tallpoppy

waffle and a bad pun

2009-11-09T20:58:00.003+13:00

As we all know, it's now a bit illegal to chat away on your mobile phone will driving. But that's just part of the recent revisions to the road rules. There's another few changes that slipped under most people's radar. From a cyclists' perspective, there are a few sensible ones: hook turns are now OK (useful at multi-lane intersections, or for less confident cyclists), cyclists don't have to signal at roundabouts if it's not safe to ride one-handed, and bike lights just have to be visible for 100m, rather than illuminating the road 100m ahead - which indicates that someone's actually worked out that the main use of cycle lights is so that other road users can see you, rather than so you can see where you're going.

But the interesting one is this:

It is proposed that there will be an infringement fee of $100 for a person who rides a cycle, mobility device or wheeled recreational device on a shared path at a hazardous speed.

Amendment concerning use of shared paths.

Basically, it's codifying the "don't be a dick" aspect of using shared paths. Hooning it around is now punishable by a $100 fine. Which is good - the problem with shared paths is that they mix multiple users with different requirements and abilities, so getting it down in black and white that the faster ones need to pay a bit more attention to the slower ones is a good thing. It's simple recognition of the nature of riding in a mixed-use environment.

So this is basically a recognition that cyclepaths are only for people who want to ride at a relaxed, mellow pace. For the rest of us - and I'm speaking as someone who just wants to get to bloody work and doesn't mind sweating a bit - the road's usually faster and often safer.

Anyway. Went for a walk at lunchtime today, ended up going through Strathmore. The name means "Large Valley" in Scots Gaelic, and you can see why: it's a big valley tucked in between the airport and Seatoun. This is the site of the first state housing in the country, presumably because it was cheap land and the valley meant that you could tuck all the poor people neatly out of sight. It's still densely packed with council accomodation, though most of the original state houses now seem to be in private ownership. It's one of the few places in New Zealand where you can see UK-style terrace blocks of state flats. Walking around I felt like I'd landed back in the Hedges (that is, King's Hedges council estate in Cambridge, where we lived for five years). Rather a lot of tinny houses, I'm informed, ditto P. Interesting neighbourhood.

Mocking someone because their name sounds like a rude word: argumentum ad homonym.

Thank you, I'm here all week.

don't ask about the itching

2009-10-28T21:50:00.000+13:00

We have now gone unconditional on the sale of our house, and the purchase of another. Moving in January. So expect our Christmas to be mainly spent putting things in boxes. Anyone got any recommendations for moving companies in Wellington?

In case I hadn't mentioned, we'll be moving from Newlands (civic motto: "Close to Johnsonville!") to Johnsonville (civic motto: "We have a mall, you know!"). We'll be exchanging a view of the neighbour's brick wall and an old shipping container for a bush-clad gully - which we will own most of the visible arc of. So that's quite cheery right there. Plus an extra bedroom, an actual study, and a decent deck. Minus a garage, but you can't have it all. Some form of housewarming party is almost certainly going to occur; watch the skies in late January or early February.

You know how when you fall over on concrete, you can skin your knee? Last weekend, Maggie skinned her forehead. Impressively acrobatic, and looked very painful. Now she has a perfectly ring-shaped scab 3cm across in the middle of her forehead (for some reason, she didn't lose any skin right in the middle of the impact site). We get funny looks, but thankfully Maggie is now prolix enough to be able to say "I fell off a step!" to people.

This is usually followed by "Wiggles!", as she is currently on a Heavy Wiggles Kick. She's obsessed with Dorothy the Dinosaur, and can point all the Wiggles out of a line-up. We have not yet gone through the Greg/Sam distinction, but it will come soon.

What I've been listening to recently.

Gogol Bordello, "Live from Axis Mundi". In the old days, this would be a Peel Sessions album. Sadly, Saint John is no longer with us, so many of the tracks are just marked "BBC Session". It's lovely. Raw, hard, and passionate. It has the immediacy and grit of a live performance, with the advantages of working with serious audio engineers who've put effort into getting a good mix. American Wedding knocks out a few teeth, and Mishto really gets rather frenzied. Worth it. On eMusic if you've still got an account.
The Mamaku Project, "Karekare" and "Mal de Terre". I can't believe I hadn't heard of these guys until recently. Of course, one of the reasons I can't believe that is that they used to gig with the Benka Borodovsky Bordello Band, but the other is that they're intensely good. Mainly jazz influences, with klezmer, dub, and French chanson in the mix. C'est bien, innit. Mellow, but catchy, and with enough of an Eastern European flavour to add spice. Wellingtonians may have heard them (I didn't) doing the intro at the recent World of Wearable Arts. I heard of them from a track played on National Radio (UK: Radio 4; US: PBS), which is possibly less funky than may be expected. But they're definitely worth it.
The Herbaliser, "The Herbaliser Band Sessions". Two albums of instrumental versions of hip-hop tracks performed by a full live band. This may not sound promising to some listeners. It's gold. There's the odd sample or two still in there, but mostly it ends up as a double album of neo-70s soul funk. Upbeat, danceable, and funky as. Pointlessly good. Actually, it seems that the first album was recorded in 2000, and the second has only just come out. Regardless, both most excellent, and both also on eMusic.
Still listening to a fair bit of the Tiger Lillies. The albums blur together after a while, but mostly I've been listening to "Bad Blood & Blasphemy". Not exactly party music, but interesting stuff. The auditory equivalent of an old, waterstained wank mag you find under a tree at the park when you're 13.

hard day again

2009-10-16T21:43:00.005+13:00

Another day, another four hours under the needle. Went out and had my birthday present to myself today: finished my sleeve. Tim out at Pacific Tattoo was excellent as ever, and carefully spent the first three hours going over the rest of the sleeve and reworking where needed to get the full depth of colour (black, mainly). We only had a rather small bit to go, and to be honest the choice of design was pretty obvious: another woven/textured section, to match the top of the inside forearm. We were done by 3pm, and I went and spent an hour walking on Paekakariki Beach before heading home. That's the way to do it.

How NZ works in a nutshell: I tried to tip Tim for his good work; he refused and gave me a free t-shirt instead. Needless to say, I'm booked in for the soonest appointment to start on my left thigh piece. Details to come, but it's a reasonably abstract piece representing an animal, hopefully taking up the whole thigh. Should be good.

You know how there's that stereotype about tattoos, "Yeah, I woke up with this one today!" The drunken sailor archetype. Not to say that it's not applicable in some cases (say, assembly line shops near naval bases), but pretty much every tattooist I've worked with has had long waiting lists. In this case, my original idea for getting a full sleeve on my right arm was this time last year: my birthday present last year was to be getting my arm tattooed, and a year later I've finished. My next project project is well in order and designs are being drawn up: the first session is booked in.

For April 2nd next year.

Because that's the first free appointment he's got. Legitimate tattooists have long waiting lists. So with a bit of luck, by this time next year I might have my leg somewhere near finished.

