From grant at mclean.net.nz Thu Jun 7 18:19:21 2012 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2012 13:19:21 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] [Fwd: linux.conf.au 2013: Call For Proposals (closes July 6)] Message-ID: <1339118361.2528.1.camel@putnam> -------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Andrew Ruthven Subject: linux.conf.au 2013: Call For Proposals (closes July 6) Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2012 11:35:02 +1200 === linux.conf.au Call For Proposals === We are pleased to announce that the Call for Proposals for linux.conf.au 2013 is now open! The conference will showcase the best of open source and community-driven software and hardware. It will be held in Canberra at the Australian National University from Monday 28 January to Saturday 2 February, 2013, and provides a great opportunity for open source developers, users, hackers, and makers to share their ideas and further improve their projects. === Important Dates === * Call for proposals opens: 1 June 2012 * Call for proposals closes: 6 July 2012 * Email notifications from papers committee: 28 August 2012 * Early Bird registrations open: 1 October 2012 * Conference dates: Monday 28 January to Saturday 2 February 2013 === Information on Proposals === The linux.conf.au 2013 papers committee is looking for a broad range of proposals, and will consider submissions on anything from programming and software, to desktop, userspace, community, government, and education. There is only one rule: _Your proposal must be related to open source_ This year, the papers committee is going to be focused on deep technical content, and things we think are going to really matter in the future -- that might range from freedom and privacy to open source cloud systems or to energy efficient server farms of the future. However, the conference is to a large extent what the speakers make it -- if we receive many excellent submissions on a topic, then it?s sure to be represented at the conference. Here?s a few ideas to get you started: * Kernel and core systems: file systems, embedded devices * Networking: peer to peer networking, or tuning a TCP/IP stack * Desktop: office and productivity applications, peripherals, support * Mobile: kernel, applications, programming, challenges * Servers: clusters and supercomputers, databases and cloud computing * Embedded systems: constraints in storage/memory, real-time aspects, open hardware * Virtualisation: benefits, challenges, management, kernel and application support * Systems administration: maintaining large numbers of machines, disaster recovery * Security: application security, network security, cryptography, malware, viruses * Programming: programming languages, software engineering practices, testing, continuous integration/deployment, different development methodologies * Modern web technologies: Open source web browsers, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, web apps, accessibility * Audio and video: video editing, VoIP, WebRTC, video player development * Free software and free culture: licensing and Free and Open approaches outside software * Free software use: home, IT, education, manufacturing, research, government applications LCA is known for presentations and tutorials that are strongly technical in nature, but proposals for presentations on other aspects of free software and open culture, such as educational and cultural applications of open source, are welcome. === Code of Conduct === linux.conf.au welcomes first-time and seasoned speakers from all free and open communities - people of all ages, genders, nationalities, ethnicities, backgrounds, religions, abilities, and walks of life. We respect and encourage diversity at our conference. By agreeing to present at or attend the conference, you are agreeing to abide by the terms and conditions (http://lca2013.linux.org.au/cor/terms_and_conditions). We expect all speakers and delegates to have read and understood our Code of Conduct (http://lca2013.linux.org.au/cor/code_of_conduct). === Format === This year, there are three different ways that you can present your content: * Presentations * Tutorials * Miniconferences _Presentations_ Presentations are 40 minute slots that are generally presented in lecture format. These form the bulk of the available conference slots. _Tutorials_ Tutorials are 90 minutes that are generally presented in a classroom format. They should be interactive or hands-on in nature. Tutorials are expected to have a specific learning outcome for attendees. _Miniconferences_ Miniconfs are day-long sessions on a specific topic. A separate CFP process will be used to propose and select miniconfs, and will be announced publicly soon. For more information on miniconfs, see: http://lca2013.linux.org.au/miniconf-cfp === Speaker Information === In recognition