Air New Zealand acts in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake

Good on Air New Zealand for ferrying emergency supplies to Christchurch, for its $50 special to and from Christchurch till Friday 8 a.m., and for extra 747 flights to and from the disaster-struck city tomorrow (subject to the airport reopening down there).    I’ve also learned that there is an extra Wellington–Christchurch A320 service departing […]

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Raw footage from Christchurch

It feels more raw when it’s been shot by a regular Joe and uploaded to YouTube: some first-hand footage from the earthquake in Christchurch today. I am, in spirit, with all people in Christchurch in the wake of this tragedy. You may also like A year of random thoughts: 2014 in review We all belong […]

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Type-changing bug identified—not that it matters next to Christchurch

It’s quite pathetic to be blogging about something like this on the day of the Christchurch earthquake, but Jonathan Kew, who has kept on the font-changing bug in the Firefox 4 betas after I mentioned it to him, has created a patch that sorts the problem out. Apparently, it applies to old PS1 fonts: Firefox […]

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How do you pretend you are surfing abroad?

Some years ago, you could set your browser to use a proxy server and surf the web as though you were in another country. This was a handy tool for us, as we often need to check that the ads being shown on our sites were suitable—you never know what ad networks might try to […]

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Fax and text spam: bad marketing moves

Above I’d mention the war, but Honda was founded after the surrender. I despise fax-spam, and under my reading of the Telecommunications Act, these come under nuisance calls. But regardless of the legality, it seems rather hypocritical for Honda to have sent me one for its Insight hybrid car.    Think about it: a lot […]

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Hannah Gordon and Robert Vaughn, four decades on in Hustle

This is the sort of thing that would normally wind up on my Tumblr, but it’s a tad hard to do two images without a bit of clever HTML programming.    Whomever did the casting for Hustle was very clever with the final episode of the season. To play Robert Vaughn’s old flame, actress Hannah […]

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Trade not supplied

In November 1993, while my mother was dying of cancer, I went and bought 12 cans of Wattie’s baked beans from Woolworth’s in Kilbirnie. She said it would be an easy breakfast to prepare for her, so I should go and get some. There was a limit of six, but there was a misunderstanding about […]

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Google Buzz is back, whether I like it or not

After all the hassles surrounding Buzz and privacy last year, you’d think Google would have learned. Maybe not. Buzz has been reintroduced to my Google account for the third time without my consent, just over a year after a part of the the internet community expressed its anger. Google has probably figured that we have […]

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Be vigilant and don’t look

This most recent trip to Auckland was marked by plenty of drama. The first experience was getting a virus the second I hooked up to the internet. The second was, having accidentally bumped the light into beam in my rent-a-Falcon on Ponsonby Road, a very interesting gentleman in a Toyota Picnic in the next lane […]

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Not quite a remake, but similar

I saw the première episode of No Ordinary Family, plus a bit of the second, and I couldn’t help but think of this:    Some folks fly to a strange place, have a plane crash, come back with special powers. One of them is an attractive blonde woman.    Where it differs is that one […]

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