About Me

Where do I come from?

Keith — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:54:25 -0700

Good question.

The most correct answer is that I come from New Zealand. I was born there; I spent my entire childhood and adolescence there. I consider my self to be a New Zealander, a "Kiwi".

But... Most of my adult life has been spent in a lot of other countries. So much so, that I now consider myself to be more a child of the world (or at least the western world) than of any one country specifically.

How to use Airtunes without MP3 (or iTunes)

Keith — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:21:42 -0700

Around the same time I purchased the Mac, we also purchased an Airport Express so that we could stream music from our computers to our stereo.

It was something of a disappointment to learn that by default, you can only stream music to the Airport Express via iTunes, and that you can only use natively supported music formats to boot (such as MP3).

The new laptop

Keith — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:07:50 -0700

I have a new laptop! It is the Mac that I was promising to get a few weeks ago. [big sloppy grin]

So far I am loving it - all the goodness of Unix in a pretty and usable shell. "Numfar: Do the dance of joy!"

Actually, the transition has been easier than I was expecting, and despite making sure that I could set-up boot-camp (the ability to dual boot into Windows) , I haven't needed to once. I haven't even bothered to install it.

A Month to remember

Keith — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 17:47:41 -0700

Well, what a month it it has been. [wipes sweat from brow].

We have purchased a house, we have moved (into afore mentioned house), attended a convention, and changed various technology in the process.

The house, as seems to be the way with new house purchases, has come with some surprises. For example:

Geek code block

Keith — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 13:54:02 -0700

Well if I'm going to have a published PGP key I might as have a Geek code block too:
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCC/CS/B/IT d-(++) s+: a C++(+++) USLAHOC+++ P+ E--- W+++ N- w+++ O M++ !V Y+>++ PGP++>+++ t@ 5++ X(+) R@ tv@ b+(++) DI++ D+>$ r+++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

My PGP Public Key

Keith — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 13:47:33 -0700

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 6.5.8ckt

Where have I been?

Keith — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 13:37:41 -0700

So many places, so little time...

What do I do?

Keith — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 13:35:20 -0700

I am Solutions Architect for large and huge scale computer systems, and telecommunications systems in particular.

I have been developing telecommunications software since 1987. In the last ten years I have helped build a rating and billing system for GSM, a rating system for GPRS (or G2.5 as it used to be known in the media), two full Customer Care systems which included product provisioning and network mediation: one for wireless GSM and one for wireline, and two rating and billing systems for wireline.

Links To New Zealand

Keith — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 12:39:49 -0700

Interested in New Zealand? Have a look at some of these...