Syringe.Net.Nz - Rambles

Taking Nice Party Photos

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:40:21 GMT

So I’m a big fan of taking available light photos. This is particularly good fun at Wedding parties and Christmas parties.

I took a bunch of photos at the Intergen Office Christmas party last Friday night and I’ve had a bunch of people ask “what camera etc… were you using”. SO I thought I’d take a few minutes and write up a post with some notes on taking available light party photos.

So the trick to taking nice party photos is not using a flash. To do this you need a couple of things;

A camera that has a decent High ISO noise level.
ISO is an interesting term in that it goes back to the film days. The ISO (International Standards Organization) measure basically set a standard for the sensitivity of film to light. A high ISO film required less light to create an image, but, a high ISO film also typically produced photos with much more noticeable film grain. In the digital age we still use the term ISO but this time it’s basically referring to the amount of light required by the sensor in order to create an image; while the ISO of a roll of film was fixed we can change the camera ISO (sensitivity) at will because it’s basically just turning up the Gain (a camera sensor is effectively an analog-digital interface). If you’ve ever played with other things that have a Gain knob you’ll know if you put a small signal in and try and use the gain knob to boost it things can get a bit ugly- so it is with camera ISO if you turn the gain up too much things get noisy.
So to get the nice party photos with available light (no flash and as such relying on not much light) you need a camera that lets you turn the gain up with out getting too noisy. The original ‘super amazing’ low light Camera was probably the Canon EOS 5D Mk II which is now about 3 years old. Indeed it is this camera that I used for most of the shots. It’s an expensive ($5k) body, but, over the past few years that super high ISO technology has filtered down such that you can get pretty decent looking shots from most $1000 bodies at ISO of 1600-6400 (to give you an idea of how revolutionary this is it would be very rare for anyone other than a professional to shoot film higher than ISO400 back in the day. Thus the modern digital cameras are several times more sensitive for the same level of noise than film was ever able to achieve)
I’m a Canon person so that’s where my recommendations will sit and I think there’s not a lot wrong with the Canon 600D body in the $1000 price point. Take a look at these high ISO shots from DPReview. There will be similarly good options from Nikon in the price point which people can point out in the comments. The benefit of getting the $1000 body is you have more moolah to spend on lenses…
The second thing you’ll need is a lens with a large maximum aperture.
You can tell the maximum aperture of your lens by reading it off the lens. It will be expressed as a ratio on the front ring e.g. 1:1.8 but it’s typically shortened in conversation and marketing to just the denominator. For the tech boffins the F-Stop (Aperture) is basically expressed as a ratio of the focal length of the lens. The lower the F stop number the larger the aperture- a bit counter-intuitive I know.
For a zoom lens about the largest F stop you’ll get is F2.8 and even then you’ll be paying big bikkies and they weight a ton. There are a few shots in the party photos that are taken using an 70-200mm F2.8 lens.
What you really want is a ‘prime’ lens. This is a lens with no zoom. Most of the shots taken in the party set above were taken with a Sigma 50mm F1.4 lens (this is a mid-range prime lens in terms of cost) but, for the most part I have it ‘stopped down’ to F1.8. This is for two reasons 1) wide open a mid-range lens like this can lose a bit of sharpness particularly around the edges and 2) A side effect of a large aperture is a very shallow depth-of-field; in the case of F1.4 on a 5D MkII with the subject at 2m only 11cm of depth will be in sharp focus. You’ll see this shallow depth of field in most of the low light photos as either a nice blurry background or as an annoying fact that of two people in the photo only one is in focus.
So. Which lens to get. This is a place where Canon has a real advantage. If you are not ken to spend much money there is a Canon lens, the 50mm F1.8 MkII (plastic fantastic) that for under $200 will let you take nice party photos too. To me this is almost as good a reason as any to prefer Canon over Nikon at the cheap pricepoint cameras.
If you have a bit more money to spend both the Canon and Sigma 35mm/50mm/85mm primes are great for under $1000.
And finally if you have plenty of money go buy a Canon 85m F1.2 for shots like this one I took on a borrowed lens.

So this post became a bit of a ramble. To answer the more direct question of what I used for the party photos.

Canon 7D Body (early evening) with a Canon 24-105 F4 zoom
Canon 5D (low light) with a mixture of Sigma 50mm 1.4, Carl Zeiss 85mm 1.4 and Canon 70-200mm 2.8

Your Help Needed: Laptop Bags for Grant Braes Primary School in Dunedin

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 01:24:36 GMT

So a friend of mine is on the board of trustees of a school in Dunedin. They have just acquired 20 laptop computers. The first ever laptops at the school but they need bags for them.

