Python for Series 60 PhonesSo the first steps in making your phone scriptable is now available.
Python for Series 60 is available for download from Nokia.
The very exciting thing about this is that it supports Bluetooth, HTTPLib and Cell based location access.
It is a matter of time (very short) before someone has built an IcyPole like app which can communicate with other phones using bluetooth, link to the network using http and determine its cell location automatically.
All this without ANY carrier involvement. Now if as a whole we were able to map the cell id to a lat/long we would have full location based services available in python without ANY carrier costs having to be incurred.
Friday, December 17, 2004
iMode Big Pond Movies
After quite of bit of work, Telstra has launched the iMode service I have been building for the last little while....Big Pond Movies on iMode.
The first version is aimed at people who are at a video store and want recommendations for movies to see. You can view the movie synopsis, see similar movies, save movies and see the highest rated etc.
The next version will allow current BigPond Movies subscribers to view their queue and return movies etc. via the service.
After quite of bit of work, Telstra has launched the iMode service I have been building for the last little while....Big Pond Movies on iMode.
The first version is aimed at people who are at a video store and want recommendations for movies to see. You can view the movie synopsis, see similar movies, save movies and see the highest rated etc.
The next version will allow current BigPond Movies subscribers to view their queue and return movies etc. via the service.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
The Manolo, he has the advice for the wifey
The big feets
Manolo is without a doubt the best blog I have found this year.
The big feets
Manolo is without a doubt the best blog I have found this year.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
AgentArts Good news
With a week to go until Xmas and our Christmas lunch to be held at the Flower Drum this week, we were very excited last week to close a long term contract and secure another significant investment from Nokia.
On the 24th Dec, it will be 6 years since we founded AgentArts, during which time we have been through the whole no money, get funded, get large VC funding, enjoy dot.com party excess, open overseas office, grow, shrink, struggle, get clients, be on call 24*7 for 3 years running.
So its great to get to the end of this year and have secured the company for 2005.
In terms of highlights, 2004 will be remembered for:
- Trip to Finland to present at Nokia
- Attending eTech in Florida
- Building a P2P Social networking app for the Nokia smart phones
- Doing a Java J2ME course
- Winning a huge client in Australia
- Watching our client's amazing success
- Getting rave reports from our clients
- Moving into a new office with "yummy" outlook
- Meeting amazing people
I'm sure I can look forward to plenty of travel, exciting meetings with interesting people and good work and hopefully make it another great year in 2005.
With a week to go until Xmas and our Christmas lunch to be held at the Flower Drum this week, we were very excited last week to close a long term contract and secure another significant investment from Nokia.
On the 24th Dec, it will be 6 years since we founded AgentArts, during which time we have been through the whole no money, get funded, get large VC funding, enjoy dot.com party excess, open overseas office, grow, shrink, struggle, get clients, be on call 24*7 for 3 years running.
So its great to get to the end of this year and have secured the company for 2005.
In terms of highlights, 2004 will be remembered for:
- Trip to Finland to present at Nokia
- Attending eTech in Florida
- Building a P2P Social networking app for the Nokia smart phones
- Doing a Java J2ME course
- Winning a huge client in Australia
- Watching our client's amazing success
- Getting rave reports from our clients
- Moving into a new office with "yummy" outlook
- Meeting amazing people
I'm sure I can look forward to plenty of travel, exciting meetings with interesting people and good work and hopefully make it another great year in 2005.
43 plus things
Yea!! I got an invite to the 43things beta from the kind robots at the Robot Co-Op.
Apparently I'm in the first 43 people invited which makes me kind of feel special in a funny geeky kind of way.
Lots of stuff to play with over the next night or two and feedback to be given.
Yea!! I got an invite to the 43things beta from the kind robots at the Robot Co-Op.
Apparently I'm in the first 43 people invited which makes me kind of feel special in a funny geeky kind of way.
Lots of stuff to play with over the next night or two and feedback to be given.
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Goal Achieved
Back in my university days I started to do weights at the gym and bought a home gym setup which I used for about 8 weeks along with one of those body building tablet program things...yes I was a vain boy....ok maybe was isn't the right word ;-)
Anyway, since then I've always had the goal of bench pressing my body weight. I'll bet I'm not alone in this as evidenced by the number of people who share my goal on 43things. Now only if they had a way of ticking off the goals because...
Today I achieved my goal. 75kg for 3 reps!! Yeah!!
I've been doing weights this year rather than running, swimming or riding and I've been enjoying it very much. Over the last 8 weeks I've been doing a new program from a Men's Fitness mag (I know I know...) and it has ben fantastic. 3 weeks cycles for a program have meant my body has adapted really really well with the weight increasing and my waist shrinking.
Back in my university days I started to do weights at the gym and bought a home gym setup which I used for about 8 weeks along with one of those body building tablet program things...yes I was a vain boy....ok maybe was isn't the right word ;-)
Anyway, since then I've always had the goal of bench pressing my body weight. I'll bet I'm not alone in this as evidenced by the number of people who share my goal on 43things. Now only if they had a way of ticking off the goals because...
Today I achieved my goal. 75kg for 3 reps!! Yeah!!
I've been doing weights this year rather than running, swimming or riding and I've been enjoying it very much. Over the last 8 weeks I've been doing a new program from a Men's Fitness mag (I know I know...) and it has ben fantastic. 3 weeks cycles for a program have meant my body has adapted really really well with the weight increasing and my waist shrinking.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Lord Ben Style
Just scouting through GQ.com, looking at the summer fashion shows and came across this Louis Vuitton outfit which is sensational.
I do believe if I was able to (read had the money) I would happily lounge around in this pretending to be Sebastian Flyte, drinking bubbly at 11am and enjoying myself immensely. The whole Metropolitan, Brideshead, Being Boring thing is very appealing.
Just scouting through GQ.com, looking at the summer fashion shows and came across this Louis Vuitton outfit which is sensational.
I do believe if I was able to (read had the money) I would happily lounge around in this pretending to be Sebastian Flyte, drinking bubbly at 11am and enjoying myself immensely. The whole Metropolitan, Brideshead, Being Boring thing is very appealing.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Getting down in the Pond of Ziggy
or How I got up the courage to introduce myself to Ziggy
As some of you regular readers will be aware, Suzette and I were invited to enjoy the Melbourne Cup in the Telstra Bigpond marquee on Tuesday.
As you come to accept in Melbourne, the weather was a mess. Sunny and warm when we headed off and miserable and cold in the arvo BUT we didn't care because by the time the cup came around I'd drunk 6 daiquiris, 2 glasses of bubbly and 2 wines ;-) and because we were in the marquee with our own TAB person and huge BigPond umbrellas (more on this later)
Suzette look fantastic and had really enjoyed getting dressed up and shopping!! for the event.
We traveled by train in the morning along with plenty of others and made our way around to the Bird Cage which is where all the expensive corporate marquees were setup. Passing through about 3 levels of security checks we got to the marquee which was very tasteful. It was big and roomy with cushions around the walls and some bar stools and high tables in the center. The food and drinks were great and everyone looked very nice.
When we first arrived (around 11am) we were by far the youngest but as the day progressed more people our age arrived.
We wandered around the rest of the Bird Cage looking at other marquees and generally feeling very well to do...not unlike when I used to get invited to work balls at the old company.
What about the celebs you may ask...well we saw...Mark Latham about 3 times, John Andersen once, James Packer, a few news presenters, two Olympians and lots of execs and their wives.
Within the BigPond tent I was expecting to see a couple of people I knew but only one person, the head of BigPond, was there so it was to be a social exploration type of day. We met a lovely couple (Simon and Cherene) who happened to be big West Wing fans so we hit it off immediately and spent a bit of time with them.
In terms of Schmooozing....I did my bit and went and talked to the head of BigPond; I introduced myself to the MD of Ericsson Australia and most impressively went up and introduced myself to the big Z, Ziggy Switkowski, the head of Telstra. We had a good chat about BigPond Movies and about some of the work I'm doing in the mobile space.
yes...about the umbrellas....they had these huge golf umbrellas to use and we needed one to get to the train back home, so we now have a huge golf umbrella.
And I managed to pick the quinella on the cup so we walked away with much more money than we had spent!!
All in all a very fun and enjoyable day!!!
or How I got up the courage to introduce myself to Ziggy
As some of you regular readers will be aware, Suzette and I were invited to enjoy the Melbourne Cup in the Telstra Bigpond marquee on Tuesday.
As you come to accept in Melbourne, the weather was a mess. Sunny and warm when we headed off and miserable and cold in the arvo BUT we didn't care because by the time the cup came around I'd drunk 6 daiquiris, 2 glasses of bubbly and 2 wines ;-) and because we were in the marquee with our own TAB person and huge BigPond umbrellas (more on this later)
Suzette look fantastic and had really enjoyed getting dressed up and shopping!! for the event.
We traveled by train in the morning along with plenty of others and made our way around to the Bird Cage which is where all the expensive corporate marquees were setup. Passing through about 3 levels of security checks we got to the marquee which was very tasteful. It was big and roomy with cushions around the walls and some bar stools and high tables in the center. The food and drinks were great and everyone looked very nice.
When we first arrived (around 11am) we were by far the youngest but as the day progressed more people our age arrived.
We wandered around the rest of the Bird Cage looking at other marquees and generally feeling very well to do...not unlike when I used to get invited to work balls at the old company.
What about the celebs you may ask...well we saw...Mark Latham about 3 times, John Andersen once, James Packer, a few news presenters, two Olympians and lots of execs and their wives.
Within the BigPond tent I was expecting to see a couple of people I knew but only one person, the head of BigPond, was there so it was to be a social exploration type of day. We met a lovely couple (Simon and Cherene) who happened to be big West Wing fans so we hit it off immediately and spent a bit of time with them.
In terms of Schmooozing....I did my bit and went and talked to the head of BigPond; I introduced myself to the MD of Ericsson Australia and most impressively went up and introduced myself to the big Z, Ziggy Switkowski, the head of Telstra. We had a good chat about BigPond Movies and about some of the work I'm doing in the mobile space.
yes...about the umbrellas....they had these huge golf umbrellas to use and we needed one to get to the train back home, so we now have a huge golf umbrella.
And I managed to pick the quinella on the cup so we walked away with much more money than we had spent!!
All in all a very fun and enjoyable day!!!
Children for sale??I was just doing a search on google for "children" to see what advertisers we might be able to target for Playground Finder. The results are below and I must say....quite illegal in Australia.
I really hope eBay and Google try and fix this type of error because selling children is just not on ;-) (Unless they've been really naughty)
I really hope eBay and Google try and fix this type of error because selling children is just not on ;-) (Unless they've been really naughty)
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Database DesignOver at Kottke, there is a great set of comments (most of which say the same thing over and over) about normalisation during database design and the use of denormalisation.
Jason asserted that normalisation/denormalisation is a tradeoff and references a good presentation on Flickr and their use of PHP and MySQL.
To summarise, most (90%) of the comments are saying that normalisation is the way to go and that denormalisation is a step you take AFTER you have normalised and then identified performance issues, rather than what I think Jason was hinting at which is that normalisation is an option which you can use if you want to but starting with a denormalised structure is ok. Quite rightly, most of the comments also say that problems/issues etc are database design have been well solved for many years and while creatively is (at least in my mind) totally needed for database design, the process itself of normalisation is well and truely defined and has been for years.
Now, I love database design, and over the last 13 years I have spent a lot of my time in both massive IBM DB2 and IMS systems, MS SQL server database driven financial systems and plenty of time with web systems running MySQL, Oracle or MS SQL Server data mining 10s of millions of rows.
Only last weekend, Phil and I were discussing database design while driving to get some take away food and we covered this very issue.
This leads me to my point (finally). Which is, that with the lowering of barriers for people to develop web applications using tools such as PHP and MySQL, the overall quality of database design has dropped substantially as has database query performance, and this is mainly due to the people developing these applications not having an understanding of good database and query design.
Now this is all and well for what Clay Shirky refers to as Situated Software, which is an emerging pattern of software creation for a specific, generally small scale, community or solution. e.g. Meeting room booking, class note support system etc.
But the problem arises when you don't have a good database design and then try to scale a system. What worked for a few users in testing and development, or even thousands of rows in a larger test, just doesn't work well with a significant (depends on each app) level of use. At this point, the system is well used and changes to retrospectively normalise the database design (and then denormalise poor performing parts) is very very expensive and time consuming not to mention a pain in the ass.
