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jarich's Journal (20 unread)

I am not "advocating child pornography."

Posted: December 23rd, 2008, 2:51pm CET by jarich

p As a bit of background Bernadette McMenamin (chief executive of child protection group Child Wise) seems to be a big supporter of the Australian Senator Conroy's plans for mandatory internet filtering. Back in January this year, McMenamin a href="http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23021828-5013038,00.html"suggested/a that no decent person would oppose Conroy's filters to protect the children. A couple of weeks ago she a href="http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24804682-15306,00.html"said/a: /pblockquotedivp i "[T]hose who are aware [of all the facts] are, in effect, advocating child pornography." /i/p/div /blockquotep I am not advocating child pornography. This is my response. /pblockquotedivp G'day Bernadette, /pp I am an IT professional and have been for almost 10 years now. Understanding how computers work, how networks work, how ISPs work and in particular understanding what is and is not possible is an important part of my job. I'm also a member, and an executive member of the System Administrators' Guild of Australia. This guild exists to cater to the needs of the people who manage everything from their company's machines, through to networks, through to ISPs. The members of this guild, collectively, know pretty much all there is to know about how networks, computers and ISPs work in Australia; and are very able to identify what is and is not possible. /pp I object to Senator Conroy's internet filtering proposals on the following grounds: /pol li It cannot work. It really can't. It's not technologically feasible. If there was some magic way to only filter out the bad stuff and not accidentally filter out good stuff (or instead accidentally let through bad stuff) that magic way would be usable to avoid spam. Filtering will make it harder for innocent people to accidentally find the bad stuff (although I'd contend that it's pretty hard to "accidentally" find it in the first place). On the other hand, those who want to find it, will still find a way. They'll use Tor, or a VPN hosted overseas or some other method not being blocked. /lili Even if it could work, what would be blocked? Those serving illegal content move their content around. Today it might be on www.illegalporn.com and tomorrow it'll have moved to www.i113g41pr0n.com and the next day it'll be somewhere else. How can a black list possibly keep up? /lili If we know the sites which need to be blocked, why can't we just spend the money on a) having them taken down and b) prosecuting the people who created them in the first place? Don't we have international treaties for this purpose? Preventing people from bseeing/b child porn doesn't reduce the abuse to the child, although I concede that it might (hopefully) discourage such an interest in the first place. /li/olp Having these objections does not mean I'm advocating child pornography and I'm really sick of you and Senator Conroy saying that it does. I understand the technological issues very well and if there was a good, workable solution, I'd be putting it forward. Anyone can see that there's a lot of money in coming up with a good, workable solution, but instead of throwing up hundreds of ideas to solve the issue; the IT community at large is a) asking for more details because what we have so far doesn't look workable or b) criticising the plan because what we've been told so far doesn't look workable. The IT community at large, the ISPs, the systems and network administrators aren't advocating child pornography; they're not arguing for a free internet at any cost; they are giving a consistent message: this bcannot/b work. Any attempt to go ahead with the plan will result in a slower internet for everyone without preventing anyone with any access to a technical professional from obtaining the material they want. /pp All the best, /ppJacinta Richardson/p/div /blockquote
Customer service

Posted: September 9th, 2008, 6:04am CEST by jarich

p It's not that the customer/potential customer/person out on the street is always right. It's just that a little bit of courtesy and faith that they're not trying to mis-represent the situation can go a long way for improving your business reputation. As such, many businesses require a certain amount of professionalism by their staff when that staff is acting in any way which might be viewed as representing the company. This includes responding to emails from those customers/potential customers/persons out on the street. Calling such a person, who tried to alert you to a flaw in your business practices, a liar, isn't really appropriate. Doing so, under the title of "Production Director" is even worse. /pp So I introduce you to a really odd email exchange I had. I've left it unedited, except I've removed the company's name and John's surname. This is because although I find them guilty; it would be unprofessional for me to name and shame them so publicly. Make sure you read the subject line from the response. I thought it was spam at first. /pblockquotedivp tt-------------------------------------------------------------------------brFromnobr:wbr/nobr Jacinta RichardsonbrSent: Friday, 29 August 2008 8:10 PMbrTo: JohnbrSubject: Rude event hire driverbr brG'day John,br brAt about 1pm today, as I was cycling down Swanston Street, in the Copenhagen style lanes I found myself obstructed by one of your vans completely blocking my way.nbsp; I'm not sure if you're aware of these lanes, but they run on the road between the footpath and parked cars with a small, gutter-high built-up pavement separating the lane from those parked cars (and reducing the concerns of opening passenger doors).nbsp; This separating pavement is not something a cyclist can easily hop over.br brYour driver, today, had stopped his van in the bike lane just where the bike lane merged with the regular road, just north of Victoria Street (although on the eastern, southward bound side).nbsp; This completely blocked the exit from the copenhagen lane for all cyclists.nbsp; I imagine he did this because there was no parking bays available, although I don't see that as an excuse to park illegally.nbsp; Had your driver parked even a metre further forward then cyclists could have easily exited the lane and gone around him.nbsp; He would still have been illegally parked, but it would not have required myself and other cyclists to stop their bikes, lift them over the copenhagen divider and then continue onwards.br brThe driver was heavy set, with pale skin and blonde hair.nbsp; He was reading a newspaper and drinking coffee and seemed surprised that anyone would even try to ask him to move his vehicle to a less obstructing place (yet alone somewhere he could legally park), but he had been there for some time, and certainly didn't move while I could see him.nbsp; The van should probably also be redecorated with your company details, as it looked a very tatty.br brBehaviour like this isn't good for your business.nbsp; As it happened, I was on the way to a meeting to arrange hiring of an event company for a product launch for one of my clients.nbsp; Unfortunately for you, I encouraged said client to choose someone else.br brnbsp; nbsp; Jbr-------------------------------------------------------------------------brSnobruwbr/nobr bject: Time you concerned you concerned yourself with real Community issues.Now read on!brDate: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 12:50:45 +1000brFrom: JohnbrTo: Jacinta Richardsonbr brHi Jacinta, Thank you for your email and I am some what surprised by your comments and there inaccuracy.brOur vehicle had broken down and had stopped 15 metres from that point. Our driver rolled his vehicle into the side of the road to prevent it from blocking traffic and possibly causing an accident.brSending us an email is your right, but it really appears you should be more concerned and proactive about things in the real world like pollution, hunger, those less fortunate than ourselves and the homeless, we do care about the community and are actively involved in many projects, it shows youbrto be a very shallow person, and one who does not contribute to society except by complaining about such a minor issue.brAs a role model Company and a leader in this industry you could do well to learn from this very frivolous complaint of yours.brRaise your horizons and contribute to our community.br brJohnnobr wbr/nobr....brProduction DirectorbrFor the Event Teambr-------------------------------------------------------------------------/tt/p/div /blockquote
Catalyst vs Jifty

