0759 for the hidden Sky menu

This really falls under the “just so I know where to look next time I forget” category. With MySky, the “setup” menu is hidden from casual use (IIRC in both UTF Sky and Sky Digital it is not). To get to it, you go to the system settings menu and type 0759 (0SKY) and then select, and it takes you to the menu where you can change the satellite settings, do a fresh installation, and so on.

When we moved house, the theory was I could just pick up the MySky box and plug it in (there was already a satellite) and save $50. Unfortunately, this didn’t work. I was told that I could call their helpdesk and they would be able to help get past the “poor reception” error (which is indeed what I got). Unfortunately, the technician I spoke to couldn’t do much – in fact she had to put me on hold while she looked up the MySky settings (she started out trying to fix Digital – do they not have an indicator on the customer record that shows I have MySky?) and was clearly reading from a sheet – and a slightly inaccurate sheet at that (it missed a couple of menus, although I knew where to go).

At the end of the day, the tech on the phone couldn’t help. Although I could again get to the hidden menu, I had forgotten that MySky doesn’t offer a nice simple “choose the satellite” menu – instead you get to enter the frequency and angle yourself, which is information I don’t have. I’m so busy with work and unpacking that I figured that I’d just not bother trying anything else and let the tech fix it.

It turned out that it was a cable around the wrong way. However, this isn’t totally my fault – the satellite cable gets split and plugs into the MySky box twice. One lead is white and one is black. There are no indicators at all on the MySky box or the splitter that indicates that there is any difference between the two (no #1 and #2 or ‘white’ and ‘black’ or any markings at all). I’ve unplugged and re-connected MySky many times, and must have luckily picked the same place to plug each cable in, since apparently if you get them the wrong way around you get no signal.

Couldn’t the tech on the phone have mentioned this? Even just a “try swapping the black and white cables” would have sufficed. If I’d had more time to play around with things I would have disconnected everything and tried again, and might have randomly selected the right way around, but I didn’t have time for that. Even suggesting that, though, would have been something.

I guess they really want their $50 moving fee. For about 5 minutes of technician time. Bah.

iPhone works fine on prepay

The Vodafone NZ website clearly states that the iPhone (3G) will not be “available” on Prepay. For various reasons, I swapped the SIMs in my prepay Vodafone phone and our on-contract 3G iPhone last night. The iPhone worked without any problems at all with the Prepay SIM.

Phone calls and SMS worked fine, as did (as you would expect) all the non-phone features of the phone. I didn’t sync the phone, so it’s possible it’s disabled there, but that would be easy enough to work around if you had two SIMs as we do (and I doubt it actually is disabled there anyway). I didn’t try getting data (no plans are available for any Prepay customer, but the casual data is available) since we’re in a non-3G area, but I expect that also works.

Possibly by “available”, they mean “available to buy” – i.e. unless you have a contact with them they won’t sell you one. However, we bought ours outright and they didn’t even get my phone number IIRC, so they had no idea if I had a contract or not.

I guess they want to sell more contracts, but being honest wouldn’t really hurt that much, would it? They might even sell more phones, although maybe they don’t make much from that (I’m much more likely to get one if I can stick with my Prepay access).

MacBreak Weekly almost killed me

I’m working away, listening to episode 98 of MacBreak Weekly, and just as I happen to be taking a drink of water, Leo says something humourous in response to Scott (about 1:04:18 in), I involuntarily start to laugh, and start choking. It was not a pretty sight – the water had to go somewhere. I’m still coughing.

The show has some reasonable Mac analysis/tips, but it’s really the humour that makes it worth listening to. Just be careful drinking at the same time!

Hardly news, but: Vodafone NZ sucks

They finally (hard to believe they waited this long) released their iPhone plans (the website is barely up at the moment – they own the second largest ISP in NZ, and can’t handle a bit of load!).

I knew that the data would be expensive here, although I had a little hope when I saw the costs in Australia. This is much worse than I thought it would be, though. Are people really going to pay $250 per month?!? I guess so, but you’re excluding vast numbers of people that would be otherwise interested in this month.

