Schmoo

This is very interesting

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/2595154/Sam-Neill-meat-ad-angers-Peta/

If you're even wondering why I can't stand PETA perhaps a quick view of http://www.petakillsanimals.com/ will clear that up.

Apart from this ad being a little cheesy, it seems harmless enough, though I have always found those Meat ads a bit propagana ish.

But PETA the same people who were angry for Obama killing a fly, feel the need to make another predicatbly frothing at the mouth statement, spattered with half truths and spurious logic, I'm surprised they haven't tried to say Orangutans are vegetarian, it really wouldn't surprise me if they had.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/2593975/Gunmans-guilty-plea-sheds-light-on-teens-death

A Maori gunman starts shooting guns all over the motorway, the cops come and shoot him, and accidentally shoot another motorist, who happens to be a Pacific Islander.

Are the family angry at the cop? Yes and understandably, are they angry at the arsehole who started shooting guns everywhere, remarkably no, they see the cops as the more culpable cause of their sons death, despite the cops actions being accidental and the gunman's being quite on purpose.

This kind of "Us against the Pigs" no matter how much of a fuckwit one of us is behaving defies logic and reason.

If the gunman had not decided to shoot up the motorway, then their son would still be alive, and even the gunman seems to miss this point and points the finger at the cops, this comment proves he too doesn't really understand what he has done, but then if you're stupid enough to fire guns all over the motorway then you're stupid enough to think like this.

It's only a complete fluke that no motorists were shot by the gunman, he was and is a person deserving of blame.

Every day I read another article about some pre-internet dinosaur bemoaning the fact that the internet has made them irrelevant and obsolete though they don't admit this or are not aware of this, they are usually calling for censorship, stronger copyright laws, protectionism or simply that the government levy the populace and give them the cash because it's not fair that they can't make money the way they used to.

The latest group seem to be journalists, or rather media publishing companies, who don't like the fact that people want free news delivered via the net rather than paid news delivered in paper form by an 11yr old boy.

Whilst it may be true that if forced by law, all those websites that simply re-broadcast news sourced from these companies sites and make money from the advertising would no longer be able to make money from their labour, this does not mean that the general public will happily start paying these media publishing companies for their news.

What is more likely is that people will simply switch to another free website that actually does gather news using actual reporters and makes their money from advertisers on their site, people are not going to pay for news, and if they were they would not pay for the drivel put out by the likes of Rupert Murdoch's army of semi articulate imbeciles.

The point that I think a lot of people, corporations, governments, conservatives seem to miss is that what makes the internet what it is, is that it's free uncensored and non legislated, anybody can and will say whatever they like, and like it or not some of the things they have to say you might not like, but that's the nature of the beast, the minute you try and attach laws and restrictions and censorship to it, people will stop using it and use something else.

The day all the govermnents will be slapping themselves on the back congratulating themselves on how they have finally reined in the internet and made it safe for little Timmy Aged 3, all the people currently using what is now the internet will have been using whatever it's sucessor will be for at least 3 years.

The reason for this is simple, the internet is not a thing, it is an idea it is an idea based on already existing technologies but at the same time on technologies that will be invented tomorrow and next week and in the forseeable future, so you can't ban it, censor it tame it, because by the time you do it will be reformed using something new, that you haven't even learnt about yet.

The idea is simple, multiply redundant connectivity or rather I'm connected to you and you're connected to me and your friend but I'm also connected to your friend so if you are taken out of the equation, I'm still connected to you friend, multiplied by everyone on the internet and multiplied by every protocol and service currently in use, so to waste time trying to shut down for exmaple the pirate bay is futile in that it's not the pirate bay, but the idea of unlimited unrestricted connectivity that you are fighting and you can't kill an idea like that.

And the idea that you will just legislate against ISPs and force them to disconnect me, is tantamount to removing my letterbox because I sent a chain letter, it is not your right to disconnect me from the rest of the world, in this day and age where the internet is used for paying bills, buying food, contacting relatives and accessing government information, you might just as well turn off the fire hydrant outside my house because I was late paying my water bill.

You are trying to gain control over an idea that you never had, will never have and can never have, not just because it's practically impossible but mostly because the people don't want you to, and likely never will.

Arseholes I have observed this week.

1: The guy who parked half on the cyclists lane and half on the bus stop, then gave the finger to the bus driver and grinned like an imbecile when the driver tooted at him to move his vehicle, inconsiderate wanker.

2: The guy who puts his recycling bins out on the bus stop where I get off at Lyttelton in just such a way that it perfectly lines up with the back door of the bus so it's completely in the way when I have to exit, special.

3: The three people who decided to stop and have an extended chat blocking half the way past in the mall right where the way past narrows, oblivious bastards.

