I'm a bit of a cynic when it comes to new technology. Perhaps I'm atypical in the software development community, but I like to know what a new technology will do for me before I make the effort to learn it. Ever since I entered the IT industry I have carefully evaluated the technology I'm going to use.

A number of years ago I attended a presentation about Spring. The users of Spring were obviously enthusiastic to the point of religious fervour over Spring, and while they went some way to explaining what Spring was they failed to really explain the one thing I wanted to know. What problem did Spring solve?

Today something remarkable occurred. Clare Curren, a Labour MP has put into effect the concept of open government for policy development. She says on Red Alert, the Labour Blog "Labour is about to try something new. A new way of developing policy. Out in the open, and involving you." She continues to say that "Open and transparent government is about how politicians, the governing party and the public sector constructively interacts with citizens to be more democratic and effective."

Today I had lunch with a secret informant embedded deep in the bowels of the Council in Auckland. He relayed to me the true purpose of council amalgamation. Is it an effort to make local government in Auckland more efficient, or is there a dark ulterior motive? Well the truth is not difficult to see if you look carefully.

In May 2007 I prepared and submitted a software patent. Given my recent work to have software patents excluded some might be confused about why I tried to gain this patent. The reason was ironic; if it had been successful I would have used the revenue from royalties to fund my own campaign against software patents.