I had a little bit of a snafu with my server and had to reinstall WordPress from a backup. Which didn’t have the media files on it.
Because I am an idiot.
Over time I’ll repopulate my posts with some images, but it’s been a wee bit of an effort to get back to this stage already.
I haven’t been very active in keeping this blog of late, but I really should have posted for September’s partial eclipse. After all I did get up at sparrow-fart and headed to the beach to take some photos. I wasn’t the only person doing that, either.
In October, I went down to the Moray Place entrance to the art gallery to protest the Prime Minister. I have to admit in the moment instead of shouting something like “Justice for Palestine!” or “Pay the nurses!”, my brain kinda shorted out and I just went “Boo!”
I am just some goof who apart from COMP 101 at university in 1997, has no formal education in computing. I use them every day, of course, and that is nothing unique. But most of the more technical side of building up my home network has been largely self-taught through some YouTube videos and some more judicious internet searching.
Somewhere along the way I learned of Kiwix, an application that was developed to serve select downloaded web content to people on the wrong side of the digital divide. And it’s a project that has enjoyed a broadening community.
All this is a roundabout way to say this week I downloaded Wikipedia. 111 Gigs of content on to a Raspberry Pi (the second I have – the first hosts this blog), or more precisely an external 2 terabyte hard disc I have connected to it.
I get a kick out of reference tools, with an atlas, English dictionary, and special titles like Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable sitting on my book case. I even have the final edition of Pears’ Cyclopaedia – a single volume, general purpose encyclopaedia from 2017 that had been published annually since 1898.
I often thumbed through the family’s encyclopaedia set when I was a kid, but it had grown outdated by the 90s.
I did have the 1997 edition of Encarta, and recently tried to get the CD-Rom up and running, but sadly that was a non-starter.
Encyclopaedia Britannica ceased being published in hard copy in 2012, leaving the World Book Encyclopaedia as the only general reference title in print today. But at nearly US$1400 for a current set – close to NZ$3,000 that is quite an investment and, well, the spine design for 2026 isn’t exactly something I’d want to prominently display on my shelves.
I contend that Wikipedia is one of the great wonders of the Internet. And just having my own copy, on my own computer, that’s a nice thought for this burgeoning datahoarder.
Wikipedia is facing some threats. Elon Musk is pushing his (ugh) A.I. generated Grokipedia and derides Wikipedia as “woke”. Who knows what levers he would pull to discredit it or shut it down? Presumably countless A.I. bots could be used not so much to engage in a DDoS attack, but rather a Distributed Enshittification of Service attack, filling articles with unreliable information. In August, Wikipedia enacted policies against this kind of thing. But it wouldn’t be that different to how X/Twitter has developed under Musk.
Another threat lies in efforts to ban social media to youth. Wikipedia is considered subject to the UK’s Online Safety Act and if regulators designate it a category one provider under the Act, they would be required to age-verify all its users in the country.
A bill in New Zealand has recently been drawn, considering similar things. And while I’m in my 40s and in some places (here, for instance) I am fairly open about who I am, I bristle at the idea that it would be easier to track what I say and what I do online if government ID would be required. That kind of information would be a honey-pot for data breaches and extortion. Consider, for example, members of the public service who quite rightly keep their professional lives and political opinions separate. Or the average person venting about work.
I digress. But overall, I am not too pleased about the way the internet is headed and how its role as an avenue for communication is narrowing. So downloading Wikipedia is one way I can safeguard against that. At least a little bit.
Pope Francis | Jorge Mario Bergoglio 1936-2025
The Pope has died.
I’m not a very observant Catholic, although over Lent and Easter I have found myself returning to Mass with more regularity. I don’t really like to talk about religion that much because I consider myself a secular pluralist – as I’ve discussed before.
But this is my blog, that’s my name in the URL and while I’m not going to beat you over the head with religion at a dinner party, I might as well gently prod you with it here.
Pope Francis was my kind of pope. His emphasis on mercy, understanding and reconciliation was very much needed after the more doctrinaire Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II. In the wake of the abuse scandals and especially the cover-ups, a lot of Catholics like me were very angry at the Church and I suffered a spiritual loss when I lost the compulsion to observe my faith.
Pope Francis’s approach to his ministry demonstrated that Catholic spiritual life and engaging in the world as it is are not incompatible. Without that approach I don’t think I would have been open to returning to church.
I hope when a new pope is elected by the College of Cardinals, that he builds on Pope Francis’s work. This world, as always, could do with more mercy, love and understanding.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,
and let Your perpetual light shine upon him.
May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed
rest in peace.
A few days ago Alec at the excellent YouTube channel Technology Connections published a video that strongly articulates some of the misgivings that I share about the modern online experience.
The conversation this has precipitated has been heartening. I am far from alone in these concerns.
This blog was in part established as a reaction against the algorithm-driven internet. It’s a way of being the change I want to see in online life. And yet habitually my browsing sessions would still be the same thing. YouTube to Reddit to Bluesky to Facebook and repeat.
So I had a good think and I realised two major pillars of my pre-algorithm life had receded: bookmarks and RSS feeds. Really Simple Syndication (or Resource description framework Site Summary) is still a thing. It allows you to set up customised federated feeds of content across from different sites into one single service or app. Instead of setting up notifications, you look at your feed on your own schedule and read or watch articles and videos in your own way.
