The King's Christmas Broadcast 2025

The video above is the annual Christmas broadcast by King Charles III, the King of New Zealand (and other places). As is usually the case, I didn’t see the message broadcast on New Zealand television, though I assume it was (I was at our family Crhistmas gathering at the time), however, I didn’t check that. At any rate, I’ve been sharing the royal messages every year for more than a decade.

I’ve never been a fan of the religiosity that the royal messages have always contained, something they do because the UK monarch is head of the Church of England (aka Anglican Church). But I’m not even remotely religious, and only a minority of New Zealanders are Anglican—actually, people who say they have any religious identification now make up a minority of New Zealanders, the majority of whom now identify as “Nones”, something I talked about last year. Still, it’s traditional for the monarch to talk about the UK’s homegrown brand of Christianity, and, of course, what I think about it is irrelevent.

These TV broadcast messages are also a tradition themselves, dating back some 68 years. As long as they (and this blog…) continue, I’ll keep sharing them. That, too, is now a tradition.

Previously:

The King's Christmas Broadcast 2024
The King's Christmas Broadcast 2023
The King’s first Christmas Broadcast – 2022 (oddly, the video is no longer available, but the post has my commentary about it.
The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 2021
The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 2020
The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 2019
The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 2018
The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 2017 (and 1957, too…)
The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 2016
The Queen’s Christmas Broadcast 2015
Previous years’ broadcasts are no longer available.

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 16

Well, what do you know? This week in 1985 yet another song from a movie was top of the charts. On September 7 1985, “St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)” (video up top) by British singer John Parr reached Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100”. It was the main theme for the film St. Elmo's Fire, and was the first single from the film’s soundtrack album. The song was written by Parr and David Foster, who also produced the record. The Wikipedia article about the long (linked to above) says the song “was created and edited within 24 hours”.

I remember the movie and the song, and while I thought they were “okay, I guess”, I didn’t exactly love either one. Before I saw it, I thought the film sounded almost like a sequel to The Breakfast Club. It absolutely wasn’t that of, course—it just had some of the same actors, and was one of the “Brat Pack” genre of films in that era, but that’s all the connection there was between the two films, and I knew all that before I ever saw the movie.

What I liked about the song was that it had a nice radio-friendly sound, and Parr’s voice was different enough from other artists of that era to be interesting. However, I loathed the music video—and, in fact, I still do.

The music video, was directed by Kort Falkenberg III, who devised the unusual concept with the film’s director, Joel Schumacher. It’s essentially a sequel to the film, with all seven main cast members appearing, and visiting the now burned-out St Elmo’s Fire bar. None of with is why I loathed the music video, it was the final scene, described well by the section of the Wikipedia article on the song that talked about the video. It says: “The ending of the video shows Parr singing to each individual cast member from the film before he disappears into the night, and the cast follows him.” Yeah, that just didn’t work for me. At all. I thought it was utterly silly, so much so that I thought it was “cringe” decades before that became a term. In fact, I loathe that scene so much that in reserarching this post, I initially stopped the video before the end to avoid shuddering at the sight of that scene. But, because I;m a professional I realised I needed to check to make sure that scene was still in the YouTube version. It is, of course, and I still loathe it. To each their own.

While I’ve had fun joking about all the songs from movies that became Number One in 1985, I had a thought when writing this post: In the old days, it was quite common for songs from movies to become hits on the pop charts, but now that seldom—never?—happens. These days, movie soundtracks often use pop songs by established artists, but the songs have often been released by the artist before the movie even comes out. I have no idea why movies often don’t bother with pop songs written for the movie—maybe it was to cut costs?

“St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)” reached Number 4 in Australia, Number One in Canada (Gold), Number 5 in New Zealand, Number 6 in the UK (Silver), as well as Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100” and Number 2 on their “Mainstream Rock” chart, as well as Number One on the Cash Box “Top 100”. The song wasn’t certified in the USA.

The soundtrack album for St. Elmo’s Fire reached Number 90 in Australia, Number 16 in Canada, Number 40 in New Zealand, and Number 21 on the USA’s “Billboard 200”. The album didn’t chart in the UK. It apparently didn’t receive any certifications.

This series will return in two weeks, on September 21 with the next 1985 Number One in this series.

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1985” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 1 – February 2, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 2 – February 16, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 3 – March 12, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 4 – March 30, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 5 – April 13, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 6 – May 11, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 7 – May 18, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 8 – June 1, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 9 – June 8, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 10 – June 22, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 11 – July 6, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 12 – July 13, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 13 – July 27, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 14 – August 3, 2025
Weekend Diversion: 1985, Part 15 – August 24, 2025

Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 7

Talk about a long time between drinks of water, this week in 1984 another song from the Footloose movie soundtrack reached Number One, eight weeks after the first song from the movie. On May 26, 1984, ”Let's Hear It for the Boy” (video up top) by American singer Deniece Williams became the new Number One song, where it would remain for two weeks. It was the second and last Number One from the movie soundtrack, and Williams’ second Number One in the USA (after "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late", her 1978 duet with Johnny Mathis). The song was released as a single both from the Footloose soundtrack, and also from Williams’ eighth studio album, also called Let's Hear It for the Boy.

Because I’ve still never seen the movie Footloose (either version), I was only aware of this song as a pop song. The song was released on February 17, 1984, a bit more than a month after the Kenny Loggins song “Footloose”, which went to Number one on March 31 (that song was the subject of Part 4 in this series). I heard “Let's Hear It for the Boy” on the radio, and I also heard it in the gay clubs that I went to in 1984. The video wasn’t released until mid-April 1984, well after I’d already heard the song. That may have been fortunate.

I love music videos as a specific artform in pop music, something I think I’ve made clear by now. I’ve also said that there have been times I didn’t like the video of a song I liked, and there have even been times I liked a video, but wasn’t too keen on the song itself. In the case of the video for “Let's Hear It for the Boy”, it wasn’t a time when it mattered whether I thought the video was good or bad, because it kind of creeped me out.

The video begins with a young boy sitting in a corner of a classroom wearing in a dunce cap, when Deniece enters, singing, and the boy ends up in a tux and dancing. All very cute, except for two things. First, the song is about her singing about her boyfriend/partner [LYRICS], and isn’t about chaste admiration for boys who we should cheer about. In that context, the little kisses the boy gives Deniece seem a bit… out of place.

This discomfort with the video needs its own context. In May 1984, I was at the height of my grassroots LGBT+ activism. It was still the first term of the Reagan regime, and we were fighting every single day against anti-gay bigots, all of whom spread vile slurs against LGBT+ people. In particular, they spread the defamatory lie that all gay men (and lesbians, too, when they could be bothered to note women existed) were child molesters. As a result, I was extra-sensitive to anything that appeared even remotely untoward, and the fact that the song was played in gay clubs only underscored that. The little boy kissing Deniece aside, all the other dancers are also young men, and even though the vast majority were very obviously well above the legal age of consent, for me the video took away the upbeat celebration of a boyfriend to a reminder of the evil we activists were fighting.

