Posts by nic.wise
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Paddy Free track: yay! It's awsome!
Only available on CD: boo :( I dont have a CD player, and we have 3 ipods (Well, my Mac is, but what use do I have for a plastic disk?)
I guess I have to wait for the MP3s on amplifier, or until it comes out on itunes.
On the upside: new Rhombus!
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Anyway, thanks to Tiki for getting in touch (and sending me a copy of his track!). I have a lot of respect for the way he does things.
That, and his album is freaking lovely.... Was listening to it on the weekend, and it'd make such an excellent live show. Maybe in a large, english speaking european city.....
:)
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@grumpykiwi:
Also contrary to the above, I actually wrote the first graphical installer for ICONZ in late 1994, at Jeremy's request, using a very early version of VB. Since I was still working for the Bank at the time, and knee deep in the Post Office integration, I didn't have a lot of time to maintain the code base, so it was eventually farmed out to a 3rd party company. Nic, I am guessing that was u?
Yup, tho we ended up working for ICONZ on contract, doing the help desk for a year or so. Sorry, I thought we were the "first" :(
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First up, I really hope that the book is on sale in mid-september, as thats when we are coming back to NZ for two weeks, and I'd love to get a copy!
My main problem with this is how to string it all together, and where to start. My memory around then is rather disjointed.
Like a lot of people, I started with BBS's before "teh internets" were really around, but in my first year of uni (94), I got a taste via friends who had access from the auckland university network, and from the original NZ ISP: ICONZ. I remember grabbing Wolfenstien 3D off UseNet when it came out, waiting for hours for the 4 or 5 megs of files to come down on the 14K modem, before playing it, and promptly going out to buy a new computer which could actually RUN it. iD software drive my upgrade cycle for a number of years.
But my first real memory of the internet was more the other side of it. Somehow (I dont remember how, but I think Hamish Guthrey or his brother Chris had something to do with it) we (Damon Maria, Nick Virtue and I) managed to start working, kinda, for ICONZ, back in the days BEFORE PPP, when you dialed up to a unix box, and ran mail, or pico, or something. Everything was on the command line, and ICONZ was in a Cave.
Well, not really but it felt like it. They were in Airdale St in the middle of Auckland, about 100m from the big telecom black box on Mayoral Dr, in a room which is quite a bit smaller than our (small) apartment here in London, with no windows, at all, and about 8 people (Terry Hardie, Rowan Smith, Chris (who part owned it), Kim Schienberg, Richard Ram, Keri Ikitoa, and a few others), and a piece of 10base2 running out the back to the "other" ISP, aka IHUG, which was in an even smaller room out the back. I think the Wood brothers had the first internet cafe on Elliot St. InternetStopShop or something. It was pretty cool.
This was back in the days when email was $50/meg and data was $10/meg. A 256K line was shared between the WHOLE country (via Waikato uni), and a 28.8K modem was the fastest thing on the planet. We were granted free accounts (yay! staff discount!) but asked not to download too much, especially the big images from NASA, which I think were about 5-10meg each.
The modem room was literally that - a small room (large closet) with about 50 or so 28K modems stacked on top of each other, with a massive birds nest of phone cables, serial cables and power cables coming out the back. There were desk fans pointing at it all, trying to keep them cool. The noise was deafening. When it came time to move from there, it took HOURS to untangle the cables, and I dont recall it being much tidier when it was all reassembled at the other end.
Those were fun days tho, hand-stuffing invoices into envelopes with the owners - everyone just mucked in, from the owners to the office girl. It was really fun, and it paid for another years worth of uni for me.
We (Damon, Nick and me, AKA Xerxes Ltd) wrote the first graphical installer for ICONZ, complete with Netscape 0.99, Windows Trumpet PPP dialer etc. It fitted on two 3.5" floppys, and was written in either Turbo Pascal or Delphi 1.0, I can't remember which. But it worked nicely, and it stopped us having to visit quite as many people to install the 'net for them. (I found an old disk just before I moved out of the flat we were living in, in 2001 or so, which had the whole thing on it. I think Damon still has it somewhere, tho none of us have 3.5" drives anymore!)
