There is a decent chunk of irony in John Cambell discussing 'proper language' on Monday night. This being the very John Cambell that opened his new show by greeting viewers - “Hey yous Guys!”

Over on rivers.org.nz there is a discussion about power stations- we kayaker care very much about power stations.

here is my response...

I always get my ass kicked for this answer. But IMHO Nuclear is not a bad option. Only problem with it is it is BLOODY expensive.
But, for a clean green country like ours it is ideal.

Minimal emissions (Coal/Gas to some degree), just Nuke waste which is pretty manageable or at the very least exportable. Minimal visual polution (wind farms), no damming rivers (hydro), small in size (solar), reliable (all of the above save for Coal/Gas).

The other good thing we could do is stop selling Comalco electricity at below market rates. Comalco is basically just an electricity exporting mechanism. Ship the bauxite in, use the cheap power, ship the aluminium out. Export electricity.

Remember Spokey Dokeys? The little plastic beads you put on ya bike spokes- I used to have some on my downhill bike (and my toddler trike when I was 3)...

Anyway. Gizmodo has the latest in Spokey technology- LED Spokey Dokes! How cool is that. You can program them with your Palm- now if they would only choose a decent mobile computing platform I could be tempted to splurge on some- write them off as a company marketing expense!

On a day when our slimeball money grubbing govt. put the gas tax up 5c (plus Govt. Slavery Tax) the National Party (opposition) has announced that they we reallocate all of the money that is collected in gas tax and currently siphons off to the govt. consolidated coffers to the Land Transport Fund.

If there is one single policay that can reduce our road toll significantly this is it!

Bravo!

DPF is a bad man for linking to this  Terri Schiavo's Blog.

Jeremy Mazner has a post on how they are dealing with WiFi @ PDC this year.

Hopefully I'll be able to get there to try it out....

Hopefully we'll also get decent WiFi @ Sky City this year.... IMHO it's pretty important for a tech conference.

OK... so it had to happen sometime. Pradeepa de Silva one of my mates form a wee way back who is the Academic Evangelist for MS in ANZ has started blogging....

Here is a good wee thread on how to make your own play kayaking hole....

http://www.rivers.org.nz/forums/read.php?f=5&i=32&t=32

Kinda just blogging it so I can find it again later.....

My mate Lukas Svoboda from Auckland has been awarded MVP status in Architecture. This is VERY cool. Lukas is probably NZ's leading Microsoft Platform architect so the award is well deserved. Oh... he was also the guy that got the whole NZ Dot Net User Group thing going!

So... well done mate!

It is my duty to ask Nick whether the lovely truffles he got were...

Truffles

or

Truffles

...one can hazard a guess that only one variety will add 5kg to your weight.... Hell Bells.... adding 5kg via the fungal variety would be painfull... to both your wallet and your gastrointestinal system.

This is a great wee playboating run. We could have done with a bit more water but we still had a great play session... lots of ends. Was a bit shallow to do anything too silly like loops though.

Seth on the hole at the bottom of the run.

Me busting out some nasty ass facials... and a few ends.. in the bottom hole.

It was a long day- about 20 hours. DUD to Queenstown and back in a day. Seth wasn't even driving!

His book is availbale for pre order here.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321336437/nova-20

Well... I was really looking florward to watching this. Much as I loathe the politics of JC I think he's quite a good journalist. But... his new TV show SUCKED THE FAT ONE for the first night out.... and that Max Cryer thing! What was the producer thinking!

Rating for Mr JC... 4/10

Rick Byers has a cool example of some C-omega code talking to a database here: http://blogs.msdn.com/rmbyers/archive/2005/03/20/399489.aspx

rows = select * from DB.Employees where City == city; foreach( row in rows )

{

    string name = row.LastName.Value;

    int id = row.EmployeeID.Value;

    Console.WriteLine( id.ToString() + ": " + name);

}

This is how I will announce it.

“Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!!  Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks! “

The nasty thing about Media Center Edition is it is a HEAP less configurable than Beyond TV.

MCE Customizer helps change that a bit.

Rod has a good link to some stuff on corporate B/S speak.

This is just the kind of synergistic, customer-centric, upsell-driven, out-of-the-box, customizable, strategically tactical, best-of-breed thought leadership that will help our clients track to true north. Let's fly this up the flagpole and see where the pushback is.

IMHO... Microsofties are some of the worst at this.... and... 'pushback' is my fave Microsoftism- it's basically a euphemism for “let's do/suggest this regardless and see how much it &*%$#s people off'....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajamahadeen

 Pajamahadeen is a word play on Mujahideen. It was coined during the Killian documents controversy during the U.S. presidential election campaign of 2004, in which webloggers were derided by Jonathan Klein, a former CBS News executive vice-president for vigorously challenging the accuracy of a 60 Minutes story by CBS anchor Dan Rather. Klein is reported as saying, "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances (at CBS), and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." Webloggers who were pursuing the story such as Little Green Footballs [1] (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12526)[2] (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12615), Power Line (blog) [3] (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2004_09.php#007770), and Jim Geraghty at National Review Online [4] (http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerry200409221122.asp)[5] (http://www.nationalreview.com/tks/052840.html) took this insult and turned it into a variety of humorous self-deprecating descriptions of their form of online activism. As Andrew Sullivan noted in response to Klein's remarks: "Actually, I'm in sweatpants and a tanktop. But of course, it doesn't matter a jot what a fact-checker is wearing as long as his facts are correct. CBS's apparently aren't." [6]

Hat Tip to Gavin

Everytime I have called Air New Zealand over the past month I have spent upwards of 5 minutes on hold......

It seems that 'exceptional' caller demands is a 24/7 thing in the travel industry.....