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Monday, January 8, 2001
[see also camping photo pages]

We packed up and left the camp by 10 am and went into the town. I still have an account with the local pharmacy goods warehouse, and we called in there to pick up supplies of household stuff like shampoo, AA batteries, face cream etc. I also called into a wholesale book importer I knew of, and picked up some computer books -- HTML, Linux networking etc. They supply all the NZ bookstores, but will sell them at least 20% cheaper if you go in there personally.

Then off, heading north along the coast; stopped off at a cousin of Joan's to leave some genealogical papers that he had kindly lent us. We stopped for lunch at a roadside cafe, then continued on north into the province of Taranaki. This is overshadowed by a large volcano, which the Europeans called Mt Egmont, but the name has now reverted to the Maori -- Taranaki -- as have many of the NZ place names of prominent places. It has been compared with Mt Fuji in Japan, but its symmetry has been spoiled by a large cone poking out one side. Tomorrow we'll be visiting a cousin of mine who lives at the mountain's foot; I hope the cloud will lift and let me get a couple of shots.

We were interested to see a well-head with buildings and drill in place. The Taranaki Basin is quite rich in oil and gas reserves, and there is constant drilling activity in likely spots. As is usual in the oil industry, there are lots of 'dry holes'. Taranaki is also prominent in the dairy industry; the mountain brings plentiful rainfall and the resultant grass growth supports plenty of cows and high milk production. New Zealand has grass growth for all but three months of the year, and cattle do not need to be 'wintered' in barns. They bridge the gap with hay stored from the summer. Only some high regions of the South Island have trouble with snow falls being big enough to cause problems with stock.

We have been to Stratford several times over the years. It is a farming centre; the main street has about three blocks of shops and that's it. The camping ground is sheltered and has reasonably good facilities; we will be here for two nights before heading home.

Tuesday, January 9, 2001

[ Apologies for the site performance yesterday: I had uploaded about half the changed pages when my phone refused to finish the job -- I found the battery was too low to sustain the FTP. I had to leave it, and completed the transfer first thing in the morning. The joys of technology. <g>]

Up and out by 9.30 am to visit Ian and Fiona Turner, who live on a hill-country farm about 20 minutes drive from Stratford. Ian grazes cattle, but has for some time been part of a group who are developing a plan to milk sheep. He has 200 ewes, at present near Auckland, but is developing the necessary facilities for milking and will then bring them down to the farm. Ewes milk is keenly sought after for the Asian baby formula market, as Asians have trouble digesting cows milk. The process is well-researched and is ready for implementation, but there are still bureaucratic obstacles to be overcome in the countries concerned.

Fiona is one of my former dispensary technicians in the pharmacy I owned in Wanganui. I trained a number of girls, usually straight from school, and they stayed with me for years. They are all 'extra daughters' and keep in touch with me as well as with each other, even though I have been retired from pharmacy for 15 years.

We came back to the camp for a bite of lunch, then drove to Ted and Jude Barnes' home which is on the lower slopes of Taranaki. This is a recently-dormant volcano (last eruption was AD-something) and is a National Park. With scenery like this, it is not surprising that New Zealand can supply any required venue for movies like Lord of the Rings. Ted has retired from a government scientific research institute, and they selected this plum site not only for its scenery, but proximity to Jude's family who live in the nearby town of Inglewood. The garden spreads over the 0.5 hectare (2 acres) property, and has been developed over the last nine years -- although the house was only completed four years ago. Ted is still active in ham radio and electronics, and has goodies like a fully steerable dish antenna in the back yard. He also has completed the first stage of a model railway (8-inch gauge) which has a tunnel for the electric engine. Jude writes short stories, and paints exquisite pictures as well as dabbling in 'folk art'.

Joan and Jude wandered round the garden, while Ted and I caught up on our respective activities since the last time we spoke. We installed a new driver for his HP LaserJet which he had just downloaded. We then left to have a quiet meal in Inglewood before returning to the camp. Tomorrow we head back home.

