Post Networkshop

In my previous post, I expressed my intention to blog and twitter all the way through networkshop 36. I so failed. For several reasons, I think.

• Connectivity problems: at least initally, I couldn't get network access. There were technical dificulties with the installation, but there was wireless available. It's just that my eeepc hasn't been set up to do 802.1x, and that's what was available. This was resolved by the beginning of the first full day, but by then I'd not started at the start. Just to be clear, there were initial technical difficulties, but I could have gotten around it. I didn't. Ah well.
• What to say? When I was in a position to twitter live from the sessions, I sorta stalled, couldn't think of anything to say that would make any sense or give any value out of context.
• More connectivity problems: I tried to make up for not twittering on Tuesday by writing up a blog post Tuesday night from the hotel. But the hotel's proxy server was broken.

Enough with the excuses. I took some pretty cryptic notes, and will be posting a distilled version of what I found interesting/insightful from those.

For now, three highlights for me were;

The network monitoring BOF.
(Birds Of a Feather session. I don't know why). There seemed to be some agreement that we, the delegates, could benefit from trying to be a bit more of a community outside of networkshop, and share techniques, scripts etc related to monitoring and the configuration of monitoring systems.

There's a mailing list (I don't know if I'm supposed to advertise it's address, so I won't), and there was talk of a wiki. There seemed general agreement, so we'll have to see if we can make it happen. I'll give it a run, hopefully I won't be billy-no-mates.

One thing that strikes me often, and struck me during networkshop several times, is the apparent expectation amongst the academic networking community that everyone runs cisco kit. And everyone's happy to build systems that rely on cisco specific services. Which doesn't help me very much. And doesn't it sorta help cisco perpetuate lock-in? Perhaps I'm just feeling left out.

Alan de Kok.
The lead developer on the freeradius project, and by far the slickest speaker I saw. Sorry guys. More on this one later. Suffice to say that by the time he'd finished, I was grinning like a fool.

Celtic Music Radio.
Every year, there's a couple of sessions with a less narrow focus. This was one. There was a bit of networking involved, not much. But the speakers described building systems, with little money, and plenty of problems to work around. And a boat ferrying sewage and pensioners was involved.

And if you noticed me drifting off while you were speaking, I'm so very sorry. I'm past 40 now, and the afternoon nap is becoming an inevitability. At least, that's my excuse.

Getting ready for #nws08

Tomorrow morning at stupid o'clock, I'll be leaving sunny Birmingham, and will be off to Glasgow, to attend Networkshop 36.

I've attended several times now, and each time it's been way too late before I've started to prepare, each time there's not seemed enough time whilst I've been there (perhaps earlier bedtimes might help there), and each time I've come home tired, inspired, and with suprisingly little in the way of details remembered.

This year it's gonna be different. I have a plan. I'm going to try to document what I gain. I'll try blogging here, and I'll try twittering.

#nws08

It's my intention to tag all my posts #nws08 (I originally considered #networkshop2008, but it's a little long for twitter's 140 char limit, and it's a pain to type on a phone). I'd encourage anyone attending who's blogging or twittering (or anything else-ing) to do likewise.

Hopefully, my blogging/micro-blogging at networkshop will

• help clarify any thoughts I have (unlikely, I know) during the conference, and
• give me something semi-coherent to show for my attendance after the fact. Y'know, to justify the expense of sending me to Glasgow. Although I get the impression that my employers consider the few hundred pounds a small price to pay to get me three hundred miles away.

Now it's time to go get the suit out from the dog's basket.

Emergent game on twitter

I've been approached by a local artist working on emergent game «Σ». I've built another bot, which uses the twitter api to search for twitterers located in the emergent game, then uses the XMPP interface to make a private account follow them.

Then we chuck the 'with friends' feed through a yahoo pipe, for two reasons.

I'm pretty sure twitter needs you to be authenticated to see the 'with friends' feed. Yahoo pipes has a 'private string' object, so we can (safely?) embed a username and password in the feed url.

If (when) there's a parsing error in the bot, the yahoo pipe can filter the private accounts own updates, so we effectively get a 'just friends' feed.

Which gets displayed on the game blog thus.

Take your hands AWAY from the keyboard..

Just a tiny post to mention a personal rule.

take your hands AWAY from the keyboard..

whenever I'm doing something potentially risky ( you know what I mean, like running chmod whilst logged in as root ), I type the command, and lift both my hands theatrically up to my shoulders while I read what I typed and decide if it's gonna cause me pain.

It's saved me innumerable times.