TUCS Tech Talk #1,
originally uploaded by
Christopher Neugebauer.

As I mentioned href="/website/blog/life/20080503-TucsLaunch.html">previously,
TUCS
had its first tech talk on Friday (delivered by myself, on the topic of Introductory Python), this is the first opportunity to show off photos from it. I was rather impressed by the turnout (there are a few people off to the side that can't be seen in the frame).

One feature that Python's built-in string replacement facilities does not provide is case-insensitive string replacement. This is a reasonably useful construct (that I use fairly frequently in other languages, such as PHP), which I couldn't find code for after Googling -- so here's some code that does it (licenced under the WTFPL, of course)

import re

def ireplace(self,old,new,count=0):
	''' Behaves like string.replace(), but does so in a case-insensitive
	fashion. '''
	pattern = re.compile(re.escape(old),re.I)
	return re.sub(pattern,new,self,count)

import re

class str_cir(str):
	''' A string with a built-in case-insensitive replacement method '''
	

	def ireplace(self,old,new,count=0):
		''' Behaves like S.replace(), but does so in a case-insensitive
		fashion. '''
		pattern = re.compile(re.escape(old),re.I)
		return re.sub(pattern,new,self,count)

Today was the AGM for the UTas Internet Developers' Society. Other than the usual blather that occurs in AGMs for these sorts of things, we've approved a change of name to TUCS (or rather the Tasmania University (union) Computing Society). For the moment this name change is purely cosmetic (as we really haven't done that much in the way of Internet Development for as long as I've been at the Uni. The new name (in my opinion) reflects the membership, and the aims of the society a lot better.

One item of Business that I raised was the upcoming Linux.conf.au 2009, which you probably already know by now is being held at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. It's been resolved that the Society establish better ties with the Free Software/Open Source Community (in Tasmania, in Particular with TasLUG) with the intention of better promoting Free/Open Source software amongst the student and staff body in the leadup to the conference; and I ran for the executive (successfully) on that basis.

Here's hoping it's a successful year for the society (which now has a cool name!)

TUCS had its launch event yesterday, which consisted of a Barbecue, membership drive, and tech talk.

The Membership front was fairly successful, given that we managed to sign up somewhere in the order of 7 new members (which is not bad given how late in the semester it is, and that we weren't offering Alcohol at the event :)), hopefully we can get a few more before the end of the semester, as it would be nice to get some people who aren't part of the "usual crowd" to join in.

The main reason for this post was that I delivered the tech talk, on the topic of Introductory Python. Overall, I think it went fairly well, although I mistimed the talk such that I had to completely miss one section of the talk (which is a reminder of my debating days... but let's not get into that). Anyone who wants to comment on my talk (except for the sections where Bruce crashes -- I already know about this) is quite welcome to -- it's available in its entirety at Google Video

The day was quite successful. Here's hoping that TUCS can keep getting stronger!

Friday was our the first meeting of the new UTAS Computing Society Executive, which incidentally, was the first under our new name (TUCS). Since then lots of progress has been made:

• We launched our new Website, www.tucs.org.au.


• We began planning for the launch day for the new society, which is scheduled for Friday, May 2. We're having a barbecue, and performing a membership drive (since we didn't do that at the start of the year, in order to get the new society in order).


• Started a new series of Tech Talks. I'll be giving the first one on introductory Python, and we're planning on making this coincide with the society launch.

All in all, it's a somewhat exciting time to be doing Computing-related stuff at UTas (here's hoping it stays that way!)

After noticing the disparity of prices of Coca-Cola, I decided that it would be a good idea to map out the location of vending machines and their prices.

and here is the link

If you have a vending machine location on campus to point out to me, or if there has been a price shift at any location, let me know by e-mailing cpw at [the domain that this post is hosted at]

The 2008 ACM South Pacific Programming Contest Results have been confirmed: my team's come 3rd overall (as expected). We find out whether or not we've achieved a wild card position in the World Finals in December.

I just posted the following announcement of my proposal for a Python Miniconf to be held at linux.conf.au 2009 to Australian Python mailing lists. I'm posting it here in case anyone has missed it:

Linux.conf.au 2009 is to be held at the University of Tasmania's Sandy
Bay campus in Hobart, Tasmania over the week of January 19-24; and the
call for presentations [1] and mini-confs [2] is now open.

I am currently in the process of producing a proposal for a Python
Miniconf to be held at LCA, so I thought I should detail my plans to a
greater audience for the purpose of feedback/suggestions.

