All work and no play makes Dan a dull boy

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.

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Arráncame la vida

Last night we attended the first night of the Hola Mexico Film Festival in Wellington. The first movie of the season was Arráncame la vida (Tear This Heart Out) , the story of a woman who marries a Mexican General in the years following the Mexican Revolution of 1910 . I found it to be a real genre breaker as far as Mexican cinema goes. Over the years, we've seen several Mexican movies, and the general theme seems to be heart breaking tragedy, and rarely a happy ending. This one was different however. Although tragedy played a huge part in the story (I don't want to give anything away, but don't get too attached to the Carlos character. He doesn't last long..), the ending seems quite uplifting. Well, comparatively at least. The story starts when the protagonist is 15 years old, and being whirlwinded into a marriage with a famous (or infamous) general, twice her age. It tracks her sexual awakening as a teenager, through to her...

Older. Wiser? Wise up.

God it’s been ages since I wrote anything here. Well I’m still alive and now I have progeny! We have a son who is16 months old and a baby girl due in May. Life is good although sometimes I feel like if you don’t pay attention, you’ll suddenly find yourself in your 40’s. Or is that just me? To show my age, here are my top decade defining 90’s songs Wonderwall by Oasis Champagne Supernova by Oasis Song 2 by Blur Parklife by Blur Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve Jeremy by Pearl Jam There She Goes by The Boo Radleys Enter Sandman by Metallica Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth Common People by Pulp Agree? Disagree? See if I care...

Conchas - attempt 2

Turns out Conchas made properly are fan- bloody - tastic . The extra kneading takes it's toll on your fingers and hands, but the final result makes up for it. I guess this is true for all bread recipes, but it's cool to realise the fact through results. They turned out rounded, plump and were sweet and tasty. The sweet bread reminds me a little of a French Brioche, but the topping makes it less poncy. They contains lots of eggs and butter, so I guess this is why they taste so good. So we brought the second attempt to our Mexican friends for them to try, and the were very impressed, so I reckon that's pretty cool. I'm making some more tonight. I'll not bother posting any more about this mind you. I think you get the idea.

mexirish...nz

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