An interesting question, who am I? This is the question that we all must answer whilst we are on this small planet. It is right up there with “What is the meaning of life?” Maybe they are connected.

My LinkedIn Profile, and more formal resume: www.linkedin.com Profile: Nick Hodge

From a duration on this planet perspective, I am 39-plus-ish. Location, usually Sydney. The family travels, and I travel for work — so there are pictures and stories from all around the world on http://www.nickhodge.com/.

From a personal accomplishment perspective, I am married to Avril and have one son, Liam.

I am presently employed as a Professional Geek at Microsoft in Sydney, Australia. I work mainly online, published here and also http://thegeekstories.com/

This web site, mungenet, has been online since 1996. It predates the current hype/craze of “weblogs/blogs/blogosphere”. Historical views of mungenet on www.nickhodge.com and mungenet on webstuff.apple.com. Apart from the design coming a long way; technologies have too.

My personal likes are books (history, specifically military history), programming languages, music; specially music of the 1980’s; and anything that is sorta geeky.

Our family has two Korats (Lucy and Mee Noi (Our Korats)). They are pure bred Thai cats, known as Si Sawat in Thailand. One is named Lucy and the other Mee Noi.

We also two MINI Cooper S’s; one named Megan and the other SCRLTT (Scarlett) Yes, the cars have names. It assists when we talk about them.

As stated, travel has been a part of my work, and thankfully something the whole family enjoy (70 Days, 7 Countries and Journeys in 2005) so I get to New Zealand and major cities in Australia regularily. Being a part of the wider Asia-Pacific, other locations such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo also pop up from time to time.

This is Avril Hodge, my beautiful wife. If you are a fan of Christian Slater, you must, must, must visit her web site.

This is Liam, our son. According to our friends, he is a splitting image of me. This photo was taken on our trip to London in 2004

Maybe it should be called “International Programming Language Peace Day”. The level of advocacy for various programming languages reaches rhetorical heights last seen during the one of the not-so-successful 18th century revolutions.

When not speaking to humans, other programmers to reading the latest advocacy on their language of choice: programmers stitch together the wild thoughts of others to munge data into information.

Programmers are the people who use computer languages, in their various forms, to get computers to do cool things. From blikenlights to cool online maps: there are a pyramid of programmers responsible for your computer experience. A programmer is behind the “ding” in the lift you used this morning; and the software that validated your ticket on the bus ride to work.

The beauty of computer languages is that they never seem to stagnate: like modern, spoken languages: they evolve as the world changes. Except those that are abandonware.

Microsoft has recently released my current favourite programming language, Python, as a CLR/.net language: IronPython. This implements Python as a dynamic language on the CLR engine.

C# is the language of implementation for CLR, as is Sun’s Java is for the JVM. A# (Ada), B#, D# F# (OCaml), G# (Generative language), J# (Jsharp), P# (Prolog), L#. More sharps than Beethoven.

The language wars has returned to an old field: dynamic languages. The grand-daddy of dynamic languages, LISP, has received some recent positive PR. One person, Paul Graham, is the poster millionaire for LISP. Lazarus of LISP.

This week, Sun Microsystems parried Microsoft’s IronPython by hiring the team behind JRuby. The aim here is to implement the Ruby dynamic language on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Some months ago, this team was able to get a Ruby on Rails working on the JVM.

Whilst the big language guys battle it out, is Erlang the next Ruby, or is it just a viking proto-language with the best non-pun name? The Erlang community is starting to come out of their telephone exchanges.

No language has deemed to have arrived in the 21st Century until there is a web framework written around it. C# is ASP.NET, Python has Dyango, Ruby has Rails, Erlang has Jaws, Scheme has Magic… and so it goes on.

This broken thing called Javascript that has been reborn with AJAX, and is receiving daily blood transfusions of new features.

All of these languages just remind me of my personal alltime favourite language love of my life: Hypercard’s HyperTalk. As Hypercard is no longer sold, and “Classic MacOS” is a battle to get going on my MacBook Pro — sadly it is a language as useful as Cornish.

So, for a short period of time it is back to one of HyperTalk’s children: Applescript. Basketweaving for the mind.

Is Web2.0 new? Relatively. Is the Web new? Is TCP/IP new? Are computers new? Is technology-augmented learning new? On the short bus ride home, all I could answer is “no”. The demands on the next generation is new. The generation that is going to replace the Baby-boomers and Generation-X are entering into an environment and community where pure “knowledge” or rote learning can easily be outclassed by anyone with a mobile phone to “google” an answer. Childhood Obesity is a furphy. It’s about Childhood Apathy.

