entries tagged with http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz//feed/ 2008-06-21T23:47:20Z maetl http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/linking-maps-reality 2008-06-21T23:47:20Z 2008-06-21T23:47:20Z design programming geo visualization mapping urban information google android japan

How can we close the perceptional gap that lies between two dimensional maps and the surrounding three dimensional reality? Enkin is a technology aimed at the Google Android platform that...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/choking-the-ocean 2008-06-16T14:07:42Z 2008-06-16T14:07:42Z environment oceans pollution ecology pacific oil

For quite some time, I've been hearing rumors and stories about a giant Texas-sized ball of garbage floating around the Pacific Ocean. Now this story pops up in Vice Magazine, of all places, which...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/improving-architecture-with-testable-code 2008-05-30T16:18:13Z 2008-05-30T16:18:13Z programming testing objects architecture modularity

Unit testing can have productive side-effects that manifest in the emergent design of classes and API's. Testing objects in isolation from their interactions in the larger code-base pushes you to...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/equity-autonomy-asymmetry-attention 2008-05-26T18:54:59Z 2008-05-26T18:54:59Z sociology communication interaction privacy attention networks power information

Personal branding - building online equity through ones own internet identity - has become a prime movement in the recent trend towards renegotiating the conventional relations between employer...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/bringing-out-the-worst 2008-05-23T16:54:20Z 2008-05-23T16:54:20Z communication interaction usability internet culture twitter

From Summon Monsters? Open The Door? Heal? Or Die?, which discusses the declining value of blog comments and social news sites: A funny thing about these sites is that they know about this problem....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/nuclear-italia 2008-05-23T15:49:40Z 2008-05-23T15:49:40Z italy europe energy nuclear infrastructure urban

The Italian government has reversed a 20 year policy against building nuclear power plants, and has announced that they plan to return to nuclear power. Unlike New Zealand's strange and fascinating...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/filmfriend-48hours 2008-05-19T11:45:16Z 2008-05-19T11:45:16Z personal mistakes creativity film 1x1 filmfriend

Well, we did it... after an incredible series of mishaps (like this) and failures to source essential equipment (like this), things actually started going really well. Our assigned genre was Crime,...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/a-true-intellectual 2008-04-30T21:56:43Z 2008-04-30T21:56:43Z learning contrarian conservative praxis lisp

A true intellectual is a man who, after reading a book and being convinced by its arguments, will shoot someone or, more likely, order someone shot. - John McCarthy For some reason, I found...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/de-vernietiging-van-april 2008-04-15T19:59:45Z 2008-04-15T19:59:45Z personal mistakes

Somehow, I've managed to destroy two hard-drives recently, and in the process lost a small but significant collection of writing, mostly stuff that I was planning to publish here. As things fell...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/how-ideas-emerge-as-products 2008-03-16T17:21:10Z 2008-03-16T17:21:10Z twitter software innovation communication markets

What does time to market really mean? Beyond face value, Time to Twitter sets up a grotesque caricature of the real evolution of Twitter as an idea. Going by the original sketches, Twitter was conceived...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/connect-horokiwi 2008-02-27T18:38:34Z 2008-02-27T18:38:34Z nz wellington networks internet communication

Recently, I've been talking a lot about freeing the internet in Wellington by spreading excess bandwidth from various 'net connections across a city-wide mesh. But this is a best case scenario compared...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/ornette-in-wellington 2008-02-23T19:36:20Z 2008-02-23T19:36:20Z jazz music wellington

Still hard to believe that I actually witnessed this. One of the highlights was the band taking to the prelude from Bach's Cello Suite in free jazz fashion - completely unexpected and completely amazing,...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/an-uphill-battle 2008-02-23T16:23:08Z 2008-02-23T16:23:08Z communication networks email twitter usability interaction

Tantek is fighting an uphill battle in his quest to rid the world of email. Email is ingrained, ubiquitous, and everywhere. Every person that regularly logs on to Hotmail or Gmail contributes to this...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/unexpected-structure 2008-02-21T12:55:11Z 2008-02-21T12:55:11Z astronomy planets science turbulence

Maybe the Discovery One really should have headed to Saturn rather than Jupiter and beyond the Infinite? The North pole of Saturn is surrounded by a massive hexagonal structure which was first...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/webstock08 2008-02-20T14:46:30Z 2008-02-20T14:46:30Z webstock wellington personal learning

Wow. Last week was absolutely crazy. Aside from being super busy at work and trying to keep several part-time music and design projects ticking over (!!), I attended Webstock 08 (aka The Nat Torkington...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/the-transforming-web 2008-02-20T14:43:41Z 2008-02-20T14:43:41Z webstock information architecture networks relationships facebook microformats

The carpet has been pulled out from under our feet and the new web is a very different place to what we were used to. On Friday morning at Webstock, eager conference goers were subjected to several...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/age-of-frameworks 2008-02-20T14:40:01Z 2008-02-20T14:40:01Z webstock usability information design architecture music frameworks patterns communication interaction

Many of us are still conditioned to think of design frameworks in terms of grid systems, Swiss graphic design, and rigid corporate identity systems. The problems with these are similar to the problems...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/good-design 2008-02-20T14:38:13Z 2008-02-20T14:38:13Z webstock design typography visualization

Jason Santa Maria's Good Design Ain't Easy was one of the most interesting sessions for me, digging into a topic that I've been through so many arguments over in the past. It may have been old news...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/introducing-historiographica 2008-02-18T23:45:49Z 2008-02-18T23:45:49Z webstock history information design architecture visualization literature mistakes learning books communication science

So I've started another website, a kind of ongoing accident, with the idea echoing so intensely during Webstock as I culled together my 8x5 presentation, it just seemed to burst out of my brain...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/here-comes-webstock 2008-02-11T20:38:22Z 2008-02-11T20:38:22Z personal wellington webstock nzwc

Excitement builds... Today was the first day of Webstock workshops in Wellington, and s'all abuzz in the NZWC. At SilverStripe, more than half our office is likely to be gone over the two conference...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/freeing-the-internet-in-wellington 2008-02-11T10:03:09Z 2008-02-11T10:03:09Z wellington internet networks mesh thefreenet communication

The future lies in making networks happen. Last month, respected security technologist Bruce Schneier explained why you would want to share your Wi-Fi bandwidth. It's not nearly as wrong as it sounds. To...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/starting-with-silverstripe 2008-02-03T14:59:03Z 2008-02-03T14:59:03Z personal silverstripe cms

So I have joined SilverStripe in a full time role as a core developer. It's a fantastic opportunity for me to apply my programming and design skills to a mature open source software project with a...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/crease-geometry 2008-01-31T18:53:05Z 2008-01-31T18:53:05Z art design geometry origami creativity patterns

Origami has expanded far beyond its origins in step by step folding patterns. These Crease Patterns are designed to be one-step transforms from flat paper into the finished shape. Even though the...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/quick-and-dirty 2008-01-30T18:53:03Z 2008-01-30T18:53:03Z programming html text lisp software prototyping

For quick and dirty programs... Paul Graham has released an early version of Arc, his ongoing project to develop a Lisp dialect suiting a minimalist taste in programming style. Never one to shirk...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/one-size 2008-01-23T22:06:03Z 2008-01-23T22:06:03Z typography printing design culture communication

As languages change, so do typefaces. These changes are not radical; they are subtle evolutions that address culture and technology. Modern typography requires modern typefaces, designed by the...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/frameworks-and-seedworks 2008-01-18T15:46:44Z 2008-01-18T15:46:44Z programming abstractions architecture objects frameworks

