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{ Monthly Archives } February 2009

Buying Dictionaries in Hong Kong

My son is learning Mandarin, so when I went to Hong Kong recently, I asked what I should bring back. His teacher suggested a Mandarin dictionary; it sounded like a good idea to me. Finding one to buy ended up being more of an odyssey than I expected though. The hotel had an English-language Yellow [...]

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2009 02 24 Travel Comments (1)

Domain Registrars?

I’m thinking of registering a couple of domains. GoDaddy annoyed me with their lame Superbowl ads, and their registration system is equally annoying (far too many screens, all with options I have completely zero interest in). Does anyone have recommendations for good basic registrars? What I want is basic .com|.org|.net, as well as .ca (separate [...]

2009 02 23 Technology Comments (16)

Northern Voice 2009

I’m slowly recovering from the whirlwind that was Northern Voice this year (I’m one of the organisers). All our hard work paid off, we had the usual last-minute glitches but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, to make new friends and contacts, to learn new things, to discuss issues they care about, and to have fun. [...]

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2009 02 22 Conference
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Hong Kong Impressions

Tim had a business trip to Hong Kong, and since I’m currently underemployed, I thought I’d tag along. It was only for a couple of days, which is a shame given how much there is to and see in Hong Kong. It was also my first trip. First impressions are that Hong Kong is clean [...]

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2009 02 17 Travel Comments (2)

OpenSolaris Hostname on DHCP

By default, OpenSolaris doesn’t broadcast the hostname on the local network, just the IP address. To rectify this, find out what network interface you have (often nge0) by running ifconfig -a. It’ll be the one with the IP address given by the router (i.e., not 127.0.0.1). Then, as root, edit the file /etc/default/dhcpagent. Find the [...]

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2009 02 17 Technology Comments (0)

Victorian Bushfires

Australians learned so much from the Ash Wednesday bushfires (I was living in Melbourne at the time and still visit as often as I can); there was a sense that although everyone knew bushfires are capricious and dangerous, that there were things to do to mitigate them. That all changed this week. The combination of [...]

2009 02 10 General Comments (2)