Honesty time. I suck at staying focused. In my life I’m never far away from an internet-capable device, so distraction is a big time sink for me. Twitter, IM, RSS feeds, iPhone games, Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, so much will drain away my time.

When I am on task, it’s usually because I’ve set myself crystal-clear goals for the next few hours. If I can see the desired result and I know exactly how I can get to it, that’d be a good clear goal.

I try to rock the Getting Things Done methodology, using Cultured Code’s Things, with good results: I know exactly what it is I should be working towards. Where I currently let myself down is not doing my regular/weekly reviews, and sometimes slacking on writing good next actions.

Maybe I should mix in the Pomodoro technique to build focus. Anyone out there tried this, or something similar?

I’ve been volunteering at Catalyst IT working with Brenda Wallace to work on projects of her choice. She assigned me to work on Laconica (an open-source version of Twitter that works in a distributed fashion). In order to do so I’ve had to learn a little about many different technologies, like PostgreSQL, the weirdness of Apache+PHP on MacOS X 10.5, and overall, how to checkout and contribute code to an open source software project with Git.

I’ve now had three code merges into Laconica, albeit very minor ones, mostly fixing bugs.

I don’t even use Laconica. (Twitter is working just fine for me, thanks.)

But I feel great.

Computer programming is something some have described as the most complex thing humans have invented — it’s all abstract, there are few corollaries to it in nature. Probably the only thing more complicated is quantum mechanics (but that is, in fact, nature).

My job is to explain, demonstrate, and encourage people who have never programmed a computer in their life (let alone their VCR) to create rather complicated things we call websites.

Why have I enjoyed contributing patches so much to an project I don’t use or much care about? A couple of reasons:

The Zone

The elusive Zone has many names; Wikipedia refers to it as “flow“. It’s that state of being you get when they’re so intensely focussed in the task at hand that time and reality become irrelevant because you’re so energised and focussed and involved at what you’re working on, and having good success at doing it. You come away feeling elated and energised that you’ve completed something of value.

I haven’t been in The Zone for nearly four years. I’ve been teaching people how to program for nearly four years now, and nary the mind to knuckle down and flex my coding muscles. I’m too worked up with office politics, helping my workmates with the technology, and thinking that I wasn’t good enough to be in the industry.

Learning

It’s good to know that I can do it, though to do it professionally, I’d just need to learn more about the processes involved.

I’ve had to learn how to use Git, how to create PostgreSQL users and databases, and submit my finished code to the project administrators for merging with the mainline version of the program’s code.

I don’t normally get to be a learner. I’m a full-time teacher, and what I have to learn is usually because I need to teach it.

It’s nice to learn things for me and me alone. I may never get to teach what I’m learning here, but what I’ve learned is helping fulfill me (more on that later)

That old adage “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach”. It’s lies.

Actually I’m a tutor, but that’s just a particular kind of teacher. Not meaning to blow my own horn, but according to my student evaluations I am actually a really good tutor. Sure, I have my weaknesses, but overall, apparently I rock at it.

And I really enjoy teaching. It’s rewarding when the metaphorical light-bulbs turn on above the student’s heads. Some of them slowly brighten, some just pop on, and some of them shine more powerfully than others, but the lights do turn on. To know that a learner now understands one of the most complicated things there is to know,

I was at Wordcamp New Zealand here in Wellington over the weekend, and Nicki Gemmell was talking about using blogs at primary schools around New Zealand. She related how uploading an image to a blog was something a principal got excited about: “I uploaded a photo to our school blog today; how cool is that?!”.

As a programmer who has written photo upload functionality, I forget how far I have come and how valuable the skills I have really are. The challenge of teaching people to do things is fun and rewarding. Teaching students to do this even more complicated stuff is the same but even more challenging.

Teaching programming, from my own experience, is the ability to communicate the concepts and foster the understanding and use of them. I was told by a trainer there were four levels of competency:

1. Unconscious Incompetence – you are unaware that you don’t know how to do X.
… awareness brings:
2. Conscious Incompetence – you are aware that you don’t know how to X.
… learning brings:
3. Conscious Competence – you can do X, and you are thinking about it when doing it.
… practice brings:
4. Unconscious Competence – you can do X, but you do not have to think about it when doing it.

I say that there’s a fifth level: where you have become once again conscious of what it is you are competent at. And that’s the level where you’re ready to teach it.

To be able to teach, you must be able to learn, and then go further so you can show others the way.

Those who can teach, do teach.

People

Okay, I’ll be honest: being around Brenda and the other like-minded geeks at Catalyst IT has been a really energising experience. Being able to vent frustration at code and technology, bounce ideas off each other and have fun while doing it has been great.

But working on Laconica and spending some time reading other peoples code and improving it, and learning the technical, and social aspects of doing so has been fun and very enlightening.

My motivation for staying a teacher has been pretty simple: Hell is other people’s work. Most of the employment in the industry has been creating websites for companies; wish fulfilment for others. I could change the world one organisational website at a time, or I could change the world 20 web students at a time.

But working on an open source project has let me use my programming skills to directly improve, ever-so-slightly at this stage, the lives of people around the globe. By making the software they use better.

Having that sense of purpose in what I are doing is really important to me. I don’t want to just be working to collect a pay check: working to live. And I don’t want to be living to work either. I just want to do what is worthwhile while I’m alive: live life to the fullest. Use the abilities I have to do things worth doing.

I am a teacher. I am a programmer. I’ve been neglecting the programmer side of me.