4: Random drunk morons who holler at you as they drive past in cars on a Saturday night along Riccarton Rd. seriously if I was that stupid I would not be announcing it so loudly to passers by, and what exactly do you expect me to do, even if I could react instantly you have already driven past, Neanderthals.

5: Silly cow who works at the Riccarton Rd. Super Liquor who didn't know what Advocaat was, please have at least enough product knowledge to know a very common product exists, if not what it is, incompetent. Oh and Super Liquor for selling out completely of Advocaat, what is your stock ordering system like, I mean I severely doubt there's been a recent run on Advocaat and the Warehouse is out too.

Sick Burn!

Could Bertie be any cooler!

Microsoft have often done things that I have found annoying, but what they are doing with Vista I think is the most annoying yet, and this has nothing to do with Vista and how it sucks as this is a topic for another time.

What they are doing as regards Vista that annoys me, is going out of their way to make you use it whether you like it or not, by making their hardware partners insist to you that you can't use XP instead and if you don't believe them and decide to try and put XP on their hardware anyway that they can't support you at all.

I just recently bought a HP DV7 desktop replacement, and the hoops I am going to have to jump through in order to get XP onto the thing and Vista off are so much of a pain I'm even considering waiting for Windows 7 instead of going through with them, not that I think Windows 7 will be as good as XP, just maybe better than Vista but then that wouldn't be hard.

And it's not about finding drivers for all the vaguely identified hardware in the computer, that's no biggie really, it takes time but in the end I'm sure I'll manage it, in spite of said hardware manufacturers playing the same "Oh no our hardware is not designed for XP" game, even though all they had to do was provide an XP driver.

It's that XP is not a dead OS, in fact most people prefer it, but Windows has decided that we should all use Vista even if we don't want to, and it's pretty telling when the computer you're replacing with a new one runs faster under XP than you brand new Quad Core beast does running Vista.

My main beef is that when there is no technical reason I can't use XP instead of Vista, why do you have to pretend there is, why do you have to thwart every step to doing so with fake problems, and refuse to allow hardware manufacturers to provide XP drivers, when they so easily could.

I think I know why, you're worried that you fucked up and made an operating system people didn't need to upgrade, and your revenue stream will cease, although it occurs to me you could have avoided this by having Vista actually work, or at least not be slower than XP on the same hardware.

So I'm pissed off, because once again Microsoft you have proved you don't give a shit if I'm happy as long as I pay you, we listen up dickheads I'm happy to pay you just give me XP and I'll give you money, it's not too much to ask.

It's always very sad to me how some extremely talented people who have brought immense joy to the world at the height of their careers end up dying alone in their homes with no friends around them.

In Michael Jackson's case I think he suffered from being a little too insulated from the real world and particularly criticism of himself and after years of surrounding himself with people who were either too scared or too worried about their jobs to criticise him or his behaviour, received a knockout blow when he was accused of child molestation by a family whose credibility was dubious at best and couldn't even keep their story straight between two years and two different court appearances, (funny thing is the truth is easy to remember, but made up stories of any complexity are somewhat more difficult).

I think he considered that that family had been his friends and that they could turn on him like that and that it seemed a lot of people believed them over him was a major blow to his self esteem.

I think had he been able to start his 30 concert comeback tour as soon as the court case was over thing might have turned out differently, but again had he not surrounded himself with people unwilling to do something about his drug dependency he might also still be with us.

I do think, to a certain degree the media's relentless mention of his plastic surgery and child molestation allegations whenever they reported on him like a broken record because of their supreme laziness and lack of imagination are somewhat culpable for destroying a person who to my mind really didn't deserve such a level of sheer bloody minded nastiness.

I grew up at a time when Michael Jackson was about as hot and new and popular as a musician could be, and his music has always been the height of cool to me, and I was always hoping he would bring out some new material because I am sure he had it in him to do so if he had just got on and done it.

One new album of new material (that was all his own without collaborating with some lame ass like Akon or whoever) would in my opinion have been all was needed for everyone to remember why they liked him and forget all the negativity surrounding him, alas it was not to be.

So I would like if nothing else now that he is dead perhaps people could stop harping on about the plastic surgery and the accusations and just simply appreciate that he was a talented person who made some very good music which I will personally continue to enjoy regardless of what people think they know about Michael Jackson.

1. You can ONLY answer 'Yes' or 'No'.

2. You are NOT ALLOWED to explain ANYTHING unless someone messages or comments you and asks—and, believe me, the temptation to explain some of these will be overwhelming. Nothing is exactly as it seems.

( Yes or No Meme )

Now that the trial is over, the debate seems to have intensified rather than calmed down.

