converser.nz

  • Brief History of Fisher & Paykel Top Loading Autowashers [1]: Introduction

    Fisher and Paykel is a major New Zealand appliance manufacturer and has a lengthy history going back over 80 years. About 1938 they started in business as an importer of washing machines from various sources (including Bendix in the US) and soon were assembling wringer machines and Hoovermatic twin tubs in their Auckland factory. Their…

  • Brief History of Fisher & Paykel Top Loading Autowashers

    It’s been decided this post fits better on NZ Techonverse so the series has been moved over there, the first part is now up and the other parts will be progressively added.

  • Managing Web Map tiles on a Debian computer, and other Webmap technical complexities

    Webmaps are a great tool for everyday use to view a map in a browser, and they are getting a lot of use from Google Maps and Open Street Maps down. What is not really seen in these technologies is some of the challenges that have to be overcome to produce them ready to go…

  • Social Housing Providers Must Protect Non-Residential Neighbours From Harrassment?

    Following up on our article about Housing NZ / Kainga Ora and Otautahi Community Housing Trust’s responsibilities to tenants, we have become aware that in the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act of 2010, Parliament sought to strengthen the requirements of the existing RTA by strengthening an existing requirement that tenants were not allowed to create disturbance…

  • Labour Health Sector Restructuring Credulity [1]

    This week the government announced the health sector will be reformed by abolishing 20 DHBs replacing them with four entities which are fully controlled by a new bureaucracy, “Health NZ”, based in Wellington. There will not be an elected membership as there currently is for the DHB system. The idea has received at best a…

  • Install mb-util on Debian

    I use a Python script called mb-util to build the mbtiles files for the NZ Rail Maps webmaps site. It takes the raw tiles and builds what is effectively a SQLite database that encapsulates the millions of little tiles into one file, which is much easier to handle for file storage and uploading, although slightly…

  • Welcome to the world of M.2 [2]

    Since last month writing about M.2 SSDs several have been installed in different computers. It has been found difficult to use them as a Linux boot device so regular SSDs still do these roles in computers. On an H97 board, six SATA ports went down to four when the M.2 SSD was installed, whereas on…

  • Welcome to the world of M.2

    M.2 is a standard for SSDs (Solid State Disks). As everyone knows, SSDs are starting to replace hard drives and have the advantage of much faster performance. They come in a number of different form factors and one of the first available was the same as the existing hard drives for laptops and using the…

  • Galaxy A12: After Six Weeks

    So I have owned this phone now for six weeks. It has been one of the very few times I have bought a phone that was a completely new model, but it was offered on special at just the right time when I needed to replace my existing phone and had the right combination of…

  • NZRM Webmaps Development Update 2021-03-17 [2]

    Part 1 of this series took a look at some of the technical history of developing the webmaps project. This part will discuss some of the present and future challenges in the NZ Rail Maps Webmaps. As the initial stage of putting all of NZ online in the webmaps is nearing completion, attention will soon…

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