A little bit of comedy: Troy Kinne – Say Cheese. (Click picture below to access YouTube Clip)
Say Cheese
Retro City
Revisiting an old rendition of SimCity Classic while stuck at home…
Downloadable from the Windows Store as RetroCity. Beware, Windows Store pop up nags.
.NZ Domain Yearly registration prices are to rise.
The .nz Domain prices are to rise after InternetNZ announces wholesale price increases. Claim is that registrations are falling. Monthly Registration statistics can be found here… https://docs.internetnz.nz/reports/
I believe a lot of the more recent new domain registrations were speculative after the release of the direct second level registrations under .nz and feel that may be it’s just a gradual decline back to the mean.
Increasing prices in my view will no doubt accelerate the so-called decline. I plan to have a look into their financials when I get a chance. (I don’t expect to find any irregularities – though worth checking for my own edification)
Drowning does NOT look like drowning
An interactive website I found that provides information on recognising signs of drowning in a child along with the opportunity to practice recognising these signs.
URL: http://spotthedrowningchild.com/
The key take away here is that… Drowning does NOT look like drowning
Quoted from the site… “Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.”
The Youtube videos utilized on the site are from the Lifeguard Rescue (Channel)
Sepitone Skies
Sepitone coloured skies in Auckland from the Australian Smoke fires at approximately around 6:00 p.m. No filter applied.
NRMA Car rental division (Was Thrifty, now SIXT Australia)
Update 7th December 2021: Much of the original Thrifty Australia operational structure has been rebranded as SIXT Australia. NRMA’s master license for Thrifty expired earlier this year and they have now changed over to be SIXT Australia.
This post refers to when NRMA’s Car rental division, Kingmill Pty Ltd, were trading as Thrifty Car and Truck Rental Australia.
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Dare I say it, I have had largely reasonable experiences with the ‘Thrifty’ car rental brand in Australia. Vehicles provided have predominantly been received in clean, tidy and good condition. Majority of hires have been smooth with one disappointing experience in the middle involving one of their licensees operating in Suburban Melbourne who I felt were dishonest and were also caught posting fake reviews to boot (Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd). Continue reading “NRMA Car rental division (Was Thrifty, now SIXT Australia)”
A2 Hosting Shared tier impressions
Update: 27 December 2019 – Have now received confirmation of a refund from A2 Hosting.
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At the same time of setting up my Digital Ocean droplet as part of the Early December site move, created an account with A2 Hosting on their shared “turbo” server (with “Performance Plus” add on), drawn in by the positive reviews on Webhostingtalk and their up to “20x faster” marketing along with their 66.6% off Black Friday Specials
I copied NUI.NZ to both a Digital Ocean Droplet and to my account on A2 Hosting (both at their respective Singapore data centers) to begin comparing the two. After some testing, discovered that the Digital Ocean droplet performed faster for my use case in terms of responsiveness, speed and consistency.
- NUI.NZ on Digital Ocean loaded up in 3.2 seconds on Average.
- NUI.NZ on A2 Hosting shared turbo loaded up in 3.9 seconds on Average (with Caching enabled and A2 Optimisation plug in installed) but was bursty / less consistent and felt so much less snappy and responsive overall.
A2 Hosting’s marketing had led me to believe that I would have access to 2 CPU cores and 3GB of RAM on a burst basis versus the 1 CPU and 1GB set up with my 5 USD/month Digital Ocean VPS droplet.
Additionally, setting up their A2 Optimisation plugin they had developed for WordPress and then clicking “Optimize all” will crash even a shiny new and fresh install of WordPress into the white pages of death. If the aforementioned didn’t crash it, enabling Memory Cache on the WordPress instance will most certainly crash it. After much frittering around I did manage to get the plugin to work but only in rather limited situations I’ve found. It is my belief A2 Hosting should seriously consider removing the plugin as it is I believe impacting their brand.
I’m also a little bit disappointed with how they have structured their so called “any time” refund policy. Within 30 days, you can get a full refund, after 30 days however, what they will do is re-bill you at the regular rate for the rest of the paid up period then give you what is left. I struggle to think of anyone who will be (willingly) paying regular rate given the performance I’ve seen of their shared hosting product. I have to admit, this has darkened my regard I have towards the A2 Hosting brand.
I have now requested a cancellation and refund under A2 hosting’s 30 day risk free policy. Given prior experience with Shared hosts and my impression of some of the way A2 Hosting do things, I don’t have enough faith to see out the full 3 years with them
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I have to admit, over the years, I’ve started really souring of Shared hosting in general and believe it should be left for only of the most insignificant of web projects (Personal websites). Sure, if you are a largely a neighbourhood bricks and mortar (Vet Clinic, Dentist, Hairdresser, etc) business and just need a site with a handful of static pages (and may be a blog, but would argue at a stretch) then Shared Hosting may be Okay.
If on the other hand you’re a business who is almost entirely dependent on the web, it should go without saying you shouldn’t be using budget shared hosting… ever. Unfortunately, I see many businesses and online only retailers for what ever in their right signing up for shared hosting, installing Woo Commerce / Presta shop and once their site goes down or goes slow, they are seen screaming to high heaven on all the support channels and web hosting forums begging for a resolution.
