My delivery from Whisky Galore was dispatched via PBT who have online package tracking. When the delivery was signed for they uploaded the signature to that tracking page.
Amy, I know you took delivery of the whisky.
My kids
Contexts in OmniFocus
I recently returned to using OmniFocus, possibly the best implementation of GTD I’ve seen. The software has a bunch of contexts configured by default. Two of them were irritating me.
- Mac
- Mac - Online
The intent is clear. Put actions into the “Mac” context that just require your computer. The “Mac - Online” context is for actions where you need to be online.
But this doesn’t fit well with how I work. 95% of the time I’m within range of the Internet. 80% of the time my work requires me to be online. It felt wrong to put my day-to-day work into the “Online” context.
My solution was to invert the default “Mac - Online” context. So now I have a specific context for “offline” work, which is far less frequent. This allows me to go somewhere without connectivity and ask my system “What actions can I do here without Internet access?”. So far it has worked well for me, without the nagging irritation of the default contexts.
The argument against plain packaging of tobacco
This argument is a direct copy from the death-merchant lobby site, AgreeDisagree.co.nz. I guess I don’t need to hide my point of view here, so lets commence with the fisking.
There’s no proof that plain packaging would reduce smoking rates in New Zealand.
I’m confident it will not increase smoking rates, and there is a chance it will lead to a reduction.
Intellectual property is one of the most valuable assets of any business. Our brands are our intellectual property, which we have created and in which we have invested. Plain packaging would deprive us of the right to use our brands.
If you invest heavily in branding which encourages molestation of infants I’m comfortable with the government denying you the ability to use it. “But we spent money!” isn’t a strong argument.
Plain packaging would infringe New Zealand’s international obligations, damage its strong trading reputation and expose the country to legal challenges.
I forget, is this extortion or blackmail? Bring it on.
Plain packaging would make packs easier to counterfeit. A growth in the illegal market would reduce the Government’s excise revenue, expose New Zealand consumers to cheap, low quality, unregulated tobacco products, and fuel a rise in criminal activity.
So right now the only thing standing between civil society and chaos is the fact that bootleg tobacco growers haven’t invested in a colour printer?
If plain packaging is implemented, adult consumers would no longer have the freedom to choose based on branding. This could force the industry to compete on price, making cigarettes more affordable and frustrating the stated aim of plain packaging.
If this comes to pass, squeezing your margins will hopefully drive some of you out of business. Works for me.
Australia is the only country to have passed plain packaging legislation. Other countries, such as Canada, have looked at plain packaging and decided not to introduce the measure.
I tried, but couldn’t find anything about a phobia of being second. But I appreciate the veiled attempt to get to boot into Australia.
We have invested in our brands over many years and have a responsibility to our shareholders to do everything we can to defend our right to use them.
I don’t disagree with your duty here, but I’m quite happy to tell your shareholders they are profiting from death. Their foolish investment is not our concern.
Plain packaging, once introduced, is unlikely to be limited to tobacco products. Which products will be next?
Occasionally you make a decision that pays dividends later on. Recently I had the pleasure of such a decision. This is all hopelessly nerdy. Sorry if that’s not your thing.
At work we need to communicate with a 3rd-party vendor using their Business-to-Business API. Said vendor uses SOAP as their API transport including a large amount of WS-Security extensions. This is where you take a complex XML nightmare and start liberally applying public-key cryptography while smoking hard drugs.
I wrapped all this disaster inside a small web-service of my own that accepts JSON as the input, does all the SOAP heavy-lifting, then returns JSON. This by itself is a fantastic win although I managed to build on it further. My interface also logs the request & response to a CouchDB instance. Since the native language of data inside CouchDB is JSON, we have a very useful log of everything that went into and came out of the API. CouchDB is now acting as a reporting tool, audit trail, and cache.
