Time to quit

Like a 2 pack-a-day man, who's been told by his doctor to quit, Australia has been in denial.

Smoke from coal plants, and other pollution has been pluming from Aussie smokestacks throughout history, and we don't want to hear that its bad for us.

But guess, what its killing us. The image left is from a 2008 article I wrote about how strong government action on energy and climate change was urgent to counter what polluters were doing to us.

In February 2010 I wrote here on this blog about how climate change would bring significant increases in the incidence of floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires

Just a year later, flooding in my city of Brisbane, caused death and devastation. These news shots are of an area in Milton, just 15 minutes walk from my home.

Images from Brisbane's 4BC News during Jan 2011 floods.

This was a year after deadly wildfires and heatwaves in 2009. Now flooding has swept through the Brisbane valley, killing and destroying property, ruining lives and wrecking livelihoods.

We've been told. But we didn't want to listen.

As I explained in my article in mid-2009, the pollution lobby is paying for expensive think tanks and "conferences" to throw up a smoke-screen in front of their activities. And the Idiocracy that passes for our political system has been drinking this kool-aid by the gallon.

Somehow we've suspected that all this smoke was bad, but the pollution lobby - like the tobacco lobby of 20 years ago - has been there to provide us with ready made plausible denial. And we believed it because it was more comfortable to believe that what we'd been doing so far was some how OK, than to believe we'd been wrecking the world we are leaving for our children for our own profits.

The floods and fires we have seen are like the first few spots of blood on that inveterate smokers white handkerchief. This is just the early warning.

We asked "how long before it causes real damage?"

"What can we get away with?"

Well, you know what? I've been writing this blog, about the things we can do about climate change - using public transport, using non-polluting vehicles, looking out for what we are doing to the planet - for going on 5 years now. In that time I have seen more evidence of the violent damage that polluting practices can do to our planet, than I could ever write in a blog.

Our scientists have been telling us. So what do we do? Keep going until we can find another scientist who will tell us what we want to hear.

Every smoke-stack, every tail-pipe is doing us damage. Every day.

Now. We have to stop now.

The BP oil disaster off the shores of the USA, cyclones, fires and floods killing so many. In Australia we were lucky, floods in Brazil earlier this year were worse:

This is recent history. How soon will we forget?

Right through history tycoons have profited by pressuring or paying their political cronies into allowing them to plunder our futures. In previous blog posts here I have written about how in 1949 shell companies formed by Standard Oil, and Firestone Tire & Rubber tore up and burned the electric trams of US cities.

How could they - that must have been illegal, you ask? It was, and they were charged in court, and convicted of it (read the article) - a tiny slap on the hand, as they went on to cover the US with gas stations and highways.

Those same tycoons are doing their stuff now. Duping and dealing with our politicians in order to get just one more, two more, another years worth of quarterly profit reports up and into their bonus cheques.

So what can we do? Its all hopeless then?

No its not. Yes, its a gloomy message. Yes, its not news we want to hear.

Use recycled shopping bags and take the bus or pushbike to work? Yes - do those things. However the scale of pollutions from corporates is undoing that good work faster than we can fix it.

But there are things we can do to tell our politicians that we have the will, to start to fix this mess. We can tell politicians - since there are those that have the guts to fight for this - that we are are behind them.

Here's what I do - support GetUp.org.au campaigns to counter the pollution lobby.

GetUp.org.au has recently claimed a big success in re-instantiating a government programme to build power stations using solar energy, and to instead get the required funding for the flood rebuilding from subsidies to the polluters. Movements like GetUp's Solar Flagship programme are galvanizing an Australian public who are sick of being dictated to by the captains of industry who enjoy far too much access to the corridors of politial power.

If you don't like the idea of organisations like GetUp, then get personal: do it yourself. Learn, research, become informed - and then write to the MP's and politicians. Use the internet, the phone or write letters. Or even blog posts.

But whatever you do, don't forget the 2011 floods.

Catching buses to QUT KG

For visitors from places without great public transit infrastructure catching buses around a strange place will be anaethema.

But for some places in Brisbane, Australia - you'd be mad not to use public transport since the new bus-way system was set up. Combined with the new Translink Go Card this system is a breeze to use, and its also clean and safe.