My guess is that the cost is indirectly Apple’s fault. At the WWDC keynote, Jobs pointed out that the cost around the world would be as low as (or lower than) the new US price – no doubt Apple enforces this in their contracts with the providers. Vodafone NZ doesn’t want to sell the phone for $199, but has to, so simply raises the contract price until they get what they want out of it anyway.

This is twice as expensive as the US or even the complaining Canadians. And we have a reasonably decent 3G network, so the phone would have been useful here.

The “250” plan costs $2,619 for 24 months. For that, you get the phone, 120 minutes, 600 txts, and 250MB of data a month. I’d pay that, but 120 minutes isn’t enough (we used about 200 minutes last month), and 600 txts are barely enough (580 last month). It’s the data that breaks the deal – 250MB is about 8MB a day. IOW, barely enough to check email and use the map occasionally. My Zabbix status page is about 3MB. I could check it twice a day. Ridiculous.

The “500” plan costs $3719 for 24 months, and gives you the phone, 250 minutes, 600 txts, and 500MB of data a month (16MB a day). Perhaps enough data to use the phone as long as you were really careful and around accessible wifi a lot. But that’s a big jump in price.

The “1GB” plan (I can’t believe that’s the largest!) costs a whopping $6349 for 24 months (3 and a third brand new iMacs!). 600 minutes, 600 txts, and 1GB of data (32MB a day). Too many minutes, and still not enough data, although it’d be useable. But $250 per month? There’s no way that I can justify spending that, even as a business expense (I would be using it to check the status of servers while out).

A 2GB plan (paying the overage cost) costs $7069 for 24 months. 600 minutes, 600 txts, 2GB for $280 per month.

The other option is to stick with our current plan and add a data pack. We currently get 60 minutes, 600 txts and also have three “best mates” (unlimited txts, pxts and calls) for $46/month.

With the 200MB data plan added, the cost is $2950.75 for 24 months. That’s only just more expensive than the iPhone 250 plan, and would suit us much better (the best mates make all the difference). The difference between 8MB of data a day and 6.45MB of data a day is the difference between barely using the data and barely using the data.

With the 1GB data plan added, the cost is $3430.75 for 24 months. Less than the iPhone 500 plan! Twice the data for less money! What are they thinking? More importantly, what are the suckers that sign up for this thinking? Sure you get 120 minutes with the iPhone plan, but we have three best mates that account for vastly more than 60 minutes of call time. Given that most of the calls and a large proportion of our txts are to those three people, we get better value for exactly the same usage for close to half the price.

So: is it worth another $50 per month (and $1129 upfront) to have the iPhone? That’s a large chunk of money. It’s a great device, and we absolutely would use the GPS/mapping/data functionality that our iPod touch lacks. Lots of thinking in the next couple of days!

A final note: the iPhone itself is $1129, the iPod Touch is $449. $680 for GPS, calls, txts, and (for lots more money) data while not connected to wifi. Pretty steep.

Meterage

There was a lengthy discussion on this week’s TWiT about bandwidth metering; the topic was discussed on the Daily Source Code for a few episodes a while back too. Although Dvorak is often excessively inflammatory and I don’t always agree with what he says, this was a case where he was clearly right and everyone else (well, Leo really did all the talking) is wrong.

The biggest problem is that Leo is confusing two separate issues:

how much you pay for your Internet access, and
do you pay based on how much you use.

These are not the same thing! Does Leo really think that unlimited Internet usage will stay the same price forever? If the ISPs want to make more money, they just all put their prices up – they don’t need to muck about with changing how they charge people (which is much more work on their end).

I agree with Dvorak ‘s 8 reasons – but it really just comes down to #3 and #4. I should pay more than my parents do, because I’m using more.