I’ve hustled around the house and found a couple of Tech Ed bags (Tech Ed South Africa 2007 and Tech Ed New Zealand 2008).

I’m looking for others who are able to find an old bag they neither need nor want. If you can I’d love to be able to get it to Grant Braes primary school for you. I am flying down to Dunedin for work on Monday so anything that can get to Intergen in Wellington (Lvl 7, 126 Lambton Quay, Wellington) tomorrow I can take down with me.

My Blog Ro9ll as an OPML File

Sat, 09 May 2009 21:16:14 GMT

So I needed to get this onto my iPhone. Thought the best way was to stick it up here and then others can take a look at it too if they want.

Blog Roll

Really Liking Xero

Tue, 13 May 2008 09:01:17 GMT

So we're using Xero for one of my businesses, Locum Jobs company MedRecruit.

I'm in a non executive role and we're all scattered around the country so it provides a great way to peek at the balance sheet or cashflow forecast where-ever I am.

I really like the way that you can dril down through all the accounts to look at transactions in detail too.

I've used a few other desktop accounting packages in my time (I currently use Quickbooks for my personal company and family trust) and they really are all a complete pain in the arse to use for an infrequent user like myself. I'm sure if you learn how to use them they are fine but honestly I expect stuff to be so intuitive that a geek like me can just pick it up and run with it.

I've got good basic accounting knowledge and I've picked up all I need to know about Xero just by using it. No documentation required.

As a small business co-owner Xero really is the ducks nuts for keeping myself aware of the goings on.

Two thumbs up from me.

What I'd really love is a chopped down version with a limited number of transactions per month that will allow me to use it for my smaller stuff at a cost point that I can justify more easily to myself.

[Update]

I am reliably advised that Xero has discounted rates for your second and subsequent businesses and even more discounted rates for non GST registered entities like your famil trust. So I've registered two of my other companies with Xero and my trust. Will blog how my move from casual observer to somewhat more active user goes.

Trademe Invest I Zoomin...

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 23:22:13 GMT

Tim has a post up titled 'Trademe Invest in Ruby on Rails'.... which is a bit misleading really.

It's more like 'Trademe invest in Zoomin, who happen to use Ruby on Rails'.

Good on Zoomin for gettig their claws ito Trademe on this one. I thik it's fantastic... but it's pushig it a bit far to note that 'Trade me have 'lauched their first Rails page'. If it were written in PHP they would have launched 'thier first PHP Page' and the same for JSP. Don't think it's too likely that Trademe will be making the move off ASP.NET anytime soon.

When you buy someone elses technology you generally get it as is where is :-)

A funny little example I saw this morning was Sysinternals Process Explorer. Microsoft now own this but there's still a right click menu option to 'Google' a process name.

Will be interesting to see how easy it is for them to Mashup the Zoomin stuff into Trademe though... in particular whether most of the 'mashing' occurs on the Ruby side or the ASP.NET side.

At Last We Get One Back - Fairfax Paid Too Much

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:12:00 GMT

Kiwis have a long history of paying too much for Aussie companies- Ansett and AAPT are the best examples.

I think with the TradeMe/Fairfax deal we might just get one back.

While TradeMe is no lemon (the others arguably were) I really struggle to see how they can justify the price they paid.

If you stack it against even the exorbitant per connection fees pad during the electricity market de-regulation it just seems out of whack. Does anyone know how Fairfax proposes to grow their investment? Into Australia, maybe, but certainly I see ver little opportunity for growth beyond that- even Aus will be hard work.

Dollar Going Ker-Boom

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 02:33:47 GMT

Looks like the dollar is continuing to get NAILED. It was always going to happen- was just a matter of when.

At Kognition we've been holding quite a lot of our working capital in US$ lately in anticipation- it's nice that it's finally started doing something :-)

I think we've had the big fall now and we'll setlle in around 63-64 cents for a good few months. That said we could see a number of the mom and pop uridashi holders bail which could further catalyze things- good time to be holding forex anyway :-)

How We Are Being Disruptive @ Kognition

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 01:26:05 GMT

I had a great dicussion with my bank manager the other day- wen't something like:

CA: I need to be able to see the statment of account for my on call forex electronically via internet banking.

BM: We can't do that- you should use desk bank, our $30+ a month 'business' product.

CA: Hmmm... that feels like daylight robery... but do tell me more. Does it work over the internet.

BM: Well, sort of, you use a modem to dial into it.

CA: WTF!?! I thought modems went out long ago. I don't even have a phone line.