Frameworks are the shining stars of this current era of web development and there are many benefits for designers and programmers to focus technical solutions around a given framework as a platform...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/cubicide 2008-01-12T14:36:04Z 2008-01-12T14:36:04Z poetry management capitalism

Dark clouds of thought were unproven examples Of the principle of doubt transforming the future They assumed the management of progress As psychic discipline for fools and thieves Readily...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/a-utopia-without-ideals 2008-01-11T17:46:24Z 2008-01-11T17:46:24Z architecture urban infrastructure farming ethics ecology

The implications of Pig City by MVRDV are a sensory and ethical challenge - architecture that tests the fine line between social criticism and gritty realism. If meat consumption was to stay...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/2008-directions 2008-01-07T16:33:36Z 2008-01-07T16:33:36Z personal creativity

I'm looking for work. If anyone knows of a good Wellington based position for an information designer slash programmer slash writer with 10 years experience building HTML and CSS websites and 6 years...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/on-refactoring 2008-01-07T11:30:26Z 2008-01-07T11:30:26Z programming refactoring objects narrative emergence

Been thinking a lot about granularity in programming languages, and the tension of common refactorings leading towards either larger or smaller volumes of code and complexity. I spotted this nice...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/the-missing-literary-traditions 2008-01-06T13:04:44Z 2008-01-06T13:04:44Z programming literature art languages syntax mistakes opensource java perl smalltalk lisp

This essay explains the core goals and meaning behind why I write here. Despite the distraction of my virulent disdain for closed source software, the most important point you should take away if...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/escaping-equality-conundrum 2008-01-04T13:26:16Z 2008-01-04T13:26:16Z programming objects java semantics

Equality is a mathematical concept, not an object concept. It's contextual. So, what is the correct implementation of equals? Sometimes it's no implementation at all. On the Beautiful Code...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/can-human-development-be-agile 2007-12-12T19:00:33Z 2007-12-12T19:00:33Z management organization agile politics environment infrastructure ecology philosophy

There is an interesting case for agile development of infrastructure, applying lessons learned from the software world to civil engineering projects. This is a useful metaphor, but there is an...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/closed-social 2007-12-10T15:03:47Z 2007-12-10T15:03:47Z usability networks relationships facebook 1x1 microformats html

Antisocial Networking couldn't have popped up at a better time for me, as I was actually sitting here, struggling with nascent suspicions about the nature of the XFN microformat. I've been designing...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/going-bedouin 2007-12-06T18:41:22Z 2007-12-06T18:41:22Z personal wellington procrastination creativity

Lately, I've adopted a new strategy to stem the flow of procrastination, and have been experimenting with the Bedouin worker lifestyle. I've been doing freelance design work from home for the...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/scc-in-ruby 2007-11-28T02:43:15Z 2007-11-28T02:43:15Z code ruby algorithms graphs sets mathematics

I've had a massive pile of code and experiments sitting around for too long. It's time to move on, but I thought, why not throw it out to rot instead of just disposing of it? Who knows, the stuff...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/outage-27-nov 2007-11-27T12:36:32Z 2007-11-27T12:36:32Z admin

Apologies to my readers who couldn't access the site last night. My ISP botched a routine maintenance job on their fileserver cluster, leading to the site being down for more than 6 hours. Very...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/true-scope 2007-11-23T12:08:42Z 2007-11-23T12:08:42Z programming agile management communication testing information

"Agile" has balkanized, and the individual cults have - in some cases - become religions that are just as bad as the things they intended to replace. But at the outset, the interesting thing about...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/creative-commons-nz 2007-11-21T23:46:20Z 2007-11-21T23:46:20Z nz copyright publishing media

Finally... A Creative Commons License that is legally valid in Aotearoa New Zealand. There's a few links on a few sites I should start updating now. Well done to Alastair Pharo, Brian Opie, Karin...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/pay-me-for-content 2007-11-21T15:55:42Z 2007-11-21T15:55:42Z design media creativity internet publishing writing

Really? I expected better from such a radical thinker as Jaron Lanier. His recent op-ed in the NYT is just not making any sense at all. Traditionally, artists, writers, musicians have been at...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/training-advice-for-entrepreneurs 2007-11-19T12:41:15Z 2007-11-19T12:41:15Z life business innovation

Learn to live cheaply. Learn to live like an animal. One thing we had going for us is we all spent a lot of time in grad school, and long periods of grad school teach you how to live well on a...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/positive-brand-experiences 2007-11-18T19:10:20Z 2007-11-18T19:10:20Z games technology mobile interaction

I think one thing that's kind of worth recognizing is that if somebody played a mobile game, and if they think "Orcs and Elves, that was a great game", and it's in the context of, "this was a great...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/domicile-terrorisme-aotearoa 2007-11-17T02:47:55Z 2007-11-17T02:47:55Z nz wellington activism politics media terrorism

As the dust settles, it is clear that the unrest is far from over. Wikipedia has detailed and thorough coverage which is currently the best starting point for exploring the issue, as grandstanding...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/coding-diversity 2007-11-15T21:34:01Z 2007-11-15T21:34:01Z programming ruby communication culture gender diversity

I fear that I'm beginning to sound like a stuck record by now, but I can't help attempting to push back against that particular form of inertia that has infected our discipline. First I saw this,...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/the-tragedy-of-hip 2007-11-15T14:53:20Z 2007-11-15T14:53:20Z poetry culture

"You solipsistic bastard", she said As if what she really wanted was a justification For why the earth was simply circling Her own sun, that vainglorious obsession, A swelling black hole closet Hoarding...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/noprocrast 2007-11-08T17:50:18Z 2007-11-08T17:50:18Z procrastination

Y-Combinator just released some new anti-procrastination features on their Hacker News site. The fact that I am currently reading this (and posting a blog entry about it) is direct evidence of the...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/robot-boats 2007-11-08T16:06:55Z 2007-11-08T16:06:55Z war technology military industry

Lockheed Martin, BAE, and Israeli defence contractor RAFAEL have launched a new product to curb growing numbers of pirate attacks worldwide. They claim these robotic gunship boats can even be adapted...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/good-as-its-tools 2007-11-08T15:24:54Z 2007-11-08T15:24:54Z programming java syntax unicode mistakes

Ruby programs can be written in unicode, meaning that you can label a real lambda. Once, when working on a school assignment to build a simple regular expression interpreter, I had a similar flash...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/ongoing-on-china 2007-11-07T13:25:04Z 2007-11-07T13:25:04Z china politics internet censorship

I found people remarkably free in talking about politics. Mostly I talked to geeks, of course; they laughed at the Great Firewall (finding a proxy to get around it is no big deal) but were livid...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/membrane-oriented-programming 2007-11-04T22:28:18Z 2007-11-04T22:28:18Z programming language membranes languages objects philosophy computing semantics

When I first started playing with Erlang, I immediately noticed something, perhaps reflecting a more nuanced view of programming languages that I have slowly started to grasp over the past few months....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/hypercommunications-and-free-energy 2007-11-04T19:28:32Z 2007-11-04T19:28:32Z communications information power politics capitalism networks futurism

Sometime in the next 30 days, the telecoms firms of the world will have reached a new milestone - three billion subscribers. About ten percent of that number are customers who have multiple accounts,...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/shocking-the-rock-jock 2007-11-03T03:56:55Z 2007-11-03T03:56:55Z nz boxing jokes mistakes