The comparison to water is nice, but very flawed in that there isn’t a lot more that you can do with water. If I had “all you can drink” water for a single price, would I use more? Well, maybe a little – I guess people might have baths more than showers, and maybe pool usage would increase. People might waste less, although I doubt people that avoid wasting water now are really doing it to save a few dollars. Compare that to unlimited Internet access – there’s really no limit in sight as software gets larger, services move to the ‘cloud’, and audio and especially video online takes over from offline sources.

In the modern economy, are there any resources that are provided (other than those that nature provides) that are not metered? Over-the-air radio and TV aren’t, but there’s no consumption, either – no matter how many TVs I have receiving an over-the-air signal, the ability of my neighbour to receive the same signal is not effected. In NZ, local phone calls are unlimited, but that’s enforced for by the government, and from what I understand there’s little effect on my neighbour if I use the phone more (and again, there just isn’t room for much more use – there’s a strict 1440 minute limit per day per phone).

Electricity would perhaps be a better example – there’s an unlimited supply, and much closer to unlimited demand. (The unlimited supply comes from a willingness to spend money on nuclear/solar/hydro/wind/etc generators, but unlimited Internet access supply comes from spending money on fibre/cables/satellites/etc too). Is anyone arguing that electricity should be ‘all you can eat’?

Actually, my bandwidth is metered (from TelstraClear) – I’m not sure if there are any other ISPs in New Zealand that offer this. I pay a base rate (covering overheads) and then a fixed price per 10GB. There’s no limit to how many GB I can use, but I pay for each. There are problems here:

it’s not granular enough – it should be 1GB (you can meter in 1GB blocks, but the per-GB price is higher), and
the price is really too high compared to elsewhere in the world.

If those problems were fixed, however, I would still have no problem with metered pricing.

Leo tried to argue that there’s no cost to bits. While Dvorak argued this, I don’t think it came across just how wrong Leo is. It doesn’t matter how much peering goes on, somebody eventually has to pay for creating and maintaining the ‘pipes’ that the bits are moved through. Those pipes have a fixed capacity, which means that there’s limited supply. If there’s limited supply and limited demand, then the only fair solution is to charge based on the amount that is used.

I’m sure that the a chunk of the motivation on the ISP’s part is to be able to make more money – but they are aiming to make more money by being more fair. My argument is that the prices are going to rise anyway, so wouldn’t it be better to have things fair now?

Leo is concerned about the viability of services like TWiT Live and Revision3, since if people are paying for bandwidth they will be less likely to use it on Internet video (when over-the-air TV is still free). I don’t see that as an argument against metered bandwidth, though, but as an argument for lower pricing. Are people reluctant to turn on the tap to get a drink because that will increase their water bill? When do you ever hear “Sorry, honey, we can’t watch Lost tonight because the TV will use up extra electricity”? That’s because the per-unit cost of water and electricity is low enough that people don’t care about using a bit more.

Note that you do get people reducing waste water/electricity. If you’re not using a tap, you turn it off. Electronic devices have power-saving features (some people even turn their microwaves off when they aren’t using them, and so on). But that would be good for the Internet! What possible benefit is there from me leaving TWiT Live streaming on my computer when I’m not even there? Does Leo really want to pay (or have sponsors pay) the bandwidth for that sort of wastage? (This is Dvorak’s reason #8, which seems dubious until you think it through).

What Leo (et al) are arguing is that everyone (or perhaps everyone outside of business) should pay the same price for Internet access, no matter how much they use. I simply can’t agree with that.

Mahalo Daily Host Search (Follow Up)

Earlier, I gave my opinions about the six potential new co-hosts for Mahalo Daily. Since then, 3 were eliminated, then another, and now the final winner has been chosen, although who it is will only be announced tomorrow.

In terms of the first elimination, I agree with Jason’s comment that if you don’t turn up you don’t get the job. Unless there was a last minute family emergency or something like that, then you need to demonstrate a fanatical willingness to do the job to get the job in the first place. So, although I thought Nadine was the best choice, and Michelle was good, I agreed that eliminating them was the right thing to do. (From Jason’s comments, it’s obvious that Nadine wouldn’t have got through anyway. Hopefully she’ll turn up in something else that isn’t MySpace).

