To comply with the law

I am temporarily turning on comment moderation on this site. You can still leave a comment, but it won’t be posted until after 7pm Saturday NZDT (1AM Saturday EST). I’m doing this to comply with New Zealand election law, which, apparently, mandates that I turn off comments (even though the law was enacted in 1993…). I will re-enable comments after the New Zealand polls have closed, and will update this post to confirm that as happened.

Update 26/11/11: Now that the polls have closed, comments are once again unmoderated, so they will post immediately (unless you’re a first-time commenter, in which case it will still need to be approved). Thank you for your patience.

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AmeriNZ 270 – Not in service

This is my last chance to post a podcast episode before the New Zealand elections. Because there have been several episodes in which I’ve talked about the election, I’ll turn on full comment moderation at or before midnight on Friday until the polls close at 7pm on Saturday, this to comply with New Zealand election law. You can still leave comments, but I won’t post them until after the polls close.

The title for today’s episode refers to the trouble I recently had with my podcast, as well as my recent jury service.

Next week I’ll finish talking about the election when I go over the results and what happens next. Soon, I’m going to revist old episodes I did on moving to New Zealand. Curious about any aspect of moving to New Zealand? Let me know!

Links for this episode
Final thoughts on the referendum – my blog post summing up my discussion of New Zealand’s referendum on our voting system.
Opinion polling for the New Zealand general election, 2011 – Wikipedia

Please leave a comment, ring my US Comment Line on 206-666-5172, or send an email to arthur{at]amerinzpodcast.com.

Get AmeriNZ Podcast for free on iTunes

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Repairs complete

Yesterday I received an email from a listener asking about access to old episodes, and that reminded me: I never finished my repair project. Last night, I did.

Last year I upgraded WordPress and podPress, which together power my podcast, and in so doing my audio files were all unlinked from the posts they were part of. This meant that they couldn’t be downloaded or listened to through the player in each post.

It happened because a setting had changed, and all I had to do to fix it was to add the complete file path name to each audio and video file. “All” I had to do—there were already a couple hundred to deal with!

Initially, I re-lnked all the files for 2010 episodes, as well as December of 2009. But apart from a few old episodes (and all video files), I just stopped. Then, I became distracted (as I often do) and forgot all about it. That email changed things.

So, last night I took a few hours and finished that project. I think that all files are now linked, but if you find one that’s not playable, just let me know. I also cleaned up a few things left over from moving the posts to this site: I fixed a few typos, added tags, those kinds of things. Someday I should clean up the posts themselves.

One addition some people may find useful is that I added political episodes of AmeriNZ Podcast with Jason to the 2Political category; those episodes eventually led to our 2Political Podcast, so I thought it made sense to make them more easily available. Categories are listed in the upper left of this site.

And that’s it. Thanks to an email, this site is back to full functionality—I hope…

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AmeriNZ 269 – A fighting chance

I was determined to post a second episode last week, but the fates did not allow. This episode was recorded on Thursday, November 10, 2011. I mostly mention a bit more about the upcoming NZ election, and also go over some feedback, which lets me talk about other topics. I borrowed a podcaster’s bumper music for this episode—and yet, it hasn’t been played on a single podcast. Ah, a cryptic riddle! While I won’t use the bumper again, I will explain the riddle next episode.

I recorded this last Thursday afternoon, then attempted to post it later that evening. However, FileZilla, my FTP software, suddenly couldn’t connect to this site (I have no idea why), so I tried to upload manually through the web, which I finally figured out how to do Friday morning (it’s been years since I’ve done that…). That also didn’t work. After some unhelpful customer non-service from my host, Nigel suggested different FTP software, Cybeduck, and that, finally worked. I still have no idea why FileZilla suddenly stopped working, or why I couldn’t upload through the webhost’s own website.

All of which just goes to show that I’m probably the single most dedicated podcaster who doesn’t podcast very regularly.

Link for this episode
Four new volcanoes found under Auckland
Blog: why Auckland’s quake was news – from last July
Polling bias among local pollsters? – via Sciblogs
Numbers and reality – from my blog
Opinion polling for the New Zealand general election, 2011 – Wikipedia

Please leave a comment, ring my US Comment Line on 206-666-5172, or send an email to arthur{at]amerinzpodcast.com.

Get AmeriNZ Podcast for free on iTunes

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Indefinite hiatus

The upload problem with this site still hasn’t been resolved. The site’s hosting company says it must be a problem with my firewall, even though there have been no changes to those settings, despite the fact that I was able to upload only a few days earlier, and despite the fact that even now I can upload to my other site hosted by the same company (and yes, I told them all that when I filed the incident report).

So, at the moment, I still can’t upload any new AmeriNZ Podcast episodes. Apparently, WordPress (which is what this site basically is) allows me to upload a file no larger than 8MB, which would be a very short episode. I haven’t tried that to see if it actually works or is similarly affected. I could also probably upload the audio files elsewhere and link to them here, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having this site.

Until this is resolved, or until I can change hosts (whichever comes first), the AmeriNZ Podcast is on an indefinite hiatus. If this continues more than a few days, I may try the methods I mentioned above, and I may put out a few Audioboos in the meantime (if you go to my Audioboo profile, there’s a button you can click on to subscribe to my Audioboos through iTunes; the RSS feed for my Audioboos is http://audioboo.fm/users/46668/boos.rss ).

I suppose there’s some sort of irony in that this all happened in week in which I was finally able to record two episodes. I just find it incredibly frustrating and annoying.

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Episode cancelled

I recorded an episode yesterday, but I couldn’t upload it using my FTP software. So, this morning I tried uploading through the host’s website—five times. It wouldn’t upload. So, until I have time to make an international long distance phone call to try to sort it out, I won’t be posting any audio or video files. Damn. I actually managed a second episode this week! Grr.

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AmeriNZ 268 – A Monday Episode

I didn’t have a chance to podcast last week, so I thought I’d record on a Monday for a change. I talk a little bit about news stuff, mainly the two recent non-holidays, one of which is introduced with a voicemail. Then, another phone comment introduces the next topic: The New Zealand election. Finally, another phone comment introduces the final topic: Who is New Zealand to get to do the haka before international rugby matches? A final written comment rounds out this episode.

Link for this episode
Greens vote could put Labour in Government – Key – New Zealand Herald
Opinion polling for the New Zealand general election, 2011 – Wikipedia
Aah speet on your haka, you feelthy Kiwi peegs – Anthony Sharwood, The Punch

Please leave a comment, ring my US Comment Line on 206-666-5172, or send an email to arthur{at]amerinzpodcast.com.

Get AmeriNZ Podcast for free on iTunes

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