EKM

In the spare time I’ve had in Melbourne, I’ve written a small Ajax app called kpassweb to do Kerberos password changes. Configuration on the backend is pretty minimal. As it turned out, the backend PHP Pecl library kadm5 doesn’t work with current versions of Kerberos, so I’ve also written a patch to get that working.

It’s not quite finished, since compiling with the patch still produces a bunch of deprecated symbols from the Zend PHP interface, but it makes it usable.

As a side note, this was all done on my venerable Atom CPU netbook with a whole 8GB of storage, with connectivity snaffled from the Melbourne city library, McDonalds, and over an epically slow cellular connection. I really don’t recommend this.

I woke up this morning in hospital. Long time readers may recall my habit of injuring myself overseas. Yesterday, I went on a wine tour, had a wee snooze and went to find some dinner. I had the flathead fish recommended by the head chef – which was delicious  and incurred the relatively minor problem of getting a fish bone lodged in my throat.

The restaurant staff insisted on calling an ambulance – which then took nearly two hours to arrive. I was shuttled to Alfred Hospital, sat in the waiting room for another hour, and was then ushered to a bed in the emergency room, to be looked at by a doctor, who after pumping an incredibly foul local anaesthetic down my throat, said that he couldn’t see the offending item. An hour later, after some some gentle snoozing, I had my X-rays, which were not helpful. The Ear-Nose-Throat specialist was called who said that it wasn’t life threatening, and would look at it the morning. In the mean time, I slept some more, had CT scan at some unmentionable hour of the morning, followed by being put on a saline drip with a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory in case surgery was needed.

Thankfully it was not. At around 0745, the ENT team turned up, had a peak using the same foul anaesthetic, had a look at the CT scan, then return to spray even more of the same retch inducing drug into my throat to calm my gag reflex, before reaching in with a very long pair of forceps and pulling out the very small bone. All was clear, and I checked out about five minutes later, where upon I took a wrong turn, and walked the 4km back to my hostel.

Touching on my previous post, there’s something about gratifying about being miles from everyone I know, and yet still having a dozen odd people commenting and messaging me to let me know that to know they cared and that they’re thinking of me. That kind of thing almost makes me want to get on a plane back home. But I won’t, I’ve got an interview tomorrow.

My first memory of Melbourne, post immigration and customs (which were, respectively, almost non-existent, and pleasantly short), was the wall of heat outside. With four of sleeping dogging my every step, 30 degree heat, and 27kg of luggage and climate-inappropriate clothing – I took a Taxi to my hostel rather than trying to navigate public transport in my sleep addled state.

The first day is not particularly memorable, except that I managed to secure access to a sim card and my bank account, before returning to the hostel to collapse in a sweaty heap and drift off at the incredibly late hour of 9pm.

Having been here for a little under forty hours, the enormity of what I had done started to finally sink in. I was in a large city that would cheerfully chew me up and spit me out if I didn’t get things together, with no support network, no real concept of how to navigate the city, on limited funds till I managed to find a job – and no-one to talk to.

We often don’t appreciate how much things mean to us until they’re taken away. I’m used to a constant stream of people I know in my life saying hello. From flatmates to work mates, dance partners, fellow team members of sports past and present. And that’s not even including the friends and family that I regularly talk to, hang out with, go drinking with and randomly run into on the street.

If, for some stupid reason, back in Wellington, I had lost my job, my flat, or all my life savings, I would have literally a hundred people I could fall back on while I sorted my life out. Here, in Melbourne – I have one facebook contact, a person I’ve never met, and have only exchanged precursory messages with.

In the exceedingly unlikely event that I fail to find work here in Melbourne, and the money runs out – I have standing offers for jobs in other cities, but that’s not an option until I’m well and truly financially desperate, which I’m not even close to. Finding fellow people to talk to though, that’s going to be the hard bit.

About three months ago, I bought a one way ticket to Melbourne for the 30th of January. I don’t know anyone here, nor have a job lined up, nor have anything pre-arranged except a bank account and a weeks accommodation in a back packers. Heck, I’ve never even been to Australia before.

Why?

Briefly – I’m on the edge of thirty, and I wanted a challenge. I was starting to dread the thought of being forty-five, and wondering where my life had gone, and why I’d never done anything difficult. So, I sold all my stuff – and left.

More to come, later.

My Ignite talk when off without a hitch. A huge thanks to everyone who came to support me and laugh at my lame jokes, and much appreciation to Kristina D.C. Hoeppner for her coaching, feedback, and being my test audience over and over again.

I’ll link to the video on youtube as soon as it’s available.

If anyone considers doing one of these, please don’t underestimate how long it takes to prepare. Two weekends were lost to the preparation of this. Given the opportunity, I could have talked for half an hour. Slicing and compressing all that content into five minutes with a merciless clock ironically takes quite a bit of time.

In one of those sterling examples of where the full implications don’t sink until much later – I volunteered for an Ignite talk about my year of only buying New Zealand made clothing.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I’ll be speaking for exactly five minutes in front of close to five-hundred people at Ignite Wellington 4, at the Paramount Theatre on Tuesday 8 November, 2011. An allegedly fun contest will run from 6pm, and the talks, including yours truly will run from 7:30 pm until approx 9:30 pm.

Do I have five minutes worth of content? Will my somewhat sarcastic baritone become a wavering soprano, or will I simply freeze up on the spot and have to be carted off like Han Solo in carbonite? Register, and come find out! If you don’t, the organisers will put up everything on youtube, and you can watch it that way.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about what makes me happy, and what does not.

