Stilgherrian » it

Fine posts for 2008

Stilgherrian — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 05:44:22 +0000

Given that mere popularity doesn’t reflect quality, here’s my personal selection of my best, timeless posts for 2008. Happy reading!

Kruddiversary: The internet thanks you for 12 months of achieving nothing, my Crikey article looking at the first year of the Rudd government from an Internet geek’s perspective.
Thailand’s political crisis: an introduction, though later pieces in The Economist are better than my amateur efforts.
Journalism in a hyperconnected world.
@KevinRuddPM stumbles into the Twitterverse, a Crikey article which includes links to the previous three essays I’d written about the PM’s entrance into modern social media.
Gonzo Twitter 1: Saturday Evening in Newtown, my experiment in live-tweeting a descriptive essay and still one of the best things I’ve written all year.
How Dell fixed my monitor order, which is being used by clever consultants as an example of how to use social media for quality customer service.
Sunday Thoughts about Journalism, a rather lengthy essay with many links to background on the Death of Newspapers this year.
Finally, The Shave, a rather wonderful film we made.
The Great Firewall of China: how it works, how to bypass it.
Note to “old media” journalists: adapt, or stfu! This piece triggered an entire wave of discussion and was quoted globally.
Winter Solstice Meditation.
Anzac Day Rememberings.
ABC Playback: so this is the future of television…? Nope! A review of what’s now called ABC iView.
There ain’t no shortcuts to professionally-managed IT.
Remembering the Space Age: Arthur C Clarke dead at 90.
Super Hornets are Go.
Jason Calacanis and the Evil Cult of the Internet Start-up. I don’t really think Jason is evil, but I do worry about the self-centred anti-human attitude of many people connected with Internet start-ups.
New national anthem: I am So an Aussie, when the Snarky Platypus and I created, yes, a new national anthem. Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!
Is it really so wrong to mix business and politics (and religion)?
Leaving room for elephants: a chat with David Attenborough, a personal fave since it harks back to an interesting time in my life. This is still one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve done. Ever.
Angry geeks: “Don’t waste money on internet filters”, one of many articles I posted about censorship, but which outlined the key issues way back in January.
Post 801: Kill the Hallucinating Goldfish.

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Live Blog: Gartner Symposium Preview

Stilgherrian — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:53:12 +0000

Every year Gartner, one of the Big Consulting Firms, runs the Gartner Symposium where they disgorge their predictions for the IT industry into the eager minds of Big End of Town clients with deep pockets. Imagine a crow feeding its young, but wearing a suit.

This year’s Sydney symposium is next week, but tonight Gartner consultants are previewing their Vision to a bunch of folks from the blogosphere.

~~I’ll be live blogging it right here from 6.30pm or shortly thereafter, depending on when the food and drinks get served.~~ I won’t be live blogging anything, as it wasn’t that kind of event. However I did have good drinks and conversation with interesting people. More in due course.

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Links for 22 June 2008 through 24 June 2008

del.icio.us — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:42:00 +0000

Stilgherrian’s links for 22 June 2008 through 24 June 2008, gathered with care and compassion:

Social networking comes of age, sort of | MISaustralia.com: Renai LeMay’s article for the Australian Financial Review, based on material gathered at PubCamp.
IT List | Skippy’s List: “42 Things That I Am No Longer Allowed To Do in IT”, beginning with “1 Not allowed to randomly rickroll users upon login to the application”. Somewhat amusing.
Seven dirty words | Wikipedia: The seven English words comedian George Carlin listed in his monologue “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television”, and a history of the furore this routine started.
7 things you can’t say on the Internet | evolvingWe: Following comedian George Carlin’s death, Josh Legard compiled this list. Read it, digest it, help prevent groupthink.
La Boheme - Restaurant Reviews | smh.com.au: I’m told we should go to this restaurant some time. Gotta love a review which starts, “Those of us who fancy a bit of porcine action…”.
Direct Note Access :: celemony_: Peter Neubäcker’s new Melodyne version 2 software can identify and edit individual notes within polyphonic audio material. This is extremely cool, and extremely important.
Top 500 supercomputers: Welcome to the petaflop generation | NetworkWorld.com Community: Welcome to the petaflop generation. The new most powerful supercomputer in the world is IBM’s US$100 million Roadrunner system at the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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CeBIT Sydney actually approaching record attendance

Stilgherrian — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:41:02 +0000

The irony about the CeBIT email flood is that it makes them look desperate — yet their PR person told me yesterday that at this point, three weeks out from the start, they’ve already got more registrations than they did on opening day last year. So why do the emails keep coming? My guess is that at some point weeks ago, some executive somewhere signed off on a marketing plan, and now everyone’s dutifully following it. How… old-fashioned.

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CeBIT Australia just FOAD, OK?

Stilgherrian — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 08:49:41 +0000

Hannover Fairs, the organisers of the CeBIT Australia IT trade show, must be shitting themselves about poor ticket sales or something. They certainly seem desperate.

These guys are spammy at the best of times, sending at least one email a week every week. But this year I’ve received three “Exclusive Limited Offer: Free Exhibition Entry” emails this month alone, plus today another one via the Australian Computer Society — yeah, that’s fuckin’ exclusive, eh? They’ve emailed a “Dear Bloggers” media release and phoned. Gawd!

I was underwhelmed last year and annoyed with the marketing wank-words.

Do these shows actually achieve anything any more? I mean, if you’ve got a new IT product you just tell TechCrunch and the geek world’s blogosphere of feral goldfish do the rest, right? Why herd everyone into a room, except to fuel an industry of hangers-on who make t-shirts and lame promotional giveaways?

[P.S. I am actually going. If nothing else I can collect some high-grade sarcasm for my podcast. But enough with the spam already, Hannover!]

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Links for 27 April 2008 through 28 April 2008

del.icio.us — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:59:05 +0000

My interwebby links for 27 April 2008 through 28 April 2008, according to UTC time, apparently:

ITRadio.com.au: The tagline is "IT news and analysis: Technology podcasts for busy IT professionals." Simon Sharwood is one of the folks here. I intend to check this out before recording my own podcasts.
Get Satisfaction: People-Powered Customer Service: "People powered", like "self-service" before it, means NO service. Leave it for someone else to fix. Irresponsible. Mind you, transparency helps. Companies' customer service performance improves when their actions are public. Transparency always helps, lo
CamTwist: Free live video-switching software for OS X.
celtx: Integrated cross-platform collaborative software for media pre-production. Film, theatre, radio, AV. And it's free open source!

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Practice what you Preach!

Stilgherrian — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 09:45:22 +0000

“Always follow procedure,” I tell every new contractor or employee. “You can’t remember everything, no matter how intelligent you are. Always cross-check.” Measure twice, cut once. All very, very good advice.

But this morning I knew that the 1GB memory stick I had in stock would be compatible with the client’s computer. I know my memory specs, all is under control. I am a professional. And besides, we’re in a hurry.

Um, what’s that burning smell…?

The result of today’s professionalism? One fried memory stick. One fried motherboard. A client’s computer which must now be replaced at my expense. A thousand dollars out of pocket and a day’s work lost.