you wish you'd thought of it first Thursday, 18 June 2009 link 

Ever used a torque wrench? It's a fairly simple device. You set it to a certain amount of torque (rotational force - which in this context, means "how tightly you can do up a bolt"), then use it to tighten a bolt. When you've applied the specific amount of torque (i.e. the bolt is precisely as tight as you want it - no more, no less) the head of the wrench starts to slip. So you can only apply up to a certain, appropriate amount of force when doing up a sensitive component.

Here's my solution to the anti-smacking debate.

One of the problems is that many people support the right of parents to administer mild smacks to their kids - these are probably the people who support the repeal of the "anti-smacking" law. Now, in point of fact the "anti-smacking" law just removes a particular legal defence from people accused of assaulting their children. That legal defence had previously been used by people who had beaten their kids with horsewhips, metal implements, and the like. Hence the cross-party initiative to remove this defence in cases where parents had clearly overstepped a line.

But the problem that a lot of people have with this is, where is that line? The examples touted by the pro-smacking crowd refer to parents giving children smacks across the back of the hand, of perhaps bent over for a spanking after particularly egregious cheek. A substantial proportion of the population wouldn't disagree with mild physical discipline of a child, but would have a problem with more serious assaults. But leaving it up to the individual parents has an obvious problem: people very seldom do things they regard as morally wrong, but someone's idea of what's reasonable may be drastically out of kilter (as in the case of the woman who regarded horsewhipping her son as a reasonably means of correction).

I propose a simple means of setting the "acceptable" line.

Just as a torque wrench lets you apply a certain amount of force (and no more!) to a bolt, we need a set of official Infant Punishment Sticks that are calibrated to break when struck with a particular force. Then we make it legal to beat your children with the appropriate stick. For example, you could have the Level 1 Chastiser, suitable for children under 2. This would allow a modicum of force, but would harmlessly snap as soon as you really get your arm moving. Thus, a parent could admonister the appropriate, legally sanctioned level of loving physical correction, secure in the knowledge that they weren't going over any lines. The level 2 chastiser could cover up to age 5, but be set to snap just as you started to breathe hard from the effort of the beating. And of course, for older and more impudent children, you'd need level 3, calibrated to last up until you start to produce little flecks of white foam at the corners of your mouth.

All sticks would be no thicker than your thumb, of course.

Think about it: we save $9 million from a pointless referendum, the youth of the nation becomes instantly more thoughtful and less cheeky, and we've created a valuable new industry making correction sticks. Plus, there's a flow-on effect in about 20 years when NZ becomes a worldwide centre of S&M porn. Win-win.

Reading: Max Brooks' World War Z. Apparently there's a movie of this in production, which is a bit of a shame. What it really needs is a TV miniseries of 6-12 episodes. Basically, the book itself is written in a fauxcumentary style, as postwar survivor testimonials. This leads to some clumsy and disconnected moments: the text is supposedly told in the voice of a disparate group of survivors, but they often end up sounding the same. The voices of some of the survivors end up almost cliched (I found the sole English survivor very annoying and unrealistic, and the non-American speakers skirt dangerously close to ethnic stereotyping). But that's an artefact of the narrative technique: the only way to tell people what was happening is to have the survivors describe it. Putting this onscreen solves that, and would give you more latitude to differentiate the testmonies. What it's really crying out for is a Band of Brother-style presentation: a mock version of the "surivor testimony re-enacted" docutainment genre. That would work very, very well and look excellent. My worry about converting this to a movie is that a lot of what makes this worthwhile is the little details and bits around the side, where Brooks puts a lot of thought into the consequences of a zombie holocaust- descriptions of undersea combat with legions of zombies walking along the bottom of the harbour, having zombies freeze solid during winter and then defrost and lurch forth in spring, sly asides about people's reaction to the initial news - and this is the sort of thing that would probably be dropped first for time reasons. Basically, this uses the book format to expand and explore around the limited window available for a 2-hour movie; you'd have a hard time keeping it all in, and not just ending up with the big action sequences. While the big splatterfests are fun, there really isn't much there that we haven't already seen on screen a few times (well, except for the scale of it, which would be pretty awesome in its own right).

Of course, no matter how good the movie is, the question is: will it be as awesome as Dead Snow?