It'll take a while to get the bodysuit finished, then.

Pictures for the curious here at flickr. Not much new work, to be honest: I didn't have much room left. Mainly we spent today sharpening up the existing bits.

How NZ works, part 2: later, in Johnsonville mall, I popped into the pharmacy. "Some bepanthen, please," I said to the lady behind the counter. She looked me up and down and said "Is it for a tattoo?" "Um, yeah," I said, "... I take it there's a specific market share for this?" "Well," she replied, "it's either for nursing mothers with cracked nipples, or people with tats. It's what my husband uses when he's healing a new one." And we had a two minute chat about good tattooists around Wellington. That's how we roll here in NZ, folks.

raising dust

2009-10-13T21:54:00.000+13:00

An interesting couple of weeks.

Firstly, we spent the first half of the school holidays in Auckland. It hammered bloody rain for six days out of the seven we were up there, necessitating rather a lot of indoor activities. Unfortunately, we were also hit by some serious viral illness: I was flat on my back for two days, Heather similarly, and the kids very sniffly, coughy, and generally vile. Still, we fitted in a trip to the museum, the zoo (on the one sunny day), and a variety of indoor playgrounds and shopping malls (embarassed cough). All the relatives were seen, a certain amount of mucus was produced, and leisure was the winner on the day. I spent a surprising amount of time rather enjoying driving a manual car again (I didn't know any car rental places rented out manuals any more), even if it was a 1.3ltr Daihatsu Sirion (a cross between one of those ride-on scooters for OAPs and a surprisingly grunty go-kart). Ah, second gear: it's the Swiss army knife of driving. There's nothing it can't solve.

While we were away, we missed out on a tender for a house. By $20,000, so we were more annoyed than gutted (gutted would have been missing out by $1,000). This was a bit annoying. But we threw ourselves back into the whirl of open homes, going around a couple of likely-looking places. One place turned out to look quite likely; we offered on it, got a bite, and lo, we had our offer accepted. Cue a certain amount of frantic running around trying to sell our place (our purchase is conditional on the sale of our current house). Anyone want to buy a 3brm character villa in Newlands, completely updated & modernised? It's a nice wee house, and a good neighbourhood.

For the curious: we're moving about 3k, out to Johnsonville. Coincidentally, just off one of Wellington's better road cycling loops. Handy that. Further details once the sales involved actually go unconditional.

You know you're selling your house when you're mowing the lawn at 8am.

Rebecca is currently obsessed with the Lego set Heather got me for my birthday. It's a set of Star Wars lego - Darth Vader's TIE fighter, specifically. Every night, we have to do another ten minutes. Heather bought it for me: I think I've managed to put about three pieces on it. Mostly, it's Rebecca carefully poring over the instructions and slotting bits into place. She's loving it. One of these days I'll have to actually show her the movies.

haunt of coot and hern

2009-09-25T19:02:00.001+12:00

Brian Edwards has clearly read Derailing for Dummies. Or, if not, he's internalised a lot of it. He's posted a rather contentious opinion piece on his blog. A large number of people have leapt on it. I'm particularly impressed with the way that he ignores the well-reasoned comments from people who clearly know what they're talking about, in favour of making snide comments to the more annoyed commentators (thereby subtly equating the serious points with the angry ones). Bonus points for rewriting the original post to remove some of the language that sparked off the vitriol, thus making his commentators look more unhinged. Why, they're flying off the handle at nothing!

Brian Edwards may be a well-respected New Zealand media commentator. But put him on the net and he's just another opinionated blowhard acting like a dick on discussion forums.

In any case, his argument seems to be that writing is hard, so he should get paid more for it. After all, people are taking advantage of his writing by borrowing it from libraries - that's money he's potentially missing out on. Ignoring the various flaws in his argument - check the comments on the original article for an examination of them - I'd just say this. Was he, prior to undertaking this hard work of writing his books, unaware of the relative remuneration? Had someone hidden the existence of libraries from him, and kept him unaware of how they work and the financial consequences thereof? No? He knew all that and decided to do it anyway? Then he can shut his whingeing cake-hole. He knew the deal, there's no bloody point whining now. Tch.

Times have definitely changed. The other day, I had reason to visit my bank manager. I went in the middle of the day, so I was wearing my work kit. My work dress could best be described as scruffy casual. My concession to discussing the loan of a pointlessly large amount of money was to wear long trousers. While I was sitting at the bank waiting, it occurred to me that twenty years ago I'd have felt the need to get dressed up in a suit. Seeing a bank manager was a big deal, and you had to look your best. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis, eh?

This was brought more forcibly home on Wednesday night, when the mobile mortgage manager sat back at the end of a discussion about requirements for potential further lending and asked me who my tattooist was. I was in short sleeves, and he liked the forearm tat; turned out he had a backpiece and a half-sleeve. We had an amicable discussion about tattoo styles, and the deal was done. So remember kids: when your parents tell you that getting a tat prevents you from getting a good job, take it with a grain of salt, eh?

And then he txt'ed me to let me know how the pre-approval was going. Truly, we are living in the future.

play misty for me

2009-09-21T21:07:00.003+12:00

One day I shall decide that I never want to get anything productive done again. Upon that day, I shall create an account on facebook.

Which is to say: apologies for the lack of posts, and I don't even have the excuse du jour, facebook is killing blogging. I blame a high workload and the recent purchase of a computer game.

Psychological violence in late 1970s/early 1980s girls comics.

I realised last week that the vast bulk of the music I listen to can be categorised as follows:

Music with accordions. Gogol Bordello, Golem, the Klezmer Rebs, the Tiger Lillies, Kultur Shock, and so on.
Bleepy bleepy twiddle electronic music. Future Sound of London, Orbital, Miss Kittin, DJ Shadow, that sort of thing.
Music by lesbians. Sleater-Kinney, Chicks on Speed, and Le Tigre, mostly.

There are a few border cases - I'm not quite sure about PJ Harvey, for instance - but those three categories do cover about 90% of what was on my iPod at the time.

But recently we've been having a clean-out of the CD collection. We've weeded out a lot of stuff that we don't listen to any more. One consequence of this is that we've come across rather a lot of CDs that we haven't heard for a while. So I got organised and ripped rather a lot of this stuff to iTunes so I can give it a blat on the iPod at work. The net result is that I now have 4GB of stuff I haven't listened to for years knocking around on my current playlist. It's a rather mixed bag: the Aphex Twin, Missy Elliott, Coil, Liz Phair, Autechre, Nine Inch Nails, Meat Beat Manifesto, Front Line Assembly, that sort of thing. It's kind of like, a snapshot of the music that I really liked a decade ago, but not so much that I still listen to it regularly. It's been an interesting exercise, and one I highly recommend.

Sometimes life leaves a hundred dollar bill on your dresser, and you don't realize until later that it's because it fucked you.