Huawei P30 Pro Camera – Hybrid zoom
Update 13 October 2019 – So took the Huawei P30 Pro and compared it to the Panasonic TZ110 and another quick test…
At x5 zoom…
Native zoom for the P30 Pro’s x5 Camera. To my untrained eye, it is fairly similar enough in detail. The TZ110 may be a touch more natural in detail and colour reproduction.
Auckland Local Body Elections
Admittedly, it’s been difficult to figure out who to put a tick against for the Mayor vote for the Auckland Local Body elections. I’ve spent at least two hours in total reading about and researching all the candidates over the last week.
Some may argue that spending two hours is a total overkill, but admittedly, I do hold Civic responsibility quite seriously, and the fact that we do get to vote as part of a democratic nation is something I consider extremely important.
Resources reviewed and canvassed include…
- The Voting instruction booklet / Candidate information. Same information is available on the Auckland Council Website. (Just click “+ More search options” then “Show mayoral candidates”)
- The Spinoff NZ – Local Policy Website
- Radio NZ – Mayoral Candidate Debates
- The Candidates own resources, such as their own personal (campaign) website and social media accounts.
So far my research has come up rather inconclusive. The decision made more difficult is the candidate information appears to vary between mediums (i.e Candidate information booklet vs the Candidate’s website).
Shaz’s $2 and more
Typical empty store in the township of Turangi…
Tongariro Alpine Winter Crossing
Saturday 21st September 2019 – Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Click photo below to access the gallery and trip notes…
South Island Trip (and NZ Shareholders conference)
Flew down to 30th to attend a New Zealand Shareholder’s Association conference in Christchurch. Did some day walks afterwards, including Mount Isobel and Mount Fyffe in Kaikoura.
Swazi Apparel to move part of their manufacturing to Thailand
Swazi NZ, Davey Hughes in a YouTube clip has announce they are moving production of their Fleece and Base layer clothing lines from their Levin Factory (here in New Zealand) to Thailand. The technical garments such as raincoats and jackets will still be made in New Zealand.
This in my view represents a not so insignificant change of direction from their original brand values and which they built the brand on.
South Island Road Trip
Pictures from a solo South Island Road Trip. Highlights include Roy’s Peak (in Wanaka) and Mueller Hut (Mount Cook National Park). Click Picture below to access the galleries.
Software Disenchantment
I concur with Nikita Prokopov’s view of the state of the Software Development Industry: https://tonsky.me/blog/disenchantment/
Where we are today is indeed not ideal.
More Mushrooms, explore around Wentworth Falls
Another visit to Coromandels, this time to explore around Wentworth Falls, it’s mid tier, Whangamata Track, and part of Maratoto Track (to the little shelter / clearing for lunch) before returning back the same way.
Blue mushrooms near Hihi clearing in Coromandel Ranges
Spontaneous explore around Paton Stream Dam Track. Blue mushrooms near Hihi clearing. Click picture to view gallery…
Carefully packaged and shipped – License code for Office 365 Online
Well packaged for Delivery. Box containing a Microsoft Office 365 box wrapped in Air Pillows. The only important bit was a line of code to activate your Office 365 subscription online.
Of course an argument could most certainly be made that it would have been cheaper and easier to simply E-mail me the code… though obviously packaged like this as a “matter of process” / “Matter of course” and to their credit, it did showed that Noel Leeming takes the effort to ensure goods are packed in a way to minimize the chance of damage during transit.
Traditional Māori Hāngī
Traditional Backyard Maori Hangi on Christmas day 2018. Click picture below to access gallery…
Air Vanuatu Domestic Twin Otter Flights Cancellations
It seems for (at least) Friday 8th December 2018 and Today, Saturday 9th December 2018, Air Vanuatu (NF) Flights that use the De Havilland Twin Otter aircraft have allegedly all been cancelled. Who the flip knows when they will be back in Action. Known locations affected include (but NOT limited to)…
- Craig Cove, Ulei (Ambrym)
- Paama
- Tongoa
- Norsup (Malekula)
- Lamen Bay (Epi)
- Dillion’s Bay (Erromango)
Upon arrival to Craig Cove Airport on Friday (Yesterday) Morning, The agents in contact with Air Vanuatu head office keep announcing ever later estimated arrival times and relayed excuses from Head office from Mechanical Failure to the weather as reasons for the delay. After 2 hours of delay, ended up ringing Air Vanuatu Head Office myself, but they kept referring me back to the agents on the ground who in turn were similarly frantically via phone trying to get a grasp of the situation from Air Vanuatu Head office.
At about 4 hours after the flight was supposed to arrive, the agents announced that the flight had been cancelled and suggested that the next flight out of Craig Cove would be on Tuesday 11th December 2018 (Too late for me). Ended up calling a private charter flight to get us off of Ambrym allowing us to return back home to New Zealand as scheduled on the next morning.
Reviewing the flightradar24 upon finally returning home this Afternoon (As scheduled), it was revealed that all flights using De Havilland Twin Otter had been cancelled… Continue reading “Air Vanuatu Domestic Twin Otter Flights Cancellations”