The Piano Two years ago, an eccentric explorer John Blashford-Snell delivered a baby grand to a remote Amazonian tribe who’d had little contact with ‘civilisation’. Late last month, he and a team returned to tune it – and to see if they had learned to play it. Andrew Brown, one of the tuners on the expedition, reveals what they found.
Category: personal
MBA!
After leaving Year 12 (that is the final year of high school and matriculation in South Australia) my plan was to work fulltime and study accountancy parttime. A few lectures into the degree, I soon learnt I didn’t have the required attention to detail of an accountant. I dropped out. This has to be the stupidest decision I have ever made.
Fast forward to 1993. I signed on to the MBA (Technology Management) course through APESMA, and have completed 8 out of the required 12 subjects. In 1997 after completing 6 subjects, I received a Post Graduate Diploma in Technology Management from Deakin University.
The aim in 2003 is to complete the final 4 subjects pronto to get the qualification. This, along with other things going on at Adobe, will certainly make next year a very busy year. If you have a technical background, and feel the need to round out your managerial knowledge (theory, not practical of course!) and qualifications – I can highly recommend the APESMA program.
MINI
Another weekend, more time in the MINI Cooper S. Sydney MINI Cooper S Meet 24 Nov 02
MINI Meet
What I get up to now on the weekend: Sydney MINI Cooper S Meet 10 Nov 02
A cognitive breakthrough. Instead of coding a particular query/transform of XML, I wrote an XSLT and transformed the XML. Saved many lines of coding and now understand “Why XSLT?”
My New MINI!
MINI
I picked her up two hours ago. She’s pretty, dark green, and I think I am in love. Oh, yes, I am talking about the MINI Cooper S…
MINI
Getting a MINI Cooper S next week. Woohoo! Its a little sad to see the Honda Civic VTiR go, but I am sure it will serve the next driver well.
DNS issues still up in the air, but getting closer to being resolved. Just waiting for the nickhodge.com IP change to propogate out onto the Internet and resolve to the new server. Then I’ll transfer to the appropriate DNS host.
Thoughts
Something I remember thinking, if not saying, was that the whole NeXT heritage of easier software development tools was going to give Apple a significant competitive advantage with software. We are seeing a plethora of MacOS X based “digital hub” (or digital lifestyle) mini-applications tied to a web-services style backed (.mac) I am sure all of these, being MacOS X native, use the Cocoa (aliasYellow Box, alias NeXT frameworks) environment. The key to the volume of application production.
Murphy’s Wireless Law
Murphy’s Law. The part of the Melbourne Qantas Club that has good signal strength for Skynetglobal is the part without power.
Travel
Now in Sydney, watching the sun rise over the CBD. Thanks to Qantas, got a late-stage upgrade to business class. Watched A Beautiful Mind, and slept for about 10 hours on the flight. In Sydney for all of three hours, then off to Auckland, New Zealand.
Now in cool, wintery Auckland, New Zealand. Some 30 hours after leaving San Jose, California
As my hosting provider is adding some level of Java support soon, and its a language that is becoming increasingly “hip” at Adobe, I’ve installed Tomcat 4.0 ready to rock and roll. The last time I seriously touched Java was back in my Apple days with WebObjects 4.0. It feels like getting back into a pair of comfortable shoes.