I also did some updating of the Friends of Huong Phuong Orphanage site. A significant amount of money has already been raised and many milestones have already been reached – enough money to buy the outdoor and indoor play equipment has been raised and almost half of the women listed are now being supported through the scholarship program. The association has decided to keep the momentum up and is now considering things like developing a medical centre. Things have turned out remarkably well so far and I’m excited to see what comes next.

About this time every year groups tend to hold their Annual General Meetings. At Computing Assistance Support & Education we’re no exception, so like every year, here’s the invitation:

Engaging in Democracy with Web 2.0 Initiatives

Guest Speaker – Pia Waugh
3.00pm Wednesday 26 October, 2011 – Pia Waugh started work as an Adviser to Senator Kate Lundy in April 2009. Prior to this she was a consultant at Waugh Partners in Sydney, Australia. She has also worked as a Research Coordinator for the Australian Service for Knowledge on Open Source Software (ASK-OSS), the Open Source strategist for a large systems integrator and still works to develop the Australian FOSS industry and improve Government policies towards Free and Open Source Software.

Weston Creek Community Hub
Main Meeting Room (across from ACTCOSS)
6 Gritten Street
Weston Creek ACT, 2611

Good ol Pia. She’s worth listening to and always steps up to present when we need someone interesting.

Work has given me a paid day off as volunteer leave in order to prepare and participate which I thought was good of them. At first they weren’t too sure about it as it appears that nobody in living memory has applied for it. But after a few emails things were sorted out, so off I go! It should be an interesting afternoon so feel free to come along.

Today I don’t have to worry about any of that on account of it being a public holiday here in the ACT. Solon, Smug and myself organised an early morning tee-off for 18 holes at Magpies gold course today. It would appear that practice really does help. Some youtube training and some carefully considered shots meant that this time around I didn’t suck quite as bad. I wouldn’t call golf my favourite sport but I’ll give it a bit more time, at least until I have the basic skills. Always worth sticking with something – I played through a season of Euro Handball and was probably worse at that.

I’ve also used the time off this weekend to continue to plan for Dad’s 59th. I cooked last year and it came together really quite well. This year I’ve put a bit more thought into what the menu will be and at this stage we’re looking at veg&chicken rosemary skewers with sauces for entree, stuffed chicken rolls with white wine sauce and couscous for mains and a cheesecake for dessert. I did a trial run of the chicken stuffing last night, cooled rice with cheese, sage, garlic in mustard oil, salt and pepper. It came together well. I’ll have to make another attempt sooner rather than later, but I think the idea is a solid one and the tastebuds concur. I wanted to take some photos of the process but I also wanted not to get raw chicken all over my phone. Maybe next time I’ll co-opt some help!

The hotel being a few minutes from the venue was a huge plus and allowed us to get there with ample time to spare. Blake’s support had some chop but maybe expected a bit too much from the crowd. The fact that you hang out with Kanye West occasionally doesn’t change the fact that you’re the support act and the crowd is going to talk if it wants to. Notice how the full house was absolutely silent for the quiet moments in Lindesfarne? Didn’t hear James Blake needing to ask us to be quiet. The performance was high quality, though, and he was an entirely appropriate lead in.

We’d set up shop just above the audio engineers as is good to do, sometimes. The whole setup was fairly minimalist which wasn’t surprising; all of the magic happens on stage. And when the bass hit at the end of I Never Learned To Share it ripped through the place like nothing else. In an amusing moment we saw all the engineers look up to the roof at the same time, it was shaking that much. Fortunately they didn’t turn it down and the roof didn’t fall down. The set included a good selection from his self titled album and EPs, Lindesfarne coming together just as I hoped to hear (see reference to silent moments above) and the guys managed to space out the satisfying hooks with some tasteful almost drum n bass style. It happened to be the last show on his solo tour which, I guess, ensured an emotional performance from the lot of them. The crowd was fine, packed to capacity (it looked like, anyway) and everyone left satisfied.

I’ve said before this was a lucky catch and I’m glad we made it. I think  it’s unlikely we’ll be able to see him again at the same place for the same price. It’ll be great to see what comes next. Frez mentioned he’s hearing Blake inspired sounds filtering through Triple J over the past few months. That’ll probably continue for a while. Refreshing!