And so it is. We do not have analog telephone lines at all in Wellington. At the office we have a VOIP PABX (an Asterisk Linux Box) and attached to this we have some SIP phones. At home I am getting TelstraClear cable turned on (they now let you have the internet without a phoneline which is a darn lot better than Telecom) and we'll setup a VPN tunnel to the office and attach a SIP phone off the PABX at home too. We already have a great VPN tunnel; running between our ISA servers in Dunedin and Wellington and we are going to put an Asterisk box at the Dunedin end so that we can VOIP out onto the University or Otago phone network- we have a number of on campus customers. We are alos doing A LOT of Skype calling- several of our customers now use it as their primary communication mechanism with us- we can have multi party phone conferences, for 90 minutes, for FREE!

We're also really taking advantage of MSN Messenger a heap more now. We use the Remote Assistance feature for pairs based programming at a distance.

Other cool things that we are doing include using MS Virtual Server to run a number of our key servers- the real benefit for us is the ability to scale up more easily without doing a full rebuild each time. Just pick up the required server images and drop them on a new box.

So a lot of this stuff really excites me at the moment. I'm talking with a number of customers and friends about how this can help their business too. Finally we're looking at some new business opportunities that take advantage of all this stuff.

Exciting times ahead.

Adam Cogan Rules

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 01:27:43 GMT

I've just listened to Adam Cogan on Dot Net Rocks.

Adam talks about his cool rule enforcement applications for VS.Net and SQL.

You also get to find out that he takes his whole team (30 odd people) to a beach house once a year and they all get up and go for runs @ 6:30am..... Now there is an idea! It's a great DNR episode and it gives some great insight into why Adam is able to run such a tight development ship.

Listening on some new headphones that I just got. I find my Sennheiser HD25 muffs a bit uncomfortable for use at the office so I got some cheapish ($120 vs $600 for HD25) Sennheiser phones- HD465. They are open ear designs- i.e. they just sit as flat pads on your ears so REALLY comfortable.

Time To Break Radio Silence

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 01:15:28 GMT

Well. For the last few months I've pretty much fallen off the face of the Earth blogging wise. A few reasons:

We've been working really hard.
We've been polishing off some product development which means that we've had to work hard on both the product and ensuring that we remain profitable and able to pay the bills.
I've shifted to Wellington
So we've now opened a Wellington Office. Will post some piccies soon. This has meant some reasonable time spent geting stuff organised. Yesterday we got the ISA boxes at each end talking to each other. It's really cool so I now have a Dunedin IP subnet and a Wellington IP subnet and we can route between them over a L2TP over IPSec tunnel. Means I am getting 15ms pings from WLG to DUD- it really is just like being there.
I've been putting in some good gym time
Been doing a lot of Spinning at the Gym which is really kicking the BF% down. Have paired back the weights for the last wee while but I'm going to kick it back up again soon.
MTBing.
I'm back riding a mountain bike quite a bit again. Riding to work most days too. Got a nice 2nd hand Specialized Epic Pro on eBay that I picked up in Vancouver last month.

I'll blog a bit more detail on some of these things over the next wee while. But anyway- going to make a real effort to blog more 'cos I've been slack.

OH! And if you haven't already noticed I tend to majorly over use hyphens- not sure why- I just do. I've found someone elase who does too! I'm reading Robert Fisk's book on the Middle East at the moment- he apostrophises too... will post a detailed review on the book once I've finished. It is heavy going but very interesting.

My Knob Is Bigger and Better Than Rods Knob

Wed, 16 Nov 2005 03:28:50 GMT

Rod Drury wants a new Knob.

One of my mates @ e-Media had a knob like that.
It was certainly big... and it flashed when you turned it.

I have a different Knob. Mine's got buttons and all sorts. Quite nice really.

More On Tagging

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:18:27 GMT

O)K... so Phil came back and commented on my post from yesterday....

One suggestion was to support mapping between tags. I still have issues with ontological mapping like this as I think that it remains both error prone and a time consuming PITA. But, I did some thinking while abluting this morning (the little boys room is a great cognative stimulant) and I reckon that we must be getting close to being able to draw inference mappings from real world data.

What do I mean from this. Well. Google has a whole schwag of information on various sites around the world that would, IMHO, cover pretty much every conceivable topic. One would think that they should be able to use their Googlebase to build some sort of inference engine that would give a ranked inference between potential tag terms. So, from my example yesterday, Canoeing and Kayaking would sit very close together on the inference list. Thus tag ontologies and the mappings between them could become a fuzzy concept and we could use fuzzy algebra to help us build systems around them.

