Posts by Steve Parks
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to giovanni tiso,
The Lonely Planet’s baffling inclusion of Wellington in the top three amongst worldwide urban destinations for this year included praise of the city’s “visible Maori culture”.
To be clear, that comment about visible Maori culture was from Wellington’s new mayor Celia Wade-Brown, in response to the Lonely Planet judgment, not a comment from Lonely Planet itself, as far as I can see. (Also, they placed Wellington at four, not in the top three.)
But I agree that even ranking Wellington in the top 10 destination cities is pretty specious. I guess that in making their 2011 list Lonely Planet were trying a bit hard to be different and include the unexpected.
The possibility that a “Wellywood’ sign might still be put up by Wellington Airport is a worry. What’s wrong with those fuckers? And to be fair, it was the capital’s former mayor, Kerry Prendergast, who thought the sign would capture the essence of the capital.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Matthew Poole,
You are a perfect example of how broken the “random” selection is, though. I know many people who’ve never been summonsed,
I'm one of those, and I'd happily do jury service. Last ten years in Wellington, no call up. In that same time, my ex was called for trials almost immediately after the 2-year reprieve. 3 or 4 times, I think. And we have concerns that it difficult to get jurors, with too many people opting out with excuses. There is something wrong with their system, for sure.
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Hard News: Behaving badly at the bottom…, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
it seems to be only an option for the very rich (who can ignore a few days loss of wages) or the very poor
Or the people like me, lucky enough to work for employers (both my current and previous) who will continue to pay you, as long as you hand over the MoJ cheque.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Nope, Lucy, “censorship” implies no such thing.
I think the word “censorship” does imply such a thing, while not actually being limited to that by definition. I’m weary of terms like ‘self-censorship’; that really isn’t censorship – that’s just human interaction. I don’t use certain swear words in front of some people that I would otherwise use in a similar situation, for example. So I think censorship does imply some kind of outside authority imposing restrictions. A publisher choosing to edit their edition of a book, however misguided, isn’t really censorship in that sense.
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Hard News: Holiday Open Thread 2:…, in reply to BenWilson,
15 days!! I used to work at a bank, and as I recall we never advised a Telegraphic Transfer would take 15 days to process, even to a credit card account (which added a day). I think 3 to 5 business days was the norm.
[Edit: reading Rich’s comment again I notice he mentions 2-3 days, which sounds about right as my work was usually involving credit cards, which as I say adds a day.) -
You can delete the text of your post within the 15-minute edit window (although it would be best to acknowledge this by replacing the deleted text with “post deleted” or similar). I think deleting posts outright is frowned upon – ‘rewriting history’, so to speak. It can cause confusion if someone deletes a comment that someone else has responded to (this may be done inadvertently, or sometimes even maliciously).
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Peter Cox,
...that thing kinda reads to me like John Drinnan simply just doesn’t *like* the whole damn film/television/music industry.
He seems to have a chip on his shoulder about Wellington, too.
I still thought there were some reasonable observations in there, but...
A sign of the times. In the online world the trendy folk of Public Address voted recently for a sexual insult "twatcock" as its word of the year.
Good grief.
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Hard News: Do you like what we've done…, in reply to Sacha,
I’ve visited discussion sites where if I go to the topic thread “Steve Parkes is a Jerk” and there are, say, 50 comments, the next time I log in to that site and click on that topic, it takes me straight to the 51st comment (assuming comments have been added since, of course). I’d assume you’d have to be a registered, logged in user for this to work, but it can be done.
Matthew’s subscription suggestion does just about the same, though, so no biggie. -
Hard News: Do you like what we've done…, in reply to matthewbuchanan,
Ah, I see I wrote "latest" unread comment, which confused things. I meant to say that clicking on the topic would take you to the first of the unread comments, ie the first of the comments added since you last visited that topic. Or some other way to make it easier to quickly find where I left off. Thanks for the hotkey tip.
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Hard News: Do you like what we've done…, in reply to recordari,
Trivial, but in-line links open in a new page, while personal links to websites or Twitter etc open in the same page. I’m of the ‘target="_blank”’ school. Others have any preference?
I agree. I much prefer links opening in a new page.
On another issue, what would really make me happy is if clicking on the topic took you to the latest unread comment. Other sites do this, with designers not a clever as the Cactus Lab people I’m sure.