My week of Monday 19 to Sunday 25 May 2014 was a busy one, despite having effectively lost a day flying back from the US. Excellent.
I suspect that in part this is down to the weather. Normally, things start getting gloomy in April, and the seasonal aspects of my depression kick in. For that not to have happened by now, nearly the end of May, is almost unheard of. I’m not complaining, you understand. I think it’s excellent. Yeah, fuck those polar bears!
Podcasts
I’m very pleased to say that I’ve resurrected my other podcast, Corrupted Nerds, with an episode entitled Conversations 10: Michelle Dennedy, privacy engineering. She’s chief privacy officer at McAfee.
Articles
Media Appearances
5at5
A full week this week. But why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.
Geekery
It’s been three years since I included this section in my Weekly Wrap, mostly because the geekery that I do is usually for clients, and therefore none of your business, or just routine stuff for myself, which is boring. However I’m bringing it back this week because I did a few little things of note.
- I refurbished the website for my tech business Prussia.Net. As well as giving it a totally new appearance, as easy task thanks to Anders Noren and his WordPress theme Hemingway, I set things so that it uses HTTPS/SSL everywhere. I’ll have more to say about that soon. I also gave it an image of Sydney taken from the same location as the photo in this post.
- I set up the Tip Stilgherrian page, as already described. I confirmed that such things are decidedly easy these days, and I’ll have more to say about that soon.
Corporate Largesse
- On Wednesday I had coffee with some people from ManageEngine. They paid for the coffee.
- Also on Wednesday, I had coffee with some people from Actifio. They, too, paid for the coffee. This is basic hospitality rather than largesse, I know, but once I started down the path of full disclosure, I decided to do so completely.
The Week Ahead
Today, Monday, consists of a morning of production planning, followed by the production of a new episode of The 9pm Edict. Tuesday and Wednesday are days full of writing, in theory.
On Thursday I’m heading into Sydney to record this week’s Download This Show with Marc Fennell, perhaps a meeting or two, and then the launch of Kaspersky Lab’s new security for virtualisation products — with, as the invitation says, “your choice of drinks”. That’s Kaspersky code for “liver damage is inevitable”.
Needless to say, I’ve booked accommodation for the night.
I’ve got a meeting or two in Sydney on Friday, and then the weekend is currently unplanned.
[Photo: Sydney skyline from Camperdown, photographed on 20 May 2014 from Rydges Camperdown Hotel.]
Given that Facebook is the biggest social network on the planet, and therefore the biggest data miner of them all, there was naturally plenty of media interest in the privacy implications of their latest feature: audio matching.
Just like 
If you’d done a Google Search for “abbott government” last night Australian time, or any time up until lunchtime today, this is what you’d have seen. Dame Edna Everage as prime minister.
“Do NOT try to diagnose yourself on Wikipedia! 90% of its medical entries are inaccurate, say experts,” begins