Visitors here and friends know that I’ve spent a some time attempting to support local community here in Australia. Focusing on Canberra was driven by the idea of ‘get your own house in order first’. With homeless and poor, those in need, in significant numbers in my home city the direction of my civic duty is clear enough. Spending the time that I have in the community service sector has taught me a few things about spotting projects that have hope and those that, while well intentioned, are likely not to make it. Some people have a conscious or sub-conscious drive, focus, that can be clear to see. It’s less about commitment and more simply about being configured in a certain way. Sometimes, rarely it seems, a particular configuration of idiosyncrasies of an individual  match with a collective need and social ability is created. Financial, political and social structures, so intertwined, can be massaged at the same time and in a certain way, given the context, to produce a progressive outcome. In this case the status quo is being challenged by a small group of dedicated people in Australia. The view is to improve the living conditions for a group of orphans living with cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness and psychiatric problems in Vietnam. At the same time they will provide scholarships for education to the women that provide the care to the orphans. A remote association driven by immediate and local needs isn’t a new way of operating and in the past impressive outcomes have been the result. The ideas from this group seem clear enough to me, the level of detail and research that has gone into forming the project is sensible and at many levels impressive. Most importantly the goals are achievable!

That’s why I am proud to announce the launch of Friends of Huong Phuong Orphanage Inc’s website: http://hporphanage.asn.au.

Solar Fields - Movements

Meanwhile Jon Hopkins’ album also from 2009 is making an impression here at BuzzMoo HQ. The variety of styles contained in his album Insides is impressively broad. It sits in form something like The Flashbulb’s Soundtrack To A Vacant Life. The first track of Insides ‘The Wider Sun’ will take you far away. You can go as far as space, even, with Light Through the Veins. Brilliant stuff.

In other news Elroy plows ahead. There’s nothing stopping him and his weirdo movie buff friends – and I mean that! There’s absolutely nothing stopping that guy uploading stuff to the Internet. He’s been doing it for ages now. This week among other things the Remote Viewing crew cover Pirates of The Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides. I saw it on Tuesday in 3D because the stupid cinema was making people pay more to see it in 2D. Socialised with work friends, actually. We weren’t sure it was a good idea but no harm came of it, in the end. The movie is supposed to be based on a book that is very entertaining and is the inspiration for some of the things you love about Monkey Island and the first three Pirates films. On Stranger Tides, written by Tim Powers and published in 1987, is pulp fiction that gives you pirate action mixed with voodoo mystery. Its action is pictured just before Hollywood got the technology to show it on the big screen. Pirates 4 is tenuously connected in the main plot line but you’ll be disappointed if you expect the movie to pick up and use the ideas that made the book entertaining. Darn!

Despite moving towards “getting out of IT” I have of course still had IT related bits and pieces going on. We’ve launched the ACT Chronic Fatigue Society’s new Joomla powered site which turned out to be an easy gig, completed entirely without the input of a designer. They’ve taken to the new tech very well and have started adding content already. Peter Kabaila has been in central Vietnam helping extend an orphanage for poor disabled kids and he’s taken some photos of the work. Apparently they could use help with their limited IT means, too.. He’s also published an amazing new book on Aboriginal life here in this region called ‘Survival Legacies‘. I have a copy and I encourage everyone to get one for themselves. Meanwhile i’ve also been helping Rafe out with his online presence but it’s not ready to go yet. He’s a funny kid. Our meetings generally follow an hour or so of my floundering in the pool, which still happens on a regular basis. But more on that later.

This year’s University of Canberra graphic design students have put on their final exhibition dubbed ‘Taste Test Exhibition‘. I’ve been hosting the site for the event which by all account was a huge success. The site details the student’s style and aspirations and won’t be the last web page you see them featured on.

There was more but this alone is enough to say ‘not a bad week!’ and leave it at that.

There’s something about water i’ve always found comforting. There’s a predictable nature to it even if it is about to dump you on the beach. Swimming, next to Tae Kwon Do, has been the sport I’ve spent the most time involved with. That was long ago, though. So it was a happy moment to find familiarity on the weekend.

Moving your head through water creates such a loud sound. I realise now that this may have been an attraction to the activity in the first place. My favourite effect is reverb and an indoor pool is perfect for it. Even with only a few people swimming, there’s so much going on; the mechanical sounds of metal doors closing, dividers being moved, pool lanes being dragged in across the wet tiles combined with the human sounds of voices echoing, shouts, mixed in with the sound of water. And it never stops. It’s an environment I like.

