I just put a tape in the video to catch the wonderful bit of Aussie humour "the Castle".
("What do you call this again Darl? ... Beautiful!")
I put in a tape, hit re-wind, waited for the "clonk" and then hit record, just in time for the start of the movie.
Now sitting here, half an hour later, I can hear the VCR re-winding after hitting the end of the tape.
Yup, that's another tape for the bin, obviously sticking ... and I am missing The Castle. :-(

I went and saw the "Hitchikers Guide To The Galaxy" film last night.
I went with some trepidation after seeing some pretty bad press about it (planetmagrathea, MirimarMike).
Overall, it's not that flash, but I still enjoyed it, and stepped out with a smile.
Most of the chuckles I had throughout the film were not to do with the plot or the few "new" lines, but more from the joy of recognition of the fun elements from the radio show.
I was totally irritated by the casting of Zaphod, and the opening scene where the house was due to be demolished was, frankly, crap. Comparing the construction crew for the bypass with that of another by-pass a little closer to home made it look ludicrous. In one scene, an actor (as a worker) was enthusiastically raking some gravel with a pitchfork, god knows what he thought he was doing.
I know they can't reduce the whole Hitchery-hiker "thing" into less than 2 hours of film, but be prepared for nothing more than a glorified love story about Arthur and Trillian with a love-sick vice-president of the universe (female .. and portrayed as pathetic, with absolutely no back-plot) pursuing Zaphod with an army of Vogons. It seems that, after having spent money on the Vogon suits, they must have decided to keep using them later in the story like a bunch of Triffids.
There's also a thing where they meet up with the John Malkovich character (I didn't catch the character name), and he basically ransoms them to go get "the ultimate gun" ... This looks like the point in the plot where Douglas Adams left us, because the whole plot thread is left hanging, making the (not very good) earlier sequence, totally pointless!
Not complete crap, just bad, but when did that stop a fan(atic) from going anyway!

It seems logical: Buy shoes that are made in NZ.
I know the sweat-shop specials in the big-box-brand-shop are cheaper, but they have no *personality*.
... got me a new pair of brothel-creepers last month, and they are GOOD!
I keep boring my workmates by showing 'em off.
"... and look at the neat tread pattern!"
Check out the Last Shoe Co. for good local shoes and if you don't like what they got,
then point your mouse at http://www.mckinlays.co.nz/
they will make to order ... and the price is reasonable.

On Monday night I watched the movie Osama. It is a powerful story, with an extra sting if you've got the DVD and can watch the included documentary as well.
The hardships and injustices that are still part of the daily landscape for a majority in Afghanistan is really depressing, when you consider the paltry amount of "rebuilding" which is being done for those people.
One of the ringing quotes from the film was that "the wounds of war can take generations to heal".
There was added poignancy when I reflected that I was seeing this on Anzac Day when we remember ... "our war", and how safe and privileged most of us are.
Then yesterday I read Michael Leunig's Opinion in the Age which really struck a chord.
The glorification of the military must cease. It needs to be considered a necessary evil, to be avoided wherever possible.

Murray and I got a bit of a walk in the bush in before the winter blast.

A cup of coffee just off the track at 1368 metres went down very nicely.
It was a bit squally on the top, but worth the stretch.

We just caught the start of the dirty weather as we got back to the car
(in the dark ... again).

Throughout my long and somewhat bumpy career in the computer industry, I have had quite a few promises of a fish ( or crayfish or venison or whatever,) from grateful recipients of my largess (*modesty*).
This week is the first time that such a promise has ever turned into a reality, when a rainbow trout was brought over and left on the back step by the old fella across the road, for whom I quite frequently have to untangle Outlook Express.
After an initial, "What the hell do I do now?", I decided to ask Gordie at work (a real keen fisherman).
"How do you cook a Trout Gordie?"
"I give it to Colleen."
"Bugger. Can I borrow her for the evening?"
Well, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing (including a 45 minute road trip ... you don't need to know!), Colleen attacked this trout in her kitchen with a sharp knife and a lot of skill.
Once it had gone through the smoker, a quick trip home followed, and it went down VERY NICELY INDEED, along with a bit of vege, some candles, a bottle of savignon blanc and a certain piano quintet playing in the background.
A big thank you to Colleen, to Gordie, and of course to Des, who caught the fish in the first place.
This lad is now well pleased ...

Yet another idiot idea from the music industry trying to protect it's investment in selling atoms instead of embrasing the the digital.
Now they are touting a software which sits on a server (which means any peer in a P2P network) and injects rubbish in place of the file content.
Very clever of them to invent another tool for the vandals to use to destroy legitimate file sharing activity. ... not that they would care at all about destroying something which doesn't involve them making a profit.

In this article in the Herald I was amused to note the following comments:

But under the New Zealand Human Rights Act, he says, a company’s website can be considered a public service, especially if it offers online sales.
"Under that understanding, you could argue that a website would be required not to discriminate against disabled people."
According to Statistics New Zealand, there are about 81,500 visually impaired people in the country.
The Government is ahead of the pack in adopting the standards, with all agencies aiming to have their sites in line by January.

I have already commented on the sorry state of the primeminister.govt.nz site.
I wonder what other flash and java-driven nasties are out there!
(Sad to say, the site of the ${EMPLOYER} displays a blank screen in lynx ... )

What the F**k has happened to Bloglines?

