Author Archive

Missing Everything Open 2024 :/

This week sees the second Everything Open conference being held in Gladstone, Queensland. Alas I’m not there :/

I’ve had the good fortune to attend CALU-99 as well as something like 20+ years of linux.conf.au events that followed as well as last years Everything Open. I very much saw EO as a sensible evolution of LCA and worthy of being considered such.

I’d hoped to attend the Gladstone event, but then had some (very routine) medical stuff scheduled at the same time, so I resigned myself to not attending. Somewhat ironically the aforementioned appointments got moved, by which time a work commitment had come up during the same week. This latter is quite special too as I get to spend time with many of my Grafana colleagues – in a fully distributed/post geographical company this is quite a special thing.

So I very much wish all involved in/at EO 2024 the best. I’m sure it’ll be a great week, some fantastic talks, hallway tracks, keynotes and everything else, I’m just a little sad that I’ll only be there in spirit.

I guess a bit of melancholy too as it means an end the unbroken run I had of attending the CALU/LCA/EO series of events over the years!

Happy hacking all :)

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Everything Open 2023 Keynote

Earlier today I was delighted to do the keynote for day one of Everything Open. I’m grateful for the opportunity to have spoken, a wonderful audience and gracious positive feedback after the session. Thank you also to the folk the laughed at my jokes :) If you’re curious, the session was recorded and my slides are available here.

I touched on a range of subjects and the talk was a little chaotic, but by the midway point the reason for a degree of chaos likely became clear…

Rather than pepper the final slide with too many links I include them below in the hope they may be of use to others.  For the health related links I reiterate that it’s prudent to get professional guidance on these matters, I am merely speaking from my own experiences.

I add my thanks to those already given to the volunteers and AV team who made the session and indeed the entire event run so smoothly and of course the attendees who made presenting so worthwhile.

Here are said links…

2023-03-20 11:55 AEDT – Uploaded slides and updated link accordingly
2023-03-16 14:49 AEDT – Updated to include link to video thanks to Next Day Video

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Cats!

Well it has, as they say, been a while, my last blog post being in July 2018. Woosh, certainly a lot has happened since then to put it mildly.

A few months back things seemed to be in a place where I thought it’d be nice to share some of what is going on, but I fell into the trap of “Oh, but I need to fill in all the gaps and that’ll take ages and oh I need to do this other thing first and then oh, look, squirrel!” And nothing gets done…

So, will keep this initial post simple. I’m a delighted to be part of a community theatre production of Cats! that is being put together by the joint efforts of the Warrnambool Theatre Company and Holiday Actors – the show will be on stage at the Lighthouse Theatre in Warrnambool in mid June. More info on times and whatnot here.

I play the part of Asparagus/Gus – the old theatre cat. A rather clever cast mate took photos of us in costume which I’ll add when I work out how the new WordPress UI works… :)

Been a ball thus far.

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Not a Reel

I was chatting with a friend of mine a week or so back and the topic of original music came up, in particular anything I’d played or written that had a bit of an Irish and/or Folk theme to it. At the time I couldn’t think of anything but when we were talking again yesterday it occurred to me that I had actually written something original that could reasonably fit into that category.

“Not a Reel” is a tune I wrote for the Kevin Windross Band and was fortunate to play live with the lads in late 2015 – a show that turned out sadly to be our last, at least for now, but that a story for another day perhaps. I recalled that I’d written a post on Facebook about it along with a recording and managed to fish it out, so will borrow a little bit of the text from same, lightly edited for context;

“About five years (c. 2011) ago a friend of mine kindly gave me a lovely old Beale acoustic piano for nothing more than the cost of freight. Based on the serial number (24780) she was made in Annandale, NSW in 1909 or 1910 and was lovely to play – something quite special about an acoustic instrument no matter its age or condition.”

“Fast forward to today (14 October 2016) and I’ve passed her on to another friend and his family for safekeeping for a few years ahead of my move to Melbourne.”

“I had a bit of a farewell tinkle last night and on a bit of a whim recorded this instrumental “Not a Reel”, a tune I wrote for the Kevin Windross Band and was fortunate enough to play live with the lads a year or so back.”

“Having the phone -sitting- at the end of the piano isn’t the ideal location and she was overdue for a tune, but hopefully you enjoy the rough take, the odd wonky timed note and all :) “

The name of course is a bit of a play on words in so far as it’s not really a Reel proper, but has a bit of that vibe to it I think, particularly in the “B” section.

If you’re curious, this link should take you through to aforementioned recording https://photos.app.goo.gl/A3rGw9A4zZ8ZvHjc9

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Gluten Free Savoury Friands

I’ll be the first to admit I never thought I’d see the day when I’d type something like “Gluten Free Savoury Friands” as a blog entry, but there you go :)

A dear friend of mine put me onto the idea of using “cauliflower rice” as a substitute for regular wheat flour in certain recipes.  The basic idea is you grab a cauliflower, remove leaves then use a food processor to blend it up to a consistency a bit smaller than rice grains.  What you get is something that is healthy, freezes well and can be used to bulk up savoury dishes either in place of flour or (say) to replace rice/pasta when serving dishes up.

