Interesting and historic night in parliament last night, revealing which eras some of our politicians are fond of.
Twenty-First Century New Zealand:
Bill to legalise gay marriage passes first reading
Twentieth Century New Zealand:
Talking suit calls for referendum
Nineteenth Century New Zealand:
Gay marriage conscience vote a failure of democracy apparently
I'm for the bill in case anyone is wondering. I'm old enough to remember when if you were a male it was actually illegal to be a practising homosexual in NZ, and I'm only 36. The bill is still a long way from being law, and there will no doubt be hurdles, but it is long past time that some of my friends enjoyed the same basic rights as I do. Their being able to marry affects my marriage and morals (and the morals of my children by extension) not one iota. And let's face it, straight people have been fucking up the "sanctity of marriage as an institution" for as long as marriage has been around. Letting gay people join in just adds to the flavour :)
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Stuff of Legend
The other week it occurred to me that an Olympic medal may be one of the few things that render people close to immortal. Then I remembered that about 384,000 kilometers away there are some tangible human artifacts that effectively are immortal:
Coincidentally I was reading my now well-worn copy of A Man On The Moon the other day, and came across a passage that resonated in a way I hadn't felt the umpteen times I've read it before:
"everything he did, even casual speech, seemed to be the result of a great deal of thought . . . Armstrong often kept people at arm's length. He rarely engaged in idle conversation, and steadfastly guarded his privacy.
"In time, the NACA pilots realised that Armstrong wasn't aloof; he was shy. Once they got past his great reserve, they found warmth. Once he became a friend, he was a good friend . . . If he could be reticent, then he could also become so involved in conversation while driving that his passengers nervously eyed the road. "
It's obviously describing Neil Armstrong, but I suddenly recognised a few of those personality traits in myself, especially shyness being mistaken for aloofness. That's about as close as I'll ever get to what he achieved (and the end of any self aggrandising comparisons), but it is nice to know there were aspects to him I could relate to. His modesty would mean he would even downplay his own significance at being the first moonwalker, claiming that the landing itself was the real achievement, and that was something that he and Buzz Aldrin (who made a nice statement today here) had done simultaneously. Even without Apollo 11, his combat flying career with the US Navy, his test flying career with NACA/NASA (including flying what is still the fastest manned aircraft ever), and his previous spaceflight on Gemini 8 (which he personally saved from disaster under difficult circumstances when a system malfunction occurred) would have been worthy of note. It makes me respect him and his withdrawal from publicity even more - he could have been the celebrity of celebrities had he chosen to.
Dr Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has written a nice piece on Armstrong's passing today, and says "we can divide all of history into two parts: before humans landed on the Moon, and after". I was born 7 years after Apollo 11; I have never known a world where we haven't walked on the moon, and I'm grateful to Armstrong and all of his peers for making it that way. I have never grown out of that childlike wonder of seeing images and accounts of people walking on another world apart from our own. There are more famous images of Armstrong, but this is my favourite, taken on the Moon just after the first moonwalk concluded, and it sums up that feeling for me.
Buzz Aldrin boot and lunar footprint, Apollo 11, image via NASA
The footprints and other artifacts that twelve men from Earth left on the Moon will remain recognisable for millenia at least if left undisturbed. The news today of the death of the first man to leave them reminded me of this.
Coincidentally I was reading my now well-worn copy of A Man On The Moon the other day, and came across a passage that resonated in a way I hadn't felt the umpteen times I've read it before:
"everything he did, even casual speech, seemed to be the result of a great deal of thought . . . Armstrong often kept people at arm's length. He rarely engaged in idle conversation, and steadfastly guarded his privacy.