I played around with this sort of autmatic inferencing in music files in my final year AI paper @ varsity. Used Self Organising Maps to cluster similar music. Google could use some sort of Neural Net to cluster key words out of their database. Then this cluster map could be used to help map between concepts in a fuzzy fashion.

The advantage of this approach is that these maps could then be represented to the user in 2D or 3D space and coupled with some funky zooming could be used to help solve the UI problem that Phil talks about.

Tagging

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 03:45:31 GMT

Phil Cockfield has been writing quite a bit on tagging recently.

He's currently talking about tagging emails at source rather than destination.

This is all well and good except that to work really well we need to either

a) Share the same set of tags

b) Alow the sender to 'pollute' the receivers tag list

And of course the whole semantics issue comes up....

For example if someone from the UK tags an email with 'Canoeing' I might miss it because I'm only interested in Kayaking.

Travel Madness Begins Once More

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 22:20:31 GMT

OK... so I'm pretty travel crazy over the next few weeks... blogiing may be light again for a bit

25 Aug DUD-AKL
31 Aug AKL-BNE
2 Sep BNE-WLG
5 Sep WLG-DUD
11 Sep DUD-LAX
16 Sep LAX-DUD
27 Sep DUD-SEA
31 Sep SEA-DUD

Done :-)

First Class

Wed, 15 Jun 2005 23:17:05 GMT

Rod has some stuff on NZ's First Class experience.

I'm inclined to agree that it's not super but I reckon the seats are actually that bad... Much better than NZ business.

The NZ inflight entertainment experience is LAME LAME LAME. When I fly to Seattle this week it will be the Fourth time I have seen the same bloody movies in NZ in the past few months.

Roll on the new business class... it looks IMHO to be about the best business offering around (bar maybe Lufthansa but only cos I want in flight internet.... which they have even in coach).

FWIW. Like Rod we have a back of the plane company policy..... but the odd upgrade is nice :-)

Rod also comments on the lounge experiences...

IMHO the Air NZ lounges (Intl ones excepted) are pretty bloody good. Every other Star Alliance lounge I've been in recently has been pretty ass.... I mean in Singapore they even give you tyhe second class treatment by bouncing Gold Star Alliance to the 'Premiere Lounge'... Premiere my ass. I reckon Air NZs lounges and Koru Club in general spank the pants of most others...

Brendon from Provoke. World Famous In Dunedin

Mon, 16 May 2005 23:37:18 GMT

Brendon from Provoke was in our student rag this week- in the Bunch of 5s Question and Answer section

Obviously down here trying to pilfer some student talent....

Pity I was in Perth otherwise I might have had to drag him out for a Tech Ed Geek Festesque Boozup @ a student pub.

ANZAC Day @ Kranji

Wed, 04 May 2005 01:35:25 GMT

My friend Sandy (in Singapore) has blogged about the ANZAC day service we attended there.

It was quite an amazing experience. I purchased a Poppy - my 3rd for the year having also purchased one in Shanghai @ the get together there, one at the Shell Station in Huntly (on the actual Friday before ANZAC in NZ).

As dawn broke I left my Poppy atop the headstone of 'An Unknown New Zealand Soldier'.

The Cool Things Blogs Have Done To Politics

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 20:28:24 GMT

We've now got Rodney Hide asking for suggestions for Parliamentary Question time on his blog.... really a rather funny situation.

The Power Question

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 04:52:16 GMT

Over on rivers.org.nz there is a discussion about power stations- we kayaker care very much about power stations.

here is my response...

I always get my ass kicked for this answer. But IMHO Nuclear is not a bad option. Only problem with it is it is BLOODY expensive.
But, for a clean green country like ours it is ideal.

Minimal emissions (Coal/Gas to some degree), just Nuke waste which is pretty manageable or at the very least exportable. Minimal visual polution (wind farms), no damming rivers (hydro), small in size (solar), reliable (all of the above save for Coal/Gas).

The other good thing we could do is stop selling Comalco electricity at below market rates. Comalco is basically just an electricity exporting mechanism. Ship the bauxite in, use the cheap power, ship the aluminium out. Export electricity.

Paul Is Off To Redmond

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 22:00:57 GMT

Paul Andrew, MS's Wellington based Dev Evangelist is moving on to Redmond. We'll be sad to see you go mate.... been great working with you. Next time I'm in Redmond we're sure hjas hell gonna get a group of the Kiwi expats together and go to Wades Gunshop for a blast up.

O-Week.....

Wed, 23 Feb 2005 04:09:16 GMT

It's Orientation Week this week @ Otago University... The talent would leave even Tim Huffman speechless!

Cool Posts That Once Were Pt. I

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:50:08 GMT

I used to really love it on web forums where every once in a while someone would dredge up a cool post from times gone by....