Time heals all wounds, they say, and I’m relaxed about the video now—though the opening scene still makes me squirm a little bit, quite possibly because the vile anti-LGBT+ slur has been resurrected as justification for anti-LGBT+ violence by a weird assortment of folks on the far-right, like fans of conspiracy theories, ardently anti-trans folks, and, maybe especially, far-right religious nutjobs, and their assorted fellow travellers. Sadly, that’s true here in New Zealand, too.

Some asides: That little boy was played by actor Aaron Lohr. Lohr, who is now 48 (!), is married to American actress and singer Idina Menzel, who Nigel and I really liked, particularly for her performance in the original Broadway cast of Wicked. Deniece Williams is now 73 (!).

“Let's Hear It for the Boy” reached Number 3 in Australia, Number One in Canada (Gold), 2 in New Zealand, 2 in the UK (Gold), and Number One on the USA’s Billboard “Hot 100”, and its “US Dance Club Songs” and “US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs” charts. The song was also Number One on the Cash Box “Top 100 Singles” chart. The song was certified Platinum in the USA.

Williams’ album Let's Hear It for the Boy peaked at Number 26 on the USA’s Billboard “Top 200” album chart, and reached Number 10 on their “Top Black Albums” chart. The Footloose soundtrack, as I mentioned back in March, reached Number 2 in Australia (5x Platinum), Number One in Canada (6x Platinum), Number One in New Zealand (Platinum), 7 in the UK (Gold), and Number One on the USA’s “Billboard 200” chart (9x Platinum).

This series will return June 9 with another new Number One, another time where I liked both the song and the video..

Previously in the “Weekend Diversion – 1984” series:

Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 1 – January 21, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 2 – February 4, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 3 – February 25, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 4 – March 31, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 5 – April 21, 2024
Weekend Diversion: 1984, Part 6 – May 12, 2024

Noting the not everyday stuff

We all have days in which something unusual happens, the sort of thing that maybe only happens once, even if similar things have happened several times. I just had such a thing happen, and while I can point to some things that have happened far more often, and others have happened far less often, this was particularly significant to me. Still, it’s the way of life, isn’t it? Things happen that we note because they’re unusual to us. I think lots of things deserve to be noted.

Yesterday, I completed the 400th episode of my AmeriNZ Podcast. That same day, my blog post announcing the release, was post number 5,623 on this blog. I always know how many total posts I’ve done because Blogger tells me the running total when I go to publish a new post. Of course, I’ve always been aware of how many podcast episodes I’ve released, too, and each one became more and more remarkable because it was so uncertain I’d get there.

I talked about that in the 400th episode by going over the numbers, in what Roger Green accurately described in a comment on the podcast site as, “the most Arthur thing in this podcast”. Specifically, I looked at how long it took to reach each 100th episode.

Between Episode One (March 28, 2007) and Episode 100 on July 11, 2008, 471 days (1 year, 3 months, 13 days) passed. Episode 200, on March 3, 2010, was 600 days (1 year, 7 months, 20 days) after episode 200. My output started to slow down, and Episode 300, on June 24, 2013, was 1209 days (3 years, 21 days) after Episode 200.

And this latest hundred, Episode 400, was 3746 days—10 years, 3 months, 3 days—after episode 300. When I wrote in the episode shownotes, “Who’d ever have guessed I’d make it?”, I absolutely wasn’t joking, because there were plenty of times I thought I’d never make it to 400. What I didn’t know—and maybe it was all for the best that I didn’t—was that it took more than a decade to get to episode 400.

If I’d known how many years it would take to go from 300 to 400, would I have stopped earlier? The simple answer is no, though obviously I can’t know that for sure. However, my podcast, like this blog, was never about numbers of things published, it’s always been about telling my story over time, as things unfold. That means that collectively the two have presented my story—whether literally about me or more generally, including my interests at any given time—more completely over the past 17 years than literally anything else I’ve done or created. I include the (very) few YouTube videos I made in that because I shared all of them here on this blog, too (all of my posts with/about my videos are tagged AmeriNZ Video).

I know, because people have told me, that they’ve gotten something from my podcasts and blog posts, and that’s powerful encouragement to continue making them. However, if I didn’t have the internal drive to create them, encouragement alone wouldn’t be enough—it’s kind of a partnership, really. I like that.

I’ve never made a cent from any of this stuff I’ve created, but I absolutely don’t have anything against anyone who makes money from what they create, including blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos—all of which I’ve made over the years, too. I talked about monetisation in a post six years ago this week, and noted that people “like me and most of the content creators I know” had made stuff “without receiving any money coming in as a result of that work”. I added:

There’s nothing wrong with people who create stuff just for the love it, and that’s sort of the flipside of crowdfunding: Very often [creators] don’t participate in any sort of crowdfunding merely because they don’t want to.

Everyone deserves to be be compensated for their work, and, for me, that compensation doesn't come in the form of money or gifts or whatever, but from interaction with folks who have been affected in some way by what I make. However, if I’m truly honest, my greatest payment is the self-satisfaction I get from the work, especially when it turns out well—and it turns out well far more often than I’d ever admit.

This is incredibly easy for me to say, though, and I’m keenly aware that it’s coming from a place of privilege: Leo and I are the only ones who depend on me having money to spend on the necessities of life, so I don’t need to receive an income from the time I spend creating stuff. There’s another side to that, though: As a dual national, if I made money from this, I probably wouldn’t see much of it because it could be taxed in two countries (and give me enormous compliance costs, too). I’d have to bring in some pretty serious money in order to get even a small net income out of it.

So, because I don’t need to make any money from my creative work, and because I’d have to make a boatload to receive much of anything, it’s easy for me to do all this stuff as a “labour of love”. And that’s the essence of why even small things like noting the fact I finally achieved my 400th podcast episode matters so much to me: The satisfaction is my paycheck.

I often say, “celebrate the small stuff”. This milestone is a perfect example of why I say that.

New life for old worklights

Who doesn’t love it when a plan comes together? Upgrading my studio lighting for photography and video—and more—has been on my list for a long time, and yesterday I finished a major part of it, converting my old halogen worklight into and LED system. It was a good result.

Last August, I talked about wanting to come up with cheap lighting solutions for videos (and also for studio photography). I said, “I wanted to make it as cheap as possible, or, even better, to use things I already have,” and today’s project actually did both.

The photo montage up top shows the old worklights (also known as “shoplights”) I’ve had for maybe 15 years, on the left. Basically, the project involved swapping out the old halogen bulbs for LED ones. There were several reasons I wanted to do that, and some challenges along the way, but the project was successful (lower right photo in the montage). I mention all that up front so that anyone who wants all the details can continue on, while those not interested in such things can be satisfied with knowing the project was successful. The rest of this post is about the whole story, from the background through to the completion, and also some technical information about it all.

I bought those worklights when we lived in Paeroa because I needed bright light when I was working on our house, which we were renovating. The lights were relatively cheap (less than $50, I think), which was good. However, they had two 500 watt halogen bulbs which used a lot of power and, like all halogen bulbs, were hot—in this case, VERY hot. The upper right photo in that montage shows the warning notice on the top of each fixture, that they get hot, so hot that, as a little picture indicates, everything and everyone should stay at least one metre away from the thing when it’s on. Each one of the fixtures has a little handle to make it possible to adjust the lights’ positions without touching them—well, theoretically, maybe, because I found even that too hot to touch.

