They even put a picture of me on the cover, which seems mean [to their readers].

This was the follow-up to an article a year earlier that announced we three were set to intern at Apple.

I’m posting it here now because I apparently never did prior, and I’d just like to include it in my records. I actually remember reading the article, although oddly not providing any of the quotes used in it (I’m sure I did; I genuinely have just forgotten).

I’m not sure what I was referring to – if anything specific – regarding “so that’s how they do that!” but I do vaguely recall that it was indeed a real pleasure to have access to a lot of Apple frameworks’ source code. I dove into a whole bunch of it purely out of curiosity. Of course, fifteen years later I don’t remember anything about it.

I had forgotten – until I chanced upon this Wheels for the Mind article a few weeks ago – about Brett’s project entirely. I did vaguely remember that Ashley worked in the Core Audio team, although in my mind it was “FireWire audio” specifically that he was involved with. I vaguely recall some discussions about isochronous transport support – something unique to FireWire at the time, notably as opposed to its competitor USB – and its huge benefits for live audio. We [Apple fans] were all particularly bullish on FireWire and quite offended by the mass-market success of the comically inferior USB. So we relished specific examples where FireWire embarrassed USB, in terms of not just its speed but its basic capabilities (like live media).

I haven’t spoken with Ashley or Brett in what must be at least a decade – probably since about when our internship ended and we all separated once more on our return to Oz. We’d barely met before the internship – perhaps just at the AUC 2005 conference in Hobart; I know at least Brett was there for that – and being thrown together into a two-bedroom apartment in Cupertino. 😆

Where are they now?

I’m here now, obviously. 😜

Ashley interned at Apple at least twice more – in fact I think we ran into each other once or twice as a result, as I was there full-time by the time of his third internship at least. He eventually joined for real, as a full-time employee. And that’s where he still is! And still doing audio – from his early days with IEEE presentations to working on Milan (for synchronising clocks over a network, for AV media purposes specifically) to at least as recently as 2020 with work on IEEE 1722 (AVTP, Audio Visual Transport Protocol). As well as some AV timing-related working on 802.11 (wifi). And possibly more – digging through IEEE papers & websites is not the most entertaining nor rapid escapade. 😝

Brett appears to have done some iOS consulting and fitness coaching, of all things! That’s particularly poetic because – when we were Apple interns – we were all a bit plump; very stereotypical computer nerds. As his coach bio says:

Brett started at VidaFit doing an Overhaul back in 2014 as a self-proclaimed overweight, headache prone, generally sluggish computer geek.

He’s also been fighting Motor Neurone Disease on behalf of his sister and all its sufferers, which it seems led him into social media consulting and general computer support under the business name Little Brown Monkey – an ironic name, given how search-engine-hostile it is 😆. Apparently it’s based on sentimental value. Still, it’s particularly funny since “Brett Brooks” is a fairly common name – with multiple minor celebrities using it – so he is already a little hard to find.

iTools

Long before iCloud, iTools was was of Apple’s first forays into web services as we recognise them today. The headlining features were the ability to create an email address (free!) under the @mac.com domain (which I still use to this day!) and an online file storage and sharing system called iDisk, which was the foundation for several other services & tools within the bundle including HomePage and Backup.

Backup wasn’t exclusively tied to iDisk, and I used it (in the later .Mac era) for a couple of years to backup my essential documents to iDisk and my entire computer to a external hard drives and CDs. I think it was my first real backup system…? And I still have all those backups!

I don’t recall that I used iTools, or at least not in any serious way. I was still in high school when it came out (just), going into university, and I recall using my university email address during that time.

If I remember correctly, iTools was pretty well received by actual users but panned critically, with the press and technorati unimpressed by it in light of antecedents like Hotmail (launched three years earlier in 1997) and numerous existing “DIY” website builders and free webhosts (GeoCities!).

There was also some resentment due to its Mac-only nature, although technically most of the services worked through a web browser on any platform, you just couldn’t create an account except on a Mac.

Remember, too, that Mac OS X didn’t exist when iTools launched. It was Mac OS 9 – retroactively named “Classic Mac OS” re. Rosetta etc – and for Mac users the world was a very different place. Once Mac OS X did launch, iTools became even better with integration into the Finder (for iDisk). This was over six years before Dropbox even existed.

Hotmail and lesser known contemporaries pioneered free email, but with tight limits on usage (e.g. only 2 MB of email storage, enough for about two modern spam emails!). .Mac offered 50 MB (upgradable to 2 GB for a fee). This was three years before Gmail was launched, too (at which time the word “unlimited” started to get thrown around, although technically Gmail only offered 1 GB initially).

My old website dates back to at the latest September 2005 when I launched my blog, although I’m pretty sure I’d been using it for quite some time before that (though the Wayback Machine didn’t notice it for three more years, until September 2008 😂).