S here is a post dredged out of the back blocks of my blog on Airline Excess Baggage Charges.....

Anyone have any similar insights?

A Suggestion for e-Bay

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:43:58 GMT

How about a link next to the expiry of an auction to allow me to add it to my Outlook calendar?

Hooray For Stupid People......

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 20:23:30 GMT

Yes Sir... that is correct.... your Subaru Lagacy really is only a 'Remuera' 4WD....

flood.wmv (391.74 KB)

* Remuera is a wealthy, old money suburb in Auckland, New Zealand notable for it’s palatial estates, four-wheel drives and middle-aged housewives who refer to each other as “daaahling.”

More Alumni News....

Mon, 31 Jan 2005 20:59:00 GMT

It don't just rain... it pours....

Bob McNeill, who did some contracting for us at the end of last year has (once again) won the New Zealand Music award in the folk music section.... well done Bob!

RIANZ web site is STUFFED at the moment- some one please fix it for them!... So can't post a link to the award details....

Wow! Baby Time....

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 04:41:13 GMT

One of my former work mates is a Dad... Congrats guys... what a cutie...

Makes me feel old... fact I'm getting married next Sat doesn't help :-)

The Crazy Sheep Stamp

Fri, 21 Jan 2005 01:06:25 GMT

There is much ado about a sheep on a recent postage stamp... Why on earth politicians like Katherine Rich (an otherwise generally intelligent polly) need to get involved I don't know.

But in that vein I've come to the concusion that the sheep stamp is the all but inevitable politically correct by-product of a United Future/Labour Coalition Govt.... it is a chemically castrated solo dad.

Back From The Brink.....

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:30:23 GMT

So I fell off the blogging wagon for a few months due to too much work. I'm back in action now... watch this space.

It's XML Stupid

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:29:06 GMT

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/01/15.html#a9204

Scoble has been fanning the flames around the copyright nature of blog material. Wearing my techno-legal guy hat for two secs... how about incorporating some sort of license metadata into the RSS standard... that's what XML is for isn't it? It's eXtensible for a reason.

This would allow publishers to indicate to aggregators how their content may be used- it's almost like DRM but without the big stick. Like an advanced form of robots.txt. It could allow things such as a copyright/attribution notice to be appended and so forth.

Contract IT Work in the UK

Tue, 02 Nov 2004 19:30:57 GMT

Someone asked about contracting in the UK on one of the mailing lists I subscribe to- a mate in Auckland who has been there done that posted a fantastic reply. Reproduced here for your information and pleasure.

Tims guide to working in the UK...

Cheat Sheet Version:

--------------------

* Its way easier when you're there (if you're applying from here many aren't interested or wont take you seriously)

* Gift of the gab goes a long way ;-)

* Many agents are petty & classest - don't out-class the agent

* Be good, but not too good - most contracts will become rolling

* Good contractors rates can provide a cheap and enteraining night a some antipodean pub

* Register quick and flirt with agents for securing invites to xmas functions.

* Stock up on condoms

Long Winded Inane Banter Version:

---------------------------------

Looking is always easy (no more difficult than doing single handed searches for porn on the web) - Securing a job is another story - I've found a lot of agencies and potential employers will ignore you if you're applying from here - however when you're there & they can see a face it makes all the difference (although I've also secured jobs remotely from here so it is possible - probably more so because they didn't actually get to see my face first).

Be good (quite easy because poms are lazy whining bastards - you'll seem like a breath of fresh air to management) but not so good that you have a high profile - most contracts will turn out to be rolling, ie if you're good and keep a low enough profile they'll just forget you're there and keep paying you. Here's a few other dubious tactics to increase your revenue:

- I've heard of some contractors billing more than 24 hours a day (dodgy)

- Also heard of some guys creating off shore accounts and invoicing from there (ie zippo tax), you just need to find an 'imaginative' accountant (very dodgy)

- I've also heard of contractors decreasing income (for tax purposes) by having a large entertainment account - the record I know of is one evening costing 1200quid for a few guys having dinner.

If you're a true billy-no-mates IT nerd then you'll probably have the social skills of a boy donkey's dingle dangle, fortuntately you're in luck, london is crawling with poor antipodean travelling scum who choose a socialistic view and correspondingly poorly paid bar jobs (unlike you with your superior capitalistic pig point of view and matching high paid job)- on any given night you can find a herd of these steaming social animals at a pub in Shepherd Bush who will be instant longlost mates if you buy a few rounds of snake bites with you're new found wealth (read: contractors rates). The down side is having to listen to their drivel and pretending that just because you were brought up 400kms apart that you have something in common..