“Computer programming is tremendous fun. Like music, it is a skill that derives from an unknown blend of innate talent and constant practice. Like drawing, it can be shaped to a variety of ends – commercial, artistic, and pure entertainment. Programmers have a well-deserved reputation for working long hours but are rarely credited with being driven by creative fevers. Programmers talk about software development on weekends, vacations, and over meals not because they lack imagination, but because their imagination reveals worlds that others cannot see. Larry O’Brien and Bruce Eckel

• @vodafonenz: Now official – Twitter coming soon to a TXT near you: [url] at 9:16 AM May 12th
• Vodafone NZ’s press release says they will use the shortcode TWTR (8987) and says “The service will launch in the coming weeks.”
• Twitter have yet to post on their blog that they now support New Zealand. I speculate that they will not do so until the service is actually live to customers.
• @telecomnz: We have partnered with Twitter to bring you Twitter to your Mobile via TXT msg from May 29! at ~3:00 PM May 12th
  
• @telecomnz: Telecom Mobile Customers from May 29 can msg 8987 (TWTR) to update their twitter account or receive tweets via TXT at ~3:00 PM May 12th
• Yet, Telecom’s media department doesn’t back it up: no press release has been made at Telecom’s Media Releases page as of yet.
• National Business Review fails at journalism and provides more proof that old media just doesn’t get it: copy/pastes from Vodafone’s press release, forgets that Twitter SMS is available in the USA, UK and India and may have just missed Twitter’s news of adding Canada, adds word ‘exclusive’: Vodafone scores exclusive Twitter deal
• @nzben: @TelecomNZ Is that a piggy-back on Vodafone’s connection, or a separate agreement? at ~2:00 PM May 12th
  
• @telecomnz: @nzben a seperate agreement with Twitter. at ~2:00 PM May 12th
  
• Google News: “vodafone new zealand” twitter shows that other old-media sources FAIL and think the deal is exclusive, including NetGuide.
• Twitter announces official support to New Zealand SMS, with update support for all, but Twitter to handset delivery for Vodafone NZ customers, with other networks, and Australia support to follow!

Any news, just leave a comment including any and all links to public sources and I’ll do my best to keep this up to date.

Anyway, a common problem with RSS reader users is they suffer from too-much-unread-post-itis. If I don’t read my feeds, in two days I’ll have 1000+ unread items.

Here’s my tip: if your reader lets you put one subscription into many folders, make a ‘heavy traffic’ folder, and put all those feeds that publish far too many posts, and that you only read when you have copious amounts of time. I have Slashdot,  Techmeme, Joystiq, Wired News, and 901am in my folder, with many more to be copied there.  Now when you’re feeling the overflow, you just mark that entire folder as read, and your unread count will drop substantially, and you won’t feel so bad anymore!

Make time to have it

You can’t have breakfast if you don’t allow yourself time to prepare and consume it, so allow yourself some time before you leave the house. You probably have a morning routine, so just make it part of that. If it means getting out of bed 20 minutes earlier than you normally do, then do it! Breakfast is worth it.

Mix and match ingredients for a taste sensation

One thing that will stop you wanting to have breakfast every day is it always tastes the same. Stock up on various breakfast cereals and toppings. I’m in New Zealand, so some of this stuff won’t be familiar to my overseas readers, but here’s what I like to have around. Important factors in choosing stuff: Must be tasty by itself, but must be reasonably healthy. Anything with added sugar should be avoided in large quantities, but is nice once in a while.

Bowl: You need to have a bowl that has high edges to prevent spillages, large enough to hold three Weet-bix, standing up on their side and still be covered in milk.

Cereals: Lots of Weet-bix, and a box of Honey Puffs, Corn Flakes, Rice Bubbles, and a couple of Hubbards mueslis: one heavier oat-based muesli and one lighter corn-flake based muesli. In small amounts: Coco Pops

Toppings: Bananas, real-fruit yoghurt (buy in 1kg pottles), grapes, other kinds of fresh and dried fruit. Avoid fresh citrus fruit as it makes the milk curdle. In small amounts: Fruit-based ice-cream or plain yoghurt toppings (strawberry, kiwifruit, black forest, blackberry, but NOT chocolate, caramel). Avoid dairy food (the sweet creamy flavoured stuff that’s not yoghurt, e.g., Swiss Maid, Go-gurt, etc.)

Milk: Homogenised pasteurised Blue-top all the way. Why not low-fat or non-fat milks? Because it doesn’t taste as good. I’m all about the taste. And you do need some fat in your diet.

How to put these ingredients together:

Weet-bix (similar to Weetabix) is the staple of a bowl breakfast in New Zealand and Australia, so use this is a base. Two or three bricks. Because Weet-bix is quite absorbant, some people put hot water over these so they don’t use so much milk. It does result in a watered down taste, but this is an option. If you like large portions for breakfast, then just add more Weet-bix bricks. I put these in the bowl standing on their sides, not lying down or on their ends.

Choose one of your other, more flavourful cereals and ‘fill the gaps’ in your bowl with it. You could add two or even three different bits. Don’t over-do it though; the Weet-bix is the base, we’re adding the secondary cereals for flavour and texture because Weetbix, while lightly malted, isn’t the exactly the taste sensation we’re looking for.

Toppings: If you’re adding fruit today, put this on. If you’re doing yoghurt or another thicker-than-milk topping, add this. Then add the milk. You might not like watering down your yoghurt with milk, but trust me, it helps the flavourful yoghurt get into the Weet-bix. Don’t go overboard with any sugary ice-cream/yoghurt toppings — just add enough for flavour. If you don’t have yoghurt, fruit or toppings, and you’re desperate, you might put a teaspoon or two of sugar on the Weet-bix to make it a bit more interesting — but be aware, you may set yourself up for sugar-crashing easily before lunch time.

Now enjoy a flavourful and nutritious breakfast!

It’s no surprise that Gmail has pushed this out solely because of the iPhone and it’s built-in mail client that requires IMAP — no POP support for you, iPhone owner, you lucky dogs you.

