Category Archives: Rant

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 🙂

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So good a quote I thought you would enjoy it.

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

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Brisbane Day 4 – Fight!

I just got in from Brisbane and boy are my feet sore!

After purchasing what I thought would a BigPond prepaid internet set up pack, and discovering that it was instead a prepaid internet recharge code at a local IGA store. Since that didn’t work, and I wanted to get on the internet that night with my mactop, Mum and Neil signed up temporarily for a 7 hour dialup account. Cheers guys!

I tried taking the code back this morning. I get there around 10am and the IGA manager tried to get it refunded from BigPond, but couldn’t, and said I should try a Telstra store and get it sorted there.

So off on my little feet I went, trekking into the middle of Brisbane to find a Telstra store. They said if I’d have bought the code at their store, they’d be able to refund me easily. They said I should try going to the nearest IGA store and tell them the story.

So I stepped out to the Information Centre in the middle of Queen St, and asked where the nearest IGA was. Brunswick St, about the same distance as home to where I was, but in the opposite direction. Oh well, why not.

Around 12:30, I find this store, and ask them for a refund. No good — they tried talking to BigPond too — but in the end, they couldn’t refund it either, and told me to go back to where I bought it… DAMMIT.

So about a 2 hour trek back to the first IGA store, and about 20 minutes of waiting for the manager to sort it out, and BigPond said they would credit the AUD$9.95 to the post-paid account. Not the most ideal refund, but it would do — I was going to pay Mum and Neil back anyway.

I got home about 2pm.

. . .

It’s 36 degrees out here. I’m using my mactop on the picnic table on mum’s balcony. I’ll be dialing up soon to post this to my blog. My blisters have blisters. I don’t think I want to do any more walking. Going home to New Zealand tomorrow!

Outside Rant 1 comment

Sirens, Wifi and incompetent landlords

It’s 3am and I’m sitting outside cash converters on cuba street, shoeless, with laptop in lap. The fire alarm in the apartment building has been going solidly for the last 2 hours. The fire department couldn’t turn it off, so they ‘rang it in’ and left as quickly as they came. Half the apartment complex is out on the street with me. Some drunk couple walked past me and mentioned to some of the flatties up the street that “that guy back down there has no shoes but a laptop – he must be homeless but earnt a lot of money busking” ROFLMAO…

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.

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Web Surrentials ’05

Sitting here at home now thinking back about the last 5 days, It’s just sinking in. It’s surreal that I was in a lecture theatre full of my industry peers and leaders learning about the latest and greatest in web standards, and that I got to socialise with them many of them.

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

Friends Life Outside Rant Web Essentials 05 4 comments