Web based systems which should be high performing given a) their user base b) the query structure and c) the content in the db, when running on one box, run slowly, even on a massive database box with multiple application servers.
in addition to poorly design databases (which I generally consider the root of the problem), developers with a lack of knowledge about how databases work, often end up designing poorly performing queries which, even with a great db design, would cause the system to grind to a halt.
For example, searching for a movie in a db, e.g. The Terminator, should be a simple select statement getting back a handful of rows depending upon the text search you want to do. What it should not be, is a query returning all movies in the database to the application server and then having the application server loop through each and every row from A to Z finding "The terminator".
Over the last 5 years I have developed a way of designing database driven web systems which seems to always start with doing a data model in conjunction with the functionally task definition. This approach seems to work well in most cases, where the web pages are driven by select, update, insert and delete statements. Its almost an databasey object modeling approach which works well for me.
So I believe in finding a balance with ease of access to tools and the responsibility of the developers to spend some time learning (what is not a difficult task really) database design methods and basic query practice. Then using this knowledge to at least create a system which, while not perfect, can start to be scaled or just maintained in the future without major rework.
Design you database reasonably well (it doesn't have to be 3rd normal form), make sure your queries are optimised (indexes used etc) and then develop to your hearts content, the extra time spent up front will save you heaps in maintenance, bug fixing due to data inconsistencies, and scaling issues.
Jason asserted that normalisation/denormalisation is a tradeoff and references a good presentation on Flickr and their use of PHP and MySQL.
To summarise, most (90%) of the comments are saying that normalisation is the way to go and that denormalisation is a step you take AFTER you have normalised and then identified performance issues, rather than what I think Jason was hinting at which is that normalisation is an option which you can use if you want to but starting with a denormalised structure is ok. Quite rightly, most of the comments also say that problems/issues etc are database design have been well solved for many years and while creatively is (at least in my mind) totally needed for database design, the process itself of normalisation is well and truely defined and has been for years.
Now, I love database design, and over the last 13 years I have spent a lot of my time in both massive IBM DB2 and IMS systems, MS SQL server database driven financial systems and plenty of time with web systems running MySQL, Oracle or MS SQL Server data mining 10s of millions of rows.
Only last weekend, Phil and I were discussing database design while driving to get some take away food and we covered this very issue.
This leads me to my point (finally). Which is, that with the lowering of barriers for people to develop web applications using tools such as PHP and MySQL, the overall quality of database design has dropped substantially as has database query performance, and this is mainly due to the people developing these applications not having an understanding of good database and query design.
Now this is all and well for what Clay Shirky refers to as Situated Software, which is an emerging pattern of software creation for a specific, generally small scale, community or solution. e.g. Meeting room booking, class note support system etc.
But the problem arises when you don't have a good database design and then try to scale a system. What worked for a few users in testing and development, or even thousands of rows in a larger test, just doesn't work well with a significant (depends on each app) level of use. At this point, the system is well used and changes to retrospectively normalise the database design (and then denormalise poor performing parts) is very very expensive and time consuming not to mention a pain in the ass.
Web based systems which should be high performing given a) their user base b) the query structure and c) the content in the db, when running on one box, run slowly, even on a massive database box with multiple application servers.
in addition to poorly design databases (which I generally consider the root of the problem), developers with a lack of knowledge about how databases work, often end up designing poorly performing queries which, even with a great db design, would cause the system to grind to a halt.
For example, searching for a movie in a db, e.g. The Terminator, should be a simple select statement getting back a handful of rows depending upon the text search you want to do. What it should not be, is a query returning all movies in the database to the application server and then having the application server loop through each and every row from A to Z finding "The terminator".
Over the last 5 years I have developed a way of designing database driven web systems which seems to always start with doing a data model in conjunction with the functionally task definition. This approach seems to work well in most cases, where the web pages are driven by select, update, insert and delete statements. Its almost an databasey object modeling approach which works well for me.
So I believe in finding a balance with ease of access to tools and the responsibility of the developers to spend some time learning (what is not a difficult task really) database design methods and basic query practice. Then using this knowledge to at least create a system which, while not perfect, can start to be scaled or just maintained in the future without major rework.
Design you database reasonably well (it doesn't have to be 3rd normal form), make sure your queries are optimised (indexes used etc) and then develop to your hearts content, the extra time spent up front will save you heaps in maintenance, bug fixing due to data inconsistencies, and scaling issues.
Monday, October 18, 2004
IcyPole at Sloane School Of Management
Woo hooo.... I'm very excited!!!
Just checking my logs and seeing a search about IcyPole from google. So I decided to check what is referencing my leading edge wireless P2P app.
It turns out that it is being referenced in some presentations on Music Distribution and Core Edge Dynamics at Sloane School of Management, which is very very cool. They have done some lovely MBA style diagrams showing its position with other P2P and edge services which is all nice.
So if you want to see the future of Music Distribution...check it out.
Woo hooo.... I'm very excited!!!
Just checking my logs and seeing a search about IcyPole from google. So I decided to check what is referencing my leading edge wireless P2P app.
It turns out that it is being referenced in some presentations on Music Distribution and Core Edge Dynamics at Sloane School of Management, which is very very cool. They have done some lovely MBA style diagrams showing its position with other P2P and edge services which is all nice.
So if you want to see the future of Music Distribution...check it out.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Alert for Patent
Set it and forget it...as the audience on some infomercial yesterday were saying. This morning I came into work and got an email alerting me that there was a press release about my latest patent on the news wire.
Ages ago...so long ago that I don't remember, I must have set an alert on yahoo to send me any news about AgentArts. So this morning in came an alert.
Very nice. And if you wish...go and read the press release.
Set it and forget it...as the audience on some infomercial yesterday were saying. This morning I came into work and got an email alerting me that there was a press release about my latest patent on the news wire.
Ages ago...so long ago that I don't remember, I must have set an alert on yahoo to send me any news about AgentArts. So this morning in came an alert.
Very nice. And if you wish...go and read the press release.
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Shitty morning
What a crap way to wake up on a Saturday. I'm in San Francisco for the next few days and really thought that the weekend would be an activity filled fun fest.
But alas....I woke at 4 this morning and was incredibly sick...icky...and only managed to get back to bed around 6 so I'm sort of feeling like I did 10 years ago after a big night out and an early rise.....tired, hungry, dehydrated and ug..
Added to this, John Howard or fearless fly as I like to think of our beloved leader, has just been reelected for his 4th term. Double ug.
The only cool thing about this weekend, aside from shopping, the apple store, marios and breakfast tomorrow is that its Fleet Week here this weekend. So, big ships and lots of cool planes flying around!!!
If only I'd brought some vegimite I'm sure I'd feel better.
What a crap way to wake up on a Saturday. I'm in San Francisco for the next few days and really thought that the weekend would be an activity filled fun fest.
But alas....I woke at 4 this morning and was incredibly sick...icky...and only managed to get back to bed around 6 so I'm sort of feeling like I did 10 years ago after a big night out and an early rise.....tired, hungry, dehydrated and ug..
Added to this, John Howard or fearless fly as I like to think of our beloved leader, has just been reelected for his 4th term. Double ug.
The only cool thing about this weekend, aside from shopping, the apple store, marios and breakfast tomorrow is that its Fleet Week here this weekend. So, big ships and lots of cool planes flying around!!!
If only I'd brought some vegimite I'm sure I'd feel better.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Monday, September 20, 2004
eMusic Relaunch
eMusic, a client of AgentArts', since 2001, is going to be relaunching their site. With the relaunch they have completely rewritten the backend and moved to NYC from San Diego.
This means two things, there will be a bunch of people in San Diego looking for work and AgentArts are no longer going to be offering recommendations and personalisation technology to eMusic. Its been an interesting three years and I'm greatly impressed we've been able to run the service from Australia with such a minimal staff. What I won't miss is a) calls at 4am to fix issues and b) having been on call for 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 2.5 years.
I can finally take a holiday and not need to take the laptop/mobile/inet access.
eMusic, a client of AgentArts', since 2001, is going to be relaunching their site. With the relaunch they have completely rewritten the backend and moved to NYC from San Diego.
This means two things, there will be a bunch of people in San Diego looking for work and AgentArts are no longer going to be offering recommendations and personalisation technology to eMusic. Its been an interesting three years and I'm greatly impressed we've been able to run the service from Australia with such a minimal staff. What I won't miss is a) calls at 4am to fix issues and b) having been on call for 24 hours a day 7 days a week for 2.5 years.
I can finally take a holiday and not need to take the laptop/mobile/inet access.
Friday, September 17, 2004
Oratory
This is one of my fave quotes from a TV Series. It works really well and I should try and state more arguments/product sales in this way.
"You want the benefits of free trade? Food is cheaper. Food is cheaper, clothes are cheaper, steel is cheaper, cars are cheaper, phone service is cheaper. You feel me building a rhythm here? Thatâ??s â??cause Iâ??m a speechwriter and I know how to make a point. It lowers prices, it raises income. You see what I did with â??lowersâ?? and â??raisesâ?? there? Itâ??s called the science of listener attention. We did repetition, we did floating opposites and now you end with the one thatâ??s not like the others. Ready? Free trade stops wars. And thatâ??s it. Free trade stops wars! And we figure out a way to fix the rest! One world, one peace. Iâ??m sure Iâ??ve seen that on a sign somewhere."
- Toby Ziegler, The West Wing 2x16 Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail
This is one of my fave quotes from a TV Series. It works really well and I should try and state more arguments/product sales in this way.
"You want the benefits of free trade? Food is cheaper. Food is cheaper, clothes are cheaper, steel is cheaper, cars are cheaper, phone service is cheaper. You feel me building a rhythm here? Thatâ??s â??cause Iâ??m a speechwriter and I know how to make a point. It lowers prices, it raises income. You see what I did with â??lowersâ?? and â??raisesâ?? there? Itâ??s called the science of listener attention. We did repetition, we did floating opposites and now you end with the one thatâ??s not like the others. Ready? Free trade stops wars. And thatâ??s it. Free trade stops wars! And we figure out a way to fix the rest! One world, one peace. Iâ??m sure Iâ??ve seen that on a sign somewhere."
- Toby Ziegler, The West Wing 2x16 Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Testing ....1...2...3
Yeah....we are back online after a week without Internet at home after a very big move.
So Suze, Jaz, Osky and I are all in our humble abode which is very very nice. The most bestest thing is that in putting the bed back together it has somehow got more comfortable....weird but true. So sleep here is much nicer.
We are directly opposite a park with a playground and football oval, we even have a secret path right next door to our house. With the garden, the secret path, the playground and everything else...the kids are enjoying themselves immensely. But....Oskar is now waking at 5-5:30 again so Suze and I have not had a night in bed after 9:30pm for 2 weeks which is just mind blowing!! Added to which I haven't been to teh gym in 2 weeks so things have to change.
Otherwise, life goes on very nicely. I'm working on some very interesting bluetooth stuff for a large retailer here in Australia as well as a large/massive shopping center complex owner.
Now that we have moved, I'm planning on a few projects, most of which involve some for of PIC micro controller hardware soldering type of thing with a RF interface to a computer or the use of a wireless network. I'm very interested in ye olde distributed agent / adaptive device type thingo. So the summer will no doubt see me hunched over a soldering iron or coding some micro code.
Thoughts are starting to converge on "The Next Thing".. which I would like to involve...self organising systems, agents, micro controller based physical computing, adpative systems, real world observational computing, immersive environments, consumers, bluetooth, mobile phones and server side technology. Huh... basically making smart devices which are used by lots and lots of people and immerse themselves in the everyday environment and communicate among themselves.
Yeah....we are back online after a week without Internet at home after a very big move.
So Suze, Jaz, Osky and I are all in our humble abode which is very very nice. The most bestest thing is that in putting the bed back together it has somehow got more comfortable....weird but true. So sleep here is much nicer.
We are directly opposite a park with a playground and football oval, we even have a secret path right next door to our house. With the garden, the secret path, the playground and everything else...the kids are enjoying themselves immensely. But....Oskar is now waking at 5-5:30 again so Suze and I have not had a night in bed after 9:30pm for 2 weeks which is just mind blowing!! Added to which I haven't been to teh gym in 2 weeks so things have to change.
Otherwise, life goes on very nicely. I'm working on some very interesting bluetooth stuff for a large retailer here in Australia as well as a large/massive shopping center complex owner.
Now that we have moved, I'm planning on a few projects, most of which involve some for of PIC micro controller hardware soldering type of thing with a RF interface to a computer or the use of a wireless network. I'm very interested in ye olde distributed agent / adaptive device type thingo. So the summer will no doubt see me hunched over a soldering iron or coding some micro code.
