pressed for words

Testing… Voice input for blogging

mikebarton — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 22:20:16 +0000

Hello brave new world this is mike barton coming from his voice to text service on his android phone.

Should say i was quite happy to find out of the word press application for android accepts android voice to text.

Hooray for now. I suppose i have no excuse now not to keep a personal blog and mention things on on my mind in my much-neglected wordpress blog.

Anyone else up there using voice to text to post a a blog let me know how it hass affected your blogging, or any other thoughts you might have.

Happy voice to text blogging out there!

Fatal Error: Your PC’s down. Now what?

mikebarton — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:35:52 +0000

Here are some first steps to pull yourself out of the blue-screen blues.
“The computer and I don’t like each other,” Marcia C. Brier says, “and it makes me anxious when it doesn’t work.” SirPopper: “I didn’t know what a B.I.O.S. is I thought how can this be alive in the computer.” Braintrain!

Google WiFi/Secure

mikebarton — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 14:32:33 +0000

Google plans own WiFi service — company Web site

LONDON (Reuters) – Online search leader Google is preparing to launch its own wireless Internet service, Google WiFi, according to several pages found on the company’s Web site on Tuesday.

GoogleNet, dark fibre…

mikebarton — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 14:04:44 +0000

From engadget: Man, this whole GoogleNet thing is getting sticky and suspicious and interesting—a real page turner, if you ask us. So if you recall, we reported before that Google was supposedly buying up unused fiber and spare backbone bandwidth like crazy—enough to move some serious, serious data. Then yesterday our man Om pointed out IP Democracy’s report that Google has been further reviewing bids for building a nationwide DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) fiber network, one theoretically capable of terabit speeds, and at the bargain basement price of under $100 million—apparently this thing could even be up and running in months, according to their sources. Yes, we know how crazy-conspiracy-theory this stuff sounds sounds, but where it goes from here is increasingly less questionable. So even though Goog can easily snap up all this backbone bandwidth, they’re left with the last mile issue, hence speculation of a WiMax or WiFi network. Now today it’s come out that yes, they actually have a piece of working WiFi VPN software to download, and that it “is only available at certain locations in the San Francisco Bay Area�?—coincidence that that’s where they happen to have a test bed of location-tracking WiFi hotspots to provide Google-local based ads on top of free WiFi access? And knowing Google, of course they’d want VPN software running on “GoogleNet,�? what kind of PR nightmare would it be for them having millions across the nation getting online on open WiFi on account of the “do no harm�? company? Ordinarily we might say this is all kind of crackpot speculation, but these pieces keep falling together and it’s kind of freaking us out.

Direct links:

Free Wi-Fi? Get Ready for GoogleNet.

Note to self: Catch Saturday Night Live reruns on Arena

mikebarton — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 13:49:36 +0000

Ten to midnight and I’m watching the only show worth watching on TV. Brilliantly bizarre American (or NY) humour. Don’t miss it on Foxtel basic… not worth it otherwise…

Nightly rant, day after

mikebarton — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 00:06:14 +0000

I wanted to get into the swing of posting every day. So, I’m just reporting that everything is going well. Very nice to work with colleagues who I can relate to.

Another thing I have been thinking about is Google Desktop’s Sidebar. Not the tech itself, but one feature: random photo slideshow. It is so nice to have it running at the side of the browser. Trawling through five years of photos and splashing them in a small window that rotates as I browse the web or email brings back a lot of memories of my two young boys and our first years in Australia.

Sometimes little featuressuch as this make using a computer seem amazing again.

Any small triumphs in computing to report, wordpressers?

My nightly rant

mikebarton — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 14:39:39 +0000

I work late as a subeditor and here is my rant. Tonight my boss said thanks for my tip to pull a story by one of our most senior journalists because his story did not add up. As a subeditor at the Newcastle Herald I do about 10-12 stories a night, checking them for news lead, accuracy, grammar, and writing a heading and caption for accompanying photographs. This one was just another sausage in the factory. But because I have a critical eye for the property industry I noticed that the ‘study’ it was using was saying the construction industry was headed for a slump while its authors said a turnaround was in the cards. A supporting story was about a local tennis star who had bought well before the hyped out market and was just now getting around to renovating. But she was using her mum and dad for labour, avoiding labourers (read: the industry) for all but $60K. Well, that is no small figure but the logic was not there. The news of late is that petrol is pinching everyday people and i reckon that means everything from dinners out to renovations in the wings would get the nix – against the property industry’s self-propagating prediction. It was pulled and it motivates me to follow my instinct to do a story on just who is behind pumping the media on this kinda stuff.

“Renovations give industry a lifeline” headline should be “Builders waiting for the storm”

Just a small success in stopping the media rot in PR-instigated stories. Subs: 1, Industry: 4546. Go figure.

News Ltd’s exclusive: Happy to leave it behind

mikebarton — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 13:53:30 +0000

Paul Kelly and Michael Harvey interviewed Mark Latham and it was published on September 16, 2005…

IN an exclusive interview, Mark Latham speaks of his joy at being a home dad and his relief at leaving behind the “sick” political culture of the Labor Party. Question: Mark, are you pleased to be out of it all? Answer: I thank my lucky stars I got out of politics, and life is relatively good. I love being a home dad. Everyone in politics talks about work and family balance, so that was a big issue. I left behind the bad work culture, as I found it, and spending time with my wife and children is an absolute delight.

full interview: go

Protected: Need to get on to interview preparation

mikebarton — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 07:21:40 +0000

This post is password protected. You must visit the website and enter the password to continue reading.

Enough Rope Latham interview transcript

mikebarton — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 06:16:17 +0000

Enough Rope went to air last night with the interview and here is the transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1461537.htm. The show will be replayed on Monday, and the Lateline interview with Tony Jones that has divided the ABC will show tonight, Friday, Sept 16.

After chatting with some colleagues, me thinks he does really have something to say in and the vitriol on a human level may mean he just wasn’t cut out for the duplicity of politics. In the interview he says he is a full-time at-home dad, and being a dad of two young boys myself, I can say it is probably harder and more rewarding than working life.

My other thought was that perhaps his self-imploding was a resulty of the party coming unglued after the election loss. Seems pretty weak to have done so as give the strangth of the economy and general prosperity, as the SMH wrote today, it did not do too badly.

The standfirst to the interview reads:

Mark Latham

In December 2003, Mark Latham became the youngest leader of the federal Labor party in over a century. Thirteen months later after a leadership marked by flashes of brilliance, personal controversy and illness, he quit politics altogether, having led Labor to one of the worst defeats in the party’s history. Since his resignation in January he has said not one word in public, until now.

Tonight on the eve of the publication of his diaries, diaries which are truly explosive Mark Latham has decided to break his silence.