Alden Bates' Weblog

It appears whoever wrote this sign:

... had an exceptionally strong Kiwi accent...

The All Black official bloke on TV3 news being quoted about the Fiat advert in Italy depicting a number of women performing a Haka. I couldn't find a text copy of the quote online, but the gist was that he didn't think the Haka should be being used for commercial purposes.

Rugby is, of course, one of New Zealand's largest industries. That sounds like a commercial purpose to me.

Pinched off Pete Wisdom: When you see this post, upload an image of your current desktop.

Though I may change that wallpaper soon: It's slightly unnerving having Billie Piper staring at me all the time.

Edit: It occured to me that the wallpaper on that screen shot was possibly a bit spoilery seeing as that episode of Doctor Who only played a day or so ago, so here's a screenshot with somewhat less spoilerly wallpaper:

The only drawback being I now have both Billie and David Tennant staring at me.

Edit: Note, if you want a proper copy of the wallpapers I'm using there without the icons and crap, you can find them in the BBC website's Doctor Who gallery.

My old DVD player had been giving me a bit of grief for a while now. An aging Philips 711, it had started refusing to play some DVDs and had trouble with others. It was a reasonably good DVD player otherwise, apart from a bizarre design flaw where it was impossible to turn off the on-screen multi-angle icon (it seems to be common with anime DVDs to provide a second angle which contains storyboards).

So on Monday I bought a Panasonic DMR-ES30V VCR/DVD-R combo to replace the Philips and my similarly aging (but still trustworthy) Mitsubishi VCR. So far I'm pretty impressed with it. Though I haven't tried recording to DVD-R yet, taping to VHS works fine, and it didn't have any trouble at all playing the DVDs which my Philips would simply spit out...

The only drawback I've found so far is that it doesn't send video output through the RF out, only via the RCA video out, but that's only a problem for me because of my stereo (it has no remote so I have to lunge across the room to mute the adverts). I may post a more detailed review later.

The time display on the front panel acts as a pretty good night light too. :)

Today I attempted to buy a can of V from Pak 'n Save. Since I only had
two items I went to the express lane.

* Checkoutgirl1 waves can over barcode reader a couple of times
Checkoutgirl1: Oh, it hasn't got a barcode
* Checkoutgirl1 waves can at fellow checkoutgirl2
Checkoutgirl1: What's the price on this? It hasn't got a barcode
* Checkoutgirl2 goes to look at shelf
* Checkoutgirl1 waves can at Alden
Checkoutgirl1: It'll just be a minute
* Checkoutgirl2 returns with price
* Alden pays and takes can gingerly in case it explodes

Seriously, WTF? Do Not Shake The Carbonated Beverage.

Just randomly, here's a bottle of sarsaparilla I bought yesterday. I post a picture of this mainly because of the instruction at the top of the label:

"Invert bottle before opening". Now there's a plan. A very messy plan. Someone fetch a mop!

This time they pulled the Mazda logo off the boot. I could understand if it was an expensive brand of car, but a Mazda logo?

Humanity, you suck.

I saw this number plate today and it confused me a bit. In computer games, "gib" is the term for a piece of an exploded game character after, say, they step on a mine, while "FXR" could be interpreted as a contracted form of a particular piece of leet speak which could lead one to translate the number plate as something entirely inappropriate.

But the vehicle it was attached to was parked on a construction site, so a more likely translation is "Gib fixer" or "one who neuters male ferrets"

I was waiting to come out of the driveway this evening, signalling that I was going to turn left, when a van nipped past and parked directly to my left (on a yellow line, I might add) completely blocking my view of the oncoming traffic to the left. Way to go, dickhead!

I'd have gotten out and given them a piece of my mind or (more likely) snapped a picture and sent it off to the proper authorities, but (a) it was raining and (b) there was a somewhat impatient person in a van right behind me also waiting to emerge.

Sheesh.

PS, and this is completely unrelated: To the person using rfetch to grab my atom feed: You don't need to refetch it every five minutes - I don't post that often. :)

1. Fiddled with the format of my weblog. I don't know if I'm going to keep it, depends on whether it grows on me or not.

2. Made more Star Trek: Voyager Livejournal userpics, to bring the total to 55. Samples:

3. Managed to win another battle on BlogExplosion, bringing my total to 3 wins, 11 losses. That's sorta sad. :)

Vodafone apologised for their misleading txt last week:

2 clarify last wks TXT from Vdfn, International TXT increases from 20c to 30c frm 25 Jan 06 for Prepay customers only. Sorry 4 any confusion. 4 mor info call 222

If they were reeeeeally sorry, they wouldn't be raising the price. ;)

Since I now have a WAP-capable cell phone, the obvious step of making a WAP version of tetrap.com occurred to me. But what to put on it? Phone wallpapers? I googled and searched, but no one seems to have a list of what resolutions are common for cell phone screens. Interweb, you have failed me!

I found the same question had been asked on Wallpaper Junkie with the response "128x172". Looking at free wallpaper sites yielded various different sizes: 120x160, 132x176, 208x176, 276x132. My own cell phone appears to take wallpapers which are around 128 by 128 (Though it crops the top and bottom and prints "Vodafone" in big letters on it, so more like 128 by 96).

While I suspect it would be nigh-on impossible to get hold of statistics regarding which models are most widely used, gallery.mobile9.com has a handy feature where you can select a make and model and it'll provide you with wallpapers in the correct resolution for your phone. I took the liberty of looking at which dimensions were most prevalent:

Resolution	# models
128x160	61
176x220	59
128x128	42
240x320	40
176x208	13
132x176	9
320x240	9
130x130	6
Rest	<= 5

This leads me to conclude that I couldn't go far wrong in providing wallpapers in the top 4 or 5 resolutions.

LiveJournal are retiring the icon I made for linking syndicated accounts, so a moment of silence, please, for the satellite dish icon.

I made that icon back in 2003 when they first introduced seperate icons for syndicated accounts, but now it's being replaced by a sparkly new orange jobbie. So sad.

Edit: and already someone's complained!

Yesterday Vodafone sent out a TXT message:

Want 2 TXT yr friends Overseas? If u r on Prepay,TXTing from NZ will cost u jst 30c starting 25 Jan 2006. 4 more details call 222 Or visit vodafone.co.nz

This sorta seems to imply that there's just been a price drop, however as the Dominion Post pointed out this morning, they're actually raising the price by 50% and dressing the price rise up as a good thing.

So... is the message up there misleading? Personally, I think so...

Some kind person was nice enough to sign my car overnight:

Looks like "AMAZOL" or "ANAZOL" with a $ in the 'O'. The policeman I spoke to at the station took some pictures too.

Edit: Jif + Brasso + paint cleaner = no more tag. Nyah!