It isn’t about teachers, curriculum, pedagogy, centralised testing, digital divides, politicians or departments. Formal learning about individual teachers and how they engage with their students. Engaging teachers leave a long emotional memory that has long term impact. Learning Mentor Apathy Breeds Childhood Apathy.

As the token layman at the conference, I kept quiet and listened and learnt. The challenges for parents and teachers is very similar for managers of small teams: engaging the minds of people is no easy task.

Phillip Adams was the keynote, famous speaker. His feelings in relation to the dotage of mass-media and the rising of unmediated media is interesting; and the impact the web and immediate communication have on the oncoming generation seems in tune with the current mood of the internet.

James Farmer: post-punk deconstructionist (iconoclastic education, incorporated subversion) using web2; or more importantly, using more advanced web technologies in and out of the classroom. In a multi-dimensional, non-mediated media this seems the current norm.

Annika Small: the future learner, future learning of the environment. FutureLab in UK. Not quite sure where this presentation was on about; showing off Xerox Parc or MIT Labs-like videos of learning scenarios in the UK. Any of these could have been created with pure paper technology and an enthusiastic teacher.

Whilst in these highly abstracted circles, one should be extremely careful not to project your personal life into a debate as important as education. As a parent of a teen age student, and not here to sell “stuff” to anyone. Just to listen, absorb — and surprisingly learn. Immersed into a world of instant-ness. Liam has created a digital learning environment based on strung-together tools. Creating content, and collaborating with his classmates to get work done.

The wisdom of enthusiastic teachers is long remembered, lessons from rote teachers is soon forgotten. Digital technology will rarely augment a boring, non-engaging teacher. This concept is touched on by Judy O’Connell, a blogger at today’s conference and represented by Al Upton and Immanuel College’s Kevin Richardson.

A brave and far-sighted Education Minister is going to have a difficult time moving the collective wisdom of rote learning, exams, competitive effort and incremental results into personalised learning and flexible measurement. I wish them well. All children have a latent thirst for learning; and unlocking this should not be constrained by short sighted populism

A good day out, and an excellent way to end the first week of doing something.

Times like these trigger throughts and feelings requiring articulation:

• According to Beth Worrall, Mike’s turn of phrase and gift of alliteration hasn’t left him. “process is the colostomy bag of innovation” illustrates both his off-centre (slightly black) but stark and illustrative phrase making skills. The Munge Brothers is distinctly an Uncle Mike term, borrowed by mungenet. These phrases have the ability to perfectly describe a situation and circumstance that defies alternate characterisation. Naming your clapped-out, 1970’s era and rusted surf-boarding carrier Holden station wagon DOSBOX replete with the personalised number plates sums up his sly sense of humour.
• Ad-hocery, or the lack of over-formalism and a fear of too-much process and methodology is an anathema to Mike. Throwing “stuff” together to solve a difficult problem is one of his strengths. “End user computing” and putting power into the hands of end users was his mantra before he joined the small band at Random Access. Strict methodologists, or god-forbid, those how invent methodologies and Mike probably wouldn’t get along that well. Watch out if you are in IT and don’t have a deep passion for IT.
• Over ten years ago as a consultant, Mike’s phrase “a laptop and a mobile phone” clearly foretold of today. One can work and be in touch virtually anywhere, and with a laptop be productive. There was a famous piece of video made by the Munge Brothers that captures this Fellini-like mood.
• A clear vision of what is important and what works. Some of the original “turning data into information” work the Munge Brothers presented in 1991/2 and ad-hoc data retrieval metamorphed into data-warehousing. This is an industry technology that I use daily in my current, non-highly-technical management job. I have no idea how I could do my job without this level of information.
• A love of art: be it music, video or still; that is off-kilter. It is difficult to describe the imagery I’ve seen; and I think that Mike’s blog has a splattering of these images. Sadly, it seems that its genetic as his son is now playing guitar at school.
• Friendship and loyalty that spans many careers. Uncle Mike was my referee for the job that lifted me from Adelaidian obscurity to Apple incubus. His loyalty to his family in the midst of a turbulent work environment is legendary — and he strike a harmony that is unmatchable. I’ve personally only seen this in one other person in my worklife; his name is also Michael.

Where next for the Fang? We might find him in the recording studio as the micro-music media mogul of Adelaide or a gadget heavy jackaroo in outback Australia. The further away he gets from this increasingly fractured IT industry the better. For those of us stuck on the inside, we are deadly envious.