…is that you’re forced to sit through the semi-final of Britain’s Got Talent.

And I thought having to sit through multiple viewings of The Wiggles was bad…

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.