While we have (sadly) had a lower sponsorship response than previous years for various reasons, we have been extremely lucky to retain several key sponsors so far - Thycotic, Storagecraft, and CommsIT!

Thanks to these awesome sponsors, the AuTechHeads Party will once again be held on the Gold Coast this year.  It's our third year, and we've loved bringing it to you every time. Last year, we played host to over 300 people, and a great time was had by all.

Returning this year as major sponsor is Thycotic, who'd like to express their appreciation for their Australian customers with a party, after a great response to a similar idea at Tech.Ed North America.

Naturally you won't need to be a customer of a sponsor in order to come along, but we do plan to issue priority invitations for customers again. Representatives of our ...

It's been a bit of a dry month for me in blog updates, or any updates really. The past couple of weeks in particular has been occupied by incredibly bad Dell service for my notebook.

So in lieu of inspiration for new content, here are some new reviews.

Civilization V - Gods and Kings

Surprisingly packed expansion. Religion makes a huge difference. Better diplomacy. Makes the game much longer overall. Better than first release.

Minecraft for Xbox

So I caved in to my kids. Not too bad actually. More accessible than PC version.Warning: major time sink.

Dwarf Fortress 0.34.11

The 2012 release keeps getting better. A surprisingly solid bugfix release. Clearing kill orders after completion is a definite win.

I occasionally get new games, and try to review them, but often don't get around to it. With this in mind, I wondered if it was the burden of writing so much about a given game, knowing that people will have their own differing views and opinions. There's also the challenge of knowing when to stop playing and write it - finish the game first, or get some way in and then write about the experience? And since I'm buying the games, I get the joy of reflecting upon the fact that I blew near $100 on a turkey, or that I don't get paid to review games.

So enough with that idea. I figure that most game reviews are far too long, and this kind of annoys me. I figure that if a game really is great, okay, maybe that justifies a long review, but the bulk of games just don't justify it. So I've decided to go with a new game review format, until I change my mind or get bored with the idea. I figure everything I think about a given game should fit into twenty words. Not "or less", and not "give or take a couple". ...

A few months back, I left my public sector role. I had to return my notebook and desktop computer, of course, and so a top priority was to replace them. For myself, a notebook is everything, and I remain ecstatic over my Alienware M17x R3 purchase. It's simply an awesome piece of hardware, and it's served me brilliantly.

I just reminded myself, though, that I never reviewed the desktop computer (I'm glad I took my time, though, as time has changed my opinion for good reason, as you'll see). I suppose that the simplest reason is that I don't use it - it's primarily used by the rest of the family. I had to have a desktop PC to work from home previously, to satisfy OH&S requirements, but otherwise I'm perfectly happy to use my notebook. The same is largely true with my wife and children - unbelievably, they each have notebooks, leading me to reminisce on "ye olde days" when the first computer we had was a Commodore 64, plugged into the lounge room TV - computer usage was a pure luxury.

No ...

Dwarf Fortress is a game.

…

What? You want more?

Dwarf Fortress is a dwarven life simulation written by Toady One of Bay 12 Games.
If you have enjoyed this review, why not check out ...

…

What? Still not enough? Sigh … okay. Here goes.

…
Slaves to Armok: God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress is a horrendously bug-laden, incredibly inaccessible, and incomprehensible game that's still only in Alpha after many years of development, and with no end in sight to development. At the same time, it's also possibly the single most fun game ever written, and purportedly the inspiration for Minecraft. It's certainly given me plenty of enjoyment.

Like many others, I stumbled on Dwarf Fortress via Something Awful and their Let's Play Forums. One of the most well-regarded Let's Play threads around, Boatmurdered, is often the first introduction anyone has to the game. Boatmurdered was a succession game ...

Hi All,

Quick post to let everyone know that the AuTechHeads are getting together for social drinks on December 3, 7pm after Infrastructure Saturday. We're meeting at the Villager in Brisbane.

All AuTechHeads members are welcome, attending Infrastructure Saturday is not a prerequisite so please spread the word and RSVP so we can book the venue with correct numbers.If you're a new member or you're looking to meet some new people in the group please come along and introduce yourself.

If you're interested in sponsoring this event or future events please get in touch with any of the core team members.

Where: The Villager, 185 George Street, Brisbane
When: 7pm - lateWhat: Drinks (Beer & Wine) + Snacks & a lucky door prize all sponsored by TechSmith !

Numbers are limited
RSVP by November 30

Yes, we know it's next Monday, and a school night, but hopefully we will see you there!

Venue has been confirmed as Squires Loft City Steakhouse at 12 Goldie Place, Melbourne 3000, booked for 7.30PM.  RSVP is mandatory for numbers reasons, so please use the registration form below or tweet us.  Please hit either @hjmcmanus or @chrisbrownie up on Twitter.

Officical hashtag is #MelbourneMeatUp so check it out!

Link to map of venue here.

