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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘Aotearoa’
26.05.2022
I posted something on Instagram the other day, something I rarely doâso rarely that itâs now noteworthy. Surfing through, I happened across this:

My friend Nicky Wagner started FashioNZ and if she were still involved, I doubt they would make such a demonstrably false claim.
Letâs pick the low-hanging fruit here. FashioNZ is not the original. They started in 1998âthey even admit it; Lucire started in 1997. I was hanging out with designers as the publisher of the fledging Lucire when I saw Nickyâs promo about her new site. It looked really good.
Secondly, FashioNZ wasnât a magazine, not initially. It was a directory, and its content was driven by its clients. It’s why I can’t bring myself to italicize it!
Now, at least Iâm honest enough to give some lip service to Fashionbrat (styled [email protected]) out of Wellington Polytechnic. They only lasted one issue, so if your definition of magazine is that of a periodical, that it must come out or have new content at various times of the year, then they donât qualify; Lucire was first. But if your definition includes something that lasted only one issue, then Fashionbrat got there before us all, in 1996. This would have faded into internet history if I didn’t keep bringing it up. Judge for yourself at the Internet Archive.
In the US there are so many people claiming to be the first but usually the record betrays them: we have one who may have got a promotional page up, but their content was not on the web initially (from memory it was on a BBS); we have another who claims they began in 1993, which may have been their incorporation date, but their own SEC filing revealed that particular site didn’t come into being till later.
I didnât expect this to happen in New Zealand, where itâs very clear who got there first. Disappointing.
Tags: 1990s, 1997, 1998, 2022, Aotearoa, fashion magazine, history, Instagram, JY&A Media, Lucire, New Zealand, publishing Posted in business, internet, media, New Zealand, publishing | No Comments »
25.03.2022

The Suzuki Swift: one of the saving graces on New Zealand’s top 10 list.
At the Opel relaunch briefing yesterday, I was shocked to find that these were New Zealandâs top selling vehicles for 2021. I knew about the first two, but had always assumed a Toyota Corolla would follow, plus some regular cars. From this, I gather the rest of New Zealand thinks the opposite to me. I personally believe petrol is expensive.
1. Ford Ranger
2. Toyota Hilux
3. Mitsubishi Triton
4. Mitsubishi ASX (RVR on the home market)
5. Toyota RAV4
6. Mitsubishi Outlander (presumably the outgoing one)
7. Mazda CX-5
8. Nissan Navara
9. Suzuki Swift
10. Kia Stonic
Not a very discerning lot, are we? We say we care about the environment yet enough of us have helped fuel the second biggest contributor to the carbon emissionsâ rise in the last 10 years: the crossover or SUV.
And Iâve driven those RVRs. Why are people buying, in 2021, a vehicle that feels like a taller, larger Colt from the 2000s?
I have no issue with those of you who really need an SUV or ute. But for those who pose, you arenât helping yourself or your planet. And even if you bought some electrified variant, I thought it was universally understood (certainly for any of us alive during the 1970s fuel crises and those who observed the aerodynamic trend of the 1980s) that tall bodies and big frontal areas would consume more energy.
Tags: 2021, Aotearoa, car, car industry, environment, Ford, fuel economy, Mitsubishi, New Zealand, Suzuki, Toyota Posted in cars, culture, New Zealand | No Comments »
10.01.2022

For homeowners and buyers, thereâs a great guide from Moisture Detection Co. Ltd. called What You Absolutely Must Know About Owning a Plaster-Clad Home, subtitled The Origin of New Zealandâs Leaky Building Crisis and Must-Know Information for Owners to Make Their Homes Weathertight, and Regain Lost Value.
My intent isnât to repeat someoneâs copyrighted information in full, but there are some highlights in there that show how the erosion of standards has got us where we are today. Itâs frightening because the decline in standards has been continual over decades, and the authorities donât seem to know what they are doingâwith perhaps the exception of the bidding of major corporations who want to sell cheap crap.
The document begins with the 1950s, when all was well, and houses rarely rotted. Houses had to have treated timber, be ventilated, and have flashings.
They note:
By the time 1998 rolled around, NZ Standards, the Building Industry Association, and BRANZ had systematically downgraded the ‘Belts and Braces’ and were allowing houses to be built with untreated framing, with no ventilation, and poorly designed or non-existent flashings and weatherproofing.