I’ve been using Gmail since June 16th 2004, and started using it as my main email client in October 2005, and haven’t looked back! Its got a whole lot of great features: Google Talk (XMPP) integration, conversation threading, excellent spam filter, address book, filters.

But I’m most ecstatic because I can finally have my Gmail offline, thanks to IMAP! I can carry my laptop with me, and know that I can access that message I received a few weeks back because a copy is stored right there on my laptop, and if I do anything with it, it’s going to be accessible through the Gmail web interface! That and templated messages…

If you want Gmail IMAP, you just need to log into your Gmail, click on Settings in the upper right, and click on Forwarding and POP/IMAP, and follow instructions there. If you don’t have that option there, log out of Gmail and log back in.  Failing that, wait a couple days and everyone will have this feature enabled on their account.

Andy makes a case that because we have ubiquitous free documentation, in the form of text-files, wikis, videos, how-to websites, screencasts and readily available specialist books (from O’Reilly no doubt), information is no longer the problem any more. Expertise is the new scarcity. Mentors and tutors and guides and people who know how to do things is the problem now.

I have a lot of industry contact in my tertiary level tutor role at Natcoll, and I keep an eye out on the jobs available in the web development industry in Wellington that my students can go into. That’s all well and good, but we’ve had organisations like mine are having a hard time finding highly skilled staff to relieve classes and even take on full time roles, and I understand it is the same at our different campuses around New Zealand — there are just not enough people who want to get into upskilling people up. There’s no shortage of people wanting to learn the ins and outs of design and development though, with no sign of slowing.

Teach NZ is always advertising on TV and on the Wellington buses for graduates who might want to take up Secondary School teaching (high school age for you non-kiwis). Now teaching in a secondary school is not for the faint-hearted, guaranteed. But what about universities? You’d probably need to have a Masters before you could get a good job teaching at a university.

There are other ways we learn other than attending institutes too: one-on-one mentoring, attending short courses, night classes, special interest groups (SIGs) including software user groups. And then there’s the communities on line too!

So why is teaching not a popular choice?

Why aren’t many people taking up the challenge of teaching? Do the people who think they want to be a teacher end up going to teacher’s college and having the life force sucked out of them? One friend of mine has a science degree and went to a teacher’s training college here in Wellington to become a teacher, went into a high school to teach physics and science and then after doing that for a year or so, switched careers! The challenges of high school teaching aside, he said he didn’t like it. Why? I don’t know, but I’ve got some ideas.

Teaching is a selfless job. You’re there as a servant. You serve the students concepts and information, challenging their pre-conceptions and assumptions, with the goal of them ‘getting it’; seeing the cogs in their heads suddenly mesh, and switch into gear and take off!

At least, that’s why I do it. And I’m not even formally trained as a teacher. All I have is a few years industry experience and a passion for being the best I can be at what I do. And I teach so that I can change the world I live in.

The internet is sometimes called the largest and most successful collaboration between individuals and organisations in the history of the human race. The internet was created so people could communicate over long distances. So they could share ideas and discuss the implications of what they were working on or what they themselves had discovered.

Specifically, I teach web development so that it can make the internet a better place. If that previous paragraph doesn’t sound like something to spend time understanding and improving, then let me know why you think so.

I could get a career as a web developer out in the industry tomorrow; there are plenty of jobs for the people who can do things out there.

But there aren’t enough people shaping those ‘do’ers.

There aren’t enough ‘teach’ers.

There aren’t enough specialised teachers. Well at least in the web industry there’s not. Not enough people teaching the hard stuff that requires masses of prerequisite knowledge. Even though the Web is just under 15 years old, the amount you need to know to make a successful website, or even a successful online community is tantamount to experience.

If you want to create a website these days, you have to know HTML, CSS, Javascript, a server side language such as PHP, Ruby, Perl or *shudder* ASP or similar. You need to understand the design and implementation of databases and how to use SQL. You need to have an eye for design, usability. You need to have a mind for communication and writing. You need to understand the human-computer interface and it’s strengths and weaknesses and how to wield these things.

Being a web guy is hard work. Still, web developers, even ones who are good at what they do, don’t get the industry recognition they deserve: a web developer or web designer (but not a ‘web decorator‘) will get paid less than a traditional ‘software developer’ who is making applications for Windows or services for the back office. But a web developer or web designer might have to a lot more than a traditional ‘programmer’.

And that prerequisite knowledge stack is only getting larger by the day! The most published thing online (other than cat pictures and pornography) is in my opinion information about the internet itself. There are tons of sites out there detailing the technologies I allude to above.

There’s lots of information online about what we web developers do. Freely available, just waiting for you to read it, if you so desired. But I believe there’s not enough people who are making it their life’s mission to mentoring and teaching and guiding individuals through this jungle of things out there waiting to be discovered.

You can go to Te Papa by yourself and see the Britten motorcycle. But that doesn’t mean you can go to Te Papa by yourself and learn about the fascinating story behind it.

But if you have a guide, they might be able to point you in the right direction.

To take a big step like that is a bit much, so to break it down a little:

• Read, write and converse in Japanese at an intermediate level by the end of 2010.
• Visit Japan for a holiday at some point between 2010 and 2014, and visit Tokyo (especially Akihabra), Kyoto and Osaka, and do tourist-stuff. Also the Studio Ghibli Museum is a must.
• Find a job, preferably teaching web development, maybe teaching English so I can get a work visa.
• Work in Japan for at least 6 months by the end of 2014.

Not so bad a plan, eh?  It’s quite flexible, and subject to change, but it’s the current target.

Why you might ask? Well, I’ve always wanted to learn a language, and the Japanese culture, history and lifestyle really interests me, and I’m single so I don’t have anyone holding me back.