The fixtures got so hot that it was impossible to keep one of them locked in place, and it kept flopping forward when it was on. Eventually, it broke the halogen bulb and it no longer worked. That was kind of a relief, really, and I used only the one after that.

We moved away from that house in 2006 and I didn’t use the lights again until I needed to shoot photos of things we were going to sell online, and the lights were perfect for that. When I became interested in making videos, I thought again about the worklight rig, but I was concerned about how hot they got. About that same time, I saw a YouTube video made by some young New Zealanders explaining how they made their videos, and for lighting they used a bunch of the single-fixture models that sit on the floor. But they get just as hot.

I knew that the advantage of halogen was that it was generally flicker free (unlike many compact fluorescents), which is important because sometimes flicker can be seen in videos. Halogen lights also generally have cool colour, which is important for both video and a lot of photography. But have I mentioned how HOT they get?

Time passed, I got busy with other things and with life. By the time I was ready to go again, LEDs were becoming much more common, and I thought that could be an option.

The first problem was cost—LED double worklights, similar to what I already had, were more than double the price of new halogen ones—sometimes three times the cost. They were also relatively low in light output and were warm white, which was of no use.

A little digression is needed. Old-fashioned lightbulbs were always referred to by their watts, like a 60 watt bulb, for example. But that was only a measure of power consumption, and we all just knew that the higher the wattage, the brighter the light from the bulb. However, watts are never a measure of light output, or the colour of the light.

Light output is measured in lumens, and the minimum lumen rating is now included on packaging for light bulbs to make it easier to compare the output of various kinds. For example, a 75 watt old fashioned lightbulb produces a minimum of 1,100 lumens, as does a 30-52 watt compact fluorescent, and a 10-16 watt LED. By focusing on the actual light output—the lumens—we can fairly judge the relative brightness of different kinds of lights.

The other thing that matters in lighting for videos and photography is light colour temperature, which is expressed as temperature in degrees Kelvin. The lower the number, the redder (or warmer) the light, and the higher the number, the bluer (or cooler) the light. For both video production and a lot of studio photography, the goal is to mimic daylight on an overcast day. The temperature of that daylight is about 6500K. A standard lightbulb is around 2400K or so.

When I had a 35mm film camera many, many years ago, I couldn’t afford photography lights (they’re still really expensive, actually), and I had to use ordinary lightbulbs. The reddish light gave my subjects an orange tinge. So, I bought a special blue filter for my lens which corrected the colours (these days I can usually accomplish the same thing in Adobe Photoshop).

Putting all that together, the LED worklights used to be too dim (not enough lumens) and too warm (too low in K). Old-fashioned lightbulbs could be bright enough, but they, too, were too warm and generated heat (plus, I really didn’t have anything suitable to use them in—clamp on lights for workshops seem to have disappeared). Compact fluorescents were available in versions both bright enough and cool enough in light colour, but they also often flicker, something that matters for video, where that can sometimes be seen. Halogens, well, have I mentioned how hot they get?

I knew that companies were starting to make LED replacement lamps (“bulbs”) that would work in a worklight. Only trouble is, I could only find them in the USA, where they ran only on 120 volt power supply (we’re 220/240 volts in New Zealand).

More time passed, and the bulbs became available here—at a very high price: A single replacement bulb often cost more than a new worklight. Moreover, they were also warm white, which was too red for what I wanted. What was the point of that?

New LED light, left, and an old broken
halogen on the right. The LED's "dots"
face down, toward the reflector.

Still more time passed, and new fixtures became available that were much brighter, had much cooler light, and were much cheaper (though still far more expensive than the old double halogen rigs had been). A range of bulbs also became available, most of which were warm white, but I found one that was listed as “cool white” (it’s in the photo at right, alongside one of the old and broken halogen bulbs). At 6500K, it’s actually daylight (also sometimes called “cool daylight”). Perfect for what I wanted. The bulbs are 1521 lumens each, which is a bit less that an old 100 watt lightbulb, enough for most of what I want it for. I bought two (and together, the lumens roughly double).

At $22 each (or $44 for the pair), the LED bulbs cost me less than the price of a totally new double worklight, but two new halogen bulbs would have cost me about $12 for the pair. In fact, the store sold six packs of halogen bulbs that cost about as much as the two LED replacements I bought. Clearly cost is still an issue. On the other hand, the replacement bulbs should last dramatically longer than a halogen bulb, so maybe halogens aren't really as dramatically cheaper as they seem?

When I got home, I went out to the garden shed and got the worklights, finding that when we moved to this house two years ago, the movers had taken it apart. First step was to put it back together. The thing was filthy—too many years without being used, including two out in the shed, and the paint was starting to peel in places.

When I opened the fixtures to replace the bulbs, I also took out the glass to clean it. Technically, I don’t need the glass anymore because the bulbs aren’t as fragile as the halogen ones were. However, if I ever want to the change the colour of the light, I can use the glass to help hold filters, which are similar to cellophane. The wire cages, which were originally to keep the user from being burned from touching the glass, are quite corroded, but they also aren’t needed anymore. Because they provide some protection, I may keep them, but if I do I’ll wire brush them and spay paint them with silver paint.

None of this actually brings me that much closer to using them as studio lights. Among other things, I need space to use them, and I also have to work out how best to position them. In the meantime, I have some painting projects I need to finish, and the lights will be really good for that—bright, won’t shift the appearance of the colour of the paint, it will be dramatically cooler, and will consume only about 24 watts of power, as opposed to the 1000 watts it used to. And, have I mentioned how dramatically cooler they’ll be?

As it was, the old worklights were pretty useless to me. Their halogen bulbs were no longer working, but when they were they were far too hot and far too power-hungry. By spending $44 I solved all those problems. It gave new life to something that would have otherwise gone to the rubbish tip, and it cost less than a modern replacement would have.

I love it when a plan comes together. Now, I just have to figure out how best to use them for photo and video lighting. That'll be a different plan to talk about.

Let there be (cheap) light

Every once in awhile I say something on a podcast that I haven’t talked about on this blog, though it’s something I would talk about here. I did that on the ArcherRadio podcast episode I announced here yesterday. That’s one thing I can fix by mentioning it right now.

On that podcast I said that I like to challenge myself, and for video lighting I wanted to make it as cheap as possible, or, even better, to use things I already have. This is the kind of thing I do a lot—trying to do things for free or inexpensively, mostly because I don’t like spending money on hobbies/diversions when I don’t need to, and because I enjoy the challenge of coming up with good solutions for little or no money.

I talked about experimenting with video lighting in a post last October, but, ironically, that photo wasn’t actually an example of the lighting: I was just trying only certain aspects, not the whole setup. Even so, one of the sets, if you will, I plan on using for videos I’m in will be there in my office. I’m also going to use the garage, which is my personal reason for getting that project done (and, as it happens, I made big progress on that today). More on the studio-making project, and even lighting choices, another day.

I also enjoy photography challenges, and have shared some on this blog. For example, the posts about my 2016 Nature Photo A Day series all talked about how I did the photos. All of the challenges used only what I had at hand, all of which was free. I even used an improvised light reflector for some photos.