Dropping Sarah next was surprising – I expected that Kristina would go first, just based on experience (it really did seem like it would take a while for her to get up to the professional quality that Mahalo Daily seems to be aimed at). I ranked Sarah last, so that fit with me – she seems to have got something out of the experience, and if she & Lon do start a film podcast, it’s possible I’ll listen to that as well as Filmspotting.

Kristina was obviously going to go before Leah & Andrea. For all the “dark horse” comments, she clearly was not of the same quality as the others, and while she might well have got there after a while, it doesn’t seem like this is the right place to be learning those skills.

At this point, the “viral video” contest was introduced. I understand the reasoning behind this – the host does need to be able to be creative and imaginative, and hopefully “think outside the box”. Producing episodes that actually do spread would obviously also be great, since at least some viewers would start watching regularly. However, it was certainly a huge challenge – predicting what video will next catch the eye of the Internet masses is basically impossible. At least they didn’t base the winner on the number of YouTube views or something like that (although it would have been better to let the videos spread for a few days I think).

First to appear was Andrea’s Guitar Hero training video:

This was pretty disappointing, since I would have previously chosen Andrea over Leah. Problems:

Training videos (particularly Rocky-style) have been parodied hundreds of times already. Another training video parody is extremely unlikely to ‘go viral’, no matter how good it is.
There was too much repetition – some really wacky training scenes might have livened it up somewhat.
The ending was pretty disappointing. Jason suggested in the comments that having a guest appearance by Veronica Belmont would have been a good ending, and that indeed would have been great (especially if Veronica was gracious enough to record herself getting slammed by the newcomer).

On the good side, it showed off Andrea well (not just her looks, but the style she would bring), and it was well put together. Lon was used well, although not great.

Leah’s video was also, unfortunately, a parody, but of a music video:

This was a good video, and clearly much superior to Andrea’s. There were still problems:

It’s another parody. Aren’t we all done with parodies now? They are also such an easy choice. I realise there was a pretty limited timeframe, but making an unusual choice would have been great. Something really risky (i.e. it might bomb) since Jason made it clear it wasn’t about how popular it was, but about how creative. If you look at the viral videos that have been successful, many of them are appallingly bad on the surface. Without thinking about it much, I would have liked something like a fake Mahalo Daily blooper real (pick a dozen of Veronica’s shows and make up semi-realistic but very funny bloopers – perhaps a short guest appearance by Veronica herself), or some wacky science thing (like the Cola+Mentos stuff, or blowing things up – find a crazy science guy and you’ll get some good suggestion), or an original song (original lyrics at least), or some crazily dangerous physical stunt (perhaps looking much more dangerous than it actually was), or a completely over-the-top homage to something odd. I’m not the creative one, and yet even I wouldn’t have chosen a parody. The need to feature the contestant themselves (and possibly Lon and Mahalo somehow) did make it more of a challenge.
The video shows off Lon’s skills as a comedian (comedienne?) more than Leah’s. I would absolutely hire Lon based on this, but not necessarily Leah. There are a few moment where she does shine, but having her a bit more ‘center-stage’ would probably have suited the contest more. Her acting is also pretty weak, but that hardly matters for a hosting job.
Probably it’s just because it’s a parody, but I can’t imagine recommending watching this to anyone, and I have trouble seeing it have a great deal of ‘viral’ success either.
Gender-reversal jokes are funny, but they’ve been done to death, and it’s a stretch to take it to two and half minutes.

BTW, I think re-mixing this (is that permissible?) with popup video style additions would make this more humourous.

I think it’s pretty obvious that Leah will win (with a slight chance that both will be hired in some way). I hope that Andrea goes on to host something else I’m interested in, since I think she’d make a good host (although not good enough to watch something uninteresting!).

Overall, my compliments to all of the contestants, especially the final six. Despite the fact that I didn’t like them all as potential hosts, getting that far is clearly a remarkable achievement, and they all clearly have enough talent to succeed with something else.

