We've scheduled some more PHP training courses up to June next year, running monthly.

People who are active members of Birmingham, Wolverhampton or Redditch and Bromsgrove LUGs or PHPWM can receive a discount of £25/day

See here for more details

Last night, Kat and myself gave a talk titled "PHP : Applying good practices to a misused language" at Nottingham LUG.

The talk itself was well received. And we thought we might as well continue in our efforts to meet various Luggers within the UK, so if you're a LUG (or similar) within the UK, we're happy to visit and present it (although we might hesitate if it requires us driving for many hours). Kat reliably tells me that we can put the trip down as a business expense.

If you happen to live around Bromsgrove (or Redditch, or South Birmingham), the third RnB LUG meeting will be taking place on the 31st of July.

For further details (directions, location etc) see :

http://rnblug.org.uk/meetings/3rd-meeting-31st-july-2007-hop-pole-bromsgrove

So, it's finished. We're both quite tired, and ended up not staying at the Chin for the #lugradio get-together.

My lasting impressions of LugRadio Live 2007 are :

• There seemed to be fewer people this year than last
• Great venue - far roomier, but there seemed to be fewer stalls
• Wow, the local MP came along (thanks to Howard Berry)

The weekend that half of the people we know have been eagerly waiting for has arrived.
LugRadio Live, the most fun Open Source event in the world, is here this weekend.

David and I are heading off this afternoon to check into the hotel and catch up with a few people for dinner before the social activities start.

Merry Tuxmas!

Last night we went to the WolvesLUG Xmas bash, and had a great time. Katherine had spent some time baking a cake, which everyone seemed to enjoy. Incase you weren't there, here's what you missed :

1. 
2. The Gorrilla Joke was retold, by Aq
3. Loads of free t-shirts
4. Loads of free dvds
5. Random other corporate tat
6. A great atmosphere

Aq, thank you for emptying your full sack (and taking the time to contact the various distros asking for freebies). Kat, thank you for the cake, and to everyone else for turning up! We both had a great time and enoyed seeing old and new faces.

Wolves LUG - GIS & GPS talk

Alex Willmer was kind enough to give us a talk on GIS and GPS last night at WolvesLug, which was quite interesting. I think I've now got the motivation to buy a GPS unit and use it to map Bromsgrove/Walsall etc - when we saw a similar talk at a UKUUG event over a year ago, we very nearly bought one, but in the end chickened out over concerns over hardware compatibility.

(I've so far found this GPS unit and might buy it).

WolvesLUG - BBQ Meeting

Last night, we had a WolvesLUG meeting at our house - it would have been an outdoor BBQ but the weather forced us indoors.

Anyway, there was plenty of food, a good turnout, and plenty of beer - I at least was quite drunk (although I didn't realise how badly, until I lay down on the bed and noticed the room spin).

Kat made nice lemon and chocolate cheesecakes, and various people remembered to bring food. Unfortunately our fridge now has a large plate of meat in it, and although there is plenty of beer left over/behind, the thought of drinking it makes me feel slightly sick!

One of the excellent things about LugRadioLive was how our talk inspired so much discussion about advocating Linux to women. This has taken some interesting turns, which I haven't had time to become involved in, which have been about more general help and advocacy. While I think that any action to advocate to new people, and provide support for the growing Linux community is excellent, I think that my personal experience and skills are leading me in a different direction.

When we get to talking about women in technology, or women in Open Source, the aspect of it that I am always most interested in is why there aren't more women in technology. While there are clearly more women in software than there are in Open Source generally, there's still a massive disparity in numbers in academic courses. I think that's where one of the real problems is. I'm not talking about the vague (and in my opinion, almost pointless in this context) IT (or ICT) lessons that most kids get at school. It's when people are moving into A-levels and above, into specialist computing courses that there's a problem. I don't know what the answer is, but for all the talk about the differences between men and women, and the way they think (I do believe there is a difference, but not that it makes women less capable of learning things like programming) we can definitely say that women are not signing up to courses that will get them involved in software development or related activities .

LugRadio Live 2006

We're still recovering from LugRadio Live 2006. Kat started on the Linux User article earlier today, and we're hoping it will get in within the next month or so.

So, after seeing a number of good talks, playing with the LowTechWiki, and talking to the numerous nice people there - e.g. Bytemark, Tux Games, O'Reilly etc.