I’m always up for this kind of news story:
Perhaps the second greatest incentive to a healthy lifestyle is that by not having to visit hospitals and other medical services you can avoid ever even knowing that such a terrible thing as “daytime television” exists.
Hmmm. Maybe they are Quattro Pro spreadsheets… One of them has a line item that mentions “Quattro Pro purchase”
Have figured out that a couple of the hard to open “Unix Executable files” are ancient PlanPerfect documents from, I think, 1988 or 89, (at least one of them has those dates in its data). From memory PlanPerfect was the short-lived MS-Dos companion to WordPerfect.
What a shame he is an Arsenal supporter.
Today feels like it was the first time since 1966 when England’s football team had an important 50:50 refereeing decision go their way at the pointy end of the a tournament.
Have just found an archived copy of the book I co-wrote in 1982:
Usborne guide to understanding the micro
Travelling in Auckland’s rush hour
There’s a curious anomaly with Apple Maps and Google Maps that took me a while to understand.
I live in Beach Haven on Auckland’s North Shore. Travelling from here to the Auckland isthmus is straightforward for 21 hours of the day, but between 6:30 and 9:30 am, car traffic is congested to the point where it can take 90 minutes, even more in the worst case.
The same car trip at other times might take 20 to 25 minutes.
Bus trips to the central city, Ponsonby or Newmarket are easy thanks to a much improved network that whisks passengers down Onewa Road and over the bridge in minutes. It doesn’t make sense to use the car in these cases.
For travelling almost anywhere else a car is essential. Multi-leg trips on public transport are possible, but often not practical. In some cases there’s no sensible return option.
So car it is.
And that’s where the digital maps get weird. This applies equally to Apple and Google Maps.
Ask, say, Apple Maps for the travel time from Beach Haven to Greenlane Clinic. Outside the rush hour it’s 30 minutes. No problem.
In the rush hour the app tells me the travel time is 38 minutes. Yet, when I attempt the trip, 38 minutes after leaving home I’m still only halfway down Onewa Road.
Why are both maps consistently wrong about travel times for this and similar trips?
My theory is that the maps get travel time data from phones. Phones sitting in cars move along roads like Onewa Road at a snail’s pace. But these are massively outnumbered by phones whisking along Onewa Road on the buses. Google and Apple don’t know if a phone is in a car or a bus, so the aggregate data shows travel times that aren’t possible in a car.
That’s my theory. If you have a better one, please share.
Since May, Google has been removing a few of my web pages from its index every week. It seems random, although I realise there must be some kind of algorithm at work here. They’re not unloved pages… some are (or were) popular with plenty of incoming links.
Memo to self:
Clean out browser cookies more often.
Vive la France
Please don’t use the term “reach out” unless you are a member of the Four Tops. In that case you can use it as often as you like. For everyone else, the term has become a horrible cliche. Think of a more original way to express what you want to say.
Minor cognitive dissonance as brain switches between early Saturday and Sunday morning Euros football and last night’s All Black - England game.
The thing I learned this week. It is much harder to close down a solvent, but not longer needed, limited company than I imagined.
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.
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.
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.