Shit My Dad Says

the pusillanimity express

2009-09-01T16:32:00.001+12:00

I was at the supermarket at lunch yesterday. As I went in, I saw a couple with a young child. The father was about 6'2", big with it, with gang tats on his neck and hands. He and a woman, presumably his partner, were doing what looked like the weekly shop, with a preschool kid sitting in the trolley.

After my shop, as I was loading the stuff into the car, I heard a lot of shouting. "What the fuck you looking at?" was interspersed with more general yelling and threats, plus wailing. Looking around, I saw that the family were having a screaming match in the middle of the carpark. The bloke was alternating between screaming at the woman, and turning around to shout threats at any bystanders who appeared to be paying attention. They were also struggling over the young boy - the woman holding him in her arms, the man trying to pull him away. This was in the middle of a busy carpark at lunchtime; counting myself, there must have been about 50 witnesses.

But what struck me was the reaction. All of us kind of expected someone else - maybe someone closer, maybe someone bigger, maybe just someone Not Me - to do something about it. But none of us did. We watched while the dad grabbed the kid and marched off out of the carpark, with the woman sobbing after him.

But that's not true. From where I was, about 20 metres away, I could see three separate people clearly calling the police on cellphones. They were standing just out of sight behind cars, occasionally stepping out to look over and answer some question from the despatcher before stepping back out of sight before the bloke threatened them. As the family left the carpark (on foot, for some reason) you could clearly see these people moving so as to keep a view of what was happening, constantly updating the despatcher on the other end of the phone. And the rest of us relaxed, because someone was doing something.

It just struck me as an odd consequence of our connected world. The ability to call in the appropriate authorities removes the imperative to do things yourself. When no-one else can become involved, there's an onus on those who are there to do something. Cellphones remove that, and we can all go about our cowardly fucking ways with a clean conscience. Or rather, we still feel the need to do something; but "doing something" is now just making a phone call.

In a refreshing contrast to the self-loathing of that last paragraph, it seemed to work. As I drove off, I saw some other bystanders further down the road pointing a police officer towards the couple. The last I saw was the bloke running away as fast as he could across the grassy centre margin of the road, having pulled off his coat to reveal a sleeveless jacket with a Nomads gang patch. So it seems that our disengaged, report-rather-than-remedy culture can get it right on occasion.

Last couple of episodes of the Fabric podcast have been most interesting; Surgeon going through his influences. Nice. I'm a sucker for anyone who drops the Art of Noise, Coil, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop into a DJ set.

Go, go Greg Henderson. Stage 3 of the Vuelta d'Espagna, beating out a lot of the world's best sprinters: well done. He's now second in the standings, after Fabian Cancellara.

formal welcome

2009-08-31T21:08:00.001+12:00

A more formal welcome to my niece Lucy Genevieve Darlowe, born this morning and weighing about 3.3kg. She's a very cute wee thing.

sadly not yet available on prescription

2009-08-30T20:25:00.002+12:00

How to get two small children to go to sleep:

Take them to a gig by the Klezmer Rebs.
Watch them dance energetically for an hour, occasionally singing along.
Take them home and feed them sausages.
Bath & bedtime.

Then sit back and watch them fall into a sound, deep sleep. Klezmer - faster than xanax, more legal than chloroform.

dip dip dip

2009-08-29T18:00:00.003+12:00

This morning, Maggie made her intentions clear. "Swimming!" she told us, lugging the kit bag into our bedroom. So I ended up taking them out to Porirua swimming pool, which is excellent. Man, there's nothing like walking into the pool and seeing someone covered in gang tats to make you a bit careful about where you put your kit. It was fairly packed, but the kids had a great time. Maggie spent most of the time clinging to my back like a koala while Rebecca marauded. The hydroslide was once again a big hit. I did my typical impression of someone who can't see ten feet in front of his face without his glasses (AKA Mr Maggoo with tats), and it all more or less worked out.

We have, for various reasons, acquired about 4kg of premium coffee beans. This drove me to go out after the swim and buy a coffee grinder. I can't stand the taste of coffee, but I'm surprisingly snobbish about the coffee that I'm not drinking. Plus, anything that's basically designed to destroy things in a specific way has got to be an excellent addition to the modern kitchen.

I am going to write a best selling childrens book.

Working title: "Where Have You Little Bastards Hidden Daddy's iPod?"

The other day, Rebecca commented that I'd missed a bit on my arm. "Yeah, I'm going to get that bit filled in in October" I replied. "Good," she said, "you need that bit filled." She paused for a minute and then said, "And you should get the other arm tattooed too. And your legs."

innovative title

2009-08-12T19:48:00.000+12:00

A brief digression on vampires.

I should point out that I don't give two stuffs about vampires, media depictions of vampires, or the current resurgence of interest in them. I, quite frankly, don't care a damn either way. I don't watch Underworld, I never saw the point of Buffy, I don't read/watch Twilight, I never bothered with Anne Rice, and I couldn't give two stuffs about any of it. So it's with some amusement that I'm watching the snitfight in the fantasy/sf end of popular culture about Twilight. Now, it's coming in for a lot of fire from "real" fanboys for being too sparkly. Twilight fans are derided as being teenage girls. Which, in fact, many of them are.

As mentioned, I have no feelings either way about Twilight. But I'm interested to note the undercurrent in the criticisms here: it's just a bit misogynist. Because, you know, vampires are manly! And having them be sensitive and stuff is, like, so gay! And girls like the sparkly stuff! And whatever girls like must be awful!

Compare this to the approved images of vampires. Say, Kate Beckinsale. So a good vampire is a sexually suggestive young woman in tight clothing, but a bad vampire is a sexually suggestive young man with tousled hair. Um, yeah. It's really hard not to read all these reactions as the spoiled, petulant whining of an adolescent boy who is actually a bit scared of young women. It's also very annoying: one of the often-stated problems with fantasy/sf in contemporary culture is the overwhelmingly male component of it. So as soon as young women start getting more into it, watching them getting frantically slagged off by "proper" (male) fans is just cringeworthy. "Why aren't more girls into fantasy/sf? By which I of course mean REAL fantasy/sf, the stuff designed to titillate heterosexual males just like me, not that sparkly stuff that's just for girls..." See also the snobbish attitude a lot of people have to anime, one of the parts of fantasy/sf culture that tends to be more female-friendly and have lots of female fans.

On another level, I'm also finding this a bit amusing, as male homoeroticism has been a big feature of contemporary vampire culture. I knew a number of young women when I was at varsity who loved Interview with a Vampire specifically for the homoerotic byplay.

So don't expect me to join in in making denigrating comments about Twilight. No, Twilight's not my thing. But then, neither are any other vampire stories. And the undercurrents in the slagging it's getting put my teeth on edge.

Apparently one of the things that a "proper" blog should do is stick to one topic per post. Sod that.