Thoughts are starting to converge on "The Next Thing".. which I would like to involve...self organising systems, agents, micro controller based physical computing, adpative systems, real world observational computing, immersive environments, consumers, bluetooth, mobile phones and server side technology. Huh... basically making smart devices which are used by lots and lots of people and immerse themselves in the everyday environment and communicate among themselves.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
More gold
So, as frequent readers of this infrequently updated blog would know, our household are Big fans of cycling both track and road. So it is with no great surprise then that I am over the moon that Australia has won my fave track event, the 4000m team pursuit.
I remember watching this event in the early 1990s/late 1980s and seeing the German team charge around the track like an amazingly well oiled machine....
Now its the Aussies turn. Congratulations Brad, Graeme, Luke and Brett. And an especially big congrats to Peter Dawson and Stephen Wooldridge who rode in the heats (to a world record) but were left out of the Gold medal ride.
This morning I heard that, unlike Swimming, the people who ride the heats for a team event in cycling and miss out on riding in a medal winning team DON'T get medals. How crazy is that!!! SOOOO unfair.....and unaustralian to boot (how I hate that turn of phrase). Message to the IOC - Change this one ASAP!! No way should Phelps get a gold for swimming a heat and watching the final yet Peter Dawson and Stephen Wooldridge miss out after riding a world record time.
In other Olympic news. Are the Australian Women's Eight the biggest bunch of K*^Ts in the world. So Sally Robbins bonked in the final. You can be shattered but don't forget without her you wouldn't have been there....now their behavior has been UNAUSTRALIAN!!!
So, as frequent readers of this infrequently updated blog would know, our household are Big fans of cycling both track and road. So it is with no great surprise then that I am over the moon that Australia has won my fave track event, the 4000m team pursuit.
I remember watching this event in the early 1990s/late 1980s and seeing the German team charge around the track like an amazingly well oiled machine....
Now its the Aussies turn. Congratulations Brad, Graeme, Luke and Brett. And an especially big congrats to Peter Dawson and Stephen Wooldridge who rode in the heats (to a world record) but were left out of the Gold medal ride.
This morning I heard that, unlike Swimming, the people who ride the heats for a team event in cycling and miss out on riding in a medal winning team DON'T get medals. How crazy is that!!! SOOOO unfair.....and unaustralian to boot (how I hate that turn of phrase). Message to the IOC - Change this one ASAP!! No way should Phelps get a gold for swimming a heat and watching the final yet Peter Dawson and Stephen Wooldridge miss out after riding a world record time.
In other Olympic news. Are the Australian Women's Eight the biggest bunch of K*^Ts in the world. So Sally Robbins bonked in the final. You can be shattered but don't forget without her you wouldn't have been there....now their behavior has been UNAUSTRALIAN!!!
Saturday, August 14, 2004
Why don't companies run browser checks
A competitor to FetchMeMovies is QuickFlix. They are based in Perth and have an up to 10 day, read that again 10 day, turn around on DVDs to the East Coast!!!
Aside from that, which will improve when they build Sydney and Melbourne distribution centers, this is a picture of the QuickFlix web site on my iBook running Safari....why don't people test their sites??
A competitor to FetchMeMovies is QuickFlix. They are based in Perth and have an up to 10 day, read that again 10 day, turn around on DVDs to the East Coast!!!
Aside from that, which will improve when they build Sydney and Melbourne distribution centers, this is a picture of the QuickFlix web site on my iBook running Safari....why don't people test their sites??
Fetchmemovies Recommendations
Now that the Fetchmemovies cat is out of the bag, I can finally talk about the work that has been my main focus for the last couple of months.
Earlier this year, we inked a deal with Telstra to provide a new recommendations engine and community features to the most excellent DVD rental service Fetchmemovies. Over the last couple of months we've been implementing bits and pieces of it with a few more pieces to go before we are fully running the recommendations and personalisation features.
Its similar to work I have done previously but is different in that it is the pinnacle of the development I have been involved with, integrating the best features and lots of learning to make a system that is tuned very very nicely (personalised recommendations in under 100ms, total CPU on the very modest box at under 8% max), runs all my patented data mining algorithms every night and provides a totally kick arse content management system for their editorial and marketing staff.
All in all I'm very proud of the work I've done and the results we're already seeing.
Do yourself a favor and sign up for the service. Its cost effective and a great way to see lots of new interesting and excellently recommended DVDs.
Now that the Fetchmemovies cat is out of the bag, I can finally talk about the work that has been my main focus for the last couple of months.
Earlier this year, we inked a deal with Telstra to provide a new recommendations engine and community features to the most excellent DVD rental service Fetchmemovies. Over the last couple of months we've been implementing bits and pieces of it with a few more pieces to go before we are fully running the recommendations and personalisation features.
Its similar to work I have done previously but is different in that it is the pinnacle of the development I have been involved with, integrating the best features and lots of learning to make a system that is tuned very very nicely (personalised recommendations in under 100ms, total CPU on the very modest box at under 8% max), runs all my patented data mining algorithms every night and provides a totally kick arse content management system for their editorial and marketing staff.
All in all I'm very proud of the work I've done and the results we're already seeing.
Do yourself a favor and sign up for the service. Its cost effective and a great way to see lots of new interesting and excellently recommended DVDs.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Happy Birthday to Me
33 today, 33 today...
Ahh birthdays. I generally try to have the day off on my birthday and enjoy the day in some fun exciting or general selfish way but this year it falls on a Java MIDP (java software on the mobile phone) training course, which someone compared to a tax seminar, but which I compare to a great deal of fun....big geek that I am.
So it was that my birthday has come to pass and I have spent the day coding mobile phone versions of the FetchMeMovies DVD site, creating simple games for the phone and getting it to send SMS messages to itself.
The day started with wifey giving me the most wonderful hand knitted scarf that she had been secretly doing for ages (no photo yet but I'm sure Suze will post one). Then off to breakfast at Cafe Sweethearts for yummy pancakes with Oskar and Jasmine which was just lovely. Then Java training and back home to an enjoyable quick dinner and standard weeknight things. Oskar had made me a magnificant lemon cake which we've all just had small pieces of and he sang happy birthday to me and Jasmine managed to say "Habby Berdy" to me which made my night.
Oh and Suze gave me another present, she'd framed my Gold Finger poster so I'll have to find room in the office for it now.
A good day indeed, even if I have been weighed down a little by twits at work.
33 today, 33 today...
Ahh birthdays. I generally try to have the day off on my birthday and enjoy the day in some fun exciting or general selfish way but this year it falls on a Java MIDP (java software on the mobile phone) training course, which someone compared to a tax seminar, but which I compare to a great deal of fun....big geek that I am.
So it was that my birthday has come to pass and I have spent the day coding mobile phone versions of the FetchMeMovies DVD site, creating simple games for the phone and getting it to send SMS messages to itself.
The day started with wifey giving me the most wonderful hand knitted scarf that she had been secretly doing for ages (no photo yet but I'm sure Suze will post one). Then off to breakfast at Cafe Sweethearts for yummy pancakes with Oskar and Jasmine which was just lovely. Then Java training and back home to an enjoyable quick dinner and standard weeknight things. Oskar had made me a magnificant lemon cake which we've all just had small pieces of and he sang happy birthday to me and Jasmine managed to say "Habby Berdy" to me which made my night.
Oh and Suze gave me another present, she'd framed my Gold Finger poster so I'll have to find room in the office for it now.
A good day indeed, even if I have been weighed down a little by twits at work.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Patent Party
Woo hoo.
Today the US Patent office issued me with my second patent.
Its all about finding patterns in data such as things you have bought at a store and deriving links between the items e.g. This DVD is like this DVD.
I'm pretty stoked about the whole thing as it really is a very inventive patent and was really a breakthrough for me.
So...its patent party time and if I wasn't holding out from drinking until my birthday next week, I'd have some bubbly. So virtual cheers to me :-)
Woo hoo.
Today the US Patent office issued me with my second patent.
Its all about finding patterns in data such as things you have bought at a store and deriving links between the items e.g. This DVD is like this DVD.
I'm pretty stoked about the whole thing as it really is a very inventive patent and was really a breakthrough for me.
So...its patent party time and if I wasn't holding out from drinking until my birthday next week, I'd have some bubbly. So virtual cheers to me :-)
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
I love the sight of Aussie Yellow in the morning
Now that's more like it. Australians in Yellow in the early stages of Le Tour.
Congratulations Robbie!!!
It sounds like stage 3 was a nightmare with Ivan Mayo getting serious gravel rash from a nasty crash and loosing quite a bit of time. But unlike our friends OS...we'll have to wait until 6pm tonight to see the details.
Now that's more like it. Australians in Yellow in the early stages of Le Tour.
Congratulations Robbie!!!
It sounds like stage 3 was a nightmare with Ivan Mayo getting serious gravel rash from a nasty crash and loosing quite a bit of time. But unlike our friends OS...we'll have to wait until 6pm tonight to see the details.
Sunday, July 04, 2004
tick tick tick...
We've just watched the 60 minutes article about Mark French and his (and others within the AIS) drug taking or at least vitamin injecting.
This has been going on for around a month now with investigations and more investigations, culminating with the track team being announced late this week and a report coming out about it all on Friday.
So....my pundit 2 cents worth....
Injecting vitamins is NOT illegal it is NOT banned and while is not approved by the AIS code of conduct it is COMMON PRACTICE in Europe cycling and many elite sports. In Australia, we the sporting pubic, have a problem with Olympic atheletes injecting vitamins to get through 40 hour training weeks yet have no problem with AFL players getting injected with IOC BANNED DRUGS prior to matches and during the game to be able to get through injuries. This I don't understand.
Anyway.. our athelete inject vitamins and I have no problem with that. Illegal performance enhancing drugs are another matter...and that's what I think is the bigger issue with the Mark French saga.
60 minutes showed the selected Track team at the CA conference on Friday and asked them about drug taking and injections....ohhhhh dear.... what idiot at Cycling australia decided that it was ok for our Olympic atheletes to have to face direct questioning less than 2 months out from the Olympics......idiotic!!!!
And the result.......disaster. Shane Kelly and Jobie Daiyka looked like they were hiding something and Sean Eddie was tooo cool. Like the master mind of the group. God I hope it wasn't any of them taking eGH.
And Mark French.....well I think he is telling the truth. Injecting vitamins was stupid and he will pay the price but he is being hung out by the various organisations to cover their arses.
Drama drama. Mark - Best of luck and I hope we get to see you ride again soon.
We've just watched the 60 minutes article about Mark French and his (and others within the AIS) drug taking or at least vitamin injecting.
This has been going on for around a month now with investigations and more investigations, culminating with the track team being announced late this week and a report coming out about it all on Friday.
So....my pundit 2 cents worth....
Injecting vitamins is NOT illegal it is NOT banned and while is not approved by the AIS code of conduct it is COMMON PRACTICE in Europe cycling and many elite sports. In Australia, we the sporting pubic, have a problem with Olympic atheletes injecting vitamins to get through 40 hour training weeks yet have no problem with AFL players getting injected with IOC BANNED DRUGS prior to matches and during the game to be able to get through injuries. This I don't understand.
Anyway.. our athelete inject vitamins and I have no problem with that. Illegal performance enhancing drugs are another matter...and that's what I think is the bigger issue with the Mark French saga.
60 minutes showed the selected Track team at the CA conference on Friday and asked them about drug taking and injections....ohhhhh dear.... what idiot at Cycling australia decided that it was ok for our Olympic atheletes to have to face direct questioning less than 2 months out from the Olympics......idiotic!!!!
And the result.......disaster. Shane Kelly and Jobie Daiyka looked like they were hiding something and Sean Eddie was tooo cool. Like the master mind of the group. God I hope it wasn't any of them taking eGH.
And Mark French.....well I think he is telling the truth. Injecting vitamins was stupid and he will pay the price but he is being hung out by the various organisations to cover their arses.
Drama drama. Mark - Best of luck and I hope we get to see you ride again soon.
And it begins...
Early July means that the biggest yearly sporting event begins, Le Tour de France, and that means that Suzette and I will be glued to the TV at 6pm every night (or more likely a video after the kids go to bed) watching Stuey, Robbie, Baden, Brad and the others fire up around France. The last few years have been amazing for the Aussies and this year promises to be no different.
But....it was not to be today. Matt White followed in his wife's footsteps with some amazingly bad luck hitting him 2 hours before the start of his first race. While warming up he fell and broke his collar bone, putting him out of the race and doing nothing to help his Olympic preparation. Get well soon Matt and may this only spur you on to gold in Athens.