I have followed the second trail quite closely on stuff, (not made easier by stuff not delineating what is new news and what is recap, every time they paste a new article), and I have to say one thing baffles me, why are some people sure David is guilty of killing his whole family and why are some people sure he is innocent of killing anybody?

I have seen no evidence for the defence or the prosecution that would lead me to believe either option so fervently, I'm frankly not surprised that the jury returned a not guilty verdict because I can't see how you could say you thought he did it "beyond reasonable doubt".

Another option has been put forward (not in the trial) that the father killed the family, and David came home and saw what had happened and shot the father, this seems possible to me, and to be honest I can't really blame him if this is indeed what happened.

I have also listened to the 111 call David made and even knowing that I'm supposed to be able to hear "I shot the prick" which would bias me towards imagining I could hear it, I still can't hear it.

But back to my original point, why are people so sure they know he did or didn't do it?

Nothing seems like a "smoking gun" bit of evidence and the evidence (such that it is) seems to have been bungled to the point that any useful evidence that might have proved anything in my mind was destroyed or botched up,

I mean the one thing that might have made me think "oh wow he did it" ie David's bloody fingerprints on the gun they couldn't even say if it was blood let alone human blood let alone one of the murdered family's blood.

And David Farrar's blog post is typical biased Farrar shite, every item on his list of things you have to believe to think Robin Bain did it is dripping with sarcastic bias, that guy is such a jerk.

And don't even get me started about Stuff's Rosemary McLoed if there's a wrong end of a stick to grab and run with it she'll manage it, what a dippy bitch.

And as usual in Stuff's usual underhanded way, you can't post comments on any of these articles.

I am now in a new office, it is the same floor, but now we are at the front of the building with a great view of the entire harbour.

I have my own space too separated by cubicle dividers which is nice, I shall have to put up some suitable dilbert cartoons.

I'm considering setting up a webcam so you can see the great view out my window.

The pizza night went well, next time I intend to make the pizza bases that require a minimum of 48hrs in the fridge before using, though our quicky (2hr prep time) version worked quite well, though I need to get some deep dish pizza pans.

I went to the British shop on Ricarton rd the other day and picked up some chicken bisto in a jar, and some treacle, but I also noticed they had a flavour of OXO cubes I didn't even know existed, that being Lamb OXO.



Now it is expensive $7.80 for a box, but well worth the price, I have used them 3 times already to make some lovely caseroles and stews in our cast iron pot, even beef tastes good with them.

They smell great.

Everything in the shop is quite over priced, but these are worth the expense.

I really hope this is a comedy routine and not an actual product

Joe Bennett's wankery about public buses in his recent stuff piece aside
(why people who don't regularly use buses, feel they have any legitimacy in commenting on what they think using the bus is like, I have no fucking idea)

http://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/2407441/A-ghastly-busload-of-old-tosh

He also complains that he saw the new tv journalist adverts around the place that proudly proclaim "It's all about the story" his problem with it is different than mine, he asserts that "It's all about" is the offending part, as it only really means "heres something I like" and his point is probably valid, but that's not what irks me about the phrase,

"It's all about the story" seems to me, a jarring reminder, in I am sure, an unintentional way, that journalists aren't interested in the facts or truth of a story, but rather "The story" and that it's a good story, an interesting story, a sensational story, but a factually accurate story? This seems to be, not that important to these people.

Think back to any news story of which you were knowledgeable of all the facts, as maybe you were involved or a family member was, and think how the journalist did the interview, then buggered off and wrote the article and never thought to run the article by you or you family member before printing it, then when you read it you realised they had changed the story, probably to make it sound better or more snappy, just enough so it was no longer true, then you had to put up with tons of phone calls from people you knew asking you why you or your family member would have said that.

I think they just don't care, a 5 min phone call, to read the article back to the person it's about or who knows the facts, just to make sure it's still correct after the journalist's "changes" and I think this brings me to the crux of the matter, the journalists seem to be complete shit at making a story flow more easily or sound more interesting without turning it into a pale of it's former factual self.

But then I think I understand why this sort of thing happens, I was on the bus the other day and a girl who used OMG as punctuation in her conversation remarked to her friend, "OMG there is this journalism course you should do", "OMG yeah that would be so fun" replied the other.

I despair that people who can't speak or write think they should go into jobs where they have to, you know, speak and write.

And before you linguist student prats start repeating your "language changes" mantra, yes it does change, that doesn't change the fact that the people changing it due to their ignorance, stupidity and laziness are arses.

Fancy network cards



http://www.killernic.com/products/killer-xeno-ultra.aspx

I really don't know what to think regarding this swineflu, the media seem to be oscillating between "we're all going to die" and "we're all going to be fine, you were silly to worry, (even though we made you worry in the first place)"

A quick look on wikipedia gives you a lot more info than the media bothered to explain anyway.

