mexirish...nz

Waiting in an Auckland bar to see... After 20 fekkin years... METALLICA!! My 15 year old self in 1992 would not have believed he'd have to wait nearly 20 years to see his fave band. Finally :)

So, it was a fairly normal Friday afternoon.  Seemed a little windy outside, but all in all, a fairly normal work day. Wind in Wellington is as normal as sand in the Sahara. We finished up at a normalish time, sometime after 4 and went home. As we approached the house,  I clicked the button so that the handy electric garage door would open and we could drive in and park, as normal. Nothing happened. Very strange, but we've had power cuts before so I thought it was probably just something like that.  I parked outside, and we went in to investigate.  Sure enough, there was no power.  I went to the switch board : two of the trips had been.... er... tripped? Anyway, I clicked them back, and the lights came back on.  Nice one! But our joy was short lived. As we made our way into the house we noticed a few things. The security system's little control panel was blank.  It's got a battery backup, so this was surprising.  In previous po...

One of my fave blogs is (of course) PZ Myers'  pharyngula . It was with great sadness and alarm that I learned a few days ago that he was to undergo a fairly extreme procedure to assist his ailing heart. Very sad indeed. Well, I learned a few days after that the operation went swimmingly and that he's recovering . PZ is one of those writers who always inspires me.  I wish I could write with just 10% of his wit and intelligence.  It's so good that he's back doing what he does best - in fact I was expecting there to be a few weeks' silence from him, but divil-the-bit.  He was producing excellent quality blog posts withing days of the operation.  That's dedication. Within the last month or so, there's also been the news that Chris Hitchens has been diagnosed with some unpleasant form of cancer.  It looks to my untrained eye that his prognosis is much less encouraging that PZ's.  PZ's problem seems to be mechanical. His heart i...

Well Jacqui's away back to Mexico for a bit.  The teenagers were here and it all went very well. They're nice kids, and we had a GREAT TIME :) I also have some opinions about the state of modern Mexico that I'm dying to write about, but it's a bit to heavy for a sunday afternoon, so instead I'm gonna tell how to make something delicious. So, lets say you've got one of those slow cookers, and you've tried a few things but it always ends up kinda-tasting-the-same. Well, I know exactly how you feel.  I've tried several things, and usually they're OK, tasty enough, but lacking in whatever it would take to make the 6-8 hours worth it. Until I discovered a secret.  I didn't find this anywhere on the web, but I have inferred it. The secret with slow cooking is simplicity.  Each ingredient just adds to the mess of flavours and makes it's easier to get wrong.  It's like mixing paint.  The more colours you add, the more likely you are to ...

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 ...

Jeese, but it was close. I was offered a very good perm role in Auckland and the agent was telling me that they needed a decision pretty damn quick!  Apparently they were going to meet with the company that very day, and wanted a yea or nay before COB the following day ("Close Of Business", just in case that's a stupid TLA - "Three Letter Acronym"). So, I was very pleased when I got word that a local company here in Wellington were interested in talking to me about a 6 month contract. The interview was arranged for the following morning. The interview went well: brief but covered most of the things you'd expect.  Nothing too technical but enough to weed out the stoopids. I think I did well enough, because they told me I was the "preferred candidate".  After some panic regarding getting by references sorted, the offer was made. I called the agent in Auckland, and she was very gracious. I started a few weeks back (hence the lack of updates ...

An article on the Washington Post website asks : What is your vision of heaven? What images from scripture, tradition or your own personal experience describe it best? The answer given by Paula Kirby seems to me to be the best, most well thought out response to a question such as this. I recommend you read it, but to summarize,  she says: To a Christian, the only point of life is to win a place in heaven to be with God for ever. But what is the point of that ? Apparently it is to praise God for his goodness in sending Jesus so that we could be saved from the eternity of torment that would otherwise have awaited us in hell (and there's another preposterous idea that has caused more than its fair share of avoidable human misery, but perhaps that will be a subject for another day). and... Fortunately, there is not the slightest evidence that points towards the existence of heaven, for it would be nothing but unspeakable tedium. I can't help thinking that the people who find...

This past week, Wellington has been host to La Révolte des Mannequin . La Revolt des Mannequin, or The Revolt of the Mannequins , is a set of French art installations.  Around the town, several shop fronts are installed with Mannequins posed and doing various things. Each day, they appear shifted to a new pose, giving the impression that they're moving. And thus a story is told. There where ten of them in the CBD area, but the first that caught my attention was called Nightmare of the Puddle and featured a man enjoying a drink on the first day.  But as the days progressed, the man appeared to be melting form the feet down, forming a large puddle of plastic. By the end, he had practically disappeared completely, and a cleaning lady was mopping up the remains into a blue plastic bucket.  On the last day, she throws the contents of the bucket at the window. Another excellent one wasn't hosted in one shop.  It was called the Inspector and the Sniper.  It f...