The air-conditioned natural gas buses are not "on the nose" (as diesel ones normally are) and run on an elevated "bus way" which is exclusive for their use, so no stop-go and jerking around like in regular traffic. Through congested areas the bus way goes down through tunnels, and is the easiest way to get across town.

The bus way is well lit, well sign-posted, fitted with security cameras and is well lit, making it a safe and easy way to get around.

Here's some popular locations well served by bus way buses.


View Larger Map

From Urbanest to QUT Kelvin Grove.

In the Google Street View image above the structure on the right is the bus way station. Urbanest is at off the left of this image, at 60 Tribune Street (which is running left-to-right in the foreground).

Take your go card, go to the station and go to the platform heading into the city. Don't worry about time tables - buses are very frequent. Check the digital display for buses arriving.

Catch the 66 bus and it will take you straight through the city to QUT - easy!

As you get on the bus touch your Go Card to the reader - no money changes hands. Nice.


Or you can get on any bus that is heading to the city, and change to a QUT bound bus at King George Square bus station.

Touch your Go Card to the reader as you get off.

King George Square is a clean, new structure only a year old - its an underground station, next stop after the Myer Center.

There, get on the 66 bus, or any other bus going to QUT Kelvin Grove campus. It will leave a few steps from where you got off on the same platform.

The 66 bus leaves from Stop E on the outbound platform - this is the stop in the photo above.

Check the BCC map of the bus station for more details.

QUT Kelvin Grove from the city.

Walk to the King George Square station. The entrance is on Adelaide St, a few steps from Queens Street Mall, near the intersection with Albert Street.

Down the escalators to the outbound platform, as in the section above.

If you see people checking tickets and so on, just vaguely wave your Go Card at them, they'll smile and wave you through. Some people still try to get on buses with loose change.

At QUT Kelvin Grove.

You can see the bus-way station in QUT's color map of the campus - its very well located right next to S block.

This photo shows the entrance to the QUT busway station.

To head south again back to the city or south bank, cross the bus way stations foot bridge which drops you onto the inbound platform without having to cross any roads or dice with traffic.

Platforms are well protected from the weather and are fitted with machines to top up your go card, or to check the balance.

Enjoy!

Paris by Wing

Just touched down at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, and having secured an over-priced coffee and croissant your intrepid reporter goes in search of transport to the city.

There, framed in the doorway from the arrivals lounge, a suave local proffers his card: "motorcycle taxi". In halting English, the raffish blade echoes the cards dangerous message: "motorcycle taxi?".

I think I was in, from the part about the motorcycle.

Right outside the door to the terminal, in the dedicated motorcycle parking are not one, but four Honda Goldwings. The presence of the 'wing - the flagship of japanese motorcycle touring and a princely investment for most motorcyclists - in these numbers indicates not just some lone wild entrepreneur in the niche market of one-up travelling light passenger transport.

Turns out its a local custom.

I was interested to see how this could possibly work, with my roll-aboard and laptop bag, but now I started to see that all the issues had been worked out.

Next to me a gallic-looking gentleman off the same flight was loading his considerably larger suitcase on to the luggage rack of an already running 'wing. I had always thought those things were just for decoration - but with some webbing (ocky straps to you Aussies) and a few deft twists the top-heavy looking load was secured and they were off.

While my driver - errr rider - was at the handle-bar mounted GPS punching in the address of my hotel I donned the thick jacket, gloves and helmet. My laptop bag fitted easily in one of the capacious panniers.

Hmm - what was I thinking, part of me said, thinking now of how the pilot on the plane had announced -1 degree celsius temperatures on the ground in Paris as we landed.

No problem - not only did the 'wing turn out to have a heated rear seat, but it was also fitted with a nifty windbarrier for the rear-passenger. Secured to the bike down the frame where the passengers legs go, and then over the seat, this heavy-duty gore-tex style piece of kit effectively covered the whole lower half of my body once on the bike. Nice and toasty!

In a minute or two we were off. I soon saw what the attraction of the bike taxi was for the locals - dealing with the congestion on the motorways, in classic European driving style.

