http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=StoQUMsFvCE

That story has to be Russian, right?

That night, as he gnawed upon a turnip before retiring to his bed atop the stove, the villager ruminated aloud: "You know, little mother, if it weren't for that pesky dirt the donkey would have been mine."

Even if it is Russian, it's…

Thanks Gio. I don't mind looking like a dumb cluck. Truly. I don't – honest :- b

I've been dying to poke my nose in those cantankerous threads about copyright, but I fear I'd be wolfed down for brekkie by those people we're…

Kerry W – am happy to talk about work process & routines – why not pm me?

Thanks, I'd love to, but neither of us has the pm "envelope" icon on our user bits. Anyway, I've sent a message to PA, asking Russell or whoever to enable it for…

good to view it
(reminds of nightmares I have had-)

http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=bgK3D71jsf8

I got up late this morning, at mD 326, so had to rush to get the kids to school…

Nobody is changing the system of time

See upstream where Paul suggested kS and mS. So, if you were changing the system of time, why wouldn't you change your base so that it worked on earth as a decimal was my point.

blow your freakin' mind

Reckon. So if System weren't still in beta, the LHC might still be working? (imagine that said like a Scooby Doo ending)

As a rule, if Napoleon couldn't do it, it is a Bad Idea.

Caesar managed, though. Just sayin'.

As a rule, if Napoleon couldn't do it, it is a Bad Idea.

(See also land wars in Asia.)

Why would you change the system of time and leave in three different factors, none of which is 10?

Nobody is changing the system of time, and coordinated universal time (which is not metric) is never going to become part of the everyday conversation on earth, although it's useful in…

Hours, minutes, seconds, arbitrary numbers someone picked out of their arse. Why would it be the second that you'd keep for your number base? Why not the day or…

designed to KILL US ALL

Thought you said that was System's goal?

Dude, the links between the two would blow your freakin' mind.

But I've said too much already ...

Sure, but then... what's a centimetre? At least one of those units is going be a tenth of nothing at all.

Yes, but it's a decimal of nothing at all. Not at 60th, 24th, or 365thand a bit-th.

Why would you change the system of time and leave in three…

designed to KILL US ALL

Thought you said that was System's goal?

I think that leap day (or the closest Monday) should be a public holiday

a tenth of nothing at all

Isn't that what the Large Hadron Collider is for measuring? :)

A gram was. It was the weight of a cubic cm of pure water or something like that.

Sure, but then... what's a centimetre? At least one of those units is going be a tenth of nothing at all.

Why? A metre is not a decimal of anything. A gram neither.

A gram was. It was the weight of a cubic cm of pure water or something like that.

And a litre is a decimal portion of a cubic metre or something. And a litre of water is almost…

I used mine to take a short, but well-deserved, break.

Like that wonderful hard-working My Key. :)

the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.[1]

I'm glad that cleared it up :)

Surely…

If we all operated in UTC, I'd have to get used to which hours constiture morning, afternoon, evening and night everywhere I went.

Universal time will not be without its own quirks it's true.

So from now on I get at up at 21:00 UTC and work until 7:00 and call 1 in the morning "midday"? All so a bunch of people can teleconference internationally without having to make complex mathemtical calculations such as "what's 18 minus 12"?

It will be particularly useful when…

There's another reason why it's a ludicrous idea: at the moment, if I holiday in Sweden, is set my watch to the local time when I get…

this is just the first step: generations from now when we all live in space and finish off what we started by switching to decimal time – we'll just deal with kS (about 20 minutes) MS (~12 days) LS (the Indian lakh will give us our day) ....

OK now…

Can you imagine the scrap over which country keeps to keep 'normal time' while the rest of us all have to shift?

Queensland won't budge, I'll tell you that now.

It was a joke, surely?

And so was that, surely.

Can you imagine the scrap over which country keeps to keep 'normal time' while the rest of us all have to shift?

It was a joke, surely?

Granny gets down wif the yoof – in a caption for a pic of a telly, of all things:

It's in your living room, sucking your electricity.

I saw what they did there...

I have long been an advocate of abandoning time-zones and just running the world with a universal time.

Can you imagine the scrap over which country keeps to keep 'normal time' while the rest of us all have to shift?

Try the Chatham Islands. They're 45 mins ahead of mainland NZ, which makes watching the news there a little weird.

