personal

It appears the only one who’s lost contact with reality is the NZ finance minister…

On one hand:

In particular, households are being squeezed by higher fuel prices since the budget, he said. Gasoline prices have surged 14 percent the past three months

and then on the other:

…workers needed to be aware of the outlook for the economy when they made wage claims… …Wage expectations in the public sector haven’t caught up with the changing economic environment. Some have lost a bit of contact with reality.

The word that jumps to mind starts with T and ends with WIT.

Well… not so sudden.. but yesterday I realised that this year will be the 30th anniversary of the first time I sat down in front of a blinking white cursor.

Said cursor was a small rectangular block, about 4 millimetres by 5 millimetres, and the machine was the Radio Shack TRS-80 — bought by my father for what is, now, quite a lot of money for a computer, comparatively speaking. That was also the year I started to learn programming (BASIC) — using a book which was the inspiration for my own programming book for kids. I was 8 years old at the time (in case you were wondering).

Thirty years is quite a long time to be using computers — although that’s elapsed time, rather than actual. There was a good period in my late teens when motorbikes were far cooler than computers…

Response from someone who grew up in the somewhat tectonically active east coast of NZ (i.e. me):

…

Meh

…

A somewhat surreal conversation with my daughter last night:

“Papa, what’s yod?”

“What’s WHAT??”

“Yod!”

“I don’t know.”

Kid wanders off, and comes back 2 minutes later.

“What’s yod?”

“I don’t know. What do you mean by yod? I don’t know any such word.”

Kid sighs in exasperation (conveying depths of feeling only possible in the average 5 year old), and stalks off down the hallway…. singing the NZ National Anthem to herself:

“Yod of Nations, at thy feet, in the bonds of yove we meet”.

Ah… that Yod…

Just been watching Animal Crazy on Sunday (about the Animal Liberation Front, and Open Rescue in NZ).

I wonder… if we employed a chimpanzee as our agricultural minister, how much more effective than Anderton would he be…?
I wasn’t aware he’d given the poultry industry an exemption for battery farming. Ridiculous, criminal (IMHO), and yet another example of a government that has completely lost touch with reality.

I notice that Richard E Grant is here for the Auckland Writers and Readers festival (an event I had no idea was even on, until I saw it mentioned on TV two minutes ago).

He would have to be one of my favourite British (well, by way of Swaziland) actors. Started when I saw the rather abysmal Hudson Hawk (he was about the only watchable character, I recall), and continued when, a few years later, I finally saw Withnail & I. My impression was well and truly cemented when, back in the mid-to-late 90’s, I was wandering aimlessly down Charing Cross Road, and happened to wander into Borders just when he was giving a talk about a newly released book (can’t remember which one it was, but damn he was funny).

If you have the opportunity to go to “An Hour with Richard E. Grant” (I won’t unfortunately), I’m thinking it’ll be well worth the effort.

Never liked my last effort.

Since I’m slightly artistically challenged, I have difficulty getting graphical elements to look the way I see them in my head. Some fundamental disconnection between brain and outer extremities I think. I have a pretty good idea what looks good, but my attempts in any graphics package you care to mention are… best not mentioned…

So, with apologies to John Gruber, for stealing the basic layout of his site, hopefully this new version will last a bit longer than the last.

PS. The logo at the top is Thai, by the way.

There is nothing worse than egosurfing your own name, only to discover you’ve missed the top spot in Google by one… because of a spelling mistake:

I’m pretty sure that first link should be “Jon Briggs”.

Damnit.

Erm…. was that just an earthquake in Auckland?

Didn’t hear a truck go past (trucks & buses never shake the house anyway), and the whole house shook for at least a few seconds.

If it was, it’s the first earthquake I’ve experienced in Auckland (been through dozens in the Bay when I was growing up)

…

Aha, while writing this, the Herald was updated. It was a mini-quake.

We’re currently trapped in the nightmare of the interminable house hunt. While doing a bit of research about house auctions, and came across this quote at realestate.co.nz.

A real estate auction is a controlled and fair process which is generally a win-win proposition for everyone involved. For the buyer, the benefits include knowing that you are making a smart investment as you are sure you are purchasing the property at a fair market value.

Here’s the rub: when bids are allowed on the part of the vendor (see the Real Estate Institute of NZ “Code of Practise“, section 3.4), how can the purchase price be a “fair market value”? A fair market value is only possible when only potential purchasers are bidding.

