50 years of the Mini!

After 50 years why do people still love the Mini? What was the thinking behind Alec Issigonis’ ground-breaking design? How can you fit four full-sized adults in a car with an overall length of just 10'? This short documentary (just under 16 minutes) answers these questions – and others. Well worth a look (well, I think so anyway)...

Exams

It’s that time of the year again... more words of wisdom from Mr John Clarke, AKA Fred Dagg...

I suppose there are some of you out there working up to sitting exams of one sort or another and I’d just like to say that all my sympathies go with you, in fact I even had to sit an exam myself once. I didn’t do particularly well because I had a bit of a headache - the night before I’d been rubbing a bit of brandy into my brain to settle the nerves a bit and I think it might have got away on me.

I thought the questions were very difficult, actually it was a maths exam and I never was very smart with numbers. In fact I wasn’t even supposed to be doing the maths exam, but I’d fronted up on the wrong day and once I was through the door they wouldn’t let me out for a few hours.

The first question was all about calculating the compound interest travelling at the speed of light past three men who took four days to mow a lawn of six acres. Well, as you can understand, I didn’t see the answer leaping off the paper and hitting me between the eyes, so I sat back and delivered my old favourite, an essay on what I did in the holidays. Then I got down on the floor and snuck off home. I got four percent for that exam. They said I’d got the answer wrong, but they gave me a couple of points for my reasoning, which was interesting because when I sat the English exam I wrote the same essay and got three percent.

So it’s really just a matter of luck, so keep at it and try to avoid getting headaches of the kind I mentioned before.

Global Warming - some more key facts

This post is about the evils of Global Warming, the impending doom of the planet Earth and the New Zealand Government’s much-debated Emission Trading Scheme.

From my (limited) perspective there are three main considerations:

• The global climate is definitely changing. Polar ice sheets are retreating, glacial melt is accelerating and there are more extreme ‘weather events’.
• The extent of man’s contribution to this has not yet been determined. There have been other great climactic changes in Earth’s history. It is possible that man made activities are making things worse, or not.
• A lot of people are getting set to become extremely rich because of global warming.

The people that are going to become extremely rich are those people that are, at this very moment, busy establishing the global Carbon Trading markets. To offset our impending doom, along with the destruction of the planet and the end of life on Earth as we know it, all global citizens involved in activities that produce carbon emissions will very shortly need to purchase ‘carbon credits’ to offset the alleged ‘damage’ that their activities cause. Just how these individuals purchase these carbon credits depends upon their individual governments. For instance you might pay for your Carbon Credits through a direct tax on carbon emitting activities (such as a levy on the price of a litre of petrol when you fill your car). Or Governments themselves may choose to part-subsidise these activities, in which case you will pay when you pay your income tax or any other tax they choose to apply it to. Either way, it’s the individuals that will end up paying for this.

The thing is, when the New Zealand Government brought into the Kyoto protocol, they thought they were onto a winner. With our small population New Zealand contributes a minimal amount to global carbon emissions. And don’t forget about the acres of forestry throughout the country. Trees are ‘carbon sinks’ – which meant that other countries should have been paying New Zealand to offset their own carbon emissions. But the New Zealand Government very stupidly forgot about the local livestock. The ruminants found in rural environments throughout the country fart and belch methane – a ‘greenhouse gas’ that makes up roughly half of New Zealand’s total emissions. And so, having read the small print, we now have to find a way to pay for these livestock emissions as well. At the time a direct ‘fart tax’ on farmers was considered, but is has since been pointed out that ruminants tend to belch methane rather than fart. However ‘belch taxes’ have not yet been ruled out.

So with the current downfall of the Global Financial Markets and the requirement some of the big wheels formerly working there to find alternative employment we now have a new industry of global markets specialising in the trading of carbon credits, and vast sums of money are about to change hands. But what I’d really like to know, and if I play my cards right I might get to the point sometime, is once the taxes have been paid, and the carbon credits have been purchased and you’re all set to crank up your coal-fired power station, stoke up the old barbie or let rip with the V8, what happens to the money?

I have a sneaking suspicion that it will end up earning interest for these Carbon Exchange Traders in a Cayman Islands or a Swiss bank account.

Just how is this supposed to save the planet? I have absolutely no idea. Presumably this small detail is still being figured out. But my gut feeling at this point in time is that we’ve all been had!

Talk to the Pod – New iPod feature!

I see that the new range of iPods are packed with new features. OK, I already knew that the iPod was much more than a simple MP3 player – the iPod Touch had WI-FI capability and I knew that you could download movies and play them on many iPods. I can see how far the iPod has come from the first 5MB ‘classic’ iPod. Since then, of course, we've had the iPod Mini, the iPod Nano, bigger and bigger capacity ‘Classic’ iPods and, of course, the iPod Touch, as already mentioned.

Some people have had their gripes about the iPod, a major one, surprisingly, being the lack of a radio tuner. Well, seeing as Steve Jobs was involved in the project from the start, perhaps this isn’t so surprising. After all, this is the man who turned Apple around in 1998 with the iMac – an all-in-one desktop computer that, thanks to Jobs’ purity of vision, lacked a floppy disk drive because floppy disks were inefficient, held a mere 1MB of data (and if you wanted to transfer a file smaller than 1MB there were better ways to do it), were unreliable and prone to errors (you can’t seriously be thinking of backing up on this, can you?) and, compared to CD media, they were expensive. So following that rationale, if you were the proud owner of a shiny new iPod with a playlist of all your all-time favourite music at your disposal, why would you want to be listening to the radio anyway? Answer, you wouldn’t. Right?

Well, this generation of iPods includes a radio tuner. And that’s not all. Amongst a host of new features I see the new generation iPod Nano even includes a video camera – although why you would want to make a video on an 8 or 16GB MP3 player escapes me. The only thing I think Apple could add to the mix now is a mobile phone – oh hold on a minute, that would be the iPhone (which also, coincidentally, browses the web, includes games and even plays MP3 files...)

