Saturday

Today started out fairly normally , until I flooded the kitchen that was. Water was everywhere. Including through my cutlery and cupboards. So everything has had to be rewashed, and the cupboards washed out with bleach, and so-forth. The draws are still wet, I'm hoping they will be dry enough to restock before bed. I really don't want to leave everything out while I'm at the conference. I was planning on listing this blog in the various blog directories around the net today. I guess that will just have to wait. I did register with Globe of Blogs and Blogwise. There wasn't any special reason for picking them to be first, that's just how it happened. Still have to pack, but my heart really isn't in it. Sure I'll get it done before bed, but <shrug> Might write later if I get a chance. Otherwise I'm not sure when I'll next have an opportunity.

Chardonnay

Tired

It's been a long day at work, so there's not much extra-mural stuff to report. I feel pretty tired & reading this before posting I can see I'm not my normal chatty self. Today was Campbell's last day. He kept busy finishing off open issues until the end of the day. It was a sad occasion for him, but he kept sounding positive. We had a few drinks to say goodbye to him. And so it goes. My day was kept busy with administration, getting ready for the conference (making sure I have everything I need), and a meeting to discuss the development projects plan for the rest of the year. Doesn't sound like much, but I'm getting worn out by it. I'll be so glad when it's over and I can do some programming. Sean's doing a sheet that will take 3 or 4 days of solid coding. I'd love to be doing that one. If I wasn't so pre-occupied with the conference I'd probably still have given it to him, but it would have been so nice to have had the option.

For the first time in 7 years

In 1998 I got glandular fever. Before I realised I had it, I had three glasses of chardonnay after work one night. With the illness, my liver couldn't tolerate alcohol & I reacted very badly "Throwing up in the gutter" is how I usually describe it. After I got well, my body remembered the incident and if I as much as held the stuff to my nose I felt ill. So I've been avoiding it ever since. Tonight I had a glass of wine. It was nice. I looked at the bottle & saw it was chardonnay. This means I've finally got over the reaction. It's so nice to have the choice back in my life.

Administration

I had a brief play with webmin tonight. Downloaded it & installed it on a machine inside the firewall. Had a brief play. Not enough study to really judge, but it could be interesting.

Google Sitesearch and more cache

Interesting night struggling with a few options. Well, probably a boring night struggling with a few options, but it kept me amused.

Google Search

I've been playing with the Google Adsense version of their website searching tool. I've seen them all over the web, you get a Google search box on your page and have the choice of searching the current site, or the whole web. The search in PHP-Nuke isn't great, so even before I signed up for Adsense I thought it would be good to incorporate Google search, it wasn't a high priority, but it was there. Then when I signed up for the ad program I discovered that many of these search boxes are actually part of the Adsense program, so webmasters that employ them get something back if someone searches from their site and then selects an advertisement. Wahoo. Count me in. So far I've made a small number of cents in a single click through from my sites. That's right, one click through. Maybe if I put the search boxes up, I'll get people using G to search from my site, and I'll get a second person clicking an ad. Maybe one day I'll actually get my cents earned up into the double digits. Seriously, I wasn't even expecting a single click yet. I'm surprised I got that. Early days yet. If I'm not getting close to having my costs covered by September, then I'll worry. So, I've tried it out, configured it to my taste and put a search box into the page header of the bad.co.nz pages. Another interesting thing is that while I'm not allowed to put Google Ads on a 404 page, I am allowed to put their search box there. <smile>

More on Google Cache

I went back to have another look at the weird search result I mentioned the other day. To recap, someone had got to an error page on 168.co.nz by following a Chinese language link from Google search. So just out of interest I went back tonight & searched Google for this domain. I thought I might find a dozen or so old pages. Wrong. It said "Results 1 - 20 of about 7,010 from 168.co.nz". What have I stumbled on here, an abandoned portal? Then I looked again. This wasn't my Domain. LOL. So I tried my domain 168.net.nz. This was much more believable. 27 pages. I wouldn't have the luck to pick up something potentially that valuable. The content is all (apparently) Chinese. I couldn't duplicate the content, but I wonder is it ethical for me to put up pages of the same name? Oh well, that's a problem for another day.

LOL Left hand, right hand.

Before publishing this entry, I just went to check for typos it using the spell check tool on the Blogspot authors page. It complained that Google wasn't a recognised word. Ha! Blogspot AKA Blogger is owned by Google! Google, Adsense and probably one or two other words I've used are trademarks of Google.com.

