Hobart: Day 00

Whilst I did technically land in Hobart yesterday, I only started looking around Hobart and Tasmania in general with the native @chrisjrn today.

We started the trip by going up Mt Wellington, but sadly were impacted by a lot of low-lying cloud making the views difficult.

Here’s a view from about half way up the mountain down onto Hobart:

With all the cloud instead of the amazing views I had been promised, I just had lots and lots of white, which whilst kind of charming in it’s own way, is clearly false advertising ;-)

After visiting Mt Wellington Fog, we headed onto the road around to Port Arthur with detours to interesting places along the way.

Always an excuse to stop for random self-camwhoring.

Chris took me to some really interesting natural rock formations at a cove, the geological activity forces the rocks to break in straight lines, they look like man cut blocks!

Check out those rocks!

@chrisjrn checking out the rocks

Following mystical rock cove (maybe not not real name) we decided to go checkout a blowhole.

Sadly it turned out to be a natural geological formation rather than some dodgy deviant makeout facility.

Natural tunnel formation - watch the water coming in before it splashes up

Splash! It's pretty hard to capture on camera really :-(

Of course the best part about the blowhole action was the salty salty deliciousness:

Fresh from the deep fryer, all chrispy and nommmmm

After refuelling at the blowhole, we headed to Port Arthur, where Tasmania had it’s convict colony to look at all the historical buildings:

Main prison block in the foreground

I can never say no to exploring a dungeon....

There’s some more dodgy pictures involving bars and chains that I’ll have to wait for Chris to upload at a later stage.

Meanwhile, here’s Chris looking dodgy and being reminded why long hair may be cool to look at whilst being very annoying to actually have:

Also, we went on a boat:

Boat View!

Captain Jethro!

After the boat trip, we headed back home – although did get interrupted by an (amazing for me) sight of a bridge being swung to allow a sailing boat to pass through the bridge.

Note the mast!! O_o

Also, today’s WTF moments:

Um, historical laptop anyone? To be fair, that model is probably about 10 years old...

Oh what the fuck, is that comic sans ms?!!?

And on that note, I’m off to bed for more adventures tomorrow. :-)

LCA2011: Day 07

OK, technically there is no LCA day 07, but seeing as it was the last day in Brisbane I figured I could get away with it, without needing to create a separate heading. ;-)

Firstly, I found an awesome pic of me by Andrew McMillian aka Karora on Flickr which clearly demonstrates my need for a haircut:

Me at the Professional Delegates Networking Session (pic by karora)

I spent the morning catching up on sleep and then after packing, I headed into Brisbane Times Square to attend a Fedora meeting at the library.

After that, I headed back to Urbanest by walking from the library, across a bridge and then along southbank back to the accommodation.

Hai Gais! (pic by @chrisjrn on a very awesome high quality lens)

Photoshop the bottle & caption if you dare ;-) (pic via @chrisjrn)

I then caught the AirTrain with @chrisjrn and another guy to the Brisbane Airport – I have to say, I love the AirTrain – it’s fast, easy, comfortable and cheap to get to/from the airport or any station along the gold coast.

I'm on a train!!! (pic by @chrisjrn)

Fast train is fast!

Travelling in style!

Brisbane Airport is pretty decent, didn’t take long to get through security, although I got explosive tested *again* which I find somewhat amusing, since they test for explosives far more often than drugs and I’d bet good money as to which one 20-something European males typically carry….

Flight was delayed a little, but made it to Melbourne with 30mins to spare to connect to the Melbourne-Hobart flight.

One oddity from arriving in Hobart was the way they advertise their seal touristy things:

Baggage seal watches you get security scanned!

LCA2011: Day 06

Technically the conference finished yesterday, however I went along to the open day event today to visit some of the stalls and people from the conference.

After re-grouping at the conference venue, we hit the town for lunch and then proceeded to bar hop our way back to the conference accommodation at Urbanest.

Hello Lisa! ;-) (pic by @chrisjrn)

Tall towers are tall! (pic by @chrisjrn)

OMG I'm outside! What on earth is wrong with me?!!? (pic by @chrisjrn)

Cross the Brisbane river with Josh whilst cringing at the sun (pic via @chrisjrn)

I like a firm grip on shafts (pic via @chrisjrn)

OMG it's flexibus!

Yay, new Fedora sticker for my laptop. #fanboysqueeeee

Lurking in Brisbane CBD

It's an Ibis!

Hello Brisbane!

Good lord it's hideous! (picture of @chrisjrn) ;-)

It's a bridge!

Geeks at the pub

Geeks getting drunk ;-)

LCA2011: Day 05

OMG how did the conference go so fast?!! :'(

It's meeeeee! (pic: @chrisjrn)

Tridge and Linux-powered coffee roaster. Fuck yes.

For some reason we got given rubber duckies at the conference.... que hordes of geeks squeezing them to make sounds

I know too many people.... mention dinner and this what I end up with... too many people to fit onto the screen

Nom nom nom nom

It’s not offical until it’s Twitter official!

