Friday, January 17, 2025
Thanks for the tag, Gabz. Why did you start blogging in the first place? It is so long ago, it’s hard to remember why. Was there even a why? I was a nerd interested in technology, and blogs were the hot new thing. There was a cool platform called Movable Type and I wanted to try it out. So I started a blog. This was all a very long time ago.Wednesday, May 29, 2024
On Hemispheric Views it has become a bit of a running gag that when I become interested in something new or different, the phrase, “I’m an insert interest here guy!” is unleashed. Most recently this was raised in Hemispheric Views E112 when it became clear that “I’m a footy guy!”. Robb Knight has formalised the collection of slash pages across the IndieWeb. Persuant to that list, I hereby submit an RFC—not to the IETF—but to the RKTF (Robb Knight Task Force) to formally add /preferred-pronoun as another potential slash page.Thursday, April 25, 2024
A good reading session will take me on a journey. Often the start will come as a surprise, and will take me on a voyage to an unknown destination. Along the way, my mind will be engaged, interested, and challenged. Today, I’ve had one of those mornings. Here is some of what I found, and some of the most captivating excerpts from them. I invite you to come with me on my reading adventure.Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Late-stage capitalism is destroying a basic human right - being able to live in a house - as housing affordability for renting and buying across Australia has been smashed in recent years. A report produced by Anglicare Australia highlights with cold hard facts something that is already clear in the community: Australian housing is unaffordable. I note a few quotes from ABC News’ story covering the release of the paper that highlight the challenge facing our nation.Sunday, April 21, 2024
I identified that my formerly robust system of data backups, particularly for photos, was no longer great. A combination of frugality and simplification had gone too far. Some time ago I deleted my Backblaze account. Recently I deleted my Flickr account. That left me only with iCloud Photos, which is a sync service and not a true backup. This doesn’t protect my old Lightroom .dng files, nor anything else that isn’t a photo.Tuesday, January 9, 2024
I can draw a fairly straight line from my personality as a young fella to who I am today. I mean, look at this nerd. He’s got a Commodore computer running Workbench 2.04. Dot matrix printer. Stephen Lawhead books on the shelf. A thermometer that read the outside temperature. Basketball trophies. This would be a great submission for one of Hemispheric Views Desk Reviews. But it doesn’t end there. As listeners of my podcast will know, I maintain a depreciation spreadsheet tracking my major asset purchases.Thursday, December 14, 2023
th:nth-child(3) { width: 50%; } A few people are blogging about their current subscription software. Here I am, jumping on the train. I have a subscriptions grouping in YNAB so I’m referencing that to assist here. In writing this, I’m discovering that there are a few subscriptions without a YNAB category. I will have to fix that! Even with YNAB, some of the cost estimates are fuzzy because of currency exchange fluctuations.Sunday, December 3, 2023
Once again, I’m here to blog about my favourite Mac Apps for the year. See previously: 2022 2017 The Standard Criteria For my purposes, to be considered an App of the Year, the software needs to be something I used extensively, value and enjoy. I also must feel I would miss them if they suddenly went away. Of course, it also needs to be a Mac App. OmniFocus It’s almost to the point where this app needs to be put into the Hall of Fame, and removed from future consideration.Tuesday, November 21, 2023
A career is an interesting thing. I’ve never been a “career at all costs” kind of person. Probably why I’ve never made millions of dollars or been a CEO. At uni, I worked at a pizza shop and a liquor shop. The mop was my friend. Things always needed to be cleaned. I spent the first part of my “proper” career working to get ahead, to succeed in using my brain and to find new challenges to overcome.Monday, November 20, 2023
Talking with a friend today. The topic of interest rates came up, as they do in any recent conversation within the Australian context. My friend asked a poignant and sensible question, “why doesn’t the Government adjust the rate of the Goods & Services Tax (GST)?” It is a broad-based consumption tax. If consumption is getting out of hand and creating an inflationary spike, then why not add a disincentive to consumers by raising the price of consumption?Wednesday, November 15, 2023