Posted: August 7th, 2008, 2:53pm CEST by jarich

p About a month ago I was looking for a good article which summarises the differences between the various Perl MVCs. I asked a few people who'd know about such things better than I, and they told me with certainty that it doesn't exist. I asked Google, and it didn't seem to know either. /pp So anyway, since I figured I had to find out this information anyway; I decided I'd learn both of them and put together a conference paper and talk on the topic as well. Still I have my concerns about being able to to learn both of them well enough to do them justice before September 15th. So I'm asking the experts as well... /pp If you are a regular user of either of these systems; have experience with both; or would just like to air your opinion regardless; please feel free to comment! If you want to comment about CGI::App, Maypole, Gantry or any of the other similar options as well your opinions are also welcome. /pp Thanks. /p
OMG I won a white camel

Posted: July 24th, 2008, 3:31am CEST by jarich

p Unfortunately, despite plans, I wasn't able to attend OSCON this year even though my husband, a href="http://use.perl.org/~pjf/"Paul Fenwick/a has made it. It would have been my first time out of Australia, but I'll have to wait for that. /pp Still, I asked him to bring me home a present, and last night he sent me: /pblockquotedivp You asked me to bring you home a nice present. I'm actually bringing home a present from the entire Perl community for you! /pp You're the recipient of one of the a href="http://use.perl.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/23/0444225"three White Camel awards/a! /p/div /blockquotepI struggled at first to take him seriously./ppWow./ppReally, Wow./pp I didn't even know I was nominated. Thankyou to the unknown person or persons who nominated me. /ppSomeone asked me what a white camel award was; and I struggled to answer the question to my satisfaction. So I searched and a href="http://www.perl.com/pub/a/1999/06/whitecamel.html"found/a: /pblockquotedivp The White Camel reward recognises the Perl community's "unsung heroes"--those who have devoted extraordinary creativity, energy, and time to the non-technical work that supports Perl's active and loyal user community. /p/div /blockquotep I think originally it was divided into three areas: Perl Advocacy, Perl User Groups, and the Perl Community with one award each; but I suspect that distinction has since been dropped. /pp I join a a href="http://www.perl.org/advocacy/white_camel/"very short list/a of very impressive people who've also earned one of these awards and share this year with a href="http://www.szabgab.com/blog/2008/07/1216803339.html"Gabor Szabo/a and a href="http://bulknews.vox.com/library/post/i-got-the-white-camel-award-at-oscon-2008.html"Tatsuhiko Miyagawa/a who most certainly deserve their awards. /pp Thanks again to those who nominated me; to the judges who've honoured me; to Paul for a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x180/2694575461/"accepting the award on my behalf/a and to everyone else who's offered me such lovely and sincere congratulations! /p
Why People Are Passionate About Perl

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 6:21am CEST by jarich

p This is inspired by a href="http://use.perl.org/~brian_d_foy/journal/36356"brian d foy's post/a asking why people are passionate about Perl. I can't speak for everyone, but I'll share some things I've picked up from others along the way. /pp bMainframe programmers/b. We were invited to present to the Capacity Management Group in Sydney, Australia a couple of years ago. Basically they wanted to know what Perl was, and whether it could be useful. They were completely blown away by the fact that it was bfree/b (in their world everything has to be paid for) and had bfilters for EBDIC systems/b automatically integrated! The idea that they could download thousands of libraries on demand also for free was an added bonus. With thanks to the passion of at least the organiser we've been given a few more speaking opportunities with them. /pp bShell programmers/b. We've had some die-hard shell programmers being sent to our courses, and some of them have fallen in love with Perl. They've been used to everything being much more verbose than shell and were delighted that you can bget so much done in so little code/b in Perl. /pp I am passionate about Perl because it's an easy language to work with. I first learned it because I needed it for a job, and I was delighted at how bpowerful/b, bsimple/b and often bintuitive/b it is. I like the benglish constructs/b: unless, and, not, or. I like the bshort-circuiting nature of the operators/b: ttmy $foo = $a || $b || 0;/tt - that saves me so many lines I always have to do in other languages. I appreciate its bvariable scoping/b and I like bstrict/b. I love the bDBI/b, and even more so the abstraction classes (DBIx::Class, Class::DBI etc). How could I not mention the bCPAN/b? Perhaps Perl's biggest answer. /pp I know, and program in, several other languages, but they don't compare well. I do a lot in PHP, but there are so many little things that get in my way and slow me down. I also keep littering my code with ttmy/tts. I do a little in C, but I think most people would prefer Perl to C when speed wasn't an issue, so that's not saying much. I write bash occasionally, but past a few lines I can't stop myself returning to Perl for better berror handling/b and breal lists/b. I have never encountered anything that compares to Perl's btesting frameworks/b. /pp We taught a friend of ours Perl, he is a very experienced Java programmer. He still writes a lot of Java but he uses Perl to script all the repetitive stuff.nobr wbr/nobr;) I can still remember the expression on his face when we showed him "Hello world". Where was all the rest of the code? He's not passionate about Perl, but he's not passionate about Java either. Maybe programming doesn't inspire him with passion, but I always smile when I he asks me "so how would I do X in Perl?" and I show him a simple, elegant, and short way of doing it; followed with him showing me the awkward, cumbersome way he's been trying in order to get it to work in Java. Sometimes I'm able to offer better Java solutions, but not as often as he's able to improve my Java code. /p
5 things I hate about Perl

