Posts by Jimmy Southgate
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Hard News: The unstable Supercity, in reply to Daniel Carr,
With a very generous annual employment cost of $200,000 (salary, workspace, expenses, etc)
My guess is that you might want to re-work that model if you're including all the other expenses. At 48 weeks x 5 days x 8 hours that would work out to less than $105 / hr.
I would guess that some of the contractors/consultants would be earning significantly more than that hourly rate without including all the other expenses.
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OnPoint: Beyond 'a bad look', in reply to Tom Semmens,
The best journalism these days is on Comedy Central
That crown has been taken by HBO with Last Week Tonight. Born of Comedy Central, but goes much deeper into a single story each week.
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One of the best things about the game was that it appeared to be conducted by two teams who have little time for this sort of attitude:
"Sledging inevitable in Cup semi-final - Faulkner"
http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc-cricket-world-cup-2015/content/story/854317.htmlTwo teams who fought as hard as i’ve ever seen on a cricket pitch to win; and where either team could have won, and deserved to win.
I just wish we could play them again in the final.
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Yes. I want to hear more about using Apple TV – which is a vastly superior device to anything inside a smart TV.
The main failing of the AppleTV is the continuing lack of an app store. I have no idea why they can't open it up at least slightly to allow 3rd party developers to expand the range of the thing. I'm a big fan of Plex as far as a media centre goes, and with a little bit of fiddling here & there you can get it going, but it would be so much nicer just to have an icon to click.
IF they can hit with a ~$20/mo plan loaded with a fairly decent content spread (including the Freeview suite) on really straightforward lounge-hardware then offshore experience would suggest they could see some success.
That's not far off the cost of getting Netflix to go in New Zealand i'd have thought, so it would have to be a bit better than a decent content spread. I imagine they'll struggle to get anything TV3 or SkyTV have the rights to; so it will be interesting to see if they can provide compelling service.
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Hard News: Telecom and TV, in reply to barnaclebarnes,
I'm going to go so far as to say if it isn't available as an icon on my Apple TV then it doesn't exist. After ditching Sky and getting US iTunes and Netflix, AppleTV is the only remote we use
Only if you turned your AppleTV to the US iTunes location to get the Netflix app to show Spark will never get an app to show on the US iTunes store so they'll have already missed your business anyway!!
The first will go away as TV monitors get more smarts and integrate Chrome or Android (particularly if the TV industry, which is a bit dark age, twigs that its actually a source of bundling revenue).
I have both a smart & a non-smart Sony TVs. For a bit of fun, and to get content onto the non-smart I've just deployed an AppleTV, and its already so much better than the smart I'm thinking I might need to buy a second. Looks like its relatively trivial to get a combo of AppleTV, plus a special DNS service to get you access to Neflix, Hulu etc.
Really, the only way any of these vendors get decent market share in NZ is by getting content on the device or making it as simple as possible to pretend the device is in the US.
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I've just recently obtained a bike again, not ridden in half a lifetime - and as with Lee M above I do my best to avoid roads. This is easily done in Tawa as they've constructed a cycle trail (well, almost finished anyway), where you can ride from Takapu Rd at the southern end of town, all the way to Porirua without riding on a main road. You can then skip around the harbour on the footpaths and get all the way to Titahi Bay or Onehunga Bay without riding through too much traffic. Splendid!
Its alongside the railway line so has a pleasant gradient for a Sunday cruiser such as myself and in most areas has better scenery than everywhere else too. They've also upgraded the footpaths in the areas where its shared with pedestrians so they're half as wide again and have a surface that drains properly to a second gutter system - its rather nice. Once i'm a bit more confident I'm keen to try further north through Mana, Plimmerton and on to Pukerua Bay as i'm pretty sure there are cycle paths there completely separate from the roads too. For me, as unconfident as I am, it seems by far the best way to ride!
The thing I find frustrating as a motorist usually occurs on a couple of rather narrow roads* which have either completely separate cycle paths or at the least marked cycle lanes. For some reason, many cyclists decide not to use the lane and instead ride in traffic, which just seems like madness to me in rush hour. I don't have a problem slowing down to sit behind cyclists until there's a safe place to overtake, but you very quickly start to feel the pressure of other vehicles behind you who are more impatient, or can't see the reason for traffic being so slow.
I'm not saying cyclists should be forced to use the lanes provided, particularly if they're poorly maintained, but I really wish they would. A small mistake from me, the cyclist or any one of the other motorists around could easily be very nasty.
*Old Hutt Rd seems to be the worst for this, its a 60 -> 80km road which is really only a 2 lane road that they've pinched the shoulders of to make 4 lanes. But there is a completely separate cycle path probably in the rail corridor, wide enough for 2-3 abreast. However, northbound cyclists will ride on the road instead of the cycle path to save themselves 1-2 minutes waiting for the lights to change so they can get across to head up to Wadestown, or Johnsonville etc.
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Sweetman's an idiot, I guess he's just run out of things to say in his drive to be a contrarian.
For me, at the moment there are so many words about being expended how great Lorde is, and will be, that seem out of place with my impression of how good the music, words & performance is.
However, given its all just personal preference what's the point in making a big disagreement about that? It reminds me of walking out of one of the best musical performances I hd seen in ages (Fleet Foxes) and having people complain about how it was a stink gig because they're not big showmen. Who wants to have someone bring an immediate downer to something you are buzzing about!
What's clearly becoming factual at least, is that the success part is real - whether its sustained or not is something we will all have to wait to see.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Farmer Green,
Farmer Green continues to swim in the Manawatu and has done all his life.
Bacteriological testing of the water that he has done himself reveals that it is normally perfectly safe.But which part of the Manawatu river? I'd say north of Oringi would be ok, and swim & fish up that way frequently, but after the Gorge i'd be thinking twice.
(apologies for responding 4 pages late!)
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Looks to me that Obamas in the stronger position. Assuming they both win their easy & narrow states in the nytimes site then of the tossups Obama can afford to lose Florida, Ohio, and either Virginia or Wisconsin & still get above 270. I think Romney needs 3/4 of those plus Colorado or Iowa.
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Im finding this one is making more sense than the HuffPo one. Much clearer about % of vote counted & how much it matters.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/president/big-board/