This article was originally written for the December 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus. In December of 2017, I put together a list of my Mac Apps of the Year. For this issue of Hemispheric News, I thought it would be interesting to revisit this article to see what, if anything, has changed. Given our collective consternation about Electron, the average capabilities of Swift-based apps, and the sad state in general that Mac development seems to be in against the influx of web apps, has the Mac App of the Year category shown improvement?Saturday, November 4, 2023
On Episode 097 of my podcast Hemispheric Views we held a Duel of the Defaults! competition. Jason and Martin fought head-to-head to see who used the most default apps on macOS. As I was the compere and judge of the competition, it wasn’t for me to speak of my choices during the show. For the sake of the record, and to follow some of our loyal listeners who have blogged their defaults, here is my list:Tuesday, October 3, 2023
This article was originally written for the November 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus. Martin has set me a challenge as to what to write about this month. He told me I have to write something about old office technology; maybe an office app feature that I used to use, or something similar. Because I’m so old, I have many topics to potentially write about; but also because I’m old I have forgotten so many of them.Monday, September 25, 2023
I enjoy reading Ross Gittins' articles on economics. He is doing a great job of highlighting the many failures of the neoliberal dogma in Australia. ROSS GITTINS: What's kept us from full employment is a bad idea that won't die: Wages have risen in response to the higher cost of living, but have failed to rise by anything like the rise in prices. Why? Because, seemingly unnoticed by the econocrats, workers’ bargaining power against employers has declined hugely since the 1970s.Wednesday, September 6, 2023
This article was originally written for the October 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus. A couple of weeks ago I inserted a thread into the Mac Power Users Forum. Part honest question, part hopeful Trojan Horse that might lead people to discover Hemispheric Views. The topic of the thread was around how people discover new, independent podcasts.Thursday, August 3, 2023
This article was originally written for the September 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus. Beck Tench is a person whom I follow online. Beck has produced a range of content pertinent to her areas of interest as an academic. One of the topics Beck has written about includes the power of rest and what makes a restorative environment.Friday, July 7, 2023
Today I completed my first week at my new job. It’s been a whirlwind, but every day has been better than the previous one. It’s been so many years since I started a new job that I wasn’t match fit in the process. I’d forgotten how to ‘start over’, so that in itself has been an experience. Learning what is expected of me, and figuring out how to implement that without getting lost in the minutiae becomes the next challenge.Friday, June 9, 2023
Social Media Deathwatch II - Mark writes: When a site tells you they don’t want you using it, except by their captured clients, you should stop using it. All they want is to control you and put ads in your eyeballs, until you explode. … Reddit came out of Digg being fed into a woodchipper just because Kevin Rose wanted a little bit of money… Don’t use closed networks owned by someone else.Thursday, June 8, 2023
I’m happy to see pressure mounting on the RBA. Not so much even for the decision to lift rates, but on it’s myopic approach to analysis. The economy has changed; it has become more integrated, and duopolies and oligopolies rule the Australian markets. A fundamental lack of competition is allowing the growth of profits, and the RBA currently seems unwilling to accept this as a line of thinking. Bernard Keane, writing for Crikey, knocks it out of the park on the Reserve Bank of Australia’s approach to inflation.Thursday, June 8, 2023
Most people have a set of skills that aren’t monetised. These skills are often linked with hobbies or interests. Why don’t people make money from them? Perhaps there is no discernible market for the particular skill. Maybe the joy is removed when a transactional element is added. For whatever the reason, humans are adept at many things, and we often only get paid for a small aspect of the overall talent inherent within us.Tuesday, June 6, 2023