Posted: May 9th, 2008, 4:04am CEST by jarich

p This is inspired by a href="http://use.perl.org/~brian_d_foy/journal/32556"brian d foy's post/a on "What do you hate most about your language?". Of course I love Perl. I program in it and teach it for a living. Still I hate.... /pol li beval/b. Block eval should be spelled "try" and should have a "catch" instead of an ugly unreadable if statement following. Block eval should not be called the same thing as string eval - which is very, very different. /lili bsymbolic references/b. You should have to *turn on* this functionality if you want it, rather than having it on by default. Trying to convince self-taught programmers who refuse to use strict because it breaks their code and don't want to know that hashes are a better solution, is a challenge in self-control every time. In fact, although I hardly ever use strict in my command-line one-liners or my temporary stuff; it shits me that strict isn't on by default. /lili bbad legacy stuff/b. In particular things like "reset", which makes some sense in the context of lazy programming, but which just screams out to be abused in "job secure" code. /lili binconsistent whitespace rules/b.blockquotedivp ttprint $foo-gt;{blah};nbsp; print $foo -gt; {blah};nbsp; print "$foo -gt; {blah}";/tt/p/div /blockquotep I get why the last one fails, but why allow the second one to succeed if you can't be consistent?/p /lili bno way to take a slice through arrow-notation/b. If it wasn't for this, we could teach our students arrow notation exclusively and they'd never need to know about the uglier form of dereferencing. /li/ol
A single point of contact

Posted: May 7th, 2008, 5:49am CEST by jarich

p I never would have thought it that hard to implement. One issue we've had with one of our vendors, is that it feels like we're always dealing with someone new. And there's never any hand-over of our account between staff. /pp There were other issues, including a breally bad day/b at their facilities once, followed by an extremely compelling offer from a competitor, so we switched. The competitor is superb at customer service and gave us an account manager straight away. She has been amazingly cool. /pp Still, the first place wants our custom again, and we're happy to have options, so we talked. I tried to tell them what we didn't like, and after a few emails I think they might have understood some of it. They promised us we'd have an account manager, who'd be our single point of contact. I said that would be lovely. /pp When I spoke to this account manager for the first time, I discovered that she didn't have any record of the upcoming work we'd scheduled with them. This lack of communication between staff was one of the big reasons we wanted that single point of contact. I informed her of who I'd spoken to and what dates we'd agreed on. Now she was up to speed I figured all would be well... /pp So iwhy/i am I getting email about our selected dates from another staff member again? And to a private address, which I've explicitly told them about 10 times not to use? Grr! /pp If they can't implement something as simple as a single point of contact, and send stuff to the requested address, I think we'll just stay with the competitor. /p
Something I'd like to see

Posted: May 6th, 2008, 8:37am CEST by jarich

p a href="http://perlbuzz.com/2008/05/perl-decentralize-diversify-colonize.html"Andy Lester's latest article on Perl Buzz/a lists a bunch of things one can do to help spread the good words about Perl. /pp But it didn't mention one of my favourites. bRun a conference!/b Or at the very least attend a conference, give a talk and then blog about it. Now I'm not that good about the whole blogging thing. I come up with great ideas to write about when I'm in bed, or in the shower, or walking down the street; but by the time I get to my computer I've forgotten, or they don't seem that great anymore... /pp Still I do run and attend, and talk at conferences, and I'm convinced that this is good for both Perl and Open source in general. Further, I want to go overseas. I'd *love* to go to YAPC::EU and I'd consider going to YAPC::NA. But I often hear about them much too late. What I'd really like to see is a calendar of Perl events. It'd be cool to have PM meetings on it, conferences etc. If you could choose whether or to see some continents, or all. It'd be even more cool if you could subscribe to ical-style feeds per continent. /pp Unfortunately I don't think I'll have time to do this myself in the very near future, but at least I've got a starting point. /p
SAGE-AU 2008 Call for Participation (Adelaide, Australia)

Posted: February 28th, 2008, 3:56am CET by jarich

p Please forward this invitation to anyone you feel would be interested. For all information, contacts and updates, see the a href="http://www.sage-au.org.au/display/conf/"SAGE-AU conference web site/a. /pp b16th Annual System Administrators' Conference (SAGE-AU 2008)/b /pp bThe System Administrators' Guild of Australia/b /pp bAdelaide, 11-15th August 2008/b /pp SAGE-AU was formed to advance the profession of System Administration by raising awareness of the need for System Administrators, and educating System Administrators in technical as well as professional issues. Our yearly conference provides a forum for System Administrators of all platforms and levels of experience to gather together and share their experiences. Further it provides an excellent opportunity to meet and network with acknowledged experts in the field. /pp SAGE-AU 2008 will be held in Adelaide from the 11th-15th August. /pp bTutorial Program: 11th - 13th August/b /pp SAGE-AU 2008 will include three days of tutorials of both 3 hours and 6 hours duration. Previous years have included tutorials on topics such as: /pul liAutomating Windows Vista/liliChange Management/liliIssues in Unix Infrastructure Design/liliManagement-101/li/ulp For more details and to submit your proposal(s), visit our a href="http://www.sage-au.org.au/x/Xg8"Call for Technical Presentations/a /pp bTechnical Program: 14th - 15th August/b /pp For the first year, two parallel streams will be running. If your job includes looking after systems, networks, or machines for which you are not the sole-user, we'd love to hear you speak! /pp Previous years have included talks on topics such as: /pul liSecurity/liliWireless Networks/liliSystem Administration Ethics/liliVirtualisation/liliStandards (and Compliance)/li/ulp For more details and to submit your proposal(s), visit our a href="http://www.sage-au.org.au/x/Xg8"Call for Technical Presentations/a /pp If you have any questions or require assistance with your submission, please don't hesitate to ask! /p
File::Temp, binary mode and text files

Posted: February 26th, 2008, 6:50am CET by jarich

p In my day job, amongst other things, I write training materials and run courses for Perl Training Australia. We've only recently added File::Temp to our course notes, and since we allow our attendees to use either our portable training server (Linux) or their desktop (often Windows) we've hit a problem. /pp File::Temp's tempfile isn't portable for text files. This is because it opens them using sysopen and the O_BINARY flag (where available). This means that newlines printed to the file aren't converted into the operating system's preferred end of line character(s). /pp This shouldn't have been a surprise, it's in the documentation: /pblockquotedivp bBINMODE/b /pp The file returned by File::Temp will have been opened in binary mode if such a mode is available. If that is not correct, use the binmode() function to change the mode of the filehandle. /pp Note that you can modify the encoding of a file opened by File::Temp also by using binmode(). /p/div /blockquotep However the binmode documentation rightly points out: /pblockquotedivp For the sake of portability it is a good idea to always use it when appropriate, and to never use it when it isn't appropriate. /p/div /blockquotep I know I can tell the Windows students to write: /pblockquotedivp ttbinmode($tmp_fh, ":crlf" );/tt/p/div /blockquotep after their call to tempfile(), but it's still not going to be portable. Creating a tempfile doesn't look like it should be a special case, and in my experience, it's usually safe to tell (fairly computer and operating system savvy) students that if it looks portable, it should be. /pp Is there a layer I can give to binmode to tell it to go back to treating the file as a text file with all the special magic regarding newlines that should happen? I essentially want a: codebinmode($tmp_fh, ":default");/code /pp I can always write File::Temp::Text which doesn't use O_BINARY but that's another, non-standard, module for the students to have to install. /pp I originally brought this question up on a href="http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=670208"PerlMonks/a but I'm still hoping for a magic answer that lets me teach students a portable way of handling temporary text files where the file name is available. (Yes, I know about open with an undef filehandle). /pp Any hints? /ppThanks, jarich/p
Open Day thank yous

