My kind of conference

Take a peek at the Ludium – a new style of conference, a twist on the unconference if you will … http://arden.indiana.edu/ludium.html

Abandoning entirely the standard speaker-audience structure, the ludium instead embedded participants in a game designed to generate both tangible output and emotional excitement and satisfaction – fun. It intentionally ignored the distinction between work and play, and sought to test the possibility that professionals engaged in a properly designed game would generate both entertainment and productivity at the same time.

Now doesn’t that sound like an idea you’d like Dave to try out? I sure would love to see this idea moved out of the original setting…

iCal problems shared, not halved

Tim Bray is having iCal problems at the same time as I am. I'm not convinced they are the same problem, but perhaps have the same root cause – bad design.

Perhaps it is just that synchronisation is a hard problem. Who knows?

All I know is that one of the half-dozen Macs I use from time to time decided to nuke about three weeks of calendar data – and that, as they say, just isn't cricket.

So I have begun to migrate my primary calendar data into Google's calendar. As a bonus I can now allow my wife to edit the shared calendar. I will continue to use iCal to view my calendars, as well as print them out for the fortnightly (if I remember) hard copy posted on a cupboard door in the kitchen.

Will I continue to use iSync? Yes, but with a closer eye cast on what's happening – I don't want a rogue data deletion being propagated to all my other machines again.

Everybody’s working for the weekend

After an unusually productive (of late) week, it is now time to party – our Time Warping trip back to Transylvania is due tonight.

Otherwise known as the 17th Anniversary of Rocky Horror Picture Show in Sydney party, re-union and so on. See http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/exozrhpscast/ for some limited info – I don’t know where the current cast is online anymore!

Shaving again

So I’m starting my sponsorship drive at the last minute this year. That way when you read this you won’t be able to put it off until later because NOW is the right time to sponsor me.

The shave will occur this weekend (luckily it seems after the wedding!)

http://www.worldsgreatestshave.com/myhomepage.php?id=93802 is my sponsorship page – please go now and make a donation … no matter the amount.

There is the matter of the $10k total body hair bounty, but we’ll just keep that between us, okay?