Here’s a short snippet that I always forget, or confuse for awk:

I bought another Acer X1800 desktop machine today (dual core 2.5GHz, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD for only $380 from JB Hi-Fi!) with the intention of creating the first node in our specjour/Hydra test cluster. You might recall we name all the computers at work after Transformers characters, which meant I needed to determine which sub-group these machines would live under. We have already used a few of the Decepticon mini-cassette names like Ravage, Rumble and Laserbeak, so I had a look at what the Autobots provided in the same suite.

I found this site which outlines the Autobot mini-cassette characters, and decided our first node would take on Grand Slam’s name. I was sold when I read that Grand Slam combined with Raindance to create Slamdance! These guys sound like the perfect machines to tackle the task of running our automated test suites.

Once again we’re looking for some more full time developers. If you know someone who might be interested, let them know.

Full details are over on The Frontier Group’s blog.

In a few weeks my contract with Vodafone is expiring. This coincides with the (suspected) release of the iPhone 4G.

My iPad is using Telstra Next-G for mobile coverage, so I used the SpeedTest iPhone application to check each carrier’s connectivity from my office.

Each test was run once, so the results might vary if I used actual science and statistics to even things out, but that doesn’t reflect my real-life usage, so I opted for the “one chance to impress me” approach.

As you can see, Telstra’s network was about 1.5x faster downloading, and 2.5x faster uploading. Certainly, they’re different devices, but I think it’s comparable.

I just wish Telstra wasn’t, well, Telstra.

On Saturday I attended BarCamp 4 at East Perth TAFE. It was a really well organised event (Matt and Darcy did a great job) and the content presented by the speakers was really engaging and interesting.

I saw Jessica Ender’s talk on form design as well as Samuel Spencer’s talk on the Australian Bureau of Statistics and their adoption of open data formats for delivering data sets to the public.

My talk was on after lunch, and I think me wandering around in a blue gi drew a little bit of attention (which if I’m being honest, I was banking on) and had people interested. Aaron helped me with the talk and received a few knocks to the head as thanks - his noggin was determined to meet the carpet-covered-concrete as often as it could.

I talked about the overlap I see between my jiu-jitsu training and every day business life, and my hope is that I’ll get the audience thinking about all the areas of their lives, which they may have previously considered insular or separate, and how they might in fact be connected and relevant.

I personally had a great time at the event, and The Frontier Group will be sponsoring it again in the future. I was disappointed that another engagement meant I couldn’t stay for the whole day, but I was very pleased with what I did get to partake in. There were a few of us pressuring Matt to plan for the next BarCamp in 6 months, but we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve uploaded the slides from my talk if you’d like to check them out.