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The Desire to Create. Genetically Expressed by The Feep

without comments

Honey laded Bee hives are very heavy.

An api­ar­ist, or bee­keeper, places dozens of bee hives, usu­ally clustered on stand­ard ship­ping palettes, near nec­tar laden sources. In Aus­tralia, this tends to be in the bush – near flower­ing Euca­lypts. The res­ult­ing honey has a slightly smoky taste: but is the best in the world. Around 1980, my Dad star­ted a small cash side­line of Bee­keep­ing to sup­ple­ment the wheat/sheep farm­ing that the Eyre Pen­in­sula prop­erty had sus­tained over 4 generations.

Coun­try South Aus­tralia is a per­fect loc­a­tion – espe­cially on the fringes of a large reserve. You can place your hives on private prop­erty (with per­mis­sion) and let the bees tra­verse into the reserve gath­er­ing the nec­tar. I see it as reap­ing from the gov­ern­ment, albeit without dam­age (and in the case of plants, a bene­fit as the bees pol­lin­ate the trees).

The trouble with bush loc­a­tions is that they are remote, unpaved and not access­ible by nor­mal palette lift­ing devices. In ware­houses, weighed down fork­lifts shuttle around isles of con­crete. In the bush, the isles are sandy loam or clay – and the shelves are very very tall nat­ive Aus­tralian trees.

My Dad pur­chased an old fork­lift and used this around the sheds for a time lift­ing and mov­ing the heavy palettes of hives. This fork­lift did not travel well. You could not load or unload it from a truck; and the wheel­base and design were dis­tinctly urban. Indoors. Def­in­itely not for bush use.

Land rovers, on the other hand, were designed for off-road use. Four wheel drive; rugged, simple & when pur­chased second hand – cheap. Another bene­fit of a Land rover is that you can put the thing into neut­ral, attach it to a tow bar and go any­where. Once in the bush – they were in their element.

Land Rovers, as built by Ley­land, did not come with fron­tend palette load­ing equipment.

So, in a flash of bril­liance, my Dad took the lift­ing part of the fork­lift & attached it to the front of a Land Rover. The Land Rover’s engine & radi­ator was slightly reposi­tioned to per­mit the hydraul­ics to fit in the engine com­part­ment. Extra counter-balanced weights were added to the rear of the Land Rover. The pet­rol tank was also moved.

What was born was the Feep. (short of Fork­lift Jeep)

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The above is the Feep. As I recall, and this is some 30 years ago now, the first coat of paint (John Deere green) was com­plete by my Dad. The accent­ing (John Deere) yel­low & the name – as you can see on the ver­tical fork­lift say­ing “FEEP” was painted by myself.

To my know­ledge, this is the word’s only Fork­lift Jeep – cre­ated by my Dad to help him lift & load heavy bee hives palettes in bushland.

The genet­ics of innov­a­tion & cre­ation have passed down to another gen­er­a­tion. Maybe not as prac­tical as a Feep, but they are there.

On this topic, more to come in com­ing weeks.

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  • Written by Nick Hodge

    February 7th, 2012 at 2:15 pm

    Posted in technology

    My Geek Origin Story

    with 2 comments

    As Microsoft TechEd 2011 is fast approach­ing & Delic8genius has made a call-out to the Aus­tralian com­munity “What is your Geek Ori­gin Story”

    So, it’s time for me to doc­u­ment My Geek Ori­gin Story

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    My first geek obses­sion star­ted with cats. Or, as we now call them, kit­tehs. Quiet com­pan­ions on the Aut­istic scale, kit­tehs added their warm furry friend­li­ness to my pur­suits – and were always more accom­mod­at­ing than humans. There­fore, I clas­sify kit­tehs as a key moment in my geek origins.
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    Along with kit­tehs in this photo are the col­lec­tion of Air­fix and Rev­ell mod­els. The his­tory of World War 2, and the mak­ing of model aero­planes was a rather unique pur­suit in the middle of rural Eyre Pen­in­sula. But I loved it. Oh, that and LEGO.
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    After being intro­duced to an Apple ][, on loan to our school from Angle Park Com­put­ing Centre, by a pres­ci­ent Maths & Sci­ence Teacher: Mr Peter Stew­art,  I was hooked. From this early access, I also played with a TI pro­gram­mable cal­cu­lator and CP/M based Osborne 1.

    My Dad, sens­ing my inab­il­ity to become the 5th gen­er­a­tion owner of the farm, pur­chased a TRS-80 Model I. Oh wow, the fun I had with that com­puter was amaz­ing.

    I owe Mr Peter Stew­art and my Dad a great debt.