Work - Phew

Well I got my presentation slides done ... almost. For the GL presentation I'd previously joined Leonie's slides with mine to make a joint presentation & sent it off to her to see what she thought, she decided that the combined set was far too long & chose to just use my slides. So I cleaned them up, reformatted for the conference and asked her to reword one of them that I wasn't happy with & that was done. David was sick today. I knew that I needed his input for the joint presentation, but couldn't get it. I tried emailing his CompuServe.com account, but mistyped it as "compuserv" (no 'E'). Well, what do you know? There's a sleazy typo-squatter that owns that domain name and likes reading other people's mail. I'll break my rule about giving clickable links. While I was waiting for David to not receive the email, I worked on the third presentation, the one on sales order changes. I got it done, and was just sitting back at my desk; hands on head when David arrived. He decided he liked my slides & has taken them to do a couple of changes to his bit. He'll forward them on to Chris for inclusion in the conference CD-ROM. So all that was left for me to do was to forward the other two to Chris. Typically, I sent him the wrong version of the GL presentation :(. Luckily I was the one that spotted the mistake & got the real version off. Left work at 5 with a clear conscience. Yeehaa!!!!!!!!

Posting by email?

I found this option on blogspot to publish to the blog by email.

Inveterate fiddler with technology that I am, I just had to try it.

Here's a quote that appeared in my in box, so at least I have a little content.

"We must practice the skill of listening instead of speaking, of acknowledging and celebrating difference instead of recoiling from it, of putting ourselves, as squarely as we can, into the experience of others." -- Andre Carothers, Writer and organizational consultant

--

(Added later) Well that was ugly. I think I'll avoid posting by email for now

Working ... Working ... Working

Day Job

I'm feeling disorientated at work this week. The week before last we had consultants and implementors from our international branches in town for a conference. My regular routine was shot as I had to do a couple of presentations and sit in on a few sessions. I expected that. What I didn't expect was that I'd end up sitting in on several extra sessions and be asked during the week to present on a technological "futures" idea for our premier product. That plus my boss was supposed to phone & warn me if a preceeding session was running over time. He often managed to do that. The one time I was really quite annoyed was when I came in from home on the Saturday for my last presentation to find that the previous session was only just getting under way.

Then we have a customer conference coming up next week. So again, more prep. I've been scheduled for 3 presentations, more than any other developer. But I think I'm on-time for getting them done in time. Need to have my slides in by Thursday so they can go on the CD-ROM for the delegates, but I can do it.

Complicating the week, David, the CTO, has come down from the UK for the user conference & his six-monthly catchup with his staff. First thing Monday the team leaders were summoned into the conference room & he announced that he had decided to step down as boss of the software team & concentrate on being CTO for the hardware business. A new "MIS" CTO has been appointed and my boss' position has been disestablished.

So, it's David running around doing the David things, Campbell running around doing the Campbell things, and at the end of the week they both stop being my bosses. I keep thinking about a portion of Jonathon Dimbleby's The Last Governor where towards the time of Hong Kong's hand-over to China when the Chinese had made it clear that new laws passed by the British administration would not carry on, when relationships between the British & the Chinese were at a low ebb, Chris Patton continued with "business as usual" and was hurt that increasingly the Hong Kong Chinese turned towards the mainland. The same mainland that was about to resume control of their island. I feel a bit like those HK Chinese civil servants who had to go through the motions of supporting their outgoing boss while knowing that the real future lies with the new boss.

And the home business?

Nothing much really. Too cabbaged by the day job to be creative. I did sign-up for Amazon's affiliate program though. The way I read, I might as well build links to their books

Relaxation, then?

Ha! Blogging. In a quiet moment I did press the see next blog link on my blog before. It took me to a blog by someone calling herself Falsafah. Her site says "Falsafah means the love and pursuit of wisdom and knowledge. Serenity ; Calmness." I like that sentiment. Good luck with the job search Falsafah.

And that's all from me tonight.

Getting Serious About The Web

Domain Portfolio

I've built up a portfolio of "investment" domain names I've "banked". OK, it isn't much of an investment, because all I'm doing is sitting on them & paying renewal fees. The idea was to turn them into real sites, and do a little business, maybe use them for information and make a little of advertising, in a couple of cases it was just for support of a cause. Some I'm getting serious about turning into domains, as for the rest I've though about my exit strategy.

The idea I've come up with is rather than just abandoning them, or trying to sell a raw name, is to to make them into real "mini-domains". Useful content, a bit of traffic. Then sell them on.

