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Weekly Wrap 207: Much productivity before a delayed winter

Sydney skyline from Camperdown: click to embiggenMy 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.]

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“Tip Stilgherrian” page operational, with few glitches

Stripe logoNow that I’ve run two successful crowdfunding campaigns through Pozible, I’m starting to set up systems to accept direct payments for my various projects. The first, a page to accept one-off donations was mostly straightforward.

I chose to use Stripe as the card payment service because I already had a Stripe account for my second Pozible project, The 9pm Resurrection.

While Stripe is still in beta in Australia, Pozible already uses it to handle recurring subscription payments, and I’d already received an invitation into the beta program. I figured it made sense to keep all my payments in one place.

Plus I’ll eventually be using Memberful to process subscriptions, and that also uses Stripe.

To integrate Stripe into this WordPress site, I used the free plugin WP Stripe from Human Made Limited. This provided me with one payment form per website, which is all I needed for this task. I also installed the WP Stripe Email Receipts plugin by Philip Newcomer.

All that went smoothly. I installed the plugins, activated them, entered my Stripe account keys and a template for the email receipts — and they just worked.

The only difficulties came with configuring Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) on the web server, and that was down to a bug I encountered in the WHM/cPanel hosting management software while I was installing the SSL certificate. That’s nothing to do with Stripe or WordPress or the plugins, of course, just my dodgy web server.

I’ll document that bug over the fold. Meanwhile, why not try out the system and give me a tip? Was that too blatant?

Continue reading ““Tip Stilgherrian” page operational, with few glitches”

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“Corrupted Nerds” on privacy engineering

Cover image for Corrupted Nerds: Conversations episode 10: click for podcast pageAfter a gap of some six months, I’ve finally produced another episode of the Corrupted Nerds podcast.

Earlier this month, during Australia’s Privacy Awareness Week, I had the very great pleasure of meeting McAfee’s chief privacy officer, Michelle Dennedy.

Not only did I end up writing a ZDNet Australia column a few days ago, Developers, ask your users about data privacy, I so thoroughly enjoyed the conversation that it inspired me to bring Corrupted Nerds back from recess.

In brief, privacy engineering is the process of turning various policies, from privacy laws to the needs of the business’ plan for data, into something that programmers can work with — indeed, something they’ll want to work with because it’s now an engineering problem.

I think you’ll agree that this conversation with Michelle Dennedy is rather fun.

Corrupted Nerds is available via iTunes and SoundCloud.

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Weekly Wrap 206: Two saints and a Caltrain, with wine

Caltrain locomotive 925 Jackie Spieir: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 12 to Sunday 18 May 2014 was spent in San Jose and San Francisco, covering NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference and more. And as I write this, I’m still in America.

Podcasts

I am very pleased to say that The 9pm Edict has, finally, returned with The 9pm Shire, an episode that includes a visit to Cronulla, shellfish, and a little Joe Hockey.

I am rather less pleased at the phenomenal amount of time it took to produce — at least 27 hours, once travel and the re-recording journey is taken into account, rather than the eight hours a “normal” episode would have taken. That was the cause of the delay. Once the podcast had overflowed its original spot in my schedule, it had to wait until a sufficiently large gap had opened up again. With travel booked, that was always going to be tricky.

In fact, the 11.5 hours I spent in writing and recording the links and post-production on Thursday really should have been spent on writing, or at least reflecting on SuiteWorld. Which is why in this next section…

Articles

… there are none. I did start doing some analysis of Australia’s Budget, because I may have had a piece to write for Crikey, but in the end that didn’t happen. Too many other, bigger Budget issues to be discussed.

Media Appearances

None. Thank the gods.

5at5

Only one this week. But why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.

Corporate Largesse

  • NetSuite paid for my trip to the US to cover their SuiteWorld conference. That included economy flights from Sydney to San Francisco and return; airport transfers; two nights accommodation at Hotel Vitali; a Sonoma Valley winery tour, with tastings at Cline and Gloria Ferrer wineries and a bottle of wine from each (a Cline 2011 Live Oak Zinfandel and a Gloria Ferrer 2005 Royal Cuvée Brut), pre-dinner drinks and antipasto at Tosca Cafe in North Beach, and dinner at the Americano Restaurant at the Hotel Vitale; coach transport to San Jose; four nights accommodation at the Marriott San Jose; dinner and drinks at ARCADIA by Michael Mina; breakfast and lunch in the press work room throughout the conference; dinner at Thomas Fogarty Winery (although I didn’t go, deciding to have an early night instead); and the conference party at the City National Civic Theatre. NetSuite also gave us all a goodie bag, which contained a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 tablet (Wi-Fi 8GB model); toiletries by Burt’s Bees; gourmet popcorn from Garret Popcorn; a chocolate sampler from TCHO; and a NetSuite branded hoodie from Alternative Earth, t-shirt and spiral-bound notebook. From the trade show floor: Jitterbit-branded earbuds. I could have taken advantage of much more alcohol and much more stuff from the other vendors, but I am not a bowerbird.