"In time, the NACA pilots realised that Armstrong wasn't aloof; he was shy. Once they got past his great reserve, they found warmth. Once he became a friend, he was a good friend . . . If he could be reticent, then he could also become so involved in conversation while driving that his passengers nervously eyed the road. "
It's obviously describing Neil Armstrong, but I suddenly recognised a few of those personality traits in myself, especially shyness being mistaken for aloofness. That's about as close as I'll ever get to what he achieved (and the end of any self aggrandising comparisons), but it is nice to know there were aspects to him I could relate to. His modesty would mean he would even downplay his own significance at being the first moonwalker, claiming that the landing itself was the real achievement, and that was something that he and Buzz Aldrin (who made a nice statement today here) had done simultaneously. Even without Apollo 11, his combat flying career with the US Navy, his test flying career with NACA/NASA (including flying what is still the fastest manned aircraft ever), and his previous spaceflight on Gemini 8 (which he personally saved from disaster under difficult circumstances when a system malfunction occurred) would have been worthy of note. It makes me respect him and his withdrawal from publicity even more - he could have been the celebrity of celebrities had he chosen to.
Dr Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has written a nice piece on Armstrong's passing today, and says "we can divide all of history into two parts: before humans landed on the Moon, and after". I was born 7 years after Apollo 11; I have never known a world where we haven't walked on the moon, and I'm grateful to Armstrong and all of his peers for making it that way. I have never grown out of that childlike wonder of seeing images and accounts of people walking on another world apart from our own. There are more famous images of Armstrong, but this is my favourite, taken on the Moon just after the first moonwalk concluded, and it sums up that feeling for me.
Image via NASA
There are now eight living moonwalkers of the original twelve. Hopefully there will be more before that number drops to zero.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Tongariro Cross
When Mount Tongariro decided to remind everyone it is still an active volcano two weeks ago, it was interesting to see the effect on the some of the parts of it I visited when I did the Tongariro Crossing walk at the beginning of last year. The eruption was centred around the Te Maari craters, which aren't on the crossing trail itself, but close enough to ensure it was in the firing line.
Here's how the trail near Ketetahi Hut looked in 2011, with the hut in the middle distance:
And how the place looked after being ash-bombed. The hut has holes in the roof that go all the way through the floorboards apparently
Here's how the trail near Ketetahi Hut looked in 2011, with the hut in the middle distance:
Both pics NZ Police via Stuff
Monday, August 13, 2012
And now, Brian Page
Just wondering if I was the only one who thought Brian May was doing his best Jimmy Page impersonation at the Olympic closing ceremony. . .
Maybe he was just being sympathetic to Page not being involved in London at all, or maybe the organisers thought Page was dead or something (as opposed to say, Keith Moon).
Page, Beijing 2008
May, London 2012
Maybe he was just being sympathetic to Page not being involved in London at all, or maybe the organisers thought Page was dead or something (as opposed to say, Keith Moon).
Friday, August 10, 2012
Box unticked
Or how to turn an honest mistake into a complete
debacle
Loving the Olympics, and more regular bloggage will resume after they are done, but I was a bit surprised this week to find as aspect of it I can actually professionally comment on. I figure its as close as I'll get to ever competing so I'm running with it anyway :)
The whole fiasco of Valerie Adams turning up to her event to find out she wasn't entered due to a paperwork botch got my interest, because a big part of my job is making sure documentation practice is up to snuff, whether it's creating docs, completing them or reviewing them. My company can't manufacture or sell our materials without it (those materials being cGMP pharmaceutical ingredients), and if I was teaching a QA
course I’d use this as a relatable example of what can happen if you don’t do it
right.
So how does an athlete (including a current Olympic
title holder) turn up to the Olympics, a moment they have been anticipating for
years, only to find they aren’t actually entered in their event?
From my outsiders perspective going by what has been
related in the media, it sounds like little failures compounding each other to
make a big one. A step got missed, maybe because it wasn't prominent enough, or just got forgotten about, it didn't get checked, and no-one noticed until it was almost too late to do anything about it (technically it actually was).
The whole situation apparently arising because a box wasn't ticked is interesting, because from a good documentation practice point of view, that possibility shouldn't be there, or at least minimised as much as practicable. Bad form design is a
great enabler of muck-ups, and if not ticking a single box as claimed can have
this kind of outcome (and I’d think “is your representative planning to
compete?” would be a pretty fundamental aspect), then barring incompetence
or misunderstanding from the person filling it out, it might be a bit
flawed.
