Fable of The Geeks :: 1: Collision

He woke. Pain squinted at the back of his head and a local area of his nose with a tunneling gnawing stab. As he rolled slightly he left a small thick crimson puddle. He undid his eyes, like zippers they peeled back to see DEATH hoving into view. Outlined with roses and thorns, it was set on a gunmetal grey clasp with the words BEFORE DISHONOUR. His focus gripped the belt buckle framed by the bangs of a brunette.

He leaned and pushed himself up, the pain attacked his frontal lobe. He felt pitiless and stupid. 

‘You?’ she said. 

‘I?’ said Lamar. ‘I must have hit a pole or something.’

She was a mass of hair in striped long-sleeved top under black t-shirt, the figure encased in jeans and boots. He forgot about the blood seeping out of his head ringed by the monotony of centre-stage nose pain, he even forgot who he was. He reached for a name but none came and the city ran in a blur all around him. La - mar … It came from out of nowhere. He didn’t find it easy with his tongue stuck in the corner of his mouth like an embarrassed fourteen-year-old.

She pointed at the pole helpfully and Lamar answered her facetiously, forgetting his manners again and she looked at him like she wanted to knock him over herself but she softened to the fool on the pavement in front of her and framed his head in her hands and imparted her knowledge on head injuries in a broad southern people’s accent that Lamar thought tremendously unique and was given pause again himself as he remembered the jet, in silver and black, like a silent and measured missile flying past the towers on the western ridge. Flew seemed a bit strong – it sneaked through the canyon between the buildings, cutting a path by stealth.

He mopped the blood matting on the back of his head with his tie and she stood up stretching herself before him, pulling her eyes wide to remind him he’d live and inquiring if he thought he could walk.

Lamar nodded because he didn’t know what else to do and then he asked who she was. She flashed her face back and Lamar copped a few frames of hair commercial as she mouthed ‘Terri … Terri Columbine’ and disappeared, sucked inside the glass-fronted hotel. Her sympathy to Lamar now only felt an inference. Columbine? Didn't they make stockings? 

He blew his nose. A blood-chunk landed on his pants leg. He rubbed at it. She thought he was an idiot wandering dazed. She didn't know he was going to be a buyer for Gentry Ltd. He’d be every inch the modern corporate animal. Wouldn’t he?

The Totem Hole

My second novel, The Totem Hole, published October 2007 in NZ, got picked up as a Best Book of 2007 by The Listener (the local authority in these matters).

But the reviewer at Leaf Salon found it all a bit scary.

Davey Darling

My debut novel Davey Darling, published August 1, is soaking up a bit of attention in little old New Zealand, where it is set and where I live.

Synopsis as published:

Davey lives with Tiny, his hard-case, beer-drinking father, and Thelma, his long-suffering, tea-drinking mother. Davey is a bit of a hard case himself, constantly getting in trouble with the local bully and giving everyone plenty of lip. The act of violence that follows his discover in the woolshed sends Davey down a troubling path of choices. He knows he should choose the moral option, but then will his family survive?

• The Listener published the first review


• Leaf Salon think it could be destined for greatness


• There have been reviews in The Press, Otago Daily Times, Sunday Star Times, North & South Magazine (Book of the Month), NZ Doctor
• Russell Brown of Public Address likes it
• This Listener profile provides the background to achieving publication.

New Zealand residents can purchase at many NZ Bookshops that run electronic purchasing.

I would recommend:

• Time Out Bookstore in Mt Eden, Auckland
• Real Groovy, Auckland City

UK residents can purchase at the SANZA Shop.

Author bio and Book Description at Penguin Books NZ.

iPod Redefines RDF

Well the Reality Distortion Field has never been in more full effect than it was last Wednesday with the announcement and release of the G5 Video iPod.

Despite Steve Jobs well-known and long documented protestations over video (immersive technology) on a small screen Apple have caved and gone to the market with the iPod update that has been forced upon him by market and popular expectation.