It stands a chance of once again becoming a regular activity!

There’s a character I’m aware of who’s into all things musical. He drummed for the Never In Doubt and many other bands I don’t know about probably and I’ve spent quite some time listening to his solo work. Now the new group he’s with are about to launch an album. I enjoyed the single which is now up on YouTube:

YouTube has also come through with the goods recently. Lisa gave me the heads up to a web-centric production of a new Mortal Kombat series. It’s actually pretty good! Especially if you go by what has come before. It deals with origin stories which is no surprise. There’s a mix of old and new ideas. The new ideas are fun. So I think there’s only one thing that’s appropriate to say here…’and now for a taste of things to come’: Mortal Kombat: Legacy Episode 1.

Sauce – It’s Hard To Do Well

Your Job – Nobody Will Understand

The Garden – Continues

The Wold - Changes Every Time I Sleep

Wicket – Still Lives

Elroy – Does Podcasts Now

Where I Thought I Would Be – I Am Not

Boards of Canada – New Album Very Soon. Seriously

Where I Am – I Like

When James Blake performs – I Am Impressed

When I Update Next – Will Be Soon.

Christmas was obviously the event that took up a lot of everyone’s time. Over here it came together quite well. This year’s tree was the best ever. I spotted it quickly and it turned out to be the perfect size and shape.

My (usual) plans for a Xmas light extravaganza were sidelined after most of the strings of lights we own turned out not to be working anymore. There’s not really a huge range of home lights and if you poke around they all look like they come from the one place, from the same schematics. I guess you could say Zhejiang is to Christmas lights what Shandong is to kites. I guess. Anyway it made me think there’s probably room in a niche market for high-quality, durable and less tacky lights. I’ll continue the research…

Xmas eve saw the return of an activity thus the establishment of a custom; Lisa and I hit the road to have a look at Canberra’s efforts in friendly competition that is the house/tree lighting. The most impressive display by far this year was a house that was lit brighter than the sun and had lights that were timed to music. What’s more, the owners were transmitting the music via low power radio to the street. This meant we were able to tune the car radio into their soundtrack as we passed by. Impressed! The later part of the evening involved ghosts, good red wine and chocolate. Grand.

This year I took on the cookery aspect head-on, doing the Xmas lunch. I’ve never cooked a turkey before; here in Australia we don’t eat the bird all that often. Save for the occasional turkey baguette pretty much Christmas is where it features. Well, I ended up with a 9kg bird on my hands along with a goodly amount of quality Christmas ham all sold cheerfully by Wes the Irish butcher. Playing it safe I awoke Christmas morning earlier than I ever have have since being a child. Santa made it this year, I’m happy to report. 6:30 saw the fire lit to preheat the Weber…I went back to bed after that.

Taking some good advice I’d prepared things days in advance. A variation on a Jamie gravy was ready to be unthawed, stuffed potatoes and capsicums ready to be cooked and the stuffing the same. Hours later the turkey along with the above, minted peas, River Cottage style roast potatoes/veg, lunch for 14 was served without a hitch! Bizarre. It took a lot of effort but it was worth it. Who knows about next year!

Following on from this, Newyears came and went at the coast. Solon had once again shown the initiative and booked a nice house, this time at Bulli. Due to time commitments I went up independently of everyone else but made it in time for the celebrations. A good mix of people at an excellent location. I stayed up and took some photos of the transition from night to day that everyone deems so important:

I had to come home early because I’ve ended up with a new full time job. If you’ve been following closely you’ll know I’ve struggled to find long term employment with The Man for some reason. Despite another round of entertaining talks with recruitment agencies, the lead for this position once again came through a friend. There’s a simple conclusion to be drawn here, my experience being more than anecdotal evidence; recruitment agencies suck balls. They’re useless and standing back I can’t really see the point of them. They range in levels of professionalism from appalling to quite good. But never came through with the goods. And given the amount of time I spent with them,no jury would convict me for being unreasonably irritated. So, again: network, network, network! If you’ve got interesting friends they’re likely to be working in interesting places that will likely need additional people at some stage. This is the way forward.

So here I am as a content author / ‘rules engineer’ building the content for BICON, AQIS‘s replacement for ICON. It tells you what you can and can’t bring into the country. And lets just say down here at DAFF’s BSG we’re big on acronyms. The team is good, friendly. Emile sits a few desks over. The situation is promising. Despite working a ’9 to 5′ the garden and cooking haven’t suffered as much as I’d feared which is a nice surprise.