Late last year, I also explained another series, which was 7 black and white photos in 7 days. That one was more a challenge of subject than of technique, but it was a challenge nevertheless.

So, I have a history of giving myself challenges for photos (and sometimes videos), and then figuring out how to meet that challenge. For me, that’s part of the fun of the whole thing.

The challenge of spending little or nothing on these things is also part of the fun for me, and it’s something I did when I first started podcasting, too. However, I did eventually spend some money on that—better mics, interfaces, even a digital recorder I never use anymore. The audio interfaces that I used to connect my mics to my computer are both gone. One pretty much wore out, and the other is obsolete. I later bought a special gadget to connect my XLR microphone via USB connection—and it works brilliantly.

I also bought some photography supplies. I have a photography table for product-shot type close-up photos (among other things, it has a translucent table surface so I can light the object from beneath), but I’ve never used it (the assembly instructions are in Chinese). I also have a handheld steady-cam sort of thing (which stabilises video when moving the camera, like walking with it), but that doesn’t actually work (which is probably why it was so cheap). When I get my office finished, I’ll figure out the table. The other gadget will need to be replaced, I think.

I mention these things because I’m not opposed to spending money on my creative hobbies, especially when it’s something I can use to improve the quality of what I produce. However, if I can save money by improvising, it will mean I have more to spend on what I can’t improvise, and to get the equipment I really need.

So, I made an offhand mention on a podcast of something I haven’t really talked about here, and that’s related to a lot of other things I’ve shared on this blog, and things I’ll share in the future. It’s nice when blog content just sort of drops into my lap—or out of my mouth, in this case.

July’s welcome

Today is the beginning of a new month, and the middle of winter. Both are good, the latter because it means we’re getting ever closer to spring and summer. But starting another month is always a good opportunity to refresh and renew and restore ourselves and our resolve. All of that is true for all things AmeriNZ.

June was in many was a pretty good month for me. It was my most blogged month of the year so far, just five posts short of an average on one per day, and that meant it was also my most productive month by far (by that measure) all year. This is good in itself.

This appears to have been mostly due my recent health journey development, specifically that Ī’m starting being weaned off beta blockers. I feel clearer in my head than I have in a year, and that’s a really good thing all by itself, not just for blogging, obviously.

Then last week I felt like the stuffing was kicked out of me, as I mentioned on Friday. This was, in fact, the sole reason I didn’t have 30 (or more) posts in June. This was a pity, because I had so many I was working on, mostly still in process. On the other hand, none of them were time-specific, so I have plenty of time to finish them. At the moment, it looks as if this month may have many days with two or more posts in a day (like today). Or, I have a head start on August. Either way, it’s a good thing.

There was one other blogging development this month. As long time readers know, I’ve quite literally agonised over the structure of this blog: Should I focus it narrowly? I’d often talked about spinning off all talk of US politics, sometimes adding non-New Zealand topics to the list to be spun off. I even set up another blog to take those political posts, but could never get the political ones from here to import there. This turned out to be a good thing.

I am, as Roger Green calls himself, a magpie blogger, that is, I write about what interests me at that moment. Sometimes I’ll follow the same topic day after day and then abandon it for months. Other times I kind of skip around from day to day as the newest, shiniest topic captures my eye. In other words, this blog is me, an epiphany I had only recently. Avoiding certain topics, such as US politics, would mean avoiding parts of myself.

This realisation/epiphany dragged up some other issues. I felt bad about how my AmeriNZ Podcast had become, basically, an audio blog (aublog?), as if that was a bad thing. And yet, way back in episode one I’d said I saw it as an extension of this blog. So, not only is the current format NOT a problem or a defect, it’s what I envisioned when I started it back in 2007.

In 2009, I was bullied, basically, into dropping talk of US politics from my podcast. Part of it was an iTunes review that said my podcast was “too political”, a criticism that ended up becoming the name of an expressly political podcast I created with my friend Jason, 2Political Podcast (and no, I don’t know when it’ll return). I also wanted it to be our podcast, not just episodes of mine, but once it was launched I stopped talking about US politics on AmeriNZ Podcast, and since then I almost never have.

Similarly, my YouTube Channel is mainly videos about New Zealand, one way or another, but nothing about any of the many other subjects that interest me. I think this is actually one of the main reasons I haven’t made more videos. At one point I even considered using a second YouTube Channel I have (which is not public) to make other videos and vlogs (video blogs). “Video blogs” on a different channel? When I already have a written blog and a podcast where I already, well, blog? This was one of two catalysts for changing my thinking.

The other catalyst was thinking about Facebook, as I did recently. I wrote about how I don’t post anything about US politics to my personal Facebook, and how I had my blog and the AmeriNZ Facebook Page for political things. I also wrote:

I still rarely post anything political on my personal Facebook. That self-censorship means that anyone reading what I post there, arguably, isn't seeing the authentic me because there’s so much more that they never see.

And that, dear reader, was the aha! moment, because the exact same thing is true of my podcast and my YouTube Channel—everything except this blog, in fact.

And so, years of agonising about this blog are now over. This blog will remain as it always has been—clearly the authentic me—and my podcast will remain as it has become, with the re-introduction of political talk when I have something I want to talk about. I'll share more details about all that here and in the next episode of the podcast, as well as on the podcast site, at that time. And any future videos I make will be about whatever I’m interested in at the time, just like this blog and my podcast.

All of this was tied up with a pretty little bow just yesterday. As part of some research for a future blog post, I read some of my old posts that, I quickly realised, could have been YouTube videos (too, not necessarily instead of). It was then I realised there was no reason that I couldn’t make videos about absolutely anything I might blog about.

So everything AmeriNZ—which, after all, is actually a name I originally made up to describe myself—may now include anything and everything that interests me, with very little out of bounds. Each part can for the first time truly reinforce the other parts, so I really can use the best medium to tell a story.

This is incredibly liberating—and energising.

I may in the future set up a different blog and podcast feed that are specialised (for example, just about New Zealand), but those will have material repackaged from the equivalent AmeriNZ channel. AmeriNZ will have everything.

There are good reasons why deciding this all now is important, as I’ll talk about later this month. For now, though, I’ll just say that having a specific direction and unity for all things AmeriNZ will begin to matter quite a lot.

So, it’s a really awesome feeling that years of agonising about this blog are now over—well, I THINK they are, anyway…

Time to for the clocks to Autumn back

The clocks changed in New Zealand in the wee small hours of the morning today. Our clocks went back one hour, back to New Zealand Standard Time (NZST). This happens the first Sunday in April every year, of course, and every year it poses the same problem—not that people complain about having trouble adjusting (though they do complain…), but that they have trouble remembering which way the clocks go. It’s all because of one word.

In New Zealand, like many other places, this time of year is called Autumn, not Fall. So, the American mnemonic device, “Spring Ahead, Fall Back” doesn’t work in New Zealand. Sure, most Kiwis know that the word “fall” can be used to mean Autumn (we see a lot of American TV shows and movies, after all), but since it’s not the word used here, it just doesn’t spring, so to speak, immediately to mind.

