There goes the neighbourhood

05.03.2021/09.01

Demolition has commenced on 1–4 Māmari Street, across the road from where I lived for over three decades. I’m not against change and my feelings toward the development have already been recorded here. It was with a tinge of sadness that I saw the demolition crews there and the only wall left standing […]

Helvetica in metal, 1985

03.03.2021/22.49

This was the back of Mum’s 1985 tax assessment slip from the IRD. Helvetica, in metal. The bold looks a bit narrow: a condensed cut, or just a compromised version because of the machinery used? Not often seen, since by this time phototypesetting was the norm, though one reason Car magazine was a good […]

The colourless world

14.02.2021/10.48

This is a development proposed for my old street in Rongotai. Since I’ve moved away I haven’t a say in what happens there. I can only make some general remarks. And this post is not written from the Luddite position. It’s the price of progress that as cities grow, we need more housing, and […]

When fashion magazine websites begin looking the same

08.02.2021/11.09

Above: Vogue Korea’s website follows the æsthetic of a big lead image and smaller subsidiary ones. This started as a blog entry but took a tangent about 500 words in, and it was better as an op–ed in Lucire. Some of the themes will be familiar to regular readers, especially about Big Tech, but here […]

Branding ourselves in the 2020s: a revamp for JY&A Consulting’s website, jya.co

05.02.2021/00.19

Last night, I uploaded a revised website for JY&A Consulting (jya.co), which I wrote and coded. Amanda came up with a lot of the good ideas for it—it was important to get her feedback precisely because she isn’t in the industry, and I could then include people who might be looking to start a new […]

A refreshing piece on diversity in our mainstream media

31.01.2021/10.58

Two fantastic items in my Tweetstream today, the first from journalist Jehan Casinader, a New Zealander of Sri Lankan heritage, in Stuff. Some highlights: As an ethnic person, you can only enter (and stay in) a predominantly white space – like the media, politics or corporate leadership – if you play by the rules. […]

From my desk, 1986

24.01.2021/06.47

Before this gets recycled, I thought I’d scan it as a memento: a 1986 printout off our Riteman dot matrix printer (which I still have, with spare cartridges), hooked up to a Commodore 64. I forget the printer interface. The image isn’t mine: I only imagine that 14-year-old me was claiming copyright over the layout […]

Autocade reaches 22 million, while Rachel Hunter appears in Lucire

16.01.2021/12.19

As I begin this blog post, Autocade has just crossed the 22 million page-view barrier, at 22,000,040. I had estimated we would get there on Sunday, and as it’s just ticked over here in New Zealand, I was right. We have 4,379 models in the database, with the Bestune B70, in its third generation, […]

Who’d like to ask the hard questions of Wikipedia as it turns 20?

14.01.2021/12.50

Well, that was a rather sycophantic interview with Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, on Radio New Zealand, as the online encyclopædia turns 20. So I was rather excited when a Tweeter said he was going to interview Wales and asked for questions from the public. I responded: Why did your co-founder Larry Sanger accuse […]

A sure way to lose customers: upload their private information to Facebook

03.01.2021/13.03

I’m still blocked from seeing my advertising preferences on Facebook on the desktop, the only place where you can edit them, something that has plagued them for years and which they’re unlikely to fix. I commonly say that Facebook’s databases are ‘shot to hell,’ which I’ve believed for many years, and this is another example […]