I hoping Jan and Tyler gets a win this year and Lance comes second or third. Who knows how it will go but it will be exciting.
Not wanting to be an ugly parent but I would love to see Jasmine or Oskar ride in Le Tour in the future. Especially as Oskar is named after a Swiss World Champ.
In other news, Suze and I spent about 5 hours doing final tweaks to Playground Finder so its just about ready to be pushed out for everyone to play with. And...it looks great. I'm very impressed with how its looking, the way it works and what it does. Hopefully others feel the same.
Last week saw AgentArts laucnhing IcyPole, this week should see a launch of some very important client work in a new entertainment area (hint dvds....) which I'm particularly proud of and the following week should see Playground Finder laucnhed to the public at large. Then its my birthday and I'm off at a Nokia mobile phone development course for that week so things are looking good.
Lots of promising things happening at the moment and potentially heading me in many many new and exciting directions...as Sherlock Holmes would say "The game is afoot".
Allez Allez Allez Aussies!!!
Early July means that the biggest yearly sporting event begins, Le Tour de France, and that means that Suzette and I will be glued to the TV at 6pm every night (or more likely a video after the kids go to bed) watching Stuey, Robbie, Baden, Brad and the others fire up around France. The last few years have been amazing for the Aussies and this year promises to be no different.
But....it was not to be today. Matt White followed in his wife's footsteps with some amazingly bad luck hitting him 2 hours before the start of his first race. While warming up he fell and broke his collar bone, putting him out of the race and doing nothing to help his Olympic preparation. Get well soon Matt and may this only spur you on to gold in Athens.
I hoping Jan and Tyler gets a win this year and Lance comes second or third. Who knows how it will go but it will be exciting.
Not wanting to be an ugly parent but I would love to see Jasmine or Oskar ride in Le Tour in the future. Especially as Oskar is named after a Swiss World Champ.
In other news, Suze and I spent about 5 hours doing final tweaks to Playground Finder so its just about ready to be pushed out for everyone to play with. And...it looks great. I'm very impressed with how its looking, the way it works and what it does. Hopefully others feel the same.
Last week saw AgentArts laucnhing IcyPole, this week should see a launch of some very important client work in a new entertainment area (hint dvds....) which I'm particularly proud of and the following week should see Playground Finder laucnhed to the public at large. Then its my birthday and I'm off at a Nokia mobile phone development course for that week so things are looking good.
Lots of promising things happening at the moment and potentially heading me in many many new and exciting directions...as Sherlock Holmes would say "The game is afoot".
Allez Allez Allez Aussies!!!
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Icy Icy Baby launches
Yeah!! Today in San Fran we launched IcyPole.
IcyPole is a Java app running on Nokia smart phones which automatically detects other IcyPole enabled mobile phones within your vicinity, using Bluetooth, and then proactively communicates with them to see if they have any content (music, videos, photos etc) you may like.
The really cool snazzy new no one has done before bit is that the whole thing is driven off the AgentArts recommendation engine which means that instead of having to search for music the system knows your profile, knows what you like and automatically alerts you to things it thinks you may like.
So you can walk down a street, catch a train or bus and just have the app running and be notified when there is music you might like nearby. You can then download it using the IcyPole application, view the profile of the person with the content etc. Best of all....the whole network runs over bluetooth so there is NO telco charges to be incurred when using it. Totally a distributed system with out of band communication.
We demo'd this app to Nokia in Finland in Feb and have done a few tweaks since then and showed it to a wider audience today.
Yeah!! Today in San Fran we launched IcyPole.
IcyPole is a Java app running on Nokia smart phones which automatically detects other IcyPole enabled mobile phones within your vicinity, using Bluetooth, and then proactively communicates with them to see if they have any content (music, videos, photos etc) you may like.
The really cool snazzy new no one has done before bit is that the whole thing is driven off the AgentArts recommendation engine which means that instead of having to search for music the system knows your profile, knows what you like and automatically alerts you to things it thinks you may like.
So you can walk down a street, catch a train or bus and just have the app running and be notified when there is music you might like nearby. You can then download it using the IcyPole application, view the profile of the person with the content etc. Best of all....the whole network runs over bluetooth so there is NO telco charges to be incurred when using it. Totally a distributed system with out of band communication.
We demo'd this app to Nokia in Finland in Feb and have done a few tweaks since then and showed it to a wider audience today.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Mobile Hide and SeekThis is fantastic..a great use of a mobile phone. What a great use for an expensive mobile and fun for the kids.
Monday, June 21, 2004
A while between drinks
Its been a while since I last posted and I guess the only reason I have is being fairly busy with 2 work projects and 1 personal project...all of which are launching/releasing this week.
As an example on Friday/Saturday I spent time coding Java J2ME (Bluetooth and music) for the Nokia mobile phone app we are building at work, PHP and MySQL for Playground Finder for myself and Cold Fusion and SQL Server for another work client. In between this were client meetings and strategic product meetings at work not to mention playing with the kids.
So its been hectic but it should all be finishing up this week. We launch with a client this week, are demoing the J2ME app at JavaOne in San Francisco on Monday and Playground Finder was finally released late late last night, still plenty to do but great progress on all fronts over the last 2 weeks.
More to come...in the meantime....if you are interested, visit Playground Finder and have a look around and a play.
Its been a while since I last posted and I guess the only reason I have is being fairly busy with 2 work projects and 1 personal project...all of which are launching/releasing this week.
As an example on Friday/Saturday I spent time coding Java J2ME (Bluetooth and music) for the Nokia mobile phone app we are building at work, PHP and MySQL for Playground Finder for myself and Cold Fusion and SQL Server for another work client. In between this were client meetings and strategic product meetings at work not to mention playing with the kids.
So its been hectic but it should all be finishing up this week. We launch with a client this week, are demoing the J2ME app at JavaOne in San Francisco on Monday and Playground Finder was finally released late late last night, still plenty to do but great progress on all fronts over the last 2 weeks.
More to come...in the meantime....if you are interested, visit Playground Finder and have a look around and a play.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Goodbye Granddad
This afternoon Oskar and I went to visit my grand father for what is highly likely to be the last time. He was asleep and looked old and tired.
My grandfather (and grandmother) moved to an outer suburb of Melbourne when I was in grade 4 and from then on, I didn't see them as much. Recently, I've seen them around 5 or 6 times a year, Oskar has seen them more (with my Mum) and knows them well for a great grand child.
A few weeks ago I took Jasmine to see them both. The joy on their faces was wonderful and I have realised over the last week that seeing their great grand children must be a thrill for them both. With that in mind I feel sad yet happy, in the sense that I know he is about to die (more tears here) yet happy that I have been able to in some way contribute to their lives with/through my children.
On the way to the gym this morning I saw a van pull up in a side street and a man in suit got out with a stretcher and rolled it into a house, I'd never thought about it before but that's what happens..
Goodbye grand dad, you taught me a lot as a young child. I'm sorry I didn't spend as much time with you over the last many years but I will always love you.
Update : Granddad died last night. My grandma rang around 10pm to tell me he had just passed away. She sounded good. This morning I went and told mum. RIP Arthur.
This afternoon Oskar and I went to visit my grand father for what is highly likely to be the last time. He was asleep and looked old and tired.
My grandfather (and grandmother) moved to an outer suburb of Melbourne when I was in grade 4 and from then on, I didn't see them as much. Recently, I've seen them around 5 or 6 times a year, Oskar has seen them more (with my Mum) and knows them well for a great grand child.
A few weeks ago I took Jasmine to see them both. The joy on their faces was wonderful and I have realised over the last week that seeing their great grand children must be a thrill for them both. With that in mind I feel sad yet happy, in the sense that I know he is about to die (more tears here) yet happy that I have been able to in some way contribute to their lives with/through my children.
On the way to the gym this morning I saw a van pull up in a side street and a man in suit got out with a stretcher and rolled it into a house, I'd never thought about it before but that's what happens..
Goodbye grand dad, you taught me a lot as a young child. I'm sorry I didn't spend as much time with you over the last many years but I will always love you.
Update : Granddad died last night. My grandma rang around 10pm to tell me he had just passed away. She sounded good. This morning I went and told mum. RIP Arthur.
Friday, May 14, 2004
My dad as a grand father
A couple of weeks ago mum and dad got back from overseas where they had been doing lots of walking. Dad had lost over 6kg which was great. He had also said he was running out of breath on a few hills in the last week of the trip.
Last Thursday he went to the doctor for a checkup and they gave him some heart tests. The next day he had some full on heart tests and on Sunday was told he had a blockage around an artery and would need some surgery. He came home on Tuesday arvo.
On Tuesday morning Suzette, Jasmine and I flew to Hobart for our offline/online holiday (more on that in another post). Oskar stayed with Mum.
Back into hospital on Wednesday and open heart surgery on Thursday morning. We got back on Thursday arvo.
This afternoon I went into see him for the first time. I walked into the room and saw my grandfather in my dad. Tubes everywhere, drips and a tired pale old man who looked but a shell of how he looked last week when I last saw him.
Its been over 22 years since my grand father died and I can remember only several things about him, walking in Spring Rd park, him teaching me to bowl a cricket ball, him giving me a watch of his and walking to Glenferrie Rd to get a band for a little boys wrist and a few other things. Now he lives mainly in my childhood photo album.
I have thought more about him over the last few years since having kids and know how much he and grandma would loved to have spoilt Jasmine and Oskar.
Then to see Dad this afternoon, it was surprising to have a 10 year old's memories come flooding back. I haven't seen anyone in hospital since then.
I try hard so not to cry thinking about it all and having my daddy in hospital looking so vulnerable, so not what dads are supposed to look like to their little boys.
Get well soon Dad, you have many many years with Oskar and Jasmine not to mention Mum, Adam, Suze and me.
A couple of weeks ago mum and dad got back from overseas where they had been doing lots of walking. Dad had lost over 6kg which was great. He had also said he was running out of breath on a few hills in the last week of the trip.
Last Thursday he went to the doctor for a checkup and they gave him some heart tests. The next day he had some full on heart tests and on Sunday was told he had a blockage around an artery and would need some surgery. He came home on Tuesday arvo.
On Tuesday morning Suzette, Jasmine and I flew to Hobart for our offline/online holiday (more on that in another post). Oskar stayed with Mum.
Back into hospital on Wednesday and open heart surgery on Thursday morning. We got back on Thursday arvo.
This afternoon I went into see him for the first time. I walked into the room and saw my grandfather in my dad. Tubes everywhere, drips and a tired pale old man who looked but a shell of how he looked last week when I last saw him.
Its been over 22 years since my grand father died and I can remember only several things about him, walking in Spring Rd park, him teaching me to bowl a cricket ball, him giving me a watch of his and walking to Glenferrie Rd to get a band for a little boys wrist and a few other things. Now he lives mainly in my childhood photo album.
I have thought more about him over the last few years since having kids and know how much he and grandma would loved to have spoilt Jasmine and Oskar.
Then to see Dad this afternoon, it was surprising to have a 10 year old's memories come flooding back. I haven't seen anyone in hospital since then.
I try hard so not to cry thinking about it all and having my daddy in hospital looking so vulnerable, so not what dads are supposed to look like to their little boys.
Get well soon Dad, you have many many years with Oskar and Jasmine not to mention Mum, Adam, Suze and me.
Monday, May 10, 2004
New Blogger UI
The folks at Google just updated blogger. It looks great and the dashboard is sensational. I love the profile stuff and the summary of posts/words etc. Only change is to clarify in the DOB field what is the day field and which is the month field. The example doesn't help.
Well done!!!
The folks at Google just updated blogger. It looks great and the dashboard is sensational. I love the profile stuff and the summary of posts/words etc. Only change is to clarify in the DOB field what is the day field and which is the month field. The example doesn't help.
Well done!!!
Tuesday, May 04, 2004
Meeting with Oskar
This morning Oskar and I caught the tram into richmond then a train under the "big big tunnel" into the city. We were going to meet my mum and dad for coffee before I had an important meeting with Telstra.
My parents are usually very very prompt, when they hadn't arrived for coffee by 8:20 when they should have been there by 8 I started to wonder what was up. A quick call to their home and I found out they had slept in (due to jet lag) and I was going to be taken the youngest member of the AgentArts team to the meeting with me.
So off we set...into the Telstra building (all 42 floors of it) and signing in at reception before heading up the lifts past the security people and into the big conference room. I'd told Oskar beforehand it was an important meeting and he needed to be quiet and that I'd bought him a ABC magazine to read.
