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Sat, 28 Jun 2008
[18:58] American Omnipresence - Day Two
We're coming to terms with just how much driving we're going to be doing over the next few weeks today. We're only two days in and we've already covered 920 miles, and we're not done for the day yet either!
We started out earlyish, 0806 when the cleaning staff at the Battle Mountain Comfort Inn burst in on our slumbering bodies - a handy wakeup call - and I feasted on the malted cornflakes and filled up the waterbottle with ice before we headed out into the desert. We've covered three states today, leaving Nevada this afternoon after an (awful) lunchstop at the 93 Casino in Jackpot (it's my fault it was awful, choosing something for lunch called "Munchy Madness" was not a great idea), meandering through Idaho before hitting Wyoming late tis afternoon. Once again I've been struck by how much the landscape changes from state to state. We started out in a boiling hot desert this morning, transitioning into scrubby desert until the Idaho border. Idaho was non-stop lush ranch/farm-land (apparently a ranch has livestock, farm has vegetable matter only) and Wyoming has been stunningly picturesque hills, canyons and rivers with some amazing wildflower (possibly pronounced "weed") displays. We keep stopping for photo-ops (who can resist a giant potato?) so we're running horrendously late and we didn't take the timezone change into account so while we're thinking it's 1700, it's actually 1800.
[Posted at: 18:58 28/06/2008]
UPDATE:
Well, we made it to Jackson Hole and managed to score what appears to be the last hotel room in the city. We got in around 2130 and stopped at the Gable Inn for directions and were informed that there was nowhere else to stay so we took the last room. We have every night from here on booked in at a campsite but this was our last night of flexibility and as it was so late we decided to hang out in a hotel while we still had the opportunity to take advantage of electricity and internet access! We headed out for dinner and ended up at the Silver Dollar Bar of the Wort Hotel. Dinner was amazingly good (I had a sort of pita sandwich ith Elk-meat) and was accompanied by a live band. We went for a wee wander around town and this place looks really nice. Additionally the locals appear to be a lot friendlier and we had a great time in general. Thankfully we have only five hours of driving to do tomorrow and we're going to go and visit Old Faithful in Yellowstone on the way through to Waipiti.
[Updated at: 01:00 28/06/2008]
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Fri, 27 Jun 2008
[17:09] Holiday Time
We're on the road! We've managed to leave only four hours late...around about rush hour to be exact. Oh well, only seven hours to the 'Armpit of America', otherwise known as Battle Mountain, Nevada where we get to stop for the night.
[Posted at: 17:09 27/06/2008]
UPDATE:
Holy crap, that was a long and smokey drive. We happened to pass by the Mothball Fleet in Suisun Bay which I found out about a couple of weeks back so we stopped and checked it out (from a distance) while we were in the vicinity before hightailing it into the whiteout. Apparently there are approximately 700 forest fires burning in California at the moment so driving through the California/Nevada wilderness was an oddly winter-like experience except instead of fog and snow it's all smoke. We left the smoke behind around 1900 and the valiant Prius has managed to live up to it's 45 MPG boasts so far. 437 miles down, only 11,000ish to go.
[Updated at: 01:17 28/06/2008]
UPDATE:
[Updated at: 01:31 28/06/2008]
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Sun, 25 May 2008
[23:36] I love Magnatune!
Ever since I found out about Magnatune at LUGRadio Live I've been poking around on the site and checking out the music. I've bought a couple of albums for $18 (the maximum you can pay - I'm prepared to pay for music I like and $18 seems pretty reasonable for an album I like) and on Friday I decided to pay for a download membership since I was pretty much streaming music all day every day for the last two weeks. There are some truly awesome albums available and I highly recommend you check it out. My current favourite is an album called Future Forever by Ion. It's a pretty simple ambient album (think of the Vangelis Blade Runner soundtrack) that does a great job of drowning out the real world without impinging on whatever I'm meant to be concentrating on at the time (although the first track, Future Forever, is so good that I may stop just to listen to it). The beauty of Magnatune is that I can just share with you the whole damn thing:
The only difference between what I'm listening to and what you'll get from hitting play here is a brief message at the end of each track sayying what it was and where it came from.
[Posted at: 23:36 25/05/2008]
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Wed, 21 May 2008
[14:48] UltraEdit coming to linux!!!
Apologies for the excessive use of exclamation marks but, as Big Kev would have said, I'M EXCITED!
UltrEdit was the first editor I ever used that wasn't just an editor but was, like Eddy McGuire, a powerful tool in it's own right (see that, IntelliMouse Support, whoa). I think I jumped on board around about version 6.00/6.10, somewhere in late-1998. UltrEdit was so good that I (eventually) payed for it, even back in the days of dodgy warez! When I transitioned to linux I tried running UltraEdit on Wine, but it just wasn't the same. I tried Kate, jEdit, emacs, NEdit and a whole host of others before finally settling on Vim, mostly because of it's ubiquity across both Windows (natively or via Cygwin) and the variety of Unix-based operating systems I was working with and because I found out that it had block-mode operations available in Visual Mode. So, I do my work with Vim or vi as required, but I still pine for the good ole days and, every now and then I amuse myself by watching the latest batch of slavering UltraEdit-junkies, going through withdrawl after moving to linux, throw themselves against the unyielding walls of IDM Computing Solutions in the forums.