The “party” that is neoliberalism has been giving our society gift after gift. We’ve had corruption and self-interest at the highest levels, as PwC executives had their snouts in the trough on both sides of the consulting equation, giving legislative design advice to government then flipping that information and advising their corporate customers on ways around said legislation. We’ve had executive wages grow exponentially over recent years, irrespective of their performance, or that of the company they lead.Monday, May 29, 2023
I think this list is complete, and compiled in no particular order. Thanks @manton for the inspiration. 🇮🇹 Italy 🇻🇦 Vatican City 🇫🇷 France 🇨🇭 Switzerland 🇮🇩 Indonesia 🇭🇰 Hong Kong 🇨🇳 China 🇻🇳 Vietnam 🇸🇬 Singapore 🇯🇵 Japan 🇭🇷 Croatia 🇺🇸 United States of America New York Washington D.C. Virginia West Virginia Tennessee California Texas Florida 🇦🇺 Australia Tasmania (born) Perth (reside) Darwin Sydney Melbourne Brisbane CanberraThursday, May 25, 2023
This article was originally written for the August 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus. I’ve written about my favourite apps before, namely OmniFocus and DEVONthink. I starting to learn and enjoy anther app — Logseq — but I don’t feel I’m in a position to yet write about it with too much authority. I use a whole toolkit of apps on a regular basis to get my work done and enjoy my computing time.Friday, May 12, 2023
I was a young teenager in the early 1990s. My brother, 11 years my senior, had children early in his life. He would often come back to the family home and bring his young son and daughter with him. As the older Uncle Andy, I had responsibility for entertaining the boy. What a pain he was! Entirely obsessed with playing F/A 18 Interceptor on my Amiga 500, but so young that he could rarely get the bird off the carrier without crashing.Tuesday, April 25, 2023
This article was originally written for the July 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus. It’s happening again. I’m feeling a degree of dissatisfaction with my note-taking app of choice. I thought Craft was going to be the one. It was as close to a macOS native application as I was going to find (albeit with Catalyst sensibilities) and features the ability to take topic notes, daily notes and collaborate with other people.Sunday, March 26, 2023
Today I restructured my computing setup. For about 2 years I’ve been running a MacBook Air M1 as a satellite device, keeping my 2019 Intel iMac as my centralised ‘home base’. The iMac had a nice screen, 40GB RAM and apart from at boot, never felt slow. To the iMac were connected a bunch of devices, including a Stream Deck, JBL speakers, an EVO-4 audio interface, and a Time Machine drive.Monday, March 20, 2023
This article was originally written for the June 2022 edition of Hemispheric News, delivered as part of the Hemispheric Views podcast member bonus program, One Prime Plus. Another WWDC has come and gone, and Apple have released the M2 and a new MacBook Air to go with it. Apple’s hardware continues to be refined and it’s hard to argue that they are not knocking all their new machines out of the park.Wednesday, March 15, 2023
“So it goes” — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five I met Hannah Beazley in 1999. We married on 19 March 2005. Innumerable highlights (and lowlights), some of which include: Establishment of a business, which together we ran for 5 years, then sold. Multiple overseas trips. Vietnam, Hong Kong, Italy, USA, Croatia, Singapore, Bali. Each of these trips with their own massive collection of memories and experiences. Hannah’s chronic medical challenges, which resulted in near death, as then virtually unknown hypereosinsophilia ravaged her body.Tuesday, December 20, 2022
There are some household jobs that I procrastinate over. Oiling the deck is a new one I can add to the list. Our deck was installed a couple of years ago as part of a backyard renovation. I knew at the time this would be a necessary maintenance job that I would despise. I dutifully entered it into OmniFocus as a task for the future. That OmniFocus task has been deferred for about 9 months.Tuesday, December 13, 2022
How good is the Mac indie developer community? Caddyshack Good GIFfrom Caddyshack GIFs I have been a long-time user of the SearchLink service developed by Brett Terpstra. I use it so regularly that I have it tied to a button on my Stream Deck, as well as keyboard shortcut, ⌃ + ⌘ + L. Last night I attempted to use SearchLink while typing in the all new MarsEdit 5. Instead of it working as it always has, I received a confounding error: