I'm lost. Do you have a FAQ?
You're looking at it.
What is this site?
Well, first and foremost, it is my Wiki - a custom-designed one where I jot down some technical notes and (of course) my bookmarks and topics of interest.
No big articles, no in-depth discussions - just a digital scrapbook on steroids with a lot of notes (both technical and related to the telecomms market), short (and hopefully efficient) articles and the odd opinion.
But it looks just like a WordPress site!
Yes, but it isn't WordPress - this is a Yaki installation using the Kubrick design by Michael Heilemann.
Why "The Tao of Mac"?
Well, because using a Mac is a lot like Taoism: It just happens. Things just (mostly) work, and it doesn't get in the way of enjoying other stuff.
What is Tao?
Click here. Enlighten yourself. You can also buy a "personal enlightenment kit" on any supermarket (hint: look for the flashlight section).
Why the Mac?
If you really have to ask that question, then you have probably been using computers the wrong way around most of your life. You see, the whole point of using a computer is getting things done on it, not letting the computer use you to keep it running.
That's just one of the reasons I prefer using Macs, but I won't get into that. Arguing about computer platforms is like arguing about cars - it's a matter of personal preference, period.
Where do you live?
In Lisbon, Portugal. Mostly in an office environment, where I roam doing miscellaneous project management work and preying upon unsuspecting vendors in a strange symbiotic relationship with Marketing and Engineering people.
Sir David Attenborough should be filming a documentary there soon and you'll know all about it.
If you're Portuguese, why do you write in English?
If you're asking that question, then you're probably Portuguese yourself.
The short answer is: Because I spend half my waking hours thinking, writing and speaking in English, and have done so for several years now.
The long answer involves explaining in rather painstaking detail why I don't subscribe to the usual navel-gazing attitude followed by Portuguese bloggers (usually along the lines of "if foreigners want to read my stuff, they can stick a fish in their ear"), which stems from our nation's peculiar form of nostalgia for the imperial days and prevents us from making any sort of headway into the modern world.
The even longer answer includes a statement to the effect that I did, in fact, write in Portuguese, and still do - just not here, where I take notes on tech stuff that is of general interest and don't want language getting in the way.
Where do you get all this info?
You mean the actual news interspersed with my notes and rants? Simple. I have a hand-picked RSS subscription list, and a set of Bayesian filters that do the hard work. This saves time, is often faster than "official" news sites and keeps me up to date without requiring hours of aimless surfing (which I can't spare at all).
Plus, you know, there's this thing called Google that helps you find stuff you're looking for - I just take notes of some of the stuff I find.
Why a Wiki?
Because it's better than a traditional weblog. It makes it substantially easier to jot down down notes on interrelated concepts and (with a few enhancements like the SeeAlso section) makes it easier to find related items even if you don't know all the relationships.
Plus it's probably the oldest way to publish content out there (no matter what "Internet historians" and journalists say), and - most importantly - it is, conceptually, the simplest thing that could possibly work.
Why won't you allow people to edit your Wiki or write comments on all pages?
Because people aren't responsible. Even if versioning meant I never lost data, I often had to remove clueless comments from people with nothing better to do with their time. In fact, I still do, since nobody reads the Comment Policy.
Want to comment responsibly? Link to the permalinks atop each post and click on them once from your site - You'll show up both in the Referrers page and (if enabled) on the list of references to each Wiki node. E-mailing me is also a safe bet.
Why use your own Wiki engine?
Well, PhpWiki was great and had a well thought-out internal structure that made it easy to bend to my every whim and that weathered well in face of all the changes, tweaks and additions I did over time, but despite that I wanted something simpler. You can read more about that here
Do you support Trackback?
No Trackback was in my ToDo list for a couple of years, but I find it altogether too crufty to be of any real use.
I side with Daring Fireball on this one - Referrers work just fine.
Wasn't this called mac.against.org?
Yes, it was. Not being a platform zealot in any sense (I use Windows, Linux and Mac OS X every day), I thought it peculiar to be put on when I decided to switch to the Mac as a primary platform at home.
Since part of the experience of being a Mac user has always been feeling the scorn and prejudice of non-Mac users, I thought using that name was a nice way to say that this Mac user will, at the very least, shoot back.
Aren't you the guy that ran/wrote/coded/did/sold/designed (whatever) ?
Yeah, I've been around for a while. I used to run a FPS online games site called accao.net, kept a Portuguese weblog at na-cama.com, worked for a few consulting outfits and integrators, did quite a few site designs for other folk and contributed small snippets of code to a few Open Source projects in my leisure time.
Last time I bothered to check, a few FreeBSD and ISDN posts circa 1994 were still archived somewhere, and I do have an e-mail archive from 1990 or so with VAX/VMS stuff in it...
Do you do this sort of thing for a living?
Definetly not. around 95% of what happens on this site is related only to my off-work pursuits. I don't actually code for a living (only when I get called in to fix something really nasty), maintain the site for profit (the banners are essentially Monopoly money), or use a Mac at work (yet).
Most of my work day is spent juggling e-mails, documents and spreadsheets and doing analysis and planning work (keeping track of project milestones, budgets, etc.). For a few years, there was a lot of testing (mostly around 3G and IP convergence these days), occasional handset debugging and a lot of poring over insanely complicated network diagrams to try and make sure we have the best damn mobile network in the business - not just today, but ten years down the road.
(Most people have no idea of the effort involved in evolving a mobile network, or even how complex it really is.)
I just did the really hard tech stuff (and even then only in IP convergence), and quite honestly wanted to get away from it as soon as possible (and I did, back to Marketing again).
I usually get home, relax for a while, turn away from the TV in disgust and reach for a book or my Mac. At least those I can learn from.
So pretty much everything you see here is the result of a few minutes a day keeping tabs on current technology or noting down some of the things I do in my spare time. If I did this sort of thing for a living, I'd probably blog about Fine Arts or something.
I do use the site to store some interesting information that I come across during work, but nothing of real consequence to what I do. And that's where this little bit of text comes in.
And that's it, really. You can go back to the HomePage now.