Posted: February 3rd, 2008, 8:48am CET by jarich

p I just want to say thank you to everyone who was involved in Open Day. To the volunteers who spent yet another day making the conference work, to all of those who turned up and asked how they could help just because they're nice people, to everyone who brought someone along to see stuff and/or told others about it. Thankyou! Without your help, Open Day would have been much less fun. /pp bEspecial thanks go to:/b /pp bGrant Diffey/b who took on the horrible task of making sure that every stand had power. He was roped in because he happened to be standing there at that very moment the issue was being discussed, and thus deserves especial thanks for doing it so well and swiftly. /pp bSteve Walsh/b for getting the networking going. Steve's job started during the afternoon on Friday - getting the patch panel ready - and continued through to last night - tidying it up again. Steve ran cables (including to the stands who decided they needed them at the last minute), set up wireless access points, and generally did an awesome job. /pp bDoug Chapman/b and bPia Waugh/b for presenting their conference talks a second time (and without much notice). /pp bPaul Fenwick/b who took much of the organisational load off my shoulders leaving me free to do the meta organisation and registration desk handling! He also gave me a great foot massage at the end of the day, which was well appreciated. /pp bThe table organisers:/b Tim Ansell, Tamara Olliver, Bill Farrow, Kylie Davies, Brianna Laugher, Mark Kowarsky, Robyn, Pia Waugh, John Stern, Michael Dale, Simon Pascal Klein, Wen Lin, Mark Phillips, Jon Oxer, Aaron Seigo, Vik Olliver, Con Zymaris, Leif Eriksen, Anthony David, Martin Servior, Melissa, Annette Meldrum, Murray Bishop, Ben Balbo, Donna Benjamin, John Newbigin, Daniel Stefyn, Scott Barnett, Leslie Hawthorn and Cat Allman, Jennifer Kreutzer, Adaora Onyia, Pauline Waite, Kanchana Wickremasinghe, Rusty, Arjen Lentz for hosting tables so that we had all of these excellent stands to demonstrate Open Source to our visitors. Thankyou also to those who helped out on these stands! /pp bSteven Thorne/b for his hugs and encouragement throughout the day. /pp All the blightning talk speakers/b, who keep the visitors so well entertained and to bAdam Harvey/b for organising these so that I didn't have to! Also to bJeff Waugh/b for his MCing. /ppThank you to bRobyn M/b and all the others whose names I missed who gave up time from the lightning talks and closing ceremony to help me haul tables around on Friday afternoon. /ppThank you to bEdward Borland/b from "Byte into IT" on RRR, who interviewed me on radio and thus helped with the Open Day advertising greatly. /pp Thank you also to bDonna Benjamin/b who not only ran the conference organisation but handled a fair amount of my publicity for me. To bPeter Lieverdink/b for creating awesome artwork and signs for me. To bRob B/b for creating out-door signs. And also to bSarah Stokely/b for her advertising amongst the general press. /pp My apologies if I've missed mentioning you! Please add your name to the comments, or email me, so I can update this. /pp bTo those who gave me gifts:/b /pp I'd also like to thank everyone who gave me gifts throughout the day. I'm afraid that much of yesterday was spent in a whirl of people, so although I should know all the names; I don't! I feel terrible about this, so if this was you, please let me know. /pp Thank you bLeslie Hawthorn/b for the funky Google pen. /pp Thank you bJanet/b(?) for the small Ritzenhoff glass with penguins on it, which I understand to be a smaller version of the ones given to the Exec team. /pp Thank you unknown speaker who gave me a cute little USB mouse with this year's penguin on it. /pp Thank you to bDarrell Burkey/b who gave me the caffeinated peppermints (and a rubber ball to pass onto Paul). /pp Thank you to bMelissa Dapper/b for the Ubuntu t-shirt. /pp Once again, thank you everyone for coming to Open Day and for making it such a great success. According to my estimations we had at least 1000 people walk in, which is just brilliant! /p
linux.conf.au (3)

