The highlight of my week of Monday 14 to Sunday 20 December 2020 was definitely the television thing, although making a podcast was fun, and the cooler, wetter weather was delightful.
I also recorded a wonderful long chat with satirist and actor Mark Humphries for next week’s podcast.
And the television thing?
All week I’d been joking that I had to go to the pub on Friday to “win the TV” in the Christmas raffle. Well, I went to the pub on Friday and won the TV in the Christmas raffle. A Samsung TU8000 50-inch Crystal UHD to be precise. Hilarious!
The question for me now is whether I really want a 50-inch TV. I currently watch everything on my 15-inch MacBook Pro, and I don’t watch that much so-called “video content” anyway. Indeed, a friend has kind of made an offer to buy it. But I do want to retain that feeling of having had an unexpected win. And I do have a potential new use for it. So I don’t know.
Stay tuned.
See what I did there?
In any event, many thanks to licensee Sean Sim and all the wonderful staff at the Great Southern Bar in Haymarket, Sydney, and to the other members who were incredibly good sports when I won the prize they’d been hoping for.
Also, it’s just 5 days until Christmas. How does that make you feel?
Podcasts
- The 9pm Surprise Christmas Plague Submarine, being a bonus extra episode in the The 9pm Edict End of Spring Series 2020 recorded on Sunday.
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Articles
None, but you can always read some of my previous writing at Authory, or subscribe to get a weekly compilation of new stories by email each Sunday morning.
Media Appearances
- I’m liking the idea that my ZDNet article China’s influence via WeChat is ‘flying under the radar’ of most Western democracies is now citied in the Russian-language Wikipedia page for WeChat.
- More pleasing is the fact that my 2015 article Encrypting data at rest is vital, but it’s just not happening was cited in Designing a cryptosystem for data at rest encryption in mobile payments in the International Journal of Applied Science and Engineering from Chaoyang University of Technology.
Corporate Largesse
None. I don’t expect any until well into next year.
Recommendations
- I’m late to this podcast series, but Marc Fennell’s Stuff the British Stole is magnificent.
- While we’re talking about Marc Fennell, here’s his audio 12-minute work 2020 in Sound.
- The 100 Year Computer, being an article about building computers that become family heirlooms. “What if instead of designing computers with 5 year lifespans, we designed them with 50-100 year lifespans?,” Steve Lord asks.
The Week Ahead
It’s week 40 of the Quarantimes at Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls, at least once I return there on Wednesday, and it’s also Christmas week.
In the first part of the week I hope to knock off a little more writing, as well as record some segments for The 9pm Edict and of year episode.
Thursday through Saturday are of course Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day respectively. At this stage I don’t have anything planned. You probably won’t see much of me though.
As I’d started to suspect, I won’t receive the reviewers’ comments on my Carnegie Endowment paper until January, so that’s all off my agenda for the time being.
Further Ahead
The following week I’ll be recording a podcast, and then it’s New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Things will be quiet.
I’m thinking about doing some podcast-related things in January. One idea is a weekly pub trivia style video stream, which might be fun. And an End of Summer Series of The 9pm Edict might go down a treat too. None of this is locked in yet, however.
Also in the calendar:
- Key players in the Biden administration, US Studies Centre, online, 20 January 2021
- Linux.conf.au 2021, online, 23–25 January 2021 (TBC).
- Mimecast Connect 2021, online, 25 February 2021.
- Australian Cyber Conference, Canberra, 14–16 March 2021 (TBC).
- AusCERT 2021, Gold Coast and online, 11–13 May 2021 (TBC).
[Photo: A feather from a crimson rosella (Platycercus elegans) found at Bunjaree Cottages on 18 December 2020.]