Welcome to the personal Web site of Rodney Gedda, a technology journalist and editor in Sydney, Australia. Here you will find a mercurial mix of commentary on IT, journalism, and marketing without the hype. Enjoy!...


Tax office chooses Ubuntu for AUSkey

I managed to get an interesting snippet out of the ATO last week.

The tax office will base its AUSkey Linux port on Ubuntu.

AUSkey is written in Java and in theory is cross-platform, but with tax testing it on Linux it should finally work without a whole lot of frustration. It also shows how far Ubuntu has come in garnering mainstream public opinion on what is the most popular Linux distribution for testing efforts.

Ubuntu does not equal Linux per se, but if the same decision was made only a few years ago it would have been based on one of the well-known commercial distros.

Good to see the ATO committing to more openness – with software and media relations. A little victory for those who care about it.


Compiz-like key bindings for KWin’s cube effect

If you've used the flashy spinning cube desktop effect on GNOME-based Linux systems running Compiz, you may be familiar with the ctrl-alt-left (or right arrow) key combination to "spin" the cube around in those respective directions. If you're a KDE user you already have compositing effects in KWin without the need ...


Regressions, regressions

So I "upgrade" to Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx and in addition to my plasma panel getting nuked my notebook no longer suspended to RAM. I've manually added my panel back and upgrading to the 2.6.33 Lucid kernel fixed suspend to RAM. The default kernel with Lucid is 2.6.32, but there are ...


5 years of blogging

This week I chalked up five years of continuous personal blogging. No big deal. From memory I started blogging just as the hype factor became unbearable. Wikipedia has a page on the history of blogging (timeline). I had a few Web sites prior to this blog, but they were tied to ...


Optus Music Store – an open option

I've often wondered if there was a music store out there that fulfilled my (not unreasonable) needs. A few years ago I tried eMusic when it first came onto the scene, but didn't get into it much as I never really caught on to the subscription model. It wasn't the cost, ...


Alice in Wonderland in 3D

After reading its mixed reviews, we decided to go and see Alice in Wonderland in 3D. I won't spoil it for you, but if you can imagine a cross between the original Alice in Wonderland plot, The Nightmare Before Christmas' tone, Edward Scissorhands-grade humanism, and a mighty Lord of the Rings-style ...


Random desktop crashes stretch sanity

My desktop decided to spontaneously restart again today in a repeat of what happened a few weeks ago. The short-term memory replacement (Twitter) tracked the occasion: http://twitter.com/rodneygedda/status/8616389858 No warning, nothing. Badda bing, badda bang... blank screen, some hard disk seeking then KDM restarts. Good thing I save my work regularly and both Konqueror ...


February 3

I was on my way to a press event in the city today. Nothing unusual about that. In a busy week I can attend upwards of 10. Today something extraordinary struck me. As I paid the taxi driver and jumped out of the cab I looked up and the first thing ...


Android in da house

My SO picked up an Android-based mobile yesterday and I am soooo jealous. It's the HTC Magic that was launched in May last year. I had used the phone previously in testing, but now I can really play around with it. Only after a few minutes with the Magic you learn how ...


Ovi app store

I finally got around to setting up my Nokia N95 8G for the Ovi Store. You need to download the Ovi Store app which replaces the old "Download" service for the N95. Once you've logged into the service it's pretty much navigate your way around the minimalist interface (or search for ...