Activism Featured Homophobia is more rife than assault rifles in the USA When elected politicians actively stir up hatred against the LGBT community, it legitimises that hatred and makes bigots more comfortable in that hate.
Tech Re-introducing prawn-graph - it's back! Simple graphing for PDF and Ruby There might be a slight sense of déjà vu about this topic, since a few years ago on my old blog I wrote a similar thing. That time it was an attempt to motivate me to actually make an update to prawn-graph. This time, it actually is updated. Over 6
Politics On 'internet piracy' and 'copyright infringement' Peoples' usage patterns change, as more and more people are connected to the internet and the speed and quality of those connections increases the more people will be looking for instant gratification from the entertainment industry.
Tech Your code of conduct is not enough if your guests are illegal But what if the country the conference is in has it’s own strict laws about what is acceptable or not? What if the law of the land makes it clear that certain groups are not welcome and indeed such people are breaking the law by existing and deserve the most strict punishment?
Personal Goodbye, Sir Terry This magical place that was a close satire of ours was enjoyable to me as a kid, and then re-reading the books as an adult, became almost profound in the subtly of his wit and criticism of the world we all inhabit.
Japan Changing your UK Driving license into a Japanese one This post is about how I was able to use my own full UK Driving License to obtain a Japanese Driving License. The procedure is for Tokyo, but should be similar throughout Japan.
Tech Ruby / Rails the 'Enterprise' and how software works in the 'real world' In this post, I draw upon my own work and personal experience to discuss both these topics and try to see where Ruby and Rails sit in the ‘real world’ as it pertains to me, and within the ‘enterprise’.
Tech Sometimes, its own worst enemy is itself It’s fair to say that I am well aware of many of the great benefits you receive with Free Software and the products off it, and thanks to my knowledge of Non-Free platforms I also have a good understanding of them.
Howto Featured Shinsei Bank CSV to QIF Conversion I bank with Shinsei here in Japan. They allow me to download my statements in a tab-delimited text file which they call CSV.
Howto Installing Ghost using Nginx / Phusion Passenger on Ubuntu This guide assumes you're using Ubuntu LTS version 14.04 (Trusty Thar). At the time of writing (October, 29th 2014), the latest version of Ubuntu is 14.10, however there are no Nginx / Passenger packages available. Update: April 20th 2022 Obviously this guide is ridiculously out of date
Tech Reflections on the past year of running a Tech Startup I’ve learned the hard way a lesson that’s so blindingly obvious now: the reason Confman hasn’t shipped yet is because of me. It’s because I let myself get in my by making these pretty fatal mistakes, and I now understand (after screwing up so bad) exactly how to go about fixing things.
Opinion My review of REWORK: surprisingly good I won’t say I feel I was entirely wrong with my initial opinion about the book, its a very good marketing ploy that promotes 37signals all the way through; however where I was wrong was in thinking that this book is not useful.
Tech Vim - All the IDE you'll ever need, and then some Vim has a reputation of almost mythic proportions about its flexibility, powerful feature set and steep learning learning curve and tetchy way of editing and interacting with files.
