Author Archives: Brett

MacZOT do it again…

There’s a BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZOT.com for a great piece of software you might have heard of called SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys. If you want it for free, you’ll post about it on your blog too. If 600 people blog about this special in the 24 hour span this sale is on for, MacZOT and TheCodingMonkeys will award $105,000 in Mac software, total to the community! W00t!

SubEthaEdit is basically multiplayer notepad – it allows you to collaborate with others across a network, all editing the same file in different places.

I don’t know if I’d use it personally, but hey, commercial software for free is not something I’d balk at 🙂

I, Course Co-ordinator

Natcoll have hired me full time to cover for my boss as he goes on leave for three months. So I’m now Acting Course Co-ordinator.

My first big task as CC was to sign all the diplomas which were only just made available to sign the day I assumed the role.

This was a big deal for me. The diploma document is a symbol of proficiency in a skill; a talisman representative of knowledge and ability, if you will. Identifying myself with these student’s time was kinda scary but in an exciting way. It felt important, and I didn’t feel like I should be the one signing them: I wasn’t the course co-ordinator while they were studying. But seeing as the regular CC was on leave, it fell to me. Proudly, I rose to the occasion.

My existing signature isn’t particularly appealing nor can I consistantly reproduce it, so I spent like a good 15 minutes re-creating and practicing my signature. I like it much better than my old chicken scrawl splat of a signature I had.

And so, armed with a sufficently better signature, I signed the diplomas for the students graduating this Friday. Congratulations to all of them. There are a lot of classes there that had finished before I began at Natcoll, and there are classes there I had a lot to do with, especially last year’s 07s who finished earlier this year.

Mmm… MacZot

I’ve been watching MacZOT with interest since it started last month, watching for awesome Mac OS X software to be on special, which it usually is.

MacZOT is updated every week day with a new piece of discounted shareware, available for instant purchase, while stocks last. Every so often they mix it up and offer a Myztery ZOT, which is an unknown package of many pieces of software for an amazingly discounted price.

I’m posting this story to maybe scam me a free copy of AppZapper with what MacZOT is calling a “BlogZOT” — every post linking to MacZot will put the price down by five cents. If we get 259 posts about MacZot, 1000 people will get it for FREE…. wooooooot! Be in quick, there’s only like 2h45 minutes to go before the software will be available 😀

What Humans are Capable Of

From O’Reilly Radar (Ya, Reilly.)

Beau Vrolyk just sent me the following email: “Once in a while someone takes something really simple and makes it absolutely extraordinary. This is a video of someone doing exactly this…. simply amazing… You’ll find this well worth the four minutes of your life it will take to watch it.” Beau titled his email “A zen master???? Dancer??? You decide.”

I totally agree. Wow. As Tim O’Reilly said: “It makes you realize just how much more humans are capable of than most of us display.”. Heart touching stuff. An opus.

At the very least, this makes all those street performers look like noobs.

Update: Jason Garfield does a Chris Bliss diss. With 5.

Yeah, Garfield’s routine is definitely a more technically-impressive display. But as we know in the design industry: bells and whistles a well designed piece do not make. Bliss shows simplicity and imperfection in his routine, and it emotes better because of it.

That said, the last 5 seconds of the video (after the end of the song) is amazing.