Tag: intel

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Weekly Wrap 195: Melbourne and many expenses

Melbourne skyline: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 24 February to Sunday 2 March 2014 was largely spent in Melbourne and Sydney. Both cities proved more or less enjoyable. And then I spent the weekend in a rainy Wentworth Falls.

While the Melbourne trip was primarily for the Intel event detailed below, I also caught up with various geekfolk and managed to combine work-related conversations with excellent food and drink. May I draw your attention to the Cookie Beer Hall, Whiskey & Alement, the Shark Fin Inn in Chinatown, and the Red Emperor Chinese Restaurant at Southbank.

I paid for all those things. It was more expensive than I’d planned. I don’t know how the lesser people can afford it, but there seemed to be so many of them in these venues.

Articles

I’ve also been working on a 1500-word piece for the Walkley Foundation magazine that’ll be published in May.

Media Appearances

5at5

Uhoh. The whole thing collapsed. Sorry. I’ll revive the poor little thing in the coming week. Promise.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I went to Intel’s mixed-bag event in Melbourne, which combined briefings on their new Xeon E7 v2 Server processors, their vision for the future of workplace collaboration and how they’re implementing it themselves — I’ll be writing about that at some point — a look at a new project at NAB, and a rather fine three-hour lunch at Bistro Vue. Intel paid for my flights to Melbourne, airport transfers, and one night’s accommodation at the Crowne Plaza Melbourne — that last item being their sensible alternative to me having to catch the 0513 train into Sydney to catch a 0830 flight.

The Week Ahead

Monday is mostly about planning my media work, writing something for ZDNet Australia, and finishing off the article for the Walkley Foundation.

Through the rest of the week week I’ll be writing another piece for ZDNet Australia, one for Technology Spectator, making sure 5at5 returns to schedule, and figuring out what to do about the loose ends from my Pozible project.

The last is particularly embarrassing, because I’ve simply failed to deliver some of the products. I’ll have to figure out some alternative plan to make good.

I’ll be in Sydney on Wednesday and Thursday, staying overnight. In Wednesday there’s a lunchtime briefing by WatchGuard Technologies, and on Thursday I’m meeting with people from the Slovak infosec firm ESET.

I’m supposed to be in Sydney again on Saturday for an important social event. I’m not quite sure how I’ll plan my movements around that.

[Photo: Melbourne skyline, 26 February 2014.]

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Weekly Wrap 172: Spring, with the Cows of Disruption

Spring, Wednesday edition: click to embiggenSo here’s my week Monday 16 to Sunday 22 September 2013, with just the media stuff listed because this is being posted so late.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I went to a media briefing by Intel about their new range of enterprise technology. It was held at Arras Restaurant in Sydney, and once again the food was excellent.

[Photo: Spring, Wednesday edition, being the start of a glorious spring day photographed at Potts Point, Sydney, on Wednesday 18 September 2013.]

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Weekly Wrap 158: NSA and all the cybers, mostly

NSA Decipher Dog character: click to embiggenMy week Monday 10 to Sunday 16 June 2013 was dominated by the US National Security Agency (NSA). Well, by the news pertaining thereto. Funny world.

I can’t be arsed writing about that any further today. Here’s the links, and you can ask me questions and initiate conversation in the comments. Which I may ignore.

You post your comments, you take your chances.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday I attended the Sydney launch of Intel’s 4th Generation Core processors at the Museum of Contemporary Art. There was food and drink.

[Photo: NSA’s Decipher Dog character, part of the agency’s kids outreach program.]

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Weekly Wrap 74: More than just a pub sign

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — which was a relatively quiet week after three significantly more busy ones. Thank the gods.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 112, “Security: PGP to Android, NFC and beyond”. A conversation with Jon Callas. He’s now chief technical officer with Entrust, but he’s been at the centre of computer security since the olden days. Thoroughly enjoyable, this was.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: A Harts Pub sign, The Rocks, Sydney, photographed this afternoon.]

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Weekly Wrap 73: The Mysteries of the Desert

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — finally posted on Sunday like it’s meant to be.

On a personal note, it was great to finally get the dental work done so that my jaw is no longer infected. Now, to wait for my shoulder to heal…

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 111, “Cybercrime 2016: a view of the future”. Recorded in Las Vegas, it’s mainly Michael Fey’s view of 2016. He’s McAfee’s worldwide senior vice president of advanced technologies and field engineering. Also, an explanation of how advanced persistent threats are a three-stage attack, and a chat with the bloke who taught me how to create malware and construct botnets in just one hour.

Articles

I wrote another two stories apart from these, one for CSO and one for ZDNet Australia, but they won’t be published until Monday.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I covered the ISACA conference in Sydney, so of course I got free food and drink.
  • On Friday I went to the launch of Intel’s Ultrabook standard for laptops at BAR100, The Rocks in Sydney, so naturally there was more free food and drink. They also gave me an Air-Tech Turbo Blimp radio-controlled indoor airship, which I gave away — to someone who then discovered that the blimp itself wasn’t in the box.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: A mysterious oval-shaped object in the desert somewhere between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. This might be in Death Valley, but more likely somewhere else. I wasn’t paying much attention until I saw this. Any idea what it is? You can click to embiggen. Oh, and yes this photo was taken last week, not this week, but I’m sure you can live with that.]

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Hey Barry O’Farrell, piss off out of Marrickville

Barry O’Farrell, I’ve got my eye on you. It’s one thing to start sorting out the mess left after a decade and half of NSW Labor government that was incompetent to the point of, I suspect, corruption. I’m sure we can all provide a list of folks whose bank and phone records we’d like to see pulled by ICAC. But that’s very different from threatening with sacking a local government body whose actions happen not to coincide with the interests of your mates in the pro-Israel cheer squad.

Yes, Marrickville Council decided to boycott Israel over that whole Palestine thing. So what? What business is that of yours as NSW Premier? None.

As an individual, I have the right to hold whatever political views I like. Freedom of thought and freedom of political expression are amongst the very few human rights we’ve properly protected here in Australia. Should I decide that some individual, group, business, organisation or nation holds views so repugnant that I’d rather not support them, then it’s my right not to do business with them.

As a proper, legally-constituted, legitimately-elected local government body — as a legal “person” — the Marrickville Council also has that basic legal right to choose who it does business with.

Now as it happens, I reckon Marrickville’s decision wasn’t terribly well thought through. As my colleague Josh Taylor over at ZDNet Australia points out, boycotting everything that comes out of Israel denies you access to the latest computing technology from Intel, amongst other things. The very fact that Marrickville Council didn’t respond to his questions but instead waved him off to a prepared statement at their website proves, in my opinion, that they don’t have the intellectual integrity or moral backbone to discuss and stand by their decision. By all means criticise them for that.

But until very recently I’d spent most of a decade as a citizen of Marrickville. Yes, there’s a certain idealistic leftism suffusing the place, if I may resort to that tediously tired old left-right classification. But from a resident’s perspective they got on with the job of delivering services with far fewer allegations of dodgy behaviour than certain Labor-dominated local councils I could name. Or Liberal-dominated councils, for that matter. Why isn’t your attention focussed on them?

So, Mr O’Farrell, unless you’ve got some prima facie evidence of corruption or misconduct on the part of Marrickville Council, piss off out of it. It’s up to the citizens of Marrickville to decide whether they do or don’t support their Council’s actions, no-one else’s.

You’ve got enough on your plate to be getting on with as it is, Mr O’Farrell. Get on with it.