It took a little bit of effort to get it functioning again – it contained a lot of references to 3rd party resources (Google Adsense & Analytics, Haloscan, etc) that are no longer valid / necessary, as well as to some more intrinsic .Mac HomePage functionality that’s long gone, like iDisk (the early file-sharing functionality a la Dropbox / iCloud Drive). I pruned out most of that for the sake of removing long-dead, broken links & images.

.Mac

.Mac was a relaunch of iTools – a major version update in technical terms, but also a major departure in that it was no longer free for all Mac users. You now had to buy it! For actual money! And keep paying for it, every year, like a caveman! $100!

I still remember receiving an actual box for .Mac, and I suspect that was when I first really used the service. I think I might have received it through the AUC as part of their scholarship program which effectively launched my career, lining me up to work at Apple, move to California, and all the rest.

As for .Mac, it was somewhat ill-received, and despite Apple bragging about receiving 100,000 sign-ups, the general attitude was that it was too little for too much. It didn’t help that it then went years without much improvement or attention from Apple.

The name was a bit weird, too – clearly playing on the .com TLD, but in an era long before the expansion of TLDs, back when there was basically just .com, .net, .org, and .edu¹. It’s interesting that to this day there’s still no .mac TLD (although there is .apple, albeit for no apparent reason since it’s retained by Apple for their exclusive use, and they don’t use it).

Years later, in 2008, it was rebranded and “relaunched” yet again as MobileMe. I for one don’t recall ever having significant issues with MobileMe, but it was widely lambasted for being unreliable. I certainly don’t think it was any worse than iCloud (especially in light of macOS Sonoma’s catastrophic embuggering of iCloud Drive).

Incidentally, as part of this trip down memory lane, I also went through and fixed the broken images on my very earliest blog posts, that didn’t originally import into WordPress when I migrated off of MobileMe HomePage in 2012, when the product was shut down by Apple (in favour of iCloud, which was mostly a PR move to distance themselves from perceived reliability problems with MobileMe – notably not an actual improvement in reliability, which to this day remains sorely needed).

1. Well, plus .gov and .mil, but regular people never encountered those in everyday life. ↩︎

I don’t recall why exactly, but evidently I had to write some kind of cover letter in order to intern at Apple. I don’t even know if this was addressed to Apple, or was perhaps just part of the visa process.

Statement of Motivation

My internship offered at Apple Computer Inc. is a fantastic opportunity for me to be introduced to and get involved with one of the worlds leading and most innovative technology companies.  It will provide exposure to their current – and possibly future – hardware products, as well as the processes by which they develop them.

Additionally, the time in the U.S.A. will provide exposure to U.S. culture and general life, which will be an invaluable grounding should I pursue further work in the U.S.A. (at a later date).  While I have no immediate plans to do so, I would certainly like to have the option, as the U.S.A. is the worldwide hub for development of advanced computer technology – the best place for someone in my industry to end up.

In terms of furthering my studies and career, the impact is almost immeasurable.  My employability – not just in Australia, but also internationally – will be increased tremendously by the internship, both from the training and experience provided as well as from the impressive addition it would make to any resume.  Specifically, I hope it will open the door to future employment at Apple Computer Inc.

On a personal level, I’d like to see a bit of North America as a tourist, as much as I can – visit all the cliché spots, like the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Yosemite, all those.  I think it’d be a great experience, and hopefully a lot of fun.

21-year-old me, in 2005

I’ve been to all three of those places now. Two out of the three were indeed fun, as hoped.

A fun footnote was that the internship paid $25 US / hour, @ 40 hours per week. That was about $33 AUD / hour, given exchange rates at the time. That compared preeetty favourably with my prior internships – $18.50 AUD / hour at NEC, $15.79 AUD / hour at PIRVic – and beat the pants off the first real job I recall having, at a flower nursery, in high school, for an amazing $5 AUD / hour.

Of course, now it’s a matter of finding time to go regularly. I don’t know if I’ll be suddenly becoming a great 6am morning person… I think it might be an after work affair. We shall see. There’s apparently always at least half a dozen people there, so I can’t escape them, but I guess I’ll overcome my embarrassment.

Work was good today. It was a bit short, with all the gym stuff, the iTMS brown bag lunch (just a sec), and then going off to the ice hockey game (just a minute).

So, the brown bag lunch… I guess I probably can’t say much at all about it, since they were reasonably candid about everything, but it was a cool insight into how the iTunes Music Store operates behind the scenes. Not so much the technical stuff, but the client and customer relations, and a look at some of the policies and the reasons behind them. Very interesting.

Then there was actual lunch, where, yes indeed, we sat only a few short metres from the great Steve himself, along with Ive. Those two seem just about inseparable. :) In a way I’m tempted to just up and introduce myself, since everyone else holds him in such comical reverence, but at the same time, regardless of the brazenness, I’m sure he doesn’t especially want people hassling him over his lunch, regardless. So, I won’t. But not because I’m afraid. :P

Anyway, ice hockey. Nothing as entertaining as watching grown men hit each other with big sticks, at high speed. :D

Well, it started off a bit slow, but I was being optimistic, so I held through… I had a bit of a light headache from hunger, which wasn’t helped by the $6AU “Jumbo Hotdog” which was about six inches long, if that. It came wrapped up in foil, and looked like a very anorexic baked potato. It was okay tasting, sure, but it was barely a mid-day appetiser, let alone a meal. Very sad affair, that.

