An Interview with Me

Online interview on the J-Walk Blog

Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

What is it? Not good is what it is. It's a trade agreement that will affect pretty much everyone in New Zealand including YOU and we have little idea of what is actually in it because it is being negotiated in secret.

Fortunately for us there have been leaks and what has been leaked isn't pretty. I won't go on at length about it as there are people out there who are far more capable than I writing about it. Here are a few links that you should read:

Michael Geist - Wikileaks

On the Gripping Hand

Colin Jackson on Speaker (Public Address)

Glyn Moody @ The Linux Journal

Paul Matthews - New Zealand Computer Society

Wikipedia's article

Fish for dinner

Last night's dinner was a very simple but delicious one. It consisted of asparagus, terakihi and egg. The asparagus was steamed until bright green and still crisp. The terakihi was cooked in a little butter on a low/medium heat and then finished with lemon juice for the last minute or so. Malden sea salt and pepper were applied. The eggs were poached until the white was firm but the yolk still soft.

Asparagus on the plate first, the fish over the asparagus and the egg topped the plate. The lemon/butter in the pan was spooned over the top.

Absolutely delicious

Sanctuary Sounds

My Sister and Brother in Law run a small music festival twice a year. It has good line ups of acts, runs from 2:00pm to 1:00pm on particular Saturdays and has free camping on site. Food and alcohol can be bought on site (no BYO!).

It's a very pleasant and relaxed atmosphere is a lot of fun. Each festival is themed and the site is transformed each time to conform with the theme and several acts will build their show around the theme. Past themes include

• Through The Looking Glass - an Alice in Wonderland theme
• Out of This World - future space
• Aquarius - Hippy fun

The theme of the next festival is "Under the Sea". More information plus photos and videos can be found on their website http://www.sanctuary-sounds.co.nz

Stairway to Heaven

Conference stuff

Yesterday was a very full on day for Camille and somewhat less so for me. Camille started at 5:30am which is incredibly early for her. However, being the conference organiser she was required to be on hand for pretty much the whole day - so it was up and breakfasting, checking e-mails and ensuring certain things were in order prior to heading to the conference facilities at 6:30am. I headed down to be there by 8:00am when the attendees were supposed to be arriving.

It was a long day and I thought it went very well. The Sky City staff were excellent. Nothing but praise for the woman who was our main liaison for the day.

My role was pretty much limited to helping people who had experienced problems with the membership database. For the most part this was in the shape of "I can't recall my login details" and the answer was a quick demonstration on how to retrieve their login details. It was a bit of an eye-opener for me though as I had considered the way I had written the database login retrieval and its display to be fairly straight foward - and it is for people who are used to computers and the internet. However, many of our client's members are older and are not very computer/internet savvy and need more of a guide. I'll have to think about this and see if I can produce a more obvious method.

The day went on. There were presentations on all sorts of subjects that I know almost nothing about though I do know more now. Meetings were held, breaks were taken, lunch was eaten, displays were perused and vendors spoken to. The end part of the conference day at Sky was the organisation's AGM which was, I gather, very successful with a number of important points being resolved.

Then it was off to the Muddy Farmer where a large bar tab and been plunked down for a cocktail/drinks evening. We had organised a small map to show the attendees where to go as the bar was a few minutes walk from Sky. And here Google Maps let us down again! We had printed a map off from Google and given it to all attendees so out of towners could find their way to the bar. The map was WRONG!

I ended up standing on a street corner in the middle of Auckland holding up my Executive conference card in an effort to flush out conference attendees from the milling crowds. It was at this point I discovered that I have an almost complete lack of authority. I ended up with about 30 attendees gathered on the corner who all ignored my instructions on which way to go though they did listen to me when I said "The map is wrong!". They insisted on asking a passing policeman who had no idea where the bar was. However, he was a Figure of Authority and he eventually directed them to head down the street where I had been trying to get them to go.

The Muddy Farmer was a good bar. We believe all those who made it there enjoyed themselves. Camille and I eventually made it back to our hotel room by 9:00pm or so.

