OpenSQL Camp 2008 is coming! When and Where: Charlottesville, Virginia, USA November 14, 15, and 16 2008!

Organised by Baron Schwartz & others, and attended by loads of cool and interesting people (Brian, Monty and Baron are already on the attendee list!) you’d better get ready for a dynamite weekend of learning, contributing, and having fun! I’ll be there too.

Some Key facts:

• It is of, by and for the community (you).
• At this event, all Open Source databases are created equal. We’ll learn together and grow together.
• It’s a combination conference and hackathon.
• It’s free.
• It is Friday night Nov 14, 18:00 through Sun the 16th at 18:00 in Charlottesville, Virginia USA in a very cool location.
• The website, where all details will be posted: http://www.opensqlcamp.org/
• The mailing group, where details will be discussed, decided and arranged: http://groups.google.com/group/opensqlcamp
• Date, time and place are confirmed and will not change. You can make your travel plans now. There’s travel information on the wiki.
• We already have some great speakers who have offered to give great talks. These and other details will show up on the wiki as they’re finalised.
• Sponsors are needed. See the wiki.

Despite the name, this will be different from other Camp conferences you’ve been to. This is a combination of a planned event (with great speakers and sessions), semi-planned spontaneity (sessions to be decided by attendees the night before), and a hackfest. It’s the best elements cherry-picked from all the conferences (and un-conferences) you’ve been to.

What should you do next? Go to the website and register yourself. Then go join the mailing list. And buy your plane tickets before they get too expensive. And tell your friends, and blog about it. See you there!

Aka, colliding MD5, but in a very cool 12-way demonstration:

We have used a Sony Playstation 3 to correctly predict the outcome of the 2008 US presidential elections. In order not to influence the voters we keep our prediction secret, but commit to it by publishing its cryptographic hash on this website. The document with the correct prediction and matching hash will be revealed after the elections.

Read all about it at http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/Nostradamus/

(yes I share my first name with one of the authors, but you’ll notice that the last name, while similar, is not identical – it’s really not me. I’m not that much of a maths or crypto whiz ;-)

Help…. the info I find online online is a tad messy and sometimes outdated. Has anyone created installable Scribus packages for OS X yet?

I’d prefer to not go through the whole Fink saga, and MacPorts doesn’t appear to want to fly for building qt4. Each approach seems to have some issues, but perhaps that observation too is based on now outdated info. Please do tell me!

Right now I need a PPC Tiger build for an old PowerBook, and a Intel Leopard for myself would be most useful.
Thanks!

disclaimer: this is a blatant plug for a friend of mine, Kristy Bennett.

Kristy runs (among many things ;-) a company called Green & Nutty, selling so-called soap nuts (sapindus mukorossi). Actually, only the nut shells are used and no actual seeds should be part of what you get as per Australian quarantine regulations (the seeds don’t contain the soap compound).

So anyway, you stick one half soap nut shell per kilo of washing in a little bag (provided) and add to washing, and that’s all you need – forget about the old laundry powder/liquid or any other blah. After a handful of washes (depends on washing temp), you add a few more shells into the bag. You can also make shampoo by simply boiling a few shells for a bit; info is on the website.

Anyway, I brought back a bag from Adelaide last week, and have been using them since; works just fine! If you like being a little bit serious about environmentally non-harmful compounds and methods, give this a try.

Good idea: WhoCallsMe?. Tracks nuisance calls (globally), of course only if there’s a CallerID. Check on the site if the number is already in the system, read the comments, add your own. Simple, but useful.