I think regardless of whether this is the killer flu that will kill millions I think it highlights just how difficult it is to stop the spread of this kind of thing with the ease of international air travel.

By the time we knew it might be swineflu, the occupants of the plane had returned to their homes all around New Zealand and in some cases even headed off to work the next day, in a lot of ways this is too late.

Also, are we quarantining everybody arriving back in NZ for overseas now that we know there may be a killer flu outbreak overseas, no we're not, and if we did everybody would cry foul, as it is they will wait to cry foul until everybody has swineflu, complaining that everybody should have been quarantined at the airports, go figure.

I think apart from everything else this has highlighted the fact that whilst my new home is very domesticated, we need more dry foods, canned foods and 20ltr containers of water, even if just as an earthquake survival kit, so I shall be buying a few more of these each week and keeping a better supply of things.

We have plenty of matches and candles, and a radio with rechargeable batteries in it, that I charge occasionally, in case they have run down, and I should get my torch and electric lantern back from the country, but I wonder would stocking some Cabin Bread and Berocca be going overboard, it seems a little too easy to get into a survivalist mindset about these kinds of things.

Rosa said well we could get a big bag of rice, and that's fine, but every bit of dehydrated food you have requires water to hydrate, and I wonder how many times can you re-use cooking water and it still be safe or nice.

One thing I have considered is that it's all very well collecting some canned foods but they should be tasty as well as nutritious, so canned corned beef good, canned spam, maybe not so much, Stagg canned chilli is good, I eat that stuff voluntarily but a lot of the Watties "Big Eat" range make me want to barf just looking at the picture on the can.

But again I'm more thinking of this as it related to earthquake and flood survival, though you never know.

On Sunday I went round to the old place and grabbed some more furniture from the garage, another couch, a dresser, two chest of drawers, a set of nested tables, a bed head, my aquarium and stand and light, a cane laundry hamper, the TV and some bits and pieces.

The place is felling a lot more homely now, and less like we're only here temporarily.

I will set up the aquarium and the entertainment centre tonight, and maybe Thursday we can get some plants and fish for the aquarium.

murphwhitt and fubarkibble popped round for dinner on Saturday we had roast chicken with stuffing and veges and gravy and apple crumble and ice cream for dessert, this time we put 200gms of sausage meat in the stuffing and whilst it made it nice, I think fnord_fnord and I prefer it without, the extra teaspoon of sage was nice though. (we use the standard Edmonds recipe for stuffing)

fnord_fnord is on holiday now, jealous.

fubarkibble brought her hard drive over full of media stuff, I snarfed lots of it, now I have some starwars games to play.

It has happened all my favourite Great old games at this new website for sale for ridiculously cheap prices.



http://www.gog.com/en/catalogue/

I can't help thinking this kind of thing should have existed ages ago.

She makes me glad to come home at the end of a long day
She learns the physics so I don't have to
She makes me cupcakes for my playlunch
She thinks I am sexy, I suspect she needs glasses
She cares what I think, and I her
She smiles and I know she means it
She is supersexycutehotmagicallybabelicious
My spellchecker informs me that is not a word, pfft what does it know
My spellchecker informs me spellchecker is not a word either
She always forgives me when I am a tard
She gets over it pretty quick when it needs getting over
She is very special to me
She lets me drink all the milk
She knows where the towels are kept, well most times.

I love my Rosa as much as I love lego and macaroni and cheese.... mmmm cheese

Another glorious morning on another Monday.

As usual the software build I was promised 3 weeks ago and then 3 days ago has yet to materialise, but this is just normal, and nothing to grind your teeth about.

I have GTA IV now, now as soon as I can get a new power supply for my main PC maybe I might be able to play it, and Fallout 3 also.

This seems to be the month for dieing PSUs I have had about 3 die on me.

I watched Clerks with the gorgeous fnord_fnord last night, as she had never seen it, I shall now have to locate my copy of clerks 2, which whilst not a pinch on the original, is worth a watch.

Thanks to morbid_curious for this great and updated photo of the Giant Pumpkin, it is getting huge.

( Giant Pumpkin Picture )


Baronial Anniversary next weekend, I will have to find some of my nicer garb to wear.


Starting to properly settle in to the new place, it's starting to feel like home, which is nice, having someone lovely to come home to is great and I have a really good feeling about the future.

A cyber rose for you fnord_fnord Hugs and Kisses

I have figured out why I have always had trouble getting the wireless security enabled on my router of which I have 2 the same, it has a passphrase to WEP key generator, which didn't caution you when your passphrase was too long and it would then generate a wireless key that was longer than 13 digits which windows would then not accept.

So all I did was type in my own wep key that was 13 digits long and bam it's working fine.

