8 Bit Instrumental – Green Hill Zone (Sonic the Hedgehog) (8 Bit Plus Edition)

I wanted to get some music from a myspace page while I wait for the artist’s album to come out. I was going to leech the xml file and figure it out from there, but instead I stumbled across musicgrab.

A nice clean interface, and results! Considerably better than the unreliable vixy that I use for youtube vids.

Concord Dawn – Never Give Up on Love (Featuring Tiki)

Hutt News, Page 10. Cheers for the heads up Crusty-C.

(Click for a 1.1M version)

Foo Fighters – Skin And Bones

While waiting for the bus home from work, I noticed that my bus-stop-comrades were clutching to a travel book printed in French, and that they were talking to each other in French. I wondered to myself how good their English was, so I tailed them into the bus when it arrived.

Their English wasn’t that great, they were struggling valiantly but the driver was having trouble understanding them. Having been to France and being impressed by the hospitality and politeness there, I felt the need to return the favour on behalf of NZ, even though my French is, well, godawful. The conversation, mixed with a bunch of pardon? (both French and English meaning) went roughly like this:

Me: Excusez-moi, bonjour, en Francais? (Excuse me, hi, in French?)
Them: Oui, sil vous plait! (Yes, please!)
Me: Uhhh…. Deux billet pour Gare Du Wellington… et…. Courtenay Place….? (Uhhh…. Two tickets for Wellington station… or…. Courtenay Place….?)

(In retrospect, this should have been ou, not et which means and. I always confuse it with avec, which means with.)

Them: Oui, Courtenay Place, sil vous plait (Yes, Courtenay Place please)
Me (to the driver): Hey mate, two tickets for Courtenay Place please
Tickets are issued, money is exchanged.
Them: Merci boucoup (very thankfully, as if I’d just saved their lives) (thankyou very much)
Me: Je vous en prie. C’est tres bien? (very politely) (You’re welcome. All is good?)
Them: Oui! (yes)

That was really, really stretching my French ability, it’s been several months since I last spoke in French and I’m sure I messed up, but not enough to confuse them. And judging by their smiles they were pleased that a New Zealander had helped them out. Glad I could do my bit for my country.

When I reached my stop, I bade them Au Revoir and went on my way. I wished I could speak more than basic French so that I could wish them good luck, or offer them some advice, but I’m not that cool just yet. Maybe if I find the time to resume my French studies. It’s interesting that what I’ve learnt so far has stuck though

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip – Look For The Woman

I have blogged before about the Drunken Street Preacher but he’s been quiet as of late. Until this morning… maybe.

During a lull in my sleep at about 5.30am, out of nowhere I was awoken sharply by someone yelling “I’ll fucking kill you!”

Must have been pretty loud for me to hear it that clearly, I initially thought it was inside my apartment – but not my room, so a bikeseat post, of all things, was the first thing in my hand from underneath my bed. Enough to knock a man out, not enough to bludgeon with though. A quick ninja sweep of my apartment and a check of the stairwell and doors revealed nothing. I looked out over the street and saw nobody, I figured I was imagining things and went back to sleep.

This morning I asked my flatmate if he heard it, which he did.

Who needs Shortland Street when you’ve got Jackson Street?

So while I can’t confirm that it was definately our beloved Drunken Street Preacher, it certainly fits his modus operandi.

Pendulum – Out Here

So a guy took a swing at me in a fish and chip shop. He got a jabbed larynx and the killer right cross for his troubles.

Isn’t alcohol fun?

The Black Seeds – Dance Dance

So my letter to the editor wasn’t printed, instead more dribble from more know-nothings was. With the exception of one letter which actually had FACTS, though it was from a slightly closed minded point of view. Alas, I will have to wait until I am Global El Presidente before my brilliance and common sense can be spread.

While looking for a fibre drawer to secure our fibre gear, I came across this. Now, I’ve seen this product before and thought “meh, looks ok”, but now having to manage some 320+ cables on our patch rack, these things make me giddy to my nerdsome core. Especially after seeing some of the before and after results, that resonate just right with me, and after reading their cabling guide (12meg pdf). And at USD$56 a shot they’re an absolute steal. The only downside is that they’re designed for 24/48 port panels. Ours are mostly 32′s. There’s always something to complicate things

/EDIT: I think I’ve figured out a method to mitigate this. We’ll see.