I even came across a brilliant (sarc.) page (unfortunately can’t find the link now) saying something along the lines that “vendor bidding helps you, because it raises the price to a point where the vendor is willing to sell”. Arrant nonsense.

On the positive side, not all real estate agents allow vendor bidding. Barfoots don’t appear to allow the practice — but on the negative side, their process for pre-auction offers seems convoluted and buyer unfriendly… or at least, me-unfriendly.

Here’s another nonsensical real estate statement in relation to auctions:

Make sure all the t’s are crossed: have your solicitor examine the Contract of Sale prior to the auction to ensure everything is in order. Also have any building and/or pest inspections carried out prior to auction day.

It’s the latter part that gets me. A building inspection could run to $500 or $600, and you’ve potentially got only a small chance of winning a property at auction. Assuming you attend a number of auctions without a successful purchase, that’s thousands of dollars literally down the tubes. Perhaps some write that off as a necessary expense of house hunting. I suspect many people don’t bother. Which means one of the largest purchases you can make in a lifetime is made without much knowing whether or not you might have bought a lemon.

Cheerful thoughts, as we try to find a place ourselves.

The countdown is on… only 3 days till we leave Bangkok. Here’s a couple more thoughts about our trip:

1. Anna’s Cafe (near Sala Daeng) has a vastly over-rated reputation. Service: abysmal. Food: average. General decor: dated, and in sore need of a tidy up. Save your money and go to the S&P restaurant on South Sathorn (excellent service, excellent food, reasonably priced). Actually the S&P on Sathorn is my favourite restaurant in Bangkok. A trip here isn’t completely without more than a few visits for lunch.

2. I first went to Shabu shabu (Sukhumvit 33) about 6 years ago. We’d thought it had closed down, since they never answered the phone when we rang. Turns out we should’ve just taken a drive past, since it hasn’t closed down at all — and is as good as it ever was (meaning it’s about a million times better than the aforementioned Shabushi). What I don’t understand is how the excellent Shabu Shabu can only have one restaurant, when the awful Shabushi has multiple outlets.

3. There’s a distressing increase in the number of restaurants which include the service charge in the bill. Large hotels usually do this, but now smaller chains, and single restaurants appear to be doing the same in larger numbers. I say distressing, because the service from waiting staff in some of these places, is absolutely abysmal. Not in all cases (service in hotel restaurants is generally excellent), but 9 out of 10 establishments we’ve visited, which have the charge included, have had terrible service. Two possibilities: either the staff know they’re getting the tip anyway, so feel no incentive to make an effort — or the restaurant is pocketing the money, and the same is true regarding making an effort.
Not sure what the approach is in Thailand regarding an included service charge accompanied by profoundly indifferent service. In the UK, I’d probably pay the food portion of the bill and leave out the service. In NZ, thankfully we don’t have the problem. But here, I’m not sure whether refusing to pay a service charge is acceptable (my wife has been out of the country long enough that she doesn’t know and we keep forgetting to ask friends).

1. If you like Dim Sum (Yum Cha), you can’t do much better than “The Good Earth” restaurant at the Arnoma Hotel. Only 300 baht gets you a large buffet-style (but not choose your own) selection of Dim Sum dishes, plus soup, a noodle dish of some kind (such as Rad Nah), fruit salad desert and unlimited refills of green tea. Just across the road from Central World, so conveniently located.

2. I’ve only eaten at 2 mexican restaurants since I started coming to Bangkok, but we keep going back to Senor Pico each time we come back here. Excellent skewered bbq chicken, good live music (which my daughter loves), and the fajitas aren’t bad either (although I don’t think the fajitas are as good as the Mexican Cafe in Auckland — but that might just be personal preference).

3. There are a huge number of food courts in Bangkok. Most of the Central department stores have a food court attached somewhere — FoodLoft at Central Chit Lom is arguably one of the best of these (very upmarket though). Haven’t been to the MBK food court in years, but last time I went there they had a couple of pretty good vegetarian booths.

4. If you want to have an expensive meal out, a lot of the major hotels have all-you-can-eat buffets with a mixture of International and Thai cuisine. I really like the lunch buffet at the Grand Hyatt Erawan (excellent service), and dinner at the Riverside Terrace at the Marriott (rather expensive for Thailand, but has a show as well, which is good for kids).

