stuart test blog

I’m not a “f***ing cyclist”. I’m Elliot’s daddy, on a bike, and she’s expecting me home around 6pm for bathtime.

I’m not a “f***ing cyclist”. I’m Ruby’s daddy, on a bike

I’m not a “f***ing cyclist”. I’m Ben’s brother, on a bike.

I’m not a “f***ing cyclist”. I’m Vanessa’s darling, on a bike.

I’m not a “f***ing cyclist”. I’m the guy in charge of creating a campaign on Facebook to help Auckland City Mission raise money for families this Christmas, and I’m riding to work on a bike.

I’m not a “f***ing cyclist”. I’m Gabriel’s daddy, on a bike, and he’s expecting me home around 6pm for bathtime.

I’m not a “f***ing cyclist”. I’m Scott’s mate, on a bike.

I’m not a “f***ing cyclist”. I’m Rochelle’s workmate and friend and she’s expecting me on a call at 8:30 a.m.

I’m not a “f***ing cyclist”. I’m Liz’s little boy – all grown up, but still a skinned-knee five-year-old pedaling a yellow Star Flyer.

And you’re not a “motorist”. You are someone in a car. Someone I haven’t met yet, with your own universe of people who laugh when you’re around, and you rode a bike to school, and you’re trying to remember your shopping list, and you’re thinking about going for a run, and you need to check your mirror before you open your door, in case the guy who plays guitar in the office band is riding past you on a bike.

Say “hi”, next time. My name’s Stuart.

PS Look out for bikes on December 5th. Details to follow.

Originally posted on Greg’s blog (and modified slightly.)

General opinion is extremely positive:

Engadget: “we think the company has set the gold standard for Android tablets”
Gizmodo: “A limited look at the Galaxy Tab showed me all I needed to see: this thing is great”
Tim Bray: “Showing off Android is part of my job and this will help me do my job better.”
SlashGear: “we’re very impressed by Samsung’s first attempt at an Android slate”
TechRadar: “The screen size, hand-friendliness and simple ease of operation make this a potentially awesome gadget – now we just need to find out the price to see if it’s going to be really popular”

Article by the New York Times implying that Google’s search algorithm should be subject to government regulation. In response, Danny Sullivan gives a great response explaining why the New York Times needs government regulation.

New York Times:

When Google was a pure search engine, it was easy to appear agnostic about search results, with no reason to play favorites with one Web site or another. But as Google has branched out into online services from maps and videos to comparison shopping, it has acquired pecuniary incentives to favor its own over rivals.

Danny Sullivan:

When the New York Times was a pure newspaper, it was easy to appear agnostic about its editorial coverage, with no reason to play favorites with one business or another. But as the New York Times has branched out, making investments in external companies, it has acquired pecuniary [that means financial, by the way] incentives to favor those over rivals.

Crappy US Reporting…
This morning, Google posted a blog post with the incorrect title: “Google Voice for everyone.” This should have been: “Google Voice for everyone in the US” but this is how the post was reported in the US:

I wrote a long post trying to figure out the permutations for the final games in Group F and how they related to the final standings. But as John Lewis pointed out via Twitter, my maths was completely wrong, so I removed the post.

There is still a chance that NZ and Italy could end up on even points in the table, so the following info is still relevant…

According to FIFA, in the event of two or more teams finishing on equal points, the ranking will be determined based on:

1. greatest number of points in all group matches;
2. goal difference in all group matches;
3. greatest number of goals scored in all group matches;
4. greatest number of points in matches between tied teams;
5. goal difference in matches between tied teams;
6. greatest number of goals scored in matches between tied teams;
7. drawing of lots by the FIFA Organising Committee.

The two remaining Group F matches are to be played at exactly the same time on Friday, 25th June at 2am. I may have to get a second TV set up so that I can watch both games at the same time!

Google search suggestions for: “What happens if”

An HTPC is a Home Theatre PC. I’m assuming you know what the ‘PC’ stands for, but in this case it doesn’t necessarily mean a Windows computer—it could also be a Mac or Linux variant too. A geek will tell you that they love their HTPC and that it never fails and that it revolutionised the way they watch TV or videos or photos, etc.

But what they won’t tell you is the World Of Hurt (WOH) that you need to be prepared to endure just to get it running perfectly. And even then, when you think you have it running perfectly, you need to prepare yourself for the WOH for when things go wrong.

And they will go wrong. And they will go wrong at the worst of times, like when your wife is watching the season finale of Desperate Housewives and the computer pops up a warning message, mutes the audio, then freezes just before they get to the climax of the episode. Or when your wife calls you while you’re out because all she wants to do is watch a TV episode that was recorded but she keeps getting a ‘funny message’ on the screen.

The reason why geeks love HTPCs is that it gives them something else to tinker with and it fills them with pride when they see their wife happily watching a recorded TV episode without any skips or stutters. But the reason there are no skips and stutters is because the geek was up until 2am the previous night, updating graphics card drivers to a beta release which fixed an issue that only occurred when watching a particular TV channel because the broadcast encoding differed slightly from the other channels.

And when the geek’s wife changes channels and sees the channel lineup displayed nicely on the screen, the geek grins at his wife while proudly stating how cool it is to have the full EPG available. Of course the wife doesn’t understand: shouldn’t it just be that way? Unfortunately our heroic geek had spent the previous two nights hacking away at an open-source program which scrapes TV program information off various websites, compiles it all into nice confusing XML file, and then parses it into a readable format for display on your screen. The geek even went to the effort of scouring the Internet for the TV channel icons so that it looks just like MySky or Tivo.

In case you haven’t seen the problem yet: if you’re not a geek and you’re not prepared for the WOH enduring endless nights hacking away at drivers, software, hardware… just to come up with something that will probably/maybe/sometimes reliably work, you should give up now and buy a MySky or Tivo.

Our copy of Hungry Caterpillar has crayon scribblings and torn pages, but I’d rather read from this to my daughter over a digital version.

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Xero are moving to a flexible pricing strategy with plans for small, medium, and large businesses.

Current Xero customers will remain on the Medium plan but will get multi-currency for free, which is now only in the Large plan.