Weekend social 14/09/2012

33 comments on “Weekend social 14/09/2012 ”

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1. TheContrarian 1

   14 September 2012 at 2:17 pm

   dress up party…
   • r0b 1.1

     14 September 2012 at 2:30 pm

     I watched “City of God”. Grim, but very well done – sometimes felt more like a documentary than a movie.
     • TheContrarian 1.1.1

       14 September 2012 at 2:37 pm

       Glad you enjoyed it. It was based on real events (those obviously dramatised).
       I have been on a Breaking Bad bender. God damn fine show 
       • felix 1.1.1.1

         14 September 2012 at 5:05 pm

         How far through are you?
2. tc 2

   14 September 2012 at 2:37 pm

   pizza oven workshop
   • TheContrarian 2.1

     14 September 2012 at 2:38 pm

     Yah, fuck man, tell me what you learn. I bought a pizza stone recently but still fuck it up.
     • tc 2.1.1

       16 September 2012 at 12:03 pm

       Serious amount of work done properly and many things can go wrong as a novice.

       Bunnings have a decent one for about 1,500, takes 4-6 people to lift the box. YouTube it, there’s plenty of DIY entries.

       Trial and error, get the stone real hot and watch carefully. Many pizza ovens don’t cut it, I swear by oven thermometers and move them about to suss out the overall performance.
3. Nick 3

   14 September 2012 at 4:02 pm

   Been watching 1 hour long episodes of A History of Scotland (got it on youtube), comes in 10 parts and is as good as (probably better than) the Schama series on Britain. Gonna watch the last 3, fascinating.
   • TheContrarian 3.1

     14 September 2012 at 4:11 pm

     Yeah I watched the history of Britain series not to long ago.

     Last weekend I got my nerd on and watched the Grim Face of Power about Muldoon on the Saturday and spent my Sunday watching, extremely hungover, the entire 4 part Revolution documentary about the 4th Labour govt and beyond back to back.
      
     • Nick 3.1.1

       14 September 2012 at 4:29 pm

       Love the get the “nerd on”. Met Piggie years back, party lad par excellence, should have stayed at the party and we might all have loved him.
       • TheContrarian 3.1.1.1

         14 September 2012 at 4:53 pm

         I got home from a rather…err… psychedelic party some years back and watched a Lawrence Krauss lecture on cosmology. That was some fun shit.

         In fact, while other people might have a few beers and watch COPS I watch lectures and the like on youtube. Not that i don’t like COPS I should add 
     • lprent 3.1.2

       14 September 2012 at 5:21 pm

       One of the things I love about the new place (actually it is my old apartment that we have been out of for three and half years – but newly renovated) is that I haven’t had the time/money/inclination to connect the TV aerial. This has proved to be of little importance because we’re steadily grinding our way through stuff available on the internet.

       The way that this operates is that the newish sony bluray player knows about a whole pile of online media. Connect the player to the sony bravia TV (ln insusted we brought soething to play her dico on) and hey presto we have a whole pile of QuickFlix (for $10/mo), ziln (free & subscribe), and other crap that I haven’t investigated yet.

       The reason why this was of interest. Ziln has somewhere in it a bloody great big pile of NZ On air doco’s. Including many of the ones from our right column. Once we get through all of the old british TV…

       I’m very happy with having no TV aerial. I don’t miss the ads at all. There were bugger all programs worth watching after TVNZ7 was shutdown. And sky is useless because it has too many pseudo-ads and is a un-interactive broadcast medium. The news and current affairs has become quite dumbed down over the years – generally not worth watching.

       Right now (and this isn’t anything more than a observation – not really hard politics) I’m all for completely cutting the NZ on-air budget, flogging off TVNZ to the highest bidder (because I think it is unrecoverable), and putting ALL of the money into regional channels, local films, documentaries, and radio NZ. I can’t see why I want to subsidize advertisers, and the net is getting to have a wide enough pipe and tech to play TV from the net on my TV cheaply.

       BTW: ziln also has this interesting section OpenMic. I wonder where they got that idea and possibly the graphic from…. (not that I care). Might have something to do with that guy I was talking at NetHui in 2011.

       BTW2: Does anyone want to play the wiggles? Then please do it at your own damn place! The biggest hassle with the bluray is that there appear to be no way to remove things from the list. However there is a way to designate “inappropiate” content. The Wiggles qualify…
       • just saying 3.1.2.1

         14 September 2012 at 6:58 pm

         I finally got the cable to connect my computer to the tv, but the picture was off to the right so I couldn’t use the arrows. Which made it all but useless. Spent hours trying to fix it to no avail. I guess I could get it set up to watch a film on the computer screen and then connect it, but I’d prefer to be able to use my computer as usual with the tv as the monitor.

