The 9pm Caltrain

Caltrain at San Jose Diridon Station: click to embiggen

The sharing economy explained in just two minutes. A Florida meth lab is a threat to dolphins. And the failure of hashtag diplomacy.

This episode of The 9pm Edict heads to the United States, at least in some strange warped sense.

There’s a story of a meth lab in a Florida hotel room, and we encounter both an episode of Hannity on Fox News and a “sharing economy guru” on the BBC.

There’s also mention of Glassholes harassing a New York restaurant, a bread line in San Jose. and a plan to reverse the California Aqueduct.

Continue reading “The 9pm Caltrain”

“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.

Announcing “The 9pm Excuses”

So you know how the other day I told you about the return of The 9pm Edict podcast and how the next episode would be posted on Sunday 4 May? Well it isn’t going to happen quite like that.

I did go to Sydney’s Sutherland Shire as planned yesterday. And I did record stuff. But for reasons explained in this mini-podcast, I didn’t get the material I needed to fulfil the plan. Sorry.

I’m heading back to Cronulla tomorrow. Stay tuned. I’m hoping to post the new episode on Tuesday 6 May or thereabouts.

Meanwhile you can listen to all of the episodes, now and in the future, if you subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe automatically in iTunes, or go to SoundCloud.

If you’d like to comment on this (non-)episode — or suggest people, places or things that I should check out — please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

You can also check out the progress videos I made on the YouTube playlist.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission. The sound of the waves breaking on the beach was recorded at Cronulla yesterday and it’s mine, I tell you, all mine.]

Announcing the Return of “The 9pm Edict”

Screenshots from The 9 O'Clock Resurrection progress videos: click for YouTube playlistMy crowdfunding project, The 9 O’Clock Resurrection, has been successful. We have resurrected the finest goat-oriented political and social commentary podcast in the galaxy, The 9pm Edict. Haha. What have we done?

What we’ve done is fund two episodes for May.

First up, “The 9pm Shire”, by which I mean Sutherland Shire in Sydney’s southern suburbs. Our Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison, said last month:

“I get so much encouragement when I walk through Cronulla mall, go down the beach, or up to Miranda Fair… On Australia Day we were at the fireworks at Cronulla and I was walking through the crowd and people were coming up to me to say ‘g’day’ and encourage me and congratulate me on what we had done so far, and basically saying ‘keep giving it to ’em and don’t back down’.”

He said residents weren’t against immigration or asylum-seekers but wanted a process that was done “the right way”.

That episode is being recorded this Saturday 3 May, and should be posted on Sunday 4 May.

And because I’m in San Francisco and San Jose later this month, the following episode will be “The 9pm Caltrain” — the Caltrain being the train that runs through that part of the world. That episode should be posted on Tuesday 20 May.

I’ve recorded an announcement, which you can listen to below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe automatically in iTunes, or on SoundCloud.

If you’d like to comment on this (non-)episode — or suggest people, places or things that I should check out — please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

You can also check out the progress videos I made on the YouTube playlist.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

The 9 O’Clock Resurrection hits Target 1

Screenshots from The 9 O'Clock Resurrection progress videos: click for YouTube playlistMy project to resurrect The 9pm Edict reached the initial target on Saturday — thank you — but there’s a few minutes left, so I’m hoping that we might get something up beyond that.

Here’s how things looked as we started the day today.

Chart of progress in The 9 O'Clock Resurrection

The upper line shows the total commitments so far, and where that line ends up at 0847 AEST today will determine what happens in May.

The lower line shows just the cumulative subscriptions, and where that ends up will provide the starting-point for crowdfunding June’s budget.

I’ll run another Pozible campaign around the third week of May, probably ending around 21 May. That will set the production pool for June — that is, the subscriptions continuing from this campaign, plus any new subscriptions, plus any one-off pledges. However I’ll also be investigating other ways to organise the subscriptions and perhaps some commercial sponsorship.

I’ll post a brief update once the Pozible campaign finishes this morning, and a longer explainer tonight.

Meanwhile you can watch my daily progress videos, which ceased on the weekend because I was distracted by a computer rebuild.

[Update 1110 AEST: The final total raised for the May production pool was $1082, so that’s two episodes confirmed for the month. We “only” have $304 in ongoing subscriptions, which isn’t quite enough to fund podcasts in June — yet. There will be further fundraising before then, so stay tuned. I’m currently feeling quite confident that I can build on this base — but I’ll have more on that tonight.]