August 2011
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Calling all IT geeks and tech-savvy people!
NEW ZEALAND PYTHON USER GROUP INCORPORATED
Media Statement August 23, 2011
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Calling all IT geeks and tech-savvy people!
Kiwi PyCon 2011, New Zealand’s conference dedicated to the Python programming language, is on this weekend at Te Whaea in Wellington. With a great lineup of speakers from Weta Digital, GitHub, a strong local and overseas contingent,...
November 2010
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Calling all Aucklanders, Whangarei-ites &...
This weekend at the Copthorne Hotel in Waitangi is Kiwi PyCon 2010. We’ve got a great lineup of speakers including Jacob Kaplan-Moss - the creator of the Django web framework, speakers from Weta Digital, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Catalyst IT, to name a few. If that hasn’t motivated you to come along, we’ve also arranged a charter bus leaving from Auckland airport, Auckland...
October 2010
2 posts
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Plains FM Interview regarding Kiwi PyCon 2010
Edit: the podcast for the radio interview is available here
Interviewee: Tim Knapp, Organising Committee Member Interviewer: Edward Swift, Plains FM
What is Kiwi PyCon?
To promote the use of the programming language Python in New Zealand the NZ Python User Group (NZPUG) is holding the second Kiwi PyCon conference at the Copthorne Hotel & Resort in Waitangi, Bay of Islands on November 20th...
4 tags
Keep up with technology @ Kiwi PyCon 2010
New Zealand Python User Group Incorporated
Media Statement
For immediate release
19 October 2010
IT folks will certainly be interested in Kiwi PyCon 2010: An exciting and interesting weekend is going to show how the programming language Python is used in science, education, and high-profile companies here and around the world. It is held at the Copthorne Hotel & Resort in Waitangi, Bay of...
September 2010
1 post
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Major IT players support Python Conference 2010
New Zealand Python User Group Incorporated
Media Statement
For immediate release
24 September 2010
Over 150 computer programming enthusiasts are set to meet at the Kiwi PyCon 2010 conference on Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 November at the Copthorne Hotel & Resort Bay of Islands in Waitangi.
Python, a programming language used throughout the world, has a massive
following and Python...
July 2010
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Kiwi PyCon 2010 Talk Submissions Due August 2nd
If you haven’t heard, Kiwi PyCon 2010 is to be held in the beautiful Bay of Islands, just outside the Waitangi Treaty grounds at the Copthorne Hotel on the weekend of November 20-21. So far we’ve had 6 financial sponsors commit to the event and 6 schwag sponsors, which puts us in line for an excellent event with a substantial grab bag of goodies the likes of which any IT...
April 2010
2 posts
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Dominion Post article (12/04/2010): Treasury...
I was interviewed by Claire McEntee for an article for The Dominion Post last week and just realised it made it into last Monday’s InfoTech Weekly section. Reproduced here for your viewing pleasure. Please ensure you come along on April 28th at the Treasury’s offices! More info here: http://plone.org/events/wpd/2010/wellington-new-zealand.
THE Treasury will host a demonstration of...
2 tags
Pushing for consistency in ICT across government
NEW ZEALAND PYTHON USER GROUP
Media Statement
April 6, 2010
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Currently a number of different content management systems are being used across government with most departments working independent of each other.
Therefore all government departments are invited to a seminar to showcase how the enterprise content management system, Plone, is being used in a number of government...
March 2010
2 posts
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Kiwi PyCon 2010 - November 20-21, Copthorne Hotel...
Expect the same great lineup of talks regarding how Python is being used in the fields of science, maths, games, animation, web development and much much more.
Again we’ll have a couple of world class keynote speakers and an ‘unconference’ aspect to the event where you, the delegate, can get involved.
Add to all this the fact that it’ll be in the beautiful Bay of Islands...
February 2010
0 posts
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Christchurch NZPUG Meetup This Friday
Just to let you all know that we’ve got the following event this Friday. Again we ask that you send an email to meeting-christchurch AT nzpug dot org so we have an idea of those who are coming along. Again we’ll order some pizzas so please bring along some money to contribute to this (usually works out at about $7-8 each). Details are as follows: Date: 5 March 2010 Time: 5:30-7:30pm...
January 2010
3 posts
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Christchurch NZPUG Meetup This Friday
Just to let you all know that we’ve got the following event this Friday. We ask that you send an email to meeting-christchurch AT nzpug dot org so that your name goes into the draw for our giveaway book (got one on: Programming on Google App Engine).
This time we’ll really order some pizzas so please bring along a few dollars to contribute to this.
Details are as follows:
Date: 29...
