This Blog is about a variety of topics that I’m interested in. My top posts are listed below. I also do regular posts on Audiobooks I’ve listened to and notes from conferences I attend.
Short biography covers the basics without going into excessive detail but covers the highlights. Worth a read to get the general picture of his life 4/5
Despite it’s title it traces the evolution and keys shows in each genre towards 1999 – 2016 era (The Sopranos to when the book released). Interesting and wide-ranging although US and author centric. 4/5
Amazingly detailed book covering systems and operations for every step of a mission. Read this after the popular Apollo books and fill in all your gaps. Highly Recommend 5/5
Memoir of a film producer (Titanic etc). I think the early parts tend to work better with the last third being less interesting. But in general worth reading. 4/5
As I have in previous years here is a quick analysis of the election vote and result. This is based on the Detail Report that was posted on the night of the election.
Background
The InternetNZ board was electing 2 board members in August 2026 via the STV method. There were a total of nine candidates.
Two of these were representing the “Free Speech Union” (FSU) who is in process of trying to take over the organisation. They were Douglas Brown and Jillaine Heather. The Free Speech Union has encouraged its members to sign up for Internetnz and vote for them.
Anti-FSU groups broadly encouraged their members to vote for Bianca Grizhar, Daniel Spector and Annette Culpan. They discouraged voting for Douglas, Jillaine and Jan Rivers (an anti-trans activist)
Round One – First Preferences
Here is a table for the 1st round votes in 2026 compared to 2025
Year
Total Votes
FSU R1
FSU R1 %
anti-FSU R1
anti-FSU R1 %
2025
2785
1046
38%
1724
62%
2026
3104
1923
62%
1172
38%
diff
+11%
+84%
-32%
The totals were almost the reverse of in 2025 with 62% going anti-FSU in 2025 while the FSU captures 62% in 2026. Note that I’ve excluded Brynn Neilson (in 2025) and Jan Rivers (in 2026) from either group but they are both under 1%.
The droop quota for a candidate to be elected was 1035 ( 3104 / 3 + 1 ). In the first round FSU candidate Douglas Brown exceeded this ( with 1822 votes ) and was elected.
Round Two – Part 1 Redistributing Douglas’ excess
In this round since Douglas greatly exceeded the quota his excess votes were redistributed. 1822 – 1035 = 787 were redistributed. Of Douglas’ 1822 voters it appears they allocated their votes as follows
Who
Number of 2nd preferences out of 1822
Jillaine
1810
Bianca
1
Daniel
2
Annette
1
Jan
4
No 2nd preference
4
The reallocation put Jillaine on 882.8 votes or 2nd place with Bianca on 695.43. This is very consistent with FSU voters listed their two candidates 1 and 2.
Round Two – Part 2 Candidates defeated
In the 2nd part of round 2 candidates were removed. Since the total votes for Daniel, Annette, Nabil, Keoni, David and Jan was 489 even if all them were transfered to a single candidate they would be less than Bianca (on 695). Therefore all of them were eliminated. Leaving just Jillaine and Bianca in the race
Round Three – Reallocation from defeated candidates
In this round 489 votes were reallocated from the defeated candidates according to the next preference ( out of Bianca, Jillaine or exhausted ). Of these 403 ( 82.4% ) went to Bianca, 21.73 ( 4.4%) went to Jillaine and 64.3 ( 13.1% ) were exhausted (ie did not list Bianca or Jillaine).
Note that the transfers to Jillaine were probably all of Jan River’s next preferences plus 10 votes out of the 175 that were for Nabil, Keoni and David. This would be consistent with Jan River’s voters being generally aligned with the FSU.
After the allocation which was consistent the pro and anti-FSU voting patterns Bianca had 1098 votes which was over the threshold of 1035 and she was elected.
Comments
Overall the result appears correct and makes sense. The biggest change was the drop off in anti-FSU voters compared to 2025 while the FSU significantly increased their supporters.
A fairly balanced biography of the 6 astronauts. Covering before and during the Astronaut careers and to an extent afterwards. Worth a read for space fans. 4/5
Everything Open Everywhere All At Once by Steven De Costa
“ChatGPT: Please create an interesting keynote about random philosophical concepts strung together in a vaguely meaningful way and themed around Chickens”
Lightning Talks
End Security by Obscurity
mygov code generator app
enrol + TOPT
is it secure? Is it spyware?
Only availbale via the app store
Made Freedom of Information in 2021 and gone through multiple appeals/reviews after being denied
Looking for money to appeal further
High Altitude Balloons and and ASN.1
Need a protocol with various requirements to help recovered balloon and get data from it.
Existing protocol not ideal
asn.1 old protocol that might be useful
What would it take to run everything Open in New Zealand
Running a conference is hard
Small team and Harder
Good idea?
What will this actually take
Contact Chelsea if interested.
Open source is not all you need to fight inshitification
No but other freedoms are needed
Brain Model in your Hand
I’m doing a talk in front of 300 people. My brain thinks I’m being chased by a Lion
Learn an Indigenous Language
How to Eat Fruit
Help is at Hand
Join a Union
My Community
Open Source Institute
My $50 question now costs a trip to fench
Pycon did battle decks
What is the most popular emoji on github?
Ran a big query on Bigquery
Grabbed the software heritage project
Lots of small files. Hard to query or mirror
3 Petabytes. Too might to download
Solid Open Source Package
6 talks about deplatforming and/or self hosting this week
