If you use Microsoft 365 Business Premium, you’ve probably discovered that it quietly bundles most of the features of Azure AD Premium P1. It is fantastic value compared to E3/E5 so hang on to it as long as you can (up to 300 users…)! Notably, it includes group-based assignment of Enterprise Applications — a really handy feature if you’re provisioning SAML/OIDC apps via Entra and want clean…
Embedded within Microsoft’s amusingly-named Introduction to vibe coding course is a series of ‘effective prompts’ which round to, uh, describing what you are actually trying to do by being specific. Love a new resource to share with teams to support the idea that describing behaviours is Good, Actually. The machines that have learned from our language are also quite good at modelling how we might…
Following the setup instructions from Ruby / mise-en-place I hit a brief snag. It references asdf-ruby, but didn’t appear to work. Bundler errors refer to: ~/.local/share/mise/plugins/ruby/rubygems-plugin/rubygems_plugin.rb This file seems to have an asdf reference that isn’t satisfied when using mise to install Ruby. The plugin appears to be trying to reshim asdf but doesn’t succeed as asdf isn’t…
Using WSL and can’t access some internal sites? It could be because you’ve copy pasted some bad resolver config. Or, you might have made changes that don’t survive reboots. Microsoft’s default configuration seems to not apply in all circumstances, and some Stack Overflow advice suggests just putting Google’s 8.8.8.8 into /etc/resolvers.conf , which also requires elevated permissions. In any case,…
Go and enjoy Zarar Siddiqi’s excellent new-year piece, The size of your backlog is inversely proportional to how often you talk to customers . His thesis holds true in more contexts than government folks like to admit. He also has orthodox (read: scathing) views on hifi design upfront, voiced but not heard by most government programs. In a recent large gov program, fairly indicative of lots of…
Hello, fictive reader. Blog’s been quiet for years. Working in government has significant chilling effects on public speech, but suffice to say Canberra has been an (unexpected) blessing in terms of work. We’ve been here about seven years and it’s been a great journey in design, tech, climate – and consultancy scale-ups. This year looks a bit different. I finished up at Pragma and am taking the…
A while back I stumbled across a FootprintDNS host on a few Office 365 services, and wondered what it was up to. A few others were wondering the same. There didn’t seem to be an answer out there. We’ve been looking into using Azure Traffic Manager for load balancing and in particular their Real User Monitoring feature . In the process of auditing how this works (noting it uses client-side JS), it…
Finally got around to playing with LetsEncrypt this evening. I was naively copy-pastaing my way through a tutorial when I ran up against this error. Failed authorization procedure. www.example.com (tls-sni-01): urn:acme:error:tls :: The server experienced a TLS error during domain verification :: Failed to connect to 104.27.178.157:443 for TLS-SNI-01 challenge, example.com (tls-sni-01):…
Need to see what’s running? I think Optimizely might’ve done something to make this tricker as an optional project setting, but it’s handy to be able to debug what’s running and possible splits. Object . keys ( optimizely . allExperiments ). map ( function ( item ){ item = optimizely . allExperiments [ item ]; if ( ! item . enabled ) return ; console . log ([ item . name , ' \n ' , item .…
Our garage remote died recently. We subbed the battery, and nothing improved. Stood closer, nothing improved. Sporadic successes were very-much outweighed by failures. The base station/”receiver” (it’s actually a tranceiver, I think? If you want to learn more about this than I did, KeyLoq would be a good starting point) in our little block of four has been known to have some problems, but the…
