So this is what I’m reduced to. Blogging about shelves that I put up last weekend. Yes, shelves.

Those skilled in the art of home ownership will recognise instantly these as Ikea Gorm. But look closely, see how they wrap around the down-pipe? Remember I’m not a hardware guy. So I’m quite proud of myself for cutting one of the planks in each shelf and using the off-cut to bind it to it’s neighbour. Bit of a hack, but I defy you carpenters to come up with a better solution.

Another thing to note is that only suckers put together furniture with an allen key. Power drills FTW.

This means I am not only qualified to wear a red and yellow fashion statement, but also to go on patrol and rescue you when you get stung by bluebottles or caught in the rip or any of the other hazards of Australian beaches. No need to thank me, it’s all part of the job.

In order to become a surf lifesaver you have to be able to perform basic first aid and CPR, rescue people from the water using boards and rescue tubes, and have extensive beach and surf lifesaving knowledge.

Most importantly, you have to be able to swim in the surf. This was the hard part for me, because I am a pretty terrible swimmer. To pass the exam, you have to do a 200m run on the sand, followed by a 200m swim (out to sea and back again), followed by another 200m run; all in eight minutes. Needless to say, I trained quite a bit for this part.

Overall, it was quite a challenge and hugely satisfying to have passed the test.

I highly recommend getting involved in a community volunteer organisation such as a surf club. It’s a fantastic way to meet new people, and my fellow bronzies were such a great bunch. Much respect and appreciation to our instructors, whose dedication and commitment to our success was limitless. Everyone at Bronte Surf Club should be proud of them.

See you on the beach – and don’t forget to swim between the flags.

It’s a pretty safe bet that if you see a semi-regular blogger (still not quite ready to label myself like that, but anyway) suddenly go quiet, then they have either had a baby or a new job. And so it is with great pleasure that I can announce that I am the proud parent of … a 5- and a 7-year-old, and also I have a new job!

I like it so far, there’s a lot of c++ coding about which I intend to blog copiously until every last remnant of a regular audience has fled for their lives. Whilst simultaneously, and endlessly, reciting the latest internet meme to jump the shark (eg “FAIL!”). Oh yes.

But not to worry because I promise not to drive you all away just yet – not until I have at returned from a 2 week northern hemisphere (just) vacation. Tomorrow, the family and I are on the next plane out of Sydney, and after seven flying hours we’ll be landing in Phuket. More interestingly we’re also venturing inland to a rather remote part of the country, staying in a villa about which you can read on their excellent website. In short, I’m very much looking forward to it.

Naturally I have some reading matter and some new toys to sustain me for the flight, and I will make a vague, non-committal promise to blog about one of these on my return.

Keep the internet warm for me while I’m gone, won’t you?

In lieu of a server room, I have a server shelf. It’s in the laundry/garage area under the house. The gang plate terminates ethernet cables which run to all parts of the house. They are in turn connected by short cables to my trusty WRT54GS.

You may be able to just see a phone line in the centre of the gang plate; it provides connection to the ADSL2 modem. This line is connected through a central splitter to the outside world, providing as-good-as-it-gets ADSL2 throughput (still not great though because I am a long way from the exchange).

Yes, I have used a slightly dodgy double adapter to make room for the stupid wall warts to co-exist. I am, however, totally desensitised to this sort of hackery, because it just so common. The power socket people really need to get together with the wall-wart people. Failing that, there’s definitely a market for 10cm extension cords; anyone know where I can get these, cheap?

Why? It’s a skill that I have been working hard on recently, and so at meetings I often find myself the only person who is doing it. This article is an attempt to evangelise note taking, a possibly dying art amongst all you young whippersnappers with your fancy tablet PCs and your screencasts and whatnot. Why in my day …

In my day — that is back in university where you’re supposed to learn about these things — I was completely clueless about note-taking. In retrospect, I think the reason is that I had high standards. Waaaaay too high. Ever seen a notebook in the movies? It’s invariably full of incredibly beautiful and detailed scribblings, with nary a correction or a wasted page. Works of art on the page for the protagonist to pore over and gain insights into the mind of the author. Some of my fellow students carried such items around university with them. For many years I held my own note-taking to the same high standard and, inevitably, wrote nothing unless it was perfectly formed in my mind first. It never occurred to me that the other students went home and deliberately rewrote their notes to their own high standards, as I’m sure some of them did. And, well, screw that.

