No, I will not fix your computer!
April 20, 2006I was only just banging on about being everyone’s tech support last night and then Marty suggested that I might want to get one of these!
Cory Doctorow round-up
April 19, 2006There’s already been a bit of coverage on the Cory Doctorow lecture that I went to last night. I’m a bit behind the eight-ball, so rather than be repetitive I thought I’d provide some links …
I’ve also put together a mind-map covering the main points of the talk and my perceptions, which I thought I’d share with you. Unlike Cameron, I decided to go oldschool and mind-mapped with a notepad and pen–worked a treat! I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible in summarising … apologies to Cory for any salient points I might have missed. You can find a PDF of the mindmap here (416K).
I really enjoyed the talk. It was informative and interesting. A lot of the material was stuff that I am relatively knowledgeable about already, but nevertheless, I found some things framed from a different perspective. I particularly relate to Cory’s description of Free and Open Source software as “an expression of enlightenment … a philosophy.” It’s often difficult for me to express my own interest in Open Source software, and I think that this sums it up nicely. For me, it’s not necessarily the ‘output’ i.e. the software per se but rather, an interest in this field is more from the human endeavour perspective and in the belief that that there are different ways to find meaning and create value, than most of us have been taught via rationalist ideals.
Another thing that I also really enjoyed about the night was meeting up with other like-minded individuals and having a good old chin wag over a few beers. Thanks to Cam for being the ‘connector’ and hooking up with a number of us local bloggers.
Rise of the Blogger
April 19, 2006Bloggers and Internet pundits are exerting a “disproportionately large influence” on society, according to a report by Jupiter (a technology research company). More here.
A Fresh Coat of Paint
April 17, 2006I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, so I’ve been tinkering this afternoon and changed the design and layout of the site. I think this theme (squible) approaches things a little differently and the features are exactly what I’m looking for.
At the moment I have not played around too much with the style (css), so it probably looks like a thousand other sites out there! I didn’t want this to stop me implementing the new features, so–as always–it’s a work in progress. Let me know what you think. I am particularly interested in useability at this stage.
Multidisciplinary Martial Arts
April 13, 2006Looks like my taekwondo club will be introducing multidisciplinary teachings into the ‘blackbelt and beyond’ syallabus. This means that I’ll get to learn a heap of new techniques from a range of martial arts such as Hapkido, Aikido, Shansou etc. Personally, I think this is a great move and I can’t wait to learn the new material, especially the taiwanese stick fighting!.
I know there will be the puritans and traditionalist out there who would strongly disagree with this approach, but my philosophy is that interdisciplinary teaching (not just in martial arts) provides a more balanced and rounded educational experience. There are a lot of things that we can learn from others approaches and ideas and to not go beyond and push the boundaries of our own experiences is to become stagnant and stale.
Looks like I’ll now be a ‘generalist’ black-belt.
