Due to othersâ appointments, the Vista Group meeting today was a mere duo: myself and Jim Donovan, Esq., who will give up blogging in 10 days. It meant it was the second-least well attended meeting in our history. Jim has never let us forget the least well attended one.
I have always said that one should blog when one wants to. If one feels pressured to do so, then stop. Blogging should be a fun activity and, for me, itâs cathartic. With a new venture on the horizon for Jim (from where he will likely blog again), time is at a premium, and I can fully appreciate that he needs to take a step back.
Of course we will not bid farewell to Jim just because he stops blogging, principally, as Natalie wrote in our emails arranging todayâs meeting, we are too incompetent to organize the monthly meetings without him. And he got us in to the Wellington Club for the end-of-2009 edition where we took over the Deputy Mayorâs table. (Albeit on a day that the Deputy Mayor was not there, which made for a less comical time.)
The Club (the luncheon at which should have been chronicled at the time) has its own gym. Apparently, Club members often talked about how our gymâll fix it. That is, however, another story.
There were some in-depth discussions about my mayoral campaign and the Wellington City Council, the fact that Anouska Hempel, a.k.a. Lady Weinberg, is a Wellingtonian and how she is important to anyone who watched various Hammer Horrors, and the Y2K episode of Family Guy and its homage to Dallasâthings that we would not have digressed to had Natalie and Mark been there. (Jim had brought up âWho shot J. R.?â* on his blog a few days before.)
However, we covered the boiler-plate approach of some IP law firms, the bad customer service we received from Vodafone and Sky TV, and the lack of clarity over some WCC charges over which Jim got three different figures for the same thing. From what I could make out, the charge varied depending on the person he spoke to, the day of the week, and the flutter of a butterflyâs wings over the Shetland Islands. Need I push transparency again?
Above One of Anouska Hempelâs creations, the self-named Hempel hotel, in London. I believe they want a definite article in the official name, but I canât be brought to capitalize it in the middle of a sentence. I will only make an exception for residents of The Terrace in Wellington.
* It was, of course, Kristin, Sue Ellenâs sister. Everyone remembers the hype, no one remembers the answer. Back in those days, we found out a year later in New Zealand, and there were no internet spoilers.âJY
This is a bit odd. I was asked to fill out a survey regarding Google Docs, which I promptly did. I didnât give it very high marks, and after clicking submit, the response was âYou have indicated that you do not use Google Docs.â
I beg your pardon?
I indicated that I had used Google Docs, because Google defines the service as follows: âConsider Google Docs products including Google Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, Forms, and its homepage.â I have indeed opened Google documents and I have been to the home page. I have outputted documents from thereâI know that because I did that tonight.
However, it seems Google does not want to hear bad news from its survey respondents, so those of us who give it a low score are classed as people who have not used the service. Otherwise, the logic must go, why on earth would you rank it so poorly? Everyone here, from Eric Schmidt downwards, knows that Google Docs deserves a high rating! You are obviously inexperienced!
This prompted me to do a bit of surfing about the survey. I was interested, in my âI have it in for Googleâ (thanks, Nigel!) mode, that deleting a Google Docs file does not mean that associated images are also wiped. Those who use the service might wish to take heed.
In 2007, Ralf Scharnetzki created a private, unpublished Google Docs document, with an image. He deleted the document. However, three years on, you can still access the image here (at a docs.google.com link).
I realize that in 99 per cent of cases, the image will be secure. No one other than the authorâand not every author, eitherâwill know the location of an image. But on the internet, stranger things have happened. Obviously those with confidential data would not use Google Docs to assemble their workâbut we are only human: you never know when you might let your guard down.
Just be careful out there. âDeletedâ does not mean, well, deleted.
Mostly by focusing on growing creative clusters and taking a bigger slice of the cake. So it is not from technocratic ideas or the notion that we are liberating more of the economy, but by growing entrepreneurship. The city will take the most socially responsible, entrepreneurial start-ups and act as an agent to grow them (with an agreement that they remain in Wellington, of course) and create the capital flows to get them funded. I realize there is Grow Wellington already, but their ambit will be shifted.
So, itâs economic growth from the bottomâup.
Then (italics added for this post):
The clusters have naturally formed but they can get so much stronger. If the city is being them, then there is no reason Wellington cannot become internationally known for them. I think in this last week I have shown that borders mean very little to me, and anyone who wants to be mayor in the 2010s needs to have a similar mindset. We are not competing just for national resources, but global ones; and by being part of the global community, we might start bridging more communities and getting some greater global understanding. The nationâstate as it was understood in the 20th century is dying as a concept, and governments have only themselves to blame. Things are shifting to the individualâcommunity level, and you are right, real things happen when it is people acting at the coal face. Those who distance themselves will not be equipped for this century.
Sam Flemming in Advertising Age mentioned the scandal that Toyota has been embroiled in inside China, before a lot of the bad press it received in the occident over âunintended accelerationâ.
