delta_november

02:09 am

I started work around 9 AM today.  I'm leaving work now, at 2 AM local.  I have to wonder: at what point does filling out a time sheet become an act of passive aggression?

10:35 pm - The weekend

It's been an interesting couple days.  I've been working far too hard the past few weeks, and not getting enough sleep.  Everybody seems to need something from me urgently.  On Saturday it all caught up with me and I just fell apart for a few hours.  Which, of course, left more work for me to do today.  One of these years I'll figure out what this is all for.

Today did have one gleam of sunshine.  On a whim I rented Red Dwarf : Back To Earth, The Director's Cut.  This is a 2009 Red Dwarf special, running about 70 minutes.  It's shot in gorgeous HD (and the actors certainly do look 20 years older...), and the quality is on par with the old episodes.  I recommend it.

Before watching make sure you are familiar with Bladerunner.  Many of the scenes are recreated. ("Noses.  I only do noses.  So very cold...").  A familiarity with Coronation Street will also help.

09:11 am - Leather coats come full circle

Many years ago I became enamored of Firefly.  I set out to find a Brown Coat (a duster) partly to show my appreciation of the show, and also because my teenaged leather jacket was coming to the end of its life.  I failed.  Nowhere would sell me a coat suitable for high-street gunfights or flying starships.

Instead, I fell back to the old standby of Northbound Leather for a trenchcoat.  I believe this may be the model I bought.  And so my dreams of starship flight died.

And then this morning I come across this.  It's a shot of the flight engineer's station in a Dornier Do X flying boat from 1930.  And that's my coat!  And if I have a flying boat I don't really need a starship, do I?

05:48 pm - Traveller Rationalization

Today, for the first time in decades, I parted with some Traveller books. Over the years I had picked up seven of the GURPS Traveller supplements, though I have never had the base GURPS Traveller book or even GURPS itself.  The covers were pretty, the production values were good, but they always seemed like lifeless lists of rules.  Now I have extra space on my bookshelves, and a whole $45 in store credit at the local comics dive.

Looking at what I enjoy in Traveller, I'm most struck by the Keith brothers era.  If it's not at least 20 years old I'm not sure it belongs in my collection.

With the GURPS gone I'm now only carrying four distinct sets: Classic Traveller, MegaTraveller, Traveller: The New Era, and Marc Miller's Traveller (T4).  I can probably get rid of the last two.   TNE never did anything for me, and I only own the base book and Striker II.  I gave T4 a fair shot and have most of the books but I can't imagine why I'd play that when there's Classic available.  I'm not sure what I'll do with them.  If I knew a deserving child who could be bootstrapped up into gamerdom I'd gladly hand over the T4 stack as it's self-contained.

And now I'm psyched to play again.  I've had good success with one-shot games nights, and I think a one-off Traveller night some time this spring may be in the cards.

09:47 am

 I recently purchased Startown Liberty in gridlore 's firesale.  This is a supplement for the Classic Traveller RPG, published back in 1984.

Imagine my joy when I realized that I now have yet another random prostitute encounter table to complement the one in the 1st edition AD&D DMG!  While the DMG had a percentile table, here we just have a D6 table to determine whether the encounter is really with a thief, law-enforcer, etc.

"This encounter involves the typical streetwalker, male or female, who may approach a member of the adventuring party of the same race and opposite sex with an offer of 'a good time'." - page 9.

The world must have gotten more interesting in the past 26 years, though to be fair I believe here "race" should be interpreted as "species".

08:59 pm

For sylvia_rachel , penguins!

It's dark out (that's when the penguins come home).  My camera is on a 1 second exposure, and I'm feeling pretty hard-core about holding it this still without a tripod.  I have then stretched the contrast as far as it would go, which took the colour out of the image.

These are Blue Penguins, just outside Dunedin.

10:39 pm - As promised, me driving the Ferret

10:07 pm

 Home safe.  Will write more when human.

Edit: I need a valet and a fireplace, so I can say "Burn these clothes."  Instead, laundry must suffice.

01:58 pm

We're all packed up, the rental car is returned (and not crushed under a tank) and we're in the departure lounge of Christchurch airport.  We will land in YYZ in 25 hours, *if* everything goes smoothly.  That's a whole lot of travel, folks.  It'll take a few days on the far end until I'm human.

05:41 pm - Vroom

Here's the Ferret.  I'm in the driver's position, and jo_etal  is commander.  You all need to go buy Ferrets right away.  They're armoured go-karts!  The pre-select gearbox transmission is magic, and I desire it to be installed in anything that I may drive.

I'll see if I can upload video of my driving in a bit.

02:32 pm - Vroooom!

 I'm going here tomorrow.  To drive one of these.  5 Reverse gears.  Wheee!

After all, it would make no sense to come home with any money left.

11:41 pm - Penguins everywhere!

This evening we watched the Blue Penguins come in to shore on the tip of the Otago peninsula.  It was incredible.  Dozens of penguins only inches away from us.  And now, sleep.  Tomorrow we leave Dunedin for Omaru, and probably more penguins.

08:12 pm

I have witnessed history in the making.  A man has wheelied a motorcycle down  the length of Baldwin Street, and I was there to witness it.  Okay, I was maybe 60 seconds late and missed the main event, but I certainly witnessed the crowds.

