Teaching Kids Computer Skills and Programming
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 …
How Cuckoos Do It
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 …
National's Broadband Plans
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 …
Telecom hosting not worth the premium
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 …
Travelocity are incompetent fuckwits suckled at Satan's poisonous nipples
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 …
Ubicomp and ubisec
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 …
Zuckerberg Interview: FFS!
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 …
Explaining technology in words
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, …
ETech
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!
Font Geeks in New Zealand
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 …