I have to admit I didn't know about this until this morning.

But Rick Smith - who narrowly missed being killed in an explosion some 20 years ago - is a colleague from the Amateur Radio world.

Interestingly, I'm pretty sure I also know the Security Guard who saved his life back-in-the-day.

Kudos to both of them for keeping their tradition alive.

As has now been widely reported [NZ Herald] a house which had been relocated to a Marae in Manurewa (my old 'hood) collapsed on workmen, killing two.

Interestingly, just the other week an old classmate of mine from highschool had come down to Wellington and we were reminiscing; she was telling me how her childhood home had been sold to the council in order that the land could be used for other means, and the house was being relocated to a marae to be used as a health centre.

Yes, same place!!

Scary to think I'd actually set foot inside the house that collapsed...

Stuff has additional photos etc.

... Now apparently Maori shouldn't need to reach any sort of qualification standard for entry to University.

Yes, of course. All us 'white kids' get to work hard whilst at High School, reaching the prerequisites for our desired university course becomes a target, a goal.

So because Maori seem to be (as a higher percentage) unable to meet the same standards of secondary education as others, we should make it -easier- for them to enter the tertiary sector?

When you spoon feed it to them, of course they'll 'do better' !! None of this however addresses the root problems.... which stem from the fact that the people who represent the lower percentiles who don't make it to University, are people who aren't 'smart', or disciplined enough, or who are unfairly disadvantaged in some way. Why does race have to have anything to do with it?

Perhaps the problems are more in the home? The culture of the household?
This holds true regardless of the colour of your skin.

Damn I hate racists.

Just to prove how reliable the media can be when dealing with the Swine Flu issue...
Wyld sent me this...

*It's a killer flu, it's an aggressive flu, it's a mild flu, it's a bad cold;

*Tamiflu doesn't work at all against it because it's a different kind of flu, Tamiflu works if you take it before the symptoms appear, Tamiflu works if you take it in the first three days;

*Those hardest hit are actually people with healthy immune systems fighting it off, those hardest hit are the immune compromised, those hardest hit have native American blood;

*It's from pigs, it has nothing to do with pigs;

*It *might* mutate.

Can anyone say 'FUD alert'?

Some friends of mine wound up a feature in Aucklands Central Leader.

Nice one guys!

Had opportunity to snap a few quick shots of a beautiful morning:

So the banning of cellphone use in cars is on the cards.

I've ranted about this before. Of course, my viewpoint hardly reflects the majority of people who seem to care, because I'm apparently one of the few people smart enough to be able to do both while prioritising the road, not the phone.[1]

But now we see opinions like this:

Mr Noon said parents should refrain from texting their children at night to ask where they were "because what could be more tragic than sending them a text that makes them have an accident?"

Good grief. How about we just never send SMS ever again, incase we unwittingly distract the guy at the other end?

A shame that there's apparently 'peer pressure' to respond to SMS in a timely fashion - on the part of teens in particular. Oh sh!t. Sorry I couldn't respond earlier - had to stop myself from dying first.

Seriously. I realise the lowest common denomonator is where we often have to aim - but isn't it sad when it really is THAT low? Can people not ignore their SMS (sms is by its very nature, not a duplex conversation... an extra few seconds or even minutes are hardly going to be life threatening (probably get blamed on the network!) until it's safe to grab their phone and look at the screen?

Sigh. I guess I better save up for the bluetooth headset to go with my phone. Only my personal phone, mind you, as work won't be supplying one for their phone (they supply the cabled one... which doesn't fit in my ear... )

@!$!@#$

NZOSS has now published a Blog Aggregator so that people can see what NZOSS members and enthusiasts are up to in the way of FLOSS blogging.

My own 'Linux and Open Source' category is also reflecting there.

Good stuff to Francois and and Andrew for their work on this.

I like it: