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Monday March 19, 2001

Had a long day today: I was in town at 11 am this morning, was picked up by three strapping guys from the forest management team, and driven about 30km in a long arc right round through a little settlement called Mamaku to the NW of Rotorua, on dirt roads, then on logging roads, until we reached the place where they were cutting down trees. For the next two hours, I shot photos solidly of the people, gear, trees, chainsaws etc -- and almost filled my new 128 MB Compact Flash Chip with about 100 shots in fine resolution. The camera takes 3.2 megapixels, and produces a raw file of about 5 MB. This is compressed using Nikon's own jpeg method. The fine setting gives me a file of about 1.1 MB, sometimes .8 or .9 MB.

We went from there, back into Rotorua and travelled south to the Kaingaroa Forest -- supposed to be the largest man-made forest in the world. I was taken to view an amazing machine: picture a large caterpillar base with swinging cab, a big jointed arm, and a large cylindrical housing on the end of the arm. This was driven up to a tree, the housing clamped round it (everything was hydraulic), a shrill whine of a built-in saw, and the tree toppled. The drum remained clamped, and just pivoted as the tree fell. Then the arm did a bit of a shuffle and started along the trunk, shredding branch stumps and bark as it went. It then reversed its travel and went up to the top of the trunk, branches and pine needles flying everywhere. The arm was centred on the tree, it grabbed tight to pick up the trunk and swing it round onto a rough stack. Then on to the next tree. Astonishing. I was shooting steadily as this went on, of course. Then back into town by 5 pm -- I was rather weary by this time!

I stopped at Don's office and found he needed CDs burnt before tomorrow, as we will be away and the client is off to a conference or something. These contain all his images to hand out to advertising people. As he is our best client, I managed to get them done, with covers etc. Also dropped the 130 -odd images from today onto a CD to give to Don to look over. The forestry people are coming in to view them as well.

My site is still hosted at the existing place, as I couldn't get hold of the guy at the new ISP before I had to leave this morning. That will have to wait until Friday. My computer pusher rang this morning to tell me that all the bits for Don's new home computer have arrived -- so that's the weekend taken care of. <grin>

Tuesday, March 20, 2001

Up at 7 am, to try and get organised to go away on out trip up to Ruakaka beach. Went to transfer the latest website files to the laptop -- horrors: I'd deleted the whole site off the laptop to make way for the latest version. But that didn't get transferred because of the network PCM card problems, so back to the old faithful floppy. It took four goes to get it all over, at about 5 minutes a time. After that, I had to catch up on the stuff that I thought I was going to yesterday afternoon: write cheques to pay accounts, fill in forms for Joan's hospital stay etc.

Then it was time to pack the car and get on our way, detouring to drop off the forms at the hospital and into town to pick up some audio book tapes from the library. We actually left Rotorua at 10.45 am; stopped at Matamata for an early lunch, then carried on through Auckland to arrive at Ruakaka at 4 pm at the house that Carole & Bryan have taken for the week. The weather stayed fine all the way through; not too hot, which made for pleasant travelling.

We talked for a while, then had a very nice chicken pie that Joan had cooked yesterday and brought up in our portable fridge. We are now trying to decide what we will do tomorrow.

Wednesday, March 21, 2001

The day started with light drizzle and lots of low cloud. We drove along the coast past the Marsden Point oil refinery, before heading for Whangarei, about a half-hour altogether. Carole and Bryan had already been to the waterfront complex earlier in the week, so we went there for a mid-morning coffee [ for Keith's benefit (in the UK): I had a bowl latte and Joan had a long black with separate cream -- both with double shots. Carole and Bryan had cappuchinos. You get coffee any way you like it in NZ, Keith <g>.]

We had a long wander around the shops in this complex, then headed up the road to where I had noted a big second-hand book shop. Bryan and I browsed there for a while, and Joan and Carole went over to the shopping area. We moved on to find the other two book exchanges, and managed to pick up some cheap reading.

On the way back to Ruakaka, we stopped at a winery to sample the wines. Joan found a golden sherry that she liked, and Bryan bought some port. We later went out to a small local restaurant for a very pleasant meal: I had pepper steak and the others had battered fish.

We haven't even been able to get onto the beach yet -- even though it's only about 100 metres away. Hopefully the weather will improve in the morning. We don't need to leave for home until lunch time.

Thursday, March 22, 2001

We were up and out on the beach by 9.30 am this morning, and the sun gradually broke through the cloud as we walked. I took a batch of photos of shells, dead fish, an old crayfish pot washed up etc. Sorry I haven't had the opportunity to post any of the huge heap of photos I've taken this week -- but hopefully I'll be able to get some work up on the site tomorrow. I haven't even had time to change the stuff on the home page ...

After we returned from the beach, we drove to the nearby Marsden Point oil refinery -- this produces about 70% of NZ's needs in petroleum stuff. They won't let you into the refinery itself, of course, but they have an excellent AV show. Yoiu sit in a long darkened room looking at a scale model of the refinery at least 40 feet long, recessed down, and covered with little pin lights. When the AV starts, the overhead lights come on in groups to illuminate only the portion the AV is referring to. Most impressive. We had lunch in the cafe attached, before returning to the flat to get all our junk loaded and on our way home.

We stopped at Newmarket on our way through Auckland: I wanted to pick up an audio cassette of Greek phrases in preparation for our trip. Joan found, by accident, a temporary shop selling English upholstery fabric remnants at very low prices, and managed to find enough of the same to permit upholstering a rolled-end couch she has. Back on the road, and we arrived home by 7 pm. The car odometer shows about 860 km travelled since Tuesday morning -- to give you some idea of road distances/times in NZ.

