Posts by Russell Brown
-
Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
One of the larger than life character landlords around the inner city was Mrs “Ma” Clifford, though I think her son may have taken over in the late ’60s and ’70s, and yes, I believe they were fairly parsimonious with their paint purchases…
Hence the Builders' 'Clifford Flat'?
-
Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Tom Beard,
In some contexts, when people ask where I’m from I’ll presume that they’ve noticed my vestigial accent, so I’ll say “London” (despite having no conscious memories of my time living there).
I lived there for five years and I still like to think that in some small way I'm a Londoner. Perhaps that's because there was a sense of achievement, of having got the hang of the place, when I first was able to think of myself as belonging there.
-
Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to BenWilson,
At about the same time, from memory, special schools were permanently ended, and kids with special needs were mainstreamed wholesale as part of “Tomorrow’s Schools”. From memory this was a Goff initiative. It wasn’t all bad – some disabled kids have flourished in the mainstream. But for any that fall through the cracks there is quite literally nothing offered by the Government.
Testify. We've seen both sides of this. One kid whose needs were suited to the system -- and one who didn't fit and was utterly failed by it.
-
When a place makes the news, especially in tragedy, whatever degree of “fromness” we have for it resonates. Even if our memories of it are painful or conflicted, we feel it.
I've been asking myself why, despite having largely grown up in Christchurch, I haven't felt that way. It's not that I don't feel terrible about what's happened, but I feel bad for the people I know and love there -- and even for people I don't know -- more than I feel a personal connection. I suspect it's partly because the then-developing northwestern suburbs where I grew up aren't the parts ripped to pieces by the earthquake.
OTOH, James Milne (aka Lawrence Arabia) asked me about contributing to an oral history of 1980s Christchurch that he wants to compile, and I really got some flow on thinking about that. The handful of independent years I spent in Christchurch are still alive to me: those were good times. But most of the people I knew then -- including the love of my life -- are with me now in Auckland.
Oddly enough, I glanced at my Wikipedia article this morning. It's been ages since anyone thought I was from Timaru ...
-
The response from the audience at last night's recording seemed to be that with the assistance of Rick and Jane we'd covered a dry and complex topic (TPPA) in an engaging way -- which is exactly what we were trying to do.
So that's 9.05pm tonight, TVNZ 7.
-
That’s a reasonable part of it, yes. NZ’s out on its own in using MPEG4, it seems, and since we’re a pimple on the buttock of the global market we’re such a tiny possible sales source that there’s no volume to drive down prices.
Until a major market takes up MPEG4, we’re probably going to be stuck with high-price Freeview PVRs.
There are actually quite a few countries using or moving to MPEG4, including big ones like France. We have seen hardware prices come down.
But to get Freeview certification, manufacturers must comply with the Freeview MHEG-5 middleware spec, which supports the EPG. This gives the platform considerable potential for expansion, but it's as yet not widely supported. But Paul will know a lot more about this than me.
-
An observation on the digital TV platforms:
The HD picture on Freeview terrestrial is markedly and undeniably better than that on Sky -- at least for the FTA channels. I don't think enough has been made of this in marketing.
-
Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Islander,
“but I’ve always voted Labour” which translates to me as “…and I’m too intellectually slothful to invest the time and energy needed to re-evaluate that”.
I’ve always voted Labour, as have my immediate family – and your translation does not apply to any of us. We re-evaluate our views at *every* election, local body or national. Thus far, we have had no reason to change our votes – except some of us now tend to give the party vote to the Greens.
Quite. I'm not about to prance around changing my vote just to show that I can. While I have great regard for a number of Green MPs, I don't buy big chunks of their policy. It would almost be fun to cast a vote elsewhere, but there's not really anywhere I'd be inclined to cast it.
-
Hard News: Chasing the Trans-Pacific Express, in reply to Aidan,
Same old drum, but lack of an unencumbered EPG (EIT) has really stuffed the NZ market.
Here in Aus I can buy an HD set top box with PVR/recording abilities for $70 (needs an external drive or flash disk) .
The fact that Freeview in NZ is MPEG 4 didn't help either -- MPEG 2 kit is commodity-priced and MPEG 4 still isn't that cheap.
The lack of a full EPG for Maori Television and Prime hurt TiVo too.
-
Hard News: Chasing the Trans-Pacific Express, in reply to Brent Jackson,
We were patiently waiting for the release of TiVo in NZ, but when it became known that it was only going to be available through Telecom (and it wasn’t at all clear whether any other ISPs would be supported), we promptly went out and bought a freeview PVR. We felt let down.
Serious marketing fail, that one. The only thing you needed a Telecom broadband connection for was the on-demand content, which was mostly rubbish anyway, but it was enough to confuse the customer.