This is great because it means we can have wireless internet in our place without having a separate wireless access point, daisy chained onto the modem/router.

And it makes it more difficult for your average Joe to steal out internets, not impossible, but at least they can't just hit connect and then steal our internets.

I might turn on mac address filtering too, and hide the ESSID.

Every little bit helps.

They connected our phoneline and internet yesterday, so we have 20gb of internets and people can call us.

I will set up the wireless transmitter tonight and secure it, so no bodies steals our internets.

Shopping day tomorrow, we need to buy a broom and a mop, and a bucket I guess.

I got a good night's sleep last night and I feel all the better for it, everything seems much less a worry now, not that I had any worries, it's just when you are tired, they seem like they exist.

This having breakfast thing is I think is helping too.

I managed to find all the bits for my spare ADSL Modem/Router, so hopefully when I get home today, they will have connected everything up, they said it would be done by lunchtime today, and Steve rang up last night and said he had connected out internet anyway, because it hadn't got to billing yet, but I don't think he knew the phone line wasn't up yet, so it didn't work, so fingers crossed for tonight.

I found the aerial for the little TV last night so we watched some TV, Prime mostly, black books, mythbusters, flight of the conchords that sort of thing.

The kitchen is great, so clean and it stays as clean as we make it, which is excellent, you actually feel like cooking, I washed some of my glasses so now we have things to drink out of that aren't coffee mugs.

Jen and Andrew came over last night and dropped off some of my stuff I had left at their place, including my grandmother's step stool, so now everyone can reach the highest shelves.

Rosa's parents came over to say hi and had apple crumble and ice cream with us, unfortunately the fridge that came with the place is way too efficient, even when we turned it down the ice cream is too hard to spoon out, will have to set up my other fridge in the laundry cupboard and keep ice cream in that, the new fridge is great at freezing ice cubes tho, does it in about 2 hrs.

Stuff night tonight, though we still have a lot of setup to do, so not sure if I'll go.

The fabulous fnord_fnord and I have moved into our new home, thanks to becky1 for helping, we have mostly setup the kitchen, after a bit of unpacking, and a deep cut to my finger (naughty knives) and a couple of visits to the supermarket and kmart (we have colour coded waste buckets you kno)

We'll spend the week setting up the lounge and other rooms, and I'll shift some more stuff into the garage from the old place's garage this weekend, can't wait till that's over, it's really hard work.

Ate breakfast and brought a packed lunch to work this morning, feeling all domesticated.

Mostly very tired, but content.

Hopefully our internet and phone will be connected today or early this week anyway.

So I'll bring home some splitters so we can at least use the internet if it get's turned on.

As we are growing up, our parent's teach us right from wrong, "don't hit the other child, you wouldn't like that if they did that to you" etc. and these lessons make perfect sense and once pointed out we understand the basic truth of them, no, we wouldn't want to be hit, so it's unfair to hit someone. etc.

However somewhere along the way we forget these basic truths and start to come up with justifications as to why it's ok to do things that are wrong.

One of the biggest justifications people use is Religion, we hold up a little book and say, this little boy must die because giving him a blood transfusion is against god, this little girl must die because abortion is against god, this woman must be stoned to death because she was out walking without her brother or father, this man is an abomination because he doesn't fancy girls.

Where along the line from the religious message of "lets all be nicer to each other" did we go so wrong that we're now condemning people to death because of what someone decided to write in a book.

Ask a child, they know it's wrong and they know the little book is just stupid.

But us adults we know better... or do we?

I did some packing today, and we went to the new place so I could check out the back yard, the creek/stream, turned out to be a storm water culvert, the kind with the wooden sides and sheer drop to the water, but the grassed area was nice and a mature apple tree has tasty apples.

We sat under the apple tree and drank some fizzy drink, yay golden pash, tropical punch sucks!

I met the neighbours in number 4 they seemed nice and were growing pumpkins, they liked the picture of mine I showed them, there is plenty more room to grow some more stuff if we wanted to.

Saw the neighbour in number 3 but he didn't say hello, we will, I am sure meet everyone eventually.

Will take photos next time I am there, I totally fail at taking photos of the place.

Rosa and I went out to Jen and Andrew's yesterday to say hi and check out the garden, it is wild and growing as usual, my Giant pumkpin is really big now and the other giant pumpkin I planted is growing a pumpkin too, so that's cool, we got some blackberries and after the recnet rain there were many dinner plate sized mushrooms, which are really amazing.



After a bit of looking it would seem that the Little River Giant Pumpkin competition is in about 2 months, so maybe I'll enter it.

http://www.littleriverpumpkinfest.co.nz/index.html

Rosa and I are moving in together horay!