But anyway, the game was fun. As with all contact sports, it become most interesting in the last ten minutes, when both teams started to get a bit tired, a bit cranky, and the tempers started to strain. Still, it was a [relatively] clean game, although I did feel sorry for the away team, the Panthers (from somewhere in Florida), who had all of about twenty supporters in the crowd. They put up a pretty good fight right from the start – they really dominated the puck for a large portion of the game, but just never had any luck scoring… the Sharks (the local team) had very good defense.

And of course it was a good way to meet a few more faces at Apple – other interns, predominantly. While I’ve met a lot of people here in the past two weeks, they’re all work people for the moment; once I leave the office, it’s back home with Brett & Ashley, to sit here each on our Powerbooks and do our things. Of course, as I’ve noted previously there simply is no night life here… although I did notice a few social places open in San Jose while we were there, so I think I’ll definitely investigate how easy or hard the ride down there is. It seems like that’s at least as far as we’ll have to go for a bit of entertainment.

Anyway, bed time now… I’ve got a lot of work tomorrow that I’m really looking forward to, and I want to get a lot of it done, so – like the night before christmas – the sooner I get to sleep the sooner it arrives. :)

As a side note, I know I haven’t been in contact with a lot of people nearly as much as they or I would like – I’m limited by the time difference in so far as when I can phone people, and too many of my friends aren’t online regularly enough… but I’ll get around to everyone as soon as I can. I’ll sort out one way or another what the deal is with phoning mobiles, which would make things much easier. Indeed, that’s the only way I’ll be able to talk with Sket, since she’s off at Hamilton Island at the moment.

I miss people, but at the same time, I’m really enjoying it here, so I’m not really getting homesick or anything. There’s still more than enough for me to do to keep myself busy. After christmas should be a little quieter, and of course I’m told homesickness really kicks in after about two months, so, we’ll see..

I also had my first Steve sighting. Yes indeedy, he was naught but twenty feet away, eating with Ive at the cafe as we walked in. I couldn’t help but laugh – Ashley was so excited last week when he similarly saw him, and even some of the permanent employees talk excitedly about Steve sightings. It really is like a cult, sometimes, here… the reverence reserved for Steve is just disturbing. :)

And I’m continually confronted by Australian anachronisms I never knew existed. Today I learnt that muesli is more or less a foreign word to most people here – some have seen something in the stores with “muesli” on it, but it doesn’t register anything like it does in Australia.

They have no idea what a dunny is, although they are familiar with “water closet”, which is apparently European.

Also, I have now watched Jurassic Park twice in as many nights, and I think it’s on again tomorrow night…. 81 channels, nothing on. Gah!

And if you thought Australian cable TV was bad for ads – that god damn stupid frog – you have no idea… there’s more ads on U.S. consumer-paid cable than free to air Australian TV. Seriously. And they do evil things like put long ad breaks between the end of a show and the credits, so you sometimes wait through all that crap for no reason. That is evil.

And as usual, we don’t get any of the good channels – movies and such. Although I do like the SciFi channel – they have a Stargate and Atlantis marathon, one day after another, at the start of January. I will thus be unavailable for several days during this period. :D

Sadly, that’s all I’m going to say about work itself. Confidentiality and all that. :(

This morning was fun… I set my alarm for 7, but forgot, as it turns out, to actually turn it on. So, I woke up at 7:30… crap. We were supposed to leave at 8. Nonetheless, I managed to a quick shower, shave and breakfast, and off we went. Ten minutes late, but that’s okay, as we didn’t start for quite some time after we got there anyway.

And then I realised I’d forgotten the only thing I really needed – my passport. D’oh. I did go back and get it later, but it seems to have thrown a jolly spanner into the works. Whoops. :)

Anyway, it’s been a marvellous but exhausting day. So, I’m off to bed.

Okay, so it’s not really that cold, as in ice forming, but it’s not exactly crispy either. The sun’s trying to come out, but it’s still overcast. And it seems that the real devil of the weather here is the wind – it’s icy cold. Luckily there doesn’t seem to be all that much at the moment, so by mid afternoon it should be warm enough for a bike ride.

Yesterday Ash & I went for a random ride around the area. Found a variety of places – finally found a shopping centre – and had lunch at some cafe somewhere… quite nice actually. Today I’m hoping to make it at least to the bottom of the hills, if not up them. It’s apparently a beautiful ride through that area, as I’d hoped.

So, our apartment. It’s pretty standard – quite nice – with two bedrooms (each with two single beds) and two bathrooms. All the taps in the bathrooms are those crazy American ones, but I guess there’s not much to be done about that. Also, the kitchen tap is backwards. Those on the planes over were as well.

