Like any architect, seeing people use the system and what they put out on it is where the pleasure of building comes from. I was debugging some bits the other day and happened upon this movie made by the College of Fine Arts (COFA Digital Media student John Turello). It’s a wonderful movie I can – and I am sure you can - relate to:

You can also watch Monkey Spoon on UNSWTV or on YouTube.

I went to the museum for the Windows 7 launch a few days earlier, but I didn’t explore the museum itself. I just went in for the event and left afterwards, but took note that this was probably something Ed would enjoy (he is a history buff).

We went back over the weekend, and scored a few “big ticket” passes. The big ticket passes let us on board all the ships they have on display – HMAS Onslow (1968), HMAS Vampire (1959), The James Craig (1874), and The HMB Endeavor (1768). (If you have the chance, I recommend a visit.)

Does this have anything to do with software?

I was astounded by the craftsmanship, and amazing hackery that went in to these ships. Not just the ships, but everything from the sinks to the bookshelves to the plate racks. Additionally, the scale of these projects and the building upon of past knowledge was humbling. I also realised that, in general, to do great, large scale things requires great wealth – and apparently a cat of nine tails.

Standing on one of those ships and looking at the dual purpose… everything… was amazing. Everything was thought out. Everything had a purpose. Nothing appeared to be thrown in at the last minute on a whim. If something was done wrong, everyone on board could die. The shear magnitude of these projects, the number of people involved and the cross disciple input it would take to build – let alone invent – one of these ships was simply amazing.

The ones that really got me where the old ones. The 1768 wooden hull ship – the HMB Endeavor – was spectacular. This ship was built with things that mostly don’t exist, navigated with devices that are obsolete and using math that isn’t likely taught anymore.

This is an example of true engineering and hackery. A thing of beauty. And when the power goes out – it still works.

However software and computers are quite new. Designing and building system is often rushed, and the process is not respected. “Do it cheaper, do it faster” is the motto. Quality, for budgetary reasons, is an often an after thought. Yet I can’t help but think we are the ones at the beginning. We are the pre 1768 Endeavors. I wonder if these ships were designed and built with the “do it faster do it cheaper” mentality.

Ships were used to discover new lands and new routes, and software is used to discover new knowledge, understanding, human potential – and, yeah, twitter.

No one will die if web software goes bad, but it will never be as pretty or stable as a tall ship until the process is given a healthy dose of respect – and probably a few hundred years of trial and error.

All pointless rambling aside, if you get a chance, go outside to a museum. There is an amazing amount of unexpected inspiration.

The clips caught my attention because the tech talk they use in the show is so ridiculous that it has to be a joke. There has to be some tech adviser on the show who just feeds the writers absolute crazy talk and chuckles when he / she gets home and watches the show. The best example is the infamous Visual Basic GUI scene:

If you are not in the tech scene, you might not have understood. However, what that second girl said was pretty much just a bunch of words thrown together. It made no sense.

Medical shows I’ve watched in the past at least try to make some sort of sense. They are obviously not accurate, but this would be like a medical show where a doctor says, “Nurse! She needs an open spleen EKG stat! Hand me the ICU so I can IV her tibia! CLEAR!”

It’s been gnawing at me for a few weeks – it’s silly, but it highlights just how dumbed down TV has become (as if it was ever a pinnacle of education).

Instead of whinging about it, I decided to throw together a widget that will help writers of shows that need a bit of tech talk for their characters.

This widget will guarantee that it will contain tech phrases that are 100% phrases that have tech in them. Here is a screen shot if it in use:

You can down load it here – that is if my ssh multi-core load balancer is still working properly.

I found these fun little hobby things called CubeeCraft. They make great desk toys, they are relaxing to build, and they are cheap to make – you just need a printer and some time.

I started making a few, then a few more, and then I thought it would be cool to make one of everyone I know. But it dawned on me that I am not artistic in the slightest.

However, at WebDU 2009 I got a cool little animated head that looks similar to the CubeeCraft style so I decided to make a commemorative WebDU 2009 Rob Rohan Action Figure (my narcissism knows no bounds does it). Since I can’t do everyone else, might as well do myself eh?

For reference, here is my WebDU head:

And here is a photo from the iPhone Web App talk:

Here is my Action figure in all its glory:

However, that didn’t occupy enough of my time so I decided to try to film a commercial in order to entice you into buying my Action figure (which, of course, is not really for sale).

Anyway, so here is the commercial.

Man, I am pathetic.

It was interesting trying to get the blue screen to work (I don’t have iMovie 09 so I couldn’t use that feature). In the end it worked ok.

If for some crazy reason you do want the Rob Rohan WebDU 2009 Commemorative Action Figure, you can download it by clicking the image below – some assembly required.

If you still have time to burn, you can watch some clips of the after filming party (which was really me testing out all the parts to see if I could make the commercial).

I should also probably mention that the presentation and sample code can from the talk are available here, and the audio for the talk can be downloaded here. The feed to all the WebDU 2009 sessions is here.

Since I was doing the rebuild anyway, I decided to just move everything over to EC2 and build an AMI. One of the major benefits of moving to EC2 is: if the server is compromised, or just gets hosed beyond repair, it’s easy to just bring up a new instance and start over.

