Police issue videos of fourth Pike River explosion

New Zealand Police has issued two videos from the Pike River coal mine, which shows the fourth blast on Sunday. These are probably the clearest yet, and give an idea of how terrible the conditions must be within the mine. May the 29 men who were trapped and who possibly perished there two Fridays ago […]

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TrueStory: My Christmas at Downstage on the 8th

Some distinguished and famous people, and I as the token undistinguished person, form the cast of TrueStory: My Christmas at Downstage on Wednesday, December 8 at 7.30 p.m. We’re going to talk about our Christmas experiences, and all proceeds are going to the Wellington City Mission.    Host Tim Gordon will be joined by: Dame […]

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Testing the search engines

I hadn’t heard of Blekko, a search engine, till last week, so armed with a new entrant, I wanted to see how they all compared.    Blekko’s very pretty, and I’ve told Gabriel Weinberg, the man behind Duck Duck Go, just what it is that makes it attractive. Most of it is the modernist design […]

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TPPA could turn the clock back

During the campaign trail, people tended to ask me if I was left or right. While I cheekily said, ‘Forward,’ many a time (and had at least one imitator), there’s something to be said for abandoning what are, effectively, nineteenth-century constructs.    And unless you are DI Alex Drake in Ashes to Ashes, you need […]

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Putting a full site feed on a Facebook fan page is not a good idea

Even though more young women are spending time on Facebook at the exclusion of other sites, last night I decided to stop connecting the Lucire RSS feed in to its Facebook fan page.    We began the fan page very late, having relied on using a Facebook group. And even then, these were promoted half-heartedly. […]

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Igovt hates my answers

I signed up to the Igovt site for the New Zealand Government today, allowing citizens a single log-on for e-government services (such as the Companies’ Office, where we have to file annual returns). In case you forget your password, you can choose from a variety of security questions they can ask you.    The following […]

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Farewell, Leslie Nielsen

A quick tribute to Leslie Nielsen—the ‘OC’—and the world’s favourite Danish–Canadian guy, who died today at age 84. And don’t call me Shirley, either. You may also like Seasonal Canadian humour Is there a type that works from home more easily? History of the 2010s: a look back at the decade that was I wanted […]

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The big and the small of it

Spotted on the Lucire website today, an advertisement for Consumer magazine.    It’s a Flash animation, suggesting that not all car insurance policies are perfect. The opening frame shows a car with oversized coins for wheels, and the wheels shrink to a more standard size at the end of the animation.    The copy reads, […]

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Retro moment: the first American Ford Granada

Above: The US Ford Granada in a contemporary advertisement, as posted at americangranada.com.   Not the European car, but the American one of the same name: the Ford Granada was marketed as a US alternative to a Mercedes-Benz. Not as overstyled as, say, the Ford Maverick, this was an extremely heavy car, and Ford’s marketing […]

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Amazon begins charging dormant-account fee

Here’s a new clause in the Amazon Associates’ contract that I never spotted before, which is available publicly for viewing. European countries have a similar one, with differences in the currency. If you have not earned any advertising fees in the 3 years prior to any given calendar month, then on the first day of […]

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