what are we doing today, brain?

I think I’ve mentioned Elizabeth Gordon Werner before, the FOSS in Government advocate and aspiring artist. Well, she’s doing a series of FOSS art, and the latest looks and sounds a bit familiar

Nicely done Elizabeth! There are more iterations of the same idea here.

When I knew I was going to be in the UK for a couple of weeks, I decided if I could go over to Ireland for a weekend I’d try really hard to make it happen. Well, I’m here! Staying in a gorgeous place in Dublin along with my wonderful friend and fellow conspirator Maureen. She is great fun and yesterday we explored Dublin, while today we are going to an beautiful historical site called Glendalough.

I love Ireland! I definitely want to come back here for a month! Photos will come soon.

I’ve been tagged by Allison with the “five things you don’t know about me” craze, so here I go

• I used to have a band and look forward to recording more music
• I lived in China for 6 months while studying Traditional Chinese Medicine, and speak basic Mandarin
• I can write as fast backwards and upsidedown as I can normally. My way of coping with being slightly dyslexic was to learn the alphabet in arrays when I was little so I could flip between them and stop getting my p/q’s and b/d’s mixed up
• I study Chan Buddhism and Shaolin Gung Fu
• I am easily distracted and thus have earned the unfortunate nickname “Shiny!” amongst some friends

I tag Amy, Rusty, Andre, AJ and Silvia!

This year has been _insane_, particularly being on the linux.conf.au 2007 team, but hopefully everyone will take at least a few days to relax and take a well-earned break.

For me this time is all about family, and the chance to spend quality time with my loved ones. Happy celebrations to the Christian and Pagan communities. A belated happy Eid to the Muslim community, and an early happy New Year and happy Chinese New Year (信年快乐!). That should cover the season, and Buddha’s birthday is in May

I’ll see some of you at linux.conf.au. Be safe and happy.

Yesterday Jeff and I got a Wii. When Jeff was convincing me (and I needed convincing as we already have computers and a gaming console), he tried saying that it could help us get fit. I thought this was laughable, but, as I love gaming I relented and we got one (by pre-ordering the day before, we got it cheaper too!

Anyway, holy crap!!! It is seriously the best gaming platform ever! The controllers are completely intuitive, and come wireless with rumble and sound. Boxing is actually like boxing! The games that come by default are awesome. You create a Mii, or an avator for yourself with _loads_ of tweaking options, and then your avatar can be used in all the Wii enabled games, so you end up building a profile through whichever games you are playing. It takes only a few minutes to get used to it, and it is really, really fun. Totally recommended!

Oh, and Jeff was right. The fitness training and sports games really do make you work up a serious sweat! Who knew a gaming console could finally get to the point of being better for your fitness rather than completely detrimental

There is this little project called dasher that basically can be used to “type” by zooming through sentences using an amazingly intuitive pre-emptive text tool. I’ve been showing it off to people who have an interest in accessibility for users who are physically limited, one handed, or even for mobile devices where typing can be a drag.

Anyway, one person I showed it to has just emailed me with another surprising application of this cute little tool. He has just had another child and while he is holding the baby in one hand he is able to use dasher to compose emails and other stuff with the other hand. Nice!

I had installed the program on Ubuntu when I was looking for accessibility software that may be of interest to the education sector (and boy are they getting interested!) and now that I’m looking through the website I’m flabbergasted! They can use breath or buttons, tilt sensors and an eye sensor to write!

It is great to have people working on projects like this. After all, the Digital Divide isn’t just socio-economic.

So I recently did a casual interview with Liz Tay from IDG about working in IT and being a woman in IT. It was a casual discussion and I thought it would be done in a short one page interview. It turns out she wrote it down verbatim for a 4 page article about “an interview with Linux Australia’s cover girl”. Funny!!

HAHAHA!!!

Thanks to Teh Internets for this and other funny logos

Seriously funny stuff

Jeff gets home in only two more sleeps.

If I should die this very moment
I wouldn’t fear
For I’ve never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
Still my heart this moment
Or it might burst

Wanna stay right here
‘Til the end of time
‘Til the earth stops turning
Gonna love you until the seas run dry
I’ve found the one Ive waited for

Gorecki - by Lamb