Happy birthday: Autocade turns 10

07.03.2018/09.32

Above: Autocade can be hard work—and sometimes you have to put up less exciting vehicles, like the 2001–7 Chrysler Town & Country, for it to be a useful resource. March 8, 2018 marks 10 years of Autocade. I’ve told the story before on this blog and elsewhere, about how the site came to be—annoyed […]

Upgrading from Flyme 6.2 on a rooted Meizu M2 Note

25.02.2018/00.48

Since Flyme 6.2 for the Meizu M2 Note, Meizu has ceased providing automatic updates of its OS to rooted phones. There are a lot of pages and YouTube videos about unrooting, and after finding that none were relevant, I’d like to add to the din with what worked for me. Meizu’s own instruction to […]

Stefan Engeseth’s Sharkonomics out in China with a new edition

11.12.2017/07.48

My good friend Stefan Engeseth’s Sharkonomics hit China a year ago, and it’s been so successful that the second edition is now out. It looks smarter, too, with its red cover, and I’m sure Chinese readers will get a decent taste of Stefan’s writing style, humour and thinking. I even hope this will pave […]

Secret “Asian” man (with apologies to Tak Toyoshima)

11.10.2017/01.20

Matt Clark Above: Driving a silver Aston Martin. I’m citing the Official Secrets Act when I say I may or may not be on the tail of Auric Goldfinger. Oh dear, I’ve been outed. I’m a spy. Actually, Walter Matthau and I prefer ‘agent’. You can read between the lines in this New […]

Twenty years on, the Hong Kong handover reminds us how impotent Britain proved to be

01.07.2017/14.11

Hong Kong’s skyline in 2008, photographed by Scrolllock. Has it been 20 years since Dad and I sat in front of the telly to watch both Britannia sail out of the harbour and China set off a magnificent fireworks’ display to celebrate getting Hong Kong becoming one of her possessions again? Following some of […]

Selling Opel: what’s good for China is good for General Motors

15.02.2017/12.01

Above: The Opel Astra K: on the roster. I’m not so sure that GM going into talks to sell Opel and Vauxhall to PSA (Peugeot–Citroën) is that big a surprise. We obviously hold a lot of nostalgia for these brands, and it’s only right that we perceive GM as selling its family jewels. Opel […]

Online publishing: how the players we dealt with changed in 2016

12.01.2017/02.45

Above: Brave Bison’s predecessor, Rightster, left much to be desired in how it dealt with publishers, while investment commentators had concerns, too. Twenty-sixteen had some strange developments on the publishing front. First, we noticed Alexa rankings for a lot of sites changed. Facebook itself went from second to third, where it has stayed. […]

Why the next Holden Commodore will have a traditional boot

01.12.2016/13.24

Above: The Holden Commodore SS-V, facing its last year of manufacture. The current wisdom appears to be that when the Holden Commodore VF leaves production in 2017, it’ll be replaced by the liftback version of the Opel Insignia B. After all, the only big sedan Ford Australia’s offering in place of the now-defunct Falcon is […]

How my Dad called the primary and the election for Donald Trump ages ago

11.11.2016/13.33

FJM88NL, licensed under Creative Commons I’ve had a phone call and a lot of comments on this in the last couple of days: my Dad, who is 81 with early-stage Alzheimer’s, called the US presidential election for Donald Trump months ago. I posted it on my social networks the day he made his definitive call, […]

What a great opportunity for New Zealand that lies before us

09.11.2016/07.12

Above: When I refer to Hillary in the below blog post, I mean the self-professed ‘ordinary chap’ on our $5 note. As the results of the US presidential election came in, I didn’t sense a panic. I actually sensed a great opportunity for New Zealand. I’ve been critical of the obsession many of […]