Check out this footage of my old mate Bryce in the ring with Shane Cameron, shot not long before the brutal fight in Auckland where Cameron ended up ahead on points but had his forehead beaten to...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/overloading-mql-acronym 2007-11-03T02:43:34Z 2007-11-03T02:43:34Z programming languages relational sql mql objects types information syntax semantics

MQL must be one of the most overused acronyms in todays technology field, including (but definitely not limited to) such specificities as search/analytics, automated trading, and molecular substructure...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/post-facto-obsequiousness 2007-10-23T17:56:43Z 2007-10-23T17:56:43Z nz wellington media politics

The Dominion Post all but ignores the local body elections for months leading up to the final vote count, but then turns around and has absolutely no problem giving Owen Scott a soapbox for hand-wringing...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/static-late-binding 2007-10-19T16:49:10Z 2007-10-19T18:04:48Z programming php languages objects mistakes

PHP is flawed. Deeply, immensely so. I first discovered this over a year ago, when I made the naive assumption that PHP 5.1 had fixed a lot of the language level failings of its predecessor. Because...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/common-websense 2007-10-15T14:09:54Z 2007-10-15T14:09:54Z internet communication business management markets services

Rowan has posted a summary of the Trade Me Manifesto, which in turn, was influenced by Google's Corporate Philosophy. Much of it should be plain common sense, except for the fact that so many...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/nz-design-review 2007-10-15T13:05:05Z 2007-10-15T13:05:05Z nz design modernism history furniture posters architecture

In a 1950 editorial the "New Zealand Design Review" identified the "horrible forces ranged against good design" as Indifference, Cheapness First, Unnecessary Novelty, Mass Production, De Luxe...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/room-for-improvement 2007-10-09T19:16:06Z 2007-10-09T19:16:06Z gender women opensource software programming learning education sociology communication

It just wouldn't be fair to ask where are the women in open source and criticize open source usability without providing some kind of summary of how we can do something about it. Humanized...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/where-are-the-women 2007-10-09T17:40:13Z 2007-10-09T17:40:13Z gender women software computing design culture sociology communication usability

It gets tiresome when every time someone publishes an article about this issue, a stream of misogynistic trolls start babbling and complaining. You fucking assholes are just proving the point...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/complacence-will-destroy-you 2007-10-03T00:00:36Z 2007-10-03T00:00:36Z security google mistakes life email

Advice from the hacked (via). The raging reality of having your GMail account stolen: What matters more for your immediate concerns, entropy is out to get you and entropy is going to win....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/council-elections-again 2007-10-02T08:01:42Z 2007-10-02T08:01:42Z nz wellington politics democracy

Despite the fact that we may be just shambling toward a messy repeat of last time, I would urge all you Wellington residents out there to get out and vote in the local body elections. So far,...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/another-blow 2007-10-01T00:59:36Z 2007-10-01T00:59:36Z internet communication media censorship politics

Verizon decides to act against its own economic best interests and block messages from an abortion rights group. This kind of discrimination sets a troubling precedent.

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/olpc-in-peru 2007-09-29T14:40:29Z 2007-09-29T14:40:29Z education learning computers hardware olpc usability

A fascinating chronicle of introducing the One Laptop Per Child project to a small school in Peru. One particular aspect that really jumped out at me was: On the first day, we also discovered that...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/method-missing 2007-09-24T23:13:42Z 2007-09-24T23:13:42Z programming ruby objects xml

Builder is a completely declarative library which makes it easy to generate XML from a cascade of Ruby method calls. But it's not completely smooth sending: working on an Atom feed, I ran into a...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/google-election-audience 2007-09-19T02:02:50Z 2007-09-19T02:02:50Z politics google democracy information society media

And of course, it's not just record companies on the verge of extinction. With Australia Votes, Google is flexing its capability to move into the online media space traditionally dominated by...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/indie-norms 2007-09-19T01:10:53Z 2007-09-19T01:10:53Z music business marketing hiphop

Trent Reznor says some things at a gig in Sydney that aren't exactly going to win him any friends on high but he is totally right. Over the last five years, I have taken great pleasure in watching...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/ponoko-goes-public 2007-09-18T17:06:18Z 2007-09-18T17:06:18Z nz design furniture interaction business

Wellington based startup Ponoko went public today, in conjunction with the TechCrunch event in San Francisco. Some of you may have seen bits and pieces at the Dowse recently, or even come across...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/egov-barcamp-wrap 2007-09-17T13:58:40Z 2007-09-17T13:58:40Z nz wellington egov economics information community politics praxis geo microformats technology

It's been a long long time since I've participated in hours and hours of such lively and (mostly) positive discussion. I have to echo Mike's view that Wellington is one of the only places where...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/local-govt-for-connected-world 2007-09-14T19:18:40Z 2007-09-14T19:18:40Z nz wellington egov economics information community politics praxis geo

I was supposedly going to be in Auckland this weekend, but things changed. After a fascinating discussion with Callum Strong on the relativity of rates on Thursday, I spontaneously decided...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/lessons-learned-from-fullcodepress 2007-09-12T21:03:08Z 2007-09-12T21:29:49Z learning mistakes design programming fullcodepress

Since Ali posted 20 things I learned at FullCodePress, I thought I'd chime in with my own observations from the perspective of being programmer for the Code Blacks: Working side by side is...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/a-ship-in-a-bottle 2007-09-01T15:20:41Z 2007-09-01T15:20:41Z poetry beginnings

All of the arts of illusion are like this: even crafting the poem which steers the flat hulk of words through its narrow neck then lofts mainsails by manipulating strings, exerting influence.       The...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/py-3 2007-09-01T14:57:03Z 2007-09-01T14:57:03Z code programming languages python objects syntax

Python 3.0a1 release hits the network, with significant backwards incompatible changes. The best way to describe this is a shedding of the snake's skin, sloughing off a whole bunch of weird ambiguities...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/shiny-shoes 2007-08-31T03:41:59Z 2007-08-31T03:41:59Z education learning programming ruby

Why is one person who cares about children learning to program, if Cut Holes In Shoes And Get A Mask is anything to go by. Many people would think this is completely insane, or merely reinventing...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/self-denial-instinct 2007-08-31T01:17:36Z 2007-08-31T01:17:36Z software design management architecture programming process mistakes agile

In Hearing without listening, 37Signals screws up, then admits what they did wrong and how they fixed it. In the end, it's just a matter of several weeks downtime before the application is working...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/software-is-not-made-of-bricks 2007-08-30T00:23:21Z 2007-08-30T00:23:21Z code programming software management organization objects systems design patterns architecture models java

Raganwald dissects the misguided metaphor from a software process perspective. I have come to believe that these kinds of problems are even more prevalent in the web development world than in...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/mind-rot 2007-08-29T23:43:03Z 2007-08-29T23:43:03Z code programming software computing languages basic objects metaphors learning education

I hate to agree with grouchy old Dijkstra, but unfortunately now it's impossible to deny: BASIC is what killed my ability to be a truly great programmer. Dijkstra was right, GOTO completely rots your...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/underground-in-canada 2007-08-29T21:13:28Z 2007-08-29T21:13:28Z architecture urban infrastructure toronto photography

BLDGBLOG talks to Michael Cook, the author and photographer behind the Vanishing Point. Michael's spectacular images of tunnel systems and urban decay are a must-see. He views the city as...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/django-on-iphone 2007-08-24T12:51:50Z 2007-08-24T12:51:50Z code programming software iphone python data