The worst are the kiwis, after 12 pints you'll be expected to strip off and do the haka half naked on the bar. Another down side is the prevalence of STDs within this incestuous bunch.

Also, it goes without saying that regardless of whether you're a pure genius or a complete plonker who cant tell the difference between a virus and a visual development environment whose name ends in .NET and was developed by one of the biggest s/w companies, if you've got the gift of the gab and can spin a yarn or two about how you single handedly re-architected all the backend systems of a forbes 500 multinational then you're in with a grin.

Oh, one more thing, they're a cheesy classest society over there so it pays to target your self sales pitch to suit the audience, you know, if the agency is located in the east end then talk applesnpears cockney drivel or if its some snooty cow from knightsbridge then just drop a few names, like the time you & uncle steve ballimer went skiing in tahoe or that time you got drunk as a skunk on larry's yacht and fell overboard etc.

And lastly, now is a good time to go over there - some of the bigger agencies throw fantastic christmas functions, and some of their staff are really slutty (guys & girls - depends on which way you bend) ;-)

New Office

Tue, 05 Oct 2004 05:06:20 GMT

That's right. Kognition has shifted offices... again.

We shifted into the Centre for Innovation at Otago University.

We've pimp'd up the office pretty nicely (see photos below).

One is of the area we call the Glasshouse- it's got two all glass walls looking out onto the University and we've got nice leather couches, cacti and an air hockey table in there.

The other half of the room is where we work- though it also has our DJ Setup. It'll also be where our big ass server rack is gonna go when it arrives- servers have arrived, just no rack yet.

Anyway- check the photos.... Bill, come visit, Casey, export yaself here

IMAGE_00093.jpg (32.53 KB)

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Full Text Feeds are back on blog.asp.net

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 21:49:12 GMT

Scoble has the details here....

Dunno why the hell they changed it in the first place....

Robert Levy Is Insane!

Tue, 14 Sep 2004 11:03:45 GMT

Ok... so Rob has re-ignited the flame @ http://robertlevy.net/ and the first post back he talks about his car... and his insurance... the man is insane... let me quote a little.

Getting screwed on car insurance. Now that I actually have my own car I gotta start paying insurance and boy does that suck. Right now I'm paying over 250/month...

This is just mad...US$250 a month == NZ$384 a month... To put that in perspective, that is NZ$4 more than I pay to insure my Subaru GT Legacy Twin Turbo 206kw Extremely Nickable For Ram Raiding 'Space Rocket With Wheels'....

And more importantly that's NZ$380 per year, not per month.

Eee youch!.... Should I ever take the red pill I'll sure as hell be joining Ericgu @ the LBS and buying myself a shiny new bike... can't believe Eric doesn't like the color scheme on the Litespeed..... Titanium is like... so sexy!

The run on self congratulation

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 22:37:42 GMT

Sorry to all of those RSS subscribers out there.... the recent run on self congratulatory blog posts is becuase I've decided to make the news page on our new look company web site simply a tap off a category on my blog. That way it is harder for me to neglect the all important comapny news... like I have done in the past.

So. Going forward you will get the odd PRish post coming out of this blog too..... should make a nice change from some of the other ranting I do.

More Google Goodness

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 02:44:48 GMT

Just to show how wonderful the Google ranking system... Technology Head Me who gets most of his Google karma from links with technology sites is ranked @ #2 site for the search term Alison Annan

http://www.google.co.nz/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22alison+annan%22&btnG=Search&meta

What a crazy world we live in.... I've posted on this before here, but I wonder if, in this age of all over the subject range blogs, Google are doing anything to correlate their ranking system with subject clustering.

SNOW DAY!

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 00:12:20 GMT

OK, so I'm a day late... But monday was a snow day here in Dunedin. Nick thought I'd be cold... but not me! Office Dog and I were out by 8am in shorts and T Shirt (well he was in his birthday suit) going for a run. Herewith some photos... off my Smartphone I'm afraid...

An Ilicit Developer Portal!?!

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 11:56:05 GMT

Iliciting suggestions for content/functionality for your theoretical internal developer portal

Oh yes please......

But seriously... developers work in all sorts of different ways- IMHO the last thing they want is some company wide uber portal to constrain their lives. Give me blogs and Google- that's a pretty good toolset to be completely honest. Google is my most important productivity tool- I'd just love some metrics on how many searches I do a day.

Tech Ed 2004 recap....

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 21:26:14 GMT

I'm pleased Mr Dee didn't come to my session on smart clients, Val and Gabe gt a bit of a roasting... :-) *

I'll have to write up my review sometime over the next few days... just REALLY busy..... and got to do GST today!