I’d love to see the document in question and confirm if that hunch is
correct or not (it's sad, but after years of being in the industry, form design is a pet obsession :) ). Single answer tick boxes aren’t great for these kind of things
since you can’t tell if it wasn’t ticked on purpose, or just forgotten. In my line of work a big no-no is to leave spaces blank, for exactly this reason; it's ambiguous. What’s
better is something that requires a definite action, like using “YES / NO” and
requiring one to be circled and the other crossed out. If neither has been circled or crossed you know that section has been missed when you review it. Another way to help
prevent this kind of thing would be to remove the question: assume the person
IS competing, and require a declaration if they aren’t, or use a form specifically
for competitors only. You can’t make documentation that requires user input
completely foolproof, but there are ways to engineer out traps, and make sure
the information you really need to be recorded is. It's all about minimising ambiguity and room for misinterpretation.
That said, the documentation should have been checked
both when it was completed, and when it was submitted. Designing a form well is no good if
people don’t fill it out properly anyway (which happens surprisingly often, even when they are specifically trained to do it right). When important things are riding on
the documentation process, you get someone other than the person
filling it out to check it, both at the time, and when the process is complete.
I find it weird that the documentation that you know, enables your athletes to
actually register in the competition doesn’t seem to have been overseen.
The management says their document practice will be
reviewed, and it should be, because at this level this is something that simply
should not happen. No excuses. It’s arguable if it cost Adams the gold medal,
but it certainly didn’t help.
Post Script:
Ultimately it didn't cost her the medal; the winner on the day failed drug testing and was stripped of the gold. More story and reaction from Adams here :).
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Thoughts on the Olympic Opening Ceremony
- It worked. Potentially difficult conceptually but it was brought off well, and I really enjoyed it. But then I am fully uncynical about the Olympics, so am a bit biased. It was a marked change from Beijing.
- That said bits of it were more effective if you knew your references than others.
- The hill built in the stadium was cool, especially as it appeared in close ups to have real dirt and grass on it.
- Watching it free to air meant some context was missed, as well as some setpieces, due to ad breaks. I only found out afterward what the whole "Abide with Me" thing was about. although I thought it was a lovely rendition.
- The setpiece of forging the Olympic Ring in the stadium was awesome. And the doves on bikes.
- This is the first time I have watched one of these things with a child alongside who needs things explained to. Particularly why daddy found the pogo-ing punks on pogos so hilarious (that was just inspired).
- The music era thing was cool (and made me think that while Rock music was technically invented in the US, it took the British to make it properly kick arse).
- I love it when directors choose good popular music as soundtracks (and in this case some pretty alternatively informed selections) for big events. It is so much easier to engage with music you already know and love than some over-earnest, usually over produced and slightly cringy commissioned piece you will likely never hear again. Plus hearing relatively obscure album tracks and recognising them from albums you own always feels ego-stroking good.
- Using movies as well was cool.
- I liked that there was a feeling of a deliberate decision on the part of the producers to make the ceremony both non traditional, knowingly self deprecating, and more interesting for certain demographics. Namely mine :).
- The Queen gets kudos points for participating in the James Bond parody, but loses some for appearing totally disinterested in person at the ceremony itself. She might have been having a good time, but looked bored, most notably during the lingering close up of her checking her nails while the Great Britain team entered the stadium. You could almost hear the producer screaming "Get me another shot, any shot!".
- The Parade of Athletes is always fun, for the uniforms (especially the Czechs in gumboots) and seeing people buzzed to be there. Although according to the three year-old the Fijian flag bearer was naughty for not having a shirt on. I'm sure though that many interested viewers might disagree on that point
-I also noticed the out of uniform Indian at the time, and wondered what was up.
-Adding to the non-traditional aspects, both the lighting of the cauldron, and the cauldron design itself were brilliant. Simple but clever concept.
-Sir Paul McCartney at the end didn't quite work so well. Still, could have been worse, could have been Status Quo.
- That said bits of it were more effective if you knew your references than others.
- The hill built in the stadium was cool, especially as it appeared in close ups to have real dirt and grass on it.
- Watching it free to air meant some context was missed, as well as some setpieces, due to ad breaks. I only found out afterward what the whole "Abide with Me" thing was about. although I thought it was a lovely rendition.