All the Telstra staff were absolute stars. They were very happy to have Oskar in the meeting and didn't seem to mind at all.
During the meeting which went for about 55mins, Oskar read his mag, talked a little, ate an apple, drew on the whiteboards, looked out the window and managed to reboot their computer in the middle of me given them an update demo on the development work we are doing for them...doh!!
Along the way were a few classic comments like "Daddy. I need to pee now" which forced a quick break to the meeting and sitting in my chair saying "I'm very busy".
All in all he tolerated it all very very well and I was so proud of him. The most important thing I saw today was how calm I am around him and how tolerant I am. My usual consulting bravado was much diminished and I was much more accepting of everyone and their work updates than I might usually be.
After that it was off to my office on the tram and bus...lots of cuddles on the way.
Next time you are in a meeting try pretending your 3 year old is there and how you would want him/her to see you. Being a hero and role model to your child brings new responsibilities not only towards them but also towards others.
Thank you Oskar you were a star and made today a very very special day for me!!
This morning Oskar and I caught the tram into richmond then a train under the "big big tunnel" into the city. We were going to meet my mum and dad for coffee before I had an important meeting with Telstra.
My parents are usually very very prompt, when they hadn't arrived for coffee by 8:20 when they should have been there by 8 I started to wonder what was up. A quick call to their home and I found out they had slept in (due to jet lag) and I was going to be taken the youngest member of the AgentArts team to the meeting with me.
So off we set...into the Telstra building (all 42 floors of it) and signing in at reception before heading up the lifts past the security people and into the big conference room. I'd told Oskar beforehand it was an important meeting and he needed to be quiet and that I'd bought him a ABC magazine to read.
All the Telstra staff were absolute stars. They were very happy to have Oskar in the meeting and didn't seem to mind at all.
During the meeting which went for about 55mins, Oskar read his mag, talked a little, ate an apple, drew on the whiteboards, looked out the window and managed to reboot their computer in the middle of me given them an update demo on the development work we are doing for them...doh!!
Along the way were a few classic comments like "Daddy. I need to pee now" which forced a quick break to the meeting and sitting in my chair saying "I'm very busy".
All in all he tolerated it all very very well and I was so proud of him. The most important thing I saw today was how calm I am around him and how tolerant I am. My usual consulting bravado was much diminished and I was much more accepting of everyone and their work updates than I might usually be.
After that it was off to my office on the tram and bus...lots of cuddles on the way.
Next time you are in a meeting try pretending your 3 year old is there and how you would want him/her to see you. Being a hero and role model to your child brings new responsibilities not only towards them but also towards others.
Thank you Oskar you were a star and made today a very very special day for me!!
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Happy Birthday Jasmine
Happy 1st birthday to my darling daughter, it has been a privilege to spend the last year with you during the day and night. Enjoy this first of many many happy birthdays.
Happy 1st birthday to my darling daughter, it has been a privilege to spend the last year with you during the day and night. Enjoy this first of many many happy birthdays.
Friday, April 09, 2004
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Toilet Map and Postcodes
As part of the project I'm currently working on I've had to do lots of interesting stuff in determining locations of places without being able to rely on accurate physical addresses, GPS, map references etc.
As the project is a personal one my funds have been limited and I've been trying to track down useful mapping information in Australia that is FREE as in beer. No dice. I can find postcode info from Australia Post which is great but I needed to find relational information to be able to say this postcode is close to this one. Then I had an idea. I checked out the ABS Cenus data and found they have localities broken down to a more discrete level than postcodes and that they have mapped these localities across postcodes. And this locality table is FREE as in beer. So with a bit of smarts and some database work I was able to come up with a FREE Australian postcode to postcode relationship table which now means I can find neighboring postcodes easily. To anyone searching for this, drop me an email and I'll send you a copy.
In following along various leads, Simon pointed me to ToiletMap, an online map of toilets in Australia. Wow is all I can say!
As part of the project I'm currently working on I've had to do lots of interesting stuff in determining locations of places without being able to rely on accurate physical addresses, GPS, map references etc.
As the project is a personal one my funds have been limited and I've been trying to track down useful mapping information in Australia that is FREE as in beer. No dice. I can find postcode info from Australia Post which is great but I needed to find relational information to be able to say this postcode is close to this one. Then I had an idea. I checked out the ABS Cenus data and found they have localities broken down to a more discrete level than postcodes and that they have mapped these localities across postcodes. And this locality table is FREE as in beer. So with a bit of smarts and some database work I was able to come up with a FREE Australian postcode to postcode relationship table which now means I can find neighboring postcodes easily. To anyone searching for this, drop me an email and I'll send you a copy.
In following along various leads, Simon pointed me to ToiletMap, an online map of toilets in Australia. Wow is all I can say!
Sunday, April 04, 2004
Friday, April 02, 2004
Slightly DisappointingFinally, Kinja has launched. This is the project/company that Megnut has been working on for 15 months (but it seems like 2 years+). Anyway, given her prior effort at Pyra making Blogger and her rep, I was expecting something amazing.
Update - I've thought more about what they are doing and I need to look at it from the perspective of their target audience, that is, people who don't no what an RSS feed is or don't care not someone like me who can handcode RSS feeds. So....with that in mind..I like the display of the aggregated digests..its nice to look at and makes sense. I miss not have personalisation/recommendation features on the digest pages and I'm looking forward to understanding if this will come and if so how it will be done (text analysis or collab filtering stuff). I'll give it some time to see what happens...
It is interesting to see that the launch has been delayed significantly (like over 1 year) from when the initial dates were mentioned. During this time, many RSS/Feed aggregators and personalisationish services around blogs have been launched and iterated over stealing some of their thunder.
Also interesting is that Meg is leaving at the end of the month. Only a month after launching a product you have worked for 2 years on??? That seems weird and smells of a conflict among the chiefs or such.
Anyway....well done Meg and good luck with your next venture.
Update - I've thought more about what they are doing and I need to look at it from the perspective of their target audience, that is, people who don't no what an RSS feed is or don't care not someone like me who can handcode RSS feeds. So....with that in mind..I like the display of the aggregated digests..its nice to look at and makes sense. I miss not have personalisation/recommendation features on the digest pages and I'm looking forward to understanding if this will come and if so how it will be done (text analysis or collab filtering stuff). I'll give it some time to see what happens...
It is interesting to see that the launch has been delayed significantly (like over 1 year) from when the initial dates were mentioned. During this time, many RSS/Feed aggregators and personalisationish services around blogs have been launched and iterated over stealing some of their thunder.
Also interesting is that Meg is leaving at the end of the month. Only a month after launching a product you have worked for 2 years on??? That seems weird and smells of a conflict among the chiefs or such.
Anyway....well done Meg and good luck with your next venture.
Friday, March 26, 2004
My little echo chamber
Recently the tide of techno blog babble around my generally read blogs is starting to get to me. So much so that I'm finding the more interesting and readable blogs are those that are more "human" and give some indication of the writers personality.
While I'm all for techno stuff I really think the level of discussion in some of these usual suspects blogs and comments indicates that they need to "get a life". I mean does someone using tables and not css for layout really mean you have to ban yourself from looking at their site or the hoopla around the vaporware typekey this week. Crazy stuff!!
To which I say the following things are inherently good or evil (you decide...but don't talk to me about it)!!
- css vs tables
- typekey
- xfn
- loaf
- foaf
- yasns
- xmlrpc
Recently the tide of techno blog babble around my generally read blogs is starting to get to me. So much so that I'm finding the more interesting and readable blogs are those that are more "human" and give some indication of the writers personality.
While I'm all for techno stuff I really think the level of discussion in some of these usual suspects blogs and comments indicates that they need to "get a life". I mean does someone using tables and not css for layout really mean you have to ban yourself from looking at their site or the hoopla around the vaporware typekey this week. Crazy stuff!!
To which I say the following things are inherently good or evil (you decide...but don't talk to me about it)!!
- css vs tables
- typekey
- xfn
- loaf
- foaf
- yasns
- xmlrpc
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Example #4,464,484 of how the Internet has changed everything
Yet another example of how the world has TOTALLY TOTALLY TOTALLY changed in the last 10 years with the Internet and associated techs....
I have The Saturday Age on the table here opened but unread. So rather than moving the 1.5 meters to the other end of the table to read it I jump to the web site (from my wireless laptop using my home lan and broadband connection) and browse every 2 hours or so the breaking news and anything else that catches my fancy.
Today it is an article about Gaijin!, a magazine about cool things from Japan.
Four clicks later and I'm subscribed for the year with my free t-shirt on the way and in the draw for a DVD.
All the while I'm soundtracked to whatever is pumping out of the iPod and transmitted to the stereo by my snazzy little FM transmitter.
No way this would have been possible 10 years ago...not one bit of it..none!!!
Yet another example of how the world has TOTALLY TOTALLY TOTALLY changed in the last 10 years with the Internet and associated techs....
I have The Saturday Age on the table here opened but unread. So rather than moving the 1.5 meters to the other end of the table to read it I jump to the web site (from my wireless laptop using my home lan and broadband connection) and browse every 2 hours or so the breaking news and anything else that catches my fancy.
Today it is an article about Gaijin!, a magazine about cool things from Japan.
Four clicks later and I'm subscribed for the year with my free t-shirt on the way and in the draw for a DVD.
All the while I'm soundtracked to whatever is pumping out of the iPod and transmitted to the stereo by my snazzy little FM transmitter.
No way this would have been possible 10 years ago...not one bit of it..none!!!
Single Ben Saturday
One of the things I used to love about living in San Francisco for weeks of end was the entirely selfish single ben weekend.
Without a partner or children around, all I had to do was my washing and whatever the hell I felt like.
Generally my weekends began with a video on Friday then a good sleep. Saturday morning was a early morning long run past Pac Bell Stadium, around the Embarcadero and under the Bay Bridge ending at the ferry building before turning around and heading back home. Then it was off to Potrero Hill, do some washing and a coffee at Farley's with Andrew and the paper. Up to Whole Foods for some groceries then back down to the work/live office. Then the whole afternoon stretched out in front of me with my fast computer and T1 line all to myself and those wonderful music services such as Audio Galaxy to download as much as I wanted.
The afternoon was the best, doing personal projects and listening to my fave music before heading off to Mario's for the best focaccia in the world along with a half carafe of house red.
You get the gist of it...
Anyway, today Suze has taken the kids off and left me alone for the day...THANKYOU wifey!!!
So it was gym this morning for a while, then back for yummy lunch, coffee and coding. And listening to my music at a high volume which Suzette and the kids could not tolerate....Wham, Pet Shop Boys, Alcazar, and other glorious 80s stuff.
If things go to plan I should have completed the beta of my project this weekend and be able to open it up on Monday.
One of the things I used to love about living in San Francisco for weeks of end was the entirely selfish single ben weekend.
Without a partner or children around, all I had to do was my washing and whatever the hell I felt like.
Generally my weekends began with a video on Friday then a good sleep. Saturday morning was a early morning long run past Pac Bell Stadium, around the Embarcadero and under the Bay Bridge ending at the ferry building before turning around and heading back home. Then it was off to Potrero Hill, do some washing and a coffee at Farley's with Andrew and the paper. Up to Whole Foods for some groceries then back down to the work/live office. Then the whole afternoon stretched out in front of me with my fast computer and T1 line all to myself and those wonderful music services such as Audio Galaxy to download as much as I wanted.
The afternoon was the best, doing personal projects and listening to my fave music before heading off to Mario's for the best focaccia in the world along with a half carafe of house red.
You get the gist of it...
Anyway, today Suze has taken the kids off and left me alone for the day...THANKYOU wifey!!!
So it was gym this morning for a while, then back for yummy lunch, coffee and coding. And listening to my music at a high volume which Suzette and the kids could not tolerate....Wham, Pet Shop Boys, Alcazar, and other glorious 80s stuff.
If things go to plan I should have completed the beta of my project this weekend and be able to open it up on Monday.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Exciting Father/Daughter time
Today is another one of the days where Suzette scoots around town doing all sorts of things and I stay at home working and managing one or two active infants.
This morning she was off to the Zoo for breakfast with her mum super early and got back later in the morning. This arvo she is off with Oskar at kinder...being the assistant for the afternoon, which leaves me with Jasmine for a few hours.
Normally no big deal...I work and she potters around enjoying a free run of the house, no brother to jump, twist, and bother her.
Jasmine knows how it all works and is happy for me to look after her. So she treated me with a surprise today and took her first steps while I was playing with her.
Such a treat to watch your child's first steps!!
Thanks Jasmine.
