Wests Fruit Cocktail

(Post theme: Taste (covered) by Daisy Grenade)

Last time: Hakanoa Dry Ginger Beer, this time Wests Fruit Cocktail.

This comes in a plastic bottle, unfortunately, but a reasonable size, 350ml. I’ve never seen or heard of this before doing some random searches for drinks online. As usual, no issues with having rural post deliver some, though.

I believe the flavour is meant to be some sort of generic fruit punch. It tasted to me a bit like a nicer Fanta (Orange), but not so much that I’m in a hurry to try it again. I forgot to try it with ice, but it was fine just fridge-chilled.

I doubt I would have this again, unless there wasn’t much else on offer. 5.1/10.

Hakanoa Dry Ginger Beer

(Post theme: Rain by Dragon)

Last time, Aroha Sparkling Feijoa, this time Hakanoa Dry Ginger Beer.

This comes in a glass bottle with a twist top, a decent 330ml. I had never seen or heard of this before it was featured in the Spinoff Ginger Beer Ranking (spoiler: it came second, behind my favourite ginger beer, which won’t be reviewed here since it’s Australian). Once again, though, no issues with having it delivered, even with rural post.

The bottle’s label has the tagline “the way it used to be”, and that feels pretty accurate to me. Dad would regularly brew ginger beer when I was a kid, and I even did for a few years in my early twenties. This tastes a lot like I remember that tasting (more Dad’s than mine; I was never great at it). The ginger beer of my youth was maybe a touch sweeter, but this is still way more like that than any other commercial ginger beer I can recall.

So perhaps it’s a bit of nostalgia, but I do very much enjoy this drink. It hasn’t taken my number one ginger beer spot, but it’d be the top local one, and probably second overall. Good with ice, but I like it most straight from the bottle.

I’d happily have this again, and would love to see it available in more places, like local cafes, restaurants, and service stations. 8.3 / 10.

Aroha Sparkling Feijoa

(Post theme: Oh My by Gin Wigmore)

Last time, Karma Drinks (Apple), this time Aroha Sparkiling Feijoa.

This comes in a glass bottle with a regular cap; once more a great start. 330ml, so we’re finally at a decent volume. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in a cafe, service station, or supermarket, unfortunately — I’m sure I would have tried it if so — but once again, no troubles with getting this delivered with rural post.

I really love the taste of feijoa (and it has a really interesting history, particularly how it became more-or-less our national fruit, despite most of the world not knowing about it, and even in its countries of origin not being as loved as here. The true taste of Easter, some say). However, I’m not a big fan of eating the fruit itself; I love the flavour in food and drink.

As such, it’s not surprising that I love this drink. Feijoa is often paired with apple or pear, but this is straight feijoa, and has a very honest feijoa taste, without being overpowering. It has one of the softest mousse I’ve experienced in a soft drink – there’s enough there that you can tell it’s sparkling, but nothing more.

It’s good over ice, but I think best straight from a well chilled bottle.

I remember a feijoa (and something, probably apple?) drink that has been discontinued (and apparently wiped from the internet as I can find no history of it, and no it is not the Macs one with pear and elderflower). I really loved that, and I think it might still be my favourite non-alcoholic (for alcohol, see Lothlorien) feijoa drink, but it’s hard to compete with a memory, and this one might actually be better.

I would happily drink this any time (still rating I guess, so 10/10).

Karma Drinks – Apple Juice

(Post theme: Karma by Taylor Swift)

Last time, Foxton Fizz (Pineapple), this time: Karma Drinks, Apple Juice.

This comes in a glass bottle with a regular cap, which is again a great start. Aluminium is ok, but glass is almost always nicer, and it is convenient to be able to close it again, although 300ml makes that unlikely. 300ml is, for me, a bare minimum volume, so Karma just squeaks in there.

The Karma drinks are quite widely available in cafes in my experience, but I don’t generally see them in supermarkets or service stations. I ordered online, which worked perfectly, even with rural delivery. (I do wonder if my postie is annoyed at how many large/heavy parcels I get, or likes that these contribute to the continued existence of the rural post service.)

I find it strange that fruit juices are typically vague about exactly which variety they are. Why “Apple Juice” and not a specific variety of apple? I imagine it’s because it’s some mix, but I doubt there is a lot of variation because that would significantly change the taste and customers wouldn’t like that (and I’ve never noticed it). Saying it’s a blend of variety x, y, and z would work fine. This one is a vague as most: it’s just “apple” (from concentrate).

The taste is fine. It’s not the best of apple juices, but it’s pleasant. Probably a green apple, not super crisp but quite mellow. Good straight or over ice.