Not for the weak of heart, but the prospect of wrangling the call database with Django is a tantalizing hint of things to come...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/mcs-week-of-code 2007-08-22T15:21:44Z 2007-08-22T15:21:44Z software identity geo networks mapping facebook

This week I've got an interesting side project, working as a mentor with a group of MCS students who are learning agile methods the useful way - by actually working on a real project. Our team...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/code-blacks-champions 2007-08-20T12:25:24Z 2007-08-20T12:25:24Z personal fullcodepress

What a weekend. One of the most intense storms of blogging and flickrizing that I've ever seen, and definitely the most intense all nighter I've ever experienced. Our charity client was so blown...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/ready-to-go 2007-08-17T19:57:56Z 2007-08-17T19:57:56Z personal nz fullcodepress

The two teams have just briefed, the rooms have been set up, the network is streaming, and we're gathering up all the final bits and pieces we're gonna need (post-it notes, and assorted bits of...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/fullcodeprevise 2007-08-17T02:15:41Z 2007-08-17T02:15:41Z personal nz fullcodepress servers apache

We're safe and sound in balmy Sydney, where we await the arrival of the Australian team. We're planning to take it pretty easy on Friday with a bit of tinkering, a bit of touristy stuff, before...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/is-php-doomed 2007-08-15T01:59:24Z 2007-08-15T01:59:24Z code programming php concurrency threads servers languages java ruby erlang haskell

There's a tide of opinion suggesting that PHP is threatened with extinction as standard hardware begins to favour widening multicore processors. This would be a fair argument if PHP was a general...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/seasonal-peturbations 2007-08-10T15:23:06Z 2007-08-10T15:23:06Z wellington climate seasons earth

A low ceiling of grey cloud and screaming 40 knot northerlies means that Spring has arrived in Wellington today. Not that this would be cause for excitement, since the Winter was so mild I hardly...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/reconstruction-3 2007-08-08T00:38:54Z 2007-08-08T01:24:41Z code reconstruction php rss formats

Various parts of this site are meshed from other services such as ReBlog, Google Reader, and del.icio.us, and I use a Yahoo Pipes assembly to merge these publishing streams into a single RSS feed...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/reconstruction-2 2007-08-07T23:38:23Z 2007-08-07T23:38:23Z code reconstruction php apache

Finally found some time to work on rolling this big ball of mud onto a more robust foundation. Before going any further, I need to get the site up and running on PHP5 (as well as Apache2 and Mysql5...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/osx-multiple-hosts 2007-07-20T14:19:24Z 2007-07-20T14:24:16Z code ruby osx apache

The process is just as straightforward on OS X as it is on Windows - if you do things manually. The catch for me was that I needed to set up a script to automate the process. Normally, OS X expects...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/high-bypass-ratio-pond-scum 2007-07-18T14:38:30Z 2007-07-18T14:38:30Z nz technology sustainability aviation oil industry

The Independent Financial Review (via Stuff) revealed today that Air New Zealand and Boeing have a secret working agreement with Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation to test a new type of biofuel for jet...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/java-chases-its-tail-calls 2007-07-16T20:04:27Z 2007-07-17T20:46:28Z programming code java languages compilers recursion

John Rose talks about implementing support for tail call optimization in the JVM. I've been waiting for this one, as in my mind, it has long been one of the biggest holes in the leaky dike of...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/simpletest-treemap-reporter 2007-07-13T08:51:51Z 2007-07-13T08:51:51Z code php simpletest testing algorithms visualization information design

Treemaps emerged in the mid 90's as a method of visualizing heirachies, and have since been widely used throughout the software design community. But very little work is out there exploring visualizations...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/redefining-computing 2007-07-12T23:26:21Z 2007-07-12T23:26:21Z programming computing objects membranes languages

As I am now starting to discover, many of these ideas were originally considered by Alan Kay, and summarized at OOPSLA in 1997. If the true shape of object oriented programming is qualitatively...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/myth-of-the-next-big-language 2007-07-12T20:33:51Z 2007-07-12T21:02:34Z languages programming compilers syntax semantics computing c++ javascript mathematics membranes cells

It's not a showdown between Javascript and Ruby, it's a race towards bioware. Language oriented programming is not a new idea, but it has taken a long time to become a significant influence on...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/php4-no-more 2007-07-11T01:56:17Z 2007-07-11T01:56:17Z php servers software

Finally, the announcement that everyone's been waiting for: Rasmus and the Zend team have agreed to make an official announcement to discontinue support for PHP4. I've been using PHP5 almost exclusively...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/ahm-gunna-au 2007-07-11T01:04:59Z 2007-07-11T01:04:59Z personal fullcodepress

I am privileged to be a part of the first NZ FullCodePress team, to travel to Sydney in August. By luck or whatever else, I somehow find myself right in the middle of it... What is possible for...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/pandoras-alertbox 2007-07-10T21:35:19Z 2007-07-10T21:35:19Z usability statistics communication business

Write Articles, Not Blog Postings could be one of the most arrogant and ineffably crude pieces of writing that Jacob Nielsen has ever published. He starts with reasonable and valid advice: thorough,...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/fullcodepress-selection 2007-07-05T15:34:16Z 2007-07-05T15:34:16Z nz personal programming webstock fullcodepress

Finalists for the New Zealand FullCodePress team have been selected, and I'm one of them! Final selection is tomorrow. Good luck to everyone who has been nominated, especially the other two selected...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/the-three-swans 2007-05-31T16:13:04Z 2007-05-31T16:30:48Z stories folktales poetry europe deutsche scandinavia

There once was a time On the banks of an Icelandic river marsh Where there lived a fisherman with his wife And they had three daughters. Then came one day When the three little daughters all...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/away 2007-05-22T17:47:01Z 2007-05-22T17:47:01Z personal stress health

I've just had a massive breakdown from lack of sleep and stress. Accidentally getting tangled up in the 48hour film project was fun, but definitely didn't help. My major web project of the last couple...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/human-area-networks 2007-04-27T15:21:00Z 2007-04-27T18:09:16Z internet technology networks communication electromagnetism cybernetics economics

There's a lot that could be said about emerging products like RedTacton: Using a new super-sensitive photonic electric field sensor, RedTacton can achieve duplex communication over the human...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/css-is-unmaintainable 2007-04-19T18:11:20Z 2007-04-19T18:11:20Z code css browsers syntax

Everyone thinks that the major problems of CSS are mostly due to incompatible browser implementations but that's not quite the full story. It can be hard to see how cascading style sheets are not...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/tvnzgnorance 2007-04-17T12:21:19Z 2007-04-17T12:21:19Z media politics journalism nz television

Russian tycoon announces to the Guardian that he is plotting the overthrow of the Russian state. Kasparov is arrested, and the Putin government orders demonstrators off the streets, and sends riot...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/twitter-the-wave 2007-04-11T13:18:45Z 2007-04-11T13:18:45Z rumours speculation communication psychology sociology interaction internet addiction

Maybe I'm speculating too far as I have no idea of the timing/background of events, but I have been wondering whether questioning Twitter contributed in any way to stirring up the hatred and death...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/datetime-in-php 2007-04-03T16:07:34Z 2007-04-03T16:07:34Z code php formats

