what are we doing today, brain?

My IBM T42 notebook — which I have loved and which has served me well — is unfortunately on its last legs. So in preparation for a trip overseas which will require a reliable laptop, I bought a black EeePC 901 netbook.

Wow! It is awesome. The battery lasted 5 hours today at a conference I took it to. The keyboard is great (although getting used to the shift key being right next to the up key is a little annoying). It cost $580 at Orange IT in the city (Sydney). Unfortunately in Australia they don’t have the Linux version (which also has a 20GB hard disk instead of 12GB on the Windows version) so I installed Ubuntu Hardy when I got home.

Jeff and I ran into a few little glitches. Here are some tips.

Firstly to get it installed. There is no CD-ROM so you can either create a bootable USB key or netboot the Ubuntu live CD image. We went with the latter as we have a fast network and server. We had to add the EeePC ethernet driver to the PXE image. We basically did this by first unpacking the default initrd.gz cpio image, adding in the atl1e.ko driver file and then cpio-ing the initrd.gz making the driver available for the PXE boot. This excellent blog post by Joseph Monk gives the instructions for getting and making the kernel driver (as well as how to install from USB key).

The webcam, sound and screen res all worked without any tweaking. Install cheese for extra fun! But the wireless did not work!

Even after trying the driver from the Ralink website, it would associate with networks but seemingly not connect, and at any rate Network Manager wouldn’t work with the wireless card using that driver. So we ended up having to use ndiswrapper (install ndisgtk — it has all the right dependencies and is easy to use) with the RT2860 Windows driver from the Ralink site.

After downloading the Windows driver, you need to unpack the file to get access to the inf file. cabextract and unzip on Linux didn’t work, which often work with self-extracting cab/zip installers, so Jeff had to install it on a Windows virtual machine to get these files. Once this is done and ndisgtk is installed you have to start ndisgtk and install the Windows driver by pointing to the inf file.

Lastly and importantly we installed the Ubuntu Netbook Remix user interface which looks totally awesome on the EeePC and makes the best use of the available screen space. Also the 901 uses an Intel Atom processor, it is fast and uses relatively little power. It feels fast and I’m really loving it

Reference: a big thank you to Joseph Monk for this post which got us on the right track.

• Gender perceptions in using computers in the classroom
  A really interesting study that reflects some of what I’ve seen. It is based on a couple of classes of 9-13 year olds. I’ve found soon after that age is when you see a gender gap. I believe this is due to negative (and incorrect) stereotypes and social pr
  (tags: women technology software geek tech teachers education)

Several weeks ago I went down to my hometown, Yass for Bonfire Night, which is on the Queen’s Birthday long weekend and often includes fireworks Anyway, I camped out there with some family and friends (in sub 0 degrees temperatures) and took some pretty cool photos. Enjoy!

Check out all the photos here where there are also some explanations

• McDonalds sued over Happy Meal toy (by Devo)
  “This New Wave Nigel doll that they’ve created is just a complete Devo rip-off and the red hat is exactly the red hat that I designed… Plus, we don’t like McDonald’s, and we don’t like American Idol, so we’re doubly offended.” HAha!
  (tags: mcdonalds devo humour)

• OAK Law Project | Open Access to Knowledge (OAK)
  “The OAK Law Project has released the results of its survey of the attitudes and practices of Australian academic authors towards the publication and dissemination of their research, Academic authorship, publishing agreements & open access” - Interesting!
  (tags: oaklaw ip copyright research australia)

• Simplified user guide - OLPC
  A simplified user guide for the OLPC XO laptop. A good read for those wanting some basic user information.
  (tags: olpc olpcaustralia xo)

• Alexandro: OpenOffice.org Migration Webinar
  “Alexandro, a longstanding member of the OOo project, is testing out some new online presentation tools and providing training and a Q&A for OpenOffice users tomorrow, June 19th 2008, 19:00 CST.” Thanks Janet!
  (tags: openoffice janethawtin training)

• The Invisible Closed Source Overhead
  “In this series of posts we will work our way through the closed source acquisition and maintenance path and have a look at some of the more obvious ones.” A really great post (and start of a series) by Brendan Scott.
  (tags: opensourcelaw brendanscott opensource closedsource foss)
• Behavioral Analysis of people in 1974
  “Everybody was kung fu fighting” Nice find by Conrad!
  (tags: kungfu humour funny)
• MSFTextrememakeover: Eight Years of Wrongness
  “Like many, I have been holding out hope that MSFT would gets its act together. In the first two fiscal quarters that looked like it might be happening. But then the wheels came off the wagon and it’s been down hill ever since.” An interesting read.
  (tags: microsoft business technology steveballmer vista windows)
• YouTube - WINDOWS VISTA AERO VS LINUX UBUNTU BERYL
  A really nice demo of both. The Ubuntu Compiz demo is seriously nice.
  (tags: desktop linux ubuntu vista video youtube fun)
• Stop whining about Wine printing! - Bend in the Weather
  A great blog post about how to print under WINE, using MYOB as the case in point. Thanks Matt Useful for all of us trying to help small businesses move to FOSS!
  (tags: mattbottrell myob linux printing wine)
• Making Windows 2003 TIFFs readable in Ubuntu - gar!
  “Technically, Ubuntu/Linux can view the multiple images embedded in the TIFF file, but it is a song and dance affair at the moment that is doable for a techno-dweeb, but not yet accessible to mere humans.” Thanks! This saved me today!
  (tags: microsoftissues tiff ubuntu graphics)

The last couple of weeks have been CRAZY! After getting back from my incredible Gung Fu week away, It was straight into everything. I flew back Saturday night, Sunday morning Jeff and I ran an OLPC TechFest in Sydney which had some amazing people come along, get talks about the OLPC server and XO projects, and then have some useful hacking time. In the middle of that I ran away to a wedding which was a big and wonderful Italian wedding, so Jeff was left holding the fort at the TechFest. There will be a more full report about the TechFest soon but there is a great write up by Sarah Maddox, so thanks Sarah! Awesome work by Martin Langhoff and Joel Stanley, who both totally rock!