Councils accepted these changes at ‘face value’ without historical review. They issued building consents, inspected the houses, and gave Code of Compliance Certificates. Owners believed they had compliant, well-constructed buildings, but they did not.
Shockingly, by 1992, the treatment level for framing timber could be with âpermethrins (the same ingredient as fly spray)’, while one method used methanol as a solvent and increased decay. By 1998 âUntreated Kiln Dried Timber (UTKD) was allowed for framingâ. The standards improved slightly by 2005 but itâs still well off what was accepted in 1952 and 1972.
We recently checked out a 2009 build using plaster cladding and researching the methods of construction, including the types with cavities, we are far from convinced the problems are gone.
Talking to some building inspectors, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence on how shaky things still look.
Since we moved to Tawa and made some home improvements, we realize a lot of people in the trade do not know what they are talking about, or try to sell you on a product totally unsuited to your needs. This post is not the place for a discussion on that topic, but one day I might deal with it.
However, I am surprised that so many of the tried-and-trusted rules continue to be ignored.
Sometimes people like me go on about âthe good old daysâ not because we don rose-coloured glasses, but we take from them the stuff that worked.
Itâs not unlike what Bob Hoffman included in his newsletter today.
As Iâve also no desire to take the most interesting partâa diagram showing that for every dollar spent on programmatic online advertising, a buyer only gets 3Âą of value âof real display ads viewed by real human peopleââI ask you to click through.
Again, itâs about basic principles. If so many people in the online advertising space are fudging their figuresâand thereâs plenty of evidence about thatâthen why should we spend money with them? To learn that you get 3Âą of value for every dollar spent, surely thatâs a big wake-up call?
It wonât be, which is why Facebook and Google will still make a ton of money off people this year.
The connected theme: rich buggers conning everyday people and too few having the bollocks to deal with them, including officials who are meant to be working for us.
Tags: 1950s, 1970s, 1972, 1990s, 1992, 2005, 2020s, 2022, Aotearoa, Bob Hoffman, crime, fraud, Google, history, industry, marketing, New Zealand, online advertising, real estate, standards Posted in business, internet, marketing, New Zealand, technology, USA | No Comments »
10.01.2022
Six years ago, I reported this error in Here Maps (a.k.a. Here WeGo), both via the official channels and to a software engineer I knew working there.
Itâs still there. There aren’t two Wharekauhau Country Estates (this is the route between them, to highlight just how wrong it is; the westerly one is correct).

Theyâve since been in touch via Twitter and Iâve re-sent them all the information, including:
Trust me, I went to this one and wound up the drive to some random farm with no one around, and had to back my car down a muddy trail with immense difficulty as there was nowhere to U-turn.
This only came up because Here Maps tried to take me to New World Foxton recently, and I decided to look back.
If I followed their guidance, I would have to drive through the war memorial.


Donât get me wrong. I really like Here Maps and the latest UI is fantastic. Itâs no worse than its competitors in accuracy terms. Google has sent me to plenty of wrong places when I was still using their site for things. Itâs just annoying when the official channels, reporting bugs the way they suggest, clearly donât work. Hopefully if anyone’s planning their journeys to the above places, they’ll be able to see this post!
Tags: 2016, 2022, Aotearoa, bugs, Foxton, Horowhenua, New Zealand, Nokia, software, UI, Wairarapa, Xiaomi Posted in design, internet, New Zealand, technology | No Comments »
01.01.2022
Here are January 2022âs imagesâaides-mĂ©moires, photos of interest, and miscellaneous items. I append to this gallery through the month.
Notes
More on the Ford Falcon (XA) in Autocade. Reposted from Twitter.
TaupĆ Plimmerton summer sunset, photographed by me.
BBC parody news item, via Twitter.
More on the Wolseley on Autocade.
More on the Mitsubishi Colt Galant at Autocade.
Dodge 1500 advertisement via George Cochrane on Twitter.
Model Alexa Breit in a bikini, via Instagram.
More on the Renault 17 in Autocade.
More on the Renault 20 in Autocade.
More on the Renault Mégane IV in Autocade.
âSign not in use’ posted by John on Twitter.
