Domain names

Originally posted 28th January 2017, updated 29th March 2017

Eventually ended up acquired the young.kiwi domain name to replace the longer young.kiwi.nz (which I’ve since dropped). I guess as well as representing my last name, the “young” + “kiwi” word combination does have a nice ring to it. The young.nz domain is still in a conflicted state with about 5 different claims on it and it looks unlikely anyone will get it any time soon.

Not quite sure what is going on with dot Kiwi and their domains. Their front page is incorrectly indicating domains which are taken as being available. Additionally, late last year, young.kiwi couldn’t be registered (had some funny lock on it preventing registration), and prior to that, the dot Kiwi registry was trying to hock it off as a premium domain name for a thousand dollars.

There is also a bit of an identity issue with “Kiwi” as a word in itself. Seems everywhere else in the world, the word Kiwi is firmly linked to Kiwifruit (Chinese Gooseberry) as opposed to New Zealand’s Native Bird, or a New Zealander / New Zealand CItizen, or anything about New Zealand as such. Go to Google NCR (“No Country Redirect”) and type in “Kiwi” to see what I’m referring to.

As an aside, how is this for unusual pricing? The young.blog is listed with an asking price of 110,000 USD per year. Not sure who will go for those with the plethora of Top Level domains to choose from these days. Continue reading “Domain names”

Domain names

Forecasting weather like the financial markets

While I am fairly sure that the folks at MetService try to do their best, the Auckland Regional Rain forecasts specifically have not been particularly dependable. I did have a First world problem where I missed out on hiking this weekend due to acting on MetService’s warnings for the Auckland Region that did not eventuate (except for parts of the Waitakare ranges) until well into the Evening.

It would be timely to Note, this non-expert opinion from myself does not include MetService’s Marine (Swell and Wind), Mountain and inland forecasts, which I hear are at least a little bit more on the mark if not more, with the Mountain forecasts being reasonable enough in the times I’ve needed to refer to them.

I’m not quite sure what it is, I do get the weather is simply the weather, but to date, much of the rain forecasting for Auckland just “isn’t quite there” to be of tangible enough benefit. It’s almost despite advances in technology, we’ve hit right into the walls of diminishing returns, as in, every Dollar being put into improving weather forecasting accuracy is now returning very little, if any improvement… as if we’ve hit a ceiling.

Some critics whom are more critical of the MetService forecasts suggest using MetVUW instead, to be honest, I don’t know how much better MetVUW are… While I’ve found the longer term rain forecasts perhaps slightly more on the mark, they may not be that much more reliable as people are lead to believe.

One of the reasons offered for the current state of Auckland’s rain forecasts appear to be that we’re coastal and that there are far less data points available to go on as opposed to an inland location on a larger continent, where there will often be many more weather stations and monitors in between the said Inland location and the coast.

I’ve called financial market and economic forecasting a “mug’s game” before.  Could the same term apply to weather forecasting at least with regards to the rain forecast specifically in Auckland? It would seem that both forecasting systems rely, at least in substantial part, on computers crunching numbers. Anyway, It would be fair to say, there is undeniably perhaps a bit of “Boy who cried wolf” effect creeping in to my psychology as the MetService has issued multiple rain Warnings in the past only to have no or not very much rain occur in the majority of the Auckland Region.

The plan from here on in. If the MetService issues rain warnings again and we’re planning to head out for a day hike or other activity, on the Morning of the Activity…

  • Look at the Rain radar on the MetService website.
  • Briefly review the Rain forecast maps on both the MetVUW and MetService website.
  • Look out the Windows or go outside to assess.

If the live rain map really is looking dire, then cancel or perhaps delay departure, if not (only patches of isolated rain), then continue with plans. Regardless of the forecast, always be prepared for change of weather, bring rain gear always and be prepared to abort if the weather changes en-route.

 

Forecasting weather like the financial markets

Something Crumbles and everyone cheers

General random photos from today. 25th Pasifika Festival at Western Springs during the day and later on “While you were sleeping” feature consisting of an iceberg texture projected on the walls of the Auckland Museum.

Picture of Iceberg texture projected on to walls of the Auckland War Memorial Museum

Having watched the awe inspiring trailer on the “While you were sleeping” page combined with the word “cinematic” along with the recommendation to “bring a blanket and a themo” at the bottom of the page, I have to admit, I was perhaps anticipating may be some transition to different varied imagery or may be even a few photo snap shots or videos of some Antarctic expeditions being creatively incorporated with the display.