I did a bit of experimenting based off regular savoury muffin recipes and ended up with this – it’s pretty foolproof and flexible.  End results are pretty healthy, freeze well and delicious – bag up in pairs in freezer bags and you’ve snacks for the week for hungry progeny.

Ingredients

As written this will make about a dozen normal sized friands.

  • 350g Cauliflower rice (A normal cauliflower will give you about three batches of 350g.  Freeze up the other two batches for later use)
  • ½ cup frozen peas (Allow to thaw while you prep)
  • ½ cup rice or regular milk
  • 3 eggs lightly beaten
  • 1½ cups of grated cheese
  • 1 cup diced cherry tomatoes
  • ½ cup of rice flakes (optional)
  • 95g tin of tuna

Method

  • Heat oven to 200C, bit lower if fan forced
  • Gently combine ingredients – usually makes sense to start with the cauliflower rice and go from there.  You want gluggy rather than runny consistency ideally and don’t wanna smush the tomatoes so combine gently
  • Grease the friand tray(s) with canola oil
  • Spoon mixture into tray – want each one to be almost level with top of mould
  • Optionally sprinkle a little parmesan cheese on the top of each
  • Bake for about 35 minutes or until nicely browned
  • Remove from oven, then allow to sit for a few minutes before putting onto a cooling rack

Enjoy!

 

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Efratom SLCR-101 Rubidium Frequency Reference disassembly

Background

Quite a few years ago now I joined the “time-nutsmailing list – a “Time Nut” as the gentle reader may be aware is an individual who tinkers with precision time keeping and/or precision frequency references, measurements and the like for hobby interest.  It’s a great list, always an interesting discussion and very high SNR indeed – fun place to virtually hang out.

Through this I became interested in playing around with some precision references at home and this in turn lead to me picking up a couple of Rubidium frequency standards off eBay from a local seller – one known working, the other known faulty.  These devices are usually ex-mobile phone base station installations where they’re commonly used to provide a precision 10MHz reference signal to drive the timing circuitry of the base station itself.  They’re usually a secondary source, the primary being a GPS Disciplined Oscillator (GPSDO) – the Rb standard is a hot spare in case the GPSDO goes out of lock for too long.

The Efratom SLCR-101

The SLCR-101 is made by US firm Efratom (now part of Symmetricom by way of Datum best I can tell) and is designed for OEM applications – so it’s basically a bare module that you feed power into and it gives you a nice clean stable 10MHz sinewave output as well as some status signals.  I’ve been unable to find any specific data on the SLCR-101 but it seems very similar indeed to the LPRO or LPRO-101 units – just lower profile – about 25mm/1″ high versus the LPROs 38mm/1.5″ height.

A bit of searching turns up a PDF of the LPRO-101 “User’s Guide and Integration Guidelines”.  Another document to seek out is Fred de Vries “Efratom LPRO-101 Repair Reference Guide”  The most recent revision of this excellent reference seems to be Revision 7, January 2011 – Fred kindly sent me an email with the latest version of his guide which, with his permission, I’ve placed here.  I am trying to find a definitive upstream source for the offical LPRO document, for now a little googleFu will get you there.

One immediate take home from these documents is that these units must not be operated for extended periods (say more than a half hour) without a proper heatsink (less than 2C/W thermal resistance to ambient) – the Rubidium lamp inside runs at around 100C so good heatsinking is required to ensure the rest of the electronics is kept within its safe operating temperature.

Disassembly

Removing the cover wasn’t difficult – I’ve a bunch of photos shared here but in particular this one shows a unit mounted on a heatsink and this one how once the connector assembly is removed (undo screws, break the slight sealing and pull straight out) With the connector removed, the cover can simply be eased up with a flat blade working around the perimeter of the casing.  Note that the unit will not operate properly without the Rubidium lamp assembly being shielded from AC lighting.  Perhaps also worth noting that you don’t need to disassemble the unit unless it’s faulty or you’re curious :)

Internals

The internals are well covered in Fred de Vries document, but by way of a quick “cooks tour”, referring to this photo; The rubidium lamp assembly is the machined section top left – lamp in the brass coloured section, photodiode etc. in the right hand side.  Slots in the PCB are to accommodate a shielded section that fits over the lamp as visible in this picture.  The cylindrical port in the top left of the shield photo is used to gain access to the frequency trimpot on the control PCB (blue, bottom right in this shot).

Close

Will have more to write on my tinkering with these units in subsequent posts – for now hopefully the little note about how to remove the connector will save someone some time :)

Edited 20170423 to include link to the repair guide kindly provided by Fred de Vries.

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Lwood-20170312

Introduction

Welcome to Last week on OpenStack Dev (“Lwood”) for the week just past. For more background on Lwood, please refer here.

