James Purser New Media, Politics And More

So you've probably worked out that we're not going to be releasing the next episode of OSOTA tonight. Blergh, these things they are sent to try us aren't they.

Anyhoo, we should be able to get something out tomorrow and failing that Friday at the latest.

Sigh.

Monday was not a good day.

It started about 1 in the morning when Karin woke me up to inform me that her computer had suffered a catastrophic magic smoke failure, complete with sparks and bright orange flash. Her PSU had hosed itself in a spectacular fashion.

Then, later in the morning after we had dropped the kiddies of to school and pre-school, we came home to find the washing machine beeping forlornely having only half filled itself and complaining about insufficient water. Turns out the cold water inlet valve had cactused. Then we check the warranty, it expired 2 weeks ago. Arrghghgh

Now for the third thing, Karin has busted her butt to get her interviews sorted for tonights release of Open Source On The Air, and having completed that, we find that fosscasts.org, the parent domain setup for OSOTA has expired and is awaiting renewal, so we're now trying to sort that out.

Sigh.

I'm going to be talking about the use of FOSS tools in Small Business at the next South Coast Linux User Group meeting, so if you're in Wollongong and would like to catch it, or even in Sydney or other areas close by (for a given definition of close) then please feel free to rock on by.

Well it's been a week since we released the first episode of the new Open Source On The Air and it's doing better than we thought. At last count we had around 130 downloads, which to be honest is about 120 more than we thought we would get for the first episode.

My adventures with django have been held up slightly by a bad case of PEBKAC, but we seem to be moving passed that :) I'm going to have more about the two projects I'm working on for that shortly.

In gardening news, I went to a composting course yesterday up at GlenGarry Cottage in Wollongong, they do some really good stuff up there, however they look to be under the gun of a Council review. It appears the new Administrators would like to stop funding this cool service and invest the money into roads and infrastructure. I'm slightly torn on this, because one thing that Wollongong needs is infrastructure spending, however the stuff that is taught at Glen Garry is both interesting and of benefit to the wider community - teaching people to reduce waste and manage their energy use can only be a good thing.

Hmm, what else...

Oh yes, some genius has decided that cheating is actually a perfectly acceptable thing in an exam situation with a school in Sydney trialling allowing students to use the internet or phone friend during exams to get help. The stated reasoning being that students need to learn how to research things much more than they need to understand the underlying concepts of a subject. I'm sorry, but this sort of thing just encourages the idea that knowledge is like a Happy Meal, cheap, disposable, and of little value. Why bother learning anything if you can just look it up when you need it? Why bother developing an understanding of the subject beyond what you read on wikipedia or what your friend tells you?

Karin has just finished doing her first interview for the next episode and she hasn't lost any of her radio skillz. Me? I'm lining up one or two people so we're still on track for full content for the next episode which will be released on the 10/09/2008.

Just for fun here's a shot of our "studio":

We return! Yes ladies and gentlemen we have returned to once again bring you the oddity that is Open Source On The Air.

This fortnight we talk with Ben Powell about LCA 09 and Khairil Yousef about the work that is being done in the Malaysian government sector on Open Source Adoption.

RSS Feeds:

There is some cool Createive Commons music out there.

You know something? They're doing some cool stuff in Malaysia.

That is all

Hrrm, I've been doing more work in the backyard today, got the new compost heap sorted out and have been busy transferring the stuff out of the old compost bin into the new heap.

While I was digging out some of the richest compost I've seen I turned my thoughts to home power generation, (I tend to think deep thoughts while I'm working out there). There are many problems associated with setting up home power generation in Australia, not the least of which is the idea that it's a dream that either only the rich can afford, or that it's something that only hippies do.

For many people the impediment is the fact that they are renting, and really don't feel that they have the control over their homes that would be required to build home generation capabilities. Combine this with the fact that renting is viewed as a temporary thing, a step in between buying homes and you get the perfect recipe for  "meh". Even if they wanted to do it, it's not worth setting everything up only to have to leave it all behind when you move.

So how do you encourage renters and landlords to invest in these sorts of technologies? How do you facilitate those people who want to do the right thing and reduce their demand on the main grid?