I went to see an interesting piece of theatre last night, a new Australian work by Marcel Dorney. Thieves Like Us was originally commissioned by La Boite Theatre in Brisbane, which is where the playwright’s friendship with director Jamie Dawson grew. Brisbane is also the setting for the play, which naturally affords some comic moments.

Dawson is currently Producer with Merrigong Theatre Co in Wollongong, which no doubt influenced how this play came to be the only in-house production in the 2008 season of a predominantly entrepreneurial company, staging visiting productions at the IPAC theatre.

Thieves Like Us is set mostly in 1989 with some scenes set in 1985. In 1989, Shannon is a hacker trying to explain that she wants to code for the good guys, just like her idol, whose life’s work Shannon has busted into. Dr Holly Arrow, however, is not too pleased at having to fly to Australia to investigate this threat to her professional status as well as national security.

Read the rest of this entry »

Anne Summers has drawn my attention to: “a peaceful, and poetic, alternative to the protests that have accompanied the Olympic torch relay, which is today in Canberra.

If you go to the website www.penpoemrelay.org you will see the PEN poem relay, a web-based campaign calling for Free Expression in China.

A short poem, “June” by an imprisoned Chinese journalist, Shi Tao, has been translated into more than 90 of the world’s languages and since March 25 has been virtually travelling the globe following the route of the Olympic Torch. Writers all over the world, some of them former political prisoners themselves, have translated and recorded “June”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well.

If I thought flying across the country for a two hour meeting was fun, how would flying across the Pacific for a two day conference compare?

It was a hoot!

Having hardly watched a movie in the past year or so, I took the opportunity on the flight over to catch up with some new release films: Michael Clayton, 3.10 to Yuma, Into the Wild, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Martian Child, as well as a few older flicks: Two Hands (RIP Heath), 2001: A Space Odyssey - hey, it’s a long flight, alright?

Apparently it rains more than it snows in Vancouver, but when I arrived it was snowing beautifully, gently, like a fairy tale. And Vancouver Airport features some stunning design elements - a great way to enter a country.

I established camp in the same hotel as the conference (hmm, will two double beds be enough for sir?) and set about addressing my major packing oversight: the power cable for my laptop. Suffice to say I failed, which meant I only had about six hours in total of laptop time. So I walked around a bit, catching snowflakes on my tongue, throwing snowballs for a dog to chase. Sigh.

The conference itself was great, from Jeffrey Zeldman’s opening overview of the short but eventful history of web standards to Matt Webb’s closing exploration of social models that might influence the web’s future development as a set of experiences.

Read the rest of this entry »

See the button for Web Directions North?

Under the search box on the right?

The conference in Vancouver? Canada?

I’m going to that.

No, I didn’t get a ticket via their Affiliates program or anything, and yes, it’s a heckuva spend what with air fares and accommodation and all, but these particular conferences give great value.

Business has been good, and some of that is down to things I learned from the southern Web Directions conferences.

And it’s a fantastically exciting way to kick 2008 into gear.

Technorati Tags: Web Directions North 2008, wdn08, Vancouver, conference, web standards, web design

Hazel has finally made the big step away from her successful career as a book publisher and editor to take on the position of Editor-in-Chief at online startup NeoNeighbourhood.

This in itself is an exciting development, not least because the kids and I will get to see much more of her. No more leaving the house at 6.45am to get to her Sydney office, and returning at 7.30pm.

In fact, no more leaving the house. She works from home now.

If you haven’t visited NeoNeighbourhood, take a look.

The format is pretty simple: take the greatest cities in the world and tell people where they can eat, drink, sleep, shop, wander to get the most exciting and engaging experiences.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was dead impressed by fullcodepress.Back in August, fullcodepress involved a team of Australians and a team of New Zealanders competing to each build a full website in 24 hours under controlled conditions.

A panel of judges assessed which one best met the contest criteria, and a couple of not-for-profit good causes had terrific websites built for them.

Being a jack of all trades myself, I thought then about how I’d go in a solo version of the build-a-site-in-a-day caper.

So when one of my longer term clients said a couple of days ago that they needed a website built “in a hurry” for “a good cause”, I set myself the task of building the No New Iron Cove Bridge website inside a day.

Read the rest of this entry »