- The setpiece of forging the Olympic Ring in the stadium was awesome. And the doves on bikes.
- This is the first time I have watched one of these things with a child alongside who needs things explained to. Particularly why daddy found the pogo-ing punks on pogos so hilarious (that was just inspired).
- The music era thing was cool (and made me think that while Rock music was technically invented in the US, it took the British to make it properly kick arse).
- I love it when directors choose good popular music as soundtracks (and in this case some pretty alternatively informed selections) for big events. It is so much easier to engage with music you already know and love than some over-earnest, usually over produced and slightly cringy commissioned piece you will likely never hear again. Plus hearing relatively obscure album tracks and recognising them from albums you own always feels ego-stroking good.
- Using movies as well was cool.
- I liked that there was a feeling of a deliberate decision on the part of the producers to make the ceremony both non traditional, knowingly self deprecating, and more interesting for certain demographics. Namely mine :).
- The Queen gets kudos points for participating in the James Bond parody, but loses some for appearing totally disinterested in person at the ceremony itself. She might have been having a good time, but looked bored, most notably during the lingering close up of her checking her nails while the Great Britain team entered the stadium. You could almost hear the producer screaming "Get me another shot, any shot!".
- The Parade of Athletes is always fun, for the uniforms (especially the Czechs in gumboots) and seeing people buzzed to be there. Although according to the three year-old the Fijian flag bearer was naughty for not having a shirt on. I'm sure though that many interested viewers might disagree on that point
-I also noticed the out of uniform Indian at the time, and wondered what was up.
-Adding to the non-traditional aspects, both the lighting of the cauldron, and the cauldron design itself were brilliant. Simple but clever concept.
-Sir Paul McCartney at the end didn't quite work so well. Still, could have been worse, could have been Status Quo.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Not quite fifty
I do know all of them by sight though (along with probably a dozen more at least). Modelling camouflaged things tends to warp your colour palette descriptions a bit.
Friday, July 06, 2012
Thursday, July 05, 2012
Social Earthquake
(source unknown, I grabbed it from facebook)
One aspect of earthquakes these days that we never experienced as kids is the social media one. Within minutes of the earthquake the other night we were on-line, not so much to participate as to seek information. Who felt what, and where? Was this local, or something bigger somewhere else?
A friend of mine astutely pointed out the following:
I found myself in all three groups. I posted a "wow that was long" status on facebook then got down to the critiquing, even of my own observations (my allowance for time dilation in estimating the quake duration was way off ), and participated in a thread on who had and hadn't used twitter as an aggregator (I'm not on twitter, so no).
We didn't go as far as this guy who tweeted during the event itself, but were quickly on facebook and other forums while waiting for the official word from Geonet. That both the power and web access were still up to enable this was a good sign, and we found it a useful quick and dirty way of getting an idea of what was going on, before adding to the discussion ourselves. There was a "Me Too!" aspect (and if I'm honest a "First!" aspect as well :) ) as people informed and collectively reassured each other, but what was more interesting was the way the discussions broke down into comparison and analysis. This particular (anecdotally at least proven to be true) XKCD also came up: "Seismic Waves" .
It was both a "we really are living in the future" moment, and a great example of how web can really work.
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
PS it's an Earthquake
So about this time last night, I'm sitting at my workbench in the study, Fi is pottering in the kitchen, and the kids are asleep upstairs. All is quiet when the model shelves beside me start rattling. They do that from time to time in response to low frequency noises like passing vehicles, the washing machine, or earthquakes. Whenever they start their noisemaking my earthquake spidey senses go all a-tingle, but they usually stop after a second or two and I go back to whatever I was doing. This time they don't stop.
After taking a second or two to tune in I notice that we are indeed rocking gently to and fro, and having an earthquake. After discussing this with friends later we'll figure out this was the P wave arriving and doing it's thing. The whole P and S wave (link) aspect of earthquakes is something I learned years ago but haven't thought about for a while and we're about to get a reminder of how they work.