Tekzilla

As suggested by Veronica Belmont herself, I checked out Tekzilla over the last week. In short: I’ve unsubscribed to the combined feed, but subscribed to the daily tips.

The show seems a lot like something you’d see on TV (or you would if NZ TV had any tech shows). I don’t enjoy watching those, so it’s not that surprising that I don’t like this (actually, I don’t think I watch any non-fiction on TV at all). The biggest problem probably is that it seems like it’s aimed at people reasonably unfamiliar with technology. So overall, if you do like watching TV tech shows, and you’re not all that tech-savvy, I think this would be a good show to watch.

Problems that I had with it:

It’s way, way, too long. It’s two to three times the length of CommandN, which I find too long. I just don’t have that much eye-time available.
I don’t know if it’s a deliberate style choice, or poor editing, or lack of practice, or something else, but seeing Patrick/Veronica change from looking at one camera to another is really irritating. I would much prefer either a single angle or an edit that changed angle but always had the host looking in the right direction.
Q&A style shows don’t interest me much, and it does seem to mostly be Q&A (I did only watch five of the full shows).
The quality of the shows on the iTunes feed is terrible. I’ve subscribed to the HD feed for the short shows, and that’s fine. I can see that there would be reasons to make the default a low-quality one, but it does give a bad impression first up (especially if you don’t realise that there are other options).
As above, the expected audience seems to be people much less familiar with how technology works than I am. Obviously this isn’t a problem with the show, it’s just a poor match for me.
I don’t mind commercials, but the ones they have seem extremely US-centric (do people in the US really not wear seatbelts? We learnt to “make it click” like 20 years ago!), which is annoying.

That said, I think the hosts are both good (and I do think Veronica is better here than on Mahalo Daily, although I think she’s better still when she guests on TWiT), and the intro & outro are good also (catchy music, short, reasonable graphics). The daily tips are also pretty good – most are things I already know or aren’t interested in, but they are short enough and well-done enough that I’ll watch 20 of them to get a single useful tip.

There is such a thing as “polite”

In my post rating the potential Mahalo Daily co-hosts, Veronica Belmont herself (presumably!) had this to say:

But on another note, geez… your comments are pretty jerky. These women are trying really hard to make a great show, cut them a little slack. It’s not the easiest thing in the world.

I couldn’t fit a reply nicely in a comment (as always, I am too verbose), and I figured that this was worth a separate post, since it applies to other things I write (and it’s not often that a tiny personal blog like this gets a comment from a celebrity – although if Sarah does win, then I guess it was four times today!).

Before I get to reviewing my own comments (blogging’s highest form, I suppose), comments in general: I don’t feel that it is my place to cut them any slack. Calacanis asked for ratings with considered thoughts, and that’s what this was. I have no doubt that it’s a challenging task (if it wasn’t, then they shouldn’t bother), nor that they are all making their best attempt, and I didn’t say either of those things.

When I teach, I give my students honest feedback about what they have done poorly, and what they have done well. If I sugar-coated my responses (or cut them any slack), then I would be doing them a disfavour, as well as anyone that uses their eventual qualifications (e.g. employers). It can be abrasive, but it also spurs development and improvement (and in general (but with exceptions) students rate my teaching highly, at least as far as I know). I expect this feedback from my students, also: either the comments are valid and I endeavour to make changes so that future students benefit from my enhanced skills, or they’re not valid and I don’t worry about them. I expect, give, and receive, this feedback in other work I do as well.

In the “real world”, people often consider me blunt, abrasive, or rude. Some people get to know me, and then they realise that, yes, I am (well, not rude). But it’s never malicious, unconsidered, or untruthful, and reciprocation is always welcome. I have friends (and a wife of nearly five years), even given this personality trait.

My assumption (could be wrong, of course) is that the comment mostly applies to my comment about Sarah (personally, I think the comments about CommandN and Veronica were the least fair, since I didn’t elaborate on either). My comments on Nadine, Leah, and Andrea’s episodes were nearly all positive, and the negative was something minor that could be worked on.

