McBlog

Kitt’s G4 Mac has been out of action for a few weeks following a power outage here at home. When the power came back on, the machine refused to turn on, flashing its power light for a bit and then shutting down almost immediately.

I’d tried to get a new power supply for it as I figured that was the problem, but Macs have different power supplies to any PC out there. Oh well – time to call Apple and find out how much.

Speaking with a tech from one of the Apple stores in town, I explained the situation and he gave me the price on a new power supply (ouch!). He also said it sounded like it may not need one as it could just need a reset of the power management system on the board. He pointed me at an Apple support page about resetting the CUDA/PM on these computers.

Piece of cake – easily done and yes, that solved the problem. So now Kitt’s Mac is up and running again and there is much happiness in the house. Kitt’s very happy to have her computer back (she’d been using the laptops on my desk – one Windows and one Ubuntu) and I’m happy to have received great service from an Apple tech. Score more points for future Mac purchases :)

That’s it – the conference is over – wow – an amazing time meeting lots of new people, putting faces to those I’ve chatted with online and catching up with people I already knew from previous meetings. We managed to get through so much but there is still wwwaaayyyy more that could be done. Is there ever enough time? :)

A big thing for me has been getting a better indication of what APC and its members are doing. A potential item is getting more involved with ICANN / IGF – early days but the initial steps have been taken. Very interesting – almost fascinating!

Flint from AID/Watch came over at the end of the day to say HI and have a couple of beers. He’s a client of ours (we host their site and developed it for them) so it was great to catch up.

After that it was off to dinner with Karen and Patcha – we wound up Sussex Thai on (surprise surprise :) Sussex St. Excellent food although their “spice ratings” are a little low. They rated a Pad Gai Kaprow as 3/4 spicy (which is correct if it’s done over in Thailand) but it was only mildly spicy, even with the bits of chillies in the food. Oh well – it was still great.

Now I’m once again sitting with the others from The Foyer Club, on the floor outside the conference room using the wireless link for access. Gotta love it :)

I finally got around to getting an account on ICANN Watch and it gave me the UserID 4666 – hmmmm – wonder if the 666 part is prophetic? Perhaps more *pathetic* :)

It’s the end of the day and I’m in my room where it’s cool and comfortable. I may not have Internet access from here but it’s better than sitting on the floor in the lobby where it’s warmer and harsher on the bum :).

In case you’re wondering, I’m writing this in a text editor and will paste it into a blog entry tomorrow morning when I’m back in wireless range :)

Today has been busy but very productive and I’m happy with how things have turned out. I was concerned that without Andrew (my APC.au co-director) here at the conference, I would let the team down. So far, it seems that I’ve been able to do OK, which is very encouraging.

We reviewed APC’s strategic priorities and discussed the work we’re doing in our member organisations, looking to see what aligned with those priorities and whether there was work being done that they didn’t reflect. It would appear that a number of us are now working in the “Intellectual Property” world, not just pure ICTs, so perhaps APC’s strategic priorities should be expanded accordingly.

The team I was working with (Bobby from IPD and Shahzad from BytesForAll) also thought that APC should make Gender Equality, Sustainable Development and Innovation strategic prioritiesi instead of “cross category” mentionable items. It was generally agreed by all that we needed a good, working definition of “Sustainable Development” and “Innovation” (no surprises there :)

I spoke with KarenB about helping APC in the project management / analysis areas as that’s what I do these days. She introduced me to their new PM space and we’ll be discuss what’s going on in more detail in the near future. Could be fun.

After the day’s work, I headed over to the James Squire brewrey/pub in Darling Harbour to meet up with Simon Rumble then headed back after a few beers. I wound up running into some of the APC crew who were getting ready for dinner so I had a drink with them then headed back to the hotel with the take-away I’d picked up.

As usual, a few of us hung out in the foyer surfing and talking but, eventually, the hard floor got to me and I came back here. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the last day and then I go back on Wednesday. Somehow I have to try to keep the momentum going when I’m back – I think now that I can totally appreciate Andrew’s comments to this effect after past conferences :)

The first lot of pix from the conference are up – I’ll be adding to the collection as & when I get a chance.

It’s gone 11pm and I’m in Sydney for the APC Asia Regional Conference. This is a gathering of representatives from the Asia/Pacific APC member organisations and some of the APC staff. We’re here to give member reports, review the APC strategic plan (a 4 year plan that we’re half way through) and start preparing for the next plan.

I arrived in Sydney yesterday arvo and came to the hotel we’re staying at (above the Great Southern Hotel), meeting up with some of the team, a few of whom I’d met at previous sessions in Korea and Melbourne. I got to work setting up the wireless router I’d brought with me, getting it patched into the hotel’s network and accessing its gateway (not as easy as it should have been due to security on their end). There was much rejoicing among the team when I got it working and they could use their laptops to get onto the ‘net at last :)

Instead of heading out to dinner with the other APC crew, I headed into Newtown to a pub to meet up with friends, staying and drinking for a while before walking back to the hotel. Great fun and I’m really pleased we all managed to catch up again.

Today has been the first of the three meeting days – we went through the introductions, expectations and member reports. At the end, we had a quick session mapping out relations between the various member organisations and APC initiatives then an overview of the strategic work we’ll be doing tomorrow.

Once the day was over, we headed to the pub and then walked into Newtown for a good Italian dinner. Given the food we’d eaten, a few of us decided to walk back as well (and introduced Bobby to Ginger Beer :)

At last, I’ve finally had enough time to load the first day’s photos from the airshow on the website. You can find them in my photo collection. I just need to finish the Grand Prix pix, then do the other 7 days of Airshow pix and then sort out the movies I shot on site…

Went to see 300 at the Jam Factory cinema – pretty good movie (we gave it a 9/10) – in summary, it’s a “chick flick with buckets of blood and gore”

How so?

Well, it’s got buff boys in revealing outfits, some emotional moments and a tragic love scenario. So, that’s good for the ladies.

Then, it’s got blood, guts, gore, shitloads of kick-arse fight sequences, a harem scene (which ranges from hot n sexy to bizzare deformities) and a multi-position sex scene. So, that’s good for the guys.

There were a couple of things that bugged me about it:

1. What’s the king of the Spartans doing with a Scottish accent? It’s not a thick one (like Sean Connery in Hunt for Red October) but it’s very there and very noticable.

2. So why does Xerxes look and sound like the bad guy out of the Stargate movie?

3. I don’t think the Persian army was quite so racially varied as they portray, nor so highly pierced – even allowing for artistic license (and lets face it – it’s not a documentary :) it was a tad over the top.

On a side note, the theatre seemed to have a problem with their booking system – they’d overbooked. We got in ahead of a most and grabbed our seats. Not long after, a bunch of people came in and said to the group next to us that they were in their seats. They compared tickets and all had been given the same seating groups. Ooops… No idea how they sorted it out but for a while there were people standing around and a staff member talking into a radio/phone. Eventually they sorted it out and the movie started. Wonder if they’re using QANTAS’s booking system? :)

Still, it was a great movie – well worth seeing.