Lunar Eclipse

 

Took this photo during the recent lunar eclipse. Unfortunately the camera I own doesn't really have enough grunt to get good sky images. I used a long exposure but I guess the auto-focus isn't up to lunar standards.

Train Trip to Wellington

On the first week of the school holidays we took the whole family for a short vacation to Wellington. The first leg of the journey was the Overlander train down country as far as you can go by land. Starting (30 minutes late) from Hamilton, the train was pulled by a standard diesel-electric locomotive.
We stopped at National Park for a meal (and the south-bound & north-bound train crews swap over), the very friendly driver allowed me to take the kids up into the cab of the locomotive. They thought that was pretty cool... In this day and age of paranoia and over-zealous security around public transport, it was nice to get the chance to experience the drivers view.

As a bonus on this trip, when we pulled into Ohakune , a genuine, old-fashioned, steam powered locomotive was hitched to the front of our train for the trip to Feilding. The smell of burning coal and the clouds of smoke and steam added to the experience.
The train chugged along puffing like the Hogwarts Express. There was an open observation platform on the baggage car from which we could take photos, but really the people in the worst place to enjoy the steam train experience are actually the passengers... People driving on the road alongside the tracks probably had better views.
The steamer was taken off the front at Feilding and we carried on by diesel-electric to Wellington. The whole journey took about 11 hours. Thanks to Helen's preparation of activity materials for the trip, the kids were quite happy the whole time. In fact quite a few fellow travelers remarked to us how amazed they were at our kids good behaviour. Most comment started with "My kids would have been bouncing off the walls...". Makes you feel all warm inside.

We rolled into Wellington about 9pm and a quick taxi ride later we were in our hotel. The kids were exhausted and just crashed into bed and were sound asleep in minutes.

Flying Girl

Don't you wish that you could fly like my daughter does....

Experimental Photography Fun

We've been experimenting with long exposure photography. We all tried to write our names in the air using a torch as a pen. The camera was set for a 10 second exposure.
Here's Mine.



Here is my daughter's. She's only six but you can almost read her name.


And last but not least is my son's attempt. He's only four but we thought he made a good effort

The ghostly effect on the image of the person doing the "writing" is quite nifty as well. Maybe we'll try some fake ghost images next time.

Jedi Gimpage Goodness

My first attempt at really "photo-shopping" an image (Using the open-source "GIMP" package). Once again, having a cute little Jedi readily available for photos goes a long way. If you have an eager young Jedi in your household, for a modest fee I could give them the same image-inary treatment (suitable for framing as a permanent memento perhaps)

World's Cutest Jedi Knight

This is a picture of my 4yr old son in his Jedi Knight outfit (that his Mum made for him). If Anakin had seen this youngling in the Jedi temple he would have put down his light-sabre with a long "Awwww...howw cute" and the Republic would have survived intact

Meet the Rabbits

Coco and Sunshine
Originally uploaded by Kotukunui.

We have two new additions to the family.
Vermin!
Say "Hello" to Coco and Sunshine. Can you tell which is which?
The kids love to chase, catch and cuddle these fluffy bunnies. We've built the pair of them a bunny palace by renovating a tired old hutch we bought second (or third) hand. Luckily they are both males so we shouldn't have too much trouble with unwanted offspring.

Another Flying Post

My mate Tony needed a ride over to his beach house in Pauanui. What better way than by our Yak-52 express.
The happy guy in back is Tony. As you can see from the back of my head, I was a bit busy flying the plane to be able to mug for the camera.



Tony, next time, you fly, I'll be the star...

If you are anywhere near Hamilton, NZ and want a thrill flight, just give me a yell.

Caution - Vanity Post!

Look how smart I am ;-)

Your Vocabulary Score: A+

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How smart are you?

And I even have a nerd score

Yak Flying over Tokoroa (but Only Just "Over")

I'm finally getting a chance to do some Yak flying. Our syndicate chief pilot, John Parker, has been monopolising the plane in practice for the Warbirds Over Wanaka airshow. He's back now and I'm putting in some time.

I'm scared of heights so this picture shows the preferred altitude for cross country flights.