I note the time for later reference, and that Fi hasn't said anything, so I calmly call out "earthquake" to the kitchen without leaving my seat. She doesn't hear me, so I call out again, and this time she responds by rushing to the doorway and urging me to do the same. That I have time to call out twice isn't something I notice at the time, but in hindsight it means the tremor has already gone on longer than usual. It hasn't got much worse yet and I'm thinking it's a pretty good nudge, (but not that bad) but it will probably end in a few seconds so I'll see what it does and ride it out. Fi is a little less blase, and getting insistent, so I get up and head to the doorway.
I've just gotten to the doorframe when the S waves start arriving and the shaking really kicks off, the worst we've ever experienced in this house. Fi suggests we head upstairs to get the kids, but I'm still thinking this will only go for a few more seconds (ignoring the fact that this is already one of the longest tremors I've ever experienced), so again suggest we ride it out. That's when the shaking kicks up another notch, we hear something glass fall over in the kitchen (later determined to be empty beer bottles in the recycling), the house starts creaking and we are both heading upstairs to rescue the little ones. Quite what we would do if the house started collapsing at this point I haven't figured out, especially having just left a spot of relative safety, but parental instinct is a great driver. We've just gotten to the top of the stairs and are about to go charging into the girl's bedroom to grab one each when the shaking eases and stops, followed by that wierd period when you aren't quite sure if the shaking really has stopped, or your adrenalised senses are tricking you into thinking it is still going.
Having determined that the land has returned to a state of quiescence, we look into the girl's room and immediately have to drop our voices as we calm each other down. The bebes slept through the whole thing. One of them may have rolled over, but that is all :).
It turns out to have been a deep magnitude 7.0, which is starting to get up there in terms of destructive potential, but luckily the depth mitigated it a bit. A much lesser magnitude, but many times shallower tremor wrought all the havoc in Christchurch last year.
There's a Geonet backgrounder here, with the Geonet quake report proper here.
And if you want to hear what it sounded like in a Wellington church, the earthquake was captured during a recording session here (lasting a lot longer than I realised at the time).
It was a doozy.
After taking a second or two to tune in I notice that we are indeed rocking gently to and fro, and having an earthquake. After discussing this with friends later we'll figure out this was the P wave arriving and doing it's thing. The whole P and S wave (link) aspect of earthquakes is something I learned years ago but haven't thought about for a while and we're about to get a reminder of how they work.
I note the time for later reference, and that Fi hasn't said anything, so I calmly call out "earthquake" to the kitchen without leaving my seat. She doesn't hear me, so I call out again, and this time she responds by rushing to the doorway and urging me to do the same. That I have time to call out twice isn't something I notice at the time, but in hindsight it means the tremor has already gone on longer than usual. It hasn't got much worse yet and I'm thinking it's a pretty good nudge, (but not that bad) but it will probably end in a few seconds so I'll see what it does and ride it out. Fi is a little less blase, and getting insistent, so I get up and head to the doorway.
I've just gotten to the doorframe when the S waves start arriving and the shaking really kicks off, the worst we've ever experienced in this house. Fi suggests we head upstairs to get the kids, but I'm still thinking this will only go for a few more seconds (ignoring the fact that this is already one of the longest tremors I've ever experienced), so again suggest we ride it out. That's when the shaking kicks up another notch, we hear something glass fall over in the kitchen (later determined to be empty beer bottles in the recycling), the house starts creaking and we are both heading upstairs to rescue the little ones. Quite what we would do if the house started collapsing at this point I haven't figured out, especially having just left a spot of relative safety, but parental instinct is a great driver. We've just gotten to the top of the stairs and are about to go charging into the girl's bedroom to grab one each when the shaking eases and stops, followed by that wierd period when you aren't quite sure if the shaking really has stopped, or your adrenalised senses are tricking you into thinking it is still going.
Having determined that the land has returned to a state of quiescence, we look into the girl's room and immediately have to drop our voices as we calm each other down. The bebes slept through the whole thing. One of them may have rolled over, but that is all :).
It turns out to have been a deep magnitude 7.0, which is starting to get up there in terms of destructive potential, but luckily the depth mitigated it a bit. A much lesser magnitude, but many times shallower tremor wrought all the havoc in Christchurch last year.
