Posts by jeremy gray
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While we are on the subject of Chris Knox covers, how come the "Not Given Lightly: A Tribute To The Giant Golden Book Of New Zealands Alternative Music Scene" album didn't get more hype here? It is an album released by Morr music, who are releasing the new the clean album internationally, first disc all covers of old nz stuff by morr artists, second disc new morr stuff.
I tried to buy a copy from real groovy for an mp3 impaired friend and they said "Oh, that sounds like something we would sell, but we have never heard of it".
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If we are still posting links, here is the new promo for the NZ book council:
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It is hard to tell the LTSA ad from the McDonalds ad where they are eating in the car in a park until the police turn up. Maccas must be pissed they are gonna lose a good deal of their middle of the night customers.
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Well, all those novels would be in Borges' library of babel
There is a pretty good treatment of the maths in this book
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And Keith Lockes bill to give us a referendum on whether to become a republic has been drawn from the members ballot.
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I have a diginet dvb t901 I got from 1-day for ~$140. It uses the same firmware as the JCMatthew system from above and can record to USB (I use a flash drive).
The PVR is not EPG based, works like and oldstyle VCR. It only has one tuner so you can't watch and record. It saves the files as .TRP files which appear to be in the same resolution as broadcast, and can be transferred to a PC and converted/played with SUPER and MPlayer classic. From what I gather this is because it is set up for Hong Kong which uses the same standards as us, without the need for copy protection needed for official freeview.
It is a bit buggy - the aspect ratio doesn't like to stay where it is set and it will crash and need reset every couple of days, but for the price it is a winner.
On the PVRs- isn't the price for most of them a bit ridiculous? I could buy a PC with wireless and a DVB card for about $800 and have a networked media centre that can play TV,stuff off other PCs as well as games/internet etc.
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When it gets so much media play as being riots, it is sure to become self fulfilling. The students show up, intending to cause trouble and at least some of the police turn up, intending to smash some students heads.
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The Greens really are infuriating when they pull stuff like the folate debacle. In general they have good ideas, but every so often something snaps and the wingnuts get in charge.
The lack of any decent science or empirical basis for policy seems endemic to most political parties, in most countries. I know I would vote for someone who promised to put evidence and results above ideology.
I guess the problem is most people don't really like the way the world works.
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In the interests of empiricism, I wrote the NZ MMP system in mathematica and had a play around.
With no cut off, Bill and Ben would have had one seat in 2008, as would the Kiwi party.
The Destiny party would have had one seat in 2005.
We would have had 2 christian heritage, 2 alliance, 2 outdoor recreation and one legalise cannabis representative in 2002!
I am beginning to see the benefits of a cutoff....
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My understanding of the system is that it shouldn't bias towards the big parties - you still get a party vote and they still get the same number of seats as under the current system.
It is just who gets chosen that would change - eg the orange candidate may have come 3rd or fourth in the electoral vote, but may have had the highest percentage electoral vote in their party, and thus will be first in on the orange list.