A confession: I was too much of a coward to watch the Black Caps test match. What little I saw made me want to hide behind the sofa like I did when I was six years old and the Daleks were on TV.
I’d like an AI service that could eliminate all incoming Black Friday spam emails, texts and webpage interstitials.
Demotivation
In 1970 I graduated from primary school to what was then called a ‘secondary modern’. Unlike the rest of the UK, Surrey had yet to switch to comprehensive schools. I had a weird form of dyslexia and couldn’t pass the exam to get into a grammar school.
On day one, a senior teacher gave us what can only be described as a demotivational speech:
“You’re all too stupid to get into a real school, so you are here for five years. If you work hard, you’ll get a factory job. If you do some work, you’ll sweep the streets. The rest of you will go to prison”.
I’m not kidding. This was my first day at the big school. I was 11 years old.
Has the angstrom gone out of fashion as a unit? I saw the word today in an old physics book and realised I had otherwise seen it in years, maybe even decades.
Do people still have elevenses?
Had a dentist check up appointment this morning. For the first time since I came back to New Zealand from Australia in 2004 there was zero dental work. Not a sausage. No charge either.
Perhaps I should buy a Lotto ticket.
Today I finally deactivated my Twitter account.
I haven’t used it for two years, but kept it open just in case there was a return to sanity.
Also, there have been important personal messages sent there since I stopped using Twitter. But there haven’t been any for 6 months now
Writing for a newspaper, magazine or newsy online site is like a self-saucing pudding. The byline acts as a form of marketing that gets me more writing work. Hardly anyone knows about it when I ghost write something, so I don’t tend to get a lot of repeat ghostwriting business.
About once a week a flyer, or an impersonal letter, from a local estate agent turns up in my letter box. And I think: “how stupid are you to expect me to trust a million dollar plus house transaction to someone incapable of reading a NO JUNK MAIL sign.”
Eliminated hay fever last year by chopping down the privit bushes near the house. Noticed eyes were streaming so checked and found there are two other varieties of privit still in this garden. Not sure what the previous owner was thinking when these were planted.
I doubt it is a popular opinion, but I feel New Zealand media is spending far too much time on an election in a foreign country.
Sitting here in New Zealand, my strategy for coping with the US election is to stick fingers in both ears and say “LA LA LA” very loudly.
They don't make newspapers like they used to
I’m so pleased this had nothing to do with me. This was published in _The Australian _ 15 years ago and spotted by Mumbrella.
So let’s do some role playing. You’re a sub on The Australian.
Your boss has just given a speech about the health of newspapers.
You’ve got to put a headline on the speech.
Do you a) Check the spelling of the word “newspapers” in the headline or b) Not check the spelling of the word “newspapers” in the headline? Remember, your career may depend on the choice you make.
Do people outside the US still care about Chromebooks? Back in the day I’d get huge amounts of local traffic when I wrote about them, then, almost suddenly, crickets.
Am I alone in thinking Bing Webmaster Tools is utterly worthless or are there stealthy fans out there?
Earlier this year I looked at whether New Zealanders pay too much for broadband.
Farewell Computer Music magazine
Although I mainly worked for newspapers, I spent a few years working in magazines too so it’s always sad to see one go. This was the last what might be loosely described as personal technology magazine I can think of. It’s certainly the last title I read. While there may be a few limping on unseen elsewhere in the world it feels like the end for the entire genre.
From ten years ago on my site:
At the time Chorus struggled to pay for the fibre build.
Reading a series of movie reviews where variations on the phrase “it doesn’t completely suck” keep appearing is not filling me with confidence.
Ten years ago on my site I wrote about the launch of MyRepublic as a fibre-only ISP. The brand no longer exists.
Do you normally get answers if you submit a bug report to Apple?
I’m disproportionately cross after buying what I thought was a low priced 1kg block of Tasty cheese in my local supermarket only to discover when I got home that it is in fact a 800g block in identical packaging to the almost finished 1kg block still in the fridge. Feel cheated.
Luxon meets Modi
Of course it is good for New Zealand’s prime minister to meet Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister.
We should have strong diplomatic relations with the world’s most populous nation. And India is a major source of immigrants to New Zealand which makes meetings like this important.
Yet even the most skilled NZ diplomats would struggle to get a good free trade deal with India. There are huge potential conflicts over dairy and while India has a handful of small FTAs, it remains relatively protectionist. It is certainly not another potential China.
I wondered how cheese shipped from the other side of the world sells for less in Auckland supermarkets than the cheese made just down the road. This goes a way to explaining that:
The killer app for cryptocurrency was cybercrime. Sometimes I have a feeling that things could be heading the same way with AI.