It’s really odd that such fundamental things could be different, when – for example – the road signs and laws here are near identical to those in Australia. There’s just some corners cut off here (like their rules on turning right, which seem to amount to “go nuts, best of luck to you”).

Being a pedestrian here is scary. Ever more so the fact that helmets are not required for bicyclists, nor does there seem to even be anywhere you can buy helmets.

I’ll be not lazy later and take some photos (albeit iSight ones) of the place around here… really should get a camera. Anyway, I’ll post them up tomorrow or somesuch. My first day is tomorrow, starting with NEO – New Employee Orientation. After that there’s lunch, and then… well, I’m not sure. There’s a few orienteering things to do in the first week, but I presume I actually start work tomorrow afternoon. We’ll see, I guess.

I should note though that I probably won’t be posting much, if anything, here about work. Apple get kinda cranky about employees talking to the public, so, I’ll be erring on the side of caution.

I hope this is a good sign. :)

Damn it’s hot here. Humid hot. It’s probably only high twenties, really, but the humidity is very tropical. It’s quite a beautiful place, even the airport… there’s lots of greenery, some half-original architecture, and lots of air conditioning… I think the power plant we flew over on the way into landing must be solely to power the air condition here.

It’s interesting that… well… the place is over-run by Japanese. Of course, this was to be expected, but it’s surprising how many of the actual staff here are also Japanese. Although at least they do all speak English fluently, which is more than I can say for Sydney, so I’ve no complaints. And there’s been no rudeness or incident otherwise, with anyone. All good.

There’s a beautiful Japanese garden here in the middle of the airport, which has a lot of water features throughout, teaming with fish. Very nice. And it’s been raining lightly too, which – while making it more humid – is still very pleasant to be in.

I’m almost tempted to rearrange my return so I can stay here for a few days, and actually see Hawaii, as my dad (among others) suggested, but I just can’t see myself overcoming the humidity. Just hauling my carry on bags around the place is exhausting… I actually had to stop for a rest between Starbucks and the gate…

…and yes, apparently I’m already addicted to Starbucks. It’s interesting that while the menu is identical in every store, the actual food and drinks are not. The hot chocolates here were particularly nice – probably the best I’ve had. The muffins were still average.

And that shall be the last mention of food for this leg of the trip, lest I descend into the genetic trap that awaits me – of judging all tourist trips by the food alone – evident by my grandfather. :)

Although I will add that the hot chocolate and muffin here cost about the same in US dollars as they did at Sydney – in Australian dollars. $7US, including “voluntary” tip. Hmmm.

Oh, and don’t blame me for the spelling of Hawai’i’ – that’s how it is on all their promotional stuff… I guess too many crazy American tourists were calling it Ha-why-ee instead of…. Ha-why-ee… The confusion never ends.

When no one turned up Friday, I rang again on Monday. I didn’t mention, initially, the failed pickup from the week before – I just asked for a pickup ASAP. They did the usual “you’ve missed the cutoff, we’ll do it tomorrow” line, to which I responded that I’d already arranged for a pickup, and no one ever turned up. Oh. Well, they almost apologised for that – only almost – and the pickup was set for Tuesday.

Then, a few hours later (on Monday afternoon) I get a call from Australian Air Transport or somesuch – whom do all the real work for FedEx around here – asking me to confirm my address at “Robo-Ralph”… seriously. Roboralph. I’m pretty sure there isn’t a street in Australia with that name. Ye gads.

So I corrected it for him – note that I did spell out the street name when I rang the first time, but they got it wrong nonetheless – and all was well. Only, they never turned up. The package sat on the doorstep for two days. No go. sigh

The morale of this story: never ever use FedEx for anything. Not that we didn’t know that already – I’ve never once had FedEx not screw up a delivery.

Anyway… I decided since I’d spent the better part of two hours thieving Starbucks’ power, I should actually buy something. Not one of the three girls there spoke English fluently. They asked my name, I said Wade. She looked at me blankly for a few seconds, then asked me to spell it. W. A. D. E. And then she wrote “Wad” anyway.

I’m not sure, but I think that’s funny. Maybe.

At the very least I’ve found a powerpoint, and didn’t have to unplug a vending machine for it. I only hope the staff here aren’t bright enough to realise I don’t drink coffee.

I’m getting flashbacks to L.A., here at Sydney. We land at some random terminal, catch a bus across the tarmac to the international terminal, and then walk for twenty minutes trying to find a damn check-in counter¹. At least I didn’t have to haul my luggage all that way… apparently it’s being forwarded automagically onto my next flight. Or a flight, at least. I’d love to put a GPS tracker in my luggage and see where it goes… imagine the frequent flyer miles I could accrue if I could get them from my luggage.

Damnit, why does no one here speak English.

I may very well have passed into the Twilight Zone… this could be central Czechoslovakia for all I really know… I think this group next to me is speaking Russian.

They have a giant frog here, skinned with tens of thousands of tiles. It’s quite impressive. It must be the national animal of whatever this country is.