Also finally got around to reading Watchmen. There really isn't much that I can say that hasn't already been said several times before; to be honest, I'm surprised that I'd managed to get to this point without reading it. Anyway, I decided that I should probably get around to reading it before I see the movie. Glad I did. It is, as all the media agree, excellent. It's always slightly odd viewing these breakthrough works in retrospect: you've already seen all the derivatives and everything affected by it, but not the work itself. Many times, it's anticlimactic when you actually read the original thing. Not in this case. Well worth the effort if you've not read it yet.

it's fucking sore, OK? Sunday, 14 June 2009 link 

There are many interesting ways to injure yourself that combine "risible cause" with "surprisingly painful/debilitating". For example, cutting yourself while trying to prise the stone out of an avocado: sounds dumb, but I know a number of people who've done it and managed to seriously injure themselves. Slight mishaps while vacuuming in the nude. That sort of thing.

To this list we must add one more entry.

My mother has recently adopted a greyhound. Then, even more recently, another. This is great; they're good dogs, the kids love them, and I get to take them for walks. One of the consequences of my childhood is that I find walking dogs very calming. So this morning, I was out for a walk with a brace of greyhounds. At one point, they saw a freerange bichon friese. And they tried to run over and say hello. Now, these greyhounds are 30kg each. They're also trained athletes; one has a career total of 13 wins, 33 places, for a total of around $24,000 in prize money. So when they decide to run somewhere, there's a lot of force going through that leash. I restrained them, the bichon friese booked it, and then I realised that I had blood freely flowing from the end of my left little finger. The combination of the dogs effort and my restraining them gave me a rope burn that took a surprising amount of skin off the end of my finger.

So the dogs have drawn blood, but not in the traditional way. I wonder if this is a typical greyhound injury? Anyway, it's bloody painful, and it makes typing surprisingly hard. I hadn't realised quite how much you use the side of your little finger when typing; this is the disadvantage of being a touch-typist. Notably it's really painful using capital letters. Expect me to go all e e cummings for a bit.

Still, it's distracting me from the residual pain/itching of the healing tattoo on my right arm. Mostly it's good, except the black stripe running along the top of my forearm. Since that goes across the articulation point of the elbow, the scab keeps breaking whenever I bend my arm. This is slowing the healing, and bloody hurts. Still, the rest of the ink looks to be healing pretty well - still a lot of healing skin sitting on top of it, but it'll look pretty nice in a week or two. Just in time for the final session, at the end of the month.

that hurt redux Friday, 5 June 2009 link 

Another day, another tattoo session. Got most of the rest of the sleeve at least mapped out, though we didn't complete some of the fill. There's just a wee bit left to figure out what to put in, and a reasonable amount of fill to complete. Looks good though. Still the abstract b/w Pacifica theme, with a bonus cycling tribute section. Pics are available on Flickr as usual.

it's a tricky balance Wednesday, 3 June 2009 link 

The company I work for has around 700, 800 employees. Two of us are called Jack. When I first started, they put us in the same room and gave us only one phone extension. We both work on the same project. You can imagine the hilarity. The other week, I conducted a user satisfaction survey (why do you only ever "conduct" surveys? You never just "do" them), and among the returned sheets of results was a single post-it note with "JACK IS SO SEXY" written on it.

Yes - but WHICH ONE? Aargh.

Anyway, it cheered me up on a cold Friday morning, so it's all good.

My Friday morning:

9am: Accountant.
10am: Tattooist.

Got another text from my tattooist this morning. We're all go for Friday. 9am I meet my accountant to work out my tax for last year; 10am, I'm being inked in Pakekakariki. Plan for this session is to work on the infill between the wristband and my existing armband. We're going with the geometric-but-flowing stuff, and trying to work in at least one round design on the forearm. So that should be good fun. On the plus side, the last session healed up quite nicely - one or two minor touch-ups necessary, but mostly very nice new flesh. So, knock on wood, we won't need to spend much time on touch-ups, and can just get stuck in with the new design. I have another appointment booked for the end of the month. Between these two sessions, we should manage to finish the sleeve off nicely.

And this should be obvious, but I can highly recommend Tim Hunt out at Pacific Tattoo out in Paekakariki. Excellent abstract/Pacific work, and a good needleside manner.

Mind you, immediately after spending 7 hours being tattooed, I'm going to a matariki party at Maggie's creche. Mmm. Fresh blood and childcare.

