The Guardian: “Analysis by the Sutton Trust suggests that Keir Starmer’s cabinet will have the highest number of ministers educated at comprehensive schools, and the lowest proportion in modern history who went to private schools.”
About time too.
This looks like an interesting idea, short form audio blogging… no more than two minutes each time. I may give this a try with my website.
I was on RNZ this morning talking technology… you can listen online www.rnz.co.nz/national/…
… and criticise or otherwise comment here. I’m open to anything other than gratuitous abuse.
Whoever said “a servant cannot serve two masters” clearly never lived in a house with a pair of cats.
From ten years ago on my site, when the Productivity Commission came out in favour of government departments using overseas cloud providers. Not its best moment.
Sitting at the computer while waiting for Stable Diffusion to do its thing is the new “a watched kettle never boils”.
Currently reading a jaunty customer newsletter from a digital service I subscribe to and realised I have absolutely no idea about the jokey cultural references in the text. None whatsoever.
While I realise this is an attempt to connectt with the audience, it actually has the opposite effect on me and now I’m left wondering if I’m compatible with this outfit.
I found my self singing The Ramones “I want to be sedated” on the way to having my wisdom teeth extraction earlier this week.
Forgot all about this… it hit the spot.
One of my enduring memories of a wonderful break in Dunedin was eating the most beautiful fish outdoors at Fleurs in the early spring sunshine when a Sea Lion came and sat about 3m away. It’s a must visit whenever in Otago
Back home from having my wisdom teeth. Removed and catching up on missed Euro 24 games while waiting for the anesthetic to wear off.
This morning’s Turkey - Georgia game was an absolute cracker.
In hindsight I was never angry enough to be a Twitter notable. Totally relaxed with that.
Watching the Euro 2024 game between Portugal and the Czech Republic on The TVNZ iPad app. The app went dark with a fatal error. When I got it running again, the Czech Republic had scored in the ~ 90 seconds of down time.
This is why New Zealand always needed more than The Southern Cross cable network. And could still do with one more international link.
Realised today that the small stash of banknotes and coins I keep for buying strawberries, cherries and other fruit from roadside vendors in summer simply doesn’t get touched for eight months of the year.
In the past 5 years two local businesses I loved closed their doors after the landlord increased rent by much more than the rate of inflation. One shop stayed empty, and clearly not earning rent, for four years. The other shop has been empty two years. The first is now leased, but the tenant told me they pay less rent than the tenant who moved out four years ago earlier.
As a nod towards the early, glory, days of the internet, I’ve decided to reinstate the Blog Roll. It’s still a work in progress. Check back in a week.
Do you think anyone in New Zealand would buy a Cybertruck if they could?
(I asked the same question years ago about the Hummer a couple of days before spotting on on the Harbour Bridge).
New Zealand’s overlooked billion-dollar industry
From my story in the NZ Herald:
“New Zealand’s financial technology sector is booming. Over the past decade, it has expanded at an annual compound growth rate of 32 per cent. That’s four times as fast as the overall tech sector.
That growth has taken the fintech sector to the point where it is roughly the same size as New Zealand’s wine industry.”
Read more at: Capital Markets Report: Fintech - New Zealand’s overlooked billion-dollar industry
I was hoping the news industry would see me out until retirement. That ambition is not looking too good today.
In my capacity as a journalist writing about business and technology I get a lot of press releases about enterprise computing. Most are incomprehensible jargon soups (and curiosly, every company sending releases claims to be the world leader in their field).
If I ever make a call to follow up one of these, frankly dull, stories , I quickly learn that the person who wrote the press release doesn’t understand what it’s all about either.
Being tortured as a business model
One of the most disappointing recent technology trends is, that for many modern apps, the only practical documentation comes in the form of YouTube videos. I find video is a tough way to learn at the best of times, but scrubbing back and forth when something is not clear and then being constantly interupted by nasty, intrustive and inappropriate advertising is form of torture.
Dear anyone online. If I’m unsubscribing from whatever spam you are sending me you can cut the passive aggressive nonsense and the “we’re sorry to see you go”. At this point I’ve already heard too much from you. You are in danger of turning disinterest into dislike.
Even after 60 years of watching football I humbly recognise I couldn’t do a better job than most professional coaches or team managers. Even the unfeted ones.
On the other hand, I’m damn certain I could do a better job of running clubs than nine out of ten owners. The majority are idiots.
Checking if all those cross posting fediverse things are working as they should. Please ignore this.