Imagine my surprise this afternoon when I stumbled across this thread and, more excitingly, this post which states:
Re: UltraEdit for Linux Postby penntap on Wed Dec 12, 2007 1:08 pm Hi Everyone, We just wanted to give everyone interested in this thread a little insight into our efforts towards porting UE to LINUX/Mac. Along with ongoing development of our products over the last year we have indeed been working on a Linux version of UltraEdit we call UEx. That's right...it does exist and we are very pleased with our progress to date! As DaveS indicated, this is not a trivial process but we do have the in-house resources to accomplish this. Furthermore, we are also adding additional resources to those already being applied to this task. We expect to have a Linux version of UltraEdit ready for market late in 2008 (Q3 -Q4). We want to assure you, our customers, that we have heard your requests and we are working hard to provide the Linux/Mac version of UltraEdit you all want so much to see. Best wishes, Ian and teamI did some digging and there's not a lot to see yet apart from that post and a very brief mention in the Jan '08 Newsletter which says:
I am also pleased to report that we are making good progress with UEX, our cross-platform Linux version of UltraEdit. We hope to have UEX ready for commercial release later in the year.I for one, pledge allegiance to our new text-editor overlord and will joyfully pay the new license fee when it arrives. Just one thing. Would it be to much to ask for a Curses interface too?
[Posted at: 14:48 21/05/2008]
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Sun, 11 May 2008
[22:02] World War Z - Rating: 7/10
I just finished reading World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (who's name you might recognise from the satirical Zombie Survival Guide). I was recommended and loaned this book by a colleague during a discussion of all things apocalyptical earlier this week (in return I loaned him Survivors which you can also read online - it's an interesting read) and I, in turn, recommend it to all and sundry.
It's not a zombie gore-fest but a series of vignettes told by survivors of "World War Z", the decade long war fought by humanity against the undead zombie hordes. There is the occasional graphically violent scene but for the most part it's interesting riffs on how assorted nationalities would fare against a zombie invasion, the aftermath and the rebuilding from a personal point of view. It's not going to become a socio-poitical textbook but it's got some interesting food for thought on various currently topical subjects mixed in with a great story! The tale covers several countries and the author manages to shift tone quite succesfully from narrator to narrator. Most of the main themes are American-centric with tangential references to things like the various wars being waged and the state of international relations at the moment, slightly spiced by being referred to in the past tense.
All in all, a nice bit of weekend escapism (350 pages with lots of spaces due to the interview-style dialog) with the possibility of some pondering on the meaning of it all should you wish to partake.
[Posted at: 22:02 11/05/2008]
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Fri, 02 May 2008
[11:33] Iron Man - Rating: 7/10
We went out to see the new Iron Man movie this evening and I was pretty impressed! I've never been a huge Iron Man fan but I know the general story line and the movie appears to stick pretty closely to that. Robert Downey Jr. was brilliant as Tony Stark and the special effects were most enjoyable! The whole film is similar to the Transformers in that it's a foregone conclusion as to what's going to happen, it's all about how you get there. Also, there's not a great deal of annoying boy/girl stuff to get in the way of the action :) I recommend seeing it if you're not going to get upset about basic physical and chemical laws from this universe being flaunted with impunity.
Don't forget to stay to the end of the credits for the Iron Man 2 teaser with Samuel L Jackson portraying Nick Fury. I was a little surprised that Jackson was Fury as I was under the impression that Fury was a white guy. Turns out that I'm incredibly behind the times and that there's this thing called the Ultimate Marvel Universe in which all of the characters have been "reimagined" to bring them up to date with current times and the re-imagined Fury was specifically (and with permission) modelled on Jackson!
[Posted at: 11:33 02/05/2008]
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Tue, 15 Apr 2008
[11:37] LUGRadio Live USA 2008 - Wrap-Up
Wow! What an awesome weekend. We headed up on Friday to set up the venue and it was pretty full on from 11:00 Friday morning through to 23:00 on Sunday! I did a fair bit of work co-ordinating the logistics of this event, assisting the lovely ladies of Open Source at Google (Cat Allman and Leslie Hawthorne), and I've learned that organising an event (especially in the US) has a little more to it than just throwing some tables in a room. Last few months of venue searching, service provider searching and screening, plan drawing and logistics puzzling aside I had an excitingly educational weekend learning how to erect and configure stage lights, screens and projectors, how to cable a large venue, (in)appropriate application of mascara and lipstick, REALLY Packing a Car 101, oh, and there was some linux and open source stuff in there too :)
I met heaps of awesome people (like Tony Whitmore without whom there would have been considerably less success), Theron Conrey from Dice (without whom there'd have been significantly less cool), Tedd St Rain (without whom the world would be a less interesting and informed place), the O'Reilly folks who happily chatted to me for far longer than they wanted to I suspect, there are more, but if I keep going I'm going to end up listing everyone who went. Many thanks to everyone who came and contributed something to the inaugural LUGRadio Live USA event!
