Hello Planet Linux.Conf.Au!

I’m very fortunate this year to be giving a tutorial on Antlr, a parser generator toolkit that I’ve done a little work for.

I’ve given plenty of talks on Antlr and even saw the lead developer (Terence Parr) give a talk when he was in Sydney, so I’m quite comfy there.

What I’m not so sure of is how to lead a tutorial session. Antlr has a great IDE in AntlrWorks, which definitely makes things easier. My problem is trying to come up with problems that aren’t too hard, and that show off the features of Antlr; but also show off the workflow benefits of a toolkit that scales.

My best idea so far is to create a simple configuration file parser, extend that to an expression evaluator, turn that into an interpreter, then use string templates to output Python bytecode.

If you’ve got any ideas, please drop me a mail.

At QPAC, supported by Women in Docs who were pretty cool in their own right.

The Indigo girls were pretty impressive, just guitars and their voices.

The noise level did get a bit much for me in the last half hour though.

The concert was held at the great hall of the Brisbane Exhibition centre. I was there earlier in the day for a motorcycle expo, early enough to see Tori go in for sound checks. She was lovely and talkative to fans, and not at all cooky.

I had high hopes for concert, the sound check sounded awesome. Unfortunately the sound levels of the rest of the band basically drowned out Tori’s voice and piano for the most part. Even during solo performances her voice and playing were being clipped by the amp.

Overall I was happy I went (first time I’ve seen her live) but it could have been a lot better.

I’ve had a paper proposal for an introduction to Antlr accepted by two conferences now, OSDC and LCA 2008, with the full paper due at end of Septempber. Along with the paper I need to do some work on the Python language target so that it works with the Antlr GUI.

Also due at the end of the September is the bid document for LCA 2009..which I haven’t started yet.

And just to make things fun, our local unix group is having it’s AGM soon, and I’ve got to work on a platform.

So..I guess I should stop blogging..

It’s biff time again, so far I’m hoping to see:

• The City of Violence
• Eye in the Sky
• Eagle vs. Shark
• Hana
• Tachigui: The Amazing Lives of the Fast-Food Grifters
• Day Watch
• 3 Men and a Bulb, Transit
• All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane
• Boxing Day
• Control
• Valley of Flowers
• Parents, Phobias
• Sounds of Silence
• Queens of Sound
• Unfinished Sky, Yolk
• SHorts (Short Film Package)
• Once
• Walking on the Wildside, Graceland
• Lights in the Dusk, Conte de Quartier
• Squatterpunk
• Woman on the Beach
• Fay Grim
• A Mighty Heart, CM FAST FILM Winner
• The Banquet
• Rescue Dawn
• The Witnesses

Mid-week I went down to Sydney to meet up with Terence Par, the main guy behind Antlr, a parsing toolkit I’ve done some work on. Terence is a good speaker and a great guy to spend some time with. He even threw me some questions during his talk, which I think I handled OK, given I was completely unprepared.

I also did the touristy things down there:

• Anzac War Memorial
• Australian Musuem
• Powerhouse Musuem
• Art Gallery

A couple of months back I finished up at ACQAO, the physics research group I was with for twenty odd months. My association with that group hasn’t entirely come to an end, as all the software being developed is GPLd, and some of it is quite generic, I’m poking my head in from time to time.

It was actually during the last LCA that I was being interviewed for my current job, a robotics platform engineer (read, jack of all trades when it comes to unix, electronics and gaffer tape) at CSIRO. You know you’re in for a good time when you meet some of your future workmates at an LCA.

The job is two faced so far; one side is the awful hassle of dealing with the bureaucracy in this huge, sprawling organisation. The other half is working with very cool tech and people.

I’m not completely happy with where I am at the moment, I find myself trying to solve problems that really shouldn’t exist in the first place. But prior experiene experience shows me that implementing a new software process can’t be done overnight, and I’m just going to have to deal with the hang overs of the previous CMM level until I can drag us kicking and screaming to the next one.

I don’t buy many presents for people, I’m hopeless at picking something that’s useful, affordable and attractive, so I don’t complain much when I don’t get any presents. This year I bought myself a minature compass to ease the alignment of the telescope. I was also given a lovely book by my sister and some death-by-chocolate from Karen and Ricky.

But really, this year, my best presents have been to spend time with friends, Anna and Will, Karen and Ricky, John and Katarina; thanks for all the support.

I’ve recently gotten into podcasts in a big way, it’s good to have something to listen to while exercising or doing house work (really would like a pair of wireless headphones one of these days..).

First, a thank you to John Goerzen for the lovely hpodder program, that makes managing podcasts trivial.

And now, a list of podcasts that I like:

43 Folders

A getting things done tribute podcast, short and infrequent.

All in the mind

ABC radio mental health program, very interesting.

Background Briefing

ABC radio current affairs/investigative reporting program

Boing Boing Boing

The boingboing.net podcast, more interesting than the website I think.

CBC Radio: Quirks & Quarks Complete Show

Canadian science show, fun and interesting.

EFF Line Noise

Infrequent interviews about EFF’s happenings

Escape Pod

Scince fiction readings, some great stuff.

Hack a Day

New, but interesting podcast about DIY tech

In Conversation

ABC science based interview.