Something that makes me unhappy is connectivity.

This is surprising. I live in Wellington. Live here long enough and you won’t be able to go about your daily business without bumping into someone you know. I like that this happens, but the constant barrage of text messages, IRC, Instant messaging, skype, emails, facebook, and who knows what else* has led me to spending evenings and weekends ignoring text messages and leaving everything else turned off.

I think a large chunk of what drives this is the feeling of anxiety that instant text messaging inherently creates. Pre-cellphones, it was a given that if you rang someone, it was entirely possible that the person you wanted to talk to may not be there, and that you would simply have to call back later. If you email someone, it’s a given the recipient may not get around to reading that email for a day or two, and that it may take even longer for them to sort out their life and thoughts out in order to generate a germane reply. Furthermore, email allows a length of reply that can be well thought out and properly phrased to avoid giving offence or the wrong impression.

At the other end of the scale, mobile messaging has forced us into the opposite paradigm. Instant responses are expected, and forced into a length that is practically guaranteed at some point to be misunderstood. Having replied, the likelihood is high that I’ll have completely lost the mental stack of what I was previously working on. Phones are the perfect method to destroy my focus.

So, here’s my rules for communication to keep me sane. Text messaging is to be limited to organisational duties only. If you send me a text message, and it’s general conversation, I’m not going to reply. “Coffee at 3pm?” is fine – “How are you?” will be deleted. Furthermore, IM conversations of any personal significance whatsoever will be limited to people** to which I don’t have to explain myself to.

* Thankfully, I never signed up for twitter, and now I never will.

** If you haven’t known me for at least ten years, you probably aren’t on this list.

I am, at heart, a patriot. Not in the sense that I think that we’re better than everyone else, but in the sense that I want New Zealand to prosper, and be the best that it can be. For the last decade, I have been watching New Zealand circle the drain faster and faster. Every election, I get more despondent that the whichever politicians we elect will faff about, and ultimately achieve nothing more than changing the part of the cliff we drive off. Every year, I think about taking my skills and moving to Australia. I could be paid more. Hell, I could happily make double what I’m on now, and that’s assuming I’m not willing to put up with overtime, or working in the piece of hell-on-earth known as Perth.

But I don’t, because I want to make this country better, and sodding off overseas isn’t going to achieve that.

I came across this video today, which struck a chord with me. It’s a twenty minute speech by Sir Paul Callaghan, where he talks about what drives our economy.

Here’s a few choice quotes to whet your appetite;

“The more tourism, the poorer you get.”

“The biggest export earner in New Zealand is manufacturing, it is bigger than dairy…”

“I’m not interested in 60 billion one offs [mining the national parks] at the cost of all we hold dear.”

If we want a country worth living in, we need to drastically increase the amount of money we spend on research, and actively promote STEM fields in our schools and universities. If we don’t, we will end up a third world country, wondering where our best and brightest went, and why we don’t have the funds to pay for our precious RWC stadiums.

A couple of months ago, I dropped a bit over one hundred dollars for a Goodfella razor handle bundled with a hundred derby blades. Partly this was driven by my compulsion to buy more New Zealand made products, but most because I was fed up with paying $25 for eight small pieces of non-recyclable metal and plastic.

While I would like to consider myself hardcore enough to shave with a straight razor, the reality is that one morning, I’ll be a little too under-caffeinated, and then I’ll get to test out my theories about the lack of an after life. Safety razors are, well, safer.

But are they any good?

Yes.

The members of Badger & Blade would have you believe that shaving with a double edged safety razor will leave you with the face of an appropriately masculine angel. Unfortunately, this is not true. My experience has been that shaving with the razor pictured is better than with the Mach 3 & King of Shave cartridges razors that was I previously using – once you get the hang of it. Use of the safety razor requires patience and attention to detail, such as details of the direction each whisker grows in, and the exact angle of the head against ones skin. I seriously considered reworking my morning routine, just so that I would have caffeine before attempting to shave, as a moments lack of attention with a “safety” razor can lead to a lack of cohesion in ones face.

On the upside, as long as you aren’t doing anything too stupid, when you do slice yourself, it’s usually a small nick, rather than a gaping multi-front opening that could plausibly need stitches. I have at one point, when using a multi blade cartridge razor, opened a gash that did not stop bleeding for an hour. That date did not go well. Suffice to say, I did not get to see that particular woman again. Whereas, despite making the incredibly stupid decision to try out a safety razor for the first time – and thus screw it up rather badly – a bare half hour before meeting someone for dinner earlier this year, I did not bleed all over the table cloth – though a high collar was required to maintain some sense of decorum.

One of the niggling issues I’ve long had with cartridge shaving is that I was prevented from shaving daily. Attempts to shave more often than every two or three days would lead to an ugly looking rash, which looked worse than being unshaven. Some weeks, I would have to specifically plan on which days I would be clean shaven. This could be a problem if I had say, a date on Tuesday, and an important meeting with a client on Wednesday. I have not yet had this problem with the safety razor. This, and the fact that the blades are less than one tenth the price (thirty cents) of the cartridges ($3.12) are the best reasons to switch.

Later – otherwise known as, when I get around to it – I’ll discuss my impressions of the Goodfella razor handle itself.

More Video. Watch this, if you need to chill out some. Recommend playing full screen with the lights off.

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

Originally found on the Daily Grail.