Canllaith.org

It’s been overcast but warm most of the time we’ve been here and we’ve had a very lazy and rellaxing holiday of walks along the beach and a little swimming. Evenings are being spent working our way through the local restaurants with some very nice finds. A Touch of Salt, down by the Ross River, served up a sublime eye fillet with baby carrot and whole baby beetroot. I mistakenly ordered a dreadful Pinot Noir, but the exceptional late harvest Viognier that arrived with my apple pie more than made up for it.

We’re a little bewildered as to what people actually do here - the city mall is half empty, with an entire row of shops vacant due to the planned construction of a new plaza. There are a couple of bars and a scattering of places to eat but compared to Wellington, Townsville is lifeless. We did visit the local aquarium, which features living coral and is the largest of it’s kind.

I took the opportunity to go and visit some gadgets that aren’t easily available in stores in Wellington - the Acer Aspire One, for which a review should appear in Linux Journal soon, and the 10″ EeePC. It’s enormous for an Eee, but with it’s 80GB hard disk and 95% full size keyboard it compares very well against my partner’s 11″ Sony Vaio, and is much the same size and weight.

It’s incredibly relaxing to be able to walk around in shorts and sandals and breathe easily without fighting Wellington’s cold winds. The only real problem we’ve had so far is that the hotel WIFI is dreadful. Not only do the cleaners unplug the AP every morning to vacuum, but the internet connection seems to be running off a 56k modem.

Oh, and don’t ask about the coffee.

We awoke at 0340 to make our 0600 flight to Brisbane, only to find once we’d gotten to the airport that the flight was cancelled. We were lucky enough to be the last two people transferred to a flight to Coolangatta, approximately 100km south of Brisbane. Never heard of the place? I don’t blame you at all. It’s like ending up at Levin rather than Wellington, except that Levin doesn’t have tropical beaches.

AirNZ did look after us very well, providing a reasonably comfortable air-conditioned coach to take us to Brisbane airport where we had a very long wait for our next flight. Poor Oliver wasnt feeling well after we’d been foolish enough to induldge in some pre-packaged sandwiches at Wellington airport so instead of spending the day in Brisbane we found a comfortable pub in the airport with squishy seats and camped there until our evening flight to Townsville.

Unfortunately Oliver accidentally dropped his bag and for a few moments we thought he’d destroyed his camera. Experimentation showed it was actually the lens, and probably just that the mounting ring where it attaches to the camera was slightly wrenched in the fall. Other lenses are working fine, and hopefully we can get the damaged one repaired or replaced in Townsville.

That screw is really not supposed to be sticking out like that.

Our flight to Townsville was pretty uneventful, apart from a child throwing up all over the waiting area just before we were to board. Thankfully said child was not sitting anywhere near us on the flight. Our first day in Townsville all we’ve done is a little shopping and getting our bearings as it’s quite overcast. Sun is forecast for the rest of the week and the swimming and beach lounging part of the holiday should commence tomorrow.

I enjoy reading Stepcase Lifehack, although I tend to skim it lightly. Many of the posts can seem a little trite and obvious at times.

Some are so obvious I wonder how, when I feel them shock me like electricity and trigger my mind’s resonant frequency, I never thought to apply this concept to my life before. Others on the surface can seem fairly ordinary, but have me thinking along tangents to the original premise for days.

8 Good Reasons to be a Lousy Musician

A lifehack I’ve always felt the strength of but had forgotten a little recently is developing creative space. As children many of us had the ability to get so lost in our art that we would reach an almost zen state. I found it all too easy to pick up a pen or pencil and be so absorbed in my task that I’d come to myself with a shock hours later realizing it was too dark to see my page and that I’d had no sense of the time passing at all.

I never lost the ability to reach that state of concentration, but as an adult a trap I often fall into is to focus on the performance rather than the art. There’s a certain pleasure to be taken in being good at something, but there are times it’s more enriching to seek the creative space rather than a polished end result. The art itself is just the means to reaching this place. When I focus too hard on the quality of the execution, this transforms the creative pursuit into just another activity to make time for. When I let go of caring whether it’s good and instead focus on whether it’s affirming, I take an almost spiritual calm and centeredness away with me when I come back to the mundane world.

As a writer and photographer, it’s a given that I make room for creative space in my life. Even if I hadn’t found avenues of employment for some of my more artistic passions, I’d still consider it a priority to set aside time to pursue them. Music, drawing, and writing give me ways to stop the world for a few hours every now and then and find some kind of serenity.

If serenity sounds appealing, I can wholeheartedly recommend giving creative space a chance. It’s easy to be so busy that you forget to make time to centre yourself. Some of us have almost forgotten how to.For those who have, reaching that state might take a lot more than just sitting down with a sketchbook. Even if you don’t find yourself reaching a zen-like calm every time you pick up your paintbrush, the abiding joy taken in creation is almost a defining characteristic of humanity and I at least can’t imagine ever feeling my life has too much of it.

