Freelancing Gods 2008

I’m slowly making my way through Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class (yes, I should have read it a couple of years ago, I know), and came across a nice quote – paraphrasing the thoughts of Joel Mokyr, that I thought was rather apt when considering the stupidity and greed of the mobile phone carriers in Australia (in general, and in regard to Apple’s iPhone):

“Technical creativity has tended to rise and then fade dramatically at various times in various cultures, when social and economic institutions turn rigid and act against it.”

You could argue Telstra, Optus and Vodafone aren’t doing anything against technical creativity, sure – but they’re certainly not doing anything for it either.

If you want a much better, more detailed write-up, go read what John Allsop has to say.

About six months ago, I sent a letter to the Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (yes, that’s a mouthful), Stephen Conroy, raising some concerns with the ISP filtering the Government was proposing.

A few weeks ago, I received a response. It’s overly long, filled with spin and cruft, but hey, that’s better than nothing. There’s still some questions unanswered though, and new ones raised, so here’s my response to the good senator. Fingers crossed for a faster reply.

To the Honourable Stephen Conroy,

Thank you for your letter dated 26 June 2008, replying to my own concerns sent to your office in January. I appreciate the extensive details on the current Government’s plans for cyber-safety, although I feel a couple of my concerns weren’t addressed. Namely:

• The reasoning behind using an opt-out filter instead of an opt-in filter;
• Acknowledgement that this filter will slow down the internet in Australia; and
• Confirmation that it is the ACMA, not the Government, that determines what sites are filtered.

Secondly, I have some questions from what you outlined in your letter:

• Who decides the participants in the Consultative Working Group and Youth Advisory Group?
• What defines success and/or failure for the ISP filtering pilot?
• Was there consultation with the industry about the feasibility of the filtering? Or is that consultation limited to how best to implement it?

Again, thank you for your response, and I look forward to the continuation of this discussion.

Kind regards,

Patrick Allan

A quick post for any Discworld fans that may peruse this blog.

Nullus Anxietas 2, the second Australian Discworld Convention, will be happening from the 27th of February to 1st of March 2009, in Melbourne, Australia. The first (in February 2007) was a fantastic success, which is why we’re doing it again.

While Terry Pratchett sadly can’t make it over this time around – he’s cutting down on travel because of his Alzheimer’s – we’ve still got some exciting events happening (including the follow-up to Snowgum Films’ Run Rincewind Run – watch it if you haven’t already).

Details are a bit thin on the ground at the moment, as we work on fleshing out programme ideas, but if you’d like to come along, registering in the next few days scores you $15 off the already-low early-bird rate of $120 ($100 for concession holders).

If this sounds like your kind of thing, but you’re not close to Australia and can’t justify the journey, you may want to check out the UK version – which has been going for over a decade now (although this year’s is already sold out), and the upcoming American edition.

If you’re a Ruby developer in or near Australia, I highly recommend attending RailsCamp number 3, which has just opened for registration. The first two were simply amazing, so I’m just a little annoyed that I can’t make it to this one (as I’ll be traveling overseas at the time). I’ve no doubt that this one will be just as fantastic – expect an extended weekend of hacking and talking with a bunch of smart, entertaining and passionate developers, and plenty of drinks and games thrown in for good measure.

You don’t need to be a Rails or Ruby genius to attend – just a desire to discuss, learn, teach and (most importantly) have fun.

Go register now.

A few notes and links on the Government finally apologising to the indigenous people of Australia, prompted by conversations with Ross via twitter and IM:

• ‘Sorry’ isn’t the be all and end all – but it’s a good start.
• Howard’s intervention to ‘save the children’ was a load of bullshit bound for failure – top-down approach, handed down from on high, by white people who don’t have a clue.
• I don’t have any solutions on how to make things better. But as far as I’m concerned anyone suggesting solutions who doesn’t work with indigenous communities should seriously consider shutting their mouth.
• There isn’t going to be an easy, clear, simple solution.
• But there are people out there putting forward intelligent ideas. Go read Chris Graham’s article in Crikey
• While you’re at it, peruse these articles by Kylie Lee and Claire Smith.
• Also topical and definitely worth reading – Martin Flanagan on Archie Roach

I’m looking forward to tomorrow morning.

An addition to auspostie.com, prompted by Dr Nic’s suggestion in the comments of the earlier blog post – the postie gem. It allows easy parsing of Postie search results, and also provides a command-line tool for searching.

By suburb:

postie Brunswick

By postcode:

postie 3070

To install:

sudo gem install postie

To use within your own ruby code:

require 'postie'

Postie::Locality.find("Melbourne")

Again, extremely simple, but just makes access to the data that little bit easier.

Now, what would be really cool is a Quicksilver plugin that queries the API. Any volunteers to code that up?

A couple of weeks ago I quickly coded a basic webservice – using Merb – for Australian Postcode data. Just got hosting for it sorted out last night, so now I can blog about it.

Postie

The emphasis is on simple – you can search by postcode or suburb, and get the data back either as a HTML page, XML, or JSON. That’s pretty much it. The request urls aren’t complicated, either:

• auspostie.com/Brunswick
• auspostie.com/Brunswick.js
• auspostie.com/Brunswick.xml
• auspostie.com/2782
• auspostie.com/2782.js
• auspostie.com/2782.xml

Suburb requests use partial matching, so you don’t need the full suburb name. If you want the JSON returned with the MIME type of application/json, use the .json extension.

I’ve no plans at this point on using this, but perhaps it’s useful for someone out there – if so, would love to hear about it.

I was watching the always-interesting Enough Rope tonight, I came across a surprising stat.

One of the segments was focused on a family who had lost their 7-year-old daughter two years ago. She had been signed up as an organ donor, and her parents were surprised to find out how rare this was – so they’ve spent a large amount of their time since raising awareness and encouraging people to sign up to be on the Organ Donor Registry.

The surprising (and disappointing) statistic is that less people signed up to be donors in 2006 compared to 2005 – and both numbers were less than 300! In a country of 20 million people!

So… if you’re not a donor, and would like to be, the Medicare website has the relevant forms. You can even apply online (although they’ll then send you a form to sign).

If you’re not a donor and don’t want to be, though, I’d be interested in hearing why. (My original question contained less thought and more expletives, but I’m open to there being valid reasons.)

RailsCamp 2.0 finished earlier today – and I think it’s safe to declare it a fantastic success (even given my bias).

Massive thanks to Ben and Karen for their hard work getting everyone fed and co-ordinating people in the kitchen (and the RailsCamp bus from Melbourne to Sunnystones). Thanks too to everyone who helped at various points – both in the organising and over the weekend.

Finally, thank you to everyone who came along – these camps are so much fun because of the calibre of people who attend, and their willingness to share ideas, code and laughs.

Will be posting a version of my talk at some point soon… once I’ve recovered from the weekend.

In case the few readers of this blog are not aware, there’s a RailsCamp happening just outside of Melbourne, from the 23rd-26th November (not far away at all). It will be a weekend of hacking, chatting, food & drink, and very likely some gaming (along the lines of GuitarHero and WiiSports), taking a similar approach to barcamps. The first one, back in June near Sydney, was a fantastic success, and judging by the current list of attendees, I’m expecting it to be much the same.

We’re edging closer and closer to being sold out, so if you’re considering coming along, I recommend signing up as soon as possible. Day passes for the Saturday and Sunday are also available.

From 2004:

From 2007:

Peter Garrett is a shining example of why ethical, idealistic, passionate people should not become politicians.

Discuss.