Category: Misc

I am getting really sick of going to kiwiblog and having it not load cause the scoop ad network it is using is not loading. In fact the content of the page doesn’t load at all when scoop (or the bit’s kiwiblog uses) is down.

Please David, give up on these guys and switch to somebody else.

Move over Star Trek..

Why I love The Economist :

China could stop making aggressive gestures towards Taiwan and buy Malaysia instead. It’s already run by Chinese, so they’d hardly notice the difference. And Barack Obama, committed to uniting America, could defuse the nation’s culture wars by purchasing an alternative homeland for those of his countrymen who want more use of the death penalty, less gun control and no gay marriage. A slice of Saudia Arabia’s empty quarter would do nicely: there’s plenty of space and the new occupants would have lots in common with the locals

From O give me a home… in the Nov 13th 2008 edition.

and the Book Meme thats going around Planet Linux Australia.

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST

and mine is:

Black has a backward d-pawn and a weak square on d5, though it is difficult for White to exploit either – the d-pawn is well guarded, while occupation of d5 often simply results in exchanges.

From Understanding the Chess Openings by Sam Collins.

Which is I guess what you get when you insist on the nearest book.

Came back a little while again from voting in the New Zealand 2008 general election.

After a bit of excitement earlier in the week with the US election today it’s New Zealand’s turn. Unlike the US where the vote takes place on a week day and most people have to fit voting in between work in NZ we have it on a Saturday in early spring ( and it is nice an sunny outside right now).

In NZ it’s also pretty easy to vote early or at any voting booth either in your electorate or outside it, so you can just pick whichever is the closest on the day ( although I have 2 places within 5 minutes walk of my house so I’ll probably go to one of them).

More about the NZ electoral system on wikipedia and elections.org.nz .

This year things are fairly interesting as it looks like there is a good chance there will be a change in government with the Centre-Left Labour Party being replaced by the Centre-Right National Party.

The government is actually ( and the new government will also probably be ) a coalition with one big party and smaller parties either formally part of the government or mostly supporting it.

In Labour’s case one of their big problems is that the New Zealand First party ( which is one of their partners) has gone beyond their previous populist position of bashing immigrants and otherwise pandering to their over 65 base to some very dubious practices including lying about donations, hiding them and then trying to give donors diplomatic posts or their industry government money. Which all might be legitimate in some countries like the US but in NZ is usually viewed as corruption.

Labour’s problem is that since it’s needs New Zealand First’s vote it has turned a blind eye to much of this and said it’s a matter for the courts etc. It’s also said it’ll probably keep the NZF leader Winston Peters in cabinet if it gets re-elected ( NZF is really the Winston Peter’s party since he founded and completely dominates it) . Labour is also perceived as a bit tired and running out of policies ( third-term-itis ) .

The opposition National Party while not looking stunning ( the leader John Key is a little bland and politically in-experienced) is at least looking a bit fresher ( I’m trying to ignore Maurice Williamson etc ) and while it probably won’t win enough votes to govern by itself it will certainly be the largest party and the big question is will it have a majority with it’s “Natural” coalition partners or will it have to reach out to more distant parties ( or failing that Labour might even be able to cobble together a wide ranging coalition) .

Personally I’ve been considering voting for National this year since I’m a generally right-wing on economic issues and liberal on social issues. The main things I dislike about National are:

• Some knee-jerk recent policies to give welfare payments to mortgage holders who lose their jobs, I’m sorry but that is what employment insurance is for and discriminates against people like myself who rent.
• Some ideas to change the electoral system ( not very defined beyond the don’t like the current one ) . I don’t like this because they will probably do their best to favour larger parties and also I dislike the fact that where somebody lives determines the worth of their vote. I live now and have lived previously in safe electorates where my local MP has zero chance of not being elected so my local vote doesn’t matter. On the other hand if I lived across the street ( really! ) I would be in an electorate which is competitive and my vote would matter quite a lot.
• I generally dislike “tough on crime” policies of building more jails, longer sentences, reduced parole etc since I don’t believe they fix the problem. The things that will reduce the crime rates involve helping poor families and parents of kids that are likely to grow up to be criminals. These programmes are a lot cheaper per person ( verses $50,000 plus per year of housing a prisoner) and more effective in the long term but don’t have the headline grabbing that longer sentences does.

I also favour lower government spending in general ( except for my pet stuff like fibre networks and public transport  ) which I’m not sure National is committed to.

So I think this year I’ll be voting for Act again. I’ll admit they do push some of the anti-crime stuff I dislike but as a rule they are more liberal than National on social issues while I really like their policy of freezing government spending to the same level ( adjusted for inflation and population growth ). If National gets in then Act will be a coalition partner and I want to to have more influence over the government’s policies that it will have with more MPs.

Results from the election will be on the official website from 7pm tonight and also in the media ( eg the Herald ) . Personally I’ve got a little “Election Party” to go to at a friend’s place.

Some links from the world on online newspapers.

The Christian Science Monitor today announced that it was going to stop publishing a daily print edition, switch to a weekly print edition and expand it’s online edition. I’ve been following a bunch of the the Monitor’s RSS feeds for a few years now and I find it’s independent voice ( it doesn’t tend to use wire feeds) interesting. See also the New York Times story on the news.

Journerdism has “10 ridiculously cheap, relatively easy, small steps you can take to change an old school newsroom culture to be more forward thinking and web friendly” . I’ve added Number ten to my todo list.

and Xark has 10 reasons why newspapers won’t reinvent news .

Nothing much close to home although I did see Keith Locke campaining on Saturday and took a couple of photos of him for Wikipedia. I mentioned that it’s a shame that the new Green’s Website has a default ( meaing “all rights reserved” ) copyright on it unlike the old one which allowed photos of MPs and other stuff to be used. I mailed their webmaster a few weeks ago but nothign back, maybe I’ll try again in a few weeks when things calm down after the election.

I thought I’d post a little about some music for a change. I’m not really
a big music person, I’ve only been to a handful of live concerts in my life
and I find it very hard to concentrate with noise around so I don’t usually
have music playing in the background or wear a portable media player when I’m
about.

However I find that I can listen to fairly “non complicated” music when I’m on
the computer at work without getting too distracted. The main music I listen
to is a [Ambient Nights](http://www.ambient-nights.org/) compilations
by “Alex Hephaestion” ( real name unknown ). Each of the fifty or so compilations ( The full
list is on [this page](http://www.ambient-nights.org/music.php) ) is a CD worth
of about half a dozen tracks blended one after the other.

They are all free to download as high quality mp3s from the site and even come
with Cover Art etc. My favourites are [Life as it is](http://www.ambient-nights.org/an13.php) and [Ambient Nights CD5](http://www.ambient-nights.org/an05.php) but
I tend to keep a bunch on a USB key and just play them one after the other over my headphones at work ( to try on drown
out CNN which people like to leave running on a TV in the middle of
the office ). I really recommend giving them a go.

Another song I like is [Halcyon + on + on](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halcyon_%28Orbital_song%29) by
Orbital. I’ve heard it called “The Soundtrack of the Sunrise” . Here is a youtube
video of the music with the “Star Gate” sequence from the movie [2001: A Space Odyssey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_%28film%29) as
the background. It works pretty well.