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	<title>Software is too expensive to build cheaply&#8230;.</title>
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	<description>Robert&#039;s Rambling Ruminations Regarding Reality...</description>
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		<title>Software is too expensive to build cheaply&#8230;.</title>
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		<title>How to run PySpark on Windows</title>
		<link>https://twasink.net/2026/02/10/how-to-run-pyspark-on-windows/</link>
					<comments>https://twasink.net/2026/02/10/how-to-run-pyspark-on-windows/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Watkins]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 10 Feb 2026 11:16:22 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[python]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[spark]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://twasink.net/?p=1961</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[TL;DR version: install either Java 17 or Java 21. Install PySpark (e.g. via pip). Run it. Longer Version Story Time As part of work for a client, we&#8217;ve been looking at using Microsoft Fabric and PowerBI to pull together data, do analysis using the IES platform (my team&#8217;s core product), and present the results in &#8230; <a href="https://twasink.net/2026/02/10/how-to-run-pyspark-on-windows/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "How to run PySpark on&#160;Windows"</span></a>]]></description>
		
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		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">1961</post-id>
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		<title>Is this thing on?</title>
		<link>https://twasink.net/2022/11/18/is-this-thing-on/</link>
					<comments>https://twasink.net/2022/11/18/is-this-thing-on/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Watkins]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Nov 2022 06:32:34 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://twasink.net/?p=1957</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[For reasons that should be obvious, I&#8217;m just making sure that my blog is still alive. Moribund, but alive&#8230;]]></description>
		
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		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">1957</post-id>
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		<title>JobSeeker and JobActive are meant to move people off welfare and into work, but COVID-19 has changed things &#8211; ABC News</title>
		<link>https://twasink.net/2020/08/29/jobseeker-and-jobactive-are-meant-to-move-people-off-welfare-and-into-work-but-covid-19-has-changed-things-abc-news/</link>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Watkins]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Sat, 29 Aug 2020 00:36:38 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[auspol]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[opinion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://twasink.net/?p=1942</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[The privatisation of the employment system is one of the classic examples of failure. Private employment agencies work well as an opt-in system – you want a job, you go to an agency to help find you one, and if you&#8217;re one of the lucky ones, they get you one. It works well for people &#8230; <a href="https://twasink.net/2020/08/29/jobseeker-and-jobactive-are-meant-to-move-people-off-welfare-and-into-work-but-covid-19-has-changed-things-abc-news/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "JobSeeker and JobActive are meant to move people off welfare and into work, but COVID-19 has changed things &#8211; ABC&#160;News"</span></a>]]></description>
		
		
		
		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">1942</post-id>
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		<title>ExtJS, Ajax, and Error Handling</title>
		<link>https://twasink.net/2019/09/16/extjs-ajax-and-error-handling/</link>
					<comments>https://twasink.net/2019/09/16/extjs-ajax-and-error-handling/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Watkins]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Mon, 16 Sep 2019 13:23:00 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[General]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://twasink.net/?p=1934</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[An example of configuring a global AJAX exception handler]]></description>
		
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		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">1934</post-id>
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		<title>AiL &#8211; Subnets! Public Subnets! Wow, they are free, and we can au-to-mate!</title>
		<link>https://twasink.net/2019/01/15/ail-subnets-public-subnets-wow-they-are-free-and-we-can-au-to-mate/</link>
					<comments>https://twasink.net/2019/01/15/ail-subnets-public-subnets-wow-they-are-free-and-we-can-au-to-mate/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Watkins]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2019 12:51:36 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[aws]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CloudFormation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[devops]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[networking]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://twasink.net/?p=1925</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[(to the tune of the Ewoks Victory Song. Now it can be stuck in your head, and not just mine) Picking up from last time, I needed to start creating things inside my Virtual Private Cloud, or VPC. The first things to create are subnets &#8211; public subnets, in particular. Without a public subnet, nothing &#8230; <a href="https://twasink.net/2019/01/15/ail-subnets-public-subnets-wow-they-are-free-and-we-can-au-to-mate/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "AiL &#8211; Subnets! Public Subnets! Wow, they are free, and we can&#160;au-to-mate!"</span></a>]]></description>
		