Posted: February 3rd, 2008, 6:44am CET by jarich

p bThursday 31st January/b /pp Thursday's keynote was by a href="http://linux.conf.au/programme/keynotes"Stormy Peters/a on "Would you do it again for free?". She referenced various studies which showed that if you took someone who was doing something they loved, and paid them to keep doing it, that once the payments stopped, they'd be less inclined to continue. There was also some talk about how hiring an open source developer to continue to keep working on their open source - but then requiring that they "work as an employee" - can lead to frustration and disinterest in the project itself. Stormy suggests that some of the bigger businesses seem to have realised this and are improving matters. The end conclusion seems to be that those paid to work on open source, will continue to work on open source even without the pay... but it'll probably be for a different project. /pp The conference highlight of the day was being awarded a HP iPac. TA few intended recipients weren't available to take their prizes, so Donna Benjamin (head conference organiser) called out some dates, and those with birthday's on those dates won the prize. The final date was "who's birthday is closest to today" and about 6 people (including me) put up their hands. So she clarified and asked if anyone's birthday is today, and that just left me. What a lovely 30th birthday gift! /pp The "Clustered Samba" talk by Andrew Tridgell (Tridge) was quite good, and I left feeling like I understood almost everything even though I've never set up a samba server, or a clustered anything. I then walked over to probably the most loved regular conference talk "a href="http://linux.conf.au/programme/detail?TalkID=123"Rockhopper Robot: Designing and Programming an Autonomous Robot with Linux and Open Source/a" by Doug Chapman. This showed a small autonomous robot navigating around a simple maze and blowing out candles where it saw them. It was simply awesome! This meant I missed Allison Randal's talknobr wbr/nobr:(, but I hope to be able to download and catch up on that soon. /pp Both Glenn Wightwick's talk on Linux and Home Automation and Elizabeth Garbee's talk on An Introduction to Open Source Animation also deserve a mention. /pp The end of the day was celebrated with both the Professional Delegates' Networking Session (PDNS) to which all delegates who paid "professional" rates, all speakers, and all exec are invited; and the Google Student Party who invited everyone else. I skipped out on both of these and had a lovely birthday dinner with my friends and family. /pp bFriday 1st February/b /pp Happy mail-man day! I took the first part of this morning off from the conference, and thus did not get to see Anthony Baxter's keynote. I hear it was well appreciated however. I arrived in time for morning tea but was quickly mobbed by people asking about Open Day requirements, so I didn't get to eat anything. /pp I won free for long enough to see (most of) Kimberlee Weatherall's talk on "Stop in the Name of the Law" which was interesting, but hard to apply to what I'm doing. /pp Upon leaving the lecture theatre I was mobbed again until I ran off to find food and somewhere quiet to eat it. /pp Carefully sneaking into the lecture theatres allowed me to see Tamara Olliver's talk on "Create Your Own Open Source Dance Mat" and Jeff and Pia Waugh's talk on "The Australian Open Source Industry and Community Census 2007". These were both really interesting, although it was disappointing to see Perl so far down on the list of a href="http://flickr.com/photos/pfenwick/2237515429/"languages used by software developers/a. First was C, then C++, Python and PHP were all equal, then Java a little below them and only then Perl with significantly less people using it. Ruby trailed the pack even further. /pp The rest of the afternoon was spent arranging tables and room space for Open Day. I missed all the lightning talks, which is disappointing, but saw some bits of the closing ceremony. At one point (after being sent off to fetch something from HQ) I walked up to the door (at the back of the room), only to have Donna (speaking) notice me, realise that I wasn't listed on her slide of thankyous (that was on display) and thus thank me personally, which was sweet. /pp Friday evening was followed by the Google Party. This was a very responsible party, with a few security guards, lots of bbqed food (although not a lot of choices), lots of salad (2 choices), and plastic cups of wine, beer, orange juice, cola (sugared and diet) and lemonade. To get drinks you had to have either a blue (non-alcoholic only) or orange wrist band. Those giving out bands showed varying degrees of diligence in checking ID, but I think that orange wrist bands only went out to those over 18. /pp All drinks (including water) evaporated at 8:30pm which was unexpected and lead to a rapid wind-down of the evening. Some people went onwards to local pubs while others retired early. Overall, I felt the food, lighting, music and socialising was better this year than last; but the drinks and venue (more seats!) was better last year. /pp bOpen Day/b /pp Somehow I foolishly ended up starting Open Day at 8am. I was late, but the only person I seemed to inconvenience was the Micro-hire delivery person who I hadn't been expecting until 10am anyway. Other helpers showed up soon after and moved tables, added table cloths, put up posters and banners, ran cables, found power points etc Set-up went extraordinarily well, all things considered, and we were almost ready for our first guests who arrived at about 11:30pm. /pp The Linux Australia AGM ran long past 12pm (which was my anticipated end time for it) so lunch was somewhat delayed, but most people seemed fairly happy all the same. While the hot food ran out pretty quickly there were enough sandwiches for me to carry around a tray to all the table organisers a short while later. /pp I had 325 pairs of CDs to give out, and ran out by about 1:30pm. Since most visitors to my "rego" booth were in pairs or families, this suggests that I had about 650 people. There were also many who didn't come near my table too. Since the day seemed to only get busier I think it's safe to say that we topped 1000 visitors! /pp a href="http://use.perl.org/~pjf/"Paul Fenwick/a and Adam Harvey took care of the main talks and lightning talks throughout the afternoon, which made my life much easier. The talks appeared to be well attended so I hope the visitors got something out of them as well. Paul suggests that there were generally about 200 people in the Grand Buffet (where the talks were held) at any given time. /pp Clean-up ended up being remarkably swift with lots of helping hands. All the hardware seemed to find appropriate homes, and only a few items ended up in "lost and found". We generally got all the tables back to where they should have been and picked up most of our junk from the floor, so I hope that the facilities providers will welcome us back again. /pp After dropping the RepRap device back at the Olliver's hotel, Paul and I did a delivery run back to linux.conf.au's storage room and then headed home. After a great take-out dinner, and hot shower, Paul gave me a foot massage and I finally got an early night. /p
linux.conf.au (2)

Posted: January 31st, 2008, 1:01am CET by jarich

p bWednesday 30th January (continued)/b /pp I took the following notes from Bruce's keynote, and thought here would be a good place to store them. /pp i In a market where the sellers know more about the product than the buyers, bad (cheaper) products drive the better products out of the market. eg 50 cars at $1000, 50 cars at $2000. Convergence price is $1500, but at this price only bad cars will be sold. /i /pp iThus in order for the seller to indicate to the buyer that their product is actually more superior they have to send signals. These might be warranties "buy this car and if anything goes wrong in the first month, I'll buy it back at full price". /i /pp i In the IT field we don't have warranties (for good reasons) so we rely on reputation, opinions of others (Bruce likes it, so it must be good) etc. /i /pp i Marketing and politics is about the deliberate creation of the right signals to encourage people to buy your product/idea/policy even if it isn't suitable to their needs. These muddy the water. /i /pp Wednesday continued with a few surprises. We celebrated the 10 year birthday of a href="http://www.lwn.net/"LWN/a with chocolate mud cupcakes. Mmm! I missed a few sessions after that to work on a href="http://linux.conf.au/programme/open-day"Open Day/a issues, and to get my a href="http://www.perltraining.com.au/talks/"slides/a available for the many people who've been asking. I enjoyed the hall-way track immensely. /pp Just before lunch, the organisers started handing out OLPC XOs in great quantities (perhaps 70 in total) assigned to selected people. This made it much easier to get a hold of one to play with and appreciate. At lunch I met an old university friend and thus got to show him the joys of these machines. He was envious that such toys are not easily available for ihis/i children. It certainly was a hit. /pp After lunch I attended a talk on AbiCollab: changes to AbiWord to allow collaborative document editing which was very interesting, and one by Jim Gettys about their experiences in getting the XOs out to third world countries. Knowing that their laptops is the brightest evening light source for some of these children gives me an idea of how life-changing this program will be. /pp A fire alarm in the later afternoon lead to some program changes, but overall, everything went smoothly. /pp The Penguin dinner was held at the Queen Victoria Night Market and was consequently amazing. I've never been at a conference dinner where vegetarians were so well catered for! We were given $40 broken into $5 vouchers and told to go get whatever we wanted. Thus I went to a vegetarian-Indian stand and came back with a plate of steaming curries, rice, pakodas, and naan. Other people had pasta dishes, or kangaroo burgers, or sausage or.... $15 worth of the vouchers were reserved for alcohol, although most drinks were $6.50 each (they gave change). This lead to a comparatively sober evening, although I didn't hear any complaints. It was quite possibly one of the cheaper social parties (in an organisational sense) for this conference, but I think it will be hard to top. /p
linux.conf.au