The very day the EeePC 701 was available in stores in New Zealand, swept up in the internet hype, I bought one.

The hype was well deserved. The original Eee has been credited with turning the notebook market on it’s head. While the concept of the netbook has been tried before, this time, we were ready for it.

I had a lot of fun putting my EeePC through its paces for Linux Journal. I regularly tested its limitations, carrying it around for internet access and writing while out at cafes and travelling. It’s spent quite a few hours perched on racks in server rooms displaying build documentation or providing me internet access over HSDPA modem. I loved my EeePC, but I did find myself wishing Asus would market a premium model. I was willing to pay a little more to get a little more.

When the EeePC 900 was announced it felt like they were reading my mind.

The Linux version of the Eee900 has a 9” screen at 1024×600, a 1.3MP webcam and 1GB of memory as standard. It has two flash disks, one 4GB and a second 16GB. The second SSD is noticeably slower than the first, making it unsuitable for OS install but at least providing a lot more storage for your data. The touchpad has been tweaked, adding multitouch support and a larger surface area. The notebook itself is also slightly larger, the thickness and width remaining the same but the depth being increased by an inch or so.

Of course, the price tag has gone up, from $600 NZD for the 701 to $750 NZD for the 900. While some couldn’t justify the increased cost, to me it’s well worth it for a computer I can use more seriously. The display is certainly not overgenerous but has at least improved from downright frustrating to reasonable for many tasks. The aesthetics of the notebook are also vastly improved without the large black speakers either side of the panel.

It’s not all roses, however. The battery life is still a miserly 2 – 3 hours, and I find both models of Eee to get uncomfortably warm. I’m also less than pleased at Asus choosing to use a much slower SSD for the larger disk. The announced Eee901 should remedy all of the remaining issues stopping the Eee from being quite the most perfect computer I could envision, with 5 hours battery life, an Intel Atom CPU and the addition of bluetooth.

I’m very excited about where Asus is going with the EeePC line. I see the Eee900 and 901 not as competing for your upgrade dollars against the 701, but threatening $4000 ultraportables from the like of Sony and Fujitsu. They’re cute, they’re fun, they’re portable and the featureset is creeping closer and closer. All for a quarter of the price.

I’m unashamed about being on the netbook bandwagon. The 900 is the first thing I pick up in the morning and the last thing I put down at night. The EeePC has cemented itself a solid place in my heart by being easy to learn, work, and play – and even easier to love.

I have the most ridiculous hat in the world.

That is all.

I haven’t been a geek for long.

I discovered computers pretty late in life, spending most of my teenage years studying music. I came to a realisation in my late teens that it would require a lot more hard work than I was willing to put in to lift myself above mediocre, and with a teenager’s arrogance I decided if it didn’t come easily I wasn’t going to waste my time on it.

It’s been a long time since I really played more than once every few months, although I still sing incessantly. After selling my digital piano close to two years ago when I was strapped for cash, I haven’t had regular access to an instrument and stopped playing anything entirely. Recently I’d been thinking about taking up music again. In a small apartment I don’t really have room for a decent digital piano - I have a borrowed keyboard that I use occasionally but it’s difficult to find room to set it up and annoying to have to put it away again every time I use it.

My second strongest instrument was flute, and much to my neighbour’s dismay I ordered one from trademe and it arrived two days ago. It was extraordinarily cheap and I’ve been really impressed with it. It’s a very light metal and I suspect it wouldn’t stand up to the knocks my old Yamaha solid silver flute did, but I’m more careful with my toys these days. I love the bright red enamel finish and for 1/5th the price of even a student flute from a store, how can I go wrong? Sadly the same seller doesn’t have any piccolos, but there are some similarly cheap from other sellers I might try.

I remember more than I thought I would, given I haven’t played flute in close to 10 years. I keep having to consult a fingering chart, and for the life of me I can’t remember how to get strong low notes, but I’m having a lot of fun. I keep forgetting I’m not playing a clarinet or a recorder but I’ll get there eventually. Strangely I remember having trouble with very high notes when I played regularly - now they don’t seem to be an issue.

While looking around for sheet music for Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (one movement in particular has a beautifully haunting flute part I’d like to learn) I discovered virtualsheetmusic.com. They have annoying DRM stopping you from copying and pasting any part of the PDF, but printing is allowed and their year’s membership with unlimited downloads is very reasonably priced. Not only did they have the complete concertos I was after, but a lot of other music of varying skill levels I’m keen to try.

10 years ago I don’t remember anything all that exciting on the internet for musicians - wow has that changed!

Tonight was pretty exciting for me - my first ever lunar eclipse. It was absolutely freezing and very windy but completely worth every moment of discomfort. Of course, we did it the geek way - with every possible gadget.

Me wearing every article of clothing I own, or at least it felt like it.

Next time, I am taking a thermos of hot milo and some handwarmers. My partner made the romantic comment that someone, somewhere, was probably being thrown into a volcano as a sacrifice to appease the moon god. We then did a little moon dance ourselves, and took some photographs.