Being bi-national makes it a little easier for me, I guess, because I’m well aware that the season here is Autumn, and I also grew up using Fall, so the mnemonic device makes sense for me. But every year I have to remind someone of which way we turn our clocks in April. I use the mnemonic device. Sometimes I’m asked, “are your sure?!” I always am.

All of this is insignificant when compared to how much people complain about the changes. Moving the clocks in either direction upsets our light cues, according to WebMD, disrupting our circadian rhythms. They add that moving the clocks ahead in Spring is harder for people to adjust to than moving them back in the Autumn, but in general it takes about one day per hour of time change to adjust. Uh huh. Considering how much people complain about seasonal clock changes, it seems to take more than one day to adjust.

I always used to be one of those people who was never bothered by seasonal clock changes, though I preferred the one in Autumn (that extra hour of sleep…). However, as I’ve gotten older I’ve begun to find those seasonal clock changes harder to adjust to (Spring in particular). Moving countries also made me realise what chaos all these changes, happening at different times of the year in different countries, and not always everywhere in a country, creates. All of which is why I’ve come around to the thinking that it’s time to abolish seasonal clock changes

So, New Zealand’s clocks have now Autumned back. Or, something.

The photo up top is one I took last October for a video I made (below) about the Spring clock change, and time in New Zealand. I also wrote a blog post about that video, and included an annotated transcript.

At the car wash, yeah

Things need to be done... #carwash #tidykiwi

A video posted by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Jan 17, 2017 at 6:07pm PST

This is a first all around: It’s the first time I’ve posted a video to Instagram, so it’s also the first time I’ve tried sharing one on this blog. It’s a simple subject: I needed to wash the car today, and this was a few seconds of that fun.

The reason I had to wash the car in the first place—as opposed to just normal car maintenance or whatever—is that I’m having a guy do some work around the house—tidying the gardens and washing the house (about which, more in a couple days), and I neglected to move my care, and so, it was covered with dust and such from the work. Oops. I knew better, too.

Still, my car was due for a wash—the last one was before Christmas—so it was needed, anyway. And when he comes tomorrow to finish the work, I’ll park my car on the street. Prudence, and all that.
Of course, part of the reason I’m sharing this at all is that if this works, I can share more short videos in the future. If not—well, I suppose one can always watch it on Instagram.

At the very least, my car is clean.

Footnote: The title, as some will know, is from the song “Car Wash” by Rose Royce, and the theme of the 1976 film of the same name. See also this:

A mission accomplished

This is the 366th AmeriNZ Blog post for 2016, and that means—even without a single post the rest of this year—there’s now an average of one post per day for 2016, and this post is the perfect way to make that achievement. This also means that the pressure’s off for this year—not that it matters, because there are several posts in the queue between now and December 31. It is, however, a good sign for many reasons.

2016 has not been one of my better years, and for a lot reasons, some of which are shared by millions of other people. But this was the year of my hospital adventure, and also feeling terrible for months before that. There were also two interruptions in our Internet connections that made posting blog posts difficult. So, the fact that I caught up on blogging, that I made up for lost time and actually completed my annual goal, means that this year is ending far better than it was in the middle. It also probably means that 2017 will be better than this year was—it pretty much has to be, to be fair.

The fact that 2016 was a pretty bad year for me personally suggests why achieving this goal matters so much to me: I triumphed over my own adversity, and did so with vigour. Yeah, the goal in ordinary years is unimportant in the grand sweep of life, but this year it was much more important to me than ever because it symbolised not just the achievement of a personal goal, but also of survival itself. Melodramatic? Tough—it’s actually true.

I achieved this goal because I set out to be a blogging machine, and that was actually harder than I thought it'd be. I’ve never been one to just post a YouTube video (or whatever) without saying something about it, so everything I posted since August was the result of thought and effort (some more that others, of course, as is always the case).

Because I knew I needed a LOT of posts, I created a lot of very rough drafts of posts to flesh out later, mostly nothing more than things like YouTube embedding code, links to relevant articles, and anything else I wanted to reference in the post. I’ve always done that to some extent, but over the past few months they were deliberate, planned, and numerous—and most of them ended up polished and published.

There were a lot of posts over the past few months, beginning with a slow start, the one extra post in September, followed by a strong October (43 posts) and a an outrageously productive November (51 posts), leading into December—31 posts in the first 23 days. That adds up to 156 posts from September 1 through this one, and that’s almost 43% of my annual goal in less than four months.

The truth is, I started out reasonably strong this year (33 posts in January and 35 in February) because I knew there would be periods when I wouldn’t have time to blog, as is true every year, and I wanted a buffer. But with the exception of July, I didn’t again come close to the one-per-day average until September, and I fell further and further behind.

I caught up because I wanted to, and I made it my priority. During this period I also resumed podcasting, still not regularly, but a resumption, nevertheless. In the New Year, I plan to resume making videos, but more about that when it happens.

For now, the important thing is that I achieved a goal that mattered very much to me because achieving it symbolised triumphing over adversity, and even over what could have happened. Sure, it’s the goal’s not important, but the triumph is. And it’s a good sign for what next year could bring.

Special thanks to Roger Green, who encouraged me and cheer-led (is that a word?) for me to meet my goal, probably because he’s one of the few people I know who cares about such things. Speaking of which, check out his latest “Ask Roger Anything” post in which he talks about some of the things he feels about blogging; I completely relate to what he said.

Related: This is blog post 333 for 2016 – a progress report on this project from the end of November, including some surprises I found along the way.

Welcome to Summer 2016

Today, December 1, marks the start of Summer—finally! While we’ve had some awesome days in the past couple weeks in particular, for the most part Spring was cool and wet, so it’s about time for some nicer weather. It’s also an opportunity to remind our friends in the Northern Hemisphere that in this part of the world, seasons begin on the first of the month, not three weeks later on the solstice or equinox.

Summer is my favourite season, without a doubt, and I’m especially happy that this year I’ll be able to take full advantage of it. After what must have been a couple years of not feeling 100%, I’m looking forward to being able to take care of a lot of projects around the house.

This morning Facebook greeted me with the graphic above, and invited me to share it. So, I did—and added a bit cheekily:

See?! Even Facebook knows that December 1st is the start of summer here in the Antipodes! 😉  Happy Summer, my fellow Southern Hemispherians! 😀

Summer also provides the perfect opportunity to go on some photo expeditions around the area, for both photos and video, to show a little more of my New Zealand. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and—weather permitting—I’ll be able to do that this year.

Speaking of video, I made one about seasons at the start of Spring, and I’ll include that at the bottom of the post. It talks about the different way we look at seasons here.

This is also the final month of the year, of course, and there are now only 31 days to meet my annual goal of one blog post per day. As it happens, I began today needing exactly 31 posts—one per day—to meet that goal. I have several posts lined up (including several for today), but I'll also be busy with work for about a week, so the actual number of posts per day will fluctuate, and I could even miss some days. Even so, I'm likely to meet my goal.

Yeah, this summer is shaping up to be a good one already.

