It’s Miller time on the Sherlock bandwagon

08.07.2012/05.48

Elementary is an modern-day, American TV version of Sherlock Holmes. It’s not an American remake of the Steven Moffat–Mark Gatiss update, which I love, and some might say it has taken too many liberties with the original. Watson is now female. I’ll leave you to comment, but I don’t make my thoughts of remakes […]

Endgame: Saab ﬁles for bankruptcy

19.12.2011/11.17

If you’re a car nut, then you won’t be mourning, too much, the passing of former Czech president Vaclev Hável. Or, for that matter, Kim Jong Il. It’s Saab that has ﬁnally died as it ﬁles for bankruptcy after GM, which still licenses key technologies to the Swedish ﬁrm, vetoed its sale to Zhejiang Youngman […]

Intellectual property doesn’t deserve a black mark, but some powers-that-be do

22.11.2011/05.50

After being interviewed about the outcome of the ‘Wellywood’ sign vote yesterday (a summary of what I told Newstalk ZB can be found on my Facebook fan page) I was reminded about how a few Wellingtonians, who supported my quest to stop the sign in 2010 and 2011, were not that thrilled that I used […]

Innovation is the way forward for New Zealand, says Prof Sir Paul Callaghan in Chancellor’s lecture

15.09.2011/03.11

Prof Sir Paul Callaghan’s address for the Chancellor of Victoria University, Ian McKinnon, held at a packed-out the Wellington Town Hall, was inspirational, and I felt that he conﬁrmed a lot of my thinking for this city. It’s great we have free wiﬁ in certain parts of Wellington now, and in our libraries, because […]

Why do the major parties insist on holding us back?

04.07.2011/04.43

In 2002, I did something really stupid. I bought a brand-new, 750 Mbyte Zip drive. After all, I had had three years of use out of my 100 Mbyte one, and since 750s looked like the way of the future, I had one installed. I can still count the number of times […]

Wellington Airport ﬂip-ﬂops again, but pennies drop more quickly in Queensland

01.06.2011/10.52

Today, those of us on the anti-‘Wellywood’ sign page got some welcome news: that Wellington Airport would reconsider. But, I had to point out, this is again déjà vu. Last time, the Airport ﬂip-ﬂopped as well, and said it would consult the public. Given that the resource consent for ‘Wellywood’ was for nine […]

Time to ﬁght the Wellywood sign—again

21.05.2011/01.24

Wellywood sign: see blog posts from last year (like this). You’d think Wellington Airport would know that the majority of residents are against this awful idea. An intelligent person would think: ﬂoating an idea in 2011 that was nearly universally rejected in Wellington in 2010 isn’t smart. Yet that’s exactly what they’ve done. […]

One year on, the same issues remain pressing

23.04.2011/00.13

In 2011, the issues that I spoke about during my campaign remain as pressing as they always did. We still need better, wider and earlier consultation, whether we streamline current processes or create new ones for citizen engagement. We still need to build a city-wide wiﬁ network, one which exists but needs a […]

National thinks the internet is ‘Skynet’ as copyright amendments pass second reading

13.04.2011/13.10

This would be humorous if the implications of the copyright amendments were not so serious: Also speaking in favour of the bill, National MP Jonathan Young compared the internet to Skynet, the ﬁctional artiﬁcial intelligence network in the Terminator movies that tried to destroy mankind. That was in the National Business Review. I believe […]

Two years on, the mainstream media wake up over BYD’s ethics

10.04.2011/06.02

I said it in 2009, and apparently, so did a diplomat whose note was leaked via Wikileaks: BYD might not stand scrutiny in a non-Chinese court over its vehicles. When I raised it, a few BYD fans (agents?) came commenting, trying to pick holes in my post, though they were unable to deny that […]