Author: Grant

Varekai

As part of Kitt’s birthday present, I picked up tickets for Varekai, the latest Cirque Du Soleil performance. An amazing show that had us captivated throughout, even Nykolai loved it.

There were a number of aerial acts, some jugglers (including three very young kids), contortionists, a troop of acrobats who did a few shows and a comic pair of clowns doing a vaudeville magician act (and an hilarious “crooner” number). The music was live, the stage layout was fantastic and the effects were great.

One hitch in the show was during the grand finale when one of the acrobats took a nasty fall. He was doing an extremely complicated tumble and missed his landing on a tiny, moving space. He fell onto some support frames and the guy who was to spot him wasn’t able to catch him properly, so he came down heavily on the floor. They stopped the show, toned down the music, brought up the lights, advised us to stay seated while they assessed the situation and had medics come out. As a precaution, the artist hadn’t moved at all since his landing and they very carefully put him on a stretcher with neck brace and much care. Once he was away, they restarted the show and another artist took over to complete the incredible stunt.

The troop went through a couple of curtain calls at the end and, as the lights were coming up, we were told that the artist involved in the accident was now in a stable condition (although no mention was made of what injuries might have been sustained).

All up, a show that I can totally recommend to anyone. Well worth seeing, as is true for any of their shows.

Do Not Call Me, Asshole

The Australian Government have finally set up a Do Not Call Register for those of us who do not want to be harassed by telemarketers at home, etc. It’s due to come into effect in June and marketers who call a number on the list will be fined – even if they’re overseas. Unfortunately, politicians, pollsters, religious organisations and registered charities can still call you, so it’s not perfect yet. At least it’s a start.

The register opened today and the website was supposed to handle 70,000 submissions an hour, but it looks like it suffered a meltdown under the crush of people racing to register. It’s working now and I’ve logged our number.

Now to get them to expand it so there’s a “Bar Everyone” option so those who aren’t barred yet can be turned off. Over half the annoying calls aren’t telemarketers, they’re the rest of the bunch (especially the charities and religious lot).

Filtering the telemarketers :)

Don’t you just hate it when those dreaded telemarketers call your house, usually about the time you’re preparing or eating dinner? Fortunately for Kitt and I, Nykolai has become a most excellent filter of such calls.

Here at home, we’ll be busy in the kitchen preparing dinner and the phone rings. Nykolai drops what he’s doing and heads to the phone, answering it with a polite “Hello.” Some days its friends or family, but usually it’s a telemarketer.

Most of them just give up when they hear the young voice, but some push on, asking to speak to “mom or dad” – hah! His first question is usually “Are you selling something?” – most of the callers drop out at this point, realising that they’ve been beaten. A few try to push on, but again, he asks what they’re selling. Those who make it past this are either friends he hasn’t recognised or people seeking donations.

Kitt and I are so very very happy with Nykolai’s filtering capabilities – we figure that if he keeps this up, our number will be dropped from lists faster than if we answered the phone “Hello, telemarketers will be charged for our time taking this call at a rate of $500 per hour in minimum 5 minute blocks – your clock starts now…”

Gotta love kids :)

Helpful Apple Tech

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 :)

APC Asia Conference – Day 3

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 :)

APC Asia Conference – Day 2

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 :)

APC Asia Regional Conference

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 :)