Category: Weekly Wrap

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

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Weekly Wrap 121: Danger with Germaine

My week Monday 24 to Sunday 30 September 2012 brought to a close a stressful few weeks of work, what with all the travel and such, with my gig at the Sydney Opera House on Saturday afternoon.

There’s probably some explanation for why this phase shift from stressful to less-stressful seems to happen every year at this time. Spring. Long weekend. The end of the winter football season. Pollen. Nazi space labradors.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 156, “Apple Maps: You can’t get there from here!”. A conversation about the Apple Maps debacle with geospatial specialist Dr Michael Dobson, who now consults on geospatial matters with TeleMapics, but who’s previously been chief technologist and chief cartographer with Rand McNally & Company, and associate professor of geography at the State University of New York at Albany, and mobile app developer Leslie Nassar.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Thursday I attended a media lunch held by Alcatel-Lucent at Coast Restaurant in Sydney. It was rather long, and there was wine.
  • On Saturday I spoke at “I Share Therefore I Am”, a panel discussion held as part of the Sydney Opera House’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas. The video will eventually be posted at the SOH’s Play site.

The Week Ahead

Monday is a public holiday in NSW but I’ll be working nonetheless, writing for Crikey, doing some systems administration for a client, and producing the Patch Monday podcast.

The rest of the week, along with the rest of the month, will be scheduled on Tuesday morning. Overall, the theme is less stress.

However I do know that on Friday the Prime Minister is hosting a Digital Economy Forum at the University of New South Wales and I might cover that. And on Friday evening I’m attending the launch of MooresLights, which is some SEKRIT project that Mark Pesce and Kate Carruthers have been working on.

I’ll be based in Sydney all week, with the return to Wentworth Falls currently planned for Sunday.

[Photo: Sydney Opera House from the south, photographed on Saturday 29 September 2012.]

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Weekly Wrap 120: Symantec, sunlight, servers and a ship

My week Monday 17 to Sunday 23 September 2012 was a bit odd. It wasn’t the steady week of writing I’d envisaged, but something a little less productive.

I think I was just exhausted after the previous few weeks so, with plenty of work ahead, I deliberately pulled back the pace. Mistress Insomnia agreed, alas.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 155, “Windows 8: Rectangles for all the things explained”. A chat about the interface formerly known as Metro with user experience designer Shane Morris from Automatic Studio and developer Nick Randolph from Built to Roam.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday morning I attended the launch of Symantec Managed Security Services’ Security Operations Centre in North Sydney. They provided coffee, but I arrived too late to avail myself of the snacks. They looked nice though.

The Week Ahead

The biggest thing on my mind right now is my session at the Sydney Opera House’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas on Saturday. It’s one thing to write stuff. It’s another to be a performer on stage at the nation’s best-known venue. Sure, it’s a panel discussion of a subject I’m quite familiar with. Nevertheless…

But apart from that, I’m producing a Patch Monday podcast for tomorrow as well as one for the following Monday because that’s a public holiday, a story each for ZDNet Australia and CSO Online, and in theory I’m working on a couple of stories for Technology Spectator that’ll run next month.

What else is in the schedule? I’m a panellist on this week’s episode of ABC Radio National’s Download This Show, which we’re recording Thursday morning, after which I’m heading to a lunch with some bloke from Alcatel-Lucent. And Friday night is the opening session of the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, philosopher Sam Harris on The Delusion of Free Will. I guess I have to go to that one. See what I did there?

I’ll be based in Sydney all this week and next. Unless I change my mind.

[Photo: Stavanger Bliss in Sydney Harbour, a photo taken from Sydney Harbour Bridge as four tugs assist the Norwegian-flagged tanker to execute a turn off Neutral Bay. When I first saw the ship, it was putting out a bit of smoke and appeared to be listing slightly to port. But I soon realised that was all just its engines revving up and a reaction to the tugs’ thrust. Clearly this massive ship needs help maneuvering in such tight quarters.]

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Weekly Wrap 119: Ducks, ducks, sheep and bull

The bulk of the business end of my week Monday 10 to Sunday 16 September 2012 was spent at Microsoft’s TechEd 2012 event on the Gold Coast, and the weekend at Parramatta.

Microsoft’s event, like all major vendor conferences, began with an intense burst of frustration thanks to the inevitable series of overly-long overly-staged buzzword-saturated propaganda events — “keynotes”, the industry has decided to call them — designed to hammer the new technology’s marketecture into your head while preventing the opportunity for critical thinking.

