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.
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 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 wonder how many New Zealanders have got the government they wanted?
I don’t mean the folk who read this; the feed makes it clear many of you are unhappy. I mean the people who don’t make a noise on social media.
Do you think they are delighted or dismayed?
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.
Is it me being fussy or do other people think that news media, including specialist tech news media, doesn’t do a great job reporting AI? Specifically, there’s often not enough explaining and background information for someone coming new to a story to get a handle on it.
Poorly defined, open-ended non paying gigs* from difficult clients.
Poorly defined, open-ended non paying gigs.
Poorly defined non-paying gigs.
Non-paying gigs.
Paying gigs.
Paying gigs from regular clients.
Clearly defined paying gigs from regular clients.
Clearly defined, paying gigs from regular clients who pay quickly.
Clearly defined paying gigs from regular clients who pay quickest.
Clearly defined, high paying gigs from regular clients who pay quickest.
If you are interested in my take on the Optus outage that brought much of Australia to a grinding halt, you can catch the replay of my RNZ Nights interview here:
Feedback is welcome.
I’m on the New Zealand Tech Podcast with Paul Spain.
Talking about the Christchurch Call Summit and whether you need to constantly upgrade your phone among other things.
I explore the phone upgrade story in greater depth here:
My work goes crazy about this time of year as everyone in New Zealand races to get things finished before we head into Christmas and the (Southern Hemisphere) summer break.
Then, usually about the end of November it slams to a sudden stop and hardly anything happens until February.