We have found a neat house half a block from Riccarton Mall, it has one huge bedroom and one small double bedroom, huge lounge, neat 70's kitchen, and the laundry is in a huge cupboard off the kitchen, which I think is cool and whilst it is in a block of other houses ours is above all the garages so shares no walls with the other houses which is great.



( More pictures of the house )


The handiness of it's nearness to the mall is only starting to sink in, movie, theater, supermarket, etc. very cool.

Also if you're looking for a place to live you might want to have a chat with my flatmates at the dollhouse, as I'm sure they would like to get a new flatmate.

I read an article on stuff about the boy racers and of course underneath people were able to comment and both sides did, with the sane voices in the wilderness few and far between.

Here is my take on things.

Boys like to race, this is fine, I can appreciate this

Residential neighborhoods are not a suitable place for them to to this, because of the noise and the danger to pedestrians.

People are literally unable to sleep while this sort of thing is going on.

Putting in lots of judder bars simply moves the problem somewhere you haven't put judder bars yet and inconveniences everyone else driving at proper speeds.

My solution, build a race track in the old stock yards, plonk a McDonalds at one end and a Supre at the other end, put in proper barriers so people watching can't get hit by cars that go out of control and escort any fuckwits racing anywhere else to the race track and take their keys off them if they don't take the hint.

I just bought a fondue set, so this recipe seems helpful.

Best song ever

Only 22 days till Canterbury Faire

I have no idea why Woot thinks it's 17 days perhaps he thrives on self induced panic.

Everything is chugging along nicely, and no major obstacles to be seen.

I shall be going out to Keppanach this weekend to do some more work on the Cottage floor, and check on the Vege garden, which is apparently thriving.

I picked up an Organic NZ magazine today, there are some interesting articles if you can stomach the GE/Organic Hysteria and glean the useful information from the articles, anyway there was an article on Hops and it reckons you can substitute ground hops for baking powder, now this would be cool, to be able to grow your own baking powder.

There was also an article on heating and cooling your greenhouse using underground pipes.

Well as there are no more compulsory family obligations from now on, I shall be spending a lot more time out in the country, apart from Canterbury Faire, which is in the country anyway, so it's all good.

I hope after CF to purchase a 20ft shipping container and have it placed out next to my Cottage and I can then start ferrying all my things out there into safe secure dry storage in anticipation of living out there permanently.

In other news I did a little research into Mopeds,



and was delighted to find you can buy a brand new 48cc conversion kit for a standard bicycle for $210, including all the bits you need, and to register this thing you just need to take it into the vehicle testing station and fill out an MR2B and pay $117.64 and you get a licence plate and everything, you need to get stop lights, dipped headlight, rear red light and reflector and horn, and a proper motorcycle helmet and you're away laughing, all you need is any class of drivers licence, including learners and you are legaly on the road, with a top speed of 50km per hr and a fuel economy of 1 litre for every 150km of travel.

( Long MemeThing )

Angel was just chatting to the Principal Rural Fire Officer at Hurunui District Council and he says that gas barbecues are able to be used during a total fire ban, and asks that they are used on a concreted pad or suitably cleared space.

So I don't think it needs to be any clearer than that, and I'll stop worrying about it now.

I have spoken with the Fire department at the CF site and my local one and they have indicated that a Total Fire Ban, is possible and means no gas operated appliances even if they are on a concrete pad or in the mong shelter.

To this end I'm looking at getting a double electric element for coffee making, I already have a small oven with a single element on the top, which I will likely place a large pot of water on top which will be kept just off the boil, for staff to fill their ibriks from before making coffee to speed up electric coffee making, which is considerably slower, with the main elements only being used to bring the hot water to the boil, it should be no slower.

We would like this year to provide more period non-alcoholic drinks as these are quite interesting and can be partaken of by all, and if we can get enough together we may re-institute the bottomless cordial subscription.

New Staff, we are pleased to Welcome Rosa and Sophie to the Mangy Mongol crew.

Now, last year people volunteered for positions of responsibility, and were unable to fulfill these, so please this year if you want to volunteer that is great, but if you do volunteer for something specific, make sure you will be able to do it, otherwise we presume the task is being done, when in fact it is not, and this takes a bit of time to notice and sort out.

There will be no formal kitchen in the mong this year, many Thanks to Cat for providing this in the past, the mong will be providing the standard turkish delight and Ravani etc. but there will be no kitchen and no pies.

Coffee Subscriptions will remain the same this year, however the coffee subscriptions will not be collected and no cups etc will be issued until Monday Morning, being the first official day of the Event, there will be staff training on the Sunday, so there will be coffee to drink for setup crew but in order to setup things properly the mong does not officially open till the Monday morning, though the bar will most likely be open from Saturday evening 7pmish.

Setup Crew/Mong Staff, don't forget to bring and wear your Mong t-shirts for the setup days as you usually wouldn't get a chance to wear them and they look great.

