Walk and ride across the harbour bridge

Support the GetAcross campaign - www.getacross.org.nz - it's all about being able to ride your bike across the bridge.

This is from the organiser:

On Sunday, May 24, 2009 the Auckland Harbour Bridge will be 50 years
old. But rather than commiserate half a century of denied access, come
out and show your support for walking and cycling access on the
Bridge. All the details are attached, in summary...

WHAT: A public walk/cycle over the Auckland Harbour Bridge

WHEN: 9am, Sunday, May 24, 2009

QUESTIONS? See the attached flyer and forward it to your friends,
family and workmates. Let's make this a demonstration of support the NZ
Transport Agency can't ignore!

Keep an eye on www.getacross.org.nz for the latest developments. At
present the Police say we will get to march across the bridge (and it is
their call) but the NZ Transport Agency are opposed (surprise, surprise!)

Want to get more involved?... we need helpers to distribute flyers,
please reply by e-mail.

Regards....

Andy Smith
Walk Auckland

Who are you!

Ooh ooh oh ho!  Well we went to the Who on Saturday, Tomachi being sceptical - however his views changed very quickly.  That is after the Counting Crows had finished!  They were good at what they do but were quite boring - Mrs Jones was good and I have always wanted to see them since I saw the Black Crows in London supporting Aerosmith along with 3 Colours Red, The Stereophonics and Lenny Kravits.  So I have accomplished that.  So the Who were great...my generation got the crowd up and jiving.  I recommend seeing them even if you're not a big fan - the show is very inclusive and uplifting and fun.

Rakinos was great afterwards - we had got the public transport system which was brilliant, good on maxx.co.nz

Tomachi played with the New Telapathics today at the Kings Arms for the Safe - choose good meat campaign.  All proceeds going to charity - safe.org.nz  - we still love meat but are promoting free range etc - Jamie Oliver thank you!

Tim Minchin

Saw a cool comedian called Tim Minchen last night at the Auckland Festival. He is *the bomb*. He is the re-incarnation of Frank Zappa in some ways - mixing comedy with music in a quite prodigeous way. His piano playing ability reminded me of that Family Guy episode whereby Peter gets drunk and plays piano extremely well, but only when inebriated. This guys hands were like that... all over the piano evern when he was in the key of C# Minor.

Another point to note - he is extremely atheist, doing melancolly tracks intermixed with "i love boobs", and this track below... If I didn't Have You:

iPhone versus Treo 750v

I now have my own iPhone 1st Gen. Running software version 2.0 I notice the following problems with the iPhone:

1. Like the Treo (Windows Mobile 6, Treo 750v), the iPhone doesn't natively support group SMS texting, but the native messaging program of each phone can still compose a message to many people: you just have to keep adding them from contacts each time, which can get boring, and not feasable for really large event lists.
2. On the Treo, I had to download a 3rd party app called Group SMS by Shailesh Ashar to make group txting easier. Group SMS integrates with the 'categories' feature of Outlook contacts allowing it to instantly pickup those. But its pretty buggy and slow and although you can paste, you can't copy.
3. Clipboard support: The iPhone lacks copy paste function! Lets say that again: the iPhone doesn't have a clipboard or method to select text in a text box. This is super stupid. All Smart Phones for the past 5 years have had clipboard - pretty much that main point of having a smart phone in my opinion.
4. SMS folders: on my Treo 750 and Treo 650 (PalmOS) both had the following: inbox / outbox / sent / draft, whcih seem very logical. You can go to a previously sent message, copy text from it, and paste into a new message. Can't do this on the iPhone, heck it doesn't even have an inbox / outbox. In fact, it would appear that it is possible to lose a half-composed txt by mistake somehow, something i will no doubt discover at some stage once i get used to it.
5. Quick Text: similar to having a clipboard, this function on both the Palm and Windows smartphones allows the instant insertion of any number of pre-defined snippets of text. I have a bunch setup for common things, usually have a nice big one that describes my next gig in detail with the lineup and door prices etc, that i can send very qucikly to anyone who might txt me. This is impossible in the iPhone, but a great feature on both Treos!
6. Treo can send and receive MMS messages - you know the ones with pics, videos, and sounds? Yep those. iPhone can't use those.

MediaWorks to ban free tv guide listings for TV3 and C4

UPDATE: They have re-instated the listings! Good on ya MediaWorks for coming to your senses.

In some impressively bad form, it would appear that the guy who runs http://www.freetvguide.co.nz/ has been asked to remove TV3 and C4 listings from his TV Guide. They've asked him to pay $2k per month for the priveledge, which makes me think, does this mean that the next best one (NZ City TV Guide) also pay MediaWorks for their ability to publish the programme listings?

Robin's words:

After a few phone calls and emails in the past 2 weeks with a representative of MediaWorks that owns TV3 and C4, they have decided that unless I pay $2000 a month I am no longer to publish their listings. When the FreeTVguide first started nearly 4 years ago, TVNZ, PRIME and a Canwest person all allowed me to publish the current days listings, I had communication with all of them, but in this past year or so Canwest have sold TV3 and C4 to an Australian company and lately they have decided to 'protect their brand' as they put it. I was told today that either I pay the full $2000 per month or pull their listings immediately, and if I continue listing their programs, they will put a lawyer and a $50,000 fine on me, can you believe that? they are only free to air program listings for crying out loud. Please voice your opinion on this thread, tell me what you think and offer any suggestions on how I can keep the freeTVguide alive and worthwhile, I really don't want it to die off, but without TV3 on the listings its a definite kick in the guts.

So i wrote TV3 a note on their website about it:

http://www.tv3.co.nz/Default.aspx?TabId=52

I'm going to start a page about Kiwisaver

I have trouble understanding the nuts and bolts of kiwisaver:  each providers pros and cons, interest rates, risk levels etc. So in order to understand it all, I'm going to create an article with a big comparison chart with the different providers compared. It should be sweet. Stay tuned.