66 posts tagged “auckland”

First time I have seen the Vox compose window for over two days. This site is so dead.
   Here was yesterday’s traceroute from Auckland:

   So I have now tried Vox this month from Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland; on Macs and PCs; on OSX, XP and Vista; using TelstraClear, Surfspot and Kordia; using Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari; and being able to compose is a rarity. I am not exaggerating when I say that Vox has been down for me for more days this month than it has been up.
   Based on feedback, three Kiwi Voxers have been able to get on this site. I still refuse to believe that this error is unique to me. As many of you know, I am on Vox regularly, and average well over a post a day, but the comment thread here gives you an idea of the number of times it has failed. I heard from one Australian Voxer who can no longer blog from Vox using Firefox and has to switch to IE8, so there is something very serious going on with the site in blocking certain individuals from using it normally.
   At least I was able to get these Mini E videos up for your enjoyment: a few days ago, Vox would not let me import images or videos.
   Hey, I’ll take what access I can get right now …

I was pretty appalled to hear that the killer of 78-year-old Jasmatbhai Patel only got three years today.
   Apparently, provocation is not much of a defence for killing someone in this country, but road rage gets you off lightly.
   Bio O’Brien, 28, with prior convictions for violent crime, was driving his BMW and had an accident with Mr Patel’s van. He dragged the elderly man out of his van and attacked him. When Mr Patel fell to the ground, he hit his head and bled profusely, dying of the injury in hospital the next day.
   I don’t care how pissed off you are that someone dented your German car. There’s such a thing as insurance. And if you are going to get annoyed, the worst that I can ever see a “normal” human being do is get loud.
   I can’t see any diminishing of mens rea if you drag someone from a vehicle, then beat him up. You know you are dragging someone from his van. You know when you are hitting someone. You have formed an intent to do that. No amount of road rage gets a reasonable human being that upset.
   I remember reading about manslaughter and murder in law school, and short of going to my Smith & Hogan to check this stuff, this act is on the extreme side of manslaughter at the least.
   Lesson: if you are going to kill someone, get into a car accident with him first. Then your defence lawyer will argue road rage and a murder rap becomes a tiny three-year manslaughter stretch.
   Or, do it in Auckland, where apparently dragging an old man out of his vehicle and beating him up is evidently such a flippant crime it carries less than half the maximum penalty for manslaughter.

Thanks to Coby at Mercedes-Benz for my transport last week: a new E350 Coupé with Distronic (the cruise control system that slows down if the traffic in front slows). Lucire review to follow. It looks much better in the metal than in the photos (where it looks fussy and rear-heavy). In fact, of all the coupés I have driven, I really began to feel “at home” with this one.

I tend to avoid reality TV shows with the exception of the first series of That’ll Teach ’Em. However, every now and then I might catch Motorway Patrol, and I have to admit I find it fascinating from a voyeuristic perspective. Who needs CHiPs? But I miss the intrigue of Cobra 11 on German TV!

In 3 News today:

Tomorrow, Labour MP Phil Twyford is putting a private member's bill before Parliament to protect Auckland’s assets like, for example, Ports of Auckland. The idea is to require a referendum before any such assets are privatised when Auckland becomes a single, super city.
   He argues the architects of the super city, politicians like ACT’s Rodney Hide, want to sell these assets off.

I guess we never learn.
   Oh, didn’t I predict this some time ago?

I remain sceptical. Some feel the amalgamation would make the city less accountable to ratepayers. Some feel that it’s an excuse to sell of Auckland’s assets to foreigners, continuing policies that have not enhanced New Zealand’s industry or society. …
   It is nearly never good news if a foreign-owned newspaper reports something as a fait accompli in its headline when the article below it offers nothing to support those words.
   Which made me wonder: what agenda does an Irish–Australian newspaper have in this whole thing?
   If you begin looking at it from that point of view, it gives a little bit more, albeit not much, suspicion to those people who have their doubts about the technocrats.

A pity, then, that chief among the technocrats philosophically is Labour’s own leader, the increasingly unpopular Phil Goff.

Although my most recent flight was Air New Zealand, when flying the Virgin affiliate out this way, Pacific Blue, you get to see some cool things. You are not sheltered with those poncy air bridges that the wimps use. It’s down the stairs and out on the tarmac—where I spotted this sign:

   If you run out of aprons at the airport, you need to activate the alarm. Very important. They take cooking really seriously there, even if airline food sucks.
   Or does it? Air New Zealand has heralded the return of the vegetarian chips! These were last served domestically on Qantas flights in 2003 and when I told that to the crew today, I was given three bags! Go Air New Zealand! (Yes, I was bribed with three bags of chips.)
   The distracting thing was that the safety announcements are now done in the nude on this airline. Before you get excited, it’s a video, the crew members are wearing body paint, and there is nothing revealing. The issue is you are getting the same sort of laugh you would with those gags in, say, the Austin Powers movies, where you wonder how they are going to cover various body parts up. It ties in to a campaign they are running: And in fact, you can see this for yourself (the blonde stewardess served us today, clothed): I warned her that if they ever heard the acronym NIFOC from the cockpit, then they might not want to go in. I said it stood for Naked In Front of the Cockpit, which isn’t exactly true—I learned the expression from a nudist I knew many years ago (the C stands for computer).
   But the point is I paid no attention to what they said, which defeats the purpose of the safety video.
   Finally, here’s a curiosity which I think should go on to Font Police: No, it’s not the use of “dumb quotes” that has me concerned, but why is it in quotes anyway? It’s like Christchurch Airport doesn’t mean it, and that they are merely quoting something someone else has said. Disappointingly, it is in Frutiger, which means instant anonymity as far as airports are concerned. Of airport signage, this is actually stranger than the apron emergency.

A shocking series of racist emails attacking job applicant Julie Eru on the North Shore, which have been traced back to a Chinese-run company called Brightstar, has been exposed on 3 News.
   It was generally agreed by Brightstar that their computers had been hacked and a police report has been filed.
   The boss of Brightstar has limited English so we can easily rule him out as being the writer of these messages, which point to a native English speaker.
   The question was raised in the report, ‘But why would a hacker attack a small business in East Tamaki?’
   I would have thought the answer very easy. The hacker is a racist.
   I said not too long ago on the blogosphere that those who make accusations of racism so readily, as the writer of these offensive emails does, are usually racists themselves.
   Their motivation is to make an immigrant, in this case, Chinese, company look bad, and to create a rift between Chinese and Māori.
   It was a failed attempt, trying to revive the sort of irrelevant muck that yesterday’s politician, Winston Peters, specialized in.
   It’s less disgusting than the attempts by racist groups some years ago of simultaneously desecrating Jewish gravestones and sending pork to Muslim families, but the ideas are similar.
   That time, we could rule out the perpetrators being Jewish or Islamic; this time, we can rule out the hacker being either Chinese or Māori.
   That time, too, it brought Jews and Muslims closer together in New Zealand; this time, I can only hope that both Chinese and Māori, who have both experienced racism, either as immigrants or in our own homeland, can come closer together, too.

If you can’t get Japanese food during your stay in Auckland, the airport (the domestic terminal) is your next best bet. Hayama does a good wakame udon for under NZ$10.

This gizmo got me. The lights flash and it vibrates when your order is ready. I’m sure others have seen this before, but it was novel to hick little me.

While Wellington was basking in sunshine earlier this week, here’s how Auckland looked: