Today’s adventures with US dollars and New Zealand banks

Above: I’m Asian, and I want banking. National Bank gets me again. (For that story, click here.) Out of the businesses I have, one is unincorporated, and it has a US dollar bank account based in New Zealand. Over the years, it’s been at numerous banks, and was at the ANZ.    Until the ANZ […]

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Behind the scenes: ‘St Elmo’s Fire’

Of the videos we had access to use today, there was this intriguing one, about the recording session of ‘St Elmo’s Fire’:    While it did not work with anything we publish, never look a gift horse in the mouth. Enjoy. You may also like A year of random thoughts: 2014 in review History of […]

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Be careful who sees you having sex—and sanitize your office furniture afterwards

I am still alive, but August was an extremely busy month that began with my speaking with Swinburne University and the University of Melbourne, on topics relating to social media, branding, typography, and why New South Wales people (OK, just one NSW person) are not very good at airport signage.    And while Wellingtonians were […]

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I wanted to grow up and be the Dean Martin version of Matt Helm

As a child growing up in Wellington, there were a few TV series that shaped my beliefs about being grown-up in the occident. The first I’ve written about before: The Persuaders, which is in part where this blog gets its name. I’ve probably mentioned Return of the Saint elsewhere, not to mention the plethora of […]

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Has it really been 20 years? Billy T.: Te Movie débuts August

I still have a lot of the Billy T. James shows on video cassette, and I’ve avoided many of the compilations, since I just don’t feel right seeing the sketches in an order that Billy himself might not have had a say in. Silly reason, I know. However, this does feel right: a film about […]

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The dystopian future has arrived, and it’s called Ryanair

This was too priceless to share only with my Tumblr readers. It’s an excerpt from a review of Ryanair, sent to my friend Nadine Isler, who has since published (with permission) on her site: Entering the cabin, I was greeted by a blindingly bright yellow ceiling that would be more at home on the back […]

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A whinge about whinging

I’ve seen this lament on a few more places now: why bother having a comment box?    We’ve just had someone tell us at Lucire that there is no such person as Princess Catherine. Well done. We all know that technically there is no such person, if one is referring to the wife of Prince […]

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Facebook hates The Scotsman, and other xenophobic bugs

Some very interesting errors on the internet today.    Facebook blocked an innocent link about the price of electricity in Scotland, from The Scotsman, because it was deemed ‘abusive or spammy’. Maybe Scottish accents don’t go down well in California. Hang on, didn’t they import Craig Ferguson?    I am told by Colvin Inglis on […]

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Google humour: the Helvetica search that doesn’t come out in Helvetica

[Cross-posted from Tumblr] Found via Chris Brogan: if you Google Helvetica, Google will deliver the results in your default typeface—in my case, Alia. (If you look at the Snap Shots thumbnails that pop up, they’re in Times.) It’s weird, because I thought a fun trick would be to deliver the results in Helvetica (which is, […]

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And now, Ben Heck makes an ‘Atari’ Xbox 360 ‘1977 edition’

A while back, I came across Benjamin J. Heckendorn (a.k.a. Ben Heck) and his Commodore 64 laptop. This is a quite a fascinating machine, considering the actual “portable” 64 Executive was a heavy beast that could kill if hurled at you. While Ben took the 64’s odd colour, keyboard and 64C’s motherboard, his is structured […]

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