Had a very annoying commute in this morning. Or rather, an annoying kick-off; came down the Ngauranga Gorge right behind a VERY NERVOUS cyclist. As in, riding the brakes the whole way, 25kph descent. I (and most other cyclists) normally take this at about 50. Fair play to the guy, ride within your comfort zone and all that; I'm a nervous descender myself, so I can't call him a bastard for that. But that doesn't mean I can't find it annoying. I don't think it helped that although he was riding a fairly decent road bike, with Look pedals, he was actually wearing jeans and sneakers (so wasn't clipped into the pedals). Still, good on him for riding, I just hope I'm not behind him again tomorrow.

With Rebecca at school, I'm only riding in 2 days per week. On the plus side, I'm definitely riding those days. If I've only got two good ride days in the week, it would have to be biblically bad weather for me to give riding a swerve. So I'm getting a lot of practice at riding in the rain. But I've got to say, it's very nice to not have drenching rain and 100kph winds for a change. Not that I've gone soft, you understand; just that I really prefer to not do the squelch-squelch-squelch-socks walk of doom when I get home soaked to the skin.

H: Is the Kings of Leon anything to do with Leon the god?
Me: The Kings of Leon are a rhythm combo popular with the youth of today. Leon the god is a mate of Morgue's.

another milestone Monday, 25 May 2009 link 

Maggie turned two last week; happy birthday, dear. Great moment at her creche - I dropped a cake in for morning tea, and stayed while they served it up. Prior to demolishing the cake, Ali had a word to all the assembled kids and told the older ones that since Maggie was turning 2 today, she'd be in the big kids' area from now on, but that she's still pretty little. Then she asked who was going to help look after her and make sure she was OK. "MEEE!!!!" all the kids chorussed, thrusting their arms up. Including Maggie, and a couple of the under-2s, who presumably thought this was more of a general query about whether they wanted cake.

In any case, this general protection was entirely superfluous. On our arrival at nursery at 8:20am, Rebecca had buttonholed her mate Sam (turns 5 in a month or two) and designated him as Maggie's minder for the day. This morning, it was Jake who got the nod. She's a good big sister; setting up the protection.

Heather's parents came and stayed over the weekend for Maggie's birthday, which was nice. I ended up picking them up from the airport (I work 1k from the airport, so it's a no-brainer), which worked nicely.

On the day (Saturday), Maggie got a number of presents. She was very impressed with the "memory game" which was basically a lot of toy farmyard animals and plastic eggs to fit them in (though this may give her odd ideas about how cows reproduce). She really loved the Wishbone trike (designed in Island Bay, folks) we got her: at 6:30am on Saturday morning, in the pitch darkness, I heard her say "Hello bike" as she walked through the house. But it all paled in comparison to the mighty joy of the picnic set Suzy got her. 73 items, the packaging says, and I see no lie. Plastic fruit, croissant, plates, cups, cutlery, and the piece de resistance: a replica plastic stovetop coffee perc. Maggie loves this and plays with it all the time. Massive win there.

And respect to all present on the Auckland Harbour Bridge protest yesterday. That's the spirit; next time, just see if you can get permission first, eh? Might help with the public perception if motorists can squeeze past.

that came from left field Wednesday, 13 May 2009 link 

I spent five hours under the needle today. I have a tattooed forearm (well, it's not huge yet), and my shoulder is finished. I am fucking sore. And happy. Taking bets on how much my forearm bruises; next scheduled session is on the 5th June. W00t, etc. I can canonically say, you would not fucking believe how much being tattooed on the inside of your forearm hurts. Or maybe it was just that a lot of that was happening with an outliner rather than a shader needle setup; either way, I'm expecting a bruise

Got there at 10, courtesy of a very fine lift from my lovely wife. Tim at Pacific Tattoo had a look at how the last session had healed. And he was not happy. From 10:30 to 12:30 was spent merrily re-inking a lot of the big black areas from the last session, plus adding the red bits and inking a couple of black sections we'd missed. By the end of that, I was literally shaking from low blood sugar: cue lunch, frantic gulping of tea, etc. I calmed down a bit and we started up on the new sections. We decided to end the sleeve with a wristband (as I've got a band around my bicep, so it has a nice symmetry to it), with flowing designs going down to it. To give us an idea of the parameters, we did the wristband today. It took about three hours and fucking well hurt.