The display itself was more maybe a slow gradual animating texture with an orchestral musical score playing in the background rather than being a “cinematic” show. In my mind, it didn’t quite lend itself to being a “sit back and watch” affair. In order to get the most out of the evening display itself, it requires one to circumnavigate the Museum Building… albeit slowly. Was good in itself as a 10 minute side visit (drop in) while going to or from one’s main evening activities in town.

Something Crumbles and everyone cheers

Binary Options Warning + ineffectual ASIC supervision and enforcement

Please note, As always, These are my own personal (non-expert) opinions and should under no circumstances be purported as fact

I’m going to be direct, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) have in my own personal (non-expert) opinion been derelict in their duty to oversee and enforce financial regulations. May be it’s not entirely their fault, I wouldn’t know, all I know is that there is a proliferation of dodgy investment products being promoted on Australian Shores by way of high pressure cold calls to prospective investors.

In my own personal mind, It beggars belief that outfits such as World Binary Exchange (WBE) among others have been allowed to continue to promote their services from Australia to Australians and beyond (in my case, living in New Zealand) without an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) for as long as they have.

I recall being contacted by this Entity (being World Binary Exchange) several times about a year ago engaging in what I feel was some pretty high pressure cold calling to try and sign me on to some unusual product trial. I told them I wasn’t interested and then blocked their number (with multiple attempts recorded). Continue reading “Binary Options Warning + ineffectual ASIC supervision and enforcement”

Binary Options Warning + ineffectual ASIC supervision and enforcement

Things one may not understand

This falls well into the Cool Story Bro Category (at least more so than usual), so only read if you have an excess amount of time on your hands.

En route to collecting my Faceborg messenger messages tonight, took a curious side road to look at some 1080 anti- / pro- groups that for some reason which escapes me, regularly gets suggested to me in Faceborg’s User Interface side panel (somewhere)

To this day, I still struggle to see as a common pleb why 1080 is such an explosive topic. I think the first and only discussion I had ever about 1080 was while being driven by a Corporate Cabs Taxi Driver to the Airport (for our Software Conference / Technical symposium in Melbourne for work)… Appears she (The driver of the cab) came from a family of avid Duck Hunters, I mentioned I tramped the Cape Brett track and I was asked. “DId you noticed how quiet it was?”

While I feel perhaps both sides on balance have presented good arguments, a curious glance through the various Facebook 1080 groups, intellectual dialog over the matter appears to be (at least in part) trounced by petty tribalism. it is clear that this issue has turned a select few grown middle age / baby boomer aged types virtually into petulant children.

I imagine if the aforementioned participants in question stepped back for a while, and reviewed their behavior as a 3rd person, then they’ll probably realize how childish they’ve all been acting. (To me, it’s yet another mass pre-occupation away from bigger wider reaching societal issues that I feel matter more to us in the longer term)

All I will say is that “In the Abyss the truth lives” Continue reading “Things one may not understand”

Things one may not understand

Wellington to Auckland Road Trip

Flew to Wellington, stayed overnight in Wellington at the Cambridge Hotel near town. Visited Te Papa, Parliament (doing the Parliaments Highlights tour), Botanic Gardens (Taking the cable car up), Mount Victoria.  Weather was wet pretty much the entire time I was there, with some brief periods of the sun trying to break through.

Sunrise while flying to Wellington

Next day, decided to leave the wet weather behind, grabbed a hire car from the Wellington Thrifty Branch and headed north, via Wairarapa before staying the night in Palmerston North / Manuwatu

On the next morning, the Wet weather had caught me up, visited Manawatu Gorge then drove onwards to Whanganui before heading to Taumarunui for a snooze.

On the final leg, stopped by Ruakuri caves and then headed directly back to Auckland.

Wellington to Auckland Road Trip

Site speed and Maintenance

Did some very superficial improvements to eek out a few microseconds for KAHA .

Decided to kill off a few install scripts, mostly examples / evaluation prototypes from the “Forum Feasibility Project” and this seems to have lightened the load a minuscule. Performance speed of this site fails due to having not many of the usual server side optimizations in place (G Zip compression), also haven’t bothered to make much use of many if any Contend Distribution Networks (CDNs).

Regarding “Time to First Byte” (TTFB), running to about 2-8 seconds. Not quite sure what’s up with that, seems even a static html test page will take a long time for the server to start serving it up. After the tweaks, it still hasn’t improved… Seems to be quite stubborn. Disabling plugins seem to reduce the TTFB by about 20%, but still not as much as I would like.

Have since found the impacting factor is actually SSL. Turn that off and make everything just regular HTTP as opposed to HTTPS, the TTFB reduces to nothing. Re-enable SSL and it jumps back up to a few seconds.

NUI.NZ will always be slow(er). It’s practically a photo gallery.

Site speed and Maintenance