Laptop Back Linky

Over a month since it went off to Computer Hospital, my laptop has come home. Yay! No more stealing strong_light’s computer when she isn’t looking! So far it seems to be working beautifully, and (touch wood) no bluescreens so far when I try the actions that used to trigger them. (Bluescreens can be software-related – who knew?)

So, heedless of the world where there are a number of awful, awful situations unfolding, here are some linky.

Via George L – Mario as indie film! (from SXSW)

It’s a good companion to the Ferris-Bueller-as-indie-film that’s been doing the rounds:

Timely: are you prepared? (via Seth Green, funnily enough)

30th anniversary of the ZX81! I remember downhill ski racing on my grandfather’s ZX81 way back then.

I twittered about this a few weeks back – the US military publicly advertised for a company to arrange fake online identities they could use. They’ve chosen a contractor now, and the Guardian has the details.

Have you seen that clip of the UCLA undergrad sounding off about the offensive Asians in the library who don’t understand American manners? Even if you haven’t, you want to see this wonderful, wonderful response.

Why Borders failed and Barnes & Noble didn’t. (NZ buyers for Whitcoulls & Borders here – take note…)

What Dr Seuss books were really about

Kate Beaton comics redialogued by Japanese kids.

Sperm whales may have names (via Allan Varney)

From Jack – a pic of the orcas in our harbour. (Anyone have a link to other good pics?)

Dude who worked on Inspector Gadget cartoon shares sketches, notes, storyboards, and other details.

Every job interview ever. (This kind of thing is actually what academia’s discourse analysts do for real.)

Visual map of history of science-fiction – a great infographic, and the subject matter is pretty fascinating too

Letters of note has this gem from Rik Mayall (via Paul Stock)

And finally… via Dangerous Minds of course… the Careless Whisper guy:

On reptiles and taking action

Stephen Judd has commented a few times here in reference to his decision to get involved in an NZ political party. His experiences have been interesting and extremely encouraging. This may not be as much the case internationally, but in NZ at least access to political decisionmaking is there for the taking.

Now he has blogged about it, and there’s a lengthy digression involving secret lizardpeople.


Go read.

Battletruck Linky

Have I mentioned Battletruck enough lately? The answer to this question is always NO. Last night I found out that a friend and colleague with a long history in the NZ film industry was the chap who designed the epnoymous truck de battle, and in fact drove it in many of the film’s scenes. I was reduced to gibbering fanboy. Hell yes. So here are some links: battletruck. BattleTruck. BATTLETRUCK!
Bonus Battletruck Spoilers:

Now, on other links containing fewer trucks and less battling:

Kodak’s test colour film footage from 1922

A lovely poetic microfilm, How to be alone:

Infographic of all the time travelling in Doctor Who. Also from DW: interesting solo-play game.

The Perfect Body – diversity in the figures of Olympic athletes. Love this.

More about political messaging: What is conservatism and what is wrong with it?

Tearjerking story of Danny and Annie:

Danny & Annie from StoryCorps on Vimeo.

Batman explains it all

Interview with China Miéville from an urban design perspective.

And finally… Wikipedia’s article on Hatebeak

The Aotearoa Gambit



St Johns ambulance and first aid was immediately in the thick of it in Christchurch and continue to play an essential part in the slow recovery.

Here’s a neat way to help them: The Aotearoa Gambit a brand new adventure for tabletop superhero RPG ICONS, with all revenue going to St John NZ.

Once again Gareth at Adamant was at the heart of the project – this was his idea, and he’s pledged all proceeds from this product in perpetuity to St John. Local legend Dale Elvy wrote it, I did some stat work, and expat Kiwi Cam Banks edited. Non-Kiwi but fine chap ICONS line artist Dan Houser made some incredible illustrations in record time.

And it may well be the weirdest fundraiser St John ever had. Fight a Moeraki boulder! See Christchurch’s famous wizard fight crime! Interfere in the filming of a certain fantasy epic involving short hairy-footed folk!

It’s a great evening’s worth of RPG fun, and for a good cause. And it’s yours for only $1.99 US! You know what to do!

Christchurch is long-term

My friend KiwiInZurich, a regular commenter here, tonight sent me some text messages from Christchurch:

I have access to the cordoned area of chch and it is as bad as the media reports show if not worse. The dmg is very extensive and central chch will be closed for a long time.

Another indicator of the scale of damage: the Rebuilding Christchurch blog suggests moving the CBD.

Surreal. That’s the word.

Tim McNamara of InternetNZ gives a thought-provoking account of a tour of the city yesterday.

The media doesn’t do it justice. If we could just communicate the scale of it everyone would be donating.

There’s heaps of stuff going on, but it isn’t enough – it can’t be. This is a long-term situation. I say this as a reminder to myself: keep contributing. Keep finding ways to contribute.

Once again, Friday is Linky

Some linky for your Friday.

Old photos recreated with the same people. (from Dylan H and Emily P, I think)

David Lynch’s 1984 movie Dune had some weird kids activity books. (from Meredith at Coilhouse)

Cat laser bowling:

NZ is now in an election year, so it’s time to take a look at this one – been sitting on it for a while. It’s about providing a new frame for media coverage of an election, using the organizing principle of a citizen’s agenda. Worth talking about, maybe worth fighting for. At the very least, worth reading to remind you of the limits inherent in how we talk about elections in the media right now. (from George Darroch)

21 creepy babies in film (from the AV Club)

True life Donald Rumsfeld memo is… as you’d expect really.

Transformation decks – turning decks of cards into works of art!

