Posts by Jeremy Andrew
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I reckon build the glorious new bridge, but don't trash the old one, turn it into a destination, build apartments and markets and shops and stalls. No road access, only pedestrian.
See Willam Gibson's Bridge Trilogy for a more anarchic version. -
Geez, did an astrologer kick your puppy or something?
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Face it Robyn, you're getting old :-)
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I mean, Real Groovy has been gouging customers for some time, but does everyone actually realise by how much?
RG offer a service over & above just buying a record. If you know the album you want, especially if its a big name one, you can walk into the Warehouse and buy it cheap. What RG (and similar outfits)provide is expertise and a wide range.
Sure if you buy Britney or Now22 from Real Groovy, you'll pay more than the re shed, but if you want to buy some obscure indie, or local artist - the LEDs for example, you'll get a blank look at the Warehouse, but RG will likely know who you are talking about and will either have it, or try & source it for you.
Admittedly the internet has charged into that niche - the whole long tail retail thing, and its lots cheaper to buy from a US niche outfit than buy an import from RG. But comparing the warehouse with RG on price alone is unfair. -
Being against that is like being against burglar alarms. The issue isn't the DRM its that some people can't be trusted to not steal shit.
Very true - I'm against car alarms as well as DRM. Like you said, its not the idea, its the implementation. Car alarm false alarms piss off many, many more people than they prevent car thefts. Much like DRM, they'll make amateurs think twice about ripping off your car, but if someone who knows what they're doing wants it, its gone.
The problem is, with the amount of dosh at issue, we still don't have a decent DRM implementation that does more good than harm. This leads me to believe that such a beast doesn't exist - Apple have come close, but not close enough to beat DRM-free.
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My NY resolution was not to post on PAS this year. Seriously.
I wish I had made a resolution that lasted as long as yours did...
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We found it prudent to avoid mentioning we were from Auckland though ...
Yeah, but us Hamiltownians are safe enough - just don't mention dairy farming...
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Mind you, land is cheap in the US itself. A person I know has acquired a full section (which in the western US is one square mile) on the Nevada/California border for a remarkably small amount of money.
With less greenery than the average kiwi quarter acre I'd imagine...
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The inaugural Public Address theme challenge? 500 sparkly words on fish or watermelons - go!
By an amazing coincidence my weekend involved both fish and watermelon:
A friend of ours has three kids (twin girls and a boy) who all have their birthdays about now. To do something a bit different, especially this close to Christmas, she organised a fishing trip instead of a party. She hired a boat & skipper out of Coromandel, and invited a stack of friends and family to join them for an afternoon's fishing.
Now, I've been fishing once or twice, but only from rocks or wharves, and never particularly successfully (except that time with the baitcatcher when I was 10). So I was rather looking forward to having a crack at this very Kiwi passtime, and the kids were positively bubbling with enthusiasm.
We fronted up at Te Kouma (just outside Coromandel Town) at half past three, and the boat showed up at fourish, we all piled on, and a motley bunch we were: Tanya and her three sprogs, plus her Belgian exchange student, her hubby couldn't make it, he was stuck working in Timaru; Me, Mandy (the wife) and our two boys; Tanya's mum and dad, not professional fisherfolk (in the same way that the All Blacks in the 70s weren't professional rugby players) but they know their way around a rod; a couple of Tanya's folks friends, retired from the farm and always looking out for new experiences; and Sheryl and Pete, friends of Tanya's, Pete being a definite, dyed-in-the-wool kiwi hardcase.
Luckily for my dodgy inner-ear, the water was the next best thing to flat, and the boat nearly as stable as a billard table. We nipped across the harbour, through the little channel, and out to the mussel farms off Long Bay. The skipper hooked us up to a mussel bouy and we commenced to baiting hooks, and bating breath. Within five minutes one of the twins had hooked a decent sized snapper. Within half an hour, Jan the exchange student had caught and thrown back three undersized snapper, Tanya's mum had chucked back an undersized Kingfish, and there were several more snapper and a lonely trevally in the fish bin. Mandy caught her first fish not long after that, a nice wee snapper for the collection, and our youngest caught himself his first ever fish about the same time.
After a couple of hours the skipper fired up the on-board barbie and sizzled up a batch of sausages and bacon, not haute-cuisine, but the sea air is a great seasoning. Pete the hard-case then began the traditional tall stories and teasing the kids by teaching my boys how to cut bait without a knife (tricky if you're waiting to get your two front teeth for Christmas...), showing Jan how to gut a snapper in the most hands-on fashion, including a spot of aruspicy to see what the fish had been eating.
By the time the fish had stopped biting just about everyone had caught at least one fish, the sun was setting and the evening chill was settling in, so we upped anchor and headed back to port. After we tucked the kids into bed at the campground, the experts filletted the fish while some of us kept them company, some of the ladies gathered for a gossip, and Pete took Jan off to the pub for a bit of the kind of kiwi culture that an 18 year old exchange student isn't going to get from his foster mother.
And the watermelon? Tanya had carefully packed a 10 kilo watermelon to eat on the boat, however the only knives on board were in use on the bait board and she was a bit too fastidious to rinse the squid bits off one in a bucket of seawater to slice the melon. So the huge, expensive, out-of-season watermelon made it back to land unscathed.
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Define 'nutbar'. My dad put an axe through the Christmas cake one year.
Depends if it was done in an ironic 'geez, this cake's a bit dense' way, or in more of a 'Heeeeere's Johnny!" Jack Nicholson manner.