Asus ROG Strix G17 G713QE-RTX3050Ti, at Asus’s Singapore website.
Pizza Express Woking parody still, via Twitter.
Tags: 1960s, 1965, 1970s, 1971, 1975, 1976, 2020, 2020s, 2022, advertisement, airline, Aotearoa, Argentina, Asus, Australia, Autocade, Autocar, BBC, BL, British Leyland, car, Chrysler, computing, Dodge, electric cars, England, film, Ford, Germany, humour, Instagram, James Bond, Japan, marketing, media, Mitsubishi, modelling, New Zealand, news, parody, photography, Plimmerton, Porirua, Renault, retro, Taiwan, Twitter, UK, USA, Wellington Posted in cars, gallery, humour, interests, internet, marketing, media, New Zealand, politics, UK, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
31.12.2021
Weâre probably far enough along from the event for people not to know which one I am referring to, as Iâve no wish to embarrass the organizers.
Earlier in 2021, we saw a weekend event that would take place at the âJohnsonville Community Hubâ. No address was given other than that. Both Duck Duck Go and Google seemed to think this meant Waitohi, the new library and swimming pool complex.
We arrived there to find that no one knew of this event, but maybe we could try the community hall next door?
No joy.
There was the Collective Community Hub on Johnsonville Road but their website made it clear that it wasnât open at the weekend.
We hung round Johnsonville for a bit and decided we would check out the Collective place, just to see it up close.
Sure enough, thatâs where the event wasâit was open at the weekendâand we got there after everyone had packed up.
They were very apologetic and we told them the above. They had noted, however, that there had been more information on Facebook.
To me, thatâs a big mistake, because I donât know what their Facebook page is, and even if I did, there was no guarantee I would see it for a variety of reasons. (Try loading any fan page on Facebook on mobile: the posts take unbearably long and few people would have the patience.) A search for the event on both Duck Duck Go and Google never showed a Facebook page, either.
A similar event posted its cancellation on Facebook exclusively, something which we didnât know till we got there, and after getting puzzled looks from the party that had booked the venue, I randomly found one organizerâs page and clicked on his Facebook link. Again, nothing about the event itself came up on Duck Duck Go or on Google.
In the latter case, the organizer had the skills to make a web page, a normal one, so was it so hard to put the cancellation there?
You just canât find things on Facebook. They donât appear to be indexed. And if they are, theyâre probably so far down the resultsâ pages that they wonât be seen. If youâre organizing an event, by all means, post there to those who use Facebook keenly (a much smaller number than you think, with engagement decreasing year after year), but it is no substitute for getting it into properly indexed event calendars or on to the web, where regular people will put in search terms and look for it.
Facebook is not the internet. Thank God.
Tags: 2021, Aotearoa, Duck Duck Go, event marketing, events, Facebook, Google, marketing, New Zealand, promotion, search engine, social media, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in business, internet, marketing, New Zealand, Wellington | No Comments »
17.12.2021
My friend Sarah Jane Adams is undertaking research on leadership and asked for what people thought being a good leader meant. Here are 10 that I gave her on her Linkedin. They are in no order and are the first 10 things that popped into my head. Not saying I’ve managed to do all of them consistently, but I try.
Recognize every individual for who they are and what they bring to the table.
Acknowledge your own limitations.
Donât assign someone something you arenât prepared to do yourself if you were in their shoes.
Work with people who can think beyond themselves and who can look at the bigger picture.
Communicate clearly and succinctly. Jargon is for losers.
If you have a good team, being transparent with them is a good thing.
Do not put up with anyone who thinks they can hold you to ransom or to hold up your work. Replace the buggers.
Are you instilling love or fear? If itâs the latter, you havenât led.
Do what you love. Itâs easier to lead when you do.
And donât be a dick.
Tags: 2021, Aotearoa, business, leadership, LinkedIn, management, New Zealand Posted in business, leadership, New Zealand | No Comments »
17.12.2021
I canât yet reveal why, but Iâve come across the work of Hong Kong-trained and based designer Caroline Li, and itâs really good. Sheâs done a lot of book covers, and I know first-hand how hard it is to have a small canvas to work from. Maybe Iâm just used to magazines. Check out her work here.

After nearly two months, Lucireâs Twitter account has been restored.
