Posts by Rob Hosking
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Crikey - how do they do the Hilter sketches in German?
I once saw the 'Don't Mention the War' episode of Fawlty Towers at a Picton Backpackers full of Germans.
They took it very well, considering. More bemused than amused though.
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we could be watching the erstwhile Foreign Minister and leader of a coalition partner get hauled away in handcuffs, possibly with his heir-to-the-throne deciding that they don't want to support Labour any longer.
Ohh...please god...
just as a matter of interest, when was the last time any government in this country lost the Confidence of the House?
From a brief look, November 1927, but that was after an election went badly. (the custom in those days was to wait until Parliament reassembled before the government was formally voted out).
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Counties-Manukau Steelers isn't too flash either.
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hear hear on the day/night games issue.
The other thing was if you are still too damn Scottish to fork out for Sky [guilty] the delayed telecast was on at a reasonable time.
But even if we had Sky, I'd probably be too damn stuffed by the time it came on.
Do they still do radio broadcasts of rugby games? Because I'm old enough to remember when they were neat.
I remember the Lions '77 Tour: I was 12, we'd put the radio on in the shed for the provincial games. Clear memories of drenching the bull calves while listening to the Counties/Thames Valley game.
Shit that dates me.
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Since this seems to be taking a 'I Was A Nerd At Uni' turn I'll add my bit...
When I first enrolled I went along to a meeting of a group called the Monty Python Appreciation Society.
Once.
It was full of people who only communicated in comedy catchphrases. Enjoy the works of various British comedies as I did, I didn't want to talk that way the whole time.
Also it was mostly guys: the only women there were already attached, if - it seemed - a little bit desperate.
I joined the Tramping Club. Still a high proportion of people who yelled 'Albatross!!' as if this were the wittiest thing ever, but at least not all the time.
It also had a couple of other advantages. You got out and about more, it got you fit.
Most importantly, you got to walk up hills behind women wearing shorts.
As far as incentives to develop some proper social skills went, it took some beating.
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Its a fair cop guv'nor,
But Society is to Blame.
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"dinner is Pre-paired!" was for a long time a saying in one of my flats. I think its also Rocky Horror, not sure.
Going further back....I didn't know whether to be proud or ashamed of this sort of thing when, about two months ago, I got an email from an old friend in Christchurch who had met a fellow scientist who had used the terms 'electrickery', 'Shine Tiny Sun!' and 'Telling Bone.'
She'd picked up it was from some TV or pop culture thing and thought I would know.
I found some Catweazle excerpts on Youtube and posted them off.
And now I look at this clip, I remember 'Hoot Not!' was a bit of a catchphrase in the Uni Tramping Club.
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If you really get a kick out of this you a probably wearing glasses. I know I am ;-)
Yes to both. It sounds like a kind of Red Dwarf for data.
Which brings me to my internet stories:
Firstly, I'm going to voluntarily disqualify myself from any prize thingy.
That's because the first gander at the internet I took was on a machine on Keith Newman's desk, and it would just look too cosy.
I'd just joined IDG as a journalist, mostly to write for Computerworld. It was about Aug-Sept 1994. I knew nothing about the internet and very little about computers. I'd been a journalist for five years and then gone to Uni before deciding journalism was much more fun than Law School.
Don Hill, the editor, explained to me they could teach me about IT: what they wanted was someone with a background in writing about business.
One of the first stories I did was about an Internal Affairs crackdown on some Usenet discussion groups. Deputy Editor Anthony Doesburg is telling me this and I'm nodding as if I understand what he's saying and in the end I have to ask, 'what's usenet'?
Keith, in a cubicle diagonally across from mine, says 'come and have a look at this': he'd got a list of all the groups available at ICONZ up on his screen. He told me there would be a group for pretty much anything I could be interested in - unless, since the Internal Affairs crackdown, I was interested in groups with titles like alt.sex.molly.sugden or some such. So, what was I interested in?
Which is why the first thing I looked at on the internet was a discussion group about Red Dwarf, a comedy I'd just discovered.
Keith then started talking about the internet, waving his arms around with great enthusiasm. He used words like ‘packets’ and ‘mozilla’ and ‘world wide web’. I nodded wisely, thinking, inside, what I always thought whenever anyone got all technical on me, my own little mantra.‘It’s still more comprehensible than Land Law. It’s still more comprehensible than Land Law…’
I always enjoyed having Keith in a nearby cubicle...well, most of the time. He was a deadly shot with these small balls he'd hurl around the office, mostly out of general exuberance, although occasionally when he had a point to make. Like the time I wrote something rude about Seals and Croft in the company newsletter.
The thing is – and this is why I’ll put a plug in for the book without even seeing it: Keith could talk for a long time about the techie side, but equally long and enthusiastically about the broader implications of the technology for society.
I remember saying to one of the others how much I missed that when Keith left.
The other thing I’ll take the opportunity to say is Keith was one of a mob of journos who were really helpful: apart from those already mentioned, there was Andrea Malcolm and Doug Casement, both of whom put up with my naive questions.
To continue the comedy on the internet theme: a couple of years later, working in IDG's Wellington office, I found a copy of a Goon Show sound effect known as 'Fred the Oyster'. The sound has nothing to do with oysters: its actually a donkey farting and hee-hawing at the same time, played at varied speeds; and ending by a character – Major Bloodnok, for fellow aficionados - saying 'Ohhh, that's better.' http://bloodnok.net/wav/oyster.wavIt is the most gloriously vulgar thing you've ever heard. I had it on my work PC: it played every time Windows 95 shut down.
Decided a mate of mine, who was help desk manager at Auckland University, would appreciate it, so I emailed it to him.
Didn't realise how large a file it was. Somehow gummed up their entire internet connection (this is 1996, remember) and I got a puzzled/irate call from my mate saying WtF are you doing?
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recall KFC's arrival as the first global fast food chain. Colonel Sanders even visited. It was the hot and happening thing to get your parents to buy, but I think I only ever ate it a handful of times. It just wasn't very nice.
The first one was at the roundabout at Royal Oak, about 1971 I think. I remember going to visit friends of the family nearby - it must have been our annual trip to the Big Smoke - and driving past in the old Ford Consul the weekend it opened. There was a queue out the door and round the corner, standing there in the muggy Auckland drizzle. We didn't stop (not that we would have anyway: my folks didn't do the fast food thing)
The last KFC I recall eating was a chickenburger in Taupo 20+ years ago. It was really, really horrible.
In partial defence of KFC - everything in Taupo tasted horrible 20 years ago. It was like they had a bylaw or something. Yet it was always the stop off point on long trips - not just for cars but long distance buses.
The worst fried chips I ever had were in Taupo. We threw them to the seagulls. They spat them out. Crapped on my car in revenge. (seriously, except maybe the revenge part)
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I'll throw in an anecdote here: some years back ran into a lawyer I know who'd just been to a meeting with various justice & law reform committee members. It may have been on the Supreme Court Bill, but I'm not sure after all this time.
This lawyer is, incidentally, an activist Nat, very much on the liberal right of the party.
Said Nandor was the brightest one there, and one of the most sensible too. This guy kept saying to me 'I never thought I'd be saying this, but....'
And in case anyone hasn't picked this already, the day I vote Green will be the day Satan is iceskating to work.