There's a Geonet backgrounder here, with the Geonet quake report proper here.
And if you want to hear what it sounded like in a Wellington church, the earthquake was captured during a recording session here (lasting a lot longer than I realised at the time).
It was a doozy.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Scale
This event in London a couple of days has finally brought some semi official recognition of the sacrifices made by the aircrew of RAF bomber command, after they were shunned at the the end of the war by a government trying to distance itself from the outcomes of it's own strategy.
It brought to mind this graphic, which I came across a wee while ago (I can't remember where), and was saving for use one day. It shows in a way that numbers can't the sheer scale at which World War 2 was fought (click to enlarge).
Each Lancaster had a crew of seven, each Mosquito two, with thousands more needed to service, arm and organise the aircraft, and thousands more on the other side trying to stop them. On this raid losses among the attackers were light at only 9 aircraft, but on one occasion (Nuremberg in 1944) 96 bombers were downed in the space of a few hours. On the ground thousands were killed or de-housed.
It's a distraction that the particular raid chosen for the graphic was the notorious one on Dresden, since it might suggest that was a special effort. In fact the horrific result at Dresden was the atypical aspect; the resources used to achieve it were not. By the mid to latter stages of the war raids of this size were sent against Germany most nights practicable, with the USAAF doing the same by day. And this was only one aspect of one theatre of the war.
It's a distraction that the particular raid chosen for the graphic was the notorious one on Dresden, since it might suggest that was a special effort. In fact the horrific result at Dresden was the atypical aspect; the resources used to achieve it were not. By the mid to latter stages of the war raids of this size were sent against Germany most nights practicable, with the USAAF doing the same by day. And this was only one aspect of one theatre of the war.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Mug Tray Jenga
Slight interruption in the regular blogging thing at the moment, due to a combination of being busy with off-line stuff, and coming up with all kinds of stuff to post but ending up like that scene in The Matrix where Neo can only sit and stare at his computer screen when it comes to posting it. I need to coincide the inspiration with the times I can get it down on pixel.
In the meantime, today some colleagues and I came up with a new game to play at work, after noticing that once the top tray of mugs empties people just go for the next one down without placing the empty tray to one side.
We call it Mug Tray Jenga :)
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
Thoughts from the saddle
Here is my gear drying out after riding home in the rain last night.
After overnight heavy rain and thunderstorms, by dawn this morning local weather picture looked like this for my ride to work. This was about as warm as it got all day.
My stream of thought on this morning's ride went something like this (not untypically):
Wow it’s a bit bitter this morning. Lucky I’m riding a
bike to keep me warm. Apart from my hands and feet.
The waterproofing I put on my jacket the other day
seems to be holding up well.
Go on clouds, hail, I dare you.
Why is this song stuck in my head? Worst song they
ever released.
Some more thunder and lightning would be fun right now.
Polypro's keep you warm even when they are wet. I’m not
getting as wet as I thought I would be though.
Weather like this is great for thinning out traffic on the trails (unless you're an earthworm, in which case it seems to encourage you to rise from the depths and see if the grass is greener on the other side of the trail).
I must be getting fitter, since I’m not working as
hard as I thought I would be.
Two lane roundabouts utterly do not work for bikes
You can sit in your cars and laugh but I’m having more
fun than you are.
Why is it every time I ride over this narrow two lane bridge with no shoulder it
coincides with a truck going the same direction?
Gas heated mains-pressure showers at work are ace
* as well as my other physical activities. Not quite back to normal yet ability wise but getting there. I seem to have lost a little bit of speed and power, but the fitness is coming back steadily.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Deb's Night Out
A couple of days after seeing the Shihad doco on the weekend, which is well worth seeing for its own sake even if you have no interest in the band, I came across this revisiting of one of my favourite tracks of theirs, "Deb's Night Out", as well as another better known song (that I kind of have a love/hate relationship with). I knew the broad backstory to "Deb's Night Out" already, but I enjoyed the more detailed insights into just how it came to be.