A stunner of a day

Absolute stunner of a day in Auckland! First day in AGES without a cloud in the sky, & warmer, too. The kind of day I don't mind running errands! The photo is from the highest point of our deck, looking over the bush nearby. The blooms in the lower left are on a cabbage tree (Cordyline australis) right next to our deck. #spring2016 #auckland #lifeinnz

A photo posted by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Nov 21, 2016 at 5:20pm PST

The Instagram caption for my photo above describes the day today: “Absolute stunner of a day in Auckland! First day in AGES without a cloud in the sky, & warmer, too.” It ended up being the first truly spring day yet, really.

I left for today’s first errand late this morning, and I thought it was a bit cool. In fact, I actually thought to myself how unusual it was to still be wearing a jacket this late in November.

But then I noticed the totally blue sky, and the day started to warm up. When I went out again in the early afternoon, it was quite warm: I didn’t need a jacket anymore. Had I not been so busy, I’d have taken advantage of the day by going and taking some photos. But, the beautiful day was a surprise, and I had things to do.

That’s why I took the photo above from our deck—although I realised afterward that anyone can post a photo of the harbour or whatever, and tourists certainly do. This is what someone who actually lives here sees as an everyday sort of thing.

The blooming plant in the lower left is a cabbage tree (Cordyline australis), endemic to New Zealand. A little farther along on the left is a tree fern—I’m not sure of the species, just that it’s not the silver fern. Tree ferns are endemic to New Zealand, too, and there are several varieties. That particular one has a trunk that’s probably more than 2 metres tall (more than 6½ feet).

Over the years, I’ve shot many photos and videos from that same spot on our deck. For example, this cabbage tree is the bottom photo in a post from March, 2015, and the group this cabbage tree’s part of were in Day 5 of my “Nature photo a day” series earlier this year.

My first video from this post is from nearly seven years ago, and was just a quick camera test. The point where it stops is where the cabbage tree is now: It hadn’t grown that tall yet (the ground at that point is a full storey below the deck):



This particular tree, and the others in the group, were first in one of my videos the middle of last year, “Rainy Day in Auckland”:



And again on New Year’s Day this year:



The point of this isn’t that this tree is special, or even that particular view is, but rather that it’s great to be able to revel in the ordinary, and to celebrate what nature and life just hand to us without us having to do a thing. There’s one other thing, though: Sometimes what’s at hand is great.

I don’t have terribly fancy video or still cameras. In fact, most of my photos are taken on my iPhone 5C. I’ve been using smartphones to experiment and learn to take better photos ever since I posted about doing that in December 2014.

Through this, I’ve found that using what’s available is a great way to focus on what I’m trying to create. Personally, I think the challenge of the restrictions from not having “perfect” equipment doesn’t restrict creativity—it unleashes it.

The same thing is true for the scenes around us, too. There are numerous ways to look at the same view, and depending on how we approach it the scene can help convey any number of ideas, feelings, and emotions.

So, having limitations doesn’t have to be bad—it can be strangely liberating.

Mostly, though, a stunning day like today just makes for something awesome to be enjoyed, and I certainly did. It was a stunner of a day in Auckland today.

What time is it in New Zealand?

What time is it? Time for another YouTube video, obviously. And that means it’s time for another behind-the-scenes post, complete with the script I used. This time, it's a little different.

This video was easier to do than my previous one, probably because I’d already remembered how to do the things I needed to do. That turned out to be a good thing.

I did most of the work on the video over last weekend, and even exported the video ready to upload to YouTube. I watched it a couple times (okay, more than a couple…), and, because I did, I finally heard and saw flaws before I uploaded.

So, I took advantage of a break in my workweek to re-record a couple parts of the narration that I wasn’t happy with. But there were also a couple visuals I didn’t like, either, so I fixed those. In the end, I went back to edit the video at least twice before I was finally finished—but I was still finished days ago, something that’s never happened before (I upload on Fridays my time, and up until now I’ve finished on the day). And still, despite all that, I missed one mistake.

I again recorded the narration separately (right after I recorded my most recent podcast episode), and I was again reading a script. I tried reading scripts and text in the early days of my podcast, and it didn’t go well—which is why in all these years I haven’t used a script for my podcast. I think I’ve improved a lot over the years—better vocal control timing, intonation, etc.—so all that listening closely to what other podcasters and video creators do vocally has paid off. In my opinion.

At the moment, I’m out of ideas for topics for future videos. I also think I may be nearing the end of the road for videos with animated text and still images with a voice over. I know that many YouTube creators stick to one style for all their videos, so it’s not that I couldn’t or shouldn’t do that—it’s that I don’t want to.

Fortunately, I’m more mobile again, which means I can shoot some actual video, something that may eventually even include me. All of that is very different from what I’ve been doing lately, but since I’ve made several videos with footage I recorded, I think it should go well.

First, though, I need to come up with some topics.

In the meantime, here’s the script for this video—this time, with some annotations about why I did what I did:

On Sunday, September 25 at 2am, the clocks sprang ahead to 3am. They’ll go back to standard time April 3rd.

Many places in the world use Daylight Saving Time, and there’s no international standard for when clocks change. It usually has to do with the needs of each country. But this makes an already complicated situation even worse

Take a look at this map of world time zones. The lines zig zag all over the place, to make sure all of one country is in the same time zone, to make it better for international trade, for any number of reasons. It’s very complicated, and Daylight Saving Time only makes it worse. [I almost re-recorded this part to avoid saying “even worse” twice—something I didn’t notice when I wrote the script or when I recorded it. In the end I didn’t mainly because I didn’t have time to re-record it (I’d already done the other bits)].

Let’s look at how that works using Auckland and Chicago.

[This next section is mainly visual, and it was a challenge to illustrate. I chose to show the clock changing for the location that was changing their clocks, leaving the other one alone. In an earlier draft version, I left Auckland alone and always changed Chicago—but the final clock change is happening in New Zealand, and it didn’t make sense to me to show the clock change happening in Chicago].

Here’s the time—and day of week—in the two cities now,

And this is what will happen after Illinois turns its clocks back to Standard Time on November 6th.

Then, on March 12, Illinois starts Daylight Saving Time again.

Followed by New Zealand going back to standard time.

So, anyone trying to work out the time in New Zealand, or the difference between our time and the time anywhere else in the world, has to know both the number of time zones AND whether one or both locations is observing Daylight Saving Time or Standard Time. That’s nearly impossible.
Fortunately, there are plenty of technological options.

I put clocks on both my blog and my podcast site so visitors can know what time it is in New Zealand and Chicago. [I didn’t use video or even screenshots of those clocks because I couldn’t do both at the same time. That mattered because they display the time and date, and it would be obvious if they didn’t match]. But smartphones have apps to show the time in various places, and they automatically re-set when the clocks change.

By using an app or a website, you can make sure that you don’t ring someone in another country in the middle of the night. Before apps and easy access to websites, people did that to me. [they really did, too].

There’s one more thing about these clock changes that makes New Zealand a little different: We don’t have Fall, we have Autumn.

That wouldn't matter, except the old saying, “Spring ahead, Fall back” doesn’t really mean much in New Zealand. So, a lot of people I know have trouble remembering which way to set their clocks.