of the value that speakers bring to our conference, once a proposal is accepted a speaker is entitled to: * Free registration, which holds all of the benefits of a Professional Delegate Ticket * Exclusive tickets to the Speakers' Dinner for the speaker and their immediate family * One free family ticket to the Partners' Programme If your proposal includes more than one speaker, these additional speakers are not entitled to free registration or to any extra benefits. linux.conf.au does not and will not pay speakers to present at the conference. linux.conf.au is able to provide limited financial assistance for some speakers, for instance, where the cost of flights or accommodation might prohibit a speaker from attending. Please note, however, that there is a limited budget for travel assistance and that asking for assistance could affect your chances of acceptance. === Recording and Licensing === To increase the number of people that can view your presentation, linux.conf.au might record your talk and make it publicly available after the event. When submitting your proposal you will be asked to release materials relating to your presentation under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License. Additionally, if you are discussing software in your presentation, you must ensure the software has an appropriate open licence. For more information, see: http://lca2013.linux.org.au/cfp === About Linux Australia === Linux Australia is the peak body for open source communities around Australia, and as such represents approximately 3500 Free and Open Source users and developers. Linux Australia supports the organisation of this international Free Software conference in a different Australasian city each year. For more information about Linux Australia see: http://www.linux.org.au/ === Papers Enquiries === linux.conf.au 2013 Papers Committee Email: papers-chair at lca2013.linux.org.au From grant at mclean.net.nz Sun Jun 10 21:45:34 2012 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:45:34 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Meeting this Tuesday Message-ID: <1339389934.21776.1.camel@hoiho> Hi Mongers The next meeting of Wellington Perl Mongers is on June 12th (this Tuesday!). 6:00pm Tuesday 12 June 2012 Level 4, Catalyst House 150 Willis Street Wellington http://wellington.pm.org/ We have two talks lined up: * Finlay Thompson - Data Matching * Grant McLean - What's New in Perl 5? See you there. Grant From grant at mclean.net.nz Sun Jun 10 22:01:02 2012 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:01:02 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Meeting this Tuesday In-Reply-To: <1339389934.21776.1.camel@hoiho> References: <1339389934.21776.1.camel@hoiho> Message-ID: <1339390862.21776.7.camel@hoiho> On Mon, 2012-06-11 at 16:45 +1200, Grant McLean wrote: > We have two talks lined up: > * Finlay Thompson - Data Matching > * Grant McLean - What's New in Perl 5? Sorry, that was a poor piece of cutting and pasting. Continuing on from my talk last month about new stuff in the Perl 5 core, this month I'll talk about what's new *around* Perl 5 (mainly specific CPAN modules). Cheers Grant From grant at mclean.net.nz Tue Jun 12 02:27:21 2012 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2012 21:27:21 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Round up of tonights's meeting Message-ID: <1339493241.6318.4.camel@hoiho> Hi Mongers Thanks to Finlay for an enlightening talk on data matching. (Finlay: I forgot to grab a copy of the slides, so if you email them to me I'll put them up on the web site). Thanks also to everyone else for the usual robust debate during my talk. My slides are up on the web site now: http://wellington.pm.org/archive/ Martyn has kindly offered to do a talk next month so that leaves one slot free - email me if you'd like to speak. Cheers Grant From andychilton at gmail.com Wed Jun 13 02:37:38 2012 From: andychilton at gmail.com (Andrew Chilton) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 21:37:38 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Off Topic : New Node.js user group for NZ Message-ID: Hi everyone, Firstly, sorry for the spam on the list. Secondly, bring it on! :-p Most importantly however, Francois Marier and I have started a Node.js user group for anyone in New Zealand. We're a fledgling bunch here so it's good to stick together. We're not (yet) planning on having any meetings so it's just a mailing list for now for chatting, exchanging code, peer reviewing, Q&A maybe even helping people find jobs, contracts or the people to fill them. I won't go on about it here (thanks Mongers), but head over to the mailing list if you'd like to join and introduce yourself. :) * https://groups.google.com/d/forum/nodejs-nz Many thanks, Andy -- contact: Andrew Chilton website: http://www.chilts.org/blog/ From lrw at