A while ago, we triaged our bookshelves and had a book swap party. This worked remarkably well as a means to give away loads of books, but we still ended up with three large boxes of books at the end of things. Yesterday morning, I dropped them off at Arty Bees in town. Arty Bees are one of the best second-hand bookshops in NZ. One of the things I really like about them is their purchase policy. They buy books (obviously), and either give you cash or store credit (obviously, offering more store credit than cash). You can either take the store credit yourself, or choose to add it to someone else's account. We chose to donate the credit to an account for Refugee Migrant Services, so they can use it to buy books for refugees arriving in NZ. And the books the Arty Bees don't want, they drop off to the Downtown Community Mission for their annual book sale. So from our perspective, we've got rid of a couple of boxes of books we don't want, supported a local business, and helped out two separate charities. Not a bad morning, really.

the face behind the mask

2009-08-09T17:01:00.002+12:00

You may have attended one of their gigs. You may have heard the CD. You may even have heard them on Radio New Zealand, talking about how they are librarians, public servants, IT wonks. They sound genteel, cultured, representing a long tradition of scholarship and musicianship.

But once you've seen the Klezmer Rebs playing in the living room of an anarchist squat, passing a bottle of buffalo grass vodka around whoever isn't actually playing a solo at that moment, you get the real picture. And as they sink red-eyed into the bacchanal, the strains of "Anarchia Total" ring out into the night.

Good night last night, in case you can't tell.

some more thoughts

2009-08-03T22:05:00.003+12:00

A while ago, I wrote some thoughts on the proposed national cycleway and why I was a bit worried about it. Over the last couple of months, many of the points I made have been addressed. It's no longer a single national path from Cape Reinga to Bluff, it's a series of local routes that may - at some indeterminate point in the future - be joined up. Now, I think it's great that we're getting the local routes. However, I am a bit worried about the suggestion that the local councils foot part of the bills.

I'm partially worried by this because I think it'll annoy the local councils. It's like someone saying to me, "Hey, man, you should totally pimp out your car and you'll get loads of chicks. Like, it'd be awesome! Tell you what, I'll pay for it." And then they come back to you a month later with a quote to get some mag wheels and say "Yeah, but this turned out to be quite expensive, and I'll totally pay for some of it, but since you're like gonna be the one getting all the chicks, it's really only fair that you shell out too." And you end up shelling out your money for something that you may not have wanted anyway. Spending other people's budgets for them annoys people. And this may alienate local councillors, who could well not have particularly liked the idea of paying for cycle facilities in the first place.

But I'm more worried by the likely consequence of this. When the local councils accept that they're going to end up spending some of their cash on the cycleway, which budgetary pot is it likely to come from? The "improvements to local tourist attractions" budget? Or the "provision of cycling facilities" budget? I'm willing to bet that it'll be the latter. In this respect, the government will be effectively cutting the budgets for encouraging everyday cycle use, by forcing local councils to spend their cycling budgets on facilities aimed at touring and leisure riders. And that really worries me. Local cycling gets short enough shrift from most councils already; this strikes me as offering them a tailormade chance to just hand the cash over to someone else and call that their obligations to cyclists met.

It's not that I think the proposed routes don't look good. They look excellent; I really look forward to riding them when they're complete. It's just that I'm really worried that the law of unintended consequences is going to result in leisure cycling (occasional, definitely a recreational activity, geared towards attracting overseas tourists) being prioritised at the expense of everyday cycling (regular, part of normal life, used by average people). I really hope that doesn't happen, but the government's recent announcement makes me pretty worried.

That said, a gentle pootle down a bike path with the family is a good way to get people on two wheels. Look at all the families taking kids along the Hutt River Trail, or around Wellington's waterfront. So I don't think leisure cycling facilities are useless in terms of encouraging and normalising cycle use - they're an excellent gateway drug.

And as an aside: it turns out that John Key had the brilliant, revenue-generating idea to hold a race on the cycletrack (tentatively titled the Sir Edmund Hillary Explorator). That's a good indication that he doesn't have a single fucking clue what he's talking about. Let's put that in context: it's like suggesting that we hold an F1 Grand Prix on the road up the mountain from Ohakune to Turoa. The proosed bike path was a meandering, family-friendly route designed for cycle tourists. A bike race is fast, hard, and needs decent roads. Unless John Key was proposing a 1200-k re-enactment of the worst parts of Paris-Roubaix (which isn't just called the Hell of the North for the weather), I'm going to suspect that he just didn't know what he was talking about.

Anyway.

I got very annoyed with the Consumer magazine Rent vs Buy comparison page today. It takes a set of details from you and then tells you whether you'd be better off renting or buying a house, and by how much. There are so many things wrong with this page (say, the inability to set the mortgage term to anything other than 20 years) that it's hard to know where to start, but let's have a stab.

First, one of the things it asks you for is the real annual growth in house value, % per annum, averaged over the next 20 years. If you know that, go into the finance industry, you'll make a killing. The rest of us will just have a guess.

Then it asks you for the mortgage interest rate over the next 20 years. They assume 8%. In June 1987, the mortgage interest rate in NZ peaked at 20.5%pa. It's currently around 6.5%. See previous comments about your ability to predict this. So here we go guessing again...

It also asks you to estimate costs like rates, maintenance, etc. If you don't own a house already, you'll probably underestimate these. Have you seen how much it costs to repaint even a small house?

And finally, it assumes that "if you rent, you invest the money you would otherwise have spent on house buying - the deposit, insurance, ongoing mortgage payments (minus rent) etc". So if you're looking at the difference between paying, say, $400 per week rent or $450 per week mortgage, it's assuming that you're going to save that other $50 per week (*cough cough of course you are*). Plus all the money you had saved up for a deposit, etc. And then it asks you for the interest rate you'll be earning on those savings. So again, it's asking you to predict the interest rates for the next two decdates.

So basically, I'm saying that this mortgage calculator is no better than guessing. In fact, it's arguably worse, because it's giving you an unwarranted feeling of confidence about the numbers. In truth, they are no better than numbers you've pulled out of your arse - but since you'll pulled them out of the NZ Consumer's Institute's arse, you'll probably treat them as gospel. Just remember that they aren't.

Vintage Rebecca moment at the weekend. At the library, during Storytime (11am Saturdays in the kids' section, see you there), Stu (the reader/presenter) asks for a parent to help hold a book open. Rebecca leaps up, shouting "My dad! My dad! He'll do it!" and waving her arms.

And another VRM about ten minutes later. At the end of Storytime, after I'd held two books open while Stu played the ukulele and sang the songs of the books (Frog Went A-Courtin' and Don Gato), Stu was thanking everyone for coming and saying he'd see us all next week. Rebecca stood up and said, in a clarion voice, "Excuse me - my daddy has a sore arm, because he has lots of tattoos. Thank you."

