Category Archives: Uncategorized

Case Fatality vs Mortality Rates in Covid-19

By | March 13, 2020

I’m still seeing a lot of confusion around mortality rate figures for Covid-19. There are three figures worth understanding. The first is the case fatality rate (CFR). It measures the proportion of cases of a disease that result in fatality. To calculate it, take the number of fatalities and divide it by the sum of… Read More »

2020 – New Years Goals

By | January 27, 2020

I don’t usually do New Years resolutions. I’ve dabbled with them in the past, but they’ve always been vague ideals that I didn’t write down, didn’t track, and had no help of understanding my progress towards, let alone achieving. This year, I’m going to try applying SMART criteria to the process. For the uninitiated, this… Read More »

On Suicide (and shootings)

By | March 15, 2019

I was already in a grim frame of mind this evening when I heard about the shootings in Christchurch. I’m not ready to talk about them, but I wanted to write about the other thing. Someone I know committed suicide just recently. I didn’t know them particularly well, but they are the third person in… Read More »

Musings on creativity, passion, and conviction

By | June 18, 2017

I often wonder at people who are artistic, who have sudden bursts of creativity and desire to make something beautiful or whatever. I don’t have quite that same impulse – I don’t see something aesthetic and decide I want to make something similar; instead, I see something made and desire to have mastered the techniques… Read More »

3D High Frame Rate film

By | January 9, 2013

Well, that was interesting. I just saw The Hobbit in 3D High Frame Rate. Ignoring the plot, design, acting and so on for a moment, I was struck by the 3D response I got. Normally, I have monoscopic vision due to my extremely far-sighted left eye, so seeing something recognizably 3D was really surprising. It… Read More »

Paralympics 2012

By | September 8, 2012

I’m far more inspired by these photos from the Paralympics than I was by anything I saw from the Olympics. There’s something much more moving about athletes overcoming physical adversity to even participate let alone win their events. Some highlights: high jump with only one leg table tennis with irregularly formed hands archery with feet… Read More »

RSS feed error

By | September 7, 2012

Urgh. Just noticed the RSS feed URLs for this blog were wrong, and have been for at least 2 years. A copy and paste error when building the current site theme.

Avon Reserve

By | September 3, 2012

There was a short opinion piece in the Press the other day about plans for the Avon River as Christchurch rebuilds. Read it here. The plan they’re talking about is broadly that espoused by the Avon-Otakoro Network, and envisions rejuvenating the damaged lands along the river (where much of the heaviest quake damaged land is)… Read More »

Musical nonsense phrases

By | August 29, 2012

Last month saw PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ video break big online. If you’ve not seen it, you should. The music’s catchy, and they clearly had far too much fun making the music video. Go on, watch it. After a few days’ trouble keeping it out of my head, I took a look into some of his… Read More »