So Apple, where to from here?

Actually there is one other feature that would be very useful. If you do an internet search on ‘iPod’ and ‘hearing loss’ you will find thousands of pages confirming what has long been suspected including this one from as early as 2005 – iPods, along with other portable music players that include earbuds that fit inside the ear canal are a very real contributor to hearing loss. In fact it is recommended that users listen to these devices for no longer than 60 minutes a day, at less than 60% of full volume. Greater exposure can cause permanent hearing loss in the middle ranges.

But try pointing this out to your kids and they just don’t want to know. In fact, when they have their iPods in it’s very hard to talk to them at all...

Which is why I suggest that future iPods should also include a very essential feature to compensate for the hearing loss of the iPod generation – an inbuilt hearing aid!

Lockie’s Bel Air

To me, this car personifies the excesses of 1950s American automotive design. Larger and lower than the classic ’57 model, the 1958 Bel Air dripped chrome. The heavy bodywork sat on top of a massive ‘X’ framed chassis and the whole car just floated over any irregularities in the road surface.

I was introduced to Lockie during my third form year. A friend who knew about my interest in aircraft took me to meet the elderly West Coaster, who had served with the RNZAF in the Solomon Islands as a navigator on PBY5 Catalina flying boats during the Second World War. Born and bred in Reefton, Lockie was driving a Rover P6 at the time, but he was a Chev man through and through. He didn’t like the Rover (“Poms can’t build a motor car, you need to be a contortionist to get into it”) and used to talk fondly of the Chevrolet cars that he had owned, particularly of “Old Goldie”, the 1958 Chev Biscayne with the Blue Flame motor.

A few years later during the school holidays Lockie phoned up one morning and told me that I had to get over there. “I’ve brought myself a Motor Car!” he exclaimed. And that’s all he said. He wouldn‘t tell me any more over the phone so I biked over at top speed, arriving to find the largest car I had ever seen sitting on the back lawn. Lockie was delighted with his buy, even though he said it meant that he would be living on bread and dripping for the forseeable future. He promptly presented me with the key. “Take it for a drive” he urged me.

I‘d never driven column shift before but could recall a friend’s older brother, who had an HD Holden sedan, showing me how it all worked. So I jumped in the car, crossed my fingers and off I went. I turned the key and the small block V8 started up, rolling the bodywork on its springs as I nudged the throttle. To a 17 year old, this was an unforgettable experience. What a contrast to Mum’s Morris 1300 – I was hooked!

During the time that Lockie owned the car I regularly got to drive it. Whenever I was finished I would reverse it into the garage so that the wall of chrome at the front was showing. Lockie even urged me to take it to school one day as he was sure this would do my mana no end of good, though I never took him up on the offer. Which is not to say that I didn’t attract attention from other sources. Such as the traffic cop who pulled me over when I had gone down to the dairy to get Lockie some milk (as I’d called in on my way back from school I was dressed in my school uniform) and asked me if I owned this car? When I stated truthfully that I didn’t and explained who the owner was I then had to wait while the MOT officer got on the radio to verify my story. Personally I think he had stopped me because he wanted to have a good look at the Chev!

But sadly Lockie didn’t get the same fun out of the Bel Air that I did. A fall that he had some years earlier had damaged his spinal cord, leaving him with a loss of mobility and a withered left arm, and he had difficulty working the column shift. And when a relative in the motor trade offered to swap the Bel Air for his 1966 Impala, complete with automatic transmission, Lockie accepted. But to me, it was never the same.

All that I have left of the Bel Air is the newspaper advertisement from when Lockie brought it. The headline reads A Piece of History and I see that the asking price was $3,500. While researching this illustration, I was amazed to find the same Bel Air on TradeMe, where it is listed for $35,000, which to me is a great return on investment! All these years later the upholstery is well worn but there are only a couple of signs of rust in the door panels.

Just goes to show, as the saying goes, “old Chevys never die...”

Super City or Super Lemon?

I’m consistently amused by all the goings-on north of the Bombay Hills.

The latest Super City fracas is the most current entertainment. Actually I think it’s a great idea. We have a long history of over-representation and over-government (we still have far too many clowns in the big house in Wellington, most of whom are there not to represent their constituents but simply to make up the numbers and follow the party line). But as far as Local Bodies go, why do we need seven local bodies to make up Greater Auckland – and while I’m at it, with roughly a third the population of Greater Auckland why does the Greater Wellington region need six local bodies to look after our needs and wishes?

Now I’d be the first to say that this needs to be done right. You can’t have some Super-Mayor calling the shots for his cronies at the expense of everybody else. And I am concerned that this is exactly what would happen if the current Mayor of Jafaville, Banksy, got his hands on the wheel. Banksy, who is definitely of the opinion that being Mayor of Auckland City means that he is the Greater Power, seems to think that he has the automatic right to be Mayor of Auckland Super City. And sorry Banksy mate, I don’t think that’s necessarily the best call. It’s undemocratic, for a start. And democracy at Local Body level definitely matters.

We have Local Body elections every three years. And while I feel it’s important that I vote (I mean, these clowns are going to be spending my money for the next three years) nine times out of ten, try as I may, I don’t have a clue who, or what, I’m voting for and how it’s going to affect my life. Having to vote for up to twenty Councillers, District Health Board Members, Greater Wellington Regional Council Members doesn’t mean anything to most of us. They may live down the road, have 2.5 children and a pet iguana but what are they going to do once in office? There again they also say you have to be fairly warped to run for Local Government in the first place. Of course we have a lot of that going on in Central Government as well, half the clowns there we never hear of until Election Year cones around and then the ones with the high profiles or the ones that are not going to sneak in the back door on the party list all put their hands up, so we could do with a bit of rationalization in that area as well.

