Jonathan's Liverstone

Shit Landscape design

Another example of why draughtsmen are crap at landscape design! This path is made up of round stones 2-3 stones deep. Remember how hard it is to walk on river shingle ... this will be difficult too. The path slopes uphill, so the stones are gonna scoot everywhere, those bricks are not going to contain them. That's a public footpath there, so there is even more chance of spreading the stones everywhere as the neighbourhood kids go past. - even sharp crushed stone would have been a beeter choice, but basically, you don't do this sort of thing. I'll lay a bet that within a year, that path will be re-done, probably concreted.

Posted by The Denizen @ 8/10/2012 05:08:00 pm {1 comments }

... not a complete waste if taxes then!

Posted by The Denizen @ 7/19/2012 01:25:00 pm {0 comments }

Stupid Charges are not customer service.

1145 am, a mid-city Kiwibank branch;
obviously a bad time to choose as there are only half the usual number of tellers, and a fair sized queue.

When I finally get to the counter
"Can I have four fifty dollar notes please, as an EFT-POS transaction?"
(Don't ask ... it doesn't matter!)
"Certainly, please swipe you card."
"Oh, I'm afraid I'm going to have to charge you $2 transaction fee, as you have an 'Internet account'."
"Eh ..., but if I just turned up & asked you to change $200 into $50 notes there would be no charge?"
"That's right" she says helpfully, realising how silly it's already getting, "if you want to withdraw $200 from the ATM terminal outside, I will change it for you."
"But, then I will have to work my way through that long queue again ..."
"Oh, no, you can come straight back to this counter; I will wait for you."
... so that's what I did, making all those poor people in the queue wait for me, because she did not have the discressionary power to waive a patently silly charge, which I was too bloody minded to pay!
An I didn't ring them & complain, because I don't expect that I would find anyone in Kiwibank who would listen & have the power to make a difference.

Posted by The Denizen @ 4/19/2012 09:42:00 pm {0 comments }

The first Sacrifice of Spring.

Posted by the denizen @ 10/15/2011 06:12:00 pm {0 comments }

Apparently it's what separates men from women ...

Posted by The Denizen @ 9/18/2011 03:01:00 pm {0 comments }

... and so it starts.

Okay, so I'm not exactly going to miss Track-side, but another analogue channel is going off the airwaves.

Posted by The Denizen @ 8/01/2011 12:54:00 pm {0 comments }

Browsers for Dummies (=IEx)

Check out the study
EDIT: Might well have been a hoax that appealed to our geek prejudices. I was worried as to how they got scores in the extremes of the graph, but the story was too appealing, damn it!

Posted by the denizen @ 7/30/2011 11:24:00 pm {0 comments }

Yupe!

Serendipity while reading about the troubles Galileo had with established faith-based world views ("Galileo's Daughter"; Dava Sobel)

Posted by The Denizen @ 7/23/2011 05:08:00 pm {0 comments }

Clever bash code sort


function f() {
    sleep "$1"
    echo "$1"
}
while [ -n "$1" ]
do
    f "$1" &
    shift
done
wait

Works for small, positive numbers.
Breaks for VERY small, and negative values.
You might need to go & have a cuppa if you use large values.

From dis.4chan.org via Otaku

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/29/2011 09:03:00 pm {0 comments }

Chinglish - Buttplate!

There is so much wrong here, that I am lost for words!
I spotted it on the underside of a new toilet lid in a motel.

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/16/2011 08:19:00 pm {0 comments }

Scorching Bay - end of Autumn

... well it wasn't "scorching", but we tasted the sand.

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/01/2011 01:06:00 pm {0 comments }

Spirit's "Last post"

Spirit has stopped transmissions ... finally.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110530.html

Posted by The Denizen @ 6/01/2011 12:38:00 pm {0 comments }

A Quiet Morning

I took this from the office window around the middle of the day that a tornado was ripping the roof off shopping malls in Auckland.
("... and they call us Windy Wellington!" said a co-worker.)

I won't be able to take any more photos from this site,
as we are shifting to a new building which I am told has even better views.

Posted by The Denizen @ 5/14/2011 05:20:00 pm {0 comments }

Taking Liberties!

I'm not too sure of the legal status of the threats contained in this notice, but I'm damn sure I wouldn't be taking them at face value if a goon approached me on the hill top!
Meanwhile the streets of Miramar are choked with cars as this film swings into full action.
Good luck to 'em and I hope this is as successful as the LOTR films.

Posted by The Denizen @ 5/14/2011 04:55:00 pm {0 comments }

Another example of comic security!

(from Roger's Security Blog)

Posted by The Denizen @ 5/08/2011 04:13:00 pm {0 comments }

Don’t bet on the joys of the pokies

If you've had any doubts about pokie machines, but haven't been sure where to start finding out, then this post would be a good place to start ...Don’t bet on the joys of the pokies. A clear eyed view of the scene in Australia.

Posted by the denizen @ 4/18/2011 08:21:00 pm {0 comments }

Way cool time waster!

Roll this "Katamari Damacy" around on a web-site.
Just go to a "wordy" site, the post the following URL into a chrome browser ...

javascript:var i,s,ss=['http://kathack.com/js/kh.js','http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.1/jquery.min.js'];for(i=0;i!=ss.length;i++){s=document.createElement('script');s.src=ss[i];document.body.appendChild(s);}void(0);

... right click to move it around.

Posted by the denizen @ 3/13/2011 10:12:00 pm {0 comments }

The land of the free ...

A disturbing piece by John Pilger contained the following paragraph.

On 16 February, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech at George Washington University in which she condemned governments that arrested protestors and crushed free expression. She lauded the liberating power of the internet while failing to mention that her government was planning to close down those parts of the internet that encouraged dissent and truth-telling. It was a speech of spectacular hypocrisy, and Ray McGovern was in the audience. Outraged, he rose from his chair and silently turned his back on Clinton. He was immediately seized by police and a security goon and beaten to the floor, dragged out and thrown into jail, bleeding. He has sent me photographs of his injuries. He is 71. During the assault, which was clearly visible to Clinton, she did not pause in her remarks.

Posted by The Denizen @ 2/26/2011 02:25:00 pm {0 comments }

The search for the perfect loaf ...

... continues.

Trying to make a homemade Vogel's bread substitute ('cos their recipe *has* changed since being taken over by the big corporate), I got a reasonable recipe going, but it was always a bit strong on the yeast.

When Matt gave me a sourdough bug, it just had to be tried.

After a few "interesting" (but nevertheless reasonable) loaves, this was todays result.

Not too bad!

Posted by The Denizen @ 1/30/2011 06:47:00 pm {0 comments }

The phone rang ...

I've just had a phone call from someone perporting to be from "Virtual IT", telling me that I had a problem with a computer. He told me it was running windoz and that he had some sort of ... gosh, I don't know what he was offering.
Unfortunately I lost my rag & told him he was full of shit; whereupon he promptly hung up.

Buggrit! I wish I had kept my cool, ... like this perhaps?

Sequential Art

Posted by The Denizen @ 1/29/2011 05:02:00 pm {0 comments }

Disclaimer: (I stole this from Internal Affairs.)
All links and references to other websites, organisations or people not within my control are provided for the user's convenience only, and should not be taken as endorsement of those websites, or of the information contained in those websites, nor of organisations or people referred to. I also do not implicitly or impliedly endorse any website, organisation or people who have off-site links to this website.
... But then again; I only link to sites 'cos I see something there that's worth linking to.