So I was in Melbourne last week (I was going to blog about it, I swear) doing the RH300 rapid track course. I learnt a lot, especially to do with troubleshooting. The instructor, Rohan Sathe, was excellent. And now, I'm a Red Hat Certified Engineer!

I strongly recommend the course to anyone who wants to take the exam; there are things in the exam that you simply won't have experienced. If you do the course, provided you pay attention and complete all the lab work, there should be no reason why you can't pass the exam. Which is important, if your employer is paying a lot of money to fly you from New Zealand to Australia, and repeating the journey might take a bit of convincing.

Just on a side note, when did the Australian government start requiring ID to purchase prepaid SIM cards? The form I had to sign appeared more concerned with how many prepaid services I already had, and not at all with the actual phone number (I could have missed something though).

Ok, so given as how I haven't actually posted these as of writing, I don't think anyone can blame me for skipping out a few days, yes?

I've come to the conclusion that Australians, at least [Melbourneites,Melbourneians]? are the worst drivers in the world. They drive recklessly and never slow down, I swear most would rather crash then give you a break. I compare them to driving in Auckland, which is reality is pseudo-chaotic. Everyone thinks it's this giant disorganised mess, but in reality, if you have confidence driving you'll love Auckland drivers. They will hold up 3 lanes of rush-hour traffic just to let you turn right down a small side street! In can even compare them to Seoul drivers, who are far more reckless, but everyone will let everyone in and will slow down when necessary.

Rant out of the way, I've finally bitten the bullet and bought an Elgato eyeTV DTT. After purchasing it I immediately tried it out in the car, and it picked up SBS no problem. However, reception in the suburb I'm staying in is very poor; at most I've been able to get 40% signal strength with a proper UHF antenna, although the small one that comes with it isn't far off. Once back in NZ, I plan to get myself a Mac Mini (preferably a used one off TradeMe) and set up a recording system / file share / backup server.

On a final note, don't forget to check out Global Game Jam, which will be happening all over the world (and in particular at Waikato University) very shortly. The idea? 48 hours to create a game based on a predefined theme. I'm not talking super 3d immersive graphics level, just something fun and playable.

Yesterday was full of driving. Sam rented us a car, he doesn't drive, and I can clearly see why. Traffic isn't as chaotic as Seoul, but I keep thinking we're going to have a crash every 30 odd min. Completely different to traffic back home.

Now, being the geek I am, before we left I upgraded my Okta Touch to Windows Mobile 6.1, and hence unlocked the GPS. I then proceeded to load it with some software, and a map of Australia. This is probably the best thing I brought on holiday. Unless you've had a GPS, you hae no idea just how much stress it alleviates. When Telecom turns off it's CDMA network or I get an iPhone (whichever comes first), I plan to mount it in my car for those times that I can't avoid Auckland.

What, so I didn't tell anyone I was going to Australia?

Sorry, between work, sleep and play, I forget to update things on the internets, such as my blog, Facebook etc. Anyway, I'm in Melbourne on holiday from the 5th till the 13th (next Saturday)!

Myself, Beverley and her family are visiting Beverley's brother Sam. Beverley's parents Bill and Louise are attending a conference in Cairns on Tuesday, and so will be leaving for that early. Beverley's sisters Jenny and Nicky have things on, and so will be joining us Monday.

Pacific Blue is a really good airline. Sure, you don't get any of the niceties that Air New Zealand gives you like... ... a blanket. It is a nice, cheap flight, and the cabin crew is friendly and energetic. Kinda reminds me of Mile High. The only thing that concerns me was the lack of water handouts. Yes, they offered for you to buy some, but I thought they were required by some air safety something?

Landed in Melbourne safely, where we encountered new ePassport booths, a "quicker" way of clearing customs. Being the digital natives we are, we had to try them. Insert your passport and answer 4 questions; have you had tuberculosis, are you a criminal, have you been to a place with yellow fever, and have you lied. Afterwards, it prints out a little ticket. You then take this ticket to a gate, look into a camera (facial recognition stuff), and proceed. Now that we know what we're doing (it took a second to figure out the order of operations), I reckon it'll be much quicker. One disadvantage though:

I don't have an Australian stamp in my passport!

Upon leaving the airport, the heat struck us. Not as bad as entering Seoul, but still very noticeable. Also, Australians seem to have an interesting sense of art, as the "artworks" along the motorway just seemed to be rectangular pillars arranged in some weird fashion. Except the huge concrete ones on the bridge, which didn't actually support the bridge...

Was mostly uninteresting after that. Went to TGI Fridays, went to Borders, went home and slept. More as I encounter it.

