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SAGE-AU Conference – call for papers

SAGE-AU is inviting papers for either the Training or Technical programs of the SAGE-AU 20th Annual Conference (the premier Systems Administration event in the Asia-Pacific region) being held 19 – 23 September in the Hilton on the Park Melbourne.

The theme for 2011 is: “The Cloud: Silver Lining or Storm?”

No one can take full advantage of cloud computing without first becoming familiar with the latest issues and trends. The 2011 SAGE-AU Conference will ensure – through an intensive five-day schedule of training workshops, keynotes, general and breakout sessions, and the trade exhibition – that all attendees leave with abundant resources, ideas and examples they can apply immediately to leveraging the Cloud, helping them to maximize performance, minimize cost and improve the scalability of their endeavours.

Some of the topics could include:

• Infrastructure Cloud
• Software Cloud
• Application Cloud
• Business Cloud
• Service-Oriented Architecture in Cloud Computing
• Virtualization of Hardware Resources
• Virtualization of Software Resources
• Cloud Computing Consulting Methods
• Design Tool for Cloud Computing
• Maintenance and Management of Cloud Computing
• Cloud Computing Architecture
• Cloud Applications in Vertical Industries

This year’s conference although focussing heavily on cloud computing, could also feature:

• Benefits of / interactions with / impacts of standards based frameworks such as ITIL / COBIT / ISO/IEC 20000 on the world of SysAdmins.
• MS SharePoint, Active Directory, SQL 2008
• AD upgrades from 2003/2008, Windows 7 and Office 2010 mass deployments
• Disaster Recovery / BCP
• Grid
• Power, cooling, and other physical issues
• Cyber Security

In addition, do you have a case study to share which doesn’t exactly fit the topics above? Whatever it is, we would like to hear about it.

Your presentation/talk should be designed to fit within the parameters of the following:

Training Program (Tutorials) 19-21 September

• Three days of training workshops
• Three concurrent streams.
• Three hours (half day) or six hours (full day) in length each.
• Optional Vendor training sessions for SAGE-AU sponsors

Technical Program 22-23 September

• Two concurrent streams of 45 and 90 minute presentations (although extended 90 minute sessions are limited).
• Keynote sessions featuring world acclaimed presenters.

Contact me for more information including the Presenter information pack and Conference Guidelines.

Awesome iPhone

I made the mistake of updating iTunes and when I plugged my iPhone 3GS in iTunes decided I needed to either blow away everything on my iPhone and start afresh, or restore from the last backup (which was yesterday, before I installed the iTunes update).

That was 9am this morning.

And so we wait.

Buying stuff Online (and the trials of international shipping)

I’ve recently started scuba diving again, something I used to do a great deal when living closer to the beach in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. Having purchased all my gear (mask, snorkle, fins, wetsuit, BCD, regs, tanks and weights) each shore dive costs me around $6 for an airfill.

There are many great dive locations in Sydney and the water is generally between 13C (August) and 25C (depending on the currents, December to March). When in the Eastern Suburbs North Bondi and Shark Point at Clovelly were easily my top dives and night diving at Camp Cove, Fairlight and Watsons Bay Pool were also favourites.

“Night diving? In the dark?” you ask. Sure! All you need is a little light! In fact the world of shallow night diving (to about 15m) is rich in weird animals, bioluminescence and night time only behaviours. Tens of 10cm wide sea slugs marching in squadron formation across the sand in search of sea grass, seahorses swimming with each other, squid feeding on small fish they catch using herding techniques and anemones using their tentacles to catch tiny plankton and other matter floating by.

Of course to see all of this you need a torch, and in the same way I need to have my tanks serviced once per year I generally update my dive torch every couple of years. My last torch had already seen its last dive (xeon bulb, could only be turned on underwater because it got so hot, eventually the batteries leaked) so I decided to upgrade to the latest in underwater diving torches, something with an LED bulb and made of aluminium.

There are quite a few excellent online dive shops and my local FrogDive also sells gear at reasonable prices. Looking through the options, I wondered whether the $150 torch was any different to the $99 torch, and so I hopped over to www.amazon.com for some reviews.

It should come as no surprise that Amazon had a range of underwater torches and after much reading and comparing of statistics I found the torch I wanted; a Dorcy Dive II, 220 lumen underwater torch with an 8 hour run time and guaranteed to 100m. Available from two sellers, it was on special for $45USD. Perfect!

