Elections

So. Upcoming elections.

Not the US ones, no, let's not go there, they're becoming just another branch of the entertainment industry now like everything else in the US. The NZ ones, which have just been announced as taking place on Saturday 8 November. (The announcement was turned into the start of campaigning, too.)

By the way, there's been a real turnover in world leaders lately, hasn't there? First Helmut Kohl, then they started falling like flies: Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair, John Howard... people who'd been around for years. George Bush, one way or another, come January. Even the dictators who've ruled for decades - Fidel Castro's gone. Saddam Hussein, of course. Rumour is that Kim Il Sung isn't well. Mugabe's days are, hopefully, numbered.

And the way things are going, if the NZ PM counts as a world leader, she's going to be another casualty. The Labour Party failed to take the hint at the last election from their very reduced majority that people were sick of being overtaxed and overlegislated and having their opinions ignored, and barring a really major screw-up by National or some act of total heroism by Labour, they're going to be out and National will be in.

Last election, the National leader was Don Brash, whose economist's personality and inspired "Let's turn the clock back 30 years!" message just didn't resonate enough with the electorate to make National a viable alternative to what we, rather reluctantly, had. Now it's John Key, or "Mr Keys" as my mother always calls him. He's her local MP, and she can't stand him - reckons he's egotistical and self-serving, a hollow man. He's a politician, so she's probably right, but that's not how he comes across on TV, so he remains electable. In fact, he sounds reasonable, sensible, doesn't do the usual National-in-opposition thing of simply criticising the Government at every turn - has even agreed with a lot of their policies, which is a new tactic. Like I say, barring startling events he's almost certainly going to be our next PM.

Which lands me up against the vexed question of who to vote for, again. The question, as always, is, "Who represents my views least poorly?" Last time I voted Progressive, because of Jim Anderton's anti-drug policies (and much good it did - they lost their second MP and he got in on his electorate seat, like he has for donkeys' years, through three changes of party).

For the sake of any non-New Zealand readers, NZ has an MMP (mixed member proportional) electoral system, which means everyone gets two votes. You vote for someone who is standing in your local electorate, who also belongs to a party, and whoever gets the most votes in each electorate goes into parliament. But you also have a party vote, which is counted nationally, and the number of seats a party has in parliament is topped up so that it matches the proportion of votes that party got overall.

It's not quite that simple; if the party wins more electorate seats than they would get in proportion to their party vote, they don't get them taken away, and you have to get at least 5% of the total party vote or an electorate seat or else your party doesn't make it into Parliament. You pre-announce a list of candidates, and anyone who doesn't win an electorate seat but is high enough up the list to be included goes into Parliament as a list MP.

So I have two votes. One for MP for New Lynn, my electorate. Currently this is David Cunliffe, who I have to say for someone so apparently obsessed with his own smiling face has done a good job in his portfolios - especially health, which needed a proactive shakeup. I don't expect that he'll go out, it's a pretty solid Labour electorate (he's number 8 on the party list so he'll be in regardless, but he'll likely win the electorate), so a vote against him is just a throwaway anyhow. I probably will vote for someone else because it goes against the grain to vote for a Labour candidate even if it makes no difference. Don't know who, though.

Then there's the party vote. The trouble is, this time round I want to vote strategically, because I'm expecting a major swing to National and I don't think being able to govern alone would be good for them (or us). So I want to try to vote in someone who has some possibility of reigning them in and making them listen to other points of view, which is what MMP is really good for.

So, not Labour or National, obviously. I'm keeping up a proud family tradition, inherited from my parents, of never voting for the two major parties, even though both my grandfathers were very involved in the early years of the Labour Party (when it was working-class and proud of it, and so were they). Even in the First Past the Post years when a vote that wasn't for National or Labour was always wasted, my parents voted Social Credit, despite the fact that it was kind of a joke party with an economic policy nobody could understand. (Not a deliberate joke, like the McGillicuddy Serious Party, which one of my old friends from school stood for once. One of the other sort.)

