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TasLUG have announced the details for this month's meeting:

When: Wednesday, May 16th
Time: 18:00 for an 18:30 start
Venue: 57F Brisbane St, Hobart

Agenda:

• Welcome!
• New venue Review / Discussion
• Statewide Meeting Review / Discussion
• Distro Wars!
  Line up and give us 10 minutes on your favourite distro framed around:
  • What's the target audience / usage
  • What makes it rock
  • What could be done better
  • Current Talks:
    • Gentoo Linux - Jerrykan
    • Bodhi Linux - Craige
    • Arch Linux - Scott Evans
    • FreeBSD - Dale Baldwin
    • Your name here!
• Decide on what we'd like Karl to talk on in June:
  • Debian (random stuff, requests?)
  • Gnewsense (DIY ubuntu/debian derivative, requests?)
  • ITShare (computer refurbishing)
  • ITShare's work in Papua new guinea, or 'stuff' about Goroka/PNG
  • Issues from running the computers of an NGO (The Hut community centre)
  • Any other things? By request ;)
• General Questions Session
• Call for talks
• Next Meeting?
• add something else here!

Coming Attractions:

• June: Karl will be talking on what we request :)
• July: Julius will be giving a system administrator's over view of ZFS.

I had a great deal of pleasure meeting a stack of Freedom Lovers from across Tasmania today at the Ross Town Hall in the Tasmanian Midlands. Josh had scored us a surprisingly well fitted out venue that we might well end up using in the future again.

The venue was in the middle of Tassie, so as to equally inconvenience everyone ;) but it was a beautiful colonial town with good food, great scenery and a damn fine venue (did I mention I liked it?).

View TasLUG Statewide Gathering 2012 in a larger map

Thomas proved himself a dab hand at minute taking and posted some minutes here. The main thrust though is that we're going to poll the TasLUG community to determine which of the structures, if any, are appropriate for the community going forward. The meeting appointed a steering committee (see minutes) to publish the three proposed options and the pros/cons related to each so that everyone can be as informed as possible about which direction they'd prefer us too take.

There's also some enthusiasm around holding a Software Freedom Day event in Hobart to complement the one already being hosted successfully in Launceston and in having further statewide meetups, which would be just brilliant, IMHO :)

As announced here on the TasLUG website, tomorrow is the state-wide Tasmanian Linux users meetup.

So come along Freedom Lovers and catch-up with some like-minded Freedom enthusiasts here in Tassie and participate in the decision making around the direction TasLUG will take over the next few years! The details in brief are:

Saturday April 28th
Ross Town Hall

• 12:00pm - 2:00pm: Mill around, get to know each other, show off any gear/projects we may have brought with us
• 2:00pm - 3:30pm: Meeting (covering voting on an organisational structure for TasLUG, maybe discussing SFD 2012 and anything else that gets raised),
• 3:30pm - 4:00pm: Pack up
• 4:00pm onwards: Go home/BBQ/whatever anybody is up for

Google Maps link

The rough agenda we have for the meeting part is:

• TasLUG Organisational Structure Vote (and nominate some people to move us forward in whatever direction we end up going)
• SFD Planning
• Next Year's Meetup,

For more complete details, go here for the full announcement

TasLUG are happy to confirm that the April TasLUG (South) meeting is all systems GO for April!

When: Wednesday, April 18th
Time: 18:00 for an 18:30 start
Venue: 57F Brisbane St, Hobart (map)

Agenda:

• Welcome!
• Dale will be speaking about Drupal using his redesign of the TasLUG website as an example.
• Chris will be speaking about how Android works from the perspective of a Linux user
• Any 5 minute talks
• General Questions Session
• Call for talks
• Next Meeting?

See you then?

The forestry conflict in the Huon Valley appears to be spilling over into unrelated businesses.

We awoke this morning to the unpleasant surprise that someone had stickered our goat's milk soap shop in Geeveston with "No Greens" stickers. Suddenly we've moved from having no involvement in the forest conflict to being labelled as the "enemy" by some poor, scared forestry worker.

