Shared today on Twitter

RT @yow_conf: Wake up, wake up, Perth! It’s #yowwest Day 1! Don’t forget to bring your device chargers!


RT @lyynx: #yowwest selfie https://t.co/bAyXhWrJSR


RT @unixbigot: Ladies and Gentlemen, Charge Your Clickers. #yowwest is go.


Andy Weir from @Bankwest talking about why events like #yowwest are important for Aussie tech companies. It’s all about being competitive. https://t.co/16rkXdRhXp


❤️ the enthusiasm of the awesome #yowwest volunteers! https://t.co/mlUgQjIPob


“Nobody is going to save you. It’s up to every organisation to face up to the disruption coming in your industry.” #yowwest


I’m so excited for @Doctor_Astro’s keynote on Mars exploration! (I even dressed up for it especially.) 🚀 #yowwest https://t.co/2yzJM37cue


@cbetta @yow_conf Nobody bothers to read the program! 😂


Why go to Mars? Well, the temp on Venus is about the same as the self-cleaning function on your oven. 😂☀️🔥 @Doctor_Astro #yowwest https://t.co/H1j30do0zd


@webdirections @Doctor_Astro Oh, the Space Geek love is strong in this room!


If you can’t be at #yowwest today, you should follow @unixbigot for a recap of *everything*. (Except his own talk, I hope!)


After two Mars mission failures due to unit conversion errors, NASA now uses metric for everything. 😂#yowwest https://t.co/VsP1VFJKK2


Heh. @Doctor_Astro did recon at Perth Zoo yesterday so she could relate rover sizes to familiar local fauna. #yowwest https://t.co/oi6P8bCVmT


TFW you’re hearing about accuracy of The Martian from a real life astrophysicist. 😲 (@Doctor_Astro says it was mostly good!) #yowwest


Wow. Modern smartphones have way more computing power than rovers, due to intense radiation shielding needed on Mars. #yowwest


Does NASA use Agile? Not really – it’s hard to iterate when your only full test happens as the thing is plummeting to Mars! #yowwest https://t.co/0cTTV6348O


@glasnt It’s an accurate illustration of some of the Agile teams I’ve been on. 😂


@unixbigot They should’ve had it check in on Swarm too. 😂


News flash! If you go to Mars, you’re gonna be a vegetarian. 😁🌽🥔 @Doctor_Astro #yowwest https://t.co/k0EseUFhjw


@betterbomb @Doctor_Astro I know – have read it and seen lots of interviews with author Andy.


IoT doesn’t intrinsically suck – 90% of everything sucks! Short product cycles and fragmentation don’t help though. @unixbigot #yowwest https://t.co/gXFsOM18NR


Sometimes it takes losing 10% of your stock price to motivate a company to put out a security patch. 😲 #yowwest @unixbigot https://t.co/kxLZRqLA3f


Pro tip from @unixbigot: Fing can help you catalog and monitor the devices on your network. https://t.co/FnGFzlPs5C #yowwest


The 5 Ages of IT, according to @unixbigot. Pretty much everything is a computer now. #yowwest https://t.co/K3qdYAXaQ4


RT @MitchPommers: “When everything is a computer, everyone is a sysadmin or no one is” – @unixbigot #yowwest


RT @FakeSamRitchie: “[With IOT] our sysadmin practices are not going to scale, even if we retrain every imminently redundant Uber driver” @…


“If I can give you one bit of advice today: Don’t. Embed. Shell scripts.” @unixbigot #yowwest


Ack! Five months later, and @unclebobmartin is still stalking me at @yow_conf events. 😂 #yowwest https://t.co/AnaaUX47EB


RT @smithcdau: Real time closed captioning of talks at #yowwest #ailive https://t.co/6cHo6CUafX


Great energy from @AshleyAitken as he kicks off his talk on Lean Startup for developers. #yowwest https://t.co/ZWZTT890c9


Incremental innovation improves; disruptive changes the business model; but radical innovation changes the MEANING #yowwest https://t.co/m4J7w2ndG3


997/1000 startups fail – not repeatable, viable, scalable, and customers don’t want! All of which means NO 💰. #yowwest @AshleyAitken https://t.co/Vgws696Anj


The question for startups is not CAN you build it, but SHOULD you. Now why does that advice feel familiar… 😂 @AshleyAitken #yowwest https://t.co/Hvrn7WCYjs


Startups are in Search mode – goal is to find business model. Only then can they evolve into big company in Execution mode. #yowwest https://t.co/sn82Gn6N1l


#1 advice for people working in startups – GET OUT OF THE BUILDING. Preferably close enough to see pupils dilate when you talk! 😳#yowwest