I agree with the Greens on the importance of the environment, and I'd vote for them - if they didn't have such bizarre radical policies on everything else. Seriously, they're trying to save a planet they don't even live on.

New Zealand First is a spent force with the inquiry into Winston Peters, their leader, and whether he did or didn't accept dodgy donations. Wouldn't have voted for them anyway, I've never liked his bluster. Expect to see the back of them this time.

Progressives, it'll probably go the same way as last time, Jim Anderton will win his electorate and they won't get enough party vote to get a second MP. Since they probably wouldn't go into government with National they would otherwise be a good choice, especially as I agree with most of their policies. Pity.

United Future live up to their name - "We're so centrist!" "How centrist are you?" "We'll support whoever gets into Government!" So not much counterbalance there. To be fair, they have got Labour to give some concessions to them on some issues, but I don't think they would push National too hard on not screwing the electorate over, since they haven't done so with Labour to any detectable degree.

Act, no help there, they're natural allies of National if they even get back in.

Which, apart from some parties which aren't in Parliament yet and are unlikely to be at this election, leaves the Maori Party. I'm seriously considering voting for them this time. I respect Pita Sharples, their co-leader, I hear good things about him - he's an elder at the local marae - and I think they're genuinely working for the betterment of their people and doing so in a sensible way. I also like the way that they consult with their constituency before adopting policy, a marked contrast to the main parties. Problem is, last time they won most of the Maori electorates (which, since I'm not Maori, I can't enrol in) but got a low proportion of the party vote, since a lot of people split their vote - electorate vote for them, party vote for Labour. If that happens again, a party vote for them is probably a throwaway.

Maybe it needs to be Progressives after all.

Rode Podcaster USB microphone

I just spent rather more than I'd planned to on upgrading my microphone, from a $50 Audio Technica lapel mic (still a reasonable piece of gear, it's Audio Technica after all, but definitely low end) to a Rode Podcaster. It's the USB version of their Broadcaster product.

Damn, this thing is quiet. And by "quiet" I mean "lacking in background noise", not "low-gain". I'll be getting much cleaner audio out of this, I think, for my hypnotherapy recordings, podcasts and videos.

I just recorded a few words in Audacity and played them back through my laptop speakers, which aren't exactly top-of-the-line. When I'm not speaking, you hear... nothing. Just as it should be.

I haven't tried it through GoldWave yet - that's the application I use for recording, it's got a couple of nice features that Audacity lacks, though one of them that I used a lot with the other mic was noise reduction. I suspect I won't be doing that quite so much now.

I did consider a Snowball, which I hear good things about all over the Net and which is somewhat cheaper, but this review at Emusician mentioned that the Rode was specifically designed for spoken voice, and when I went on TradeMe a guy was selling one second-hand but basically unused for a much discounted price. Turned out he lived just up the road from me so I picked it up same day.

I just got a mic stand delivered (also bought through TradeMe) and set it up. You wouldn't want to use this mic without a stand. It's bigger than I expected, about 20cm long and a good 4cm in diameter (plus apparently it can pick up noise if it's hand-held). I'll be recording in a carpeted basement on a concrete slab, so I probably don't need the optional shockmount to eliminate noise.

I'm just glad I'm not a Freudian, given the shape of the Rode vs the Snowball.

Life Leverage: my new nonfiction project

Over at Hypno NZ I've just announced Life Leverage: Simple techniques to improve your health and wellbeing.

The project is a book-and-CD combo, with the hypnotherapy tracks on the CD supporting the changes that the book talks about making.

I've created a mailing list where you can sign up for updates on this and my other hypnotherapy-related projects, such as audio recordings and videos. The idea is to assess demand so that I can decide what kind of a print-and-distribution model to adopt.

If health is a topic that interests you, please take a look. I try to stay on the scientific end of the health advice spectrum and make sure that my recommendations are well supported, but at the same time treat human beings as human beings and not squishy machines.

City of Masks storygame at Nerdly Beach Party

If you're in the neighborhood of San Simeon State Park on Friday 19 September, my storygame based in the same setting as the City of Masks novel is set to be playtested at Nerdly Beach Party.