Ideally centralising Local Body affairs would cut out a lot of dead wood, not to mention cutting costs through elimination of duplication of resources. And hopefully with fewer, higher-profile candidates, we might get to know a bit more about them and what they really stand for. In the best of worlds they might actually be accountable to their constituents, of course this is probably hoping too much.

But what has really intrigued me about Auckland’s progression to Super City is this business about Maori Seats. It took the MP for Local Government Rodney 'Perkbuster' Hide threatening to throw his toys out of the sandpit to force the National Party’s hand to say, even at this early stage in proceedings, that it’s not going to happen. And now the Dr. Pita Sharples of the Maori Party is up in arms. “No special Maori seats on the council? That’s not democratic!”

Now excuse me Dr. Sharples. But this is democracy in its purest form. It’s not as if we’re saying that Maori can’t stand for the Super Council. In fact, what we are saying is that if a Maori candidate comes forward is the best person for the job everybody will vote for him (or her). You won’t need to be on the Maori roll, or stand as the token Maori candidate! And that, Dr. Sharples, is what democracy is really about!

Give it back!

While it’s long been suspected that our politicians have only their own best interests at heart, this new spirit of ‘openness and transparency’ over Parliamentary expenses has been a shock to us all.

For the first time NZ taxpayers can see some of the costs associated with the traditional ‘rorting the system’ that has gone on since time immemorial in Parliament. No wonder Deputy Prime Minister Bill ‘We must all tighten our belts’ English has moved to repay just over half of the $24,000 that taxpayers have paid him to live in his own Wellington home for the last six months! While this action was taken after days of English asserting that his expense claims were completely legal, in the middle of a global economic downturn there were much more important things that a Finance Minister should be worried about, with redundancies and cost cutting across all sectors of the economy (including Government departments, but apparently excluding the Government itself) this was a really bad look. However other MPs from all political patries are ‘hanging tough’. They continue to live in taxpayer-funded Ministerial residences or claiming accommodation expenses while renting out their Wellington properties, sometimes to other MPs (who, of course, get an accommodation subsidy)! It all looks like an incredibly cosy, taxpayer-funded money-go-round

ACT MP Sir Roger Douglas is the toughest nut to crack. Originally touted as one of Parliament’s ‘Perk Busters’, ‘Roger the Dodger’ has attempted to justify the use of taxpayer subsidies for travel expenses associated with a trip he took, together with his wife, to England to see his grandchildren. He justifies the expense claim by pointing out that as a result of his time spent serving the public as a politician he is legally entitled to ‘Roger’ the public to the tune of a 90% subsidy of international travel expenses. While it may be legal, in the present economic climate it is certainly not moral. When even backbench MPs earn at least three times the average annual wage, plus expenses and a gold-plated, taxpayer-subsidised superannuation scheme, there is certainly no need for politicians to expect the taxpayer to stump up for their holidays as well. At the present time many taxpayers can only dream about overseas holidays, a fact which has definitely depressed the local travel industry!

Which brings us to the Philip Field affair. Once a promising young MP from the Pacific Islands, Field has just been found guilty of accepting bribes and of corruption. He got a Taiwanese tiler, along with other Asian tradespeople, to work on his properties in Auckland and Samoa on the understanding that he would use his influence to get them New Zealand residency. He could get up to six year’s imprisonment, however under the current regime his wife is still entitled to all his perks as an Ex-MP.

It’s time all Politicians, of all political persuasion, got their snouts out of the public trough and smelt the coffee! Which is why I think the Tom Scott cartoon shows the hypocrisy associated with politics so well! (Is it any wonder we loathe them?)

The Winter of our Discontent

Another infamous Wellington southerly hitting the coast close to the airport... it don’t stop them flying but it makes takeoff and landing time much more interesting!

It’s official. This has got to be the crappiest winter on record.

Heard on the news earlier this week, during an almost unprecedented break in the weather, that if our bodies are telling us that winter is nearly over, normally that would be right – it’s been about three months. Unfortunately as winter came in a month earlier than normal this year the reality is that, based on the seasonal norms, we are actually only half way through winter. So the word from the boys at the Met office is, hunker down and expect more of the same!

And what a winter it’s been! Even HRH Queen Elizabeth is aware that her loyal subjects in Godzone are not having the best of weather. My personal experience has been that I’ve only had to mow the lawns once in three months (and that was really just a quick tidy up, they could have done another two months at least as most of them are still under water) and the dogs have taken to swimming out to do their business before coming in with hypothermia. We’ve had a succession of gale-force southerlies blowing straight off the South Pole and it’s been icy cold for months.

Even the Government’s got in on the act. Apparently the problem is that when we all first colonised the place we made the mistake of thinking that this was a ‘temperate’ climate (European settlers weren’t the first – the Maoris, and the Morioris before them obviously thought the same thing or they wouldn’t have stopped here. I wonder how they coped without polypropylene?). Anyway, the story is that’s why we built all these quaint little wooden houses with absolutely no insulation qualities. Seriously, in Petone (which is where some of the first European settlers landed) the wind blows in straight off the South Pole and the average house is colder inside than outside. So what we need to do, and John Key and his mates in the Beehive are going to help us out here, is insulate all our houses to 1st World standards.

The story is, if your house is over 10 years old the Government will give you money towards under-floor insulation, ceiling insulation, wall insulation, heat pumps, you name it! And they’ll help you out with finance for the rest. Which is not only good news for the average house owner, it’s also great for those people who want to get into the insulation retrofitting and heat pump installation industry! It’s even got residential property investors smiling, they can increase the value of their housing portfolio and get a Government handout. All in all, in these recessionary times, it’s a great thing.

Our house doesn’t qualify however, because it was built after Y2K (remember Y2K?). Which normally wouldn't have worried me. You see, our house meets modern insulation standards. Since we moved in here we’ve always said that it’s a warm house. Sure, it’s made of wood, not brick or concrete or stone. It doesn’t have double glazing. But it’s well insulated. And it’s well designed for this location. It takes full advantage of passive solar heating. It has a large, north facing roof what heats up like you wouldn’t believe when then sun’s out. Any little ray of sunshine warms the cavernous roofspace and is then pumped down and circulated through the house. We’ve had quite a few winters here and never found it that cold.

