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Infrequent irresponsible ranting

2nd November, 2009. 3:02 pm.

I’d like to talk to someone who remembers going to high school with Brian Tamaki. I want to know if he was bullied.

These rules that he demands his followers obey, the ones that made the paper last week (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10605956&pnum=0). Examples include:
- Never disagree with him or "get in his face," and make sure nobody else does.
- Only ever talk about him positively. Never criticise.
- Don’t interrupt him. Listen when he talks. Give audible signs of agreement.
- Remember his birthday. Make sure you give him a nice present.
- Dress like he does.
- When you’re talking to a group, acknowledge him first.
- And so on for 1300 words.

Something occurred to me. You could sum up the whole thing in two lines:
- Don’t be mean to me.
- Treat me like one of the popular kids.

I reckon this "covenant" is nothing more than his wishlist from when he was thirteen.

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8th June, 2009. 1:58 pm.

I like to collect questions that imply the wrong answer. Many of them are quite well known, for example:
What animal are the Canary Islands named after?
How long did the Hundred Years War last?
How long is Ninety Mile Beach?

Here's one that may not be new, but was new to me: Which is heavier, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?

( Answer: )

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26th December, 2007. 11:28 am. Undergraduate metaphysics meets Bloc Party

One of the things that distinguishes a human intelligence from a computer is that we can have degrees of belief.  A computer is binary, it either believes something or it doesn't.  But humans can believe something just a little bit, we can have opinions of the form "Right now I'm tending towards thinking x" or "I'm pretty sure that y".  And we can attach all these little mental footnotes reminding us why we believe that, so we can update the strength of belief if the reasons change.

Of course just because we can do this, doesn't mean we necessarily do.

Which is why I get embarrassed when I find out I have believed something for no good reason whatsoever.  Case in point:  I had always thought Bloc Party was a club techno dance band, for no reason other than (and it pains me to say this) the name.  But I was hanging out at 5Doc/2's house on Christmas Eve and he played me Hunting For Witches.  Gawd-damn!  It didn't distinguish itself at first, but at 0:37 when the four-bar guitar line kicks in...  No song has hooked me like that since The Coral's Dreaming of You. 

Needless to say I did not leave the house without a copy of the rest of A Weekend in The City. 

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7th September, 2007. 6:27 am. And when they came for me, there was no-one to cry out.

Today is the last day for public submissions on the Electoral Finance Bill.

This is the Bill that creates a licensing regime for political speech.

This is the Bill that says if what you say is about any issue that a politician or party has become associated with, it's not just you having your say as a citizen.  It's an election advertisement.

This is the Bill that says that no person or organisation can spend more than $60,000 total on making its views known in an election year.  Since elections are usually held in November, that means eleven months out of every three years. 

This is the Bill that says if you want to spend more than $5,000 during an election year you have to register as a "third party".  You cannot so register once the election writ has been issued.  That means if a politician unexpectedly attacks you during the election campaign, you effectively cannot respond. 

This is the Bill that says even if you don't intend to spend more than $5,000, you still have to register and provide a statutory declaration if you want to say anything at all.

This is the Bill that says if your organisation wants to spend more than $100 a week on political issues, it has to register with the Government and declare all non-trivial sources of income.

This is the Bill that does not prevent massive anonymous donations to political parties - which was ostensibly the whole point.


If you care about any of the above, today is your last chance to make your views known.  You can make an online submission to the Select Committee here.  This is the big one, the one that matters.  It's no exaggeration to say if you don't stand up this time, you may not be able to next time.  The purpose of electoral finance law is not to ensure that no-one can contradict the Government.  Tell them so.

If you want to read an analysis written by actual legal experts, a partner and a solicitor from Bell Gully wrote one for New Zealand Lawyer.  You can read it here.  (.pdf format).  It's only a page and a half.

( If you want to read my own submission to the Committee, it's behind the cut. )

UPDATE - Prompted by something [info]theunshaven said, may I remind submission-writers of these words of wisdom from Mitchell Royce, two-fisted editor: "Printable words, Spider. I still remember that essay you wrote when the Beast got elected. I do not want to see the word "Fuck" typed eight thousand times again."

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30th August, 2007. 1:57 am. Awwwww... it's good!

Hmm, that was a new experience.  Just saw an episode of a New Zealand comedy TV show... starring a large number of ex-Shortland Streeters... and I can only assume that someone at New Zealand On Air neglected to crank the "suck" knob to 11.  It was called Serial Killers.

