Akademy talks are in the process of going up. Here are the video (Stream, OGG 76MB) and slides (PDF 88KB) for my talk on The KDE Usability Project.

Amazon will be selling the OLPC XOs via the G1G1 (give one get one) - which i understands means they'll be shipping to New Zealand.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/150642/amazon_to_sell_olpc...

i'm a finalist in the New Zealand opensource awards - not sure what category, but guess this means i get a ticket ;-) I'm waiting for NZOSA to update their website so i can show my mum.

Last year, the project my husband Callum commits to, Open GPS, won best project. This was great for the project as well as bring the committers+contributors together to meet face to face for the first time.

Some of my colleages are also 2008 finalists:
Francois Marier - for contributions to Debian
Grant McLean - for contribution to Wellington Perl Mongers
Docvert/Matthew Holloway - for support of the Public Knowledge Project

Wellington is fast proving itself to be the home of New Zealand's open source software movement with two major collaborative software events scheduled for the capital within days.

First up, on Saturday September 20, is Software Freedom Day '08, part of an international celebration of open source software that will gather together more than 150 software enthusiasts including programmers, website development teams and open source advocates.

read more

Netguide's guide to passwords

And then.. To encourage people to come back to netguide, they reset EVERYONE's password to 'netguide', and then emailed everyone to let them know...

nice one.

I'm not a fan of loooong reviews. -- here's the short version

Headphones - from SKULL CANDY (awesome name).

good:
* comfy
* compact
* adjustable on 3 axis.
* GREAT bass. good treble. good range
* snow proof, which means semi-water proof.
* the cord has a connector halfway, so i can disconnect the middle the cable to untangle with bag straps and coats and such.
* great looking.

bad:
* white (but there is a black version)
* don't sit in neck mode.

Action from the Girl Geek Dinner Tech Ed 08 , originally uploaded by techedlive

girl geek dinner @ tech ed.

Action from the Girl Geek Dinner Tech Ed 08 , originally uploaded by techedlive

Amanda

Girl Geek Dinner Tech Ed 08, originally uploaded by techedlive

Girl Geek Dinner Tech Ed 08, originally uploaded by techedlive

me (not a gamer btw)

Girl Geek Dinner Tech Ed 08, originally uploaded by techedlive

Joh talks about gamers

Girl Geek Dinner Tech Ed 08, originally uploaded by techedlive

.

The nice lady next door sent over some saheena. I took pictures of it but haven’t got it off the camera yet. I figure today is time for a history lesson.

But back to this Iftar first.
So, mom boiled corn, we had saheena (bhagi - a type of spinach - chopped up in a batter, fried, sliced, spread with tamarind chutney), mom dates and our regular old weak tea and water.

For dinner…leftovers or unhealthy stuff.

I wish I knew how other people did their Iftars.
When I went away to school, the first communal iftar was…different…for me. There we all were, standing around in a room, somebody shared out dates1 and then they’d call the maghrib2 adhaan3 and we’d break our fast (some would wait for the adhaan to finish, others and I would break it as soon as the adhaan was called).

Then we’d go pray maghrib and come back and feast on the lovely almost potluck food there.

For me, Iftar always meant what you actually broke fast with. Dinner was something separate.

For our masjid, there used to be a list. And if someone wanted to sponsor Iftar (otherwise known as Aftari in Urdu), they’d put their name down for a day. If they wanted to do Iftar and Dinner they’d claim a day too. The list would help us know what days were free, what days we had to make our own dinner and what days we would have to make things for Iftar.

Days that weren’t claimed, people coming to the masjid to break fast would bring something. Sometimes it could be A LOT! Sometimes you could get 4 different saheena…or 4 different black eye beans cooked down.

Yeah.
Usually by the second week, these could be avoided…people would get time to announce what they might be making.

When my grandfather was alive, and Imam of the masjid we used to all go down waaay early. Somebody would mix juice. And we’d set out a number of glass plates (he’d tell us how much I think), and with him leading the pack with GINGER, we’d go through sharing up everything on those plates. Bananas would be sliced so that everybody got some. All the saheenas were divided up equally. Everybody got everything. And glasses and plates were always waiting for the latecomers.

Claimed Iftars and Iftar and Dinner were done slightly differently.

But can you imagine how much wares to wash just to break your fast? And you still have to go home to eat dinner…well…if you have room I guess.

