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Weekly Wrap 150: Hiatus with hip flask

Danger, at Sydney's Central station: click to embiggenMy week Monday 15 to Sunday 21 April 2013 was demolished by illness, one involving plenty of trips to the bathroom and the need to keep up my fluid intake. I will not be providing photographs.

So a solid week of writing was turned into a week not noted for solidity (sorry), and just one article emerged. I’m told it’s not all that good.

Articles

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday I had lunch at Wildfire Restaurant at Circular Quay, Sydney, which was a media briefing by Adaptive Planning. So I assume they paid. I know I didn’t. I can’t afford to eat at places like that. I took a photograph of the menu.
  • Later on Monday I had coffee with some folks from Bitdefender. They also gave me a gift pack containing a t-shirt, a novelty USB stick and a hip flask containing something that I suspect has alcohol in it. Very practical. I approve.

The Week Ahead

I’ll figure it out on Monday morning. I know I have lots of writing to catch up on, and there’s a bunch of email asking me to do things I’m sure. But it’s also a public holiday on Thursday for Anzac Day, and I feel quite strongly that public holidays are there for a reason — especially given that Easter failed to be a long weekend for me.

[Photo: Danger, at Sydney’s Central railway station, photographed on 15 April 2013. I asked the workers, and there wasn’t really any danger.]

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Weekly Wrap 149: Multiple dominations, with spiders

Spider guest, Nicodamus species: click to embiggenDuring the week Monday 8 to Sunday 14 April 2013, I submitted to the cloud and was dominated by broadband. I did some dominating myself, in relation to two SEKRIT matters that I won’t be telling you about.

Reactions to the Coalition’s broadband policy, launched by Malcolm Turnbull on Tuesday, made it clear that the National Broadband Network (NBN) will be a key issue for Australia’s federal election on 14 September. I’ll be writing up my reflections on reactions and media coverage, including reactions to my own work, tomorrow. We’ll be seeing plenty more about the NBN in the coming weeks.

Articles

Media Appearances

  • On Tuesday I spoke about the NBN with Dom Knight and his guests on ABC 702 Sydney, but I didn’t record it.
  • On Saturday I spoke about the NBN on FBi Radio’s politics show Backchat.

Corporate Largesse

  • On Tuesday I had a few beers at Alcatel-Lucent’s expense. Three Peronis, if I recall correctly.
  • On Wednesday I attended a press briefing about trends in unified communications by Dimension Data, held at the wonderful Flying Fish Restaurant in Pyrmont, Sydney. Check out the full menu and the pre-lunch canapes. There was also wine, but I forgot to grab the wine list.

The Week Ahead

It turns out that I won’t be in Sydney continuously for the next two weeks after all. In the two years that I’ve been mostly based at Bunjaree Cottages near Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains, I’ve usually migrated to the proprietors’ family home in Lilyfield during school holidays. The holidays are a busy time for Bunjaree, so it was handy for them to be on-site. But this time they’ve made other arrangements, so Wentworth Falls will continue to be my base.

That said…

It’s already Monday. I had an 0600 conference call — whose idea was that again oh yes that’s right it was mine shut up — and right now I’m on a train headed to Sydney for a lunchtime briefing, an afternoon meeting and dinner with a friend. I’ll be staying overnight for more meetings on Tuesday.

The shape of the rest of the week is unclear, but there’s a bunch of writing in the pipeline, and a bunch of planning. Stay tuned.

[Photo: Spider guest, Nicodamus species, a change from my usual bird photos from Bunjaree Cottages.]

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Weekly Wrap 148: Libertarian overload, with heraldry

Heraldry Overload, Union Theatre, Lithgow (detail): click to embiggenThe week of Monday 1 to Sunday 7 April 2013 was days ago, so once more I’ll just present the basic facts with a random photo.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None. But there’ll be plenty this week.

The Week Ahead

Well, Monday’s been done. I wrote a thing for Crikey previewing the Coalition’s broadband policy announcement. We’ll get the actual announcement tomorrow (Tuesday) or the day after (Wednesday, in case you need help working that out), so I’ll write more about it then.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) I’m also taking the train to Sydney for a 1500 meeting in the CBD and subsequent drinks, and then staying overnight for a lunchtime briefing on Wednesday.

The rest of the week will be a mix of writing and geekery, as I choose to take it.