I had never heard of this show before tonight.  [info]poing_critter was just randomly channel surfing, and neither of us expected to spend more than a few minutes on this show before moving on.  But there we were, right through to the end credits.  We kept looking quizzically at each other, almost as if to say, "Is it just me or are you enjoying this too?"

What's the word here?  Did we just happen to catch a good episode, or does there indeed exist a watchable New Zealand sitcom?

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22nd August, 2007. 5:35 am. Help!  Video playback problems!

Help!  I have run out of options here, I'm hoping one of you has some idea what could be causing this.

I suddenly started getting video playback problems on my PC.  The video file starts playing, the audio is there, but the video screen is blank.  I'm not getting an error message, and the player is sizing itself to fit the size the video should be.

This happens to all sorts of video files (.avi, .wmv, .mpg) and in each of the three players I've tried (Windows media player 9, Media Player Classic, and VLC).  The video files have worked in the past (today!) with this video card and this monitor.

Oddly enough, Quicktime works fine, as do embedded YouTube videos.  Everything else is working fine, including some fairly graphic-intensive games. 

The only potentially relevant thing I did between the time video worked and the time it didn't was install an image viewing program called ACD See.  I have no idea if this is related, but I have since uninstalled it anyway.

Here's what I've already tried by way of troubleshooting:
Adjusting the screen resolution, colour quality and refresh rate
Running dxdiag (directX and directdraw test fine)
Reinstalling the latest nVidia drivers
Reinstalling the various divx codecs
Reinstalling VLC
Installing the latest version of DirectX 9.0c
Rebooting.

The most recent thing I tried doing, pretty much in desperation, is disabling DirectDraw acceleration in dxdiag, and that worked.  As long as directdraw acceleration is disabled, video files play OK.  But I never had to do that before, and it's a workaround rather than a solution.  There are a lot of things on here that I need directdraw acceleration for!

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this problem and how I could fix it?

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9th August, 2007. 8:16 pm. Ten and counting.

One exam down and passed!  I am now MCP closer to my goal of having more letters after my name than I have in it.  (And I don't just mean "Alasatyr".  I mean my proper name, first and last.) 

Having spent four years at Auckland Grammar School (motto: Per Examina Ad Augusta) and then far too many years at university, I have taken more exams than I care to count.  So it means something when I tell you that Prometric are the Best. Exams. Ever.  The reason:  you get your results in three seconds!  Seriously!  You hit the button marked "finish test," it checks to make sure you really mean it, the screen goes blank, and then it comes up, "The pass mark was 700.  You got 905.  Congratulations, you passed!" 

I don't think I could have survived waiting two weeks for the result of that exam.  There was a fair amount of... well, let's be generous and call it Educated Guesswork, shall we?  (Who says exams aren't like the real world?)

Anyway, next stop:  CCNA!


In other news, the webcomic "Basic Instructions" is most excellent.  Go read it.

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1st June, 2007. 5:29 pm. IM IN UR INTERNETS, POPPIN UR CULTURE

Here's a somewhat high-level geek litmus test. Is this funny?

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
VISIBLE "HAI WORLD!"
KTHXBYE

If you just sniggered, then go to http://lolcode.com immediately.

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26th April, 2007. 11:04 am.

I had the best out-of-context religious quote *ever* used on me yesterday.

So I had been working out with [info]starfirenz, doing a bit of boxing with bag and focus pads.  We were at the cool-down stretches part of the session.  She started doing a shoulder stretch that, from the point of view of a heterosexual male, did some rather interesting things to the overall shape of her torso.  So I very pointedly looked away and said something along the lines of "This is me being all gentlemanly and not checking you out, see!"  (Because what's the point in being a gentleman unless the lady notices, right guys?)

At which point she smiled sweetly, said "Manish tanah, ha laila hazeh?" and went right on stretching.

I had forgotten this line from the Passover dinner a few weeks ago.  She had to explain that it means, "Why is this night different from other nights?" 

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18th April, 2007. 6:39 pm. Anxiety problems, Susan?

Coming to you from the same deranged mutant who brought us the "Meow" comic, here is some new linky goodness:
Phone counselling with a being from another reality!

I can foresee a time when this comforting philosophy will be of great assistance to me when dealing with stress and anxiety.  Other people's stress and anxiety, that is.

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