Aka Arjen’s head ;-)
So this was at the conference dinner of Linux.conf.au 2009 in Hobart Tasmania. There’s always at least one auction, and for some reason it has become tradition to a) bundle in extras with the original auction item and b) for some of those extras to involve removal of facial hair.

As described earlier, my hair was a package deal with Bdale Garbee’s beard, and it was later bundled with Linus Torvalds turning into a barber for the day. So here’s the fun in action…
I think Linus did a great job, having practiced previously only on his dog (who did not like it). The organic kernel hack appears bug-free, there was no bleeding, and I even have both my ears still.

In this case it was all even fairly appropriate in “shave for a cure” context, since the target of the auction was the appeal for the endangered Tasmanian Devil which really isn’t as fierce as they’re made out to be, but they are severely threatened by an infectious cancer.

We made a fab amount of money (over $40k), MySQL’s original author Monty Widenius added some to that also, and it was all good fun. Most people reckon I look pretty decent with a shaved head… my older brother has been suggesting for years I should shave it all, so I owe him a pic (and a Youtube movie, once everybody gets their stuff uploaded). By the way, you can still donate!

And what is it with the Aussie habit of wanting to rub bald people over the head for good luck!?

I’m staying at the campus (student) accomodation, which is fab, people call it “5 star student accomodation”. We did two dinners in our full kitchen, pasta Sunday night, and Indian curries on Tuesday.

The swag is cool too: a simple calico bag, a deck of cards (Tux backed), a Tassie picture Rubik cube; all fun and/or actually useful. I’ll see if I can take pics of all items and upload to Flickr so it can be shown on http://swagreport.com

One curious thing is that hardly any geeks seems to be playing with the cube… I’ve been solving it for a few people who did dare, and the organisers have asked me to have a table at the Open Day on Saturday to help any others that want to have a “safe play”. I first learnt how to do the cube while at primary school in Amsterdam, so I’ve got about 32 years of experience ;-)

At the Penguin dinner last night we had a fundraiser for research to save the Tasmanian devil. They are severely threatened by an infectious cancer. Bdale Garbee’s wife donated a fabulous photo print, which provided the basis for the action led by Rusty Russell. It’s a kind of tradition that other things get bundled into the auction. Flame Herborn offered is QLD “GEEK” license plates for a year, Monty Widenius matched a bid (in donation), and at some point someone offered a considerable sum if Bdale Garbee were to shave his beard (auctioning off hair is another tradition, previously people like Jeff Waugh and Rusty Russell have lost head hair and moustache).

Anyway, Bdale was looking a bit distressed, and he felt a tad better when I offered my head hair (much as it is ;-) to help the Tas devil and in honour of my 40th birthday a month from now. A consortium of about 20 people put up the very considerable winning bid – Elspeth Thorne’s Mazda RX-8 will show off the GEEK plates for the coming year, very fitting.

And so it appears that I’ll be losing my hair on Friday morning, with Linux Torvalds doing (some) of the shaving honours. We’ve been looking for volunteers so he can practise (hacking kernels is not quite the same skill) but so far this has been unsuccessful ;-)

I’ve been told a bald head can be colder than imagined, and thus I might go acquire a beanie some time today.

After a long but nice ferry trip (9hrs) from Port Melbourne, quick pizza dinner and another 3hrs or so drive from Devonport, we arrived in Hobart late last night (Hobart is located on the Southern coast of Tasmania). For some reason pretty much all accomodation was booked out for that one night, but one of our group found an apartment earlier with extra rooms so we even had space to put up additional linux.conf.au travellers we met on the ferry. The conference accomodation for most of us only starts on the Sunday.

It’s nice to be back in Hobart and Tasmania in general. There’s even more fresh air here (like New Zealand) and space and lots of nature (as long as bloody Gunns doesn’t chop it all down to feed its stupid papermills). Last time here was several years ago when I was invited by the Tasmanian government to give the opening keynote at a Tasmanian Open Source Forum. That visit I also spoke at the local Linux user group (the good gang that is now organising this year’s LCA) and travelled to Launcheston to chat with local TAFE students and a teacher who were using MySQL in their web/db course.

Tas was most enjoyable that time and I’ve always wanted to come back. I won’t have time for a big look around in the coming week, but I do intend to spend a proper holiday here some time fairly soon (perhaps with Phoebe). But first now, we need to find a good breakfast!

Today I flew down to Melbourne. But hang on, isn’t LCA in Tassie this year? Yep!

So, tonight I’m staying at Jonathan Oxer‘s place, and we’re driving his incrementally non-standard RX-8 to the Melbourne-Devonport ferry and on to Hobart.

Well I’ve been back for nearly a week already… happy New Year everybody! I am happy to note that Open Query business continued as normal while I was not around; delegation to capable co-workers is a great thing (I’ll admit to checking in on things while in Europe, but that’s about it – had a real holiday).

Barely back from the three weeks in Europe with my daughter (3 1/2 yrs old, she had a ball and good fun even on the very long 12+8 hrs flights), I’m packing for the annual Linux.conf.au which this year is in Hobart, Tasmania (that’s still Australia).

Linux.conf.au 2009 features a two-day miniconference about open source databases, with MySQL and Drizzle abundantly represented. Monty Widenius (yes the one and only!) is coming this time, possibly thanks to me prodding his wife Anna about it many months back… and it appears nearly all of the core Drizzle team (Brian Aker, Monty Taylor, Mark Atwood, Stewart Smith) will be there also. Excellent! All good friends and it’ll be great to see them again (well I did see most in Charlottesville in November, but still).

See http://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule/monday and http://linux.conf.au/programme/schedule/tuesday for the miniconf schedule as it stands now. I’m also speaking in the “Business of Open Source” miniconf, a session on “Open Source and your business and development models”. I believe Brian has a talk about Drizzle in the main LCA program.