Posts by Hugh Wilson
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Good to hear Blackalicious were in effect - I remember them playing the Urban Expressions festival in Sydney in 1998, and rocking up to the park jam the day after their show, cold chilling with everything. Hopefully Alphabet Acrobatics & Swan lake got a look in!
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Easy Moz - I'm not the architect of the NBN policy, or involved in any service delivery let alone responsible for it - there is a long, long history here and I agree its not pretty and as evident from your posts very underwhelming from a consumer perspective. I'm simply a mid tier nine to fiver who's been on deck for 2 years, working to pay my mortgage & put food on the table for my family.
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Hard News: Sky and 2020, in reply to Moz,
Moz you've got pretty good speeds relative to many! As it happens I work in Regulatory Affairs for Telstra, so what you speak of is familiar. Your HFC infrastructure will get upgraded as part of the NBN rollout, and you will have the option of purchasing a 100 mbps plan (and possibly higher) from more than the current one RSP. There are also moves afoot to improve disclosures and consumer awareness about speeds outcomes/expectations prior to contracting, so your lot should improve with time.
Some of what you refer to with congestion goes to upstream infrastructure, and crosses over to Russell's earlier point on dark fibre - international peering arrangements and domestic caching are also factors, and I think its safe to say there will be improvements in all of these areas in the years ahead, as actions are taken to meet ever growing consumer demand.
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Absolutely - just to clarify, currently here you have to sign up with Optus to get EPL, there is no resale (aside from one game per week on free to air) - thats quite a big ask, and there is a view that consequently EPL's profile locally has nosedived this season. The whole multi-platform model means there is an online channel alongside traditional TV channel (irrespective of whether the TV channel can also stream delivery).
PS: Go the Blues
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In some ways the decision was not that surprising – the content part, as in Sky sport, was always going to be contentious and re-seller provisions were absent or light (Sky’s person seemed to suggest that Spark et al walked away from ‘equivalent’ type offers made to them, which is curious).
In industry speak there may have also been concerns about VHA ‘zero rating’ sky content to build its customer base.
As for the rugby rights, I would think the holders would want to avoid a ransom model approach (which is what has happened with EPL rights in OZ, under the current ownership of Optus) – instead a multi-platform approach would seem the most sensible, as encapsulated in the ‘season pass’ offerings which exist for leagues such as the NBA. This would align with more content being delivered via online platforms, something NZ seems much better positioned for than Oz given the current high uptake of 100 mbps plans (and near ubiquitous infrastructure). Dark fibre sounds sexy, but really its just a transmission input – if it’s a bottleneck it’ll get regulated, if not competition will push down prices and perhaps enable direct access (that’s what’s on the cusp of happening in OZ, but I’m not fully across the NZ situation).
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There's a cracking rocksteady song called 'little things'
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Good looking on those prints - rightup my alley, so I ordered a couple from what was left!
On the music tip I've been enjoying some of Paul Nice's offerings, who's ventured to Oz this week - there have been 100's of tour mixes put out before, but not many like his, so certainly recommend:
https://soundcloud.com/realpaulnice/3-the-hard-way-paul-nice-delta-kavi-r-free-download
Sail on the Grill is also up, and I can imagine it'd go with a kiwi summer like some crisp, cool Rheineck's & oysters
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I like the quote in Andrew’s blogpost about the mixtape being the most widely practised artform in America. I sense that was probably a moment in time but I guess that also depends on how you define a mixtape – I feel a degree of effort is needed to qualify, and as such (for me) an itunes playlist doesn’t really count.
In my teenage years the key to making mixtapes was the mini sound system with built in double tape deck – what a marvel they were. A few years later I graduated to the minidisc platform, and was even known to plug that into the computer through the line in port to create CD’s. I later purchased a portable mp3 recorder but that was bit of a dud really, and since then – somewhat paradoxically – I’ve been without the capability to make mixtapes despite having a bigger collection than ever. (Haven’t gone the serato route, so no recording via that and the whizz band Apogee Duet unit (at ~$900) is still on the wish list).
At the risk of stating the obvious, mixtapes are a super broad subject area and when overlaid with personal anecdotes the number of possible permutations would seem almost infinite.
One thought I had on the ‘what track next’ aspect was the close parallel to djing. Indeed Russell alludes to trying to influence the mood of his gatherings through his playlist music selections – that’s quite a bit of djing in a nutshell really, and whats key – in different measures, in different settings – are the skills in the mix and the depth (or quality) of selections. A good amateur/enthusiast should know their limits (or perhaps I should say strengths) and work to them accordingly – when you get it ‘right’ it’s a wonderful feeling/thrill. In the mixtape context, clean segues through to a catchy riff or punchy beat are probably the main elements of things that prick my ears and stay in the memory.
Another line of thought on ‘memorable tracks/mixtape moments’ was to think about whats stuck with me over time, and why. Off the top of my head (and some of these I haven’t listened to for years) were:
Dj Vadim’s Conquest of the Irrational tape (late 90’s) – first time I heard Placebo’s Balek, and also featured Skitz’ Fingerprints of the Gods
Coldcuts Journeys by DJ mix, from 95 – seminal really, and perhaps birthed solid steel
Headspin’s Rakim mix, where he mixes the OG’s with Rakim’s verses we know so well
Brainfreeze – I can recall hearing about this when it came out late 1990’s, and the idea of owning a copy was completely beyond the realm of possibility. Hey Joyce and more, and perhaps a strong appearance by the number song (can’t quite remember, its been a while)There more, but that’s probably enough for now, suffice to say I still listen to (and download) a lot of mixes ...
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to BenWilson,
Well, in fairness to the Vox piece – and I am not an Uber expert – it did frame the strategy as being somewhat 2 part: First win the market on price and convenience factors, second margins via uptake of self driving cars … I agree that there are lots of question marks over self driving cars but am less sure that consumer willingness to use these would be the deal breaker so to say. Behaviours and attitudes change over time, and I myself could forgo driver conversations.
I think the main parallel with Amazon is the incurrence of losses upfront to herbalist a dominant position which is then commercialised over the longer term … as noted int the article, there is a reason $11B in capital has been provided thus far …