Keep the parliamentary term as it is

Rumblings about extending our three-year parliamentary term to four surface from time to time. I don’t think we should change a thing, more so in the era of coalition governments under MMP. And it shouldn’t matter which side of the fence you sit. The length of the term should be inversely proportional to the power […]

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Autocade turns 16

The latest model on Autocade: the second-generation Ssangyong Rexton, now the KG Rexton.   Last week, Autocade hit its 16th anniversary, and how different this one looks from the last. Now there’s a print counterpart, and some very nice readers have offered their reviews, too. We’re nearing 5,000 models on there, and the last several […]

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Heritage

  I’m not sure why the history page about my ancestor, 甄舜河 (Gin Sun Hall), has disappeared from the family association’s page, but for others who are descended from him, here’s his pic from the Internet Archive. He lived in the late 13th century. Also from the Archive was this extract from a 1997 publication […]

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Who pioneered phone food ordering and delivery?

Not that any search engine will find this, but according to the BBC’s The Secret Genius of Modern Life (episode 2), the inventor of the phone orders for food was the Kin-Chu Café at 137 South Brand Boulevard, Glendale, Calif., in 1922 (another link here). ‘Special Delivery Service 11 A. M. to 1 A. M.—Phone […]

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My real expert opinion on Google, SEO, and the mess that’s to come (not the LLM junk)

Skry being right on the money:     Still those web pages about me being a Google SEO expert or having an algorithm named for me are being indexed and prioritized by Google, all because Semrush hallucinated (or was there a malicious hand in this?), told a bunch of people (in south Asia, predominantly) about […]

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Is Google stealing your voice for its virtual assistant? Meanwhile, Mktg Stinx

Here’s Google’s latest privacy gaffe, the latest in a long, long line where they pretend to not know it’s happening till they’re embarrassed into admitting that it is happening—and then the authorities will fine Google millions of dollars which they will make back in a few hours. Ibly writes in a post on the fediverse […]

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Hellos and goodbyes

Twenty twenty-three, what a year. I’ve met some amazing people this year, a lot of whom are in the public service. You know who you are. I am happy to know you. Those who champion the good in our society. Those who offer alternatives to things that harm society. Those who create good in this […]

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Who leads when the house of cards falls?

Scott Burchill makes a good analysis in Pearls and Irritations on how the US is ‘a rogue state’ and becoming a pariah (alongside Israel) over recent events in Gaza, and how its influence is waning. It’s hard to argue with a lot of his points; certainly here, with the exception of some politicians who either […]

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Introducing Autocade in print

  There’s a lot to report now that the news is public: Autocade is more than the online encyclopædia, it’s also a print yearbook. I’m happy to say it has been launched, after ironing out some tech issues, and there has been good interest in the new publication. You can read a bit more about […]

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The designer’s quest for timelessness

In the editorial to one of our print publications—not yet at liberty to say which—I show a 2004 cover of Lucire featuring Jennifer Siebel inset in the text. It got me thinking how, when I first designed the cover, with Jon Moe’s photograph, I was aiming for a classical timelessness. Now nearly 20 years on—in […]

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