The miniconf would be a single-day conference on the broad topic of
Python programming.  Broadly speaking, the topics I would like to see
presented would range through:
- Recent developments on Python core (presented to a more
Python-oriented audience than may happen at LCA proper)
- Frameworks and libraries (e.g. Django, which I believe is hitting
1.0 this year)
- Techniques of Python programming (e.g. using advanced/new/etc
features of Python effectively)
- Discussions of Python use in the "real world" (e.g. Industry use,
education, etc, etc, etc).
- Anything else Python-related: please make suggestions! [3]

The intention is that there would be 5 "organised" talks of ~45
minutes length (although if there is sufficient interest/free space, I
could split blocks into 2x25 minute talks), with a 50-minute block of
lightning talks to conclude the event, with the possibilty of some
loosely-organised get-together of pythoners after the day's
proceedings have finished.

If you are interested in participating in the Python miniconf (which
requires you to also be interested in attending Linux.conf.au), please
e-mail me [3].  I would particularly like topics of talks that people
would be able to give (vague/general is fine at this early stage in
preparation), so that I can include them in the miniconf proposal (so
the earlier I receive them the better!).

Thanks in advance for any help that you may be able to offer me.

-- Christopher Neugebauer

P.S. if I have missed any user groups/potentially interested parties,
could you please forward this message on -- I've already dealt with
most relevant mailing lists in Australia, but international lists may
also be interested, due to the nature of LCA as an international
conference.

[1] http://marchsouth.org/media/news/6
[2] http://marchsouth.org/media/news/15
[3] for the benefit of google groups users: chrisjrn [ a t ] gmail.com 

Friday's keynote was fantastic -- Simon Phipps (who retained his job at Sun Microsystems) spoke of the Third Wave of Free Software, which was an observation that Free Software (specifically not Open Source) is becoming a sensible business proposition. It's about time that it did. It was refreshing to see a large corporate's view of the world of Free Software largely agreeing with my own. Talks after morning tea were Tridge's talk on his automatic cluster testing framework (pretty cool), followed by Conrad Parker's talk on Ogg Chopping, which despite the name, was actually a 50-minute rant about why Haskell is cool -- I'm sold (I think), but somewhat confused about the talk -- really, I have no idea what happened. I strongly urge you to watch the video (when it becomes available) in order to figure out what happened for yourself.

Lunchtime was the Great Unbeardening -- Linus Torvalds (who was roped into the act at the auction on Wednesday) shaved Bdale Garbee's beard -- the result? Disturbing. Really disturbing, but all in the name of charity. The #lca tag on twitter was displayed on the projector screen, so live audience responses were shown as the shaving continued, including one Maclabbian pointing out the relative weirdness of the event; photos were up on Flickr well before the end of the event, and Southern Cross News came to film the event (focusing on the shavee, and not the mysterious Finn doing the shaving...).

Matthew Garrett's talk on Power Management that works was great: nothing too technical, but an excellent discussion of the user interface issues surrounding power management. Matthew's talk was unique in that his talk covered everything in his abstract -- this includes answering the question "will we ever get to beer island?" -- the answer? Yes, provided you're in Texas. Following was Geek My Ride, presented by Jonathan Oxer and Flame -- this was a pretty cool demo talk, showing how the two of them have modded their cars to include some pretty cool stuff, including in-dash diagnostics, MP3 playback, and remote ignition (wow cool!).

The final talk of the conference was Bdale talking about rockets, which as usual were pretty cool. Lightning talks concluded the conference as they did in 2008 -- nice to see them becoming an LCA tradition, I will definitely aim to present at least one next year.

Conclusion

So that's it. LCA is over for another year, and will reconvene in Wellington, New Zealand for 2010 -- I've never been to New Zealand, and am really looking forward to going there next year. The 2009 Conference was excellent, the talks were well-presented, and the organisation of the conference was such that it appeared from the outside that the everything ran well (I've been told that that was certainly not the case). The conference allowed us to show off Hobart to the technical world, which is an opportunity that does not present itself regularly -- I'm glad that we got that opportunity, and I think most delegates this year will agree that it was an opportunity that was well-received, and resulted in an excellent conference for all involved.

Also thanks to Adam Harvey and Monica Wood for helping out at UpDNS -- you certainly made my job in organising it a lot easier; Linux Australia for having faith in the organisers ability to put on the conference -- I hope your investment in the Tasmanian Free Software Community pays off.

Neugebauer Chocolate, originally uploaded by Christopher Neugebauer.

I was in the TUU Shop today, and did a double-take as I saw my surname staring back at me (it's in the top left corner of the wrapper).

Why a Brazilian chocolate company would call themselves "Neugebauer" is beyond me -- but I shalln't complain. The occasional ego trip can be healthy.

(Oh, and the chocolate itself wasn't particularly nice. Oh well :()