West Coast Wandering. (2019) Getting thereAs is often the case, getting there is half the fun. Or half the un-fun in this case.Before we even left - about 4 weeks before - a huge storm went
Blogging on the iPad The previous blog post, about the West Coast, was done end-to-end on my iPad with an external keyboard. This is something I’ve been trying to work out - how I can move
See a pontoon. Swim to a pontoon. Jump from a pontoon A wise couple, Alice and Ross, once told me:If there is a river, or even the sea, go jump in itWe don't have rivers on Waiheke. But we do have lots of
Getting started with Github Actions A while back, Github announced Github Actions, which is a containerised platform for running things when you do something in Github, like make a PR, comment, etc.On the surface, it looks like
Upgrading Sonoff Switches with Tasmota As I've written before, I have a few of the 16A Sonoff TH16 switches around the place, running the pump, some lights in the bedroom, and as an over-engineered temperature sensor for the
John William Wise - 1936-2018 John William Wise was born the middle child of 3, in a small village called Nunthorpe, North Yorkshire, in July 1936, 3 years before the end of World War II. His father -
Running Docker on the home server - giving life to old hardware Sometimes, old hardware lasts a very very long time. Until recently, I had an iPhone 7, which was mostly perfect running iOS 12 - the battery could be better, but in general it
More IoT switch fun with Sonoff and Tasmota I was looking at Tomas Blog a while ago, when he mentioned that he had bought a couple of the Sonoff WIFI switches to do some outdoor LED lighting. They sounded like they
Wellington to Auckland by Train For my sister-in-laws birthday, we all flew down to Wellington, then caught the train up to Auckland on the Northern Explorer.
Waikaremoana, 2017 We go year-about, having one year on the island, and one year doing something else. Last time, we walked the Routeburn Track. This time it was a return to Lake Waikaremoana, in Te
Apple Watch 2 - 12 months later So last year, when Apple re-released the Apple Watch as Apple Watch Series 2, I decided to get one again. Yes, again. I got the developer-release Series 0 special version thing they did
More Homebridge: AWS IoT, Dash Button, SQS, and Broadlink RM3 Mini I wrote about my use of Homebridge a while back (a long while, it appears), and since then, Homebridge has been there, just a swipe up on the iPhone, but it hasn't had
Nic's Guide to Surviving Conferences Unlike some people I know (and work with), I'm not big on conferences. I find them equal parts interesting and incredibly tiring, like I've had the world turned up to 11 all day.
Pay launches in NZ - but only on ANZ I've written about Apple Pay a few times before, it's a technology I like a lot. Retailers blocking Apple Pay - this will not end well Pay: The most secure form of payment
WWDC roundup - How iOS security really works How iOS Security Really Works https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/705/ Excellent overview of iOS security. Covers off ATS, the secure enclave, the true value of untethered jailbreaks ($1m!). Not super
On building a platform The realisation came to be over a glass of wine (or 2) and a cup of ginger tea on a quiet Sunday night. The realisation that we are not building something for someone
End of month 2 at Pushpay - the difference is ? and ☀️ It's been a very quick 2 months since I left ANZ goMoney and started at Pushpay. The time has gone by in a bit of a blur, but a good blur. I was
Making Windows 10 inside VMWare Fusion 8.x a bit quicker on OSX 10.11 El Capitan I think thats enough google bait in the title. Using VMWare 8.x on El Capitan (OSX 10.11) with Windows 10 can be quite slow - this is a known (and un-addressed
Apple Pay in New Zealand: what would that mean? Apple Pay - Apples implementation of NFC based payments, AKA Tap to Pay/PayWave/whatever the card companies are calling it now - is available in a few countries now, but New Zealand
(f)unemployment week; HealthKit; AppleTV Remote; External Views and Build I'm officially (f)unemployed this week - I finished up at ANZ last week, and I start at Pushpay on monday. Pushpay has been on my list of places (and people) I want
Increasing your trust: Certificate Pinning on iOS SSL is a tricky beast, which isn't overly well understood by most developers. The common mis-conception (or partial understanding) is that it's about encryption: hiding the content as it passes from my device
Xamarin acquires Microsoft! Shock news to some, about time to others. Xamarin CTO Miguel de Icaza said: "yeah, we kind of wanted to increase the horsepower of our VS team, so we thought we might
Error 53: when good intentions go very, very wrong The Guardian Apple has come under pressure to scrap its controversial policy of permanently disabling repaired iPhone 6s when software is upgraded, following a global consumer backlash and claims the company could be
SSL all the things with Let's Encrypt and nginx With the stories around the 5 eyes snooping of internet traffic from the likes of Edward Snowden[1], its hard to justify not using SSL for anything which is remotely sensitive these days.
Homebridge: Homekit without Homekit hardware We have a few WIFI-connected devices here at Casa Wise - AppleTV, printers and the like, and also a few Belkin WeMo switches which we use for outdoor lighting. We needed remotely switched