Well, actually it looks a fair bit like a cane toad. Hmmm.

“Sydney” is apparently “sid-nay-er” in Russian. Important thing to remember.

My decision to pack all my CDs with my laptop seems to have been exceedingly wise… I’ll soon be able to fire up Starcraft and pass a little time. Unfortunately there’s no wireless here… at least, not that’s usable. There are networks from Optus and Telstra, but they charge $12 an hour. Ummm… no thanks.

This sucks.

1. There isn’t one – a check-in counter – by the way… apparently check-in counters only appear three hours before the flight. Indicating this at any point would of course be much too difficult for all concerned. ↩︎

There was also food going around – chicken on skewers, rolled up meaty things, all the usual party foods. All very good, of course. The waiters and waitresses quickly learnt not to bring the fresh food trays by us first, as we consistently laid waste to them in no time flat. :)

But beyond the food – did I mention the food? ;) – the first night was nicely casual. Everyone chatted, got to know each other a bit, all the usual introductory socialising. From memory this was when I was introduced to Daniel Woo, who as it turns out works with Ashley (at uni). There was James Lucas, as well, whom I spent quite a lot of time with over the course of the conference. And I also met many other people, who will have the awkward pleasure of re-introducing themselves to me next time I see them, seeing as I’ve largely forgotten all their names. :)

Once that wrapped up, which was fairly early, I retired to my room, probably wrote some emails, did a little coding, before hitting the sack. Knowing I’d be looking at a 6am waking the next day, I was careful to be asleep by a mere 9:30 or so – which felt like it was barely even midday to my twisted student body clock. Oh well. :)

The next morning I fought with the crazy shower for a long while – it was one of those “water saving” ones which never give you enough flow to actually wash yourself properly, and had the crazy bath-shower hybrid system I grew oh-so fond of in San Francisco… shudder. Anyway, I was up and down to breakfast in good time, amongst the first to arrive. I found it a pleasant, albeit unnecessary touch that Natalie Evans – one of the handlers from ID Events & Meetings, with whom the AUC entrusted the conference’s operations – was at the door in these wee hours to greet people (and, let’s be honest, check they had their conference badges, but hey, let’s be nice :) ). Breakfast was a little skimpy for my tastes – the kind of “continental” breakfast you get in U.S. hotels which mostly involves toast and muffins. Well, muffins are all good and well, but I’m a cereal man myself. There was some cereal there, but with tiny little bowls, with which I was too embarrassed to go for seconds and thirds lest I scare away other attendees. ;)

I’ll digress blatantly at this point, to point out – yes, ironically – that I keep digressing onto the food. It’s a genetic problem inherited from my grandfather, I’m afraid. Although I’ve been lucky so far in seemingly not inheriting his desire to visit every bathroom in Australia. Anyway, onwards…

Breakfast was a good chance to socialise again, and meet a few new faces. After that, it was up to the main hall for the opening speeches. Stephen Young kicked off again with the usual housekeeping stuff, before handing off to Tony King, the managing director of Apple Computer Australia. He talked about where Apple was, where it was going, and all that sort of thing. He was a good speaker, and kept interest up, although for myself – someone who reads all the Apple news sites religiously – there wasn’t really anything too new. Nonetheless, I good “state of the union” style opening for the conference.

After that, Stuart Lynn – past President of ICANN among many other impressive accolades – spoke on the topic “Build it and they will come…”. His main point, I think, was impressing the importance of natural evolution over intelligent design, if I can needlessly incite furious debate with that pointed analogy. :) He was excited about where the future was taking us – particularly relating to networking technologies – and left a good impression. I regret I cannot now recall more details of his talk – the conference proceedings contain only the papers presented by other speakers, not an overview of all the sessions, so I’ve got nothing to jog my memory with… I’m sure snippets will come back to me as I write on. But one key thing I do remember him emphasising was the importance of providing the infrastructure without immediate justification – i.e. just building it, and seeing who comes. It’s an important message – let’s face it, 90% of the stuff we propose today is unnecessary for our immediate uses, but it’s because of the recklessness and the over-provision of facilities that we get bold new revolutions. For example, sure, the average person doesn’t need a 20 megabit internet connection for their email and web browsing, but it brings with it all new possibilities – VoIP, IPTV, advanced peer to peer technology like BitTorrent, etc. But I digress to my own opinions… Stuart’s talk was kind of a “feel good” thing about all this, and how in the end things tend to work out pretty cool for everyone.

After Stuart there was a break for morning tea – won’t talk about it, promise :) – and then we resumed sessions. I think – although I’m hazy – that it was Joe Cox who spoke for the Apple Plenary session, on MacOS X technologies. It was an interesting talk, but much like the “Apple Directions” talk by Tony King earlier, really just a rehash for someone like myself, already “in the know” on all things Apple. Still, it was a good intro for those new to the platform, or without a technical background on it.