Finding Hosting

So I've experimented with finding some hosting. Now that was a job and a half. There's thousands of little resellers out there all trying to make themselves look like real hosting companies. Complicating the issue I needed to host multiple domains.

After a few nights of staring at hosting offers until I went crosseyed I gave up. I found an interesting site at forums.devshed.com I placed a description of the type of hosting I needed. The little resellers clustered around and placed answers to my queries. This whittled it down to about 20 replies. I then checked each of them against my stated requirements. Most of them were dreamers. They had non-functioning sites, didn't offer all the features I said I needed, or their terms and conditions disallowed what I said I wanted the hosting for. This got it down to a very few sites; then I used "feelings" this got be down to two I felt comfortable about. Eventually I made my decision.

I'm not associated with devshed, just a happy customer of their free service.

Domains

I've started shifting the domains. It's slow work, but each time I do one, it gets easier.

Some little funnies have popped up

• I got a google hit on my main domain for the search term "Albanian Musak." Totally blank look from me, how on earth does my little domain about pacific rats get a hit like that. Google cache to the rescue. I had a random quote dongle on the page, turns out that when the google spider came through, the quote it got served contained exactly that phrase. Won't happen again, I've put rat related quotes in the file it uses. There's a small irony there, "Kiore" is also the name of a town in Albania.
• I also found a 404 on 168.net.nz. When I went to look at the referring page it was Google ('natch), but in Chinese. I asked a Chinese co-worker. He said the search was about AUT, and so was the page in the google cache. He said the page was unusual. It was written using simplified chinese characters, but the wording suggested that the person writing was more at home with traditional Chinese. We then had a conversation about how it's just a transliteration (or to coin a word, transpictoration) and how a simple search/replace could do someting like this. Programmers, huh?

Missed opportunity

I got caught up with some stuff at work today & clean forgot that the local Linux users group had its meeting tonight. I finally remembered at around 6:50 when I was in Broadway standing at the bus stop opposite 277 with 4 supermarket bags of shopping. At the time I was annoyed at myself, I have an interest in virtual servers, the subject of the talk, but I also realised that by the time the perishables were in the fridge and I'd eaten it would be too late to get there. Luckily I've since realised that the virtual servers being talked about are the cluster style, joining many machines into a super computer, not the partition one machine into several virtual slices. Still would have liked to have gone, but never mind.

Ellipsis

Quite a while has elapsed

I'm living in Epsom North, been here 8 months. Had one brief relationship. Right now I'm not meeting anyone, but I'm not really looking either. I don't know, it all seems too hard. I guess I'm settling in well to the single life.

I'm back playing bridge again, this time at the Royle Epsom bridge club. LOL. Getting back to how I used to be before the November 12th event.

Dad

Dad's fading, Mum's soldiering on. There's been a few scares with Dad's health. I don't like to think about it, but I have to accept that one day not too far off he won't be with us. I can't remember when I last said I loved him. Weird. I'm 47 and I don't know if my Dad knows how I feel. I remember a few years back when I gave him a hug and he didn't know how to react.

Michael's coming back from Australia for a week's holiday in a couple of weeks. He'll be staying with Mum & Dad. I don't know if he'll be coming over for their 50th in December.

I'm backdating this a few days because I wanted to set the scene for a couple of recent pages.

A Google Operating System?

I wrote this article in 2005 as part of a Slash Dot discussion "Google Planning Web Browser? ", I've decided to add it in here as part of consolidating significant writings I've done in other forums and have added it here in October 2008. From the 2008 perspective we know that Google did, in fact release their own browser.

The original discussion's header was"John Dvorak has just posted a very interesting, albeit hypothetical, analysis of Google's future directions. Citing the 'unusual' hires of Rob Pike (from Bell labs), Ben Goodger, and Darin Fisher (both from Mozilla) and the acquisition of the gbrowser.com domain, Dvorak speculates that a Firefox based Google browser and Google-OS may soon be coming to a cluster near you."

Rob Pike was the principle author of the Plan-9 operating system and is a world expert on distributed operating systems

---

Let's assume Google is acting rationally

They might want Rob Pike for other reasons, several have been suggested elsewhere in this discussion.

On the other hand, they may actually want him to develop an operating system. That is one of the things he's done before, and one of the things he's well known for.

Why on earth should Google want to develop a new (or highly modified) operating system? What strengths would Dr Pike bring to that project?