So if you’ve been following me or @splatdevil (Lisa) on twitter, you may have noticed that some of our tweets have been soppier than anyone would like for the past couple weeks.

Now it’s twitter official – the proper test of any relationship ;-) It’s going to be interesting as Lisa is currently in a different city, but we both want to try and make it work and hopefully end up in Wgtn together as one of those horribly sickly cute couples. ;-)

*hugs lisa* :-)

LCA2011: Day 04

As usual, I’ve had no time to update my blog and so I’ll post more technical stuff later. Meanwhile, here are the pics from day 04 of the conference.

As can be expected of LCA, the day starts like any other – sleep deprived ;-)

Please tell me there's coffee *dying* (pic: @chrisjrn)

And of course, the early morning email reading/hacking session whilst waiting for the keynote:

I'm deep in thought whilst optimising corporate synergy (pic: @chrisjrn)

All the cool kids. (pic: @chrisjrn)

Tasty tasty breakfast from some hole-in-the-wall cafe off Grey St – kind of a weird way of serving scrambled eggs….. but was very tasty. :-)

Delicious, yet interesting method of serving breakfast. (at a random hole-in-the-wall cafe on Gray St)

Some dodgy twitter person. Think maybe @chrisjrn

Went along to lunch with a bunch of like-minded geeks:

Ewwwwww giant steak next to me! #militantvegetarian

Resturant is putting @LGnome on a diet or something.

Mmmmmm delicious vegetarian pizza.

Ended up catching public transport back to Urbanest to take a shower before the penguin dinner:

Wow! If only Wellington busses were this good!

And of course, the penguin dinner – although I didn’t stay as late as I would have normally, on account of me being insanely tired and needing to do washing or having to go commando the next day:

Conference dinner - note the vegetarian option isn't listed

Dinner buddies!

More LCA dinner buddies!

Nommy curry thingy

mmmmmmmm desert :-)

And of course, washing:

Finished the day with washing. Much excite!

As an amusing side story, I discovered one of the vending machines at Urbanest will convert change coins (eg 10c, 20c, 50c) into $1 coins by using the coin reject function. LIFE HACK WINS! ;-)

Till tomorrow’s post! :-)

LCA2011: Day 03

Very exciting day, lots of interesting talks and I got interviewed for a podcast about PHP – will post the details once it goes live.

More pics!

Linux geeks!

Brisbane is shiny!

Lurking in the dark :-P

Geeks on a warship at the Maritime Museum, trying to figure out the engine to enable us to declare war on Microsoft.

Professional delegates networking session.

If I need lube during the conference, I know where to find it! ;-)

Tweeting hard ;-)

LCA2011: Day 02

I’m running a little behind on these posts, a lack of free time for anything is one of the unfortunate side effects of a conference as awesome as linux.conf.au.

Been a large number of existing interesting talks today, I intend to blog separately at a later stage – prob next week whilst I’m recovering from all the excitement. ;-)

Meanwhile, pics!

It's happy Jethro! Clearly something is wrong since I'm not depressive and over stressed like normal :-/ (pic from @chrisjrn)

Ewww, is that a Mac??? (pic by @chrisjrn)

All the cool kids at LCA

South Bank isn't looking so fancy these days. :-(

LCA2011: Day 01

Monday (yesterday) was the first day of the conference, so much great content and stuff on I’m only just catching up with blogging about it now.

I was one of the afternoon presenters, with my Indefero Source Code and Project Management presentation. The videos are still getting processed, but my slides are now available as a PDF downloaded.

There’s some pictures taken of me doing my talk by @chrisjrn which make me look like a bossy dictator. Which is probably accurate. ;-)

Me looking excited at the conference introduction, whilst @LGnome works hard on his slides like a good boy. (pic: @chrisjrn)

I look a bit old, but I think that's the sunburn/dry skin :-/ (pic: @chrisjrn)

I am Jethro, hear me roar! (pic: @chrisjrn)

If you don't use this software, I will come to your workplace and hurt you. (pic: @chrisjrn)

Chris is takingĀ  a large number of pictures during the conference, you can see them all on his flicker feed here.

Also, here’s some blurry camera phone pictures by me from the conference:

Some of the LCA crowd waiting for the conference to start.

South Bank busway, with train line in the background.

Geeks hit the town - lookout Brisbane!

OMG! It's taller than 2 stories!

It's a bridge!

Brisbane looks awesome at night. Especially when standing in the middle of the river.

Maybe I don't have enough chargers already..... there's also a laptop and another cellphone not yet pictured O_o

Indefero – Source Code & Project Management

This blog post is for the benefit of those who attended my Indefero presentation at linux.conf.au 2011 and want a copy of the slides/links.

Download indefero_source_code_management presentation [PDF].

Download indefero_source_code_management presentation [ODT]

The talk was also recorded but I’m not sure when the video will be up online – I shall post the link to it once it appears. :-)

You can now watch my presentation online, or download the Ogg/Vorbis at Blip. :-D