Over the years it’s been a source of frustration for me that the conferences which I wanted to attend were either too expensive (time, travel, registration etc) or not covering topics I was interested in.Late last year I realised I should stop grumbling about it and fix it myself.So it is with great pleasure that I can announce that this July 15th to 17th in Brisbane, there will be an Open Source kernel-focused conference: Kernel Conference Australia. We don’t have absolutely all of the organisational bits together yet, but here’s what we do have:

Delivered via Caesarean section at 15:37 Australia/Brisbane time on 31 December 2008:

While we spent 9 hours of Christmas Eve in the Mater Mothers’ antenatal ward as a precaution (her BP was up and our OB was being properly cautious), we’re still in “not parents” mode. Hence, “not-a-dad” on facebook.No news yet.

Yesterday I visited Tiantan – the Temple of Heaven, which is about 2 km south of Tian an Men.

I found it to be a really peaceful space – probably helped by the “keep off the grass” signs – I spent about 5 hours wandering around, looking at the various parts of the temple and its grounds, looking at the tourists…. despite having really sore feet at the end of the day, I actually felt quite quite refreshed by the experience. Such a beautiful surprise to find this oasis of calm in such a busy city.

I took a few photos of course, and I’m really glad that I borrowed Chip’s 10-22mm lens – it really made a difference:

I was also really pleased to get some detail on the ends of the blue-glazed tiles that are just everywhere:

This is a short gallery of my favourite pictures from the day:

Today was hot. Quite a bit hotter than forecast – we got about 36 or 37C in our part of the world. I didn’t mind it too much, but it seems that my two coffee plants did

This morning (rather early, actually) I called the DPI, and a little while later received a callback from the on-call pest person (I think that was the title) with the name of three local apiarists to contact.

I rang an apiarist called Peter (who is also listed on the Bindareepage), he came over this afternoon and removed the swarm for us, gave me a heap of information about bees and how to handle them, and also some advice about what I could do to help bee-proof our house. Really great bloke, if we ever need bees removed again I’ll certainly call him first.

While he was working, our next-door neighbour got home, saw what we were hanging around in the front yard for, and mentioned that they’d got some pest eradicators in to their place yesterday afternoon …. because they had bees in their wall cavity. By an amazing coincidence, that’s about the time when I noticed we had a swarm of bees in our front yard. Hmmmmmph!

While Peter was working I took a few photos (Canon EOS400D, 75-300m EF 1:4-5.6 IS):

Wandered downstairs this arvo to refill my glass, and was surprised to hear a buzzing sound from the loo. Turned out there were bees inside, and quite a few more outside in the patio area. Promptly closed all the doors, making sure codercat was inside, then went to call J’s parents for advice. They said to close the doors and wait until sundown.

When J got home, she parked her work car out the front under the grevillea as per normal, and when we got to the front door, codercat bolted out. Not such a problem…. except that I noticed there were manymany more bees out the front than out the back. Turns out, we’ve got a bit of a swarm thing going on:

J’s been feeling the kicks and general movement for a while now, but tonight was the first time for me. Put my ear to her tummy and listened…. got kicked twice in short order! Also heard the fluid movement sound – a bit like a bubble bursting, a bit like when you’ve just had a really large glass of water and hear your insides gurgling.

#FF35C5. That is all.

The unofficial results are in and Spoonboy looks to have come 21st in the Elite category at the 24Hours of Adrenaline World Championships in Canmore, Canada.

W000000t!

Spoonboy: we’re very proud of you, hope you had a great time. Looking forward to catching up when you get back to Oz.