Posts by Paul Campbell
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Hard News: Paying for the storms to come,
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We have trees come down all the time in Dunedin, the power goes out, it comes back - our big trouble is that the council has pulled so much money out of the local lines company that they've not been able to do routine maintenance ... now power polls are blowing down on their own. Luckily for us when they installed fibre Chorus refused to climb the poles in my street and they were all replaced
But in general trees come down regularly, not all at once, as Auckland starts to have periodic strong winds like the rest of us you probably will stop seeing large outages like this, instead you'll see the occasional tree come down each time it blows as they age
PS: where does one get the money to underground 1/3 of your power lines, asking for another town ....
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Yesterday's Tremain
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woo hoo - as of yesterday we can have BBQs again in Dunedin, they've been banned all summer, must have something to do with the 2 inches of white stuff in the back yard
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Yeah sure, these are the same guys who pushed all their DSLAMs into neighbourhood boxes as soon as the govt required them to host ISP's hardware in their exchanges
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Hard News: Big Night Outage, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
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If that’s best practice, it’s nuts
No, I believe 'best practice' (for Chorus at least) is to remove the copper phone lines least some crazy government try and split the copper/fibre monopoly to create some competition in local internet providers (at least they came down my street and removed all the copper after they installed the fibre)
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Hard News: 1984, Cambridge Analytica and…,
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There's also this:
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Hard News: Bikelash, paralysis – and progress,
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Talking about cars acting in a more friendly manner - a few things I miss from living in California
- 25mph (40kph) speed limits in most communities (just not on main arteries)
- 4 way stops - that means cars stop at every intersection, and never really get up to speed
- virtual zebra crossings at every uncontrolled intersection - pedestrians have the right of way everywhere (except for jaywalking)In Berkeley where I lived they put in clunky roundabouts to slow traffic, here in Dunedin they speed cars up and are decidedly pedestrian unfriendly. I was in Amsterdam last month, near my hotel was a 3 ring roundabout (cars, bikes, people) with people having the right of way at the entry and exit points
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I was so sad to discover that my current fave band was playing and I didn't even know, at least I got to hear them on RNZ
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Hard News: The climate changed,
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remember that hurricane that made it all the way to Ireland this year, unheard of …. except in the southern Pacific we call Hurricanes “Cyclones” … and the southern west cost is further north than Ireland is south … I expect in the future we’ll see more energetic cyclones lasting longer and coming further south … particularly driven if the sea temperature rises like it has local over the past few months
We in Dunedin are not prepared for that level of rain, the 100 yr old storm drains just don't empty fast enough, nor are we ready for 34C heat .... the tar on our streets was chosen to deal with frosts
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Up Front: Why a Woman is Like a Bicycle,
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I lived at Purakanui for a year - ever since they got rid of the morning rail-car to Osbourne, and then later the bus, it stopped being practical without a car.
It would be a horrible slog up that hill either way
Riding across the top of the hill on a motor-bike in the winter fog (I still have the scars it's why I have a beard) in the dark (after 5pm, maybe 30% of the year), with no white lines at the edges of road, and barely able to see the faint fading dashed line in the middle ... you have to drive slowly down the middle ... is not for the faint of heart - I can't possibly imagine doing it on a bike, even an electric one, and even with the nice white lines they have now