For a while in the late-90s/early-00s I carried a PDA. What a disaster that was for note-taking. Those things were, and still are, completely hopeless. You can’t write notes on these things. Paper is the winner baby. Hey, if it’s good enough for air-traffic controllers, it’s good enough for you. More testimonials here.

So recently I’ve been trying to teach myself how to take notes again, mostly at meetings. Here is what has worked for me so far:

• Get a nice, bound, notebook and put your name on the front. Lose scraps or pads of paper are OK for reminders, brainstorming or other throw-aways. Your notebook is going to going to contain information that is not stored elsewhere. It’s for keeps. Get something that can hold your notes properly. And a nice pen to write with.

• Start every meeting with a datestamp and (preferably) a list of participants. This helps to get your mind into the note-taking mould, and avoids the mental speed-bump of “is this important enough to open my notebook for?”, which is the adult equivalent of “is this going to be on the exam?” Commencing the meeting with an open notebook and a few preliminary scribbles signals to everyone else that you are there, and not just a passenger. (Conversely you might deliberately leave the notebook closed in certain meetings, just to make a point…)

• Don’t try to record the decision making process. It took me a while to realise this, but if you’re at all participating in the meeting, you probably won’t have the bandwidth to write it all down as well. Instead focus on noting problems (unless you’re the one with the problem), decisions, and actions. (Hey that’s just about catchy enough for me to base an entire self-help book on.) But you get the idea: knowing when not to take notes and just participate is important, and a bit of an artform. In some cases you may need to stay after the meeting to jot down any particularly important discussion points that you didn’t have time to note at the time.

• After the meeting, send an email round with the actions, including your own, and any important decisions. Don’t make it a formal record of meeting minutes, because that’s just too much work and rarely justified. (Or it’s mandatory, in which case you have to do it anyway.) It’s not really related to note-taking, just a good habit to get into.

• Notes aren’t just for during the meeting. I often find it useful to jot down agenda items before going into the meeting. Doing this makes you appear to be incredibly organised, and in fact you are.

That’s it really. No I’m still not the best note-taker by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m slowly learning how to focus on the important stuff, and that’s making me far more effective at work.

Maybe you have some note-taking tips you want to share?

Facebook

It’s is the latest thing with the cool kids and I can see why. It’s very addictive. I’m compulsively hitting reload to check for updates. Accumulating friends is like levelling-up in an RPG. Preening your profile page is also quite fun.

Kottke likens Facebook to AOL, a walled garden that shuns, rather than embraces, the internet. An “intranet for you and your friends”. This is completely accurate, but it’s the reason why I like it. For a while now I have struggled with deciding what facts to reveal online about my real life identity. On facebook I know exactly who is going to read it, and have generally no dillemas about what to post.

The use of email addresses to make connections between people is very clever. If I have your email address I am probably a friend of yours (within some loose approximation). Hence I will allow you to know information about me like my work history and other facts that I will not divulge online but will happily to anyone I meet in person.

There is of course some information that I am quite happy to divulge online, and I think this is what Kottke is talking about. The missed potential for facebook users to contribute to the wider internet is significant, and worth keeping in mind when posting content there. Not to mention: can you export your data? There are times when you want your facebook profile to point to content stored elsewhere.

Twitter

So here’s how I got started with Twitter. I’ve got into the habit of updating my status in my IM service of choice. Certain friends often do the same. One day, it seemed almost as if every single one of my online contacts was in a discussion via their status line. OK it was only “how much coffee have I had” type of interaction, not exactly an intellectual discourse on classical French poetry, but it changed throughout the day and amused me and I’m sure I’m not imagining it.

So I tried out Twitter and .. it’s nice enough. A bit of fun. Set up the twit-by-SMS feature. Then turned it off after receiving the first SMS.

Then I discover that facebook also has a status field. So now my three main weapons of online presence are IM status, facebook status, and twitter. And the element of surprise.

