His current research interests include computers and music, public understanding of (computer) science, and educational applications of podcasting. He received the Science Communicator Award from the NZ Association of Scientists in 1999, and an inaugural New Zealand Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award in 2002. He has appeared with his “Computer Science Unplugged” show at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, the Dunedin International Science Festival, and the Australian Science Festival. He is also a qualified musician and performs regularly on instruments that have black-and-white keyboards. He is co-author of the books Text Compression and Managing Gigabytes.