Google have a very large number of servers. They won't reveal how many they have, but admit to more than 10,000 servers [baltimoresun.com], another another estimate [tnl.net] suggests between 31 and 158 thousand servers. That's a lot of computing power. Presumably the people at Google are highly interested in getting as much work out of this hardware as they possibly can.

Enter Dr Pike. He's well known for Plan 9 [lucent.com] "The Plan 9 system is based on the concept of distributed computing in a networked, client-server environment. The set of resources available to applications is transparently made accessible everywhere in the distributed system, so that it is irrelevant where the applications are actually running."

I have seen passing references [screamingelectron.org] that Plan 9 is strong on clustering and load balancing. Unfortunately I can't get Google to give me a good citation, so this may be a myth.

Google have a large number of computers, and have hired an expert on writing distributed operating systems. I feel it's likely that they want him to improve the operating environment of their servers, or possibly of the Google appliances they sell.

It doesn't take much thought to realise that Google would be well served by a stripped down operating system that supports the work they do highly efficiently, and supports non-core activities relatively poorly, or even not at all.

OK, let's assume that they are writing an OS for their own internal use. An OS that makes their servers carry out the core business of their company more efficiently. Why should they either sell or give away that operating system?

Spidering, organising, searching, and delivering information is what Google does. Why should they let their competition have access to the tool that lets their 10,000-158,000 computers do their core business better?

Not many facts to back it up in any depth, but my best guess is that whatever it is that Rob Pike does for Google won't be released for a long time, if ever.

Kaukapakapa to Wellsford

Getting going

In the morning I wanted to get going, but neither the custodian nor the owners were anywhere to be seen, so I loaded up the bike and sat down to have a cigarette and a coffee. While I was doing that the owner turned up and I was able to settle my bill.

The muscles are a bit sore, but soon loosened up.

Nightmare on wheels

Ourshop describes the road to Wellsford as "Wellsford, Provincial Highway 16 meanders its way to Helensville." and helpfully adds "Watch out for the logging trucks using this stretch of road." Add monster hills and killer heat to that description and it's pretty good. Yesterday was overcast and while cycling could never be described as a pleasure at my level of fitness, at least it wasn't too bad. Today I was bleeding sweat and needed lots of breaks, but I decided that even when I needed an extra break I'd keep going. 5 km per hour isn't getting me anywhere fast, but at least it's getting me somewhere. Rabbit, tortoise, that kind of thing. About the 5th time I saw her, a policewoman that had been patrolling the road stopped her car and asked me if I was OK. I assured her I was & had plenty of water. I think she was afraid I was near to collapse.

On the other hand, I did allow myself my scheduled breaks. Originally the idea was ride for 90 minutes and then rest for 10. I decided that this was too much, so revised it to ride / walk for 60 minutes then rest for 20, but every time I was due for a rest I kept going until I found a place with shade and somewhere to sit or lie, so probably closer to 70 minutes.

About half an hour out of Wellsford a very nice young lady in the front paddock of her farm said she'd seen me coming in the distance and that I looked completely knackered. She asked if I'd like a dip in their pool. I would have loved to, but as I said to her, if I stopped I didn't think I'd have the strength to get going again. And so I got to Wellsford, turned left to get onto State Highway 1 and headed north. Wellsford is built on a hill and at the top of the hill I looked out over the countryside and decided that although it was only 3 PM I really didn't want to go any further today. There was accommodation up that end of town, but I thought about a tidy little motel I'd see at the end of highway 16, so I turned around and went back.

Rest

This was the right move. I was in a reasonably modern motel, with friendly host and after a swim in their pool and a hot shower I walked down to the shops for some fruit for tomorrow, then to the local bistro bar for a take-away pizza.

Again I slept well

It seemed like a good idea

Editorial note: This posting and the next few days are a reconstruction after the event, I had no net access during this time.

I Really don't want to do this

It all seemed so simple when I went to bed last night. The bike was all loaded, all I had to do was take the drink bottles out of the freezer, put them in the panniers; take the unfrozen bottle out of the fridge and put it on the drink clip then leave.

The reality was different. I kept finding all types of things that I "must do before leaving". I'm planning to ride 120 km, when the longest strip I've ever done before is 30 km, and that only a few times while I was seeing Maria.

Eventually at around 11 AM I decided it was now or never; so it was on the bike, out the driveway and up to the end of the street. Up to now I hadn't made up my mind whoever to take the shorter, but busier State Highway 1 route, or highway 16. I now needed to turn either left or right. I stopped and thought. Eventually I turned left. Still not completely committed, but I was now heading towards highway 16.

