Flickr Photo credit: spunkinator

With the launch of my new site http://alison-young.com it is a sad fact that this blog has now been made redundant. If I’m on your blogroll then please change my blog address according, alternatively feel free to add me

Please edit your RSS feed details to the new feed address: http://alison-young.com/feed

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions then feel free to let me know by whatever means pleases you most. Looking forward to seeing your comments at my new blog.

I’ve had the pleasure of attending both Sydney and Canberra BarCamps over the recent weeks. Sydney BarCamp3 occurred over the weekend of the 5^th and 6^th of April and was held at the UNSW Roundhouse. Canberra BarCamp1 was held on Saturday the 19^th of April in the ANU CSIT Building. Because I’m cheating in a way and posting 2 entries in one I’ve sub-headed my comments from each BarCamp.

Sydney BarCamp3

I’d known about BarCamp for quite some time upon hearing through some friends in late 2007 that I should come to the next one as I’d have a lot of fun there. When the call went out for Unorganisers in late December 2007 I jumped at the chance to become involved in my first BarCamp from an organiser perspective. It was exciting because there were a lot of new faces in the unorganiser camp but despite our inexperience things moved along well. On the morning it was with some trepidation that we all rocked up to the Roundhouse at 8am to set things up and try to anticipate numbers for the day.

People started arriving shortly after 9a and we kicked things off at 10a with a giant circle and 30-second introductions for everybody. The schedule quickly filled with talks and people bustled between the 3 presentation rooms. While on the registrations desk greeting everybody I had noticed some blank looks when I explained to new arrivals to write their names and Twitter handles on their name tags. It seemed that Twitter wasn’t as well recognised as I had thought…. then I had an idea.

I’d always tentatively planned to present at BarCamp, despite my unease at getting up in front of 20+ people and talking about something. The original topic I had in mind individuals and their acceptance of Open Source – a particular passion of mine. But I also love introducing people to technology that may benefit them. So a spur of the moment switch in topics occurred, to a presentation I initially titled ‘what the heck is this Twitter thing about?’. I compiled a collection of slides while sitting at the desk during quiet moments and decided to keep the name as it was. Catchy, attention-grabbing but not offensive or confronting.

Presentation time came and as I’d anticipated I had a major laptop projector fail. Jodie came to the rescue with her EEE and I did some laptop -> phone micro sd card -> usb geekery and transferred the presentation across. Through my nerves I managed to present to approx 30 people and nobody left- BarCamp version of talk success! People were engaged and amazingly enough I had people in the room create Twitter accounts and start to follow me while I was doing the talk. I was impressed.

On Saturday morning an unorganiser, Alex, had the idea to run speed networking/dating sessions in rooms that didn’t have talks scheduled as a means for attendees to talk and get to know each other. These sessions were a massive success and we ended up running quite a number of them across the weekend. Playing Werewolf in the afternoon hours of Saturday was also an unexpected but raging success with thanks to Mike from Atlassian for getting everybody started. These ideas for activities were taken to Canberra and run with similar degrees of success.

People took some amazing photos at Sydney BarCamp3, I’d highly recommend having a look at them. Flickr BarCamp Sydney3 set.

Canberra BarCamp1

We had a few people from Canberra travel up to attend Sydney BarCamp so in exchange we did the right thing and agreed to travel down and go to their first BarCamp. It was such a great day and the Unorganisers really do deserve top credit for pulling it all together so well.

Because I’m hardcore I’d decided to drive down that morning. BarCamp didn’t start until 10 so by planning a 6am Newtown departure time I theorised I’d allowed plenty of driving time and arrive at the scheduled start hour. A few things caused delays and I was half an hour late but quickly got into the swing of things.

