Category: tinkering

  • Mike Hosking but it’s an actual AI this time

    Mike Hosking but it’s an actual AI this time

    A while back I used an AI-powered predictive text keyboard called Botnik to create Mike Hosking columns. It was fun, and the results were definitely more entertaining than actual Mike Hosking columns. Since then the field of using AI to generate text has only got more interesting. Of course, I understand very little of what’s…

  • Ghost clean-up industry knew houses were safe, now the game’s up

    Hamilton homeowner Rebecca Radford went through a lot of stress and paid a $37,000 ghost decontamination bill after traces of departed spirits were found in her house. She says she’s devastated to learn it wasn’t necessary. Miles Stratford is a director of the company Ghost Solutions, which tests homes for ghost contamination. A Hawke’s Bay-based…

  • A column by Mike Hosking, except it’s an AI predictive text bot

    A column by Mike Hosking, except it’s an AI predictive text bot

    It’s probably safe to say that people hold many and varied opinions on Mike Hosking. Some, like my solidly National-voting in-laws, will lurch for the remote to change the channel should he appear. Others, like me, consider him essential. Even if you can’t stomach his sounds-of-a-dying-wasp-nest drone on radio, Mike Hosking’s most-days printed mindfart is…

  • In which I apply for a job

    I haven’t done the fake job application shtick for a long while, but this was too good to pass up. Duncan Garner found this beauty and posted it on Twitter. Keen to work on a dairy farm? pic.twitter.com/wQNZa1YUjY — Duncan Garner (@DuncanGarnerNZ) June 11, 2017 It has to be a joke of some kind. “Reply with handwritten…

  • Movember

    Movember

    I’m doing Movember this year. The only problem is that I already have a beard. I had the same problem last year, so I shaved it off and started Movember from scratch. Literally. It was scratchy as hell. It was also kind of cold. I don’t get how people get around without hair on their faces. It…

  • Book Review: Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley

    Book Review: Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley

    I got an e-book review copy of Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley, which is a great book by blogger Danyl McLauchlan, by asking the publishers for one on Twitter. I read it over the next week and then didn’t review it for a month, mainly because I am not very good at reviewing things. Part…

  • Horoscopes for 11 July 2016

    Aries You’re interested in everything today! Look around you. Isn’t life wonderful? Oh, look, The Void! Stare into it. Let us know if it stares back. Leo The moon is in your quadrant this month, and as we all know, this makes you fantastic at differential equations. If you’ve been looking at engineering as a…

  • A short history of New Zealand’s punitive approach to gardening

    The following are excerpts from Ask That Garden by noted horticultural historian Dick King, reprinted here with permission of the author. For further personal accounts of New Zealand’s gardening ban, please refer to these reddit threads.  The idea of restricting private vegetable gardens and orchards due to the many economic and health risks they pose,…

  • Meth removal, but for ghosts

    The fledgling meth-testing industry is enjoying record patronage, with landlords and Housing New Zealand rushing to find out that pretty much every house in New Zealand is infested with meth. I read a stuff.co.nz article about one meth tester and realised it would be much better, and also about as accurate, if I replaced every incidence of the…