I agree on poor old Nic's session... the drilling was crazy... I left and stormed down to the speakers room and told some people to start rolling shit down hill!

[OK.... Quick Brainfart Below]

To be completely honest I'm not as keen on Sky City as a venue. I really liked the Aotea center because it was spread out, had lots of room and has some character. The rooms are not as good as Sky City maybe, but, they've just done a major refit.

I didn't actually get to many sessions at Tech Ed this year- was busy reworking my slide deck to remove all the content I presented @ Security Summit. In the end I only had two people who had been to the security summit presentations in my session so I could have represented some of that exciting content.

My session went pretty well. Got through a couple of Demos. My Smart Client deployment demo went well apart from the fact that I couldn't get my initial MSI deployment to work so I had to XCopy deploy. Deployment really is the best feature of smart clients. We have one of our applications deployed from invercargil to Kaitaia and updated automagically over the internet.... Really is useful.

I think that I spoke fairly well but that I could probably do with refining my slide deck a little- had a bit too much detail on some of the slides. I really wanted to make it an interactive session... but everyone was pretty tired :-) Daryl Burling and Brent Clarke helped kick things off though.

Will be interesting to see my feedback. Anyway... gotta go do some work. More on Tech Ed from me (including jumping off the Sky Tower) later!

*[UPDATE] Mr Dee did come to my first session (the DNUG Meeting) and said it was a 'must not miss' :-)

The New Office Dog

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 20:59:31 GMT

We've now got an 'office' dog around Kognition.

Toby is a wee terror who has just today learnt to climb the stairs to the office. Provided he is good and stays relaxed on the bean bags I'll let him stay... otherwise he's going out the back!

Interactive Tech Ed Sessions

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 03:42:34 GMT

Michael Kleef is talking about how he tried to make his session more interactive for Tech Ed this year...

I really want to start getting my sessions more interactive too- tried to get this years Tech Ed one more interactive. The fact that it was 2nd to last session made it a bit tough...

Looks like Michael was using bribes... must remember to take some bribes next time :-)

Will have to wait and see how my evals turn out....

Teh L0rdz Pr4y3r

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 20:50:47 GMT

Now you all know that I'm by no means a religious nutcase. But this is really funny...

Our Father, who 0wnz h34V3n, j00 r0ck!
May all 0ur base someday be belong to you!
May j00 0wn earth just like j00 0wn h34V3n.
Give us this day our warez, mp3z, and pr0n through a phat pipe.
And cut us some slack when we act like n00b lamerz, just as we teach n00bz
when they act lame on us.
Please don't give us root access on some poor d00d'z box when we're too
pissed off to think about what's right and wrong, and if you could keep the
fbi off our backs, we'd appreciate it.
For j00 0wn r00t on all our b0x3s 4ever and ever.

4m3n

Tech Ed Day One

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 20:26:49 GMT

Got to a few sessions on Day one... in between sorting my deck and in particular my demos.

The 100 level Map Point session was prettty good- getting our hands on the map data for NZ (about 6mo out) will mean that we can start to do some really neat stuff with our utilities job dispatch application. Pity there is no support for writing your own plugins to the MLS- kinda precludes doing funky stuff like location over packet trunk radio.

Next session I hit was the stuff on Team System. I'm not completely convinced that the demarcaton of roles in Team system is going to work in an NZ context- we tend to be jack of all trades down here... but we'll see. The workflow looks good but I'm going to delegate all that hard stuff down to Nick :-)

Went to the Metropolis architecture talk, if only becuase it was The Metropolis talk. Harry did a good job, knew his stuff well.

Also went to the Data in SOA discussion that Harry gave. Again, a useful session if maybe a little assumptuous of the idea that we are all from big IT shops.

Finished the day with an early Dinner @ The Mexican Cafe with Nick. Saw the guys from Provoke and there were plenty of other Wellywood types- seemed they were all out for dinner with PAndrew.

Tech Ed Keynote

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 20:43:19 GMT

Blogging from the keynote this morning.... The room is filling quickly and as per usual people are STUPID and don't shift to the middle of the rows..... is it some innate fear of a sudden need to ablute that causes this phenomena?

The MS team have been a bit more adventurous with the keynote this year and chose a 'Professional Speaker' rather than an MS exec for the keynote. I think this should be cool- we never get one of the really BIG execs down here anyway.

Holy Smoke Batman... It's a full house!

Mon, 26 Jul 2004 21:15:58 GMT

Seems that yet again Tech Ed New Zealand will fill one of NZ's largest conference venues to capacity.