I have long been an advocate of abandoning time-zones and just running the world with a universal time.

It won't solve the problem of people in different parts of the…

It's in your living room, sucking your electricity.

I get time-zones, I even get how they come about, but half-hour ones are bollocks... but half an hour, what's the point?

Try the Chatham Islands. They're 45 mins ahead of mainland NZ, which makes watching the news there a little weird.

[posting while draped over the sofa btw]

Me standing at breakfast bar, trying to get something done while keeping one eye on kids playing with water in the backyard (and one ear on the cricket commentary).

Y'know, I would consider myself lucky to get as much feedback or instructions from…

Another peril of working at home, when the phone (and internet) goes down, you have to be your own IT department.

Got that base covered too (thank you Linton!), and if we lose external connectivity we can always go down the road to borrow some bandwidth from a…

It appears the sofa quip earned me two dogs and a five year old on the chest. I am now the sofa.

Leave the house and exercise for at least an hour a day. A long walk is not only good for the body...

Not so good for my body I found, I always ended up at the local bakery.

Oddly, I went for a nice walk today which really cheered me…

Leave the house and exercise for at least an hour a day. A long walk is not only good for the body...

Not so good for my body I found, I always ended up at the local bakery.

[posting while draped over the sofa btw]

I've been boggled by the way that people who live in a country that contains different time-zones can be so unable to handle the idea of people living in different time-zones.

I get time-zones, I even get how they come about, but half-hour ones are bollocks. SA is half and…

I hate you all. :)

That's fine Danielle — I hate me too. :) Another peril of working at home, when the phone (and internet) goes down, you have to be your own IT department. Telling yourself to get this shit sorted before you go postal isn't quite as satisfying.…

Sam F, nope, not even a notional reader...when I read work, it's to see how I can improve it (and it's frequently, read/rework/reread/work it over again etc. etc.) What fascinates me is character & story building – which is why I have mss in drawers – I…

There's no creative form that's as much of a group effort as screen production. It amazes me how people different skillsets (and peole with them) it takes to make a TV programme.

And we're a low-budget affair — the small army marshalled to produce, say, a…

Actually, this is the first time I've done a satirical or humourous column for PA where I haven't either Got Letters

Oh, would that we could read those letters. If it wasn't ethically iffy, it could be like Jezebel's Crap Email From a Dude.

Ian Mackay, of course you are entitled to disagree with me, but be assured, I do *not* have an audience/reader in mind when I write.

Not even a notional reader, which might even just be yourself in a reading rather than writing mode? (Apologies if you've already made this clear,…

Jesus replies from Glenfield: "If God wanted Emma Hart to swan round in her underwear all day, He would have said so in His Bible. It is people like her who are bringing our society to ruination and she is beyond..........."

Heheh, underwear, sorry?

Actually, this is the first time…

It's quite nippy.

(hey, it beats banging my head against the wall trying to moderate user behaviour in copyright threads ...)

I thought they, of all people, would know better.

I've been boggled by the way that people who live in a country that contains different time-zones can be so unable to handle the idea of people living in different time-zones.

It's entirely possible that they don't even really handle the concept of timezones within the country and get confused…

A few hours laters he replied, more or less like this:

I've been boggled by the way that people who live in a country that contains different time-zones can be so unable to handle the idea of people living in different time-zones.

Most are fine, of course. And more can…

No, see, I'm in a different time-zone. It's Wednesday night for you, but it's Thursday for me, so…

Once, a few years ago, I checked my email and found some guy in America had emailed me asking a simple question about something I'd written about on my website. I replied…

Never worked in the performing arts then?

Nope, never. The idea appeals, all except for the being in front of people bit.

That's not at all the sort of group I was imagining though. That's more of a hierarchy of fairly well defined pockets of creativity. I'm not sure if…

http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=AUOpUqni0_g

until the mormons went away

Not sure letting my bathrobe slip open would have achieved anything other than getting a visit from the constabulary. Our solution was

We used to invite them in and make them tell us about the magic glasses

I don't know why but they really hate…

when I was a student in ChCh my flatmate (who worked nights in a restaurant) used to let her robe slowly slip until the mormons went away

How much slippage does it take to get rid of a Mormon? There's a joke in there somewhere...