This article is a work in progress, part of a new series "Undocumenting PHP", which explores and discusses some of the less well documented or uncommon aspects of PHP. After running into a weird...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/promise-of-perfect-symmetry 2007-03-22T21:05:49Z 2007-03-22T21:05:49Z mathematics symmetry visualization algebra physics

Via Infosthetics, this exceptionally simple Lie group could be the Mandelbrot set of our generation. The tie-ins to abstract physics are astounding - it forms a picture of what is generally thought...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/helen-meets-george 2007-03-22T20:26:43Z 2007-03-22T20:26:43Z nz politics media america

He's a personable fellow, George, greeting our Prime Minister with a cheery "Hey, here's Helen!" upon her arrival. But he's not the sharpest tack in the pack, it must be said. I noticed he had some...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/charting-change-over-time 2007-03-21T15:10:03Z 2007-03-21T15:10:03Z design information visualization statistics flash interaction

Grant has been doing some great stuff over at Xero, with an account balance view that enables fluid browsing of the time range by adjusting the width of the scroller control. This is a good technique ...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/win-apache-virtual-hosts 2007-03-20T13:52:04Z 2007-03-20T13:52:04Z code apache windows servers

This will be of no interest to most people but it's useful to note for future reference. The various click-installer solutions to set up Apache and PHP under Windows such as WAMP don't seem to automate...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/reconstruction-1 2007-03-20T10:58:24Z 2007-03-20T10:58:24Z code reconstruction mistakes http php simpletest

Well I went to upload some new writing and just snapped - I couldn't write here until I was happy with the way it was presented. So I tore down all the styles and javascripts, leaving just a structural...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/maetl 2007-03-16T01:26:24Z 2007-07-17T17:17:53Z personal

This site is my playground, a whirlwind of ideas, projects, tutorials, and information, a mental mind map. Warning: this site is undergoing a major transformation in public motion. Aspects...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/oh-shit 2007-03-15T23:37:07Z 2007-03-15T23:37:07Z personal

Here's an old journal which hasn't been written to in a while... What shall we do with it, precious?

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/difference-between-programming 2006-10-03T15:01:36Z 2006-10-03T15:01:36Z code functional imperative learning

Why learning Haskell/Python makes you a worse programmer: So, learning Python and Haskell has demoralised me and encouraged me to write code that is bizarre and difficult to understand, and,...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/putting-women-in-their-place 2006-09-25T12:59:26Z 2006-09-25T17:09:31Z education computing communication gender women

My Salient feature about the gender imbalance in computer science is out - Putting Women in their Place. Obviously, it's focused on the specific situation of VUW, but it should be relevant in a...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/rethinking-persistence 2006-09-22T16:20:22Z 2006-09-22T16:20:22Z code servers data persistence rest functional

People are starting to catch on to two very powerful ideas - that functional languages are ideal for building persistent storage repositories, and that a huge subset of web applications don't need...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/scaling-for-the-masses 2006-09-20T16:04:38Z 2006-09-20T16:04:38Z internet software hardware network infrastructure economics capitalism

ReadWriteWeb summarises an interesting new service based on utility computing: In the next decade, only the largest enterprises will be able to justify owning and operating their own servers. This...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/greatest-story-ever-sold 2006-09-19T12:25:36Z 2006-09-19T12:25:36Z politics war terrorism media america

How could this have happened? How could some of the best, most fact-checked, most reputable news organizations in the English-speaking world have been so gullible? The answer is that they...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/straw-men-language-ecosystem 2006-09-15T22:00:00Z 2006-09-15T22:00:00Z software languages ruby

I understand the philosophy that developer cycles are more important than cpu cycles, but frankly that's just a bumper-sticker slogan and not fair to the people who are complaining about performance. I...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/nightly-streams 2006-09-01T19:26:52Z 2006-09-01T19:26:52Z poetry dreams beginnings

The unremitting voice of nightly streams That wastes so oft, we think, its tuneful powers, If neither soothing to the worm that gleams Through dewy grass, nor small birds hushed in...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/culture-of-segregation 2006-08-17T12:51:45Z 2006-08-17T15:49:01Z politics culture religion terrorism war europe america

The many "copycat" and "self-starter" groups that have been "inspired" by al-Qaeda and that have sprung up in England, Spain, Indonesia, and elsewhere will continue to pose the threat of attacks....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/xbox-live-youtube-for-video-games 2006-08-14T20:49:57Z 2006-08-14T20:49:57Z games software markets

Microsoft have announced plans to release a stripped down consumer version of their Xbox 360 development tools, hoping to spawn the emergence of a massive network of homemade game content - the...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/bubble-spike 2006-08-14T19:48:31Z 2006-08-14T19:48:31Z internet software statistics markets networks

People are starting to wise up to the distortions of bubble math surrounding the recent rush of interest in socially oriented websites steaming ahead under the banner of Web 2.0, but it is interesting...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/do-we-construct-nature 2006-08-13T18:21:49Z 2006-08-13T18:21:49Z philosophy science physics truth reality objectivity

See how that one little cloud floats like a pink feather from some gigantic flamingo. Now the red rim of the sun pushes itself above the London cloud bank. It shines on a good many folk, but on...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/a-real-knowledge-economy 2006-08-09T02:50:30Z 2006-08-09T02:50:30Z nz science mathematics education learning creativity life symmetry

The state of science education in New Zealand, is in dire need of a massive creative rejuvenation, but it can only occur to it's fullest once there is widespread knowledge of an irreconcilable crisis...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/pink-hand-style 2006-08-04T14:30:43Z 2006-08-04T14:30:43Z art music comics illustration exploitation

I guess this is only relevant for Illicit headz or my generation of Welli kids who remember Switchblade being quite possibly the best Package cover of all time, but hot damn... Looks like the new...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/blue-sky-mining 2006-07-26T13:34:41Z 2006-07-26T13:34:41Z australia politics history energy nuclear environment

It may not matter whether Australian uranium is exported from three mines or thirty... This proposal, according to Labour leader Kim Beazley should define Australia's uranium policy. But maybe...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/crying-sculpture 2006-07-22T07:23:48Z 2006-07-22T07:23:48Z art aesthetics history

Via bTang, I just stumbled across this crying sculpture (.pdf) which explores the theme of communication through tears. Crying is often considered solitary and individual, but here a significance...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/still-life-with-typewriter 2006-07-21T23:00:13Z 2006-07-21T23:00:13Z books creativity software writing

I'll never write another novel on an electric typewriter. I'd rather use a sharp stick and a little pile of dogshit.  - Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker On rereading this, and pondering...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/problem-with-css-dropdown-menus 2006-07-19T18:08:30Z 2006-07-19T18:08:30Z code design usability css javascript browsers interaction

This technique been mentioned in passing for a couple of years now, and recently seems to be gaining a fair amount of attention. Many web designers love the idea of building dropdowns like this....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/multimathematical-immaterialities 2006-07-18T15:58:54Z 2006-07-18T15:58:54Z art science poetry physics quantum

The abnihilization of the etym by . . . the first lord of Hurtreford expolodotonates through Parsuralia with an ivanmorinthorrorumble fragoromboassity amidwhiches general uttermost confussion are...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/narrative-action 2006-07-13T16:37:40Z 2006-07-14T14:03:32Z games design writing creativity ideas

The games industry has come to a crossroads, something that is becoming more and more apparent as I engage deeper into research for my upcoming game (more on that soon). The Guardian Games Blog has...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/thoughts-of-a-lonely-programmer 2006-07-13T15:30:01Z 2006-07-13T15:30:01Z poetry writing code languages