Wednesday, January 10, 2001
[see also camping photo pages]

We packed up and left Stratford by 10.15 am, after picking up some groceries from the supermarket. The route home was up the west coast for about 40 minutes, then turning inland through some very rugged country indeed. The roads are in good condition, but the constant twisting through winding curves and up and down hills doesn't make for easy driving. Tourists have told me that they thought they knew how to drive, until they did a NZ tour. But the scenery makes up for it <g>.

We stopped for lunch at an old river port called Awakino, in the estuary of the river of the same name. In the nineteenth century, this would have been an important call for coastal boats -- carrying people, freight and produce in and away from the area. All that is left now are decaying houses and a store -- and a delightful cafe/restaurant called the Hook, Line and Sinker. They served beautiful home-cooked pies with bread and butter, and a good cup of tea -- all for a total of $8.40 (US$3.60). There was a wonderful display of old fishing tackle and colonial bits'n'pieces like old crosscut bush saws. I took a photo of a tongue-in-cheek version of a chain saw.

After a long spell winding alongside the Awakino River and going up its gorge, we stopped in a small place (shops, gas station, hotel) called Pio Pio to visit friends. This is an isolated country place, but it is the centre of a large farming district. It has a high school which last year had the distinction of being selected as NZ's top achieving country school. This is probably an acknowledgement of the competency of its staff (of which our friend is one), but nevertheless a symbol of the pursuit of excellence which is a characteristic of the NZ character. Kiwis are sought-after for employment all over the world -- we sometimes joke about graduates being our biggest export.

At last, we pulled up at our home at 5.30 pm and hastily unpacked the camper before threatening rain hit. We had been through a couple of solid downpours on the way. A big pile of emails to download (most of which I'd checked but left on the server). Lots of mail to open and gear to put away. Another break away concluded.

Thursday, January 11, 2001

I must pass on this gem from Daynoter Dr Keyboard:

Simon L sends me an amusing observation:
In 1555, Nostradamus wrote: "Come the millennium, month twelve, In the home of greatest power, The village idiot will come forth To be acclaimed the leader."
Blimey, fancy predicting that all those centuries ago.

Putting-Away Time, this morning. All the paraphernalia that we cart away with us has to be restored to the appropriate hidey-holes. Lots of time spent catching up with email and sending replies. After lunch, a trip to the pharmacy to collect Joan's medicaments, and off to the supermarket for people-fuel.

Later I spent time fixing up some of the site pages that got rather hasty treatment while on the move. Apologies to those who had trouble loading images; having my cellphone go dead in the middle of updating a whole string of pages was disastrous. When I attacked them next morning, I had to try and ferret out the changes that hadn't been transferred. I couldn't use the site-synchronise feature of Dreamweaver, as the phone link in the morning was rather tenuous -- even with a freshly-charged battery. I notice on my ISP message board that there had once more been Telecom problems with the overseas pipe about that time.

Friday, January 12, 2001

Oh goody, we don't have to go into town today. Nothing whacks a hunk out of your day like climbing into the car, driving to town, finding a parking space, transacting your business, returning to car, heading for home, going back to town because you forgot your wife had asked you to get something from the supermarket, returning home, exiting car, bringing purchases into house. And if you can get all that done in less than an hour, you're doing OK.

So today's chore is doing the financials. Dig out the credit card slips and EFTPOS slips and enter them into Quicken. Sort out the bank statements and reconcile. Do lots of double-entry bookkeeping for an estate and two trusts. Well, I managed to get some of it done, anyway. Don brought in some work for me to to do -- a website for a local charitable trust has to have their latest glossy posted newsletter broken down to post on the site. We get a CD from the originating company (who are in a sort of alliance with us), with the newsletter in a CorelDraw file, and originals of the pix. I use the previous pages as a template; copy and paste the text into place; convert the pix from CMYK to RGB, drop the resolution and size down for the web and pop into place. A convenient excuse for me to duck the financials and play.

The family come later in the afternoon, because Joan is cooking a steak casserole for all tonight. Eli is having problems with his scooter handle not locking properly, so I do my Grandad thing in the garage: drill a hole to fit the spring-loaded pin (that doesn't have a hole to go to), and click into place. Then I find Ethan's scooter has the handle at 45 degrees to the wheel; more Grandad work on the locking nuts until fixed. That's what Grandads are really for -- fixing things. I've done everything from dolls to scooters -- good thing my workshop has Every Known Tool.