At noon we kicked off the streams. For the first session, while I did want to see Sandy Shuck’s talk on “Teachers as Producers, Students as Directors”, I gravitated in the end towards James Steele’s talk on “Streaming TV via IP”. This was a fascinating talk, where he discussed the streaming video system at Australian National University (henceforth ANU) from it’s prehistoric days as a satellite TV relay via analogue coax, up to it’s current incarnation as a true video over IP solution. It was interesting from all points of view – seeing how they originally started out with their coaxial system, and hearing of the problems and costs associated with installing such niche infrastructure, in sharp contrast to their modern system, which utilised the existing networking infrastructure.

It was also amusing to see how they had tackled many of the interfacing issues with their various TV sources. They have numerous satellite dishes amongst their sources, as well as AM/FM radio and possibly even terrestrial broadcast TV as well. For the AM/FM radio they actually had, in their server rack, half a dozen car stereos, each tuned into a single station and outputting via [presumably] a standard 3.5mm stereo connection. I think they also had some VCR’s and other crazy equipment linked in somehow.

They used numerous PowerMacs for the real-time encoding, and ultimately piped their channels out using m3u playlists which could be viewed in VLC (VideoLanClient). I don’t think they were at the point of streaming directly to Quicktime or similar, which is a shame, but I seem to remember him mentioning that it was certainly something they hoped to do in future.

It was also funny how the project came in to real, financial being – originally the AUC provided funding for a single Xserve so that they could prototype a digital system… but then somehow they landed over a million dollars in funding from some other project that had been cancelled or run underbudget, or somesuch… so they – like all good kids in a candy store – went all out and built up the whole system in quite a short time. It’s always funny, things like that – of course it never rains, it pours. :)

After that session was lunch – which was good of course – followed by two more stream sessions. I should note that some time during morning tea I started to get quite nervous about myself having to talk later that afternoon, so I began ferreting through my Documents folder, rounding up anything that might be demoable at short notice. Similarly, I whipped up some horrible but succinct notes on what I wanted to say. Lunch was spent similarly.

The next session I went to was by Paule Bourke, from Swinburne University, on the topic of “Using Mac OS X to drive immersive displays for science visualisation and education”. This was a really cool session from a “whizbang” point of view, as he showed off a lot of their technology and research into immersive displays – that is, 3D displays and very wide-angle displays (e.g. planetarium-style).

It was impressive to see how they were dealing with the problems within stereoscopic displays and immersive displays. The immersive displays, for example, that they used utilised a quarter-sphere mirror to reflect the image onto a large portion of the room (or dome, or whatever was available). They could then use precisely calibrated texture maps in OpenGL to warp their outgoing images so that they would appear perfect on the final surface. Very interested stuff – we’ve all probably seen or heard of people doing simple fish-eye distortions for dome projections and such, but these guys were working on arbitrary mesh distortions, so they could use any shape of surface they like. Very cool.

And the stereoscopic stuff was good, although they were a bit down on the fact that MacOS X doesn’t really make life easy in that area… none of the graphics cards currently available support gen-locking, which is where two graphics cards are synchronised to output frames at exactly the same times, necessary with stereoscopic and multi-panel displays to prevent tearing. There were also some issues, I believe, with actual stereoscopic support… OpenGL has supported this pretty much forever, but they were having some issues making good use of it…

Anyway, overall it was pretty cool. I love seeing scientific visualisations in these ways – it really is so vital to facilitating understanding, and can really increase interest in the sciences.

The next session I went to was titled “Wicked problems and shared meanings: Evaluating design competence”. The speakers were Grant Baxter and Nick Laird, from the university Otago in New Zealand (although we didn’t hold that against them ;) ). The name of the session doesn’t mean a whole lot, really, I know. But what it was about was an online community for design students, which encompassed online coursework as well as submission and review. It really stood out to me in two ways:

a) It didn’t suck horribly. In fact, it was pretty fantastic.
b) They really “got it”, with regards to what students and staff really want out of such a system.

The first point is pretty easy to define – if you’ve ever used WebCT, you’ll know about the horrible sucking. Their system was the opposite – it was smooth, elegant, aesthetically appealing and simple. Students could obtain their assignments online, then submit them, and lecturers could keep track of everything with great ease. The marking system was great – marking was broken down into weighted categories, which could be assigned marks using a slider. In addition, each category had a whole lot of checkboxes which could be filled out to provide more detailed feedback, e.g. “Understood the application of soft lighting in this scene” or somesuch. And there was of course a provision for free-form textual feedback as well.

And there was a cool feature were you could see the distribution of overall marks in various histograms, and could adjust the current student’s mark to see how that changed the distribution. This is essential for lecturers to ensure their markings are consistent – on the first run through they mark each submission in an absolute sense, and then they go through and adjust the marks slightly to ensure the better students actually get better marks than the others. All too often I’ve seen marking go haywire for this reason, because it’s difficult with traditional submission schemes (i.e. paper) to do all this adjustment.

