Posts by Lindsay Vette
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: The Web, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yes, communication before tcp/ip was proprietary and convoluted, and applications like Usenet were only recently established anyway.
When I joined DEC they had a corporate network (not tcp/ip) that enabled email and a forum like application amongst other network facilities with links to the internet for things like Usenet etc. What we had internally was more useable than the internet applications of the time (and quite extensive given the 100,000+ employee count), and until the arrival of the web there was little need to stray outside the corporate boundaries for more than email and the occasional connection to customer systems.
X.25 and modems were more commonly used till the mid 90s to interconnect with other businesses.
-
I always laugh a bit when people talk about the internet starting with Tim Berners-Lee. I'm an old geek and to me the Internet is the underlying infrastructure that's been around since I was in primary school in the 60s. I have used email, Usenet, BBS type discussion boards and knowledge sharing applications since 1984 when I joined Digital Equipment Corporation (now subsumed by HP). My wife was one of the original Xtra employees, and I still use my XTRA address from back then. But I had been using email for 10 years by then.
-
My thoughts:
- Novopay, surely the worst run IT project I've heard of in a long time. It makes me embarrassed to be an IT Consultant
- Kiosk, also makes me embarrassed to be an IT Consultant, and particularly one with a geeky bent
- Kim Dotcom, as much as I hate to admit it. Can we please just have one day this year when the large smiling Mercedes driving German is not in the news? Just one please? -
I have a very long and varied catalogue of injuries, courtesy of hockey, basketball, motocross, skiing, cycling and just generally getting out and getting stuck into life.
The best series of injuries I have had were three shoulder dislocations from a skiing crash, a fall in the bush and finally throwing a ball. The last dislocation the day before heading overseas for 3 months holiday in Europe. Taking my sling off to collect the rental car in London was interesting.
However my best/worst ever injury (actually three in one), was a crash in a cycle race involving a concussion, a fractured scaphoid and a wrecked AC joint.
I remember everything about the race except for the last 30 seconds of my participation. I have seen the crash described on the Internet as the worst crash they had ever seen so at least I know it was memorable. I was in a criterium race (google it for a description) and was three laps from the end of the race where everyone is starting to jockey for position and cornering gets more than a little crazy.
Apparently a rider crashed in front of me and started sliding/bouncing diagonally across the corner. I attempted to first ride around them by hopping onto the footpath, then to jump them when they slid further into my path. I landed on the rider/bike and went over the bars at about 40kmh wearing lycra and a cycle helmet.
The helmet saved my head but I was unconscious for some minutes and concussed for several hours. I wasn't aware of my surroundings till I was in hospital in a neck brace being x-rayed and cat-scanned. When the hospital finally decided I still had a brain and it wasn't scrambled they wanted to send me home.
At that stage I was finding some other hurts and ended up with another round of x-rays and left some time later with a cast on my right wrist (scaphoid) and a sling on my left arm (AC joint.)
My lovely wife has extracted a concession from me that that was my last criterium race.
Oh yeah, and helmets work. I have replaced three in the last five years after crashes where my head hit the ground or other objects.
-
I recall seeing Toy Love at a poky little underground club near the Auckland Town Hall around 1980 when still very much underage. A mate's friend ran the club, and we were let in and told to look inconspicuous. It would have been the first time I saw anything non-mainstream live, and I was completely in awe of the energy in the place.
I grew up listing to old Stones, Dylan and Beatles music, and when Toy Love did a hundred mile an hour cover of Dylan's "Positively 4th Street" I think my jaw hit the floor about the same time as my eyebrows hit the ceiling.
-
Aardvark was interesting, but you had to keep Bruce's personal agendas in mind when reading. I have to admit to being a bit conflicted as my missus worked for Xtra at the time which was one of Bruce's main targets for his spleen venting.
NZOOM, Ihug and Xtra's web sites were good sources of early local news content.
And to promote the sponsors product, I've found publicaddress a good source of mostly well considered opinion. Which is quite a refreshing change in the utterly opinionated (excuse the pun) shite found in the mainstream media.
-
I had to have a quiet laugh a few weeks ago walking past the Tauranga Destiny Church while they were having a happy clappy session.
The Bish was obviously in attendance judging by the line up of custom hogs and choppers parked on the footpath (so the bouncers could keep an eye on them.) One got the impression the Bish travels with outriders. Not unlike the leaders of similarly profitable organisations like the Head Hunters, Filthy Few and Hells Angels whose leaders would be wont to travel on custom choppers with outriders in attendance.
Now that's irony
-
For me:
Neil Young - Cinnamon Girl
Rolling Stones - Love in Vain
Beatles - While my Guitar Gently WeepsNot that I expect such a thing at my funeral, but I attended a really uplifting funeral (strange to say but it was) this year after a wonderful elderly aunt of mine passed away. Despite coming from a pakeha background, she had a number of maori grandsons-in-law and quite a number of maori great grandsons. Anyway, as the hearse was pulling out of the funeral chapel, the boys gave their Nanna Peg a rousing haka that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and sent a chill down the spine. It was an amazing send off to an amazing woman.
Can you believe that most refugees settled through the Mangere Refugee Centre in the past few years received T shirts and sweatshirts made by my Aunt Peg? A project taken on voluntarily in her 80s to welcome new New Zealanders to the country.