Blog entries from December, 2008

On Thursday I noticed that my rear derailleur wasn’t shifting properly, it wouldn’t shift up to the largest gear. Once I got home I confirmed my initial suspicion, that the cable had again broken inside the shifter. As well as this happening on my old bike, this is the second time it has happened since I got this bike.

But what does this mean?

Other parts such as brake pads and even chains are expected to wear out. But I have never heard anyone mention cables breaking under normal use.

Unless what I am doing isn’t normal use…

At work today was the second of three Christmas parties, this one for all of ITS. Normally these are not very memorable, except that for the last couple of years the prize draw has had a couple of nice items.

For the second time in a month (the CSS book from the last WSG meeting) it has been my turn. A blue 8GB iPod nano. Hmmm… shiny…

But do I want to keep it?

I have loaded music onto my phone, but I have only listened to it a few times. When on the bus/train or when walking up to the shops. So when would I use an iPod?

I have yet to open the packaging, which in itself is very nice. But I have noticed that after carrying it back to the office, being handled by people and then coming home in my backpack the plastic box has quite a few small scratches.

The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens that I bought secondhand arrived today. From a quick test it appears quite nice.

I also took the opportunity to take a photo of my current lenses, ie the three that I keep in my camera bag:

These are the 28mm I got back in May, the “nifty fifty”, and the 17-85mm IS I got in March.

I have just finished sorting through my photos from the conference and have uploaded the better ones to Flickr in a set for each day:

• OSDC2008 – Day 1
• OSDC2008 – Day 2
• OSDC2008 – Day 3

Almost all of them are of people in between the talks or in the evening at the dinner or at various pubs.

The photos I took of presenters as they were presenting didn’t come out the best, the 50mm f/1.8 would have been very nice. Despite this I am glad that I resisted the impluse to go and buy one as I ended up being the winning bidder for a secondhand one, at half the retail price.

Of all of the photos, this one requires to be singled out:

I have a lot more other photos from Sydney. I should be able to sort through them soon.

So what did on my final day in Sydney?

After checking out of the hotel and putting my bag in a locker I headed down to and then up Sydney Tower. It was a very different perspective of the city that I had seen so far.

My next stop was back at the bridge, but this time to the lookout on the south east pylon. I didn’t even know about this until I got a complimentary pass when I did the bridge climb.

From there I continued walking across the bridge to the northern side where I walked under the northern approach and then down to Luna Park. I didn’t actually spend long there as the next ferry over to Darling Harbour was only a few minutes away.

Once I got to Darling Harbour my first priority was something to eat, and then I headed into the Maritime Museum. As it was quite warm outside I decided to only visit the air-conditioned museum, but that was quite interesting.

Time was moving on (as it usually does) I spent another hour or so wandering around Darling Harbour before heading back towards the hotel for my bag before heading to the airport. But I had more time than I thought so I went back to Hyde Park and St James for some more photos, specifically of the fountains that I saw on Tuesday.

Which brings me to right now. Sitting on the train from Central to the airport.

It is now technically the day after the last day of the conference, but it ended up being a long day.

Despite my plan I didn’t end up making it to the breakfast as I ended up sleeping in a bit By the time I arrived I had also missed the keynote, which by all accounts was quite good.

Of the talks that I did get to, Adam’s and Paul’s were excellent as usual. I also went to one about a CMS originally written for a local government and I caught the end of one about code reviews. The content of that one wasn’t anything new to me, but the questions/discussion after it have me some ideas about how to get buy in for our processes at work.

The closing keynote from Pia Waugh about the OLPC in Australia gave me a better understanding on how the project was going and also how it is related to Australia and Oceania.

But that wasn’t all as Adam revealed the sekrit that he had been alluding to. Which was actually two things:

• at 5:30 that morning he had managed to build perl6 for windows and a beta should be (hopefully) out for Christmas.
• during his recent tour talking about Strawberry Perl he was offered assistance from Microsoft. They will me running virtual instances of all the current versions of windows for testing purposes. Which will be available to anyone with CPAN account.

So that was the end of the actual conference, but that wasn’t all as many of us adjourned to the pub next door. As that was crowded and didn’t serve food (at least in the bar), we moved to the nearby RSL. At least thirty of us.

I am now back at the hotel and have a rough plan for tomorrow:

• get up as early as I can
• figure out exactly when and how I’m getting to the airport
• check out of the hotel
• find somewhere to leave my bag
• head up to the Sydney Tower observation deck

This should take until midday. Only another six hours to fill…

The remainder of the second day of the conference was quite good, but only one presentation, about building up documentation for a project, sticks in my mind.

After the lightning talks session (the usual mix of good and bad) there was a Perl BOF. Twenty five of us (including Larry) headed up the street to a pub for drinks and then dinner. All sorts of things were discussed only some of them Perl.

Tomorrow there is a late addition to the schedule with one of the sponsors putting on a breakfast. That could be interesting.

After my post yesterday there were two of the most memorable talks of the conference so far. First there was a lightning talk by Adam Kennedy about asciio, a tool for drawing ASCII diagrams, then there was the dinner keynote where Anthony Baxter ran through an A-Z of thing he hates.

These talks were memorable more for their delivery rather than their content. These two guys are skilled enough to make any topic entertaining. (which isn’t to say that their talks weren’t also informative)

On the other side was this mornings keynote from Larry Wall which was way more informative than entertaining. It was still excellent and Larry talked about regular expressions under Perl 6.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to best appreciate it because after the dinner (with its free drinks) we went to the bar next door…

It’s now part of the way through the first day of the conference (ignoring the pre-conference hackathon which sounded interesting, but I have heard that a laptop was essential) and it is going quite well. My tiredness from yesterday aside.

I have been taking a few photos but I’m finding that this is another situation where my 17-85mm isn’t fast enough and my 28mm is too wide. There is a Ted’s down the street and they do have a 50mm in stock. I’m tempted.

Tonight is the conference dinner and the 28mm will be better for that.

My journey to Sydney ended at 2PM when I checked into the hotel. After a brief rest I walked around the corner to the conference venue and registered instead of waiting until tomorrow morning.

Then I started walking … and didn’t stop until 10PM.

I had a bridge climb scheduled for 5PM so I first spent a couple of hours walking down there. Via parks (eg Hyde Park and the botanical gardens) to the opera house, taking photos as I went.

Then there was the actual bridge climb which is 3.5 hours long.

As it was dark by the time I left the bridge climb I spent some time taking night shots with my tripod around Dawes Point (under the bridge) and Circular Quay.

This was topped off by walking back to the hotel.

My feet aren’t quite happy. But the climb was worth it and I’ll find out about the photos once I get then off the camera.

Right now I’m sitting on a train on my way to Sydney for this year’s OSDC.

No, I’m not going all of the way by train. There is a bus, a plane, and another train before I get to my hotel.

I have limited the technology that I am taking with me this time. Previously I would have lugged my laptop along with me. But two things are different: my camera is now a lot bigger and needs it’s own bag, and my phone has Internet access so that is how I can keep up with my email and other things.

Writing this post on my phone (yay for the WordPress app) was a bit easier than I expected so now I have no excuse to not post about the conference as it unfolds…

However expanding each post with relevant media and links will have to wait until I get home and have a full browser. You know, one that has copy and paste.