About

This is the personal Blog of Dave Gray (aka. The Rooster). Here I sit on my rail and ramble about life and everything else.

I am married with two children. I live in a small town just outside Lismore, New South Wales, Australia. We moved here in 2007 and are pretty happy living in the country and enjoying the small community and services that are typical of small towns.

I have been blogging now for about 5 years. I started out sharing a website that my brother hosted called The Gray Matter. After a time I thought I might like to step out on my own and discovered WordPress. I have stayed because I find it dynamic and feature rich and I enjoy supporting the open source community. I hate the commercialism of “MySpace” and clones. I think WordPress suits both my temperament and my age. I go through stages of blogging everyday and sometimes more to periods where I don’t, but it doesn’t bother me as I continue to enjoy it. By day I am a Registered Nurse who works in a busy operating theatre I find that I draw on my experiences rarely in regards to blogging. In fact I prefer to keep my online life quite separate.

I am involved with podcasting co-hosting the Aussie Geek Podcast. The podcast has produced 10 shows at the time of writing this and continues to evolve. The podcast used to be known as The Global Geek Podcast, however in 2008 we rebranded the show, renamed it and continued on! In January 2010 the hosts decided to move to the LifeStyle PodNetwork. I am responsible for editing it and publishing it once a week. So you will find that I blog about audio production, editing and hints and tips on working with audio files and .mp3’s in relation to podcasting. I get a lot out of doing the podcast and I do it for the love of it. Although I am open to the possibilities that it might provide.

The Aussie Geek Podcast is a “geek” show and features “tech” news, it stays on a path that has a user focus as myself and co-hosts, are users and that is what we bring to the show. My current hosts are Cait and Keith. The show is a dynamic mix of chat, tech news and a Web2.0 focus. Although other topics colour the show like blogging, new applications, interviews and reviews. But always from a users perspective. You won’t hear us going on about how programs work or what code was used in a page that makes it great. You will hear us talk about what a program is like to use, or a web site is like to navigate and what the features are friendly and how original it is to us: users.

In December of 2008 I began a podcast and a close association with James Williams of the LifeStyle PodNetwork. I started a podcast with James called Two Schooners. A fun show that we do for fun. Taking the idea of two blokes sitting round at the pub having a chat about the past weeks news and events and anything else that comes to mind. The show is doing very well and we are having a blast with it.

James and I also began collaborating on another project and another podcast; Podcasters Emporium. James was having difficulty finding some direction and purpose for the show. So to that end James and I reinvented the show with a relaunch in February 2009. The show is squarely aimed at podcasters who want to make their show better. We have high hopes for the show and have some great interviews lined up which we are looking forward to. As joint hosts in the project we are really enjoying the challenge and the working relationship we are developing.

I also blog about life in general, family, friends and general things that are going on. This is my personal blog after all so expect to find a mash-up of a lot of things. But that is the way I like it and I am not doing this for numbers. It is nice to know that people are interested though.

I am an advocate for new technology being more accessible to users and more easily understood by laypeople. I am a fan of RSS technology and my most treasured application is FeedDemon, I live there on-line and venture out seldom. I try to expose as many of my friends to the Internet and all it has to offer. I aim to get them excited about what it can do for them. I certainly hope that this blog reflects that which I strive to do. In addition to having a bit of fun along the way.

Welcome to my family and friends that stumble on the rail. I hope that this site gives you some insight into the on-line community, what it is I am doing in this “space” and what I have been up to.