If you've ever been a rider, you'll know what lane splitting is. Also called filtering, or sharing, the practise is a bit hair-raising when you first try it, in the relatively safe slowness of stop-go traffic. There's a little thrill of the slightly illicit, when you cruise between stopped cars to take up a position on the front of the grid at traffic lights. Narrow waisted sport bikes, and scooters are ideal at this sort of thing.

Now take that, and multiply it by 1000.

You have a Honda Goldwing - six cylinder highway beast, at least a meter wide, plus mirrors, travelling along at 100 kpm (that's about 60 miles per hour) between cars and trucks with an inch to spare.

Strangely I was not scared. Dumb-founded. Amazed. Didn't have time for scared.

How the hell was he doing it? Without us dying?

At one point we passed a large Fiat van on one side, and on the other a Citroen was backed over as far as it could toward the barrier and as the 'wing passed thru a gap that I didn't think was there a "clack!" annouced that we'd tipped something against the van on the way through.

I think in engineering circles they call that an interference fit.

It was a feat that was being accomplished in equal parts by skill and split-second judgement, by some sort of Nietzsche-esque nihilism, and by a lot of co-operation with other Parisian road-users.

After we'd been on the choked up highway for some time, I noticed that my rider had both blinkers going, and was using his headlight to flash traffic in the fast lane. I say "fast lane" tho' the traffic was doing around 50 kph in the congestion - but we were doing twice that. Occasionally he would use his horn when the expected gap didn't open up.

Most motorists were completely aware of what the light show coming up behind meant - in the fast lane (the left most lane in Europe) cars would hop to the left, and the next lane over they'd squeeze a little to the right.

The pilot of the 'wing would gun the big six and surge thru just as the gap opened up.

The fact that I'm typing this is a testament to the fact that I survived.

I'm still not sure how.

But I want to do it again anyway.

Vive la différence!

LCA just got even better

In January 2011 free & open source rockets - like, you know, space rockets - free & open source software, and more free and open source good will than you can shake a stick at all come together for linux.conf.au, in QUT's flash facilities (photo left) at Brisbane's beautiful Gardens Point.

And there's another reason why LCA is going to be even better this year.

LCA has long been the most vibrant and enjoyable grass roots technical conference on this side of the equator, but it has - like many other technical conferences - had its share of incidents that pretty sorely detract from that inclusive and productive community spirit.

Yuk. Harassment.

Its not pretty, and we'd all rather we didn't hear about it. But its been pooping on our doorstep for sometime now.

And its time to clean house.

Our broom is the new LCA2011 anti-harassment policy.

It went live on the LCA 2011 site last night and already we're getting a lot of great buzz.

Several of us on the LCA2011 organizing committee, led by yours truly, have been working really hard with the community both in Australia and abroad to pull together this policy - something that can stand against the awful trend; that can help to make LCA more welcoming to a whole range of people who maybe have been put off technical conferences because of that atmosphere.

We hope this will clear the air. It will show that we stand behind the fine print in our T&C which also gives a mention to harassment.

We're also hoping it will provide the courage for other future technical conferences to do their own policy as well.

A lot of the success of our effort has come from standing on the shoulders of the Conference Anti-Harassment Project, championed by Val Aurora and friends. And it has been helped by discussions and input from a whole range of people - you know who you are: thank you!

Got questions? Got thoughts?

Please, leave them here - but can I encourage an approach of first please - most graciously - read the Conference Anti-Harassment resources. If the issue is already answered there its probably just going to attract a "Read the Fine Manual" sort of response. :-)

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing you all at Linux.conf.au 2011.

Why are you still here - go and register!

iMiev for Christmas

Well, I may have to take it all back - it just might be that Mitsubishi can deliver me an iMiev in 2010!

Today I spoke with Mark Whyte of Mitsubishi Motors Australia (MMAL), about the MMAL lease program and about the iMiev roll-out in Australia. True to his word, shortly after getting off the phone an MMAL lease agreement arrived in my inbox. Now I just have to see if we can put together the legals to make all this come together.

You have to hand it to Mitsubishi - they have consistently been delivering on the detail of their undertakings in the production roll-out of EV's in Australia, and on the phone I can see why - Whyte is pragmatic and straight-forward about the iMiev, for example talking about issues of range in Australian conditions.