So I’ve bought a book (Japanese Step by Step by Gene Nishi), and am keeping an eye out for beginner’s Japanese courses, so I can sign up for one that’s running at a good time for me.

I have a friendly workmate who spent a long time in Japan a few years ago who is encouraging me along. We go for lunch at Japanese restaraunts around town; he’s got many of us at work hooked on katsukari (pork fillet curry with rice)… mmm katsukari! Damn, I’m hungry now…

So I think in the short term, I’m pretty sussed. I’ll be signing up for a beginner’s Japanese course after September, and I’ve got a friend or two who I can practice with.  Maybe I’ll make friends with some cute Japanese girls in Wellington, who knows? I’m pretty open minded about the whole thing.

What is kind of weird is being 26 right now, I’ll be 33 in 2014. But you’re as old as you feel, and with me, that currently can range from 21 to 35 right now, -_-;

Anyway, does anyone out there in the world wide tubes have any suggestions on learning Japanese? Tips and tricks? Must have resources? Must visit places?

Also, anyone know how to get my Mac so I could type katakana and hiragana with a Dvorak keyboard layout? It wants me to use QWERTY instead

You can now update from your Mac OS X Dashboard, with my first ever Dashboard Widget Twitterlex. It displays the latest status messages from your friends, and provides a quick access way for you to update your own status easily!

Download Twitterlex dashboard widget

So we did. And let me tell you, I’m really happy with how it turned out. It’s nothing revolutionary or taxing, but it was heaps of fun to redesign and make the templates as we went, with Michelle right there working with me.

This comment from The Abandonware Blog about Bunny Abandonware 4.0 really made me feel good:

Finally some nice scene news! Bunny from Bunny Abandonware has been mentioning is for quiet some time now but finally managed to get the new version of her website online and I must say (again) that it kicks ass! The unique colors used by only one abandonware site, the wonderfull [sic] navigation, the nice kinda web 2.0 style with all the gradients and big buttons ‘n stuff… damned pretty.

LOL, I did some Web 2.0 :rolleyes: But I’m taking it all as a compliment. I believe that what Michelle does with her abandonware hobby is crucial for the survival, not just of the games, but of the memories. Abandonware, while legally dubious, is less a case of stealing and more the case of paying tribute. I keep telling Michelle she’s not just another retro gamer; she’s an archivist — the curator of her own museum. A museum where the exhibits remind her visitors of the way video games used to be, and where not only games, but ourselves as people have come since then, for better or for worse.

I think the best Christmas present I gave myself was when for Christmas I gave my brother a huge pack of water balloons . I had moved out of home to Wellington and I had come to realise that I missed him. We had fun in that back yard that one day, running around with the sole purpose of cooling off and having a blast. But I did it with the motive of having that memory to look back on — a careless, happier day in my history. It worked, and it’s one of the most cherished memories I have. It didn’t cost a lot.

Memories are worth gold, but the most valuable memories are the ones that cost the least.

I haven’t blogged this yet, but I’ve been working at Natcoll Design Technology for over a year now. I started as a part-time Multimedia tutor, and now I’m the Diploma of Web Development Course Coordinator for the Wellington campus. I teach on average 18 hours a week, with the rest in prep, paperwork and management. Really fun job, besides the paperwork I even get to help out with the tech support sometimes… but eh, what ya gonna do?

. . .

Mid last year, I moved from downtown Cuba St to the boxed valley suburb of Karori (said to be the largest suburb in the southern hemisphere) with the intention of eating better and getting fit.

I’ve got the getting fit thing working somewhat: Mountain Biking. Karori has a world renowned mountain bike park running up, and most importantly, down, the back of it. I got my bike at the start of December, a nice GT Avalanche 3.0, and I’ve been slowly discovering the many tracks it holds. It’s really a beautiful place, and with summer turning up finally, I’m going to make the most of it.

I originally got the bike to commute to and from work every day. Karori is up in the hills, and the city, where I work, is at sea-level. It takes me 15 minutes door-to-door every morning, and depending on my route, 30-50 minutes coming home uphill. I don’t really enjoy exercise, but at least I know I’ll have achieved something every day, no matter how my day might have been.

1. I sucked at tag. Primary school was pretty hellish for me — I was unfit, I had no friends, and I could never catch anyone. It’s a part of my life that I like to forget. Because I had no-one who liked me or understood me (my parents admit to not really understanding me and my interests when I was young) I turned to reading books and learning. If I had to pick someone who I think understood me when I was young, I’d probably have to say my grandmother on my mother’s side, Lois, who unfortunately passed away while I was at Intermediate, or just starting, I can’t remember. She would buy books for me all the time, and it was her who I credit for getting me into computers and specifically programming. An Osbourne book on Basic for various computers like the Commodore 64 and the TRS-80, and the really simple game listings within it. I would spend hours staring at that code, trying to figure out what the game would do. I wouldn’t get any kind of computer until after she passed away, and then it was a 286 and no-one told me where GW-Basic was.

   Gosh, there’s a bit there. Does that count as only one?

