LCA2006 - Norovirus
Linux.conf.au 2006 has ended, and I will be saying a few more words on it shortly. My report is somewhat delayed as myself and many other delegates contracted what is believed to be Norovirus. In my case this manifested itself with violent signs of gastrointestinal upset.

Luckily I seem to have completed my recovery in a mere 36 hours, but at least one delegate was hospitalised (now recovering nicely, thank-goodness). I also know that some unfortunates developed symptoms while on the plane; it's hard to imagine a more uncomfortable experience.

Linux.Conf.au, days -1..2
I'm in New Zealand which is hosting the annual Australian Linux.Conf.au (LCA). It's in a lovely little town called Dunedin which all around seems to be a great little place. This is my first LCA, I'm not presenting, so I'm still discovering what to expect and what not.

The first two days have been filled with "mini-confs", baby conferences organised around particular themes. Unsurprisingly, the highlight so far has been the Conway mini-conf, where I was able to see Damian's Presentation Aikido. I was extremely pleased to see that Damian's talk was quite different to MJD's and my own.

Other nice things about the conference so far have been the accomodation (in-room ethernet), the breakfasts, and the conference bag. In fact, the conference bag is incredibly cool, and is designed around holding a laptop and gadgets.

The big down-points have been the lack of easily accessible timetabling information, the flakey network connectivity, and the quality of the talks themselves. It seems that I've had the misfortune to attend a number of poorly prepared talks, but I'm confident that the main conference will be of a higher quality. There have also been some very good ones; like many conferences the talk quality varies greatly.

My primary goal here is to meet new people, although I've been having mixed results. I think I'm going to have to engineer matters to my favour, which means I'll try to kickstart a Perl BOF. I'm particularly interested in meeting any NZ Perl-mongers (I've already bumped into a few).

PerlNet - The Australian and New Zealand Perl Portal
During my travels I've discovered that the Australian and New Zealand Perl communities are very active, but also very insulated from each other. While lots of activity can be seen in local user-groups, those groups rarely talk to each other to share ideas, code, or activities.

Unfortunately, having such insulated groups makes it more difficult for anyone who wants to have a better idea of the state of Perl in Australia. I'm regularly asked "who uses Perl?", "who supports Perl?", "where can I find a Perl job?", "where can I find a Perl programmer?". While I've often been able to answer this questions accurately and successfully, the knowledge has come from my own personal experience, and not from a freely available source.

In order to better encourage communication between Australian and New Zealand Perl groups, users, businesses, and organisations, we quietly launched PerlNet almost a year ago. It's been running in stealth mode since that time, but now it's finally time to take it out into the open.

There'll be a formal announcement a little later on, but for those who read my journal you're welcome to get involved early. The site is aimed at the community, we want you to get involved.

Chatter can be found on irc.freenode.net #PerlNet, and the main website at perl.net.au. It's a wiki, so be bold in your edits.

A venomous trip to the beach
Yesterday was as beautiful summer day, with sunshine and clear skies — the perfect beachgoing weather. Being the holiday season, Jacinta, myself, our friend Kat and daughter Emily all headed off to Williamstown beach for the afternoon.

I had my snorkling gear with me, and went for a bit of a swim around the beach to see what I could find. I had a collection bag with me, mainly to pick up any rubbish found in the water, but also to collect anything particularly interesting that I may find.

My first trip back to shore had me arrive with a pretty sea-shell, which I proudly displayed and from which a small blue-ringed octopus emerged. Yes, within only a few minutes at the beach I had discovered one of Australia's most venomous marine species. Living in Australia is grand!

We all admired the octopus for a little while, and discussed how a single bite causes paralysis and respiratory arrest, and how there is no known antivenom. Indeed, our book on dangerous creatures claims that a single octopus contains enough venom to kill ten adults. An exciting find indeed.

Being careful to stay away from the biting end of the rather annoyed cephalopod, I walked back into the ocean and let it free. The colour changes were quite amazing to watch, the octopus went from an angry blue-ringed pattern to a gorgeous orange as it swam away.

The remainder of the snorkle had me discover a number of old bottles, a golf-ball, a puffer fish, and a skate (images). Overall a most rewarding day.

Falling fruit-trees
Our favourite plum tree split into three this week. It seems that modern fruit-trees produce so much that they require human support and pruning in order to remain stable, and unless this conducted regularly they can produce so much fruit they'll just fall to pieces. Ours did exactly that.

Some time was spent with Jacinta, myself, and our helpful neighbours in hacking off large branches to reduce the weight, and then pushing the three parts of the tree back together, putting in supports, and binding the trunk. We now have probably only half the tree that we used to have, and a much greater chance of infection or future difficulties.

This is a real shame, as it's our favourite plum tree that normally allows me to subsist off nothing but fruit during the summer months. I suspect that come winter we'll be taking a more attractive approach to our pruning schedule.