First, a public service announcement. The SCMS Pub Crawl will be happening on the 17th of October. A splendid time is guaranteed for all, as has been the case year after year. Free/cheap drinks and lots of free food, and of course the always popular pub crawl t-shirt (which will NOT feature Comic Sans MS this year, graphic designer types can wear it without shame). Being part of the SCMS is not a requirement, we always welcome our Science / Engineering counterparts, or anyone else who has a geeky tendency. We need to know numbers by the 13th. $18 with t-shirt or $3 without, collect your tickets from Bronwyn Poki in R.G.22.

The year is quickly pulling to a close, like it does year after year, and so begins my plans to move between lovely air-conditioned rooms, ensuring that I'm not at all exposed to the harmful UV rays of summer. It always surprises me that it happens, in the same way most nerds were surprised when 01/01/2000 happened. It's not as if it's something you can count down to or anything. And so if I've done my math correctly, this is the last ever time you'll be able to read The Nerdery this year. I should end with a reflection into all that's happened this year, unfortunately I still haven't learned how to program reflections correctly (The Earth language is worse than Java), and I can just barely do them with Algebra. So instead, here's a short list of what I'm looking forward to in revision 2009;

I'm looking forward to getting rid of the horrible Windows thing in my pocket and getting a Google Android-based thingy. No, not iPhone. The iPhone, although pretty, sucks when compared to what the Android is going to be able to do. I'm looking forward to Internet Explorer 8, how much better the web will be (standards-wise), but not how slowly it will be adoped by users. I'm looking forward to the end of people's hatred for Vista as Windows Mojave hits the shelves. And finally, I'm greatly anticipating playing Duke Nukem Forever.

I look forward to spending another year hunched over the keyboard with your, dear reader. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

First and foremost, the people at WAND are gauging interest for running a JNCIA course over a week of the summer holidays. For those who don't know what JNCIA is, it's an entry level networking qualification from Juniper Networks (comparable to the CCNA from Cisco). This is a great way to get hands-on networking experience from people who really know their stuff, and if you have any aspirations of getting a technical job with Telecom, Alcatel-Lucent, Kordia, or some other telco/service provider, I strongly recommend you take this course. Email ben@staz.net.nz if you're interested.

Now, onto the ASPAs. It rocked. Except for me the next morning, when I realised oh too late that me + Chardonnay == bad. Hangovers aside, I really enjoyed it, and I hope that it'll be equally awesome next year. Being the photography geek I am, I had my camera. And despite being incredibly intoxicated, I managed to take some decent photos with it, which you can find on this week's classy busted page, or at http://www.jlaundry.com/photos/aspa08, which will not work properly in IE 6.

And so here is where I venture to nerdiness. I'm one of those people who won't release something until it's exactly how I envisioned, or at least decent to the point where I like it. Which is exactly why it's now months since I started writing code for my photo gallery. In designing my website, I've always upheld the concept that it should be easy enough for my mother to use. Design-wise this isn't hard, just use decent (bigger than small) sizes and everything else somehow falls into place. But technically, making something consistent under all circumstances is incredibly difficult.

I write in valid XHTML. I use compliant CSS. I use the most rudimentary of JavaScript, and use libraries (which are designed to be cross-compatible) wherever possible. So why is it that even the "better" browsers aren't compatible with each other? I'm puzzled why Safari, Firefox and Opera all render things differently, when all three (3) are supposed to be a better, more standards-based web experience compared to Internet Explorer.

The only explanation I have for it is the fact that users of said alternative browsers are more likely to run a newer, less bug-ridden version, and hence the kinks will be worked out in time. Firefox almost forces updates upon users, Apple tricks them into downloading it, and users of Opera are mostly developers, who love new software. And yet here's big Microsoft, who won't even put IE 7 into the last XP service pack, despite IE 6 being more than 7 years old. People like to drive new cars, they're safer and have more features. So why is it 40% of the world is still driving a shitty old commodore?

For those of you out there disappointed at the lack of content lately, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about my little site. I've just been busy with work (seriously cool stuff which I hope to share soon) and getting the backend working. Now that it is, you'll start to see some changes around here.

For example, you can now see my latest Twitter up at the top of the main page. Nifty eh? Next up, I'm almost done my admin interface, so I'll be able to tell if people are writing comments, and actually respond to them in a reasonable timeframe. You know, like I should have done in the first place, instead of relying on phpMyAdmin.

Watch this space.

It's time I sat down and explained to the general public why, despite the contradictory evidence, they shouldn't take anything on the internet seriously. "Zealots". Zealots are everywhere, and they propagate their thoughts throughout the internet like a sex joke propagates though a middle school. Slow at first, but by the end of the week everyone knows the tale of the 3 (three) sticks that get shoved into a dark hole and made to puke.

While the more commonly found zealots should be obvious to those who've been to more than one (1) forum, such as the gaming console zealots (nerds who still think their god-given console is better than a computer) or the Mac/PC/Linux zealots (nerds who still haven't heard of interoperability), I figured I'd better start informing everyone about the lesser-known types...