The writer is doubtless stricken with writers block And can thus, for weeks, vanish into a myriad of dark rooms Where conversation dangles under glistening rows of liquor. The programmer is expected...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/coromeander 2006-07-04T22:47:48Z 2006-07-04T22:47:48Z personal landscapes

Just meandering on the Coromandel...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/on-mirrors-and-bridges 2006-06-29T22:22:07Z 2006-06-29T22:22:07Z poetry philosophy reality

The synthesis of form Is not as some have thought A process whereby time Unwravels the intentions Of a hidden creator. But removing the teleological Source of all life Does not make the universe Cold...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/error-correction-and-scientific-progress 2006-06-14T14:26:58Z 2006-06-14T14:26:58Z philosophy science logic knowledge

The logical positivist movement stemming from the Vienna Circle is famous for its empiricist approach to scientific rationality and a theory of meaning based around the principle of verification....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/architecture-of-happiness 2006-05-27T17:04:10Z 2006-05-27T17:04:10Z architecture philosophy modernism

Alain de Botton was in Wellington this week, promoting his new book The Architecture of Happiness, and we heard him speak the other night to a packed auditorium at Wellington Girls College, courtesy...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/webstuck 2006-05-16T12:41:16Z 2006-05-16T12:41:16Z personal webstock games

Yes, I'm still alive. No, I'm not planning to be at Webstock even though the lineup looks fantastic and me ol' mates Mark and Phil will be showing off some pretty cool stuff in the 8x5 session. I...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/a-particularly-bad-moment 2006-04-28T12:28:40Z 2006-04-28T12:28:40Z personal drunken party stories

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/obsessive-geometric-abstraction 2006-04-19T16:31:59Z 2006-04-19T16:31:59Z nz wellington art geometry

We all suspected that Marty was an insane genius, seems the art world is starting to pay him some attention after the close of the Obsessive Drawing exhibition. Not that any of this publicity would...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/trying-to-tell-me-something 2006-03-25T15:02:57Z 2006-03-25T15:02:57Z personal mistakes

I think someone is trying to tell me something... I've been noticing requests for http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/http popping up in the logs, which is probably a sign that I should be fixing a few...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/thinking-beyond-java 2006-03-24T17:07:07Z 2006-03-25T19:12:52Z code languages organization management java ruby php

Last year, I picked up this curious book which seemed to sum up the zeitgeist of web programming in 2005 - an interesting and polemical twist from O'Reilly

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/moderation-patterns 2006-03-11T00:27:57Z 2006-03-11T00:29:50Z internet software communication interaction patterns

Clay Shirky on moderation strategies: Social software is the experimental wing of political philsophy, a discipline that doesn't realize it has an experimental wing. We are literally encoding...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/dohpacity 2006-03-08T12:29:43Z 2006-03-08T12:46:15Z code css browsers usability

Joel on Software has published the first draft of a short essay on usability, where he makes the salient point that: Something is usable if it behaves exactlyas expected. This principle of usability...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/etech-06 2006-03-07T13:14:28Z 2006-03-07T13:14:28Z internet software information attention communication membranes

Trapped in the Neue Zealand ghetto region, and can't even fly to Auckland at the moment, let alone San Diego... But I'm keenly interested in a couple of presentations in particular: Firstly,...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/passive-consumers 2006-02-23T22:53:07Z 2006-02-23T22:53:07Z internet media publishing yahoo google

What is Yahoo! doing? That's the question asked by Greg Yardley, responding to recent talk about a pyramid of content creation, which he argues, shows how Yahoo's design decisions are being pushed...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/kiwi-prejudice 2006-02-15T14:24:13Z 2006-02-15T14:24:13Z nz maps

I noticed that New Zealand is not included on the Prejudice Map. Due to the obvious weirdness of our location on many Euro or US-centric world map projections, it's always funny to see where we are...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/just-chemicals 2006-02-05T00:00:00Z 2006-02-05T00:00:00Z poetry love

They say love is just chemicals In your bloodstream, tiny baubles, Inscrutable in their subtle action. You say love is a physical force, An emotion greater than any other, So impossible to...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/resource-dissonance-format 2006-02-02T11:01:11Z 2006-02-02T11:01:11Z code syntax semantics models xml rdf html

Recently, I've been looking for good case studies of the practical benefits of RDF adoption, and while I've found a little interesting stuff, I've been noticing a severe dissonance in the volume of...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/porno-attention-data 2006-01-31T22:34:27Z 2006-01-31T22:34:27Z art porn interaction attention

Talking to a friend the other night who remarked that she thought surely most people still use the internet for porn, just like always? Which got me thinking about the latest movements towards logging...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/botany-downs 2006-01-31T00:00:00Z 2006-01-31T00:00:00Z poetry auckland suburbs

However many gaze across the evening At these crowded tentacles of suburb? Skulking gibboard ghettos bordered By sanded concrete fringes, locking The mediocre and the restless, Fuming with resentment, For...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/you-are-loathsome 2006-01-28T19:59:39Z 2006-01-28T19:59:39Z politics conservative media america

Charges: Silently enabling and contributing to the irreversible destruction of your planet. Absolving yourself of your responsibility to do anything about it that your immediate neighbors don't....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/quantum-people 2006-01-28T14:27:48Z 2006-01-28T14:27:48Z poetry relationships love

What error correcting code could cross the much vaunted gap Of people as particles, or functions of an ever fluctuating wave? Attraction and repulsion are forces, of matter, they don't, At least...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/google-web-authoring-survey 2006-01-26T20:20:32Z 2006-01-26T20:20:32Z code html google microformats semantics

Google have released a bunch of high level statistics from a recent survey (SVG capable browser required), looking at the relative frequency of HTML elements across more than a billion web documents....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/ogle 2006-01-25T22:16:43Z 2006-01-25T22:16:43Z software graphics opengl visualization

Eyebeam R&D have just announced the release of OGLE, a graphics extractor that intercepts OpenGL messages, and allows users to capture and save 3D data dumps that can be repurposed in a variety...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/higher-order-primitives-in-php 2006-01-21T02:44:02Z 2006-01-21T02:44:02Z code php javascript syntax parsing grammars

Thanks again to Harry, I stumbled across two fascinating projects that tackle a particular fundamental problem in PHP5. The ambition of metaphp is to take over the world, and that's actually not such...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/nz-in-ten-movies-or-less 2006-01-19T20:30:41Z 2006-01-21T13:13:02Z nz film history culture reviews

I'm not usually one to jump onboard the blog meme wagon, but after seeing the recent proliferation of America in Ten Movies or Less, I started wondering which ten films would best sum up the New...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/best-pick-up-line 2006-01-04T08:30:11Z 2006-01-04T08:30:11Z nz youth stories

It's 3am, after a night of boozing and rampaging in Whitianga and everything is closed except for a takeaway bar on one of the side streets. Rustic bogan dude steps out of the line at the counter,...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/cultural-logic 2005-12-16T14:25:08Z 2005-12-16T14:25:08Z sociology economics culture philosophy capitalism aesthetics

Frederic Jameson, author of Postmodernism or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism gave a lecture at Vic yesterday about Representations of Globalisation. Jameson's project can perhaps be summed...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/tag-a-long 2005-12-08T20:45:19Z 2005-12-08T20:45:19Z information architecture language design communication semantics metadata