There were also other really nice touches, such as personalised home pages for each student which listed relevant information, news, etc. There was also a real-time slide show feature of student’s works, updating as they were handed in. In this way students could see what everyone else was submitting, and get a real sense of engagement. The speakers noted that they’d ended up setting up dedicated computers in public places to showcases these slideshows, which gathered large audiences around submission time. Very cool.

It really emphasised, in my mind, how crap La Trobe’s systems are. We have a generic, boring home page for each department – all completely different styles and arrangements just to make things difficult – and online submission consists of a jumped-up cp clone (on the Unix machines), or a web form. No marks or feedback or usually given online, or if they are it’s just a crappy Excel document.

In fact, feedback on formal submissions is generally non-exist at La Trobe. Very counter-productive.

I really hope Ric (from La Trobe ITS) saw this session – someone really needs to light a fire under the administrata at La Trobe, and get the whole system out of the 19th century.

After that session was afternoon tea, followed by the Student presentations. Yikes! I was getting pretty nervous at this point, and really running out of time to get my presentation in order. But, more on that in the next instalment. :P

The conference was placed in the Wrest Point Hotel in Hobart. Attendees flew in on the Saturday and Sunday, for the conference which kicked off in earnest Monday morning, and ran through to Wednesday afternoon.

My silly mistake to start off with was in choosing flights. There were only a few available, as the booking was to be done in just a few large groups, for efficiency and economy. The selections were made months ago, and I didn’t realise at the time that the conference fell unto to the mid-semester break. Thus, I mistakenly thought I would be missing uni during it, and so endeavoured to return as quickly as possible. That meant a flight out Wednesday night, and a silly early flight Sunday morning – departing 8:25am, to be precise. That meant, what with all the check-in and so forth to be done, that I was up at 5:00am, to be on the way to the airport by 6. My father drove me there, which provided a good opportunity to catch up, as I hadn’t been seen much for the past few weeks, on account of various uni committements. As it turns out, the trip at that hour on a Sunday was uninterrupted, and we arrived before 7am. So, we had a second breakfast and chatted for a while, before I eventually went through the metal detectors and x-rays to the boarding lounges.

I should add at this point that I am most definitely not a morning person. In fact, getting up before 6am usually makes me feel ill, as it did in this case. It wasn’t until lunch time that the “oooh, I think I’m going to throw up” sensation dissipated. Needless to say I wasn’t much with it all of Sunday.

It wasn’t long ago that I was flying to San Francisco for WWDC, and that wasn’t the first time I’d flown by any means, so the novelty had worn off somewhat. Still, I think I’ll always love that pushed-to-the-back-of-your-seat feeling as the plane first takes off, and will hopefully always appreciate and admire the amazing view one always gets from a plane. The world looks so simple and small, even from only a few kilometres up. I was one seat away from a window, 6E, so I could still see out the window. I sat next to a very pleasant older lady – and I say older in the nicest possible way, since she was probably in her fifties or possibly even sixties, but was mentally a far cry from the stereotypical senior – and on the other side a web designer, probably in his thirties or so. As is always my way, I can’t for the life of me remember either of their names. I’d forget my head if it weren’t screwed on.

Anyway, they were quite pleasant company down to Hobart. It was interesting the route we took – heading west for a wide berth around the city, then cutting across Rosebud (or thereabouts) on the Mornington Peninsula, to then turn south and cross over Philip Island. It was sporadically cloudy most of the way, so I didn’t see all that much. I would have loved to have seen more of Tasmania as we flew over, given it is reputably such a beautiful scenic place, but alas I was granted only a few brief looks as we descended into Hobart International Airport.

It’s odd how changes in pressure can effect you. Having had the flu (or somesuch) for nearly two weeks by the time of this flight, my sinuses were quite well blocked. As we flew up and decompressed slightly, my sinuses cleared very nicely, and I was having a great time. Of course, once you start to recompress on the descent, well… it can get icky. More worrisome was the pain I experienced in my neck – feeling very stiff and as if all the blood was at a very high pressure. It almost felt like I was heading towards passing out. I nearly called for assistance from the air hostesses, but didn’t want to worry anyone – most of all myself, I suspect. So, I toughed it out. It lasted only a few minutes, although after landing I did still feel a little stiff. We did descend very fast, I thought – a sentiment shared by many others, including those on other flights that day. Perhaps it is just the way it goes flying into Hobart.

But in any case, I did arrive safe and sound at Hobart International Airport. Which, if you’ve been there, you’ll no doubt find an immensely humorous name. As someone later joked, they could barely fit the name on the building. The first thing I noticed was that the only aircraft in sight, parked right under the name, was a two-seater light plane and a tiny Leerjet-style craft. I half expected the mayor and some locals to be greeting us in our great huge flying device. :)

Quite a few people were confused once they walked off the plane – which of course meant down the steps onto the tarmac, and then the short distance into the one and only building. I myself walked in and nearly all the way out of the airport before I realised that, yes, really, that was it. Several people were audibly confused that they could not see any baggage carousels. As it turns out, the “shed” we were in sufficed as baggage pick-up. 50 feet or so away it was hauled off the plane onto one of those baggage trains, which was then driven into the shed alongside us. We then watched for a few minutes while a beagle was instructed to thoroughly trample our belongings, before finally being able to pick them up and depart.