As dev in a Lean startup, don’t focus on scaling and “shiny things”. Instead it’s all about validated learning. #yowwest @AshleyAitken https://t.co/LkulXz9hYD


I liked the Wizard of Oz analogy – shiny front end, but everything behind the curtain is manual and hidden. #yowwest https://t.co/OkAWwPsDIQ


I know from experience what a great teacher @notsolonecoder is, so I’m excited to learn about consistency from her! #yowwest https://t.co/idXkCNOIDJ


@evanderkoogh @bodil @decadentdickens Wrong Katie Bell! You mean @notsolonecoder 😂


Developers like consistency guarantees. It makes your life easier, so Google developed Spanner to handle offload a lot of that. #yowwest https://t.co/jTVgp4JBB1


Strongly amused that this is the slide @notsolonecoder used to represent “The Future”. 😹 #yowwest https://t.co/qjUHVyumEO


Timestamps alone are not enough to guarantee linearisation of your data transactions. Why? Clock drift. #yowwest https://t.co/yOHAhTHC8w


“I’m not a distributed systems expert but I’m gonna show example things we did that made us 💰” @philiplaureano has our attention! #yowwest https://t.co/xzkypnGyqb


“You know who you remind me of?” – @lyynx

I know. I get that a lot. 😂 https://t.co/yE6lOe4rYs


Not just theory – @philiplaureano is showing (dummy) code examples of how Domain achieved consistency in clickstream event data. #yowwest https://t.co/iM6YmV5IRZ


@malcolmsheridan @philiplaureano To be fair, he did admit as much during the talk. It was just an example.


RT @marlousteh: @yow_conf We stuck ours here 😂😂😂 #yowwest #tech #innovation #fun @web_goddess https://t.co/Kbe9uzADke


I thought having two Katie’s was confusing enough! 😂 https://t.co/dgbL7mxDYu


“I don’t care about Docker or Ansible, and I sure as hell don’t care about my Windows Server.” Focus on your core business. @RhysC #yowwest https://t.co/D1VZePCYTv


How to code in the cloud? Don’t just write random little bits in AWS Console and glue together. @RhysC will show us the right way! #yowwest https://t.co/YPXrmLH5JK


Code is happening! @RhysC narrating his recorded real-time demo of creating a new serverless service. #yowwest https://t.co/8tntDW2fUN


GitHub + AWS + Slack = working build server in < 30 minutes! #yowwest @RhysC https://t.co/SNf6x5LNCI


RT @unixbigot: Argh, next slot at #yowwest is another o-my-daughter-oh-my-ducats dilemma. Mad props to the so many great speakers, and AWS…


Rob Ciolli knows his audience – using a Beer example in his talk about Rx in the Real World! #yowwest 🍺 https://t.co/Eppbv31bNx


“What did we think of that? Not much. Let’s try again and be HEAPS more Reactive.” 😂 #yowwest


@Brett_Jay Where can I invest? 😂


Starting to get suspicious that Rob is fishing for sponsorship by @FeralBrewing in his #yowwest tech talk. 😂 https://t.co/NpzqUz3BtM


“@Doctor_Astro puts shit on Mars! How am I supposed to compete with that? ‘I can make a website responsive’?” – @malarkey 😂 #yowwest https://t.co/A5H0EB0P2e


Is it important if a style guide is ugly, as long as it has the information? Andy says YES. Beauty complements functionality. #yowwest https://t.co/WlQIzmiWDo


RT @LukeSleeman: @Malarkey “I ordered British rails style guide … It didn’t arrive on time” 🔥😂 #yowwest


Tweets from #yowwest dropping off as we all stare at the cavalcade of amazing design examples @malarkey runs through… https://t.co/ohxz7zVaKT


Kind of neat that we started and ended the day at #yowwest talking about NASA! https://t.co/OWoso0wHo4


One way of testing font choices: make a simple HTML page with them and check on various devices to determine min/max sizes. #yowwest


RT @unixbigot: I’m seeing an entire room of mostly coders completely rapt at @malarkey’s impassioned keynote about communicating design sty…


Style guides can be a great place to try out shiny new tech like Flex box and grids, without expectation of browser support. #yowwest


@unixbigot EXACTLY. Perfect analogy!


Shopify Polaris – “the best design guide I’ve seen this year.” @malarkey #yowwest https://t.co/odFoiOUWnq


@notsolonecoder Still going??


@notsolonecoder Sweet, be there very soon!!


@Malarkey @yow_conf @SydCSS We’ll miss you!



Important Note

This site features content going all the way back to 2000. The posts you’ll read reflect my views and writing style at the time. While I have gone back to clean up a few of them, I think it’s important not to sanitise too much. This site is a record of who I am and how I’ve grown. Any blog post written years ago may not reflect who I am today, nor how I would write about the same topic today.