         Thanks for the links. I see Kim dot Com has pretty much taken over open mic so far. Plenty of scope for talented Standard readers and writers to create….
         • lprent 3.1.2.1.1

           15 September 2012 at 12:25 am

           Sounds like you have the resolution wrong. The dotcom songs were pretty amusing…
           • felix 3.1.2.1.1.1

             15 September 2012 at 9:07 am

             I’d have a lot more time for Dotcom if he stopped making those shitty songs and dropped the phoney-baloney free speech matyr act.
             • lprent …

               15 September 2012 at 4:20 pm

               The music isn’t that good, and I don’t have much time for him.

               I do have quite a lot of time for his case though. The procedural and legal holes in the cases before, during and after the seizures and arrests in all countries are such that you could drive a bus through them. It is good to see that our judges are. IMO it is going to wind up as being a complete clusterfuck for everyone from the FBI to RIAA to our police because there doesn’t appear to be any law covering their actions in shutting down the servers or the arrests under any existing criminal laws unless they start trying to redefine it as a terrorist organisation.

               The civil cases are going to be hugely expensive. I suspect that the parties laying complaints to the FBI will be in the gun for this as well. That will be quite amusing
       • Bill 3.1.2.2

         14 September 2012 at 7:16 pm

         Lynn. Was that a big ‘thunbs up’ to the Pirates party you just gave through that link? Bit of an oopsie? Makes me feel not so bad about 3.2.1. 😉
         • lprent 3.1.2.2.1

           15 September 2012 at 12:23 am

           If it was ziln then it was whatever they had on. Was watching Bernard Hickey there tonight.not bad.
       • TheContrarian 3.1.2.3

         14 September 2012 at 8:15 pm

         “flogging off TVNZ to the highest bidder”

         You mean asset sales?

         And yeah, I have 92 channels of crap. The only thing I watch is Fox News – Sean Hannity specifically because he is a deluded blow hard.
         • lprent 3.1.2.3.1

           15 September 2012 at 12:21 am

           Yep. I just don’t like selling natural monopolies. But that is a topic for a different post.
         • tc 3.1.2.3.2

           16 September 2012 at 12:19 pm

           Hell yeah, sell it before its worth nothing. Ellis drove it into the dust under his masters orders.

           I’m looking at a second free view dish to look at Optus D2 satellite as the feed from D2 to D1 (sky,freeview) which carried SBS got canned earlier this year.

           Worth it if I can get a box the gets SBS AND ABC digital channels on the Tasmania footprint.
       • fatty 3.1.2.4

         14 September 2012 at 10:16 pm

         Does Sky still have RT News?…Its a great channel for news about the US, and its Russian propaganda is good for a laugh.
         • lprent 3.1.2.4.1

           15 September 2012 at 12:17 am

           Beats me. I realized 4 years ago that I’d exchanged small numbers of channels of broadcast crap and ads for dozens of channels. I still couldn’t find anything to watch. Moreover, the price of DVDs of TV series was dropping and there was a lot of stuff on point to point media like YouTube. So I quit sky.

           The last vestiges of broadcast were some comedy shows, but the ads are irritating. Easier to wait for the DVD’s. Now the aerial isn’t working – what a disaster.. Not.. So I quit broadcast media.

           Cracker anyone? 2nd series.
           • fatty 3.1.2.4.1.1

             15 September 2012 at 1:55 am

             I got rid of my TV about a year ago, I now go through 60gig a month, and still spend the same amount of time in front of a screen.
             The one downside I have noticed is that I no longer watch a full news bulletin, as a result I do not get the news on things that don’t grab my attention. My news is much more narrow…but the benefits far outweigh this.
             Telstra cable is great for streaming regardless of the time of day.
             I also youtube news…RT releases a lot of stuff on their channel – http://www.youtube.com/user/RussiaToday/videos?view=0
             The 10th series of QI begins on Saturday in the UK
             http://www.youtube.com/user/quite1nteresting?feature=CAQQwRs%3D
             8 out of 10 cats is a sharp panel show
             http://www.youtube.com/user/jnpolzin/videos?flow=grid&view=0
             Nathan Barley
             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06AS8SiY3rw&feature=related
             Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle
             http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO8F1HJjzkA

             it never ends…
   • Rosie 3.2

     14 September 2012 at 5:02 pm

     Hey Nick, I’ve been watching that history show on choice tv on freeview on Monday nights. Its’ really refreshing to hear the story of Scotland from a Scot, instead of a Brit. I like that the presenter is doing a little myth busting too. Like the first king NOT being Kenneth MacAlpine. I’d be interested to see what else he has to say as he goes on. Great show.
     • Bill 3.2.1

       14 September 2012 at 7:09 pm

       Its’ really refreshing to hear the story of Scotland from a Scot, instead of a Brit.