I found myself onto one of the standard airport<->hotel buses quite quickly, and was on my way. It was quite funny – there were at least 30 AUC people on that flight, possibly more. Indeed, we may well have consisted of the majority of the passengers. Yet I was not forward enough to introduce myself – it seemed everyone else knew everyone else, and in my groggy early-morning state, I wasn’t mentally equipped for actual conversation. My iPod served as a convenient escape.

Anyway, the situation on the bus was more or less the same as the plane – in fact I think only three or four of the 15ish people on the bus weren’t heading to the AUC conference. I found myself sitting just in front of two rather attractive women (older than me a little, I think, but well within my interest). Now, I’ve never been to an AUC conference before, but I do know geek events in general, and knew the odds of any woman being involved is pretty slim. So I presumed these two were unrelated to us. A pity – of course they were attending the conference, and I should have used that fact to generate some appropriate line. But, poor shy old me, no, I couldn’t summon the courage. In any case, I was enthralled with the scenery as we drove from the airport, through Hobart, out to the Wrest Point.

I must say that Hobart is probably the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. It reminded me a little bit of Sydney, only without the snobs and much nicer, and quainter. It’s so hilly, as is most of Tasmania, that nearly every house has a beautiful view over the Derwent River (which is bogus – it’s salt water and no more a river than the Yarra is to Port Philip bay, but anyway)… although I did notice that there were extraordinarily few blocks larger than about a quarter of an acre, which seemed extremely odd. Even the brand new housing estates we passed on the way, which were a good 10 minutes east of Hobart centre, were poky little quarter-acre affairs. Very strange.

Now, the check-in time for the hotel is officially 2pm or somesuch, which meant up to four hours of waiting around, potentially. They had a concierge for baggage storage, so it would have been all right, but as it turns out I was lucky enough to have a room already ready, at 10:30am or so, which meant I was straight up to drop of my crap and relax… which involved a little bit of poking around on my Powerbook – more in a moment – followed by a nice healthy nap for two hours. That brought my total sleep up to somewhere in the vicinity of seven hours, which got me through the rest of the night.

What really stunned me more than anything else that day was the view from the hotel room. When I came in the shade curtains were drawn shut… I opened them and was blown away. I was on the 9th floor, facing east, more or less. To the north I could look up the river to Hobart centre and the bridge, and to the south down out towards the Tasman sea. I was actually laughing out loud to myself at this, thinking that the AUC had really done us up sweet. I sat for a good ten minutes or more just admiring the view. I even messaged my mother, father and Bobo to tell them I’d arrived safely, and that the view was fantastic. They all thought it quite uncharacteristic, which emphasises how amazing it was.

Of course, being a true geek I inevitably whipped out the Powerbook and iSight, to try and capture the beautiful view. Unfortunately my iSight has decided not to do infinite focus anymore, so it’s all a little blurry. :( The photos are available here.

So, after a little nap and once settled in, I head downstairs and wandered around a bit, to get my bearings and see what the hotel had to offer. There were numerous restaurants and bars, a very nice outdoor area (as shown in the photos), and of course the casino areas. I never ended up going into the casino proper, although I’d wanted to – apparently no one else was willing to spend $10 or so for a half hours entertainment. :)

Eventually of course 5:30 rocked around, and it was time to the welcoming reception… which I’ll write about in the next instalment. :)

I’ve been working with the AUC for nearly three years now. And by working I mean, a student developer sponsored by them. In 2003 I received a seeding grant to develop a system for distributed processing. The area isn’t an original one, but some of my focuses were – that the system work in an ad-hoc fashion, requiring no central administration, no complex configuration, and with high security manageable by even the most basic users.

There was also an interest in very low latency operation, such that interactive programs (e.g. Photoshop) could be parallelised with this system, and deliver direct, visible benefits.

They extended the seeding grant – which included loan of a G3 iBook and other resources – through 2004. In 2005, I applied for and received the first AUC Student Scholarship (of three available, for the first time, in 2005). This was essentially to continue on with my work, but encompassed much more – the scholarship included a trip to WWDC in 2005 (which I’ll write about in much detail soon) and has blossomed into an internship at Apple this summer.

I certainly owe the AUC a great deal of appreciation and thanks. Without their support my project wouldn’t have gone very far at all, and certainly wouldn’t be alive today. Thanks to them I’ve managed to survive without a part time job during the uni year, which has meant both more time for my projects as well as uni.

I’d like to start this little stream of my journal off with tales from the AUC’s 2005 conference in Hobart, from which I returned just two days ago. So much of it is still fresh, that I’d like to get set in pixels before I lose it forever. I’ll then tackle WWDC last June, from which I gained so much and still remember like it was yesterday.