Though I tell you, working a morning in my little blue satin dressing gown is an effective way to make Jehovah's Witnesses leave.

* must remember to speak to husband sitting only 2 m away rather than using IM.

Heheh, guilty. The children…

Guest: I would like to get some of that moisturiser that they have in the Spa?
Reception: I am sorry the Spa is…

No, it's nothing personal. I'm from New Zealand, we all swear like that.

While I was working in a lab in CA I used to say "bugger" when I stuffed up – again.

One day two of the students commented that they really liked the sound of the word and…

I am sitting in a dingy, windowless cubicle with coffee in a travel mug after commuting for an hour. I hope you work-from-homers take this in the fond and tender spirit in which it is intended:

I hate you all. :)

Can I rub salt in to the…

I hate you all. :)

I've done it for about half of the past 20 years – so far I have 2 rules:
* you must get dressed by lunch time, no hanging around in your bath robe
* you must leave the house and interact with actual people at least every other day

I'd…

* must do at least 30 mins work for every 5 mins reading PA

Or the other way around, as the case may be for some.

I share the inability to create when family/friendgroup are fraught. For me, it's meant I've lost the flow – for a…

Maybe we need to do a "people who work at home" session at foo-camp (we can either commiserate and get drunk together or swap working tips).

Oooh – count me in!

I've done it for about half of the past 20 years – so far I have 2 rules:
*…

ROFLnui

Quite like that variant.

I wouldn't have worded my response quite they way that Sacha did

Heh – neither would I. Imbibing complex academic theory followed by years of procedural writing seems to have eroded the previous simple strength and beauty of my writing. May take ages to come right..

I've been self-employed/home-working…

Interesting comment Tom -while, as a writer, I am obviously part & product of the wider culture/s, I dont see interconnections between my story/poem/whatever and readers & critics. It's just me and the words.
Readers & critics come after everything is finished.

I wouldn't have worded my response quite they way that Sacha…

Client: "Can you please apply a 25mm wrench to that fitting and turn it five times clockwise to remove it, then replace the washer with this black one I found in the garage, remembering to use plenty of thread tape when replacing the fitting."

Plumber: "Cabbage cabbage."

ROFLnui.

I know!…

With an NZ advertising audience, the responses would have been exactly…

Client: "Can you please apply a 25mm wrench to that fitting and turn it five times clockwise to remove it, then…

The title made me think you were planning to be on the organising committee for the next Foo Camp.

The organising committee's name is Jenine. You'd like her.

I've always had trouble defining work, because I'm aware that pretty much all the things I've put the most effort into I've done for free. Also I work in the same chair I play in.

I know! You're me!

Except I'm not that funny ...

Readers & critics come after everything is finished.

Aah, but they also come beforehand, given that none of us create in a cultural vacuum. We're all "born into language" – from Lacan, I think.

No, it's nothing personal. I'm from New Zealand, we all swear like that.

Once I (kind of unwittingly) used 'twat' in a graduate history seminar in Houston. I could peripherally see my fellow students freeze around the table, and then feel/watch the group all force themselves to relax. 'Oh you…

No, it's nothing personal. I'm from New Zealand, we all swear like that.

...were nearly my exact words, everyone relaxed after that, it was fun.

OTOH Wikipedia has an account of the writing process for Good Omens.

In my experience there's nothing as inspiring as other people and if you can all be inspired by each other that's phenomenal. However properly working as a group involves all the usual management problems and a few extra one like not knowing what your goal is until you've finished.

I…

In my experience there's nothing as inspiring as other people and if you can all be inspired by each other that's phenomenal. However properly working as a group involves all the usual management problems and a few extra one like not knowing…

The title made me think you were planning to be on the organising committee for the next Foo Camp.

I'm quite happy to sit back and be organised upon on that one. Nonetheless, my partner and I will be there thanks to the astonishing generosity of those around us. I…

Computer jobs still tend to be considered as sorted by gender. Operations or support = female and programming especially gaming = male. Therefore if Emma works in code then despite all evidence to…

Yes thank you, I have found Jesus. He was behind the couch. Now it's my turn to hide.

Love it. May try it on the next besuited door-knocker..

You're a what?

When I first started doing web content work, a lot of it was in gaming – it was when the last generation of consoles came out. I was frequently mistaken for a man. When this persisted after I put a photograph on my profile, I started to…