Revisiting an old rendition of SimCity Classic while stuck at home…
Downloadable from the Windows Store as RetroCity. Beware, Windows Store pop up nags.
Retro City
.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.
Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd – Trading as SIXT Car Rental Vic and SA
Update 9th January 2022: – Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd used to be trading as a Thrifty Car and Truck Rental independent franchise up until late 2021. They have since rebranded to be SIXT Car rental Vic & SA.
It is sincerely hoped under their new banner as SIXT Australia – Vic & SA that Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd will use this opportunity of a clean slate to continue to improve their business practices and move on from some of their former practices observed and experienced as a past customer of theirs.
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Known SIXT Locations in Victoria, Australia which are operated by Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd
- SIXT – Avalon Airport, VIC
- SIXT – Bayswater, VIC
- SIXT – Blackburn, VIC
- SIXT – Clayton, VIC
- SIXT – Coburg, VIC
- SIXT – Campbellfield, VIC
- SIXT – Dandenong, VIC
- SIXT – Footscray, VIC
- SIXT – Frankston, VIC
- SIXT – Geelong, VIC
- SIXT – Hoppers Crossing, VIC
- SIXT – Moorabbin, VIC
- SIXT – Pakenham, VIC
- SIXT – Preston, VIC
- SIXT – Richmond, VIC
- SIXT – Tullamarine, VIC (Not the Airport one)
Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd also operate…
- SIXT – Mount Gambier Airport, SA (South Australia)
- SIXT – Repairhub (Derrimut, VIC)
- Direct Vehicle Warehouse (formerly Thrifty Vehicle Sales)(Dandenong, VIC)
SIXT Car and Truck rental locations in Victoria not operated by Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd…
- SIXT – Melbourne City (operated by Kingmill Pty Ltd – Master Franchise / NRMA Motoring and Services)
- SIXT – Melbourne Airport (operated by Kingmill Pty Ltd – Master Franchise / NRMA Motoring and Services)
- SIXT – South Yarra (operated by Christer Aust Pty Ltd)
- SIXT – South Melbourne (operated by Christer Aust Pty Ltd)
- SIXT – Brighton (operated by Christer Aust Pty Ltd)
The information has been compiled from what I know as a past customer to NRMA Motoring and Services car hire division (Originally trading as Thrifty, now trading as SIXT) and will likely be incomplete. I’m not employed in anyway within the car hire industry. The information was originally compiled upon request from other fellow Thrifty Car rental customers (back in 2018) enquiring as to which Thrifty car rental branches were operated by Lawrence Vic Pty Ltd and which of those that were not.
New Zealand Rooms of Matrix/Element.io Chat
Update: 10 April 2022 – This is an old article and has been superseded. Quick and dirty getting started guide for Matrix using the Element.io client can be found here.
Update: 23 July 2020 – Riot.IM is now Element.io
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So far the known New Zealand specific chat groups (chat rooms) that exist within the Matrix chat federation include…
- #nz:matrix.org – New Zealand Aotearoa
- #nzphoto:matrix.org – NZ Amateur Photography
- #nztech:matrix.org – NZ Technology Discussions
If there are others that you know of, feel free to advise me or post in the comments below.
If people are looking for a viable alternative for staying in contact with friends and family at home and abroad as opposed to using the common proprietary messaging systems (e.g. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc) operated by sole corporations. Then I implore people to start looking at the federation of matrix.org chat servers.
If you want to start chatting. Go to Element.io, sign up for a Matrix.org account and start joining rooms such as #nz:matrix.org
Similar to how Email is structured, where Joe Bloggs at Hotmail can seamlessly Email his friend, Max Mustermann at Yahoo without needing to be with the same provider. The Matrix protocol is structured the same way for instant messaging and group chat. No one single company / provider has total control of the protocol.
If Joe Bloggs for example, doesn’t like Hotmail for what ever reason, he is able to choose to sign up to Gmail. Matrix.org is the same way, you have a choice of providers. You can even host your own node (like I do).
Like any project the onset, Matrix was pretty rough around the edges, but I feel the development of the system (being the Matrix Protocol together with the available client software) has now matured to a point where I feel Matrix/Element.io is now certainly very usable.
The reason why I favour Matrix over say Telegram, Signal, Slack, Zulip, Mattermost, Rocket Chat, is that Matrix is the only system where you can…
- Self host a node of your own AND
- Send messages to users on other servers (Federation) AND
- Has a usable front end client (Being Element.io available for Windows, Android, iOS, Linux, and others)
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…