5. Non-food-related (surprise): the Ancient City is really worth a visit. Full of replica and relocated temples, buildings, mini villages, etc. I’ve been twice now and still enjoy it. Will probably go back on the next trip, because there’s parts of the 300+ acre park that we haven’t visited yet (plus they’re building more attractions). You will be impressed. By the way, contrary to that article I’ve linked to, entry fees have increased to about 300 baht per person (at least for foreigners).

A couple of observations, so far, from our latest sojourn in Bangkok (Krung Thep, in Thai, which hopefully explains the title):

1. Shabushi restaurant (a mixture of Shabu Shabu and Sushi), is definitely not worth the 219 baht per person. Save your money and go to Coca, or even MK (though MK is pretty average as well). Better yet, go to Daidomon. It’s a bit old, but much better value for money — plus the locals are a (mostly) bored with it, so it’s easier to get a seat. We waited almost an hour to get into Sabushi. What a waste of an hour that was.

2. Today I managed to get across 3 lanes from the exit from a car park building without too much pain — admittedly by following a BMW. Here’s a trick for driving in Bangkok: get behind someone more obnoxious than you are (the bigger the car, the better).

3. The difference between a foreigner (me) driving in Bangkok, and a local (expert) driver: last night the driver of a friend of my wife, drove from a carpark across 5 lanes of traffic. Amazing. It was like Moses parting the Red Sea. If you’ve experienced Bangkok traffic, you’ll know what I mean.

4. “Breakfast included”, is overrated. You can get really sick of eggs on toast, or thai-style omelets, really quickly. A serviced apartment with breakfast included is nice, but not really worth the extra money (unless, of course, your company is paying for it).

More to come when I think of them…

The weather in Bangkok is surprisingly mild at the moment. This is my 5th or 6th time here, and without a doubt, experiencing the mildest temperature yet.

Living in a city where jaywalking is the norm (if not encouraged), I read this story with amusement (although with sympathy for the professor’s plight).

Interest in visiting the US… rapidly decreasing.

We’ve just returned from a 5-day stay in Chiang Mai (in the north of Thailand). It’s been 8 years since we were last there, and it seems that very little has changed. The Riverside restaurant is still brilliant, the steps of Doi Suthep are still crammed with a ridiculous number of street sellers, and Tuk Tuks still follow you down the street, hopeful for a fare.

There is, however, a new attraction in the region — the Chiang Mai Night Safari. First impressions are quite simply amazing. The architecture of the main building is consistent with traditional northern Thai styles (and an impressive size), the fountain-light show on the lake is good, and there’s a level of professionalism that you don’t typically see at other Thai tourist attractions.

Visitors travel around the park in an (approx) 40 seater glorified golf cart (basically an open-air bus), and pass through various enclosures to see the animals. The individual habitats seem reasonably sized and the animals look healthy (at least what you can see of them in the lights of the bus)…

…that is, until you reach the very last enclosure, containing the elephants. Where the other animals are free to roam their enclosures, the elephants are chained to the spot. Where the other animals at least seem relatively comfortable, most of the elephants constantly struggle to free themselves… I say most of the elephants, because a couple just stood there rocking backwards and forwards — I’m no animal behaviourist, but it sure looked like psychological problems to me.

The experience is like an ice-cold bucket of water in the face after a hot shower.

Contrast with the Maesa Elephant Camp we went to a couple of days earlier, where the elephant we rode (yes we did the typical touristy stuff) felt free to stop and munch bamboo leaves whenever she wanted (completely ignoring her exasperated handler) and all the elephants looked healthy and interested in what they were doing — without a huge amount of intervention from the handlers (mahout).

The treatment of Thailand’s national animal, is quite simply shameful.

I also wish I’d had internet access to do a bit of research before we went there, because a quick search uncovered the following:

http://www.elephantnaturepark.org/news/0511a.htm
http://www.thailandqa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10906

What could’ve been an attraction I’d recommend to anyone, instead becomes something I recommend you stay away from. Save your 500 baht and give it to support the animals at Maesa or one of the other elephant camps, where the animals are treated with a bit of respect (in fact the mahout live with the animals).

1. plug new digital camera into usb
2. run gphoto2… get error (something about kernel)
3. try digikam. error connecting
4. try konqueror. nothing detected.
5. unplug camera, repeat process with a vague sense of futility
6. remove SD card from aforementioned camera, try plugging into internal card reader in laptop
7. when nothing happens, spend 45 mins reading about internal card readers only to discover they’re generally not supported well. fail miserably getting anything to happen there
8. give up on SD card, return to camera, plug in usb again and begin search for more info about specific model
9. KDE automatically detects USB mass storage and pops up a dialog… twice. in annoyance, select “do nothing”… twice
10. Somehow Konqueror still opens, displaying the now-mounted usb storage device representing your camera, complete with photos ready and available to be copied.

