The Australian Capital Territory can be considered to have two parts. The first (well known) part is halway between Sydney and Melbourne, and is the site of Canberra (see below map of the ACT).
The second is Jervis Bay. (see below map of Jervis Bay).
It was only a matter of time, but facebook phishing scams have hit the wild in a big way.
At work we saw a number of emails from a facebookmail.com address (that’s where facebook e-mails come from), suggesting that you might want to add a friend.
The add a friend link actually sent you off to an isgreat.org domain, which had a facebook look-alike login page.
This was the closest that I’ve ever come to clicking on a phising link. I only stopped for two reasons
If it went to my real facebook account I might have been tempted (but sure won’t now).
The security adage – Don’t click on links in e-mails is definitely true. Even for facebook sending nice helpful e-mails with links.
This isn’t the only way that phishing is happening for facebook. See here, and techcrunch
With an increasing push for Ephox to have a European presence based out of England, I’ve been reflecting on some of my favourite things of my time there. These are the bits that are slightly more uniquely me, than the standard tourist things. Out of the varied experiences and things to do in London and the UK, these are some of my favourites.
Christianity and church is an essential part of life for me. Finding All Souls was a great discovery, and the times and people there form some of the fondest memories of our time in London. Before going there I had no idea how good pipe organs could sound. I was also thankful for the opportunity to be a part of Christianity Explored, and some of the other ministries of the church. It was great hearing John Stott preach, and we were also blessed and challenged by the other preachers there. I still listen to sermons from their sermon library (which dates back to 1966), which is available online (All Souls Sermon Library).
Of all the great museums, historical and cultural places and sites, my favourite was the British Library. It was great to go and see some of the extant manuscripts, especially some of the early new testament artefacts. Seeing some of the early versions of Beetles songs, some of Leonardo DaVincis writings, and Handels work was cool too.
I took a trip to Bletchley Park one week-end with my Dad. Given Dad’s background in Cryptology, and my interest in IT, and security, visiting the home of where the British government was attacking German ciphers in World War 2 was a must. It was great to be able to go around on a tour and see the rooms which were filled with people attacking Enigma codes, and to see where the first computer was created by Turing. The computer history museum they had there was cool too.
Ryanair and similar flights for a penny + taxes are too hard to refuse. Even though you end up miles from anywhere, and have to pay for transport to obscure airports at both ends, as well as taxes the trips are good for a week-end, and are a real part of the England experience. It really is worth doing this at least once, and taking advantage of these cheap flights for a great week-end away.
On the subject of cheap flights, travel generally is an Aussies initial reason to go to London. It is definately worth doing a fair bit while there. If nothing else, going on organised trips makes for a decent way to see different places. Suzanne and I ended up doing a bunch of travel with Oak Hall, visiting Turkey, and doing their Europe tour. Their holidays have a bit of a reputation for being a place for singles to meet, but Suzanne and I had fun as the old married couple :).
We lived in inner London, on the tube, and definitely enjoyed being in the centre of it all. Staying on top of a French Patisserie was definitely nice, as was the Organic Butcher next door.
Overall I have many fond memories of life in London, and would definitely recommend the experience.
My Mum and Dad were members of the Mountainers association in Washington State. They always telling me that there were 10 essentials to take with you. You had to make sure you had the 10 essentials. Of course there was also the eleventh essential for mountaineering—toilet paper :).
As I sit here typing this blog (of all places I’m in the labour ward), I am reminded of Mum and Dad’s lists. For us coming to labour, there have been many lists as well. Suzanne did a google to help get some good ideas of what to bring, and had a nice suitcase that she packed. The lists didn’t include the eleventh essential, which for us has been my laptop ;).
It has been really great, allowing us to watch a DVD to pass the time (the epidural made it possible for us to be enjoying the experience). It has also has been nice for me to be doing something while Suzanne rests. Overall a laptop with some decent media definately ranks as an important thing to bring in your overnight bag when giving birth.
ps—by the time I post this, the baby will have arrived, and we will once again be proud parents. If I’ve missed sending you a photo, and you are interested, send me an e-mail.
