I remember how amazing Crashplan backup service was back in 2010. Affordable, basically unlimited backup in the cloud made offsite backup practical for the home user. Somehow, they seem to have lost the plot somewhere in the past years. They have pivoted the business to focus on … something else? The client has deteriorated, the performance has degraded, the impact on client macs is frankly ridiculous.
I’ve just switched to Backblaze and it is amazing how much nicer the whole experience is. Clean modern admin UI, clean modern client, little performance overhead during backups – and cheaper too.

If you use this link to register, you support the friends at ATP.fm: https://www.backblaze.com/landing/podcast-atp.html

An argument for taking time to really think a problem through, then return to it later. Which requires careful planning in the first place…

I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn’t turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing.

Source: Learning How to Think: The Skill No One Taught You

Suppose you’ve misplaced your Mac. Or someone’s taken it. Or you’re just curious….

With a little craftiness you can use your favourite remote command tool (ARD/SSH… ) to execute a scan for Wi-Fi SSIDs (network names) on the remote host.

thomas$ /usr/local/bin/airport scan
SSID BSSID RSSI CHANNEL HT CC SECURITY (auth/unicast/group)
HZN507010065 11:2a:de:d9:d9:10 -56  104     Y  -- WPA2
H469AEA6914 76:a7:8f:ea:69:42 -79  100     Y  -- WPA2

While a list of network names may not directly tell you much, this is where a nifty 3rd party service comes in handy..

http://wigle.net

(free account registration required) allows you to plug in a SSID and it will come back with the locations where that SSID has been reported. I’m not entirely sure how comprehensive their source data is, but in limited testing it is easy to pinpoint a location as long as a few SSIDs are found by the mac.

Coming to Melbourne we figured it would be great to have a few regular activities to fall back on. The options below have proven to be very worthwhile – the kids are as eager as always to go to any of these, even after visiting pretty much every week this year.

Melbourne Zoo

The zoo is not only a great place to see Australia’s native species up-close, they’ve also gone out of their way to make a visit great for kids of all ages.

There is a good outdoor play area, but the highlight of most visits for us is the Keepers Kids area.

Here, kids get to dress up as several zoo employee roles including Vet, keeper, maintenance. There are daily activities organised as well including story time and drawing.

One of the great things of being a member is that you can hop in anytime, without any pressure to ‘make the most’ of the visit. I often find myself hopping in late afternoon, when we have the place practically to ourselves and enjoy one or two hours doing one of the ‘loops’ of animal exhibits and some play.

Melbourne Museum / Science Works

While everyone should visit the Melbourne Museum at least once to learn about the history of the city; you will keep coming back for the great indoor and outdoor play areas.  The indoor kids corner offers a variety of fun games and physically challenging climbing for the kids – even if outside it is freezing  or too hot to move. The outdoor play area offers giant building blocks, water play, paleontology in the sandpit and the usual play equipment. Especially with two kids there is a bit of extra peace of mind in that the courtyard isn’t too easy to escape from for the kids – you can enjoy a nice cappuccino in relative peace.

The Science Museum is part of the same organisation and another great all-weather option with lots of great activities. The quarterly ‘little kids days’ are fun but can get hectic – especially in contrast to mid-week afternoon visits when we are almost guaranteed to have the place mostly to ourselves.

The museum offers three outdoor playgrounds in its courtyard, as well as a recently renewed indoor play/exploration space. The sports area offers loads of nice activities for the kids to engage in.

Bonus: Sea Life Aquarium Melbourne

The aquarium is another all-weather destination, and can even be great when the energy levels are lower then usual as a nice relaxing bit of entertainment other then Peppa Pig.

Here, as in the zoo, the yearly membership is very reasonable compared to the one-day tickets and we must easily have visited 15 times. The kids get to fondle starfish, ogle the croc and the tend to be hypnotised by the deep-ocean tank with sharks and rays. A good time for everyone.

Bonus: your local pool;

A morning in the pool more or less guarantees a quiet afternoon while the kids rest, and its a nice all-weather option too. We ended up taking up swimming lessons for the oldest (4yr old) and included with the lessons is free anytime entry into all of the local pools for the kids and myself, all for 12$ per week.

This has been one of our staples, the weekly playgroup meetup for dads in Brunswick. A very welcoming group, no pressure to do anything other then relax, enjoy the kids playing and have some fresh baked bread thanks to Jarek.

I’ve found this a great way to meet a very interesting diverse group of guys. Highly recommended to give this a shot.

Brunswick Dads Facebook group

Benedict Evans on ML applications

Worth a read plus some time to ponder.

“Don’t assume that you have to sacrifice your privacy in order to enjoy the advantages of technology. In the long run, tech is only sustainable if it can deliver both.”

This article takes a closer look at how Facebook sneakily (or cleverly) combines data to track you more effectively. Without too much FUD and with a glimpse of hope near the end. Remember, Facebook = WhatsApp = Messenger = Instagram; so quitting this entire ecosystem may be somewhat hard.

LifeHacker – Facebook Isn’t Recording Your Conversations, But It May as Well Be