General

There’s a café in Melbourne that I’ve liked going to for a while. It’s not far from where I live when I’m in Melbourne, and it has all the makings of a really nice cosy suburban café. But there’s something missing. When I sat there the other day, my meal came as ordered but it was just a shadow of what it normally looks like. I put that down perhaps to a different chef that day.

2021-03-12

I’d been using an iPhone6+ for quite a while, and it still worked fine. Lately though, I’d been running into things that needed a later version of iOS than what was supported on that phone. So I changed to an iPhone12 Pro. So far, that’s been a big mistake. One thing I’ve seen over the years while working with technology, is that development teams often get enamoured with the new features.

2021-02-09

Hi Folks, Just wanted to make a post to wish you all a happy new year for 2021. I doubt there’s anyone much on the planet who didn’t have a very, very peculiar, or very, very difficult 2020, and while there’s a glimmer of hope with the virus now as vaccines arrive, I suspect that 2021 is still going to be dominated by the coronavirus, and a very tough year for so many.

2021-01-01

We had a new house built a while back, and in a few rooms there was a double switch: one for the light and one for a fan. But which is which? Now the old way to do that would have been to put a label on each one. Seems like a reasonable idea but unless that’s a braille label, and you can read braille, that’s not going to help you in the dark.

2020-10-20

Many years ago, I spent a lot of time in universities. I ended up finishing my studies at QUT in Brisbane and I have a great and continuing fondness for that institution. Earlier on though, amongst other universities, I did quite a lot of study through Charles Sturt University Over the years, I’ve maintained a continuous link with my friends at Charles Sturt University (CSU). Back when we used to run Code Camps for both developers and DBAs, CSU were only too pleased to jump in to help us.

2020-08-16

I’ve seen a lot of people lately complaining about meeting burnout. It seems that in our pandemic-isolated world where staff members and others are available pretty much on call all day long, it’s become really common to have a much larger number of meetings than we used to. I’m interested in why this is. Perhaps it’s the lack of contact leading to a desire for more contact and conversation, but if there were a lot of unproductive meetings before, nowadays that seems to have increased so much that it seems almost silly.

2020-06-02

I work with many different clients and I see work that’s great and I also see work that’s not so great. But the work that frustrates me the most, is inconsistent work. When we built a house a while back, there are a number of rooms that have a combination light switch like the one shown in the main image. One switch is for the light, one is for something else: most likely a fan in a bathroom, etc.

2020-05-26

In some countries, post office boxes are quite anonymous. And for that reason, some vendors aren’t keen to send goods to PO Boxes. But that’s not all countries. In Australia, for example, you have to provide all sorts of ID to the post office to be able to get one. Why PO Boxes? The fundamental reason that many people use PO Boxes is to have a relatively safe location for their mail to be collected.

2020-05-19

Most websites that I visit have a link at the bottom of the page that suggests that you can use it to contact either the website team or the company that owns the site. (Might not be the same people) Based on years of trying, my expectation of ever getting a response from using one of these links is close to zero. If you have a website that has a contact link, does it lead anywhere sensible?

2020-05-12

I hear about frequent drive-by shootings in some countries. Fortunately that doesn’t happen where I live. But what I come across all the time on Q&A forums, is what I’d like to call DBTs (Drive by trashings). It usually starts when someone makes a genuine effort to try to help answer a question. The DBT (drive-by trasher) pops in and leaves a nasty unhelpful message. It could be “That’s misleading” or “That’s wrong” or “You don’t understand how it works”.

2020-05-05