More news as soon as there is some.

Michelet

As you can see from my trusty fish thermometer, the windowsill next to my desk is a balmy 34 degrees, which should be excellent for growing tomatoes, chillis and capsicum and tomatillos.

fnord_fnord and I went to dismantle the glasshouse on Saturday, it only took 6 hrs and we really didn't have to rush, and we broke a minimum amount of panes of glass considering they aren't designed to be taken apart.

The guy also gave us a back door and some built in wardrobe doors and some ferns.

So a successful day, we finished it up be attending Richard's party/drinkies, which was fun, a wee bit hung over the next day but nothing to write home about.

The glasshouse had very few truly rotten wooden parts and will to all intents and purposes, simply be reassembled, we will of course have to build a 2 foot high wall to build it on top of, which we may do with breeze blocks or concrete which ever is more practical.

The biggest spiders you ever saw were living in the roof ridge, luckily they did not try and leap on our faces or eat out our brains, so that was a bonus, also no injuries other than a couple of scrapes, so that was also good.

I have been seriously wanting a glasshouse for a while, but the ones on trademe are usually quite expensive and we still would have had to pull them apart ourselves, so free is good.

We will likely change the original design a little in that it had two doors one each end, if we change it to one door, we gain a lot more growing space.

fnord_fnord and I found a glasshouse on freecycle, we were both very keen and arranged to go round and see it at 5:30pm last night and we agreed to dismantle it and take it away for the guy, which is pretty cool as 12 other people were interested in it, it is huge, about the same footprint as the cottage, some of the wood is a little old, but most of it will be fine, and most of the glass is still there, but we can collect glass till we replace any that is missing, but when it's free you don't need to be too picky.

I am especially pleased with this new acquisition, as they tend to go for a lot on trademe even in the condition this one is, the glass alone would be very expensive to acquire, I now need to start collecting breeze blocks on trademe to create the base for it, though you can usually get a fair few for bugger all, if you keep your eye on it.

So I will be spending the next two weekends dismantling the glasshouse and breaking it down to pieces that will be easy to move out to Keppanach.

The building of the cottage has started with the floor, which my father graciously decided to build for us, and after rather complicated discussions of which I am still mostly baffled with fnord_fnord's Dad, we have now mostly agreed on the design for it, it will have a loft bedroom, and we can use most of the existing framework from the garage that I got, which will keep costs down, and using papercrete (http://www.papercrete.com) for insulation will also remove the need for pink bats and gib board, two other large costs.

First day back at work, the office looks like a bomb hit it, this will probably take all week to fix, not much has changed, I was supposed to spend the week getting back up to speed with the software, however I now have to do that and tidy the office and do a mail out, you can never concentrate on one thing and do it properly around here.

Not that I'm complaining, it's great to be back.

We may be moving down the hall to a new office with a better view and less direct sun, and curtains and everything, I'm looking forward to that, even if it means I can't use my store room as a greenhouse.

I rescued my spider plants pruned off all the dead leaves, planted the babies in the soil and watered them, so even if the main plants die which they are unlikely to, the babies will grow into viable plants.

Rosa's dad gave me a "Ringo" alarm system he got at a garage sale for $5 it's great, very retro alarm system, comes with 5 switches and the alarm goes off no matter what, then you have to find the ringer to switch it off, so I think I'll rig up a key switch to the power supply (which can run at 240volts or 12 volts) so that it doesn't go off every time you come home.

I now have a mountain bike, I just need to get mudguards, carrier, lights, bell, carrier bags.

Oh and in the long term, an electric front wheel and maybe a little trailer for it.

We had a late frost in the garden at Keppanach, it burnt some of the leaves on the potatoes and the marrows and pumpkins, but nothing major and they should recover, for some reason it left everything else alone.

I have a little oak tree now, it is about 30cm high, as they grow very slowly I have ages to decide where it will live.

This weekend was educational, we slaughtered one of the sheep,

I was wondering how I would feel about it as a sheep is a little different than a chicken, but it really didn't bother me at all, even when I stood in the wrong place and the blood shot out of the neck and onto my shoe, in fact that was mildly amusing.

photos below

( Sheep Slaughter )

Well some pleasant news, I have my old job back, which is a weight off my mind and means I no longer have to apply for jobs I didn't really want and would have been bored doing.

This means everything is back on track though Cottage building will probably proceed after Canterbury Faire now, but there is no rush.

My plants grow with reckless abandon, and now I'm moving onto getting some fruit trees sorted.

I'm thinking Lemons, Grapes, apples, pears, plums apricots, and berries to start with.

