Posts by Joe Wylie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
I think we have reached car threadjack nirvana.
Yeah sorry.
BTW none of the aforementioned Triumphs, regardless of engine size, could pull the skin off a rice pudding.
-
What I found interesting was the reactions of the other guests - it was pretty much a 50:50 split between those who thought the German guest had spoken completely out of turn, and those who thought she had done a good thing. It was not divided down male:female lines either - but there was a real black/white take on the event - no one was undecided about it.
I've experienced something rather similar at a social gathering, where the recent young(ish) Thai bride of a gentleman of a certain age loudly collared anyone who was prepared to listen - and some who weren't - to complain about hubby's impaired horizontal folk-dancing skills. Seems that the stomach he'd developed from all those advertising industry lunches "got in the way".
So much we can learn from the values of other cultures eh?
-
. . . a very good friend had a Triumph Vitesse . . .
A Triumph Herald with a Vanguard 6 motor shoehorned in, and weird diagonally-mounted twin headlights. Quick, but fatally undermined by the dodgy Herald swing-axle rear suspension. Hark, the Herald axles swing.
-
Quote:
Unrelated, but Danyl has discovered that Lhaws' mystery woman has her own blog.
Not only unrelated, but frankly, who cares?
Well I confess that I did follow the link, but . . . once there, it took all of 30 seconds to evoke an image of shining a light in someone's ear and making those bunny-rabbit shadow pictures with your hand on the wall out the other side.
Pfaaah.
-
The masthead will still be there, in some form.
But it may not mean much.
The ABC is still more or less intact as a public service broadcaster, despite John Howard's best efforts. From the moment he was elected in '96 the attacks began. Boards were stacked, and token hard-right commentators inserted into existing shows to provide 'balance'. Interestingly enough they only tried that on radio, possibly because the untelegenic nature of some of the tedious old drunks (literally) that were mustered for radio would have seriously spooked the viewing audience.Anyway it didn't work, largely because Australia has sufficient critical mass, and the multiple levels of government, to resist the crash-through approach. Sadly NZ doesn't. We got the Douglas "reforms" in the 80s, they got Hawke's social contract with the unions. The agenda has always been to pull up the ladders once the bastards have achieved their ends. Sadly, horribly, it could happen here.
-
. . .I do care about 1) the loss of public service broadcasting culture which RNZ has and which has disappeared from TVNZ and 2) the ghettoising of TVNZ's public service media. I also don't like moves that prepare TVNZ for sale, or more of the restructuring mentality that's tossed TVNZ around from one thing to the next over the past 20 years or so.
Hopefully you're doing your bit by encouraging your students to engage with these issues. Even more hopefully you department is now providing something more than than the godawful level of feedback on assignments than was the case back in that dismal year when COMS introduced Turnitin at Canterbury, and all undergraduate work was automatically run through the mill, whether or not plagiarism was suspected. As a means of semi-automating the marking process it probably suited the department fine. In terms of serving the needs of students it was a disaster. TVNZ isn't the only organisation to have experienced major quality issues.
-
using this old laptop is like living in a cave </sob>
A bit like Cthulhu's calculator, what?
My deepest sympathies.
-
Wow, thanks for that AAMC.
Wow indeed.
By way of a little history, I like this one. -
My God, I'd completely forgotten about that place, and my very first portable computer, the Casio PB100, which I had to save up for 2 months worth of paper deliveries (the Herald! Imagine!) to buy at $100. I wrote lots of lovely programs in BASIC, saved to tapes, then tragically it was stolen while I was playing Gauntlet after school one day. :-(.
As it happens, that's where I bought my first "real" computer, back in 1983. An Epson HX-20, with a 4-line LCD display, optional minicassette backup and a built-in adding machine type printer. Set me back over $1800.
Used it to work out animation camera moves. Gave it to a kid two years later when I bought an IBM XT. Paid for itself too, there was money to be made in that racket back then. Will burn in hell for the carbon footprint I'm sure.
-
You could have bought one of those locked-down Texas Instruments graphic calculators. Purchasing one of those really brings out the ire of most geeks, it seems.
I remember someone trying to buy a biorhythm calculator back in the olden days. Figuring that The Calculator Centre in Lorne Street would have every kind of calculator he tried there, only to be told that they didn't stock such a thing. When he asked why the guy got seriously sniffy and said "I don't think people should be allowed to have them."