Off to bed early -- I've got more photos to take for the forestry outfit tomorrow morning, and lots of stuff to pick up in town.

Friday, March 23, 2001

Got my camera gear ready and charged up batteries etc. I spent some time on the phone with a techie at my new ISP, sorting out the FTP for my website. Uploaded that and made sure everything was working OK so they can change the DNS. At 10.45, drove out to Ngongotaha, about 10 minutes away at the head of the lake, to the head office of the forestry group. Spent an hour with a different set of guys from Monday -- these are the office workers. Got each one in his office, with tools of the trade such as computers, GPS units, a Journada and so on. Then got them into the board room for a group shot at one end of the polished rimu table.

Back home for lunch with Joan and Jo, who had been into town shopping. I spent some time trying to revive my internet banking connection, which involves a lot of javascript. It's been OK as a dial-up connection, but refuses to perform under DSL. The help line people make all sorts of helpful suggestions -- none of which made any difference. We eventually decided that my easiest course of action was to implement one computer as a dial-up, download the javascript stuff, and use that for accessing my banking.

Took Joan back into town to her beauty consultant, while I picked up the new computer for Don to use at home. I was rather disconcerted to find that the lads at Millennium Computers had done the full assembly and left me with an unpartitioned 30 GB drive. I was looking forward to a hardware weekend -- and they spoiled it <g>. Actually, I'm so strapped for time, it was probably a good thing.

Briefly, I decided on modest specs: ASUS CUV4X m/board, Celeron 700 MHz, 128 MB SDRam, 30 GB hard drive, Win 98SE, Matrox Millennium 450 video card, and the usual bits and pieces. I specified an AOC 17-inch monitor, which wasn't available so they substituted an equally obscure brand. Seems to be fine. I spent some time formatting the hard drive to my usual plan: 800 MB for C: drive just for Windows, and the rest whacked up into 3 GB partitions. That's as far as I got tonight. When it goes over to Lisa Cresc, I have to whip the Zip drive out of the old gear and install. Then I have to get a network going between the two computers.

Saturday, March 24, 2001

Amazing .. didn't have to rush out anywhere this morning. Eli at cricket; his team won again -- just goes to show the effect of a little team coaching from Don. He's been going down to Aorangi School on lunch hour per week and coaching the team. After the first time, a bunch of boys from the senior team cottoned on and joined in too. How about that ... a gum-chewin' baseballer from the USA coaching CRICKET? Well, he has been here for about 12 years, and basic ball skills are the same.

I did some much-needed site maintenance this morning: found lots of broken links, and some I'd just forgotten to do. I've thrown a sample batch of Forestry pix together and got that up. I've also picked up on John Dominick's rant about the Taliban males' treatment of their women and put it on my Life in NZ page. Should be required reading for all religious bigots.

I also loaded the website over to the new ISP. For those who like fiddling, try clicking on Icarus. Exactly the same?? Good. That ~ address will be pointed to by www.icarus.gen.nz in due course. As soon as the new URL goes through the name servers -- hopefully Monday -- I'll be able to sort out the muddle of email addresses I'm running at the moment. Actually it's no hassle to have the dual sites: I've got Dreamweaver set up with the two different site names, but each points to the same set of files on my drive. All I need to do until the old site is pulled, is to do two separate uploads each time I change something.

The rest of the time, I've worked on Don's new box and loaded it with software -- a long, tedious job. Some of the utilities I loaded came straight down the network from my archives on Sissie which made that part of the job very quick. I also downloaded all the critical updates for Win98SE, and the service pack for Internet Explorer 5.01, so that's all up-to-date.

Sunday, March 25, 2001

After breakfast, we drove into town for a supermarket top-up. Today is our fourth wedding anniversary, and Joan needed some supplies for tonight's roast meal at Don & Jo's (Lisa Crescent). After returning, we had a leisurely coffee, then I spent some time finishing the software load on Lisa, Don's new home box.

I packed up the computer and put the bits into the car; we drove over after 4 pm. Because Don is going from a 15 to 17 inch monitor, the shelf space in his computer desk was too small, and we ended up unscrewing half the desk shelving to get it out. I then had to remove the internal Zip drive from the old gear and install in the new. Because the new box had been assembled for me, the ribbon cables were all bound with ties which had to be cut off. I finally got the Zip drive mounted, and found the IDE plug was about 1 cm too high to connect -- it was already plugged into the CDRom drive in the top 5 inch slot. I swapped the cable for the one in the old computer -- success -- the plug was crimped quite a bit further down the ribbon.

BUT, the Zip drive wouldn't perform; put a disk in, and it just sat there flashing its LED in a slow on-off. I guessed there was a jumper problem; but of course I didn't have a manual for the drive -- that had been pre-installed when the old box was built. And the other problem was that my computer pushers had forgotten that I needed another NIC to get a network going. SO, we just left both boxes with their covers off, quivering naked in the cool air, pending a resolution tomorrow.

Thus, we adjourned for a bottle of bubbly (local methode champagnoise chardonnay) to toast our anniversary -- and very drinkable it was too. The roast hogget (teenaged sheep for the information of beef-eating North Americans) was excellent; Jo had produced a crafty sauce that I had noted in a London restaurant -- a mixture of mint jelly and whole-grain mustard in wine. We returned home; I went straight onto the Iomega site, and found that I had indeed left the Zip drive jumper in the wrong position -- as a slave, it shouldn't have had one at all.

I am finishing this off early, as Joan has to be at the private hospital at 7.15 am tomorrow. Her sinus work will be done in the morning, and I will visit late afternoon after the drugs have worn off a bit.