Win.

fill the gap with our english dead

2009-07-16T21:25:00.009+12:00

It's the school holidays again. I remember when I was a kid: school holidays were giant events that lurked rarely in our calendar, huge chunks of free time, during which we were invariably packed off to some improving activity which suspiciously happened to take place during business hours and thus let our parents get some time at work. These days, the plethora of diversionary activities is larger and more diverse; but the holidays are more frequent. Like, every two months. Blimey. Blink and there's another set of the damn things. And R is still just our lovely wee girl, so we're taking a bit of time off to look after her. So far, I got the first end of the holidays, and then had a bit of a gap, and now I've got another day tomorrow. At the start of the holidays we checked off all the major things we wanted to do:

Movies: check. Ice Age 3 was good fun; Simon Pegg gives a stand-out performance as a mad weasel. The plot is cobbled together from Jurassic Park 3 (seriously; I can go into boring detail about exactly how precise the rip-off is) with splashes of Moby Dick (again, can be dull, but Buck = Ahab, Rudy = the whale - c'mon, it's even bloody white!) and a kick-off homage to Sir Arther Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" (though to be fair, they probably just got that from Jurassic Park). Find anyone who says "But it's so unrealistic, dinosaurs during the ice age!", and hold them against a wall with a broken bottle to their throat while saying "and what's so fucking realistic about talking mammoths, matie?"
Swimming: check. Porirua pool has a very nicely sized hydroslide and a wave pool. Rebecca loves it. When we went, they even had a miniature inflatable assault course thingie in the kids' pool; they covered it with soap bubbles, with the result of greased toddlers moving at high speed.
Wildlife: check. We went to a morning's talk about wetas at the Karori Sanctuary. And then Rebecca got to make a weta hotel (basically, a wooden box with a perspex cover and a detachable lid, so you can take the lid off but the weta is still safe behind perspex). Due to an hilarious mix-up, there were no hammers, so the session turned into a group re-enactment of early human evolution as we all pounded nails in using rocks. Fun though, and it works fine.

So I've done my duty as a parent. Until tomorrow, of course, when R wants to go see BJ Bear do a teddy bears' picnic at J'ville mall. Wish me luck.

Oh, and we took Rebecca into her first tattooists yesterday. I had another session booked with Tim out at Pacific Tattoo in Paekakariki, and since it was the school holidays, Rebecca came along for the ride. More specifically, Maggie was in creche (we got a casual day for her) and Heather gave me a lift out on the way to take Rebecca to Lindale for honey and llamas. Rebecca thought the studio looked interesting but smelled "stinky" (disinfectant not a hit with the kids), but seemed interested. Before she could warn Tim against hurting me (as she'd been threatening to do), Heather took her off, and Tim and I got down to the serious business of pain.

We kicked off by reworking all the big black areas from the last session, to get a good depth of color and consistent shade. After that, there was a fair bit of work filling in the chevrons we didn't get around to the last session, then a short bit of design to work out what the new bits should look like, then a fair bit more inking. We stopped about every two hours for tea and biscuits, but it was quite a day under the needle. I can say that having the inside of your elbow hurts immeasurably; and the inside of your arm isn't a picnic either. Apparently I'm quite good at staying still while thinking inside my head "Well, this is agony." Not fun on that front, but the results are quite nice. I now have a lot of black chevrons and lines on my inside forearm, and a patterned section inside the blank triangle in the junction of my elbow. When we started this project, I put together a portfolio with the words "Big, bold" on the inside. We've achieved that. Latest pictures are available through flickr.

One interesting moment during the day was when I noticed that the tattoo machine's power supply (an Eikon unit) has a display that showed stats about the current being supplied. One of the stastistics shown was CPS, Cycles Per Second - how fast the needles are going back and forth, in general the frequence of the tattoo machine. This mean that while I was being tattooed I could look over at the power supply and know precisely how much this hertz.

Still have a blank area right around the back of my arm, on the lower back of my tricep. The plan for the next session is to tweak any remaining re-coloring, add some more patterning/texture in the remaining area... and then start work on the next project. But that's another story.

you wish you'd thought of it first

2009-06-18T20:59:00.000+12:00

Ever used a torque wrench? It's a fairly simple device. You set it to a certain amount of torque (rotational force - which in this context, means "how tightly you can do up a bolt"), then use it to tighten a bolt. When you've applied the specific amount of torque (i.e. the bolt is precisely as tight as you want it - no more, no less) the head of the wrench starts to slip. So you can only apply up to a certain, appropriate amount of force when doing up a sensitive component.

Here's my solution to the anti-smacking debate.

One of the problems is that many people support the right of parents to administer mild smacks to their kids - these are probably the people who support the repeal of the "anti-smacking" law. Now, in point of fact the "anti-smacking" law just removes a particular legal defence from people accused of assaulting their children. That legal defence had previously been used by people who had beaten their kids with horsewhips, metal implements, and the like. Hence the cross-party initiative to remove this defence in cases where parents had clearly overstepped a line.

But the problem that a lot of people have with this is, where is that line? The examples touted by the pro-smacking crowd refer to parents giving children smacks across the back of the hand, of perhaps bent over for a spanking after particularly egregious cheek. A substantial proportion of the population wouldn't disagree with mild physical discipline of a child, but would have a problem with more serious assaults. But leaving it up to the individual parents has an obvious problem: people very seldom do things they regard as morally wrong, but someone's idea of what's reasonable may be drastically out of kilter (as in the case of the woman who regarded horsewhipping her son as a reasonably means of correction).

I propose a simple means of setting the "acceptable" line.

Just as a torque wrench lets you apply a certain amount of force (and no more!) to a bolt, we need a set of official Infant Punishment Sticks that are calibrated to break when struck with a particular force. Then we make it legal to beat your children with the appropriate stick. For example, you could have the Level 1 Chastiser, suitable for children under 2. This would allow a modicum of force, but would harmlessly snap as soon as you really get your arm moving. Thus, a parent could admonister the appropriate, legally sanctioned level of loving physical correction, secure in the knowledge that they weren't going over any lines. The level 2 chastiser could cover up to age 5, but be set to snap just as you started to breathe hard from the effort of the beating. And of course, for older and more impudent children, you'd need level 3, calibrated to last up until you start to produce little flecks of white foam at the corners of your mouth.

All sticks would be no thicker than your thumb, of course.

Think about it: we save $9 million from a pointless referendum, the youth of the nation becomes instantly more thoughtful and less cheeky, and we've created a valuable new industry making correction sticks. Plus, there's a flow-on effect in about 20 years when NZ becomes a worldwide centre of S&M porn. Win-win.

