If I lived in Alaska I could be working from Nome.

Had a press release today about the fancy communications technology being used on the driverless trains that will run on the Western Sydney Metro which made me realisejust how far behind the public transport eight ball we are in Auckland.

My plan is to wrap up my limited company and switch to working as a sole trader by the end of this tax year, but the amount of loose ends that still need to be tidied up feels overwhelming. That’s ironic, because reason to switch was all about making life simpler.

Chelsea play Liverpool in the Carabano Cup Final early on Monday morning New Zealand time.

The game isn’t shown on Sky Sport. The NZ rights belong to BeIn sports.

Last year my Sky subscription included Bein. This year it doesn’t.

A year’s subscription to Bein is NZ$150, that’s a lot for one game.. There is a $15 monthly option, which I was mulling over. But when I went to the Bein site, there is a one week free trial.

Bingo.

I’m no longer the only family member withh a regular writing gig:

theboilup.substack.com/p/i-dream…

Went to a company website to see its annual result. Clicked on the link, which took me to Microsoft Teams… strange, but OK, the annual result could be a video presentation and it’s possible the company is clueless enough to use Teams for that job.

Anyway Teams crashed rebooting my Mac.

This is what using computers and the internet used to be like all the time. Haven’t seen anything like this in a least a decade.

Have done the preparation for tomorrow’s technology slot on RNZ Nine to Noon.

If you are in New Zealand you can listen on the radio at 11am… but it’ll be posted online later in the day.

If I buy something then get bombarded by pleading messages for positive online reviews then I’m unlikely to ever use (or trust) that company again. If someone has to beg for positive online reviews, that’s because they know they do not deserve them.

My new driving licence photograph makes me look like I should be doing 12 years for armed robbery.

Things have reached the point where it feels like it is easier to find and watch Australian cricket than the Black Caps.

I won’t be watching tonight’s Wolves - Chelsea football match live, but will probably see it before Christmas morning breakfast kicks off.

The newsletter sent out on Friday December 23 has, so far, had 3 per cent fewer openings than the average.

Have spent the morning writing to various websites, especially online forums, requesting they do a better job with site accessibility. In particular there are sites which override browser accessibility controls… that’s not good enough.

For a while I was concerned at the drop in page read numbers when I switched from WordPress’s internal analytics to Ghost and Matomo. Especially so after I stopped engaging on Twitter.

Then I realised:

a) Matomo doesn’t include stats from people with cookies turned off or who otherwise request privacy and

b) Ghost automatically generates AMP pages for people viewing my site on a small screen.

Given that before the switch more than half my traffic was from mobiles, that means what looks like a 60 per cent drop in traffic is probably close to business as usual.

Not that it matters… I don’t sell ads or other information, I’m more interested to know what does or does not get read.

My all time favourite piece of technology is the Bialetti stove top espresso pot. No question.

After that it is all a blur although for a long time the iPod was up there near the top.

Soon I will be extending my 65th years in a row streak of not going to Boxing Day sales.

As a freelance journalist (and occasional business writer) I have clients who insist on Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Both are awful in different ways.

Most of the time I write everything in a Markdown editor then save or copy and paste into a Word or Google Docs file. It is about ten times more efficient.

Markdown is, essentially, a plain text editor with a few extra commands. I’d argue that discovering Markdown was behind my second biggest every productivity leap. The first leap was when I became so frustrated with Windows 8 that I bought a MacBook, possibly the smartest investment a writer could ever make.

It is only a matter of time before Elon Musk comes to a sticky end when James Bond enters his secret lair, kills his evil henchmen and saves the planet from certain destruction.

Just realised that the scheduled phone call I came in from doing gardening work to handle is, in fact, a video call and I’m about as untidy looking as a garden could be.

Boffins confirm what most of us already knew, that video conferencing is draining.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/27/videoconferencing_fatigue_is_real_study/?td=rt-3a

Do people who are concerned about the woke mind virus use masks if they go somewhere potentially infectous like a library?

I’m not a coding kind of person, but I can’t stress enough how my computing experience improved after learning how to use rsync on my Mac. You can buy pretty apps to do that same thing, but rsync seems better, faster and more robust.

One of my proudest achievements is never, ever having worn a bow tie.

One argument against New Zealand moving to four year parliaments is that there is no second chamber. By all means have a longer term, but in the absence of more regular mandate refreshes, add some checks and balances.

I’ve been using Bluesky for three whole days now and no-one has given me a Mastodon-style scolding for not doing (or doing) something that is far from obvious but seems to offend.