Not that this blog is used for much, but I hit this while trying to add a file under .well-known and realising I couldn’t get the directory to show up. As this is hosted on Github Pages (and I hadn’t published for ~2 years), I wondered if adding a static file wasn’t enough to trigger a publish. Turns out GH Pages is fine, the issue’s how Jekyll handles (or doesn’t) . prefixed files/dirs. The…
First update in quite a while… but worth noting this blog is now powered by Jekyll after a pretty bad run of security things with WordPress (my fault: not keeping it up to date, their fault: security holes every other day). Good news is everything is static and Github Pages hosted now. Comments have gone to Disqus (for better or worse), and analytics stays on GA (I just upgraded their circa 2007…
A friend sent this Mobify article my way with a one-liner comment: “Sprites over Data URIs?” True to Bettridge’s law of headlines, here’s my reaction. No. :P Their test image is a 17.6KB file. If you’re serving up any files that big you’ve already lost (see also, our jumbo sprites on mastheads). See also the recommendation at the end of the post to “use data URIs in exactly the right way” – which,…
We currently have a strong dependency on SSI at work and were recently offered a nicely-specc’d Xserve that was being retired for use as an in-house preview server. I’ve got my doubts about SSI , but we have literally thousands of templates that require it for includes. It also functions in subtly different ways to PHP, and we’re not about to embark on any bulk conversions of our front-end…
JSON is nice to read. It’s also nice when parsers are forgiving, but here we are. I just spent ages chasing [what I thought was] a bug using $.getJSON in IE7 that turned out to be an issue with something else entirely. If you’re using $(el).css or .animate with JSON, make sure you’ve terminated all items correctly and don’t have any hanging commas left over: This case sent me particularly crazy as…
On “retina”/high DPI: SVG sprites are a beautiful thing. Make the canvas size work at a device ratio of 1, and capable user agents (read: mobile Safari) will do the hard work for you. Don’t create a double-resolution sprite, because you’ll need to manually re-declare all your sizing and positioning, which is no fun. Opera supports SVG but doesn’t bother to scale it. In most cases, this means a…
[Visit] Telescopic Text . Click [[any of] the [first [three]]] words. (My formatting will make sense when you start using it)
Australia Post provide a nice convenient CSV of all of their postcode data, and then proceed to make the license quite prohibitive. Commercial use? No. Open source modification? No. Redistribution? Nope. This is really annoying, but thankfully there’s another option. For your bookmarking pleasure, enter https://github.com/joahua/AusPostcode . It’s a CC-BY licensed version of suburb/postcode data…
A particularly timely email went around the office this morning about WebGL and 3D animation. All in all, it’s pretty depressing for us – but we’re on 2.5-3 year old hardware in some cases so the next generation won’t have the same issues. In fact, today’s mobile devices would probably demolish the desktops of yesteryear. From: Sam Sent: Thursday, 10 November 2011 9:02 AM To: Web Developers…
The latest Android SDK doesn’t ship with Android Debug Bridge (ADB) included. Instead, you need to add it by installing the “Android SDK Platform-tools” package via the Android SDK Manager. Once you’ve done this, it will be available under {path to Android}/android-sdk/platform-tools/ instead of its old location under android-sdk/tools/ Simple!
To some developers, the title of this post might well read “Unicorns exist! News at 11!”. Exciting stuff, but not widely known in my experience. Not that unicorns exist in my experience. I digress. The colours below are the palette generated with indexed transparency (left) vs. true alpha transparency (right) in a 256 colour 8 bit PNG by a lovely piece of software called Fireworks. Let me explain.…
If you’ve made a screen recording using Quicktime X, you’ll likely have difficulty importing it into Final Cut Pro 7 because of its variable framerate. The easiest way to resolve this is to take the file through Compressor first – ProRes 422 Progressive will be great. Frustrating, but whatever.
