Unfortunately, Riqi and Taj couldn't come around last night (work and family, respectively) so we've had to postpone the GeekFest to next week :-( We presently have an ADSL connection with proxying and filesharing across 3 nodes (Marie to join at her convenience).
The next step is to build out the kiosk interface, so I'm looking comments on:
What kind of Instant Messaging clients do we want? Yahoo? MSN?
What links do we want? White/yellow pages, TV guide, weather, tram/train timetables, street maps etc
What kind of interface do we want? I'm happy with a webpage, since it'll port to Linux, but you guys have seen my HTML ...
Other news - I have Postgrad Geek Trivia tonight, and tomorrow is DateNight with Marie.
I was at Rochester on Thursday, Friday and Saturday for the funeral of my Uncle Les. I caught up with my cousins Heather, Rhonda and Judith, and their respective partners Ron, Grant and Peter. Also met Judith and Peter's daughter Brooke, and they're just a couple of weeks away from their next one! It's always a shame that it takes a funeral to spend time with family - we committed to all trying harder in future, and proposed the date of Dec 22nd as a candidate.
On Saturday, we realised that the "kiosk" machine was not going to cut the mustard. So, we traipsed out to Camberwell and I purchased a new machine (P-200MMX, 64MB, 3.5GB, CD-ROM, soundcard, keyboard/monitor/mouse, Win98SE). It's working fine, and is already connected to the stereo. Today we (hopefully!) get ADSL.
Don't know what to do about the wheels on the floor - a big rug is probably the go, because those little ones are quite shitty.
I'm heading off to Rochester (near Bendigo) tonight with Katy for the funeral tomorrow for my Uncle Les (Mum's sister Merla's husband). Should be back tomorrow, or possibly Saturday.
I believe the "kiosk" arrives tomorrow. Marie has Win95 CDs. Rickie is currently getting ADSL fired-up at his work, so he'll be another valuable source of wisdom in this area. I propose that we proceed with the following steps:
set up kiosk with Win95
install ADSL
cut-over kiosk to Linux
install LAN with hub (including filesharing)
install soundcard and connect to stereo
install instant messaging clients and links to web services (directories, blog, TV guide etc)
install telephony system for voicemail for unified messaging
What do you guys think? Taj will be in the country for another couple of weeks at least, so we may be to exchange food, beer and couch-space for his expert advice. In fact - perhaps we could offer him broadband access over our network as an incentive? :-)
Have we had any feedback from Fiona, Ananda or Paddy about the blog? Perhaps we can enrol them once they've shown interest.
Please note: I won't be able to make dinner as promised on Thursday due to the intrusion of Sci-Fi Trivia Night this Thursday (see below). With any luck, I will return with the coveted "Doctorate of Trivia" - although I feel I should be bestowed this one in honorium for my contributions to the development of the discipline as a practitioner.
Next Monday, between 3pm and 5pm, we'll be getting ADSL installed. Yay! So we'll need a PC sans network card, running a kosher copy of Win95 with CDs. Perhaps next week is a good week to invite Taj and Rickie over for dinner ...
I have an investment seminar tonight until midnight, and a CRM seminar tomorrow morning at 8:30 , so I'll probably be asleep tomorrow afternoon! Marie - how do you feel about moving Date Night to tomorrow?
Last night I went to Rickie's place, and caught up with:
Rickie
Megs and Jase
Ivan and Michael
Taj
I also sought and received RickieEndorsement(TM) and TajApproval(TM) for my latest get-rich-quick scheme, this time involving patenting compression technology. More to follow once I've done a patent search, and found out some more about these innovation patents (provisional).
As Marie mentioned below, tonight is indeed Date Night. Tomorrow I'm hoping to have lunch with some ex-workmates (Brett, Mendi and Rob), and I'm giving an extra tute. I might be going to Warrnambool on the weekend, depending.
Monday night I will be skipping Mexican (and the debut of Kim's brother the chef) to go to a Peter Spann "investment" seminar with Brett and half a dozen others.
Tuesday morning I've got an industry seminar on CRM - it's sort of on the boundary between my research and professional interests.
I've been roped into a Sci-Fi Trivia Night next Thursday with the some of the other geek^H^H^H^H^post-grads in the department. Should be a laugh.
Since blog usage has dropped off (personally, I blame Theresa), perhaps we could look at creating honourary positions for eg Fiona, Paddy, Ananda etc? Does anyone want to nominate some other names?
Lastly, how does Monday 22nd in the arvo sound for ADSL install? (I need to make the booking on the weekend.)
Had a nice weekend: Friday I went out for drinks with Neal, Marie, Gerd, Paddy (back from NT), Taj (still here!), Brett, Kelly and Rickie. Saturday night Marie, Theresa, Gerd and I went to Katy and David's for a BBQ. They've recently purchased a nice big barbie and I can attest that it works well!
Today Marie's nephew Spencer and other members of Clan Barnard will be coming over to visit CERES to feed the chooks etc. Later, I'll go to Mexican with my housies, and hopefully we'll be joined by friends of the house like Anna, and my former housemates Gopi (getting ready to move back to Melbourne) and Paddy.
Taj didn't depart. Despite the 27th departure drinks, the (delicious!) good-bye dinner at his Uncle and Aunt's place and the threats of violence, Taj is still with us. Some sort of administrative issue at the Indian end. We're enjoying his company for another week or two. Odds on he'll just piss off without telling anyone.
We're getting ADSL. From Telstra. Despite the bad press. After persuing options from other DSL providers, Telstra looks like the way to go. Neal and I have come up with an application architecture and a basic component deployment model. Ie we've drawn the boxes-and-lines. The idea is to have a domestic information services kiosk (DISK), that provides internet connectivity, as well as music, telephony, messaging, search, blogs and billing/kitty apps. It's a sort of Holy Grail. While the order's in, and the money-side's been tentatively sorted, we've yet to projectise it.
Marie and I played football in Geelong on Saturday with Bec and Matt and about a dozen others in a "Geelong" vs "Rest of the World" match. I was pleased with my performance on the day, although we went down in the final quarter.
We're going to Mexican tonight, specifically to catch up with Paddy who's returned from wooing his beloved Kate in NT.
That's all the news at this end - I hope Gerd and Theresa are enjoying themselves, and are able to make a contribution from Sydney.
