After 30 hours door to door I am back home again. Who knew Australia was so far away :)
For those of you who saw my presentation at LCA my slides are now up on the web page. There are a couple of slides I didn't bother showing during the talk which has references to software and hardware I used on Rockhopper. It can be found on the LCA page at: http://linux.conf.au/programme/thursday
I had a wonderful time at LCA and honestly it was worth the long trip. I spent a couple of days more in Melbourne. Of course this meant I was there for the superbowl which I was a bit concerned that I would miss it. I wasn't sure I could find anywhere showing it in Australia. Boy was I surprised! I checked a couple of sports bars but none said they would be open that early (since the game was shown live it was on at 10 am there). I was told the best bet would be the crown casino. I expected to find just a few American's there begging the bartender to turn it on to "that american football game". What I found was a large sports bar with probably 200 very excited football fans. While there met some really fun Australian fans and of course a few Americans spending some time abroad. So, I want to give a special G'day to Gary (aka Gazz), Rod, and Jamie from down under and Melody (from the US) and of course "guy from California" who I am ashamed I cannot remember your name.
Even though the Pats lost it was a hell of a game and I had more fun watching it than any superbowl I can remember.
So, now that I am back home I am already starting to think about possibly building a new bot for this year's contest at Trinity College. I have just about 2 months to work on it and this year I certainly won't be able to take a bunch of time off like last year. Still undecided but I am considering it.
Friday, February 8, 2008
Friday, February 1, 2008
Greetings from down under!
Yes, I am a horrible blogger. I have not updated the blog since the contest and yes I am quite ashamed of myself.
So certainly time for an update. I am writing this update from a hotel in Melbourne Australia where I am attending Linux Conf Australia. My manager urged me to submit a proposal to do a talk about Rockhopper to LCA a few months ago which got accepted. It is pretty cool that HP sent me here to talk about something that was not HP related (although I did talk about a lot of HP specific stuff with various people during the week).
The talk itself went very well and was voted one of the best in the conference. I was asked to do an encore of the talk today during what they call "Open Day" where members of the public can attend. I didn't think today's talk went quite as well as the first one but still not bad. The best part of the talk was the demo of the robot itself. I was not able to bring the robot itself but what I did do was set up a webcam in my workshop and run live streaming video. When I came up with that plan I gave it a 50/50 chance of actually working (it is from the other side of the world after all) but it worked perfectly. Special thanks to Paul for helping out on the New Hampshire end. He powered up the robot and lit the candles and most importantly he was there in case I ran into network issues (luckily there were none).
I plan on posting my slides and code for the robot online soon (yes, should have done that months ago). Hopefully that will happen in a week or so. I am staying a couple more days in Melbourne to do the tourist thing (have not done anything but the conference since I got here).
The video of my talk can be found on the LCA web site.
So certainly time for an update. I am writing this update from a hotel in Melbourne Australia where I am attending Linux Conf Australia. My manager urged me to submit a proposal to do a talk about Rockhopper to LCA a few months ago which got accepted. It is pretty cool that HP sent me here to talk about something that was not HP related (although I did talk about a lot of HP specific stuff with various people during the week).
The talk itself went very well and was voted one of the best in the conference. I was asked to do an encore of the talk today during what they call "Open Day" where members of the public can attend. I didn't think today's talk went quite as well as the first one but still not bad. The best part of the talk was the demo of the robot itself. I was not able to bring the robot itself but what I did do was set up a webcam in my workshop and run live streaming video. When I came up with that plan I gave it a 50/50 chance of actually working (it is from the other side of the world after all) but it worked perfectly. Special thanks to Paul for helping out on the New Hampshire end. He powered up the robot and lit the candles and most importantly he was there in case I ran into network issues (luckily there were none).
I plan on posting my slides and code for the robot online soon (yes, should have done that months ago). Hopefully that will happen in a week or so. I am staying a couple more days in Melbourne to do the tourist thing (have not done anything but the conference since I got here).
The video of my talk can be found on the LCA web site.
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