Posts by Russell Brown
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Jamie McKay at MCH has kindly kicked in a few links.
You can learn more about the 1918 pandemic in New Zealand here.
And also check out its impact on your local town or region:
The death rate amongst Auckland Maori who contracted the disease was 68.4% ...
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Without your enthusiasm I probably would not have become such a coffee elitist, and I certainly look to public address to keep me up to cultural date.
Thanks to you, too Bruce. That was an interesting post.
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When there are groups like Generation Rescue that say they have research that vaccines increase Autism rates there is certainly more science required.
Sorry, but there simply isn't good evidence to that effect, and IMHO, the likes of Generation Rescue are not helping anyone.
Indeed, in sluicing money into yet more vaccine research, they're actually hurting people with autism and their families.
And I get really pissed off about the airtime the Huffington Post gives this stuff. It's just wrong.
Gotta love Orac, though ...
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And I would support moves to allow family members to totally block parole of people convicted of these crimes.
I certainly would not. Victims' families should of course be involved in the decision, but they are not the people who should be making it.
Apart from anything else, if a family indefinitely blocks parole (as Rita Croskery would), that means the system loses all the monitoring tools and parole conditions, and just dumps the offender on the street when the time comes. That's a terrible concept.
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Also: I think Powershop did themselves quite a lot of good with the geek/blogger scene when they pitched in on the 92A blackout. That was clever, but not without risk for them.
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Kyle and Paul. Thanks for the feedback.
I was talking last week to Steve Adams from MFNZ/Ffunnell, who's working on a proposal with a certain company where they put up the CEO and/or several expert staff to be questioned by our readers.
They were a little nervous about putting up expert staff.
But what really freaked them out was that Steve said part of the plan was that it would all be plainly explained to the readers (he anticipated my view on that, basically) -- including the fact that the client company was paying for the privilege of reaching the audience.
You mean ... we'd actually tell people what was going on?
Heh.
To be honest, I still haven't reached a completely comfortable view about how this stuff gets presented, and how to avoid mixing up straight editorial and conversational media. I'd be happier for the commecial conversations to have a separate place, but I'm not quite sure where. But the motivation is that there must be something better than more useless banner ads .
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While we're about interacting with our corporate overlords, I forwarded Graeme Edgeler's observations about his new Zinwell Freeview DVR to Freeview, and have finally just received this back.
I suspect they were waiting till they had a happier story to tell -- which they have, via an over-the-air software update for the Zinwell.
Q&A below the line:
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Every so often it just loses a whole bunch of my series-linked series and I have to enter them all in again!
Fixed.
Whenever it starts recording a programme, it switches to that channel, even if you were watching another one.
Fixed unless you are recording something else as well (only 2 tuners available so if already recording it must change the 2nd one to record the new programme)
You can't just rewind what you're watching (if you want to be able to rewind "live" TV you'd have to record it, and then start watching that recording)
Not fixed sadly. This wasn’t mandatory in our spec but I’ve encouraged all manufactures to include this. One of the new units available soon will have the feature.
If you are watching the recording of a programme that is still being recorded (i.e. you are watching it time-delayed) and the recording finishes it quits out of your viewing and goes back to live TV, it then doesn't remember where you were up to and you have to fast-forward/"chapter"-skip to that point to continue watching it.
Fixed
If you're recording one programme after another on the same channel it doesn't do its usual tape 3-4 minutes before it starts and 10 minutes after it ends, so while you'll tape both, the file of the recording might have the start (or end) of one programme in the file of another.
Not fixed. The buffer can’t be applied in this situation but real time start/stop times will be implemented soon. This will use the actual times from the broadcaster playout equipment so recordings will never be cut short.
You can't tell it to record on a specific date and time; you can only record material off the EPG. What if I'm going on holiday for a fortnight and know that some film I want to see is on during the second week of my time off? Well I can't record it, even though I know exactly when and where it’s going to be, because the EPG only sees eight days into the future.
Sadly not fixed but again will be available on models to be released soon.
The position of the play and pause buttons on the remote is the reverse of what it should. I record World News with Charles Gibson on TVNZ 7 every night, and it tapes it at both 5:10pm and 11:35pm (also I get multiple copies of Media 7 every week). I record The Daily Show every night and it only records the 10:30pm showing, not the day after repeat.
Fixed
Some programmes are listed on the EPG as blocks. I don't want to tape five hours of BBC World every time it has a documentary I want to see on it; the Simpsons block on Sunday nights is just also a block - what if I only want to tape the new episode? And why won't the guide tell me what each of the episodes is, only the first one?
We are encouraging the broadcasters (TVNZ in this instance) to break up these programmes but at this stage this is not achievable.
One bonus: it says it can record two channels at once, and will allow you to watch a recording while that is going on; it does slightly more - if those two channels are part of same channel (e.g. TV3 and C4, or TV One and TVNZ 7) then you can also watch something else, and you can also watch a sister channel of either of the channels you are recording.
:)
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Alan Macdougall ran an interesting discussion of Powershop on his blog a wee while ago.
That's excellent, as are the comments.
If Ari Sargent is reading this, he's welcome to contribute any comments.
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Hey, this is interesting ...
I've just had a call from Mercury Energy -- not because of who I am, I think, but because they seem to be calling everyone for whom they get a Powershop switch request.
Their pitch:
- Actually, when you factor in the standing charge and the prompt payment discount, their offering is priced about the same as Powershop's
- Like Powershop, they're offering a $50 credit by way of an inducement.
- They're holding their rates until April 2010.
- They point out that you need to be careful not to overbuy with Powershop -- ie, don't buy more kW than you can use before they expire.
Interesting. I've asked for details in writing.
But is contacting and making offers to customers on this basis anti-competitive, or just good retail competition?
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and TVNZ 7 doesnt show any commercial adverts... so I think Media 7 is definitely publicly fundED rather than public fundING.
TVNZ 7 is covered by the $89m for five years granted by the last government to get the digital channels established -- so not the Charter or advertising.
But I don't actually work for TVNZ. I'm a contractor to Top Shelf Productions, which in turn is contracted to make the programme for TVNZ. Reasonably important distinction.
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