Today is another one of the days where Suzette scoots around town doing all sorts of things and I stay at home working and managing one or two active infants.
This morning she was off to the Zoo for breakfast with her mum super early and got back later in the morning. This arvo she is off with Oskar at kinder...being the assistant for the afternoon, which leaves me with Jasmine for a few hours.
Normally no big deal...I work and she potters around enjoying a free run of the house, no brother to jump, twist, and bother her.
Jasmine knows how it all works and is happy for me to look after her. So she treated me with a surprise today and took her first steps while I was playing with her.
Such a treat to watch your child's first steps!!
Thanks Jasmine.
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Bagels
On Sunday I made some very very yummy bagels....the best ever!!!
Here are some pics. The recipe is below for those interested.
A plate full
Happy Ben with bubbly
Bagel Recipe (makes 10-14 bagels)
You will need
4 cups plain flour
2 tsp salt
2 sachets of yeast or around 20-25g of natural yeast
3 tbl sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1 egg yolk
2 tbl oil
poppy or seasame seeds to cover
The Steps
1. Cream the yeast with 1tbl sugar and 1/4 cup lukewarm water. Let stand for 10-15 mins
2. Mix Flour, salt, remaining sugar in big bowl with lukewarm milk and remaining water, egg yolk and oil. You may need to add an extra 1/4 cup water to make it fairly stiff dough.
3. Knead the dough well and put in bowl. Cover and let rise for 1 hour.
4. Punch down dough, knead again. Divide dough into 10-14. Roll each portion into a 20cm long rope. Coil rope into a bagel shape, moisten and squeeze the bit that joins the ends. Put them down for 10 mins to raise a little.
5. Slide a few bagels at a time (4 max unless you have a super size saucepan) into boiling water. Let them sit for 1 min the turn over with a slotted spoon. Turn them over and leave for another 1-2 mins. They will swell really nicely and look like uncooked yummy bagels.
6 Finally, put the bagels onto a greased tray (or oven bake paper) brush with egg white and water then sprinkle poppy seeds and sesame seeds. Bake at 200 for 15-20 mins or until golden and bagel-ish.
Enjoy!!!
On Sunday I made some very very yummy bagels....the best ever!!!
Here are some pics. The recipe is below for those interested.
A plate full
Happy Ben with bubbly
Bagel Recipe (makes 10-14 bagels)
You will need
4 cups plain flour
2 tsp salt
2 sachets of yeast or around 20-25g of natural yeast
3 tbl sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1 egg yolk
2 tbl oil
poppy or seasame seeds to cover
The Steps
1. Cream the yeast with 1tbl sugar and 1/4 cup lukewarm water. Let stand for 10-15 mins
2. Mix Flour, salt, remaining sugar in big bowl with lukewarm milk and remaining water, egg yolk and oil. You may need to add an extra 1/4 cup water to make it fairly stiff dough.
3. Knead the dough well and put in bowl. Cover and let rise for 1 hour.
4. Punch down dough, knead again. Divide dough into 10-14. Roll each portion into a 20cm long rope. Coil rope into a bagel shape, moisten and squeeze the bit that joins the ends. Put them down for 10 mins to raise a little.
5. Slide a few bagels at a time (4 max unless you have a super size saucepan) into boiling water. Let them sit for 1 min the turn over with a slotted spoon. Turn them over and leave for another 1-2 mins. They will swell really nicely and look like uncooked yummy bagels.
6 Finally, put the bagels onto a greased tray (or oven bake paper) brush with egg white and water then sprinkle poppy seeds and sesame seeds. Bake at 200 for 15-20 mins or until golden and bagel-ish.
Enjoy!!!
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Sunday, March 07, 2004
New Project
One of the reasons for the lack of posts recently has been that I've been quite focused outside of work on a new project/business that I have started. Its going to be an online service with potential revenue generating opportunities (physical products) in the year or so offline.
I'm using the project as a great opportunity to learn about starting a business from scratch and making sure I'm covering off the things I didn't have involvement in when founding AgentArts 5 years ago. Things like business structure, options for future staff, the business' values, the business plan and all the interesting things (and some not so interesting) associated with it.
As its an online service I've been coding the web site, database, PHP pages etc and again have been using it as a chance to skill up on CSS and approaches to building a database driven web site using the best techniques I know and to adapt from the problems I've previously encountered.
All this has meant that my brain cycles have been fairly focused on this new project and not on creative or interesting things to say on my blog. This will change over the next week as I start to get the site live and post some thoughts on it.
One of the reasons for the lack of posts recently has been that I've been quite focused outside of work on a new project/business that I have started. Its going to be an online service with potential revenue generating opportunities (physical products) in the year or so offline.
I'm using the project as a great opportunity to learn about starting a business from scratch and making sure I'm covering off the things I didn't have involvement in when founding AgentArts 5 years ago. Things like business structure, options for future staff, the business' values, the business plan and all the interesting things (and some not so interesting) associated with it.
As its an online service I've been coding the web site, database, PHP pages etc and again have been using it as a chance to skill up on CSS and approaches to building a database driven web site using the best techniques I know and to adapt from the problems I've previously encountered.
All this has meant that my brain cycles have been fairly focused on this new project and not on creative or interesting things to say on my blog. This will change over the next week as I start to get the site live and post some thoughts on it.
Fetchmemovies
Telstra launched a new DVD rental service a month or so ago called FetchMeMovies. Basically its a NetFlix style service which allows you rent a number of DVDs at a time and return them when you feel like paying a flat monthly fee. So if you watch and return the DVDs quickly you'll see more during the month. For Suzette and like watching DVDs but struggle to watch an entire movie in an evening and don't like the hassle of driving to the video store late at night, this is perfect!!
Initially I was skeptical about how the service would work given my poor experiences with Telstra products initially (ADSL etc). I've always found that whenever I use something of theirs for the first time I need to contact the support or customer service people for a couple of questions.
As usual...I did need to contact the support, firstly for their problems with support for Safari and Mozilla due to silly javascript use and , secondly, to find out when my DVDs would be sent. In both cases the customer service was BRILLIANT!!! They responded to my emails with a few hours and escalated the tech issues to their developers. Wonderful.
Anyway, I must admit its been a great service so far with the core function of DVD delivery response time being spot on....return a DVD on Sunday and get a new one on Tuesday morning.
Telstra launched a new DVD rental service a month or so ago called FetchMeMovies. Basically its a NetFlix style service which allows you rent a number of DVDs at a time and return them when you feel like paying a flat monthly fee. So if you watch and return the DVDs quickly you'll see more during the month. For Suzette and like watching DVDs but struggle to watch an entire movie in an evening and don't like the hassle of driving to the video store late at night, this is perfect!!
Initially I was skeptical about how the service would work given my poor experiences with Telstra products initially (ADSL etc). I've always found that whenever I use something of theirs for the first time I need to contact the support or customer service people for a couple of questions.
As usual...I did need to contact the support, firstly for their problems with support for Safari and Mozilla due to silly javascript use and , secondly, to find out when my DVDs would be sent. In both cases the customer service was BRILLIANT!!! They responded to my emails with a few hours and escalated the tech issues to their developers. Wonderful.
Anyway, I must admit its been a great service so far with the core function of DVD delivery response time being spot on....return a DVD on Sunday and get a new one on Tuesday morning.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Back homeAfter 16 hours of flying time, I'm back home with the family. My was it strange to hop off the plane into 31 degree heat after having been in -8 degree cold only 1 week ago.
The trip was great, Helsinki is a beautiful city and my time at eTech was very worthwhile. It was by far the best conference I have ever attended and I learnt quite a bit but I went away feeling a little let down. I guess I had huge expectations about it which may have been unrealistic.
After all the topics presented I feel as though I have a whole bunch of threads in my brain that I need to organise and give structure to in order to best make use of them. Key concepts of location, mobility (strangely not something covered by O'Reilly in his keynote), social interaction, emergent behavior and other cool things are racing around my head waiting for me to tie them together into some new projects.
I think this week will be spent re-reading the notes and presentations from eTech, making notes and trying to bring it all together, along with the next 3-4 month plan at AgentArts and trying my best to get Suzette to have some sleep and recover from 2 weeks of being a single mum.
The trip was great, Helsinki is a beautiful city and my time at eTech was very worthwhile. It was by far the best conference I have ever attended and I learnt quite a bit but I went away feeling a little let down. I guess I had huge expectations about it which may have been unrealistic.
After all the topics presented I feel as though I have a whole bunch of threads in my brain that I need to organise and give structure to in order to best make use of them. Key concepts of location, mobility (strangely not something covered by O'Reilly in his keynote), social interaction, emergent behavior and other cool things are racing around my head waiting for me to tie them together into some new projects.
I think this week will be spent re-reading the notes and presentations from eTech, making notes and trying to bring it all together, along with the next 3-4 month plan at AgentArts and trying my best to get Suzette to have some sleep and recover from 2 weeks of being a single mum.
Sunday, February 15, 2004
RIP Pirata
Its a sad tragic day when anyone dies young; all the more so when the person in question was a world champion and tour de france winner.
Marco Pantani was found dead in a hotel room today. At 34!!
We're very upset here in this cycling loving household. What a waste.
Its a sad tragic day when anyone dies young; all the more so when the person in question was a world champion and tour de france winner.
Marco Pantani was found dead in a hotel room today. At 34!!
We're very upset here in this cycling loving household. What a waste.
Thursday, February 12, 2004
You cannot be serious...the ball was in!
On of the innovations I've noticed at the Aust Open this year has been the Hawkeye system which tracks a ball's trajectory and can be used to show line calls. It was also been used here for the last couple of years for cricket decisions...especially LBWs.
Apparently its owned by a British company and is now used in tennis, cricket, snooker and baseball. I can easily see it taking over all ball sports.
On of the innovations I've noticed at the Aust Open this year has been the Hawkeye system which tracks a ball's trajectory and can be used to show line calls. It was also been used here for the last couple of years for cricket decisions...especially LBWs.
Apparently its owned by a British company and is now used in tennis, cricket, snooker and baseball. I can easily see it taking over all ball sports.
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
eTeching across the universe
After a great trip to Finland last week and a long flight in which my baggage got lost...I' live at eTech in San Diego sitting in the first of the sessions..this one about swarm technology which I'm quite interested in.
First couple of keynotes were disappointing...Tim O'Reilly gave a repeat of previous talks he has done and Helen Greiner from iRobot gave a very poor talk that was 90% sales pitch for her robots....so much could have been covered..ethics, swarm algorithms and plenty more instead it was videos and overviews of what they are doing.
Dined last night with a bunch of uber blogger types including the so called "British Intellectual eTech crowd" and a few others...lots of interesting talks.
I've picked well hotel-wise with a big room although a little basic but it has a bath free gym membership at one of the best gyms I've ever worked out at, laundry and many many useful things.
time to listen.....
After a great trip to Finland last week and a long flight in which my baggage got lost...I' live at eTech in San Diego sitting in the first of the sessions..this one about swarm technology which I'm quite interested in.
First couple of keynotes were disappointing...Tim O'Reilly gave a repeat of previous talks he has done and Helen Greiner from iRobot gave a very poor talk that was 90% sales pitch for her robots....so much could have been covered..ethics, swarm algorithms and plenty more instead it was videos and overviews of what they are doing.
Dined last night with a bunch of uber blogger types including the so called "British Intellectual eTech crowd" and a few others...lots of interesting talks.
I've picked well hotel-wise with a big room although a little basic but it has a bath free gym membership at one of the best gyms I've ever worked out at, laundry and many many useful things.
time to listen.....
Monday, February 02, 2004
To Do in Helsinki
Thanks to Claire for this link to Caterina's site with a list of things to do in Helsinki!!
Lots of laughs this morning after reading someone describe Claire's site as "stick-person, kiddie type sites etc". A lot of jealous people out there after Claire won the best Australian Blog and I would think another Bloggie for Best Australian Blog.
What is a stick-person kiddie???
Thanks to Claire for this link to Caterina's site with a list of things to do in Helsinki!!
Lots of laughs this morning after reading someone describe Claire's site as "stick-person, kiddie type sites etc". A lot of jealous people out there after Claire won the best Australian Blog and I would think another Bloggie for Best Australian Blog.
What is a stick-person kiddie???
One Sleep to go
And then its off to Finland and America for a couple of weeks!!!
The last week has been very hectic with demos and presentations to complete along with bits and pieces of other work to be done prior to leaving.
Its now early Monday morning and I'm feeling a little stressed about the whole thing but not too much. I always worry about my flights before leaving, mainly about the seating arrangements of all things. I trying to get a window seat up the back of the plane which gives me a little more leg room. If not that seat then a window seat will do.
