web-goddess

Category: Computers

  • Falafel Land

    Last week there was a bit of a brouhaha when Eddie McGuire referred to western Sydney as “the land of the felafel” on his radio show. (My personal feeling is that it was probably only 25% racism and 75% Eddie-being-a-dickhead, but whatev.) Anyway, the Snook is going to the apps4nsw “Hack Day” event tomorrow, where developers from around Sydney will spent 10 hours mashing up government data in new and interesting ways. As practice, he decided yesterday to test Eddie’s hypothesis. He pulled restaurant data from TrueLocal to create a heat map of the kebab shops in Sydney.

    Land of the Felafel

    Some interesting results there. Plenty of felafel available in the CBD, but once you go over the Harbour Bridge, you’re in a veritable felafel desert.

    Incidentally, if you have any inspiration for an app idea for the Snook, leave a comment or drop me an email. He’s even dabbling in iPhone development too…

  • TopBetta

    I’ve been pretty quiet lately, huh? The main reason is this website, which just launched on Wednesday. I have been working on this site for about five months, and the original specification I wrote ran to over 70 pages. It was a mammoth undertaking. And it didn’t stop once we got into development; I have since done a *dozen* different versions of the spec as things were added, removed, and changed. The dev team were amazing, and they pulled out all the stops in the last few weeks to get it done. There have been a few hiccups since launch, of course, but far less than I had feared. Now we get to start putting back in a lot of the stuff that was cut for deadline. But not today, today we finally get to celebrate getting to the (first) finish line. Well done to everyone on my team! We did a good job.

  • Good jobs

    It appears I have the 26th best job in America, according to CNN. The Snook’s current role is #37, but he’s also been #1 many times over the last 10 years. The weird thing is that neither of us actually got degrees in our current fields. (I did Communications; the Snook did Chemistry.) For the most part we just stumbled into our roles because we find them interesting and they play to our strengths. We’re very lucky.

  • Hogwarts Finally Gets the Internet

    Hogwarts finally gets the Internet. HA! Nicely done. Can anybody read Russian? I want to know what Viktor wrote on Hermione’s wall…

  • So frustrated.

    I feel like my pre-verbal nephew who can’t enunciate what he feels and is reduced to caveman-like outbursts of rage. DAH! DAH DAH DAH!

    • I tried to buy an international calling card at the Chinese grocery near my house tonight. I spent like 10 minutes reading fine print on stupid posters and flipping through brochures and finally found the one I wanted. I spent $10 on it, walked back to my house, and realised it was for recharging mobiles, NOT using with a landline. I ran back over, expecting them to exchange it. They refused. Policy of no exchange on phone cards. “But I was here 2 minutes ago! This isn’t what I thought it was! I didn’t scratch the PIN off! I SHOP HERE ALL THE TIME!” They told me I could come back and see the manager tomorrow. I said I needed the card for a call at 6am in the morning. No go. I finally threw it on the counter and told them I’d never shop there again. Tomorrow I’ll stop in just long enough to tell the manager the same.
    • Okay, so having wasted $10, how am I going to connect to the RRT show tomorrow at 6am? I could ring on the landline, but obviously it’s the principle of the thing now. So I just spent a goddamn HOUR trying various ways of doing it via VOIP. I tried the stupid ShoePhone. I tried using Google Talk. I tried it with telephone. I couldn’t get any of them to work. At best, I’d get choppy audio that sounded like it was coming through a fan. I’m going to have to suck it up and pay to ring in.
    • I used to have several cron jobs that did useful things at this site, like processing Moblog posts (emailed images from my iPhone) and updating my podcast download stats and posting my Google Reader items. Sometime in the past few months, Quadrahosting changed something and they all stopped working. I spent a couple fruitless hours with the Snook trying to fix them. No go.
    • Earlier this week I spent $60+ on Moneywell for my Mac and our iPhones. It’s personal finance software that’s meant to sync to your phones. Yet the first evening, we couldn’t get the sync to work at all. One phone would work; one wouldn’t. Sometimes neither. Then today suddenly without changing anything, they’re both working. Until they stop.

    WHY DOES EVERYTHING SUCK? If supposedly smart techie people like me can’t figure this crap out, how the heck is the rest of the world?

  • Smartphone Domino Machine

    Smartphone Domino Machine. That’s so cool! Just in case you haven’t had enough Rube Goldberg awesomeness lately.

  • HATETRIS

    HATETRIS. I played one game. I managed to clear two lines. Yowza.

  • Toodledo

    Have I mentioned Toodledo before? This is my preferred task manager (i.e. “To Do list”). I used to use Remember the Milk, but I balked at their $25/year subscription fee to use it on my iPhone. Toodledo has a version that’s completely free, and you can get the iPhone app for less than $5. All your tasks are synced to the Toodledo website, meaning you can access them wherever you are. They’ve also got loads of other ways to access your list: a Firefox add-on, Twitter integration, Google gadgets, iCal feeds, and various solutions for Android, Windows, and Palm devices. I’ve been using it for well over a year now, and I absolutely love it. So why bring it up now? A few days ago I noticed on the website that I’d been upgraded to a Pro subscription for three months! This normally only happens if you give out your referral link and somebody uses it to register for a Pro account. I’ve asked around and nobody is willing to own up to it. So whoever you are, thank you! It actually prompted me to purchase an additional year’s upgrade since I like the app so much.

  • Epic Awesomeness: Q and Data and an iPad

    Kunaal: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/04/q-and-data-examine-the-next-generation-padd/
    Me: DUUUUUUUUUUUUDE
    Me: Data with an iPad???
    Kunaal: I know!
    Kunaal: and Q!
    Me: who’s the dude next to …
    Me: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
    Me: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
    Kunaal: I know!
    Kunaal: That is the awsomest of pics

  • Sketching and Wireframing Templates

    Free Printable Sketching, Wireframing and Note-Taking PDF Templates. Very useful if you find yourself scribbling websites on bits of scrap paper.