There were a few familiar faces, lots of people from the Canberra Twitter community and many more who became known over the course of the day. Canberra BarCamp consisted of three rooms but majority of my time was spent in the main room. There some excellent talks and the focus was slightly different to that of BarCamp Sydney. Following a session in one of the smaller rooms I decided to see whether my laptop would place nice with the projector, turns out it did. Upon the suggestion from the crowd I decided to do my Twitter talk for people. A much smaller group but no less interested or enthusiastic. Lots more discussion took place in this talk and it was far more interactive. Upon the insistence of the unorganisers I uploaded my talk to SlideShare so that interested people could access the talk slides later.

The biggest surprise of the day for me wasn’t the popularity of my talk, or even that I gave it when I wasn’t really planning to talk. It was winning the ticket to WebDirections Government being held on the 19th of May in Canberra. I initially wasn’t sure that I was the right person to have won it, given that I haven’t been to one before. After some hesitation I decided to accept it and plan another trip to our nation’s capital.

Drinks and then dinner followed and it was a great opportunity to talk further with some of the people I’d met earlier in the day. There were some really interesting, inspiring and amusing people that I’m pleased I travelled down to Canberra and wound up meeting. Hours after majority of the dinner guests had left a small band of us had remained still talking about all things geeky and some non-so-geeky.

Pictures from BarCamp Canberra can be found on Flickr. I think the BarCamp pictures capture the passion, fun and intense discussion much better than text can.

Early this week we found that the BarCamp Canberra slideshare.net group has been selected to feature on the front page. 4 slide sets were displayed for a day and mine were among them. I was quiet astonished that the view count of my slides went from 37 to over a 1000 in the space of less than 48hrs. It was really great to get feedback from all corners of the globe (quiet literally) that people had read and enjoyed my slides and felt they were a good primer for people who’d never heard of Twitter before. I also found I’d gained quite a number of new followers.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend BarCamp Perth being held on the 10th of May as I’ve already scheduled a trip to Brisbane that weekend but I do know of a Sydney contingent making the trip. I know they’ll have a fantastic time if the other Australian BarCamps of 2008 are any indication. There are whispers of a Brisbane BarCamp being planned for late May, I’ll have to keep my ear to the ground, as any excuse to go and visit my former home town is usually a good one. There are lots of people up there that I know would love to be involved and would gain something from a BarCamp experience.

BarCamps are run all over the world and there is no reason why an enthusiastic group of people can’t make one happen in your local area.

Check out these BarCamp related resources for more details:

• BarCamp homepage- with details of BarCamps occuring across the globe.
• Wikipedia BarCamp page
• Wikipedia Unconference page

After reading these posts from Fifikins and Lu I’ve been inspired to compile my own list of 100 things that you may or may not know about me. I’ve tried to come up with things that majority of readers probably don’t know already and also things that I’m relatively comfortable with everybody knowing given that this is a very public medium.

Here we go!

