Month: January 2015

Posted on

Weekly Wrap 242: Insomnia revelations, and more

Section of data collected during a sleep studyMy week of Monday 19 to Sunday 25 January 2015 continued the unproductive period, as my intestinal troubles went through their final stages, and then after that I really couldn’t be bothered putting in the effort.

Given that the early part of January was so exhausting, Monday through Wednesday ended up being mental health days. This lack of productivity will now haunt me for the next two months. Such is life.

On Thursday I discovered something interesting: that the cause of my endless insomnia is actually severe sleep apnoea. It’s probably also responsible for a large chunk of my depression. A sleep study showed that I was experiencing a disturbance to my respiratory functions every 90 seconds through the night, roughly, and doing rather a lot of loud snoring. So that’s something to take on board. There’ll be more to come on this soon, because I’ll be starting a treatment program next week soon.

Articles

None. But I did start work on a feature for ZDNet Australia that’ll appear next week.

5at5

There was only one edition of 5at5 this week, on Friday. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all in the future. Subscribe. Just subscribe.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None. But the PR industry will be returning to its usual levels of largesse in the coming week, I suspect.

The Week Ahead

The main theme will be returning my productivity levels to some semblance of normality, and wrapping up all the things that need to be completed this month. This week also sees me based back at Bunjaree Cottages in Wentworth Falls, after my sojourn in Lilyfield since late December.

It’s Australia Day on Monday, but despite the public holiday I’ll be working on the ZDNet feature. That work continues into Tuesday. On Wednesday I’ll file that feature, and then head into Sydney for a lunchtime media briefing by Check Point Software, Dimension Data and L.E.K Consulting, followed by an appointment with a sleep physician to start the treatment program.

On Thursday, I’ll be writing my usual column for ZDNet Australia, and on Friday and/or Saturday I’ll be producing an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast, finally.

The weekend is unplanned, mostly, but I’m hoping it’ll be a quiet one.

Update 27 January 2015: Updated to reflect the cancellation of Wednesday’s trip to Sydney.

[Photo: A section of the data produced during the sleep study, showing disruptions to airflow and snoring. Yes, I was the patient.]

Posted on

Weekly Wrap 241: Extended gut symptomatics, apparently

My week of Monday 12 to Sunday 18 January 2015 was another unproductive one, thanks to the intestinal problems continuing. Or maybe it was a new one arriving. Either way, it was terrible.

I don’t think I’ll even bother putting a photograph on this post. It’s late enough as it is.

That said, this seems to have been the week that the Australian media returned to work, because I did four spots in total.

Articles

5at5

There were only two editions of 5at5 this week, on Monday and Tuesday. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all in the future. Subscribe. Just subscribe.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

Posted on

Talking #optuswrongtime on ABC Gold Coast

ABC logoNo sooner had I spoken about #optuswrongtime on ABC Radio’s AM than I got a call from ABC Gold Coast to expand upon my comments.

So a little after 0830 AEDT on Wednesday morning, or 0730 AEST in Queensland, I spoke with Trevor Jackson and presented my two theories for what might have happened. One was that some new cell towers were switched on overnight in the 700MHz band, which Optus had recently been given permission to do, and they were set to the wrong time zone. The other was that a security update for the network time protocol (NTP) server had been pushed out, and somehow that was configured incorrectly.

We still don’t know the correct answer.

Also, under the influence of a certain Canadian, I managed to sneak in a mention of the secret code word.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.8MB)

The audio is ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Posted on

Talking #optuswrongtime on ABC Radio’s “AM”

ABC logoOn Wednesday morning, smartphone users on the Optus network in Queensland were running an hour early. Why? The ABC’s Will Ockenden decided to find out for the national current affairs program AM, and apparently that involved taking to me.

Presenter Ashley Hall introduced the story like this:

Queenslanders have long resisted embracing daylight saving time, leading to split time zones down Australia’s east coast for large chunks of the year.

But this morning many from the Sunshine State were given a taste of what it would be like after the Optus mobile phone network automatically updated phones to Sydney time.

Here’s the story as broadcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.3MB)

The audio is ©2015 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The audio is being served directly from the ABC website, where you can also read a transcript.

Update 1300 AEDT: I just noticed that my comments were quoted by Yahoo!7 News and the Sunshine Coast Daily, and even translated into Chinese for Radio Australia and translated into Dutch for Metronieuws. It all connects up.

Posted on

Talking propaganda hacks on 2UE

2UE logoThis was the week that the Australian media returned from holidays. What caught the eye, or ear, of Justin Smith on Sydney’s radio 2UE on Tuesday afternoon was the series of hacks and planned hacks for political purposes.

Someone had hacked the Twitter and YouTube accounts of US Central Command (CENTCOM) — although it probably wasn’t Islamic State. And Anonymous, or at least their French-speaking sections, announced that they were declaring war on the jihadists.

I’m posting the audio stream even though it suffers some dropouts. I’m assuming this was just the stream back to me, rather than the broadcast chain, because we continued on air regardless.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.7MB)

This audio is ©2015 Radio 2UE Sydney Pty Ltd.

Posted on

Weekly Wrap 240: Technology, little sleep, a belated possum

"Come at me, bro!": click to embiggenMy week of Monday 4 to Sunday 11 January 2015 was very, very, very annoying. Not only did the server migration take up far too much of my time and ruined my sleep patterns, I ended up with a nasty intestinal problem for a few days. Not happy, Jan.

As I mentioned last week, I may or may not write up the server migration problems. I’m not sure that any real lessons were learned. I’m just thankful that it’s something that only has to be done every few years, because it took about 47 hours all up.

But it did screw up my productivity. No articles written. No podcasts produced. Sigh.

5at5

There was only one 5at5 this week, on Tuesday. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all in the future. Subscribe. Just subscribe.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

It’s going to be a busy one. Monday through Wednesday I’ll be sorting out my work for the new year — including getting the subscription for The 9pm Edict podcast back on track, reviewing some interview recordings, preparing an ebook, and sending story pitches to editors.

On Thursday, I’ll be writing for ZDNet Australia, and then at 1615 AEDT doing a spot on ABC News24. On Friday, there’s a “webinar” [ugh!] at 0600 AEDT, and then I’ll be producing an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast.

I daresay I’ll have a social life in there somewhere too, perhaps on the weekend, which is as yet unplanned.

[Photo: “Come at me, bro!”. A brush-tailed possum invades the Chirgwin residence at Lilyfield on 3 January 2015. Rather than being persuaded to leave, he decided to take me on. Technically this image belongs to last week’s Weekly Wrap, but I’m not too worried about consistency.]