Wonder why so many people on Mastodon refer to Twitter as “the bird site”. Feels like the people in the Harry Potter books who refer to “you know who” because they are frightened to say Voldemort.
Sometimes I think television drama is far too obsessed with murder mysteries. What about other crimes, why aren’t there shows about unpaid parking fines or income tax evasion?
When I buy something online, anything, and within days I’m pestered by needy requests for me to write a product review or to otherwise rate the product, my immediate thought is “I regret doing business with this company and will try to avoid them in future”. Can you imagine how you’d feel if, after purchasing something in a physical shop 30 years ago, a sales assistant ran down the road after you with an intrusive questionaire?
It’s that time of the year when I have no idea what day of the week it is. This might seem strange to overseas readers but much of New Zealand goes to sleep for two weeks around Christmas - New Year and the days merge into one long glorious summer holiday for many people.
Very early days, but here is the first version of my New Zealand media on Mastodon directory.
Please get in touch if you have updates or additions. bill@billbennett.co.nz
I’m looking to lift my IndieWeb game. This Micro.blog site links to Mastodon (and from there to Twitter), but I haven’t integrated the Ghost site at billbennett.co.nz yet.
This post from Jason McIntosh prompted me:
My main aim to be findable online if Twitter falls over or becomes unusuable. Linking the various islands should help.
I’m not going to pretend I have a clue how to use or read Google Analytics. I used it years ago and it was fine. Now it seems to be complex and geared entirely to sites that sell something.
Blue-sky thinking: Air NZ’s push to become the world’s leading digital airline
Had a whistle-stop tour through some of the innovations coming out of Air New Zealand as the carrier sets out its ambitious technology plans.
Researching, interviewing and writing this story on New Zealand’s Deloitte Top 200 Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Award was fascinating. The nation’s best companies are doing a lot more than paying lip service to diversity and inclusion and, as a result, get better business results.
Here’s a story I wrote for yesterday’s NZ Herald:
Deloitte Top 200: Young Executive of the Year: Kate O’Brien - Air New Zealand
It is a truth universally acknowledged that ever house interior I seen on Zoom or in a casual photo taken for social media is way, way tidier than my house.
Or are they pasted in backgrounds?
I’m still in two minds about Mastodon and Twitter.
Mastodon has some friendly banter, but is distinctly third rate when it comes to ideas or sources for news stories.
While Twitter could never have been described as reliable, it is now even less so.
My weekly NZ telecommunications newsletter is out:
“The government has released Lifting Connectivity in Aotearoa, a paper that sets out its connectivity vision for the next ten years.”
If you’ve had it with Twitter and don’t warm to Mastodon, Micro.blog could be the answer. I like its vibe, but there are precious few other New Zealanders on the service. Which, I guess, may even be an attraction for some Kiwis.
Infrastructure: How Spark is moving NZ forward with 5G and fibre rollouts
Published in the NZ Herald.
Six years ago I quit using Linkedin and closed my account. I explain why in a blogpost.
My work as a journalist means I sometimes need to use Linkedin to research job titles and work histories. For a while I could do this without having an account. Linkedin now insists on an account before letting me see people’s profiles.
So I did what any sensible person would do. I made up a fake account using an annoymous email address and connect using a secure private browser.
For my fake profile, I used the most humble job title I could think of. And a seriously humble experience list. There are no connections. I list no qualifications.
Even this fake account gets the occssional connection request. But it’s the jobs that are “recommended for you” that crack me up. One of them that came up to day, was quite literally, for a rocket scientist. Or, at least, a scientific role at Rocket Lab in Auckland.
[www.theguardian.com](www.theguardian.com/football/…
World Cup 2022: England, Wales and others back down over armband row – live
This makes Qatar look worse, makes FIFA look weak and cowardly.
You know how on Star Trek, there are matter transporter machines that can “beam me up Scotty”?
How many gigabits a second do you think they’d need to use?
When the news broke about lowering the NZ voting age to 16, my immediate, knee-jerk reaction was: “that’s not wise”. Then while I was mentally sorting through the reasons why I thought it might not be wise, I realised they all apply equally to voters at any age.
I moved from England to New Zealand in 1987 with my wife. At first it was going to be a temporary stay overseas, but within months we were hooked and had started a family.
People sometimes ask if I ever get homesick.
The answer is, not really. If I’m homesick for anything it would be for life as a child in the Home Counties during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
It’s time to move on from WordPress. Because I’m not a developer, I now find the PHP code incomprehensible. Back in the day I could at least follow what was going on and fix errors even if I could never write a line of new code. It has become too complex.
But the real issue is Gutenberg. To use a cliche, it’s not so much that I’ve left WordPress, more that the old WordPress I knew has left me.
I’m going to keep the .com account, but let my managed hosting account die when it comes up for renewal. I’ll use this site for my personal blogging and have moved billbennett.co.nz to Ghost, which has some marvellous newsletter features.
It’s strange that this planned move is taking place just as everyone is bailing out from Twitter, but it may not be a co-incidence. I feel both are at some kind of turning point.
Some people have already left Twitter. Others are watching and waiting. I’m not jumping yet, but I am preparing an escape route with billbennett.micro.blog, Mastodon NZ. and there is always billbennett.co.nz.
Now you know where to look if you can’t find me here.