Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Wat Bang Phra Tattoo Festival

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

In my younger days (I am getting on a bit now, so I am allowed to say that!), I never dreamed that one day I would get a tattoo. Actually, I never imagined that I would find myself living in the tropics in the Far East, but that’s a whole nother story altogether …

More to the point, I would never have dreamed that one day I might attend a Tattoo Festival in a Thai temple!

Well, this morning my wife and I woke up outrageously early, and went with two friends to the Wat Bang Phra Tattoo Festival.

So how did that happen exactly?

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Popularity: 94% [?]

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Poorly Rendered – a new blog

Friday, February 26th, 2010

After using my own site as a sounding board for my rants, I liked the idea of having a rant site (for technical content) that was non-personal – by which I mean it has its own name and not mine – with no personal posts in it.

This site will become a blog for more personal stuff, since it bears my name. To me this makes good sense, as the more ‘neutral’ Poorly Rendered site can contain stuff that is not necessarily related to me, and my own site (this one – the one with my name) can have stuff about me and my life.

Given that my life typically centres around technical stuff and the latest (especially Apple) gadgets anyway, I can see Poorly Rendered getting a load more traffic than this one.

The new site can be found here : http://www.poorlyrendered.com/

Enjoy!

And please let me know what you think of the new site – both what you think of the idea, and what you think of the site itself, although right now it is largely without content!

Popularity: 27% [?]

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More about Google apps generally

Friday, February 12th, 2010

After talking at a little length about Google Buzz yesterday, I was thinking this afternoon about what it would take to make it a success in the face of the functionality present in Twitter and email.

Twitter has what can best be described as a huge following. Sure, it has limitations – but for the most part people are OK with that. They are familiar with how to use it, and how it behaves.

But to me, the clincher is that Twitter has a published API. With that, anyone who wants to can write a Twitter client on literally any platform (any platform that has a TCP/IP stack, at any rate).

This has led to a plethora of clients for every smartphone, every desktop OS. Every system that people would like a Twitter client for. There is a Twitter client for the Commodore 64.

But wait – Google has an iPhone app for their Google Apps! Have you seen it?

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Popularity: 31% [?]

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Google Buzz – what’s the point?

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

Google seem to be taking over the world.

I know they have made a point of not being evil, but it seems that they are trying to corner every activity on the Internet, from web search, email to chat, to social communication to … whatever Wave and Buzz are about. I mean – they even have a free DNS service!

So right now, mere months after the raging excitement followed by bewilderment that was the release of Wave, we now have Google Buzz.

And the buzz (pardon the expression) on the internets seems to be … “what’s it for?”

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Popularity: 42% [?]

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Welcome

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Background

So … I had the same basic layout for my website for the last eight years. It was getting a little boring.

I have been using computers since 1979, and writing my own software out of interest since 1980. My first job started in March 1987 with RCP (later RCP Consultants), and I stayed there until the end of February 2004.

At RCP we got a dial-up UUCP connection to the internet in 1993, and used it to do batch downloads of USENET and email several times a day. I wrote my first personal website in 1996, and it got its own domain name (this one) in 2001.

So you can say that I have a fair bit of experience with computers and with the internet.

And here we are in 2010. Frankly, it’s astonishing that my own website has hardly changed at all in eight years.

New Look

Really, I wanted a blog. Somewhere I could post my rants so they could be ignored by a much wider audience.

After trying to install one as a sub-page to the main website, and running into what can best be described as ‘technical issues’, I decided to replace the previous site completely … with a blog!

Feel free to comment on anything you see in here.

Popularity: 23% [?]

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