Posted on August 14th, 2011
Being in Melbourne for training all week, I was lucky enough to catch Ignite Melbourne on Tuesday 9th August. Below are some highlights from the generally amazing presentations. If you’re thinking of running your own Ignite, then O’Reilly has some great resources to get you started.
- “Crowdsourcing: Stories from Kaggle’s frontline” from Nicholas Gruen [@NicholasGruen] of Kaggle
This was a great presentation on how scientific problems were solved via crowdsourcing – and how to make crowdsourcing happen
- “How long is a piece of string? inspired by the concept of a Fermi estimate” by Jason Yip [@jchyip] of ThoughtWorks
This presentation was amazing and used limits, statistical analysis and boundaries to provide a scientific estimate of how long a piece of string is.
- “The Awesome Foundation” from Ross Hill [@rosshill]
Great presentation from Ross Hill around the work that 10 micro-investors do each month with Awesome Melbourne. In summary, 10 people put in $100 a month to fund an idea, startup or other proposal. No strings attached – a generally philanthropic and grass roots movement.
- “Modelling salaries in a financially transparent company” from Marty Andrews [@martinjandrews] of Cogent Consulting
Great presentation on the model used to determine employee salaries at a small consultancy. Points are awarded for experience, level of business development proficiency and bonuses for things like peer or community recognition or other ‘valued’ citizenship type behaviours. Not so relevant for a large institution, but an interesting and valid approach to salary setting.
- “The History of LOL“ Kealey Nutt [@kealey] from Thelma Magazine
Humourous preso on the history of LOLZ. Left early so I missed most of it. @Kealey is great to speak with – she’s inspirational.
Posted on July 11th, 2011
Working with Lilypad Arduino is something I’ve wanted to try for a while now – but simply haven’t found the time! Knowing that BarCampGeelong was only a few weeks away spurred me into action. First, I read up on the Lilypad Arduino tutorials from Leah Buechley. Running Ubuntu, I had already installed the Arduino IDE from the software manager, so I was good to go.
So, what sort of project was simple enough to allow me to get the hang of this new technology while still presenting enough of a challenge to be interesting? I decided on a scarf that would detect light levels, with the aim of turning on some bright white LEDs if light levels were too low.
First, I needed a scarf. I decided on this Dropped! lace openwork pattern so that the components could be sewn in with conductive thread and not look out of place. I also thought about what type of material to make the scarf out of – in case any of the electronic components overheated and melted or caught on fire. I chose a 98% wool blend – ‘Beulah’ by Sean Sheep – nice and cheap too in case the project didn’t work out.
Next, I needed some Arduino Lilypad components – which are now available in Australia from Little Bird Electronics. For this project, I used;
Then, I needed some Arduino code to read in the light sensor and do the logic for turning on the LEDs –
you can get the code from my page on GitHub. Once the Arduino board was programmed, it was time to sew in the components with conductive thread. It was here that some problems arose. My original plan was to have 5 LEDs on the scarf, which all lit up at the same time. When sewing the conductive thread, I found that I could only sew in one LED to the -tive terminal (ground) petal on the Lilypad Arduino.
NOTE: Andy Gelme (@Geekscape) has since given me some advice on working around this, by finding alternative methods to ground the LEDs. I just haven’t implemented it yet!
The other problem was that due to the openwork design of the scarf itself, some of the conductive thread was prone to crossing – which meant that the circuit didn’t work as designed. I unpicked the thread and it was resewn, with care given to making sure the wire did not cross.
The presentation given to BarCampGeelong can be found on Slideshare here;
UPDATED: Photos!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kathyreid/sets/72157627158152752/
Posted on February 28th, 2011
There was an interesting find in my letterbox today – a scam ‘Domain Name Expiration Notice’ from a company called Domain Renewal Group, seeking to have me renew one of my domains (wordpresschix.org) to them – for the bargain price of four times what it cost me originally!
This letter looks so authentic that less-savvy people could easily be fooled – in fact, unless you were really skilled in domains and registration, it would be difficult to pick it up as a scam;
Image of the scam domain name expiration notice
Because the domain is not in the .au namespace, auDA does not have any authority over the registrar. I emailed Public Interest Registry, the registrar for the .org TLD to let them know, and also let auDA know in case they wish to raise a consumer alert.
I also emailed Domain Renewal Group themselves, and threatened to report them to the ACCC (the enclosed self-addressed envelope – not reply paid! – has the address 189 Queen Street, Suite 209 Melbourne 3000 on it – so they obviously have an Australian base of operations) if they did not cease their operation;
To whom it may concern,
I recently received a letter addressed to me concerning the domain
WordPressChix.org
This letter constituted an unsolicited domain name expiration notice, and
is considered a scam. Because the namespace '.org' is not maintained by
auDA, the Australian domain authority, I have raised my concerns with the
Public Interest Registry (PIR), the official registrar for the .org TLD,
in writing.
I would like DROA to undertake the following:
1. A written apology via return email for your actions to me personally
2. A written undertaking via return email that you will cease these
operations in Australia no later than 14th March 2011
Failure to respond to this email with 14 (fourteen) days with the above
will result in a formal complaint being raised with the Australian
Competition and Consumer Commission (www.accc.gov.au).
Please note I will also be using social media channels to inform other
Australian webmasters of your unethical tactics.
You may also wish to know that you're garnering a very unfavourable
reputation within Australia;
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1040704
Regards,
Kathy Reid
Member, Linux Users of Victoria
Member, Linux Users of Australia
Board member, PHPWomen
@KathyReid on Twitter
We’ll see what happens!
(to be continued…)