Star Wars, told in iconography.

Filament linked to this about a month ago, and I found it interesting: I made out with a pick-up artist, then interviewed him

And finally… this. Contains male bottoms, so exercise discretion in the workplace.

How to raise $60,000 for ChCh

After the quake in Christchurch, I started thinking about what I could do to help. I think most New Zealanders thought along the same lines. One of the first things I thought of was the OneBookShelf fundraiser bundles that had worked so well for Haiti and Pakistan.

It works like this. The tabletop role-playing game community, due to a range of factors, some years ago developed a marketplace where people pay for copies of books in PDF form. (The whole e-book revolution going on in traditional publishing? The TTRPG crowd have been there, done that and bought the ironic t-shirt.)

Due to another set of factors, the marketplace is heavily concentrated around one vendor, OneBookShelf, which has two linked storefronts, DriveThruRPG and RPGNow. This isn’t a huge commercial sphere – tabletop roleplaying is a hobby long past its cultural prominence. A side effect of this is that the RPG community does feel like a community – in some sense it is small and knowable.

Now all of those conditions mean that when the Haiti disaster arrived, the OneBookShelf team could launch a very effective fundraiser. Publishers donated books to a special bundle. About $1300 retail value of electronic books was sold as a charity bundle for just $20. The sale ran for about a week and raised $175,000 for Haiti.

It was an incredible success, and a lesson in how a marketplace of electronic products can make everyone win. The publishers got to help with a charity effort and got samples of their product into the hands of many, many people who might never have seen them otherwise. The purchasers got the genuine satisfaction of helping and also walked away with a huge stack of cool stuff. And the people of Haiti got a whole lot of money they would not have otherwise got. (I blogged about the Haiti effort a year ago, and talked a bit about what it means for electronic marketplaces.)

Walking down the Terrace I decided that it was time to check in with the NZ-linked RPG publishers I knew to see if they were keen in following the logic of the bundle to raise funds, either on our own or as part of a formal OneBookShelf bundle. I also decided to contact Gareth at Adamant, publisher of much RPG stuff with my name on, to ask for his support.

The Kiwis & expat Kiwis & Scottish honorary Kiwis were keen, with at least one of them already thinking along the same lines. Gareth, likewise, told me he was already investigating the possibility. Apart from my email conversations I saw someone online suggest a bundle fundraiser. So the idea was out there. Gregor Hutton contacted Matt McElroy at OneBookShelf, and Matt was totally on board – I don’t know, he might well have already had things in motion, but either way the bundle was launched. Publishers were invited to contribute and soon a bundle of ~$300 worth of cool stuff went on sale for $20. (A $5 donation option was also made available.) Every cent was destined for the Red Cross NZ appeal, chosen by Matt based on suggestion from me.

The sale just ended. US$46,125 was raised. That’s over $60,000 NZ. I’m astonished and delighted.

I had a role in making this fundraising happen, but just a small one. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally taking credit for the part I played! But the vast bulk of thanks must go to Matt and team at OneBookShelf for developing this fundraising model out of nothing a year ago – I think it’s an incredibly innovative approach, one that deserves a huge amount of attention from people working in the charity sphere. And of course huge thanks are due to the publishers who contributed to the bundle, and all the people who blogged and tweeted and above all purchased it.

It’s been an emotional week. The success of this bundle gives me cause to smile.

Not least because, man, there are some cool games in that bundle, and I hope a lot of people play the heck out of ’em.

RPG bundle for Christchurch

Nearly $350 of RPG stuff for $20

All proceeds to earthquake relief in Christchurch.

Helping get this up and running has been a significant preoccupation in the last couple days. I’ve written before about similar efforts to help Pakistan & Haiti. The Christchurch quake isn’t on the massive scale of those disasters, but it has hit our small country pretty damn hard.

If you’re into tabletop games, drop US$20 on this bundle. You will be rewarded with some incredibly cool bits of gaming genius, and you’ll be directly donating to a good cause. Everybody wins.

Thanks to all those who purchase, all those who contributed products, and all those who helped make it happen.

Welfare Working Group Logic

The WWG report was released today and it was much as expected (full report here in PDF).

NZers will hear heaps about it in coming weeks, particularly the already-infamous “solo parents: when your baby is 14 weeks old you must start looking for work” recommendation. I want to look a bit closer at this, because I think it exposes the thinking behind this whole report quite clearly.

It’s section 3.7, starting on page 76. The last paragraph says this:
“The Working Group suggests that if the changes to the work test requirements do not address the incentives to have additional children while receiving welfare assistance, then the Government may need to consider financial disincentives, say by withholding part or all of the extra payments that come with having an additional child.”

The Executive Summary (PDF) describes this a bit more clearly:
“Government monitors the effect of this policy. If it is not effective, Government should consider whether further financial disincentives are necessary, including that parents not qualify for any additional financial assistance through the welfare system for any additional children born whilst in receipt of welfare, other than access to emergency assistance.”

Rephrased: if financial disincentives don’t change human reproductive behaviour, try harsher financial disincentives.

No consideration whatsoever for the view that having children has a range of causative factors, and despite popular mythology, continued access to welfare is not a strong one.

The ideology is taken as fundamental premise. There is no room for corrective measures. Failure is not a sign that the premise is wrong, rather that it hasn’t been applied fiercely enough.

The only comforting thing about this document is that it is mostly political theatre, and Key and company will distance themselves from extreme points like these. But remember who appointed this group, and know that this was always expected. John Key and company need to wear this report, for it is exactly what they asked for.