Keeping my clocks in Daylight savings time (DST, NZDT, UTC +13:00) until such a time I can’t.

Have already stopped bothering with changing the clock in my car and since I’m still working from home (until May that is) and am chatting mostly with work colleagues who are mostly overseas anyway, I have set all the devices (with the ability to do so) likewise to UTC +13:00

Picking I’ll eventually stumble though, schedule something in DST time resulting in confusion which may compel me to fall back into line and put my clock back an hour.

If one claims to advocate for the environment and is pretty blunt in doing so, what am I to think when I find that one drives a large double cab diesel ute and a Ford Falcon along with living in a huge house that you’ve just recently built. Basically goes against the whole concept of “Taking only what you need”.

Luggage exhibit from the Maritime Museum at the Viaduct.

The issue I have with the events that have transpired over the weekend is that the result was really a loss for both sides of the transgender discussion. Not only that, the impact has apparently spilled over to inflict at least some mild transient damage to New Zealand’s reputation.

Instead of reasoned debate, we ended up in totally unnecessary and counter-productive violence of both the physical and verbal kind. The issue here is instead of making the other side more likely to see and come to understand your point of view, the attacks like this just make the other party dig in, radicalize and double down entrenching a war that frankly does no one any use.

Thought the cones in this scene may be a little excessive…

Admittedly it hasn’t been in my nature to feel like this towards others, but If you want the public to either do or not to do something (as in areas you can and can not go to), it would help if there were signs. It’s simple people. Don’t expect people to freaking mind read.

On a tangent but still on the Signage rant bandwagon. Why are so many speed limit signs in Auckland these days twisted and turned around facing the wrong way? Even the new ones showing the recently lowered speed limits are like this.

Yeah, sorry, I fear I may be becoming only a husk of my normally meek self.

Picture of an urban waterfall, in Raumaga, Whangarei. Beware of the roaming / unrestrained Pitbull.

TL;DR Answer was found here. https://askubuntu.com/questions/1426476/ubuntu-22-04-audacity-does-not-show-up-in-pulseaudio-recording-tab

sudo apt install audacity -y

Admittedly, the process of trying to lay down and run Audacity initially gave me a bit of grief.

Wanted to install Audacity on my freshly laid down copy of Ubuntu 22.04 and all the references I could find of Audacity was to either install using “Snap” or “Flatpak”. Was apprehensive about Snap versions of any software and recall having grief with Audacity Snap before on my older machine giving me vague errors (e.g error -9985) about being unable to save or being unable to listen to a particular recording device. “Going Transport” –> “Rescan Audio Devices” did absolutely squat.

Even went back into Ubuntu Store and enabled all permissions on Audacity with again, nil effect. Appears nothing has changed (at the time of writing this post) two years on. As a Ubuntu user, I don’t have an overall very good impression of Snap at all having had issues with other Snap packages including with Flameshot (a screenshot tool) being unable to save to the Picture directory.

Traditional Hangi at Christmas.

Admittedly, my desire to travel anywhere is in a definite lull at the moment. I’m anticipating it will come back at some point, but I ain’t going to try and force it back. May be accommodation and general travel costs is impacting this a bit.

Might do some day or short overnight trips somewhere these Holidays depending on availability of accommodation / tent sites and depending on how I feel. Again, I’m not going to force it. Will spend my holidays how I see fit.

An average picture of “The Tron” (Hamilton, New Zealand)

Have migrated this website peak.nz to the Main VPS (where nui.nz currently is).

The server pcluster09.stablehost.com has allegedly been suffering a DDoS attack that is now going on two weeks. In an apparent attempt to try and mitigate this, Stablehost deployed BitNinja which results in the frequent triggering off of false positives under WAF rules 941100, 941160 when ever I attempt to edit any given WordPress post.

Scanned the web space for potential Malware using both of the Antivirus tools they had available and nothing was found. In addition to that, as a test… laid down a fresh install of WordPress and attempted to edit the sole example post there, BitNinja again kicked me off the server. Support as friendly and as eager to assist as they were, were not able to ultimately resolve the issue.