1. I love to write and sometimes feel I can express myself better in writing. I’m a verbose writer, this isn’t going to be a short read.
2. I’ve never liked beer and only this year have started to develop a tolerance/taste for wine. Despite all claims to the contrary, you can do a uni degree without becoming a beer drinker. My preferred alcoholic drinks are spirits and liqueurs.
3. I’m quite competitive. It’s usually all in the spirit of healthy competition, not necessarily a bad thing if used carefully. My old Personal Trainer was particularly gifted at using this compulsion of mine to progressively improve my performance against my past achievements.
4. If you’re making coffee I’ll have a skim milk latte with no sugar. I haven’t had instant coffee since the late 1990’s and will opt for tea or nothing before instant. Having said that, I love tea and the T2 Monk Pear blend is my current favourite.
5. I am most motivated and inspired when surrounded by people that I believe are smarter than I am.
6. I like my natural lip colour and rarely wear lipstick. This is also because I like to wear colourful eye makeup while still keeping my overall look fairly neutral.
7. I enjoy my own company as much as that of others. If I’ve had an overly social week I crave some time in solitude. I am happiest when I can strike a balance between time alone and time spent around others.
8. I’m a Virgo who was born on the cusp of Leo. Belief in astrology or not, it does sum up my personality. Easy-going, perfectionist and friendly most of the time but get me fired up about something and you’ll certainly hear about it.
9. I love to drive. This inspired my love of taking road trips both by myself and with excellent company. Living close to the CBD of Sydney has meant I drive little and I get cravings to jump in my car and take off somewhere. I usually indulge these cravings when I have days off and a yearning to go and explore somewhere.
10. I will do almost anything for my friends, I’ve been known to put their wants and needs before my own. Fortunately, I also have friends that do the same for me.
11. During my honours year I had purple hair for a couple of months. It was great fun and my students loved it. I’ve had many hair colours over the years and am most happy with the way it is currently.
12. Ever since I was in high school a great majority of my friends, particularly my ‘inner circle’, have been guys. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve developed close friendships with a few women; usually they have guys as their ‘inner circle’ too. It’s been a learning curve but having chick best friends is just as good as having guy best friends.
13. Puzzles, games and challenges are a fun past-time for me, not a painful thing to be suffered through. Cryptic crosswords are much more fun than regular crosswords for me.
14. I am incredibly self-conscious about dancing. This is the result of being told some years ago that I have no rhythm by a highly trusted person. I can’t seem to get past this most of the time unless there are a lot of my friends dancing also.
15. My natural personality is bubbly, happy and open; I also talk a lot. I withdraw from people and situations when I’m feeling down in order to not inflict my stormy moods on others.
16. I’m a huge romantic and love to hear stories about how people get together and the sweet things they do for each other. A grand romantic gesture is a sure way to get my attention.
17. I feel compelled to hug people a lot. Most of my friends are ‘hug types’ which is probably a good thing since it’s my most common way to greet and say goodbye to friends.
18. I have an affinity for the numbers 5, 8 and any number under 100 that is a multiple of 8.
19. I have a particular dislike for the word ‘blog’, something just doesn’t quite sit right with me about it.
20. To me, my parents divorce when I was quite young was a good thing. Not only did I get to travel more (my Mum, siblings and I moved to Mackay while Dad stayed in Albury) but I was given the opportunity to get to know my parents better as individuals while as a teenager and adult. I respect them greatly for not staying in the marriage purely ‘for the sake of the children’. It was never about getting twice as much stuff come Christmas or birthdays. On a related note, I consider my Mum to be one of my best friends and have always had an open and trusting relationship with her. It is rare that more than a few days go by between us speaking and she’s on my Facebook friends list too.
21. Over the years I’ve made friends with so many amazing people that it’s impossible to keep in regular touch with them all. This makes me feel sad because they all rock and I hope they all know that their friendship still means the world to me.
22. I prefer the cooler autumn/winter/early spring months over the warmer months.
23. I define my personal style as sitting in between classic and funky. Often my outfits will incorporate elements of both.
24. I lost a good many hours sleep worrying about whether my decision to move to Sydney would be the biggest mistake of my life. It wasn’t!
25. I’m a good cook and love cooking but my current kitchen is not conducive to lavish cooking. My signature dessert is lemon cheesecake.
26. My computers, car and significant gadgets have names.
27. Give me chocolate that’s at least 70% cocoa, though if the need is great enough milk chocolate will suffice.
28. I get the giggles often at the most inappropriate times over the strangest of things. Something may be hilarious to me but not always to those around me.
29. I write with my left hand, mouse with my right and can play pool and tennis with either though I tend to favour my right. I’ve always loved how I can multi-task between a writing pad and computer using both hands simultaneously.
30. Rick-Rolls have always been funny and I don’t foresee that they will ever not be funny.
31. I don’t feel overly comfortable wearing dresses; if you see me in one, you know it’s a big deal. This is predominantly a result of it being very difficult to find a well cut dress for my rather abnormal proportions.
32. I’m a terrible liar and find it so much easier to be truthful. Liars get found out in the end anyway and by then it’s always worse than if you’d been upfront to start with.
