Fri, 28 Jul 2006

Your Host : Google Code

So, sitting here at OSCON Google's just announced Google Code's project hosting service. It's SVN based with a "bigtable" implemented back end.

Some internal poking: 


_follower_ (2:03:15 PM): called "dit" in js code?
_follower_ (2:04:05 PM): http://code.google.com/js/dit_scripts.js
_follower_ (2:04:44 PM): alert("DIT: error parsing response of issue starring")

Posted at: 09:16 | category: / | Comments ()

Thu, 27 Jul 2006

Planet NZTech now on its real home

I'm having DNS issues with some of my domains but that's kinda forced me to finally have Planet NZTech exist on its proper domain rather than redirect to another URL.

When I've sorted out the DNS issues I'll endeavour to set up a redirect from the old URL.

Posted at: 07:25 | category: / | Comments ()

Tue, 25 Jul 2006

Original Title #384 : At OSCON 2006 Day One

So, here I am at OSCON 2006 in the first tutorial session Businesses Partnering with Open Source Communities: Opportunities, Perils, and Pitfalls which is presented by...an Australian. :-)

According to the old school paper map with push-pins there's someone here from Wellington, but I don't know who... If it's you, speak up!

Update: The push-pin spoke! The powers of the internets. I noticed another two pins appeared late yesterday and then i got an email explaining they are a group from Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences at least one who works on GeoNet.

Posted at: 05:20 | category: / | Comments ()

Mon, 10 Jul 2006

You Know You're Back in the US When...

Top 4 things I'd forgotten about that remind me I'm in the US

  1. "Upside down" light and power switches
  2. Ice cream cookies--mostly Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich (you have no idea how long it took to find a link)--I really can't stand the things but feel compelled to buy and eat them.
  3. So many people walking down the street talking on a cellphone--a cliche but true.
  4. There's something else but I can't remember it--I knew I should have written them down. :-)

Things that are the same here

  1. Infomercials
  2. Radio (thanks)
(Yes, I know...)

Moment of Kiwi Pride

Wandered into a vinyl music store on my way into downtown Boston and saw a Concord Dawn LP--had an interesting chat with the guy behind the counter about them and The Upbeats.

And now...

Can't spend all my time writing about what I'm doing or I won't be doing anything so I guess I better go find some breakfast and head out. Hard to believe last Sunday I was eating brunch at Saints Pizzeria in Hamner Springs. Hoping to see A Scanner Darkly later this afternoon...

Posted at: 05:45 | category: / | Comments ()

Trip Notes #1

Flew Air New Zealand from Christchurch to Auckland to Los Angeles--a fairly uneventful flight. I believe the plane was a refitted Boeing 747-400--I was in a window seat with a spare seat next to me.

The seat-back entertainment system was okay--when it worked. They had trouble early in the flight which necessitated a reboot (hmmm...) and sure enough the sysytem was a Windows CE based affair. The games were pretty ho-hum but some interesting music CDs available and quite a few movies--although the newer ones were fairly uninteresting. Only film I watched all the way through was 16 Blocks with Bruce Willis--not really worth seeing at theatres I would say.

The food was uninspiring airline fare but the onboard staff were friendly enough.

I had hoped to get a Frequent Flyer upgrade but discovered that while I was less than 300 points short the purchase of extra points would take 3-5 business days to apply to my account. :-( I wonder if I would've slept anymore in business class?

Most Bizarre Trip Moment

Undoubtedly the most bizarre moment of the trip occurred at LAX. I was walking out of a news agent's in the United terminal when I heard someone say "Phil?!?". It turned out to be a travelling friend of mine who is currently living in Hawai'i and was returning there from New York. Talk about a small world! Neither of us knew the other was due to be travelling so it's one of those times you just have to shake your head in disbelief. Certainly made the eight hour lay-over at LAX more pleasant.

Posted at: 05:15 | category: / | Comments ()

Timezones redux

By default Pyblosxom doesn't seem to handle much in the way of time-zone fun-ness. As such, I'll be posting entries with New Zealand time and dates while I'm away. In case anyone cared...

Posted at: 05:10 | category: / | Comments ()

Boston Tea Party

Ummm, yeah, so I'm in Boston (well, Cambridge, actually). The confirmation of the final details and purchasing of ticket didn't actually happen until the day before I left so I didn't want to say too much until I knew it was actually going to happen.

I'm going to be away for about six weeks and will post a more detailed itinerary shortly but basically my plan is something like:

  1. Two weeks on site in Boston with a client
  2. OSCON!
  3. A couple of days in San Francisco
  4. Back to Boston for a week
  5. New York for around five days
  6. Hawai'i for around five days
  7. Back to Christchurch 20 August 2006

I'm keen to catch up with any people while I'm here--although my time in Boston will be pretty busy with work stuff. Please email me follower (at) rancidbacon.com if you're interested in a coffee or something.

Thanks to those who have enabled this to happen. :-)

Posted at: 05:00 | category: / | Comments ()

Mon, 03 Jul 2006

User Groups in San Francisco

This is mainly for my benefit as it always takes me a while to re-find it but here's a site with a list of San Francisco user groups meetings by date.

As to why I'd find such a list useful at the moment, I'll get back to you on that... :-)

Update: And here's a user group events list for Boston/Cambridge.

Posted at: 17:30 | category: / | Comments ()

Timezone tests for all

As Craig mentions, if your blog entries stay atop a Planet too long, your feed's time zone is probably mis-configured. Mine was, so I'm now seeing if I fixed it

I simply added this to the bottom of Pyblosxom's config.py as suggested in this post about timezones in Pyblosxom: 

# Update your timezone as necessary
import os
os.environ['TZ'] = 'Pacific/Auckland'
# Done!

Posted at: 15:40 | category: / | Comments ()