Except for the last three months we’ve had bugger-all sun.

So bring on your global warming. I can’t wait!

“Take it easy - take the TRAIN”?

Not that I’m a greenie or anything... but I had a mid-day meeting in town today and a bit of time up my sleeve. So seeing as we have a train station practically at the end of our street I thought I'd do the decent thing and try to save the planet, which apparently is warming at an alarming rate (here in Wellington we have yet to see any evidence of this – particularly this winter, more to come on this in a subsequent post – but the media assures me that this is the case). It was also ‘$2.00 Thursday’ – this happens on the second week of the school holidays and is a blatant attempt by TranzMetro (or KiwiRail, or whatever they like to be called these days) to bribe people that don’t normally take the train so that they can show them just what they’ve been missing.

Due to it’s geographic constraints Wellington actually ‘enjoys’ a relatively high amount of public rail transport compared with the rest of New Zealand where rail service is practically non-existent. The rail lines run more or less where you would expect them to and are within easy distance of many residential suburbs (apart from the southern or eastern suburbs – this was due to a bureaucratic oversight early last century when some clown decided to put a city in the way). But this winter they’ve had bad reviews. Not only are people actually freezing in the carriages (the heating systems have broken and TranzMetro refuses to carry spares to repair them) but the timetables are erratic and the infrastructure is run down, dilapidated and on the point of collapse. Which is why, last year, the outgoing government decided to pay top dollar and buy rail back, lock, stock and barrel, from the latest in a succession of private-sector companies that brought it and subsequently asset-stripped it (much to the delight of their shareholders).

The service this winter has actually been so bad that TranzMetro even reduced fares for monthly commuters July passes and announced that they would give all commuters FREE return trips on two selected Fridays. Unfortunately on the first of these nominated Fridays some fool of a TranzMetro contractor decided to start his part of the project a day early and brought the whole rail network to a standstill for six hours, starting with the morning rush period. TranzMetro’s failure to convey this information to many commuters was another source of frustration with many succumbing to frostbite while waiting on grotty, run-down and graffiti-laden platforms for trains that were never going to arrive.

Anyhow, this morning I came hurtling down the street and flung myself onto the platform just in time for the 11:23 train. Which failed to show up before 11:45, delivering me into Wellington 25 minutes late. Meaning that I was forced to ‘take it easy’ loitering on a grotty platform next to three brand new, but already severely defaced shelters before climbing into a run-down unit and travelling along the refuse-laden rail corridor into town. Meeting over I raced back to the Wellington station, missing my train, which had departed right on time, by less than a minute. I then had to ‘take it easy’ for another half hour before getting back to work.

“Take it easy, take the train”? Yeah, right!

CMS or static pages? You decide!

What do you want from your website?

No, really. Do you want an online brochure that presents your company and its services? Are you more interested in featuring current news and events? Are you planning to frequently update your content? Perhaps most importantly, do you have the necessary skills?

Many people would say that a website should include a Content Management System (CMS). These websites can have all the latest features, blogs, RSS feeds, etc plus an administration console where a site administrator can edit or add content to the site. Sounds great, doesn’t it? No HTML or coding knowledge required! With one of these sites you can do your own updates and there’s no need to go back to your designer or web developer everytime you want to change something.

However it pays to be careful. Having a database-driven website can open the door to all manner of security issues, not the least of which is having someone ‘inject’ malicious code into your database, corrupting it and allowing them administration access to your files. How would you cope if this happened? Who is responsible for backup and restoration of your data and how often is this done? What do you know about site security? If your site uses a complex CMS with lots of features, do you have the knowledge to operate it properly?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not opposed to Content Managed websites at all. I build and administer both static-content and CMS sites and can see that CMS interfaces are a great way for site owners to maintain their own websites. But each CMS is different and they’re often a ‘one size fits all’ solution. If you stick to creating and editing text content, fine. But if you have a need that’s even slightly outside the scope of what the site is capable of, you’re stuck. Unless you can find a workaround (which usually involves a bit of old-fashioned HTML know-how).

If you’re not into constantly updating your web content and you want a stable site that can’t be compromised with the flexibility to modify pages to look the way you want them to, good ol’ HTML, with a smattering of CSS, can still be the best way to go!

One side of mammoth to go, please...

It might be seen as stating the Surprisingly Obvious – but I blame the current recession on Retail Therapy.

This statement might appear to have nothing at all to do with the headline of this post but please bear with me for a minute. I’m sure you’ll all agree, there's nothing as satisfying as walking away from the shops with a ‘bargain’. We get a real buzz out of any new purchase, be it a car, a wide-screen plasma television set, the latest mobile phone, a new outfit, even something a simple as a pair of shoes.

Well I’m no psychologist but I have a theory on this. Back in the good old days of Hunter-Gathering, any Neolithic caveman could arrive back at the den come dinnertime carrying his side of the mammoth that he and his best mate had knocked over that day, knowing that he’d provided for the family and feeling that he’d done a good day’s work. Similarly his partner could show him the bushel of berries or the mixed nut selection that she had gathered during the day. Together with their kids, man and woman could enjoy the fruits of their labours.

But today, after working a forty, fifty or even sixty-hour week, what do we have to show for it? Maybe we arrive back home with a pay packet – really just a wad of paper notes. But nowadays, more often than not, all we have is a pay slip, weekly, fortnightly or even monthly, advising us that the balance of our bank account has been changed. The reality is that our credit with our bank has increased as a result. But to us, emotionally, this is all just abstract numbers. Our inner selves need something more tangible. We really want that experience of walking through the door with our side of mammoth.

