Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Friday Music: Why anyone does…, in reply to Gareth Ward,
First listen to this yesterday left me a little cold – high expectations perhaps. Or perhaps because Flume’s remix was so outstanding? Growing slightly on me though…
Fair enough. I actually like it better than the Flume one.
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Feed: Fulminating and fermenting, in reply to Gabor Toth,
Also, for a style of beer best drunk in hot weather, you can only really make them in winter (unless you have a way of chilling down your fermenter)
Professional brewers use heat exchangers, I learned last week.
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Well, here’s an interesting quote, from a source familiar with the story:
REDACTED AND PARAPHRASED AT SOURCE'S REQUEST:
Basically, Fairfax had no intention of putting up a paywall but indicated otherwise as a feint to try and lure the Herald into doing so. They will be somewhat annoyed that this is being reported.
Gadzooks! -
Hard News: Te Reo Māori in schools:…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I would love to see NZ Sign Language offered too (third official language and also indigenous to NZ). Some schools do so it is not an impossible idea. As I get older and my hearing less effective, especially in noisy cafes, I think how useful it would be if we all had NZSL in our repertoire. There is also a real shortage of tri-lingual interpreters which could be overcome if both these languages became more mainstream.
All those things. Even just the basics would have multiple benefits. And I imagine there's a level at which it could almost be taught as play to small children.
(Otoh, Tim Kong has promised to pop in on the discussion later to explain to us how all this isn’t as straightforward to deploy as we might like to think. We put a lot on teachers already.)
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NB: This all seems like a while ago and I didn’t take any notes, so hopefully, I got the details right.
Also, for beer nerds, this is the recipe Hamish used:
NZ Best Bitter
OG 1.041
IBU 27NZ Ale malt
Toffee malt
Dark Crystal
Pale Crystal
Black maltPacific Jade bittering
Hops at 30 mins and 0
Nelson Sauvin
Cascade
KohatuFermenting with Wyeast 1318 London Ale III
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Hard News: Te Reo Māori in schools:…, in reply to bob daktari,
I wasn't joking about 'A.E.I.O.U.' -- the vowel sounds being part of a chorus makes it a great mnemonic. Where vowels are combined in a word, combine the two basic vowel sounds and you'll be close to the mark:
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Last night's show, where I revealed a bit more of what I've been told about the internal conversation at Fairfax.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Good ideas and grumbles, in reply to George Darroch,
Is there any attempt from NZ labels like Arch Hill or Flying Nun to give their music to the people in this format? Hold music is hardly glamorous, but it is a source of revenue.
Aaron told me he approached Flying Nun about it but never got a reply.
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Hard News: Over the paywall?, in reply to Tom Semmens,
Their editorial and opinion writers often betray an astonishing ignorance of the facts.
The sad fact is, the quality of op-ed writing in New Zealand newspapers is generally very poor.
Personally, I would never subscribe to the Herald because but I would subscribe to a properly resourced Guardian NZ site because it would come with a huge stable of quality writing.
We can now envy Australia that choice. Except the bloody Guardian won't take your money!
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Hard News: Over the paywall?, in reply to Jason Kemp,
On the Herald online this morning they had the headline
“Tobacco giant vows to find $23b award”and now I see it has been changed to “Tobacco giant vows to fight $23b award” but there is a big difference between those two. At times it looks like the content on the herald looks like it is on auto pilot.
The staff posting those stories to the website can be very junior, under-skilled and overworked. It's not uncommon for bad headlines or photo captions to have to be changed when there's a complaint. The Herald looked really tone-deaf when the review of Lorde's triumphant homecoming show at Silo Park laboured under the headline 'Lorde drops F-Bomb at waterfront concert'. Shayne Currie readily agreed on that and got it changed when I bailed him up on Twitter, which was good.
I did talk to a subscription person but they kept referring to their supervisor and clearly knew nothing about digital subscriptions and I was quoted 3-5 days* to process which means the subscription would expire before they could look at it.
Oh dear. Oddly enough, I interviewed the guy who built that paywall this evening. He'd be doubtless horrified.
I did try using “flattr” which operated a micro payments system. It was recently taken over by someone else and the latest changes to their terms and conditions made it too much hassle to use.
I'm struggling to imagine how Flattr's usability could actually have got worse.