First though, it looks like maybe some more POE and some VOIP is on the cards before I can go requesting funding for this. The day that I have at least 80% of our patch rack tidily cabled in a set and forget configuration will be a good day… Or not, because I won’t have much to do :-/

Pendulum – Out Here

The latest Hutt News pissed me off. Too many people making uninformed opinions, bleating on with generic rhetoric. It pushed me to the point of writing my second ever letter to the editor. Let’s see if it gets published, stay tuned!

Dear Editor,
Regarding Nuclear Energy: No.  To the people who are jumping on the nuclear equals green bandwagon, while it is indeed less pollutive than say, Huntly, it’s a simple matter of economics, future technologies and alternative mentalities.

New Zealand has 4.26 million people in an area of approx 268,680 km sq.  It is an isolated island nation, astride the Pacific “ring of fire.”  The closest comparative country, also on the ring of fire, is Japan.  Japan has a population of over 127 million in an area of approx 377,873 km sq.  The other island nation to compare to, the United Kingdom, has nearly 61 million people within approx 244,820 km sq.

Japan and the UK can justify nuclear energy via supply and demand:  In terms of density, Japan has 339 people per sq km, the UK has 246.  We have around 15 per sq km.  Nuclear energy, while great on paper, is simply uneconomical for NZ at this point in time.  There is basically no realistic return on investment, and should a plant proposal get through the red tape of resource consents etc, no-one in their right mind would fund such a venture.

And as for those blithering on about “what about another Chernobyl?!”, look, Chernobyl was a rushed plant based on a flawed design over 20 years ago.  It was Soviet corner-cutting at its worst, and even though it was built in the Generation II era, it was by design no better than a Generation I reactor. We’re up to Generation IV designs now, including designs that will do nothing at all when void of coolant.  You’re simply more likely to be hit by bird droppings while in the middle of an air traffic accident during a solar eclipse than you are to experience another Chernobyl in your lifetime.

The main concern with Nuclear is the insistence that it has to be Uranium based.  Uranium has limited reserves, of which only 0.7% of (natural) reserves can be used.  However it remains popular because of the existing technologies/infrastructure and that it generates the most weapons grade material.  Basically, any investment in Uranium based technology is a wasted investment, because like oil it is a dead-end resource.

Thorium, on the other hand, is much safer and has reserves to last us several hundreds, if not thousands of years.  It is more efficient, can burn conventional nuclear waste, generates less waste, the waste it does generate has a half-life measured in dozens of years instead of hundreds/thousands, and it produces considerably less weapons grade material.  Thorium is the answer to that (George Dubya voice) “Iran + Nukular = Terrism” non-issue that we in the West are being ignorantly force-fed.  And to top it off Australia has the largest Thorium reserves in the world, followed by India, making it the most suitable Nuclear technology for NZ should it ever become economically and politically desirable for us.

But it’s all for nothing, really.  The latest estimates from MIT is that if current funding continues, we’ll have commercial-grade fusion reactors within 30 years.  Fusion is infinately safer and less wasteful, and any radioactive leftover from the process has a significantly lower half-life than present fission technologies.

The only real way forward in the meantime, though, is to do away with the silly notion that all electricity absolutely must be generated centrally.  If we all had some combination of insulated homes, energy-efficient appliances, hybrid solar lighting, solar hot water panels, and small 1-2kWh cowl-style wind turbines, our dependance on our aging and inefficient national grid would collectively decrease.  

Imagine; no more moaning in the middle of winter about lake levels, if only we’d all do our part, starting with the government retrofitting all state buildings and offering subsidies to people on their “Welcome Home” first home loan package.

The business model of the electricty industry would change – you’d basically augment your at-home-generated energy with units from a conventional provider.  It would be possible under the right conditions for even a city council to generate and supply electricity, maybe finally giving us the competition that we were promised all those years ago when the industry was shaken up.  Decentralisation is the key.

We have the technology now, we just lack the mentality and political motivation.  And without either we’re not going to innovate, we’re not going to apply our #8 Wire ingenuity, we’re not going to go anywhere.  We’ll stay stuck here in our anti-progressive public bickering session.

The fact remains though: For every wind turbine you protest, a little Huntly keeps polluting.

Rawiri Blundell
Petone