I'll be there! Will you? Let me know in the comments and we can catch up.... talk some politics and have a beer maybe.

The Keynote looks fantastic... a great surprise to pull out of the box... checkout what you're missing.

Deviating from the usual TechEd keynote, we are very pleased to bring you Dr. Joseph MacInnis, one of the world's foremost explorers and innovative thinkers. Dr MacInnis was the first man to dive under the North Pole, was a consultant to the Titanic discovery team and the discoverer of the world's most northern shipwreck.

Cool Links for Friday Arvo

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 04:48:56 GMT

A very cool 'Your Potential Our Passion' Flash app from MS.

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/innovation/yourpotential/main.html

I have mixed feelings about the 'Your Potential Our Passion' thing.... I really love it as a feel good marketing series and cncept but it's been overused in silly places here in NZ... Like playing the advert at a rugby match...... what a waste. But this flash app is VERY cool..... love to know who did it and what they spent on it? No hints in the code unfortunatly.... :-(
It even has subtitles for disability accesibility!

Check out this piccie of a fully frozen PC still running Windows!.... I used to do a lot of work with these industrial style PCs... VERY cool shot.
http://blogs.msdn.com/mcreasy/archive/2004/07/13/181857.aspx

No time to rip all your CD's? LoadPod will do it for you! (Assuming you have an iPod and at least 50 CDs and are willing to pay $1.50 a CD and live in an area they service - which now includes Seattle).
http://blogs.msdn.com/mcreasy/archive/2004/07/13/181868.aspx
Now what I want to know is will they rip Vinyl!... that's what I want done!.... Thinking about hiring a student to do it!

That is all... back to work for me!

Len Lye

Wed, 07 Jul 2004 03:41:44 GMT

Lukas notes the Len Lye movie being shown in Auckland at the moment... if you really want to see some cool Len Lye stuff the New Plymouth Govett Brewster Art Gallery is the place. They have some truely phenomenal kinetic sculptures from the man who must surely be the grand master of that art. A photo simply does not do Trilogy (below) justice...

[UPDATE] In case you haven't seen it the above sculpture is about 10 meters high and hangs from the ceiling of the art gallery.... when running the sound alone is truely awe inspiring... and quite frightening!

Tech Ed Aukcland 2004 - Chris Auld Speaking

Wed, 07 Jul 2004 03:31:53 GMT

You heard it there first I'll be speaking at Tech Ed in the second to last session of the whole conference... eeek....

More details as I prepare my content... be sure to look out for me... I'll be the one wearing the red shoes! I am allowed to wear my red shoes under the speaker dress code aren't I!?!

But who are the Keynote speakers this year???
Steve Riley?

Good to see Tony Goodhew back in this neck of the woods!

And Michael Howard... Nice one....

DJ Mix Sets

Tue, 06 Jul 2004 22:46:34 GMT

When I get time I like to do the odd bit of DJing... Lukas has pointed to his sets from his radio show hosted @ Twisted. I also have some sets hosted at twisted... Listen to them here...

Life in Iraq.....

Tue, 06 Jul 2004 21:41:41 GMT

Ok so Army Steve (Smith) is now in Kuwait. If you have been following his blog it looks as though he has jumped through most of the usual military hoops to get there....

I received a very thoughtful piece through the email this morning... it filtered through our New Zealand Territorial Force (Reservist) command and through my dad to me... it makes quite touching reading. Google tells me it's been sydicated widely.. but it is well worth reading if you have not already.

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Galloway_062304,00.html

WASHINGTON - The Internet, which fills our inboxes with spam and scams every day and keeps our delete keys shiny, occasionally delivers a real keeper, such as the words below, which were written by a graduate of West Point, Class of 2003, who's now at war in Iraq.

We tracked down the author, who gave us permission to quote from his letter so long as we didn't reveal his name.

Old soldiers in the Civil War coined a phrase for green troops who survived their first taste of battle: "He has seen the elephant." This Army lieutenant sums up the combat experience better than many a grizzled veteran:....

Air NZ Super Economy

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 02:48:40 GMT

Air New Zealand has just announced that they will be implementing a Super Economy class on their 747 fleet and the new 777 ERs and one assumes the 7E7s when they arrive. Details here.

The most significant thing is that there will be in seat power and an extra 5-6 inches of leg room. I'm sold already!

I just hope that 'Premium Service' doesn't mean that I'll have to pay for expensive NZ wines and fancy food.... Give me airline stodge and a can of coke any day as long as I can have a power socket for my PC!

Now if they would just install Boeing Connexion it'll be just about perfect.
http://www.connexionbyboeing.com/