Bookmarks are simpler, allowing you to save urls of sites in your browser to return to at your leisure. I hope that’s something you knew already, but on the off-chance you don’t, well … that’s my explanation.
Anyway, I’ve come up with a list of sites I deem worthwhile. Most of them sit outside the list of most popular websites, except for one at time of writing (a search engine). Take from this list what you want. Rebuild your own internet experience into a bespoke model instead of a series of walled gardens.
Reject push notifications, embrace RSS.
Again, take from this what you wish. My tastes very likely aren’t yours. But I think the approach has some merit, just in terms of where our digital lives are headed.
This weekend I confirmed the cancellation of my Adobe subscription. I’m just a hobbyist and I’m happy to use Darktable instead of Lightroom and GIMP instead of Photoshop. I’ve been trying them out for a couple of weeks and they are more than satisfactory. They are more than enough for a hobbyist like me.
I also took the opportunity to look at my Amazon spending. I’ve been blocking them since November, but it was only last month that I gave up on Prime Video. I have to admit this gives me a smug sense of satisfaction. I hope you’ll forgive me.
When Trump was elected last year I promised myself that I wouldn’t concentrate on international politics that much this time around. While yes, I am no longer on Twitter or TikTok any more and barely on Facebook, it’s hard to ignore the collapse of a superpower into authoritarianism. It’s the kind of thing that invites comment.
My boycott is going well. I don’t miss Amazon, Adobe is slated to end next month and I don’t subscribe to Amazon Prime any more.
For New Zealand I think the rubber is going to meet the road on 2 April (3 April our time). Trump is calling it “Liberation Day”. That’s when the Trump administration is announcing global tariffs on a country-by-country basis. Even in the absence of a free trade agreement, the United States is our second largest export partner. A smidge ahead of Australia and a fair way behind China.
The risk is severe enough that in February Minter Ellison Rudd Watts outlined steps NZ exporters should take and Winston Peters returns from a diplomatic mission to the United States today.
Tariffs there will hurt us. And I don’t know whether Luxon and the rest of the government have the mettle to retaliate in a reciprocal manner should they be applied. Trump considers value added taxes like GST as a form of tariff and I fear his administration will act to that effect.
I guess we’ll find out in two weeks. But I think we need to brace ourselves for our exports to take a hit. At least we won’t be alone in it.
The eclipse was already starting to wane by the time I got to photograph it, but I managed to resolve some of the redness, even so. Here’s a picture of it, and another of St Clair Beach with some interesting lighting.
Both were taken on a Pentax K10D.
Almost every day it’s like “idiot government does idiot thing”, but this really takes the cake. The proposal for a four year term in New Zealand is a retrograde step that is not healthy for our democracy.
I was against this when Labour floated it and I’m against it now that National is advancing legislation for a referendum.
Efficiency shouldn’t be the primary motivator. After all, the most efficient government would be a dictatorship.
I don’t want my opportunities for democratic participation to be reduced. This proposal would do that. It is at its core anti-democratic.
We don’t have a system of checks and balances in place in New Zealand. There is no veto option for a head of state, there is no upper chamber, there is no supreme law the courts can apply to strike down unjust laws.
Parliament’s rule is absolute and it can already bypass normal processes under urgency to enact its programmes.
Elections every three years serve as a good safeguard against complacency and bad law in an otherwise fairly lax constitutional environment.
If there were other safeguards in place, I’d reconsider. But given how powerful Parliament is in New Zealand’s system I am strongly against this measure.
I’d like to take a moment to declare that I am a secular pluralist. Secularism – at least in my understanding of it – is the practice that excludes religious influence from civil administration. This is because there are so many diverging positions when it comes to religion that when a civil government imposes the precepts of one religion on the population as a whole it is oppressive to many within that society.
Pluralism is the practice that society accommodates a diversity of religious beliefs. In order for it to do so, religious adherents should not seek to force their beliefs and practices on others. While they can campaign, lobby and protest just as much as anyone else they must accept that their religion is only practiced through their personal conduct. Not through the intervention of the state or other civil powers on their behalf.
This brings us to Brian Tamaki and the Destiny Church, elements of which over the weekend invaded a library, disrupted a drag-king event and are alleged to have carried out acts of assault.
Leave aside for the moment that it is an error to conflate drag performers with transsexuals. The Venn diagram does overlap, but it is not a perfect circle (see for example Dame Edna, Monty Python and The Rocky Horror Picture Show). But that’s beside the point. Tamaki and his followers have taken to performing a number of provocative and escalating acts against the LGBTQ+ community in New Zealand. Mountain Tui has a good rundown here.
Certain evangelical types like to revel in the false idea that they are persecuted. They point to the Sermon on the Mount:
(Matthew 5:11) Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me.
But my source of condemnation is not due to their faith in Jesus. It is due to the betrayal of his teachings. If they have faith in Christ, they have an odd way of demonstrating it.
It’s time for the justice system to take off its kid gloves and protect the rainbow community from the brutal and cruel thuggery of Tamaki and his gang. They’re welcome to believe what they want to believe and protest what they want to protest, but intimidation and violence is where we as a civil society must draw the line.