Archive for the ‘New Zealand’ Category
Monday, January 2nd, 2012
Every long weekend we hear how many people died, as though it means something, but there's never any analysis beyond whether it's more or less than last year's number. It doesn't help me know what's going on: are we better drivers or worse? What's the point of measuring if you ...
Posted in New Zealand | No Comments »
Saturday, December 31st, 2011
I've been conscientiously using Goodreads to review every book I read. I've used the Goodreads API, some Perl, and some Javascript to boil down my year's reading. Without further ado, I present ...
My Year in Books$(function() { $('.bookspermonth').sparkline('html', { type: 'bar' }); $('.starspermonth').sparkline('html', { type: 'bar' }); ...
Posted in New Zealand | No Comments »
Monday, December 5th, 2011
tl;dr: Charter schools aren't a panacea, they don't appear to be compatible with the emphasis on National Standards, and this seems like the top of a slippery slope which will result in us all being as stupid as Americans.
Background
New Zealand introduced "National Standards" last year. In the past, the curriculum ...
Posted in New Zealand, politics, Rant | No Comments »
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011
It was my pleasure to address the National and State Librarians of Australasia on the eve of their strategic planning meeting in Auckland at the start of November this year. I have been involved in libraries for a few years now, and am always humbled by the expertise, hard ...
Posted in New Zealand, Technology | 16 Comments »
Sunday, November 20th, 2011
Pondering the New Zealand fishing industry, I had an insight today. Forgive me if it's old news to you.
You have three options to make more money:
Lower costs.
Sell more of the same stuff.
Make new types of stuff to sell.
In quota-limited systems such as fishing, you can't catch more fish because ...
Posted in Business, New Zealand | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
There's a trend now to question the value of a university education. It used to be that simply possessing a university degree gained you access to a Better Class of Job. That is no longer the case; now you have access to The Same Class of Unemployment Benefit. ...
Posted in Business, New Zealand, Personal | 5 Comments »
Sunday, September 25th, 2011
Our band has two gigs coming up in Auckland and we'd love to see you there!
We play The Thirsty Dog on K Rd on Sunday, and the set is shaping up to be a good 'un: the songs we were playing last year have really bedded down nicely. We ...
Posted in New Zealand, Personal | No Comments »
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
New Zealand has, for a long time, marketed itself as 100% Pure. In the last year, this slogan has taken a beating. The climax seems to have been when BBC Hardtalk interviewer Stephen Sackur gave Prime Minister John Key a colossal roasting over the discrepancy between reality and ...
Posted in New Zealand, Rant | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
This post is about my 3 March 2011 appearance on Nine to Noon on Radio New Zealand. Listen to the show in MP3 and OGG. My notes below were made during research for the show, but we often depart from the script. In particular, this week I ...
Posted in New Zealand, Radio, Technology | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
We're counting down the days here at the mothership, getting ready for the 5th Kiwi Foo Camp. It's hard to believe this is year five already, the time's flown by. I've had a few people ask for more details than are on the web site, so I thought ...
Posted in New Zealand | No Comments »