Are New Zealanders, the People on the Edge of the World, about to tip off the edge and into cultural homogeneity with the United States? I was surprised to read in The New Zealand Herald that the a new edition of the Lonely Planet travel guide is advising visitors to leave a tip of about 10% for good service. Tipping was not part of the culture when I was growing up, and nor was it an overt practice during my last stint at home during 2006–2007. It would be unfortunate if visitors to Godzone came with the expectation that they had to pay over and above the advertized price.
Continue reading 'New Zealand tipping over the edge?'
Tag archive for 'shopping'
Some cretin recently cloned our debit card, in reflection of rising UK and international rates of card fraud despite technological countermeasures like "chip and pin".
Continue reading 'ATMs should be avoided. The Internet too.'
According to Mint, most of my blog visitors are American. To reflect this I decided to change my default Amazon Associates links from the UK to the US. In the process I got confused over the link syntax I should be using, but now have this sorted. For managing links to specific items on my site (automatically tagged with my Associates ID) I use Amazon Media Manager. AMM is a WordPress plugin that will randomly show a specified number of product links, categories of which can be matched to categories on your blog. AMM development is not active, however, it is easy to hack the plugin to use the more recent link syntax.
Continue reading 'Unravelling Amazon link formats'
PCWorld says Windows Vista is incomplete; expensive; wants a new PC; is time-consuming; doesn't obsolete Windows XP; and may be the best reason to buy a Mac.
Daft, I tell you. New Zealand no longer has 1, 2, or 5 cent coins (I've been away for a while), so the smallest denomination coin is now 10 cents (the 5 cent went in July 2006). But you don't find things for sale at sensible prices, like $4.10 and $9.90. Oh no, it's $4.12 and $9.97. Although you can pay such amounts electronically (using EFTPOS), not everyone seems sure what to do when you give them cash.
Continue reading 'Rounding makes folk cents-less'
One of the priorities for any Mac addict when moving somewhere new must surely be to check out the local scene for suppliers capable of feeding the said addiction. Newly arrived in Wellington, New Zealand's compact capital, I dedicated some time to explore the streets, news-agents, and Internet for all things Mac.
Continue reading 'Mac user survival guide to Wellington'
