Life is so good, it gets better every day

Protect our heritage

As much as I’m loving seeing Microsoft having to re-assess their business, documents like these are a little disappointing. This document was produced in quick time for a full page advert in the Dominion Post (a newspaper in Wellington, which conveniently happens to be the location for the NZ government) after a 2 day meeting with Standards NZ. NZOSS rallied around to get a couple of great people attending to keep things on an even keel and take notes. Good work guys! I am biased on this one, obviously.

Rapid News

Mark mailed with his latest venture –

Rapid News is a comedy spoof news programme with jokes. Think of it as a radio show without the radio. Or a book that you listen to. Or a picture without the shapes. Or a pat on the bum without the wink.

Check it out here – 8 weeks in an RSS feed, though I should warn it’s pretty Irish centric.

OpenSolaris Developer Summit

The first OpenSolaris Developer Summit has been announced for the weekend of 13th and 14th October at the University of California in Santa Cruz. It’ll be a pretty hands on summit, with a lot of discussion (hopefully) around putting together the bits of Indiana. It’ll also be a good excuse to party and get to know some faces behind the OpenSolaris project which I’m looking forward to – I’ve found with previous GNOME experiences, it’s the best way to get excited about where we’re heading for the project and putting a face to a name really helps communication wise too.

We haven’t yet got a solid schedule around, but there’s a mailing list set up and ready for discussion. We also have a small amount of travel sponsorships for non-Sun employees to be able to attend, so if you think you’d like to attend and have been active in the project thus far, please do apply. So go register! (oh, and save the world by car pooling down to the event if you can).

Fermentation proceeding nicely

In the fine tradition of YouTube, I’ve uploaded a status report.

Unsurprisingly enough, there’s a few better examples of people explaining the process of brewing beer on YouTube.

• How to brew beer – Lake House Brewing Co
• How to make beer (2, 3, 4) – Matt (waterball)

SUNW moves to JAVA

Red Hat’s reaction was to move to NYSE in response to the volatility of the NASDAQ. Sun changes brand. A while ago, Jonathan talked at an internal Solaris all hands where he talked about leadership, characterizing it under a single word, courage – courage to be honest and integral, courage to be innovative, courage to collaborate and courage to act with pace and react to market needs. Of course time will tell on whether this will be a successful move, but either way, I’m satisfied that Jonathan practices what he preaches and I’m massively supportive of that and his continuing leadership.

And Yet Again He Nails It

Like Jim, I’m sure I won’t be the last to quote passages of Matt’s interview with Jonathan –

The question to ask is, “What portion of the world knows my brand?”

With the Java platform I’d guess we reach 20 to 30 percent of the Internet every day (powering the games kids play online, the intranet application at a bank, etc.). Each of these constituents may think about Java in different ways, but in each case Java “sells” my brand. If you believe that brand is central to the next wave of Internet monetization–and I believe it is absolutely central–then the more people that know my brand, the more benefit inures to me.

and more importantly

Understand the demographics of your market. You need adoption in order to get sales. You don’t need to monetize every user of your software.

Both quotes absolutely on the money.

New Blog, New Comments!

I know I’m probably the last person alive to have a commenting system, but finally, thanks heaps to Jeff, I’ve now successfully transitioned from pyblosxom to WordPress. Very much liking the Twitter and Flickr widgets, and tweaked the style enough to feel good about having a fresh new look. I do lose URL points on not re-directing all my previous blog links, but I figure reasonably intelligent people can figure out the new URL. Hooray!

Happy Birthday GNOME

GNOME turns 10.

Hard to believe GNOME is 10 years down the road, and that I’ve been in the project for 7 of those since I joined Sun back in 2000. It’s incredible the amount of progress the project has made during those 10 years, with the launch of the GNOME Foundation and massive industry support. I’d like to have thought I’ve grown up too since those early days of hacking on gnome-session and not having a clue what I was doing.

Just before GUADEC I announced that I had intended to put together a documentary on GNOME, asking the various developers how they got involved, any amusing anecdotes and their thoughts for the next 10 years. Unfortunately, I didn’t really pull it off at the time.

But we have another chance!

As part of the birthday celebrations, record yourself or your local GNOME user group (like Jeff, Jono, Quim, Willie and Mikael), and upload the recording. We’ll be collecting a whole bunch of links to them on our scrapbook, and adding more footprints to our story!

Flowin’ in the Wind

Wildwinds had a 40% sale on snowboards this week, so I sucked it up and replaced the piece of crap I’ve been using for the last couple of seasons. I now have a new Flow Infinite and a pair of bindings. Sweet. Really looking forward to using them down in Wanaka when we head down there in 2 weeks time. Also looking forward to carving the slopes with my buddy!.

Brewing

Today, I am following in the footsteps of my brother. After talking for several years about how cool it would be to brew my own beer, I finally bit the crown and purchased the small beginnings of a home brew kit. Included in it is the vat, hydrometer, dextrose sugar, carbonation drops, heater mat, and various cleaning substances. My fellow brewer, Mikey, and I opted for the traditional glass bottle approach, and consequently needed to buy 48 litre bottles of Speights to would work nicely with our capping device. So we’re on a mission. Not only do we have to drink 48 litres of beer as fast as we possibly can, but we also need to be ready to produce at least one brew before working on our Christmas celebration brew. Embarassingly enough, the entire time I was in the shop scoping out the gear I had hiccups which I couldn’t get rid of.

I’m getting crazily excited and celebrated with a pie on the way home.