2006

Before I started travelling around I handled all of my email from Mozilla Thunderbird on my Desktop PC using POP3. Thunderbird's spam filtering was great at filtering my spam client-side and I was content. But then I sold my PC and started travelling. I quickly switched to using the RoundCube webmail client (I could have used DreamHost's default SquirrelMail but it's ugly as hell) but ran out of time to configure SpamAssassin to protect my inbox from the torrent of junk floating through cyberspace. So I traveled the globe, often with little time to check with my email, sometimes weeks apart... and the spam piled up.

This is something that I've been meaning to post about for ages but haven't gotten around to, so I'll do it quickly now.

When I originally wrote my portfolio into the website... well I don't know what the hell I was thinking. There were no links and it instead used JavaScript to pop-up a window based on the id attribute value. Obviously I was asleep that day. It was completely non-accessible and you had to have JavaScript enabled just to view any piece.

I've been using Steve Smith's Tiger Admin(istration) Plugin for WordPress for quite some time now. Basically it just restyles the WordPress Admin Panel to look a lot nicer. I recently managed to get my grubby little fingers on the Tiger Admin 3.0 Beta. (By which I mean that I got it from Steve, not illegally.) I'm sworn to secrecy so I can't give away too much but it looks very, very sexy. Expect huge changes which make for a better product. Keep visiting Ordered List to get a hold of your own copy when it releases.

Yes it's one of those double posting days. I've told you what the current status of the website is but what about me. A lot has been happening in the real world too.

What, drawn, and talk of trends! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee. Well OK a little over the top, but Shakespeare sure knew how to rant. On one of my all-too-frequent visits to SimpleBits I noticed that Dan had decided to tear things apart and do a live redesign. This approach leaves the website styleless or incomplete in the process. Most people choose to develop the website in private, then through slight of hand replace the old site with the new one seamlessly. Some wish to criticize this approach and others wish to follow the trend. It reminds me of computer game release delays. Everybody complains when a game is delayed but, when John Carmack delayed Doom 3 by 12 months there was no complaint. You don't doubt someone like John Carmack and you don't doubt someone like Dan Cederholm.

When I first got my MacBook I installed Transmission to look after my BitTorrent downloads but found it a little too lightweight for what I wanted. Bit Sticks has to get an honorable mention as a cool widget for for downloading torrents. Runner up was BitRocket but the top podium spot has to go to Xtorrent.

More than anything, this post is just about claiming my blog on Technorati. I don't really use Technorati, as exciting as it's release was it's just never really clicked with me. Apparently I don't visit the site nearly as much as I should as I never re-claimed the blog after switching domains last year. So while I'm at it, here's a chance for everyone to tell me what's so great about Technorati. So what is it?

I have mixed feelings about buzz-words. They save you the time of having to say or write a ridiculously long name but at the same time they become representative of so many things, both good and bad. The obvious example here is Ajax which, let's face it is far easier than typing Asynchronous JavaScript and XML all of the time. Not to mention that Ajax just sounds cool. We have Jesse James Garrett to thank for the term, and when I first read his article Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications I was really excited. Here was a way to change the content of a page without the annoying page reload, the birth of true web applications. But sometimes the web moves too fast for it's own good.

I've been a growing fan of Apple Computers for several years now and over the last 18 months they've really become a passion of mine. While travelling I got to have some great Apple experiences thanks to my good mate Hayden and his lovely friends Pam and Paul Costa. Pam and Paul are both Apple employees and Apple fans (Paul is the Lead Engineer on the iMac). They put us up for several nights in their beautiful home in Sunnyvale where proudly displayed is this poster. We got to watch a game of Segway Polo featuring none other than Mr Steve Wozniak followed by lunch with all of the Segway Polo players and a quick tour of the Apple Campus at Cupertino.

Recently I celebrated by 21st Birthday (now back home in New Zealand) and my beautiful girlfriend Carmen read to me a profile of people born on September 30th. I'm not usually one to believe in things like this but I thought that it was rather fitting in a lot of ways so I thought that I'd share it.

More photos are now online of my journey in North America. New photos include trips to Seattle and the very Grand Canyon. If any photos look stupid or dangerous they aren't really.

I'm really wanting to focus on my Storyburst project which I've shelved for far too long so at the moment I'm looking for an experienced programmer (probably Ruby on Rails) to help me get Storyburst up and running.

Hate me Do it and do it again Waste me Rape me, my friend

Yes it is I, Keri Henare with a long overdue (but brief) blog update. It's been almost three months since my last confession... I mean entry. I've been a very busy boy.

While I'm in America the easiest way to contact me is still by email. However I do have an American mobile number while I'm here too. +1 646 709 3629 Please TXT only because phone calls cost me money.