2. I love computer games, but in reality, I’m not a hardcore gamer. I like the games that I can pick up, play for 15 minutes, and then put to one side. To this end, I rarely finish a game. A mild case of ADD? It’s certainly not AD&D I can count on one hand the games I’ve clocked without cheats:
   • Half-Life (PC)
   • Half-Life 2 (PC)
   • Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (PC) (but that barely counts)
   • Phoenix Wright (Nintendo DS) (but it’s mostly trial-and-error. Heh, trial, law game)
   • Doukutsu Monogatari (aka Cave Story) (PC)

   Yet recently I’ve bought so many DS and GBA games for my Nintendo DS Lite, and haven’t clocked any others

3. I’m not allergic to anything, but I have had cancer. I have a giant scar on my back from where they removed a melanoma (skin cancer). Luckily it came back from the labs that it hadn’t spread, but I can’t give blood anymore. If they’d let me, I’d go every six months. So if you’re reading this, and you are able to give blood, you should go do it — it helps so many people out there, and only inconveniences you for a few hours; heck, most workplaces will let you go give blood on work time!
4. When I want to chill out, the forest is my chill out space. I love to just go somewhere and listen, relax. Rivers are also very awesome. I was baby sitting a couple of my mum’s friend’s kids for the weekend one time in the middle of summer, and they had some really large inner tubes, so we took them out on the river out the back of their house, and had a ball and we all got so tired, we walked back, packed stuff away, and we all fell asleep in the lounge where we were sitting, totally unexpectedly. It was probably the quietest they ever were!
5. I like chiptunes. Music made on old retro hardware that sounds like it could have come out of an old GameBoy or C64. I especially like the stuff that comes out of 8bitpeoples
6. Bonus Fact: I don’t like peas. But that said, they are tolerable when mixed with other vegetables. But by themselves, blargh.

Bob Brown (Confessions of a Guru), Hamish MacEwan (self titled), Hillary (Kiwirose in Canada), Dan Milward (Mind of Mufasa) (fix your feeds, they’re broken), and Unbounded (self-titled), even though Unbounded is the kind of guy who would abhor this kinda meme; TAG – You’re it!

I was reading my feeds at work before going home, and this one caught my eye. I watched it and actually started weeping. Not bad tears, but just… special tears for times gone by. If one piece of animation should make me cry, I’m glad it’s this piece of footage I grew up with — heck it’s about as old as I am. Makes me feel proud to be a New Zealander…

What are some strategies for prioritising tasks in day-to-day work?

Running a car is expensive, so why don’t more people use the bus, especially in Wellington, since we (arguably) have the best bus system in the nation… ?

Why is picking up good habits so difficult, but picking up bad habits so easy?

Have you… seen my legs?

When I switched host, I needed to update that site’s record of who is handling the domain name. Friday night, I logged into the domain registrar and found the page which lets me update the nameservers. I am told this is called updating the zone file.

When I do this, it is supposed to propagate the changes through the all of the DNS servers around the world within the space of 24 hours. That’s how it works. Problem solved.

Not with this domain name. Monday morning rolled around, and still the domain name was pointing at the old host’s servers.

This is weird, because whois.net and samspade.org are reporting the dns records correctly.

So I get in contact with the registrar who handles the domain name. The lady on the other end of my web-based IM session told me it’s probably Telecom’s fault, as this kind of thing isn’t surprising, and on request provides me with phone numbers to Telecom.

After 15 minutes on hold (because of the power cuts in Auckland recently) I get through to a guy in Complex Technical Support (yes, that’s what the department is called at Telecom/Xtra), and I explain to him my problem, and stubbornly refuses to believe that their systems are as bad as I have been informed — I asked that he flush their dns cache for me, but he refused. After frustrating attempts to get him to see what I was seeing, I took his name down and department in case I needed to stick it to him.

So I talk to my System Administrator here at Natcoll, and he introduces me to a tool called dig which will let me see what different DNS servers are saying about domain names. After checking a few low level DNS servers, such as Paradise and Xtra, we checked the A-level DNS servers — and the first B level DNS server I checked was mis-reporting too! No wonder we’re having these problems.

So, after trying to raise an IM session with the registrar, I tracked down their phone number and called them for real. I got a helpful soul who said aha, no, what I was told by the other staff member is incorrect. Turns out that they are not a .com registrar themselves, but have to go through a US company to register .com domains on behalf of their customers, and it would seem that the propagation of the zone file changes I requested had failed, and they would need to request them to happen by telephone.

So all’s well that ends well. I’ve called Complex Tech Support back and asked that a message be left for the employee I spoke with, telling him that he was right, and I was fed bad information from my registrar and I wanted to apologise.

Hopefully the site will be up tomorrow morning! I guess we’ll see, eh?

Clark doesn’t just criticise the content of the new guidelines, but the manner in which they have been delivered to the world and how valuable stakeholders haven’t been listened to or even consulted.

What does this mean? A lot of the work of WCAG1 — the things that actually work — seems to be being undone and losing a lot of it’s punch. And instead, most of what WCAG2 is proposing Joe claims to be unachievable — and he’d know.

I could start explaining, but you’re better off reading what Joe Clark had to say his A List Apart article.

The WAI committee didn’t give much time for interested parties to provide comments — only until 31st May 2006. You better read this now and provide your feedback to the group while you still can.

UPDATE: Corrected some mistakes — thanks Joe Clark for dropping by and correcting me

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.

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.

And hey, you can help! I need people to sponsor me to make it all worthwhile. This year’s famine is about stopping child labour. For every $300 raised through the famine, World Vision will help a family in India to start a business so they can support themselves without needing their children to work in bonded labour.

And I’ve discovered that you can even sponsor me online! World Vision have set up a system that lets Faminers register their famine books online and get people to sponsor them online! It’s pretty neat.

So you can go pledge your sponsorship of me here:

Even if you only give NZD$2, that little part will go towards helping children from more than twelve countries worldwide. $10 will provide a family of five with a health checkup and basic medical supplies in India. $150 will provide seeds for one Tanzania primary school so they can provide daily meals for their students for a year!

It all adds up! Sponsor me and help change the world!

I’m actually pretty excited about learning more about teaching. I read this article yesterday which quoted Raph Koster’s definition of fun:

Fun is learning in a safe-environment.