I have also witnessed many sealions today.  We struck out on penguins, unfortunately, but will try again tomorrow.

11:49 pm - The southernmost city in the commonwealth

We're in Invercargill today, famous as the home of Burt Munro.  He bought a brand new 1920 Indian motorcycle, and over the next 45 years he tuned and tinkered with it.  He then used it to set the world speed record for a streamlined motorcycle with under 1000 cc engine.  The record still stands.

In town is a store called Hammer Hardware.  It's hard to describe.  It sells plumbing and camping equipment, like a Canadian Tire.  It sells milling machines and drill presses, like Atlas Machinery.  And distributed at random through the store are displayed a host of wonderful things.  Burt Munro's bikes.  A hand-powered drill press.  A pedal-powered metalwork lathe.  A couple of bicycle-to-motorbike conversion kits from the early 1900s.  If I lived here I'd never leave the store.

We're staying in a very nice hotel that reminds me immediately of Fawltey towers.  Or the Platonic ideal that Fawltey towers fails to reach.  It's a private hotel, 25 rooms, run by a family.  There's a dining room, and a private bar for guests only.  I could imagine the Major dropping by for a drink.  It's here, in a few hours, that we'll ring in the New Year.  I believe the plan is to have dinner here at the hotel, then check out the concert in the city square (barring rain) and then finish up in the friendly atmosphere of the hotel bar.

Tomorrow we head out to Dunedin, and penguins!

08:36 pm

 I have been instructed, on implied threat of domicilary arson, to post pictures.  Here they are.  When I have time I will attempt to back-fill with words.

( Read more... )

08:18 pm - % Feelings are important. So is laundry. %

In Fox Glacier.  Tomorrow at 0750 we begin to climb it.  Should be fun.  14 years ago I did the Frans Joseph Glacier which is just down the road.

Mt Cook and Mt Tasman dominate the skyline, but we have low cloud such that you wouldn't realize we were in the mountains.  Every once in a while there's a little window that pops open to reveal snow caps.  In a way it's nice, as it makes you appreciate each little bit of the scene on its own.

Laundry is done.  It's the usual travelling maneuver of wearing as little as possible while doing laundry, such that the maximum number of things are washed.

08:26 pm - % I've got electric light, and I've got second sight %

Reefton has somewhat redeemed itself. At dinner tonight RUN-DMC was on the stereo, and our server was a perky goth.

I've been doing a little reading about the latest air travel security theater.  My flight back passes through LAX, so I expect to experience this in its full foolishness.  Exciting!

05:31 pm

Tonight finds out heroes in Reefton. This town is proud to have been the first with electricity south of the equator. From then on, it all seems to have been down-hill. It's fundamentally a mining town with no working mine. The hostel is serviceable, but damp-smelling and cramped. There's a young lady on the main street who is trying so very hard to be Amanda Fucking Palmer.

Yesterday was Renford, which was very pleasant indeed. Vinyards look pretty so long as you don't have to do any manual labour in them. On the way out we passed through Nelson which is also nice. It has a gellato place which reminds me of home. It also has some formal Japanese gardens which try very hard but don't hold a candle to Hamilton.

Tomorrow we head out to Fox Glacier for two nights. Glaciers and rainforests -- two great tastes now in one package! We have a half-day guided hike on the glacier booked, and will likely wander through the forests on our own. And laundry, because it's getting towards that time.

09:13 pm

The best things in life are free. We've made two wonderful free discoveries in the past few days. The first is Hamilton Gardens. This is a massive garden complex, with very well maintained themed gardens. http://www.hamiltongardens.co.nz/ You could happily spend a day here.

The second is the Te Papa museum in Wellington. http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/pages/default.aspx This is the museum with the famous colossal squid. It also has a heart-breakingly beautiful marae.



Shown above is a Christmas tree decked out in tiny colossal squid. It's Christmas Evening here on the far side of the dateline. For many of you it's just beginning. Have a good one! And watch out for the squid...

08:02 am

 For niqdanger , the Land Rover report. So far in North Island New Zealand I've seen two series Rovers.  One was a 109" station wagon at the side of the road not far from Mitimiti.  This is pretty close to the middle of nowhere, and is almost certainly a farm truck. The second was more interesting.  Riding the ferry north from Rawene we see a Series 3 88" on the far side of the harbour towing a big boat on a trailer.  As the ferry gets closer to the landing the Rover starts backing down the slip -- the same one that our ferry is about to dock at.  The boat is launched.  At this point I'm thinking that if the driver's buddy hops takes the boat out right now they might just avert disaster. But no, the driver is alone.  He launches the boat, then hops into the Rover and drives it up the slip.  Then runs back down to the water like a madman, hops into the boat, and frantically attempts to start the engine.  It finally sputters to life, and clears the slip before the ferry can crush it. I'm not really a nautical cove, but I would guess the boat was 15'.  It had a rack of tiny anchors along one side.  I assume it was something akin to a lobster boat, and that there was some species of trap attached to each anchor that he intended to plant out in the harbour.  So he may repeat this operation every tide. It was interesting to see a Series being used professionally.  I wonder if that's the cure for shipfitter's disease, having your livelihood depend on the truck running each day.