I recently moved on from my IT Manager job within the NSW Government, and a top priority for me was to buy a new notebook and desktop computer - the old ones having gone back to my employer. I don't use a desktop myself, but the family does for various purposes, and they've fallen in love with the All-in-one touchscreen style; I'll review that one next. I'm in the habit of using a notebook for everything, and I find I need a fairly high powered specification to meet my many and varied needs, including;

While my work notebooks have grown ever greater in power, they've never totally suited my needs - the closest I'd come was a HP Elitebook, but I've found the HP offerings can be quite inflexible and limiting within my price range. There are plenty of HP notebooks that do suit people, and I feel they're quite good for business use (with a decent SOE), ...

Cross-posted from my blog, ClubDUH!

WARNING: Contains rude words tweeted in anger; adult concepts and immature computer hardware. Sharing a few hours of my life that I’ll never get back in the hope that I’ll save someone else from enduring the same saga.

It was shortly after 6pm on Thursday night and I was about to leave the office. I checked my mobile and was excited to find a new gadget, that I hadn’t heard of before, was available at Officeworks, here in Australia. Wh0o0o0o!

I immediately went googling and quicky found a video of the LG LSM-100 in action. Naturally, I tweeted my excitement at what I’d found:

I was lucky enough to attend TechEd again this year and had a fantastic week. Like most people I’m heading back to work with tons of new ideas and a renewed enthusiasm in the technology I work with every day. If you missed it this year, this is my wrap up.

Highlight:
The most amazing part of this week for me personally was winning runner up in the Microsoft Women in IT Community Contributor Award. I was genuinely shocked when I was called up and I’m still really touched that people thought of me. For those of you that nominated me, a massive thank you. I meant a lot to me and has really inspired me to keep at it.

Of course the biggest thank you goes to Catherine Eibner (@ceibner) who does lots of hard work to help promote the WIT cause. I think she does a stellar job and deserves to be recognised for her hard work. 

Speaker/ Sessions Highlights:
My favourite sessions were delivered by Rhonda Layfeild (@deploym ...

Wow. What a night the AuTechHeads Party turned out to be. No less than 300 people came along on Tuesday night for free food and drink, networking, fun, and prizes! The buzz and atmosphere was fantastic, laughs were had by all, and boy did we demolish that drinks budget (twice)!

I'd particularly like to congratulate the winners of our various prizes:

 @JinOhChoi - winner of the 5 day DDLS Microsoft course

@MikeRedden - winner of the Telerik Ultimate Collection for .NET

@OrinThomas - winner of the iPad 2, courtesy of Vonage Time To Call

Brenton Smith - TechSmith Snagit and Camtasia!

I'll be making sure Orin, Brenton, and Mike get their prizes ASAP!

Thanks once again to all those who came along, and to our awesome sponsors - we couldn't possibly have done it without you! And we hope to do it again next year ... bigger and better yet again!

I've had some great feedback and stories already from people, I have some hilarious video t ...

"So, how do you improve on giving away an iPad 2, a 5 day Microsoft course, and the Telerik Ultimate Collection?" That was the question that Betsy Weber, Chief Evangelist from our latest sponsor TechSmith, posed to me today. "That's easy, Betsy!" I answered, "Give away your awesome products!" 

And so it came to pass. TechSmith have very kindly added copies of Snagit and Camtasia to our awesome list of prizes!

Snagit and Camtasia are legendary products. From screen captures to recording, they can help you to make awesomely professional presentations, handouts, and video. Whether it's technical documentation, training materials, or even sales info, they'll make you look good!

Betsy will be at the AuTechHeads Party herself to help us give them away - it's her first time in Australia, and what better introduction to the locals than taking part in our 2nd annual event! Say hi to her and make her feel welcome!

You must, of course, be at the AuTechHeads Party 2011 ...

So we've told you of the pre-party competition to win an iPad 2.

We've told you about the opportunity to win a 5 day Microsoft course from DDLS.

What more could you possibly want??? Okay, what about one for the developers among you?

Our returning sponsor Telerik has generously thrown us a license for the Telerik Ultimate Collection for .NET! An award winning package with best-of-breed UI and productivity controls from Telerik, one of the masters of rapid application development! It retails for $1,999 USD on their website, with around $8,000 worth of value!

We use the Ultimate Collection at my work, and it was an essential part of our open source Snomtastic project. Telerik controls are used throughout the AuTechHeads site, too. There's simply no doubt that Telerik know their stuff, that they really deliver solutions that simplify application deployment, and that this is a seriously awesome prize!

To win, you must be at the AuTechHeads Pa ...

So we've already kicked off the season of giveaways with a bang, with the pre-party competition to win an iPad 2.

"But Matt," I hear you ask. "That competition allows people who won't be at the party to win - what of those who are coming along? Will we be left out in the cold, doomed to enjoy free drinks, food, networking, and to listen to the terrible wonderful jokes to select the winner of the iPad 2?"

 Well, do we have the prize for you! DDLS have generously offered a 5-day Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) course, valued at $3,400 inc GST, for one lucky party goer. DDLS is the trusted learning solutions partner for Australian organisations, and a proud sponsor of the AuTechHeads Party!

 We'll be sure to concoct a means to give this baby away at the party - in the meantime, make sure you RSVP! We're fast heading toward capacity and we'd love to see you there!

