The Musings of Chris Samuel

CSIRO has developed a biodegradable plastic that’s made from wheat starch. They say:

The wheat starch plastic has similar properties to conventional plastic, but it will break down in the compost heap in 40 to 50 days.

They also claim that it won’t contaminate the food it holds, but I wonder if it is suitable for coeliacs given that wheat starch is known to contain residual gluten ?

(Hat tip to Jeremy for that).

The Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA), the volunteer fire brigade that covers most of rural Australia and a lot of suburban Melbourne, now has an RSS feed for the incidents that they’re dealing with.

Very handy for keeping an eye on what’s going on. Be even nicer if you could get an RSS feed per CFA region, rather than just the entire state!

Westall Secondary School in Clayton South, Melbourne, has started using KDE under KUbuntu Linux to allow them to replace the 3.0GHz Intel PC’s they were using with older 2.1GHz PC’s, extending their lives and avoiding landfill. The systems use KDE’s Kiosk framework to let the staff lock down the systems for their library system. The 3.0GHz machines released from this role will be going back into the main school for teaching duties there.

In explaining why the school went for Kubuntu, Stefyn said the students responded well to CDs put out by the Ubuntu project. Many had tried Ubuntu at home, which led to a decision to provide a familiar working environment at the school as well.

They got help both directly from Peter Lieverdink and also from the Linux Users of Victoria. They are also encouraging students to experiment with Linux, with old PC’s as a prize:

During our last hardware cleanout, we challenged the students to create the best Linux install and customization, and the winners would get to keep the hardware once it was decommissioned.

and all that apparently unnecessary desktop bling helps to get attention, according to the schools IT manager and teacher:

The kids were rapt with Compiz Fusion and this scored magic brownie points, because even the magical Vista couldn’t compete with the graphics. This was a great step into having them explore the other functionalities of Linux

Great stuff!

So Jeff Waugh has announced the “Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report” has been published as a PDF¹, hopefully the first of many.

Come and see what Open Source really does for Australia!

Our conservative projection of earnings suggests that the Open Source industry generates $500 million in revenue each year, with over 50% of that being directly related to Open Source.

The report is covered by a CC license:

The Australian Open Source Industry & Community Report is published as a freely downloadable PDF on the Census project website and is redistributable under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives license.

1. or you can buy a hardcopy version [back]

What’s all this wet stuff falling out of the sky ?

The Bureau of Meteorology warns that, at 9:55 pm, severe thunderstorms were detected on weather radar near Craigieburn, St Albans and Werribee. These thunderstorms are moving towards the east. They are forecast to affect Caulfield, Dandenong, Footscray, Frankston, Glen Waverley, Greensborough, Melbourne City, Preston, Ringwood and Rosebud by 10:40 pm and Healesville, Pakenham and Phillip Island by 11:25 pm.

Hmm, I think this is what they mean..

A nice find by Andy..

From a bottle of Carlton Draught (hat tip to Kevin for asking).

From the ABC news:

Federal Opposition leader Brendan Nelson has issued another very specific apology to a member of the Stolen Generations. In his speech in reply to the national apology this week, Dr Nelson referred to the story of a Victorian Aboriginal elder, Faye Lyman. But Ms Lyman says Dr Nelson did not ask her if he could use her story. When he incorporated it in what she describes as a “toxic speech”, she says he took her comments out of context, misrepresented the way she was taken from her family, and made her feel “stolen all over again”.

She goes on to say:

My Dad was not happy that I was taken [...] They cheated us, they cheated me of my life with him. Now, I feel like I’m stolen all over again. My dignity, and I’m ashamed he’s done this to me, I’m so ashamed.

No wonder that hundreds of people turned their back on him as he spoke in response to the sorry motion in Parliament (see picture 7 in the ABC News slideshow).

I’ve not been able to get to blog for the last week, so I thought my first post would be in support of the Federal Governments apology (flash video) for their treatment of the indigenous peoples of Australia (the text of the motion is here).

So whilst I am a (very) new Australian I recognise the fact that the people who came from the same island that gave me life were responsible for many of the wrongs visited upon indigenous people here, and for that I say sorry.

As a footnote, if you haven’t yet seen the complete footage of the “Welcome to Country” ceremony that preceded the opening of Parliament I suggest you do so soon, it appears it will expire from the ABC News website on the 11th March.

I have uploaded my photos from Thursday (Day 4) of Linux.Conf.Au 2008 at Melbourne University. They are exclusively of the RepRap that was being shown off today and a gathering of people experimenting with the wireless mesh and collaborative capabilities of the OLPC XO’s that were distributed yesterday. I’ve already heard of at least 2 bugs being found through this release of machines to developers (one by Jason White).

I’ve just rearranged & geocoded all my LCA 2008 photos on Flickr into a set per day, gathered together into a single collection, which makes life easier for people who just want to see what happened on what day! I’ve updated the links on previous blog entries to point to the right set for the day in question too.

I’ve now uploaded more photos onto Flickr from the speakers dinner on Tuesday night held at St Pauls Chapter House (near the cathedral), built in 1891, a lovely building! I don’t have any photos from the day on Tuesday as I had to work.

There are also photos from Day 3 (Wednesday) where at morning coffee there were LWN cakes to celebrate LWN’s 10th birthday and we were distributing OLPC XO laptops to various chosen delegates for them to go develop amazing things with (or give them to someone else who would). It was a great buzz to make peoples day like this, especially when they tell you what they could do with them!

Hence the LWN photo..