The Travelblog Prospectus

— Log opened Wed Feb 02 01:27:21 2005
<vorlon> btw, it seems Skolelinux is interested in sponsoring a physical meeting of folks related to the release process to discuss how we can get Debian to a state of timely, regular releasing. Your name was on the list of people I said should be there. Would you be interested in attending, and if so, what weekends this spring would you be (un)available?
<aj> spring?
<vorlon> … fall for you. :)
<aj> march-may, ym?
<vorlon> yes. :)
<aj> “autumn”

— Log opened Fri Feb 11 11:04:28 2005
<stockholm> please book that flight of yours.

As has been mentioned previously on this blog, Europeans are crazy. Anyway, as a direct consequence of their evil influence on world events, I ended up enjoying a whirlwind trip of New York, New York, Toronto and Vancouver in February/March just gone.

(Technically, I think NUUGF ended up being the sponsors)

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The Winner Is... Syduhney!

So I was in Sydney over the weekend for the first LA exec meeting of this term. The meeting was, like all meetings, boundlessly thrilling, and minutes will follow. This post is for the trivia.

First, my poor, poor expectations. Cast mercilessly aside to be dashed on the rocks of reality. The trip started well – I was flying Virgin Blue. But then, it all went wrong. The head stewardess was a guy. On a Virgin Blue flight. Sure, he was young, fun, and attractive in his own way, but still – a guy! WTF?!

The trip continued badly. On Saturday night, we went to a dark, sophisticated cocktail lounge in Woolloomooloo. We ordered expensive cocktails, and even had one invented on request, possibly some sort of watermelon martini that may have been baptised Flames of Passion. Or perhaps something else, I’ve no idea. And then, and then our dark, sophisticated cosmopolitan cocktail lounge closed – at 11:30pm. Did I mention this was on Saturday night?

Likewise, public transport was clean, pleasant and mostly ran on time, the weather was sunny and clear, and when traipsing through Kings Cross at midnight alone and at night, I wasn’t mugged even once.

Also worth noting the “Bombay Lounge” in Surry Hills is an awesome little indian restaurant. Some of the nicest I’ve had, with good portions, and excellent service. Apparently they’re planning on opening some more restaurants in other cities sometime too.

Krispy Kreme donuts are pretty yummy, too.

Also, you’d think I’d know by now that sunburn is bad, mmmkay.

Skiing? Mmm, mmm!

Following the brilliant weekend at Mt Buller last year, we went back again in August this year to see if history wouldn’t mind repeating; this time bringing along my step-borther and his kids. Happily, things turned out even better: similar amounts of snow, even nicer accommodation, and way better weather.

We tried rearranging our trip to get the most skiing time in: we flew to Melbourne in the afternoon, then drove to Bonnydoon, where we enjoyed a cold, but nevertheless tranquil, evening in little motel resort place. Next morning we headed on to the mountain and checked in – the aim was to get a full day skiing in when we arrived, but we only actually managed to get our skis and lift passes organised by a little after lunch. Oh well, worth a shot.

There were enough people at the mountain over the weekend that when we arrived on Sunday, we had to park on the side of the road rather than at one of the resort carparks; then we got one of the 4WD snow taxis to cart us and our luggage up the resort. We got dropped off behind the lodge, and it took a bit to actually work out where we were meant to be, so naturally a snowball fight developed.

When we eventually worked out where we were meant to be, one of the owners/staff of the lodge was showing us where our unit was and how to get back out onto the slopes, and helping with our luggage. As was the cute little girl you can see in the photo to the left, with Alisa Camplin, underneath the signed racing vest. There was another jersey signed by Zali Steggall and Jacqui Cooper. How goddamn classy is that?

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Linux.Conf.Au 2004

Someone complained that my last entry wasn’t recent enough to “count” as an updated blog entry. Maybe that someone will be more pleased with an entry about stuff that at least happened this year.

As mentioned previously on this blog, this year’s l.c.a was in Adelaide, and was hosted by Michael Davies and his crew. It was huge and very well done, so much so that there’s not really much to say beyond that.

For those of you who attended the Debian miniconf, I’m hoping that you’ll apply the “a picture is worth a thousand words” rule in judging this post in order to meet certain expectations.

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Mmmm. Skiing.

So since I’m not in the mood to write much, I thought, hey why not put up some pretty piccies. And then I thought, why I have all those skiing photos I took last year; I haven’t put any of them up. And then I thought, mmmm, skiing.

Anyway, I was priveleged enough to take two ski trips last year; one to The Remarkables in Queenstown, New Zealand; the other to Mt Buller in Victoria. NZ had a crap year, with really crap snow cover; Oz had a great year, and the heavens gifted us with something like thirty centimetres of fresh powder for, literally, the weekend we were at Mt Buller. Mmmm.

Skiing.

The view on on the right is out the car window on the way back to Queenstown from the Remarkables.

More photos below.

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Dinner With Michael!

I had dinner with Michael. Other people showed up too. Michael forced me to post pictures, because he’s vain. Unfortunately he’s not vain enough to blog. Bitch.

Debcamp/Debconf, Oslo (and London!)