So, even though it’s nearly impossible to know what time it is in another part of the world, technology means no one NEEDS to know—they can check.

And THAT means that I no longer get phone calls in the middle of the night.

But it doesn’t make it any easier to adjust to those changes!

Full credits, along with other resources, are in the YouTube description of the video.

Spring has sprung

Above is my latest YouTube video. I narrate this one, as I did with my previous one. And like that one, this one talks about New Zealand. It begins with talk about when Spring began in New Zealand, and even offers a tip for people in the Northern Hemisphere to work out what season it is here.

It’s been some eight months since I last made a video, and there were a few things I couldn’t remember how to do. In the end, I figured it out, and maybe even did a bit better than my previous videos.

I record the narration separately, and this video, to me, sounds better than the video in January. That one was made when I was still unwell, and this one was made afterward, so my breathing was better, and that made it easier to record (at the very least).

I wrote the narration as a script I read, including notes for whatever would be onscreen at the time (a sort of stage direction), so I could pause as I recorded. This gave me room to edit the audio track and/or visual tracks so the two meshed well. Or, to put it in more practical terms, I’m beginning to get the hang of it.

There will come a time when I’m actually in my videos, rather than just narrating them, but since I’m not mobile at the moment, that’ll have to wait awhile longer. For now, my videos will be along the lines of this one.

I often blog about my videos and photos, giving some of the behind-the-scenes information, as I have in this post. With that in mind, here’s the narration (more or less…) from this video:

Ah, Spring! Trees break out in flowers, and the birds visit them and sing their songs. It’s nice, right? Only I filmed this Tui feeding on a flowering tree on August 30, which is late winter in the Southern Hemisphere. And, birds never leave for winter. But, this was still spring in Auckland.

That’s because Spring began in New Zealand a few weeks ago, on September first.

That confuses some people. The September Equinox arrived at 2:21am today, and some people take that to mean the official start of Spring. But, does it?

Well, no: Spring was already three weeks old by then.

Equinoxes and Solstices are astronomical events, which may not correspond to changes in weather.

The first of the month is closer to when weather starts to change, so they’re often called meteorological dates.

Although, in truth, the weather has very little to do with either.

Also, Equinoxes and Solstices arrive at different times each year, and sometimes different dates, too.

This page from time and date dot com shows the dates and times for Auckland over a ten-year period.

But, the reason we have seasons, equinoxes and solstices at all is because of the tilt of the earth as it goes around the sun—and THAT’S a whole topic in itself.

Really, all you need to know is that New Zealand seasons are exactly the opposite of the Northern Hemisphere.

Think of it this way: January = July. If you keep THAT in mind, you can always know what season it is in New Zealand.

So, Spring has arrived in New Zealand—at SOME point this month…

Now, about the time difference… uh… that’s a topic for another day.

Full credits for the video along with other resources are in the YouTube description.

Ten years of the AmeriNZ Blog

Today is the tenth anniversary of the AmeriNZ Blog: I published my first post, “I live in a land downunder. No, the other one…” on September 13, 2006. After a decade of this, I could have lost interest, but apart from a few brief times, that hasn’t happened. And, even then, or after times in which I’ve been particularly busy with other things, I always eventually catch-up and carry on.

However, this is the first time I’ve mentioned this Blogoversary since 2013. Last year, it was overshadowed by the twentieth anniversary of my first arrival in New Zealand, and in 2014 I was busy with New Zealand’s election campaign. I accept those as valid reasons to miss talking about the anniversary.

This year I made a special effort to mark the anniversary, because ten years is a long time in Internet years. It’s the date that was the beginning of me engaging in what is now fashionably called “content creation”. A few months after this blog, I started the AmeriNZ Podcast (which will itself turn ten in a few months), the 2Political Podcast with my friend Jason, and my much neglected AmeriNZ YouTube Channel, among other things.

Over the years, I’ve struggled with questions of whether I should focus this blog more sharply, but I always came back to the fact that I’m a “magpie blogger”, as I talked about in that 2013 anniversary post, picking up on something Roger Green talked about. In the end, I realised that this is a personal blog, and my podcast and YouTube Channel are just other ways to tell stories, different aspects of the same thing.

For example, in 2013 I wrote about “The origins of AmeriNZ”, which explained where the name came from, and last year I created a video to explain it all visually (I’ve included that at the bottom of this post). Different ways to tell stories.

I explained the origins of this blog specifically back in 2010, but it was in 2008 that I changed the title header up top to the one I made. In 2012, I added a left sidebar with subject tags—after one of those times thinking about whether I should focus this blog more sharply—and that left me with a weird space at the right-hand side. I’d always planned on putting something there, then decided the blog was already too busy visually. But that space bugged me (sometimes…).

So, in celebration of the Tenth Anniversary of AmeriNZ Blog, I’ve updated the title header up top, and the welcome graphic in the upper right-hand corner (the true purpose of which is to be the default graphic for posts I share to Facebook and Google+ for those posts with no graphic or that have YouTube videos). It’s a small thing, but a thing nevertheless.

I have no idea if blogs will exist ten years from now, or whether I’ll still be doing one. Still, what I said at the end of my first post ten years ago today is still true: Pour yourself a cuppa, relax, and let’s see where this leads.

Thanks for joining me on the journey so far.

Previous posts on my blogoversaries:

Anniversay Time (2007)
Blogoversary 2 (2008)
Anniversaries Three and Fourteen (2009)
Fourth blogoversary (2010)
Fifth blogoversary (2011)
Sixth blogoversary (2012)
Seventh Blogoversary (2013)

AmeriNZ Podcast 314 now available

A new AmeriNZ Podcast episode, “AmeriNZ 314 – New Year” is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast.

5 Awesome Things About New Zealand

Above is my latest YouTube video, and it’s one I narrate for a change, something I plan on doing more of. This video took a long time to make because I had to find sources for everything I mentioned—of course I did.

So, since I went to all that trouble, here’s a version of my narration (this version may differ slightly), complete with relevant links. I included all the sources in the YouTube description, but I know some people would rather read them in context.

Here’s the narration:

I arrived in New Zealand from Chicago in 1995, and there were a lot of things to get used to—like driving on the other side of the road, for example. In future videos, I’ll show more of what that was like, but today I thought I’d share Five Awesome Things About New Zealand (…in my opinion).

5. Wellington is the southernmost national capital in the world. That’s not particularly important, but it’s interesting.

4. In 2014, New Zealand was ranked as the world’s second least-corrupt nation, according to Transparency International. Denmark was least corrupt. Among other countries, Canada was ranked tenth, Australia 11th, and the USA and the UK were among four countries tied for 17th. North Korea and Somalia tied for most corrupt. [UPDATE: NZ dropped to fourth place in the 2015 rankings, released January 27]

3. No part of New Zealand is more than 130kms (around 80 miles) from the sea. Anyone who wants to can get to the ocean fairly easily. New Zealand also has 15-18,000kms of coastline, depending on how it’s measured. [Source: Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand]. That means New Zealand is ranked the 9th in the world for total coastline.

2. Women matter.

In 1893, New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the right to vote. Later that year, Elizabeth Yates was elected Mayor of Onehunga, now part of Auckland, making her the first woman mayor of a town anywhere in the British Empire.

