Tokoroa is not somewhere normally associated with classy food, but tonight I once again enjoyed top quality nosh in the timbertown.
It is a well kept secret that Albericio D'Andrea serves some of the finest pizza and Italian cuisine in the country, from a restaurant up a sidestreet.
If you are passing through Tokoroa around meal-time, turn off the main highway onto Logan St. (one block north of the clock tower) and he's a block up, on the right.
If you don't believe me, ask Nicky Hager, spotted tonight in the corner of the restaurant in a conspiritorial huddle with two others. Is no secret safe from Nicky?!

What is it?

"I've been collecting unusual objects for quite a few years and have just recently started posting them on this site as puzzles for others to figure out what they are. Answers are typically provided a week after the original post."

via j-walk

<uncharacteristically-long post alert>

I've been thinking about the daily newspaper lately, and what I want out of it. This has been triggered by the fact that the Sunday Herald has been delivered gratis for the last few weeks (in the mistaken hope that I might subscribe).
Firstly, I was raised in a household where the paper was delivered in the morning, and it was given due consideration at some stage during the next 24 hours, usually in the evening. This was a time when there was little *real* difference between a morning or evening paper; you chose your flavour and paid your sub. (I guess there were some greedy people that took both, but they where probably sick news junkies). So it was the Herald or The Star, the Dominion or Evening Post, etc. depending on where you lived.
More recently, I have been happy to subscribe to a provincial daily, delivered in the evening, containing *todays* news, and I could then digest it that evening. I didn't (and still don't) see any point getting a morning paper, as there is simply no time in the morning; getting off to work, or being at work. OK, so the Dominion or Herald crossword is a staple for many a morning smoko, and the rest of the paper is scanned in the smoko room while getting a cuppa; but the *real read* occurs for me when I get home.

So, now I get puzzled at the way the press is developing; obviously I don't seem to fit their "demographic".
First, the main centres have given over to the morning papers, with evening editions dissapearing and being restricted to the provinces. Why? Do city people take longer to get to work? Sipping lattes and checking the morning news on the terrace? How about on the bus or train? Public transport commuters aren't *that* big a market surely!
Suits me fine, I get a national daily at work laying on the smoko table, and my very own evening paper at home. But it all seems back-to-front.

Now there is a new trend developing. The dreaded weekend edition. A single paper to try and retain interest for two days, has turned the Saturday edition into a weekly magazine, trying to compete with the Sunday papers. ... and then they gave up and produced a Sunday edition as well, trying to look like a separate paper.
Big fat deal! Doesn't affect me, I don't buy a national daily.

However, THE REAL DISTURBING BIT is that the local rag has now tried to get in on the act. They now produce a "Weekend" edition on Saturday MORNING. Like that's really just a second Friday night paper isn't it?
No! It's got virtually NO NEWS (that got used up in last night's edition). This thing is cluttered with second-rate opinion columns written by second-rate journalists (or worse: celebrities pretending to have something to say).
If I want that sort of stuff I would read blogs (ahem); or for a better class of literature, subscribe to a weekly magazine (no, NOT Women's Day!).
So what do I want?
I want a newspaper ... with news in it. If they can't deliver that, then perhaps I can get a five day subscription and skip the weekend fluff.
... and while I'm on it: How about not sending me those massive Motoring and Real Estate dropout sections ... I'd even pay a bit of a premium for such a "greenie subscription". So maybe I can combine the two ... same price, less crap.
Now I think it's time for a letter to the editor ...

So the Sunday Herald's free deliveries didn't induce me to buy, it has had the opposite effect.

Why do I enjoy reading about these Nigerian Scams?
This latest one is based on getting the mark to present counterfeit
money orders, and then wire the bulk on to their account before it
bounces.
This guy has the added flavour of having a real attitude to authority
(police, bank tellers, anybody ...)

So here's a couple of chilling quotes:

"States and their rulers expect to monopolise violence, and
that is why they react so virulently to terrorism."

"In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility,
fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain
their power."

" ... al-Qaida did not even have a name until early 2001,
when the American government decided to prosecute Bin Laden in his
absence and had to use anti-Mafia laws that required the existence of a
named criminal organisation."

