What I forgot to mention in my lightning talk about depression, there’s an excellent Australian website beyondblue which has a wealth of information and resources.

And for all of you who stuck their hand(s) up, well done and thanks again! One never knows what the response will be with experiments like this, but you did good! Chances are that with that simple act, you helped at least one other person in the room, if not more. Going by the responses I received afterwards, it was a worthwhile exercise.

As I mentioned (and really it was a spontaneous unprepared gem ;-) it’s not about being geeks, but about being human.

If you’re in Australia, at least… see PetrolMonkey.
Very cool. Simple yet functional and useful.

You can register your car there, and by entering how much you filled up with at each petrol station visit, and your odometer reading, the system works out how what your petrol consumption is like. Not rocket science, but handy nevertheless – I’ve been tracking my fuel purchases for a while but hadn’t yet got round to setting up a spreadsheet to do the math – so now I don’t have to! If I had though, the site would have also catered for that as it allows importing of some historical data. Handy.

Now for the extra… since it’s online, it also allows you to compare with other cars of the same year/make. Again, not perfect as there’s many variables, but still… once you track this stuff, you probably become more fuel-use aware also, which is good as well. Plus there may be some peer-pressure effects. Who knows how these things develop, usually in directions that noone envisaged.

Anyway, I think the site shows what can be done these days with Agile development and appropriate web technologies. Something very functional in a short time, simply fit for its intended purpose. The PetrolMonkey site was built by Refactor which is based on the Queensland Gold Coast.

Yes, I too am at OpenSQLCamp… others are great at the live blog-reporting and instantly putting photos online.
I am taking some photos, but I’ve kept my laptop in the bag for much of the day as really emails, IRC and IM can wait and it’s just great to actually have full focus on the talks that are going on and walk around and chat with people.

Today is “hackathon” day so the laptop will definitely be out for coding.

Also looking at Tokutek‘s challenge for inserting 1 billion rows. Chatted with someone from the company at the camp about that. I’ve got some code lying around that can serve as a good base for tackling this. We’ll see.

Sitting at LAX waiting for my onward flight. Breaking with LAX tradition, there weren’t huge long waits at the passport or customs checks, I was not harassed, abused, or barked at. Impressive change!

Walking through a corridor, there’s a “welcome to USA” above, with photos of the US president and vice president (currently the talking gloating bush and his evil brains Cheney), but thinking about the fact that soon someone will get a stepladder and put Barack’s picture up there just made me smile ;-)

Packing for OpenSQL Camp 2008… dropping Phoebe off at daycare in the morning, and straight on to the airport. No worries, her mum will pick her up in the afternoon ;-)

Decided on a lightweight approach, handluggage only. Got a little suitcase that satisfies the requirements and actually used it earlier this week for a Melbourne trip…. then realised that I actually have a Tom Bihn professional laptop backpack from about a decade ago, and it’s actually also within the size specifications. Just need to make sure it stays light enough, but the backpack should be lighter than the suitcase.

If you’re coming to OpenSQL Camp too, see you there!

Brisbane Australia – LAX – Washington DC – Charlottesville VA. The flights will be a joy and a pleasure, I’m sure. 26 hours travel time in total (with airport waits included). If I appear incoherent on arrival, please add chocolate + water and I should be ok ;-)