Earlier in the week, they had requestedâagainâthat I upload my ID to prove that I was who I said I was, despite this having been done countless times already in the past two months.
Today, I received another âit appears that this issue may have been resolved.â I had my doubts and was about to send them a reply giving them a piece of my mind, but I checked, and sure enough, Lucireâs account was back.
I donât know if my letter to Twitter New Zealand Ltd.âs directors, via their lawyers, did the trick, or whether my private information finally reached someone literate with reasonable intelligence.
I gave the lawyers till today (the 17th) to respond, though the timing of the resolution could be a coincidence.
It showed just how terrible Twitterâs systems have been and how right I was to call the entire process farcical.
To think that Facebook did better when Lucireâs Instagram was deactivated, and we were only out for a week. And I have had plenty to say about Facebook over the years, as you all know.
Itâs a shame that we never got to play with Zoho Socialâs premium version trial with all our social media accounts intact. I just hope that now that weâve reactivated all our gadgets (IFTTT, Dlvr.it, etc.), that they work as they once did. (As they certainly didnât when we used our temporary @luciremagazine account on Twitter.)
When I was waiting for my new phone to arrive, I didn’t know what all the DHL status updates meant. I looked online to see if I could get a clue as to how long each stage took, especially the “last mile” delivery. There were very few screenshots or public traces. Here’s the trace from my package in case it helps someone else the same boat. (Vivaldi put the DHL website header near the bottom when I made the screenshot.)

Tags: 2021, Aotearoa, designer, graphic designer, Hong Kong, law, Lucire, New Zealand, social media, technology, Twitter, UK, Zoho Posted in business, China, design, Hong Kong, internet, New Zealand, technology | 1 Comment »
07.12.2021


Top: Decent enough specs for the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 5G. Above: Very respectable download speeds (in the header) as the phone updates 71 apps.
My Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 5G is here, and itâs proved better than the reviews suggested.
First up, kudos to the seller, YouGeek on Aliexpress, who not only double-checked to see that I wanted the Chinese version, but was considerate enough to send me, without any prompting, a New Zealand power adapter. The wrapping was the most secure Iâve ever seen from any Aliexpress vendor, like a hefty transparent Michelin man.
DHL did the delivery two days ahead of schedule, which pleased me no end.
The phone itself surprised me. I imagined 6·53 inches would be too big and 199 g too heavy, but neither has come to pass. Itâs marginally taller than the outgoing Meizus but not ridiculously so, and as I have large hands, the width is fine. I havenât noticed the weight increase, either.
The blue finish, which isnât available on the export Note 9T 5G, is probably the best colour of the three on offer, and frankly I donât care if the back is plastic or metal. As long as it keeps the bits inside, itâs fine.
What also isnât on offer for export is precisely these specs: MediaTek Dimensity 800U running at a maximum of 2·4 GHz, 6 Gbyte of RAM, and 128 Gbyte of internal storage. The model code is M2007J22C.
Other surprises: itâs Android 11 (security update, October 1, 2021) running MIUI 12·5. Now, whether it was straight out of the box, I canât swear to, since it prompted me to do an update not too long after I switched on and logged in.
It did try to get me to give a voice print to unlock its features by saying four Chinese words. Naturally I said them, but it seems Xiaomi doesnât recognize Cantonese! The fingerprint scanner wasnât that easy to set upâit took numerous attempts before it recognized my fingerâbut I got there, and now itâs programmed, the home screen does launch quickly.
The first order of business was to take myself off ad personalization (so easy, they even take you to the screen during set-up), then download Bromite as the browser, to stop using the clumsy default; and replace Sogou keyboard with Microsoft Swiftkey. The rest was getting the apps to mirror the old phonesâ, which was pretty simple thanks to various APK sites such as APK Pure. The only one that did not function at all (a blank screen after the logo) was Instagram, but you expect Facebook, Inc. products to be buggy. An Uptodown download of a version from June 2021 solved that.
Despite what other reviewers found, I discovered that the watermark on the photos was switched off by default. Iâve seen the grand total of one advertisement on the default apps, so the notion that Xiaomi is heavily ad-driven doesnât seem to be the case with mine. There is a possibility that the combination of Chinese spec, English language, and a New Zealand IP address isnât one that advertisers want to reach. There are far fewer app notifications than I got on the Meizus.