Karma has a gimmick that they donate to good causes (hence the name). I have no idea (and no inclination to research) how significant this is, but it’s a nice thought. I imagine this is a significant reason they’re a feature in so many cafes. It’s a nice bonus, but I wouldn’t choose one of their drinks over a different, better tasting one, because of it.

Overall, I would drink this if other superior juices were not available (am I scoring? If so, 6/10).

Foxton Fizz – Pineapple

(Post theme: Soda Pop from K-Pop Demon Hunters)

Backstory: I love trying new (non-alcoholic) drinks. One of my most favourite things about travelling for work is being able to go through a supermarket in a new country and try out all the new (to me) things they have. I also love supporting local (for the purposes here: New Zealand) businesses, particularly small ones, so extra love trying new, local, drinks. But I struggle to remember the drink I tried months ago, both whether or not I’ve tried it, and how much I enjoyed it. So I’m writing them up. These aren’t really reviews, because unless you share my taste, your results will vary.

First up: Foxton Fizz, Pineapple.

This comes in a glass bottle with a twist top, which is a great start. I’m not sure if aluminium or glass is most sustainable, but glass has a nicer feel, and the twist top acknowledges that this is not a drink for multiple sessions. That’s the first negative: it’s 250ml, which is just too small.

It’s a bit tricky to find here – I don’t see it in cafes or service stations (I’m in Auckland – when I drive through Foxton, I see ads all over the place, naturally), and it’s not in Woolworths, but is in New World. However, you can order online and have it delivered, and that’s worked great, even though I’m a rural delivery.

I don’t know why, but it has an extremely nostalgic taste. It seems unlikely I was drinking this as a child in Kaitaia (soft drink wasn’t common, and it’s the opposite end of the island). Maybe something I did have then was a similar taste?

It’s sweet, but not too much so. There is a pineapple taste, but it’s not really what you get drinking actual pineapple juice. Closer than a Pineapple Lump, though. Good either straight or over ice.

It has a great mousse – almost no foam, even over ice or other textured surfaces, and a very smooth feel in the mount.

Overall, I love this drink and would happily have it any time. (I’m not sure if I’m going to rate things in this series, but if so, 10/10).

Review: Help! I Have a Manager! – Wizard Zines

(Post theme: Talk by Coldplay)

Next up in the Wizard Zines set is an odd one, not being particularly technical, and I think one of the earlier ones: Help! I Have a Manager, which is all about building good relationships with your manager.

Like Julia, I’ve had several good or great managers, and a few not so much. I have found them all very different, so page 16, which is all about this, really resonated. Other than that, this was pretty much all advice I’d seen elsewhere and/or picked up naturally. For someone really early career, this might be worthwhile, but I’d skip it otherwise.

Unlike the other zines, this one (at least the PDFs, when viewed in Apple Books) had weird spacing issues where text had odd gaps and sometimes had overlaid characters. Not enough to prevent reading the zine, but enough that it doesn’t feel polished like the others.

Review: Bite Size Bash – Wizard Zines

(Post theme: Hall of Fame (feat. will.i.am) by The Script)

As mentioned previously, I purchased the set of Wizard Zines via my annual training budget, and am working through them. Current reading: Bite Size Bash.

The first 20 pages surprised me – I don’t consider myself particularly knowledgeable in terms of bash (or similar shell scripting) but pretty much everything in the basics I’ve managed to somehow pick up over the last couple of decades, despite usually jumping pretty quickly into another tool whenever my needs get above simple. It is a great intro, though, and I would have benefited having this at hand years back.

On page 20, parameter expansion is introduced. Most of this was either new to me, or I think I’ve seen but certainly wouldn’t remember to use. I’m not sure how to make this stick, though – the syntax is so odd. Maybe I should just jump to this page next time I’m writing bash, or maybe I’ll remember that it can be done and that will be enough to look it up or remember. I do wonder if LLM will replace this sort of learned syntax, though.

After that, it was background processes and subshells, both of which were again surprisingly familiar. After that is trapping signals – I knew this could be done, but I’m pretty sure by the time I have something that needs to do this, I’ve already moved to another language, and I don’t see that changing. Errors and debugging were also mostly things I knew, except for ‘trap x DEBUG’, which seems pretty handy.

Overall, this zine surprised me: I expected to learn a lot, and instead recognised a lot. In some ways, this is great: I feel more confident that I do actually know the most useful core of shell scripting (even though certainly not the vast area beyond that). I’d definitely recommend it for shell scripting beginners (especially bash) but likely not for others.

Review: Become a SELECT Star – Wizard Zines

(Post theme: Call Off the Search by Katie Melua)

As part of my training allowance for 2024, I purchased all 14 of Julia Evan‘s zines. There are definitely ones I expect to learn from more than others, but having the pack appealed, and one of the things I really enjoy about her posts is finding little tidbits of information that I didn’t know, even though I would have said I know the topic fairly well in general.