What I’d really like is to update my status once — preferably in the IM client because I have that running anyway — and have it propogate to the others. Is that too much to ask? Then there will be pointless and banal one-liners for all!

Last.fm

So I have a bit of a fetish for analysing my music listening habits. You might have noticed.

To this end I installed Audioscobbler, as it was known. At the time the young’uns were demanding to listen to their own types of music in the car. Unbeknownst to me, these were quickly accumulated into my Audioscobbler statistics. And to this day you can still see The Wiggles in the top artists list in my profile.

With my new laptop, I set up a new last.fm (as Audioscobbler is now thankfully known) client and hopefully the anomalies will slowly become diluted.

Also last.fm is a fantastic place to explore people’s music tastes and get recommendations. Anyone who remembers the late, lamented Audiogalaxy will recognise the same type of voyeuristic thrill of perusing other people’s music tastes, except this time you can see what they actually listen to.

So there you have it, three interesting social networking sites. As long as you don’t have any stupid corporate censorware blocking access, give them a try. And please be my friend, I need the XP…

Firstly, I got a new job. As with the last job I’m not going to say too much about it, or identify the company. Suffice it to say that I’m doing stuff with compressed video for the broadcast industry, and it’s really interesting. Lots of customers, great technology, some software engineering, err, challenges.

One other thing I can say about the new job is that involves a lot of air travel. But I’m here to claim that my work’s air travel is the least onerous that you could possibly experience and still be leaving the ground on a regular basis. I’m talkin’ 2 hours door-to-door, people. This miracle is brought about because home and work are close to their respective airports at either end. Very close.

After working out how not to bump my head on the door of a Dash 8, I actually prefer flying in these than in Real Planes. It feels more like actual flying. You are closer to the ground, get some great views — even the landing gear, as it touches down — and generally enjoy the experience more.

Anyway if the new job wasn’t enough to keep me busy, I have also been through the experience of selling a house. This would not ordinarily be blog-worthy, except that I wanted to convey the giddy feeling of disbelief that we experienced during the auction. The estate agent did his preparation and we ended up with a huge crowd of people. The price went up steadily until it passed reserve, and then … kept on going. We stood there trying not to look conspicuous as our jaws dropped further and further while the price went higher and higher. Each bid became a new plasma screen or an overseas holiday. In the end we made over $50,000 over the reserve price on our humble 2 bedroom unit. Much rejoicing was had.

Was it a good investment? Probably not. In over 7 years, the price went up 40%. I don’t know what annualised rate of return that works out to be, but probably not more than the share market over the equivalent period. Still, the property market in Sydney has been famously flat for the last 5 years or so, overall not too bad.

Now, to clear that blogging backlog…

I used to have one. In fact I had lots of them. One for each machine I used regularly.

Wanted: todo.txt.com

Text files are great, but also a real pain because they proliferate. Those of us who use many different computers regularly either spend lots of time syncronising their todo.txt files, or (more likely) we use our brains as a backup repository for the times when that crucial piece of information is on the other computer.

Some time ago I came to the realisation that my working set needs to live online. Everything except passwords, of course. That’s when I started using a personal wiki.

Strictly speaking I don’t really need a wiki to organise my life; after all, it generally fits into a single .txt file. However when I started to look into this, the wiki was the closest match to what I wanted. Google Notepad and similar weren’t yet invented. And after using a wiki for a while, I got used to it.

WHYTO: Wiki

You may be wondering what sort of content a personal wiki is useful for. Well the Backpack site has lots of examples of the types of notes you might want to make with a personal wiki (even though Backpack isn’t really a wiki, more on that later). In general you could take just about all of those loose .txt files that are rattling around in your home directory and stick them in a wiki.

