I just heard this poem mentioned on tv & I remember we learnt it in Primary School - My Country - by Dorothea Mackellar. I can't post it here as it's still under copyright of her estate.
some in Australia / NZ regions
interestingly, most of these seem to be using drupal too!
:::
https://conf.linux.org.au
from their site blurb : "linux.conf.au (LCA) is Australia's national Linux conference, and said to be one of the best in the world. It prides itself on being “seriously fun and seriously technical”. In January 2009 it's being held in Hobart, Tasmania, for the first time. So join us and march south! :)2009 will be the 10th anniversary for LCA. It will run from January 19-24 and end with an open-to-the-public Open Day"
- not strictly women, but I've heard it's a good conference
- they're calling for papers if anyone is interested : http://freeasinfreedom.modernthings.org/d/doku.php?id=call_for_participa...
Roy Christopher's Summer Reading list has a lot of great books suggested by people such as Daniel Pinchbeck, Steve Aylett, Ian MacKaye, Mike Daily, Paul Saffo, Gareth Branwyn, Rodger Bridges, and Peter Lunenfeld, Erik Davis, Richard Metzger, Dave Allen, Mark Pesce, Alex Burns, Paul Miller, Brian Tunney, Patrick Barber, Steven Shaviro, Ashley Crawford, Cynthia Connolly, and Gary Baddeley.
Marcus Westbury posted a comment on facebook today with a link to an audio interview of him by Peter Goer, evening presenter ABC radio Adelaide. one topic was copyright as it is also a topic on his ABC program Not Quite Art this week. there are two sides to every argument. Peter Goer was in favour of protecting the artists rights, and Marcus suggested he's on the side favouring remixing protected works. I can see both sides of the argument.
so whilst reading Reality Sandwich articles - about the 'global financial crisis' as it's become known over the past couple of weeks - I came across this paragraph which I thought was timely :
"In ancient times entertainment was also a free, participatory function. Everyone played an instrument, sang, participated in drama. Even 75 years ago in America, every small town had its own marching band and baseball team. Now we pay for those services. The economy has grown. Hooray."
I just saw the email for the upcoming Maybe Logic Academy courses - there's another by Douglas Rushkoff called Corporatized - An Alternative To Corporatism & Beyond coming up in January 2009 - scheduled for 6 weeks from January 12 to February 22. his last class "Technologies of Persuasion - From Propaganda to Paranoia" was great - the class was very popular and had a lot of people in it. the first few weeks moved really quickly, by the last few weeks it was running at a slower pace so I could try and catch up. I was doing the The Crazy Wisdom of Philip K. Dick class with Erik Davis at the same time, so I was running behind on the Rushkoff class as the PKD class was so interesting! Fingers crossed there might be another PKD class with Erik Davis too - I asked and they said Maybe! (excuse the pun :)
I think Rushkoff's new class will be really interesting, especially as in the Persuasion class he mentioned his thoughts on the global economy and how we should be using a different 'money' system & alternative currencies. He's written many books, and columns with newspapers such as New York Times & Guardian of London. He now also writes for Arthur Magazine, which I think in some ways has taken over from where Mondo 2000 and previously Reality Hackers magazines started. Arthur No. 29, May 2008 has one of his articles, Riding out the Credit Crisis which I think was very timely considering the state of economic affairs around the globe now with some regions stating they are in a recession. this month's Arthur # 31 - October 2008 has another article by Rushkoff called "No Money Down" (pages 26-27) which is worth a read too - the pdf's are available to download on their site (part A has this article). he also has a forum on his site where some of the discussions can take place & continue from previous (and I'm assuming future) MLA courses, boing boing posts, Arthur articles and his books.
from Riding out the Credit Crisis : "Whatever the case, the best thing you can do to protect yourself and your interests is to make friends. The more we are willing to do for each other on our own terms and for compensation that doesn’t necessarily involve the until-recently-almighty dollar, the less vulnerable we are to the movements of markets that, quite frankly, have nothing to do with us."
...
"Think small. Buy local. Make friends. Print money. Grow food. Teach children. Learn nutrition. And if you do have money to invest, put it into whatever lets you and your friends do those things."
today 18/10/2008 was the Sydney Drupal Camp - held at University of NSW campus in Camperdown & hosted by the Drupal Australia Group. Ryan Cross did a fantastic job organising the "unconference" with assistance from many people in the group. I'm too tired right now to write up my notes about it - suffice to say it was a great event and I learnt a few new tips to try out. I'll try write more tomorrow & post the photos (I only took a few) after some sleep. I'd helped out by recording audio of the sessions which will be uploaded to the group site & available for those who couldn't make it.
attached are the raw notes I took during the day - pasted below for searching purposes. I spent all day in the "B" area - which was beginners, but they went through some of the new drupal 6 modules I haven't used much yet. area "A" was more for the hardcore programmers.
I went to the Sydney Drupal Usergroup - October Meetup last night - my first one in Sydney. previously I've only been to the drupal sessions at fosdem 2005 in Brussels as I'd never been to Brussels and wanted to see what it was like. I'd been using drupal for a couple of years at the time and was testing upgrades. initially this site was a custom made php site that I coded to let me do data entry for events / news items and display them on the site in the same format I used for the mail lists which had been running for a few years prior to the site - so at the time, the custom php site saved me time. but also I found I spent a lot of time getting the site to work and adding new features, so when a friend (thanks Damian) asked me over to try out some CMS's including Drupal and we got it working in about an hour, I was hooked! the format of the articles was not exactly the same as what the previous site had been using, but it was so much easier to manage! I can't remember the exact date I moved the site to drupal, but by looking at the the wayback machine pages, it seems to have been in june / july 2003 - maybe 23rd july??
so, back to the Sydney meeting...
I was surprised to see so many people there - probably around 25-30 people. I hadn't realised drupal was so popular in Australia - though to be honest, I hadn't really checked for a few years. even the European and USA conferences and meetings are really popular now! great to see!! and there's so many books available.
I've been in Brisbane for past 12 days - catching up with lots of old and new friends. Valli & Dave moved to the UK. Frankie and I made a video - he'd kept a Strawberry from Strawberry Fields '96 and took it out for dinner last thursday night, so we made a video of the strawberry wandering the streets of the Valley looking for some of the old clubs which have since closed down.
Strawberry looking for lost clubs in the Valley
How Frankie found his Strawberry
I went to the Reunion Rave at the Met on friday night. it was a fantastic party! the djs played all the old tracks that were played at clubs years ago Thief's set was a highlight - he played tracks from Magic Roundabout @ Metropolis + The Site, as was the return of Vision Four 5. The screens in the MET were amazing too - the visuals were so crisp & clear. The lasers in the main room were great too. I caught up with so many people and danced most of the night. could hardly walk on Saturday though! but as Custa said "it's because of the hard floors - not because of my age or the fact I haven't used those muscles in a long time" sounds right to me!
I took some photos and video clips throughout the night, but most of the time I forgot I had the cameras as I was too busy talking and dancing. I think this is why I have hardly any photos from parties back in the day!
so now I'm listening to Damage's Soul Mix - a great set to wind down after holidays and first day back at work. I'm really liking his selection in this mix. the terntable jediz guys are doing well. sheep's back in Brisbane, and Freestyle's records are selling for crazy prices on discogs - 80 EURO for the 2006 Roy Davis Jnr remix "The Session" 12''. good to hear! I've heard they're going to be playing some regular (additional) gigs soon too.
