Some of my readers will know a certain Beck-appreciating Wellingtonian called Daniel who I work with.
I’ve been allowed to let the cat out of the bag: Daniel has a LJ. That is all. We now return to your normally scheduled life.
Category Archives: Work
Looking forward to Tax Cuts this election?
If you’re a New Zealander like me, you’ll probably know that there’s an election coming up, and good old Don Brash of the National Party, like so many politicians at election time, is advocating tax cuts. Apparently the Government can afford it, assuming they get rid of some of the less-important functions of the government.
Public Address have put together a handy little tax break calculator! You enter your salary, and punch in the percentages of tax you want to pay, and it tells you how much money per week you’ll be scoring. w00t! NZD$202 extra a week 😀
However, it goes forward to explain how much money it’ll need to recoup from giving the tax break to the nation. For me it was NZD$3,935 Millionbut luckily it goes on to offer suggestions of things it could get rid of, you know, to keep the government running smoothly. You know, the controversial things, like hip-hop tours, woman’s affairs, artist’s dole.
For example: Getting rid of the Wananga O Aotearoa? Sure, but what about all the students? — they’ll still be interested in tertiary education — onto student loans they go…
Largest 1-year funding the Wananga ever recieved: $239 Million
Cost of a third of ex-Wananga students going elsewhere: $220 Million
Net Money Recovered: NZD$19 Million.
Still to Recover: NZD$3,916 Million.
Ooo big savings. NOT.
Seriously, I think I can safely assume that National is unable to give a significant tax break. As the fellows at Public Address said:
There’s a word for that, and it’s nothing so prim as “baloney.”
For the record, I’m happy with how I’m being taxed. Maybe the rich should be taxed more, and the poor taxed less. What do you think?
Movin on up, Movin on out
So I have a new job! I handed in my 4 weeks notice to the DRC and am moving on to 3months.com! I must say thank you to 3months for letting me start in a part time manner so that the DRC wouldn’t be left in the lurch while my workmate is on 6 weeks leave, and so I can get the projects I’m currently working on at DRC out the door.
So I start part time at 3months on August 8, and I’m told while I will still be doing XHTML, CSS and PHP, I will be doing more XML and XSLT related work, along with picking up some Python and working with Plone and Zope. Scary stuff seeing as I don’t know much about working with those last three; I told them I was prepared to learn Python at the ‘interview’, and that I’ve tried to do a little Python here and there, but I have yet to use it for something non-trivial. However, I’m prepared to take the learning curve 🙂
I am however, really excited about working in a Agile environment. Everything I’ve read about Agile makes perfect sense. The values it upholds in the Agile Manifesto just seem to resonate that there is a solution to the project problems in all the organisations I’ve worked for to-date.
I’m really looking forward to it.
Web Designers and Typography
This is a rant.
Design is a mis-used word today, and leads to much confusion in the Web industry today. I consider myself a “Web Developer”, because I’m a developer. But people categorise me as a Web Designer. Yes, I design things, but I don’t do asthetics as well as I do functionality.
According to Web Design From Scratch, Design is a spectrum. Something that is well designed will be an appropriate balance between Asthetic design and Functional design. Designing the Asthetics is the art of creating something visually conveys an emotion or brand. Designing the Function is the art of making something useful.
Even though I’m a programmer and focus on the functional end of the spectrum of design, I rely on the so-called “Web Designer” (who is in charge of asthetics) to make the application look good, and every time in my life I have been sorely disappointed.
Why is this? Web Asthetic Designers too often focus on the “wrapping of the content”; That is to say all they do is the graphics that surround a body of text. They might stipulate a font, colour and point size for the text, but that’ll be it.
What about Bullet points? Blockquotes? Sub-headings? The asthetic design of web forms? Text-boxes? Buttons? Photo positioning and balance? Captions? Source Attribution? Even simple things like link colours are sometimes forgotten.
Too many times I have recieved a “letterhead” — a webpage design that is essentially a blank piece of paper save for an asthetically pleasing header and navigation. Don’t get me wrong, I need someone to do that part, but I also need someone to tell me how to fill that blank space in a manner that doesn’t clash with the template.
As a programmer who appreciates asthetically-pleasing, yet gloriously-functional-design, but as someone who is less capable to create the asthetics (but doing his best), I would appreciate a web designer who can provide a great site presentation and provide a style guideline for laying out content within the template they provide. Is that too much to ask?
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People say you can tell when a programmer has designed a webpage because it doesn’t look pretty. One web agency I worked for it would call it “Programmer Art”. But I can tell when a designer has half-designed a webpage, because the programmer’s user interface is clashing with the design of the site.
Oh, and don’t think I’ve forgotten that Programmers also have a responsibility to make their applications user friendly. But that’s a whole different rant.
MacOSX: First Impressions
OK, so it’s not my mac, but I guess I’m gonna be the one using it the most. Work just bought a Mac mini, and it is so quiet! And of course, it runs MacOSX, that sexy smart OS.
After some initial oversights (Didn’t have any USB keyboards), I got it up and going with my existing CRT monitor, mouse and keyboard. First things I learnt: Home and End go to the top and bottom of your document, not the start and end of the current line. Just to clarify:
| Windows | MacOSX | |
|---|---|---|
| Start of line | Home | Command + Left Arrow |
| End of line | End | Command + Right Arrow |
| Start of document | Ctrl + Home | Home |
| End of document | Ctrl + End | End |
| Start of (previous) word | Ctrl + Left Arrow | Option + Left Arrow |
| End of (next) word | Ctrl + Right Arrow | Option + Right Arrow |
But I should get used to all that. I guess I wish I had a real Mac keyboard, but I did find DoubleCommand, which I have yet to try, but looks promising.
I did however, try Quicksilver! I really like this tool — it lets you do things you might do quite often all from the keyboard, things like start applications, upload files. If I was going to replace my Windows box with the Mac as my desktop machine, I’m sure Quicksilver would definetely become handy 🙂 It’s like a command prompt on de-obfuscation pills!
The main reason we have the Mac is for testing websites in Safari and IE5Mac. Safari is quite good, but as many of my web designing and developing friends out there will likely know, the bane of our existances is Internet Explorer, and IE5Mac triplely so. So I stand to learn a lot about the inadequacies of crappy browsers… as if IE6Win wasn’t enough… 😛
Webfroot is looking smart in Safari — the one-liner doesn’t render correctly, but hey, can’t win them all. Haven’t tried looking at inner.geek yet… will do that tomorrow.
Getting to know the ins and outs of a highly polished, well thought out operating system is an exciting prospect. I’ve tried several KDE and Gnome installations over the years, and they don’t have squat on MacOSX.
If I wasn’t saving to go to WE05, I’d be all like saving hard core for a Mac… I have been dreaming of a Mactop to call my own for a while now…
Can anyone out there recommend good freeware apps a Windows Poweruser “switching” to OSX should look at?