3 tags
LCA2010
Well I just touched back down in Christchurch after returning from LCA2010 in Wellington. Overall the event was worth every penny and featured a number of high profile speakers from a number of FOSS projects. In fact, one thing that really struck me about the event was the number of ‘offshore’ speakers (in fact delegates too) - people that I would never have an opportunity to meet or...
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Plone Birds of a Feather Session at LCA2010
I’m organising a Plone Birds of a Feather session at LCA2010. It’ll be on Wednesday, January 20th from 14:30-15:15 in Civic Suite 3 (which is apparently in the Old Town Hall building). Topics up for discussion will include:
Plone 4 and Beyond E-Commerce in Plone Interconnectivity with RDBMSes Plone Theming Plone Support in NZ Etc
essentially whatever anyone would like to discuss.
...
November 2009
3 posts
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Conference Sets The Bar For Future Ones
NEW ZEALAND PYTHON USER GROUP
Media Statement
November 13, 2009
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
What do 150 software developers, a 2 day conference, and a programming language called Python add up to? Kiwi PyCon 2009, which was held in Christchurch this past weekend. PyCons are held annually throughout the world but this was the first time the event had been held in New Zealand.
The main keynote speaker,...
3 tags
Kiwi PyCon 2009 Recap
Just thought I’d do a bit of a recap from an insiders perspective on how things unfolded during the course of Kiwi PyCon 2009. Needless to say, the organisation of the event happened over a few months and most of the preparations had been done quite a bit in advance of the big day. So this is more of a how did all these preparations culminate and did it blow up in my face or did we bask in...
3 tags
Conference Emphasises Language's Benefits
NEW ZEALAND PYTHON USER GROUP
Media Statement November 2, 2009
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“Simplicity, Flexibility, Beauty!” is the theme for Kiwi PyCon 2009, a conference being held this Saturday and Sunday in Christchurch to promote the Python programming language in New Zealand.
Python has been described as the closest programming language to the English language and is therefore very...
October 2009
3 posts
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Update on Preparations for Kiwi PyCon 2009
Its exactly 2 weeks until Kiwi PyCon 2009 and preparations are all in hand for a really great event. We’ll be releasing another media statement the week of the conference to remind the media about the event and also to get a last bit of advertising out there about the event. Registrations closed yesterday but we actually sold out the event about 4 days before the registration closing date,...
3 tags
Plains FM Interview regarding Kiwi PyCon
Edit: the podcast for the radio interview is available here.
Interviewee: Tim Knapp, Conference Director Interviewer: Edward Swift, Plains FM
What is Kiwi PyCon?
To promote the use of the programming language Python in New Zealand the NZ Python User Group (NZPUG) is holding the first Kiwi PyCon conference in Christchurch at the Canterbury Innovation Incubator on November 7th and 8th.
What is...
3 tags
How a programming language is changing the Web
NEW ZEALAND PYTHON USER GROUP
Media Statement
October 5, 2009
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The main keynote speaker at Kiwi PyCon 2009, Joel Burton, an internationally recognised trainer and presenter, will explain how the programming language Python is becoming the language of choice for developing websites due to its simplicity and flexibility. The conference will be held at the Canterbury Innovation...
September 2009
1 post
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Conference brings programming language of the year...
NEW ZEALAND PYTHON USER GROUP
Media Statement
September 21, 2009
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
What do Google, YouTube, Weta Digital and the New Zealand Government share in common? They all rely on the 2009 Programming Language of the Year - Python, for their daily operations. To promote Python’s use in New Zealand the NZ Python User Group (NZPUG) is holding the first Kiwi PyCon conference in...
August 2009
1 post
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Zope Essentials 7
I gave a presentation at Zope Essentials 7 in Japanese regarding Deliverance, the new flexible theming technology for Plone. Funnily enough, 2 years earlier, I also attended and presented at Zope Essentials 6, so this was as much a resurrection of the event as an opportunity for me to present again to the local Plonistas. 17 attended including myself and following my presentation I fielded a...
July 2009
1 post
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Kiwi PyCon 2009
On November 7-8, 2009, Christchurch, New Zealand will host the first PyCon in the Asia Pacific region. The event is being organised by the NZPUG and the call has already gone out for speakers and potential sponsors. So please if you’re able to help out with either giving a presentation or sponsoring the event, we’d love to hear from you! (the deadline for speaker proposals is August...
October 2008
1 post
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World Plone Day
On November 7th, 2008 we will stage the first worldwide event to market Plone to the masses. The event’s objective (according to the official event page) is to introduce Plone, via introductory talks, to business, government, NGOs, and universities. The community of developers and consultancies surrounding Plone is second to none and this has been shown once again with the number of...