UPDATE: Boy, until bloglines went off the air, I didn't realise how much I had come to rely on them for navigation around the blogs... not just supplying the blogroll.

"Steghide is a steganography program that is able to hide data in various kinds of image- and audio-files. The color- respectivly sample-frequencies are not changed thus making the embedding resistant against first-order statistical tests." Way-cool technique for encrypting data.
But I still MUCH prefer the idea I came across a year-or-so back which involved encrypting information into spam. You then release the encryption program for general usage.
That way the spooks would then have to closely examine all that spam for messages; pretty soon they would create pressure for spam control measures.
End result: less spam!

I swim laps at the local swimming pool regularly, and I frequently find the chlorine persists way afterwards..
I'm sure there's a market for some clever boffin who can figure out how to produce a soap (or shower gel) to deal with pool chlorine and WASH IT OFF!
Showering after a swim doesn't flush off the chlorine of the pool, and later in the day if you work up a bit of a sweat, the chlorine just wafts off you.

A bit of time trivia.
The gregorian calendar dropped 10 days in 1752.
Well actually the Papal Bull of Feb 1582 decreed they be dropped from October 1582, but the protestant countries were reluctant. GB and dominions observed the calendar reform in 1752, and as US is a scion of that, the Unix system shows it if you are perverse enough to want to see it.

$ cal 9 1752
   September 1752
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
       1  2 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Time Trivia indeed!

A leading player in Japan's telecommunications market says New Zealand's relatively slow broadband internet services are "extremely dangerous" to the nation's economic prospects.

Sachio Semmoto - co-founder of Japan's second largest telecommunications firm KDDI and leading broadband provider eAccess - said yesterday that New Zealand's expensive and slow broadband service could mean this country gets left behind.
The lack of competition meant Kiwi consumers were paying top dollar for what were among "the slowest broadband connections in the world".

ARE YOU LISTENING COMMISSIONER "spin around" WEBB?
What *did* Telecom pay you?
via Aardvark

I dunno, but I thought there were accessibility standards and guidelines for Governmeent organisations & quangos (and the like) to *actually* adhere to when they developed web-sites. Sam at Cuba St has discovered that the LTSA have a nasty site which is browser specific! (You can only register on-line if you have the third party software supplied by MS).
It reminded me of the PM's site .
I went there last week using a text browser ... talk about accessibility: It's a joke!

[trans.gif]
   [trans.gif]
   [trans.gif]
   [trans.gif]
   Prime Minister of New Zealand - Helen Clark [trans.gif]
                                               [trans.gif]
                                               [trans.gif]
                                               [trans.gif]
   Prime  Minister  of  New Zealand - Helen Clark [nav-off_01.gif] [nav-off_02.gif] [nav-off_03.gif]
   [nav-off_05.gif] [nav-off_06.gif] [nav-off_07.gif] [nav-off_08.gif] [nav-off_09.gif] [nav-off_10.gif]
   [nav-off_11.gif] [nav-off_12.gif] [nav-off_13.gif]

                       The official website of the Prime Minister of New Zealand
             Copyright to the New Zealand Prime Minister's Office 2004 - Legal Disclaimer
                                      Design by webdesign © 2004

I was amusing myself browsing around the quotes on bash.org and I just couldn't resist this one:

#338364
Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.

The new TiVo has the "i" and the "o" removed and so is called TV!
You can now watch you new TiVo with the sure knowledge that you are viewing the advertising and program breaks *as they are broadcast*.
100% time-shift free ... guaranteed!
No more time-shift viewing!
And there is no need for all those messy menu options either ...
Available at a store near you.

Seems that MS-Word is protecting my morals and blocking "objects" which it considers will corrupt my sensitivities. :-(

Dirty filthy anarchist protesters outside a downtown food bar, protesting at the blatant and immoral commercial offering of disgusting health food in exchange for (gulp) money.

I guess I'm lucky that this blog doesn't attract too many comments, as I
don't seem to have a very good way of keeping track of new comments.
The blogger.com interface allows for new comments to be e-mailed, but if
the context of the comment isn't exceedingly obvious, the message can be
somewhat cryptic.
So a follow through involves trolling through old postings trying to
find where a new comment has arrived. Not exactly an effective way of
tracking what's going on, and somewhat defeats the purpose of having
comments.
Perhaps I have missed something. Is there a "something" that you can
turn on, or another utility for managing comments?
I imagine the most useful single change would be if the e-mailed comment
had a link to the actual posting, rather than merely having the time &
date of the comment in the subject line.
Anyone got any suggestions? How do other bloggers deal with comments?
(... obviously I am talking about comments to a blogger.com hosted
site.)

NASA Photo: Astronomy Picture of the Day
Finding water on different regions on Mars has implications for understanding its complex geologic history, the possible existence of past life and the sustenance of potential future astronauts.

How to physically remove pop-ups.
This advise should be followed carefully, as the results can be unpredictable.

I gotta give the Brownie point to the Wellington City Council (officer 170).
I had left the cruise-mobile parked in a coupon parking space overnight, and wasn't getting back to it until the following night, so I left a scratchy coupon on the dash. This clever lad very carefully checked the date and marked the right date, so the next day it was WRONG ALL DAY!.
Nice to have someone intelligent working the the parking infringements, and not charge for the mistake.
It sure beats paying a king's ransom to retrieve the wagon from a tow-away if you leave it for 5 minutes too long in a Wilson's carparks!