Linux.conf.au (1)

[kerravonsen]

I survived the first day of Linux.conf.au!

I woke at 6am, dragged myself out of bed and straight to the shower to wake myself up. I made it to the bus in plenty of time, and started reading a new book (but I'm not finding it that interesting).

I got off the bus at Myers, preparing to cross over to Elizabeth Street to try to get the #19 tram, when I noticed a car beeping at me. And who should it be but dawnmist and Col! They offered me a lift to Melb. Uni. which I naturally accepted. They had been intending to catch the train in themselves, but the train had left early, so they had to drive in. Hopefully tomorrow not being a public holiday, the public transport will be a bit more predictable. Though tomorrow's bus will be an earlier bus. Oh well.

We got to registration, got our stuff, and sat down to go through the "loot". And loot there was! Not only did we get given a pretty good bag with the usual program and handful of advertisements (and conference T-shirt), but there was actual useful loot.
- a steel water bottle
- a folding umbrella inside an aluminium case
- a RedHat hat (a black baseball cap, with a RedHat logo)
- a cable tidy
- a Koala badge with "Melbourne" on it
- a few info-ish things

We were busy looking through the stuff, and transferring stuff from one bag to another; Col offered to take the extra bags back to the car. They had both brought their laptops, which was common. I hadn't brought mine, because I wasn't sure whether one did, but now I know.

With all the sorting, we missed the first items of the day, but that was okay. dawnmist and I went to the lounge and sat (she fiddling with laptop, me just reading) until morning tea. Which was catered, whoa! Tea, coffee and actual nice bikkies. (My favourites were the gingerbread ones). I had coffee, for the caffine.

Then we parted ways, going to different items.
The item I went to in the Education mini-conf wasn't the one on the programme, but I'm glad they switched it, because it was a very interesting talk about accessibility and metadata. The following talk was, well, I'm not really certain what his point was.

Lunch. Which was snackage which I'd brought with me, because I'd been warned beforehand that there weren't any food places open on campus because it was a public holiday. I sat on a step in the shade, which was quite pleasant. Melbourne Uni is really quite a stately campus, with lots of sandstone and ivy, at least where I was. And trees.

After lunch, I went over to the Community Wireless stream, but they also didn't have what was on the program, instead continuing an earlier talk, which was all Greek to me. So I took out my notebook and worked a bit on "Paradox" instead (yay!). But the talk after it was what it was supposed to be, which was about wireless in the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project. That was quite interesting (I think partly because this speaker was simply a better speaker, more at ease and more engaging). I noticed he had a T-shirt which said "su queensland computercamp.org.au" and I thought "Aha! Scripture Union Computer Camp!" So I went down afterwards to talk to him, and ended up having a long chat with his wife, who was also involved in SU computer camp. She let me play with the OLPC computer too. Cool stuff. We talked for quite a while, because it had been the last talk of that stream (because their other talks had been cancelled) so everyone had left except us. A couple of people came in looking for the other talks and we told them that there were no more.

Then a bunch of guys came to the door, saying they were just looking at the theatre because they were going to be there tomorrow, and I asked them which mini-conf they were, and they said "Gentoo", and I was all "Yay! Gentoo!" and they said "Well, now we know there's going to be at least one person..." I then warned them I was also going to be at the Linuxchix one as well.

So I'm not sure which one I should be at at 9am, since the main GenToo one I'm interested in is their 10:30 talk, but now I wonder if I should go to their 9am intro for moral support. Except I'm a bit more interested in the 9:20 talk for LinuxChix... Hmmm. Naw, I should go where I'm interested. Except, that I'm curious as to what they would say in the GenToo intro. Hmmm.

We all left, and the tail end of afternoon tea was still there, though it was going fast and they packed it up while I was still drinking my coffee.

I didn't go to any more items, just sat around in the shade and wandered a bit, so I could doublecheck where the tramstop was for tomorrow. I also wrote a bit more of "Paradox".

During the day I saw a couple of people with Asus eee PCs. I want. I want. So much so that I looked at the programme for tomorrow, to see if there would be any point where I could skip an item or two so I would have time to go into the City and buy one. Except I am supposed to be saving money. Except they are so cool! And small. I want.

Sitting there in the courtyard, I saw Col walking on the other side, called out his name, but he didn't notice me, so I followed him downstairs to where dawnmist was sitting at a table tapping away at her laptop. So we chatted away for a while, and Col told me the cheapest place to buy an eeePC, and reasons why I shouldn't buy it (such as "There's a 10inch one coming out this year some time"). As we finally were gathering to leave, he went looking for a loo, and found instead, someone with an eeePC who was willing to let us have a look at it. The keyboard is small, yes, but one could get used to it. And of course I already knew that one of the attractions is that it is running Linux (Xandros Linux). I want.

We decided to go and have dinner together. We hopped into the car and went to a place in Chadstone that they knew and liked (Japanese), which was nice. And more companionable conversation.

Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig!

Made it.

Comments

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you had a good time. I'm glad. :-) Though now I'm wanting Japanese food, which I can't get round here. :-( But it's more important that you had a good time! :-)

[kerravonsen]

8-)

Comfort yourself with cheerful Wilson.

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

Yes, Wilson and I have spent all day converting and organizing fic files. Mucho progress has been made. :-)

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a good and geeky day. Someone on my flist has an Asus eee PC which she carries round with her and she loves it.

You had a public holiday too? Australia day? It was Auckland anniversary here.

[kerravonsen]

Yes, Australia Day holiday (the day itself was on a Saturday this year).

Someone on my flist has an Asus eee PC which she carries round with her and she loves it.

The conference would be a perfect place for it, since I'd be carrying it around all day, and a full-size notebook would get heavier and heavier.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

You're lucky. If our two national holidays fall on a weekend, we get zip. Some years we lose both.

[infiniteviking]

Neat stuff! :D Sounds like you had a great time.