These days, Jacqui drags herself out of bed at about 6.30am to get out in time for the 7:25 bus. I'm an unemployed bum, so I stay in bed. So, this morning she managed to grab this outstanding photo of sunrise over the eastern hills. Breathtaking.

Saturday evening was spent at Neil Gaimans 's talk.  It was his part in the New Zealand International Arts Festival . We went with our friends Jen, Dom & Jordan.  The compere (she seemed nice) introduced him as the Amadaus Mozart of postmodernist literature.  Aside from the fact that I usually detest the term "postmodern" when assumed to mean anything (can you define it satisfactorily?), I thought it was quite a clever description. The talk itself was excellent - he read 3 short poems. I can't remember the order, but they were: 1) A story called "My Last Landlady" about a murderous landlady in an unnamed English seaside town.  Sounds like Brighton. 2) A story about the bones of Saint Odhrán buried under the church on the Island of Iona which is just of the west coast of Scotland.  Downpatrick , the town I went to school in, gets a breif mention :) 3) A beautiful poem (which he described as his credo) about reading Goldilocks to his daughter....

Well, Richard Dawkins was in Wellington last night to do a talk as part of the NZ International Arts Festival . Jacqui and I had bought tickets as soon as we heard he was coming (months ago!) and were amongst first in line to get to a good seat. our friends Raquel and Cristina were with us. We settled about half way back, not so close as to be craning our necks; not so far as to be unable to see.  The view from our seats.  I put the phone away when Richard came on to the stage. The room was filled almost to capacity.  This, I remind you, is not a rock concert or a famous actor.  This is a talk by a scientist.  And the room is filled to capacity.  I hope this is a sign of the times.  I hope that scientific literacy is improving.  10 years ago, I don't think a science writer could have attracted such a large crowd in a small city like Wellington.  Perhaps we're putting myth, superstition and religion behind us.  Perhaps. The talk...

As you probably may have gathered from reading my other posts, you'll know that I have little respect for religion. I'm proud to call myself an Atheist, and think that's it's probably the only philosophy worthy of respect in a sea of morally bankrupt religions. Christopher Hitchens seems to live in the same moral sea as I, and in keeping with this he's written a nice little article for Vanity Fair about the 10 "Commandments" - the moral framework set forth by the judeo-christian god. He goes through all the biblical commandments one by one and deals with them as one would given today's ethical environment.  I'm always horrified by people who treat the biblical commandments as if they're in some way a moral high point. They're really not, and I admit to being further horrified by the glaring omissions (genocide, rape, child abuse and care for the environment.  Wouldn't an omnipotent god have known about these too?) So check out h...

I was browsing the old intertubes today and happened upon a guitarist.  He was showing the qualities of a brand of guitar amplifier on Laney's website and I was quite impressed with the guy playing the yellow guitar. I went along to the youtube page (where the video is hosted) and discovered that he was a French guy called Christophe Godin , and he's remarkable.  Seriously good doesn't even begin to describe his style; I thought I was quite good, but I now realise that I have to work alot more to get anywhere near this guy.  His style reminds me of Joe Satriani, but he's interesting and pleasant to listen to (unlike Joe, who isn't either). I read further and discovered that he's mostly known for playing in French band called Metal Kartoon, who I must admit I've never heard of.  There's no sign on iTunes, so I may have to dig a bit deeper.   Rockin' Out! Go to his website and have a look at his videos.  It's all in French, but really it do...

Well it's turning out to be an interesting time. As I discussed recently , contracting is turning out to be something of a pain in the ass. I recently started applying for suitable contracts in Auckland - a sprawling city in the North. Apparently. I managed to secure a phone interview with a Nameless Large Company, and they kindly informed me afterwards that I came "a close second".  This was cool, and usually that woud have been the end of it.  Us contractors have to be used to rejections - it's part of the job. But they have confused matters a bit - they told my agent that they might consider me for a perm role. Usually, I'd reject this straight away, but it's been nearly 5 months since I last secured a contract.  Also, it's a very well known company, and there are some excellent bribes, er, I mean benefits... I'll not mention what they are cuz you'll instantly know the company.  Suffice to say I'd be able to do the thing they do f...

Who's Christopher Maloney? Why would I say such a thing? Good reasons. Baloney Maloney!

I love to hate youtube.  But sometimes, I find something that makes me love to love youtube.  Edward Current is one of those things. Great stuff :)