I use my wiki for things like:

• Coding snippets. One-liners or shell script commands that I don’t want to trust to my .bash_history
• Quotes. Any quotable quotes get copy’n'pasted into the wiki.
• Blog ideas. Yes I have a big page of these. Sometimes just a bullet point, sometimes more. When it gets too big I can often copy’n'paste it into MarsEdit and it can become a draft blog post without further editing thanks to the magic of Markdown!
• Forum posts & blog comments. So damn hard to keep track of what I’ve said where. When posting on someone’s blog, I try to remember to store the URL for my comment on my wiki.
• Cheat Sheets. Packaging systems are my particular bugbear, I can never remember the differences between apt-get, rpm, rubygems, darwinports, etc etc.
• Shopping lists. Things to get at the hardware store, movies to rent, music to buy.
• eBay Queue. As I discover things around the house that could be sold on eBay I add them to the queue, which is periodically emptied in one big afternoon of eBay servitude.
• Big purchasing decisions. When we were buying a house I kept a wiki page on the current candidates; just a picture, short description and open inspection times for each. Each weekend I’d print it out, and plan the day’s inspections.

WHYNOTTO: Self-Hosting

For my first foray into the world of personal wikis, I installed PHPwiki on my home server. This worked OK, although I found the markup language frustratingly different to the others that I use regularly (eg Markdown here on the blog). That, and the desire to play with Rails, led me to Instiki, which I have been using until recently.

The main problems I had experienced were due to the use of my home server as a host. This proved to be a problem because connectivity is far less reliable than a proper hosted service. Either the ADSL connection would drop or (more likely) the DNS entry wouldn’t be updated correctly. Or the home server would be powered down. Or in the middle of a software upgrade. Or something. Maintaining your own server is a mug’s game, particularly if you want to depend on it.

Then I went looking for hosted alternatives. I wanted a site oriented towards users with similar needs to mine, and was willing to pay about $5/month for it to be professionally maintained. And after that, the only other features I absolutely needed are data export and privacy.

Backpack

I initially looked at Backpack, as it seemed ideal for my needs. In addition to supporting freeform wiki content, such as I have been generating up until now, it also supports to-do lists, images, and other types of content. And it certainly is nicely implemented with all sorts of Ajaxy goodness. However, after a short evaluation I decided it wasn’t right for me. The problems that I saw were:

• The $5/month fee is reasonable, but the 25 page limit is ridiculously low. Maybe it’s just the way that I like to organise things, but I much prefer to “spread out” information across multiple pages and 25 is nowhere near enough. The next plan up is $9/month, and provides 100 pages, but that is starting to get expensive.
• Backpack does not support Markdown, the markup language that I have internalised. It does support Textile, but I’m not sure I want to change.
• Unlike a wiki, Backpack does not support page history. One of the nice things about a wiki is that it has automatic version control, meaning that you can trim old data from your site without worrying about ever getting it back. The same cannot be said for Backpack.

Stikipad

After a bit of casting about I came across Stikipad. It seems that this is simply a hosted instance of Instiki, with some custom add-ons. In short, it suits my needs perfectly.

• Stikipad supports Markdown, so I could transfer all my current content across without any problems.
• It supports an unlimited number of pages with the FREE account. This is quite the bargain. I may well end up upgrading to a paid plan, but the free one is actually fine for now.
• In addition to wiki content it does support to-do lists. However these seem a bit of a tacked-on afterthought. They aren’t included in the exported data, for example.

Anyway so I’m pretty happy with it for now. To be fair there have been a few short-term outages, but nothing that isn’t cured by a refresh.

Ubiquitous Access

One of the main reasons for getting my important information online is to allow me to access it from anywhere. Obviously this is still dependent on the availability of a browser and internet connection. And these days I carry both in my pocket.

Visiting the video store I can instantly look up that movie recommendation that you emailed me several months ago and I had promptly forgotten. Just whip out the phone, dial up the browser, et voila.

As a backup I also keep a copy of my wiki on my iPod. I’m happy to announce that the wikipod script has been updated to work with stikipad’s form-based authentication.

So in summary: get a stikipad account, get access to it from your phone, and get organised!

As an added bonus, this post doubles as a collection of mini-reviews and updates for hardware I’ve bought recently! It’s two posts for the price of one!

Welcome to my Cave.

Here’s what you’ll see if you look carefully at the picture above.

• A Dell 2407WFP 24″ LCD Monitor. Got this baby last last year and ohh boy am I loving it every single one of its 1920×1200 pixels. You never can get enough screen real estate, and it certainly feels like a productivity win. Despite being possibly flawed I’m sympathetic to the Apple study that tried to quantify this. Just being able to put stuff side-by-side is a massive win.

