Blog
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Recruiter hilarity of the week
I get about five calls a week where a recruiter finds my name in LinkedIn and call our company reception number asking for me by name. I can see this on my phone so I'm always prepared for them to be…
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Nerd Dad does an experiment
On Saturday my nearly 5 year old asked me why the heat was going out of the room by him leaving the bathroom door open. He's not really ready for the Second Law of Thermodynamics just yet, so I though…
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Healthcare spending: worst of both worlds
A few years back The Economist had a great chart on health care spending showing the split between public and private spending. What's interesting is the huge proportion of government spending from th…
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Awesome Q
For Mother's Day I did some racks of ribs in the smoker. Mostly followed this recipe but used a commercial BBQ sauce for the final basting. They turned out amazing. Lip smacking good. No leftovers. Se…
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The three possible responses to Heartbleed
There really are three things you'll see from vendors about Heartbleed: We don't update our packages very often. (i.e., RUN AWAY RUN AWAY) We use a Microsoft stack for all our web stuff (i.e. RUN AWAY…
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Bunnings: the Soviet hardware store
One of the most frustrating things about living in London was the supermarkets' reliance on Just In Time goods delivery, which more often than not ended up being Just Too Late. Rocking up to the Tesco…
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2013 was the year I finally kicked print
I got a new Kindle for Xmas and I'm absolutely loving it. The backlighting is so smooth and subtle, I can read in the dark without disturbing the other half. It's a brilliant piece of technology conne…
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Exxopolis by Architects of Air
Yesterday we took the kids in to see Exxopolis, a giant inflatable scupture sitting out the front of the Sydney Opera House. The first photo is one I took on Tuesday while walking down for the Matmos…
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Security too weak
The password I was trying to use? Why, the common dictionary word "bBFFI$&Q^UAH". But if I add a 1 to the end, no problem!
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Tableau formula for email domains
As much as I love Tableau, its string functions are rubbish. No split, no regex, not a lot very useful. I find myself constantly searching back in old Tableau files for this, so it's time to publish i…
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Sydney Festival 2014
It's January in Sydney which means Sydney Festival time. That's when Sydney's centre is transformed for a pretty damn awesome art and culture festival. There's always a stack of awesome gigs, plus fre…
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Jawbone UP! and self quantification
In May last year I started wearing the annoyingly-capitalized Jawbone UP device. It's a wrist band that tracks your movements, syncing the data with an app on your phone. It's part of the whole Quanti…
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5:2: a diet for greedy people
I've never been a skinny guy. The fittest I've ever been, playing rugby in my mid-teens, I was still chunky bloke. Helped me avoid being bullied. As an adult, my weight has gradually crept up. Finally…
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Using a Gandi SSL certificate in AWS Elastic Beanstalk Load Balancer
Wow this was way more painful than it should've been. SSL is hard! So I followed the instructions from Gandi and ended up with a private key, a certificate signing request, a certificate and an interm…
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Standing desk: Day 1
I've had a few back problems of late, a herniated disk from lifting my daughter basically. My physio suggests that sitting all day is a big problem, so I've decided to experiment with a standing desk.…
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Fuji Xerox ApeosPort-IV C2275 on Ubuntu and Linux Mint
Just to save anyone having to bugger around to set up this printer, it's dead easy. This printer is in HUB Sydney, and I wanted to use it. Go to the CUPS configure printers thing. Open up Network Prin…
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I was duped by a microparty
My first real job after high school was working for a mail order porn video company. It was a great job, management was very professional and I got really great opportunities after showing aptitude in…
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Underbelly Arts
We went out to Cockatoo Island on Sunday to the Underbelly Arts Festival. It was a stunning sunny day and the kids had a fantastic time. Kids seem to immediately understand that "art" just means "play…
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No Marque, you can shove your environmental "concerns"
"Due to environmental concerns Marque Restaurant no longer uses bottled mineral water. In this regard we have installed a chilled, filtered, carbonated water system. To support this initiative $5 per…
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Our new local: Young Henry, The Cure's a Forest, brisket sandwich and a kid play room
The Henson opened tonight in the old "Henson Park Hotel" premises around the corner, after a short hiccup with their license. They've done a great job, stripping back some of the covers over the origi…