I have a large crop of tomatoes on the way which should satisfy all our tomato related requirements for the next few months. Coriander has proven easy to grow as long as you put it in the right spot, the strawberry curse has well and truly been broken with my little terrace producing some impressive berries. Apropos my Sylvanberry, a throwaway experiment, has surged with the rain and warmth almost like a Triffid. The runner made it all the way down the wall and into the next garden before I noticed. Importantly it’s started to bear some small fruits. Spinach, lettuce, basil and some self seeded rocket make up 2011′s first crops of leafy greens. A chili formed on a plant in a pot and was of good size but I’m not sure the plant is entirely happy in its current home. To chop all of the above up into an edible format I may well be using a Wustof Trident knife come my birthday.

That could be the sum of it, at least the essentials. I’d better post this before something else happens!

Welcome to 2011 @ BuzzMoo.com

Well, it’s been raining like that again.

Actually, harder. The trouble started on Monday morning where I woke to soggy socks. I assumed while sitting at my desk they’d slowly dry (sure, It would have made more sense to take them off) but they kept getting wetter and wetter. Right then I knew what had happened and I really did try to just pretend it didn’t happen for ten minutes. After that a brief survey revealed a good amount of water in my room, about a quarter of the carpet wet and my computers in  a puddle! The problem is the leak comes from what is what is essentially an inside wall of my room which I previously saw as the safer, dryer space. Given the amount of electronics in my room I’m lucky nothing short circuited.

StainBusters attended the next day with Big Drying Fans. Twenty four hours later and it looked like things were drying up nicely. I went to bed  just as the rain started to pick up again and for the fist time in my life raindrops on the tin carport roof weren’t a comforting sound. And I was right to be nervous. Because the water had already made a path this second lot managed to make it about halfway into the room. Nothing to be done about it except call StainBusters which isn’t so bad when the lovely Alanna is taking the calls  - she has wonderful phone manner and sense of humor, it could be a disappointment that all we get to talk about was wet carpet.

Last night was Nature’s big push. The radar had a big red dot over North Canberra and for about two hours there was an unreasonable amount of water in the air. Then the water started coming and didn’t stop. Couldn’t be stopped in fact. Dad, Mum and I spent the rest of the evening with buckets, towels and I used a dustpan as a scoop. There was no hope, really. A few hours later and almost the entire room was gone. Moved as much out as I could and everything up off the floor.

It’ll be a good few days until things start to come dry again. So in the meantime I’ve set up a temporary HQ in the dining room upstairs. Not the most comfortable arrangement in the world but I’ll certainly live.

Of course I’m not the only one dealing the the deluge, a lot of the ACT has taken a whack. Dams are at 100%, though! Dazza went out to check out Coppins Crossing but couldn’t get too far. The video below is evidence why.

Stay dry!

Today’s workshop “Building Websites From The Ground Up” has proven very valuable for us and I assume everyone else. We’ve had a range of diverse speakers from a wide range of backgrounds who have really covered building a website from the ground up from concept to delivery. Viveka kicked off the day with a hugely detailed presentation on the Victorian AIDS Council’s efforts to develop their new website. She let us into the finer details of the planning process including objectives, constraints, assumptions and a lot, lot more. The key thing to take away from their experience, I think, is that documentation and planning has to be paramount in the process of developing a site, if you’re to end up with what you want! Also critical to the process was ensuring Government accessibility standards were met and that the staff were adequately trained in using the new software backend (Drupal). Have a look at their site which was launched late last year – great effort! http://www.vicaids.asn.au

Following on from Viveka’s presentation we had Andrew Johnson from FII who detailed a developer’s perspective on processes and jobs very similar to Viveka’s. He really emphasised the personal aspect to developing a website, encouraging looking at the task as developing a relationship between the developer and the organisation you (they’re) developing for. Returned to frequently was the idea that it was a good idea to actually like the client you’re working for. If you don’t…consider not taking the job! FII are big on Joomla which is great to see. They’ve got a range of projects on the go and we can recommend checking out their site! http://www.footefrancis.com.au