    Note on Angle Park Com­puter Centre: many South Aus­tralian Geeks of my gen­er­a­tion began thanks to Angle Park Com­puter Centre. Stilgher­rian, Frank Falco, Simon Hack­ett and David Newell to name four. Being a coun­try kid, we relied on loaners.

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    More cats: this time Bindi; with our/my first Macin­tosh: a 128K Macin­tosh. One of the first in South Aus­tralia: so first, it only came with a 110V power board!

    Thanks to Tim Kleemann from Ran­dom Access (later owner of Next Byte) – this Macin­tosh opened the door on a career & a love of Apple.

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    Taken some­time in 1984 or 1985, this is me at my Macin­tosh. A har­binger of the next 13 years in the IT industry.
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    Ran­dom Access, Adelaide. 1987. This is me at my desk, work­ing away at some Macin­tosh things. Thanks to Tim Kleemann, Tre­vor Starke & Adrian van den Bok – and many oth­ers – I worked here hap­pily doing Mac things.
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  • Written by Nick Hodge

    August 17th, 2011 at 4:22 pm

    Posted in geek,teched

    Hello from Windows Phone 7 app

    without comments

    This is merely a post from the Word­Press Win­dows Phone 7 app. GPLv2 licensed.spacer

  • Written by Nick Hodge

    August 4th, 2011 at 1:34 pm

    Posted in technology

    Me on Geek Culture

    without comments

    Thanks for the inter­view, Stil!

  • Written by Nick Hodge

    April 18th, 2011 at 11:28 am

    Posted in podcast

    Japan & New Zealand

    without comments

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    Hav­ing vis­ited Christ­ch­urch, South Island New Zea­l­and many times; and Japan at least 4 times — I can clearly state they are some of the greatest places in the world to visit. The people are friendly; the sights and exper­i­ences are extraordin­ary. The places are rel­at­ively safe.

    One would think.

    In both instances, they live on the edge of the “Pacific Rim of Fire”, the edge of the Pacific tec­tonic plate that rings West­ern Amer­ica around to New Zea­l­and: the ‘shaky isles’

    It is with much inner tur­moil and sad­ness to see both places crumble and sucumb to devestation.

    This only makes me want to revisit when the time is right, to show sup­port. That their choice to live in a shaky place is not a ghetto nor a place to be shunned.

  • Written by Nick Hodge

    March 14th, 2011 at 1:08 pm

    Posted in japan,newzealand

    Yet Another Trip to Seattle, Washington

    with 7 comments

    Trip num­ber 27 to the USA. I’ve almost lost count. I don’t think I’ll be back for another 12 months. It was cool to go up the Space Needle. And then get a head cold.

  • Written by Nick Hodge

    February 19th, 2011 at 12:15 pm

    Posted in travel

    The World Forces Split Identities in Social Media

    with 14 comments

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    Grow­ing up on a farm, as I did, provides a free­dom that never leaves you. My par­ents lived on and immersed dir­ectly in their work: the farm. It sur­roun­ded them, day in day out. I am sure I absorbed this envir­on­ment in a way where I expect little to no sep­ar­a­tion between work and my per­sonal life. From this stems work­ahol­ism and ded­ic­a­tion. A deep prot­est­ant work ethic.

    There are sig­ni­fic­ant down­sides to total work immer­sion. Espe­cially in this new world of always-on social media. You tweet a response to a work related ques­tion at 11.32pm, and fol­low up with a tirade against an air­line can­cel­ling your flight. The seam­less meld­ing of what is work and what is your life is one of the beau­ties of social media. We are all connected.

    Yes­ter­day, one of the down­sides firmly bit me on the bum. One of my per­sonal opin­ions; a flip­pant tweet has caused an ongo­ing ker­fuffle at Microsoft. This is not the first time I have come unstuck on the social media fron­tier; and sadly I am not alone. Nor am I the last to be bit­ten. There are many bums with bite marks.

    Until now, I have res­isted the urge to have sep­ar­ate twit­ter iden­tit­ies. To me, cre­at­ing and using dif­fer­ent iden­tit­ies is the anti­thesis of social media. To be frank, I wish that I could be one iden­tity on twit­ter.; but there are forces in the wider world does not accept the sep­ar­a­tion of per­sonal iden­tity and an employer’s iden­tity. As I found in recent events, there is always the risk that someone will take an utter­ance out of con­text, and use this as a cudgel in piti­ful internal office polit­ics. Or, as oth­ers have found, fod­der for gossip.

    The cleav­ing of iden­tit­ies is a topic upon which I have struggled through­out my Microsoft career. Being true to myself, whilst attempt­ing to com­ply with the weight of an employer’s expectations.