Then it was back off home for hot soy milk with dark chocolate stirred through to get the blood flowing again. If I walk out onto my balcony I can see the moon still, heavy and dark and somehow more like a sphere than I’ve ever seen it before.

I am currently in the middle of a 12 day adventure in Perth, Western Australia. Apart from the weather being a bit changeable since it’s early in winter, it’s been pretty nice.

I had forgotten some of the more annoying things about Australia - absolutely nothing is open on Sunday and we had to spend about 2 hours driving around to find the one smegging supermarket that was open. It’s also damn near impossible here to buy a cell phone that isn’t locked to a network. In NZ there is only one GSM network, so no point in locking handsets. Here I had to ask at about 4 stores before I got a staff member who could tell me how to unlock a handset - and at one of the previous ones the woman who served me told me that there was a guy called Bill who lived down on the beach who’d unlock handsets on the cheap! Very professional.

Monday was shopping at Rockingham and then a coffee down on the waterfront looking over the ocean. Shopping here is fun, Australian women’s clothing and shoes tend to run to bigger sizes than those found in the stores I shop at in NZ making it a lot easier to find stuff that fits. Unfortunately still no easier to find stuff I actually like.

Tuesday we went to Freemantle, where we visited a car museum and a maritime museum - the latter offering a tour of a decommissioned Oberon class submarine. The submarine tour was excellent. The people who volunteer to be submariners must have nerves of steel - the idea of being under water in a big pipe under enormous pressure gives me chills.

Wednesday we just chilled down at the beach in the sun, and got attacked by a pair of ducks.

The weather has been a bit too cold since then for beach fun, so we’ve been doing more indoorsy things. Perth is kinda nice, but I’m really homesick for Wellington… and normal sized currency. Photos to follow.

She’s Such a Geek really jumped out at me with its bright yellow cover. I remembered having read about it on boingboing, and on the linuxchix mailing list. I bought it and started reading it over hot chocolate on my lunch break. It’s a collection of essays written by women in science and technology, essentially about their geekiness and what it’s like to be that geek and be a woman. They’re in turn bold, strong, honest, familiar, inspiring, and at times bitter. It isn’t easy being a woman geek and I found myself empathising often.

I can recommend She’s Such a Geek to any one who either wants to better understand some of the difficulties woman geeks encounter, or those who, like me, understand only too well already. This isn’t an earth shattering book - it isn’t going to radically change how you feel about women in science and technology, or being a woman in science and technology. It is a celebration and an affirmation. We’re here, it says, and we understand - we’re like you, and we don’t feel we should have to apologise for it either.

After being a little disappointed with Kubuntu Edgy, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to Feisty on my VAIO. I have been very impressed with some of the changes evident so far.

At the moment Feisty is using the Polyester theme by default and it looks great. Very glossy and shiny without being too heavy. Knetworkmanager has been updated and now has the option to configure static addresses as well as being a little more reliable. Nice work!

The main reason I was less than thrilled with Edgy was that both suspend-to-ram and hibernate were broken for me. Not so good. Both seem to be ok in Feisty though. Occasionally my wireless card doesn’t want to come back from suspend-to-ram, but that is a marked improvement over kernel panics. Kubuntu’s Guidance power management tool also has some great improvements - It is now capable of setting the cpufreq policy on plug/unplug events, and setting actions for other events. For example, you are now able to set the machine to suspend when you close the lid.

It wasn’t all roses though - the Ubuntu installer was a nightmare. I most certainly did not want it to touch my Windows partition, yet the only options it gave me was to resize my Windows partition, delete it and use the entire disk, or manual partitioning. I had an unused 30GB vfat partition I wanted to delete and then use that space for Feisty. I usually partition manually, but this has to be the worst tool I have ever seen for that process. It forced me to specify partition sizes in bytes, told me perfectly valid sizes were invalid and crashed quite a lot. Finally I chose to partition first with fdisk and then run the installer, and I managed to get there with a minimum of pain. This was an Ubuntu rather than Kubuntu CD though, I hope the Kubuntu installer is a little friendlier.

All up, I am pretty impressed with Feisty. Looks as though it is going to be an extremely polished release.

I am currently writing this post on an interesting new gadget. I got rather sick of always carrying at least three gadgets around (phone, ipaq, mp3 player) and replaced them with a PDA phone instead. It is the i-mate jasjam, affectionately nicknamed jamjar. It is my new best friend. It is just as functional as each of the other devices were separately, and the qwerty keyboard makes it pretty usable for jabber and irc on the move. Indeed, also for typing out long blog posts. It is Windows Mobile, which is probably the only thing to dislike about it, but I am reconciled to it’s operating system every time I leave the house with only my wallet, keys, and my jamjar.

In other much less exciting news, I managed to sprain my back on Friday night. Not all that much fun. Lots of drugs are rendering it bearable, but I recommend that people look after their backs. They suck heaps when they’re unhappy.