Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Air Guitar World ChampsForget the Olympics (oh, you already had?) New Zealand's entry in this year's Air Guitar World Champs - the superbly monikered Tarquin "The Tarkness" Keys - has been named one of the world's top two best air guitarists: a week after the competition final was held in Oulu, Finland. Having finished second on the night, a recall was called for after discrepancies were noticed in the judging...MiRi "Sonyk-Rok" Park of the United States was announced to be the Air Guitar World Champion late last Friday after a tight Final in Oulu, Finland. However, after the re-count of the total points it appeared that the national champion of New Zealand, Tarquin "The Tarkness" Keys scored more points on the first round. On the second round the points were even. After all the Jury decided to share the title and announce both Champions, because "Sonyk-Rok" and "The Tarkness" were extremely even during the whole competition. This was the certain and clear opinion of the Jury.Check out the winning moves from all the competitors here (22mb windows media file). And some pix of 'The Tarkness' taking out the NZ competition back in June, here. # | Friday, August 27, 2004
Google Adsense goes horribly wrongOuch.A child was taken to Dunedin Hospital with a hand stuck in an industrial meat mincer after an accident in a South Dunedin restaurant yesterday evening.And the google adsense ad that pops up underneath the story? An ad for meat mincers, of course. update: stuff have since changed the ad on that page to non context-senstive public service announcement ad type. Nice to see they can respond quickly to such unfortunate web happenings. [via David Farrar] # | Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Clear Channel: making money from the musicEver wonder why the US music industry seems to have degenerated into producing bland pap-pop? Blame Clear Channel. In this excellent article from Rolling Stone, the corporations grip on the airwaves and live venues across the USA is spelt out for all to see...Clear Channel controls roughly 1,200 radio stations and about seventy percent of all live events that are promoted in the United States. The company also is reportedly considering the launch or purchase of a record label.The company is now drawing flack for it's continued focus on revenue, to the detriment of both quality product, and the artist's own income. As Dixie Chicks manager Simon Renshaw puts it, "They don't care about music. They care about ad rates." One former Clear Channel executive told Rolling Stone that at annual corporate meetings, sales awards are given out for more than an hour -- and programming prizes take up only ten minutes. "You're controlling all this media, and what you're saying is, 'We don't care about what's on the air,'" he says. "All they care about is moving product."On the live front, the Channel has such a near-monopoly of the live circuit that bands are at the mercy of the corporation. Steve Miller complains of his tour being so padded out with corporate freebies and giveaways that one concert he performed at had an attendance of over 18000, of which only 2300 were paying money that he might see some profit from (after splitting the profit with Clear Channel, of course). Read on... [via j-walk] # | Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Maybe it's their custom.Doing a bit of post-match analysis of the NZ v. China Olympic basketball match, I stumbled across these great passages in an English-language Chinese paper...Describing the Tall Black's haka before the game... Heh. Apparently it had little effect on the Chinese. Says Yao Ming, the 2.26m giant NBA professional...
Ahaha! Great stuff. He also suggested the Chinese team should indugle in some Shaolin Kungfu the next time the two teams meet. Whether he meant before the game, or to combat some of Dillon Boucher's more aggressive defence, I'm not too sure. # | Monday, August 23, 2004
Alien invaders Apparently we're being taken over by an alien snake empire. Barbara Wiowala, the discoverer of the conspiracy, has been accumulating evidence on her website. Unfortunately, 'they' are against her, manipulating her photographic evidence directly on her web servers, as she claims: "'THEY' ARE MAKING MY IMAGES DARKER!" She has this to say on the two Israelis recently convicted here in NZ on passport fraud charges (pictured above) ... "PLEASE NOTICE THEY AR NOT HUMAN the lizard person on the left has had facial surgery exactly like SENATOR SPECTER and his WIFE to build up a FALSE NOSE.. what is AMAZ_XING is the man on the RIGHT.. i think he has a special type of finger that probably INJECTS POISON!.( I WOULD NOT WANT TO SIT NEXT TO HIM ON AN AIRPLANE WOULD U?). and is invisible.. WANNA BET!? this is just enlarged and one filter solarize to show these KREEPS working for the USA LIZARDS and SHARON"Errr, yes. Other notable lizards include George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and the Pope. Osama Bin Laden is some sort of clone, Vladimir Putin is a Vampyre [sic], and the industrious Barbara also reveals that Michael Jackson is in fact, wait for it, a human! (But he does want to be a lizard). [via the presurfer] # | Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Sideways RainAhh, a soothing sea breeze, or, as people who live outside the fair city prefer to call it, a howling gale. There's nothing quite like the Wellington Wind. If we lived in more tropical environs, the massive low and associated winds that's been hovering off the East coast of New Zealand for the last few days would be classed as a hurricane, but you don't have hurricanes in temperate zones, you just have bloody big storms. From the NZ Herald...In Mt Kaukau, near the city, the average wind blast was 133km/h [82 mph] gusting up to 178km/h [110 mph]. The average wind speed in Cook Strait was 130km/h [80 mph] gusting up to 160km/h [99 mph]So yes, it was fairly blowing. Anyway, my wife gets up at her traditional time of 6am to go for her run, steeled to her morning workout by a work colleague's use of the phrase 'a creampuff' (about another employee, but motivation enough), and heads out into the still dark morning and the howling wind, the sleet mixed with ice cold sea water whipped by the wind off the mountainous swells of Cook Strait. We live on the leeward side of a hill, with Cook Strait, notorious for it's big swells and cold seas (if do you follow that link, scroll to the bottom of the page), on the other side of the rise. So when my wife headed up the hill this morning, everything was probably all right until she got to the top, 100ft or so above sea level, where the