33. I have a strong moral compass which means there is very very little that I regret. I also believe that even bad situations can be positive if you gain some sort of insight from them.
34. I’m on friendly or neutral terms with majority of my former partners.
35. I really, really hate having my feet touched.
36. I don’t get star-struck around celebrities or well-known personalities. I’ve been asked a couple of times to be a special guest PA at conventions. Once you get past the fact that they’re very recognisable due to their occupation, the celebrities I’ve spent time around are pretty regular people.
37. I wear contact lenses and have never worn glasses. This is due to the difference in strength between my eyes. I’m loathe to get glasses as I hate the idea of having a border to my field of vision. I can wear lenses more places than glasses and they have inbuilt UV protection. I’m yet to be convinced to switch to glasses no matter how cute girls wearing glasses apparently are.
38. I’ve never flown anywhere for leisure with somebody who wasn’t in my family. I have flown with others for business but would love to go overseas somewhere with 1 or more friends.
39. I’ve been involved in Book Crossing for a few years now. Over that time I’ve spent hours sifting through and buying books I’ve found in Life Line book fairs. Unfortunately I haven’t had the time to read and release even half of them yet.
40. As I find out about sites I anticipate I’ll use, I register accounts for them to ensure that my nick (Alegrya) isn’t taken by somebody else.
41. I’ve never had nor, plan to ever create a MySpace account.
42. My great passion, professionally and personally, is to have everybody love technology as much as I do. I see so many ways that it can make life easier and more fun and want everybody to get in on it. My dream job will indulge this passion.
43. I dislike it when people constantly agree with me. I’m not always right and there is nothing wrong with some healthy debate between friends and colleagues.
44. I use Ubuntu on my laptop, it shipped with Windows but the install was never activated. As soon as my battery had charged I installed Ubuntu. The intention was to learn Linux and avoid gaming distractions while writing my thesis. It worked a charm, I now use my laptop as my primary personal computer and still enjoy learning about Linux.
45. I’m an open source software and creative commons advocate. There’s so much great open source software and freeware out there, why aren’t more people using it?
46. Sony Ericsson mobile phones own a special piece of my soul. After having Nokias for years I was impressed by the sleekness and usability of SE. I’m onto my third SE and hope they release something like the N95 in the next year or so.
47. I’ve never owned anything branded Apple. The Mac OS confuses me greatly.
48. My personality type is ENTJ or ESTJ depending on the site administering the test. I always get one of those two types, most commonly I’m an ENTJ.
49. I pay careful attention to my spelling and grammar even if the medium is very casual. Careless spelling and bad grammar are the first things I’ll pick up on when reading something.
50. If I haven’t heard from somebody in a while I’m quite likely to call, email or IM them out of the blue to say hi and see how they’re going.
51. I am a total and utter geek and not ashamed of it.
52. I haven’t had a chance to play computer games since leaving Brisbane and I really miss playing Guild Wars.
53. I have a pretty dry sense of humour and people don’t always get my wry wit or obscure references.
54. I’ve never seen a James Bond movie.
55. Honours was the best year of my time spent at university, followed closely by 3rd year. The opportunities extended to me and things I was involved in made all the stress and work totally worth it.
56. No job I’ve had so far has been as personally rewarding as university tutoring was. There’s nothing quite like the look of delight that crosses a troubled students face in the moment that all the content ‘clicks’ for them. Knowing that it happened as a result of your patience, energy and creativity is pretty awesome.
57. I’ve been an insomniac on and off since 2001 as a result of being stalked. It thankfully wasn’t for an extended time and hasn’t happened again since. The insomnia still comes and goes depending largely on my stress levels.
58. I don’t watch television, but do watch some television shows.
59. My current house doesn’t have a television in the living room and I really like that when my housemates and friends hang out here, we have conversations and engage each other instead of staring blankly at a screen.
60. Sydney is the 4th city I’ve lived in that I can recall. I was born in Melbourne but my parents moved to Albury approximately a month later. I lived in Albury for 12years, Mackay then Brisbane for 7 years each and now I’m in Sydney.
61. I hated Sydney for years and years and my mind was only changed after spending some time here over a couple of weekends in 2007. The idea to move here was planted by an old friend after I told them about how I was getting a bit tired of Brisbane.
62. In early 2007, after Honours and the end of my nearly 4-year relationship I resolved to spend more time and energy taking care of myself. I got into gym and discovered that I loved running. Dropping 3 dress sizes in a year was pretty great too. I’ve been frustrated since moving to Sydney because I haven’t had the chance to go to the gym and get my fitness levels back up to what they were in September. My current fitness goal is still to be able to run 2km in 12mins. I used to be able to easily do 2km in 15mins.
63. I drove my current car out of the showroom when I was 17. I decided that I wanted a new car to take with me to Brisbane and after working out the numbers I bought one. The only thing that wasn’t in my name at that time was the bank loan as I wasn’t yet 18. From May until August of 2000 I had two cars. My old Mitsubishi Colt sedan (it was a beast of a car) and my new Hyundai Excel hatchback.
64. I love Dendy films, the more obscure the better.
65. I listen to most types of music, I especially enjoy the many flavours of electronica, house, drum’n'bass, jazz and most of the things played on JJJ.
66. My favourite colours, in no particular order are: purple, blue, silver and red. I don’t have just one all-time favourite colour.
