Been using the latest Joomla beta release for my sporadic blogs, but have finally decided to make the move to wordpress.
Major reason was a number of articles pointing to indications that using dedicated blogging software rather than Content Management Software helps improve your searcj rankings (can’t remember where I read that but will try and track it down).
So install went fine, migrated my content (manually, lucky there weren;t that many posts).
Custom theme next, then maybe some time spent lookign for toys to add…
As I have mentioned before, working in an office with a large contingent of Mac users is a whole new experience.
Its the subtle things that take a while to notice, but really bring home how different Mac users really are to the rest of us (I justify the rest of us being the windows majority as Apple only has 5% market share - something that is fun to mention to a Mac users during a conversation).
As a Windows user the first thing I always do on a new PC (after downloading a couple of hundred MB of security patches from Microsoft and installing firefox of course) is change the default start page for Internet Explorer to something other than the microsoft.com webpage. Mac users never seem to change the default page they leave it pointing to Apple.com.
Taking this one step further they don’t just wait for apple.com to finish loading and enter their detsination url, or stop it loading like I do, they wait for it to load, have a quick peek to see if anything new has appeared and then carry on their task.
Now while this must be analytics hell for the Apple.com online marketing guys, think about the amount of messaging that this enables Apple to do, and probably is one of the reason they refresh the content of their front page so often.
You should have heard the office when they put the new iPods up on the frontpage the other day, talk about rapture…..
Moving from a company that only had Windows users to a company with a large contingent of Mac users has been an experience, often akin to a religious war.
Apart from the fact that I have sworn at my windows PC at least once a day for the many years I have worked (my orginal PC had a green screen and then I upgraded to amber) and I have yet to hear the Mac guys swear at theirs (although the constant referal to their baby is disconcerting) they are actually right about MIcrosoft vs Apple design as highlighted in the video below.
We succumbed to the exercise generation and brought a reticulated excercycle the other day, way more comfortable compared to the upright veriosn I must say, will be interesting to see if we will actually use it more.
Anyway we decided that a Television in the vicinity of the exercycle will increase our usage in the evenings. The exercycle is in the same room as our PC, which has a 19 inch LCD monitor so logically I thought TV tuner card in the POC was the best option to go.
Price comparisons are favourable with a tuner card being in the $100-$200 range compared to a 20inch LCD TV in $750-$850 range, so one for the TV tuner card
But the TV is a pop into the shop and hang it on the wall option, versus the rip open the PC cover, insert card, install drivers, hope and pray option (buy a Mac I hear my Xero colleagues say), so one for the TV.
We currently have a Hard Disk recorder in the lounge (one of our most used toys) and love the on demand of pre-recordered programs, not to mention DVD movies. The TV tuner card can record to the PC Hard disk, the TV requires a seperate unit, one for the TV tuner card.
When we get to the usability arguement the TV wins hands down, push the remote and it goes. The PC will require eductation for the better half, mmmm. One for the TV.
So overall a decision between ease of use vs cost and functionality. The TV will win out, only because it will be less hassle that the PC. If it was just me using it the Tv tuner card would probably win.
Makes you think if somebody created a set-top style device for my PC they would solve both my problems and get my business.
Well National Bank has really pee’d me off today.
I have had my credit cards with BNZ for a long while, and in a fit of financial cleaning I decided to focus on reducing my bank fees. I contacted BNZ ato see what they could do on this front, given our rather generous expenditure on these cards. Nothing was the response so time to move.
After searching consumer and sorted I decided that National Bank had the best fees and a cash back rewards offer. So after signing up (and of course faxing paper proof of income and who I was because you can’t forge faxes like you can electronic details 
a nice shiny new card arrived in the mail.
After a month of spending I wanted to download my transactions so I went to sign up to internet banking.
Sorry sir but you have to have a savings account with us to use internet banking, the cheapest being $2 a month in fees. Oh and by the way sir you will have to pay $1 a month to use internet banking.
But dear National Bank I have my business accounts with you, and I already pay $1 a month to use Internet banking for those accounts. Can’t I just add my personal credit card to that?
No sir, sorry that is not possible.
So out of the green bank it was, across the road and into th blue bank (isn’t ANZ owned by National Bank or vice versa now).
ANZ said certainly sir, we ave the same low fee for credit cards (no cash back rewards though), you don’t need a savings account to use internet banking and internet banking is free.
Well at least ANZ National are wiorking hard at brand differentiatiion.
When I was young I remember going to my cousins house in Auckland.
He was a couple of years older than me and had jus got a Spectrum ZX 81 (at least I think it was a ZX81) for christmas.
I thought this thing was the coolest thing I had seen.
You could play games, write some code and it used a tape (cassette) drive. The even cooler thing was the tape drive was a standard cassette player so you could play music on it as well.
Well things haven’t really chnaged as I still keep finding othher people with cool technologies and toys, so I thought I might as well blub about them here.
Of course you will then ask why ZX84.com not ZX81.com, well after 25 odd years I couldn;t really remember the number after the ZX and of course I also just went ahead and brought the domain name rather than do any research, but then for those that know me they won’t be suprised by this.