    As stated yes­ter­day, I have cre­ated a new twit­ter iden­tity @RealNickHodge which is a private, for people only account. Each fol­lower is vet­ted. I am being care­ful not to let in bots and sen­sa­tion­al­ist journ­al­ists. I am also wary of “brand name” twit­ter iden­tit­ies. I fol­low real people; people who are smart enough to real­ise my opin­ions are mine, and mine alone.

    My old twit­ter account is now clearly iden­ti­fied @NickHodgeMSFT, with a pro­file stat­ing my pos­i­tion and employer. As at the time of post­ing this blog entry, it has 4803 fol­low­ers. I do not ima­gine the fol­lower count will increase dra­mat­ic­ally. Thank­fully, formal Microsoft accounts such as @MSAU are doing an out­stand­ing job of present­ing a formal social face of the organisation.

    Within 24 hours of cre­at­ing the new account, I have about 200 real fol­low­ers, less noise and I trust more free­dom to be real. Or at least the free­dom from guilt in speak­ing as me, being who I am.

  • Written by Nick Hodge

    January 5th, 2011 at 1:45 pm

    Posted in socialmedia,twitter

    From @NickHodge to @RealNickHodge

    with 3 comments

    I have been on twit­ter since Feb­ru­ary 2007 as @NickHodge. Nearly 4 years. In that time, my account has gathered nearly 5000 fol­low­ers. Whilst I have no accur­ate data on these fol­low­ers: it is fair to say a major­ity are spam­bots or dormant accounts. There is abso­lutely no way I am that inter­est­ing to 5000 people.

    Con­sid­er­ing my twit­ter per­sona has been cheeky and some­what icon­o­clastic, even to my present employer; and the con­tent of 90% of my tweets are not related to work — I find it sur­pris­ing to gather so many pieces of moss.

    5000 fol­low­ers does put the @NickHodge account into the top 20% of Aus­tralian twit­ter­ers. Being an open (not locked) account, this puts my utter­ances on twit­ter into the fun­nel for social media mon­it­or­ing engines. Their sys­tems will determ­ine my fol­lower count (and retweet count, and other met­rics) puts me into a “must watch” list.

    I base this assess­ment on my work use of social media mon­it­or­ing engines. Keywords, key people. Asso­ci­ated, and you are prime bait for engines to watch fil­ter and report to their cor­por­ate stakeholders.

    Some people crave this atten­tion. In fact, it is their life blood. I am per­fectly fine with their need for fol­low­ers, read­ers, fans if you will. But this is not for me. The dir­ect asso­ci­ation between my employer and what I say and think is not dir­ect. At best, it is loosely coupled.

    There is no quick mech­an­ism to com­pletely delete all your fol­low­ers, and who you are fol­low­ing in twit­ter. As an imme­di­ate solu­tion, I have sus­pen­ded post­ing from the @NickHodge account and cre­ated @RealNickHodge. I am being strict as to whom I fol­low; the account is locked.

    For me, it is back to feel­ing free to com­ment without the fear of caus­ing col­lat­eral damage.

  • Written by Nick Hodge

    January 4th, 2011 at 5:42 pm

    Posted in socialmedia,twitter

    Vale Chris Gulker

    with 2 comments

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    In the middle of 1996, I was driv­ing Chris Gulker and Bah­man Dara – fel­low Apple employ­ees – to their hotel after just vis­it­ing the new Fair­fax Chul­lora print­ing plant.

    Hav­ing spent hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars on very large presses, col­lat­ors and dis­tri­bu­tion sys­tems – Fair­fax were hav­ing dif­fi­culty in keep­ing col­our con­sist­ent in their advert­ise­ments. For instance, a green tinged advert­ise­ment for meat at Coles would not gen­er­ate sales. The CMYK to news­print is a tricky business.

    It was not the col­our prob­lem that Chris Gulker men­tioned. It was the rise of the Inter­net – and the impact the inter­net would have on the print­ing presses. At this time, Avril’s The Defin­it­ive Chris­tian Slater web site was get­ting reas­on­able page vis­its. Using the for-work of Chris, and Dave Winer, I embraced Fron­tier for the Fairfax@Atlanta web site.

    Chris’ com­ments, and fol­lowup dis­cus­sion when I vis­ited 1 Infin­ite Loop (as an Adobe employee in late 1998) def­in­itely changed my out­look on the world. The inter­net was, and has, become king. Later Chris joined Adobe.

    Late in Octo­ber, Chris died after a long battle with brain cancer.

    Even though my inter­ac­tions with Chris were inter­mit­tent – they were impact­ful. This is the mark of a good life. Vale, Chris.

  • Written by Nick Hodge

    November 6th, 2010 at 11:09 am

    Posted in history

    Zero Top Tips for Social Media Success

    with 2 comments

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    I hope you found this useful.

  • Written by Nick Hodge

    October 28th, 2010 at 5:10 pm

    Posted in socialmedia

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