Today is the end of an era. After almost 5 years, this is my last day at Catalyst.

I started working at Catalyst in May 2004. I had about 2 years experience working in the Industry, but I'd never worked on Open Source before. I used Open Source happily, but had no idea that I could be a contributor. Suddenly, that was all to change.

My introduction into the Open Source world was through The NZ Open Source Virtual Learning Environment (NZ(OS)VLE) project, which was a NZ-Government funded project to deliver a Learning Management System that could be deployed through NZ at low cost, to encourage collaboration between all the institutions participating.

And man we did a lot of awesome work on that project. Suddenly there was Moodle being used all through NZ. The Open Polytech deployed it, and at the time it was the largest installation of Moodle in the world. I used to wake up every morning and fix performance issues, I did a huge amount of work for Postgres support, I was pretty much paid to work on Open Source full time.

Eventually NZVLE funding ran out, and we started working on commercial Moodle projects - still managing to keep a happy balance with Open Source. The elearning team, which I was the second member of by about 3 months, grew.

Mid 2006, I started working on another government funded project, to deliver a portfolio system. This was to be what NZVLE was to Learning Management Systems, to portfolios. I started off co-leading this project, that would grow into Mahara, and I fell in love with it.

Eventually, various circumstances dictated that I had to work on other projects for a while, and Mahara fell away from me into other capable hands.

Life continued. Other than the projects I worked on by day, I also collaborated with various people on other projects under the roof of Catalyst - SuperHappyDevHouse the NZ edition was born, Linuxchix stuff happened, Linux installfests, Planet Catalyst was started, at first subversively. I did mentoring, I travelled quite a lot to talk at conferences about the work we were doing, I wrote articles, I helped start the Eight....

Catalyst began to feel like a family to me - there were people there who were like cousins, some like brothers and sisters, again others favourite aunts and uncles. I don't think a single day went by where I didn't learn some new cool computer thing. Traditions were started and continued: beer o'clock, pizza thursday, hot teen vindaloos, special coffee, mjollniraptors, hot cold hot cold, g<tab>, foosball, "where's $person?" emails, so's your face, boozey lunch, thrash metal Friday, bubble wrap, red liquorice bribes, step mania, haiku battles...

But like most young New Zealanders, I wanted to travel. The mjollniraptor was to become the Inter Continental Ballistic Mjollniraptor. After a few months in London, it became clear that Catalyst UK didn't hold much appeal for me, and there were many reasons for me to go to Switzerland. Liip offered me a job and I happily accepted, and look forward to starting with them on Monday.

I'm not sure whether it's completely ridiculous or perfectly appropriate that my last day at Catalyst is Black Friday, but here ends my journey with you for now. Ka kite ano, so long & thanks for all the beer, g<tab> etc.



Edit: The most recent explodingdog is incredibly appropriate:

I am too cold to work

As of this morning, I have officially finished my 3 months with Moodle HQ, and am back on board with Catalyst fulltime (still based in London though).

The Portfolio API is "finished" - still a few things to sort out, and undoubtedly a few more bugs will shake out over the next few months.

Working for Moodle HQ has been a great experience. It turns out the flexibility of working remotely on my own time suits me pretty well.

I particularly appreciate the help of Nicolas Connault and Dan Poltawski, for sanity checking my API, writing plugins, helping me with testing and writing tests, and providing pictures of kittens.

Assuming I get it together, I will hopefully be talking about this work, and Moodle/Mahara integration at a Moodlemoot near you soon.

Yesterday I got a parcel from vex and Pauline, who I have been loosely describing as Catalyst's den mother for awhile ( yes, we are a little bit like baby bears ). I had asked vex to post over a disk I needed and it arrived with:

• red liquorice! proper red liquorice! I don't think I've had any since I left New Zealand. Long term (or even short term, probably) readers of my blog know I run on red liquorice and black coffee.
• A cat badge, which I have put on my cellphone sock
• A beautiful scarf which looks like someone knitted it, although I cannot be sure
• Spaceman cigarette and Goodnight Kiwi badges. Glee! They are going right next to my I ♥ MT VIC badge I have on my laptop bag from Bec at Beckon Design Store

Anyway, this all filled me with warm fuzzy glee and reminded me what an amazing place Catalyst is.