And, like nearly all others, it eventually settled down into something sensible once all the vice-presidents and managing directors and pointlessly-animated PowerPoint presentations and bass-heavy music had been stage-managed out of the room and actual engineers and designers and other geeks started talking through specific details.

I’ll have more to say about that in due course.

Parramatta, by comparison, delivered a delightful spring weekend full of ducklings and food and wine and almost no pretension whatsoever.

I’ll have more to say about that in due course also.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 154, “Good-guy hackers and other infosec anomalies”. A conversation with Michael Montecillo, a threat research and intelligence principal with IBM Security Services, covering good-guy hackers (well der!), click fraud, his views on the profile of hacktivism following the arrest of key Anonymous and LulzSec members, and more.

Articles

Media Appearances

  • On Tuesday I did a spot on ABC 105.7 Darwin, but it wasn’t recorded my end so I can’t bring it to you today. That’s a remarkable similar statement to last week, except that one was a pre-record with Richard Margetson and this one was live with Kate O’Toole. I’m annoyed that the recording didn’t happen, ‘cos I managed to give a coherent exposition of my thoughts about online bullying.
  • On Tuesday I did another regular Balls Radio spot with Phil Dobbie, talking about the High Court rejecting an appeal in the Optus TV Now case.
  • On Friday I spoke about the new iPhone 5 and the utility of smartphones for journalism on ABC Radio National’s Media Report.

Corporate Largesse

I attended Microsoft’s TechEd 2012 on the Gold Coast as their guest.

  • Microsoft covered my airfares from Sydney to the Gold Coast and return, airport transfers, three nights accommodation at Jupiter’s Hotel and Casino on Broadbeach Island, and all the food and drinks.
  • The conference backpack was a high-quality Targus job, containing marketing material from sponsors and other vendors. The former I’ve kept, because my The North Face backpack is starting to wear out. All the latter I’ve thrown into the recycling bin, unread.

Also:

  • On Monday evening I attended the SANS Sydney Community Event “Your Security Monitoring — An Attacker’s Perspective”, where the food and (soft)drinks were sponsored by Shearwater Solutions. An article about this will appear in due course.

The Week Ahead

It’s a busy week of (mostly) writing for me, with around five articles already committed to various mastheads, as well as my presentation at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. I think my original plan to win the first annual Orkney Short Crime Fiction Prize will have to be dropped. I has disappoint.

I’ll be heading from Sydney to Wentworth Falls this afternoon (Monday) and will return to Sydney for the school holiday period on the coming weekend. I also plan to be in Sydney on Wednesday morning for Symantec’s announcement of their Australian expansion plans. How will that turn into an accommodation schedule? I’ll figure that out this evening.

[Photo: Ducks at Parramatta, a delightfully pastoral scene photographed on the banks of the Parramatta River on Saturday afternoon. I managed to get quite close to this family of ducks before they raised the alarm and took to the water.]

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Weekly Wrap 118: Planes, pains and delays

My week Monday 3 to Sunday 9 September 2012 began pleasantly enough in San Francisco, but ended badly in Sydney — at least until I escaped to Wentworth Falls

I’m way behind schedule, so I’ll only briefly mention the two annoyances.

On Friday I woke up early with a massive pain in my leg. Since I’d just done a long-distance flight I naturally thought of deep vein thrombosis, so I figured I’d better check it out. It turned out to be simple delayed onset muscle soreness, but of course I lost half a day in the hospital.

Then on Saturday I woke up to the news that Prussia.Net’s shared hosting server was dying. I lost eight hours on that. While the wonderful engineers at ServePath did the actual work, I still had to hang around to approve each step and keep clients informed.

As a result, this is all a little thinner than planned.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 153, “App.net’s radical social network strategy: charge money”. A conversation with App.net founder, technologist and entrepreneur Dalton Caldwell. Will App.net be Twitter’s successor?

Articles

None. Though I’m working on a couple today for publication tomorrow.

Media Appearances

  • On Tuesday I did a spot on ABC 105.7 Darwin, but it wasn’t recorded my end so I can’t bring it to you today. However it was a pre-recorded spot, so with luck I’ll be able to get a copy from the ABC. Stand by.
  • On Tuesday night I did another regular Balls Radio spot with Phil Dobbie, talking once more about online bullying.
  • On Thursday afternoon I was on a security and privacy panel at the ACCAN National Conference. I’ll bring you a recording in due course.
  • On Thursday night I spoke about government data retention plans with Dom Knight on ABC Local Radio.