Posted: January 30th, 2008, 2:00am CET by jarich

p bSunday 27th January/b /pp LCA started on Sunday, where I got to go to the airport and hang around for a few hours running around to meet speakers/delegates and collect them up to put on our hired bus. Registration opened sometime in the afternoon, but being at the airport until 7pm meant I missed it. /pp bMonday 28th January/b /pp First day of the conference. Spent in Portsea (2 hours away from the conference venue) scuba diving with our special guest Linus. Lost Linus at the start of the first boat dive and was very grateful to see him on the boat when we re-boarded at the end. Thought the dive master we had with us could have been better on that dive. Second boat dive was much smoother and we all managed to stay together and have a great time. /pp bTuesday 29th January/b /pp Gave my "a href="http://www.perltraining.com.au/talks/"Not common enough code optimisations/a" talk at the a href="http://conf.au.linuxchix.org/"Linuxchix mini-conf/a. Discovered that I had a lot less time than I was hoping to have, so I had to speed up the talk dramatically, but it seemed to be well received all the same. /pp Went to a great talk by Stormy Peters about community managers. It made me think about my contributions to Open Source. I don't actually contribute code to any projects. I could, but I don't because I fill up my time with community tasks. I'm active in all of the Australia Perl Mongers groups, and hang out on the Wellington Perl Mongers list too. Where I can I organise meetings for them, especially if one of us will be in town to give a talk. I'm subscribed to almost all of the Linux Users Groups in Australia as well as several women in IT based lists. I've helped run a href="http://www.osdc.com.au/"OSDC/a every year since it started in 2004. I'm responsible for LCA's a href="http://linux.conf.au/programme/open-day"Open Day/a this year (Saturday 2nd February - come along if you're in Melbourne!), and have been doing various other volunteer things to help too. I'm also Treasurer of a href="http://www.sage-au.org.au/"SAGE-AU/a (the Australian System Administration industry body), and am helping organise their conference for August this year. /pp Doing this hard behind-the-scenes work proves to be quite rewarding in its own way. I turn up at conferences, and everyone seems to know my name. I suspect that if I gave my free time to coding on an Open Source project, then a lot less people would know my name - unless I was lucky enough to pick the "next big thing" project... /pp I never really intended to be famous; but I'm certainly not complaining. /pp bWednesday 30th January/b /pp This morning's keynote was by a href="http://linux.conf.au/programme/keynotes"Bruce Schneier/a. A very interesting talk, presented extremely well. The best talk I've ever seen given without any visual assistance. Compelling enough that the right hand side of my brain didn't even notice the time passing. /pp Huge number of OLPC XOs are being given out, but it looks like I'm not going to be one of the lucky recipients. The focus is to encourage more people to develop more things for them, so it's reasonable I'm not getting one, seeing as how I don't program in Python much and I don't have the time to write much code right now. /pp I'm really looking forward to reducing my volunteer load a little. /pp More on today to follow... /p
Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Posted: November 18th, 2007, 2:05am CET by jarich

p Australian Federal elections always include a few crack-pot lunatic political parties. This isn't surprising considering how many political parties a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_parties_in_Australia"we have/a. However, for those who vote for the Senate by numbering all the candidates from 1-68 below the line (those voting above the line just put a single "1" in any of the 10 or so boxes of their choice) it can be a challenge to remember what all the parties stand for. /pp I think a lot of people vote based on their emotional reaction to the party's name. For example non-custodial parents might give the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Custodial_Parents_Party"Non-Custodial Parents Party/a a higher vote than custodial parents without knowing anything about that party's policies. a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Women_Want_(Australia)" What Women Want/a is another odd one. /pp I think, sometimes, that the biggest challenge can be in deciding who you put last. When it comes to deciding between great parties like Family First, One Nation, Australian Shooters Party, Christian Democratic Party and the Citizens Electoral Council; how do I decide who I like least? /pp Fortunately, one of these has seen fit to spam me with information on their beliefs to help me decide to put them last. Even putting the fact that they spammed me aside, I can't vote for a party who writes (in all seriousness): /pblockquotedivpnobr wbr/nobr... Make no mistake: the "climate change" swindle run by the British financial oligarchy and supported by our complicit mainstream media, will tax us to death#8212;no pun intended. This tax-and-trade scheme will shut down our farmers and manufacturers and ram up the price of petrol, gas and electricity#8212;and it#8217;s all based on one big scientific scam. The London-centred financial oligarchy intends mass genocidenobr wbr/nobr... /p/div /blockquotep Yup, the a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Electoral_Council"Citizens Electoral Council/a wins most-crazy crack-pot party from me for this election./p
#perl on irc.perl.org tonight

Posted: September 29th, 2007, 2:47pm CEST by jarich

p Someone called "alankila" a href="http://lwn.net/Articles/252193/"complained/a that women don't join ircnet #Perl. So I thought I'd go represent my gender by joining #perl on irc.perl org tonight. /pp What a great start! I was greeted with the following (presumably out of context) topic: /pblockquotedivp(22:32:24) The topic for #perl is: Happy 10th Birthday Purl | iPhone 1.1.1 released | lt;hexgt; It was going well until the young girls peeing. lt;wsdo_okadrgt; I've seen too many of those around lately | COCKROACH PORN/p/div /blockquotep Hmm. /pp Since I wanted to see whether purl had a command that would allow me to see if anyone of the name alankila had been in, I PMed it and had the following "conversation": /pblockquotedivp ttConversation with purl at Sat 29 Sep 2007 22:33:22 EST on jarich@irc.perl.org (irc)br(22:33:24) jarich: helpbr(22:33:27) purl: help is lt;replygt;Jesus is coming! Everyone get naked and fuck!br(22:33:40) jarich: helpbr(22:33:46) purl: help is lt;replygt;HELP IS AVAILABLE FOR YOU. SAY "HELP" OR ANOTHER COMMAND. FOR A LIST OF COMMANDS, TYPE "COMMANDS".br(22:33:58) jarich: COMMANDSbr(22:33:59) purl: COMMANDS are HLAGH, DONGS, JERK IT/tt/p/div /blockquotep Yup, I feel included and welcome here.nobr wbr/nobr:( /pp bUPDATE/b: Fixed the attributions in the topic I posted as I didn't realise that use.perl was eating them./p
PHP oddity

