Category Archives: Life

Looking forward to Tax Cuts this election?

If you’re a New Zealander like me, you’ll probably know that there’s an election coming up, and good old Don Brash of the National Party, like so many politicians at election time, is advocating tax cuts. Apparently the Government can afford it, assuming they get rid of some of the less-important functions of the government.

Public Address have put together a handy little tax break calculator! You enter your salary, and punch in the percentages of tax you want to pay, and it tells you how much money per week you’ll be scoring. w00t! NZD$202 extra a week 😀

However, it goes forward to explain how much money it’ll need to recoup from giving the tax break to the nation. For me it was NZD$3,935 Millionbut luckily it goes on to offer suggestions of things it could get rid of, you know, to keep the government running smoothly. You know, the controversial things, like hip-hop tours, woman’s affairs, artist’s dole.

For example: Getting rid of the Wananga O Aotearoa? Sure, but what about all the students? — they’ll still be interested in tertiary education — onto student loans they go…
Largest 1-year funding the Wananga ever recieved: $239 Million
Cost of a third of ex-Wananga students going elsewhere: $220 Million
Net Money Recovered: NZD$19 Million.
Still to Recover: NZD$3,916 Million.

Ooo big savings. NOT.

Seriously, I think I can safely assume that National is unable to give a significant tax break. As the fellows at Public Address said:

There’s a word for that, and it’s nothing so prim as “baloney.”

For the record, I’m happy with how I’m being taxed. Maybe the rich should be taxed more, and the poor taxed less. What do you think?

Life New Zealand Politics Work 7 comments

Week of Insanity

So several crazy things happened this week:

  1. Webfroot turned 4 years old. Ask me 4 years ago how popular Webfroot was gonna be in 4 years, I probably would have said it wouldn’t last that long. But it has, and it’s still going strong! The popularity of Webfroot _SCARES_ me. Webfroot gets around 2000 unique IP addresses visiting it every 24 hours. If I search for things we posted about only a week ago, we’re on the first page on Google!
  2. I got a new job! I start that in August, going full time the first workday in October.
  3. The day after I told work I was resigning to start a new job, my other workmate hands in his resignation too, being head-hunted for a position with a nice Wellington ISP. What’s up with that?
  4. My mum calls me and tells me that in October she’ll be moving from Napier, New Zealand to Brisbane, Australia! Wow… what a shock… I’m kinda a little sad, but I’m happy for her 🙂
  5. My post about saving any multimedia file to your hard drive got 270+ diggs on digg.com, was mentioned on Make:Blog, and then talked about by Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht on the diggnation podcast!
    An interesting fact is that it took over a month for it to get to the homepage on digg.com, and then everything started linking to it.

So yeah, pretty weird up and up week. It’s nice when things seem to be turning out for good!

Blogging Family Life 4 comments

Movin on up, Movin on out

So I have a new job! I handed in my 4 weeks notice to the DRC and am moving on to 3months.com! I must say thank you to 3months for letting me start in a part time manner so that the DRC wouldn’t be left in the lurch while my workmate is on 6 weeks leave, and so I can get the projects I’m currently working on at DRC out the door.

So I start part time at 3months on August 8, and I’m told while I will still be doing XHTML, CSS and PHP, I will be doing more XML and XSLT related work, along with picking up some Python and working with Plone and Zope. Scary stuff seeing as I don’t know much about working with those last three; I told them I was prepared to learn Python at the ‘interview’, and that I’ve tried to do a little Python here and there, but I have yet to use it for something non-trivial. However, I’m prepared to take the learning curve 🙂

I am however, really excited about working in a Agile environment. Everything I’ve read about Agile makes perfect sense. The values it upholds in the Agile Manifesto just seem to resonate that there is a solution to the project problems in all the organisations I’ve worked for to-date.

I’m really looking forward to it.

Internet Life Work 5 comments

Weekend with Mum

My mum came down this weekend to visit both my brother Stuart and I. Saturday night we ended up at Stuart’s place drinking crates of Bushman’s Lager, and then it turned into what Stuart says was the largest party they’d ever had. Mum and I left early to go see my Uncle Steve and Aunty Rosie Ffrost, leaving Stuart and his girlfriend to enjoy the party.

My Aunty and Uncle were in town for (Rosie’s Mum) Leslie’s 70th birthday party the next day. My cousins Abby and Sam were there too — man they’ve grown and look so different! Abby is now married(?) and has had two kids, one of which was adopted out, but they were both there. My goodness, they look so much like the younger Abby I remember.

I also talked to Leslie herself, and she told me about her trip around South America, and off hand she mentioned going to Easter Island, so I asked her a bit about that… she was only there for two days, but she saw most of the island — remembering that you can probably bike around the island in less than a day.

Mum was crashing at my place, so before we went to bed, we tried to watch Napolean Dynamite, but my computer was having issues and we were both tired; Mum doubly so after a 4 hour drive from Napier.

The next day was Church, and after an ordeal missing late buses back into town, I made it back in time to go to Leslie’s 70th party. It was at the Kingsgate Hotel in Oriental Bay, which is a great venue! After eating many club sandwiches, mini-croissants and drinking glasses of orange juice, talking to the whanau, we got to hear speeches from Leslie’s children telling the attendees about Leslies life. It was really interesting — she used to be in the Lighthouse service, which involved living in and running lighthouses for 18 months at a time. Fascinating!

After the party, Stuart, Mum and myself returned to my place where we relaxed, then we fetched some supplies including popcorn, beer and food for dinner, and Mum cooked up a feast of Potato, Cauliflower and cheese sauce and Porterhouse Steak — YUMMM. Then we retired and watched Spongebob Squarepants: The Movie, drinking beers and eating microwave popcorn. Mum had bought a few fruit-and-nut chocolate bars and said you gotta try this: Put a chunk of the chocolate in your mouth, then grab a small handful of popcorn and put that in there too. I did, and it was great! The chocolate melts from the heat of the popcorn and it tastes great 😀

Monday morning I wake up and Mum and Stuart are buzzing the apartment, so I quickly get dressed and we all go to Fidel’s for breakfast. They had a FIFTEEN PERCENT SURCHARGE for a public holiday! SCREW THAT! Well, we ended up ordering and paying for the meal before we realised there was a surcharge, and the food was REALLY GOOD… and we had a good time, so that was good 🙂

After that we walked to Te Papa where Mum wanted to check out the Holbein to Hockney exhibition of pictures from the Royal Collection, which featured some pieces from Leonardo de Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, along with many others. I think the other Ninja Turtle was in there too 😉

After that, Mum was on her way back to the Hawkes Bay and we said our farewells. Overall it was good sharing the city with Mum, and having a real good time. Love you lots Mum!

Oh, and I scored a full copy of Duke Nukem 3D from the Gamesman for NZD$1.00… pity I can’t get it to run in any screen size bigger than 320×240 under Windows XP. I tried a few HOWTOs but they didn’t help 🙁

Family Food Games Life Movies Outside 4 comments