Posts by Hugh Wilson
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Hard News: Friday Music: The First Time, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
@Robyn - I went to the De La Soul show at the Auckland Town Hall in 1991, as well, aged 15 or 16, and mainly remember how dorky me and my buddy were sitting right at the back, up top, some way away from all the action ....
Pretty sure my first convert was the Greenpeace POP (Preserve our Planet) concert at Mt Smart supertop circa 89 or 90 - Toni Childs was the headliner .... incidentally it's a tad depressing to think of what a terrible job we have done at preserving our planet since that time ...
Soon after the Greenpeace concert I went to Tracy Chapman at Carlaw Park, mainly - ahem - to try socialise with young ladies from Baradene College ...
Seeing the Violent Femmes at the AKL Town Hall early 90's is another early concert memory
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This uptempo little number might just slot in amongst the others round here …
https://soundcloud.com/souleance/a-little-bit-of-love-souleance
* Embed issues *
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Hard News: Kitchen Hacks, in reply to Russell Brown,
Curry hack: fry onions and garlic, add fresh-ground spices, stir for a bit, add passata, stir some more, and then bring your curry sauce up to the required volume by adding boiling water while stirring. Comes up really nicely.
Further to this, magic curry ingredients (i.e. those to take them next level) can include fresh pandan leaves, fresh curry leaves, maldive fish (or maldive fish sambal) and coconut powder - the only downside is that some of these things seems impossible to find in Auckland (nothing but blank looks when asking about maldive fish a few months back, at multiple shops including the Sandringham area Indian strip)
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A couple of kitchen/cooking tips:
- once toasted your risotto should be on heat/cooking for 18 minutes, 19 if you were a bit casual with the heat
- olive oil can be purchased very economically in 4-5 litre containers - for day to day use source a dark bottle and plug in a spout/pourer
- funnels are very useful things, so invest a coupla bucks -
Re: the Sunday replay and Monday highlights show, it’s worth noting that the EPL schedule changes up a lot around the Christmas / New Year’s period with games being held midweek and a general plethora of matches occurring (i.e. 2 ‘rounds’ within one week) .. presumably TVNZ and Coliseum will manage this bridge as they cross it
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Hard News: The future: be careful what…, in reply to Alan Perrott,
Being based in Melbourne my comments on this are somewhat arm’s length.
The new arrangements are obviously illustrative of the convergence which is occurring in the media, broadcasting and communication space. As alluded to by Russell convergence has the potential to create major implications for business models of ‘traditional’ TV broadcasters , any by extension – although perhaps not in this case, and depending on the associated legislation – the production of local content. Put another way, IPTV marks another step in the leakage of customers, and thus revenue from the traditional, commercial operators. Hopefully this development will shake things up at Sky a little (why, for example, do they screen BBC but not the equally impressive Al Jazerra?), and open the door for increased consumer choice and flexibility.
If there were a season pass available for the Super 15 and All Blacks I would certainly look at ditching my Foxtel sub, but then I'd also need a season pass for the EPL :)
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The article linked to by Russell was published in the Farifax papers here in Australia last week.
I don’t have a lot to add to the discussion, but would point out that while there are a lot of similarities to cycling in Auckland, Christchurch, Melbourne and Sydney there are also notable ‘structural’ differences between these cities in terms of spatial layouts, geography and competing road users. These ‘differences’ may help explain some of the reported results, but it is of course difficult to articulate said differences in a short post such as this. My observations (having lived and ridden in Auckland, Melbourne and Sydney) are basically:
(1) Melbourne and Sydney have much more substantive public transport networks (especially rail) which take lots of cars off the streets, particularly around the CBD – in Melbourne cars are effectively discouraged from entering the CBD due to the plethora of one way streets and the car free designation of Swanston st. The upshot of this is that lots of roads around the CDB can be oddly devoid of traffic (even at peak times) which provides less incentive, if you like, to wait for that green when a quick scoot is possible.
(2) Auckland and Sydney seem to have more heavily trafficked roads in general than Melbourne – this makes riding in those cities relatively more ‘challenging’, as the dominant culture/mindset is that of cars.
(3) Humans are wired to behaviourally seek out shortcuts, so despite the provisions of road rules cyclists – and motorists – will at times break these, with varying possible consequences. The problem here is that these acts, where committed by cyclists, catalyse ill feelings. For evidence of this have a look at the comments section next time there is a big cycling story in the Age or the SMH. Unfortunately there is little political leadership re: changing attitudes towards cycling, and the media – playing on divisiveness as it does – seem to like nothing more than stoking the fires of ill will towards cyclists. This apathy is, I suspect, common to all major centres in Australia and NZ.
On the positive side, Melbourne City Council has been reasonably progressive in its approach to cycling in recent years and has made year-on-year budget allocations for cycling infrastructure in the CBD – I think its $5M in the current year, and this is funding the creation of a separated an east-west cycle lane along La Trobe st. Further to this, more and more people are riding bikes into the CBD – the procession of (law abiding) cyclists at city intersections can be rather breathtaking, as in 20 every three minutes sort of thing. To the extent that these cyclists are one’s co-workers or bosses or partners, attitudes towards cyclists will gradually start to change. What seems less likely, however, is the application of a behavioral lens – from a human / cyclists point of view – to the road code in the interests of common sense and harmonious co-existence.
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I tweeted some thanks to Russell for this post earlier, as I have peered into the world of DJ app's before only to retreat in a fog of confusion - I'm more psyched (if that's the right word) for parting with $25 than previously the case ...
One alternative I thought of to this route was buying a mini portable mixer to which two ipods (or similar devices) could be plugged into: a simple cross fader, volume control and headphone jack would suffice for that future party (NY's or otherwise) in the middle of nowhere where there's basically stuff all chance of anyone lining up any dj gear. Seems there are quite a few mini mixers about, and heck you could even plug a portable record player in if you were so inclined. Running ipods as inputs means other people can plug their phones or whatever in as well so they can hear their favourite song, which can help keep everyone happy if you know what I mean !