Pictures and a few notes available at my Flickr set for the sleeve. Next session is on June 5th; we're going to start on the infill between the bottom of my old armband (done by Rog Ingerton way, way back in 1996 or so) and the wristband we did today. Idea is to have it flowing, but geometric. Further bulletins as events warrant.

social media this Tuesday, 12 May 2009 link 

Good ways to start the day: 10am text message from your tattooist, advising that an appointment has come up tomorrow. Excellent. Roll on another 6 hours under the needle, then.

Rebecca is loving school at the moment. I now have a new tool of persuasion in the morning: "No, you can't do your homework until you've got dressed and brushed your teeth." It's like someone's flipped the "must learn to read and write immediately" switch in her mind.

bit of a hiatus there - hopefully you won't notice Monday, 4 May 2009 link 

Went out to the SFBH on Saturday for the gypsy evening. Excellent gig. We had to do some thinking, and came to the conclusion that the last time we'd been out on our own, together, to go to a gig where Heather wasn't playing, must have been... in the UK. Yikes. Don't get me wrong, we actually go to a lot more live music now than we ever have; it's just that most of it is related to Heather getting up onstage with violin. And man, you know you've been out of it for a while when you find yourself reflexively turning up at the venue at the stated start time for the gig, "in case we miss the support" (who, of course, don't actually start playing for another 90 minutes you fool).

Speaking of which, Niko Ne Zna were great; didn't fuck around, just got out there, started playing, and had taken the lid off the place within 5 minutes. You got a sense that a lot of the crowd were friends of the band, but a lot of the crowd weren't, and everyone was jumping up and down. From start to finish they played an excellent set of Balkan, klezmer, and latin-influenced stuff (covers of stuff from the Amsterdam Klezmer Band, Slavic Soul Party, and the like). Very impressive, and I'll definitely be looking out for their gigs in future.

The Benka Borodovsky Bordello Band, on the other hand, were a bit bitsy. When they were good, they were very very good, but when they were bad, you were standing there thinking "fuck the showmanship and play the bloody tune." They were clearly into the spectacle of the whole thing, but they took it a bit too far. I frequently found myself wishing they'd talk less and play more. And they'd fallen victim to the virtuoso trap: they were doing some stuff just because they could, rather than because it was actually a good idea. Yes, it's pretty cool if you can start a song really slow, and then slowly work the tempo up well past the point where anyone can actually dance to it. That's fine once. You don't need to keep doing it. You certainly don't need to do it more than once in the same song. I just wasn't convinced about the pacing; between the long gaps between songs, and the long gaps in the songs (both when everything stopped dead and when they were actually playing too fast to dance to), it ended up a bit jagged.

But when they hit their stride - when they picked a song that didn't fuck around and concentrated on booting it well out - they were blindingly good. Their original stuff was mostly great, and they were obviously having fun up there. On balance, worth seeing; and their album ("Polkapocalypse") holds up very well.

And it was fun being at a gig by two New Zealand bands who are very, very unlikely to get any particular promotion as part of New Zealand Music Month.

On the other hand, it was desperately unfun getting to bed at 2:30am. I was forcibly reminded of the reason why we don't do this very often, when at 6am the girls came through and started agitating for breakfast. I managed to talk Rebecca into taking care of it and slumped back, trying to doze through the sounds of destruction from the kitchen. I heard the following:

Fridge: *beep beep beep* [the "you've left me open too long" alarm]
Rebecca: Maggie, can you close the fridge for me please?
Maggie: *clump swish clump swish clump swish clump* [She's got one shoe on] *noise of fridge door closing*
Rebecca: [Runs into our bedroom and shouts at high volume] Papa! I asked Maggie to close the fridge door! And she did it!

Excellent. Three weeks out from her 2nd birthday, Maggie can help with basic household tasks. Next week: "Maggie, can you pass me a 3/16" hex socket?" Or, and handily, "Maggie, just get under the house and grab this wire when I poke it through the floor, eh?"

And a very happy birthday to my lovely wife for yesterday. And fervent thanks for the babysitting that let us go out for a nice French meal to celebrate it.

Why I don't drink cocktails much: the sheer, horrifying pretension of it all. Note the number of admonitions to chill everything (lest you should, quelle horreur, actually taste the damn stuff); note the attention to ceremony to get around the fact that you're SWIGGING NEAT FUCKING GIN.