67. I have a head for trivia and can remember some things in scary amounts of detail for a long time.
68. I dream in colour and have been known to remember up to 5-8 dreams and how they all interlinked to each other. I used to write my dreams down but found that it could take up to an hour to get it all down.
69. I hate running late or being held up waiting for others who are running late to leave for something. If it’s really important I’m usually 5-20mins early. I am sometimes late because I hate leaving people behind even more than being late. Internal conflict anybody!
70. I always carry at least one book with me. Be it an actual book in my bag, an e-book on my phone or audiobook on phone/iriver.
71. I have an inherent dislike for clothes shopping and will put it off for as long as I possibly can. I do have days when I’ll enjoy going shopping with friends but mostly I tend to avoid it.
72. My eyes are my most complimented feature, followed by my smile.
73. I always have trouble recalling the correct spelling of ‘definitely’ and will sometimes avoid using it in text conversation because it’s quicker for me to come up with an alternative word and use that.
74. I knit. My grandmother taught me how to knit when I was a child and a friend re-taught me the basics a couple of years ago. I’ve done some pretty funky projects and use it to relieve stress and occupy my hands while I’m watching television shows or movies at home. I’ve found it’s just one of those things that instantly ‘makes sense’ to engineers/IT folk. After all, it is only a series of binary operations.
75. For years I’ve wanted to go up in a hot air balloon. I haven’t done it yet but I think it would be great and have plans to do it in the next few years.
76. I’ve never been overseas except to visit a friend in New Zealand. I’m very jealous of all my friends who frequently visit Asia and Europe for work and/or pleasure.
77. Sometimes I wear headphones with no music playing when walking in the street just so the street sellers won’t stop me to try and sell me something.
78. I collect movie scores. They’re the best ambient music ever.
79. I have penfriends because I love to get letters and packages that don’t have letterheads. It’s also fun putting together packages that I know they will adore.
80. Some people who know me pretty well have never met me face to face but I still consider them to be good friends. Technology is great like that!
81. I spend way too much time in front of computers.
82. If given the choice I’d rather talk with people in small groups of 2-3 than in large parties. Parties are still great fun, but you can’t really talk with people.
83. I love a good house party and don’t often enjoy going out to clubs. If the group is good then I’d be more than happy to hit a cocktail bar or pub for some drinks and a game of pool.
84. The sorting hat would totally put me in Ravenclaw.
85. I own more bags than pairs of shoes. True story! I really should stop accumulating bags….and own more than 7 pairs of shoes. I suspect I’m letting down the females of the world by owning less pairs of shoes than some men I know. I also don’t own a pair of thongs.
86. I can spend hours playing simple java/flash games on the net that are stupidly addictive and utterly pointless but ever so much fun.
87. I really can’t stand it when people say ‘like’ an unnecessary number times when they’re talking. Like, you know, like totally hate it like. To amuse myself I count how many times they say it.
88. I enjoy doing housework. It may seem strange but I find it meditative, especially if I’m listening to some good music at the time. I’m also quite house proud and like common areas to be clean and tidy within reason and time available for housework.
89. For a very long time I hated having my picture taken. I still don’t especially like it, but I no longer actively run or try to hide from cameras when they’re pointed my way. I just never thought I looked good in pictures. Still don’t but I’m accepting of the fact that not everybody thinks as I do on this matter.
90. I think British comedy is much funnier than American comedy.
91. I love things that smell great. A US-based friend got me addicted to the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfumed oils. I must have more, they’re beautiful.
92. It frustrates me when I see friends going through difficulties and I know that there is nothing or little I can do to help.
93. I have great difficulty asking for help from those around me. The more I need it, the harder it is for me to seek it. One day I will realise that it’s ok to get help from those around me and that I’m not expected to be super-human.
94. It is rare that I sleep well the night before I fly anywhere. It’s a mix of excitement about the upcoming trip and a tinge of nerves.
95. When I was much younger my siblings and appeared in a brochure for a Mackay resort as the children of a family supposedly holidaying there. To my knowledge they’re still using those pictures. We thought it was pretty funny that our fake ‘Mum and Dad’ were actually brother and sister.
96. Hacking code and learning programming languages comprehensively has never come easily for me. I can’t explain why it always seemed so difficult when it was easy for my peers. I suspect it’s a mental block I’ve placed there mixed with the fact that I’d rather be writing the documentation that accompanies the code.
97. While putting together my personal website I’ve been surprised at how easily HTML, CSS and some PHP have come back to me after studying them at uni all those years ago. I enjoy this kind of development because I can see what I’ve created/broken almost straightaway and can change what needs to be changed straight away. Development environments are also much easier to put together.
98. There is much more I’m happy with about my life currently than I am unhappy with. To me the things I’m unhappy with are merely an opportunity for self-improvement and growth.
99. I plan someday have my own consulting company. I’ve been told a few times recently that I should start one but I know I need to learn more about the business environment first.
100. I like the occasional chick flick. They’re a guilty pleasure of mine. Between all the deep, thought provoking movies that I also love; sometimes I’m just in the mood for something I can sit and enjoy and not think too much about.

