So, the big local politics story is that the government is buying a whole bunch of luxury cars - 34 of them, at $200,000 each ( Read more... )

Over on twitter, one of the people I follow is muskrat_john, a.k.a. John Kovalic, co-creator of Munchkin and other excellent games ( Read more... )

9 Surrey St

Streetview

It should really feel like a bigger deal :-/

So, we made an offer on a house yesterday. They'll probably turn us down, but maybe they'll make a counter-offer. Eh ( Read more... )

So, we've been pondering buying a house ( Read more... )

Cheap veges bring food prices down

Statistics New Zealand said this morning that its food price index dropped by 0.1 per cent in August, following increases of 1.6 per cent and 1.3 per cent in June and July ( Read more... )

So, there's been a big earthquake in Christchurch. I have told people, in the past: "When early settlers came to NZ, some built in brick and some in wood. Then big earthquakes knocked all the brick buildings down, but the wooden ones stayed up, and so after that they built only in wood. And so today, practically all NZ houses are wooden."

The ( Read more... )

Here's Gordon Campbell quoting the "Keep it 18" campaign:
18 year olds can vote for who runs our country, get married, join the Police or the armed forces, stand for Parliament, and make any number of other extremely significant life decisions. It is ridiculous and offensive to say that an 18 year old cannot be trusted to purchase alcohol in the ( Read more... )

I just finished reading Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. If you've been reading his blog for a while, then there won't be much new here -- in fact, the book is almost certainly an edited collection of articles from his blog (or from the Guardian). If you haven't been reading his blog, and don't care to, then here's a summary of what you might learn, ( Read more... )

Just finished Starcraft 2 episode 1 on normal difficulty ( Read more... )