clear.net.nz Wed Jun 13 16:03:09 2012 From: lrw at clear.net.nz (Lesley Longhurst) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 11:03:09 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Hardware and Perl Message-ID: <4FD91C2D.3070703@clear.net.nz> Hi Mongers, Does anyone know a good* module for getting information about the capabilities of CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drives? The methods we've been using to date are not working too well with the transition to virtualisation. * "good" in this context means reliable and supported, works with VMware virtual drive, preferably Debian-packaged. -- Lesley Walker Longhurst Linux Systems Administrator Opus International Consultants Ltd From grant at mclean.net.nz Wed Jun 13 19:08:56 2012 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:08:56 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Hardware and Perl In-Reply-To: <4FD91C2D.3070703@clear.net.nz> References: <4FD91C2D.3070703@clear.net.nz> Message-ID: <1339639736.12793.3.camel@putnam> On Thu, 2012-06-14 at 11:03 +1200, Lesley Longhurst wrote: > Hi Mongers, > > Does anyone know a good* module for getting information about the > capabilities of CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drives? The methods we've been using to > date are not working too well with the transition to virtualisation. I'm afraid I don't know of such a thing. If I were looking to get that information I'd probably start by parsing the output of lshw. But that might be what you're doind already - you didn't say. We had a brief chat on the #wellington.pm channel on irc.perl.org and the only other suggestion that came up was perhaps your problems are due to running inside a VM where you can't get access to the information (once again, wild speculation in the face of little information). If you do find an awesome solution then by all means tell us :-) Cheers Grant From lrw at clear.net.nz Wed Jun 13 19:32:52 2012 From: lrw at clear.net.nz (Lesley Longhurst) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:32:52 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Hardware and Perl In-Reply-To: <1339639736.12793.3.camel@putnam> References: <4FD91C2D.3070703@clear.net.nz> <1339639736.12793.3.camel@putnam> Message-ID: <4FD94D54.3020802@clear.net.nz> On 14/06/12 14:08, Grant McLean wrote: > On Thu, 2012-06-14 at 11:03 +1200, Lesley Longhurst wrote: >> Hi Mongers, >> >> Does anyone know a good* module for getting information about the >> capabilities of CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drives? The methods we've been using to >> date are not working too well with the transition to virtualisation. > I'm afraid I don't know of such a thing. Oh well, it was worth a crack. I was kind of hoping for one of those "aha" moments like the time I was told about Data::Dumper ... but I know I was being optimistic. Never mind. :-) > If I were looking to get that information I'd probably start by parsing > the output of lshw. But that might be what you're doind already - you > didn't say. Various things along those lines. /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info is the first port of call, supplemented with info found under /sys/block/foo. This approach has served well enough until now but /proc/sys/dev/cdrom/info is not being correctly populated under VMware. It shows that the device exists but doesn't get the capabilities. I think perhaps we're missing a driver. > We had a brief chat on the #wellington.pm channel on irc.perl.org and > the only other suggestion that came up was perhaps your problems are due > to running inside a VM where you can't get access to the information > (once again, wild speculation in the face of little information). Thanks to everyone for trying. Perhaps I should hop on that channel myself. > If you do find an awesome solution then by all means tell us :-) I don't think "awesome" is the right word, but in addition to the above we use the output "cdrec dev=foo -prcap", and I've recently discovered dvd+rw-mediainfo which reports on media in the drive. -- Lesley Walker Longhurst Linux Systems Administrator Opus International Consultants Ltd From grant at mclean.net.nz Wed Jun 20 16:18:56 2012 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:18:56 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] NZ Open Source Awards Message-ID: <1340234336.5307.7.camel@putnam.wgtn.cat-it.co.nz> Hi Mongers Just in case you haven't seen it announced elsewhere, nominations are now open for the 2012 New Zealand Open Source Awards. The New Zealand Open Source Awards 2012 recognise and promote: * the contributions of New Zealanders to free and open source projects and free and open source philosophy * exemplary use of free and open source by New Zealand organisations. There are 8 different categories to recognise people and their contributions, so