When I wasn't running around like a blue-arsed fly I did manage to catch a couple of talks, Ian Murdock on OpenSolaris, Benjamin Mako Hill was Revealing Errors, Kristen Accardi (ably assisted by Val Henson) did an excellent talk showing that it's just as easy to bake a cookie as it is to write a device driver for linux and I missed so many others. Luckily Tedd was there recording a lot of the talks (pretty much single-handedly) so you can check out the schedule and watch the ones that you missed. Apart from the talks there were also some interesting vendors/exhibitors showing off their shiny wares, the ones that really caught my eye were Frets on Fire - TOTALLY AWESOME. I'm not a Guitar Hero fan but playing Jack's Playing Ball on Frets on Fire with a practically-unmodded keyboard (it had a guitar strap cable tied to the feet) was very cool. Magnatune, a music distributor who provides all their music under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (I'm listening to music off of their website as I put this post together, go check it out). O'Reilly were there and I spent way too much time drooling over the up-and-coming new books including HackerTeen, a graphic novel aimed at tech-savvy teens with a website tie-in (looks promising), the Essential Silverlight manual, not so much because I care about Silverlight but because of the interesting new O'Reilly book type: Up-to-Date. It's basically a wee ring-binder with some conent and some blank pages that you can update when the book gets updated. The second edition of Hacking: The Art of Exploitation (I didn't know that O'Reilly distributed No Starch Press books). I was really excited about this one, so much so that Marsee from O'Reilly let me walk off with it!
So, in a nutshell, awesome event! If you were unlucky enough to miss the event (I assume because both of your legs were broken) then, as I mentioned, some of the talks are available on Google Video (thanks to Tedd), check out the schedule. If you just want to see what happened then there appear to be some photos on Flikr, tagged as lugradioliveusa. Thanks to The Four Large Gents for coming over, all of the crew who pitched in to make the event happen and everyone who came to check it out. See you next year!
PS Yes, that is me in the photo up there, no, I'm not telling you what happened. You should have been there ;)
[Posted at: 11:37 15/04/2008]
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Thu, 03 Apr 2008
[16:25] LUGRadio Live _USA_ - the L10n-version
After being incredibly upset at missing the awesomeness that was LUGRadio Live 2007 (due to being in the wrong country), I joined the campaining to make sure I wouldn't miss the 2008 event. Thus, with considerable cajoling, effort and exertion by myself and a whole bunch of awesomely motivated and useful people, I'm very excited to say that I will be able to attend LUGRadio Live 2008 here in the USA!
I'm really looking forward to this (and to my shiny, shiny crew t-shirt), there's a whole lot of really interesting speakers and meeting up with the afficianados here in the US will be most interesting :) If you're already doing something next weekend (Saturday and Sunday the 12th and 13th of April) then you should cancel and come to this. See you all there!
[Posted at: 16:25 03/04/2008]
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Wed, 16 Jan 2008
[23:39] TMI!
It's your own fault if you find out more than you wanted to know. You were warned!
My new underwear finally turned up today! It's been a long time coming (too long some might say). I worked out a couple of months ago that the last time I purchased underwear was approximately 15 years ago, I worked this out as my current underwear disintegrated in my hands coming out of the wash. So begun the search for briefs in America. Turns out that briefs or "tighty-whiteys" as they're known here aren't so popular and anything actually labelled as "briefs" tends to be something more along the lines of what I'd call a muumuu. I don't know why I never bothered to check the internet, just this evening I found Dugg, but I didn't and we ended up guessing the appropriate size by deciphering the frayed and faded labels and asking a friend of Shona's to head down to Target and pick up some budgie smugglers.
She did (thanks Kyles!) and dutifully sent most of them over to us (apart from the ones her dog ate the crotch out of). They got here, there was excitement...and then I tried them on. Seems I've grown a little over the last 15 years. Target (in Australia anyway) has a pretty good returns policy so we sent them back to Australia with Andrew and Sarah to go back to Kylie to go back to Target to get exchanged. Andrew and Sarah had already flown the coop so the well-travelled grundies hit the post up to the parents of the next batch of holidaying Mountain View Aussies who dragged 'em back over to the USA and delivered them to us today. My opinion:
[Posted at: 23:39 16/01/2008]
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Mon, 14 Jan 2008
[21:40] Victory...nearly
A bit of a turn up for the record books: I actually won the first whole game today, 11-9! Of course I went on to lose the next three 9-3, 9-0, 9-1 but that's not the point. We really need to find somwhere a little cheaper but it doesn't look like squash is a big thing in Silicon Valley so we might be stuck with constantly getting rorted. At least it's good fun and good exercise.
[Posted at: 21:40 14/01/2008]
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