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
Valet: Keychain done right. Needless to say, as a bank, we need to have "Bank Grade Security". No, not THAT Bank Grade Security, but we do need to secure things which should be secret[1]
Stuff and Nonsense. 2015/16 Personal Edition So I had one post, and it got too long. So while that was all tech stuff, this is more personal stuff. The main aim for coming back to NZ (rather than staying