The reverse “learning in a safe-environment is fun” isn’t always true, but taking risks to practice something new and exciting and not having to pay huge consequences is fun.

Not to mention getting paid to get a qualification — that’s pretty sweet.

The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side. Hunter S Thompson

And with that said, go listen to Cory Doctorow’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) talk he gave in Antwerp earlier this year.

Also Relevant: MPAA Logo Goatse

Imagine your heart as a room, a room you have prepared for God to live. This room is perfect in every way — clean, spick and span.

You live there too. It’s your heart, and you and God share it.

It didn’t used to be clean. It was once like a dirty old store room, full of dust and dirt and some big old cardboard boxes you didn’t really want to open.

But here you are, in this room with God, sharing the space. You are both having a good time.

God decides to take a look around. He sees a white cloth that seems to hiding something. He takes the cloth off gently, and reveals the boxes, still crusted up with the thick grey dust of years gone by. He also sees some brand new boxes, still kind of shiny.

You’d forgotten you had put the boxes there. Just remembering that they are still there after all this time is painful.

You know what is in the boxes. He knows what is in the boxes. You know you should have gotten rid of the boxes, but you can’t put the boxes anywhere else — no-one will take them.

Except Jesus.

Jesus pops in and spies the boxes. Wanting to get the boxes out of your life, you run over and grab a box, giving it to Jesus. He gladly takes it, and starts prying apart the flaps on the top of the box. Afraid, you quickly hit the flaps out of his hand and hold the box shut.

“I know it’s painful to remember what you’ve done, but if you want to stop doing it, you’ll need to understand the reasons behind why you continue to do what you do.”

You know he’s right. The box is there, and you know he’s here to help. Together, you open the box and begin unpacking it, sorting through its contents.

It really hurts. Countless times during the time that passes you are brought to tears. And the more you dig through the box, the more things you find. The box is deeper than it looks.

After a long time, you find a long forgotten memory. It hurts so much to recall it. You want to just close the lid and forget it ever happened.

But Jesus takes it in his hands, and shows you that he was there.

You struggle to take it in. Do you believe it? He was there. In one of the most painful memories of your life. It’s unbelievable. But it’s true. He was always there. He is always there.

. . .

There’s a lot more boxes in the corner, and the memories of what lies within start flying around your head. Dealing with those boxes is gonna take some time. What will you do with the boxes?

… do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? …1 Corinthians 6:19 ESV

I had already recieved my christmas present: a return flight to Brisbane, so not much was under the tree for me. I did get this neat gel neck cooler thing — you put it in water for about 2 minutes, and it soaks up and becomes pretty solid, then you chuck it in the fridge, then you velcro it around your neck — so beautifully cold!

Today’s weather was forecast to be 38°C. Neil’s new thermometer reports 38.8°C o_O;

We went swimming at Streets Beach again today — a huge turnout for Christmas Day. Lots of beautiful women. I got a little depressed about how I didn’t have a girl to share the day with. After talking with Mum a little, I guess I lack confidence to approach the ladies.

Mum also said that she thought I’d changed; “like you’ve lost a part of yourself – I used to be able to talk to anyone”. That touched a nerve and I didn’t know what to think about myself anymore.

I don’t think I used to talk to HEAPS of people, but I guess I don’t say much anymore.

I hate making judgement calls on people.

I’ll usually only pipe up when I have something to add to a conversation, like a fact or something funny.

I really like to talk about things I know about, like computers, the internet, christianity, creative commons and copyright.

I don’t start conversations. Maybe that’s the problem. I guess I feel I don’t have anything relevent to say that will be interesting. And that’s probably a lie; I’m an interesting person. I am, right? I don’t know. If chicks find out I’m a hard-core geek, I tend to get judged and stereotyped. I don’t look like a stereotype geek, but I certainly can behave like one.

Mum said I needed to boost my confidence. She said I could look at losing some weight and I should do the things I enjoy to make me feel better about myself. I don’t care too much if I have a beergut. And I do do the things I enjoy.

I work. I love to get on a computer and punch out a website. I love to help others with their computer problems. I love to do the things I do well, and I love learning to do them better. Reading about my industry online. Attending conferences. Stuff like that.

How do I boost my confidence in something I suck at? Getting rejected hurts. I feel like I have so much to offer to some special lady. But putting myself on the line only to get burnt really hurts. I work my courage to go over and say hi, and I put effort into it over a few weeks, and then I figure out that she’s probably not interested in me. That’s a bum deal.

But I guess it’s life. The only way to build my confidence up is to take the chance and try talking to a girl.

The first thing I noticed about Brisbane at this time of year is how GOD DAMN HOT the place is. I mean DAMN, this place is freaking stinking hot. I’m sitting here with my shirt unbuttoned, shoeless and sporting my three-quarter shorts, at 8pm at night!

The second thing I noticed about this place is the different bird sounds you hear. They have some pretty random bird sounds here in Australia, and some really weird birds to go along with them. The Ibis, for example.

My Mum lives in South Bank, which is a really nice place. They have the right idea too: to combat the heat, they have countless New Zealand Natural ice cream booths along the promenade along the river. And if that doesn’t do enough to cool you off, there’s a pool near the riverside which is done up like a beach, along with real sand. We popped down there around 3-4pm today and the water was really really warm — like a good bath — but it was still the coolest I’d been that whole day.

At dusk, the fruit bats come out to move around or something — Mum’s apartment is on the 3rd floor, and the bats swoop past the balcony about 10m away! It’s crazy seeing real bats flying around in an urban area!

I haven’t seen much of Brisbane yet, but it’s a really nice place. I’m here for 5 more days. Christmas Day tomorrow – so Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Everyone in my department (apart from the course co-ordinator) owns a PSP. So I figured I should make the most of it and bite the bullet myself. Mind you, it wasn’t cheap :/ Anyway, I got the PSP value pack, a USB cable, a 1GB Memory Stick Duo and the game Mercury, and I have GTA Liberty City Stories preordered.