Reading: Max Brooks' World War Z. Apparently there's a movie of this in production, which is a bit of a shame. What it really needs is a TV miniseries of 6-12 episodes. Basically, the book itself is written in a fauxcumentary style, as postwar survivor testimonials. This leads to some clumsy and disconnected moments: the text is supposedly told in the voice of a disparate group of survivors, but they often end up sounding the same. The voices of some of the survivors end up almost cliched (I found the sole English survivor very annoying and unrealistic, and the non-American speakers skirt dangerously close to ethnic stereotyping). But that's an artefact of the narrative technique: the only way to tell people what was happening is to have the survivors describe it. Putting this onscreen solves that, and would give you more latitude to differentiate the testmonies. What it's really crying out for is a Band of Brother-style presentation: a mock version of the "surivor testimony re-enacted" docutainment genre. That would work very, very well and look excellent. My worry about converting this to a movie is that a lot of what makes this worthwhile is the little details and bits around the side, where Brooks puts a lot of thought into the consequences of a zombie holocaust- descriptions of undersea combat with legions of zombies walking along the bottom of the harbour, having zombies freeze solid during winter and then defrost and lurch forth in spring, sly asides about people's reaction to the initial news - and this is the sort of thing that would probably be dropped first for time reasons. Basically, this uses the book format to expand and explore around the limited window available for a 2-hour movie; you'd have a hard time keeping it all in, and not just ending up with the big action sequences. While the big splatterfests are fun, there really isn't much there that we haven't already seen on screen a few times (well, except for the scale of it, which would be pretty awesome in its own right).

Of course, no matter how good the movie is, the question is: will it be as awesome as Dead Snow?

Also finally got around to reading Watchmen. There really isn't much that I can say that hasn't already been said several times before; to be honest, I'm surprised that I'd managed to get to this point without reading it. Anyway, I decided that I should probably get around to reading it before I see the movie. Glad I did. It is, as all the media agree, excellent. It's always slightly odd viewing these breakthrough works in retrospect: you've already seen all the derivatives and everything affected by it, but not the work itself. Many times, it's anticlimactic when you actually read the original thing. Not in this case. Well worth the effort if you've not read it yet.

it's fucking sore, OK?

2009-06-14T22:38:00.002+12:00

There are many interesting ways to injure yourself that combine "risible cause" with "surprisingly painful/debilitating". For example, cutting yourself while trying to prise the stone out of an avocado: sounds dumb, but I know a number of people who've done it and managed to seriously injure themselves. Slight mishaps while vacuuming in the nude. That sort of thing.

To this list we must add one more entry.

My mother has recently adopted a greyhound. Then, even more recently, another. This is great; they're good dogs, the kids love them, and I get to take them for walks. One of the consequences of my childhood is that I find walking dogs very calming. So this morning, I was out for a walk with a brace of greyhounds. At one point, they saw a freerange bichon friese. And they tried to run over and say hello. Now, these greyhounds are 30kg each. They're also trained athletes; one has a career total of 13 wins, 33 places, for a total of around $24,000 in prize money. So when they decide to run somewhere, there's a lot of force going through that leash. I restrained them, the bichon friese booked it, and then I realised that I had blood freely flowing from the end of my left little finger. The combination of the dogs effort and my restraining them gave me a rope burn that took a surprising amount of skin off the end of my finger.

So the dogs have drawn blood, but not in the traditional way. I wonder if this is a typical greyhound injury? Anyway, it's bloody painful, and it makes typing surprisingly hard. I hadn't realised quite how much you use the side of your little finger when typing; this is the disadvantage of being a touch-typist. Notably it's really painful using capital letters. Expect me to go all e e cummings for a bit.

Still, it's distracting me from the residual pain/itching of the healing tattoo on my right arm. Mostly it's good, except the black stripe running along the top of my forearm. Since that goes across the articulation point of the elbow, the scab keeps breaking whenever I bend my arm. This is slowing the healing, and bloody hurts. Still, the rest of the ink looks to be healing pretty well - still a lot of healing skin sitting on top of it, but it'll look pretty nice in a week or two. Just in time for the final session, at the end of the month.

that hurt redux

2009-06-05T21:54:00.004+12:00

Another day, another tattoo session. Got most of the rest of the sleeve at least mapped out, though we didn't complete some of the fill. There's just a wee bit left to figure out what to put in, and a reasonable amount of fill to complete. Looks good though. Still the abstract b/w Pacifica theme, with a bonus cycling tribute section. Pics are available on Flickr as usual.

it's a tricky balance

2009-06-03T20:36:00.005+12:00

The company I work for has around 700, 800 employees. Two of us are called Jack. When I first started, they put us in the same room and gave us only one phone extension. We both work on the same project. You can imagine the hilarity. The other week, I conducted a user satisfaction survey (why do you only ever "conduct" surveys? You never just "do" them), and among the returned sheets of results was a single post-it note with "JACK IS SO SEXY" written on it.

Yes - but WHICH ONE? Aargh.

Anyway, it cheered me up on a cold Friday morning, so it's all good.

My Friday morning:

9am: Accountant.
10am: Tattooist.

Got another text from my tattooist this morning. We're all go for Friday. 9am I meet my accountant to work out my tax for last year; 10am, I'm being inked in Pakekakariki. Plan for this session is to work on the infill between the wristband and my existing armband. We're going with the geometric-but-flowing stuff, and trying to work in at least one round design on the forearm. So that should be good fun. On the plus side, the last session healed up quite nicely - one or two minor touch-ups necessary, but mostly very nice new flesh. So, knock on wood, we won't need to spend much time on touch-ups, and can just get stuck in with the new design. I have another appointment booked for the end of the month. Between these two sessions, we should manage to finish the sleeve off nicely.

And this should be obvious, but I can highly recommend Tim Hunt out at Pacific Tattoo out in Paekakariki. Excellent abstract/Pacific work, and a good needleside manner.

Mind you, immediately after spending 7 hours being tattooed, I'm going to a matariki party at Maggie's creche. Mmm. Fresh blood and childcare.

Had a very annoying commute in this morning. Or rather, an annoying kick-off; came down the Ngauranga Gorge right behind a VERY NERVOUS cyclist. As in, riding the brakes the whole way, 25kph descent. I (and most other cyclists) normally take this at about 50. Fair play to the guy, ride within your comfort zone and all that; I'm a nervous descender myself, so I can't call him a bastard for that. But that doesn't mean I can't find it annoying. I don't think it helped that although he was riding a fairly decent road bike, with Look pedals, he was actually wearing jeans and sneakers (so wasn't clipped into the pedals). Still, good on him for riding, I just hope I'm not behind him again tomorrow.

With Rebecca at school, I'm only riding in 2 days per week. On the plus side, I'm definitely riding those days. If I've only got two good ride days in the week, it would have to be biblically bad weather for me to give riding a swerve. So I'm getting a lot of practice at riding in the rain. But I've got to say, it's very nice to not have drenching rain and 100kph winds for a change. Not that I've gone soft, you understand; just that I really prefer to not do the squelch-squelch-squelch-socks walk of doom when I get home soaked to the skin.

H: Is the Kings of Leon anything to do with Leon the god?
Me: The Kings of Leon are a rhythm combo popular with the youth of today. Leon the god is a mate of Morgue's.

another milestone

2009-05-25T21:37:00.001+12:00

Maggie turned two last week; happy birthday, dear. Great moment at her creche - I dropped a cake in for morning tea, and stayed while they served it up. Prior to demolishing the cake, Ali had a word to all the assembled kids and told the older ones that since Maggie was turning 2 today, she'd be in the big kids' area from now on, but that she's still pretty little. Then she asked who was going to help look after her and make sure she was OK. "MEEE!!!!" all the kids chorussed, thrusting their arms up. Including Maggie, and a couple of the under-2s, who presumably thought this was more of a general query about whether they wanted cake.