Moving Backwards

Before setting out I'd found a list of NZ waypoints including Uretiti at Uniquely NZ. I had set my GPS to Uretiti and as I cycled along it was telling me something I already knew intellectually; I was actually getting further away from my target. The psychological impact of seeing this while on a ride that was to be 4 times as long as my previous longest was pretty devastating.

So it was down Balmoral Rd to Great North Rd, then to Point Chevalier and up the cycle way alongside the motorway. I had my first ride at Henderson and pumped my tyres up as hard as I could. Then after 10 minutes I was moving again. Lunch was chicken and chips from the fish and chip shop in Kumeu and back on the road again. By now the kilometres on the GPS were ticking down and I just kept riding along. Another brief break at Helensville and back on the road again.

Night 1 Kaukapakapa

Around 5 PM I rode into Kaukapakapa, pretty exhausted, so I decided I needed to find a place to sleep soon. The only place to sleep there seems to be the local pub. Problem, there was a sign on the door saying they were closed for the public holidays! I wandered around the back and found the live-in custodian. She confirmed that they were closed, but seeing how tired I was took pity on me and opened a room for me. "I'll let the owner know and you can pay in the morning" she said. How trusting. The room was basic and dinner was a couple of pies & sandwiches from the Caltex station, but it was all I needed. Sleep came easily.

Christmas Day

Early

Woke up my normal time and made sure I had breakfast. Picked up the bike and started moving it outside. While I was doing this I realised that the panniers were unbalanced & the bike wanted to tip over. Worse, it wanted to tip to the right. A Quick re-pack cured that.

Diana phoned and asked if I could pick up some crackers on the way

Travelling

Pretty uneventful, the roads were almost empty. I stopped a few times during the ride to try and get some crackers. Gas station, dairy, convenience store, even a little Asian anything-you-can-think-of store. None of them had any.

Unfortunately I timed my ride badly and just missed the ferry so I was going to be late arriving at Diana's place. I could have left home a bit earlier, but partially it was all the stops to try to get those crackers. I should have kept a better eye on the time.

XMAS

Diana did us proud. The kids loved their presents. Even Cliff seemed to like his Harold toy, once he realised what it was.

Ross phoned during the lunch. It was late evening UK time where they phoned from and young Hampton seemed very sleepy & I was having difficulty understanding him. Mike phoned, but at a more reasonable hour by his clock.

Travelling

Ride home was pretty uneventful. Connected with the ferry and, amazingly for me, I made it up the Parnell hill, well almost. There was a bit more traffic on the roads than earlier, but still very light.

Packing

I'm determined not to make last night's mistake, so everything I need for the trip is more evenly distributed by weight between the panniers. Found a place for the tent between the air mattress and the saddle. I'm so glad I managed to get the mattress on the bike as there was no way I want to sleep on a camping mattress.

Presents Wrapped

Usual December Christmas Eve nightmare. Last minute gift buying on the way home. This time it was little extras for Maia and Milo. I managed to get Mum & Dad something before the panic really set in. After dinner it was wrapping. Of all things I got Mum a garden spade as Diana had had a little whoopsie and broken her old one. I took great delight marking it "Fragile - keep away from daughter". Just as well I did as the wrapping paper kept tearing on me. Then everything had to go on the bike. Luckily the new pannier bags are large capacity. The only difficulty was getting the spade on-board ... It went crosswise over the panniers and clipped on with bungies. All ready for tomorrow's ride.

Begin

Just shy of 25 years ago I left Auckland for Wellington to start a new life. This was as my birth name. Five and a half years ago, I left Wellington and moved to Auckland to start a new life. Still my birth name, but overlaid with a scene name of Kiore. That Kiore's not high on my priorities, but I like the name, so I think I'll keep it. Now once again I am starting over. This time, leaving town isn't an option. The previous times there's been something drawing me to the other end of the journey. This time it would just be running away. I choose not to run. So, here's the raw material for the second incarnation of Kiore. I'm 46. Single, based in Auckland, employed in a great job with a good company. My parents are elderly and I see them reasonably often. Perhaps I could see them more. Perhaps I will be a more dutiful child in the months and years to follow. Currently I'm looking for a new home. A base for my new life. I wonder which of the various options that appear will turn out to be the one for me. I'm intending this blog to be my diary of the changes, the finding of me mark 4, what I am calling 'Kiore mark 2', if I keep that name.