I'm sitting here doing some work on my thesis (obviously procrastinating by blogging), and enjoying listening and watching Suzanne and Isaac on the main desktop going through the results of a images.google.com search for Thomas the Tank Engine on safe mode :).
Hours of fun for the young one, even better than the junk mail :).
A question for the Mac gurus out there.
Is there an option in mail to stop it from automatically choosing the account for you, instead forcing you to choose what account you want to send the message from.
I'm using mail actively at the moment, and would like to be forced to choose to stop me from sending mail using the wrong account (which I have a bad habit of doing).
Please give suggestions in the comments.
ps - yes I am too lazy to work out which list I should post this question to.
The Blogosphere has been pretty excited this week with Oracle showing off many of their applications running on Flex at OpenWorld this week (including these announcements blogged by James Ward: support system Meta Link, Enterprise Manager database tool, Siebel CRM and more). It has made for interesting viewing, and been a nice trip down memory lane for me, after having worked at Oracle (back in Web 1.0 days), and having sat in on the first flex 2.0 training offered in Australia when working for OmniEffect.
It has also been interesting because of the involvement of Mike Wise (Founding Director of OmniEffect and former Lead Architect at Oracle) with Flex and Oracle.
Mike is a real fan for cutting edge technologies. When he was at Oracle his job comprised of finding cool cutting edge technologies, and building awesome proof of concepts. He left Oracle to form OmniEffect and build rich internet applications back in 2004, before they became cool. Those were the days before Adobe had bought MacroMedia, and Mike was building RIAs using the MacroMedia suite.
One of his early projects was to build a front-end to the Oracle Self-Appraisal systems using Royale (the precursor to flex). He did a great job of putting together an application, and the video footage still doesn’t look out of date (almost 4 years later).
Take a look at the video presentation of this great job by a true RIA pioneer:
http://hosting.omnieffect.com/preview/video/presentation1.html.
Mike hasn’t been one to rest on his laurels, and has been continuing to innovate. More recently he’s put together some presentations on Flex(video, ppt), and he’s been delving into the world of Microsoft.
Take a look at his blog, and think about OmniEffect for RIAs. Mike’s been building solutions to real business problems using this technology stack for years and has a great team of people ready to help you solve your technical and business needs. OmniEffect has the answers that come from experience, and it's well worth getting in touch with Mike
One of the principals listed in Extreme Programing Explained is the idea of Self-Similarity (taken from Mathematics and fractal geometry). The idea in XP is to copy the structure of one solution into a new context, even at different scales, and is often used to help think about testing, and forms a good starting point for thinking about what structures or processes to apply.
In the Ephox development team we do this at a number of different levels. We practice reflection regularly at a weekly basis with a weekly retrospective. On a roughly quarterly basis we review our current state of play from a process/methodology standpoint. We will often look back over things at a small level with coding. I've recently noticed myself doing the same thing at a micro level, helping myself to learn keyboard shortcuts for IntelliJ.
In summary, some of the good spots for reflection for a development team are:
Reflection is a great practice to follow at different times. When do you find reflection useful?
While reading a Java Diagnostics guide for a unnamed JVM I saw this:
This book is for anyone who is responsible for solving problems with Java(TM).
Somewhat less than useful 
I have been working hard at developing an understanding of what it means to be a product manager how to do this. A part of the role has been to step in as an XP customer. Recently I had a great IM conversation with Dan North about what the role is all about, and how to best do the job. Dan was my XP coach when I was working on a project in London, is the father of BDD, one of the lead developers behind JBehave, and RBehave and an all round great guy.
Here are some of the highlights of what Dan had to say:
Focus on your outcomes.
Work out what it is you want to achieve, and how much you think that's worth.
Everything else is detail. If the project goes "over budget", it just means you didn't predict the future. As long as you're within your comfort zone for the benefit you're going to get then you're still ok.
Likewise the feature list is just detail as long as you and the development team are on the same page
The most useful thing you can do is inspire the developers with your vision. Ideally find a way of sharing any success, so they feel vested in the outcome
Try to stay focused on the "what". As a techie, you will be really tempted to get involved in the "how",but you have to trust the team to do the right thing. Once you let go of the technical detail you can really get into "character" as a product manager!
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