Archives for May 2008

To protect threatened dolphins

Last year I posted: both Hector’s and Maui’s Dolphin face imminent extinction. We can submit comments by 24 October 2007 that may give them a small chance. [Via : Extinctions: Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins — Oddity 59.] Now they have that chance. Radio New Zealand News reports Tough new measures to protect dolphins: The Government […]

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Less smoke in NZ

It rained for days and days on end last week. One day I scurried in to the Post Office, past a bunch of people hovering in nearby doorways, smoking their cigarettes. I thought about how glad I was that most places are now smokefree by law inside, but how the covered areas of footpaths are […]

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Ways to involve kids in IT careers

According to a post on the Webgrrls mailing list, the Dominion Post had an article on 26 May 2008 which read “Pupils being ‘put off’ computing”. Futureintech would like to turn that around and inspire kids to continue in the IT field. They say in their email: Female IT Graduates needed Are you under 30 […]

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Plain English awards open in New Zealand

Be in folks! 2008 WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Awards: Entries are now open for the 2008 WriteMark New Zealand Plain English Awards! Kevin Milne (of Fair Go) will host the awards at a gala dinner on Thursday, 11 September at Shed 5 on Wellington’s waterfront. This will be the third annual presentation of a […]

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How to handle Safari’s Tabs

Did you know that in Apple Safari you can combine windows into Tabs, move Tabs around, break them out into separate windows? I subscribe to the Apple Quick Tip of the Week podcast. These are short, focussed Tips presented by Apple employees, with very professional production qualities. The Tips are often interesting and useful, but […]

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Shift the Dock

MacTips.org (no relation to my own MacTips, established more than 6 years ago 🙂 ) has many diverse tips for Mac users, often for the more advanced and more adventurous. Today though they have a good, solid, practical Dock tip: MacTips user Alex Hwang submitted an alternative way to move the Dock around. Hold down […]

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Banks and anti-usability

I don’t know how they do it in other places, but in New Zealand bank accounts have numbers like this: xx-yyyy-zzzzzzz-00. See that 2-digit suffix in the top part of the screenshot? The suffix may be 50 or 00 or maybe 51 or some other two-digit number. That’s the number the bank issues when you […]

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New Zealand gardens no home for native birds

From time to time I grab photos of birds in or near our garden, such as the Eastern Rosella that visited briefly last week (The red Rosella). Some birds I’ve had no success with, such as the silvereyes and waxeyes, and the fantails, because they are small and very quick, but they are around. We […]

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Presentation Zen comes to Webstock

Sometime over the summer I read a couple of books that made a huge change in my approach to my writing, my tutorials, and other presentations I offer. One book was by Garr Reynolds: Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter). I used the techniques he explained when I created […]

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NZ Science website

I was at Wellington airport tonight and spotted a display advertising Science New Zealand: … Science New Zealand. It represents the nine Crown Research Institutes: the power of 4,400 people advancing ideas and delivering results for New Zealand through excellent science and technology. The site has a multitude of RSS feeds and all kinds of […]

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Xero for iPhone and iPod touch

I now manage my invoices and general accounting with Xero Online. It’s still all new, and I’m still blundering around a little, but it’s working nicely. One thing I have to get used to is that I can keep track of client invoices from any computer. I still have an old habit of sprinkling around […]

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Does your website have too much ‘guff’?

Welcome to this blog post. You may also be interested in … Aaargh! Rewind! Does your website have too much ‘guff’? Rachel McAlpine wrote about visiting a friend in the middle of major hospital renovations, and points out how websites should be: [the guide] did not say Welcome to Wellington Hospital. He did not spout […]

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