Tag: vmware

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Weekly Wrap 318: Post-election madness, and fatigue, and…

Nom Chomsky, the cat I'm feeding at AshfieldLast week I said that I was emerging from the mysterious illness. Alas, it didn’t last. My week of Monday 27 June to Sunday 3 July 2016 was far less productive than I’d hoped.

That said, I made progress on the much-delayed geek-work, and on the seemingly never-ending tax compliance work, although there’s little to show outwardly. My stress levels were much reduced, but I’m aware that there’s still a lot to go.

Meanwhile, as you’ll read below, there’s been a disturbing development…

Podcasts, Articles, and Media Appearances

None, sadly.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Wednesday, I went to a lunchtime media briefing by VMware, which took place at est. Obviously, there was excellent food and drink.

The Week Ahead

It’ll be another week in Ashfield, Sydney’s inner west.

Monday begins with another batch of tax compliance work. I’m then spending the rest of the day with an old friend and his offspring, who are visiting Sydney.

The rest of the week is another mix of geek-work and more tax compliance work, depending on my mood at the time.

And the disturbing development?

A Special Podcast Episode?

There’s talk of me doing a special post-election episode of The 9pm Edict podcast, consisting of nothing but me downing Bundaberg Rum and reading the full policy agenda of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

I mean, after Saturday’s election she’ll be in the Senate — and the policies aren’t just racist, they’re a mashup of of almost every paranoid conspiracy out there.

Reading all of these policies would take more than two hours. But there’s a groundswell of support for making it happen — including at least five financial contributions so far. It could actually work, if it were streamed live, and people could read along at home and chat amongst themselves.

I will make an announcement about this, one way or another, before 2100 AEST tomorrow night, Monday 4 July 2016. Probably well before that, actually.

If you’d like to make a persuasive contribution before then, do feel free to give me a tip. If your tip is specifically for this project, I’m happy to refund it if this special episode doesn’t go ahead.

Further Ahead

While the following few weeks are still be be organised, I can say that I’ll be going to theGartner Security & Risk Management Summit in Sydney on 22-23 August, and the AISA National Conference in Sydney on 18-20 October.

[Photo: Nom Chomsky, the cat who I am duty-bound to feed while at Ashfield, photographed on 2 July 2016.]

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Weekly Wrap 244: Cloudy sky, cloudy mind, kinda

Sydney skyline from Camperdown: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 2 to Sunday 8 February 2015 was exhausting — but as you can see, the productivity levels started returning to something approaching normality. Slowly.

Podcasts

  • “The 9pm Sleepless in Canberra”, being The 9pm Edict episode 35. Yes, a new podcast appeared just one week after the previous one. Amazing. It still took 11 hours to produce, though. I must fix that.

Articles

5at5

There were three editions of 5at5 this week, on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all as they’re released. Subscribe. Just subscribe.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

The Week Ahead

Monday will have pretty much ended by the time this gets published. It’s likely to have been a day of pottering around after very little sleep, and planning for the rest of the week.

Tuesday and Wednesday both see day trips to Sydney to cover the APIdays conference at Australian Technology Park. “Liberate then Innovate”? I feel sick already. Late Wednesday afternoon I’m also covering a seminar on “Risk-based approach to Privacy” being run by iappANZ, the International Association of Privacy Professionals ANZ. These will be long, exhausting days — in part because I’ll have to do the long commute both days rather than staying in Sydney, thanks to cashflow constraints. Wish me luck.

Thursday and Friday are writing days, I’m guessing, turning those two hectic days into words for money.

The weekend is unplanned.

[Photo: Sydney skyline from Camperdown, photographed from level 6 of Rydges Camperdown Hotel on 5 February 2015.]

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Weekly Wrap 123: Food, drink, virtualisation and snow

My week Monday 8 to Sunday 14 October 2012 was yet another exercise in chaos, but this time with added snow.

Virtually nothing in the schedule actually happened when it was originally planned. There was too much moving around, and then Friday’s snowfalls almost derailed the week’s close.

Still, it was my first-ever encounter with actual snow at close range, so there were a few childlike moment of joy. And then I decided to spend the weekend in a SEKRIT hideaway.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 158, “Partitioning porn from PowerPoint: VMware’s virtualisation vision”. VMware’s vision of a virtualised future extends far beyond their existing desktop and server virtualisation products, to include virtualised mobile devices, and even software-defined data centres (SDD).

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I was a guest of NetSuite at Sydney’s Aria Restaurant, where of course they paid for the food and wine. We also received gift vouchers from some of NetSuite’s customers: Avago ($100); SkincareStore ($75); and WineMarket.com.au ($75).
  • On Wednesday I was a guest of Alcatel-Lucent at the Australian Internet Industry Association’s NSW branch forum Customer Centric Services, held at the Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney.
  • On Friday afternoon I was a guest at MooresCloud’s press event, held at the City Hotel, Sydney. There was food. And drink. And mysteriously flashing lights.

The Week Ahead

On Monday I’ll be producing the Patch Monday podcast and having lunch with someone from Trustwave SpiderLabs before returning to Wentworth Falls. I’ll spend the week up in the mountains catching up on many, many loose ends of both media work and general geekery.

[Photo: Waratah in the snow, not the same specimen of Telopea speciosissima as seen last week, but another one at Bunjaree Cottages.]

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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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Lots coming later in the week

What with the end of last week occupied by Consilium and then travel to San Francisco before covering VMware’s VMworld from today, there will continue to be a few days of radio silence before I post new material here.

But if you want the most current details about what I’m doing you’re already following my Twitter feed, right?

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Visiting San Francisco for VMworld 2012

I’m heading to San Francisco for VMware’s VMworld 2012 event starting on Sunday 26 August and staying on for the rest of the week.

I see that the logo features the words “Right here right now”. If they play that effing Fat Boy Slim song, I will truly go postal!

This will be my fifth visit to San Francisco in the last two years, and I must admit the place really is growing on me. Apart from the fact that it’s in that collapsing empire called the US. It does depress me to see the disabled veterans begging on the streets.

I mentioned this trip on Twitter about half an hour ago and already I’ve been told to visit a “beer mecca” called Toronado. What else, do you think?

And yes, I’m travelling as VMware Inc’s guest.