BTW, No it isn't me doing the flying... I'm not that good! (yet)

San Francisco Stopover 2006

On my way home from BrainShare in Utah, I had an overnight stop in "The City on the Bay", San Francisco. I was determined to do all the tourist traps I had seen on TV and movies over the years. I arrived early on Saturday morning during some grotty weather. Luckily for me the showers soon cleared and I was able to enjoy the city in sunshine. I took a bus tour which purported to show the "City Highlights". The double decker bus was crowded but the views were good. The main reason for choosing this tour is that it crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.

This view is looking back across the bridge towards the city of San Francisco. The image was kindly snapped by a couple from Connecticut I met up with (I swapped seats with the wife so that they could sit together) who were very familiar with New Zealand as they travelled regularly to visit friends in Akaroa. The bus driver was an amateur poet and writer named "Welvin" who regaled us with his poems and pitched us to buy his book about San Francisco (US$19.95 with autograph included free - I didn't buy one). If you go to San Francisco, go to the hills called "Twin Peaks". You get great views of the city from there. Unfortunately, my photos just show a hazy blob of city in the background.

The other big tourist destination in S.F. is Alcatraz, so I booked a tour for the Sunday morning. The day dawned fine and cool. perfect weather for a boat cruise to a prison (which is now just a tourist attraction run by the National Park Service). Getting out on the Bay was well worth it. Got to see the cells of Al Capone and "The Birdman". They were just cells, no biggie. The self-guided audio tour was well worth it though, telling the story of Alcatraz up until it was closed. It was quite neat seeing everyone looking in the same directions and knowing what part of the tour they were up to.

NB. You'll notice a fair few photos in my blog featuring my ugly mug extra large in the forground. As a solo traveller I developed a one handed self-protrait mode of photography so that I wasn't constantly bugging strangers to take photos for me. I need longer arms to get more scene and less me.

Other places I visited were "Fisherman's Wharf" where a colony of sea lions hang out at Pier 39 (just behind all the restaurants). I suspect that even though it is illegal to feed the sea-lions, the restaurants do it anyway to keep the sea-lions there (and attract the hungry crowds who come to watch these pinnipeds at play... mostly sleeping actually). You can see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background if you look closely. I recommend the "Seafood Chowder served in a Sourdough Loaf" speciality dish at Fisherman's Wharf. Yum.

I spent most of Saturday night trying to catch up with some other Kiwi BrainShare attendees who were also staying in SF for a few days, but had no luck. They didn't get my messages left at their hotel until Sunday. So I ended up dining alone (sob..)

A trip to S.F. wouldn't be complete without a ride on the cable-cars. (Ding!-Ding!). The streets of San Francisco (a Quinn Martin production) were layed out in a square grid regardless of the terrain. Therefore there are a lot of long, steep, straight streets. In NZ we would just build roads to the contours of the terrain (e.g. Wellington). To navigate these streets they had to invent systems like the cable-cars. I walked from Fisherman's Wharf back to Union Square once just to show how tough I was. I was knackered at the top of the hill and kind of staggered down the other side. After that one time, I stuck to the public transport.

Another well known feature of SF is Lombard St. This is a street with one section near the top of the hill being so steep that they had to build switchbacks to allow horse-carts to negotiate it. I don't think it is quite as steep as Baldwin Street in Dunedin, but it would be close. On Sunday, it seemed to be a very popular pastime to drive down the twisty section of Lombard St.

After finishing up my touristy adventures, I shuttled out to the airport allowing 3 hours to get organised for my flight. The airport was pretty much deserted and I was through the check-in and security procedures in 30 minutes. Wow! I will never travel through LAX again if SFO is an option. It was just so much better than the zoo that was LA. I also met up with yet another group of Kiwi BrainShare attendees who had also chosen to travel home via SF. This gave me someone to talk to for the next 2 hours before boarding the Air NZ 777 fo the trip home. I had a row of three seats all to myself so I actually got some sleep and arrived home at 5:30am in good old NZ. Cleared baggage, customs and immigration in 20 minutes. Excellent. Welcome Home.