Dear RTA, I know you just spent a lot of money finding out exactly how unpopular you are – now I’m telling you why. This one’s on the house. Think of this as an (il)logic puzzle. Want to renew? Go get a green slip. Got a greenslip? Go get another safety check. Want to just give us money and do the others out of order? Nope, sorry, you can’t do that. N/A in the Safety Check column actually means…
DUNS numbers (Duns and Bradstreet) are needed for a few things business-related but you run your own business you’ve probably never got around to applying for one. If you’ve registered a company in Australia, chances are you’ve already got a DUNS number. Surprising, huh? Search for your business and a DUNS number will be available top left, just above the company name or ABN. I discovered this…
MAMP is a good way to setup a low-maintenance dev environment for OS X in very little time, but its handling of MySQL is quite annoying. When you suspend/sleep a computer, often when you resume MAMP has lost track of the MySQL instance it started and can no longer connect to it. Not sure if this is a problem with the MySQL build being used, but as the problem has existed since 2009, I don’t have…
ClubsAustralia and the AHA want to apply pressure to the federal government not to pass legislation restricting access to gambling . They reckon there’s support for the madness that is gambling-funded “community activities” in this country, and have setup a GetUp!-esque “message your MP” form. Instead, use their form to send the government the OPPOSITE message! Here’s what I said (more or less…
OS X is a bit retarded, but what the rest of the world thinks Home / End should do, Mac users can achieve by pressing Shift + Home / Shift + End or Control + A / Control + E respectively. I’m talking about how to move your cursor to the beginning or end of a line, of course! If you’re on one of those special midget keyboards (a laptop?) that lacks useful buttons like Home and End, you’re probably…
Or will it? If you’re setting up a new computer and have Authorized This Computer (Store -> Authorize This Computer) already, it seems weird that iTunes won’t let you just sync your apps from the device. For whatever reason, you ALSO need to “Transfer Purchases from” the iPhone or iPod in question. Crazy huh? Nevertheless, it’s actually pretty straightforward.
On running Firefox 4 for the first time I was shocked to mouseover a link and apparently not be able to see where I was going. Had they banished the status bar? Of course, everyone’s just playing catchup to Chrome’s UI, and its status bar isn’t really a bar at all – it just appears as and when it’s needed. Perfect. The way it's meant to happen! As and when typically just means “right before you…
After spending a day and a bit last week hacking together a simple mailer (with merge capabilities) for Amazon’s Simple Email Service (it’s really pretty simple) it struck me that there must be a better way to do this. I toyed with launching a web app for others to use to simply accomplish the same thing, but figured someone, somewhere, must’ve already done something substantially similar. Turns…
To install Yii for the first time, the README suggests you should run the following command: yiic webapp ..\testdrive Unfortunately, for most users this will result in an error along the lines of “ bash: ./yiic: Permission denied ” unless you first make yiic executable. The easiest way to do this is to run the following command in your framework directory: chmod +x yiic The x simply means…
There’s no native way to do this – and I’ll spare you the lecture about editing delivery formats , because, let’s face it, you’re reading this because you’re probably stuck with one. You can stuff around with AviSynth scripts, or you can give up and transcode using Handbrake or another 3rd party tool – or you can be clever about it and use a remuxing tool that’s much faster and better quality.…
This video comes with a mature content warning, but you probably knew that from the subject line. (Begins with 15 second ad) The Aokigahara Forest is the most popular site for suicides in Japan. After the novel Kuroi Jukai was published, in which a young lover commits suicide in the forest, people started taking their own lives there at a rate of 50 to 100 deaths a year. The site holds so many…
Short version: Don’t do it, it’s a bad idea, host it yourself if you’re serious about business video online, host it on YouTube if you don’t yet have the resources to. Vimeo is an amazing service. Their high quality, long format video is a great choice for people publishing creative content online, and the general awfulness of competitor YouTube’s embedding options (and lack of any premium plan)…
Just got an “Unable to Purchase” error while updating a bunch of different apps on my iPhone using the App Store. It didn’t affect the actual upgrade, but the error appeared twice before I entered my iTunes password – after a quick search it seems the problem is related to changed system times. I hadn’t attempted an update since before daylight savings started here three days ago, so I’m assuming…
Here are some teardown instructions/destructions for opening up Digidesign’s Mbox 2. This little journey took place after the USB port decided it would be a great time to fail, thus rendering the entire device useless. Got to love it when a $2 part breaks a $500 device, huh? Presented with a choice of shipping it off for at least 2 weeks and some probably-not-insignificant freight costs (the…
