Officially disguised as a Canadian
(Originally posted on my technical blog.) For the last six months or so, I have been helping some really smart people put words on paper, both the physical and electronic kind, which is hopefully going to culminate in an actual technical book that I can point to and say “Yes, that’s the name I inventedContinue reading SQL Server 2017 Administration Inside Out
2017, am I right?
Last year on Facebook, I engaged in a discussion with a friend about the fact that violent acts seem to be the norm to make people notice things, in place of that time-worn cliché of “rational discussion”. While my response does refer directly to South Africa, in hindsight it could apply elsewhere. Here it is,Continue reading On violence in South Africa
I can’t believe it took me almost nine years to write about this on my blog. Shock, probably. In the second half of 2008, M and I moved into our new house in Linden, in Johannesburg, just 600 metres down the road from a rental we’d had for about a year.
I have an online stalker. This is nothing unusual in the age of the Internet. I had a stalker back in the late 1990s as well. The first one was someone who fell madly in love with me through IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and devised extremely weird ideas on how we could be together, despiteContinue reading Don’t be rude
Did you see me on Fargo last night? Here’s the long path I took to get there. My first serious acting gig was when I was eight or nine years old. I was to play the absent-minded professor, a major character in one of those end-of-year school productions where every grade had to put onContinue reading My absent-minded journey to Fargo
I worked on my first international production today, and it was a great experience. A US/Canadian set with a very talented group of people. Observation: most of the people running the show (ADs, etc.) are women. This pleases me. A large percentage of the crew is female.
Recently I started seeing the above annoying error message every time I opened up Outlook 2016 on my MacBook, but only after being prompted for my passwords for every single email account I had. This is tedious with two connected accounts. I have five. A quick search led me to a thread on Microsoft Answers, withContinue reading Office 2016: You’re connected to too many services
I used to be a vociferous defender of prescriptive grammar (I don’t like the term “Grammar Nazi” anymore, because that’s no longer funny or clever). After listening to, and reading, a podcast and associated transcript-turned-blog entry by Stephen Fry, I realised that it is necessary for language to change, to adapt.
I am a person with many interests. In one conversation, I’ll introduce myself as a new filmmaker. In another, I’m a seasoned theatre actor. Sometimes I give talks on Microsoft’s data platform products, SQL Server and Azure SQL Database. There’s another strong field of interest I have, which I don’t speak much about, and that’s informationContinue reading Air gaps and secure networks