Posted: August 27th, 2007, 1:00pm CEST by jarich

p The a href="http://perl.net.au/"PerlNet Wiki/a uses Mediawiki which is written in PHP so too are the plugin scripts we use to manage it. As the wiki is open to anonymous edits, we have a fun arms race with spammers. Most of the time, they get caught by our blacklist and their edits don't even get saved. However recently one spammer has done something clever... /pp When I first spotted this afternoon's spam I checked it for common urls and found that most links pointed to codeifrance.com/code. I would have added it to our a href="http://perl.net.au/wiki/PerlNet:Spam_blacklist"blacklist/a but it was already there! So I checked that the anti-spam bot was still active and it was. Why wasn't this page being picked up? I took a copy of the cleanup script, printed out the regex and ran that with some of the page text: yup it matched! /pp I printed out what the script was seeing as the text and it matched the page content. I printed that to a file and ran a simple regex over it, yup it matched. I ran the bigger regex over it, no match. /pp I looked at the data again. Couldn't see anything special about it except that all of it was on one line. Well... surely it couldn't be a memory issue. I was reading the whole text into memory before performing the regex, how would line boundaries make a difference? I wasted time looking into other possibilities. /pp I eventually came back to the fact that it was a _very_ long single line... that a simple regex could match. Could that be it anyway? I removed a few thousand characters and wow! It started matching again. /pp I eventually found that (for the size of regular expression we're using) strings of 13808 characters or less would match, but any more and the match would fail.... silently. I did this with the following code: /pblockquotedivp ttlt;?phpbr# defines $testbrinclude( '/tmp/spam.txt' );br br# Shorten the process a little....br$test = substr($test, 0, $length-1160);br br# $re removed for brevitybr# while I can't match, shorten the stringbrwhile(! preg_match($re, $test, $match)) {br brnbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; $length = strlen($test);br brnbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; print "$length\n";br brnbsp; nbsp; nbsp; nbsp; $test = substr($test, 0, $length-1);br}br# Yay I matched!brprint "match\n";/tt/p/div /blockquotep My string started with 14979 characters! /pp I wondered how much of this was because it was a very long _line_ as opposed to a very long string. So I edited the data file to add newlines after each url. It matched immediately! /pp I thought about the length of the regular expression (it's 2584 characters). The simple regular expression codeifrance\.com/code had worked, so I wondered if the failure was due to alternation or capturing. I added in a small hunk of the real regex for about 30 characters (4 alternations) and it still matched. Removing a third of the real regex length (string length, not necessarily alternation opportunities) resulted in matching the string one character earlier but that was it. /pp Odd. /p
RFC: Perl jobs mailing list guidelines and submission form

Posted: August 6th, 2007, 2:31pm CEST by jarich

p Perl Training Australia has had a unused a href="http://perltraining.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/perl-jobs"Jobs mailing list/a for a while now with the bold intent of allowing all the businesses who contact us regarding Perl consulting and jobs to have (moderated) access to past students of ours (opt-in) and other interested people. But we've been busy and lazy and nothing has happened. I have good reason to believe that the list will receive in the order of 300 subscribers when we make it live. /pp Today I spent all day putting together a a href="http://perltraining.com.au/jobs/"jobs submission page/a for businesses. This was partially caused by Skud's a href="http://infotrope.net/blog/2007/07/31/how-not-to-write-a-perl-job-ad/"How not to write a Perl job/a post and the discussion we had while she was writting it, and also from yet another request for Perl programmers. /pp I've taken Skud's, a href="http://use.perl.org/~Ovid/journal/24933"Ovid's/a, a href="http://use.perl.org/~Adrian/journal/33295"Adrian's/a and a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html"Joel Spolsky's/a advice, and tried to make the potential employer answer all the questions I've ever have about a job when I'm reading the advert. Still I've left lots of them optional just in case they can't be bothered. /pp This service isn't designed for recruiters. It's for Perl businesses, or businesses who use Perl. Recruiters can use it, but I don't know if they will. /pp This isn't up for real yet. There's lots of work to be done, including javascript tooltips, improved page linking and the creation of a back-end to handle submissions. What I'm asking for right now is feedback. /pul liWould you use a href="http://perltraining.com.au/jobs/"this form/a, or decide it was just too hard?/liliHave I missed any really important questions?/liliHave I missed any really important ioptions/i in my multi-option questions? /lili Do you think I should change what is/isn't optional? /lili Are there things you think I should leave out? /lili What else should I be covering in my a href="http://perltraining.com.au/jobs/guidelines.html"guidelines/a? /lili Any other feedback. /li/ulp bjobs.perl.org/b. Before you ask, I just want to say that yes I'm very aware of this wonderful service! Unfortunately there are a lot of Perl programmers in Australia who are completely uninterested in being part of the Perl community. Many of our students are in this category. While I expect that I can ask them to let me subscribe them to our mailing list, I don't think I could ever get them to subscribe to the jobs.perl.org list. My compromise is suggesting that employers also submit their job to jobs.perl.org, hopefully we'll just help them think a little about what they want to post first.nobr wbr/nobr:) /pp Thankyou in advance! /p
OSDC is over

