I always intended to report upon the OSDC in Auckland. Thygocanberra has requested that I report upon: “how did NZ trip go? victories? triumphs? feasts? spoils?”. There were indeed all of these things, and more.
AWESOMENESS
I have already posted as to the awesomeness of travelling to New Zealand on the Air NZ "Hobbit" plane. We saw some unusual aircraft on our journey, but nothing came close to the Hobbit plane which boldly proclaimed itself "The Airline of Middle Earth".
TRIUMPHS
The conference itself was well organized and a success. For a lawyer attending a hard core geeks convention I found it surprisingly enjoyable and genuinely interesting.
The triumph was PythonMagus, who strode through the conference as a giant among geeks. The Python's talk "Creating Masterpieces with Raphael" was the highlight of the whole conference, and I got a massive buzz seeing PRESTAGS Moderni Agone on the big screen. We met an intense young developer who told us after the talk that he has been working on a computer game for three and a half years. The Python completed MA in three months. Even in the small photograph on the below left one can recognise PRESTAGS Moderni Agone.
After his talk the Python was able to relax a bit, however he still maintained 'the stance'. That is the stance of triumph, which has not been seen since the cover picture for PRESTAGS Viking in 1975. The Python was also able to enter 'The Great Room', where only the great dare to venture.
FEASTS
Were there feasts? Yes, too many feasts! The formal dinner for the OSDC was held at Eden Park on the first evening of the conference. Eden Park is the most sacred place in New Zealand, and Aussies usually leave Eden Park on a stretcher, so it was a privilege to enter and survive this place. Dinner at Eden Park was great (it is hard to go wrong with a self-serve all-you-can-eat top restaurant quality smorgasbord) and the real treat was Yorkshire Pudding which I have not had in ages. I remember this pudding at the Python's wedding: is this correct?
The conference was held at the Langham Hotel in Auckland. I have stayed in quite a lot of 5 star hotels around the world and I can honestly say the Langham beat them all. I normally travel for business, and without family or friends, so perhaps I was particularly well disposed to the Langham because the circumstances were more fun. All of the food at the Langham was top notch. The morning and afternoon teas came with a huge variety of cakes and wraps. The lunches included numerous hot options, with no stinginess on the meat as is usually the case. The cheese platter was particularly memorable.
The view from my hotel window included an old red brick house among taller modern buildings. The house was now a posh French restaurant on top called "Number 5" and an earthy Italian restaurant below called "Da Vinci's". Python and I had an excellent two course Italian meal at Da Vinci's to celebrate his talk.
Feasts come in all shapes and sizes. I was well behaved on the first two mornings and had my own cereal breakfast, but on the last morning I went for the traditional hotel cooked breakfast of eggs and sausages.
The breakfast was first class. It was delivered precisely (to the second) at my nominated time of 7.15am and the poached eggs were still runny. A surprise was the toaster so that I could toast my own bread in order to achieve maximum freshness of toast. I have never encountered this before. The pot of strong freshly brewed coffee for one was enormous and I drank it all. I haven't slept since.
VICTORIES
There was a victory, and it was mine. Throughout the conference the Python and I continued our two player game of EDEE. How cool was this and how different to all the boring legal conferences I have been to over the years. Every couple of hours we would exchange turns, and even the uber geek talks with topics like "Clustering Web Apps with MariaDB & Galera" and "MySQL Roadmap, more flexibility with NoSQL API" could not hold the Python as he rushed to a quiet corner to do his move.
It was a particularly close and exciting game, and I had been rewarded with a radical opening strategy which the Python still refuses to concede is better than his opening strategy. In any event, after a particularly crushing counter move by me, the Python officially resigned in a game that he has dominated for years. It was a very satisfying victory indeed.
No PRESTAGS was played, although MI 22 and his friends did travel to New Zealand and they were remarkably well behaved.
SPOILS
The true spoils of the conference are knowledge. I learnt a lot, especially about cyber security and privacy which have always interested me. I really enjoyed a panel discussion on the second morning "Government surveillance of online communications" and the keynote address on the third day by Vikram Kumar, the CEO of Mega, which is a NZ based private cloud platform. There are so many threats to our privacy and even the geeks are struggling to hold back the ever increasing online Orwellian nightmare.
I learnt about Tor, which has a suite of applications to assist online privacy. I learnt about BeagleBone which is a credit card sized linux computer: absolutely brilliant and I want one. I don't need one but I just want one. I learnt that I cannot challenge the geeks when it comes to 'most nerdy' t-shirts or 'most nerdy' laptop stickers. I collected a lot of stickers at OSDC. But I still think my own sticker design of the linux penguin with the V for Vendetta mask was the most original at the conference.
HOME
No matter where you go or whatever you do it is always marvellous to get home. As the return flight descended over Sydney I was able to take a photograph through the window with a rather crappy camera. I am quite proud of this photograph. It captures the CBD and harbour bridge, and the bushfire haze that was still sitting over the city. Welcome back to Sydney.
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