In any case, this general protection was entirely superfluous. On our arrival at nursery at 8:20am, Rebecca had buttonholed her mate Sam (turns 5 in a month or two) and designated him as Maggie's minder for the day. This morning, it was Jake who got the nod. She's a good big sister; setting up the protection.

Heather's parents came and stayed over the weekend for Maggie's birthday, which was nice. I ended up picking them up from the airport (I work 1k from the airport, so it's a no-brainer), which worked nicely.

On the day (Saturday), Maggie got a number of presents. She was very impressed with the "memory game" which was basically a lot of toy farmyard animals and plastic eggs to fit them in (though this may give her odd ideas about how cows reproduce). She really loved the Wishbone trike (designed in Island Bay, folks) we got her: at 6:30am on Saturday morning, in the pitch darkness, I heard her say "Hello bike" as she walked through the house. But it all paled in comparison to the mighty joy of the picnic set Suzy got her. 73 items, the packaging says, and I see no lie. Plastic fruit, croissant, plates, cups, cutlery, and the piece de resistance: a replica plastic stovetop coffee perc. Maggie loves this and plays with it all the time. Massive win there.

And respect to all present on the Auckland Harbour Bridge protest yesterday. That's the spirit; next time, just see if you can get permission first, eh? Might help with the public perception if motorists can squeeze past.

that came from left field

2009-05-13T19:42:00.002+12:00

I spent five hours under the needle today. I have a tattooed forearm (well, it's not huge yet), and my shoulder is finished. I am fucking sore. And happy. Taking bets on how much my forearm bruises; next scheduled session is on the 5th June. W00t, etc. I can canonically say, you would not fucking believe how much being tattooed on the inside of your forearm hurts. Or maybe it was just that a lot of that was happening with an outliner rather than a shader needle setup; either way, I'm expecting a bruise

Got there at 10, courtesy of a very fine lift from my lovely wife. Tim at Pacific Tattoo had a look at how the last session had healed. And he was not happy. From 10:30 to 12:30 was spent merrily re-inking a lot of the big black areas from the last session, plus adding the red bits and inking a couple of black sections we'd missed. By the end of that, I was literally shaking from low blood sugar: cue lunch, frantic gulping of tea, etc. I calmed down a bit and we started up on the new sections. We decided to end the sleeve with a wristband (as I've got a band around my bicep, so it has a nice symmetry to it), with flowing designs going down to it. To give us an idea of the parameters, we did the wristband today. It took about three hours and fucking well hurt.

Pictures and a few notes available at my Flickr set for the sleeve. Next session is on June 5th; we're going to start on the infill between the bottom of my old armband (done by Rog Ingerton way, way back in 1996 or so) and the wristband we did today. Idea is to have it flowing, but geometric. Further bulletins as events warrant.

social media this

2009-05-12T20:02:00.001+12:00

Good ways to start the day: 10am text message from your tattooist, advising that an appointment has come up tomorrow. Excellent. Roll on another 6 hours under the needle, then.

Rebecca is loving school at the moment. I now have a new tool of persuasion in the morning: "No, you can't do your homework until you've got dressed and brushed your teeth." It's like someone's flipped the "must learn to read and write immediately" switch in her mind.

bit of a hiatus there - hopefully you won't notice

2009-05-04T19:21:00.002+12:00

Went out to the SFBH on Saturday for the gypsy evening. Excellent gig. We had to do some thinking, and came to the conclusion that the last time we'd been out on our own, together, to go to a gig where Heather wasn't playing, must have been... in the UK. Yikes. Don't get me wrong, we actually go to a lot more live music now than we ever have; it's just that most of it is related to Heather getting up onstage with violin. And man, you know you've been out of it for a while when you find yourself reflexively turning up at the venue at the stated start time for the gig, "in case we miss the support" (who, of course, don't actually start playing for another 90 minutes you fool).

Speaking of which, Niko Ne Zna were great; didn't fuck around, just got out there, started playing, and had taken the lid off the place within 5 minutes. You got a sense that a lot of the crowd were friends of the band, but a lot of the crowd weren't, and everyone was jumping up and down. From start to finish they played an excellent set of Balkan, klezmer, and latin-influenced stuff (covers of stuff from the Amsterdam Klezmer Band, Slavic Soul Party, and the like). Very impressive, and I'll definitely be looking out for their gigs in future.

The Benka Borodovsky Bordello Band, on the other hand, were a bit bitsy. When they were good, they were very very good, but when they were bad, you were standing there thinking "fuck the showmanship and play the bloody tune." They were clearly into the spectacle of the whole thing, but they took it a bit too far. I frequently found myself wishing they'd talk less and play more. And they'd fallen victim to the virtuoso trap: they were doing some stuff just because they could, rather than because it was actually a good idea. Yes, it's pretty cool if you can start a song really slow, and then slowly work the tempo up well past the point where anyone can actually dance to it. That's fine once. You don't need to keep doing it. You certainly don't need to do it more than once in the same song. I just wasn't convinced about the pacing; between the long gaps between songs, and the long gaps in the songs (both when everything stopped dead and when they were actually playing too fast to dance to), it ended up a bit jagged.

But when they hit their stride - when they picked a song that didn't fuck around and concentrated on booting it well out - they were blindingly good. Their original stuff was mostly great, and they were obviously having fun up there. On balance, worth seeing; and their album ("Polkapocalypse") holds up very well.

And it was fun being at a gig by two New Zealand bands who are very, very unlikely to get any particular promotion as part of New Zealand Music Month.

On the other hand, it was desperately unfun getting to bed at 2:30am. I was forcibly reminded of the reason why we don't do this very often, when at 6am the girls came through and started agitating for breakfast. I managed to talk Rebecca into taking care of it and slumped back, trying to doze through the sounds of destruction from the kitchen. I heard the following:

Fridge: *beep beep beep* [the "you've left me open too long" alarm]
Rebecca: Maggie, can you close the fridge for me please?
Maggie: *clump swish clump swish clump swish clump* [She's got one shoe on] *noise of fridge door closing*
Rebecca: [Runs into our bedroom and shouts at high volume] Papa! I asked Maggie to close the fridge door! And she did it!

Excellent. Three weeks out from her 2nd birthday, Maggie can help with basic household tasks. Next week: "Maggie, can you pass me a 3/16" hex socket?" Or, and handily, "Maggie, just get under the house and grab this wire when I poke it through the floor, eh?"

And a very happy birthday to my lovely wife for yesterday. And fervent thanks for the babysitting that let us go out for a nice French meal to celebrate it.