I am now in America, but before I left New Zealand I was without any real internet access for a month. So many things that I wanted to get finished before I left, didn't get done.

I've been at Webstock all morning here in the lovely Wellington. I'm staying at Nomads which is just across the road from the venue (Wellington Old Town Hall) so It's pretty convenient for me. Running out of internet credit so I can't really make a big post until I'm back in Auckland.

After I thought my days of Dreamhost downtime were over, it happened yet again. It wasn't a total outage across all of my sites this time. However, when everything came back up I had lost an entire database. I don't mean that it was corrupted or deleted, the whole database has vanished. My Dreamhost Control Panel doesn't even show signs that it ever existed anymore. This could only be made worse by the fact that I am a terrible person for backups. Terrible in the fact that I don't tend to ever do them.

I consider my latest CSS Reboot attempt to be a failure. If you wish to follow my new redesign head to CSS Refresh to follow my redesign blog.

I just received a link to an image showing how Microsoft's web designers are web standards enthusiasts like the rest of us. It may not be something new but I think that it's hilarious. It's all been fixed up now.

I've been a uni student and I'm about to be a tourist (a broke one) so I've learn't all about being cheap. And nothing says cheap like free software. I also happen to be a huge fan of fun viral marketing initiatives which is why I have to link you to macZOT it's all about promoting new software for mac. If you post about the website within the next few hours you could get yourself some cool new software for free.

Hold your applause, I have to clarify: I (kerihenare.com) am getting naked for Dunstin Diaz's First Annual Naked Day. I (Keri Henare the person) will be keeping my clothes on unless requested otherwise.

kerihenare.com is now completely moved to DreamHost and thanks to the great setup at my new host I was able to do it seamlessly without anyone noticing.

If you've been living under a rock (cliche I know) for the last week then you probably wouldn't know that a new build of the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview has been released. The major thing about this release is that it features a basically finalised rendering engine. I only just got around to downloading it today. There's a little bit to do to get IE7 to be completely stand alone rather than replacing IE6 but I need both for testing. So far this site looks ok mostly. The higher security settings that are native to IE7 seem to have disabled the JavaScript for the portfolio section and there's a weird bug in the hCard. I probably won't fix these as I'm still aiming for a May 1st Reboot which should be well before the final release of IE7 and there should be no major IE7 issues.

The team at Web Standards New Zealand have put together a conference for this May called Webstock. Unlike last year's WE05, I will be at Webstock and I'm really looking forward to it. Douglas Bowman, Kelly Goto and Joe Clark are all going to be giving presentations.

As I'm heading overseas to travel I've decided to switch to a US based webhost. I've been hosted at iServe in New Zealand since I decided to start my own website. Friends tried to convince me to move my hosting offshore to take advantage of the lower pricing, but I've always been a loyal kiwi. iServe have been a great host and I recommend them to all New Zealanders.

One of my favourite designers (possibly my all time favourite) Dan Cederholm has yet again realigned his website with a nice new design called Araknoid.

I've rewritten my contact page so that it's now a bit more attractive and works better when translated to vCard format. I've done some testing with Windows Address Book and the OS X Address Book and all seems fine. Please feel free to point out any problems you may find with the hCard otherwise any suggestions that you have.

I just completed my 2006 Census form and for the first time ever, I did it online. Being the web-savvy geek that I am I had decided to scrap pen-and-paper in favour of the web interface as soon as I heard that it was an option.

I came across a new app on the new iMacs today, introducing Comic Life. Hayden and I even made a quick comic of our own to show it off. It's a little silly but making it was good fun.

The South by Southwest Peoples Choice Web Awards are back and New Zealand's own 95bFM website is in the running for the CSS category. The 95bFM site was made by the very talented team at Cactuslab. I've always been a big fan of the site and I'm glad that it's made the final five. Make sure to vote for it to win.

Personality tests, while there's often one or two things that you don't agree with, they seem to be pretty correct on the whole. I came across an entry on Joshuaink about this site Personal DNA which determines your personality type. It turns out that I'm a Benevolent Inventor, seems to have me all worked out.

Yes I know that I've only just rebooted back in November but exactly six months later, I'll be doing it again. The reboot is being driven by a large change in the focus of this site. I'll still be focusing on design and web standards, but I also want to make my website a place for friends and family to keep in touch while I'm at camp. The idea is to take a MacBook Pro with me to help me keep everyone updated with video podcasts and Flickr feeds.

Camp America is a summer camp work placement programme that is run the world over. This year I will be part of it. I'm currently awaiting selection by a summer camp which will be located somewhere in the United States. I hope to get a bit of travelling in after camp although I have to be back in New Zealand by late September for a string of birthdays (including my own 21st).