I also bought a UMD Movie of Steamboy, which is a great anime film — you should see it if you get the chance. But I don’t think that the PSP is a great delivery platform for a two-hour movie, unless you’re stuck on a plane and are sick of playing video games.

Also, hooray for Homebrew! After upgrading from 1.52 to 2.0 and then downgrading to 1.50, I got a Genesis/Megadrive emulator running on there!

And OMG PHEAR LUMINES. That game, once you get into it, is intense. You go into it all relaxed and you come out of it all tense and powered up. I love that game.

So on Monday, while I was still an employee, our client the Department of Labour launched New Zealand Now, a website aimed at New Zealand expats to bring them back to the mothership that is New Zealand. It’s damn sweet if you ask me. The team did an excellent job of getting it together in about 9 weeks. We worked with Shift who did an awesome job on the design and HTML+CSS+Flash — seriously superb!

So then on Tuesday I was told that the contract I’d been given was coming to an end. I’d been hoping that they’d give me more work after that, but it turns out they didn’t.

Talk about your mountain-top experiences. Talk about your dark tea-times of the soul.

That night, I was going to go Orienteering for the first time since about 1997. I wasn’t gonna let a little thing like having to find a new job get in the way. Even though I walked most of it. 44 minutes for a yellow course on the Petone foreshore — lets just say that’s not my best time. I enjoyed it though, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the series over the next five weeks.

And today, to cheer me up, a Thinkgeek package I ordered about a week ago shows up! Nothing like schwag to take the edge off of a redundancy. Hooray for Domo-kun shirt!

. . .

Oh well, I’m over it. A door closes, another door opens. I start the job hunt tomorrow with updating the CV. But if you could do with anyone who can ninja up some (X)HTML+CSS along with a healthy dose of PHP and Javascript, maybe even some AJAX if you want it, then please, for my sake, contact me!!! I’m no graphic designer, but I do have a good eye for interfaces, and I’d like to get into interaction design and HCI work.

And now, for a megabyte of expletives. Nah, just kidding. But I do feel like it.

UPDATE: Changed to make things a bit more accurate.

But seriously, 3am and I want to go to sleep already, dammit. There are security guards here trying their best to get the sirens turned off. Whats New, our landlords, haven’t exactly been helpful in any of this. Oh, and would they fix our elevator for once and for all? -_-; Incompetent.

I’m listening to the Katamari Damacy soundtrack I nabbed off of Macweeny yesterday. It’s quite relaxing, even though the drone of the beeping is still quite loud, even street-side. But it is quieter down here than in my room. And at least I’ve got Cafenet coverage here

If a guy holding a white iBook is found lying down on the street this morning, it’s me. Please don’t steal my laptop.

Oh, and happy birthday, SmileyChris Hopefully I’ll see you later today, if I’m not freezing my toes off.

I mean, taking Eric Meyer for example, hearing the world expert on CSS talk about his field in the morning, meeting him and having a conversation with him after lunch, getting two books he wrote signed by him that night, hearing him talk again the next day, and then go out drinking with him and our new-found buddies and some of us end up at a nightclub in Kings Cross… THIS STUFF JUST DOESN’T HAPPEN! And it wasn’t just Eric either, it was Molly, Tantek, Doug Bowman, John Allsopp, Jeffrey Veen, Derek Featherstone, and so many more! It was so much more than an honour to meet these people; hanging out was a mindjob.

What’s weird at first is that the “big stars” are approchable and friendly in real life, they want to know who you are, because they know you know who they are. This is in comparison to many people in the lime light in other more fame-focused industries (music, movies, but not microcode) who are less likely to give you time of day than have a conversation with you.

As much as this will sound like I’m blowing my own horn or that I’m kissing up, the most humbling thing to discover at the conference was that some of these “big stars” had heard about “the guy who was fundraising through his blog to get to we05” and that when those individuals and I met, they had a suspicsion that I was that person — I didn’t have to tell them. These people knew kinda who I was!

So when I get home and discover that Molly and Tantek have left such generous comments that I have a grin from ear-to-ear, how am I supposed to react?

Really, it all comes down to respect: I could have an unhealthy respect for them bordering on holding them as idols, but one has to remember that they are just regular people. As the famous Bruce Dickenson once said “Easy, guys… I put my pants on just like the rest of you: one leg at a time. Except, once my pants are on, I make gold records.”

And when I think about it, and as hard as it is for me to get to grips with it right now, in reality, they are my friends and colleagues in this industry. Now to keep those friendships alive! Hey Tantek, I’d be keen to see the photos you took on your Matrix tour…

Mind you, he also said “I got a fever! And the only prescription… is more cowbell!”, so I won’t push that metaphor

UPDATE: I guess the other side of the equation can happen too: molly.com » Moments of Doubt and Glory

After more legendary presentations from Molly, Eric and Derek, I attended the Ajax session by Tim Lucas. I found myself wanting a bit more, but it was still VERY good.

Lunch came around, so I caught a cab to Found Agency. I got to meet Zak, the guy I talked to on the phone just over a week ago. He showed me around his office in Bondi Junction, and gave me a very in-depth insight into the world of SEO and Pay-Per-Click marketing. Basically, there is OMG HUGE money to be made — seeing some of the Google Adsense windows brought it to life. He also described something called A-B Testing: serving up two identical ads going to slightly different convert pages, observing the difference that the slight difference made, and deciding to keep that change. Zak said that click through conversion can be increased phenomenally just by iterating through this every 1000 clickthroughs.

