Blogs Posts by Nick McHardy

Welcome to my blog, where I cover tech, games and whatever else that’s interesting in the universe like vinyl, fusion jazz and side projects.

This website is inspired by the web of the late 90s - no, not just the style of the site - but also harking back to a time when people would set up websites (probably on Geocities or similar) and write about anything that interested them. Most of the websites looked terrible (my first few sites were no exception) but it was so liberating having your own site. So here’s my modern-day version of that late 90s vibe.

Not sure where to start? Here are some blogs to get you started:

Learning About Leadership Episode 1 (May ‘20)
The Humble Minidisc (Aug ‘18)
Why the Sega Dreamcast is the Best Console of All Time (Aug ‘18)
Common Website Vulnerability Scans Found in Logs (Apr ‘18)
On Being an Engineering Manager (Feb ‘19)

There’s also a 🍊 Garden Diary to check out. It’s sometimes updated as the seasons change.

Latest Posts

When Scrum/Agile/XP works your own way

📅 Posted 2014-09-18 (5 minute read)

Recently, I’ve been working on a project that is rebuilding approximately 18 websites with a new theme, latest CMS software (Sitecore 7.2), MVC and other fancy front-end things (AngularJS, latest jQuery, Bootstrap, font-awesome, and a bunch of other “vendor” packages). What I have noticed is that although we are using some aspects of Scrum or Agile or whatever it is called these days (it’s just a revision of eXtreme Programming right - but people aren’t called “programmers” any more for some reason), there are many things that you need to see if they work for you.

My quick music notation system that needs an attractive name

📅 Posted 2014-09-17 (3 minute read)

For a long time, I’ve used a quick notation for jotting down songs with minimal of effort but also with conveying the general idea and feel of the song. I have no name for the notation, nor do I claim to have invented it since it was pretty much borne out of the PLAY command in QBasic (more on QBasic in a future article that I have half-written - it’s going to be gold).

Latest project - Hawkesbury History, People and Places

📅 Posted 2014-08-23 (4 minute read)

Well it’s been a little while since I’ve posted here, mainly because I have so many projects on the go at once. More to be revealed later, of course. But for this blog I would like to talk about a not so new project of mine, namely Hawkesbury History, People & Places or more easily just “www.hawkesbury.org”. What is it? Hawkesbury People and Places is an ongoing project which collects & locates places, buildings, organisations and people of the Hawkesbury Region.

Pnau's Sambanova was re-released, but is there a difference?

📅 Posted 2014-07-31 (11 minute read)

This has always intrigued me. Pnau released their Sambanova album then only after gaining popularity it gets pulled from stores because it contains uncleared and uncredited samples. It is then re-released under a new label, this time with Warner Music. I am lucky enough to have both copies here in front of me and despite having different cover art and a slightly different track listing, it begs the question: Original Pressing Peking Duck vs Warner Music, just what is the difference?

Real estate, it's another language

📅 Posted 2014-07-27 (3 minute read)

So Real Estate uses a lot of terms to describe property. Surely there is some fact and some fiction behind all of these terms? I figured it was about time someone decided to decrypt the mysterious language of Real Estate. Tried selling a house before? Been told your place is “quaint” (basically, tiny) or “open plan” (impossible to heat)? Or perhaps “bay-side” (the bay is down the road, turn left, turn left again, keep driving for another 2 kilometres, yep, there you go)?

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