That, my friends, is the true definition of frustration.

Ugh. motivation dropping… enthusiasm waning… (vague cinematic tribute to favourite Mystery Men character — Mr Furious)

Pre Christmas Blues have definitely set in. Serious inability to focus on the masses of stuff I have to get sorted before Xmas. Thank god, in 2 weeks time we’ll be in Bangkok, with ready-and-willing inlaws available for babysitting!! A social life… how curious.

Can’t wait for Gaeng Paa Gai (that’s Jungle Curry with Chicken if you’re not in the know), from S&P in Sathorn (favourite mid-range restaurant).

My IHUG broadband has been abysmal lately. I’m getting dropped connections, slow performance, and generally an unacceptable service.

Just ran a couple of tests. Within NZ I got:

1. 984kbps / 132kbps
2. 1380kbps / 128kbps

To LA I got:

1. 138 / 129
2. 159 / 129

To NY I got:

1. 346 / 129
2. 279 / 129

Holy Crap!

The big question is, would I be any better running a piece of string between two yogurt containers? I think so!

Awesome! An animated version of PvP is on its way…

…but it’s $US19.95 for a subscription.

I mean, come on! I’m stuck with Pacific Pesos here. That’s like a million NZ dollars at the current rate of exchange (warning: extreme exaggeration alert).

In any case, this is officially the first time I’ve considered taking an online subscription…

I notice that I can occasionally suffer from wrong-syntax-itus when switching between Python, Java and PHP; particularly when I’m caught up in the development moment. Although the more I get used to a language, the less this seems to occur.

However, there is an exception to this rule — the switch from SQL to HQL — my particular gripe du jour. I still find Hibernate’s Query Language a jarring wrench from thinking ‘relationally’, so to speak. For that matter, I also find it far more efficient to write queries in SQL (only to then suffer the pain of converting them to valid HQL — which is perhaps part of my problem).

Which brings to mind another gripe when moving between languages — the lack of features in one that are available in another. Case in point: the lack of multiline strings in Java. There’s nothing worse than a large SQL (or HQL) statement split over multiple lines in Java — the string could be included from a separate property file, but in my opinion, this makes the code more difficult to work with and it doesn’t easily explain itself on first glance. There’s a lot to be said for immediately readable code.

Having said that, I’ve thought of something worse: the hideous blight inflicted on code by complex Hibernate Criteria Queries.

…for some reason it was really hard to see the monitor (see photo below).

Rod is right: If the price of mobile calls dropped, I’d be making more calls per day as well. In the UK, prices were significantly cheaper than here (even taking into account the exchange rate was 1 pound to 3 pacific-pesos at the time) — with some really cost-effective plans available as well — and I used my mobile considerably more than the land-line. There’s nothing like a cheap per-minute rate, to lull you into spending more than you intended…

My grandfather was intensely patriotic, and felt an abiding sense of civic duty… something not so unusual in the early half of last century. Consequently, when war broke out he was keen to enlist, but as he worked in one of the essential industries (rail), wasn’t given leave to do so — much to his disgust. He was a big man (I recall hearing that when he had a stroke in his 60s, it took 3 paramedics to lift the stretcher, to get him into the ambulance), and the reaction to him walking around Napier (a very small town) was, on the whole, pretty negative (& completely undeserved). The husbands, fathers, and sons of other women, were away fighting; so a fit & healthy, young 6+ foot tall man, was given short thrift. I’m not sure if there was spitting in the street in front of him, but it was certainly pretty close to it.

In any case, my understanding was that he spent the next few years making an absolute nuisance of himself, constantly nagging until the powers-that-be gave in, and he got his release from the Railways. So it was rather ironic that he was on a troop ship, most of the way to Africa, when the WW2 suddenly ended.

He spent the next 2 years, stationed in Egypt, as part of the peacekeeping forces. I believe, mopping up pockets of German resistance which hadn’t heard that the war was over — but again, that comes from a rather hazy recollection of stories told when I was small.

The most vivid story I remember him telling me (why is it grandads always tell the best stories?), was about firing parachute flares into the night sky above sand dunes in the desert. I don’t recall whether there was any fighting involved after firing those flares, but the image of the flickering light illuminating the desert sands has stuck in my memory, even 25 or more years after the telling.