Observe the following from #catalyst:

12:12 <vik> release the hounds
12:13 <Mjollnir`> WHAT
12:13 <Mjollnir`> you're a hound
12:16 <Andrewbr> wow... even though Mjollnir`is no longer with us, it's like we can still see her presence in irc...
12:16 <matt> so, is that a bot, or a real Mjollnir` ?
12:17 <Andrewbr> well, we could try a capcha to find out
12:17 <matt> but we'd need a t
12:18 <Mjollnir`> why is it so fucking cold up here? is anyone else cold ?
12:18 <luke> Mjollnir` Captcha; Is the temperature a) HOT b) COLD c) just right d) a AND b
12:18 <Andrewbr> Mjollnir`: When littlefoots mother died in the original 'Land Before Time', did you feel sad?
12:18 <ben> (No cheating)
12:18 <Mjollnir`> you're a cheating)
12:18 <matt> it's a bot
12:18 <ben> bot :P
12:18 <ian> luke: hehe
12:19 <ian> .. although e) g<TAB>
12:19 * pie votes it's the real Mjollnir`
12:19 <matt> pie-bot, more likely
12:20 <pie> it's HOT! yet this morning it was COLD!!!
12:20 * pie impersonates
12:21 <matt> pfft
12:21 <Andrewbr> pie: you forgot a g<TAB>
12:21 <Mjollnir`> g<TAB>!!!! you're a g<tab> !!!
12:21 <pie> Andrewbr: g<TAB>

What do you think? Real Mjollnir? or Mjollnirbot, designed to fool #catalyst?

Subject: MJOLLIRAPTOR DEFEATED! WORLD IS SAFE AT LAST

CITIZENS OF THE BUILDING FORMERLY KNOWN AS EAGLE TECHNOLOGY HOUSE AREPARTYING IN THE KITCHEN TODAY, AS NEWS OF THE MJOLLIRAPTOR'S DEMISE AT THE HANDS OF THE CURRYCOPTER SPREAD.

"I CAN'T BELIEVE ITS ALL OVER" BLUBS PETE "JANITOR" BLACK, CURRY WATCHDOG SPOKESMAN AND LEADER OF THE CRUSADE AGAINST THE 'RAPTOR. "THINGS WERE LOOKING GRIM UNTIL THE VINDALOO HYPERCANNON FINALLY GOT UNDER THE THICK ARMOUR PLATING AND BLASTED IT ALL THE WAY TO ENGLAND! ITS A GREAT DAY.. WAAAAAA!" [1]

"ACH, MY DARK AND EVIL SERVANT HAS BEEN BANISHED!" MOANS RAJ PATEL, OWNER OF DAAWAT CURRYSERVICES. ON THESE WORDS, A SMALL WHINING SOUND CAN BE HEARD AS A VOICE ACTIVATED DETONATOR SPOOLS UP. THE WORDS "YOU'LL NEVER BE THE BOSS OF ME, BIATCH!!" CAN BE HEARD BEFORE RAJ PATEL'S ISLAND PALACE IS BLOWN TO SMITHEREENS, ALMOST CERTAINLY KILLING EVERYONE THERE.

"I MAY BE BANISHED, BUT I'LL BE BACK!" ROARS THE MJOLLIRAPTOR WHILE ENJOYING A GLASS OF SHERRY (WHATTO!) BY THE FIRE [2]. I JUST HAVE TO SEW UP THE HOLE IN MY STOMACH FIRST, AND BUY BIGGER FANGS. I HEAR THEY'RE ON SALE AT HARRODS!"

SO, IS THE WORLD SAFE FROM THE MJOLLIRAPTOR AT LAST? HAS RAJ PATEL LOST A POWERFUL ALLY OR GAINED SOME OF HIS OWN FREEDOM? AND HOW AWESOME AND TERRIFYING WOULD IT BE IF THE MJOLLIRAPTOR HAD EVEN BIGGER TEETH THAN IT DOES CURRENTLY?! FIND OUT TODAY AT http://hotteenvindaloos.com/ !

[1] AS HE BREAKS DOWN CRYING, YOUR INTREPID REPORTER KINDLY HANDS HIM A CUP OF TEA AND A BISCUIT
[2] CAUSED BY ITS IMPACT CRATER

set envelope_from

Turns out my landlord's mailserver has been configured to disallow mail with an unroutable envelope from. So I told mutt to set it to From: and I told exim to allow my user to do so and now mail gets through.

It seems as though this is a pretty common case. The default for exim seems to be to disallow envelope from munging, and qualify_domain is clearly not going to default to anything helpful like @catalyst.net.nz for me, so the default case is that the envelope from will be unrouteable ( from my workstation at least ).

Not the best time (re: moving) for mail to my landlord to just silently not arrive.

PS I hate exim.

