Michael Dowse: Archive

How incentives saved Darwin's man-eating...

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to attend a post-conference dinner at Crocodylus Park in Darwin, Australia. We ate outdoors surrounded by over a thousand crocodiles while Grahame Webb, the founder of the park, spoke to us about his work saving the crocodiles from extinction. My favourite solutions involve aligning incentives to achieve the desired result, and the story of Darwin’s...

Dec 15th

How Club Penguin teaches charity

Yesterday I heard Lance Priebe, the co-founder of Club Penguin speak at AnimFX 2011. I was looking forward to his talk because Club Penguin is kind of a big deal. It’s a safe virtual world where children can play games and chat with each other. With over 150 million users between the ages of 6 and 14 it’s the most popular child oriented site around. Ask any 10 year old and chances are...

Nov 15th

Oct 12th

Fixing Kiwibank's Account Number Fields

In Kiwibank’s online banking the Account Number is split into four fields. To copy an account number you have to either copy and past in sections, or type it out. I do this a couple of times per week whenever I pay someone new. After months of mild irritation I wrote a Chrome extension to automatically change the 4 fields into one field which strips out hyphens and whitespace and reinserts...

Sep 27th

Sep 18th

Aug 26th

“I may be wrong but I think the idea of legacy is for fools. We will all be dust....”

– Alex Bogusky

Aug 25th

1 note

Subliminal Stimuli

Yesterday I signed up for Spotify. Pick a song, any song, Spotify lets you play it instantly, on your computer, or your phone, or your ipod. For someone like me who loves music but can’t be bothered keeping their local music library up to date it’s a game changer. The free account I’m on is loaded up with free advertising and the major launch partner is Coca Cola, so for a few...

Jul 18th

166 Years

In August of 1844 a German explorer named Ludwig Leichhardt departed Sydney to explore the inland section of Australia now known as the Northern Territories. The expedition party initially numbered 10, but two turned back and another was killed in an attack on their campsite by aboriginals (natives). The remaining 7 completed a 3,000 mile overland journey to reach Port Essington in December of...

Jul 12th

Jul 11th

Jul 2nd

Jul 1st

10pm, driving, I stop at the lights. A man runs...

Apr 1st

Mar 27th

k776 asked: Will you release the RailsQuest source code on Github for a look?

Mar 25th

RailsQuest

I spent last weekend at Railscamp, an unconference/hackathon for developers. One project I worked on while there is RailsQuest. It started on friday night when a group of us started brainstorming ideas for a project that we could build at Railscamp, for Railscamp. The concept was to take something that happened at Railscamp (people programming stuff for fun) and add a unifying social game...

Mar 24th

Mar 7th

2 notes

1 tag

Mar 7th

24 notes

Nov 24th

Heaps! wins TUANZ awards

I spend a lot of my time working on heaps! and last week we won the Education and Commerce categories at the TUANZ Innovation Awards which is fantastic! If you’re a Kiwibank customer and you’re not using heaps! yet then you should definitely check it out. I’ve just had a fantastic couple of days in Dunedin, though the temperature is about a quarter of what it was in California....

Sep 9th

1 note

2 tags

Adioso →

Yesterday I caught up with Andrew Tipton who is now a co-founder of Adioso ‘a travel search engine for spontaneous and adventurous travellers’. One of my goals at the moment is to be more nomadic and with fares this cheap I’ll be looking at more international trips!

Sep 4th

1 note

Sep 1st

2 notes

Aug 29th

Graduation

I had my graduation ceremony on the weekend. Yes, I got dressed up in the gown, hood and cap. No, I will not be posting photos. Now I have a BSc, majoring in Computer Science and am an Alumni of the University of Otago. This also marks my return to blogging, lets see how long it lasts.

Aug 25th

2 notes

Jun 5th

43 notes

May 29th

“When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than...”

– Why the Lucky Stiff

May 15th

May 8th

Apr 22nd

44 notes

“Can whoever owns the bed currently situated under the stairs on the ground floor...”

– the Computer Science Secretary to all CompSci students

Apr 12th

hoperenee: fuckyeahprettygirls: ...

Apr 6th

Apr 2nd

1,105 notes

I can't wait to go to University

drian42: michaeldowse: drian42: it’s going to be awesone. I wonder, what should i study? Where should I go? I should really know by now.. Correct. Don’t stay in Wellington. Otago’s pretty good. Why not? I think i might, but i wouldn’t stay at home. Otago? So i here. Do you think its good to go to whichever place does whatever you want to study best, or the place that generally appeals...

Mar 30th

I saw her hipster with her hair dyed grey last...

albertsabyss: Is this a thing now? Yeah, it’s a thing and I hate it.

Mar 29th

Google Docs: Making me look like I'm working when...

Jess: Ha we're both editing the report. I'm writing about our calibration at the moment, you?

Me: I leave tabs open for weeks without looking at them

Mar 27th

I can't wait to go to University

drian42: it’s going to be awesone. I wonder, what should i study? Where should I go? I should really know by now.. Correct. Don’t stay in Wellington. Otago’s pretty good.

Mar 20th

I'm pretty happy with that Skins ending

Come on guys, Skins has never had happy, or even conclusive endings.

Mar 19th