Posts by JackElder
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Something is lost in the process of using a machine of any kind - your natural ability will atrophy.... I really don't think running to the CBD from an outer suburb every day is necessary.
On the other hand, using a machine makes you much better at using the machine. I couldn't run 40k a day if you paid me, but I'll quite happily use a machine (the bicycle, the most energy-efficient transport mechanism ever invented) to do it on my commute. And there are plenty of machines that are designed specifically to improve your natural ability - they're often found clustered in places called "gyms".
Yes, I should stop being a smartarse.
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One of the great things about my job is that I can have as many wooden pencils as I want. We have a stationery cupboard full of H-love (no HB for some reason). It's absolutely great.
Geek tank moment:
Working replica Rhino APC from the Warhammer 40k universe. Running over cars. -
Do we need to start cross-referencing February birthdays and tech writers yet?
My father, mother, sister, and one set of grandparents were all born in February. I was born in October. They were all conceived in the Southern hemisphere, me in the North. The only thing I can think of is that there really wasn't much to do in NZ in May in those days...
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A public library I used to frequent marked all their risque books with a purple spot and kept the very risque ones in the stack room and borrowers had to ask for them.
At 16, I got the Karma Sutra out of the Wellington Public Library. That was held in a back room, and we had to ask for it. Though I think that had less to do with gleeful puritanism than the simple fact that the smutty books, on open shelves, tend to get nicked. Similarly, a friend of mine used to work in a "New Age" bookshop. She told me that they did stock The Satanic Bible, but it was under the counter. Again, mainly because otherwise people just shoplifted it, but also (in that case) because it meant that they could do a quick judgement call on whether to sell it to any particular punter or not.
My wedding anniversary is on the 20th. Handily, so is my wife's. Gets us nicely out of any particular implicit onus to celebrate valentines.
Personally, I think we should celebrate Saint Sebastian's day on the 20th January instead. Instead of giving flowers, we'd all go get pierced.
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Look, if you're not going to store contraband visibly on a high shelf, how will the offspring discover the illicit thrill of snagging forbidden literature?Surely once they have the height/engineering skills/curiosity to winkle the naughty stuff down, they're probably old enough.
And a fair point, and I did the same when I was a kid. But I may have go through the contraband and bowdlerise the collection so that they only find the right sort of forbidden books. ;)
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Angelina Jolie could not play Halo Jones. She's a bit too sculpted. The point of Halo Jones is that she's the everywoman, not some super-hyper-wow-enhanced killing machine etc (as was unfortunately standard for most women in 2000AD). As the lecturer says at the start of Book 3 (I think, it might have been book 2), there wasn't anything special about her - and that's what's so remarkable and why she's such a compelling character.
When you think of how much of 2000AD's output was basically violence-porn, what Alan Moore managed to do with The Ballad of Halo Jones was pretty special.
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You know who wrote a song for me?
You know who wrote a song for me?
No-one, that's who.
Not that I'm bitter.
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I'm reminded of the Onion headline "Romantic Comedy Behavior gets Real-Life Man Arrested".
Once, when we were at varsity, a mate and I spent the night of Feb 13th walking across most of central Wellington distributing anonymous Valentines presents to a dozen or so of our friends. Chocolates, jars of jalopenos, etc. Drove several people mad for ages trying to figure out who their "secret admirers" were. Ah, youth.
By the way, is the "samrt" typo deliberate?
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It's always fun when your kids find your comics collection. My not-quite-any-more preschooler found our Asterix and Tintin collection, and is displaying quite a lot of interest. Mind you, the problem is that those books are in the "oversize books" section of the shelves, which also hold several books that have been the subject of obscenity trials and which have pictures that I don't want to be explaining any time soon.
I was a good boy when I was young, and read The Eagle religiously. Ah, the Mekon. Then I discovered 2000AD, and never looked back...
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On the subject of stealth power generation from energy that would otherwise be wasted - why not? If people can power a nightclub from the dancers' energy or run a railway station on commuter's footsteps, there's surely no reason not to. Imagine having some of these installed in Courtney Place on a Saturday night.
I'm ahead of my time. I use a bicycle-based power generation system to commute to and from work. I call it "riding my bicycle to work". Sign up for the Bike Wise Battle now, kids!