In order to feel truly fulfilled and emotionally satisfied, we must convert the wad of paper in our pay packet, or the abstract figures in our bank account, into something real – something that shows the fruits of our labours, something that shows how good we are at providing. So how do we do this? We hit the shops, and spend, spend, spend! And there are whole industries out there devoted to taking our money.

Of course, the good people at our banks that look after our money are shrewd. They know how much we like to spend and how good it makes us feel. And they are prepared to borrow money that we haven’t earned yet, lend it to us to buy the things what we would like to own but can’t afford just yet, and make a tidy sum on the interest payments. Result – we happily borrow this ready cash so that we can buy bigger and fancier sides of mammoth, covered with bling and all the latest features that show all our friends how good we are at providing.

And this is all very well and good – until the credit runs out...

We are - what was it again?

Saw it again on TV the other night. That little ditty coined by the Folk North of the Bombay Hills celebrating the fact that their city was recently voted the World’s Fourth Best City to Live In.

It really goes to show how fragile the average JAFAs self-image must be when they feel the need to make such a song and dance about coming fourth in anything! I mean, think of the fuss and bother involved? First they have to get somebody to come up with suitably catchy tune and lyrics, and then they need to get a whole lot of so-called ‘celebrities’ (‘Mad Butcher’ Peter Leitch, I’m ashamed of you - aren’t you supposed to be a Wellington boy?), grab a few mildly-talented musos and do a whole big ‘Band Aid’ sort of production. After that, of course, they have to go and find some ‘Not For Profit’ organisation to act as beneficiary to make the whole thing appear kosher.

And if it comes down to quality of life - I wonder how many of the people of Manukau City (South Auckland - which, incidentally, has the largest share of Auckland’s population of 1.4 million) can identify with the sentiments of the song?

Well, at least they got the bit about the traffic right...

Nudity on the Hutt Motorway - and other places

OK, perhaps calling it a ‘motorway’ is a bit of a misnomer seeing as it’s got traffic light-controlled intersections and you can ride a bicycle on it... but I must admit to some involvement with the recent appearance of six ‘nude’ males (OK, they were wearing body paint), on the side of State Highway 2 (Lower Hutt) – and various other places around the country (including Auckland – nice to give those JAFAs something to look at as they sit in their traffic jams).

Some years ago, British Progressive Rock group Pink Floyd printed a poster to promote their back catalogue. The poster featured six naked female models, each body-painted with a different Floyd album design. When Daz, lead guitarist with New Zealand’s Pink Floyd Experience, asked me if I could do something similar featuring the band, I accepted the challenge. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

P.S. Went to the Wellington concert last Saturday night and it was just amazing! These guys are really talented musicians with a real passion for the music of Pink Floyd. And the light show is incredible too! Floyd fans take note – if you get a chance you should see these guys!

Under Construction?

No, I’m not talking websites here (websites should never carry the words ‘Under Construction’ - it’s like saying ‘enter at your own risk’ or ‘beware of falling brickwork’). Lately, as temperatures plummet, storm clouds gather overhead and winds reach gale force, we suddenly have a spate of orange cones and men in safety vests digging up the roads.

For a long time comedians have made jokes about road working crews. Like, why do you need two men with stop/go lollipops, one man with a road roller, two trucks and three guys standing watching (one’s there to make the tea), working on a one metre wide by 10 metre long strip of new asphalt? Why, when driving during the weekend or holiday season, do you find yourself driving through ‘road works’ at 30kph for miles and miles while all the machinery is parked well off the road and there isn’t a worker in sight?

I used to think it was just a Kiwi phenomenon (why else was the Ministry of Works commonly referred to as the ‘Ministry of Jerks’?). Until I saw this video the other day. In the 1960’s, at the height of the Vietnam Conflict American singer/songwriter Barry McGuire performed a song "Eve of Destruction", exposing the hypocrisy of modern society. Forty years later comedian Dan Geiger has written new lyrics and made a video about road works!

Apparently Barry really enjoyed it too!

Don’t have a cow, man!

Have a purple cow!

I’ve just finished reading the book Purple Cow – Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin. At first impression the thinking behind the Purple Cow is obvious – no matter what the economic circumstance your best chance of business success lies in producing a totally remarkable product or service.

But there’s a lot more to the Purple Cow than that. In today’s mass media and information overload it takes a lot more to get you or your business noticed than a simple ad design, an appropriate logo and strapline or catchy jingle. As Godin succinctly says, it’s “no longer good enough to be good enough” when very good is an everyday occurrence and seldom rates a mention. Hanging out your shingle and running an advertisement in mainstream media is no longer a path to success. Today the most successful businesses are exceptional, remarkable or simply amazing. And that’s where Purple Cow thinking comes in. The book is full of examples where companies have discovered their particular ‘Purple Cow’ and gone on to enjoy the rewards.

A Purple Cow sets you apart from other players. It’s a dynamic point of difference, an ‘out of left field’ approach, a special service or a remarkable product that nobody else offers – yet. And all really successful companies have at least one ‘Purple Cow’. In fact many of the most successful Purple Cow companies are often embarking on finding their next Purple Cow to stay at the forefront of the game. Once you have your particular Purple Cow, your competitors are going to want one too!

Unfortunately the book is not a manual on creating a Purple Cow. There is no plan to follow. There are no rules. A genuine Purple Cow is something that is remarkable in just the right way, at the right time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing – it’s easy to look at a successful business and see their Purple Cow, but without the benefit of hindsight the Purple Cow is a lot harder to spot.

There is, however, a methodology to developing a Purple Cow. Go for the edges. The marketing checklist has been spoken of for years and includes such things as product, pricing, promotion, positioning, publicity and packaging. Review the checklist as it applies to your product to mark out where the edges are. Then test which edge is the most likely to deliver the marketing and financial results that you seek.

Purple Cow thinking is best summed up by the two word headline of Apple Computer’s famous 1997 “Think Different” campaign.

For more information on Purple Cow thinking visit the Purple Cow website www.apurplecow.com or the author’s website www.sethgodin.com.