Why I don't drink cocktails much: the sheer, horrifying pretension of it all. Note the number of admonitions to chill everything (lest you should, quelle horreur, actually taste the damn stuff); note the attention to ceremony to get around the fact that you're SWIGGING NEAT FUCKING GIN.

I mean, I have little enough time for lushes, but none at all for a pretentious lush.

I love it when other cyclists casually coast up from behind me as I'm waiting at a red light, and drift to a halt just in front of me. You might think that this is a bit rude, but you'd be wrong. It's a direct challenge. "I need to get in front of you," they're saying, "because I'm going to be taking off faster than you when the lights go green and it's easier if I pass you now." They're throwing down. And that's fun. It means that when the light goes green, I can put a bit of wellie on and try to pass them. If I manage it, ha! If I don't, well, they were right that they were faster than me, so no harm done.

There's a pair of piwakawaka (fantails) who seem to have taken up residence outside my office. It makes me very happy to see them twirling and diving around outside my window.

Mostly, Secret Tweet is depressing; occasionally it has entries that are entire short stories on their own.

and now, i'm off to the pub

2009-04-17T13:34:00.001+12:00

Had the rellies down for Easter. Jim, Jo, and Evelyn came down and stayed for a few days. The weather intermittantly cooperated withour plans to run the kids around outside. Probably a larger spanner in the works was Maggie coming down with gastroenteritis on Friday night. Hilarious. Let's just say we spent a lot of time over the break cleaning toddler vomit out of bedsheets. Often at 1am. She came right after a couple of days dedicated care, and everyone else had a good time, so it all worked out OK.

As it's now the school holidays, I've taken a few days off to look after Rebecca. So far, it's been good. Tuesday we did a fair bit of art, went for a bike ride (Petone esplanade + stiff southerly = short ride), went to a ceramics painting place, had lunch out, then came home and prepped dinner, did some baking, and I read her the first five chapters of Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang. All around, a good day. During all this, Maggie was off at nursery, happily playing with her friends and painting things, because I am the sort of appalling parent who lets other people look after my children even when I could actually do so myself. Tcha! And then today, I took her out catching fish with the bait trap (we practice catch and release); she loved it.

Mind you, Tuesday night was Maggie's first night in a real bed. I was pretty concerned about the danger of a lot of running around and yelling, but she snuggled in and went to sleep like a real trouper. Excellent. Another couple of days to double-check, and then we can go and pass the cot (and the porta-cot) to my sister, who we now know is expecting a girl later this year. Nice.

rush the stage

2009-04-08T19:25:00.001+12:00

Went to the Wiggles gig on Saturday. Excellent stuff. We stayed in our seats for about ten minutes, then it was off down to the front to dance. I hung back slightly (sitting cross-legged in the aisle), but R was straight up in the mosh pit. M mainly stayed around us, but enjoyed the music as well. Full credit to the performers; it was notable that Sam was significantly younger than the others, and Jeff got a bit of stick for his age, but they all kept the pace on. I was amused that they put in a gymnastics sequence featuring Anthony and Captain Feathersword in skin-tight gymnastics kit, hanging upside down from things and showing off their impressive physiques: definitely one for the mums in the audience. And on the way out I was impressed to note that the merchandise stall included tour t-shirts for the preschoolers. On the whole, well worth the money, and if you get a chance I'd recommend them as a gig. Best atmosphere I've seen at a gig since the first time we saw Lemon Jelly. Mind you, I think most gigs could be drastically improved by throngs of preschoolers who know all the words.

Interesting/depressing credit crunch note. I just received a flyer from a debt collection agency. No, not one of those flyers where they threaten to send the boys around unless you cough up last months' payment; one of those flyers where they point out politely that with the credit crunch, people may not be paying their bills promptly and offering their services to send the boys around to anyone who hasn't paid your bill for last month. This makes me uncomfortable.

Having fun with Twitter so far. One point to note: watch out for any interesting keywords in your tweets. I dropped a one-liner about creationism, and promptly picked up a couple of fundies on my follower list. So be careful out there, kids.

Job satisfaction: I just managed to get a quote from The Orb into a technical manual. See that? That's quality, that is.

Ah, easter. We've got rellies coming to stay, so there will be much time spent doing familial stuff around the place. I'm just hoping that the weather holds for a trip to Staglands. After easter, I'm taking a few days off to look after Rebecca for the first week of the school holidays, then Heather's doing similar for the second. I have a few basic activities planned - bit of cycling, bit of fishing, trip to the movies, that sort of thing. Should be a good laugh.

i blame the dog

2009-04-01T19:14:00.001+13:00

We don't watch much broadcast TV. We kind of run on the principle that there's almost always something better you could be doing than watching telly, and anything worth watching you can catch up with on DVD. So we'd kind of meant to get around to watching Battlestar Galactica one of these days. Still, no hurry eh? Then a couple of months ago, one of Heather's coworkers loaned her a copy of the miniseries. After a night or two we got around to watching it.

Now, I'm a reasonably focussed person. I can concentrate on stuff. I can particularly concentrate on good drama. Heather is of course renowned for her non-diffuse attitude to paying attention to things. Which is why, about 2 1/2 months after watching the miniseries, we're now two episodes from the end of the 4th (final) season. With luck, and a following wind, we'll be there by about 11pm tonight. Excellent. I've managed to avoid hearing how it ends, though that was harder than it sounds. Heather and I have a couple of side bets about the resolution; this is what happens when two people with postgraduate arts degrees watch something with symbolism in. "I reckon [Character X] will turn out to be [Y]"/ "No, that won't work, because there's the obvious symbolic link between [Thing A that happened at the end of Season 2] and [Thing B that happened to Character X at the end of Season 4]". Seriously, we're putting a surprising amount of mental power into this thing. And if you haven't seen BSG yet, seriously, it's really, really good. It's the West Wing in space with death, weird mystic stuff, and hotties.

As I am a Young Trendy Person, damn you, I have acquired an account on Twitter. So if you're the sort of person who wants to be relentlessly updated with what I'm thinking and feeling at any time (Sample entry: "Scratching myself. Ahh, that's better"), I'm user jackelder. It must be a boon to stalkers. Now, one of the things that's supposedly great about Twitter is that you hear about stuff within 10 mins of it happening. Personally, I'd rather not be that connected with the world. I like the fact that, for example, I completely missed all the discussion around the end of BSG, so the ending can now come as a complete surprise to me. I'm mainly in it for two things: the ability to post throwaway lines that I wouldn't bother actually blogging (I prefer writing longer, rambling blog posts - you may have noticed), and the ability to txt in posts like "Pod of dolphins back in Evans Bay now".

Of course, now I've said that, the bloody dolphins will disappear for months.

Maggie is really into books at the moment. She likes looking at the pictures and saying the words she knows. One of her favourite books has both pictures of bunnies and ducks, two animals which she likes and two words she can say. Those of you who've ever read anything about the philosophy of perception will probably be able to guess what I showed her next.