Infotropism Kirrily Robert’s blog

Middle class life, Vanuatu style

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! With the help of some friends, I’ve put together a little tour of a household in Freswota (pron, “Fresh water”), a neighbourhood of Port Vila which my host Dan describes as “solidly middle class” by Vanuatu standards. [...]

Technical books for Vanuatu

Vanuatu’s a bloody long way from anywhere.

It’s hard to realise how far until you come to visit, and people start asking you to bring things. “Can you buy me a pair of Tevas?” asked Dan. One of his friends who’s installing a security system asked me to pick up some [...]

Las Kad

This morning I woke early — around 5:30 with the chickens and the next door neighbours’ kids — and dressed before my host, Dan, had emerged. Since I’d gotten a little sunburnt yesterday, today I chose to wear a real button-down shirt with a collar instead of the singlet that’s been my usual [...]

The best public transport system in the world?

Port Vila has what is, arguably, the most efficient public transport system in the world.

The main way of getting around, for the locals, is by bus. Don’t think of a 40-seater behemoth; what we have here are mini-buses that seat around 10 passengers, some on fold-down seats, with a sliding side door. [...]

Vanuatu so far

The whole place smells of wood smoke; it was the first thing I smelt as I came off the plane.

Dan’s brother Jakob — part of an adopted family who took him under their wing when he first came here — is teaching me Bislama, the local pidgin language, and I can now [...]

And we’re off

I’m off on two months of travel, during which I may have patchy or intermittent net access. I’m hoping to blog and post photos, but I’ll have to see how the bandwidth looks when I get there.

Here are my travel plans courtesy of Dopplr, who have recently created this facility to add a [...]

Benford’s Law

I’m putting together the results of the Perl Survey, and as I sat on IRC this evening I mentioned that I was collating the data regarding years’ experience in programming.

“I bet,” said Greg McCarroll, “that about 30% of people said they have either 1 year or 10-19 years’ experience.”

I took a look at the [...]