Ari Sargent

Scripting tool

a summer break wouldn’t be complete without a visit to the dump :)

Sargent’s log stardate 1 January 2010.001: time to get my online presence sorted! This is not a New Year’s resolution, rather a good period of downtime to get a bit organised. I have recently realised that I exist in both the virtual and real worlds, but other than through closed communities (such as Facebook) there is very little connecting the two. Hence this blog, an open online space where I can share myself, my family, and occasionally (ie. when I get my shit together) my opinion/views on issues.

I am Ari Sargent, born 1968 in Christchurch, New Zealand. These days I am a proud Wellingtonian, living in Mt Victoria with my partner, Sascha Német and our three children – Saffron (10), Tallulah (6) and Tintin (3).

I have been a closet geek since I was about 10 (or perhaps earlier), and cut my teeth programming assembler for the 6502 processor on an Apple II computer, and then Z80 machine code on a ZX81 and a Sord computer.

I have tinkered with web technologies as a hobby for a number of years – these days I have settled on cutting the odd bit of PHP code to create various utilities for my own use (such as a Wellington City Library website scraper to monitor all of the kids overdue library books and fines, or my Amazon EC2 hosted digital photo library and a bunch of other stuff – none of it pretty, but all functional to a greater or lesser extent). I would love to learn Ruby/Rails, but realistically with 3 kids I struggle to get in even a tiny bit of app development, let alone learning a new language/platform. I think I’ll just try and learn MVC using Cake PHP in the vain hope that someday I might get time to learn Ruby.

I trained as an electrical engineer, completing an honours degree in Electrical & Electronic Engineering in 1989. Since then I have worked in the electricity industry in NZ.

By day I head up Powershop – a job I really cherish. It is a rare opportunity to combine my professional experience in the electricity industry with my personal passion for technology and inner geekiness.

So, it is now 2010 and I really need to get my online presence sorted. I can currently be found everywhere on the web, and nowhere in particular at the same time. Here is the plan to tidy this up:

Personal:

• tumblr.deepthought.co.nz – random and sporadic outbursts.
• Facebook – where I will interact with my “real world” friends online.
• Twitter (@d33pthought) – where I will have conversations and a bit of fun with all and sundry – I will happily follow (and be followed by) people whom I have never met.

Professional:

• powershop.co.nz – where it all happens!
• Twitter (@powershop) – discussion with customers and friends of Powershop.
• Powershop Blog – discussion on Powershop and stuff related to the electricity industry.