Rob the Geek

Category: Education & Innovation

  • NetHui 2011

    So – the Net Hui is on at Aucklands Sky City Convention Center and, given the line up of people and the subjects being discussed it’s something I decided I need to be at so, startig tomorrow – I am taking 3 days of Annual leave and heading off to the conference as “Rob – […]

  • Chrysalis Cam – Using Open Source to Open Minds

    The kids in Room 3 had a problem, all of the caterpillars that went into the pupa stage of their metamorphosis were emerging when the students were out of the classroom. The solution was to setup a laptop with a web camera programmed to take a snapshot of a waiting chrysalis once every minute. These […]

  • Tots Corner – A Magical Place

    When my wife and I first learned we were having our first son, we asked around our friends in the childcare industry for recommendations for pre-school care. The answers unanimously came back “Tots Corner” they all gave glowing accounts of the staff and the atmosphere there and, when we had our first look around we couldn’t help […]

  • Visualising Public Data – Auckland Transport

    Chris McDowall is a very, very clever person. In addition to all the other cool stuff he’s done in the NZ data space, he has just released this post on taking the Maxx public transport data feed of movements over a day, and plotting it out on a map. It’s hypnotic and astounding in the […]

  • Functional MRI and Improvisation

    How. Cool. Is. THIS?! Another gem from TED, this clip is of Charles Limb – a researcher who put jazz musicians and rappers in an fMRI to see how their brains work during musical improvisation. (@Kubke – this is a coffee worthy conversation)

  • How to kill that pesky creativity in your business

    This video by Harvard Professor Youngme Moon has been sitting in my open tabs for a couple of weeks now as a irreverent reminder of the safe-play bingo phrases which find their way into so many meetings… My Anti-Creativity Checklist from Youngme Moon on Vimeo.   I’ve got *my* personal favorites (being one of the […]

  • Organizing, Getting Things Done, (N)Evernote…

    With a recent move to a new working environment, I’ve needed to re-address how I’m working to compensate for the loss of an ability to leave my workspace setup ready for action each day. Part of this change has been to start using (then consolidate) ‘To Do’ lists. As as assistant for this – I’m […]

  • Barcamp Auckland 2010 – Redux

    The following is intended to be a summary of various links covering Barcamp Auckland 2010 as my notes only capture what I was able to attend. Much of the discovery was done via a twitter search, so I’m not expecting it to be an exhaustive list – please let me know if I’ve missed anything […]

  • Notes from Barcamp Auckland 2010

    Barcamp Auckland is an annual gathering of developers, designers, start-ups and social-media types. It’s a full day event held in an ‘unconference’ like style, where the attendee (see my attendee & interested folks list on Twitter) set the schedule – and people turn up to discuss topics which interest them. The following are the session […]

  • Google Maps Navigation

    Oh very very cool… and if you are lucky enough to be able to source an Android 2.0 based phone (like the Motorola Droid) it’s also very very free. Couple this with the just announced Google Music service and Google Voice and you have a take everywhere, contact, entertain and communicate solution – Not much […]