Ti Point Tork

Teaching Kids Computer Skills and Programming

May 11, 2008 – 2:21 pm
Last year, Kiwi Foo Camp acted as a fundraiser for my kids' local primary school. Around 60 kids, 3.5 teachers, and at the time they had around six old Windows 2000 and Windows XP boxes in various stages of decay. They'd planned to buy new computers but were making the "Macs are too expensive" noises. I gave them the Foo money and said, "use this to buy Macs". They were able to buy nine bright shiny new Macbooks. Once they had the computers, I came in to teach the kids how to use them. I started with the basics (keyboard, trackpad, power switch, desktop, menu bar, dock, finder) and before long they were making presentations in Keynote and having fun. One of the teachers got right into it and one day I came in to find them all making amazing music in GarageBand, a program ...

Posted in Technology | 1 Comment »

How Cuckoos Do It

May 8, 2008 – 12:23 pm
I was editor for the first edition of Programming PHP and, like all O'Reilly books, there was a vigorous discussion with the authors about which animal should be on the cover. All the recognizable megafauna have gone and we're left with different types of birds, bugs, and fish, so conversations about covers inevitably start from a "hey, I was expecting to choose between elephant and tiger, and you gave me a friggin bird!" handicap. Programming PHP was no different. In almost every case in O'Reilly history, authors focus on the negative aspects of an animal. The main exception was Larry Wall, who came up with the positive story for Programming Perl's camel: thrives in harsh environment; not pretty but gets the job done; etc. We took the same approach with cuckoos: "yeah sure, they lay their eggs in other birds' nests, but think of it as minimal ...

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National’s Broadband Plans

May 3, 2008 – 6:20 pm
I see in Rod Drury's blog that National have released their first real economic policy and it's to do with funding fibre-to-the-home in NZ. It's good! Anyone who travels knows how dire the bandwidth situation is here, and it's worse on the ground. For me, bandwidth = productivity. I don't buy Rod Drury's productivity maths; productivity is the increase in value added by a process, e.g. for manufacturing the value of outputs over the cost of inputs, labour, and land. I could add more value (earn more) if I have faster Internet access to the rest of the world. I'd be able to read more, write more, and create more billable outputs if I wasn't constantly waiting for web pages to load or Ajax apps to update. At the moment, I can't video or audio iChat with colleagues in the US. I can't even Skype most ...

Posted in Business, New Zealand | No Comments »

Telecom hosting not worth the premium

March 17, 2008 – 1:48 pm
A client made the decision to use Telecom as their web site host. I argued against it because the price differential was so great between Telecom and, well, anyone else. The client's management decided to go with solid blue chip Telecom. The service we've had from them has been such unmitigated shit that I'm astonished Telecom is still in business. You'd think the premium would get you better customer service or at least efficiency, but it doesn't. I've been on hold for, let's see, 18 minutes so far (listening to "come together ... right now ... over me" every 3 minutes) with nary a human in sight. If your choice is between Mad Ken's Shonky Web Hosting and Telecom's business packages, turn to Mad Ken every day--you'll get the same shitty service but at least you won't be paying through the nose for it. I'm calling them ...

Posted in Business, New Zealand | No Comments »

Ubicomp and ubisec

March 17, 2008 – 11:30 am
Read this ABC news story on digital frames coming with viruses installed if you want a glimpse at an unpleasant future. Ubicomp ("ubiquitous computing", aka spimes aka real world objects with computation and network capability) promises wonderful things: fridges and pantries that network to produce your shopping list, art that knows who's looking at it, etc. But where there's a networked CPU there's a botnet-in-waiting. Reading this ComputerWorld article I see that the frames only infected the PC if you plugged it into the USB port to load with pictures. How long before a networked photo frame sniffs packets, portscans, and mails passwords back to the mothership? It's a shame that infected PCs are so cheap (that link is to a PDF on the malware industry by Kiwi Foo attendee Peter Gutmann) that there's not a business model in having the botnet creators subsidize the manufacture ...

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Travelocity are incompetent fuckwits suckled at Satan’s poisonous nipples

March 17, 2008 – 12:46 am
I took a trip to ETech earlier this month. I initially attempted to book the trip using Travelocity but it turned into a massive clusterfuck of their making. I've documented it below in case you, my lovely reader, need any reason to avoid this dribbling shit trickle of a company running down the thighs of modern travel. If you hate people whining about (incredibly incredibly bad) customer service, skip this message now. You have been warned .... It began, as all good nightmares do, on the web. I booked a multi-city trip: AKL-LAX, then SAN-LAX-AKL (I drove LAX to SAN). Or, at least, I thought I booked it. Within a few hours I got an email message: Subject: Unable to ticket reservation From: memberservices@travelocity.com Date: 17 February 2008 3:22:37 AM To: nathan@torkington.com Thank you for booking your travel reservations with Travelocity.com. We are unable to complete ...

Posted in Business, Rant | No Comments »

Zuckerberg Interview: FFS!

March 12, 2008 – 2:19 pm
Now that Silicon Valley is slowly returning trickling back from Austin, I'd like to post something I wrote during The Zuckerberg Interview Soap Opera ... This is an example of the intellectuanal Ouroboros that hits Silicon Valley in waves. Let's see what's wrong with this intarwebs blow up, shall we? Who in their right mind goes to a keynote with Mark Zuckerberg and is DISAPPOINTED when it goes wrong? What the fuck did you EXPECT? I mean, come on, he runs a bloody SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE. That's like running a "web mall" in 1997! What did you think you were going to learn? The secret of getting a hundred million users? Hint: Zuckerberg would pay to go to a keynote to learn that--Facebook barely has 60M. MySpace passed 100M in 2006. It happened at SxSW, a conference with no discernable purpose other than to meet ...

Posted in Rant | 4 Comments »

Explaining technology in words

February 28, 2008 – 1:54 pm
Julie Starr faced an interesting problem recently: how to explain RSS, aggregators, even Twitter to a room full of journalism students ... without slides or a net connection. In attempting this, as she says, she "found a new respect for teachers this week". As a recovering teacher (or, as we're called when companies pay the bill and we have no pedagogic qualifications, trainer) I thought I'd give it a go. The basic rule is that you start with what they already know and move out from there. So rather than starting with Twitter, I'd start with newspaper web sites ... You know how at the heart of a newspaper's web site is a continuously-growing pile of stories, but there's a lot of web site froufrou on top of it? I'm talking about how stories are separated into pages and pumped with ads and links to other parts ...

Posted in New Zealand, Technology | No Comments »

ETech

February 26, 2008 – 10:35 pm
I'll be in San Diego for ETech, arriving in San Diego on Sunday and leaving on Thursday. If you'll be around, look me up. I'd love to catch up!

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

Font Geeks in New Zealand

February 26, 2008 – 10:34 pm
I often joke that Foo Camp ("Friends of O'Reilly") should be Font Camp (Friends of Nat Torkington) in New Zealand. I love typography and was delighted to find "The Font Scene in New Zealand", a list of typographers and fonts made by New Zealanders or by New Zealand companies. My favourite so far is Feijoa (PDF), made by Kris Sowersby who was also featured in the latest Idealog.

Posted in New Zealand, Technology | 1 Comment »