• An Apple iSight. This is the nifty firewire webcam that I got bundled with my first PowerBook a few years ago. Unfortunately I don’t know that many other iSight owners to do the video conference thing with, but it looks cool perched up there.

• My 80GB Video iPod sitting in a Apple Dock. Seriously, I could not manage my horrendous daily commute without the iPod. Audiobooks and podcasts get me to work and back without committing acts of automotive homicide.

• A Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro. I’ve grown used to Microsoft’s curvy keyboards, although I’m on the lookout for an alternative, as this one is getting a bit long in the tooth. Also it has a fairly flimsy plasticy feel to it which has gotten progressively more annoying over the years.

• A Razer Pro|Click™ 1.6 mouse. Yes that really is a vertical bar in the product name, but it could have been worse. Had this for a few days and so far I’m very impressed. The increased resolution really is noticeable, it is comfortable for my big hands, and the Mac OS drivers aren’t too intrusive. Unlike its blue LEDs. Recommended anyway.

• My trusty PowerBook G4. Probably due for an upgrade to a MacBook Pro, but still going strong.

• A Canon LIDE 600F scanner. Stored, and sometimes used, in its upright position. I use this far more than I had anticipated, most likely because of the fact it can be kept within easy reach without taking up too much precious desk space. Also the scans look great. And although the software is fairly sluggish, it does at least OCR the contents, which makes it the key piece of my document filing system.

• A Konica-Minolta Magicolor 2430DL colour laser printer. After about 1300 mostly colour pages, I’ve just finished the black starter cartridge. I replaced it with a high-capacity (nominal 4500 page) cartridge for about $120. I consider this pretty good value, but talk to me again when the three colour cartridges run out.

• A Griffin iCurve laptop stand. This is basically a pretty, but horrendously expensive, piece of clear plastic. The cost is nevertheless justified, in order to be able to get effective use of the laptop screen. The second screen is a great place to dump IM clients, iTunes, file transfer windows, and other background monitoring stuff. The iCurve is no longer available, having been replaced by the Elevator which at least offers a moderate amount of adjustability for the same extortionate price.

• Some Altec Lansing MX5021 speakers. They sound OK, about what you would expect from a set of $200 speakers. I don’t think they sound as good as the Klipsch Promedia 2.1 speakers I used to have. I just can’t justify spending any more than $200 on speakers and even that was pushing it. For serious listening I break out the Audio Technica A-900 headphones (not visible). The controller and remote are nice though, and also bedazzled with blue LEDs.

• A Uniclass DVI USB KVM. This is a really ugly box which may be a re-badged, or OEM, Avocent SwitchView. Compared to the Avocent it is a comparative bargain, at $160 versus about $400-odd. Nevertheless, it switches the keyboard, monitor and mouse between my laptop and the Ubuntu desktop box. Does a great job too, the 1920×1200 images are crystal clear, just as good as the monitor directly connected.

• A Netgear GS608 Gigabit Ethernet Switch. 8 ports, $100, what’s not to like? Performance is definitely noticeable over 100MBit/s. Let’s just say my PowerBook’s PCI bus cannot keep up.

• A Billion ADSL Modem. Configured in half-bridged mode to avoid double NAT with my OpenWRT router. Seems to just work.

• A Linksys WRT54GS. Running OpenWRT firmware, I could not be happier with this. Very stable, great performance, very flexible.

• My Nokia N70. Recently upgraded to the latest firmware thanks to a downloadable Nokia utility!

• My Athlon XP-based PC. For some reason the Ubuntu installation feels really sluggish on this box, at least in comparison to the (admittedly faster) Fedora Core box I use at work. This is, as they say, all the justification I need for a hardware upgrade.

• A totally cheap-ass office chair. If I remember correctly, mail ordered from Staples for maybe $60. Absolutely awful, especially in comparison to the Aeron I have at work. Unfortunately I can’t justify a $900 Aeron at home, but there must be a sweet spot for office chairs somewhere around the $200-300 mark?