LugRadio

A great UK LUG podcast, very funny

MSF Voice

Medicenes sans Frontieres podcast, how my money is saving lives.

NPR: Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!

A weekly news quiz, similar to good news week.

Ockham’s Razor

ABC science show which is a forum for science based speeches.

SolderSmoke

A great little podcast run by ham radio guys talking about home brew tech.

Science Show

ABC radio science show.

Toolmonger

High end tools, podcast of the website

Sunday Night Safran

ABC show with the irrepressibly whiny John Safran.

Today I visited the Amazing Human body Exhibit. It’s quite amazing to see such well preserved bodies up close.

I wouldn’t call myself a generally squeamish person, but it’s hard reconcilling respect for the dead as you’re peering at their naked body from a few cms away.

The highlight for me were the tubular castings, where the veins/arteries of an organ are protected with resin and the surrounding flesh is removed, leaving just an incredibly detailed, beautiful piece of art.

This is the result of watching too much Insiders and spending too much time with aj.

With the pathetic choices available to us this coming election, I thought it’d be a good idea to try a reality tv program to pick a politician. I haven’t quite figured out if I’m trying to find a federal Labor leader or a QLD Liberal leader.

The basic idea would be to have a test each week, with an studio audience voting off the worst performer (using a worm, of course).

Tests could include:

• A characterture test, get the political cartoonists to do a quick sketch, and see which one has the least flair.
• How convincing a “I do not recall.” rendition is.
• Baby kissing, the entrant to make the least babies cries wins.
• Prop handling; how quickly can a politician raise an appropriate prop (think giant two cent coin or a monkey)
• Verbal barbs, we don’t want any more lame stand-offs in front of the cameras.

Of course, only the Chaser guys could pull this off.

I popped along to the MoB today to see two exhibits.

Double Take is a set of artistic works using older works as inspiration; there’s some great stuff there, though the abstract interpretations are completely lost on me. My favourite is easily the Russian doll set of high rise offices, with the worker looking no happier no matter how large he gets.

Somebody must think that Joh’s body is cold enough to put together this large set of artifacts covering his reign that go to make up Taking to the Streets exhibit. There’s a lot of fun and interesting stuff here, but only if you lean to the left.

Over long easter weekend I attended the 45th National Science Fiction Convention. Overall, I was quite impressed by the con, but there were still a few annoyances, otherwise I wouldn’t be blogging..

Most of the panels were excellent value, with lots of industry people spilling the beans. Kim Wilkins, Aussie horror author, was just divine; I’m thinking of reading some of her stuff based solely on her stage presence.

It was a tad disapointing when panel chairs didn’t show up, but the panelists usually went on to give great sessions. What was more annoying was a biased chair: Cory Doctorow of boingboing fame chairing a copyleft vs copyright panel was never going to give both sides a fair hearing.

The “what’s new in science this year” seminar was let down by a lot of time being spent on intelligent design.

There’s a large intersection of geekdom between the science fiction world and the OSS world. The obvious difference though is the gender balance, something like 60/40 towards women. I might start writing more.

The funniest session was actually sponsored by my current employer, readings of old work by Aussie authors that are now stored in the Fryer Library.

I met a lot of interesting people (and a cute one too) and just generally had a good time. Thanks to Felicity for dragging me to the masquerade ball, which was good fun.

A very intense story of one persons attempt to make sense of family, lust, faith and truth.

The lead is an Jewish philosophy student, physically attracted to a Muslim, she struggles to reconcile her religious faith with her belief in reason, and her base urges with her family’s values.

A very artsy look at cambodia. It’s almost like a documentary of peoples daily lives, but with the commentary replaced with classical music.

There’s a strong emphasis on children and teenagers.

A lovely winding story about how far a group of young immigrants will go to look after each other. With a sharp tongue and a sardonic attitude they grin and bear the worst that a racist, elitist French society throws at them.

A remarkably upbeat film considering the topic.

An interesting exhibit at Queensland museum, until 21st May.

There are a lot of artifacts accompanied by some modern scans of their contents.

I didn’t know the Egyptians mummified so many animals.

My only complaint was the very low lighting used, to minimise fading colours, made it difficult to see detail. Perhaps some bright photography of the detail would have helped.

I attended the speculative fiction awards ceremony last night, it was a good bit of fun, interesting to be surrounded by so many authors.

It’s also Pulp Fiction’s tenth birthday.

This book lays down an argument trying to show that the same evolutinary path that led to langauage also gave rise to our mathematical ability. Given that, even now, we don’t really know how the brain works, and that there’s no possibility for a fossil record, I find all these thought experiments fascinating.

Devlin’s argument is much more coherent than Andrew Parker’s, and his writing still is less academic and more approachable.

Overall, I’m quite attracted to parts of Devlin’s arguments and am happy to have spent the time on this thought provocing book.

A split time-line space opera, in which Alastair attempts to tie together an alternative, pre-computer earth with an advanced nanotech based society.

It does work quite well in parts, each side of the time-line drawn realistically, but it almost seems as though Alastair is more comfortable with the old word than the new sometimes.

A little bit of an obvious finish did slightly spoil the book, but overall it is quite good.