Utah trip (BrainShare 2006)

Last week I returned from a 10-day trip to the United States, primarily to attend the annual Novell BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. I've never been to Utah before and all I knew was that it was the origin of the Mormon (Latter-Day-Saints) church. We have a well-known Mormon temple in Hamilton so I had at least an inkling of what the LDS church was all about.

After a 12 hour flight to Los Angeles via Air New Zealand, I arrived tired and haggard at LAX. During my 5 hour layover, I took a taxi (US$25) down to Venice Beach and took in the sights. The brisk sea breeze was quite refreshing and the lifeguard towers look just like they do on "Baywatch". The guard on duty didn't look anything like David Hasselhoff (or Pam Anderson, dammit).

I walked along the beach where there seemed to be a preponderance of blue surgical gloves abandoned in the sand (I didn't ask...) and globs of tar and oil. I stuck my hand in the Pacific Ocean so I could see if was any different on the eastern side. It wasn't.

Got on a short (1.5 hours) jet flight from LAX to Salt Lake City (first experience of shoe removal before boarding) and arrived after dark. I checked in to the Sheraton City Center hotel and dived into bed. I woke up the next morning to find that it had snowed overnight.

Luckily, Helen had just bought me a new possum-fur beanie and gloves just in case this happened and I appreciated the warmth.

I had a walk around downtown S.L.C. on the Sunday. Not much happens in that town on a Sunday. Perhaps we are all supposed to go to church or something.

There are all these statues around the big temple which are supposed to portray wholesome images of the joys of LDS church membership, but some of them are a bit creepy and all figures are distinctly whitebread if you know what I mean...

This one looked particularly funny in terms of the snow globs. The boy looks like a cotton-tail rabbit and the woman needs some famous NZ possum-fur nipple-warmers.

The conference itself was particularly well organised (with 6000 attendess, it has to be) and they just threw food and drink at you the whole time. I don't think I paid for any meals between arriving and departing which means my MasterCard bill was quite spartan for having been away for a week to an overseas location. I won't put in any images of the conference as the official ones are so much better than mine.

However the conference parties were a bit different. I partook of the oxygen bar at the "BrainWash" party. The gas was bubbled through all sorts of different "flavours" with different properties. Perhaps I'm just not in tune with my physiological responses but I didn't feel any different for having breathed any of the flavours of oxygen. Having the nasal-cannula stuck up your nostrils wasn't that comfortable either. It's not something I'd rave over but if you get the chance, give it a go... You never know, you might feel some "buzz"...

The weather did improve over the week and by Tuesday I was happily walking around in just a t-shirt (and trousers of course, hey, this is Salt Lake City, you know). The views of the Wasatch mountains became quite spectacular.

The conference session were mostly pretty good but aimed at a more infrastructural audience. Got to talk to a few product managers and learned some interesting stuff about future directions. However by day 4, I was ready to jump ship. So I took a trip to the Great Salt Lake itself.

I tasted the water and I can confirm it is very salty. Nothing lives in it except brine shrimp (AKA "Sea Monkeys" from the adverts at the back of those american comic books from the '60s & 70s)

That's enough of Utah.

Next stop, San Francisco...

Apple Fragrance Parody Ad

Apple Fragrance Ad
Originally uploaded by Kotukunui.

This is pretty funny. There used to be an actual product called iSmell which allowed scent tags to be embedded in websites and the device would mix and evaporate chemicals to imitate the scent specified in the tag. It never took off and the company went under. This is a funnier use of the term iSmell

Taupo Trip

taupo_landing
Originally uploaded by Kotukunui.

Flew an aero-club Piper Archer (ZK-FWS) down to Taupo for the 2005 AgriQuality Leader's Conference. Co-pilot was Mike Gilbert from HO and the photo was taken by Richard Leong from Hamilton who was sitting in the backseat. Lake Taupo is to the right of screen and the snow-covered eastern slopes of Mt. Ruapehu can just be seen in the far background.

Just got back from a short holiday in Ohakune having a play in the snow on Mt. Ruapehu . The kids loved tobogganing and we built an awesome snowman. Stayed at the Ohakune Court Motel which was OK. The kids also loved the big carrot and throwing stones into the Mangawhero stream from the little swingbridge near the motel.