Some time around when my dad became Imam, mom took over in that, I think I remember a trip to a homegoods store (Bel Air?) and buying about 3 or 4 of these big metal enamelled serving platters (2 pink, 2 blue, *sigh*). There were four tables, two for the brothers and two for the sisters. Most everything would go on those plates. Things like watermelon or very liquidy stuff might go on their separate glass plates but basically, there were no individual plates anymore. People could take what they wanted and leave what they wanted and tada! less wares to wash (except for glasses…but at least we weren’t pre-filling them…they were on the table and you filled it as you sat down).

As those platters got older, either they were replaced or people just started using the glass plates to put things on…but still one dish of one thing per table.

For Iftars alone, it was typically a big spread. If people weren’t providing dinner, they would go all out with sweets (cake, dates) and fries (pholourie, saheena, accra, chutneys) and fruit (watermelon, bananas, pawpaw) and beans (channa, black eye). As my grandfather’s death became a distant memory, so did the ginger…

For Iftar and Dinner, people would usually just provide one fried thing, one bean and maybe one fruit so that everybody would get something but not too much because the main event is yet to come.

Now, after the Iftar (regardless of dinner, no dinner) we’d go pray Maghrib.

There were washing rotations…
If there was dinner, we’d all go out and have dinner and then more wash up and usually by then it would be time for Isha4 and Tarawih5. If no dinner, we’d go back home and have dinner and then return to the masjid to pray.

The days of Iftar and Dinner were some of my greatest memories. The younger you were the less work you had to do. We would play games. Catch, Pole-to-pole…I’m not sure if we played box games there (hopscotch, moral) as I don’t know if there was anywhere to do it. I used to look forward to Ramadan and not just for the fasting ;-)

As time’s gone on it’s not the same.
Maybe because I’m older…less energy…oh yes and less people coming to the masjid…or maybe all the people who’re not fasting aren’t coming anymore.
There might still be a sort of list…but there aren’t really the communal iftars and dinners anymore.

Dad and some others go down to the masjid for before maghrib. Mom makes sure there’s juice, water and dates in the kitchen. If she makes anything special or if anybody else makes anything special they send it down. Mom and I don’t usually go down. If we have hopes of making it for Tarawih (and I haven’t made it to the masjid for Tarawih yet), we conserve our energy.

Everytime Ramadan comes around, mom yearns (and so do we) to do an Iftar and dinner, catered even. But…reality kicks in and the work…and how she’ll feel even with me there…and we figure it’s better we make sure there is something at the masjid all the time to break fast. But we do miss it…bad.

1. traditional…the practice of the prophet (saw) was to break fast with dates and water
2. sunset prayer
3. call to prayer, called five times a day because we have five obligatory prayers
4. night prayer, last of the five
5. special extra prayer during Ramadan, prayed after Isha4

I made it to Oakland last night, after a long, crazy day driving from Blackfoot Idaho, to Oakland. On Tuesday, I’d driven through Yellowstone, which was quite wonderful. But I was getting tired, and cranky, and realizing that I was ready to be done already with this road trip, so I got up early, and drove long. I gained an hour along the way, which helped me get here just in time for dinner.

I’m a bit disoriented, and not quite sure which end us up. And, it’s HOT here, which I am not enjoying.

This is one really, really huge country - you realize how much space there is when you drive across it. In general, I had a good time, but I’m also quite ready to be here - to find my way to getting rid of those quotation marks.

The hiatus is over with a short entry about Google Chrome, the new browser from Google that I learned about on the twitterverse while I was stopped at one rest stop or another.

I can’t test it, because my Mac that has a Windows virtual machine is packed. But I will say this: that doesn’t matter. I won’t be downloading it, or trying it, even when they release Mac or Linux versions.

Why so curmudgeonly you ask? It is open source, after all. And it has some cool features.

Yes, it is open source, and I applaud Google for releasing open source software. However, there was an initial brou-haha about the EULA, which initially suggested that everything you type into the browser belongs to Google (talk about All Your Base Belong to Us!) Yes, they changed it, but it made me realize that it is a Bad Idea to put all of my eggs in one basket. Google already knows enough about me (it reads my mail, my feeds, my search history, and a few shared documents, to boot,) I’m certainly not going to add virtually everything else I do (the percent of things I do using a protocol other than http(s) is dwindling by the second.)

If someone releases a “Chrome minus Google” - that is, a version of Chrome with all of the “phone home” code completely eliminated, then I’ll think about using that version, just to see what it’s like. Otherwise, fuggetaboutit.