shelter of the hill disappears, and the full force of the gale just about blew her off her feet. She wisely chose to turn heel and continue her jog around the more sheltered inner suburb - only 80km/h winds here - but still (as she described later) with the sensation of frozen needles pinging off her legs at every stride. I was in bed, warm. My 4yo, an earlier riser than me, got the story first, so he ran into the bedroom and gave me a breathless second-hand description of the morning jog: "...and when she got to the top of the hill there was a big WHHHOOOSSSHHHHH! and the wind nearly blew her away!" Going for an early morning jog in a hurricane. My wife is now, surely, a true Wellingtonian. I am, yet again, in awe of her will-power. But yes, with our storms here, the Cornwall floods and Hurricane Charley, the weather has been filling the bits of the paper that the Olympics hasn't. I'm trying to find a conspiracy theory to explain it, but nothing springs to mind. Suggestions welcome. # | Tuesday, August 17, 2004
Basher Bush Turns out President George W Bush is familiar with New Zealand's national sport, as he played rugby for his Yale college team. This picture of George not only going high, but delivering a simultaneous fist to the face of an opponent has generated a fair amount of interest over at This Modern World since first posted a couple of weeks ago (follow the link to see a slightly larger version of the picture as well). There's been a bit of debate as to what might actually be going on (as Bakkies Botha might try to argue, a photo can make things look a lot worse than they are), but, regardless, he's pretty high. Turns out Dubya played on the wing (and, as they point out over at TMW, insert jokes about left or right wing here). # | Monday, August 16, 2004
Ticketek: bustedTowards the end of last year, Alan over at half-pie had a wee rant about Ticketek's website. Over the next few months, like-minded individuals added their two cents to the rant, creating a good example of that familiar online phenomenon: the bitchfest. But then 'Simone' leaps to the company's defense, saying... I have to disagree with u all i stumbled onto this website by mistake and i cant belive all the rubbish im reading ticketek is a great web site and service who have continued to give me great service over the years there is always somethinh for people like you to moan about so get a life!!!To which Alan replies... Well of course you would say that, Simone - seeing as you work at Ticketek. Everytime a comment is made on this site the IP address of the commenter is logged. Yours is 210.54.93.30, which by an uncanny co-incidence belongs to auck.ticketek.co.nz. Funnily enough it looks like you came to this site through "accidentally" entering "I hate Ticketek" into Google, the same search that has been used by you and your Australian counterparts to find this page several times in the past month.Ahahaha. Busted. [via David Farrar ] UPDATE #1: While doing a quick Google search this morning to see how the rankings were shaping up, I stumbled across this equally outrageous Ticketet horror story from Australia, where hundreds of email addresses were sent out on the CC line of an email (instead of the BCC line) announcing the cancellation of a Hoodoo Gurus gig. The poster of the story had this to say... Naughty naughty. UPDATE #2! Boingboing have posted the original story on their mega-traffic site. Poor old Ticketek. # | Friday, August 13, 2004
Flight of the Conchords in the UKHere's a nice Guardian review of Flight of the Conchords latest show at the Edinburgh Festival. "...they've taken comedy song to a whole new level ...there's so much right about Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement's act that an hour in their company is still sublime."Good work the Wellington lads! # | Tuesday, August 10, 2004
TVNZ website frustrationsOk, I wanted to take a look at the TVNZ Breakfast news item about this 'new phenomenon of blogging', mentioned over at weapons of mass distraction. I couldn't find it via the TVNZ homepage, nor the Breakfast 'mini-site'. So I tried their search facility. Useless. Not only did it reveal that the 'blogging phenomenon' wasn't even new to TVNZ (they had stories going back to 2002 on the topic), but when I did a search on 'blogging' I got a hit that took me into some weird redirecting loop. Even if you do find what you're looking for, you can't go back, as when you click on a link, there's a redirect page you have to go through to get to the content. When you click back, you go back to the redirect page, which, naturally, sends you back to the content page. And around and around you go. Maddening.And, vaguely-related in a crap-website design way, why does the Restaurant News link on the WellingtonNZ.com website take you to a promo about the SeeSaw children's clothing range? # | Friday, August 06, 2004
Jeff Crowe: The Wandering GolferThanks to demonsurfer for the heads up on this one. Jeff Crowe, venerable ex-captain of the New Zealand cricket team (brother of fellow cricketer Martin, and cousin of Hollywood uber-star Russell), is up for the job of host of the US Fine Living Channel's new golf show The Wandering Golfer.The job of host is being decided by public vote, with three Americans up against our Jeff. As of the time of writing this, Jeff was well out in front with 45% of the vote (a cool 21903 people have given him the tick), with his nearest contender - the hairier but more furrow-browed Troy Brettson - coming in with 21%. To add your vote, go here. And spread the word. Go the kiwi lad! # | Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Request The ever excellent ze frank takes a classic 'we-request-your-help-in-moving-unfeasible-amounts-of-money-out-of-the-country' 419-scam email, and manages to turn it into a Shakespearean-style soliloquy. Clever bugger. # | Monday, August 02, 2004
The Terri Spears Affair The 48hrs Film Competition effort I was involved in has turned up on the NZ Short Film website. Debris, the indie noizepop band I play bass for, provided the bulk of the soundtrack, with a wee electronic effort from yours truly providing the aural ambiance for one scene about half way through. If you do take the time to watch and listen, it's the bit where the detective pours himself a whiskey and calls the lab. It was interesting to see how the film-makers matched the music to the movie - with my piece in particular they'd actually gone to the effort of splicing it up and looping a few sections so it played long enough to fill the scene. All within the space of 48 hours. Nice work Sammy and Adam. Looking forward to the next effort...# | |
noizyland
blog main page