Boy am I tired of seeing that anti-piracy advert at the beginning of my new DVDs… which I have to fast forward through because they block your player from jumping ahead…

…every bleedin time.

Pah!

Having seen the new broadband offerings, I’m less than impressed. Frankly I’d rather get a cheaper connection with my current speed, than pay the same for 3.5GB -and- lose 5GB of data allowance a month.

The sooner Aunty Helen buys a large boot and stomps on a certain (IMO) monopoly, the better.

Tried Kava tonight for the first time, at the birthday party of a friend whose (Fijian) father had mixed a large bowl. Interesting taste — but very hard to describe. Seemed like there was a hint of aniseed, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on any of the other flavours. My tongue went numb for 15 minutes or so afterwards, but no other effects as far as I could tell.

The question I am asking myself, is why am I <pc>mentally challenged</pc> enough to pay for Sky TV? We use it mainly because our terrestrial TV reception is cruddy, and my daughter loves Cartoon Network and Playhouse Disney (hell, I probably watch more of Cartoon Network than any of the other channels put together). But after seeing the same shows repeated ad nauseum — I’m seriously starting to wonder why I’m bothering to dig into my pocket each month. For an even better exercise in monetary drainage — why not purchase a “MySky” decoder for $500 or $600 (or whatever it is currently)… but wait, it’s not a purchase, it’s a “joining fee”, so you don’t even get the privilege of owning the decoder.

Couple of options off the top of my head. Option 1: $600+ (I think) for a satellite dish, point it at one of the satellites for free-to-air stations (including, I believe, a few of the standard terrestrial channels), and hope that there’s enough cartoons to keep my daughter entertained. Option 2: Find a good (legal) source of (cheap) cartoons on the web to download (unlikely?). Forget about terrestrial TV because I hardly watch it these days anyway. Option 3: Climb up on the roof and play with the aerial until reception improves (should’ve done that a while ago), spend the money currently used for sky subscription to import cheaper cartoon compilation DVD’s from the US. Option 4: stop watching TV altogether.

Option 1 is expensive. We’re planning a move overseas sometime next year, so the dish is going to have to be taken down and stored. To get the best use out of it, the dish probably needs to be coupled with a DVD+HDD recorder, or TiVo-like box, in order to catch the shows we want to watch. In addition, it looks like a larger satellite dish will be needed to pick up Aus broadcasts (more likely to have 3-year-old-friendly shows), so add a bit more on top of the overall costs. Scratch that idea.

Option 2 is probably wishful thinking. 1st search for downloadable cartoons on Google turned up porn (item #1) and porn+bestiality (item #2). Sigh. 2nd search didn’t turn out much better: “Kim Possible” nude (now that’s just weird), and more unmentionables. 3rd search with a strenuous application of -keywords, pulled up 80s cartoons, but not much else of interest.

Option 3 is perhaps the most workable solution short term. At least considering we can’t plan much past the next 18 months anyway. A quick look on Amazon turns up SpongeBob Squarepants complete 1st season for the cost of a month sky subscription — plus various other compilations (Bob the Builder, Clifford, Little People, Bear in the Big Blue House — if you’re a parent you’ll know them well) that fit well within the budget. I’m thinking I could probably find cheaper if I tried, so the equivalent of a year’s subscription to Sky would potentially buy a pretty good kiddy DVD library without too much repetition.

Option 4 results in a contract hit being taken out on me by my 3 year old.

Addendum: Serious spanner in the works, in the form of the (if I remember correctly) a 12 month contract on installation. Quit Sky early, pay through the nose for the privilege.

I sat down to have a go at the mensa test linked to by Adrian Robertson. Supposedly an intelligence test, but in my case, more like a persistence or perseverence test. I damn well wasn’t going to give up with less than 19 (the score you’re supposed to reach in order to be considered a genius… yeah, whatever) — but reaching that score is damn hard graft with an almost-3 year old yelling, “Papa, whatchudoing?” in your ear (I reached 20 by the way, before kid imperatives interrupted completely — and even then, one of those was a gift from my wife who happened to look over my shoulder).

The wincy wincy bider cimbed up the water bout
Down came the rain an washed oo-wincy out
Out came Santa and drank up all the rain
And wincy bider cimbed the bout gain.

– My daughter singing in bed, aged 2 and 3/4