So there you have it. Enjoy. Be inspired to compile your own lists. It’s a pretty interesting to form a snapshot of yourself. I found it a bit tricky at times but I think there’s at least one thing in there that everybody didn’t already know

Last night following the Sydney BarCamp 3 Unorganisers meeting I unveiled the ’secret BarCamp project’ I’d been working on for the last few weeks. At an earlier meeting we were talking about the idea of having Mikons but they weren’t quite right for us. Instead I had the random idea to come up with a list of things that people can identify with and then just write a one or two letter ‘code’ for each thing on the bottom of your name tag. The others thought this was quite a novel idea and it was suggested maybe doing it in a table, which led to the suggestion that we modify a periodic table. Bingo! Since I had no other tasks I offered to take on this project with a fellow unorganiser, the lovely JodieM. The project took flight.

JodieM found a periodic table online and created a shared GoogleDoc that we could work from. Then as tends to happen she got busier and I got less busy. This resulted in most of the element ideas coming from my side and taking suggestions from others. It was easy to come up with the things that I could relate to but more than a few times I was concerned that I’d missed something glaringly obvious.  I ran my ideas past a few people during the development stages and was pretty happy with the spread I’d created. Hopefully not too much of some things and missing other. A moment of quiet humour led to me add ‘Ni’ for Monty Python and that has by far been the most commented on ‘element’.