Oskar starts back at swimming today then we're off to the pediatrician to discuss Oskar's behavior at times, which I must say has improved a lot in the last week. A combination of us ignoring him when he throws things or picking up Jasmine and going to another room when he is shouting at her. Without the attention he doesn't continue. Thanks Dr Green!
I've been consistent with my gym routine and diet for the last couple of weeks; no alcohol (except 1/2 a glass with Mum and Dad yesterday), no chocolate at all and working out a few times a week. My weight is down (1.5 kg) and I feel stronger already...it'll be tricky keeping it out overseas but I think I'll manage.
My only "cheat" meal was a great Panettone that we had with Claire, Phil and Amelia yesterday. Yummy.
And then its off to Finland and America for a couple of weeks!!!
The last week has been very hectic with demos and presentations to complete along with bits and pieces of other work to be done prior to leaving.
Its now early Monday morning and I'm feeling a little stressed about the whole thing but not too much. I always worry about my flights before leaving, mainly about the seating arrangements of all things. I trying to get a window seat up the back of the plane which gives me a little more leg room. If not that seat then a window seat will do.
Oskar starts back at swimming today then we're off to the pediatrician to discuss Oskar's behavior at times, which I must say has improved a lot in the last week. A combination of us ignoring him when he throws things or picking up Jasmine and going to another room when he is shouting at her. Without the attention he doesn't continue. Thanks Dr Green!
I've been consistent with my gym routine and diet for the last couple of weeks; no alcohol (except 1/2 a glass with Mum and Dad yesterday), no chocolate at all and working out a few times a week. My weight is down (1.5 kg) and I feel stronger already...it'll be tricky keeping it out overseas but I think I'll manage.
My only "cheat" meal was a great Panettone that we had with Claire, Phil and Amelia yesterday. Yummy.
Monday, January 26, 2004
Social Software using Amazon
Matt Jones has a good thought about using Amazon's profiles for Social Networking.
Worth a look....I'm hoping to meet Matt when I get to Helsinki or San D.
Matt Jones has a good thought about using Amazon's profiles for Social Networking.
Worth a look....I'm hoping to meet Matt when I get to Helsinki or San D.
Icy Pole
In preparation for my trip to Helsinki and then the USA next week, I've been working very hard for the last while on our new project, code named, Icy Pole. Basically, its a P2P client which runs on the most recent Java enabled mobile phones and uses Bluetooth for the network communication. The secret sauce is that we've added a recommendation engine on top of the app so that the whole communication, search, and alerting is all automated.
It works thus:
The Icy Pole enabled phone automatically looks for and forms a network with other Icy Pole enabled phones. They exchange details of the music, photos, movies etc.. available on the phones and then match it using the Icy Pole recommendation engine so that the phone user only gets an alert when there is content they would be interested in nearby.
I think its pretty cool; the whole ad-hoc network forming and deforming as you and others move about with the system automatically monitoring your environment (in this case the content in the network) and recommending you content you might like.
On top of the P2P type app, we're doing work to use the underlying tech to utilise the social networking stuff that's going on at the moment and to have people matching done using Icy Pole.
In preparation for my trip to Helsinki and then the USA next week, I've been working very hard for the last while on our new project, code named, Icy Pole. Basically, its a P2P client which runs on the most recent Java enabled mobile phones and uses Bluetooth for the network communication. The secret sauce is that we've added a recommendation engine on top of the app so that the whole communication, search, and alerting is all automated.
It works thus:
The Icy Pole enabled phone automatically looks for and forms a network with other Icy Pole enabled phones. They exchange details of the music, photos, movies etc.. available on the phones and then match it using the Icy Pole recommendation engine so that the phone user only gets an alert when there is content they would be interested in nearby.
I think its pretty cool; the whole ad-hoc network forming and deforming as you and others move about with the system automatically monitoring your environment (in this case the content in the network) and recommending you content you might like.
On top of the P2P type app, we're doing work to use the underlying tech to utilise the social networking stuff that's going on at the moment and to have people matching done using Icy Pole.
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Now this is what we should be working on
Given the choice between a mobile peer to peer music service and social recommendation system and this....I think people may well pick the orgasm over the phone :-(
warning - not work safe!!! Sorry Jen
Given the choice between a mobile peer to peer music service and social recommendation system and this....I think people may well pick the orgasm over the phone :-(
warning - not work safe!!! Sorry Jen
A new beginning
After a month or so of holiday drinking, eating and low exercise levels....I'm back with focused goals for the new year and a plan to get there.
For the last few (6-7) years I've focused on a particular sport, triathlons, swimming, running etc. So this year I'm up for a change. My motivation to just run was dropping right off after the last 1/2 marathon I did in 2003 so I've decided to do some new sports.
Inspired by this guy's change in 1 year I've decided to join the gym and start doing weights along with continuing my running and riding and carefully watching my weight.
Some of my medium term goals for are
- Join a gym
- Develop a weekly plan for lifting and aerobic workouts
- To have a < 9% bodyfat by end of June
- To have a visible 6 pack by end of June
- To drink no more than once a week except for special occasions (birthdays etc)
- Be to be able to bench press my body weight by April
Today I joined the gym and I'm planning my weeks now so I'm on my way.
If I get enough courage I'll post some weekly photos showing my progress along with charts.
After a month or so of holiday drinking, eating and low exercise levels....I'm back with focused goals for the new year and a plan to get there.
For the last few (6-7) years I've focused on a particular sport, triathlons, swimming, running etc. So this year I'm up for a change. My motivation to just run was dropping right off after the last 1/2 marathon I did in 2003 so I've decided to do some new sports.
Inspired by this guy's change in 1 year I've decided to join the gym and start doing weights along with continuing my running and riding and carefully watching my weight.
Some of my medium term goals for are
- Join a gym
- Develop a weekly plan for lifting and aerobic workouts
- To have a < 9% bodyfat by end of June
- To have a visible 6 pack by end of June
- To drink no more than once a week except for special occasions (birthdays etc)
- Be to be able to bench press my body weight by April
Today I joined the gym and I'm planning my weeks now so I'm on my way.
If I get enough courage I'll post some weekly photos showing my progress along with charts.
Sunday, January 18, 2004
My view on where phones and entertainment are going
or Why I would want to put music on a phone
Last week I put up a post about the work I am currently doing to build some interesting music stuff into the latest Nokia phones.
I got a good comment about it questioning whether people would use it. So...I'm trying below to provide my view on what I think people will use relating to the technology I'm building etc.
Background
A few years ago, say around 1996, I got very excited by things called intelligent agents, at this time, the view was that in 5 years time we would all have these super pda things that talked to each other, understood human voices and basically organised our lives like a perfect virtual butler. During the next couple of years I was fortunate to get involved working on intelligent agents and specifically focused on what were/are called recommendation systems. These systems would try and predict what someone would like given their "profile"; subsequently these systems became integral parts of sites like Amazon.com.
The ultimate aim of these systems should be to proactively and accurately recommend items to people which they will buy, consume, listen to etc.
In 1999 I founded a company, AgentArts, which was going to focus specifically on building music recommendation systems. The last 5 years have been spent tuning this technology and trying to sell it in Australia, USA and Japan. To varying degrees we have been sucessful...I guess any tech start up that is still around after 5 years and is cash flow positive is a sucess ;-)
Tech Vision
In 1998 I got one of the first MP3 players around, the Diamond Rio. It was a flash memory based player which could hold about 64mb of songs (about 10-15 songs). Last year I bought the lowest level iPod which now costs about the same as the Diamond Rio did but which holds 10gb of songs (about 5000 songs).
In 1999 I bought a mobile phone which had no features beyond basic phone features with around 20 numbers to be stored and 1 line of display. This month I got a Nokia 6600 contains a basic phone, 32mb memory, a camera, bluetooth connections, a Java virtual machine, full colour big screen etc. Until I got the Nokia 6600 I would never had thought there was a need to have a camera on a phone but its already been very useful and fun and a great value add.
With these two data points, it very obvious to me where the technology is heading...smaller, faster etc...all the things we have seen in the PC space over the last few years.
That said, I DON'T believe that the same growth in power etc we have seen in PCs will apply in the mobile device market for two reasons 1) Power requirements. PCs have full power while mobiles have batteries...a technology which has not progressed like memory, storage, CPUs etc and 2) Heat. Todays fast pcs generate a massive amount of heat which a mobile phone could not handle as they are designed at the moment.
Asthetically and production wise, I don't believe that all these small devices will merge into one device, however, I do see a merging of small hard drives into mobile devices or phone tech into an iPod style device. The power requirements are being met, the interfaces are ok for this merger and the physical constraints are not an issue either.
So to the crux of my tech vision...I see the general public having mobile devices which they can use as telephones, PDAs, music players, and low quality digital cameras with a small hard disk on board within 2-3 years.
People will choose to use these devices as stand alone music players and mobile phones but more and more people will start to use them as communication devices which automatically form Personal Area Networks (PANs) and allow people to communicate, interact and link together.
These PANs will use technologies such as wifi and bluetooth to automatically form and emerge. PANs will be dynamic ad hoc groupings with nearly unlimited FREE bandwidth among members of the PAN and more expensive slower bandwidth to the wider world via 3G or lilly pad style links to broadband access points. You will form, deform and reform PANs as you and others move through physical space. Most importantly, these PANs and the required technology will be in all mobile devices, cost nothing to start, and will be proactive, requiringminimal intervention from the user to be part of. You simply opt in to form the networks or turn it off...jusat like turning your phone from ring to silent.
This is very unlike todays crop of calendars, syncing, browsing etc. which are hard for the general person to understand and use.
Recommendation technology can support and add to these networks in two ways.
1) As more and more content becomes available, be it photos, music, videos, information etc. recommendation technology can be used to monitor your participation in PANs and to recommend available content to you which you may like. ie. I hope on a tram/train/bus and automatically my mobile device finds other mobile devices, forms a network and exchanges details of what music each has available. Using recommendation technology, you phone would know what music you may like which is available from the limited selection available and download it automatically at ZERO cost to either party.
2) As more people have access to these mobile devices, network effects emerge which will mean that linking people to other people, not just content, can begin to be very valuable. Recommendation technology can help link people to other people based on their profiles; be those profiles based on similar interests or a need able to be fulfilled by someone or identifying a FOAF at a party or networking event. This is very heavily the social networking aspect of recommendation technologies vs 1) which is more item to item oriented and doesn't focus on the people as much as the content.
I think 2) has more value than 1) in the longer term.
So thats my view on where things are going.A platform for mobile devices which uses a recommendation system at its core to link people to other people who have things they might be interested in; be that dates, music, information, deals, skills etc. All these extra features and great functionality which really helps people, is pervasive and costs ZERO to all parties.
or Why I would want to put music on a phone
Last week I put up a post about the work I am currently doing to build some interesting music stuff into the latest Nokia phones.
I got a good comment about it questioning whether people would use it. So...I'm trying below to provide my view on what I think people will use relating to the technology I'm building etc.
Background
A few years ago, say around 1996, I got very excited by things called intelligent agents, at this time, the view was that in 5 years time we would all have these super pda things that talked to each other, understood human voices and basically organised our lives like a perfect virtual butler. During the next couple of years I was fortunate to get involved working on intelligent agents and specifically focused on what were/are called recommendation systems. These systems would try and predict what someone would like given their "profile"; subsequently these systems became integral parts of sites like Amazon.com.
The ultimate aim of these systems should be to proactively and accurately recommend items to people which they will buy, consume, listen to etc.
In 1999 I founded a company, AgentArts, which was going to focus specifically on building music recommendation systems. The last 5 years have been spent tuning this technology and trying to sell it in Australia, USA and Japan. To varying degrees we have been sucessful...I guess any tech start up that is still around after 5 years and is cash flow positive is a sucess ;-)
Tech Vision
In 1998 I got one of the first MP3 players around, the Diamond Rio. It was a flash memory based player which could hold about 64mb of songs (about 10-15 songs). Last year I bought the lowest level iPod which now costs about the same as the Diamond Rio did but which holds 10gb of songs (about 5000 songs).
In 1999 I bought a mobile phone which had no features beyond basic phone features with around 20 numbers to be stored and 1 line of display. This month I got a Nokia 6600 contains a basic phone, 32mb memory, a camera, bluetooth connections, a Java virtual machine, full colour big screen etc. Until I got the Nokia 6600 I would never had thought there was a need to have a camera on a phone but its already been very useful and fun and a great value add.