<stockholm> aj: will you come?
<stockholm> aj: 12. -17 jul
<stockholm> aj: please? (*bamby eyes*)
<aj> stockholm: hey, if someone wants to wave free plane tickets in my face i could be easily convinced :)

Europeans are so generous. Well, at least with money they collect from Americans. Continuing the exciting saga of the travelblog, July saw me setting off to Norway, land of the midnight sun and Viking invaders, or, more accurately, Oslo, land of the midnight semi-twilight and hideously expensive food. The excuse this time was DebConf 3, also comprising the inaugural DebCamp.

(Warning, this one’s got lotsa piccies)

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Linux.Conf.Au 2004 -- Coming Soon!

Introducing the travelblog! Episode One: Adelaide, Excuse One: Linux.Conf.Au organising meeting.

The trip was to help pass on any tricks and tips to this year’s organising committee, and make sure that everything’s rosy and nothing’s pear-shaped. Mmm. Pears. So I arrived Friday evening. Brrr. Cold. Southern states just have a different sort of cold, one where words like “brisk” and “nippy” have a real meaning. Got picked up by Dan Shearer, and dropped off at the City Park Motel. A little later Tony Breeds-Taurima and Mark Tearle (from the Perth organisers) showed up after being entertained for the afternoon by the Adelaide folks. We chatted for a bit, and headed out to find bars.

After skipping a yuppie bar, and overcoming our dismay at walking into a pub with no beer (and far, far too much wine), we found an excellent venue that would (a) let us in (although not “upstairs”) and (b) serve us beer. For bonus points, it managed (c) live music, and (d) an attractive mix of sketch comedy and reality television presented live for our enjoyment just out the window.

What the room looked like shortly after we arrived	What the room looked like shortly before we left

The beer wasn’t great. There might be a reason that Adelaide’s known for its wine. Saturday woke up gray and chill, and loomed ominously above us as we headed out for breakfast. Remembering this is the city of churches, we kept our eyes open and our tithes to ourselves.

Breakfast, and coffee ensued. We met up with the Adelaide folks, who joined us in the imbibification. Pia, president of Linux Australia which backs the conference, but not an ex-organiser of any l.c.a, arrived to join us, having had an unaccompanied trip due to unexpected somnolescence on Anand Kumria’s behalf (treasurer of Linux Australia, and one of the Sydney organisers). We took our leave of the coffee shop, and were guided to a secure area on the 6th floor of a building in an undisclosed location. We unpacked laptops, and began discussions. Rusty Russell, who organised CALU, the forefather of all l.c.a’s in Melbourne in ‘99, arrived, and Anand showed up shortly after, letting discussions begin in earnest.

So, for the rest of the morning, we talked about stuff.

Eventually, we stopped talking about stuff, and headed off for lunch, in weather wet and miserable enough you’d think we were in Melbourne.

The tour of the venue followed. It’s a pretty sweet location: the University of Adelaide is literally just a block down from the city mall. Accommodation, restaurants, nightlife, and everything is a within spitting distance. Of course, everything in Adelaides’s within spitting distance from the heavens, as we were continually reminded throughout the tour.

We came in from Pultney Street, across North Terrace. The first building we were meant to be shown, but unfortunately weren’t due to some screw up or other was Elder Hall, which is where the keynotes will hopefully be held. After that, we wondered down towards the university club, then back up to the Napier building, which is where most of the conference will probably be held, and we were fortunate enough to get a look at the lecture halls in here. Two of them hold around 150 people, the third holds a few more. More wet trudging ensued, as we had a quick wander down towards the river, past the Union hall (where the refecs are, if walking across a road into the mall is too much hassle), and back. Just across North Terrace, on Pultney Street, and smack-bang between the university and the mall is The Mansions, which will probably be the speaker accommodation. All very pretty and convenient.

We returned to the dry warmth of indoors and continued talking about stuff ‘til five, then knocked off and went out. Drinks, dinner and shiatsu massage chairs followed. Some time later, so did sleep.

A beautiful surprise woke us on Sunday – blue sky! Naturally, we made the best of this by spending most of it indoors, eating yummy bbq lunch put on by Geoffrey and Lindy. And that was about it. A few Virgin Blue boarding calls later and the interstate visitors were sent back whence they came.

Without stealing the Adelaide guys’ thunder by going into much detail about any of the “stuff”, it’s abundantly clear that the conference is going places. And going places that you’d like to visit, at that. By any measure it’s improving significantly every year – number of attendees keeps rising, interest by business and sponsors, and the amount of stuff actually happening, and Adelaide already shows every signing of extending that trend. Many of the difficulties we faced in running the conference in Brisbane (is anyone going to come? what features should we keep, and which should we change?) seem to have been solved, leading to new, grander difficulties (how should the miniconfs and the main conference be balanced? are we going to be able to cope with the number of people who’d like to go?), which is an absolutely excellent state to be in. Even with the increased size of the conference they’re planning, the Adelaide organisers seem to be much more organised than we were in Brisbane at a similar point in time, which is also a very positive indicator.

Basically, keep watching the Linux.conf.au website; there’s a whole bunch of surprises they’re yet to extract from their sleeves.