Month: October 2012

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Weekly Wrap 124: Dirty dog, dirty martini

My week Monday 15 to Sunday 21 October 2012 was marred by the black dog, who decided to visit in strength with his friend back pain. Productivity was very low.

It’s a shame. I have the workings of several quite good articles in various stages of assembly on the computer, and invitations to take part in a variety of interesting unpaid projects. At least half of them will progress no further.

Podcasts

Articles

None.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday I had lunch at a North Sydney cafe with Marc Brown, managing consultant of Trustwave SpiderLabs in Australia, along with members of their external PR team. They paid. I believe I had smoked salmon salad.

The Week Ahead

It’s a busy week of writing ahead, after the usual Monday scramble to complete the Patch Monday podcast. At this stage it looks like I’ll be in Sydney on Wednesday and overnight into Thursday. The weekend is currently unplanned, but that will be fixed later today.

[Photo: Manhattan at the Carrington, an essential part of yesterday’s return to normality. For some value of “normal”.]

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Talking Microsoft Surface on Balls Radio

My regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio this week was a conversation about the new Microsoft Surface tablet and related matters.

I’d previously spoken about Microsoft’s new gadget in an episode of the Patch Monday podcast the day it was announced, with the deliberately provocative title “Microsoft? Is that still a thing?” I was thoroughly amused by the lack of critical thinking from the zealots who infested the comment stream, but they’re zealots after all.

Or perhaps it’s more that they’re so deeply embedded in the Microsoft worldview, so busy operating the ship, that they can’t see that the ship might not be headed in the right direction.

This week’s news included some Australian pricing, interesting in the light of the parliamentary inquiry into why IT seems to cost more in Australia. The industry body thinks that’s a distraction, but then they would say that.

We also spoke about the new Windows 8 interface, which I’ve previously discussed in an article and a podcast. I still reserve my judgement on that. As I say in this podcast, I understand Microsoft’s argument but I’ll wait and see how things unfold.

Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, have a listen to the full episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:10 — 7.0MB)

The program is no longer broadcast on FM99.3 Northside Radio, it’s purely a podcast. You can subscribe over at the website.

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Weekly Wrap 123: Food, drink, virtualisation and snow

My week Monday 8 to Sunday 14 October 2012 was yet another exercise in chaos, but this time with added snow.

Virtually nothing in the schedule actually happened when it was originally planned. There was too much moving around, and then Friday’s snowfalls almost derailed the week’s close.

Still, it was my first-ever encounter with actual snow at close range, so there were a few childlike moment of joy. And then I decided to spend the weekend in a SEKRIT hideaway.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 158, “Partitioning porn from PowerPoint: VMware’s virtualisation vision”. VMware’s vision of a virtualised future extends far beyond their existing desktop and server virtualisation products, to include virtualised mobile devices, and even software-defined data centres (SDD).

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I was a guest of NetSuite at Sydney’s Aria Restaurant, where of course they paid for the food and wine. We also received gift vouchers from some of NetSuite’s customers: Avago ($100); SkincareStore ($75); and WineMarket.com.au ($75).
  • On Wednesday I was a guest of Alcatel-Lucent at the Australian Internet Industry Association’s NSW branch forum Customer Centric Services, held at the Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney.
  • On Friday afternoon I was a guest at MooresCloud’s press event, held at the City Hotel, Sydney. There was food. And drink. And mysteriously flashing lights.

The Week Ahead

On Monday I’ll be producing the Patch Monday podcast and having lunch with someone from Trustwave SpiderLabs before returning to Wentworth Falls. I’ll spend the week up in the mountains catching up on many, many loose ends of both media work and general geekery.

[Photo: Waratah in the snow, not the same specimen of Telopea speciosissima as seen last week, but another one at Bunjaree Cottages.]

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Talking spear phishing on Balls Radio

My regular spot on Phil Dobbie’s Balls Radio returned this week after a wee break, and the topic was spear phishing.

Most of what we discussed was based on newly-released research from Websense and my as-yet-unreported conversations with their guys.

Here’s the audio of my segment. If you’d like more, have a listen to the full episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:00 — 6.3MB)

The program is no longer broadcast on FM99.3 Northside Radio, it’s purely a podcast. You can subscribe over at the website.

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Weekly Wrap 122: Fatigue and a helpful waratah

My week Monday 1 to Sunday 7 October 2012 was a reminder that travel and on-stage performances can be more exhausting than it feels at the time. Especially when you’re working while everyone else has a public holiday.

Out of curiosity, I just scrolled back through my calendar to find the last week when I hadn’t been working in some way or other. I scrolled back more than four years without finding such a week. I decided to stop before it all become too depressing.

That said, I know the answer. It was nearly five years, when I spent some time in Bangkok.

Podcasts

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

So far I know that Monday will be spent producing the Patch Monday podcast, and on Tuesday I’ll head into Sydney for a media lunch with NetSuite boss Zach Nelson.

I’ll stay in Sydney overnight so that on Wednesday I can meet Allison Cerra, author of Identity Shift: Where Identity Meets Technology in the Networked-Community Age. I’m sure you can guess why.

The rest is a bit disorganised. There’s an Internet Governance Forum in Canberra on Thursday and Friday, though no-one’s asked me to go yet. Yes, that’s a hint. But I also seem to have less commissioned writing locked in for this month than I thought I did a week ago. I should probably do something about that.

[Photo: Waratah near Bunjaree, which I believe is a specimen of Telopea speciosissima, photographed near Bunjaree Cottages earlier today. Despite living in New South Wales for something approaching two decades, this is the first time I’ve seen the state flower in its native habitat.]

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Weekly Wrap 121: Danger with Germaine

My week Monday 24 to Sunday 30 September 2012 brought to a close a stressful few weeks of work, what with all the travel and such, with my gig at the Sydney Opera House on Saturday afternoon.

There’s probably some explanation for why this phase shift from stressful to less-stressful seems to happen every year at this time. Spring. Long weekend. The end of the winter football season. Pollen. Nazi space labradors.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 156, “Apple Maps: You can’t get there from here!”. A conversation about the Apple Maps debacle with geospatial specialist Dr Michael Dobson, who now consults on geospatial matters with TeleMapics, but who’s previously been chief technologist and chief cartographer with Rand McNally & Company, and associate professor of geography at the State University of New York at Albany, and mobile app developer Leslie Nassar.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Thursday I attended a media lunch held by Alcatel-Lucent at Coast Restaurant in Sydney. It was rather long, and there was wine.
  • On Saturday I spoke at “I Share Therefore I Am”, a panel discussion held as part of the Sydney Opera House’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas. The video will eventually be posted at the SOH’s Play site.

The Week Ahead

Monday is a public holiday in NSW but I’ll be working nonetheless, writing for Crikey, doing some systems administration for a client, and producing the Patch Monday podcast.

The rest of the week, along with the rest of the month, will be scheduled on Tuesday morning. Overall, the theme is less stress.

However I do know that on Friday the Prime Minister is hosting a Digital Economy Forum at the University of New South Wales and I might cover that. And on Friday evening I’m attending the launch of MooresLights, which is some SEKRIT project that Mark Pesce and Kate Carruthers have been working on.

I’ll be based in Sydney all week, with the return to Wentworth Falls currently planned for Sunday.

[Photo: Sydney Opera House from the south, photographed on Saturday 29 September 2012.]