In the current economic climate, it’s the remarkable companies that are going to survive and prosper. So read the book and think about what your particular Purple Cow might be. And when you’re ready to take it to market, we’d be happy to help!

Happy 50th Anniversary, Mini!

I didn’t want to let this April pass without mentioning that it has been 50 years since the launch of that everyday classic car, the Mini. Designed by engineer Alec Issigonis the small car was a revolutionary design featuring transversely-mounted engine and front-wheel drive, rack-and-pinion steering and rubber cone suspension that gave legendary handling, and a surprisingly large passenger space relative to the small overall physical dimensions of the car.

My Mini, affectionately known as ‘The Beast’, was made in 1961, and totally rebuilt in 1983. When I brought it the car was a near basket-case. Every time it rained water flowed through the rust holes in the gutters and exited through the rust holes in the floorpans (not surprisingly the interior smelt like a wet dog). The electrical system was suspect (I even had a small fire under the dashboard one night) and, as with all early Minis, trips in wet weather were fraught with tension lest a curtain of spray from opposing traffic drown the exposed distributor behind the grille and kill the ignition. However when it wasn’t raining ‘The Beast’ was a lot of fun to drive, veering round corners on the metal road I lived on almost sideways, holding on with the aid of a widened rim at each corner and its firm ride on rubber cone springs.

I became so attached to the car that after a year I decided to completely rebuild it to a sort of ‘Cooper’ specification. The rebuild took a whole year and involved stripping the bodyshell back to bare metal and repairing the rust-affected areas (roofline, scuttle, door skins and floorpans), completely rewiring the electrics and repainting and retrimming the interior. The original 850cc A-Series engine was replaced with a larger 1100cc unit (better for the open road and enabling ‘The Beast’ to take on all comers when going uphill) complete with straight-flow exhaust system and a two-inch tailpipe that made the car sound much larger than it actually was. The only thing missing was the set of dual SU carburetteurs that I had always promised myself. Needless to say, I learned a lot that year!

Once completed, ‘The Beast’ was the archetypal 'Boy Racer'! I sold it to my younger brother in 1987. Should have kept it...

Back to the Future... again!

OK. I’ll ’fess up now and admit I watched Back to the Future – again – this weekend.

What a nostalgia trip back to the ’80s! Seeing Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd as in character as Marty McFly and Dr. Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown. And then there was the car! Doc’s “if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?” DeLorean DMC-12 managed to be both awesome and kitsch at the same time. The time-travelling DeLorean is, putting it simply, incredible. Flashing LEDs, digital readouts and lots and lots of buttons – real 1980s technology hardware at work! Sure, there are the reliability problems that I believe were part and parcel of 1980s DeLorean ownership (in fact one or two cars that I have owned that were definitely not DeLoreans suffered from similar problems)! But then the car hits 88mph, the Flux Capacitor kicks in and all that remains are burning tyre tracks scorched across the asphalt! After the movie, still feeling nostalgic, I looked up ‘DeLorean’ and guess what I found?

This press ad for carsguide.com.au is one of a series of three (the other two being the original Knight Rider and The A-Team). The set is totally in keeping with Doc Brown’s workshop from Back to the Future. And what I like best of all is that the image tells the whole story. The only words on the ad are in the tagline ‘Choice is Everything’ and the address for the carsguide website. How often can a designer persuade the client to forgo the headline in an advertisement completely?

Brilliant!

Blogging – the voice of someone shouting in the desert?

Why do people start blogs? Why do they spend time updating them? Does anybody even read them?

It really depends on the purpose of the Blog. Sometimes this is obvious – the blog is a commentary on the interests, or even, shall we say, professional interests of the writer. These blogs can include comments on politics, sports or media. ‘Professional’ blogs can also include examples of work, or tutorials on specialised subjects. The value of these blogs, of course, is directly proportional to the experience and skill of the writer.

Does a Blog need to be on a single subject? Not necessarily. Blogs are often written spontaneously and often include subject matter that, in the opinion of the author, is topical or simply seems to be a ‘good idea at the time’. However it’s important to remember that whatever is posted on the internet has the potential to be around for a very long time. Once your thoughts are out there in the public domain there’s no taking them back. It’s also a good idea to label your posts so that readers can follow your material by topic. Relevance is also important!

Does presentation, grammar and spelling matter? Well, as an aspiring Blog author, do you wish to be taken seriously? Why do you think so many online Blogging applications include a spell-checker? Enough said.

What happens once your post is ‘out there’? People should normally have the opportunity to comment with their views on your post. Should you moderate comments before they appear? Absolutely. Should you remove comments that contradict your view? Never. Moderation is about separating the spam from comments but one of the key ideas behind blogging is open lines of communication between writer and audience. Remember you always have the right of reply. But before you flambé some ignorant imbecile take a deep breath, try to stay on topic and be objective. Blogs are not the place for ‘flame wars’. Once again remember, once it’s published you can’t take it back!

Will a Blog help my business? Hard to say. What a Blog will do is give a human face to the person (or people) behind the business. Blogging can present a person as an expert in their field. It also gives business owners another opportunity to interact with customers or potential customers.

Will a Blog replace a business website? Unlikely. A professionally-designed website is still the best way to present a business, together with it’s products and services. While a well-designed Blog should complement a business website it should not attempt to replace it.

History Never Repeats?

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

Douglas Adams (1952-2001), The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

I think Douglas Adams was really onto something here. The current doom and gloom resulting from the global economic climate shows just how dependent our happiness is on ‘the movements of small green pieces of paper’. We originally developed money as a means of exchange for good and services. It quickly became a means of gaining power over others. Eventually we allowed it to determine the value of the same goods and services, apparently completely beyond our control. This is due to a rationale called Free Market Economics, which humorist Mr. John Clarke has described as follows:

Free Market Economics: The belief that a beautiful day has no value if you can’t sell it.

