Author: Kris

  • New web-goddess theme!

    I’ve been feeling like the site needed a new lick of paint, so I spent some time today installing and customising a new theme. I used the Björk theme from Anders Norén, who made my previous theme. My logo remains the awesome one that my friend Matt Hinrichs drew for me many years ago. I…

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  • Eighteen years ago, Mr. Snook’s grandmother (“Kathy-Nanny”) moved into a retirement village, and I was gifted one of her many needlepoint tapestries: a tasteful nude reclining with a whippet. If you don’t know much about needlepoint, it generally involves a heavy canvas with a picture printed on it that you then embroider over with slanted…

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  • I’m a big fan of the Finnish design house Marimekko. They’ve been making gorgeous fabric prints and homewares for 70+ years. The only problem is that their stuff can be very, very expensive (especially here in Australia). A few months back though they had a clearance sale, and I picked up a couple meters of…

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  • Craft Room IKEA Hack

    In 2024 we embarked on a pretty major home renovation, and once we were moved back in I spent a lot of time thinking about how I wanted to set up my office. I knew that I wanted a dedicated sewing table where I could have both my sewing machine and overlocker set up, with…

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  • This is old but I only just discovered it: an NPR interview all about EB White and his famous book Charlotte’s Web. This is one of my all-time favourite books, and I can still remember exactly where I was (the babysitter’s house before school) when I read about Charlotte’s death. I sobbed my little heart out.…

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  • I knocked out a quick sewing pattern this week: a new Arkie shirt in some Liberty Tana Lawn I bought in Tokyo back in June. (This is the same pattern I used for the AWS Shirt last December.) I made the biggest size, but it’s fairly roomy and I think I could easily go down…

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  • This is a write-up of a talk I gave at the October 24, 2024 meetup of Sydney Technology Leaders. While it wasn’t recorded so this isn’t an exact transcription, I’ve written out my notes and the information I gave as best I can remember. It also builds on and expands a previous blog post I…

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  • As you probably know if you’ve followed this blog or any of my social media accounts, back in 2018 I worked for Amazon Web Services and I had the idea to sew myself an AWS dress to wear to tech events around the world. It was so popular, my colleagues even made t-shirts and stickers!…

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  • Palia on Mac

    I’ve been casually playing Palia on my Switch for the past couple months. I’d heard it described as a “cozy” game, and I’m all about the cozy. You are a human in a fantasy realm, and you build a little house and farm. You hunt; you craft things; you cook food; you go fishing. There…

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  • Mac mini + duckyPad

    When I handed back my work laptop a few months ago, it occurred to me that I needed a new computer. My 2015 MacBook Air is still going strong but it’s many, many years old, and I knew it would struggle with streaming or playing games. So off I went and merrily started pricing new…

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