Being a better blogger is something many of us aspire too (even I aspire to that), but coming up with things to write about on a regular basis can be difficult. Leading off the previous post I explicitly wrote called Writing Is Fucking Hard I want to share one of the ways I come up with things to write about.
Many articles will tell you to write about things you love or are passionate about. I do that, I write a lot about Javascript and the web in general because it is what I love, but writing about the latest Javascript framework or language can be difficult. A post about Javascript generally requires thought, research and takes days to write.
Update 28/1/2016: This post was about Angular 1, it was published well before Angular 2 was even near ready for beta release. A bit has changed since then, but my thoughts on Angular in this post have not.
For quite a long time developers have been using AngularJS. Coming at a time when the alternatives were the likes of Backbone.js (while powerful in its own right), which just didn’t tick all of the boxes a modern web application needs ticked, we thought we had reached developer nirvana.
As Australian’s most of us are pretty lucky. We are often dubbed the “lucky country” by ourselves, even though we are lagging behind other countries in many areas.
SBS’s newest TV program called Struggle Street details residents of Western Sydney in an area called Mt. Druitt, which has a pretty notorious reputation for being a rough area because of the public housing it contains.
The show before it even aired its first episode drummed up a heap of controversy, all solely based on the limited glimpse we had through the promos. After watching the first episode I have come to the conclusion that the media and those opposing the program were overreacting.
When I found my contract with an overseas company ending at the beginning of the year, I went into job search mode. I had some runway in the bank, but I hate sitting idle and prefer to be working so I started looking for a job (a full time permanent position).
I already had a LinkedIn account, so I decided to purchase a LinkedIn Premium subscription, the job search tier to be exact. I kept my premium subscription for 3 months and then I cancelled it. It didn’t take me three months to find a job, it took a couple of weeks, but I kept it out of curiosity and kind of forgot about it as well.
Coming up with things to say? Easy. Finding the time to write them down? Moderately easy. Being able to translate those thoughts into succinct words without 10 paragraphs of waste? Not so easy.
Given the amount of posts I have published in 2015 alone, you could be forgiven for thinking that I find writing somewhat easy. I have no shortage of ideas and things to write about, I have at current count 12 unpublished ideas sitting in my unpublished documents folder, most of those probably will never see the light of day.
I recently just upgraded from a Galaxy S4 to a Galaxy S6 Edge with Optus and absolutely love it. Arguably the best Android phone I have ever owned to date. Naturally after getting it, I wanted to root it. I like to hack my way through applications and games for fun and profit.
The first time that I tried to root, I screwed up my phone. I was so close to factory resetting it, but I tried a couple of other root methods and finally got it.
Let me prefix this article with the fact I have no allegiance to any brand. I have a Samsung phone, I own a MacBook Pro, I have an iPad, I own a PC and I own a PS4. I use whatever works for me and what I like: I like.
I am a pretty big watch nerd. While I do not currently own a watch, I have my eyes set on a few watch beauties (non digital). I like reading about watches, I like looking at them and occasionally trying them on. When Apple first announced the Apple Watch I was immediately skeptical, but also intrigued.
Unless you’re reading this far into the future or a jail cell because you downloaded Dallas Buyers Club, then you would know that metadata retention laws have just been passed in the Australian senate.
Australian Parliament (with cooperation from the Coalition and ALP) passed amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 requiring telecommunication service providers to retain for two years certain telecommunications metadata prescribed by regulations.
What is metadata? The analogy being thrown around is metadata is not the contents of the envelope, but rather what is on the outside of the envelope. It is pieces of descriptive information that describe or give one or more pieces of data additional context and meaning.
For far too long Australia has been reliant on mining. We have seen it rejuvenate and decimate towns. When things are good they are great and when they are bad they are dire.
The thing is, the future of Australia’s economy is not mining. Sure, it will continue to be the backbone of this country for a long while yet, but we need to realise that the good old days of mining money are over.
You have probably heard of Jay Z backed high-quality music streaming platform and Spotify rival called Tidal. The sales pitch is that Tidal will stream lossless audio to consumers for $20 a month or Spotify standard 320kbps for $10 per month.
The thing is, high bitrate audio for the general consumer is pointless. I am not an extreme audiophile nor an audio expert, but I do like listening to music through nice headphones and speakers. And to be quite honest, even through expensive headphones I cannot tell the difference between a 320kbps MP3 or a lossless FLAC file.