Check out this article in The Guardian for more, and wait for the Documentary
series.
(via "Pete-the-non-blogger")

Try this one for size ...
The Reverse Dictionary allows you to describe a concept, and it comes back with a bunch of words surrounding it.

Nevertheless; I'm sure there's a name for someone who keeps eagles, but I still haven't found it.

I have noticed a disturbing trend lately.
It is very subtle, but once you notice it, it gets you thinking,
... and then it makes you get very worried.
Have you noticed how, as you are happily whizzing around your computer (probably on the internet), you think ...
"I just clicked that!" and nothing is happening.
So you click it again and away it (whatever it is) goes.
You are gratified by a response, so you think nothing more of that "lost click".
What happened to it! Where did it go?
At first, once I noticed it, I put the blame on a slightly dodgy mouse, but then I realised it was happening on other computers. "Yes... I definitely clicked that!"
So maybe it's a crap feature of using Windoz; but then I spotted it happening on the KDE-Linux Desktop!
I would now happily bet that the Macs do it too (even if they have got only one button)!
So whats it all about?
Are all these clicks accumulating in some sort of electronic version of an elephants graveyard?
(What would be the collective pronoun for a collection of clicks? ... a tapdance? ... a telegraph? )
... or is it something more sinister!
Is someone actually collecting them, and if so, what for??!!
Is it a manevolent collector who is going to unleash them all at once on the unsuspecting, as some sort of "click-storm"?
Or is it a corrupt commercial ruse, to collect up valid clicks and then use them for "click fraud"?
Perhaps on a commercial site selling "automatic" buttonless mice, ("No clicks required!").
I don't know, but it's spooky!
What? me; paranoid? ...err no? Should I be?

Natalie Biz has posted her reaction to being recognised "in public" (eek!) and "in real life" (double eek!).
Her concern about being "outed" at work for some of her more harsh judgements on workmates despite mild obfuscation is something which budding blog-journos need to consider.
I know you can make yourself just about completely anonymous (try it as an exercise with a trail of web-based e-mail accounts), but what you *actually* write is usually what you care about, so your (real) life must squeek through in places.
(Nice trendy profile image Nat!)

This New Scientist article has got a map of the world showing the distribution of hotspots of NO2 concentration.
Along with the usual suspects, you can also pick out some of the shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea.
via Aardvark

So you thought you'd seen it all,
we how about a program for your mobile (phone/PDA) which not only knew where you were *physically* but was able to tell you the political compass of your immediate whereabouts!
The program (called red|blue ) will tell you if you're in Republican or Democratic territory based on maps developed on fundrace ... and must be invaluable for the politico-geeks! It'll even warn you if you are going into "enemy" territory by tracking you direction of movement.
Hmmm, what would a local version look like?

Just did a couple of posts,
and noticed that, despite the blogspot dashboard timezone setting being labelled as Pacific/Auckland (or alternatively NZ). The time of the posts is set to UTC+12 so at midday, posts are labelled as 1:00pm .
(Daylight saving time ... system confusing time)
UPDATE: Yeah, well, it all came right on Sunday (as it would), so I guess this is just another example of the blogsphere being ahead of the rest of the world.

I am not the first to notice that the only time I use the <Caps Lock> key,
is to turn CAPS OFF AFTER I'VE ACCIDENtally turning them on.
So ... a few seconds with the pocket knife, and *Problem Solved*!

A friend who has a wonderful way with words and has an ocassional column in his local paper asked me this when I suggested to him that his pieces may get a bigger audience if he by-passed the establishment publishers.
After trotting out the usual literal translation, I began to wonder what this thing I was recommending to him really was, and then I uncover this little gem, so here you are Peter:

Halley's Comment
Blogging is all about trying things, failing, not trying to be perfect and just throwing words at a wall, like pasta to see if it's ready. It's a much easier way for me to write than any I've tried. It's enormously freeing.

But maybe they are just a freakshow

I just *knew* there was a reason why I prefered open source, I really did!
And I thought it was just because I was too tight-fisted to pay for software.
Nandor's Open Source page makes me really feel I'm like, maybe, I'm part of a political "thing" ...
Yeah baby! Up against the wall! Fascist pigs! Yeah! Power to the people.