If that wasn’t enough (and it could have been) Gary Barber from Radharc weighed in on all things Information Architecture. Detailed, to say the least! He offered suggestions on how to better survey and study a userbase so that more appropriate development decisions could be made. He also showed us multiple ways of considering content, how we might look at it differently and how we might spot patterns. Surprisingly, something as mundane as sorting cards turned out to be a great way (through discussion, not necessarily the final arrangement of the cards!) to organise information in way everyone can understand or at least is happy with. Survey, observations, interviews, analytics! Details about these and more can be found at Gary’s site http://www.radharc.com.au

A slightly re-arranged schedule and a relateively relaxed atmosphere after lunch resulted in an expert’s panel on web content management systems. Joomla, Wordpres and Drupal all represented (Silverstripe gets a mention), the importance of keeping ALL of your web software up-to-date was reiterated by myself a few times. Seriously, you’ll get hacked if you don’t stay up to date. Andrew and Vivecka got to field followup questions from an engaged audience and everyone seemed pretty satisfied.

Following afternoon tea an enthusiastic/passionate discussion about domain names in Australia and abroad ensued. Darrell’s position on the auDA policy review panel allowed everyone to get a bit of insight into the domains industry and the history that preceeded it’s current state. Do .com.aus get more traffic? Are they more appropriate than asn.au? What would happen if Australia’s domain policy ended up matching the American free-for-all? There were a range of diverse opinions and everyone came away with something to think about…

Overall a very valuable day and we’re glad we attended! This is actually an event that runs prior to Making Links 2010 proper which of course we’ll be attending. We’ll continue the coverage here and of course you can follow the Twitter stream at #ml10 http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23ml10

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Day 2

The conference proper kicked off this morning with a wonderful Welcome To Country from the entertaining Nanna Beryl Harp. Tanya Notely then made us feel hopeful and afraid at the same time by giving a presentation about freedom and technology. She used examples from worldwide to show how communications technology can make dramatic changes to social fabrics in a very short time. She also talked about how fast repressive governments and regimes can (and do) disable these technologies when they feel they need to. The group she works for provides resources and assistance for those who are being repressed. Head over to http://www.tacticaltech.org to learn more.

We were then very lucky to hear from Susan Moylan-Coombs, an Indigenous character that worked for a long time at the ABC but recently has been working for National Indigenous Television. This is a channel I’d never heard of before but It’s accessible through Foxtel, Austar and Optus. Susan gave us some interesting numbers, including an impressive amount of original content created and aired for very little money. Alarmingly, we were told that NIT may very well be shut down at the end of the financial year. This is appalling news; if NIT disappeared not only would our Indigenous community miss out on much needed local content but Australia as a whole would be culturally lessened. For more information on National Indigenous Television click here…

More to follow…

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Day 2 post 2

Web accessibility is constantly overlooked. But there are a lot of really simple and easy things that you can do to ensure that people with disadvantage have a great user experience at your website. Actually, it’s the law that you attempt to provide this. Vicki Stanton gave us the the basics on how we could think about making websites more accessible. One very important point (one I’ll have to shame myself with) is that transcribing podcasts is important (which I’ll do as soon as I get back to Canberra..), captioning YouTube videos is important and understanding that screen readers for the vision impaired will not work well with your site if you don’t take care. Vicki provided a great range of links to resources to help you and your organisation bring your site up to standard. Check out  Check My Colors, WAVE  (Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool) and ATRC Web Accessibility Checker. Vicki’s personal story was inspiring and encouraging. Well done!

Jessica Kerr really, really, REALLY likes forms. By cheerful coincidence we have been thinking about web forms here at CASE, too. Her insights proved very valuable. Her approach to building a great form revolves around “The 4 Cs”. Clear, Concise, Clever and Cooperative and the way she detailed the thought process that should go into building a form makes us feel confident that the next one we do will be the best one we’ve done… apart from giving a great presentation, Jessica also provides a stack of great articles at formulate.com.au..