• A cheap-ass folding table from Bunnings. Getting an affordable desk to fit the space is surprisingly hard. Ikea, for example, don’t seem to make one in the 180cm range. Any ideas? Although it’s mostly the right size, I am forever banging my knees on this thing.

• A Kambrook 12-outlet Power Board. Yes, 12 outlets! They’ve even designed it for wall-warts. Unfortunately I must have freakishly big wall warts because I still have trouble getting all of the outlets used. The problem is not enough space between the two rows of outlets, and the wall warts on one row prevent plugging even regular power plugs into the opposite outlets. Damn wall warts! Death to them all!

• Reading Matter. Amongst the many books that I am currently reading, the ones that happened to be on my desk for this photo are: Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid On Earth, Harbison & Steele’s C: A Reference Manual, and Tufte’s Beautiful Evidence. No, I don’t regard them as an odd combination at all.

• Some Bamboo. I am so lucky to have a window which looks out onto a two-story atrium. This room is on the first floor (that would be the second floor for the Americans in the audience), and hence the bamboo is quite tall obviously. I like it. It looks nice and makes pleasant rustling noises. That is, until we seal up the windows, flood it, and fill it with sharks (suggestion courtesy of Chris, who has a bright future ahead of him in interior design).

In the picture above you won’t see too much in the way of artwork, toys, trinkets and other adornments. Not because I don’t like or value such things; on the contrary. I am very envious of Jeff Atwood’s work space, with its many decorative touches. I believe these add immensely to the comfort level of an environment, making it more than just a desk with a computer.

To cut a long story short, I have some pictures and such, but they are out of frame of the above photo. I also have some tchotchkes but they are at work, where I spend more time and need them more. Regardless, I’d like to do more here.

Hope you enjoyed your stay and found it informative. Please feel free to browse the gift shop on your way out.

As a parent I am keenly interested in protecting my children’s actions online and often discuss with my SO how to manage their access when they start to reach the age when they spend more time online. Although I am far more worried about them exposing their own identities, than about being exposed to others, the latter is still a concern. There are certainly sites out there that I cannot now un-see, however much I wish I could. No doubt these sites and others will cause confusion, anxiety, and harm to tender intellects.

Like a lot of parenting, I expect there will be a fair bit of playing by ear. So when the time comes I expect it will involve some combination of: close supervision; logging and blocking proxy servers; whitelisting and blacklisting; an implicit understanding of Bayes’ theorem and the potential for false positives and negatives; some serious conversations and constant reassurance; and lastly acceptance of the fact that I’m ultimately not going to be able to stop a determined and curious teenager from finding what they want online.

Exactly what criteria I use to categorise a given site as unsuitable is still undecided. I expect to outsource to some suitably liberal classification agency of some sort. All I want, at least initially, is to block the worst material from accidental discovery, and log any access to only mildly dodgy stuff.

Anyway I can tell you right now who I wont be outsourcing this stuff to, and that is the government. Either my own government, or the US government, I have no reason to believe they will provide classifications that are compatible with my wishes. The various proposals to set up a .xxx domain also fall into the category of government-based classification, even if it is through an unwilling ICANN.

The arguments against using the gTLDs as a classification scheme are eloquently set out in RFC 3675 and there’s not much more I can add, except to ponder why PICS has languished for so long. A .xxx gTLD would be a juggernaut of laws and regulations, and a magnet for protracted legal disputes. Why can’t we just save ourselves the effort and instead do whatever it takes to get PICS off the ground? Or at least look at the business case?

I don’t know whether the folks from ICM Registry — responsible for the most recent .xxx proposal — included in their submission an assessment of PICS. Given that a technical solution to the problem of site classification is available, one would have to wonder why it is apparently not suitable for ICM Registry? The onus is on them to explain why that technical solution is not appropriate, and this one is.

Because it seems to me that the .xxx domains are simply proposals to solve a small set classification requirements with a specific technical solution, where a different solution to a larger set of requirements already exists. From a systems engineering point of view at least, it makes no sense.

Not that stops folks like ICM Registry who stand to make a ton of money in the short term, registering all those new domains. Sorry guys, looks like you’ll have to try a different sales pitch.