Our formal attempts at understanding language tend to be hierachically structured, but when it comes to actually organizing language, it is well known that meaning is relational and constantly fluctuates....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/google-link-relationships 2005-11-27T16:16:00Z 2005-11-27T16:16:00Z code html google semantics graphs topology

Google is based on the concept of the web as a gigantic directed graph. Edges in this graph are determined by directional hyperlinks between web pages. How many of us understand how the usage of rel...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/gangs-and-assumptions 2005-11-10T18:09:56Z 2005-11-10T18:09:56Z culture hiphop history philosophy politics society youth

Opinions have been flowing in local media, regarding the intersect between exploding urban situations in France and some of the serious problems in South Auckland at the moment. One thing I'm noticing...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/keep-on-runnin 2005-11-07T19:22:57Z 2005-11-07T19:22:57Z personal death

Just got back from a few days chilling in Auckland (pleasantly free of internet technology, thank you very much). Touched down in Welli on Saturday night, to be greeted with the amazing sight of a...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/ignorance-of-open-source 2005-10-28T12:09:03Z 2005-10-28T12:09:03Z politics software management opensource openoffice

Francis Till comes down full fist slinging on Governments & Open Source, which turns out to be little more than another thinly veiled attack on the Green Party. Beyond the hot air and apparent...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/more-questions-than-answers 2005-10-18T19:46:15Z 2005-10-18T19:46:15Z personal research

Too busy and preoccupied to write anything coherent for a while, I've finally been plunging headlong into Ruby and for the first time, doing programming work and experiments that are not directly...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/politics-of-personal-destruction 2005-10-04T20:31:02Z 2005-10-04T20:31:02Z politics culture power

If you are a young, idealistic person, don’t get involved in organised politics. Contribute to your community, your neighbourhood, your immediate circle of trust and support. This is the best...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/xhtml-design-patterns 2005-10-03T03:38:31Z 2005-10-03T03:38:31Z code html design patterns semantics microformats

The key concept that underlies the modern web is the separation of presentation and structure, and recently, there has been a lot of interest in documenting the synthesis of human friendly and...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/zen-and-the-art-of-template-engines 2005-09-25T23:28:09Z 2005-09-25T23:28:09Z code architecture html xml

Without exception, programmers espouse separation of logic and display as an ideal principle. In practice, however, programmers and template engine producers are loath to enforce separation, fearing...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/how-microformats-are-different 2005-09-25T16:16:58Z 2005-09-25T16:16:58Z code microformats html language semantics

In response to More Thoughts on How Microformats are Different, I'm starting to wonder if maybe there is room for another proper noun that describes "a specific compound of semantic XHTML units",...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/left-out 2005-09-22T19:38:13Z 2005-09-22T19:38:13Z personal learning education mathematics mistakes

It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/plotting-deviations 2005-09-20T20:17:31Z 2005-09-20T20:17:31Z personal learning education research

Well, now the election's over, and there's not much left to do but wait til the coalition is announced (and perhaps look at some visualizations of the results), I have a bit of personal news to relay... As...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/baldfaced-election-bribes 2005-09-11T14:13:26Z 2005-09-11T14:13:26Z nz politics election

Labour: wipe interest on all student loans. National: cut petrol tax. Vroom vroom... Let's treat the NZ public like a boisterous toddler. If they don't listen to us, we'll just stuff their...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/null-policies 2005-09-08T23:30:22Z 2005-09-08T23:30:22Z nz politics election

One of the worrying things about this National Party under Brash, is the noticeable lack of clearly planned policies and strategies. In terms of fiscal objectives, these well documented tax cuts are...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/too-close-to-call 2005-09-08T02:16:33Z 2005-09-08T02:16:33Z nz politics election

A new TV3/TNS poll puts the Labour party back in front... Projected number of seats in the House on the basis of the latest poll results: * Labour 57 National 45 NZ First 6 Green Party 8 Maori...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/howling-arrays-of-wolves 2005-09-06T19:53:08Z 2005-09-06T19:53:08Z code java health

Physical/Mental side-effects include howling arrays of wolves that cannot be popped out;

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/louisiana-flies 2005-09-05T23:59:00Z 2005-09-05T23:59:00Z economics sociology reality

The situation in New Orleans painfully illustrates a totality of social disintegration, a powder keg of anger and anarchy primed by the greatest oppressive capitalist state this world has ever seen....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/clouds 2005-09-01T22:14:09Z 2005-09-01T22:14:09Z poetry beginnings

That outré architecture the clouds! I came out dog tired my eyes smeared with words & saw them. I had to laugh. Nature exceeds me in everything including folly. That's truth enough...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/web-deux-pointe-zero 2005-08-31T23:59:00Z 2005-08-31T23:59:00Z information power communication http greasemonkey

As much as Web 2.0 ideas are about openness and freedom, they indicate an increasing emphasis towards power and heirachy. You can see this directly manifesting in the present situation of Yahoo! swallowing...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/national-billboards 2005-08-31T21:39:30Z 2005-08-31T21:39:30Z nz politics

Make a National billboard... a few people have taken this for a spin with the most obvious tax joke ever, looking after US interests, the Green Party, authority, and facism and socialism.

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/hoodlum-scripting 2005-08-27T18:17:05Z 2005-08-27T18:17:05Z code ruby javascript browsers http

Why and MenTaLguY show how to upwink javascript into web requests - is this a replacement for Greasemonkey, or just total insanity?

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/negative-space 2005-08-27T17:40:38Z 2005-08-27T17:40:38Z personal mistakes

The last few days I've been locked into a frustrating negative and consuming frame of mind where writing and programming clash together, which unfortunately caused a few headaches. Just one of those...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/i-really-thought-it-was-over 2005-08-23T22:57:04Z 2005-08-23T22:57:04Z code xml rss

But it's not... Yet the author of this new RSS 3 spec has made a more-than-insignificant oversight: he's missed the fact that RSS 3 already exists and it's a f**king joke... Aaron Swartz certainly...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/erd-in-html 2005-08-21T18:01:54Z 2005-08-21T20:41:47Z code data models html php sql

This is a prototype of a language modelling tool, created for the purpose of helping designers, information architects, and developers collaborate better. If you want to check it out, and have access...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/making-nzs-government-transparent 2005-08-11T14:02:05Z 2005-08-11T14:02:05Z nz politics government parliament opensource

KiwiMP is an open source project aimed at opening up the information available about New Zealand's government and political processes: For all its faults and foibles, our democracy is a profound...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/you-get-what-you-pay-for 2005-08-09T21:06:47Z 2005-08-09T21:06:47Z code ruby management communication sociology software

This piece landed in my inbox twice today, and immediately caught my attention. It's well written, and makes some excellent points that I think are exactly on the mark. Paul Graham has elaborated...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/going-backwards 2005-08-09T11:42:26Z 2005-08-09T11:42:26Z nz communication networks policy

I can't believe they're still arguing about this... it's the year 2005, can we really take the idea of investment and competition in copper wires that seriously? As if theres going to be incentive...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/on-semantic-html 2005-08-05T21:11:46Z 2005-08-05T21:11:46Z code html css semantics microformats

Having slogged through the trenches on some pretty large scale HTML and CSS builds, I tend to have a somewhat jaundiced view of declarative syntax. There’s only so many hundreds of hours you...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/consistency-and-completeness 2005-08-03T15:44:43Z 2005-08-03T15:44:43Z personal logic