It was a long day.

The photo above is of the main conference room set up for the 240+ attendees.

Breakfast

Last night when ordering breakfast I decided to have something different. Any ideas on what it is? None?

Seared salmon, pickled ginger, steamed rice and nori. Quite a tasty wee dish though the stock was a little salty for me.

Hotel Hotel

In Auckland again and in the Sky City Hotel, not the Sky Grand Hotel. Back in June we stayed in the Sky Grand and I wondered at the difference between the two hotels, the SG being a 5 star and the SC a 4 star. We are staying in an executive suite in Hotel 5 which puts us on the top floor. We have a large living area and large separate bedroom, both larger than most people's living rooms/bedrooms. The bathroom is separate from the toilet and shower and there is a dressing room. Not too bad.

However the 4 star rating kicks in with

1. No bathrobes!
   
2. No bottle opener
3. No utensils of any type at all except for 3 teaspoons
4. Lots of other small bits

The one that really gets me is the lack of bathrobes. You get used to things like this in hotels. Even the Jimmy Cook provides them in their standard rooms. Yes; one gets used to them and so fails to pack them. This can cause embarrasment in the morning when breakfast arrives - so I made Camille get up and answer the door.

I'm pretty suprised by the lack of various items in this suite. Have they forgotten to stock it or did they deliberately remove everything just in case we decided to pack our bags with extras? Either way, it's been noted down along with a fairly long list of other things about Sky City Hotel which I won't go into here - suffice to say we won't be organising any more conferences here unless they buck their ideas up.

Mystery Headshot

Any ideas who/what this photo to the right is of? None?

It's the back of Oscar Kightly's head. We saw him and some cronies in Napier airport when we were on our way to Auckland. He was being affable with a group of people, some of who wanted their photo taken with him.

I was tempted to do the same but decided he might not appreciate an almost 50 year old man running through the airport like a lunatic screaming "OSCAR, OSCAR! I can give you some hair if you need it" and so did not.

When we got on the plane, Oscar was seated right up in the front row on the right hand side and we were seated as far back from him as you could get in the rear seats on the left hand side.

I was jealous of all the leg room he must have had.

Well worth reading!

An excellent article about children, risk, and the way adults are being vetted as possible abusers while ignoring the real risks.

A small excerpt:

Further, experts such as Professor Gary Melton are increasingly coming to the view that rather than treating all adults as potential abusers, the more adults that are involved in a child's life, the chances of the child being maltreated or abused are reduced. This makes sense. Think back to the cases of egregious child abuse in New Zealand. A common thread is isolation: not knowing the neighbours, moving address frequently, not being enrolled in childcare or school and so on.

Risk and Children: Time for a rational debate

Wellington

Camille and are in Wellington this weekend. For once it's a social instead of business trip. We came down last night after we finished work for the day. Around 5:30 or so we were feeling a bit peckish, not having had any lunch, so we decided to get fish and chips. As we were nearing Masterton and had no idea what was a good fish and chip shop we got one of the laptops out and did a Google search on "Best fish and chips" +masterton. The results pointed to the Four Seasons Takeaway so the next step was to look them up on Google Maps on one of our phones as they have built in GPS. That done we started following the directions.

Google Maps let us down and let us down badly. Instead of taking us to the Four Seasons, we ended up outside McDonalds which is not a place we ever wish to eat at. Not good.

However, we decided to drive around looking as we figured Four Seasons couldn't be far away. We found it on the main street, duly ordered a feed and continued on our way.

Were the fish and chips good? Yes, they were. The fish was very good. Pleasantly moist, lightly battered, lovely flavour, not greasy. All things I look for in a piece of fish from a fish and chip shop. The chips were good as well. I recommend the place.

We are staying in a small cottage in Belmont. The cottage is called "Gate Cottage" and is one of two cottages available at Belmont Cottages. It's a very nice place that gives a feeling of seclusion. I woke this morning to the sound of tuis which I really enjoyed. We don't often get tuis at home.