This involved a netizen, an owner of a Toyota Highlander Sport, filming that his SUV was unable to get up a 30-degree incline, something which âlesserâ models such as the Korean-built Renault Koleos, and even the subcompact Chery QQâone of the cheapest cars around in Chinaâcould manage. The following news item reveals more. Itâs in Mandarin and dates from December 22, 2009.
The news investigators show that even a Daewoo Lacetti (Buick Excelle in China) and a Chery van could manage the same slope, and confirm that the Highlander could not do it.
They are not alone. Jitendra Patel filmed this with his 2009 Highlander earlier last year:
As Sam says, this issue has brewed thanks to the Chinese internet which, while not as free as it is in most countries, still seems to create active consumersâ groups. People will rally as individuals if the cause is rightâand consumers seem to be rediscovering their power, online.
To be confirmed is an interview with the BBC, in my politician guise. I have not been on radio in the other hemisphere for something like seven years, and that time it went to some of the most way-out places (it was UN Radio). I have one reservation only: my accent goes all over the place. Remember how the Rt Hon Jim Bolger went funny with his when foreign dignitaries came and he sounded like he was mocking the foreigners? Or, a few years before, Michael Fay during the Americaâs Cup lawsuits and his Americanized pronunciation of water?
Yeah, I do that. And even more disturbingly, I know I do it while Iâm doing it, and cannot stop it.
Itâs going to be hell if a northerner interviews me and I start sounding like Jimmy Nail. I am told that I do a very good Lily Savage when I have the âflu. And if I get a southerner, you will think I was trying to impress Keeley Hawes (which I try to do, anyway, never mind Matthew). Not one is sufficiently âKiwiâ for Wellington voters. Though I might find that British expatriates based in Wellington might suddenly vote for me. Because in any case I will sound better than Harold Wilson.
Necessity is the mother of all invention. I never thought some of the Der Untergang (Downfall) parodies could be topped, but I think this just happened.
I was interested to see a Tweet today (via Daniel Spector) asking if I would object to the erection of a âWellywoodâ sign in Miramar that would parody the âHollywoodâ one in the Hollywood Hills, Calif. The answer is: yes, I would.
For numerous reasons. First, itâs naff and tacky.
Secondly, why do we need to rip off someone elseâs idea as a joke (and a second-rate one at that)? Sorry, whomever raised this is, to me, not used to the idea that New Zealanders are original, innovative people, and we lead. We donât copy. Judging by my own Facebook page, this issue is running 12 to 1 against the sign, with the one conceding that she would prefer to see something âmore Kiwianaâ.
Thirdly, that money could be better spent elsewhere. City deficit much? How about Wellington Airport just gives the city that money if it has this much to spare on trivial projects?
Fourthly, we donât need any damned sign for us to know we are the best. Didnât the proponents of this sign watch the Academy Awards last night? Winning those Oscars was proof enough Wellington doesnât need a sign to be the worldâs best.
I did my last edits to this blogâs pages that had resided on the old Blogger service today, before decommissioning them from the service. After today (in theory, since the updating stalled twice as I wrote this), you will not be able to make any more comments on posts written before January 1, 2010.
In doing so, I discovered a very interesting post: my moan about Google Web History on October 1, 2007. It turns out that was the day I switched it off, until Google decided, in its wisdom, to turn it back on again. In the same post, I mentioned how I was unhappy that I was signed up to Orkut and Google Groups without my consent.
Anyone who thinks Googleâs recent misbehaviour is new is (as I was) mistaken.
Back in 2007, I threatened to shift this blog away from Blogger, which I did not carry out for two years due to busy-ness.
The silver lining then, as now, is that at least Google has the guts to tell us under what means they were collecting our private data and allow us to opt out (in theory). But the point, surely, is that we should not need to opt out, if we have never opted in, to these services.
The more things change âŠ
I received yet another junk fax today, which I believe are not permitted under the Telecommunications Act. My enquiries to Telecom suggest that this is the case.
This time, itâs a well known business based in town and in the Hutt. And you know what? Iâve now made a mental note not to go there. Unless they and these other junk faxers want to pay for the film and paper they use up. Because my giving them even more money is now an offensive idea.
A couple of years back, I outed a company that turned out to be an old friendâs. We patched up our differences (I would be happy to frequent his business given that his really quick response to show he gave a damn, and he has ceased this practice), though in the process we discovered that these fax lists date back to the early 1990s.
Thatâs right: they are as old as surgically enhanced parts of Demi Moore.
The usual defence is that anti-spam legislation in New Zealand does not extend to junk faxes, but what that paragraph does not tell you is that unsolicited, nuisance faxes fall under another law. From what I understand, faxes, too, have to be solicited.
When you are using someone elseâs resources, beyond their time, to get your message to them, the balance feels wrong. By all means, send me stuff in the post, and pay for your own paper. Asking me for money when you are already wasting it with a junk fax is more arrogant than any form of topâdown marketingâand separates buyer and seller more firmly into âusâ and âthemâ.