Posted: December 9th, 2006, 1:08pm CET by jarich

p Another a href="http://www.osdc.com.au/"OSDC/a is over and I'm exhausted. We did well this year. I believe registrations were about 185 when we closed them, but we got another 10 or so "walk-ins". Considering that we didn't advertise "walk-ins" (we only decided upon them late Tuesday afternoon) I think that that's pretty amazing. My job was publicity, so I can feel confident that I did it well. (For reference, previous years counts were: 153 for 2004 and 141 for 2005). /pp From an administrative point of view, there were a number of obvious (in retrospect) mistakes, but nothing we couldn't recover from. Examples include small things such as difficulties with printing name tags and not giving ourselves enough time to bump in. /pp Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It seems that everyone was happy with the mix of talks and speakers. There were some (valid) complaints about the catering, but most people understood that we were unhappy about it too and that we did our best to fix it. /pp The committee members did a fantastic job in making it all happen, and I'm hoping that my colleagues get a good chance this weekend to recover. Particular thanks go to: /pul li bAmanda Penrose/b for her beautiful artwork and for keeping the website up to date. Amanda also took the meeting minutes, organised and ran the tutorials, designed and arranged printing for the postcards, likewise for the t-shirts and bags, chaired rooms and did a fair bit of the registration desk management. In her free time she also helped out in the other roles as necessary. /lili bRichard Jones/b for his excellent management of proposals, papers and the proceedings. Richard worked with the speakers to keep them informed of what was going on, found replacement talks at short notice when speakers pulled out, created the programme and made it all happen. In addition Richard also provided technical assistance with the CGPublisher software, managed registrations and organised the room helpers each day as well as the lightning talks. Furthermore, Richard also helped with the publicity by reaching out to Australia's python users. /lili bDebbie Picket/b for her superb handling of all things facility. Despite all sorts of obstacles coming up with unfortunate timing, Debbie got us our conference rooms, arranged the catering, yelled at the caterers when they got things wrong, organised the registration desk helpers, procured a coffee machine so attendees had "real coffee" (or hot chocolate) and provided technical assistance in the lecture theaters. Debbie also helped with the publicity by using her university contacts. /lili bZoran Radicic/b did a fine job as sponsorship manager. He created by far the best sponsorship materials we've ever had. Unfortunately for us, he had to head overseas for the middle of the year and didn't end up with as good an internet connection as he'd hoped. Nevertheless, on his return he worked hard to put it all to rights. For someone who is both new to the area of sponsorship and conference management, I think he did well. Zoran spent most of the conference helping out on the registration desk and running small errands. /lili bBen Balbo/b did a great job as treasurer and was always prompt to answer questions regarding budget or whether registrants had paid. He helped with publicity by contacting the Australian and international PHP communities. Unfortunately Ben did his work and then headed overseas in November thus missing the conference. /lili bScott Penrose/b was the committee president. He has presided over yet another (his third) fantastic conference. This year Scott managed all the keynotes (and even found time to contribute one). He also arranged the monthly meetings, moderated the committee mailing list, managed the mail and web servers, kept an eye on tasks progress, helped with sponsorship while Zoran was overseas, co-managed the bank account with Ben, took on many of the small tasks (like contact person X about Y), purchased most of the sundries, collected and transported all of the materials, created and printed the signs, name badges and feedback forms. Scott also helped the publicity by sending through messages to the OSDC announce list, OSDClub announce list, LUV programmers' SIG and the Perl groups list. During the conference Scott was in all places at once doing all things which needed it. /li/ulp It was great to work with such a group of talented and dedicated professionals. /p
Good and bad leadership

Posted: August 7th, 2006, 8:50am CEST by jarich

p Some people are great at leadership. They manage everything that comes their way. They keep track of all the important stuff, such as what team members are working on (in general terms). If people seem to disappear for a bit, they get in contact and give them a gentle nudge back into work. If others need to temporarily put down their responsibilities for any reason; these good leaders step in and either take their tasks on, or find someone else who can. If new tasks appear, good leaders delegate; or arrange new recruits. Good leaders might not actually do any particular task; but they take responsibility for the whole, and make sure the project runs as close to schedule as possible. /pp Good leaders are worth their weight in gold, so to speak. /pp Then there are the bad leaders. Who are much more interesting to study, unless you're working for them or with them. /pp There are all sorts of reasons why someone might be a bad leader. Perhaps they were forced into a leadership role when they'd rather just be a worker. Perhaps they chose the position for the glory perks. Perhaps they usually are a good leader who has taken on too many tasks, and has lowered the priority of ithis/i project. Knowing the "how" can help you push a mediocre leader towards becoming a good leader (if you're very lucky, and good with people). What makes someone a bad leader can vary as well. Perhaps they micro-manage too much, until noone tells them anything. Or maybe they don't pay any attention to what others are doing (failing to lead at all) until some catastrophe happens. Perhaps they just assume that everyone will take care of their own problems. /pp Good leaders often inspire loyalty and commitment. In return they reward their followers with recognition, praise and glory. Bad leaders inspire discontent and apathy even when they share the glory. Good leaders remember to reward and thank the helpers behind the scenes, bad leaders might only reward those they liked. /pp Good leaders are fun to work with. Bad leaders are people you want to flee from. Both can be found in all types of leadership roles. Open source project leads, school principals, bosses... /pp The breally/b hard bit is if you are a generally good leader, trying to follow a bad one. Particularly when the position is voluntary one and the only reward is knowing you did a job well. Such a position leaves you with only a handful of options: /pul liQuit the project -- and hope it survives without you. If you don't really care about it, this one is a good option. On the other hand if you joined because you wanted to see a successful conclusion, then this might not be sensible. /lili Step up and lead from the side-lines. If your manager is a control freak, this probably won't work. If they aren't, then this tends to work quite well. Unfortunately you typically then have to do both your assigned task iand/i the leadership tasks. Further, you rarely get the glory at the end. Good option if you really value seeing the project reach a successful conclusion and have the time to spare. /liliOverthrow the current leadership. If it's a long running project this will probably be better for your health than leading from the side-lines. However, it may involve political nastiness, and that's not everyone's cup of tea. /liliDeal with it. Become apathetic, or whinge about the leader's suckiness in private. Do exactly what you have to and hope that everyone else does likewise. Works fine and will probably have successful project outcomes as long as there aren't any crises. Should leadership decisions have to be made however, you may need to push extra hard to ensure they happen. /liliTry to improve the leader. I'm sure this is possible, and it would be the ideal solution, but in all the cases I've experienced (my own, friends' and family's) I haven't seen this work. /li/ulp In the past I've tried leading from the side-lines. It's worked extremely well for the project, but no so well for my health. Running a business, iand/i working almost full time on other volunteer projects tends to take its toll on my sleep, relationships and general happiness. /pp Recently I decided to try the option of "dealing with it". The project I'm thinking of includes many clueful people. They have relevant experience, the leader has done it all before. Unfortunately that hasn't made it easier. Even with experience, bad leaders still stuck. /pp Feel free to add your stories below. /p

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