Basic Stats for the week 6 to 12 March for openstack-dev:

~447 Messages (down nearly 22% relative to the long term average)

~135 Unique threads (down just shy of 25% relative to the long term average)

Traffic about the same as last week, if anything up slightly.  A busy few days conspired against me so Lwood is a bit short and a bit late this week, apologies to those who I know set their clocks by it’s arrival… ;)

Notable Discussions – openstack-dev

OpenStack Summit Boston Schedule Available

Erin Disney writes that the schedule is now up for the Boston Summit later this year.

Call for Mentors at upcoming Summit

Emily Hugenbruch notes that the upcoming Boston summit will again provide an opportunity for Mentors to assist newcomers to OpenStack in getting up to speed.  If you’re interested, please follow the info in Emily’s email and sign up.

OpenStack PTG Atlanta summary of summaries

As mentioned in the previous couple of Lwoods, with the Atlanta event concluded summaries of the event, mostly from a projects standpoint are rolling in. There were a few more this week past, listed below, and the original blog post has been updated too.

End of Week Wrap-ups, Summaries and Updates

Two this week; Ironic (Ruby Loo) and Nova (Balazs Gibizer)

People and Projects

Core nominations & changes

Miscellanea

Further reading

Don’t forget these excellent sources of OpenStack news – most recent ones linked in each case

Credits

No tunes this week, was again working remotely and needed all the concentration I could muster despite the relative simplicity of the task at hand! :)

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OpenStack PTG Atlanta 2017 Summary of Summaries

Background

The last couple of editions of Lwood included a list of links to mailing list posts from the preceding week where the writers have provided a summary of particular PTG sessions and/or commentary about the overall event.

Like the previous ones for Austin and Barcelona, the list below is aggregate of these weekly posts into one readily searchable list.

Summaries posted to the OpenStack-Dev mailing list

This list will be updated each week with any new summaries that are posted to the list.  Additions/corrections welcome.

Updates: 20170314 – Added Acceleration, Heat, Ironic, Mistral, Neutron and Octavia links; 20170313 – Corrected TripleO link;

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Lwood-20170305

Introduction

Welcome to Last week on OpenStack Dev (“Lwood”) for the week just past. For more background on Lwood, please refer here.

Basic Stats for the week 27 February to 5 March for openstack-dev:

~424 Messages (down nearly 26% relative to the long term average)

~154 Unique threads (down a bit over 14% relative to the long term average)

Traffic picked up a bit relative to last week though once again a fairly brief Lwood – the main thing of note to many will I suspect be the summary of summaries from the PTG

Notable Discussions – openstack-dev

OpenStack Summit returns to Vancouver in 2018

Allison Price announced that the Summit is returning to the fair city of Vancouver in May 2018.

OpenStack PTG Atlanta summary of summaries

With Atlanta PTG concluded the summaries are starting to come in – as I’ve done previously I’ll link them over the next few Lwoods then put together an aggregated list

OpenStack Community Leadership Training open to all

The opportunity to take the well regarded leadership training program that had previously been made available to the TC, Board and Foundation staff is now being extended to all Community members writes Colette Alexander.

End of Week Wrap-ups, Summaries and Updates

Three this week; Horizon (Rob Cresswell), Ironic (Ruby Loo) and Zuul (Robyn Bergernon)

People and Projects

Core nominations & changes

Miscellanea

Further reading

Don’t forget these excellent sources of OpenStack news – most recent ones linked in each case

Credits

No tunes this week, was working remotely and wasn’t an appropriate setting for tunes (aka I forgot headphones :)

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Lwood-20170226

Introduction

Welcome to Last week on OpenStack Dev (“Lwood”) for the week just past. For more background on Lwood, please refer here.

Basic Stats for the week 20 to 26 February for openstack-dev:

~346 Messages (down nearly 40% relative to the long term average)

~146 Unique threads (down a bit over 18% relative to the long term average)

Historically traffic drops around the time of a Summit, not unexpectedly it seems it’s same around the PTGs.  A correspondingly brief Lwood too :)

Notable Discussions – openstack-dev

OpenStack PTG Atlanta summary of summaries

With Atlanta PTG wrapping up last week the summaries are starting to come in – as I’ve done previously I’ll link them over the next few Lwoods then put together a combined list early next month. Just five our this week, next week I suspect there’ll be rather more… :)

End of Week Wrap-ups, Summaries and Updates

Pretty much supplanted by the PTG wraps this week, listed above.

People and Projects

Core nominations & changes

Miscellanea

Further reading

Don’t forget these excellent sources of OpenStack news – most recent ones linked in each case

Credits

This weeks edition of Lwood brought to you by a large music collection on random track play, so had Eric Clapton, Queensrÿche, David Francey, Elvis Costello, Weather Report, Coldplay, Miles Davis, Bruce Hornsby, Rush and Sásta amongst others.

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