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Day 3

Computers in Homes New Zealand have come across the sea to visit Making Links this year to share with us the trials and tribulations of deploying low cost computer solutions to remote and disadvantaged communities. There was a great deal of emphasis placed on working side by side rather from the top down in these communities. NZ (or this group at any rate) seems to have a grasp on how imposition of new ideas or interventions made in the social structure is so very condescending for an Indigenous culture with thousands of years of history. It took them over ten years to get where they are today and now with a line in the budget they certainly aren’t going away any time soon. While the politics and the geography are very different to Australia’s, the inspiration behind the ideas were valuable. For more information on the project you can head over to http://www.computersinhomes.org.nz

The WA Community Resource Network was another inspiring story that has obviously done a great amount of good for rural and regional communities in Western Australia. Generally focusing on communities between 200-3000 in population, they have ensured services like banking, Centrelink, vehicle registration and other government services are available to these areas. The polar opposite of waiting in line at Centrelink would be attending one of these community centres to enjoy a live cast of an orchestra performance in Perth. Which they also organise! From essential services to cultural enrichment, WACRN is providing these and more to a lot of grateful people. Find out more about the organisation at http://www.crc.net.au

More to follow….

The presentations on gaming mechanics for social action were fascinating. The idea of using game mechanics to achieve social action at first appeared novel but after a few minutes of schooling we were made aware of significant change achieved by making challenges/chores/laws “fun”. A wonderful example offered was an experiment by a car company who created a “Speed camera lottery”. Over a period of days a speed camera measured those speeding and those not, recording the details. Those who broke the speed limit were issued with fines as normal but those who obeyed the rules went into a lottery to win some of the money surrendered by those who were fined.

The change (for the better) of driving habits in the area were profound. This was one of many ideas floated out during the session. Words like “gamification” “interestingness” and “pointsification” are all real words even if this spellchecker doesn’t agree. Collecting, points, leader boards, levels, exchanges and flow are other words also used to describe the game mechanisms that people use to encourage participation in an activity.

The counter gaming presentation, apart from being heavy on theory (not a bad thing, and a great reading list is provided) was actually quite confronting. Videos such as “dead-in-Iraq” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTnuUMM7frk) and “Shoot an Iraqi” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtvvVbeaSHk) showed us how games and social media designed to re-enforce the institutions of war and conflict can actually be ‘hacked’ in various ways to turn the message on its head. Given the academic background of the material used, I’ve got to do some serious reading before I can say anything more in-depth! We’ll get a copy of the reading list up on the blog when we can!

FII’s Joomla presentation was comprehensive and energetic, demonstrating their in-depth knowledge of the web content management system. Working with the software for many years they have developed a range of open source and commercial components, modules and plug-ins which Andrew gave us a brief overview of. The question about open source versus proprietary CMS software was asked, the answer was that the entry cost of open source is much lower than a commercial solution but you have to trust in the community behind the free software to support your needs into the future; in some cases organisations require service level agreements that can only be properly arranged in a paid environment. On the other hand the community behind Joomla is so large and friendly that finding good help isn’t that hard.

By the end of the day everyone appeared happy and tired. The closing plenary summarised a lot of the feelings I’d heard expressed out during the tea breaks. A good group of people that have come together to share some great ideas. There’s plenty of work to be done by ourselves and by the conference. One discussion earlier today perhaps alluded to the goal we all share; by working hard enough and encouraging enough positive change we’re actually all working to put ourselves out of business, making our support groups unnecessary and irrelevant. Some groups put a timetable on that goal (2020 for example) and the more cynical among us perhaps don’t. Personally, I don’t mind – Tweeting and blogging isn’t all I do. Getting back to the other side of the continent is next on the list, for example. Then, probably sleep.

Thanks to everyone involved, see you next year!

Things kick into gear early in the morning tomorrow, so for now it’s sleep time!

“@bocpages Their site and myspace just got a black background. I don’t think this is just me. I thought I would let you know.” 8:34pm

House of Reps:
Quintin Hedges-Phillips – Secular Party: Decided to throw all I had at pushing back religion.
Andrew Leigh – Labor: Bob McMullan’s replacement, haven’t seen to much of the kid on the news, but have seen him in plenty of fluro vets and hardhats. Must be creating jobs!
Indra Esguerra – Greens: Greens always go above Liberal.
James Milligan – Liberal: Bottom of the barrel.

