Author Archive
Time to renew – by midnight
Written By: - Date published: 8:45 pm, August 22nd, 2013 - 42 comments
The word is that the NZ Council decided tonight when they will cut off the memberships which are current for voting in the membership vote on the leadership primaries.
The deadline is at midnight tonight.
Submit to prevent SkyCity corruption
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, August 14th, 2013 - 5 comments
The SkyCity deal still needs some urgent attention from members of the public interested in getting a submission to the select committee. They close on Thursday 22 August next week. The politically corrupting influence of the gaming industry means that members of the public will have to push the politicians to stop them giving SkyCity these extraordinarily lucrative and destructive concessions for a economic pittance.
600,000 Comments
Written By: - Date published: 7:28 am, August 7th, 2013 - 77 comments
600,000 comments is getting pretty large. Even more disturbingly we are almost exactly on Eddie’s predictions of getting to a million comments by the August 2015 – in a exponential growth curve. While the numbers of posts per month aren’t changing that much, the numbers of comments per post have risen to average 75 per post. I have some charts and a bit of personal philosophy on what it all means…
On converting .pst, government style
Written By: - Date published: 1:52 pm, August 4th, 2013 - 49 comments
Were David Henry and his staff the right people to pursue an inquiry? They were incapable of opening a Outlook .pst file. And this appears to have held them up for days. They had the files before they even requested permission from Peter Dunne and (apparently) only their incompetence prevented them from their intent of reading the emails. If they’d been capable of using google, then our political landscape might look quite different..
GCSB protests at 2pm today
Written By: - Date published: 8:47 am, July 27th, 2013 - 132 comments
This cartoon by Mark O’Brien at monsta.co.nz probably accurately reflects the distasteful uncertainty that many of us feel about the purpose and intent of John Key’s bill to control the past and future excesses of the GCSB. Put away a bit of your weekend at 2pm and come and show your MP’s why they should […]
Lazy Jono on 3 News invents a story
Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, July 27th, 2013 - 124 comments
Jono Hutchison invented a story that aired on 3 News last night. He took a single inaccurate comment expressing an opinion and wrapped a story around it as the angle. The comment he used was in my observation quite inaccurate and has escalated my opinion of Jono to that of being a lazy dickhead unworthy of being called a reporter.
GCSB protest – Auckland tonight
Written By: - Date published: 9:35 am, July 24th, 2013 - 145 comments
To say that the GCSB law changes are misguided is the kindest possible interpretation, but many people including myself tend to view them as being quite malevolent. They aren’t going to provide any more security for citizens and residents here. But they are going to provide more security for incompetents in the security and police forces from both public and legal scrutiny. There are series of protests planned, and one in Auckland tomorrow. Updated – packed.
On party membership
Written By: - Date published: 2:19 pm, June 2nd, 2013 - 67 comments
Been having a look around the question of party memberships. Turns out there was a good investigative package in The Nation last year. We really need to tighten this stuff up. From alleged National’s “raffle ticket” membership to the incompetence of our revenue minister’s party being unable to locate their members, it seems like an awful lot of money flowing around with little accountability.
Please, please educate the fuckwits
Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, May 11th, 2013 - 127 comments
The story this morning of a hotelier in Whangarei causing a lesbian couple to seek another place to sleep. That she was worried about them doing “sodomy” under her roof might be amusing. However the coprolalia syndrome that it displays has been tiresomely endemic amongst the self-ordained fuckwits in recent months. When will they take time to educate themselves so they don’t look like they just have brain defects?
Advocacy is the core of any charity
Written By: - Date published: 5:26 am, May 10th, 2013 - 35 comments
Yesterday’s NZ Herald editorial gave a hard-line conservative view of what a charity should be. Charities should and must deal with ills of society on a person by person basis without attempting to fix the causation. That sounds more like a parasitical “charity” like the workhouses of the 19th century or the adoption factories of the 20th than anything that a person of goodwill would choose to support.