July 2008
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Inaugural New Zealand PloneGov Meeting
On Tuesday, July 1st, 5:30pm at 3months’ offices in Wellington, New Zealand we had a meeting with many representatives from New Zealand Government to introduce the PloneGov project to them. Joel Burton also made a guest appearance (thanks Joel :)) and did an excellent job of introducing Plone 3’s features from both the perspective of a user and/or developer. Until then I’d only...
April 2008
1 post
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Inaugural NZPUG Christchurch Meetup
We had 13 come along (including myself) from varied backgrounds: a human interface technology student, some web developers, an embedded hardware developer, an electrical engineer and various other python developers (I’m sure I’ve missed someone out here). I started off proceedings with my Introduction to Repoze presentation. Following this Marek Kuziel presented his Password and...
December 2007
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Plone and Python Promotion
We’ve been back from Taiwan about 4 months now, and the trip was well worth it. I met some fellow FOSSers, bought a geek toy, and did some Plone promoting. On that note, I finally got around to posting a video of the presentation I gave at the TOSSUG meetup on plone.tv. Interestingly, Taiwan has had a Python User Group (PUG) around for quite some time and this has been the rallying point for...
November 2007
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Chip In To Help Me Translate Plone into Samoan
Initially, a bit of background - about 2.5 years ago, myself and another Plone consultancy took the initiative to begin translating Plone into Maori, Samoan, and some other Pacific Island languages. Unfortunately we were denied funding for translating Plone into Maori (apparently Microsoft New Zealand had already created a bilingual CMS for the Maori Language Commission on the then pre-release MS...
October 2007
2 posts
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How I Restored My QEMU Windows XP Environment
Recently I had to setup Enfold Server on Windows XP and as I run Kubuntu on my notebook, the virtual environment I’ve chosen to run Windows under is QEMU. I’ve been running QEMU for some time now and it provides all the features I need in a virtual machine, especially with kqemu installed. When I was in the process of setting up Enfold Server, though, I accidentally loaded the same...
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Technorati Blog Claim
Technorati Profile
May 2007
1 post
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I Beat Paul Everitt To The Punch
I had the honour of giving the first Plone speech at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan recently. TsungWei Hu, who arranged for me to give the speech, manages the Open Source Software Foundry (OSSF) project, whose key objectives are to promote Open Source Software in Taiwan. TsungWei mentioned that he had been meaning to ask Paul Everitt to give a speech regarding Plone at the Academia Sinica...
April 2007
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Japan-style and NZ-style Plone Meetups
On Wednesday, April the 18th, the Japan Zope Users Group had their quarterly meetup, and I gave a presentation regarding the use of Open Source software in New Zealand and particularly the use of Plone in New Zealand Government. My presentation also included a demonstration of creating a UML model for a simple Plone content type and associated workflow and then using the code generator,...
March 2007
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Setting Up Development Environments for Plone
N.B. The examples assume you are using a Linux-based operating system. Do a subversion checkout of the instancemanager product into an appropriate location, by entering the following: svn co http://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/instancemanager/trunk/ instancemanager
Install instancemanager by entering the following command from within the instancemanager folder (this will ensure instancemanager...
February 2007
1 post
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Achieving Server Xen
Recently I had to setup Xen 3 for a client, and the following are the steps I undertook to install it (N.B. As a guide for the installation, I followed the instructions listed here). The most pertinent hardware specifications for the server we installed Xen 3 on are as follows: 2x Intel Xeon 1.6 Ghz CPUs 4GB DDR2-667 RAM 3ware 9550SX-4LP PCI-X-to-SATA II RAID controller 4x Seagate Barracuda ES...
January 2007
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Back In The Plone Saddle
After a brief interlude, I’m back developing in Plone again. I think, like myself, most Plone developers have found that Plone has increased in popularity and that they are finding themselves inundated with work. It’s no wonder that this has happened, as Plone has progressed from being just a visual style for the Zope CMF (as when I started developing in Plone back in November 2003...
December 2006
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Sysadmin Stresses
This may be my last post as a sysadmin as like some other people, I’ve discovered that being a sysadmin has its own challenges, most especially the need to be constantly available, as computer systems can fall over at any time. Something, though, that proved invaluable in my previous role was some Systems Monitoring software called Zenoss (another attraction was that it runs on Zope!)....
August 2006
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Setting Up Windows Active Directory LDAP...
Emerge Technology had an enquiry from a client recently regarding setting up authentication via Active Directory in Plone 2.5. I share our response here for the benefit of anyone else who wishes to do this (the test environment I setup included Microsoft Small Business Server 2003, Zope 2.9, and Plone 2.5): One recommendation I would have is that you install LDAPMultiPlugins1.2 (available from...