We have a pleasant meal which allows me to catch Don up with all the scary stories about the Great Abomination M$ and its stupid schemes that I've been reading on my fellow Daynoters' sites. Speaking of which, Jonathan Sturm has some very interesting things to say about homeopathy and biodynamic organic farming in today's column. We also discussed the various Linux installations that Daynoters have been writing about; I am still resolved to perservere with Mandrake to the point where I can at least get it to see the rest of the network. That'll have to wait until I have uncommitted time <g>. CUL folks.

Saturday, January 13, 2001

A trip into town this morning to replenish some supplies from the supermarket, and also to call into my friendly computer pusher and collect a copy of Crimson Skies. On return, I install it and spend the rest of the morning crashing the plane -- until I got the knack of coordinating stick and throttle.

An intriguing concept, this game -- instant nostalgia: took me back to my childhood formative years during WW II. There were very few new childrens' books, so all we had were second-hand ones. I was enthralled by a couple of volumes of the English Chums Annual circa 1936-7, a compilation from the weekly issues during a year. There were always air stories; one called Ace of the Seadromes was about an attempt to overcome the problem of flying the Atlantic when the planes couldn't carry enough fuel as well as freight. They constructed floating seadromes like huge aircraft carriers, and the planes landed to refuel. Ace was always embroiled with pirates and sundry villains, shooting them down from his trusty biplane. And, of course, there was always Biggles.

Felt a bit weary in the afternoon, so put my feet up and read while Joanna took Joan off to town again to choose fabrics. The TV this evening was dismal, so I dug into my tape library to retrieve the excellent film Bedazzled [1967] by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. We had talked about this recently, as there is an American remake on the circuit which reviewers have described as "pathetic" -- mind you, IMHO anyone who attempted to remake a Cook and Moore effort is doomed to failure. Joan hadn't seen this, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Such a tragedy that Dudley Moore has a metabolic disorder which has just about destroyed his speech and ability to play the piano. Although classically trained up to a music degree, he was a brilliant jazz pianist in the style of Errol Garner, and composed all the background music for Bedazzled. Very sad.

Sunday, January 14, 2001

Being Sunday, I treated myself to a lie-in until 8 am. A leisurely morning spent deep in the black arts of double-entry bookkeeping. I am still using the same DOS program I've used for the last ten years or so: Bottom-Line Accounting. With the addition of several upgrades over the years, and a Y2K fix, it performs without fuss and hassle and does what accountants expect it to do. Beyond that, I don't care -- I'm quite happy working in a console window.

I tried their <trumpet fanfare> 32-bit version when it was released, and found it had no redeeming features other than to print through Windows and thus use TT fonts. BUT the problem was, I was supposed to register the bloody thing live on the phone to their HQ in Florida -- an expensive exercise ringing from New Zealand. The program presented me with a random key for which I had to get the other part. I emailed their support, and they made a big concession and decided that I could email the key and await a reply. Bearing in mind the time difference, that meant I had to start the program at 7 am, email the key and hope I caught the support guy before he finished work for the day. I managed it on the second try. As I would have to go through this performance every time I re-installed (and I wasn't fussed about the program anyway), I just flagged it away and went back to the DOS version.

This paranoia about trying to defeat the pirating of programs is getting exasperating. When will these people learn that all they succeed in doing is antagonising their customer base. I've no doubt that this company will improve their Win product and expect me to upgrade -- but they've blown it for me. And the same thing with M$; I'm staying with Win98SE.

Sneaked another hour with Crimson Skies and can now fly the plane without crashing every time. Crashing is a pain, as often instead of returning to the episode start, I get a lockup and have to reboot. Yup, it's something amiss with my NVidia TNT card drivers or Direct X or something. I've updated everything I can think of, and it still does it. And C/Skies doesn't let you save as you go -- but I need the flying practice, anyway <g>.