Anyway, having migrated this successfully to the Main VPS, noticed this site now loads up so much faster and is so much more responsive both at the front end and at the back (composing posts)

Discovered in the billing section of my Stablehost account that I’m only paying 36 USD a year for the service (Billing history indicated I was originally paying over 100 USD per year). No wonder it is now crap. To be honest, I’m done with shared hosting. It always starts off great, then somehow it always ends up being a race to the bottom when providers slash prices to compete resulting in frankly shit quality hosting performance.

Unfortunately broke my Weider Home Gym over the weekend.

Have gone and put in a M20 bolt in the meantime. But looking at the whole construction, will need to replace it as it’s clearly under designed to handle the weight it was supposed to be able to handle

Continue reading “Home Gym Breakage” →

Could some unscrupulous businesses as a business strategy possibly be intentionally sneaking on extra charges onto selected customers hoping the customer not notice it? And if the customer does notice the discrepancy such as an unusual charge (or line item) and queries it, simply say sorry, correct the billing error and say it was a mistake?

Been a few cases recently when procuring products or services, errors have been spotted in either the quote or with a given invoice and have usually given the business the benefit of the doubt. I like to think (and still believe) the vast majority of these have been genuine and innocent mistakes, but the increasing frequently of such experiences in recent years has left me to question, is it a possibility that some businesses could be feigning mistakes? Particularly in these more challenging economic conditions?

My concern is that it can be extremely difficult if not downright impossible to determine between what are genuine billing mistakes that any business (despite the best of intentions) could still make and what could be feigned billing mistakes undertaken willfully as a business strategy by less than honest businesses.

Government agencies and Government appointed authorities in my view need be very careful about increasing the amount of ‘Strict Liability’ offenses on offer, particularly in light of recent reporting in the media about other crimes (such as Ram Raids, Assaults) being left unresolved / unpunished with offenders of these crimes getting off with merely a few months of home detention or even just a warning.

’Strict Liability’ supposedly does away with the need prove a ‘Guilty Mind’ (intention).

As the “infringement fines” base increases and the net widens, we are now seeing more and more otherwise Law abiding people getting pinged over an ever increasing array of ‘Strict Liability’ offences.

While arguably in many cases, the punishment may be warranted, This brings to light a number of issues and considerations…

• Where ordinary people who otherwise have the best intentions and have no intent on causing harm are now no longer able to go about their lives without worrying about the the state coming down on them for what is often an innocent mistake.

• This also comes on the back that of many events recently where people who are perceived to be committing real crimes with greater social and public harm are getting away with a slap on a wrist or just a warning while the ordinary member of the public who drove a few metres too long in the bus lane are slapped with a hefty  $150 NZD fine which anecdotally is extremely difficult to get out of. This is the same monetary penalty as someone running a red light which by all accounts is a much more serious act with more material consequences.

• Another issue this situation brings up is that instead of the state being seen as an ally out to assist the lives of the ordinary tax-paying citizens, the state are increasing instead seen as an adversary out to get at them at any means possible in turn causing public to distrust those in power

• It potentially normalizes offences and offending. We are now seeing more and more people regard certain fines as just another tax and revenue generation (or “revenue raisers” more commonly used in Australia / Across the Tasman). It is also ultimately has the real potential of reducing the public’s regard or “respect of authority”.

• More significantly, the fixed nature of this penalty means those on the lowest incomes are the most impacted by the imposition of such fixed value monetary penalties. For those on low incomes, a $150 may mean a weeks worth of groceries and the inability to feed one’s family. For a more financial well off it may be a little mere a minor slap on the wrist.

The imposition of Automatic fixed camera bus lanes enforcement at fines of $150 is I feel a slippery slope in the wrong direction, a step too far already. This also confirms my anxiety as it were over what I originally saw back in Melbourne, Victoria Australia with respect to Victoria being a fine state increasingly being applied to New Zealand as well.