At present we are both lying in bed. Shortly I will make us breakfast which will be raclette cheese melted on garlic toast with poached eggs and bacon. Looking forward to that!

Live cross overs on the news

Something that has annoyed the hell out me for a while is the habit of television news crossing over to a reporter "Live On The Spot" even when there is clearly no reason for them to be on the spot at all as all the action happened there hours ago. TVNZ news is full of them and they are, for the most part, totally pointless.

Bill Ralston voices his opinion here.

Eggs II

or should that be Eggs V? Unbelievable. Earlier tonight I cracked an egg into a dish and got another double yolker. So that's five in one week.

1. two double yolked eggs in scrambled eggs with my sister
2. one double yolked egg in breakfast yesterday.
   
3. one double yolked egg in breakfast this morning.
4. one double yolked egg whilst preparing crumbed fish for dinner

All from two different six packs of eggs picked up at the local supermarket on Saturday morning.

Somehow I feel privileged.

Eggs

Some things in life are worth celebrating. This week it's the fact that I have had three double yolker eggs while preparing breakfast.

To the right: Blackball black pudding, vogel bread, a double yolker all quietly cooking in a litttle olive oil.

It must be breakfast!

Update: FOUR Double yolked eggs now as I had another this morning!

Roadworks

There is a long stretch of roadworks between home and work at the moment and the speed limit has been dropped to 30km/h. This limit is for both the protection of the workers and of travellers for there is a lot of heavy machinery on the site and it crosses the road frequently.

I have to admit that I get a perverse pleasure in ensuring that cars behind me are travelling at 30km/h as I have noted that very, very few people actually obey this limit. I'm quite happy to be leading a line of 15 or more cars through a couple of kilometres at 30km/h.

In fact, woe betide you if you come speeding up behind me when I am half way through the roadworks as if I am in a cheerful mood, and I often am when driving, I'll happily travel at 15km/h to ensure that you haven't saved any time.

A map of things

A map of some of my videos and photos located on the map. You may have to do some zooming in as some of the icons overlap and can't be clicked on until you zoom in close enough for them to separate. Each photo is a link to the larger version.





And here is a link to the map just incase this one doesn't work too well. Some people have had problems with the embedded videos

The Bolton Hotel

A good hotel which we have stayed in before. The woman at reception was pleasant enough but needs to think about the way she approaches things. I enquired about the food style in the hotel restaurant and was startled to be told that it was 5 star dining and that I may find it a bit expensive and that there were good but cheaper restaurants elsewhere. Ok, I'm not one of the best dressed members of society; in fact I can look very rough. However, I would have thought hotel staff would know not to make assumptions about their guests.

We were given the key cards to our room and headed on up to the 3rd floor which is the same level as the Gymnasium but we were told that we were far enough away from it so we wouldn't be disturbed by the noise. We got to our room and it wasn't quite what we expected. Instead of the suite with kitchenette we had booked, we were in a tiny room with barely enough space to get around the outside of the bed. A quick "There must be some mistake" phone call was made and we were transferred to the 14th floor into something more like what we were expecting.

The staff in the hotel are very pleasant people and quite chatty. I like this and have had several conversations with them in the lifts and corridors.

An Annoyance

Camille and I are in Welllington today, having driven down yesterday. One that that annoyed us intensely about the drive is something that a lot of New Zealand drivers are guilty of. I refer to the practice of cruising along at 90km/hr until you get to a passing lane at which point the driver slams his or her foot down on the accellerator and hammers along the passing lane at 110km/hr or faster thereby preventing anyone behind from being able to pass. Once they reach the end of the passing lane they ease their foot of the accellerator and slow down to 90 again.

We encounter this sort of behaviour all over the country and it's time it was stamped out. I propose that if you end up behind someone who does this you should sit behind them with your hand firmly on your car horn button and just keep it on until they pull over.

It's been a bit damp lately

It's been a bit damp lately