I’m no economist, but I’d say it’s going to take a complete change of view to get us out of this one and to prevent it happening again!

What’s good for Auckland is good for you...

I see the new Government has had a re-think on the regional petrol levy issue. Just as well given the current economic situation! With the economy in the shape it’s currently in the last thing we need is an increase in the price of petrol to pay for new roads around here when we’re finding it so much more expensive to fill up the car already. But just a moment... it seems that now instead of paying a regional petrol levy to fix the roads around here we’re all going to pay a national petrol levy to pay for new roads in Auckland. Notwithstanding the fact that a lot of MPs actually come from Auckland (including Prime Minister John Key and Transport Minister Steven Joyce) apparently this is simply a more efficient way of doing things and after all, as we are often told, what’s good for Auckland is good for the rest of us.

Now Auckland’s got its problems for sure. Every night I sit down at 6pm in front of the TV to watch the Auckland News and to catch up with all that’s happening north of the Bombay Hills. We see the same stock footage of motorists sitting in their cars in Auckland going nowhere. We hear about the traffic congestion, the infrastructure woes, the crime. I’m surprised that criminals can still use getaway cars in Auckland. If the congestion on the roads there is so bad wouldn’t it be faster to walk or take the bike?

Whenever anybody cries foul about the rest of the country bailing Auckland out yet again we always get the same reply. “Auckland is the Engine Room of the New Zealand Economy”, we hear. “What's good for Auckland is good for you!” Well, they have a point. It’s certainly a lot quieter in the rest of the country now that Auckland’s taken most of the industry, most of the corporates, most of the banks, most of the insurance companies, most of the population and a sizeable proportion of the criminal fraternity, which we actually don’t mind them keeping.

In the face the resulting national hostility Aucklanders very seldom venture out of Auckland. Many of them become severely disoriented once they venture south of the Bombays and very few make it much further than Taupo apart from during the skiing season. Although a surprising number of Aucklanders do, in fact, own holiday properties on the Coromandel Peninsula which is comfortably close enough to Auckland to get a decent break away in their Remuera Tractors. The National Roads people are fixing the highway and replacing the old Kopu Bridge to make it easier for Aucklanders to get to the Coromandel. As a matter of fact they’re also fixing the highway between Auckland and Hamilton, the idea being that if enough Aucklanders decide to live between Auckland and Hamilton pretty soon they’ll be able to annex Hamilton and make Auckland even bigger.

It’s not much better north of Auckland either. They’ve just built a flash new highway to take traffic from Orewa (quite a way north of Auckland) to Warkworth (even further north of Auckland) so that Aucklanders would find it easier to head north for a break which seems to be the preferred destination. The weekend they opened it there were major traffic jams and it was as if the drivers had never even left Auckland. In fact they still don't have it all sorted and the general view seems to be that it now needs to be extended further north to circumvent the congestion issues.

Auckland has long been called called ‘Sydney for Beginners’ and in fact the average Aucklander would quite like the rest of the country to regard Auckland as a world-class city in the same league as Sydney. The average Aucklander likes to think that the average Sydneysider looks back at Auckland with the same regard but the simple fact is the average Sydneysider is far more interested in Los Angeles.

Petrol and how to get it

The current situation with world oil prices reminds me of a monologue by satirist John Clarke (aka Fred Dagg) from the mid 1970's. At the time petrol in New Zealand was less than 50c a litre, we were worried about an impending ice age (not Global Warming) and the country was run by Rob Muldoon...

I hear the price of petrol will be going up again. It's a bit of a problem having the oil-producing world run by a pack of ratbags like the Arabs. Actually I know something about this and they're really quite bright. It's just a pity that nobody else thought of the idea first.

They don't actually produce oil out there at all. I mean, have you ever seen the place? It's built like a big long sand-hill and it's pretty clear to the average observer that there's nothing underneath. One of the big oil sheiks is a bloke who used to live out our way, as a matter of fact, Sheik Trevor. He's a funny sort of bloke, His Imperial Highness, and what he did was really quite simple. He took all his sheep-retention money, and he had quite a lot because he'd been retenting himself into the ground at the time, and he brought petrol (at the old price of course) from his brother who ran a gas station just outside Taihape. A few others had the same idea and pretty soon they'd brought up all the oil stocks and had it sitting in these big separators in the desert which is the only place they could get cheap land. And now that things have got a bit tight they're selling it back to the rest of the world and they make up the price as they go along... maybe if the Government had a bit of a chat with Sheik Trevor he'd let a few barrels fall off the back of a tanker for his mates!

I see the major oil companies think they might be on to a big pot of oil just off the West Coast. This would, of course, be of enormous benefit to New Zealand as we would no longer need to be dependent on the whims of the Middle East. I think I know what they're up to, these companies, and we're doing the same thing down our way so it won't only be the big oil companies that take off once the drill strikes the black moisture. The idea is to go along with Sheik Trevor and his mates, only without the problem of transportation. A few years ago the big oil companies started putting oil in the ground on the off-chance that the price might go up. They'd take a few million barrels, wrap it up in a big plastic bag or something and drop it off the coast somewhere that a whole lot of fishermen or scuba divers weren't going to run across it. And now the price has gone up they set up a few big rigs and pretend to find it. They know where it is all along, of course, but they can't just go and pull it up or people would ask questions.

A mate of ours was working for the Harbour Board at the time and he's about the only one who knows exactly where it is. So once the directors of the big oil companies have had their rigs photographed and they've all been on TV a few times they'll send for this mate of ours and he'll go out and point to the bit of water where he turfed it in. He owes me a few favours, this particular bloke, and with any luck I should hear a couple of days in advance so if anybody wants a share in the big strike, drop us a line and I'll see if we can fit you on the boat!

For more John Clarke humour visit www.mrjohnclarke.com

Today’s entry is brought to you by the letters ‘A’, ‘C’ and ‘C’...