I also learnt that there are three types of “SEO” people: Super Affiliates (those who partner with a company who wants to sell something and enter into a huge referral rate in the hundreds of dollars per customer), Pay-Per-Click marketeers (those who manage their adwords and search terms they appear on) and Hybrid marketeers (those who do both).

I also learnt that Google doesn’t really like what some Super Affiliates are doing sometimes, and that the Super Affiliates are listening to what Google has to say, including the rel="nofollow" microformat. It becomes obvious to me that the ones comment-spamming blogs don’t really know what they are doing; shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to Google.

I spent so long talking to Zak that I was late for the 2:15pm sessions. I really wanted to see Cameron Adams’ Javascript and the DOM session too. Oh well, there’s always the podcasts.

Thank goodness I made it back in time to catch Tantek’s Microformats session — fascinating stuff. I guess I already knew about XFN and rel=”nofollow” but I didn’t know that these were called microformats. Yay for learning!

Then Jeffrey Veen got up and did yet another PHENOMENAL session giving us all the boost we needed to go back to our jobs and do this stuff we’ve been learning about. I’m totally pumped. I’m gonna go out back and kick that tree.

For some reason, because I was that-guy-who-did-the-blog-donation-box-to-get-to-WE05, I was given a collectable WE05 belt pouch for a digital camera or iPod or the like. Sweet! Thanks people!

The WE05 afterparty was at The Pumphouse in Darling Harbour. Putting my Flickrazzi hat on, I caught some hilarious moments of the presenters on NVRAM and have put them up on Flickr for all to enjoy, namely Doug Bowman dancing, Eric, John Allsopp and Mark Harris doing the WWW, Derek Featherstone getting drawn into a pint, Tantek searching for Wifi at a dance club, and Eric giving Doug in his patented “CSS Brace”

Tantek tells me that I can probably go find many of the places where scenes from The Matrix were filmed here in Sydney; something I was hoping to do, but didn’t realise actually how easy it will be — 10 minutes of Google Searching apparently… hmm…

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here in Sydney. Will I be back for WE06? Heck yes!

Oh, and don’t forget to keep the middle of May 2006 free in your calendars — a web conference in New Zealand is being planned, and you will highly desire coming along… but more on that later…

CJ and I did the duty free store – there was hardly anything. CJ tells me to wait till I see Sydneyâ€s duty free area – much better a selection. That said, Iâ€ve never seen such a big bottle of Baileys or such a big bar of Toblerone in my life.

Iâ€m listening to the Daily Source Code on my iPod. I really like listening to podcasts – they fill time so well, and there is always something interesting to listen to. IT Conversations especially.

If you canâ€t tell, Iâ€m rambling. I try to blog when I have something interesting to say, but today, Iâ€m blogging for the sake of blogging. An almost-live thought-dump if you like, seeing as Iâ€m not posting this till I get onto some sort of internet connection.

Iâ€ve told a few people that I used to have this recurring dream that Iâ€d be flying to somewhere in the world, and Iâ€d get to the other country, get to customs and Iâ€d forgotten my passport; Iâ€d left it on my desk at home. Of course, thatâ€s not possible, because you need to show your passport before you get into the international departure lounge, but I was pretty scared that Iâ€d forget something pretty important by the time I got to Australia.

Iâ€m pretty excited about getting to Sydney. The flight is just a necessary boredom between here and there, even though Iâ€ve never left New Zealand before; yes, this is the first time in my life.

I hope I can get a bed at wakeup tonight. The place looks pretty trendy from the website, but if I get there about 8pm on a Wednesday night, Iâ€m concerned that they wonâ€t be able to put me up.

. . .

So here I am on the Airbus A320 to Sydney. I don’t know what time it is, because I don’t know what time zone I’m in right now, and I my cellphone is off. (EDIT: When I wrote this, I didn’t think to look at the time on my laptop.) Iâ€m in row 5 behind, the 2nd row from the front of the main cabin, behind Business Class. I canâ€t recommend this seat, because the front row of business is equipped with bassinets for baby travel, and thereâ€s three babies traveling with us today. After 3.25 hours of this I can imagine Iâ€ll be all “Argh! SHUT IT OFF SHUT IT OFF!”

Itâ€s lovely above the clouds. I wish I could tell you how high we are.

OK, on goes the podcasts – damn babies.

11:33
So I got into Sydney about 5:30. I say 5:30 because there was a HUGE line at customs. But once we got into Sydney proper, we drove off to the centre of town to the Mercure where CJ was staying. The bellhop at the Mercure gave me bum directions to Wake Up, and I ended up walking around nearly the entire railway station. Man they have some really long pedestrian subways in Sydney; so long infact that in this particular subway there were two buskers who werenâ€t within earshot of each other.

So eventually after asking some random people where this place was I found it. Itâ€s a really nice place – trendy, and really busy. Iâ€m in a six-share with five other girls.

So I went to wake upâ€s bar “Side Bar” – a fitting name for a guy whoâ€s a web developer. I ordered the special of the day (Steak & Kidney Pie + a pint – WTF, I hate kidney!) and grabbed a seat with some randoms. Backpackers are friendly people, always ready to strike up a conversation – I guess this is of necessity, as people donâ€t know anyone, and are looking for people to hang out with. I met two people from the US, one from Denmark and one from France.

Right now Iâ€m lying on my bed typing on the laptop. Itâ€s hard to keep my head up, especially with all the beer I just consumed. I should save this and go to sleep. BTW, Iâ€m typing all this into Word, as thereâ€s no public wifi available from this room.

Actually, there is, but itâ€s pay wifi, so I went and hunted down a AUD$20 Telstra PhoneAway card. So Iâ€ll post this now and hit the sack.

No photos as yet. Will take photos at the conference tomorrow