Stephen Blyth's Blog

The first thing to go when our son was born in December was not sleep,  but writing posts for this blog. No matter how much I’ve willed myself to jump online and blog, the ink has’t flowed. Today, the hiatus is officially over. For good reason – I’m at the webstock 09 conference at Wellington [...]

On Wednesday I finally decided how I’d rejig my computer set up. Because of the amount of work I do in front of a screen I thought I’d probably be more productive with a bigger one. Plus a couple of times recently, my presentations haven’t worked 100% because I included multi-media that can’t be handled [...]

Downstairs in my office I’ve got a webserver running. On Wednesday night it began hosting this blog along with some other websites, programmes and my email from its new possie. The only thing I know about keeping it going is how to switch the power back on if we have a powercut. I appreciate the [...]

It was a year ago today that I purchased the domain www.commonknowledge.net.nz. This calls for raising of glasses and toasts. Not so much to celebrate the first birthday of a domain name, but to recognise I’ve been self-employed for my first year. Being self-employed has its up and downs but right now I’m feeling pretty [...]

My demeanour as an ihug customer has changed from happy and unflappable to disgruntled and frazzled. I’m in the middle of a broadband tale of woe. It all started when I decided to switch ISP from ihug to TelstraClear. Faster cable broadband was the carrot, and slightly cheaper pricing a not unwelcome bonus. TelstraClear’s customer [...]

I’ve been searching around for a Wilco bootleg. After seeing the band play at the Opera House on Easter Monday, there’s something about the energy and intensity of the concert I’d like to recapture. Already I’ve heard a couple of their live recordings as Wilco are prolific sharers and have embraced the Internet. Aside for [...]

The popularity of authors and presenters following in the footsteps of famous writers or artists, or walking the whole length of a country, mountain range, island or following some geographic feature has got me thinking about a project of my own. Last year I really enjoyed a TV series about distinguished English actress Miriam Margolyes’ [...]

I’ve been humming and haring about whether to upload any photos of our daugther Elsa. Something primal has struck me – I feel very protective of her and I guess I don’t want to her image freely shared willy nilly with strangers. It’s not that I think any harm will come to her (I definitely [...]

Pounding in the background is Talking Heads from on their “Stop Making Sense” live concert, now on dvd. It’s an astoundingly good concert, with a real spark over 20 years after its first release. Using the concert name for my repackaged blog is not a homage to Talking Heads, though I’m fond of their quirky, [...]