Growing up is optional

Get an airfair from the Trademe Charity Auctions for the tsunami appeal.

(For overseas, Trademe is the reason the ebay isn’t in New Zealand. They could learn a lot.)

Oh yeah. How cool. End of discussion.

I’ll be lining up for one when it hits the shelves in NZ (probably with a bigger harddrive and more RAM). This is a smart move by apple; capitalise on the brand familiarity and current fad status of the iPod with a serious, price competative mac. And of course like most apple products it look awesome too.

I seem to be listenning to heaps of neopunk lately. (That’s my terminology, I don’t know if it’s a real word yet, but I do think that the American punk of today is quite different from Brit punk). Yellowcard is that latest in my list that also includes Greenday, Sum 41 and Good Charlotte. Anyway, if you like those bands, Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard is worth a listen.

I’m playing with Wordpress 1.5 so things may look a little weird here. I really like the theme setup and also the ability to write pages instead of posts. There may be a few bugs over the next day or two. Hopefully not too serious. Update: let me know it there are any problems

I received an email today announcing the new Chemical Brothers’ website. I’m a big fan and want to point out while their website is terrible, it doesn’t make me like their music any less.

In conjunction with the release of their new album ‘Push The Button’ Tom & Ed launch their new web site:

It’s choc full of new areas, so as well as news, tour dates and the message board you can now download wallpaper and buddy icons, there is a mobile area for all your ringtunes, you can check out all your favourite tunes and videos and there will also be a fully fledged shop for all your Chems needs. The new site will be up from midday GMT on the 7th January so have a look round and let us know your thoughts via the feedback section

However, the site is an accessibility nightmare. I don’t know of any accessibility rules it doesn’t break. You can’t even get into the site without allowing pop-ups (and obviously Javascript to generate the pop-ups), so there goes half of their audience already. It then proceeds to resize your browser to around 800×600 minus scrollbars and toolbars, which it removes anyway. Oh yes, it’s all done in Flash too. Navigation is a nightmare. One positive is that they do label the link to their discography, which is a PDF, as a PDF so that you know what you are getting in to.

I for one will not be visiting their site again, but I’m looking forward to seeing them at the Big Day Out.

Turns out I was right

Blog comment spam increases

I know its’s obvious, not insightful. Rampant advertising and page rank stealing will continue.
I’m surprised that blog spammers are still submitting forms. I don’t
know why they haven’t started using trackback/pingback yet.

I’m being comment-spammed by trackback in a major way

One of the things that’s really good about Wellington is that the city is so close to the water. From my desk (the one I’m at today because someone is still on leave, not my usual desk) I can see the masts of the seven boats that have made it to port so far in the BT Challenge(Update: apparently no longer BT sponsored, losing the advantage of all that branding) Global Challenge. While I do enjoy sailing upwind more than down, I’m not sure I would want to sail that way around the world.

How convenient (though maybe shocking after the isolation) it is to step of your home that you have shared with 16 others for the last month to find a bar on your doorstep. The crews must love it. Equally for us in Wellington it is a great opportunity to see a global event close up.

I find it quite amazing that in a race that has been going for over a month and 6100 nautical miles, that the first three 3 boats are only separated by less than 40 minutes.