Play About a Greek Nursing Home: Bittersweet Comedy

Last night I had an unexpected invitation to "The Plot", a play by Evdokia Katahanas and directed by Sophie Kelly at the Mantouridion Theatre, Marrickville, Sydney. The play chronicles a few days at an aged care centre, run for the Greek community. It is about the politics of staff versus a governing board, political ambition, personal relationships in the workplace and testing the bonds of friendship.

The Play starts with the main character as a little girl singing "You'll Never Walk Alone"reminiscent of the start of "Jerusalem" at New Theater Sydney (2013), which was also about an idealistic individual battling an uncaring organization. The Plot is not as frantic as Jerusalem, with more warmth.

Most of the play is set in a nursing home, with a hospital bed dominating the otherwise mostly bare stage. The play starts well, but ends abruptly, perhaps like a Greek tragedy, where the message is that mortals come and go but the goods of fate go on.

The Mantouridion Theatre is also know as "The Greek Theatre" and usually puts on ancient Greek classics in Greek. But "The Plot" is a new work in English (altough the themes are ageless).  The Theatre is located in the Addison Road Community Centre (Marrickville, Sydney) and is worth a visit on its own. This former Army Barracks  is now home to the Sidetrack Theatre, several child care centres, art galleries and recycling centres.

The Plot, runs until 1 March 2015 at the Mantouridion Theatre, Sydney. I could not find a website for the theatre, but you can book tickets online at TryBooking.com

Solar powered world electric bicycle tourist in Sydney

"Guim" is on a Electric Bicycle World Tour with a towed solar power trailer. He is being supported by Glow Worm Bicycles in Sydney and will be in the store, along with his bicycle, 7pm, 20 May 2010 for a free presentation.

CeBit Sydney Opens with Innovative Thinking

Greetings from the opening of CeBit Sydney. I arrived a little late, towards the end of the opening plenary session. David Gonski, from Investec was answering a question on education for innovation. He was arguing against closed book examinations: it is not about the memorisation of facts, but what you can do with the information. He was also arguing against short term-ism. This stuck a cord with me, as I am have told my colleagues at ANU I will no longer set closed book paper based examinations. and am talking on this nxt month at the Moodle conference in Melbourne: "Using Moodle for Postgraduate Professional Education with eBooks and Smartphones".

Dr. Werner Vogels, from Amazon Web Services was the next speaker and was a disappointment. In his own words Dr. Vogels was doing a self serving sales pitch for Amazon's cloud computing services (he was intending to be ironic, but it was an accurate description of the presentation). He claimed cloud computing is a new and disruptive technology. These claims are, of course, nonsense.

Cloud computing is a reworking of the idea of computer bureaus, which are decades old. This concept is so old than many now in IT and business are not aware of it, as computer bureaus died out long before they were borne. Cloud computing is different in that it provides higher levels of standardisation and has a standard network technology (The Internet). But otherwise cloud computing is just 21st. century computer bureaus. The same business and technical issues apply as were investigated extensively decades ago.

Before accepting any of the claims Dr. Vogels made in his extended sales pitch today it would be useful to look back at the literature and see what experience showed about the benefits and problems of this, one of the oldest concepts in computing. Professor Roger Clarke will be doing that 28 May 2010 at the ANU in Canberra with a seminar on "User Requirements for Cloud Computing Architecture".

CeBit Sydney are running seven parallel conferences over several days as well as a trade exhibition. The plenary session I am in seems to be about half full. I am speaking tomorrow in the enterprise conference on mobile web (at last I think that is what I am speaking in, as it was changed and I find the parallel conference streams bewildering).

My presentation is about how to optimise web sites for mobile devices and search optimisation. As usual, I prepared my presentation as a web page of notes which, via some extra CSS and Javascript turns into a slide show. Ironically for a conference about use of the web, this is something the CeBit organiser have been unable to cope with and keep asking for Powerpoint slides.

In contrast to CeBit, the Moodle Moot in Melbourne in July is a good example of this new approach. The Moot is doing the obvious and using Moodle to help with the organising. Each speaker gets a Moodle "Course" on the conference web site to provide materials about their presentation (mine is: "Using Moodle for Postgraduate Professional Education with eBooks and Smartphones". The course is pre-filled with the abstract for the presentation, but the speaker can add other materials and use Moodle's interactive features to contact the delegates, before, during and after the event.

The CeBit event has partners including the Department of Defence (DSTO), NICTA and CSIRO. It is not clear why these organisations are spending funds on such an event. These organisations are not in the business of selling products and there does not seem to be a good reason to spend public money on such promotion.

However, these are minor quibbles over what is the least important part of a conference. Unless I am speaking, I usually avoid attending the formal presentations of a conference. What is important for me are the informal contacts outside the sessions and the trade exhibition. By these criteria CeBit has already been a success. As I was queuing to get my badge I saw two people I needed to talk to. I have not been to the exhibition floor, but expect it to be as good as usual.

Glow Worm Bicycles

Looking for the Addison Road Centre in Sydney on Friday, I noticed a group of people in a brightly lit shop with electric bicycles. This turned out to be the opening of Maurice Wells' Glow Worm Bicycles store. On display were a few different models of electric as well as pedal-only bicycles. Glow Worm claim to have the lightest electric bicycles in Australia, at 18kg. The lithium 36V 10Ah battery packs are in removable cartridges locked onto the bicycle frame with a key. You can remove the battery and carry it indoors by the built in handle, for charging.

On the bike I took for a brief test ride the battery is mounted vertically, low down behind the seat post (even more so on the "Lucky Legs" step through model). This helps with the balance, having the weight low down. However, it results in a more complex frame. Other models, such as the one in the photo with Maurice, have the battery horizontally under the carrier over the back wheel. This requires less engineering but results in more weight higher up.

The bikes have standard gears, brakes and other equipment. Apart from the battery at the back, there is an electric motor mounted in the oversize hub of the front wheel, and a throttle lever next to the left handgrip. It only takes a few seconds to get used to controlling the motor speed. The hard part is remembering to pedal, rather than just let the electric motor carry you along. Claims performance is 25km/h and a range of 20-50km.

Maurice said there was also a folding electric model available, but not on display. Other options include solar charging.

At the launch I met Jerry Desousa, CEO, Timor Air, (flag carrier airline of East Timor) who pased Maurice's skills as an alternatvie energy technology engineer, installing solar systems in East Timor (Timor-Leste).