Under that professionalism you can hear how pleased he (and MMAL) is about the success of the iMiev program so far. All of the cars that MMAL have been able to persuade their parent company in Japan to ship to our shores have been snapped up, even tho' this number was considerably more - 110 units now - than they had originally been earmarked for.

Now it will be up to the reaction of the early-adopting corporates that have signed up to lease the iMiev, to see how the program goes in 2011. Electric vehicles require a radical rethink - and for traditional fleet owners having EV's on the lot is a whole new ball game.

What do we do with that petrol card now? How will drivers of the fleet-owned vehicles handle plugging in?

For my part having been writing about EV's since 2007, the chance to finally have one will be a pretty big deal, and I can't see any problems at all with getting along with the iMiev.

Watch this space and I'll keep you updated on this development!

2012

Floods.

Explosions.

Hell freezing over.

And, apparently electric cars in Australia.

Last week I rang Nissan Australia and spoke to one of their reps about when I could buy a Nissan Leaf EV. After all its prominently advertised on their Australian website, and nowhere there does it say that there are any delays in supplying the vehicle.

The context for this is that under the heading "Our Plan for Australia" BetterPlace, the demand side electricity-for-EV's technology supplier says they are "working with the Renault-Nissan Alliance, which will be among the first to introduce EVs". Of course to supply electricity for EV's to help us clean the air, and reduce dependence on foreign oil, Better Place actually needs the actual EV's that people will be driving. So when they say they are working with Renault-Nissan, you could be forgiven for thinking that when they "introduce EV's" that we will actually be able to drive them.

"Sorry", I was told by the Nissan rep, "not until 2012".

I also contacted Mitsubishi Motors Australia. Surely their iMiev, which is being trumpeted as the first EV in Australia is available? I personally think the iMiev is likely to be less car than the Leaf, but without the choice, I was willing to compromise. Here we are in 2010, the battle has been won, EV's are here right? Well, EV singular - the iMiev is here, at least, eveb if the Nissan Leaf is not.

As you would expect, there is enormous global demand for this vehicle, and consequently, availability of the i-MiEV will be somewhat restricted for a time. In response to strong demand from the local market however, Mitsubishi Motors Australia Limited (MMAL) has negotiated to secure a limited number of i-MiEV vehicles for Australian release.

Mitsubishi's rep went on to say that these cars are only being released to fleet buyers, and in 2011 they plan to release cars to the public. I will believe it when I see it.

Why?

Think about where are the cars that are being produced to satisfy this "global" demand going: Japan.

There is much evidence that the profits to be had in their home markets for Japanese EV makers are much greater counting in all factors including government incentives for clean vehicles that don't burn foreign oil.

Japanese auto consumers are also more tech-savvy, and more open to compact cars with advanced features. Why take the risk on markets like Australia, and the USA who are too dumb to even understand an electronic accelerator pedal. Hint: its not cosmic rays interacting with your pedal, its your foot.

However even tho' the manufacturers don't want to ship their cars here, they are not afraid of using their vapourware vehicles to hype their clean car image on their websites. All the while continuing to sell the gas guzzling, road hoggers that we follow the Americans in buying up by the ton.

A footnote about the Nissan Leaf promotional machine - I was contacted by phone by Nissan in October, and offered a chance to test drive the Nissan Leaf at the All-Energy Conference in Melbourne. Unfortunately I was just about to fly internationally for work, and could not take them up on their generous offer to pay all my own costs to appear in Melbourne with 2 days notice.

Had it not been for the international travel I would probably have taken them up on their offer - but it smacked to me of a failed PR effort, since I was aware that they had been running a competition on their website with very similar prospects. It made me wonder if perhaps they had not gotten a lot of entries.

Nissan, Mitsubishi, and others - wake up and smell the profits. People don't want flash websites and broken promises - we want the actual cars. We want clean air and better tomorrows.

And we don't want to have to wait until 2012.

Qt Dev Days 2010

Held at the ginormous San Fran Airport Hyatt hotel, it was a great event for getting amongst Qt hackers both in & outside Nokia