A couple of days ago I spoke at a TechGirls event up at the Central Coast. I was the keynote speaker to about 200 girls aged 11-16 from the area, and it was fantastic! I got some excellent feedback (from girls and teachers alike) and I received this email which made it so incredibly worth it!

I thought you spoke extremely well and you have inspired me and my friends a lot. I aim to be a Graphic Designer sometime in the near future and you have encouraged me to follow my dreams. Up until today i was undecided if that was the career i wanted to pursue but after your speech today it has made my mind up. Thankyou very much for attending and sharing your views today. You have helped me choose my career.

Yes! I got a few other awesome emails and it was so exciting to have so many girls keen to get into IT.

Tonight was the third GeekGirl dinner in Sydney, which was awesome. Over 110 people (about 85% women) all getting together for an awesome evening of food, wine and talks. We had Claudia and another girl from Yahoo, and then Sara Falamaki, and all the talks were awesome. Then we played Guitar Hero for a while and it was a late night home. An awesome night and a major thanks to Damana, all the other organisers and to Yahoo for putting on such a great night

I’m currently (and have been for a couple of years) President of Software Freedom International, the body behind Software Freedom Day which is coming up in September. This is an awesome day and we had over 330 teams from over 90 countries last year all taking the concepts of freedom, democratic software, and of course FOSS to the mainstream. All the teams generally do events that are locally relevant and you’ll see some teams have an entire village do a march, or a music festival, or, as Nepal did last year, a candle lighting ceremony It is a fascinating and exciting event and I’m so proud to be able to help make it happen. Anyway, we opened registrations for teams almost 2 weeks ago and we already have over 160 teams registered for this year! We are expecting around 500 teams. Check out the easy to browse map for teams near you, and register your event today! Only the first 300 teams get a team pack with shirts, stickers, badges, some CDs and more

Lastly, one of my best friends Sue recently posted a whole schwag of photos on Facebook from our trip to China in 1999. It was one of the best trips of my life. I learnt a lot there and it reminded me how much I want to return! Below is a (kind of crappy) scan of one of my favourite photos!

Yes, that is me with short, red hair and riding a young and very fast horse. The locals thought I was lost control but I galloped to the group in the distance and back again. It is one of my best memories There are also some photos of us at Shaolin Temple and more, but you’ll have to find me on Facebook

Last week was an amazing week. I had an incredibly instructive, inspiring and mind-awakening week studying with a Shaolin Gung Fu Master who has had quite an influence in my life.

I started studying Gung Fu when I was almost 15 in a small Shaolin school in my hometown run by Shi Fu Jason Parks (Xing Mu). It was amazing because I found people and ideas that challenged me, new ways to look at life, and perspectives that looked beyond the mundane (and ironically back again). I’ve always had a strong connection with Chinese culture, language and martial arts and have over a period of almost 14 years spent about 8 years studying Shaolin, Mezong and White Crane Gung Fu as well as a combination of weapons, Qi Na, Qi Gong and Chan Buddhism. The more I study the more I want to study, and the more sense it all seems to make - which leads me to a core goal in my life, clarity.

Anyway, I hadn’t seen Shi Fu Parks for 10 years and jumped at the opportunity to visit his Shan Men Shaolin Gung Fu school for an intensive week of training and study. I spent 4 1/2 days training ~8 hours a day, studying hard and spending quality time with Evie, Shi Fu and his partner Karen’s beautiful little girl. Karen has also studied Shaolin Gung Fu and is as awesome Pilates instructor. I had a fantastic class with her which was a first for me in understanding the value of Pilates, even though I’d been to classes in Sydney.

An unexpected surprise was when I realised weapons are not nearly as regulated in Tasmania as in other states, so I got to play with a bunch of weapons that I’d need a special permit for in New South Wales (my home state). I played with Nunchucks for the first time which was awesome, scythes and my main weapon, the pole.

One of the core lessons that arose from this week was how my entire life is actually in fact one big classroom, and how the constant habitual segmentation of life into this and that is both completely unnecessary and ultimately divisive. This sense of wholeness about it all was quite a relief. I learnt a whole schwag of new Shaolin fist and weapons forms, and polished up some existing stuff I already had. It was awesome and although I got a little sore, I was actually quite surprised that I didn’t get much more sore! I guess time goes quickly when you’re having fun

I spoke to Shi Fu and Karen about getting their ideas online. They were interested and excited about the concepts of FOSS, software freedom and Creative Commons, and it felt pretty cool to explain it all. Jeff and I set up some blogs for them and will be helping explore how something like Gung Fu or Pilates might balance both the ability to engage broadly online, and the personal interaction so necessary in a teacher/student arrangement like you’d have in Pilates or Gung Fu. It’ll be an interesting challenge!

It was also fun to help two non-geeks get excited about Wordpress and feel empowered to play and tinker. Karen made the comment that she didn’t expect it to be so much fun, and I’m really pleased to be sharing something back

So a big thank you Shi Fu and Karen for their lessons and time, and a huge hug to Evie who personifies gentle tenacity, and from whom I’ve a lot to learn