After updating the OS, there were 71 apps that also needed the same treatment. Those came down at lightning speeds, even on wifi, at over 20 Mbyte/s.
Iâve synced my messages, call logs and contacts, though surprisingly the phone could not work out that the New Zealand 02 numbers were the same as +64 2, and those had to be manually added. The old Meizu M2 Note had no such trouble back in 2016.
The default typeface choice in MIUI is much easier on the eyes than the default Android fonts.
Interestingly, the default music player here also fails to pick up local music on an SD card, rendering it useless, much like Meizuâs (are they copying one another, to have the same bug?). Once again, it was InShotâs Music Player to the rescue, and it works fine here. Sadly, I do have to relink a lot of the album covers.
Screenshots arenât as intuitive, as the volume control invariably appears if you do the powerâvolume switchesâ combination, but a screenshot feature in the pull-down menu does the job.
The battery life is interesting, as Iâve used it for about six hours since it was charged up to 100 per cent, and it fell to 65 per cent in that time. That tells me the 5,000 mAh is good for 18 hours of sustained usage, which included setting up, Bluetooth-linking it to the car and the M2 Note, running apps, using Here Maps for some navigation, and using some mobile data. I havenât viewed any videos yet, and I donât play any games. Iâll be interested to see how it fares on a more regular day: earlier reviews had led me to believe it could last over a day. Iâm sure it can without the heavy use Iâve put it through in its first six hours.
I understand that with the pace of change in China, this phone, launched this week one year ago, is already obsolete, but as far as Iâm concerned, I hope Iâm future-proofed for another six yearsâthatâs how long the M2 lasted before things like its short battery life and inability to receive some calls became an issue. (And this was despite the M6 Note having come into service from 2018 with a short break to get serviced at PB.) Itâs been a very pleasing first six hours, without the stress of having to put on a Chinese OS myself, and continuing to be Google-free.
Tags: 2021, advertising, Aliexpress, Aotearoa, cellphone, China, Google Android, language, Meizu, New Zealand, privacy, review, Shenzhen, technology, typography, Xiaomi Posted in China, design, internet, New Zealand, technology | 1 Comment »
03.12.2021
Our governmentâs response to COVID-19 has been better than many nationsâ, but it is far from perfect, as Ian Powell points out in a well reasoned blog post, and in his article for Business Desk. Itâs backed up by a piece by Marc Daalder for Newsroom. To me, Powellâs piece makes a great deal of sense, and for those who feel the new system feels, instinctively, politically driven, then they are right. He says, inter alia:
At the time I thought that the traffic lights system had been initiated by the Ministry of Health (experts outside the Ministry were not supportive). Subsequently, however, according to senior Health Ministry officials privately, it came from the Prime Ministerâs department.
This helps explain the working it out as you go along approach that is causing confusion among many. Jacinda Ardernâs claim of the system being world leading is overcooked.
He cites Daalder, who writes:
While the outbreak was expected to have a long tail, the Government fully intended to return to zero cases and even to maintain an elimination status after reopening the borders in 2022.
Just two weeks later, Cabinet threw in the towel on elimination.
We know that the government is working on overdrive through this whole pandemic, but it seems there are areas where the experts are being overridden.
But what does our opposition do? Instead of firing at the targets that Powell and Daalder have helpfully revealed, new leader Christopher Luxon repeats the ad nauseam cries of his predecessors to open up, to put Auckland into the âgreenâ. Any expectation that National had found pragmatism with its new leadership vanished in smoke mere days after Luxon took the helm.
This is the identical complaint I have over Sir Phony Blair over in the UK with not only missing the targets painted on the Tories by themselves, but turning 180 degrees and firing the other way.
We need an opposition that holds a government to account but it seems Luxon, who bafflingly refers to Simon Bridges as having âintellectual heftâ, might be yet another ideologue, importing more of the same but in more hidden, calm language than his predecessor.
Are there any pragmatists left in politics, or is everyone following ideology these days?
Tags: 2021, Aotearoa, Auckland, blogosphere, COVID-19, health, Labour, media, National Party, New Zealand, Newsroom, pandemic, politics, TÄmaki Makaurau Posted in media, New Zealand, politics | No Comments »
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