You’ve probably heard of the BarCamp phenomenom which brings together technically minded folks in a forum to share, innovate, learn and collaborate. Victoria has now had two BarCamps, both organised by Ben Balbo. The first, in rural Victoria was held in 2007 with a very successful city based event in 2008.

This year, a rural based BarCamp event, StixCamp, will be hosted in Newstead, central Victoria.

We’re now putting out the call for sponsors – whether it be $$$, products for prizes, in kind sponsorship such as catering or anything else you can think of. So if you or a business you know of is keen about technology and wants to assist in growing and nurturing the bright young sparks of Victoria, then please get in contact. In return, we can offer the following;

Sponsors will have their logo on the http://vic.au.stixcamp.org/ website and the http://barcampmelbourne.org/ web site, linked to a URL of
their choosing. These logos will be on the main page until the nextBarCampMelbourne or Victorian StixCamp are announced, at which time they will be available in archives within those two sites.

Sponsors will also receive verbal thanks and recognition during the opening and closing speeches, and in any communication with reporters.
Press releases will also name all confirmed sponsors at the time of release.

The Seven Things is starting to take off in the blogosphere so thought I would do my bit…

So, here’s seven weird and wonderful things about yours truly;

1. My first computer program was in BASIC on a ZX Spectrum, stored to secondary memory on cassette tape (yikes!). It was basically a menu selection program which invoked different subroutines based on menu choice. Yep, essentially a case() statement…
2. My first job out of high school was as a copy typist, a skill which comes in handy as a programmer / IT person
3. I had no hair until I was two years old (true!!!) and my nickname was Hare Krishna…
4. My favourite food is spaghetti bolognese
5. I can swim 3kms without stopping
6. My favourite authors are Paulo Coelho and Jostein Gaarder, oh and William Gibson and Neal Stephenson too!
7. I hold two degrees – a BSc majoring in Information Systems and a BA with majors in Indonesian language and security studies.

The duly tagged:

Donna Benjamin: For being open, creative, collaborative and all of the other things that makes Open Source a great field to work in.

Pia Waugh: For rejecting societal norms, stating that the world can be a better place, and then making it happen.

Lorna Jane Mitchell: A fellow knitter, and inventor of the PHPWomen-branded elePHPant.

Elizabeth Naramore: Because she rocks And also for her work on PHPWomen.org

KaityGB: For showing us that no matter what we’re faced with, there’s always a way to create, dream and achieve

Meg Sawyer: For being herself

Ainslee Hooper: For correctly identifying bullshit.

The rules:

And here are the rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post—some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

I’ve recently been joined by a new colleague, who will be taken over Problem Management duties while I’m seconded to something else (improving video conferencing). In chatting with him, he mentioned that Kepner Tregoe is quite a dated model, and that it isn’t all that useful. Ever since doing my KT training in 2007, I’ve tried to find ways to apply it – to the ITIL Problem Management process itself, or to everyday rational decision making. Personally I find it quite a useful tool, and so am always interested to explore further when someone quite passionately takes the opposite stance.

One of the key tenets of Kepner Tregoe is that changes cause problems. Alterations in supplier, materials, personnel, work practices, equipment, raw materials etc can lead to a defect (or in KT terms, a ‘deviation‘). This is particularly applicable in the IT world – as configuration changes, hardware changes, script changes etc can all lead to a deviation. Although we have quite a mature Change Management process, and in most cases a clear audit trail of all Changes made to a Configuration Item, there are times when the ‘changes cause problems’ mantra, while valid, is of limited value. For instance, let’s take the principle where a problem caused by a change can first occur at any point after that change. What if the change occurred a while ago and in the interim there have been several other changes? It then becomes more difficult to try and identify how a change has contributed to a problem.

This is a downside of KT problem analysis – so the question becomes how then to avoid being unable to determine which change caused a problem. ITIL Change Management can contribute partially to this – by helping to bundle changes into change windows, and eventually reduce the rate of change. If the dependencies of a Change and the Configuration Items involved are adequately identified, this can also provide better information to link a change with a problem.

Another downside we have seen with KT in recent weeks is that it is still very dependent on specialist (subject matter expert – SME) knowledge to identify the most probable cause. Even after comparing similar objects to identify distinctions, and reviewing changes to see how these could account for the defect or deviation, in many cases there is still a great deal of technical knowledge required to formulate a probable cause. One wonders if this is a true downside – as it would be fair to assume that in a specialist technical field, it will be the specialist who undertakes root cause analysis. After all, would it be appropriate to have a dentist find out why you have a pain in the stomach?

I suspect I will have many more interesting Kepner Tregoe conversations in the coming months…

The saga continues. Here is a copy of the complaint I made to WishGiftCard.com.au:

Hi there,
I would like to make a formal complaint about the Wish Gift Card.

After being urged to purchase a Wish Gift Card at Safeway Newcomb last year, and with a not-insubstantial amount left on the card, I have hence been told by Big W in Geelong that the card has expired.

Checking the card against your site, it expired on 26 June 2008.

Point 1: I was never told that this card expires

Point 2: The card has no expiry date printed on it

Point 3: What happens to the leftover money? I assume that Woolworths simply absorbs this. At the current CPI, the $100 I “purchased” in 2006 would now be worth around $106, not to mention the fact that there’s still over $20 left on the card. Nice going – that’s a 26% return!