My criticism of Michelle – the hair flick is constructive criticism (it should go), the laugh perhaps unfair (but it bothered me personally, and this was a personal response), and I think my feeling about the enthusiasm has the same source as comments from other people about “professionalism”. I didn’t say that it was fake (that would have been unfair), but that it came across that way. My guess (personal response, remember) is that she could be more natural and it would be a better show, or that she’s just suited better elsewhere.

My criticism of Kristina echoes that of nearly everyone, including the official judges. Considering that I’d (probably) watch her in some other show, I can’t see this as “jerky”.

So that leaves Sarah:

Easily the worst. The comments talk a lot about “energy” (meaningless drivel, really). There are three problems: (1) the interviewing skills are terrible (evident in the over-editing, if nowhere else), (2) the facial expressions are off-putting, and (3) frankly, she just isn’t ‘hot’ enough – realistically, the show needs an extremely attractive host (especially if co-hosting with Lon) and while Sarah is pretty, she’s not that hot. Picking a “suck-up” topic doesn’t help.

Personally, the “energy” comments seem more “jerky” to me, since they’re too vague to be of use. I could have elaborated on the interviewing skills, I suppose, but I already commented on her individual episode (which it’s logical to assume she read). If I had said her face was off-putting, then that would have been “jerky”, but “facial expressions” is not; to me personally the expressions distracted from the content.

Beauty, as the cliché goes, is in the eye of the beholder. This is my personal blog, so thankfully I don’t have to prefix IMO to everything I write. However, IMO Sarah is pretty, but not hot. Clearly many people disagree with that (possibly including some/all of the official judges). Commenting on people’s attractiveness is often considered impolite (ironically, more so when the commentee may know of it), but realistically, it’s a huge factor here (and the judges opened the door on such comments in the earlier episodes). To throw in another cliché, beauty is only skin deep: while I don’t find Sarah attractive, that says nothing about how I find her as a person (again, IMO, but vastly more important).

The topic really did seem chosen to insincerely ingratiate herself with the audience. Reading her personal blog entry, which I did after writing my post, it seems a little less so (but the audience can’t be expected to follow her elsewhere). I think it was a poor choice in that regard.

Was I impolite? Well, politeness is a cultural thing – I don’t feel I was, but perhaps in the Mahalo Vlog Idol culture, maybe I needed a “sorry Sarah” at the end to make it polite. I guess the subtitle of this post is then, “but it’s not me”. Personally, I would consider myself polite, even though (perhaps especially because) I am directly honest.

Bottom-line: if I offended Sarah (or Veronica, or Amber, or whoever is responsible for the quality (or lack thereof) of YouTube videos), then I apologise: such was not my intent. However, I believe that my comments were appropriate, and not inherently offensive, demeaning, or “jerky”, and accurate (as a reflection on my personal opinion).

Footnote: the title of the post references a tweet from Veronica, which is quite possibly completely unrelated to this, but seemed appropriate.

Mahalo Vlog Idol

Update: There’s now a proper place to vast a real (presumably non-binding) vote. Go to it!

I listen to a lot of different podcasts, but watch very few (I have a lot of ear-time free, but not much eye-time).

Apple’s Quick Tip of the Week is extremely short and although I know the majority of the tips already, I can spare a minute to possibly learn something new (I don’t know why they target it at business users).
I have watched CommandN much longer than any other. It borders on being too long for my taste, and is often more mediocre than great, but it’s good enough to continue with for now (and the last couple of episodes have had much better video quality). I would drop this first.
I love Geekbrief.TV. Great host, great length, good content. I would drop this last.
MacBreak (video): The video quality is great, but the intros are really far too long. There needs to be more content than intro+outro! The really short shows that cover events are often the best. Many of the hosts are not that great – sticking with Alex and a couple of others would work fine.
Mahalo Daily: I’ve never really understood the attraction people have for Veronica Belmont. Maybe you have to be familiar with her from previous work (which I’m not) or something. The first 100 shows were a mixed bag – some good, some awful – but they were at least the right length and well produced.