Senate:
Kate Lundy – Labor: Kate’s a good friend of CASE. She knows what’s going on and wouldn’t it be nice if she somehow ended up Communications Minister one day?
David Matthews – Labor: For added Labor support.
Hannah Parris – Greens: The Greens have some insane policies. Here in Fraser Green influence is on the rise. They’re effectively tempering any social swing to the right in this city, keeping Labor in check and pushing the Libs further away from power, which is what I like about them.
Lin Hatfield-Dodds – Greens: A nice woman who’s done a lot of work in the community. Her husband is a nice guy, too. But the Church Energy really, really turns me off here.
Darren Churchill – Democrats: These goons are referencing the Liberals for some reason. Since their almost total implosion a few years ago, I’ve heard almost nothing from them and don’t really expect to.
Anthony David – Democrats: Same goes for this guy. I might have even put them above The Greens had they not preferenced the Right.
John Glynn – Independent: Not much info on this guy. He could be a gun advocate for all I know, and since info was hard to come by, I have to put him towards the bottom. But not all the way…
Matthew Watts – Liberal: I’ll be honest, I didn’t look at this guy.
Gary Humphries – Liberal: At the end of the day ACT would be better off with Labor and Greens Senators.

If you like music check out www.thesixtyone.com.

We’re coming up on lunch in the first day of Connecting Up 09 – there have been some highlights so far including a great talk by Mark Pesce where he explored ideas surrounding the gradual change of our social fabric. An incredibly comprehensive online version of his presentation (plus much much more) can be found at his blog here.

Elliot Bledsoe’s talk on creative commons and copyright was very informative and ultimately, very important. Learning more about creative commons can be done (quite easily!) through their newly revamped website at www.creativecommons.org.au. A very important tip is to make sure you generate creative commons licenses specific to your country, even though CC applies worldwide.

The official Twitter feed has been getting a healthy workout despite generally poor wireless broadband at the venue! You can follow the twitter conversation here.

The second day of Connecting Up 09 is now in full swing. We’ve just had a talk from Alan Noble, engineering director of Google Aus/NZ. He gave a brief overview of some of their lesser known apps, cloud computing and answered some good questions. Just how green can cloud computing be? Can we get our information back out of the cloud if we place it there? He also detailed how adwords works and where community organisations can go to apply for grants from Google.

The wireless connectivity issues that plagued the conference seem to have been resolved (at this stage) so Twitter is still filling up with tweets. Elliott Bledsoe who gave the talk on Creative Commons yesterday also has a great blog post that explains how hash tagging in Twitter works and would be a valuable read for anyone new to Twitter.

Yesterday Susan Devine and Gail Tuft gave a talk on how they have used a wiki to maintain business knowledge. The session was packed and a lot of people were very interested in trying out a wiki themselves. Gail reccommended DocuWIKI for a simple, easy to use wiki platform.

Peter Deitz from Social Actions gave a thought provoking presentation on “Social Actions”. For his site you can see www.socialactions.com, for a list of social networking sites you can see this wikipedia entry.

Headshift, a social networking consultancy based in the UK (but looking to expand into Australia) has done some good work and their offical site can be found here: http://www.headshift.com.

CASE President, Darrell Burkey, presented also. His presentation “What’s in a Name – Choosing the Right Domain Name” looked at what makes a good domain name, how to register domain names and how to select the most effective name to represent your organisation. Also outlined were most common problems that organisations have with their domain names and how to prevent them. You can find CASE’s domain name info sheet here.

For the official CUA09 website, click here.

• Official Public Sphere event details on Senator Kate Lundy’s site.

• The Twitter feed from the morning.

• Craig Thomler’s liveblog from the event.

• Tom Worthington’s blog (Including links to the slides of the morning’s presentations)

More posts to follow, just need to let the dust settle!

Akismet  for WordPress: Anti-spam. If you’re running WP you’re probably already running Akismet. It’s a fantastic anti spam plugin that fights against the scourge of comment spam. If you aren’t running Kismet you’ve probably got a lot of jibberish comments from Russia. If you’re not running it, you must set it up immediately! You’ll need an API key for this, but getting one is a simple process. Akismet = ftw.

NextGEN gallery: Photo Gallery. This is a fully featured but simple to use gallery plugin for WordPress. It uses the nice Lightbox transition effects to display your photos and there’s an option to turn those photos into a flash slideshow. It’s got good thumbnailing, tagging and watermarking options. I’ve tried a few gallery plugins and this is definately my most favourite to date!

Cystats: Cystats is a great web-stats plugin with a good layout and a comprehensive set of views. It lets you see who visists, when and where. I use Cystats for “blog-only” traffic data which for some people is going to be their focus. Free, well supported – a must have!

So there you have three essential plugins for a multimedia website. Check back later for additions to this list!

