Up Front by Emma Hart

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Up Front: Will Work for Foo

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  • Neil Graham,

    Leave the house and exercise for at least an hour a day. A long walk is not only good for the body...

    Not so good for my body I found, I always ended up at the local bakery.

    [posting while draped over the sofa btw]

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 118 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Leave the house and exercise for at least an hour a day. A long walk is not only good for the body...

    Not so good for my body I found, I always ended up at the local bakery.

    Oddly, I went for a nice walk today which really cheered me up. The staff at the local bakery are so nice.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • Islander,

    Walking was one of my especial pleasures until arthritic hip and knees
    made it rather unpleasant...I look like turning into a hundred stone zombie without it tho' (and thus, the post-modernists are proved right!)

    Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report Reply

  • Neil Graham,

    bloody karma...

    It appears the sofa quip earned me two dogs and a five year old on the chest. I am now the sofa.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 118 posts Report Reply

  • Judi Lapsley Miller,

    Craig said

    Another peril of working at home, when the phone (and internet) goes down, you have to be your own IT department.

    Got that base covered too (thank you Linton!), and if we lose external connectivity we can always go down the road to borrow some bandwidth from a mate on cable (thank you David!).

    Back on the sofa now in clean PJs after a spot of gardening... (no kids or dogs in sight Neil!). And look! It's just gone wine-o'clock...

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 106 posts Report Reply

  • Ben Chapman,

    [posting while draped over the sofa btw]

    Me standing at breakfast bar, trying to get something done while keeping one eye on kids playing with water in the backyard (and one ear on the cricket commentary).

    Y'know, I would consider myself lucky to get as much feedback or instructions from my clients, even if it was as crazy.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2008 • 135 posts Report Reply

  • B Jones,

    I get time-zones, I even get how they come about, but half-hour ones are bollocks... but half an hour, what's the point?

    Try the Chatham Islands. They're 45 mins ahead of mainland NZ, which makes watching the news there a little weird.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 976 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    Sofas, breakfast bars, random association. Granny gets down wif the yoof - in a caption for a pic of a telly, of all things:

    It's in your living room, sucking your electricity.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Ben Chapman,

    Try the Chatham Islands. They're 45 mins ahead of mainland NZ, which makes watching the news there a little weird.

    I have long been an advocate of abandoning time-zones and just running the world with a universal time.

    It won't solve the problem of people in different parts of the globe not knowing at what time the sun shines here though. But it will make it easier to schedule international calls.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2008 • 135 posts Report Reply

  • Jackie Clark,

    It may also be of moment to note that - when any of my family/friendgroup are fraught or - forfend- dead, I cease to be able to work as writer. I can sing ephemeral stuff, I can draw (but not paint) but I cant really write. Pity that people have regularly died over the past 7 years. May this year we are all lively & happy.

    May your family thrive and prosper this year, islander. I, for one, whether you write for readers or not, enjoy the results of your familial contentment.

    Mt Eden, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 3136 posts Report Reply

  • Islander,

    Kia ora Jackie- thanks! And while I dont write with possible readers in mind, some stuff does creep out into the wider world- may all be well with all you love too-

    Big O, Mahitahi, Te Wahi … • Since Feb 2007 • 5643 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    I have long been an advocate of abandoning time-zones and just running the world with a universal time.

    Can you imagine the scrap over which country keeps to keep 'normal time' while the rest of us all have to shift?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Sam F,

    Granny gets down wif the yoof - in a caption for a pic of a telly, of all things:

    It's in your living room, sucking your electricity.

    I saw what they did there...

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 1611 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Can you imagine the scrap over which country keeps to keep 'normal time' while the rest of us all have to shift?

    It was a joke, surely?

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Emma Hart,

    Can you imagine the scrap over which country keeps to keep 'normal time' while the rest of us all have to shift?

    Queensland won't budge, I'll tell you that now.

    It was a joke, surely?

    And so was that, surely.

    Christchurch • Since Nov 2006 • 4651 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Campbell,

    I think having us all switch to UTC would be a grand idea - as to which country gets to keep theirs - probably no one - even the UK which is nominally on UTC/GMT is on permanent summer time so they'd have to change too - all we'd have to do would be to change our work hours (and figure out when the weekend was since we'd probably lose/gain a day when we switched)

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    So from now on I get at up at 21:00 UTC and work until 7:00 and call 1 in the morning "midday"? All so a bunch of people can teleconference internationally without having to make complex mathemtical calculations such as "what's 18 minus 12"?

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Campbell,

    it's like when we changed to decimal currency and didn't have to do math in 1/240ths or distance in power of 2 fractions of 63360 - we changed, we got used to it - what went away was that whole part of primary school where we had to deal with word problems like "I sold 4lb 7oz of gold for exactly 3 guineas and a half crown, how much could I buy for 5 pound 16 shillings thruppence farthing?" (hint it's a trick question, double hint because of the gold) - that was hard and obviously there's a whole portion of society who don't get timezones, much less DST ....

    (you may think I'm joking - I genuinely got just those sorts of word problems in NZ primary school pre-decimalisation, I was also expected to know such arcane trivia as feet-in-a-furlong etc)

    this is just the first step: generations from now when we all live in space and finish off what we started by switching to decimal time - we'll just deal with kS (about 20 minutes) MS (~12 days) LS (the Indian lakh will give us our day) ....

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    this is just the first step: generations from now when we all live in space and finish off what we started by switching to decimal time - we'll just deal with kS (about 20 minutes) MS (~12 days) LS (the Indian lakh will give us our day) ....

    OK now you're really messing with my mind. What's an S?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Paul Campbell,

    second

    Dunedin • Since Nov 2006 • 2623 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    "Not only are our trains running on time, they're running on metric time! Remember this time people, 80 past 2 on April 47th!"

    There's another reason why it's a ludicrous idea: at the moment, if I holiday in Sweden, is set my watch to the local time when I get there and that's all the adjustment I need. If we all operated in UTC, I'd have to get used to which hours constiture morning, afternoon, evening and night everywhere I went. Which, incidentally, would mess up conference calls too, not to mention when somebody has to phone from overseas and would have to work out if it's morning or night where you live, which would be just as problematic in spite of the supposed adoption of the same time everywhere.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Ben Chapman,

    So from now on I get at up at 21:00 UTC and work until 7:00 and call 1 in the morning "midday"? All so a bunch of people can teleconference internationally without having to make complex mathemtical calculations such as "what's 18 minus 12"?

    It will be particularly useful when a fraction of the population live in space stations or moon bases or other places where there aren't timezones.

    Seriously though, there are any number of things that need to be synchronised around the world, and cutting out the translation into and out of universal time will cut down the chance of error.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2008 • 135 posts Report Reply

  • Ben Chapman,

    If we all operated in UTC, I'd have to get used to which hours constiture morning, afternoon, evening and night everywhere I went.

    Universal time will not be without its own quirks it's true.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2008 • 135 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    Ah of course. Incidentally Wikipedia tells me that a second is measured by:

    the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.[1]

    I'm glad that cleared it up :)

    Surely the unit should be based on something. Second derivates from dividing up the year via days, hours, minutes, seconds. Shouldn't the base unit be an earth or an earth day? And then divide one of them up into smaller units?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Not only that, but the length of a metre is defined as a function of time (the distance travelled by light in one 299,792,456th of a second, to be ridicolously precise), so if you change the duration of a second - which is arbitrary, you're right - that would also change the length of a metre.

    There is no even number of seconds in a year, though.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

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