The finalised table (for now)  is able to be viewed here.  It’s been licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License . I’d love to see it used in other BarCamps as I think it really does embody the whole BarCamp spirit and other geeky networking events. There are way more elements than space on the table which is no bad thing as it lets each group update the table and add the elements that mean the most to them. I’ve also deliberately left the space at the bottom blank. The element list is going to be printed up and put next to the table. On the day the bottom spaces can be filled in by Sydney BarCamp3 attendees with what they’d like to add.

I’m pretty excited that it’s been so well received. It’s also the first project that I’ve CC Licensed which is also exciting, for me at least. A couple of people have mentioned that it’d be a cool t-shirt idea. I think so too and may look into doing a run sometime. Keep an eye out here and on my twitter timeline for more details.

Thank-you to everybody for their feedback!

Catherine hit me with a White Rabbit so in the spirit of sharing I’m going to play along.

The rules:
1- Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2 - People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3 - At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4 - Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

8 Random Things:

1. I enjoy problem solving, puzzles and challenges. I adore cryptic crosswords and sudoku in particular.
2. My personality type is ESTJ which kind of explains a lot, but not everything.
3. I was once proposed to.
4. If given the choice between dark, milk or white, I’ll take dark chocolate every time.
5. Tutoring is the most self-fulfilling job I’ve ever done and would do it again in a heartbeat.
6. I made a resolution a couple of years ago to fly somewhere at least once every 12 months for as long as I can. So far so good.
7. I’m something of a clutz and tend to drop things or trip often.
8. I often knit while watching episodes or movies at home to occupy my hands. Not only is it the ultimate in stress reliever but I find it difficult to just sit and watch something, especially if I’m alone.

I’m tagging:
~ Lauren Watson
~ Monnie
~ Fiona Henderson
~ Michael Specht
~ Della Misner
~ Donna Brown
~ Tony Buttafuoco
~ Lauren Hewitt

Something that has been discussed in various circles lately is age. While out with some colleagues on Friday night the topic arose and not for the first time has somebody been surprised that I’m 25. This person was actually agape, later explaining that they’d thought me to be closer to 21 and that I didn’t look 25 at all. On my birthday last year in a different workplace I had colleagues asking me if I’d finished high school the previous year. When I look in the mirror I don’t see an 18 or even a 21 year old. In conversation when the topic of age comes up, majority of people will guess I’m 23.

The point to the post is that I continually observe how age seems to be less important than your achievements, passions and outlooks. At a different event I was among a group where the exclamation of ‘I can’t believe you’re only 23′ was the response to a story about somebody and what they had done during recent years. Majority of my social and professional interactions involve people across a very diverse age group. My friends group age range exceeds 25 years between youngest and oldest. In recent years age seems to matter less when it comes to determining who you talk to and befriend, especially among technology people. What keeps us all so young? Our areas of passion are young and vibrant to many; do we tend to adopt those characteristics and to non-tech people appear much younger than our years?

What I’d like to find out is whether the age barrier breakdown is occuring amongst non-technology people. What about groups in other countries or even different parts of Australia? I think it’s great that I know and have built friendships with people of varying ages. Experience comes with age and develops into widsom. Sharing of wisdom is something that people can always benefit from.

Last night I did some further reading on Miro which I became aware of a couple of weeks ago. Miro is an open video player that utilises the VLC media player and also features an array of internet channels with all free content and an inbuilt bittorrent client. It also enables you to download and save videos from YouTube, Google Video and seven other sources. Before it was renamed to Miro in mid-2007 it was called Democracy Player and DTV.