Thanks to Nancy (Faerieloch) for facilitating this.

Review: Nightlife, by Rob Thurman

Nightlife by Rob Thurman

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
A good one for Jim Butcher fans. This is urban fantasy, a little darker and scarier than the Dresden Files perhaps, but comparably well-written and entertaining.



Cal (short for Caliban) is the son of a monster and a Gypsy fortune-teller. His half-brother Nico is a martial arts genius who protects him and tries to raise him right. With the help of the puck Robin Goodfellow (now a car salesman in New York) and a cute teenage psychic, they confront Cal's darkside family, who are very motivated to ensure that human history never happened.



Rob Thurman does a great job of the narrative voices and writes a thrilling, fast-moving and action-packed plot.


View all my reviews.

Pentasystem progress

I've been working a bit lately on version 0.6 of the Pentasystem, my roleplaying game system for creating novel-like or movie-like stories in which the heroes change and their lives get complicated as they involve themselves in fighting for what they care about.

It's actually coming together pretty well at last. I've solved a couple of significant issues with the system recently, and it should be in shape to playtest soonish, or at least soonesque.

Hopefully by the time it is, Matt Machell and I will have our browser-based online tabletop emulator up and running and I'll be able to find some people to do a playtest with, despite living in a story-games desert.

Some high points of the system:

• The Coolmap. This is a diagram on which you put what you think will be cool to have in your game. Introducing things that people thought would be cool is rewarded in the game by giving you more resources.
• Characters and situation are meshed together at the beginning, so not only are you driven to conflict by what you care about, what you care about is linked to what the other characters care about.
  
• How many dice you roll is based on how important the attribute you're using is to your character's self-definition.
• You're encouraged to play against type.
• Pain now is rewarded later. Good luck now gets paid for later.
  
• You can sometimes win in a hopeless situation by sacrificing part of who you are or putting something you care about at risk.
• Your attributes can work against you as well as for you.
• You can set up "paths", sequences of events which, when worked through, result in both a reward and a new challenge.
• Changing your character is something you narrate, it's not just adjusting the numbers on a sheet.
• Everyone can play all the time, because supporting characters and sets are run by whoever's standing around.
• Locations are a bit like characters, and get more attributes if they link to more of the themes that everyone said were cool.
• You can tinker with the system yourself using Special Effects, which are rule exceptions that you buy with player points and apply to characters or sets.
• Modelling reality is not important, but modelling fictionality is.

Further bulletins as events warrant.

Poor customer service from Epson and Auckland Office Products

Advisory: Posting while angry.

Last week, my Epson Photo 230R inkjet, which I've been using to print CDs for my hypnotherapy clients, started getting horizontal banding from the black print head.

I bought it last October, so it was still under warranty. So I called the store I bought it from, and they directed me to Epson, who directed me to Auckland Office Products, their local repair agents.

I dropped it in on Wednesday and was told I should hear the next day. I didn't.

I didn't hear on Friday either.

I rang on Monday and was told I'd hear "tomorrow".

I rang on Tuesday, having not heard, and was told "tomorrow". I said, tomorrow never comes. You told me "tomorrow" on Wednesday, you told me "tomorrow" yesterday. It's been nearly a week, what's the holdup?

They were waiting to hear back from Epson about the warranty claim. You see, Epson, in its attempt at the Gillette business model (sell the tool cheap and the consumables dear), says not to use refilled cartridges or you void the warranty. This is total environmental nonsense and, I have been told, illegal in New Zealand, though they probably gamble on people not being bothered to fight it if they just refuse to honour their warranty. The printer service guy who I talked to before I contacted Epson suggested that I get non-refilled cartridges, even empty ones, from Cartridge World, where I get my refills done, and put them in before I put the printer in for a warranty claim to avoid trouble. I probably should have listened to him, but I didn't do that, both because it seemed like too much bother and because it seemed slightly dishonest.

