Posts by Moz
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Yes, batteries lose some energy.
But you can save a bucketload with your laptop by turning the screen brightness down (like it should do when you run it off batteries). My IBM has that on the blue function key setting so it's easy to access and I play with it regularly to keep it visible but as dim as possible. Find that setting and use it! It's anything up to half the power used by your laptop.
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Yes, the whole efficiency thing means the same light output for lower wattage, because lightbulbs are measured by input not output. Which is dumb, but there you are. CFL's warm up over a minute or two so they seem dim when you first turn them on.
The lowest-power ones we could find are 4 watts. So in a fitting that takes multiple bulbs you will probably only want to half fill it, or even less. Try it. IMO they actually look better than the incandescent ones, because they match the white colour of the fitting better. We got "warm" bulbs which give a more orange light, not as orange as an incandescent but very orange compared to the other CFL bulbs we have.
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Here is Oz they had a great program where the energy companies would come round and swap all your light bulbs over, and give you a low-flow shower head. Unfortunately the nice Mr Rudd killed that program in favour of... well, nothing in particular really.
We've got chandeliers everywhere in this house and could install a total of 70-odd mini-bayonet bulbs if we were completely batshit insane. Instead we have two or three per chandelier and that's ample, because we can only get 4W bulbs that fit them and you really, really do not want to be in a room that has 16 of those in each of two chandeliers. It would not just cure SAD, you'd probably require sunblock.
Energy and water efficiency is so easy I'm offended every time certain bags of ugly open their mouths. In Melbun we have "target 155" for water - 155 litres per day per person. On world water day (Saturday?) there was a "Target 30" for the day, which we managed even though apparently half the household didn't know we were doing it. So now our house is on target 30 for the rest of the year. 5-7 people in a share house... but we have rainwater tanks and rain, so we use rainwater for toilets, washing machine and garden when we don't have enough shower greywater for that (most of the time). It's not hard to get below 50l/day/person once you have a low-flow shower head and a decent washing machine.
Electricity is similar, most of ours goes into the fridge and computers, so we have a chest fridge ($99 conversion from freezer) that uses ~20% as much electricity as an upright fridge (I was shocked too, and had to measure it). We also have mostly laptops and a combined modem/router/switch/VOIP box that only draws ~10W, plus a shared media drive that's another 15W but is turned off most of the time. If only it actually did torrents properly like the box says (but the torrent client is rubbish) we could use that instead of the laptop.
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What peeves me is all this talk of cheap holiday homes being readily available. But strangely the only ones I've found are horrid McMansion-on-the-Bay type places that were wildly overpriced (even to someone unlike me who wouldn't buy one for any price) and are now just overpriced. They're still heaps of junk. Sure, half a million bucks for something that last sold for two is cheaper, but when you're talking bad architecture built on sand dunes... any price is too high.
I'm more hoping that an acre or two in the Sounds with some kind of shack on it drops into the realm of affordability, but unfortunately it seems that the sort of people who buy those are not likely to let them go.
(and in Melbun where we are rental prices are still subsidised by insane tax laws, so renting is half the price of owning. Maybe less... $600k house for $24k/yr... you do the maths)
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The one thing that strikes me about the Thompson affair is that Ryall is sending a clear message: if you find a problem, DO NOT involve the police or anything else that might draw attention to it. If you can't clear it up probably best to deal yourself in because the final outcome is going to be the same: you get fired.
My cynical side says yeah, what do you expect from people who want to be led by a merchant banker. I mean, that's what they would do in Thompson's position, surely anyone else would do the same? He must be an idiot to have drawn attention to an opportunity for personal profit like that. But surely someone in there has a clue and can see that the message above is not a sensible one to send?
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The worst of the US setup is that if your plane is diverted into the US for any reason and you don't have the visa you can be somewhat inconvenienced. It's also quite tedious to get in and out of Canada without transiting the US (but it is possible), although often the diversion airports are in the US so you have to hope for good weather and no problems.
With surveillance cameras, there are mapping projects in some places but they are not popular with the PTB. Neither are the p*lice databases (just collect photos of cops, note any details you can about the cop, wait for facial recognition tech to improve et voila). On that note, many of these systems currently archive footage that has no use today in the hope that future tech will make it much more useful.
I wonder just how much of the data will leak... the UK might as well have an "all records public" law going on their record.
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The "any fertilised egg" thing was scary... especially since it didn't address liability for spontaneous abortions (20%-40% of fertilised eggs don't make it very far).
With the NZ election, I keep coming back to "but I'm politically engaged and so are most of my friends". The people I'm only vaguely friends with who aren't engaged tend not to talk about politics (really!) So it's a bit hard to tell by listening to what's happening around me.
I do hope that the Nats go with a centrist agenda and look for support from the Maori party (and Labour and The Greens when they can) rather than continuing their "mandate from heaven" all or nothing approach. I'd be both impressed and amused if they only went to ACT for their occasional outbursts of right wing monetarist fundamentalism. Partly because I'm sane, but after living through the 80's seeing Roger Douglas repeatedly kicked in the testicles would please me no end.
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I think we might see a lot more of it now that the parties who work with MMP instead of against it are in opposition (deperately scraping for the silver lining).
I like the idea of party (leader) bills, that makes more sense than changing the member's bills.
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Yeah, telling ozzies that we can't campaign on election day always raises eyebrows and not a few "that would be wonderful" comments. The flip side is that handing out how to vote cards does help where there can be more than 50 candidates that must be ranked, and it also shows party membership strength. I've been on a few booths where there were volunteers from the current MP and The Greens and that was it, because the "opposition" had conceded the seat and put their volunteers from that electorate somewhere else. It's also funny to see hired help handing out Liberal material while telling people to vote Labour/Green (often they're hired because it's an immigrant-heavy electorate and they speak languages other than English - my partner gets lots of offers at good wages because she's ethnically Vietnamese). Of course, the Liberals have no way to stop their hired help doing that because the whole need to hire them arises from not having anyone who does actually speak the language...
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Overseas voting I suspect depends a lot on where overseas you are. In the worst case I expect snailmail transport of votes to a trained professional (ie, posting back from the US to NZ), but in countries that have an electoral bureaucrazy probably the same fast turn-around as NZ. In Melbun we voted at the AEC offce using their staff so it was all fast and smooth (except for the "can't read or pronounce Maori to save themselves" that they acknowledged).
By my rough guess if NZ did the Italian thing of having overseas electorates Oz would get about 8 to 10. Which would be kinda cool. I'd like my own local MP.
The one thing that does gripe me every election is that I'd like STV in the electorate so I can vote for a minor party or two before voting against the safe incumbent who I dislike with some intensity. Instead I hold my nose and vote for my second least liked candidate.