The final thing I was waiting for to come through has arrived, and now I can announce:

I'm leaving. Moving to London initially, but I hope to be in Europe proper by the end of the year. I'm not really leaving Catalyst yet, I'll still be loosely tied to them, and for the next few months I'm going to be working on the Moodle Portfolio API & Mahara Integration for Moodle 2.0.

I'm leaving New Zealand on May 21 (which is also my last day at Catalyst here), and will have a few weeks holiday, continuing the Penny and Martin Adventure, before arriving in London June 15.

For those who know and care about my little black cat, Andypants is moving into my Mt Vic flat and taking over the lease, and Nothing will stay there with him.

And yes I am well aware that I tried to ragequit elearning, and have clearly failed. I can't say I am surprised in the slightest, and I'm super looking forward to working fulltime on Moodle upstream.

After the Portfolio integration is done, I'm not sure what will be next. I do want to keep working in elearning and ideally on Mahara, but I expect it to shake out over the next month or so.

Today looked like:

New Samuel Flynn Scott & Bunnies on Ponies CD -> abcde -> cd drive anger -> try usb cd drive -> still cd drive anger -> remembering recent dist-upgrade -> split:

a) go to another machine to use cd drive -> fetch abcde.conf -> no cdinfo in cddb -> enter cd info -> get it wrong -> retag oggs

b) do another dist-upgrade -> hit #477194 -> flail about -> find debian bug -> use workaround -> continue dist-upgrade -> cups problems -> bang head on desk and start drinking beer

remerge -> try again to use the cd drive -> epic failure -> fury -> more beer.

For the lazyweb purposes, dmesg is full of

UDF-fs: No partition found (1)
hdd: command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdd: command error: error=0x54 { AbortedCommand LastFailedSense=0x05 }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown
ATAPI device hdd:
Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05)
Illegal mode for this track or incompatible medium -- (asc=0x64, ascq=0x00)
The failed "Read 10" packet command was:
"28 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 "
end_request: I/O error, dev hdd, sector 64
isofs_fill_super: bread failed, dev=hdd, iso_blknum=16, block=16


Multiple other people with same problem found, but none of them seem to have a solution. Sysadmins say: who cares, you're leaving, don't bother spending too much time on it.

I haven't rebooted yet, I'm too scared.

Today I was whinging about how hot it was, and David helpfully came up with the following:

13:12 <lurbs> Menopause?

and then:

14:19 <Mjollnir`> HOT
22:21 <Mjollnir`> that was HOT
13:39 <Mjollnir`> FUCK ITS COLD
22:55 <Mjollnir`> it's COLD
14:57 <Mjollnir`> why is it so FUCKING COLD
09:22 <Mjollnir`> it's COLD
18:57 <Mjollnir`> HOT
19:28 <Mjollnir`> it's HOT
21:54 <Mjollnir`> COLD
15:51 <Mjollnir`> lurbs: HOT
10:26 <Mjollnir`> COLD COLD COLD
10:31 <Mjollnir`> why is it so FUCKING COLD
11:25 <Mjollnir`> TOO COLD
11:30 <Mjollnir`> COLD
11:31 <Mjollnir`> why is it so fucking COLD
14:22 <Mjollnir`> COLD
16:21 <Mjollnir`> it's COLD ffs
09:31 <Mjollnir`> why is it so COLD
13:56 <Mjollnir`> HOT
12:44 <Mjollnir`> SHIT HOT
15:42 <Mjollnir`> HOT
12:12 <Mjollnir`> HOT DOG
15:48 <Mjollnir`> HOT
20:26 <Mjollnir`> HOT
20:32 <Mjollnir`> HOT
13:33 <Mjollnir`> HOT
14:03 <Mjollnir`> did anyone else notice that it's fucking COLD
18:54 <Mjollnir`> HOT
10:11 <Mjollnir`> HOT
13:12 <Mjollnir`> TOO HOT


I maintain it is the air conditioning. I know I just had a birthday, but I was only 28, ffs.

So it appears that Matthew Holloway is coming to work at Catalyst, and this is causing some alarm amongst my co-workers who have somehow managed to get the idea that I hate him.

So to clarify once and for all, yes, I fired Sam Vilain as my nemesis in favour of Matthew about a year ago, who has remained Number One Nemesis to this day, but I don't hate either of them.

In fact I would think it to be a rather large compliment to Matthew to be named my Number One Nemesis. But to be specific, I think it's great he's coming to work at Catalyst, and he'll be a very valuable addition to the rather large dysfunctional family that Catalyst is.