With these two data points, it very obvious to me where the technology is heading...smaller, faster etc...all the things we have seen in the PC space over the last few years.
That said, I DON'T believe that the same growth in power etc we have seen in PCs will apply in the mobile device market for two reasons 1) Power requirements. PCs have full power while mobiles have batteries...a technology which has not progressed like memory, storage, CPUs etc and 2) Heat. Todays fast pcs generate a massive amount of heat which a mobile phone could not handle as they are designed at the moment.
Asthetically and production wise, I don't believe that all these small devices will merge into one device, however, I do see a merging of small hard drives into mobile devices or phone tech into an iPod style device. The power requirements are being met, the interfaces are ok for this merger and the physical constraints are not an issue either.
So to the crux of my tech vision...I see the general public having mobile devices which they can use as telephones, PDAs, music players, and low quality digital cameras with a small hard disk on board within 2-3 years.
People will choose to use these devices as stand alone music players and mobile phones but more and more people will start to use them as communication devices which automatically form Personal Area Networks (PANs) and allow people to communicate, interact and link together.
These PANs will use technologies such as wifi and bluetooth to automatically form and emerge. PANs will be dynamic ad hoc groupings with nearly unlimited FREE bandwidth among members of the PAN and more expensive slower bandwidth to the wider world via 3G or lilly pad style links to broadband access points. You will form, deform and reform PANs as you and others move through physical space. Most importantly, these PANs and the required technology will be in all mobile devices, cost nothing to start, and will be proactive, requiringminimal intervention from the user to be part of. You simply opt in to form the networks or turn it off...jusat like turning your phone from ring to silent.
This is very unlike todays crop of calendars, syncing, browsing etc. which are hard for the general person to understand and use.
Recommendation technology can support and add to these networks in two ways.
1) As more and more content becomes available, be it photos, music, videos, information etc. recommendation technology can be used to monitor your participation in PANs and to recommend available content to you which you may like. ie. I hope on a tram/train/bus and automatically my mobile device finds other mobile devices, forms a network and exchanges details of what music each has available. Using recommendation technology, you phone would know what music you may like which is available from the limited selection available and download it automatically at ZERO cost to either party.
2) As more people have access to these mobile devices, network effects emerge which will mean that linking people to other people, not just content, can begin to be very valuable. Recommendation technology can help link people to other people based on their profiles; be those profiles based on similar interests or a need able to be fulfilled by someone or identifying a FOAF at a party or networking event. This is very heavily the social networking aspect of recommendation technologies vs 1) which is more item to item oriented and doesn't focus on the people as much as the content.
I think 2) has more value than 1) in the longer term.
So thats my view on where things are going.A platform for mobile devices which uses a recommendation system at its core to link people to other people who have things they might be interested in; be that dates, music, information, deals, skills etc. All these extra features and great functionality which really helps people, is pervasive and costs ZERO to all parties.
Saturday, January 17, 2004
Bloggies
Phew....I'm blogged out!!!
I was selected to be a panelist to help pick the finalists for the 2004 Bloggies.
I had to review 10 categories each containing over 20 blogs so I've churned my way through some 200+ blogs this morning. I must admit after a while I start to get quite critical...much like when I have reviewed resumes...a bad first impression and they are out.
The upside is that I've discovered some great new blogs including greenfairy and Pussyranch.
Unfortunately I didn't get to select for Best Australian blog but I guess that makes sense given as how I'm sponsoring that category.
Let the voting begin.
Phew....I'm blogged out!!!
I was selected to be a panelist to help pick the finalists for the 2004 Bloggies.
I had to review 10 categories each containing over 20 blogs so I've churned my way through some 200+ blogs this morning. I must admit after a while I start to get quite critical...much like when I have reviewed resumes...a bad first impression and they are out.
The upside is that I've discovered some great new blogs including greenfairy and Pussyranch.
Unfortunately I didn't get to select for Best Australian blog but I guess that makes sense given as how I'm sponsoring that category.
Let the voting begin.
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
I've got the power
I've been selected as a panelist to choose the finalists for the Weblog Awards aka the Bloggies.
Bad news is I've got about 500 blogs to check out ug....
Good news is....I'll accept bribes of chocolates and booze....Claire Robertson if you want to win again you'd better start being nice to me ;-)
Must vote now.....
I've been selected as a panelist to choose the finalists for the Weblog Awards aka the Bloggies.
Bad news is I've got about 500 blogs to check out ug....
Good news is....I'll accept bribes of chocolates and booze....Claire Robertson if you want to win again you'd better start being nice to me ;-)
Must vote now.....
Saturday, January 10, 2004
eTech via Helsinki
Wooohoooo....this week has seen some uber programming by yours truly along with a new gadget a conference booked and a trip Helsinki arranged....all in 3 days!!!!
In early Feb I'm off to Helsinki for a few day meeting/conference at Nokia followed by a weekend in Helsinki enjoying the ummmm darkness (apparently is light for 2 hours a day at the moment) then I'm off to San Diego to the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference for the week.
If anyone has any suggestions about what to do in Helsinki or anyone is going to eTech let me know...I've love to meet some people on my travels.
Using a few (ok lots of) grams of courage, I put up my hand to give an participant session at eTech talking about this tres cool P2P app (code name Icy Pole) I am building which will form local networks over bluetooth and find music and people you might like within close proximity to you ie. while you are on a tram/bus/train.
Lots of J2ME coding this week to do it; for those non techies....this means I've been coding things to run on a cell phone.
Note to Google - I've been using Mac OS X to code J2ME Midlets using the Nokia SDK and sending the applications to a Nokia N Gage and Nokia 6600. Send me a mail if you have any questions about how to do this!.
And....we got new Nokia 6600 phones at work to go with the Nokia N-Gage we already have. The 6600 has a built in camera along with the only Java Bluetooth implementation on a Nokia phone.
So today I've been snapping just about anything thats happening onto the phone.....much fun.
Wooohoooo....this week has seen some uber programming by yours truly along with a new gadget a conference booked and a trip Helsinki arranged....all in 3 days!!!!
In early Feb I'm off to Helsinki for a few day meeting/conference at Nokia followed by a weekend in Helsinki enjoying the ummmm darkness (apparently is light for 2 hours a day at the moment) then I'm off to San Diego to the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference for the week.
If anyone has any suggestions about what to do in Helsinki or anyone is going to eTech let me know...I've love to meet some people on my travels.
Using a few (ok lots of) grams of courage, I put up my hand to give an participant session at eTech talking about this tres cool P2P app (code name Icy Pole) I am building which will form local networks over bluetooth and find music and people you might like within close proximity to you ie. while you are on a tram/bus/train.
Lots of J2ME coding this week to do it; for those non techies....this means I've been coding things to run on a cell phone.
Note to Google - I've been using Mac OS X to code J2ME Midlets using the Nokia SDK and sending the applications to a Nokia N Gage and Nokia 6600. Send me a mail if you have any questions about how to do this!.
And....we got new Nokia 6600 phones at work to go with the Nokia N-Gage we already have. The 6600 has a built in camera along with the only Java Bluetooth implementation on a Nokia phone.
So today I've been snapping just about anything thats happening onto the phone.....much fun.
iPod the 2000's Walkman
I noticed today that the redo of the apple 1984 ad has the lady with the hammer running in wearing an iPod rather than a Walkman.......very nicely done Apple.
I noticed today that the redo of the apple 1984 ad has the lady with the hammer running in wearing an iPod rather than a Walkman.......very nicely done Apple.
Thursday, January 01, 2004
The year that was
Well another great year has come to an end and a new one just begun. I attempt to live each year in such a way that I strive to have a better year than the last with better being measured in different ways each year.
2003 was a very family oriented year with the birth of Jasmine, working at home full time and sharing the care of the children with Suzette. Having two young children really has been the highlight of my year and life. For those not accustomed to having a young family, lack of sleep has been a common theme all year.
At least to be able to look back on this year and remember what was happening I've created my xyz of 2003 and a punt at what 2004 may hold.
Ben's xyz of 2003
Moment of the Year
- Jasmine's birth
Emotions of the year
- Seeing Jasmine for the first time
- Reading Miss JenJen's post about her habit
- Feeling expectant about terrorist attacks all year
- Bonding with Jasmine over the first 6 months of her life
Family moments
- Having Oskar and Jasmine smile and dive over me together in the mornings
- Working as a team with Suzette to look after and "manage" the kids
- Family hugs
- Laughing with Oskar and Suzette
- Giggling Jasmine
Work moments of the year
- Having a very positive last 5 months of 2003
- Stephen leaving AgentArts
- Getting funding from Nokia
- Being cash flow positive by the end of the year
- Securing a major Australian deal on Dec 30th
- Moving back into an office here
Webish Memories
- Launching BlogChangeBot and getting A-List coverage along with over 1000 subscribers
- Helping Suze launch Cosmicbuzz
- Discovering a whole eco-system of Melbourne Blogs
- Making new friends in the real world with online friends
Food Memories
- Sushi at Kenzan
- Cleaning whole squid
- Cooking a magnificent meal for Suze's birthday party
Song of 2003
- Clocks by Coldplay
Movie of 2003
- The Matrix Revolutions at the iMax in San Fran
Sporting Moments of 2003
- The second or third day in Le Tour with all three leaders Jerseys on the backs of Aussies
- England's Rugby World Cup win in the dying moments
- Brisbane going back to back to back
Technologies of 2003
- my iPod
- OS X in all its forms
Achievements of 2003
- 2 half marathons
- Surviving on so little sleep
- Being a major part of my children's day to day lives
Disappointments of 2003
- Sydney 1/2 Marathon. Cold, wet, poorly organised, hard and miserable
- Getting demotivated about exercise towards the end of year. A combination of tiredness and lack of goals
A few things for 2004 ..... more in planning at the moment
- Continue with AgentArts
- Spend time with the kids every day
- Pick up Oskar from Kinder
- Join a gym
- Save some money for investment
- Launch a new business with Suzette and others
- Get more sleep
- Have more sex, preferably with Suzette ;-)
- Get back into Swimming and riding
Well another great year has come to an end and a new one just begun. I attempt to live each year in such a way that I strive to have a better year than the last with better being measured in different ways each year.
2003 was a very family oriented year with the birth of Jasmine, working at home full time and sharing the care of the children with Suzette. Having two young children really has been the highlight of my year and life. For those not accustomed to having a young family, lack of sleep has been a common theme all year.
At least to be able to look back on this year and remember what was happening I've created my xyz of 2003 and a punt at what 2004 may hold.
Ben's xyz of 2003
Moment of the Year
- Jasmine's birth
Emotions of the year
- Seeing Jasmine for the first time
- Reading Miss JenJen's post about her habit
- Feeling expectant about terrorist attacks all year
- Bonding with Jasmine over the first 6 months of her life
Family moments
- Having Oskar and Jasmine smile and dive over me together in the mornings
- Working as a team with Suzette to look after and "manage" the kids
- Family hugs
- Laughing with Oskar and Suzette
- Giggling Jasmine
Work moments of the year
- Having a very positive last 5 months of 2003
- Stephen leaving AgentArts
- Getting funding from Nokia
- Being cash flow positive by the end of the year
- Securing a major Australian deal on Dec 30th
- Moving back into an office here
Webish Memories
- Launching BlogChangeBot and getting A-List coverage along with over 1000 subscribers
- Helping Suze launch Cosmicbuzz
- Discovering a whole eco-system of Melbourne Blogs
- Making new friends in the real world with online friends
Food Memories
- Sushi at Kenzan
- Cleaning whole squid
- Cooking a magnificent meal for Suze's birthday party
Song of 2003
- Clocks by Coldplay
Movie of 2003
- The Matrix Revolutions at the iMax in San Fran
Sporting Moments of 2003
- The second or third day in Le Tour with all three leaders Jerseys on the backs of Aussies
- England's Rugby World Cup win in the dying moments
- Brisbane going back to back to back
Technologies of 2003
- my iPod
- OS X in all its forms
Achievements of 2003
- 2 half marathons
- Surviving on so little sleep
- Being a major part of my children's day to day lives
Disappointments of 2003
- Sydney 1/2 Marathon. Cold, wet, poorly organised, hard and miserable
- Getting demotivated about exercise towards the end of year. A combination of tiredness and lack of goals
A few things for 2004 ..... more in planning at the moment
- Continue with AgentArts
- Spend time with the kids every day
- Pick up Oskar from Kinder
- Join a gym
- Save some money for investment
- Launch a new business with Suzette and others
- Get more sleep
- Have more sex, preferably with Suzette ;-)
- Get back into Swimming and riding
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