However at some time on the weekend I should be returning to Sydney, to stay there for two weeks while Bunjaree Cottages turns into school holiday mode. In theory. Nothing has been confirmed. And I am actually quite relaxed with this knowledge.

[Photo: Heraldry Overload, an architectural detail on the Union Theatre, Lithgow.]

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Weekly Wrap 147: Easter rush with added geekery

"Shut up, I'm eating this flower": click to embiggenThe week of Monday 25 to Sunday 31 March 2013 was hectic and varied — lecturing at a university, appearing on TV and being reminded how easily internet technology can fall apart.

The various media things are listed here, of course. What’s not listed is a sudden and unexpected day full of geekery that began at 0100 on (Good) Friday and ran well into the evening. A server software upgrade went pear-shaped. and I had to coordinate work between the server team in India and the data centre team in the US. Given that they had different responsibilities and authorities, I had to sign off on their plans. There’s some lessons in there that’d make an interesting blog post — but not yet.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

  • On Monday, I paid a visit to Vertel in Alexandria, Sydney, to find out about what they can do with high-speed wireless internet links. They offered me a beer. I accepted. It was a Peroni. It was rather nice.

The Week Ahead

This’ll be an interesting one because tomorrow, which is both the public holiday for Easter Monday and the start of a new quarter, I’m planning to kick off a series of changes in my little world. Or at least try to. I’ll write about that tomorrow morning afternoon.

I’ve also got plenty of writing lined up, including two pieces for Technology Spectator, one for CSO Online, one for Crikey and my usual column for ZDNet. This both pleases and stresses me. I may rearrange this a bit, because that’s rather a lot for a short week.

At this stage it’s looking like I’ll be in Wentworth Falls for the first part of the week, before heading down to Sydney on Friday morning to record Marc Fennell’s Download This Show for ABC Radio National.

[Photo: Shut up, I’m eating this flower, yet another photograph of a crimson rosella (Platycercus elegans) at Bunjaree Cottages. I feel like I’ve posted a few too many Bunjaree bird photos lately, but I couldn’t resist the seemingly-cheeky look this guy threw me while he ripped apart and ate the eating a mountain devil (Lambertia formosa) flowers from a nearby plant.]

[Update 1 April 2013, 1145 AEDT: Updated the ETA for the post about my plans to reflect the unfolding reality.]

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Weekly Wrap 146: Just a photo, Ma’am

Blue sky at Katoomba: click for original image on FlickrThe week of Monday 18 to Sunday 24 March 2013 was bereft of newly-published media objects, so here’s a photograph of the sky.

The Week Ahead

On Monday (today) I’ll head into Sydney to deliver my guest lecture at UTS in Ultimo and then go to meeting in Alexandria. The rest of the week is full of writing (exact order TBA) until it all stops early for Good Friday and I become annoyed.

[Photo: Blue sky at Katoomba, photographed on 24 March 2013.]

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Algorithms and the Filter Bubble: UTS guest lecture

Diagram of the Australian political Twitterverse: click for article "Twitter mapping and how we choose our own adventure"On Monday I’m delivering a guest lecture at the University of Technology Sydney. “Algorithms and the Filter Bubble” is the supplied title, and in theory I’ll be looking at Google (and friends), big data and personalised news filtering.

The students — who are, I’m told, “first and second year students who are at the beginning of their media studies degrees” — have been given some pre-reading: Eli Pariser’s book The filter bubble: what the Internet is hiding from you (specifically the chapter “The User is the Content”, pages 47-76 in the edition I’ve seen; check the Wikipedia summary), and David Beer’s paper “Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious”. I’m about to read them myself.

But I reckon the bleeding-edge action here is in advertising, not news, and especially the comprehensive data mining that allows, for example, Target in the US to figure out that a woman is pregnant just by her shopping list.

After I discussed these topics with the lecturer, I sent her a list of related material I’d written. I believe this has been sent to the students.

I also linked to my presentation at Consilium 2012: Social media is destroying society? Good!

Since then, ProPublica has posted an excellent article, Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You.

I don’t know if non-students are allowed in, but the lecture is on Monday 25 March at 1300 AEDT in Room 56, Level 3, Building 6 (Peter Johnson Building), University of Technology Sydney, 702-730 Harris Street, Ultimo. In any event, I’ll be recording it and will post the audio and transcript here in due course.

For now, though, I suppose I should write the damn thing.