Hockey stick becomes a wheelchair
Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, April 30th, 2013 - 23 comments
When you look at the dependence of farmers in extreme climates around the world who are reliant on regular weather like the monsoons in Bangladesh or the mild winters in the gulf stream washed areas like Europe, it is clear how reliant we are for food on our relatively unchanging climate of the past 11,000 years.
Best (so far). The bill passed well.
Written By: - Date published: 9:07 pm, April 17th, 2013 - 144 comments
The marriage equity bill has passed with a strong majority.
This is a watershed moment in New Zealand’s political history.
Outage and an irritating lack of support
Written By: - Date published: 9:07 am, April 9th, 2013 - 15 comments
As I’m sure that many of you are aware, we had an outage commencing at about 2205 NZST last night and finally getting fixed at about 0825 this morning. I got notified about 10 minutes into the outage by my various ping systems that the system was down. The main server with the database was just […]
Iain M Banks: Bugger!
Written By: - Date published: 6:34 pm, April 4th, 2013 - 38 comments
Iain Banks has cancer and is expected to only have a few months. Damn this is bad news. He is one of only three authors whose books managed to survive my move into ePubs last year and the donation of large quantities of my science fiction paperbacks.
Surplus power and asset sales
Written By: - Date published: 10:03 am, March 28th, 2013 - 55 comments
Apparently Meridian Energy are saying that there is unlikely to be a renewal of the Tiwai Point power contract. This would massively disrupt the value of sales of shares in state owned power companies by this government. However news is being released just before Meridian appears before a select committee. So I’m anticipating that it is a chicken little play to scare this weak-kneed government into an emergency wastage of taxpayers dollars – just like the Peter Jackson inspired Hobbit extortion.
Banks sued over exceptional bank fees
Written By: - Date published: 12:58 pm, March 11th, 2013 - 88 comments
New Zealand banks face a large class suit for over $1 billion in default fees over the past six years by three of NZ’s largest law firms in a case being announced today at 1pm. It is about time.
The economic value of the internet
Written By: - Date published: 11:41 am, March 11th, 2013 - 35 comments
The innovations that drive our modern economies changes and growth these days is largely powered by the internet. It is ubiquitously embedded in most businesses these days to a fantastic degree. While I wish economists well in their continuous attempts at measuring the effect of the internet, I think that it will be a futile endeavour.
This reeks of kickbacks
Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, March 6th, 2013 - 41 comments
It appears that someone in the government is leaking private information from the asset stripping of SOE value. Serious questions are being asked about how a sharebroking firm managed to obtain the details of a woman who’d just registered her interest in buying Mighty River Power shares. Is there a kickback system in operation? Perhaps to help fund the exorbitant upfront costs of sale?
Annoy Prosser and vote Muslim!
Written By: - Date published: 8:17 pm, March 4th, 2013 - 88 comments
After reading Queen of Thorns complaint about the limited gender options in the census, I was considering the census. For me and almost everyone else I know (apart from my brother and a few others) we are devotedly irreligious. But every census they ask us that same old rather meaningless question… Obviously voting Jedi didn’t work. However […]
Project complete (at least for the moment)
Written By: - Date published: 2:25 pm, February 28th, 2013 - 37 comments
Project code is complete and getting stamped on the hardware.
I have some time for maintenance and writing at last…. So put in your wish lists.
Oh and this is a warning to trolls. I have time to measure you and comment on your obvious lacks and deficiencies again 😈
Tickets to the Laneway Festival
Written By: - Date published: 10:48 am, January 24th, 2013 - 4 comments
I have 3 tickets in my hot hand to give away to the Laneway Festival (the one that we have been advertising for months). It is all day at Silo Park down at the waterfront in Auckland on the Monday the 28th of January.
I’ll hand out tickets for those who request them (e-mail to me) in the usual order – authors, commentators, and readers and then on order of request.