This was the first time I ever encountered this face-detection feature, and it just so happened Facebook picked a particularly poor photo to introduce it with! Clearly they’ve started using a face-detection algorithm to pinpoint probable candidates for tagging – unfortunately, the algorithm is easily fooled by V for Vendetta masks. The photo in question features four friends and we have no idea…
I heard precisely one person complaining loudly when WordPress 3.0 first released but I’ve hit no snags so far – elegant, painless upgrade on WebFaction (Disclosure: I’ve got an affiliate link in there, 10% of your spend – but I’d recommend them even if you want to strip the link out) which is more than can be said for most web hosts I’ve used over the years. Admittedly I’m not using the most zany…
Just bought a cheapie compact digital (well, next to the Nikons I usually chuck around) to do some low effort filming with and decided to (literally) take it for a drive. Titles and speed are the only changes I’ve made to the footage apart from the fact it’s only PAL widescreen. The camera did okay, but for the slight inability to focus a lot of the time (and forget manual focus, this is a…
Today I had an interesting conversation about business podcasting for a B2B focused small business looking to generate leads and perceived expertise in their area. We chatted a little bit about the tools that were needed and observed that, far from being a big burden, podcasting is relatively low effort while giving an authentic connection with people who consider you an expert in your field.…
Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro Mobile is a piece of software recently released for iPhone/iPod touch that is rather interesting for a number of reasons. I noticed it because it largely overlaps with a product that we’ve been canvassing support for to release on the iPad (and likely still will), but there seems to be a lot more going on here! Firstly, it’s worth noting that this free software is…
I stumbled across quite a visually beautiful commercial today. Its script follows: In the future, one thing is certain. Someone’s going to drive it. Someone’s going to collect it. Someone’s going to lie on it. Sit on it. Sleep on it. Drink too much German beer on it. Someone will sit in front row seats, here, here and here. Someone will land it. Someone will save it. Someone will find it. Then get…
We recently refreshed one of our core product websites, Equip Schools . It hits a fairly complex mix of schools, parents/carers and individual students and we spent a lot of time trying to best articulate how the programme speaks to the varied concerns of each of these groups. The product has three curriculum-driven strands in the form of workshops, publications and software. The software strand…
This weekend Evening Church from St Matthias went away to the Northern Beaches together on a weekend entitled “Division Not Peace”, examining Jesus’ teachings from Luke’s account of his life. The teachings of Jesus were clearly divisive in the Gospels and continue to be so today. Light illuminates darkness. Christ reveals sin. He also pays for it. And is worth following. The unsweetened reality of…
In a retrospective piece in the SMH concerning a new publication out of the University of Melbourne dealing with how media workers responded to and processed last year’s Black Saturday fires, Mallesons IP partner Natalie Hickey writes (among other things) that “It is worth reflecting that a healthy democracy does not need free speech at all costs. Words can wound and information can cause pain.”…
This video goes some way to dispelling that myth. Some of the statistics appear hyperbolic or dubiously verified, and as with much content on YouTube it avoids any form of rigorous referencing, but enough of it is true that it stands regardless.
We signed up for a PayPal account ages ago and never got around to using to process payments (we’ve got a merchant facility with CommBank so there was no great urgency to the situation) – and since setting it up the person responsible has moved on. Our unverified account has never processed a single payment, and yet with the amount of ID they require for something as simple as a contact name…
From Tori Tonight while driving me home, Josh and I stopped at Maccas and bought a chocolate sundae. He asked me whether there are McFlurries in China and I said yes. He was glad, and joked that this isn’t something he’d be willing to give up for Jesus. We laughed, because this isn’t true. We both would give up much more than McDonald’s icecreams for Jesus. I love this boy.
Note to academics. Just read an article that uses the word “situatedness” without any good reason. Stop inventing words when you don’t need to. Especially if you’re in a scarcely established field that already struggles to justify its existence as a unique discipline. Inventing words doesn’t aid your cause – if anything, your weak attempts at establishing a jargon for yourselves serves only to…
Sydney’s covered in a dust storm this morning and everyone’s talking about it. It’s pretty funky coloured and unprecedented in recorded history. Tori says Thank God in her new blog (at least, that’s the blog’s focus :)) – others say more amusing things. Here’s a sample. “”UFO?” – my brother, “no, dust storm” – me. He looked upset.” “[name] proudly welcomes you to Sydney Ranga Day. You can’t see…