The Week Ahead

As I write this, it’s still Saturday in the US, and I’m spending the rest of the weekend here in San Francisco — wandering around and, in between drinks and occasional food, pondering all manner of things about the world and my life. I believe that’s called having a weekend. But that said, I’ll also be recording some bits and pieces for The 9pm Edict.

I fly out of San Francisco on Sunday night, which means I arrive back in Sydney early on Tuesday morning. I’ll be spending Tuesday and Wednesday in Sydney, taking care of various meetings, interviews and errands, before returning to Wentworth Falls on Wednesday night.

The rest of the week, including the weekend, is unplanned. Please feel free to make suggestions.

[Photo: Caltrain locomotive 925 Jackie Spieir , photographed at San Jose Diridon Station on Friday 16 May 2014, just before it was to power the 1310 to San Francisco..]

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Weekly Wrap 205: Productivity reigns again, bringing joy

Touchdown San Francisco: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 5 to Sunday 11 May 2014 was another productive one again, which is a pleasant happenstance.

Articles

Podcasts

The resurrection of The 9pm Edict has continued to be delayed by the continuing self-satire of the Australian government and my own busy schedule. Once it had overflowed its original allocated slot in my work plan, it’s had to wait until everything more time-critical is out of the way. We’ve nearly reached that point.

Media Appearances

5at5

Only two this week. But why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.

Corporate Largesse

The Week Ahead

As I write this, it’s already Monday in Australia, but it’s still Sunday morning here in San Francisco. This afternoon NetSuite is taking us on a tour of the Sonoma Valley, visiting the Cline and Gloria Ferrer wineries, then returning to San Francisco for pre-dinner drinks and “a special surprise guest” at Cafe Tosca in North Beach and dinner at the Americano Restaurant.

On Monday we make the journey to San Jose, with a meet-and-and-greet cocktail party in the evening. SuiteWorld proper then runs Tuesday to Thursday, with the evening events including dinner at the Thomas Fogarty Winery on Tuesday and the conference party on Wednesday.

On Friday I plan to catch the Caltrain back to San Francisco, recording part of the next episode of The 9pm Edict en route. My schedule is then open through to Sunday night, when I catch a late evening flight back to Sydney.

[Photo: Touchdown San Francisco, the view from United Airlines flight UA870 as it was about to touch down at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) on Saturday 10 May 2014.]

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Weekly Wrap 204: Libertarian troll beach abortion, yeah?

Fisherman at North Cronulla Beach: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 28 April to Sunday 4 May 2014 was yet another solid performer — which, to be honest, surprises me. But here we are. Praise be.

The entire week was spent at Wentworth Falls, apart from a day trip to Sydney — but despite the rapidly dropping temperatures as winter starts to bite, and despite Mistress Insomnia’s continuing persistent calls for attention, my mood holds up.

Articles

Podcasts

The big chunky piece of joy for me this week was resurrecting The 9pm Edict. The first episode, “The 9pm Shire” should have been appearing tonight — and the photo at the head of this post was taken during the recording expedition — but for reasons already explained that’s been postponed until this coming Tuesday 6 May or thereabouts.

Media Appearances

  • On Tuesday I was interviewed by The Wire, the daily current affairs program of Australia’s community radio stations, about internet security — but that’s being held over to the coming week.

5at5

Four out of five this week. But why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Thursday I had coffee with someone from LivePerson, a company that provides technology for online customer service. Their PR company paid for the coffee.
  • Also on Thursday I went to Good Technology’s Sydney Mobile Summit, all about the state of the art of mobile security — or at least as framed by their products and PR messaging. It was held at the Sheraton on the park, and lunch and afternoon tea was provided.

The Week Ahead

Next week is already completely packed out, and it also sees me heading to the United States yet again.

On Monday I’ll be heading to Sydney to complete my recordings at Cronulla and deal with a few errands.

I’ll be staying in Sydney overnight, because on Tuesday I’m going to a breakfast briefing that starts at 0730 — this is how businesses treat their staff, apparently — as well as doing a couple of interviews. I’ll head back to the Blue Mountains on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, it’s a day trip to Sydney for a lunchtime briefing by AVG Technologies on some research they’ve done into the security of the Internet of Things (IoT). “There isn’t any,” I assume to be the answer, but with additional wine.

Thursday is a writing day. Then on Friday it’s back to Sydney again for a bunch of errands and then the Optus IT Journalism Awards, in which I am a finalist. Then I stay in Sydney overnight before flying to San Francisco on Saturday.

On Sunday I’m visiting some wineries in the Sonoma region, thanks to NetSuite, who are also paying for that US trip. But I’ll write more about that in due course.

[Photo: Fisherman at North Cronulla Beach, photographed shortly before sunset on Saturday 3 May 2014.]