To win, you must be at the AuTechHeads Party 2011 by T ...

In ze build-up to zer party, ve vill be giffink avay einer iPad Zwei, zanks to..*thwack*

I'm sorry, I'll read that again.

In the build-up to the AuTechHeads Party 2011, we will be giving away an Apple iPad 2 32Gb WiFi, thanks to Vonage Time To Call! You need to enter before the party, but we'll pick the winner at the AuTechHeads Party! Note: You do not have to attend the party to win, but it's free so if you'll be up at the Gold Coast on 30th August, RSVP NOW!

Vonage is introducing the Time To Call app for Apple iPhone and iPad mobile devices, bringing affordable phone calls that can be charged to your iTunes account. 

Time To Call is simple to use: select the country you want to call and tap to buy a 15 minutes phone call. The amount is charged directly to your iTunes account and you can then place your call. Calls to landline or mobile numbers cost th ...

Last year we held the first ever AuTechHeads party during Tech.Ed 2010, and it was a resounding success - over 200 people descended on Waxy's Irish Pub at Surfer's Paradise, following the Tech.Ed Australia welcome party! We had some great prizes, free food and drinks, and an overall awesome time.

Hold on to your seats, because we're doing it again this year! We're planning to hold it after the Welcome Party again, and Waxy's will be the venue of choice once more. We've been working to meet our budget targets, and I can say that we're definitely going to be ready to roll come 30th August!

As with last year, we expect to start receiving people just after 9pm, with the party kicking off around 9:30. To ensure Tech.Ed attendees and speakers get plenty of sleep, we'll wind up the formal party by around 12am.

The focus this year will be on networking and socialising, as we don't want to heavily encumber the evening with prize giveaways - but there will still be some awesome ones. And mos ...

It's been a good week of discovering cloud services for me. I just blogged about Cloudflare, but I also wanted to talk about a piece of software I recently discovered that makes my life incredibly easier - Gladinet.

 I have used cloud services for personal backup for a while - whether Dropbox for my Android phone (using a feature of Titanium backup) or Windows Live Mesh to sync my working documents across Windows machines, I've found cloud services incredibly helpful to ensure I'm backed up at all times. When I'm at home, SyncToy takes a secondary copy of my documents to my Windows Home Server - which I can then access via Microsoft's online WHS service - but the cloud gives me an essential offsite backup capability that gives me a great deal of peace of mind.

The problem with Dropbox and Live Mesh is that they're quite limited in space. Dropbox gives you 2Gb free, with the ability to expand slightly by inviting friends to the service, or to pay for more storage on a monthly basis. Liv ...

Portal 2, the sequel to the Orange Box smash Portal, was released last Tuesday, to an overwhelmingly positive reception. Let's take a look at why this positive reaction is somewhat justified! 

I must start with a disclaimer - while I will try and avoid spoilers wherever possible, its certainly possible for me to give away parts of the plot that might not be common knowledge. It's certainly nothing that you can't find out by going to the Wikipedia page! But if you haven't played it, don't be disappointed if I give anything away.

Portal 2 Cover (Valve, inc. Retrieved from Wikipedia under WikiMedia Creative Commons License)

Portal 2 starts with a rude awakening from stasis, by a personality core called Wheatley, brilliantly voiced by Stephen Merchant (The Office, Extras, The Tooth Fairy). He leads you through the Aperture Laboratory facility, which is overgrown and dilapidated after ...

As geeks¹, we NEED the latest SpankySoft hardware. We CRAVE it.  We’d sacrifice our first-born (or favourite pet) for it, and unsurprisingly, this is where the wife² acceptance factor starts to emerge. As a rule, partners like to be involved in purchasing decisions, and they don’t often share the irrational ‘MUST HAVE’ gene that seems endemic to the geek population. Also, they tend to like the kids/pets/neighbours/rest of mankind.

So when the SpankyPhone 5 comes out, hailed by the company’s CEO as the greatest thing since frontal lobotomies, these lucky geeks who have access to sex suddenly find that they have to deal with a new factor beyond “I have money and I want it” – one that might actually prefer the lobotomy option. Congratulations. You’ve just run into the Wife Acceptance Factor.

The Wife Acceptance Factor, according to legend, emerged back in the dawn of time

[Updated 9th February 2012 - please see comments for my answer re HP xw4400 and WHS 2011]

Windows Home Server is somewhat of a strange beast. It hasn’t exactly taken the world by storm, especially outside of the US in places like Australia, where – until relatively recently – it was available only as an OEM software license, and you had to build your own hardware. WHS is intended to be a pure OEM offering, as such – manufacturers like HP, Acer, et al, are meant to sell it to you within their own purpose built hardware, with value adds and nice little touches for good measure. HP, for example, delivered a range of extra add-ins in their bundle (no longer though – they abandoned the platform).

There still doesn’t seem to be a great penetration for WHS after some years. Microsoft haven’t really marketed it that heavily, and my experience is that not only have most consumers not heard of it, but neither have most computer retailers. Wh ...