Anyway, I asked the guy at Auckland Office Products to call Epson for me and chase them along, which he agreed to do. He displayed no reaction to my statement that I was very unhappy and it was impacting my business. (I have had to let my CD auctions on TradeMe lapse because I can't fulfill orders at the moment - I work on a "make to order" rather than "make to stock" model for the CDs.)

I don't know whether he kept his promise or not (though you can probably guess what I think), because when I rang back yesterday, Wednesday, he was on another call and the person I spoke to asked if he could ring me back. I said yes. He didn't ring me back.

Today he's up north all day. The other guy I talked to seemed equally unconcerned at how unhappy I was, even when I told him that I would now need to buy a new printer and it wouldn't be an Epson, even when I told him that I had had only promises from them and no delivery, and even when I told him, when he said that they sold printers, that given the lack of service I'd had from them that buying from them wasn't even an option.

I mean, these people have my phone number and my email address, but they haven't contacted me once, even when they've promised to do so.

So just now I have bought an HP Photosmart C5280 online, which is a multifunction (printer/copier) and also prints on CDs. It looks like a better piece of gear, is cheaper (especially since HP are doing a cashback promotion at the moment), and hopefully will be couriered here in time for me to print a CD for my client tomorrow evening or at least for the one on Sunday.

I feel better for having ranted about that. Hopefully I'll be able to get store credit or something for the printer cartridges in the old printer (I've given up hope of it being fixed), since some of them were nearly new and they aren't all that cheap, even refilled.

So, learning experience. Don't buy Epson; if you're going to use refilled cartridges (which you should), don't let on when making a warranty claim; and definitely don't rely on Auckland Office Products to do anything.

UPDATE: Auckland Office Products finally called me on Friday to say that Epson had refused the warranty claim on the grounds that the refilled cartridges had caused damage to the print head. They promised to send me an estimate for the repairs.

This finally arrived on Monday, with some boilerplate on it that said if I decided not to proceed I owed them $65, which I instantly emailed them about saying that I didn't accept it - it was the first I'd heard about it. (No reply to this yet.)

I talked to Cartridge World, who were very helpful and said that if AOP would state in writing that the cartridges had caused the issue, they would meet their guarantee on their product. Apparently this often calls Epson's bluff and they honour their warranty after all. I emailed AOP asking for this. No reply as yet.

It's two weeks tomorrow, and in the meantime I have bought another printer, a Hewlett Packard. I'll be going back to Cartridge World for the cartridges for it, because they stand by their product whereas Epson, apparently, doesn't.

UPDATED UPDATE: AOP have just sent me a revised version of the quote, still with the $65 charge mentioned, but now they say "This printhead is unable to be covered under warranty as non-original/refilled ink cartridges have been used". Which is weaselly, because they're not actually saying that's the cause of the fault.

UPDATED UPDATED UPDATE: I talked to Cartridge World again, they said sorry, they have to say that the refilled cartridges were the cause of the fault. So I emailed back to AOP asking for that. They have never replied, and it's now several weeks later. I suppose I should chase them up but there doesn't seem to be much point.

Suckful, suckful customer service.

HOPEFULLY FINAL UPDATE, 30 September: AOP finally called me last week. According to them, they had sent a revised email, but I never received it, so they were waiting for me and I was waiting for them. Once we got that sorted out, I passed it on to Cartridge World. They are buying me a new printer, a Canon IP4500, since that's cheaper than getting the Epson fixed, that Epson model is no longer made, and I now wouldn't touch Epson with a long pole anyway.

Their opinion (and mine) is that Epson are hiding behind the refilled-cartridge issue as a way of getting out of a legitimate warranty claim that has nothing to do with refilled cartridges. But anyway, I'll now get a replacement printer, two months after my Epson broke down.

I think I'll keep the HP since it works as a photocopier as well and it's a backup in case the Canon ever breaks down, but unlike the Canon it has one cartridge for black and one for colour - expensive to run, in other words, compared with one cartridge for each colour, since if one colour runs out you have to replace the whole colour cartridge. (I should have researched it more carefully before buying.)