Nevermind… Lives!
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Uh, yeah, back from my blog-free stupor.
Other
New Server
Moved Nevermind to a new server in the US – because it’s cheaper, of course! Basic VPS so I can run some Rails apps I’ve been hacking on.Also has a decent control panel and DNS manager.
Some weirdness… hopefully not too much, let me know if you find anything strange…
Next step: Setting up automatic installs for the wordpress upgrade and plugins!
Oprah, The New Religion?
Just a quick post but this is definitely worth a read.
Should people with this much influence be more careful about what they’re pushing? Reading a bad book she pushed is one thing, ruining your life with hormone therapy is another… Kudos to Newsweek for this one.
This Could Get Ugly
Over the coming weeks you may notice some changes around here.
I’ve decided to do a few “new” things…
- Take a new look at the design. Although I like the look of Nevermind, it’s quite rigid and inflexible. With some newly-flexed coding muscle I hope to either improve or replace the look & feel of Nevermind to something better. Of course, I have no idea what better is – hence the title of this post
- Integrate some new technology. There are lots of great things out there in the Blogosphere just waiting to be taken advantage of. I’ve been testing some plugins that will let me play with some new toys and hopefully make things better for my readers and commenter. OpenID, Facebook Connect and Action Stream are all on my list.
- Take a new direction. Excepting a few things, I find it hard to get excited these days about what our government is up to and the tedium of political “debate”. I hope to make Nevermind a more personal place with a wider spread of content including technology and life.
So bear with me, if you do/don’t like something feel free to shut speak up 
Gameplanet Store Evolves – Mighty Ape Launches!
Gameplanet Store, one of New Zealand’s last 100% NZ owned independent player in the gaming industry, has just launched the next generation of their store and undergone a complete rebranding.
The new store is called Mighty Ape and has expanded it’s already impressive product range, going from Games, DVD’s and Music to include Toys and a massive section of over 800,000 Books.
For those familiar with Gameplanet Store service, you’ll be happy to know it’s the same shareholders with the same team (with a few additions, myself included!). So have a look around, see if there’s anything you like or any products you would like to see and let us know
Happy Shopping!
Disclaimer: I am a long time Gameplanet Store customer and Web Developer for Mighty Ape.
Back…
Well, I’m back – I hope…
Things have been pretty busy around here, have been putting off writing for a little while but hopefully should be able to start again 
To Brighten Your Monday
Here’s a story to restore your faith in humanity and just generally brighten up your day.
Kyle Springs is a 7-year old boy. Kyle and his family are on the way to hospital for his chemotherapy treatment. While everyone is at Dennys enjoying a Lumberjack Slam (or similar) some worthless cruft of mankind burglarises their car and steals his homework, his cancer medicine and worst of all, his PSP. Oh yeah, and this all happened the day before his birthday. I guess some people have all the luck 
A ray of light in this otherwise perfect story of misery is that the office of the Dallas police had a quick whip-round and raised over $1000 to buy him a new PSP, games, movies a little left over for some cancer medicine. Nice one, but I hope the crim is caught and the cops hang him up by his figgin!
Match it for Pratchett
Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors, suffers a rare form of early-onset Alzhemer’s disease. This was diagnosed recently as the cause behind his recent “phantom stroke”. Thankfully, this hasn’t impaired his ability to write and he still feels a time for “at least a few more books yet”.
Terry, at the age of 59, has recently come up against the underground status of the disease and the support given to suffers relative to other diseases such as cancer patients. In fact, the amount of funding in Britain for Alzhemer’s disease research is a mere 3% of the total given towards cancer research and support. He dryly remarks, in typical Pratchett style:
The NHS kindly allows me to buy my own drugs because I’m considered too young to have Alzheimer’s for free. I could get hold of crack more easily.
Last week, the author announced a whopping £500,000 donation towards Alzhemer’s disease research and Discworld followers the world around have decided to conduct their own whip ’round to collectively match Terry’s generous gift.
If you wish to make a donation you can do so here with a simple credit card payment.
Young People vs. Rugby Culture
The Dominion Post says that a report by a Wellington Rugby Union asserts that less kids are playing rugby and therefore are lazy and apathetic. Well, if they’re not playing rugby it’s obvious that they’re sitting around in front of the TV and therefore don’t care about anything. Pull the other one.
Perhaps they’re a little sour that while Rugby numbers are down (31,000 to 29,845), Soccer numbers are UP (20,667 to just over 22,000)!
I can’t find the actual report anywhere, but The Dom Post actually have a reasonably balanced article on it – with quotes and questions to a lot of other sports figures and organisations (SPARC, Danyon Loader and some others) to balance out the junk from the report. An interesting piece but to jump from “Kids are playing less rugby” to “Generation Y should be ‘Y Bother’” is ridiculous and makes it sounds like it was written by a bunch of NZ First voters.