In the interests of full disclosure, I will transcribe some of the original Haiku Battle between Matthew and I, with additions from Brett, that formed the inspiration for the epic battle between Nat and I after eGovtBarCamp:

Matthew:
Penny Nemesis,
XY chromosome trumps all
Sorry for your loss

Penny:
Unfortunately,
Matthew had to change his name.
Harden the fuck up

Brett:
What is it good for?
Can't we all just get along?
Honorary Male

There were other poems, but none of them were haiku.

Via Brenda

I'm going back to work today after two weeks of holiday, spent learning to dive & becoming certified, and then frolicking around the South Island with a visiting Martin, and then an obligatory webstock experience.

I'm ridiculously bad at blogging these days, but luckily Martin isn't, so hop off over here to read about Phase 1 of the adventure (Wellington) and Phase 2 of the adventure (the road trip). Photos are on flickr.

Webstock (the tiny bit I saw) was amazing, I'm really sad I missed most of it. There was bad behaviour in the photo booth with ducks.

My other big news I guess, is that I've left elearning at Catalyst and am moving to another project. I've been in elearning for almost 4 years, right from the start pretty much. This is a pretty sad move, but it's definitely overdue. Realistically, it's pretty unlikely that I'll find much time to continue to do any work on Moodle or Mahara in my spare time, so this is goodbye to both of those too for a little while at least. So long & thanks for all the fish!

On Friday, I received the following email:

From: "moodle mug"
To: penny@catalyst.net.nz
Cc: all catalyst employees
Subject: SoMEwHERe a LiTtLe mUg WAiTs...



However, this morning there was a box at reception for me, containing the moodle mug and three packets of red liquorice. Judging by the packaging, I suspect sysadmins.

From: "moodle mug"
To: penny@catalyst.net.nz
Cc: all catalyst employees
Subject: PrOOf of SoCial LIFe



At least it has good taste in bars, it takes after its owner.

After yesterday's BLATANT and UNREASONABLE kidnapping of my moodle mug, today's currymail was:

Subject: "MOODLE MUG" TERRORIST KILLED BY "WRATH OF PADDLESHIP"

THE "MOODLE MUG" TERRORIST HAS FINALLY MET HIS MATCH AFTER WINDING UP HIS INTENDED TARGET "PADDLESHIP" [1] UNTIL IT BODYSLAMMED HIM OFF THE ROOF OF THE BUILDING FORMERLY KNOWN AS EAGLE TECHNOLOGY HOUSE.

"WELL IT ALL LOOKED TO ME LIKE A PATHETIC GRAB FOR ATTENTION" SAYS SAM "I CAN'T ORGANISE A COUP" VILAIN. "THE UNDERWEAR DIDN'T ATTRACT ENOUGH ATTENTION, BUT THE MUG HIJACKING GOT THE TERRORIST THE FULL ATTENTION OF THE PADDLESHIP ALRIGHT. IT MUST REALLY ADORE THAT MUG ACTUALLY, HOW CUTE -- WAIT THE PADDLESHIP DOESN'T SHOW LOVE DOES IT?"

YOUR INTREPID REPORTER LEAVE HIM PONDERING THAT THOUGHT AND GOES TO ASK EYEWITNESSES ABOUT THE FINAL PADDLESHIP ATTACK. "OH IT WAS AWFUL! A BLOODCURLING BATTLECRY, A TERRIFIED SCREAM, I NEARLY CRIED!" LAUGHED PETE "I RESIGNED TO GET AWAY FROM CURRYMAIL DUTIES" BLACK. FOR SOME REASON HE APPEARS TO FIND IT ALL HYSTERICALLY FUNNY, BUT THAT MIGHT CHANGE WHEN HE GETS BACK TO HIS DESK TO FIND JOSH HAS BROKEN HIS BASS GUITAR.

"WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS, WHERE IS THE CURRY COPTER IN TIMES LIKE THESE?" EXCLAIMS PETE "EVIL PETE" BULMER. "ONE ROUND FROM THE VINDALOO HYPERCANNON AND THEY'D BOTH BE TOAST, BUT NOW WE HAVE TO LIVE IN FEAR OF THE WRATH OF THE PADDLESHIP! HMM, THAT MIGHT BE A GOOD MOVIE TITLE... OR HOW ABOUT 'PADDLESHIP VS. MJOLLIRAPTOR'?".

SO WHO WAS THE MOODLE MUG TERRORIST? WHERE IS THE CURRY COPTER? AND SINCE WHEN IS PETERB A DIRECTOR? FIND OUT AT http://hotteenvindaloos.com/ TODAY!

[1] POCKET BATTLESHIP