r3dux.org

You can read about the history of Australia Day here, if you’re interested. Or just throw another shrimp on the barbie and be thankful for the day off =D

Linux.conf.au 2012 kicks off next week in Ballarat at the UB Mt. Helen campus (commuting win – 10 minute drive!) so I’ve just spent a few hours working out my conference schedule… You might think this is perhaps too long to be pondering over schedules, but as the conference runs for 5 days and is organised around multiple sessions in streams, you can pick and choose which sessions you attend each day. For example, options for Tuesday the 17th (with my planned sessional route in blue) look like this:

Even reading about each talk takes a while, nevermind deciding which ones to attend - but it's a nice problem to have

So, yeah, it’s taken a bit of reading and thinking to figure out which sessions I’d like to attend (of-interest or fun stuff), which sessions I should attend (useful learning opportunities but not necessarily fun) and which sessions I’m not particularly fussed about, of which I’m not finding many – quite the opposite in fact, I keep finding multiple sessions I’d like to attend which are on at the same time! Looking forward to a great week of Linuxy shenanigans and learning stuff. Should be fun =D

Saw this on boingboing earlier – sounds like that SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is some seriously far-reaching draconian craziness…

Find out what you can do to derail this bullshit here.

Also, more David Rees cartoons at the above link, and there’s always Get Your War On, My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable and My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable if you feel like a good laugh to cheer you up afterwards =D

I’m doing the Stanford online AI class this year, taught by Professor’s Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig. And up in week 5, unit 11 is Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) and State Transition Probabilities. Sounds dry, right?

Check this out…

Oh. My. God.

As a teacher myself, and one who genuinely tries hard to interest and engage students, Sebastian is a role-model. How absolutlely RARING-TO-GO is he?! To paraphrase: “I CAN’T WAIT to teach you all about this, and that, and this other cool shit! And you can use it for all kinds of neat stuff! Woo-hoo!” =DDD

And yeah, the course isn’t easy, and it requires time and effort and commitment – but it’s fun! And it’s rewarding, and I’m inspired as a student, and blown-away as a teacher.

If more teachers had this kind of passion, I sincerely believe that the world would be an entirely different place.

My lovely wife just got me another bouncy-ball for the collection (power-ball, if you’re American), and it’s brown with a monkey face on it. So, as you do, I asked her how many points you score for the brown in snooker – and she hadn’t a clue. So love, this is for you

Pot the reds then, screw back
for the yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black!

Funny stuff – hadn’t thought of that in years… Also, quality dubbing! Ha!