“The lovely folks at Radio Proglas have been foolish enough to give me 45 minutes of air time. I think they think that because the majority of the audiance doesn’t speak English, I can’t do any harm.Radio Proglas is a Christian Radio Staion, but from 7.15 to 8pm Feb 12, I promise there will be no mention of god…possibly of alcohol and sex, but no god.Feb 12 @ 7.15pm in Czech / EuropeFeb 13 @ 5.15am in Australia” (Radio Proglas)

For a preview, it’s worth checking his MySpace and if you like what you hear do yourself a favour and join his Facebook group.

The day was well balanced and very valuable. The audience of around sixty comprised of people who had never used Joomla before, to seasoned gurus, and everyone in between. For the uninitiated, the first hour was used to show how quickly and easily Joomla can be set up in a variety of environments. A very thoughtful suggestion from Raoul Callaghan for people who don’t have their own web hosting account was to use JumpBox, a virtualisation package that allows for a nearly instant install of Joomla for you to play with! Being told about JoomlaPack, a Joomla backup and migration tool, probably made my day! CASE is always looking for handy tools to make things easier, and JoomlaPack looks to be one of them.

The day moved onto discussions about templating, general design and then security. A tip from Nick Sibbing has three big ticks and a star next to it in my notepad, and that is putting ?tp=i after a URL to reveal location and name of each Joomla module – no more hunting! Potentially the most shocking number of the day was that despite millions of downloads of Joomla, only a few tens of thousands of people have subscribed to the Secuity Alert email service. If you run Joomla but aren’t subscribed, do it now!

During the day there were two other  pieces of software shown off, all Joomla friendly of course. OpenFreeway, an Open Source e-Commerce solution, I think, shows great potential. I would be very nervous using a FOSS e-commerce solution (especially if credit cards are envolved) but a note the FreeWay people made was that, unlike any other in it’s class, will be PA-DSS certified (that is, appoved by the credit card companies). So, FreeWay holds potential for small business and not for profits that previously couldn’t afford to take their commerce online! Then, in a global launch, the guys from Zac Ware revealed Jentla, the world’s first Joomla Enterprise Layer. This could be an exciting development for CASE, because it allows you to administer up to a thousand different Joomla sites from one point. This means security updates, rolling out new extensions network wide and things of that nature may have just become a lot, lot easier.

This is just a taste of what took place during the day and I can highly reccomend that anybody interested in Joomla to attend the next one, well worth the trip!

“Hello, Everyone.

It breaks my heart to inform you all that Charlie Cooper, my better half in Telefon Tel Aviv, passed away on January 22nd.

We have been friends since high school, and began making records together a decade ago.  We have been so fortunate to tour the world together, while at the same time having a massive amount of laughs at one another’s expense.

Aside from Charlie’s singular genius and musical gifts, I can tell you that he was a total sweetheart of a guy, and a loving friend and confidant to people everywhere.  His musicianship was surpassed only by his greater gift to the world – his warmth, his generosity, his unquenchable humor, and his undying loyalty to those whom he loved.  In the spirit of honorable mention, however, I should mention that he had a shoe collection that was marvelous, knowledge of hip-hop that was profound, and knowledge of wine that was subtle.

He is survived by a sister, a neice, a nephew, his mother, his stepfather, me, and more adoring friends than the Universe has dark matter.  As such, his family and I ask for your discretion and consideration of our privacy during these extremely turbulent waters.

Yours in Music,

Joshua Eustis”

Terrible, terrible times!

You can follow along with all CASE’s projects at the official CASE Blog.

There are reports today that The Greens won’t give support to Conroy’s plan, effectively killing it. The Green vote in Canberra is strong and growing. And since I didn’t meet anyone who supported the plan, I can only surmise that our community has been appropriately represented by our elected officials. That’s a Good News item right there. This amusing article about Senators complaining about being subject to the same restrictions the public will be is the definition of irony. Talk about good timing though, it’s made some lawmakers give second thought to the idea.

Suspiciously good timing, actually! I might have to look in Hansard…

As for me, I’m tired but glad things went well. There are plenty of things I learned, one important one is that you need practice to demo a large number of these things effectively. Being intimately familiar with the devices will make the difference when trying to pitch their case, and that takes time.

So what’s next? Basically wait and see what the powers-that-be decide what they’ll do next (In Australia, specifically) we’ll see something solid on the OLPC wiki (wiki.laptop.org) shortly, I believe. More to follow…