Wood and Wire

australianscreen ready for launch

I've just removed the password from the beta version of the australianscreen site - a massive new site my company has been working on for the Australian Film Commission. It's fantastic content - a team of curators have been trawling through the archives of the NFSA, ABC, SBS and AIATSIS ...

Bizarre warning dialog

This took me by surprise today, when trying to open a Word file over the network. Actually, it's not the scariest warning I've ever received. I remember trying to change screen resolution in an old beta version of BeOS, and being told that selecting the refresh rate I had chosen may ...

Bring David Hicks home

We just produced this campaign video for Amnesty International Australia. It was a bit of a rush job - we wrote the script on Wednesday, filmed on Thursday, and uploaded to YouTube on Friday - but I think it's come up OK. It was a great job to do. The folks ...

Features are bad…

Who would have thought that an almost complete lack of features could make an application so useful? [WriteRoom](http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/product/writeroom) is a new Mac application that does word processing > For Mac users who enjoy the simplicity of a typewriter, but live in the digital world. WriteRoom is a full screen, distraction free, writing ...

Pure Drop update

I just realised it's been quite a long while since I last wrote about The Pure Drop, despite the fact that it's been the project keeping me busy for most of the last few months. We've been busy filming interviews and performances around Australia by The John Butler Trio, Zulya Kamalova, ...

My small disaster

Something mysterious and bad just happened on my PowerBook. Basically, it looks like a lot of my application preferences have gone missing. Most applications are acting like I have never opened them before. Daily workhorse applications like BBedit and Transmit are welcoming me as a newbie. My dock looks way ...

AIMIA finalists

I've just heard that Australians at Work, a site we built for Film Australia, is a finalist in the Best Learning category of the 12th Annual AIMIA Awards. We're thrilled because it's a site we're particularly proud of — especially from a technical point of view. For a site that is based ...

We’ve got new offices

It's been a hectic week, but we have now moved Ether into new premises. When we first started the company back in 1993 we had offices in the wonderfully bohemian and sadly demised Blackwattle Studios. During the late 1990s Ingrid and I tended to work on-site with clients, so there wasn't ...

Earth Shines - Kerið crater, Iceland

Earth Shines, originally uploaded by pietroizzo. This one is for Jayda Tham and Pete Talbot. I just found this on Flickr. It's what you guys missed when you fell asleep in the back of the car on the way back to Reykjavik and wouldn't wake up to come and look at the ...

Google Earth for MacOS X

Google Earth has just been released as a beta application for MacOS (Tiger only). Oops, there goes the weekend!

New Nick drake group on Flickr

I just started a Nick Drake group on Flickr, since I noticed I had a few photos in my collection that would fit in such a group, and I wondered if anyone else might. Having set it up I was surprised how many images on Flickr had connections with Nick. ...

DreamHost review / testimonial

I've been using US-based DreamHost as a web hosting provider for 3 months now and it has been a uniquely enjoyable experience. I've been building web sites since 1993, and I've used upwards of 20 different hosting companies during that time, so I've experienced most of the things that can go ...

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…

Welcome to the new WordPress 2.0 powered Wood and Wire. Being a glutton for punishment, I decided to simultaneously upgrade my blogging software, change my blog design (using the fabulous, but still a bit beta/dodgy K2 theme), and move to a new web host at the same time as moving offices! Anyway, ...

New Years Day bushfire at Woy Woy

I've just uploaded 42 photos Ingrid took of the New Year's Day bushfires at Woy Woy (NSW Central Coast). We were staying at the family weekender which is just a few hundred metres across the water from the fires at Phegan's Bay. You can see the full set at Flickr. I ...

Words that aren’t in Google

My good friend Moses Aaron is an author and storyteller. In his spare time (which seems to be plentiful) he is a logolept, verbivore, paronomaniac, and logodaedalus. Recently he mentioned to me that he had "tested" Google by searching for several known but very obscure words, but had not received ...

A geek’s xmas

Things I did since I last posted: Got enough sleep for the first time in 2005 Ate too much Hung out with the people I love most Enjoyed air-conditioning (the temperature in Woy Woy where I was staying on xmas eve hit 41°C) Saw The Chronicles of Narnia — for the most part this helped ...

24 Ways to impress your friends

Something I'm enjoying reading at the moment: 24 ways to impress your friends is a sort of geek's advent calendar. Each day there's a new tip covering some of the latest techniques in standards-based (mostly!) web design. All of them are well thought out and well written.

Cronulla - an eyewitness account

Rick Eyre has posted a lucid and detailed eyewitness account of Sunday's riots by Benjamin Amy, a Cronulla resident who was there as a bystander. As a first-hand account from someone outside the media, I think it deserves to be read far and wide.

The difference between a gang and a mob

My last post about the Cronulla riots prompted some soul searching — why was I so much more disturbed by the actions of a violent mob of 5,000 white Australians, than I had been by the violence of 4 Lebanese gang members a week earlier? For me the answers lies not ...

Race Riots in Cronulla

I found the news of the race riots in Cronulla depressing and alarming - yet another symptom of Australia's slow inexorable slide towards a new kind of fascism. Like most Australians, I want to believe that "it couldn't happen here", but it's getting harder to sustain that idea. There's an old ...