So far the server is screaming fast compared to the one I was using. The server will likely be much more stable and faster now, but I still have a few sites to move. Apologies if have hit errors in the past, or get any in the next few days.

We’ve been trying to learn strine, and I’ve been trying find some time to learn about footy (if you have any good references, please share). I’ve also been practicing driving on the other side of the road – the police don’t seem to like that much. I think we might hold off on getting a car.

As you might imagine we’ve been busy taking care of all the crazy things one has to do when moving to another country (on top of finishing out or current gigs). If we’ve been a little slow on getting back to you / doing releases / writing letters, that’s why.

Geoff Bowers, Daemon’s Captain, has been an amazingly cool cat. I am humbled that he would go through so much paperwork to hire a couple yanks. Just so it’s on record, we owe him a yardie – or three. On top of Daemon, Geoff also does WebDU, so hopefully I’ll get to go to that next year. WebDU is awesome.

This will be the first time either of us have worked outside of the United States, and we are very excited to give it a go. My wife and I know there will be culture shock, but from what we’ve read, Oz should be a nice fit for us. Hopefully we’ll blend right in.

FarCry is written in ColdFusion, so I’ll be dusting off my cfskills. I’ve been checking out the FarCry codebase on and off in the evening for the past few weeks, and I am excited to be digging into it soon (it’s open source so you can too). I haven’t been able to get my hands dirty yet because of all the goings on, but I have been lurching on the FarCry Google groups list (developer version), and the FarCry community seem like a nice bunch.

Sydney also has a decent sized Chinese population, and a China town so I’ll hopefully get a lot of practice with my Chinese study. We might even be able to take a vacation to China someday since it’s only a 5 hour flight. Wicked.

We are totally rapt.

Need to try a picture:

Hum, it doesn’t look like I can place the images. Oh well, you can’t have it all ;)

(text added in the website – a picture at the bottom of the post wacks out my template)

Tough times are a hot bed of opportunity for invention and ingenuity. They are times in our lives when we get to solve puzzles. Real world puzzles; “How to do more with less”.

I find it is often the most fun when solving a puzzle / problem with hard constraints – don’t you? It is much more fulling, in my opinion, to create a new propulsion engine out of duct tape, two paper clips, and a can of Raid than to have an open checkbook with unlimited funds. I could be off my rocker, but I think if you’re into computers / tinkering you likely have the same bug as I do. So here is my tip:

0. Reuse, Recycle, Renew, Repurpose, Rethink.

The underlying theme for this post is “the fun is in figuring out how to solve problems”. However, to get you started, let me give some examples of things we have done / have been doing on a small scale.

• I needed a few containers to hold parts on my work bench. Instead of going to the store and buying something, I made a few containers out of old floppy disks (something I saw in Make):

• I also repurposed a couple boxes of tea and a cigar box to hold bits of things:

• For entertainment, we’ve done things like create our own board games, go to the library (yeah, those things still exist), go for a walk, and took up trying to garden (which has the added bonus of a bit of food, and less electricity usage).

• My wife, who happens to be very talented, often goes to the thrift store to buy clothes, then takes them apart and uses the fabric to create new clothes of her liking. She still buys stuff at the store when she wants, but for added accessories, or that hard to find blouse – she makes her own just the way she wants it.

• We have started riding our bikes most everywhere. Which happens to be another great area to do a bit of tweaking…

• Instead of buying a bag for my handle bars I repurposed an old first aid kit from our camping gear:

• Instead of buying a “saddle bag” I reused the free bag they gave out at WWDC:

• My last example is “upgrading by downgrading”. I had an old PowerMac G4 which I was using as my “always on” build server. From the sale, I got just enough money to buy a MacMini. The G4 drew a large amount of power (>200 Watts) compared to the mini (~85 Watts). By selling the G4 and getting the Mini not only did I get an arguably better computer, it also uses less power so our electricity bill went down.

Obviously, none of these are things that can be made into tutorials (unless you happened to have gone to WWDC for example), but they are simple examples of simple problems solved without spending any money. When I step back and look at them, I am kind of proud of them in a way. I figured out how to solve my problem without dipping into my pocket book. Best of all, we have a fun time doing it – an added bonus of entertainment while working through problems.

Hopefully these simple examples will inspire you to approach problems with an air of fun, and not just a sigh.

The US was built by people doing insane things with bits of string, paper clips, and slide rulers. We sent some dudes to the moon with the computer power of a Commodore 64. If you can tap into that rush of fun – the rush of solving problems with your mind not your checkbook – you might just start having a lot of fun (oh and save some money too).

Here are some nice sites for inspiration: Make LifeHacker

Gas is about $4.60 a gallon where I live. It has gotten to the point where we don’t drive the car anymore – we just bike around now (we actually used to have 2 cars).

While it’s inconvenient, it’s actually better for us from a health standpoint so we don’t mind very much. We also, luckily, live in a smallish community so using our bikes to get food and such is easier than most. I feel bad for all the SUV owners in LA with the two hour commute.

But even though we have it better than most (and don’t forget, we pay way way less for gas than most of the rest of the world), I would absolutely love to buy one of these babies. Where can I pre order?!

He was a witty guy who could see through “it”.