get along to the web site and get nominating now: http://www.nzosa.org.nz/ And just so you know, it absolutely *is* OK to nominate yourself or your own project. If you don't feel comfortable doing that, then it's also OK to ask someone else to nominate you. Regards Grant From grant at mclean.net.nz Wed Jun 20 16:19:54 2012 From: grant at mclean.net.nz (Grant McLean) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2012 11:19:54 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] NZ Open Source Awards Message-ID: <1340234394.5307.8.camel@putnam.wgtn.cat-it.co.nz> Hi Wellington Linux Users Just in case you haven't seen it announced elsewhere, nominations are now open for the 2012 New Zealand Open Source Awards. The New Zealand Open Source Awards 2012 recognise and promote: * the contributions of New Zealanders to free and open source projects and free and open source philosophy * exemplary use of free and open source by New Zealand organisations. There are 8 different categories to recognise people and their contributions, so get along to the web site and get nominating now: http://www.nzosa.org.nz/ And just so you know, it absolutely *is* OK to nominate yourself or your own project. If you don't feel comfortable doing that, then it's also OK to ask someone else to nominate you. Regards Grant From dave at thinktank.co.nz Wed Jun 27 03:17:35 2012 From: dave at thinktank.co.nz (Dave Moskovitz) Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2012 22:17:35 +1200 Subject: [Wellington-pm] Startup Weekend discount offer to Perl Hackers Message-ID: <4FEADDBF.3040606@thinktank.co.nz> Hi Everyone Wearing one of my many hats, I'm one of the organisers of Startup Weekend Wellington. I was talking to Lenz the other day, and we thought it would be great to get lots of Perl hackers along to Startup Weekend, so we decided to offer a special discount to wellington.pm members. We'd seriously love to see lots of new startups coming out of Wellington built on Perl. We'd like to offer a $50 discount on tickets to Startup Weekend Wellington to up to five wellington.pm members. The event runs from Friday evening 27 July through Sunday evening 29 July. Tickets are normally $99, so discounted would be $49. Tickets include all food, wireless, etc for the weekend. To get the discount, you just need to go to http://wellington.startupweekend.org/ click the "register" button, and purchase a developer ticket using the discount code "PERL". We also really want to specially honour significant contributors to Open Source projects. So if you're the owner of an OSI-licensed Sourceforge or Github project, or the author of a CPAN module (OK, or a publicly available Ruby gem or Python package) contact me directly on davemosk at startupweekend.org, and I'll cut you a FREE ticket. We have allocated five free tickets to FOSS contributors. If you or any of your members have any questions or would like any more info about Startup Weekend, just drop me a line on dave at hyperstart.co.nz or ring me on 027 220 2202. Thanks! Dave -- Background info (see http://wellington.startupweekend.org/ for more, and to follow our blog) If you haven't been to one, Startup Weekend is the most amazing release of entrepreneurial energy ever, where entrepreneurs, developers, and designers get together to form new businesses in a 54-hour marathon of inspiration, perspiration, collaboration, and fun. We attract people with all skill levels in a friendly, welcoming, yet challenging environment. The event starts on Friday evening with an icebreaker game and dinner, and then people pitch their businesses concepts to the crowd. 10-15 concepts will attract viable teams around them. By late Friday night, teams have sketched out their concept in some detail and everyone will have roles assigned and an inkling of how they?re going to achieve their goals over the weekend. Saturday morning is all about market validation ? participants will be contacting potential customers and finding out if there?s really a market need for what they?re building. If not, they?ll need to pivot based on the information they?ve picked up by ?getting out of the building? and talking to people. Meanwhile, developers and designers will be furiously building products (or mock-ups), and teams will be attracting partners, advisers, and customers. Teams will start preparing their final 5-minute presentation on Sunday morning, because they'll need to pitch it by dinner time. After that, prizes will be awarded to the best teams. Prizes include books, cash, software, and a trip to Kiwi Landing Pad in San Francisco. It's going to be amazing. -- Dave Moskovitz dave at thinktank.co.nz / Skype: dave_moskovitz Tel NZ +64 27 220 2202 / Tel USA +1 310 496 7564 Twitter: @davemosk Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/davemoskovitz Calendar: http://dave.moskovitz.co.nz/calendar