The expectation of invisibility

I rewatched Princess of Chaos, the TV drama centred around my friend, Bevan Chuang. I’m proud to have stood by her at the time, because, well, that’s what you do for your friends. I’m not here to revisit any of the happenings that the TV movie deals with—Bevan says it brings her closure so that […]

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January 2023 gallery

Here are January 2023’s images—aides-mémoires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.     Notes Rosa Clará image, added as I was archiving files from the third quarter of 2021. The Claudia Schiffer Rolling Stone cover came to mind recently—I believe it was commended in 1991 by the […]

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If corporate America says it, it’s probably untrue

Le dernier.   I see the Le Snak range has now left us, after its US owner PepsiCo cited a lack of demand. I call bullshit, since during 2021 it was becoming increasingly difficult to find them on the shelves. Throttling distribution is not the same as a lack of demand, something you see time […]

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The missing second verse

The second of three verses of the Scots College school song appears to be missing from the web. I posted them once on Facebook, back when people used Facebook, so of course it doesn’t appear in Google. We sang it, but I understand that the generation before, and the one after, didn’t sing it. We […]

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Lucire’s holding page prior to launch

Of course I remember there was a holding page prior to Lucire launching on October 20, 1997 at 7 a.m. EST, or midnight NZDT on October 21, 1997. I just didn’t remember what it exactly looked like, till I discovered it at the Internet Archive:     There was no semicolon in JY&A Media, not […]

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How to end social media censorship

Kristina Flour/Unsplash   This Twitter thread by Yishan Wong is one of the most interesting I’ve come across. Not because it’s about Elon Musk (who he begins with), but because it’s about the history of the web, censorship, and the reality of running a social platform. Here are some highlights (emphases in the original): There […]

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Browser history

In 2011, I was definitely on Firefox.   I believe I started browsing as many did, with Netscape. But not 1.0 (though I had seen copies at university). I was lucky enough to have 1.1 installed first. I stuck with Netscape till 4.7. Its successor, v. 6, was bloated, and never worked well on my […]

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Back, on the new box

There are a few experiments going on here now that this blog is on the new server. Massive thanks to my friend who has been working tirelessly to get us on to the new box and into the 2020s. First, there’s a post counter, though as it’s freshly installed, it doesn’t show a true count. […]

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The erosion of standards

For homeowners and buyers, there’s a great guide from Moisture Detection Co. Ltd. called What You Absolutely Must Know About Owning a Plaster-Clad Home, subtitled The Origin of New Zealand’s Leaky Building Crisis and Must-Know Information for Owners to Make Their Homes Weathertight, and Regain Lost Value.    My intent isn’t to repeat someone’s copyrighted […]

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Spacing in French: figuring out how to punctuate professionally

With the French edition of Lucire KSA now out, we’ve been hard at work on the second issue. The first was typeset by our colleagues in Cairo (with the copy subbed by me), but this time it falls on us, and I had to do a lot of research on French composition.    There are […]

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