Obviously I will not be purchasing a Wish Gift Card again, and will be telling all of my friends about my poor experience.

Regards,
Kathy

Now, I don’t usually do rants. However, incensed at my recent woeful customer service experiences, an exception will be made.

Task number 1: Purchase digital photo frame at Big W

Result: Fail

Of the six models displayed, only two were in stock, and one of those was two and a half more times expensive than the other models. I was left wanting.

Task number 2: Purchase roll down Bonds Large yoga pants in size XL at Big W

Result: Fail

Now, the homework had been done on this one. I had contacted Bonds and asked their customer service department where I could purchase (using specific product codes) a pair of Bonds Large roll down yoga pants. Obviously my grammar and standard of English were subpar, because the response I got was little more than a rehash of the Bonds website (which any semi literate person could peruse). The response told me to go to Target, Big W or K-mart. Well, the original pair was from K-mart and they were sold out. So, next to Big W. Wrong! None there either.

The Bonds response told me to try the TSL website (keeping in mind I had specified the product I wanted). TSL doesn’t even stock the Bonds Large range. What the??

Task number 3: Use up Wish Card at Big W

Result: Epic Fail

This is the most worriesome and wicked part of the rant. Last year I purchased a Wish Card, promoted by Woolworths. It had $100 on it. The week before last at Big W, approximately $70 worth of the $100 card was used. It doesn’t take much effort to calculate that $30 is still on the card. So, after going to the register and trying to pay for goods using the Wish Card, the card is declined – apparently it’s expired! Who knew currency could expire so quickly!

After going Evil Kathy on the customer service lady, I paid using other methods and will follow up with Woolworths. Wonderful.

So here’s a warning: Think of the Wish Card as a You Wish Card – I’d like to pay for some goods with this card. You wish!

To be continued….

Today I got cash out via EFTPOS at a shop in Geelong. I asked for $100 in cash, which I received. It wasn’t until afterwards that it dawned on me that the amount that I had authorised was $100.01. So, where does the one cent go? Obviously not to me, and probably to the shop which was assuming I wouldn’t notice. I didn’t mention anything at the time – but I want to know whether this is standard practice or just a typo by the woman processing the transaction? Surely one cent is not worth it, but over hundreds or even thousands of transactions? Has anyone been diddled like this?

I have some Paton’s Inca in a beige blend (the same colour that the One Piece Jacket was done in) but I can’t find exactly the sort of pattern that I want to knit, so it’s time to design my first jumper. I’m an information systems major rather than a textiles major, so I decided to apply software engineering principles to designing my jumper.

So, first of all, requirements elicitation. The business requirements of the jumper are;

• The jumper must accentuate my “assets” while downplaying any not-so-desirable attributes
• The jumper must fit, and should have plenty of stretch
• The jumper should be easy to maintain
• The jumper’s cost should be less than $150

Translating the business requirements into functional requirements;

• The jumper will have a v-neck that is 2o cms deeper than the top of my shoulder and shaping will begin 8 cms in from the shoulder. The v-neck accentuates the bust while drawing attention away from the hips and gives room for movement
• The jumper will be knitted in 1 x 1 rib to give shaping and stretch
• The jumper will have slight increase to allow for large bust and decreases for waist, possible increase for hips
• The jumper will have sleeves that finish 10 cm below the elbow (my preferred sleeve length)
• Paton’s Inca is $6 at Lincraft or $5.40 at K-mart (unless I can twist Damo’s arm to get ACS to offer bulk packs cheaper). Therefore, the pattern must take less than 26 balls of yarn if I buy them at K-mart.

Next: knitting pattern design using functional decomposition

I’ve just installed the WordPress Mobile Edition plugin for WordPress, which means my blog is mobile.
So, does that make it a moblog or a blobile ???

So, if you’re viewing this on a web browser you’re probably wondering what the site actually looks like on a mobile device. I can’t take a picture of it (d’uh!), but it’s basically a plain text list of recent posts – with all the formatting taken out.

I was curious as to how the plugin detects whether the user-agent is mobile. It was straightforward. An array of user agent strings for small browsers (DoCoMo, Wii, Symbian) is created, and if the user agent matches an element of the array, then the plugin generates a mobile-friendly layout.

I was looking forward to Easter when suddenly chills began to run up my spine. Before I knew it, I was running a fever. A couple of days later, and my leg looked like this:

Lovely. OK, so cellulitis is no big deal, get some antibiotics on board and things will be sweet, right?

Not so fast. The antibiotic the guys at the hospital decided to prescribe is apparently pretty harsh on veins. So much so that my vein ‘blew out’, that is, caused a clot in the vein and caused my arm to swell. Wonderful.

Okey doke, so they put a central line in to get the antibiotics in. Problem solved? No. Next, I developed an abcess which had to be removed.

Here’s a shot 10 days after surgery. The term “perfuse pus” and “bucketloads” were used by the docs. Apparently the abcess was the size of a grapefruit. Delicious!

And here’s another shot a few days later:

Every day, the wound is packed with Algisite, to stop it knitting at the top. This allows it to heal from the bottom up.

You may have seen tonight’s Australian Story about the Toowong breast cancer cluster.

It has raised some very interesting questions about long term exposure to EMF radiation, particularly low-frequency EMF. What are everyone’s thoughts?