mexirish...nz

Well, it's all been very busy at work these days.  I'm helping the very nice folks at NZQA to build their new website, and this weekend, after months of coding & hacking, it finally went live. You can check it out (if you like) at http://www.nzqa.govt.nz .  There may still be bugs, missing pages and perhaps catastrophic crashes, but it certainly looks better and is apparently easier to use. I did the "dynamic" pages - this is a fancy way of saying that I re-skinned the legacy pages to make them look like the rest of the site :) There are several nice &/or interesting technologies in use back there : Silverstripe is used for CMS, and it's been interesting to see how to integrate something complex like a professional CMS with a set of legacy pages. Anyway, mostly done now. 

Since I've been home alone since Sunday, I've been taking the opportunity to listen to old music that I haven't heard in ages. Like many people, I maintain a huge Mp3 collection on an external hard drive.  Practically every CD I've ever owned (and a few I've never owned, but that's another story) plus hundreds of tunes bought or downloaded from various online sources. My favourite songs this week are: Lovely Head - Goldfrapp Sunchyme - Dario G The Golden Path - The Chemical Brothers & The Flaming Lips The Weekend - Michael Gray Gangster Trippin - Fatboy Slim Praise You - Fatboy Slim Reverence - Faithless La Femme D'Argent - Air Numb - Portishead Wandering Star - Portishead Protection - Massive Attack Born Slippy - Underworld Beachball - Nalin & Kane Harvester of Sorrow - Metallica My tastes have certainly changed over the years, and some of this stuff would never have been pat of my collection before.  Jeeze. I only add

Well, Jacqui is finally safely arrived in Mexico City and is, as I type,  recovering from a fairly arduous and long ordeal.  Apart from arriving at the wrong terminal, everything seemed to go relatively smoothly.  She even has a decent wifi connection in her hotel room, so we could even chat for free over skype. She makes the 4 hour bus trip to her home city tomorrow afternoon, and will be staying a night in a local hotel before getting settled. Excellent :)

Jacqui called me at around 5:30am last night to let me know she'd arrived safely in Santiago de Chile, and was getting her next flight in 20 minutes.  Her luggage being on the same flight was something of an open question, so I guess she'll find out when she gets to Mexico....

Well, Jacqui's off to Mexico for a few weeks, or a month, or maybe longer.  Thursday night Jacqui spent packing and I spent sorting out her laptop.  Updated all the software and switched off automatic updates - Jacqui will be using the tethering function on her iPhone for internet and at $10 per megabyte, it could be very expensive!  We ended up going to bed sometime around 4. A few hours later, on Friday morning, we got up early and faffed about for exactly 7 minutes too long, and then battled our way through Friday Morning Traffic, moving at the exact same speed as Golden Syrup, before arriving at the airport exactly 7 minutes late. Damn. "Sorry sir, check-in is now closed." the lady told us. "Closed?" "Yes, but don't worry; you can get on the next flight for a $90 charge." "Excellent!  When's that then?" "In 6 hours" The lady was very nice though : not her fault we arrived late.  She suggested that we might