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		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">1925</post-id>
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		<title>AiL &#8211; Baby&#8217;s First CloudFormation Stack</title>
		<link>https://twasink.net/2019/01/11/ail-babys-first-cloudformation-stack/</link>
					<comments>https://twasink.net/2019/01/11/ail-babys-first-cloudformation-stack/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Watkins]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2019 21:15:11 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[aws]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CloudFormation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[devops]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://twasink.net/?p=1921</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[As previously discussed, I&#8217;m doing a small series of posts around bringing the AWS infrastructure that I use into the current era, and putting it all into CloudFormation. In this post, I&#8217;m going to cover setting up the first stack. This is going to set up a Virtual Private Cloud (or VPC), which is where &#8230; <a href="https://twasink.net/2019/01/11/ail-babys-first-cloudformation-stack/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "AiL &#8211; Baby&#8217;s First CloudFormation&#160;Stack"</span></a>]]></description>
		
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		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">1921</post-id>
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		<title>AiL &#8211; Exploring AWS CloudFormation</title>
		<link>https://twasink.net/2019/01/11/ail-exploring-aws-cloudformation/</link>
					<comments>https://twasink.net/2019/01/11/ail-exploring-aws-cloudformation/#comments</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Watkins]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jan 2019 21:13:33 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[aws]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CloudFormation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[devops]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://twasink.net/?p=1919</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve been an active user of AWS for over six years now. The application I work on &#8211; a vertical niche app for the mining industry &#8211; is hosted there. But as the lead developer &#8211; and sole DevOps type &#8211; of a small team with an aggressive development schedule, I haven&#8217;t ever managed to &#8230; <a href="https://twasink.net/2019/01/11/ail-exploring-aws-cloudformation/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "AiL &#8211; Exploring AWS&#160;CloudFormation"</span></a>]]></description>
		
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		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">1919</post-id>
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		<title>AWS Lambda finally supports Ruby, shared libraries</title>
		<link>https://twasink.net/2018/11/30/aws-lambda-finally-supports-ruby-shared-libraries/</link>
					<comments>https://twasink.net/2018/11/30/aws-lambda-finally-supports-ruby-shared-libraries/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Watkins]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2018 20:35:25 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Software Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aws]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lambda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[woot!]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://twasink.net/?p=1917</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[So here&#8217;s my favourite bit of news out of Amazon for today &#8211; they&#8217;ve finally got Ruby support in AWS Lambda, AND they&#8217;ve got support for shared libraries. I&#8217;ve got a metric tonne of scripts for dealing with AWS environments in Ruby that I&#8217;ve written over the last six years of working on IES, mostly &#8230; <a href="https://twasink.net/2018/11/30/aws-lambda-finally-supports-ruby-shared-libraries/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "AWS Lambda finally supports Ruby, shared&#160;libraries"</span></a>]]></description>
		
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		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">1917</post-id>
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		<title>Of course negative gearing benefits go mostly to the already wealthy&#8230; they can afford it</title>
		<link>https://twasink.net/2018/11/16/of-course-negative-gearing-benefits-go-mostly-to-the-already-wealthy-they-can-afford-it/</link>
					<comments>https://twasink.net/2018/11/16/of-course-negative-gearing-benefits-go-mostly-to-the-already-wealthy-they-can-afford-it/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Watkins]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Nov 2018 21:10:55 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[capital gains]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[negative gearing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tax]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://twasink.net/?p=1915</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[ABC facts checks claims about negative gearing Negative gearing is a system where the rent earned on a property &#8211; after removing other expenses &#8211; doesn&#8217;t cover the interest on the mortgage. You can then take that loss, and use it to offset other taxable income. It&#8217;s a system where you deliberately run what is &#8230; <a href="https://twasink.net/2018/11/16/of-course-negative-gearing-benefits-go-mostly-to-the-already-wealthy-they-can-afford-it/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Of course negative gearing benefits go mostly to the already wealthy&#8230; they can afford&#160;it"</span></a>]]></description>
		
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		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">1915</post-id>
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		<title>So you want reliable power?</title>
		<link>https://twasink.net/2018/11/16/so-you-want-reliable-power/</link>
					<comments>https://twasink.net/2018/11/16/so-you-want-reliable-power/#respond</comments>
		
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Watkins]]></dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Nov 2018 21:06:46 +0000</pubDate>
				<category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[coal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hydro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[power]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[renewables]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[solar]]></category>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://twasink.net/?p=1913</guid>

					<description><![CDATA[Want reliable power? Don't bank on coal says the AEMO]]></description>
		
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		<post-id xmlns="com-wordpress:feed-additions:1">1913</post-id>
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