First up: Become a SELECT Star, which, as you’d guess from the title, is all about the SELECT statement in SQL. The first dozen pages are a really good summary of the fundamentals: things that I gradually absorbed over the last 20 or so years, and probably would have been better off with having a summary like this rather than a bunch of more traditional reference material.

I really like how the examples work through the query in the logical order rather than the syntax order. It makes it much simpler to follow what’s happening.

On pages 14-16, it covers window functions, which I didn’t really know at all. I would normally just do this by getting a bunch of the data down into something like Python and calculating there. I’m a big fan of moving computation left where possible, so these seems super useful, and something I hope I remember (although I don’t do a huge amount of SQL these days).

The zine continues on to cover NULL and COALESCE, which we used a lot at SpamExperts, so those were pretty familiar, but again a good summary that I could have used many years back! It then covers CASE, and I don’t remember if I knew that or not, but also don’t think I can think of times I would have wanted it directly in SQL.

After a straightforward page on counting rows, it moves into subqueries. I’ve used these quite often (I’ve often had situations where subquery performance was better than joining, for various reasons). However, common table expressions (naming sub queries) is new to me, and look super useful.

It wraps up with a few more useful tips, most of which were things I already knew.

I’d definitely recommend this to anyone that’s just starting with SQL. If you’re a SQL expert, it’s likely not going to be useful, but if you’re a casual querier like myself, then there are good tips to pick up, and given how small and inexpensive the zine is, I’d highly recommend picking it up.

Review: The Map of Tiny Perfect Things

(A while back The Spinoff asked for suggestions for best book-to-film adaptations, and this was my suggestion. Post theme song: If You Think This Is Real Life by Blossums).

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (2021, streaming on Prime Video) is based on a short story (of the same name) in the anthology book Summer Days & Summer Nights (edited by Stephanie Perkins). In general, I find short stories produce better film adaptations than novels do.

It’s a great story – a modern (and much better) version of Groundhog Day. It’s romantic, deeper than you first think, and has fun playing with time-loop tropes. (Mild spoiler, sorry) it also has a truly wonderful moment when both the narrator and the reader realise that the story isn’t actually about him at all.

The film takes all of this and is true to all the important parts, but also improves on some of the weaker parts of the story. Kathryn Newton (Little Big Lies, Supernatural) and Kyle Allen (West Side Story, The Path) bring their characters to life perfectly. Director Ian Samuels’s style is clearly there, but it’s not as odd as Myrna the Monster and a stronger story than Sierra Burgess.

The author, Lev Grossman, has other adaptations (e.g. The Magicians) but both source material and adaption aren’t as good as The Map of Tiny Perfect Things.

Anyway, if you know the film I assume you also love it. If you know the story, I strongly recommend the film. If you haven’t read the book, it’s worth it just for this story, but some of the others in the anthology are ok as well, particularly if you’re looking for a light, romantic, read. If you don’t know the film or the book, definitely add it to your watch list.

SkyTV iOS App

The SkyTV iOS app is free, and I rarely use it, but on occasion is is very handy. The application is mostly a TV Guide – since SkyTV refuses to let anyone else have their listings, but they do have all the free-to-air channels, it’s clearly the best guide. However, I don’t really have much use for a guide, because I’m never looking for something to watch (everything I’m interested in is scheduled to record).

Where the app is occasionally useful is that it can be connected to your MySKY box, and you can remotely schedule a program to be recorded. This is essential for those times when you’re away from home and remember that a new program is starting in a few hours and you forgot to schedule it. The scheduling is limited (e.g. you can’t set up a series link), but it’s good enough for these situations.

As you’d expect from SkyTV, the process of setting this up is incredibly painful. You need to enter your SkyTV account details and the unique ID of the smart card in the MySKY box, and although this should be a smooth process, it never works first time – and then, without anything being done at all, will ‘magically’ start working at some later date (I’m guessing that the linking process takes time, and the app fails to tell the user this, leading them to believe they did something wrong).

Once it is finally set up, though, it’s very simple to use – just find the program you’re interested in recording and a few taps later it’s scheduled. Test it at home first, of course! (But not right away, because, as above, it doesn’t appear to work until a few hours have passed since the initial setup).

If you’ve got MySKY and an iOS device, then this is absolutely an app that you should have installed (it is free, after all!). If you don’t have MySKY, but you do want to use a TV Guide on iOS, then this is the more comprehensive one for New Zealand listings, so (again given that it’s free), it’s worth having.

Note that the app doesn’t offer any sort of iSKY (on demand video) access. It would be extremely nice if that was added in the future, but I’m skeptical that it will be.