Mega overloads
Written By: - Date published: 6:15 pm, January 20th, 2013 - 72 comments
In the continuing saga of Kim Dotcom against the forces of blind, silly, and technically illiterate conservatism, amongst whom John Key (our Minister of International Embarrassment) fits pretty well. Kim Dotcom has launched a new file storage service. Although that is not strictly correct – rather people associated with him did. It is the “Mega” and is accessible at present only using the https://mega.co.nz. And it is a bit bogged down with mega demand…
Back to work time
Written By: - Date published: 11:55 pm, January 9th, 2013 - 24 comments
Looks like people are heading back to work. I’m always surprised at how predictable the end of year pattern is on this site. In fact I can (and do) bet server maintenance on it. This year we moved fully into the cloud but did it offshore. That way we don’t pay excessive variable costs to the Southern Cross cable monopoly to pay for searchbots.
Climate: last year and this year
Written By: - Date published: 5:06 pm, January 3rd, 2013 - 142 comments
A group of people interested in climate have put out a list of the most interesting climate events of 2012, which was a year that weather made more of the headlines than usual. It is likely that it will have been just a precursor to 2013 as the northern fridge disappears and the sun flares. The one certainty is that the IPCC AR4 report got it wrong – they were far too conservative about how fast climate change was happening.
Comments at the end of 2012
Written By: - Date published: 4:11 pm, December 28th, 2012 - 30 comments
The average daily comments by week for 2012 are pretty healthy. 2012 was a post election year. 2012 was consistently higher than the election year 2011.
I’m pretty pleased with the comment’s growth. It looks like the policy of offloading all of the idiots to the sewer works well for steadily increasing rational dialogue on this site.
Take the damn chocolates AWAY
Written By: - Date published: 2:54 pm, December 26th, 2012 - 24 comments
I’m about to start doing some substantial site changes. So don’t get worried if the site disappears for a few minutes at a time. Most of these changes are targeted at increasing the privacy of both the site and of the people who use it. It is a really good day to do it. Traffic […]
Mega-screenshots promise more embarassment
Written By: - Date published: 11:29 am, December 10th, 2012 - 6 comments
Kim DotCom has been twittering about his new website that is under development to the amusement of some observers. But for us in NZ we’re probably less interested in the layout of his file manager than what is actually in the screenshot of the file manager. Promises yet more pain for the government and it’s inept police and security services.
Auckland’s tornados again
Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, December 6th, 2012 - 37 comments
Auckland has been hit by tornado’s again (last time was in May 2011). Several people are dead. NZ Herald reports Storm brings death and destruction Three people have been killed and seven injured during a storm, including a tornado, that hit Auckland today, with another tornado hitting near Rotorua later this afternoon. Police have confirmed […]
I’d almost agree with David on gender discrimination
Written By: - Date published: 3:02 pm, December 6th, 2012 - 38 comments
A partner in a Napier legal firm is boycotting the annual Law Society Christmas party because it is being held in a club that will not allow women as members. “Women had to fight to get the vote. I’m not prepared to let that part of our history go, I’m not prepared to take that for granted.”
The political media and the blogs
Written By: - Date published: 10:34 pm, November 29th, 2012 - 110 comments
Chris Trotter, like myself, was at the Labour party conference a week and a half ago. Like myself and damn near every left wing blogger who was there, he saw a massive discordance between what was being reported and what was actually happening in the conference. The hysteria at having a carefully constructed fiction of media and the beltway PR being torn to pieces by ordinary citizens writing has been extraordinary. The implications for the poorly constructed Law Commission report on cyber-bullying is sobering.
Medium density housing is now the Auckland way
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 am, November 27th, 2012 - 35 comments
It was clear that someone wasn’t doing their job in briefing. Sure a section of land sufficient to build a traditional 3 bedroom house in Auckland is bloody expensive and would cost as much as Labour’s budgeted amounts in KiwiBuild. That is obvious. So don’t build those types of property. Build something that requires less land. A brief lookup on my single bedroom studio Grey Lynn/Newton apartment shows a land value of $85k. A 3 bedroom townhouse down the road has a land value of $170k
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