Spring is beginning here, as evidenced by the tiny yellow blossoms sticking to my shoes these last couple of days... It seems a very fertile time for open source collaboration at the moment, and...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/quit-smoking 2005-07-23T19:29:50Z 2005-07-23T19:29:50Z personal health addiction weirdness

Why do I always notice shit like this? (via 43 Things)

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/more-bombs 2005-07-23T00:39:04Z 2005-07-23T00:39:04Z war terrorism london

Are stories like this ineviatable? It looks like things are starting to get out of control again...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/greasemonkey-update 2005-07-20T13:47:54Z 2005-07-20T15:35:05Z code mozilla greasemonkey

Any users of Greasemonkey who aren't on the mailing list, and didn't see the latest round of security discussions should immediately read this and follow the requisite steps... Update: Simon has...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/dreamweaver-sux 2005-07-20T13:24:29Z 2005-07-20T13:24:29Z personal mistakes

Or I'm a complete and total dumbarse... Uploaded some random experiments via FTP, and accidentally overwrote some of the core libraries without realising it. The good thing is that it forced me...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/tardme 2005-07-16T18:37:03Z 2005-07-16T18:37:03Z nz

Brilliant: tardme.co.nz... complete with threats of legal action.

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/the-better-of-circumstance 2005-07-10T16:40:48Z 2005-07-10T16:40:48Z personal

Of all the places my parents could have been on the 7th July, they just happened to be travelling on the underground in London that morning. It took me nearly a whole day to get hold of them, a fairly...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/wheel-turning-full-circle 2005-07-03T17:14:40Z 2005-07-03T17:14:40Z sport rugby management

There is a story about a senior England player who was asked to speak at a corporate seminar soon after the 2003 World Cup. He spoke the day after Woodward had spoken to the same audience and was...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/g8reboot 2005-06-24T21:15:15Z 2005-06-24T21:15:15Z catastrophism

G8Reboot wants to make poverty history... But what about global climate change or the impending end of the world?(*2)

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/nz-remote-tagging-reverse-relationships 2005-06-18T17:01:59Z 2005-06-18T17:01:59Z nz metadata semantics html

In Remote Tagging: A Richer Social Model, Stowe Boyd describes an addition to the RelTag microformat that allows shared tags themselves to be embedded in the link....

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/digital-textile-portfolios 2005-06-15T03:09:25Z 2005-06-15T03:09:25Z fashion design teaching

The web design class that I've been teaching in the Fashion and Textiles Department at Massey is finally finished, and what's more, we've put the portfolios online for all to see at crafty.coretxt.net.nz These...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/accidental-enhancement-in-ie 2005-06-13T01:32:43Z 2005-06-13T01:32:43Z browsers css ie weirdness

Sometimes, things happen that are just totally impossible to explain. Like this... Ok, so that border on the feature object box is set to 1px dotted #D4E5FF. Now, we...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/dodelicious 2005-06-12T19:13:56Z 2005-06-12T19:13:56Z code javascript greasemonkey

I've started a simple repository of Greasemonkey User Scripts. Mostly experiments I've been playing with in my spare time, and occasional annoyances with sites that I feel compelled to fix. The most...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/userscripts-in-ie 2005-06-08T12:57:44Z 2005-06-08T12:57:44Z browsers ie javascript greasemonkey

Yep, the cat couldn't stay in the bag any longer... I know of at least two implementations that are wingling their way out of development - Trixie and now Turnabout Of course, an Internet Explorer...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/semantic-vocabularies-and-basic-english 2005-06-06T20:57:07Z 2005-06-06T20:57:07Z metadata semantics html xml language

Microformats make sense to me immediately, in a way that RDF never has. By focusing on visible data, the markup retains a high degree of interoperability with existing...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/only-send-what-you-need 2005-06-05T23:36:42Z 2005-06-05T23:36:42Z code http interaction

Managing RESTful AJAX operations is an open problem. While I say that aspects of managing HTTP requests, and designing UI feedback cannot be understood in isolation and must...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/asynchronous-rest 2005-06-04T19:37:16Z 2005-06-04T19:37:16Z code javascript http usability

AJAX is not new(s). Previously, I've been critical of the nomenclature, perhaps more for aesthetic reasons than anything else, but I have to agree with Simon Willison, who...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/wireframes-of-reference 2005-06-02T00:55:16Z 2005-06-02T00:55:16Z design

Wireframes or schematics (also known as "paper prototypes") are a common way to create a mock up of a user interface. In the best case, they can function in a similar...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/media-politics-idiotic-behaviour 2005-05-18T00:48:26Z 2005-05-18T00:48:26Z education politics

So the Associate Minister of Education shoved a sawn-off tennis ball into a students mouth back in the early 80's at a Dunedin Secondary School - ye olde "mute puppet"...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/the-standard-is-rising 2005-05-12T22:23:40Z 2005-05-12T22:23:40Z personal design interaction

It's good in Wellington at the moment. I'm just glad that I am going to be able to sleep this weekend (unlike those about to unleash the 48 Hours!). But there's a lot going...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/multicolumn-layouts-in-css 2005-05-03T00:54:48Z 2005-05-03T00:54:48Z code css javascript mozilla

Gecko support for CSS3 multicolumn layouts looks interesting... I know next to nothing about CSS3 in Mozilla, but this is something that I have wanted to use on a...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/mayday 2005-05-01T23:59:59Z 2005-05-01T23:59:59Z personal

Some things keep going, a little bit at a time... Just a collection of random notes at the moment, but I've made some big changes recently, that should start to make the core features easier to...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/the-original-technologist 2005-04-30T12:08:08Z 2005-04-30T12:08:08Z poetry

In the communities of the Paleolithic, archeologists often find a single dwelling, isolated from the others, at the boundary between the community and the wilds of the world beyond; this is...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/writers-block 2005-04-14T01:23:40Z 2005-04-14T01:23:40Z personal poetry

So stood the young man On the verge of never holding back, But never still yet Oblivious to praise, He could only focus on the chinks in his armour Small steps in a search...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/four-reasons 2005-03-31T23:49:32Z 2005-03-31T23:49:32Z code php java

Why you would choose PHP over Java on your next major CMS development project: You want to write anywhere, run once. You want to work directly with classes,...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/bifurcation-and-biodiversity 2005-03-28T18:16:37Z 2005-03-28T18:16:37Z ecology sustainability

Entries from the Dictionary of Human Geography Abbreviation of "biological diversity"... conservation of patterns and complexity... Generally understood as persistance...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/poisoned-sea 2005-03-09T17:31:00Z 2005-03-09T17:31:00Z environment

A few weeks after the Indian Ocean tsunami, and it comes to the attention of the UN that a whole lot of people living on the coast of Somalia have started to show signs of...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/ajax-and-ux 2005-02-21T20:53:59Z 2005-02-21T20:53:59Z code javascript patterns

Amongst those of the user experience and information architecture persuasion, there seems to be a growing trend that involves taking interesting new technological and interactive...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/disputing-anomalies 2005-02-16T22:40:19Z 2005-02-17T00:13:58Z sociology science physics communication interaction

Thinking more about Wikipedia, and the kind of content disputes that seem to demarcate in terms of specialist/expert vs non-specialist/layman, led me to wonder whether there...

http://maetl.coretxt.net.nz/how-many-words 2005-02-15T00:00:00Z 2005-02-15T00:00:00Z nz design government education

So Te Ara is finally live, and I'm immensely proud of having been involved in the design process, primarily the development of the CSS/Javascript system, the lower lev