Corporate Largesse

  • VMware covered my travel back to Australia, which included a limousine from San Francisco to San Jose, and flights from San Jose via Los Angeles to Sydney.
  • On Thursday I attended the launch of Symantec’s Norton Cybercrime Report 2012 at Sydney’s Justice and Police Museum. They provided food and drink.

The Week Ahead

I’ll head to Sydney some time tomorrow, Monday, after having filed stories for Technology Spectator and CSO Online, as well as producing the Patch Monday podcast.

On Monday night I’m attending a SANS Sydney Community Night, with a presentation entitled “Your Security Monitoring – An Attacker’s Perspective”. Should be interesting. I’m not sure where my write-up will appear yet.

On Tuesday I’m headed to the Gold Coast to cover Microsoft’s TechEd 2012 event, which runs through to Friday. I’ll post more about that as I go. I’m not sure whether I’ll return to Sydney immediately it’s over or spend the weekend in Brisbane.

[Photo: Embraer EJR-140 belonging to American Eagle at San Jose Airport gate 10. This is the aircraft I flew in from San Jose (SJC) to Los Angeles (LAX).]

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Weekly Wrap 117: Cheese, booze and virtualisation

My week Monday 27 August to Sunday 2 September 2012 was spent in San Francisco, and as I write this on their Labor Day holiday Monday I’m still there. Here. Whatever.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 152, “Geo-engineering: fixing climate for just US$6 billion?” A conversation with Dr Caspar Hewett, visiting researcher at the University of Newcastle in the UK, and Danish author and political scientist Dr Bjørn Lomberg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre in Washington.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

VMware’s VMworld was such a large bunch of stuff that it deserves its own section.

  • VMware covered the travel and accommodation, including flights Sydney to Los Angeles to San Francisco, and back again San Jose to Los Angeles to Sydney. A car is being provided for today’s drive from downtown San Francisco to San Jose airport. Four nights accommodation was provided at InterContinental San Francisco.
  • Food ranged from the truly frightening breakfasts in the conference’s media rooms Monday through Wednesday to gorgeous canapés and cheese platters like the one pictured above at the evening cocktail parties. The latter were held at the InterContinental on the Sunday before this week commenced, the St Regis Hotel on Monday, and the Temple Club on Tuesday.
  • On Tuesday night I also went to the Sourcefire cocktail party at the Marriott San Francisco. That’s their cheese platter pictured above.
  • The big VMworld party was Wednesday night and featured Jon Bon Jovi, but I didn’t go because I was exhausted and the last thing I needed was to be in a room with 15,000 drunk nerds. Sorry.
  • The conference backpack contained a VMworld-branded t-shirt, hardcover notebook and ballpoint pen, along with a sheaf of sponsor-related crap on paper. Pretty much all of the latter was thrown out.

I think I gained about 20kg in weight, 75% of which was my liver.

Also this week:

The Week Ahead

I leave San Francisco on Monday evening. That’s tonight. The limousine is scheduled collect me at 1745 PDT to take me to San Jose airport for a 1945 flight to Los Angeles, from where I take the 2250 Qantas flight to Sydney. I arrive in Sydney at 0740 AEST on Wednesday morning and will be heading straight to my hotel to collapse.

Wednesday night is the conference dinner for the ACCAN National Conference. I’m speaking at that event on Thursday afternoon.

Symantec is launching the Norton Cybercrime Report at Sydney’s Justice and Police Museum at 1100 Thursday morning, and I plan to be heading to that.

The rest of the latter part of the week will be full of an awful lot of writing, I imagine.

[Photo: Cheese platter at the Marriott San Francisco, courtesy of Sourcefire.]

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Weekly Wrap 116: Porn, planes and presentations

Here’s my week Monday 20 to Sunday 26 August 2012. Once more it’s nothing but the facts, ma’am, because I’m so far behind in these posts.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I attended the launch party for the Samsung Experience Store in Sydney, where of course they provided food and drink.
  • On Thursday through Saturday I attended Consilium at the Palmer Coolum Resort on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. The Centre for Independent Studies covered by flight from Sydney to Sunshine Coast, accommodation, food and drink, a limousine from the resort to Brisbane airport, and a flight back to Sydney — but I wasn’t paid for my appearance at the event.
  • On Sunday I flew from Sydney via Los Angeles to San Francisco to attend the VMworld event at VMware’s expense. I’ll list all of the freebies from that event on the next Weekly Wrap.

[Photo: View from Millers Point, taken from my room at The Sebel Pier One Hotel in Sydney. On the left is Pier 2/3, and across Sydney Harbour is Harry Seidler’s controversial Blues Point Tower.]