The astonishing thing about Mahalo Daily is that their search for a new (co)host has produced more compelling viewing than the show itself previously was. I’m not a fan of [Country] Idol, The Bachelor, etc, but Mahalo Vlog Idol (not a great name) has been funny, entertaining, and even informative. I don’t care how long they stretch it out for (and it has been a while already!) – it’s good watching.

One of the baffling things about the contest has been the judges’ picks – my suspicion is that there are elements of the contestants that don’t show up well on camera, and the judges have so far been judging more on the live aspects of the contestants than solely watching what we the audience see. A couple of people got through that really just seemed very low quality.

The first round ([Country] Idol style), and second round (“The Batchelon”) were solely judged (as far as we know) by Jason, Alex, and Loren (who is he?). For the third round, where each contestant created their own Mahalo Daily episode, the audience has been asked to offer their opinion about how everyone did (although this clearly won’t be binding). Perhaps with the last round, there will be real voting?

FWIW, my opinions are (ranked best to worse – and you should subscribe to the show, rather than watch these crap Youtube quality versions):

Nadine would be a perfect choice for next host. She has a great look, distinct from Veronica, but still in the “Mahalo” style. She’s exceptionally attractive, and produced a great episode. Like Leah, there’s a variety of people interviewed, which helps make a more interesting episode, and there are really good popups. There were a couple of weak spots in the middle, but they didn’t detract from the episode, and generally the interviewing was good. She feels like she brings in a style already; more so than the others.

I vacillated between Leah and Nadine as #1 – they’re really equally as good. All I could come up with as a deciding factor was that Nadine is slightly ‘hotter’ than Leah (although both easily ‘hot’ enough). The episode felt a little ‘infomercialish’, but was generally good. Well produced, with good popups, but the voice-over felt stilted and ‘read’, rather than natural.

I think the next round should have three contestants, and so Andrea should go through. I really liked this, and she’s a good host, but the environment made it hard to really tell what she would be like in other sorts of episodes. A brave topic choice, and she’s certainly ‘hot’ enough to be the host (the criteria being ‘hotter than Veronica’, I guess!). Great rapport with the interviewee, good ‘popups’, but the questions weren’t that interesting. I’d definitely continue to watch daily with Andrea as host.

I wouldn’t be disappointed if Michelle got through to the next round, but I do think her episode wasn’t quite as good as those above. The hair-flick is annoying, the laugh is a little annoying, and the enthusiasm seemed almost fake. On the other hand, it was very well produced.

I would like to like Kristina more – there’s something appealing about her – but I just can’t rank this higher. An interesting topic, and interesting content, but the episode just didn’t ‘pop’. Her interviewing skills aren’t really up to scratch. I’d consider watching her in some other show, but she doesn’t fit Mahalo Daily, IMO.

Easily the worst. The comments talk a lot about “energy” (meaningless drivel, really). There are three problems: (1) the interviewing skills are terrible (evident in the over-editing, if nowhere else), (2) the facial expressions are off-putting, and (3) frankly, she just isn’t ‘hot’ enough – realistically, the show needs an extremely attractive host (especially if co-hosting with Lon) and while Sarah is pretty, she’s not that hot. Picking a “suck-up” topic doesn’t help.

Massey Weirdness

While looking through links for my previous post, I found this one – which caught my eye in particular because it has my old postal address (also weird – Google maps used to show the house, but now I can’t see it, even though the neighbours are there, and so is the lake. Has the imagery got older?!). I’m not sure why I’m listed here (pretty much everything else seems to be a business, although I didn’t look thoroughly) – maybe from when I was providing theatrical services to Massey, although I did that under “Underground Services” (the theatre was named the Underground Theatre).

The information at the top seems to always be about veterinary products, but maybe that has something to do with the flashing (good grief!) “test site” at the top of the page. I would think that Massey would have the skills available, somewhere, to make test sites (and, really, the purchasing system in general) hidden from the public and from Google.