edna.edu.au

Classifying Clouds. Such a stupid science

Well I'm back in a city; Sydney.

Had a luvely lunch with friends by the pool.

But my head has been buzzing with what I would say to some Adelaide people who are undertaking a "gruelling schedule" shortly, and what I might say to them if they ever had time to listen. Seems quite strange that they don't, considering the time they're going to be spending on planes and in autos this month. I could ask them to read this, although they probably wouldn't understand what it's about. If they did then they might consider using a network like aarnet, and tools like this, as well as the ones their team has compiled, to save their shoeleather.

But its more than that. The biggest problem is these "educators" don't seem to understand that people, regardless of what (ICT) skills they are taught, will always learn by noticing what educators (teachers) actually do.

There have been a few reports floating around the education.au community lately, which talk about "professional learning", as if my learning, and yours, can be aligned and (forgive me) curriculized. That's fine of we want to limit our education to just 'getting our chops up' (in a musical contexts). But it ain't much good if we want to collaborate in a cloud, or on a grid (in a network design context), cause the bandwidth is all over the place at the moment, depending on what institutional network we might be attached to right now.

 If I was on aarnet, I would be fat. I'm on iprimus, which is on the Optus network, so I'm very thin, and so on. This explains why the tools designers are all over the place at the moment. More importantly it explains why our well intentioned educators are always wasting their time, and our money, on transport to some remote places, and back. They just aren't very good at understanding how people (of any age) learn.

Tags: professional
Posted at 09:25AM Mar 04, 2009 by simon fenton - jones  |  Comments[0]

Crowded Head

Well Crowdy Head actually, just east of Harrington. (I know one of my readers is jealous)

Yep Harrington we'd all agree is a top tidy town. Just sittin on the verandah above its pub, listening to the buzz and watching the pelicans. The breakwater is in the background. This is how it looked last night.

Crowdy's just up the road about 5 km. Actually got into the water for an hour, after bargaining with the lifeguard (who's older than me, that two in the water breaks the risk of being bitten by half). And he didn't get bitten. Damn. There I was offering to do the caretaking for the surf club and still no chance. (You should see his set up).  

Came in from the north via the first turn off (to the left) past the Lauriton turnoff. Through the Crowdy Head National Park's dirt tracks. (I need new teeth), and trying a few of the beaches, including Kylies. The paradise continues. The track brings you in closer to Crowdy than Harrington, which is just as well, cause coming in direct from the highway you have to go through a modern Middle America, or at least some unimaginative architect's (developers) idea of it. I just can;t believe how these can spring up. I understand the economics, but couldn't they just attempt an Aussie version.

Anyhow, close your eyes or get used to the dirt tracks. Its purgatory, either way, before heaven.

Tags: personal professional
Posted at 05:52PM Feb 27, 2009 by simon fenton - jones  |  Comments[0]

A shout in the wilderness

No. Not from me ( for a change). 

But I thought this one was a nice petition from one of new breed of (software) engineers, who are trying to help government bureaucrats get their heads around the new way computing is done, and the way Information & communication (IC) networks are put together, or will be before much longer, simply due to the economics.

I'll also make a few notes which will be useful in helping people understand the beginnings of the Internet.

This one from Paul Baran, which outlines how a packet switching network could be put together. It became the basis of the Internet. It's about the communication of data. And data these days includes Voice (IP).

I'll also put up Timmy's page, seeing he invented the World Wide Web. It's about information, or multi media to be more precise.

 I keep the two together because we are the stage where everyone is so caught up with talking about "the Information" (i.e. mainly the Web) and no one seems to have considered how the (IP) Communication networks and the (IP) Information networks  are supposed to work together, who they are supposed to support, and how they are supposed to complement the local broadcast (TV ad radio) stations (at least the public broadcasters).

 I better put in these big picture docs here as well, so they don't get lost. Always nice to have something coherent when pieing in the sky/.

1. One from the genies at Rand.
2. The other from the National Science Foundation
   

Tags: professional
Posted at 07:07AM Feb 17, 2009 by simon fenton - jones  |  Comments[0]

Conference

Just taking a look at Informa's (Australian) web site. Seems like the Whole of Government conference to which I had invited half the speakers has evaporated. That tells me a lot about their ability to market. All my attempts to get them to talk about how it might have been done were ignored. But that's par for the course. Too busy being terribly efficient.

No doubt there's been a bit of discussion between Johnathan down there and John Butterwoth at the AIMIA. That explains why this announcment popped up. At least JB has taken up my suggestion since I attended the AIMIA conference last year. Going through the prospective agenda I see they've even invited Tanner, although what he might know about "utilzing Web 2.0 technology" is anyone's guess.

I'll have to see if JB might want to invite a few people from the Aussie network end of town. Who knows? Might even be an opportunity to get a couple of OS movers and shakers involved. Of course I'd never hold my breath.

Tags: professional
Posted at 11:01AM Feb 08, 2009 by simon fenton - jones  |  Comments[0]

SAE and R&D

Did meet with Arno at SAE in Byron, so we finally had the pow wow at the ranch.

Bit like going back and rediscovering the problems a global(ising) company gets due to success; the last one time when working with Sun Micro a couple fo decades ago. i.e. The work (sales) is always done locally and the "head office" never gets to act as the great switchboard between them; and that's before one considers the language gap. Think globally, act locally is a very old mantra now, and still usually, quite meaningless.In short, Arno's response to where I might find SAE's research director (committee) = "dunno". Nice (and quite bright) guy though.

Still, we are starting to see the academic network geeks and the AV people get closer and closer. Oh for just a trace of (shared) imagination between them!

 Just a quick note from last weekend's Fin Review. P.28. "the current levels of agency autonomy were counter-productive and inefficient". Duh! and right opposite a note about tenders for running global conferences (some for ICT), locally of course.

Tags: professional
Posted at 12:56PM Jan 29, 2009 by simon fenton - jones  |  Comments[0]

A New Year. A new beginning

OK. Promised I'd write to keep everyone across my travels, so here's the first. Got as far a Chris and Fran's place at Polkobin in the Hunter Valley. I'm so fortunate to have friends and family who are either extremely talented or so into what they're into that their persistance creates originality. Wish I had a few mor shots of Fran's new mosaic covered wall around the pool. Chris's 10-foot ferro cement kookaburra, on the other hand, won't have some feathers on it for a few more months. 

Such lovely people with such beautiful babies.

I'm also aware that we are meant to keep our private lives and professional ones very separate. But I've never been capable of keeping the divisions completely separate. So I'll just make a note of two docs. One is a doc by the guys at the National Science Foundation about cyberinfrastructure. OK. It's too wordy and a bit over the top. But it's a good one at describing the technical vision before it gets decimated by the small(er) minded. It's 2009, so here's an interim report from some librarian types of the vision cut in half. I.e. Let's forget the future (the production) stuff and just focus on preserving things.

Tags: professional personal
Posted at 08:27AM Jan 20, 2009 by simon fenton - jones  |  Comments[0]