       Erm. you do realise that it was done by BBC Scotland. And that will always betray a certain protestant and union bias. Just saying. And sorry for possibly entering a bit of politics into the ‘weekender’.

       Having said that, I watched all the episodes (streaming) some time back and some of the stuff is definately interesting. Shame abouot the wee gnaff they have as a presenter though – total fucking embarrassment.
       • Rosie 3.2.1.1

         15 September 2012 at 8:34 am

         Yes, I do realise it was produced by BBC Scotland. And sure that guy that presents it does kind of remind of Nigel Latta which is a bit disturbing but non the less it IS presented by a Scot from a Scots viewpoint. I welcome that as most history shows are so Brit centric and often demomise The Celts and their history. Yes there are proddys and unionists within Scots history but there were also Jacobites. They were my ancestors and I’m proud of their history as I am of my Irish.

         I get tired of the hostility on this site. Weekend Social is the one place that is usually free of that. Hostility serves no purpose to a group of like minded people. The old Scots clans could tell you that. Perhaps if they had stood in unity, rather than continuing old feuds, they could have had the strength to keep the Brits at bay and retain an independant nation
         • Bill 3.2.1.1.1

           15 September 2012 at 8:55 am

           Hi Rosy. Don’t want to get into a debate on the history of Scotland and England; union of crowns and so on.

           So, on a positive note, if you want a very good and informative short history of the Celts (and others!), you won’t do much better than this

           http://www.infocobuild.com/books-and-films/social-science/terry-jones-barbarians.html

           Enjoy 🙂
   • NickS 3.3

     14 September 2012 at 9:32 pm

     There was a similar docu on Choice TV do with British pre-history up to the Roman period. Bloody good, but it’s not available for sale to the public: http://www.bbcactivevideoforlearning.com/1/Search.aspx?PageIndex=0&SeriesID=24055

     And I can’t find it via torrents either sadly 🙁

     edit – fuck yes, found it, the series is also called “a celtic history of britain” Now to find it all :3
4. Bored 4

   14 September 2012 at 4:42 pm

   The bees are buzzing (saw a few bumbles last week) which means things are kicking off in the garden. Please everybody go and plant some blue flowers / crops, bees love them for some reason. Am going to spread a few seeds in places they are not supposed to be. We have to look after these guys in the towns because modern agriculture is killing them. That is my theory anyway, and even if it is wrong the more bees the merrier..

   Going to watch some rugby, seems very silly to me that the fishing season is weeks off and we still have a couple of months of rugby to go. Madness. cant be bothered with the test: the Shield game better, go the Naki.
   • Bill 4.1

     14 September 2012 at 7:12 pm

     Saw my first wasp some four or five weeks back. And thought ‘Oh, fuck’. Live in the south of the S. Island btw. Looking to a stinger of a summer.
     • lprent 4.1.1

       15 September 2012 at 12:31 am

       Yeah el niño AND a solar sunspot peak AND the ever rising climate changes – all in the coming year. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit…*

       This would be a good summer to have a long holiday near a deep mountain fed lake. Next summer will be even better..

       It may be a bad summer for the dams.

       * working programmers# are adverse to excessively good weather. They like to live in caves** with open windows and get bored with aircond. They tend to hibernate in summer in a sloppy haze pining for bad weather.

       ** because monitors hate competing with the sun..

       # corporate programmers live in aircond, attend meetings, don’t stick their bare feet on the desk while thinking, never have their workstations running as a breadboard, and don’t really work at writing actual working code. They mostly patch patches and dream of greenfields. So please, let’s not describe them as working programmers……
5. NickS 5

   14 September 2012 at 9:44 pm

   Should get out in the garden this weekend, but I’m still stuffed from a job I did on Wednesday, with my right arm complaining elbow, wrist and shoulder wise…

   And I’m so going to tell an employer they’re dreaming if they think over 3 cubic metres of soil can be moved in under 6 hours by hand by one person.

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