I don't blame the individual for this misguided attempt to intimidate us but I instead look towards our representatives, Paul Harris and premier Lara Giddings, who have failed in their leadership roles to unite the community. With their partisan positions, they are driving a wedge through the community to create an "us vs them" mentality that ultimately harms the community but increases their chances of getting re-elected.

• Where is their initiative to provide trade schools in the Huon?
• Where is the encouragement and support for business diversity?

The fear of the Ta-Ann workers that they have no future outside forestry is directly the result of the failure of our elected representatives to provide education and employment opportunities for the Huon, not of someone who had the initiative to start dairy goat farming and a soap business.

Wandering through one of our paddocks today, I noticed all the alpaca's staring intently in one direction, like they do when there's a threat (usually a dog). I headed in the direction they were looking and begin to hear faint, plaintive goat bleats, although I could see no goats in the paddock.

It didn't take long to discover one of this year's kids had found a hole exposing one of our many underground spring flows.

This hole is big enough for me to get into and spring flow underneath is large enough for me to crawl in. It's worth noting that this paddock is almost 100% covered in blackberries. If you look closely, despite abundant blackberries, Nicola had leaned across this opening, managed to take two bites from the blackberry leaves before slipping into the hole.

After I stopped laughing and put the camera away, I pulled out one cold, wet and muddy kid who immediately bolted through the sunshine in search of her mum (who licked off all the mud).

Kristina and I are proud to launch the latest addition to our goat's milk soap range:

Honey Goat's Milk Soap

With fresh goat's milk and honey, this makes a luxurious and soothing soap that is perfect for all skin types. 

This soap is available in the following forms:

• Honey Goat's Milk Soap bars
• Skincare (4 pack)
• Skincare (8 pack)
• Skincare (14 pack)
• Honey Goat's Milk Soap (4 pack)
• Honey Goat's Milk Soap (8 pack)
• Honey Goat's Milk Soap (14 pack)

Last Friday saw another milestone passed on our little patch. We had the first on-site mating of any of our livestock, either alpaca or dairy goat. It has been a year since Creampuff had last given birth and she is in excellent condition, so we figured it was time for her to be introduced to Sappa, who has worn out a trench pacing up and down the fence line that separates him from our ladies.

We found an empty paddock and left our two love birds to get to know each other...but no introduction was required, as Creampuff went straight to the ground (the alpaca mating acceptance position) and Sappa was soon set about his business.

We'd opted for a paddock mating rather than a stockyard and at "half time", Sappa and Creampuff decided to pull up stumps and move their show over against the fence next to all the other females. This prompted three of them to go to ground next  to the fence (alpaca for "me too!") while another nibbled Sappa's ear while he continued the show with Creampuff.

I was too busy laughing to put my camera to good use.

Alpaca males have a fibro-elastic penis which has a dexterity that most human males would envy but from what I've seen, they can have that, there appeared to be far too much complaining from Sappa to make it worthwhile!

Mating with alpacas is a little hit and miss. Alpaca females ovulate in response to the act of mating and the presence of semen. So now we wait a while, then re-unite Sappa and Creampuff again. If Creampuff spits at Sappa and runs off, she's pregnant. If she submits for mating, she's not.

That's as precise and scientific as it gets with alpacas.

Kristina and I are looking at another farm with a view to selling ours and moving to this new one. This particular farm has a rather large cool store on site.

Looking at this rather large, 12Mx12Mx5M, refrigerated shed our reactions were along these lines:

Kristina: "Cool, dairy...."

Craige: "Cool, data centre..."

This morning Penelope gave birth to Grace Kelly. Although the dodgy camera photo does her no justice, Grace Kelly is what they call a light fawn. Not white, not brown, I'm sure you get the idea.

Penelope and Grace Kelly enjoy a balmy spring morning

We were trying to reproduce Penelope's luscious colours but the black male we were trying to mate her with wasn't producing strong swimmers (and he died a few months later). We switched to a light fawn male and the result 12 months later is Grace Kelly.

Welcome Grace Kelly.