New Zealand is the only country in the world where all the highest positions have been held simultaneously by women: On 4 April 2001, Dame Silvia Cartwright was sworn in as Governor-General (the Queen’s representative; the Queen is head of state). Attending were Prime Minister Helen Clark, Leader of the Opposition Jenny Shipley, Speaker of the House of Representatives Margaret Wilson, and Chief Justice Sian Elias—all women. [SOURCE: “Dame Silvia Cartwright Sworn-in as Governor-General" New Zealand History]

At the same time, what was then the country’s largest corporation was headed by a female CEO, as was the largest government department [SOURCE: “The making of the Christine Rankin legend”, New Zealand Herald, 3 August 2001).

1. There are no land snakes in New Zealand. [SOURCE: “Reptiles”, Hamilton Zoo].

There also aren't any scorpions or venomous insects, either, and there’s only one native species of venomous spider, the rare kātipo, which is a threatened species, so hardly anyone has ever seen one, and over the past 100 years, there are no known fatalities from kātipo bites. A couple species of venomous Australian spiders have become established in New Zealand, for up to 100 years, but they aren’t considered a major threat. [SOURCE: “Story: Spiders and other arachnids”, Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand].

Sea snakes and kraits sometimes, though rarely, show up in New Zealand waters, and, while venomous, there are no known bites of humans [SOURCE: “Sea snakes and kraits”, Department of Conservation]. So, we’re pretty safe here.

And all of that is why I make this my number one awesome thing about New Zealand.

There are a lot more awesome things about New Zealand, and I’ll talk about them in future videos. If there’s anything you’d like to know about, let me know in the comments.

And there you have it: What I said, basically, in the video, some of which I haven’t really talked about on this blog, and especially not my podcast. There’s a place for everything, I guess.

Creating, announcing, and cheating

All bloggers do something or other that other bloggers probably don’t approve of. Whether readers care or not is another matter (often, they don’t). But the line between simple content and filler—a cheat?—is pretty fine and, I think, largely imaginary.

Personal blogs, like this one, are very different from blogs that exist to sell something—a product, service, an author, etc. Blogs selling things need to have a constant flow of relevant content pointing toward their objective: Sales. Personal bloggers, on the other hand, merely need to have something to say.

Last year, I wrote about my podcast’s eighth anniversary and said that I planned to I resume posting announcements of new podcast episodes. It came about as part of a sort of evolutionary process: I realised that this blog, my podcast and my YouTube videos are basically different ways to do same thing: Tell the stories I wanted to tell.

It had been five years since I’d last posted a podcast announcement, and I’m still not certain why I stopped (or why it took me that long to notice!), but I think I may have an inkling of why I did that: I think that back then I thought it was “cheating” to post those announcements, that I should only publish blog posts that were new content unrelated to anything else I did, including any non-blog content I created.

To be honest, I think that’s really silly. Most blog readers may not care about a podcast episode, but some might. Similarly, not all podcast listeners would care about one of my blog posts, but I put links to relevant posts in podcast shownotes all the same, and for the same reason: Someone might be interested. It’s too early to be sure, but I bet it’s the same for my YouTube videos: Some viewers may be interested in my other content, but most probably won’t be. That’s fine—but why should I make that decision for them?

I came to realise that I spend a lot of time and effort on all this various content I produce, and I’ve never been paid for any of it (and have never sought to be). So, since “consumption” of what I create is the main reward I get, it's silly not to make that content as widely known and available as I can.

That’s why I resumed posting announcements of my podcasts. So far, I’ve shared my YouTube videos the same way I would anyone else’s: In a post with further commentary. As long as I have something to say about a video, I’ll share them here in that way, and if not, they’ll also get an announcement.

What all this means is that while I once saw announcing new podcast episodes as a “cheat”, and not “real” content, I now see it VERY differently: It’s sharing everything I produce, all the content, and letting people decide for themselves whether they’re interested or not.

Related to that and this very post, there was a time that I also thought that talking about the process of blogging—what I personally do, why I do what I do, etc.—was another kind of cheat, and way too “meta” for most readers to care about. I was wrong about that, too.

Most bloggers read other blogs, and we learn from others in various ways. Sometimes that means, um, borrowing things from other bloggers, but a lot of the time it means learning to do what we do better. I’ve learned so much from other bloggers that it seems rude, to say the least, not to share what I do and why; I can never know who might find something of value in my experience, just as I have in the experiences of others.

I’m no longer even sure there’s really such a thing as “cheating” for personal bloggers. If a blogger publishes or shares things that are relevant to the overall theme of the blog, then can anything really be a “cheat”?

Of course, I have a good reason to take this stance: I have a goal of an annual average of one blog post per day, so I have an incentive to defend filler as content. Maybe that’s all it is—defensiveness. But if the posts I mentioned—announcements and ones like this—don’t count as “real”, what does? If “real” posts are only those where I sat down and composed every word without ever using a video, meme/graphic, Tweet, Facebook update, or whatever, as a starting point, then most of this blog is made up of cheats. Obviously I reject that.

Personal blogs are a reflection of the bloggers who create them—what interests them, what they’re passionate about, what they find entertaining. Readers decide for themselves whether there’s value in any of that.

Who am I to argue with readers?

This post was inspired by a comment that Roger Green left on my most recent announcement post, that for the latest 2Political Podcast episode;(link goes to the comment).

Visiting Takapuna

Earlier this week, I was in Takapuna for awhile, so I went and visited the beach there, which is the subject of my latest brief YouTube video. I haven’t been there in awhile, so it was nice to stop by.

Being winter, it was a little cooler than I would have liked, but the beach was still quite busy, anyway. The clouds were moving pretty quickly, so an area of beach that was in full sun one moment could be in shade the next. I didn’t realise that was happening until I edited the video.

I’ll let you in on a secret: At one point in the video I have a title that says it’s looking toward the Pacific. The truth is, on the eastern side of Auckland’s North Shore (where Takapuna is), everywhere one looks toward the east is looking toward the Pacific, though there may be islands in the way.

I used that phrase to give some sort of geographic orientation to foreigners, and so they’d know what ocean they were looking at. But that part of the North Shore isn’t really directly open to the ocean (because of islands). So, the label I added is a little misleading: It’s true, but probably not quite in the way some viewers will take it.

It was one of those times when simplicity was better than strict accuracy, something I’ve run into before when I’ve made these videos. Actually, I’ve learned a lot of things since I started making them. I’m sure that as I continue to learn more, and as I get more confident, I’ll make longer videos.

At any rate, making the videos has been fun. And, it’s always nice to have an excuse to visit favourite places.

What is AmeriNZ?

The video above explains where the name "AmeriNZ" comes from. I don't think I’ve ever explained all this on my podcast, but I did talk about it here on the blog a couple years ago. I wanted to make sure an explanation was available on YouTube itself.

I’m slowly starting to make more videos (and I’m always glad to get suggestions…), so I thought it would be good to explain the nickname—well, more of a brand, really—before I make too many more. Eventually, new videos will be a more or less weekly thing (I hope).

In any case, at least folks on YouTube will know where the name comes from, too.