Arc Tangent

@klepas and I put together a pod­cast. It’s going to be a bi-​weekly sort of affair (or when­ever we feel like it). I should note, first up, that the audio qual­ity is pretty ter­ri­ble. It was a first shot and not one of the three record­ing devices we used were really up to scratch — we’ll def­i­nitely have that fixed before next time!

In this episode, we discuss:

1. Recent events in the world of web fonts (pro­pos­als to bring more fonts to the web, and the advent of TypeKit)
2. The pro­nun­ci­a­tion of Opera (Oh-​pear-​uh? Op-​er-​rah?)
3. Sta­tic vs. Dynamic Web­site Con­tent Generators
4. Ope­nA­trium, a new intranet pack­age based on Dru­pal (which we’ll review next time around!)

Turns out ID3 meta­data in MP3s is pretty lim­ited — our show notes in the MP3 cut out about a third of the way through. So, here’s some use­ful links:

1. ‘Beau­ti­ful Web Typog­ra­phy’ talk slides
2. Type­kit
3. Kernest
4. Jekyll
5. Devel­op­ment Seed
6. Dru­pal
7. Open Atrium
8. http://​klepas​.org/
9. http://​klepas​.org/​b​eta

The intro music we used is the open­ing riff of ‘Fake It’ by Brad Sucks (http://​www​.bradsucks​.net/​a​l​b​u​m​s​/​o​u​t​_​o​f​_​it/), licensed CC-​BY-​SA 3.0 Unported (http://​cre​ativecom​mons​.org/​l​i​c​e​n​s​e​s​/​b​y​-​s​a​/​3​.0/).

Since we’re just get­ting this off the ground we’d love feed­back. Feel free to email us — arcwhite@arcwhite.org and klepas@klepas.org.

This show is licensed Cre­ative Com­mons Attribution-​Noncommercial-​Share Alike 2.5 Aus­tralia (http://​cre​ativecom​mons​.org/​l​i​c​e​n​s​e​s​/​b​y​-​n​c​-​s​a​/​2​.​5​/​au/).

We hope you enjoy!

Over the week­end, Aus­tralia lost our last liv­ing World War 2 VC — at the ripe old age of 90. His name was Edward ‘Ted’ Kenna, and I met him a cou­ple of times.

It would have been 1995, pos­si­bly 1996. I was 11, and we were liv­ing in Puck­a­pun­yal, the Army base smack-​dab in the mid­dle of Vic­to­ria. Pri­mar­ily used as a train­ing facil­ity, Pucka is lit­tle more than a mas­sive artillery range with an Army base and a mar­ried patch attached. It’s sur­rounded by elec­tric fences — not for secu­rity, but to keep the ‘roos from jump­ing out of the range into nearby farmlands.

Dad was run­ning 1^st Recruit Train­ing Bat­tal­ion, Echo Com­pany in Pucka. A big intake had meant that Kapooka didn’t have enough room, so E Com­pany was detached to Puck­a­pun­yal. The first march-​out called for a bit of pomp and cer­e­mony, and it turned out that E Com­pany was Ted Kenna’s unit way back when (or so I’m recall­ing — it’s been a while).

He came over to our place for din­ner, with his wife. They were both gen­uinely lovely peo­ple — just nice, real nice. Ted was happy to talk to me and my brother, and he was even okay with telling the story of how he got his Vic­to­ria Cross — though he cau­tioned us not to call him a hero, because he was just a bloke who was under pres­sure and lost his cool when he’d had enough. In fact, I seem to recall he called his actions ‘reck­less’ and ‘a lit­tle crazy’.

Con­tinue reading

I apol­o­gise in advance for the fol­low­ing post. I was feel­ing whim­si­cal, hav­ing watched one of Pres­i­dent Obama’s pub­lic addresses, and decided to loosely emu­late the style for a blog post. Con­sider your­selves warned.

My fel­low inter­net users,

Despite rumours to the con­trary, I have not stopped updat­ing this blog. True, my detrac­tors would like me to be silent, if they existed. I say to them — you do not exist, there­fore, I con­tinue to blog!

Even if they did exist, I would con­tinue. At this his­toric time, who could stand idly by, their voice still and silent? When so much is at stake, and so many give their all for the Good of the Inter­net, how could I sit by and not participate?

There are great things hap­pen­ing behind the scenes; great and ter­ri­ble things. Just last week, I was accosted by some lawyers over a pre­vi­ous busi­ness sit­u­a­tion. I thank you all for your con­cern, but urge you not to worry — for we are greater than this sim­ple chal­lenge, and together, we will triumph.

Con­tinue reading

In about 2 months’ time, I’m plan­ning to be in Europe for at least a month. I’ll pack up, leave Can­berra, and spend 4 weeks kick­ing back overseas.

I may not come back.

Well, not to Can­berra, any­way. I’m feel­ing a strong urge to relo­cate, to be some­where else. There are peo­ple that I dearly love in Can­berra, but I do not care for it as a city. Peo­ple tend to be closed off; there’s a pre­vail­ing atti­tude of snob­bery and affected elit­ism that I can’t abide. In short, there’s a lot of pre­ten­tious wankers here.

Plus, it’s bit­terly bloody cold.

I’m con­sid­er­ing a shift to Mel­bourne, where I have a lot of friends and fam­ily. It’s all very up-​in-​the-​air. Assum­ing Europe goes ahead, I may sim­ply give up my cur­rent place in a share house and make some deci­sions when I get back.

Time to hit the road.