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  • New Toy

    New Toy

    My place of work has been so goodly kind to shout me a shiny new Okta Touch.

    First thoughts: It’s sexy. Real sexy. Sexy as really cold beer on a hot day. This is my first real PDA, and all my ‘I just want a PHONE, man’ thoughts melted effortlessly away in no time.

    It’s got a touch screen, and despite not having an ‘I’ in front of its name, its really well put together. The OS is more complicated than my old Nokia, but it’s not bad. I can do everything with my thumb, pretty much, I was worried I’d have to use the stylus the whole time, which is less than ideal for tapping out a quick SMS. It’s got touch-screen Qwerty keyboard, it’ll be interesting to see if I can get any actual writing done with it.

    Here’s the Stuff and Geekzone reviews. I’ll post more thoughts as we go.

    It IS missing a bottle opener, though.

    140208 UPDATE: Hmmm yes, I still like. The TouchFlo (many, many manhours would have gone into that name, team) bit where you phone, text and email contacts in a few strokes is magic. Flipping this nicely animated menu around with your thumb makes you feel like Buck Rogers ordering a pizza. A pizza from the future.

  • Link: Five cues that Robert Plant is ready to have sexual intercourse with you

    From Merlin Mann’s 5ives:
    1. gently enquires as to where you like to put the turkey baster
    2. repeatedly offers to demonstrate “how Blighty squeezes the lemonade”
    3. stands in your front yard, pants-less and swinging a garden hose in lazy figure-eights
    4. makes rapid “milking a cow” gesture while screaming something incoherent about Robert Johnson
    5. drops his semi-erect penis onto your dessert plate

  • Cross post: Fisking the Herald on the Northern Busway

    You can read the original over on the Aucklandista

    For Aucklanders, traffic is big, right up there with property prices and ‘How’s my hair?’. THAT big. So when I moved to the Shore (love makes you do crazy things, team), getting to work weighed heavily on my mind. I mean, Shore traffic is crap, right? The Northern Motorway is one big car park, right? Turns out I was wrong, the Shore is a haven of public transport – but not according to the Herald. Jump to find out why Granny Herald is talking out its delivery bay.

    (more…)

  • Lookalike – is it just me?

    Has anyone else drawn comparison between alleged murderer / vigilante Bruce Emery  and the Michael Douglas character from Falling Down?

    In other, related questions – am I a terrible person?

  • Narrowneck beach, anniversary weekend

    PICT0297

  • Link: You suck at Photoshop

    A nerd’s life comes apart in front of your eyes, while explaining best clone stamp practice. I love that he’s turned a boring old Photoshop tutorial into a mini tragedy. Genius.

    Episode one / Episode two / Episode three

  • Facebook infestation hits New Zealand beaches

    Facebook has taken over from Sharks as the slow news summer shock horror story. The Sunday Star Times reprinted curmudgeonly Tom Hodkinson’s rant from the Guardian, changing its’ title from ‘With friends like these…’ to the much more measured “Why Facebook is EVIL!”.

    Reading the SST front page story I learned Sophie Elliot’s boomer era father doesn’t understand the internet as well as his late daughter, and felt sad a reporter rang a still grieving family for quotes to support their angle. Reading Tom Hodkinson’s rant, I learned that shadowy far right libertarians are mining the worlds’ friendships for profit, and felt a sneaking admiration.

    Facebook can be annoying with its vampire games and people you hardly know sending you *HUGS!*, but evil? Really? Peter Griffin beats down Hodkinson’s rant here, but I’m more concerned that both Fairfax Sundays featured front page stories from social networking sites this week – that just seems lazy to me. Along with Bebo, Facebook’s an easy (and unimaginative) source for reporters to find victim’s background, without even leaving the office (or browser) – just the thing for slow news summer.

  • Climb every mountain

    One of our greatest died today. I’ve only got one Sir Ed story (it’s not even my story, technically, but anyhoo).

    A good friend used to look after Sir Ed’s feet at his Meadowbank podiatry practice. He was making small talk and remarked that it was pretty cold that morning. We’re talking Auckland in maybe June or July.

    Sir Ed looked at my friend and said in that deep, deep voice: “This isn’t cold, son.”

    I met Colin Meads one time in a pub toilet (not circumstances I’d have wished for, really, but I’ll take it) and I imagine Sir Ed had a similar presence. Meads was huge, with impressively out of control eyebrows, and screamed of the no-bullshit, ‘get the job done and get the jug on and have a yarn about it by the fire in our woolly socks’ rugged-ness that makes us guys working in offices all day pausing only for sushi feel very un-manly indeed.

    Guys like Hillary and Meads made this country what it is today (I’m thumping my desk here), and it makes you wonder where today’s equivalent is. And no, blogging doesn’t count.

  • Bressa Creeting Cake appreciation day

    Bressa Creeting Cake recorded my fav NZ album ever – here’s my entry to Public Address System’s Soundtrack competition. It’s a fuck of an album.Bressa Creeting Cake for the most part went on to become vineyard and
    orchstra salwarts Goldenhorse, after releasing my favorite NZ album, the eponymous Bressa Creeting Cake. Dodgy name (and cover) aside, BCC is choka with fine tunes, great playing and cheerful bizarreness. Track four ‘Superstation’ is an ode to buying petrol station pies, while ‘A Chip That Sells Millions’ tells the tale of a boy taking his food scientist Dad’s new chip flavor sachets to school to ‘blow his friends out with flavors they don’t know about’.It’s a rilly summery album, complete with cicadas running throughout ‘Zenax’, and the perfect pop opening of track one ‘Palm Singing’. The band took over a studio in Devonport to record it – having recently moved to the Shore I love that this ace album was recorded here (hey, Frank Sargeson lived on the shore too, hey? And Warwick Roger). Rocky Mountain is a fantastic laid back pop song, and was chosen for Flying Nun’s 25th Anniversary Box.

    This is one of my most-listened to albums ever, and I’m still discovering little noises and lyrical phases. I love that this is BCC’s only recorded output, giving it the same ‘we made one perfect album and that’s it-ness’ of say, The Stone Roses (IF you don’t count Second Coming, which I don’t). I love its’ intelligence, sly humor, unabashed pop – I only wish I’d got to seen them live, and enjoy catching little BCC moments in Goldenhorse songs.

    Further BCC resources here.

  • New Cloverfield trailer

    Empire has the latest trailer for Cloverfield, the mysterious monster mashup movie that ‘s got interweb nerds ordering an extra case of Mountain Dew and towelettes for extra long nights’ online debate. It’s bought to you by Lost’s JJ Abrahams, and has loads of hand held camera stuff, plus shit blowing up – The Blair Godzilla Project, if you will.
    Fill yer big monster fighting boots here
    Bonus link: Is this the monster?