These taste like nard.

Man this is funny. Some nerds getting serious about their online gaming, and one of them decides enough with the talking!

This morning I went to IBM’s Forum ‘05 at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre.

It kicked off at 8:30, with a coffee and after some short introductions from the WA Regional Manager and the Australian Manager, we had the keynote from Tim Pethick. Tim launched Nudie Juice Australia in 2002 and shared some of his experiences and stories with us. This was genuinely interesting to hear what he had to say. Other keynote speakers for the rest of Australia include Rev. Tim Costello, CEO World Vision Australia and Bob Mansfield, Chariman McDonald’s Australia. Bigtime businessdudes.

A quick coffee break followed, with some baked snacks (you missed out Fitzy) and ofcourse Nudie juices galore. I had a mango, orange and passionfruit juice, and it was so good. By chance, I met up with Brad, a friend I met through 2600. He’s working at Rusty as a systems engineer now and it was good to spend the day with him. We went off to check out “Prepare Now - strategies to ensure successful deployment of IP Communications” which was about VoIP and associated technologies. Nothing really groundbreaking here, but it’s good to keep an eye on what the big boys are doing. They were a bit behind on what the Open Source community is up to, but I kept my mouth shut. I’ll learn more myself when I finally convery the Qube into an Asterisk box later this month.

We skipped the next round of talks and instead browsed the demonstration stand. It had over 30 exhibitions from IBM and their business partners. I was especially interested in their blade (including ClearCube), storage, VoIP and portal technologies. Everyone was selling without really selling, if you get what I mean.

Morning tea came around (at 11:50AM) and we grabbed a scone and a coffee. The coffees were good - real good. We decided to hit the “Linux Fuels Innovation (Open Source)” talk which was where I felt at home. The speaker was quite knowledgeable and only made a few mistakes ;) I learnt of a IBM’s World Community Grid project, which operates like SETI but has humanitarian goals. It doesn’t look like there’s a Linux client yet through :(

We grabbed a bite to eat for lunch and I caught a taxi back to the office. As a thankyou gift I got a 4-port USB hub, which I am glad to report solves my prior Bluetooth problems! On my laptop, I plug in the docking station, and into that I plug in a 4-port USB2 hub. If I plug the Microsoft Bluetooth adapter into the old hub, it doesn’t work; I plug it into the side USB port on the ThinkPad and it works a treat - go figure. It was only cheap, so I guess it mangles the USB addresses or something. The hub I got today looks even cheaper but works better! It’s not USB2, but I don’t need that so I’m just stoked that I have my (very expensive) Bluetooth mouse working.

It’s that time of year again…

Playboy have their 6th Annual Breast Test online now. I saved everyone the hassle of registering their email address so we could have a direct link. What a nice guy I am!

The only issue is that it doesn’t work in Firefox/Netscape for some reason. Argh!

OK, so this was just a scam to have some boobs on lambie.org.

Has anyone else seen Westnet’s new website and logo? I personally think it looks much cleaner and the colours are bright and attractive.

However, it does concern me how similar it is to our old friend goatse. I’m sure their service would set them apart, along with their cheeks.