Except, not so perfect. For no reason at all Amazon (who blame Dorcy) have decided that this particular torch (unlike other diving torches, or other normal torches in fact) can’t be delivered internationally. In a response from the very prompt Amazon customer service team I was told I could have the torch delivered to a friend in the US, and then they could send the torch to me. Their second suggestion was to find a different torch I might like to buy, and included a link to

amazonglobal.com

This amazon.com entry point is for international customers who wish to search only for items which can be shipped internationally (although Amazon doesn’t remember this setting, so bookmark amazonglobal.com now).

Essentially it adds an ‘International Shipping’ option to the ‘Department’ pull down box. A quick check for a couple of interesting items (such as the awesome but illegal in many many ways Stone River Gear SRG1STLB Ceramic Folding Hunting Knife with evasive to x-ray Titanium handle) saw Amazon successfully filter out items which it couldn’t ship.

And there were very few things on the Post Apocalyptic Survival Kit (for after the zombies attack) I could buy. Not even the ultra cool Wiley-X SG-1 safety goggles were available, which is a shame because as a piece of protection equipment (protection from the sun, shrapnel, the occasional splattered zombie, exploding zombie, popping zombie, spittling zombie, and if the government decides to nuke a nearby city, your eyes wont get harmed by the flash) they rock.

Still wanting the Dorcy torch (the non-diving version of the same torch is number 13 of Amazon’s Top 100 Internationally shippable items) I did a search for Dorcy in Australia and found they have a local distributor…. who doesn’t carry the dive torch. I think this is a little stupid for a country which has the longest tropical reef in the world and a very healthy scuba diving industry… but I digress.

Eventually I found the torch at another US site which is happy to ship internationally and it was only a few dollars more than Amazon. It’s scheduled to arrive mid next week, which is better than my last Amazon order which had an expected delivery time of 2 months (and the items were in stock!).

So what other online buying tips do I have?

Well, to summarise my points above my first three suggestions are:

1. Amazon is a great place to find your item, and reviews can be very helpful but look for ‘Other Sellers’ as some of these non-Amazon stores have no problem shipping internationally and will ship immediately.
2. It’s worthwhile making sure the deal you’re getting online is better than the deal you can get locally. It’s often the case shipping or a currency conversion impacts the total cost. Buying things from eBay (and being forced to use PayPal) adds extra complexity as PayPal makes money out of the transfer as well. In almost all cases JB hifi will be a cheaper place to buy that DVD you’be seen on eBay.
3. Don’t go looking for items which you know are restricted, the Australian Customs site has very clear documentation for almost every kind of restricted item and if you convince a seller to send that crossbow you’ve always wanted don’t be surprised to have it confiscated and possible criminal charges brought against you! Obviously any food products are out and alcohol importation is a whole world of pain.

Keeping those things in mind, the way you pay for an item doesn’t need to be restricted to your Australian credit card, PayPal or a direct bank transfer.

One way of dealing with exchange rate fluctuations is to use a travel money card (available at ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, TravelEx, and many other places) which allows you to hold a specific amount on a MasterCard debit card, and transact in up to 5 currencies. I hold Euro for my European trips and USD for the purchase of highly critical tools of trade (that’s how I got the dive torch past the wife, although I’m not sure she completely fell for that line).

Transfers from your Australian dollar bank account into the Travel Money card in US dollars are done via bpay with a small fee, and then you provide the Travel Money mastercard number when purchasing. So when the Australian dollar is strong against the Euro, I transfer some currency over and count it towards ‘holiday savings’ or ‘toys seen on coolhunting.com‘.

Having a fixed amount on the card also limits any serious ‘over charging’ (your maximum loss is just the value you have loaded on the card), and you can simply cancel the card if you find yourself the victim of credit card fraud without affecting all your automated credit card payments from your regular credit card accounts.

Other payment vehicles to look at include GoogleCheckout. I quite like GoogleCheckout as it keeps track of all your orders, fronts the payment with the store (so if you’re using a credit card the store doesn’t accept GoogleCheckout will allow you to use the card with Google, and pass the payment through) and there’s a certain amount of protection included.  Using GoogleCheckout your credit card details are never provided to the store, and assuming you’re ok with Google having those details, there’s less chance of your credit card being compromised.

Finally, it’s well worth your while going a quick search for coupons when buying items in the US. Many sites have ‘seasonal specials’ and ‘clearance items’ but coupons may give you that extra 5% (or even 25%) to compensate for delivery. couponchief.com is one I use a fair bit, and http://www.retailmenot.com/ is often exceptionally current (old codes usually don’t work so they key is to be ultra-recent).

Got any tips for buying safely and cheaply online?