Yes, you read that right. In 1994/1995, we (as kinda-employee's of ICONZ) used to visit people's houses, usually for about $75/hour, to setup the internet for them. It was always fun doing the odd trip around Auckland to set it up, and the people were always really grateful for the help.
Then there was the help desk. At the time there was, I think, about 4 people doing helpdesk. We either had PC's, or Sun X terminals, which made it really fun to try and support Mac's, without having one. I was the mac guy, and I could setup PPP etc on a mac from memory - just closed my eyes and imagined the screens, and it seemed to work. Oh how the world has turned, as Im typing this on my macbook, having been a PC weenie for the 13 or so years in between.
Anyway, thats enough for now. The 'net is now so much a part of my life, I don't think about it anymore. It's just there. I have access to it almost everywhere, thanks to my iphone, which has somewhere around 100x the power and space of the machines (Sun Sparc 20) which literally ran the ICONZ. But it's become a utility - it's lost it's new shininess. I've made a lot of friends thru the internet, most of whom I see in the big blue room more than I see online. I just realised the other day I've been doing software development for nearly 20 years (I'm only 33!), and being paid for it for 16. I've been on the internet about as long - for the full 20 years if you count BBS's. This is about as close as I can get to the kids of today, who dont know a world without it.
But I'd still love to know what RussB and Kim went off to talk about during the ICONZ wake in Ponsonby, after it was sold to Melco. Maybe he'll tell us (privately) some time :)
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In the US, it's all about the online video. NBC will deliver video "up to" HD quality using Microsoft's Silverlight technology, in a punt that Microsoft hopes might helpis haul in Adobe Flash's dominance of the web. There will be 200 hours live and 3000 on-demand. But -- of, of course -- it'll be tied up with DRM that locks out Mac OS and Linux users
Before everyone gets all anti-MS on this, this is a NBC limitation, NOT a Microsoft one. Silverlight works just fine on a Mac, and fairly well on Linux - DRM or not.
It may be MS somewhat, but I'd guess the thought leaders that are the US networks behind that one.
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I may be a bit late on this, but isn't this EXACTLY what redaction is for? ie, the big black pen (or whatever is relevant in the digital age) crossing out bits which are too sensative or not 100% related?
Sure, show a name - or a first name + first initial or something, but the rest of the details, on public documents, isn't on. If the defense NEEDS to know that info, they can request it with reason.
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Oh, and any discussion of Starbucks is never complete without Foamy the Squirrel
http://www.scarysquirrel.org/special/movies/foamy/sml1.html
Possibly mildly NSFW.
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quality European-style coffee introduced in the last century to Australia by immigrants, especially from Italy
I wish some of those same immigrants (or, I guess in aussie: "Damn Immos!") made it as far north as the UK. Even starschmucks here is lousy - burnt, too hot, and generally average. But they are everywhere - not as much as the US, but still obvious.
Go Monmouth in Borough, I say! £1 for an espresso which is pretty much perfect.
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I used to think the AirNZ inflight system was a little buggy, and a little laggy, until I few 14 flights in 6 weeks from NZ to the UK via Asia, and experienced what other airlines call inflight entertainment.
Lufthansa came close. Singapore wasn't tooooo bad, Thai was non-existant, but none came close to AirNZ's AKL -> LAX or SFO (or london/HK, I imagine) experience. The only thing which out did it was on Lufthansa (Japan to Frankfurt, seperate trip) - inflight internet. A little slow, but really good when I'd not seen or really talked to the Mrs for 2 weeks, and would not see her for another 3.
As for the US carriers...... oh dear. Old, decrepid, stuck in the 90's. And I've never had my bags come with me on a trip thru the US....
<sigh>
ipod nano 8G with video is still the best option for me, loaded with content from BBC iPlayer. But a dock will help a lot. Hope they have them in by Sept when we come back to NZ for a holiday!
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Russell, been really enjoying watching M7 on the tube on a thursday morning. Gets me my dose of NZ TV without, well, the crap :) Your face is a bit distored on the ipod nano screen, but it's definitly "good enough" to watch.
BTW, if bandwidth is an issue, I'd settle of audio only - it's a show which would work without the video, tho I do like it WITH the video.
cheers