I can’t understand what all the fuss is about! Today’s Dominion Post informs us that, due to a massive budget blowout, the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) will be cutting back on claimant entitlements. The Opposition say that this is a Government plot to privatise ACC, which will result in increased levies with some people no longer being covered for injuries due to accidents.

Firstly, I have never had a successful ACC claim in my working life. Despite paying ever-increasing levies, it always seems that I am never covered whenever I have an injury that makes it difficult, if not impossible to work. So what am I paying levies for?

Secondly, I still haven't forgotten the last time the ACC ran out of money and the then-Government had to quickly draft a law enabling them to have a quick whip-round New Zealand businesses to top up ACC coffers. As a business owner, I was suddenly wondering ‘where did this extra invoice come from’?

Interestingly enough around 15 years ago the National Government opened the Accident Compensation field to insurance companies which were then able to compete with ACC by offering similar insurance products. And guess what? It wasn't the end of the world! Those that elected to change nothing remained with ACC, and everybody still had the same type of accident cover. And suddenly ACC levies on Employers and Earners dropped to a more reasonable level. When a subsequent Labour Government repealed this legislation ACC levies went through the roof and they haven't looked back.

And this burgeoning bureaucratic monopoly is what we need to preserve? Yeah, right!

Imitation – the sincerest form of flattery?

No doubt about it – copying somebody’s corporate identity is fraud. However I think it’s fair to say that this copy of the Starbucks logo is more a case of imitation than direct theft.

That said, I do feel that making money out of somebody else's design is no go. And as the imitation logo is used on a range of merchandise that is then onsold to the general public, the whole thing starts to smack of commercialism, which flies in the face of the message that the message that the copied logo is trying to portray.

Not so nice one, guys.

'Times are hard...'

Recession. There, I've said it. It's been a long time coming and some say it's well overdue. Never mind that the first signs were evident this time last year, when some were saying that if we ignored the markets and paid no mind to the media it would somehow go away. It's here, and we're going to have to deal with it!

Some of the suggestions to come out of the economic forum last Friday were a bit loopy. I was particularly intrigued by the one about constructing a cycleway to run the length of the country. Not that I have anything against cycling per se but just how is that supposed to help New Zealand's economic future? I much preferred the suggestion of a nine-working-day fortnight, with the 10th day being used for upskilling and training the workforce.

There's no denying that we're all feeling the effects of a sluggish economy. In our business demand has dropped significantly from previous years. So we're investing in training. Any downtime is used to gain new skills so that as the economic cycle follows its course we will be ready to offer existing and new clients new products and services.

So stop fretting and start learning. You'll be much better placed to carry on when the brakes come off the economy. Remember, what doesn't kill you always makes you stronger!

Make the logo bigger...

It’s a song that’s familiar to most graphic designers and those involved in the design and advertising industries. And finally somebody, somewhere, has set it to music!

It’s the rockingest version of Make the Logo Bigger that you’ve ever heard! Two minutes and thirty-six seconds, composed and performed by Burn Back. To download the MP3 file for your listening pleasure click here! (MP3 file size 3.14MB)

Make The Logo Bigger

Make the logo big, make the logo bigger.
Make the logo big, make the logo bigger.

Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can. And make the logo bigger.

That logo isn't big enough, so make the logo bigger.
Bigger, bigger, make it big. Make the logo bigger.

(Yelling)
Don't try to be the brave guy!
We don't have a job for you!
You know what you've got to do!
You gotta stick to the process!
Make the damn logo as big as you can!

Chorus
Make the logo as big as you can. And make the logo bigger.

I don't want to tell you how to do your job, but could you make the logo bigger?
Bigger, bigger, make it big. Make the logo bigger.

New image lightbox gallery online

Visitors to our website mhdesign.co.nz may have noticed the updated illustration gallery. While I'm still working on new content, I have improved the interface from a CSS/Javascript popup to an easier-to-use 'lightbox' format.

A quick search on the internet led me to Lokesh Dhakar's Lightbox2 JavaScript application. Lightbox2 is easy to install and configure. Thanks Lokesh!

So you think you can dance?

Stephen 'Woz' Wozniak, the man who invented the Apple Computer and co-founded Apple, obviously does! Seems that Steve's been selected to appear on the American version of Dancing With the Stars.

It all goes to show the immediacy of the Internet. A multimillionaire engineer, not to mention one of the leading lights of the modern computer age, entering a televised national dance contest doesn't rate a mention on New Zealand television (even though we unfortunately get to sit through American Idol and other cast-offs from the American media). But as soon as it's announced it's out there on the internet, complete with pictures!

Full marks for giving it a go Woz, and I wish you every success!

Flash 8 in 24 hours?

Well, perhaps a little bit longer than 24 hours. I've been using Macromedia Flash for some years now, though I've always been too pressed for time to look into its more advanced features. But, having had a little more time than usual on my hands lately, I found the aforementioned book in the Library and am working my way through it.

If you want to learn how to get the best from Flash I thoroughly recommend this book. Phillip Kerman does a great job taking you through from simple animations to more advanced topics and while he only scratches the surface of what can be achieved with Actionscript (this is a 24 hour course, remember?) I know a lot more about Flash 8 now than I did before!

I've looked at Flash books before but this has to be the best one I've found. Check it out or visit the author's website www.phillipkerman.com

Let's get this show on the road!

Why would a Graphic Designer who already has a website go to the trouble of setting up a blog?

For those of you who do not know, Blogs are small part of the new 'Web 2.0' philosophy. Web 2.0 is all about interactivity. First-generation websites had limited interactivity - users could click a link to decide where they wanted to go, request a search or fill out a form to give feedback or make a purchase. But interactivity was limited. With the advent of Web 2.0 and Blogging, interactivity between publisher and audience is expected, and even encouraged. Any web user can generate new content!

In starting this Blog I am looking to engage with my audience. Just how much time I have to put into maintaining it remains to be seen. For now it's simply a case of 'publish and be damned'!