July 2006
2 posts
1 tag
An Alternative To Ubuntu
I recently installed Ubuntu on a desktop computer at work and do like it but as Ubuntu uses Gnome as its Window Manager and I’m a KDE fan (unsure whether this is due to my familiarity with the desktop environment or its extensive feature set), I was still seeking a version of Ubuntu that used KDE instead of Gnome. I was already familiar with Kubuntu but had heard from a few friends that...
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A Router Configuration Itch
In New Zealand, due to our older telecommunications infrastructure, many people are using ADSL for their broadband internet connections, which uses the older copper-based telephone lines for transmission. This means slower speeds and in my case problematic internet configurations. Specifically, I was trying to setup a web server that could be accessed over the internet. Our network configuration...
June 2006
2 posts
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Back To My Roots
Although I’d rather be developing in Plone, it really is just ‘back to my roots’ as I originally trained as a network/systems engineer. It is great, though, being able to apply the skills I’ve gained over the last 2-2.5 years (a big thanks to Paul at TheVirtual Ltd for his help here) to a role I am already familiar with. Whereas in the past I was only familiar with...
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Time Makes the Wine - Part 2
Following on from my previous entry - the homebrew brewed out in about 4 days. My friend said that you can tell when it has finished brewing because the carbon dioxide stops bubbling out the fermentation lock. Another perhaps more accurate way to determine that the brew is ready for bottling is to use a hydrometer. From here we performed the following steps: Check all the bottles for mould by...
March 2006
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Time Makes The Wine
On Saturday afternoon, with the help of a friend I made homebrew beer for the first time (for those of you who are unawares, it’s not illegal to make homebrew in New Zealand). The homebrew kits come with instructions but my friend, who is an experienced homebrewer, knew a better methodology that results in a better tasting beer. For future reference and for the benefit of my readership,...
January 2006
2 posts
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Xue2xi2 zhong1wen2 he2 zhong1guo3rin2 de peng3you3
Our Chinese Bible study group is coming along excellently and since we’ve moved into Halswell I’m putting a lot more effort into learning the language and I’m improving. We’ve got a good core of 15 learning the language (as can be seen from the photo) with a new induction starting on the 6th of February. We’ve also got equal numbers of Kiwis and Chinese coming along...
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The Year in Rewind
Mariko’s Farewell Party. Good food, fun games, good food, Japanese conversation, good food, great association, good food. Nicola’s Farewell Party. A good friend headed over to the Dominican Republic
for 6 months to teach the Bible. The evening was a formal affair and
consisted of an assortment of yummy dishes, ballroom/latin/rock’n’roll
dancing, and some chinwag. Kaikoura...
December 2005
2 posts
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Kokorice Remixed V3
It has taken me over a month in my spare time to complete but I have
already had some positive feedback, which makes it well worth the
effort. I made sure the redesign is accessible in Internet Explorer 5.5/6.x, Firefox, Mozilla and Konqueror. Some highlights of the new site are: Plone 2.1.1 Zope 2.8.4 Quills 0.9 final The bowl image in the header is from morguefile.com The site action and...
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What a Hoot
Recently I have been working at a car yard, and I stumbled across a 1973 Morris Marina selling for $2750!!
I don’t think you can exactly call it a vintage and the body isn’t
particularly in pristine condition either, as you can see from the
photos. This is why I buy my cars direct from Japan and miss out the middle man.
October 2005
2 posts
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A Teenage Wanwan
Chocolat is now 15 months old and has already been through her first period. Though this isn’t a particularly wonderful ‘news flash’ it is significant for us as we didn’t expect her to live even a year. Unfortunately, though, with the onset of puberty has also come some other not so desirable habits, of which I don’t really want to go into detail. I suppose you...
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Virus Pandemic
Part of my job description entails working as a computer engineer or as an American friend informed me, being a troubleshooter. I’ve been doing this type of work for about 9 years so have dealt with quite a number of varying computer problems. Recently, though, a friend asked me to remove some viruses from their computer and I was ‘blown away’ to find around 3,300 viruses! On...
September 2005
2 posts
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A Tim First
It started
falling at about 5:30am yesterday and didn’t letup until about midday.
It made everything look very beautiful and clean and was a fun
experience (except for the extremely cold temperatures).
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How To Ruin a Good Reputation
In the past I would’ve recommended Linksys products to anyone I know. This was based on my personal experiences using a Linksys WRT54G for my home broadband connection, as well as my bosses’ good experiences with his router of the same model. I’ve also successfully installed/setup a couple of Linksys devices for our clients and am highly impressed that Linksys support open source...
August 2005
3 posts
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Priorities in Life
It’s amazing that multi-millionaire, Howard Hughes, appeared to have it all - money, fame, women, success - but it didn’t seem to bring him genuine happiness as he had a life fraught with problems, such as poor mental health, broken marriages, and legal battles. It really brings home to me that these things don’t bring happiness but that we have a need to find meaning in our...
