Monthly Archive for January, 2008

BarCamp Melbourne 2008 is go!

Published
by
Ben Balbo
on January 28, 2008
in BarCamp, Conference and Education
. 1 Comment

BarCamp Melbourne 2.0
BarCamp Melbourne is on for the 23rd of February 2008 in Melbourne CBD. This will be the first BarCamp held in Melbourne itself, and hopefully this will make it more accessible than last year’s (there are rumours that two participants got lost and never made the event!!).

While this is a free event, please remember that you must register to attend. Details on the web site.

To remind you, a BarCamp is “an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees”, anyone is welcome to come along for free. Everyone is asked to participate by giving a presentation or leading or participating in a discussion, essentially forcing the sharing of ideas and knowledge.

Installing PHP5.3

Published
by
Ben Balbo
on January 28, 2008
in Hosting, Open Source and Work Life
. 0 Comments

PHP LogoI recently installed PHP 5.3 in order to play with some of the new features and thought I’d share the steps I took with you. While it’s based on a clean installation of Ubuntu 7.10 Server, you might find this useful on existing systems too.

As ever, this guide is for educational purposes only. I offer no warranty of suitability or accuracuracy. Use at your own risk, and if it goes wrong head over to the forums for help…

Read my full article at the Melbourne PHP Users Group web site.

That’s just unaustralian!

Published
by
Ben Balbo
on January 21, 2008
in Environment and Rant
. 13 Comments

There’s this web site that asks people to add their 2 cents to the discussion on climate change. For reasons I won’t go in to, I will not be mentioning this site by name, nor giving you a link to it, but I wanted to share a comment I found on it.

Most of the comments include concerns about the future of the planet, the next generation of humans, and all things green.

Cameron F of Victoria, Australia, has a different opinion, pointing out that it’s “UnAustralian that we can’t water our plants & wash our toy’s [sic]“. Cameron adds “Over 100 years of drought and the best the government can do is turn us against our neighbour’s [sic] hosing their garden”.

The apostrophic abuse aside, is this person serious? Are they taking the piss? I seriously do hope so.

We live in a society that is driven by consumer greed, fuelled by corporate marketing. It is desirable to own a big car. We buy power hungry electronic goods and leave them on standby because it’s more convenient than switching them off. We buy carbon credits instead of a more economical car, green power or an efficient washing machine because it makes us feel like we’re doing our bit. Convenience is bliss - screw the planet!

People! We only have one planet, so why are we doing our best to destroy it? Until we learn that the environment is not there for us to rape and that we have a duty to look after our planet for future generations, we will continue to head down a path towards an environmental catastrophe.

Selfishness, greed, death and destruction of living organisms for your own gain - these are unaustralian.

Have you ever met any of these types that think the planet is here to serve us, that we deserve big cars, that chucking that perfectly good 4 year old TV into the tip and buying a new one is acceptable? I’d love to hear your stories…

Are you one of these consumer hungry, planet depleting types that feels compelled to comment on this topic and persuade me that I’m wrong? Chime in!

Make someone feel good by blowing their trumpet

Published
by
Ben Balbo
on January 10, 2008
in BarCamp, Conference, Extra Curricula, Open Source and Work Life
. 1 Comment

TrumpetThe new year typically spawns lots of “Best of …” and “What happened in …” articles and blog posts. It’s a time of year to reflect on the past 12 months. It’s time to look at the highlights, sometimes the lowlights, and hopefully lock a few of those nuggets away for future use.

What I wasn’t expecting while rapidly devouring the 1000+ items in my RSS reader was one post that contained my name accrediting the initiation of a number of Australian BarCamps to me.

Now before you accuse me of blowing my own trumpet, I write this not because I want you to bow before me, rather because I wanted to share how that made me feel. It was great! By simply including that one paragraph in her post, Janet spurred me to get of my Christmas pudding and get BarCamp Melbourne 2008 back on track.

The truth is 2007 was a busy year for me. Most years are - I’m the type of person that can’t say no. After having co-authored a book, organised BarCamp Melbourne 1.0, bought and moved in to a new house, changed jobs* and possibly more that I can’t remember (now you can accuse me of blowing my own trumpet!), I was seriously considering postponing, or get someone to take over the organisation for, BarCampMelbourne 2.0.

* Truth be told, the job change was more of a relief than a burden. It’s great to leave a company that wants you to feel lucky for working in a chaotic environment under bad management with an internal IT department that has an agenda so huge you could swear it’s trying to bring the company down from the inside - a sad end to what once was, debatably, one of the best places in Melbourne to score a job!

So, the good news is that my flame has been relit. In order to make my life at least that little bit easier, BarCampMelbourne 2.0 will be a one day event so I have more venues to choose from. It has also tentatively been brought forward one week.

Thanks Janet! Apologies for the post title…