On the return trip we stopped in at the AC Baths in Taupo which was fun. The hot water left us all a bit tired for the journey home.

Despite the high price of petrol it was well worth the trip to get away as a family.

Trolley GP Team Photo

TrolleyGP_Team
Originally uploaded by Kotukunui.

My brother-in-law Andrew took a few photos of us at the Trolley GP. I'm the one in the "pram" (Awww.. wot a cwute widdle man...)
The other team members are: (from left to right) Barry, Chris, Steve, Mike.

Having gotten the trolley grand prix over and done with, I now turn my attention to an aviation project. Getting my Yak 52 rating. I have just bought a share in the Te-Kowhai Yak Syndicate which owns and operate ZK-TYS. I've had a joyride in it previously, but this time I'm going to be a part owner. I'll probably be broke and disillusioned within 12 months but, by crikey, I am determined to enjoy it while I can.
Chief pilot, John Parker will be guiding me through the rating and teaching me the ins and outs of this aircraft. Can't wait. (But I will have to, as the aircraft is up in Whangarei with some of the northern syndicate members for a few weeks.)

Here are the 2005 Red Bull Trolley Grand Prix Results. Team "Four Men and a Baby" came 29th overall (or 25th according to my calculations). Our trolley was the 13th fastest down the hill but two of the judges absolutely HATED our dance number.

Well the Red Bull Trolley Grand Prix has been and gone. We didn't win, place or show.

Our race actually went really well. Thanks to a good pushing effort from Barry, Chris, Mike and Steve, I got out ahead of my opponent and took off. The trolley just flew down the course. Everything went to plan right up until the "hairpin" where I turned in a bit early and the understeer scrubbed off a bit of speed before the finish line. I didn't see my elapsed time and they won't publish the full results until Wednesday 16th Feb. However, I'd put money on it being about 48 seconds.

What really annoys me is that we put on what I thought was a great pre-race stage-show and got rubbished by the judges. One judge gave us only 1 out of 10! To say I'm a bit disappointed is an understatement. We were race team 74 out of 82 so perhaps the judges were a bit jaded by the end. Another team had done a "Greased Lightning" number and a team before them had already done a pram racer. Ours were different (and better, of course) but I'm just dumbfounded about how bad our scores were.

The event was won by the Wanganui Motors team in a machine shaped like a trollified Ford Falcon racing car. They were heavily sponsored by Ford and must have spent thousands on the build. Second place went to the Porsche International Racing Team in a miniature Porsche racing car trolley. ( ditto sponsorship and budget ). I guess our off-beat concept and miniscule budget just couldn't compete...

I think our trolley would have been competitive in the 2003 Trolley GP but we were 2 years behind the times and this one was the year of the big-budget teams. Special thanks to Team Thomas (driving a "Thomas the Tank Engine" kart and doing "The Locomotion") for their support. As team "Rubber Duck Racing" they had won they previous GP in 2003 in their rolling bath-tub. They expressed their sympathy for what they saw as the injustice inflicted on us.

Will I want to be part of another Trolley Grand Prix team? I don't know. I'll make a decision later when the all the bile I have built up has drained from my spleen.

Steve and I took the Prambinator for a test run on some deserted back roads last Sunday. Found some twisty hills out the back of Huntly (Pukemiro, Glen Afton way). Sat in, strapped on the seat-belt, took a deep breath and pushed off. The trolley handles like a real go-kart, cornering flat-out with no worries. In fact I chickened out before the trolley reached its adhesion limits. Luckily the brakes seem to stop the machine quite well.

I got up to 65km/h on the steepest bit. I could feel the wind putting the brakes on as we are not the .. ahem... most streamlined design. (Well, strictly speaking it is my bulky ass that is the biggest wind resistance factor).

We tried to pick roads with no traffic, but inevitably I met up with vehicles going the other way. Everyone smiled and waved and no cops turned up looking for us. Phew! The biggest worry was cars coming up behind, but Steve shadowed me with the van flashing his hazard lights so we were OK.