This weekend I’ll be at the Small Print Zinefest, which promises to be a rollicking good time for all and sundry. As well as the usual Funtime Comics desk extravaganza you get at all the big international comics shows, I’ll be giving a sort of presentation workshop thing on Jam Comics. There will even be a little booklet, which I’m working on at the moment.

Little patches of high-res content are starting to show up in Google Maps. So far we seem to have the North Shore of Auckland, a little patch of northern Waikato, and for some reason lots of the mountainous part of Marlborough.

This picture shows a bit of the Wairau River (in Marlborough) at maximum resolution. The top left part is what most of the country looks like, the rest is part of the new high-res imagery.

I like Google Maps very much indeed. I would like to be Google Maps when I grow up.

Apparently, Don Brash not only doesn’t accept that climate change is caused by human beings, he isn’t even convinced that the climate is changing at all. We have over a hundred years’ worth of research on this now. There comes a point where being skeptical in the face of all the evidence is no longer the sign of an open mind, but of a person who willfully refuses to confront reality.

It looks like Google is beginning to add more data to Google Maps. It now shows the world in outline and satellite imagery, although useful detail is still only available for the USA and UK. Still, it shows they’re making an effort.

This may be the best we get out of Helen Clark for a while – a public acknowledgment that she’d really prefer not to be in a coalition with New Zealand First if she can help it. Personally I think she could help it by having the courage to make it clear that a vote for New Zealand First is a vote for a National-led government.

It’s true that a Labour-NZF government would be better than a National-NZF government. But based on the experience of 1996 and everything that’s happened since, the chances of Labour being able to negotiate any kind of deal with Winston Peters are very slim. New Zealand First is clearly lined up with National, and I don’t think it does Labour any favours to pretend otherwise. It makes them look weak, indecisive, and willing to compromise their integrity to deal with racists. I think they’ll pick up more votes if people know there’s a choice that doesn’t involve having Peters back in the government.

Slow Train Comin’. A new blog shinin’ its ever-lovin’ light on the condition of rail service in Auckland. Specifically, on the Western Line.

A jam comic from the Auckland Comics Workshops. By Angelo, Ruth, Saul, Andrew and me.

When you want thoughtful, considered commentary on the Mac, which you do, you can’t go past John Gruber at Daring Fireball. He’s done a nice summary of the whole Apple-Intel thing.

Now that the panic has died down, the general consensus of the Mac-talking people seems to be that it was a bit of a shock, but probably for the best. IBM’s chips are better-designed than Intel’s, abut they aren’t consistently faster in the real world, and they can’t supply as many as fast as Intel.

On Friday I was having dinner with friends in the foodhall of SkyCityMetro (or whatever they call that Logan’s Run place next to Aotea Square) when Don Brash walked past, with the Asian wife he mentions occasionally to prove that he isn’t racist. They went to Burger King, then upstairs, presumably to see a movie. He didn’t have stormtroopers like the Mayor, but presumably at least one of the other people walking past was some kind of undercover imperial security agent.

This got me thinking about politics, which is only natural when you see the Leader of the Opposition going to a movie. It’s also natural to speculate about which movie he might be going to see, but you can only get so far along that line without conducting the sort of research that can cause an Incident, and my companions had got caught up in a discussion of the tactics involved in competitive rock-paper-scissor tournaments at an international level, so I stuck with thinking about politics.

In the last few elections I’ve voted for either the Alliance or the Progressives. The Alliance are pretty much defunct, and the Progressives have become a vestigial appendage to the Labour Government, to the point that they are now commonly referred to as “Jim Anderton”. This isn’t really a bad thing, as far as I’m concerned. Labour has changed since the 1980s, and it’s no longer the party that Jim left. After a couple of terms of stable, moderate government, I’d be happy to vote for Labour this year.

Except for one thing. If Labour makes any noises about a coalition with New Zealand First, they can forget about my vote. I want to see them take a clear line against the nasty immigrant-bashing politics of Winston Peters, as well as the anti-Maori slant of Don Brash.

I don’t always agree with the Green party, and I didn’t like the scare-mongering about GE foods they stooped to at the last election. Normally I’d say that I’m much closer to Labour in political preferences than the Greens. But at least they’re clearly against racism, and I’ll vote for them if I don’t see Labour making the same stand in public.

I remember fondly a moment during the 1999 election when a reporter asked Helen Clark, leaving her home to formally declare victory, whether she would consider forming a coalition with New Zealand First. She just laughed. I’d like her to do that again now.

My brother Ari has been making the most of his call centre job to forge a comics-making alliance with colleague Brent Willis. Together they have created two fine Mini Comics concerning the adventures of the Moxon, the Brain Turkey, Radioactive Shorts Boy and the Stress Monster.

Check out Moxon: Gripping Courtroom Drama and Moxon: Grim Northern Realism wherever… well, wherever you can find them.