dalts.net Kind Acts of Randomness

Well, here we are, me attempting to blog again - let's see how this goes!

After my 4:00am start from the Gold Coast - I am finally in Melbourne (a cool 15oC as I stepped off the plane in my Gold Coast attire...brrr) at my first ever LCA!

After crawling my memory for Melbourne geography and how the trams work, by some miracle I made it to Melbourne Uni. Nice campus, the eclectic mix of beautiful heritage buildings and hideous 60's architectural mistakes reminded me a lot of my own campus - gave me more thoughts about becoming a student again, but this came crashing down again as I thought of lack of $$$!

Allotz are paying for the trip, so I thought I had better make sure I attend some relevant talks. I started off at the Security miniconf - good (and scary!) talk by Enno Davids about self healing networks, but my interest soon started to wane a bit after that (no matter how hard I try I find it hard to get excited about security). I switched over to the Community Wireless miniconf for a fantastic talk by James Cameron about wireless testing for OLPC... but there was also a lot of talk about the XO itself - this a great project... highlight of the day. I especially liked all the cool uses for the XO that James found, especially the motion detection (Bird pictures were great!), I'm sure the kids will find many more.

Then it was onto... keysigning. I had a feeling this was going to be a nightmare, and it was.... false start with the lack of projector. Then eventually we got started with the big conga line method instead. Was an interesting experience to say the least. Met lots of interesting people, saw some FANTASTIC passport photos and even came across a citizen of the Transnational Republic. To the guy that was giving out Tequila - sorry, I took one, but really had no intention of signing your key - I needed a drink.

After that a few of us went off to Dinner at a nice Thai place - sandwiched between 2 Italian restaurants. We got great amusement from analysing the style of the spruiking for business that was going on from the waiters. Very disappointed that our Thai waiter (who was very happy to see Peter's linux.conf tshirt) didn't give us a Linux-Discount though.

Not a bad start (apart from my crappy night's sleep at St Mary's with Fire Engines and all sorts of heavy vehicles passing my window). Mysql miniconf today, with a little diversion to the puppet talk in SysAdmin. Hoping to speak some Esperanto at some point this week!

Oh - almost forgot, seen a few people with n810's around the conf... look cool. Can't wait to get mine next week (en-route from US as I write this)!