Stet » geeky

Victim of my own success

Ria — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:46:30 +0000

After the summer break, I got busy setting up a new eLearning platform for our local university. It was an upgrade from a version I had introduced to a limited group of students last year, and offered lots of features for interactive learning with a sleek interface.

In the last two weeks, my colleagues and

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Pissing in the wind

Ria — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 12:15:45 +0000

I’m halfway through an Outlook training day for which I signed up after Outlook 2010 was introduced at our university over the summer, replacing the previous Groupwise system. I had hoped for a sleek overview of an ultra-efficient workflow, but instead we’re working our way along the toolbar, stopping every now and then to send

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Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’

Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’

Ria — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:20:52 +0000

Keep those wagons rollin’ …

Life is rollin’ on chez les Bacon — school’s almost out for summer, my contract at the university has been extended for another year, baby Didi is up and walking, and we interviewed a woman last night to come help clean for us, which of course meant we spent a

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Don’t believe the hype

Ria — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:22:59 +0000

iPad slips from hype topspot

Now that the brouhaha is beginning to fade, maybe we can take stock of the absurdity of the latest product launch by Apple. For those unable to attend the event in person, there were live blogs galore and even a blow-by-blow retelling of what was happening inside by vloggers refused

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Future proofing

Ria — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 23:07:33 +0000

I’m trying to get my head around joining up various online activities. It’s a challenge, which may be ultimately pointless, but the potentialities of crossover are too inviting.

Current linkups include Squeezebox to and from Flickr, LastFM and Facebook; Stet (this blog) to and from Flickr, LastFM and Twitter, with a pending bug query

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Bummerrrrrr!

Ria — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:37:28 +0000

I happened to pop over to Mininova to get something for the weekend. All my searches came back empty. Then I noticed the banner at the top of the page and clicked on the latest blog post.

It’s a familiar story, and one I’ve followed, all the way back to Napster in ’99. Ahh, happy

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Sibling rivalry 2.0

Ria — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:12:07 +0000

As technology evolves, so do the arguments between siblings. Until recently, we heard outraged voices shrieking

“Mama! She broke my Wookie!”

“Don’t touch my My Little Pony stud farm!”

Things grew quieter when they started squatting in front of our laptops and watching Youtube and playing online games (with obligatory headphones).

Two days ago,

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What does not kill me, makes me stronger

Ria — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:21:45 +0000

After spending a few days in the north of Senegal, I returned to Dakar to find one of my sites had been hacked. Each page of my photoblog, Ria Galleria, had a long list of ads and links above my own photo posts. The ads were all related to travel, which is preferable to zoophilia,

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Blistering bandwidth!

Ria — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:11:17 +0000

I signed up with Sonatel last week and got a phone line installed. The broadband services are predictably very expensive, and I chose the cheapest one, which gives us just 512k downspeed … or that’s what I thought. In fact I had already warned the salesperson that, annual tied contract notwithstanding, if I didn’t get

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Photos in motion

Ria — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 23:53:29 +0000

Here are a couple of examples of a very neat little program called Sqirlz, which makes water-related animations out of photos. In the first example, of Villa Sonsbeek in Arnhem, I tried to capture the slow swell of a breeze-blown lake. I’d give it 5/10.

In the second example, more appropriate for this time of

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