Discussions about the media, journalism and news.
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 […]
Read More… from And now, Ben Heck makes an ‘Atari’ Xbox 360 ‘1977 edition’
Tomorrow, it will be one month since the Christchurch ’quake. It’s tempting to argue scale—the Japanese earthquake and tsunami versus our own—but at the end of the day, people are people, and our nations have both been hurting. We have become united, through disasters that emphasized that we live in an emerging global community. […]
Read More… from Some positive news a month on from the Christchurch ’quake
Today marks the 15th anniversary of Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei, a German show I have followed for just over a half of its run. I’ve watched it through budget cuts and some naff storylines of late. It’s of some interest to chart the course of the show over these many years. […]
Read More… from Alarm für Cobra 11: a 15th birthday celebration
Autocade’s third birthday is on Tuesday, though today I had to introduce something that goes against the principles of MediaWiki: the prevention of public user registrations. Despite adding an Akismet anti-spam extension last week, spammers, evidently using non-blacklisted IPs, continued to add false content with their links on to the site today. I […]
Read More… from Autocade’s MediaWiki software gets locked down
Earlier this month, I gave a workshop talk to the Leadership and Development Conference for the New Zealand Chinese Association in Auckland. I’ve just uploaded the speech notes, and as I did so, I wanted to append a few more thoughts. The topic was identity—not just branding, but personal identity. My self-critique […]
I’m not enough of a bastard to only dis Google, because they have made a pretty good move today. Google’s new algorithm, it is claimed, will weed out content farms, one type of site that has annoyed us here regularly. These are sites that just pinch others’ content automatically. Because search engines pick […]
Read More… from Google’s new algorithm will likely weed out content mills
As jobs are vital to any economy, there is, at least, a glimmer of good news from Christchurch’s manufacturing sector. Tait, Sanitarium, and Steel & Tube appear to have escaped major damage, says The New Zealand Herald. It’s not much solace to those who have lost everything from homes to limbs to family […]
Read More… from Glimmers of hope for the people of Christchurch
Above Good Living, November 11, 2009, with Angela Stone and Megan Banks. Or, the day I met Donna Manning, who produced the show. I drove in a total daze today. The last time I felt like this was September 12, 2001,* the day of the World Trade Center attacks. And then I learned a […]
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 […]
In the Fairfax Press today, this story: ‘Food shop protest “racist”’. From what I can make out from this story, New Plymouth District Councillor Sherril George (her address, telephone number and email are here) has been urging people to boycott a Waitara food outlet run by some folks of Cambodian ethnicity. This business, […]
Read More… from Taranaki food shop must be a front for international finance