It's sad that there is emerging this view that you have to have one device to do everything when the iPod has done music so well. I wouldn't want to combine my iPod with my cellphone because I'm sure as hell not going to dock my phone with my stereo when I get home from work.

And this is why the iPod rules in the music player stakes and also why video won't hurt it. It is so damned practical to dump all your music on it. For fanatics like me it is the business. It won't displace my phone but it has displaced my two PDAs (one an aging Palm IIIe and the other the lacklustre and backlight bereft Palm Zire 21) and frankly I'm pleased to se the back of them as the iPod's contact display and management options are more than enough for my needs.

Coked Out

You wonder whether they're on the jungle juice over at Coke Headquarters ... You really do ...

Yesterday, in little old iTMS deprived NZ, Coke launched Coke Tunes, a big music service touting 500,000 songs.

The Herald reported the launch but missed the fact that it doesn't work with Firefox - only I.E. (bad idea, especially as the new I.E. cannot be built to standards.

They reported that the service doesn't work with iPods and I thought "What are they thinking?"

Every kid wants an iPod. They are not going to use this service if they can't put their tunes on their player of choice.

Coke may as well just give their money away ...

Map Attack

Following reports in Wired News this morning that the new Virtual Earth from MSN shows Apple Headquarters as an empty lot I decided to have a look for myself ...



Sure enough. Microsoft have now fully decided to ignore completely the Cupertino crowd. They blame old maps. No excuse.


The same view from Google Maps showing the 11 buildings in the oval that make up the Apple Campus.



What is more interesting though is the way the two mapping rivals treat each other. Google is confused about itself .. Somehow it thinks it is Keyhole and is based in an empty lot beside a freeway.



MSN does depict the location ... Surprise, surprise. I guess Apple are just hacking off MS more in their games of endless catch-up with both companies.

Bollocks Fast Company

In an article published for their August issue, Fast Company argue that the iPod is doomed because Apple's competitors are adding more features for their players while the iPod remains closed.

The author, John J. Sviokla, argues that the iPod's competitors are operating in an open "ecosystem" and that history has always favoured such.

Well that is debatable and there are precedents for suggesting that the inferior technology offered by this lumpen conglomerate of PC lovers could succeed ... but really it's beyond them now because none has the sheer effusive style and panache of the iPod.

Even consider for a minute the fact that Creative, one of the first company's on the market with a MP3 player, actually saw their profit fall last year.

How can they innovate and research when they have no money? Will Microsoft's support be enough? I would say their support would be a hindrance rather than a benefit.

The MSN music service is muddled at best with its typically timid washed-out MS design and featuring all this stuff that gets in the way of what I want.

Apple though have made a iTunes is a classic ... They have the classic paradigm ... The device combined with the application and augmented by the service (the Music Store) all with miraculous ease of use. Nothing can beat it. Not in a million years.

Squandered Opportunity

In my home of Auckland, TVNZ are tonight screening the first episode of the hit UK drama Hustle.

Looking like a cross between Snatch and Ocean's Eleven, the network have been pumping this baby for weeks with promos setting out to titillate and encourage us to dive in there on the night.

None of the promos really got me going though like some thing that I caught out of the corner of my eye a few nights ago advertising the Auckland Harbour Bridge being for sale. Details were apparently planted in the Herald of the next day ... it was shaping like a media bonanza ... I had to see it.

So yeah, they'd taken out a full page ad (right-hand page, inside back front section - prime space) advertising our bridge being for sale and referring us to a website for Clacy Hughes Realty ... (or Clacy Huges Realty in the title bar)

So what does one do .. well one goes and has a look and yes, its pretty much a replica of the print ad. same picture, (albeit cut down) but with one difference, blinking text enticed me to CLICK HERE to view tenders.

So I did that too and then I was greeted with a screen that told me I'd been hustled. Hustled? For clicking through on that? Maybe if I had been genuinely tricked. Great idea for TVNZ to try stepping outside the bounds of their usual promo activity but not quite enough to convince me ... Having come up with the idea they could have at least seen it through ...