This application initially interested me as I often get video’s in my rss feeds that I do want to watch but not always at the exact moment I have the item open. It’s untidy and inconvenient to have several pop-out windows loading at once and sometimes the environment isn’t conducive to watching videos. Previously I’ve also found watching videos from browser windows to be laggy and sometimes they fail to load entirely.

What particularly impressed me about Miro is the ability to download videos only when I want to see them, but also that the downloaded videos can be set with an expiry after which they’re automatically deleted to free system resources. I like to watch BoingBoingTV and VLog ‘episodes’ but don’t need to retain them after viewing. The channel searching and browsing is novel but I don’t foresee that I’ll use that feature often. Searching and downloading clips from YouTube to watch later is useful and searching is quick and quite accurate. The ability to limit bandwidth used by Miro is good and there are plenty of options regarding how often you’d like new videos in the channels you’ve added to be downloaded and managed.

Miro did crash a number of times while downloading videos however after restarting, the application instantly picked up where it left off. Given that Miro 1.1 was released a mere 10 days ago, a couple of initial crashes can be forgiven. It has been running quite stable since.

Extra kudos must be given for having installers with simple clear instructions for Linux, Windows and Mac systems. Within the Linux installation page, Ubuntu had it’s own guide with instructions for installation on either of the three latest Ubuntu releases.

In summary I’m impressed with what I’ve seen so far of Miro. For me it is a great way to store and keep short videos for later viewing. I don’t plan to use Miro for large file and playlist management but according to the website it’s more than capable of doing that. Have an explore, it’s refreshing to find such a great application that solves a long-standing niggling problem.

I’ve discovered to my absolute delight that I can in fact add a widget to my blog which shows links that I’ve selected to share from my GoogleReader rss feeds. In effect this could be seen as being lazy, but I’d like to defend that by stating it is now easier for me to share the more interesting things I find and no more difficult for my readers to find more rapidly changing content.

I’ve also registered my own domain for a bargain price. Now I just need to determine what I’d like to do with it and organise a page and hosting. I’m actually looking forward to developing some more web skills in terms of basic page design and coding in addition to learning more about how domains, space hosting and creating a statement page can all come together.

In 2003 Paul Graham wrote an essay as to why nerds are unpopular. Beginning as quite a detailed account of how the groups within a school function, specifically how nerds fit in and why they are victimised by the popular people before graduating into the role of modern teenagers in society. This offers some sort of explanation as to apparently why teenagers are the way they are and how it is merely the product of the ‘adult world’ and their lack of ability to engage teenagers and thus two disparate worlds are formed, the teenage and the adult.

It’s an interesting read and while I can’t overly identify with all aspects of it, I suspect that’s due to differences in the American and Australian school systems, difference in lifestyle and engagement with my parents and other adults.

My new contract has been indulging a few of my geeky weaknesses. I’ve had a really good time learning about how mobile phone towers communicate with each other and with our phones. The basics are that I’m in charge of testing new 3g towers and collecting data from around the place using a variety of expensive gadgets and software. Part of my job also includes adjusting the electrical ’tilt’ of tower sectors where required. Learning how to do that was the basis of a ‘field trip’ today including a first hand look inside the shed at the base of a local towers which housed a lot of cable, racks and other assorted goodies in a white air-conditioned room.

Onto the links that are grabbing my attention this week.

• LOLcode - it’s real, it’s out there and apparently there are employers seeking LOLcoders with at least a month of experience. It looks like fun, I wonder if they’ll let senior programming students use it when they get to pick their own language.
• Street kids running their own bank - this is so inspiring to me. Why aren’t more children being so innovative and gaining such important skills?
• Model of Scrooge McDuck’s money bin - link is to the set, I highly recommend going through each of the pictures as the detail and attention put into this is incredible.
• Portrait Landscape Sketchbook - this is more novel than anything else, but I still think it’s cool though I’d likely never actually buy one.