Technology on Nick Perkins Archive

Freedom and challenges – working from home

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:41:55 +1000

March last year saw a big change in my life. I went from being a public servant to working in the private sector. I went from being a leader of a team of around 13 people to working from home by myself, with my boss working from his home and their boss working as part of a larger team in another state. I went from having structure to having freedom. It’s been great and it’s had its challenges.

Human Software Testing

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:09:14 +1000

The last few weeks of my life have been full of tests. Not medical or life changing ones. Software tests. If you aren’t aware by now, I’m a computer programmer by trade. Well I’m called a “Business Analyst/Developer” by my company, but that really just means I look at problems and solve them with code.

I’ve been working on a major project for quite a while now and we are at the point of running through testing scripts to see if there are any major issues with it. I’ve come to love and hate testing since I entered the full time world of software development. On the one hand, there is great satisfaction in running through all the tests to find that there are no errors and that something I created does exactly what it is meant to do. On the other hand, there are the times where I just feel like there is no end to the issues I am finding.

DrupalDownunder 2011

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 23:52:42 +1000

I attended the DrupalDownunder conference which was held in Brisbane last weekend. Work paid for me to go since I have been working on a major Drupal project over the last couple of weeks.

Talking about Drupal and web development in general and attending all these great sessions have really driven home that my passion is in web development and web programming. Most of the development work that I do is in Excel so being able to shift into web development is going to take time and patience.

Facebook stoops to a new low in revenue raising

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 11:31:17 +1000

Update: False alarm folks. Carry on. Apparently it relates to a spam bug in Facebook Pages. Content below is left as a historical reference as to why I should not go off half cocked.

Facebook have done it again. In its attempts to make itself a quick buck it has run roughshod over its users. This time it isn’t about privacy concerns or about claiming in ads that people have used features which they haven’t. This time they are adding links to pages which the page admins have not added and cannot remove.

I need your help – tell Flickr to help block stalkers!

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 11:52:23 +1000

I don’t ask for much but today I need some help. Flickr is a great medium for posting photos and my wife is a major user of it, especially for her art work and outfit photos. Sadly some douche is being a stalker and creating multiple accounts every time she blocks them.

Click the picture to make your voice heard on Get Satisfaction

I’m sure you can imagine that this would make someone feel very uncomfortable. But would you believe that flickr doesn’t have a block by IP Address option? In this day and age where static IP addresses are becoming more prevalent, this one step would help to eliminate her problem. Or at least make it harder for them to continue stalking.

The only way is oAuth!

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:27:34 +1000

A reminder for all those who deal with the Twitter API that the cut off has now passed for the end of Basic Auth access to Twitter. For the non-technical out there, this is where you give an application, or a website, your username and password and it logs into Twitter and does something for you.

From now on, all applications will need to use oAuth. I think this is much more secure as the application or website will direct you to Twitter, who would verify who you are and whether you give approval or not. Twitter will also tell the user who is seeking the authorisation, so as an end user I have a better idea of who gets to know what. Developers of Twitter applications have been moving towards this model for a while now and it was pretty much the de facto standard anyway.

Flashback: National Broadband Network – a quick summary

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:16:44 +1000

In the first of a number of ‘flashbacks’ to my old blog, here is something that is quite topical. Back in April 2009, I wrote on the Federal Government’s plans for a National Broadband network. Quite relevant given the current debate over the Opposition’s plans being announced today.

The Federal Government has announced the winner of the National Broadband Network tender process. Nobody wins! Yay! I’m sure you’re thinking WTF? right about now, so lets get into some of the details.

The future of the Internet in Australia

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:06:34 +1000

Today we have finally seen the plan of the Liberal/National Coalition for Australia’s future when it comes to Internet connectivity. Today we have seen what the Liberal and National Party plan to do in order to take Australia into the Internet future. That is, move back into the past.

The Coalition has announced that Australians will have access to at least wireless with a peak speed of 12mbps. They also propose that the current Hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) network will bring 100mbps speeds to the major centres of Australia. They will also spend money to upgrade exchanges to provide more people with access to ADSL 2+ speaks.