The fads-never-die zealots. As much as it pains me to lump them all into this category, I really can't be bothered explaining how forums about every single frame of Tool Time is analyzed and personalized, or those still stuck arguing wether or not the earth is flat. These are the more specialized type of zealots, and are either very hard or not hard enough to find with a few keywords typed into a search engine.

The 'simple concept' zealots. "Imagine a 747 is sitting on a conveyor belt, as wide and long as a runway. The conveyor belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels, moving in the opposite direction. Can the plane take off?" Simple eh? It's too bad that, provided you have a group of 3 people, everyone will come up with a different answer. Thankfully, these arguments are mostly confined to 4chan boards, and the occasional Bongo sushi session.

The n00bs. Not so much zealots as-per-se, but still as annoying as, or even more so in some cases. These are the people who refuse to learn before diving head in, and once their in, still refuse to learn. It's like someone who refuses to learn how to tell time using an analog clock, so instead of learning just complains whenever a digital one isn't avaiable.

And finally, there's the mindless attention-seeking zealots. The worst kind, they'll infect the "off-topic" boards of any forum with crap, and will advocate for whatever dumb-fuck idea pops into their head. These people will fight on the internet for the sake of boredom [1], and seek out new places to drain the life of.

_{[1] And I don't mean that in the good, Uncyclopedia Flame Warriors way.}

I hate getting my calendar mixed up. I sat down this weekend to realize that next Saturday is software freedom day, and so this column misses out being read before then by a mere two (2) days. Oh well, better luck next year.

Let me begin by declaring my stance on the FOSS (Free, open source software) issue. I'm the uni's Microsoft student partner. My personal servers run Windows Server 2003 and FreeBSD (using VMware). At work, I manage software projects that utilise php, Perl, MySQL and Oracle, and servers that run Linux (with Xen). I have a Mac laptop, and being the photography nut I am, I use Adobe software. Who says you can't mix milk with orange juice?

Most people don't care what tool they're using, so long as the tool best suits their needs. This is where a lot of conflicting ideas between free software advocates and the non-free-software types occur. If someone were to say "you can have as many spoons as you like, so long as you give up your knives", most people would laugh it off and walk away. But, in my opinion, It really comes down to that.

There are many types of zealots in the computer 'verse, as i'll get to in my next article, but the hardcore FOSS advocates seem to be the most aggressive of them all. These are the type that take the "all-or-nothing" approach, which by today's standards just isn't feasible. Imagine if Adobe adopted the FOSS business model; gave away their software but charged for support. Raise your hands if you regularly use Photoshop and have ever contacted Adobe for support. How about if they gave away a feature limited version, but allowed you to pay for advanced features. Well, isn't that what we're currently doing?

I know quite a few people here at waiKato who would like to think the world can and should adopt to certain ways of thinking. But one solution will never be able to gracefully meet all needs, a solution that tries to is obviously not a good solution.

On a more upbeat note, I'll leave you with a quote to mull on, by one of my former lectures.

I've been insulted by Richard Stallman three times and I've only just met him.

As many nerds may know, waiKato has had more than a fair share of it's nerdiness. There's something about the fine farmland air that produces the best nerds in the country [1], and probably the best in the world. From the warm routers [2] of WAND, to the students SSHed into the labs, to the first-years mocking the management students who are trying to learn how to code, to the end of year pub-crawl, we're a proud bunch.

Nexus has been here for us nerds. Back in 1996 was the first glimpse into mainstream nerdery, with an article about the internet written by my cousin Malcolm (hmmm... I wonder if you still read Nexus/my blog...). Thats right, a 7 page long feature on the internet. Let's see a modern contrubutor rant and rave on that long! Then a few months later started a column called "Computers", which was renamed to The Nerdery a few issues later. Each column started with 42.

I had the intention of analysing the columns, how things have changed between then and now, but got distracted by how the first Nerdery column talked about online dating, and just how little had really changed. There was even a mention for those who couldn't get an online date to revert to a site with free pr0n passwords. Unfortunately, I don't know of such a site to give you, but I'm sure if you google hard enough you could find it before the ITS people find you.

And there's been the advertising revenue to go with our long-running nerdy column as well. If you ever get a chance (hopefully you'll be able to just look to your left), have a look for the raunchy Microsoft ads in Nexus issues that were. They launched a campain back in '2k (and then again 2k3) promoting their student-friendly priced Office editions. I gotta say, not only do they really get the message across, but it's amazing they were published in the first place.

_{[1] I'm not just talking about our PBRF ranking
[2] if you're a kiwi bloke out for giggles, get Donald Neal or someone with an equivlently awesome accent to pronounce routers
[3] http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/department/history.html}