I mean, I have little enough time for lushes, but none at all for a pretentious lush.

I love it when other cyclists casually coast up from behind me as I'm waiting at a red light, and drift to a halt just in front of me. You might think that this is a bit rude, but you'd be wrong. It's a direct challenge. "I need to get in front of you," they're saying, "because I'm going to be taking off faster than you when the lights go green and it's easier if I pass you now." They're throwing down. And that's fun. It means that when the light goes green, I can put a bit of wellie on and try to pass them. If I manage it, ha! If I don't, well, they were right that they were faster than me, so no harm done.

There's a pair of piwakawaka (fantails) who seem to have taken up residence outside my office. It makes me very happy to see them twirling and diving around outside my window.

Mostly, Secret Tweet is depressing; occasionally it has entries that are entire short stories on their own.

and now, i'm off to the pub Friday, 17 April 2009 link 

Had the rellies down for Easter. Jim, Jo, and Evelyn came down and stayed for a few days. The weather intermittantly cooperated withour plans to run the kids around outside. Probably a larger spanner in the works was Maggie coming down with gastroenteritis on Friday night. Hilarious. Let's just say we spent a lot of time over the break cleaning toddler vomit out of bedsheets. Often at 1am. She came right after a couple of days dedicated care, and everyone else had a good time, so it all worked out OK.

As it's now the school holidays, I've taken a few days off to look after Rebecca. So far, it's been good. Tuesday we did a fair bit of art, went for a bike ride (Petone esplanade + stiff southerly = short ride), went to a ceramics painting place, had lunch out, then came home and prepped dinner, did some baking, and I read her the first five chapters of Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang. All around, a good day. During all this, Maggie was off at nursery, happily playing with her friends and painting things, because I am the sort of appalling parent who lets other people look after my children even when I could actually do so myself. Tcha! And then today, I took her out catching fish with the bait trap (we practice catch and release); she loved it.

Mind you, Tuesday night was Maggie's first night in a real bed. I was pretty concerned about the danger of a lot of running around and yelling, but she snuggled in and went to sleep like a real trouper. Excellent. Another couple of days to double-check, and then we can go and pass the cot (and the porta-cot) to my sister, who we now know is expecting a girl later this year. Nice.

rush the stage Wednesday, 8 April 2009 link 

Went to the Wiggles gig on Saturday. Excellent stuff. We stayed in our seats for about ten minutes, then it was off down to the front to dance. I hung back slightly (sitting cross-legged in the aisle), but R was straight up in the mosh pit. M mainly stayed around us, but enjoyed the music as well. Full credit to the performers; it was notable that Sam was significantly younger than the others, and Jeff got a bit of stick for his age, but they all kept the pace on. I was amused that they put in a gymnastics sequence featuring Anthony and Captain Feathersword in skin-tight gymnastics kit, hanging upside down from things and showing off their impressive physiques: definitely one for the mums in the audience. And on the way out I was impressed to note that the merchandise stall included tour t-shirts for the preschoolers. On the whole, well worth the money, and if you get a chance I'd recommend them as a gig. Best atmosphere I've seen at a gig since the first time we saw Lemon Jelly. Mind you, I think most gigs could be drastically improved by throngs of preschoolers who know all the words.

Interesting/depressing credit crunch note. I just received a flyer from a debt collection agency. No, not one of those flyers where they threaten to send the boys around unless you cough up last months' payment; one of those flyers where they point out politely that with the credit crunch, people may not be paying their bills promptly and offering their services to send the boys around to anyone who hasn't paid your bill for last month. This makes me uncomfortable.

Having fun with Twitter so far. One point to note: watch out for any interesting keywords in your tweets. I dropped a one-liner about creationism, and promptly picked up a couple of fundies on my follower list. So be careful out there, kids.

Job satisfaction: I just managed to get a quote from The Orb into a technical manual. See that? That's quality, that is.

Ah, easter. We've got rellies coming to stay, so there will be much time spent doing familial stuff around the place. I'm just hoping that the weather holds for a trip to Staglands. After easter, I'm taking a few days off to look after Rebecca for the first week of the school holidays, then Heather's doing similar for the second. I have a few basic activities planned - bit of cycling, bit of fishing, trip to the movies, that sort of thing. Should be a good laugh.