Spent a lovely day and night with the fabulous fnord_fnord at st crispins, apart from forgetting to bring bedding all went swimmingly, people seemed to like the Stout that I made, and I now have the mead recipe that everyone enjoyed, which I shall make lots of soon.



So this week I shall do a little spring cleaning and then back to work on Monday.

Well I won't be taking more photos for a while as it would seem all seedlings look the same, roughly, so once the plants have got big enough that they look like something I'll take some more pictures.

I found you can buy pumpkin carving kits on trademe for $10, the kit doesn't seem like much, but the tools would take longer to make than I can be bothered and hell it's $10, also I have found some neat jack-o-lantern patterns and I have some neat ideas myself, so as soon as my two living pumpkin vines grow some giant pumpkins we will have some to carve and of course unlimited Giant pumpkin seeds to give away to friends so maybe next Halloween we could have some neat jack-o-lanterns.



I know some people are down on American holidays, and I really don't have and interest in trick or treating, but I do like jack-o-lanterns and having a party where we dress up as zombies, skeletons, witches and ghouls, and decorate the place all spooky and watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow, The Haunting, The Brothers Grimm and Buffy The Vampire Slayer etc. sounds like a fun time to me.

This video shows how to make Korean Kimchi

I spent a lovely weekend out at Keppanach with the gorgeous fnord_fnord who despite what anyone says did not profer up dubious scientific studies as fact, she did however plant a lot of seedings while I faffed about with potting mix in the place where my potting shed isn't yet.

We have decided the cottage will be called Raineach Cottage (pronounced Rain-ack) which is gaelic for fern or bracken, I love ferns and had planned on planting a lot anyway so I think it is fitting.

We managed to plant all the seedlings and we have the majority of the rest of the seeds we had, sewn into the left over pots after the seedlings were planted.

The thornless backberry is finally putting up shoots, making me feel a lot better about snapping off the only ones it had removing all the grass from it's base when I planted it, also the rhubarb plants are thriving.

The Marrow plants and sugar snap peas I planted last time are looking very healthy and the one surviving gherkin plant isn't dead, after leaving the tray of seedlings in the caravan awning over night they all fell over bar 3, and of those 3 one is alive, so I guess that's better than a total loss.

We have chosen a plethora of seeds from the seedsavers catalogue which we will pick up this weekend.

The pigs are looking very pregnant I think they are about a month away from farrowing, which means piglets, which will be pretty neat.

EDIT: We have piglets! not sure how many yet as they are hiding in the haystack in the pig's area, but looks like 6 or so at least. yay!

We slaughtered 4 roosters and plucked and gutted them which was a new experience for most of us, and fnord_fnord made coq au van which is supposed to be made with roosters and was very nice, not a lot of meat on a rooster so you'd really want to be killing at least 2 if you wanted to make anything with them, but an experience nonetheless.

Hopefully soon we will be getting some Pekin Ducks



We will run them free range as we do with the chickens, but we won't try and collect their eggs unless we end up with lots of them, and keep them as eating birds.

A lone turkey showed up when we left this morning, I think all it's mates are dead and gone, so it might be for the chop, better than it just getting hit by a car like the rest.

I have a job interview/group screening at Bunnings tomorrow, after they made me show up last week because they forgot to tell me the thing had been postponed so all going well I shall have a new job very soon.

I went to the Chinese food warehouse on Middleton Rd. that I always get the cups for the Mong from and from which I had asked them to get 200 for me and shock horror, they informed me that the cups I usually order are so old fashioned that the factory in china has stopped making them.

This will understandably upset a lot of people as the thin walled small based ones they do have, are awful and hardly a substitute.

So if you are out and about and happen to be going near a Chinese food warehouse of any kind can you keep a look out for the old kind?

However if the factory has stopped making them we really need to think of a permanent solution to this, and using the crappy new ones really isn't great.

EDIT: It appears southern hospitality have them, only double the price, but still better than those shitey new ones.

http://www.southernhospitality.co.nz/product.pasp?categoryid=15&productid=178

I made a visit to the doctors today, because of a nagging pain in my stomach which I have had for the last 3 months or so that I thought at first was a muscle strain, but it stuck around, so I looked it up on the net and it appeared to most likely be a stomach ulcer, so I have some pills to make it go away, and while I was there I had them take some bloods and urine to see if there is anything about my health otherwise that I should be worried about.

Also the subject of how much and how often I drink came up, and my doctor seemed unconcerned though mentioned if I cut down I might lose some weight, but other than that no great drama, so my concern based on what my "two pint piss queer" friends drink compared to me was quite unfounded.

I will also be taking my BP and pulse for the next month to establish what it normally is and to see if I might need to take some medication to lower it, because although it has always been high my doctor said this could be a problem in the long term, so an ounce of prevention as they say.

So I feel a lot better with my suppositions confirmed.