Tomorrow: Miniconfs! No idea which one I’m going to yet, but it should be fun anyway.

For anyone who saw our lightning talk at OSDC and wants to view Pac Wars in their own home cinema, you can view it on YouTube, courtesy of shenki.

Is it just me, or does the koala as printed on the OSDC bag bear a striking resemblance to the dog from the Rubber Johnny video clip? (OK, it’s probably just the eyes, really.)

Odds that a Brisbane native will actually cross a street without a green pedestrian light: 20/1.

Odds that I’ll do a lightning talk: 5/1.

Odds that I’ll do a lightning talk that isn’t a rant about something: 100/1.

Odds that someone (or, in Julien’s case, some TV) will end up in the Royal pool: 3/2.

Odds that the registration process for OSDC will go smoothly: bets closed, because it did.

Officially, I’m now at OSDC. There are people sitting on couches sucking down wireless and killing their battery life. It’s good to be back in the conference groove.

Just wandered out of my hotel to grab a snack and a drink (strangely, minibar prices remain unattractive to me), and I was surprised at how many people were still on the streets of Brisbane at a bit after 10 pm on a Monday. Coming from Perth, the land of it’s 5:01 pm — quick, everybody out of the city so the tumbleweeds can roll!, it’s a little disconcerting.

I drove up to Rockhampton on Friday and then spent a long weekend there and Hervey Bay. Going to Rockhampton and Great Keppel Island (for a daytrip) means that I’ve now entered the tropics within Australia, which is another remarkably minor geographical milestone that I can cross off. GKI is nice, but incredibly expensive (even moreso than Queenstown, which isn’t something I ever expected to say). In spite of being subtropical, Hervey Bay actually felt more like the stereotypical tropical paradise — the laid-back beach lifestyle just didn’t seem as forced. Plus, way less expensive.

Tomorrow it’s time to get my hacking boots on, because OSDC is here. I’m looking forward to it; it’s my first OSDC and my first conference since LCA in January. Feel free to say hello if you see me wandering the halls — I don’t bite.

Well, there was that one time, but I maintain he deserved it. Also, I was five years old. I’d like to think that I’ve grown since then, if only physically.

(Finally, since Derick just prodded me about it on IRC, no, I haven’t forgotten about Dubnium. I’m hoping to be pretty close to a 0.2 release — that’s the release that might actually be usable — in about a fortnight.)

My bank balance has worn one — actually, several — for the team, but I’ve finished a very productive day arranging the various bits of travel that I have planned for this summer. In order, I shall be inflicting myself on gracing the following cities with my presence:

• Brisbane (and any parts of Queensland I can get to during the five days I’m hitting the road that aren’t infested with schoolies): November 20 to 30, ostensibly to attend OSDC. Also the Muse concert on the 21st. I’m still not sure which one I consider more important.
• Shanghai: December 5 to 20, for a university study trip. I also have about 24 hours in Singapore (which I’ve never been to — well, outside the airport, anyway) on the way back, so if the lazyweb has any suggestions for things to do there which could be fitted into, say, a morning, I’d love to hear them.
• Mel8ourne: January 27 to February 3. I note that an open day has been scheduled for my birthday. How good of the LCA organisers to give me such a nice present.

Simplistic maths suggests that I’m going to be out of Perth for ~45% of the time between November 20 and February 3. Sounds like a summer of fun to me!

For some reason I still can’t quite fathom, people have been interested in my Hackfest entry at LCA. Specifically, the entry I put in for the Audioscrobbler question, which asked us to create a program that could interface with the Audioscrobber related artists API. I decided to write a buzzword compliant Web page. So, I’ve uploaded it to http://www.adamharvey.name/hackfest/ for your viewing pleasure. You’ll need a browser with decent XHTML and SVG support. Firefox 2 seems to handle it nicely.

It uses PHP 5 for the little bit of backend processing it requires, but most of the heavy lifting is in Javascript. The only other dependency is the HTML_AJAX PEAR package — I developed against a test release of 0.5.1, but 0.5.0 should work as well.

The files I actually wrote (be warned, they’re messy and undocumented):

• index.php: The entry point for the user. It’s only in PHP so I can control the Content-Type header.
• server.php: The AJAX server which pulls in the Audioscrobber related artists information.
• audio.js: The Javascript that does the heavy lifting of getting the related artists information and spitting out SVG via the DOM to render it.

You can consider these files to be licensed under either the GPL (which was a condition of entering Hackfest) or the MIT License. HTML_AJAX is licensed under the LGPL.

I had the best of intentions when it came to blogging LCA, but it’s easy to forget just how all-consuming it can be. (I haven’t read a newspaper for a week, either.) So, instead of making up for it with a deathly dull four page blow-by-blow account, I’ll just jot down a few feelings now that I’m back in Perth and then stop breaking Planet LCA once and for all.

I thought the programme this year was outstanding. Every talk I attended rocked in some way, whether from the point of view of cool hackery (Nouveau), usefulness (Eat My Data), or sometimes sheer chaotic entertainment (x86 Hypervisors). HackFest was also really, really good fun, and I ended up with a completely unexpected little toy to bring home, pictured below. (The LCA 2006 key ring/bottle opener is for scale.) Congratulations to Stephen Thorne, too, who really, really deserved to win after attempting five more of the problems than I did.

Plus, even Tux finds HackFest cool enough to attend!

Otherwise, the experience is really the key. While I could go a long time without hearing Good morning, freedom lovers! again, LCA’s such an insane, overwhelming experience that you can never really get much more than a taste. As with every other year, though, I’ve found myself coming home with lots of things to try, lots of things to work on, some new people to annoy talk to on IRC — and, ultimately, just having learned more in a week than I would have in 51 weeks at the office through attending talks and talking to people who are way, way smarter than I am.

Now I just have to look forward to Mel8ourne — only 373 days to go!

Random images from Shalom College tonight. People say the Internet and pervasive wireless will isolate people in their rooms — these images suggest that less-than-pervasive wireless will actually bring people together.

The link between the old and new parts of Shalom’s first floor.

The very popular couch area at the top of Shalom’s main staircase… now with wireless behind the bin!

The main common room in Shalom. Note the various groups of people interacting in ways other than IRC. (Yes, really.)

More people in the common room.

So, as you can see, LCA once again brings people together from across the hacking world into university accommodation. It’s like a slightly geeky “Big Brother” without cameras. That we know of.

Finally, I give you Steve without his super wireless powers: