January is here and it's that time of year for penguin-lovers everywhere to make their annual migration south to Australia to flock together. Linux.conf.au is one of the world's most popular technical Linux conferences, and for it's 10th anniversary is being held at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. The conference runs for a week, with two days of mini-confs followed by the main conference programme and culminating in an Open Day on Saturday.

I'm looking at attending the Linux Kernel and Virtualisation mini-confs, with a glance in at the LinuxChix and Systems Administration streams. The main body of the conference I haven't looked at too closely yet - a traditional part of the fun on the first day is sitting down with my colleagues and going over the programme to see which talks we'll be attending. It's a given that we'll be attending Steven Ellis of OpenMedia's talks to heckle support our former colleague.

This year I'll be blogging my impressions of the conference for LinuxJournal.com, thanks to our wonderful webmistress Katherine, who is extremely patient with my inability to remember how to use my LinuxJournal account for longer than 24 hours at a time.

I'm trying very hard to take fewer gadgets than last time, although the list of shiny things I can't bear to be parted from is growing alarmingly. My excuse is that I'm a journalist, and I need them to do my job. Honest.

I'll be using my EeePC 1000H running Intrepid as my main computer for blogging, processing photographs in Canon RAW and keeping in touch. I'm taking my Canon 400D DSLR with the 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS as my standard walkaround, with the 24mm f/1.4 L for capturing shots of the conference indoors. My 50mm f/1.8 is coming too by virtue of being cheap, light, fast, and sharp.

Now I just need to finish packing and see if I can squeeze in another EeePC, and I'll see everyone there!