It's the song that finally got me into the band, after flirting with earlier singles. I remember hearing it on the radio sitting in a car in a supermarket carpark in 1995, hearing that looping melodic drone, the line about "pray for the rain, to wash you far away", the relentless drum sample that propels the song forward and I was hooked. It was perfect. In its more guitar based reworked live version it has become one of my favourite songs to see at a gig as well. The doco used the song brilliantly, cutting from live footage of it being performed last year to archival footage of the band's manager at an early 90's show.
When released as a single it was packaged as an EP, with four other tracks, two of which are also favourites, the bulldozering cover of their then manager's band Flesh D-Vice's "Flaming Soul", and the gloriously moody and atmospheric instrumental "Last Day Of A Three Day Journey". I remember driving around in a car all night with a few friends in 1996, talking about loves and life, and playing this tape over and over until the sun was about to come up. The video too is cool, capturing the conflict in the song perfectly (as well as some Wellington locations that are now either very different or gone altogether).
I like it's unusual structure, and the way it presaged where the band was going creatively. It isn't only unique in style on it's album, it pretty much stands alone in their entire back catalogue. But it showed there was more to this band than just riffs and noise. It's dark, moody and uplifting at the same time, and I love it.
It's the song that finally got me into the band, after flirting with earlier singles. I remember hearing it on the radio sitting in a car in a supermarket carpark in 1995, hearing that looping melodic drone, the line about "pray for the rain, to wash you far away", the relentless drum sample that propels the song forward and I was hooked. It was perfect. In its more guitar based reworked live version it has become one of my favourite songs to see at a gig as well. The doco used the song brilliantly, cutting from live footage of it being performed last year to archival footage of the band's manager at an early 90's show.
When released as a single it was packaged as an EP, with four other tracks, two of which are also favourites, the bulldozering cover of their then manager's band Flesh D-Vice's "Flaming Soul", and the gloriously moody and atmospheric instrumental "Last Day Of A Three Day Journey". I remember driving around in a car all night with a few friends in 1996, talking about loves and life, and playing this tape over and over until the sun was about to come up. The video too is cool, capturing the conflict in the song perfectly (as well as some Wellington locations that are now either very different or gone altogether).
I like it's unusual structure, and the way it presaged where the band was going creatively. It isn't only unique in style on it's album, it pretty much stands alone in their entire back catalogue. But it showed there was more to this band than just riffs and noise. It's dark, moody and uplifting at the same time, and I love it.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Speed reading
Found this the other day and had a go. Apparently I am a fast reader (somthing I noticed at high school, when I once attracted an audience in class for reading this at about a page a minute when it was our study text), although I have no idea how the metrics for this thing are sourced, and it is advertising, so the whole thing might be bunk.
http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/technology-research-centers/ereaders/speed-reader/index.html
I clocked in at 525 wpm, although I wasn't reading at full pace (the display and typeset took a couple of seconds to get used to, and I take a few pages to get warmed up anyway). Fun though.
Also fun in the way of internet randomness was discovering I share my blood type with at best 1% of the world on average (I knew it was rare, but not that rare), and that as a type it didn't even exist until relatively recently (not seen until 1000-1500 years ago). For some reason it reminds me of the time I got 'made' for being Black Irish by an Irish doctor last year. Solely on appearance (pale skin, very dark hair) he determined correctly I had at least some Irish ancestry. Since I have elements of Irish, English (and possibly Scandinavian given that part of England was prone to occasional tourism by the Vikings) that I know about in my ancestry, getting an ancestral DNA test done might be fun sometime.
http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/technology-research-centers/ereaders/speed-reader/index.html
I clocked in at 525 wpm, although I wasn't reading at full pace (the display and typeset took a couple of seconds to get used to, and I take a few pages to get warmed up anyway). Fun though.
Also fun in the way of internet randomness was discovering I share my blood type with at best 1% of the world on average (I knew it was rare, but not that rare), and that as a type it didn't even exist until relatively recently (not seen until 1000-1500 years ago). For some reason it reminds me of the time I got 'made' for being Black Irish by an Irish doctor last year. Solely on appearance (pale skin, very dark hair) he determined correctly I had at least some Irish ancestry. Since I have elements of Irish, English (and possibly Scandinavian given that part of England was prone to occasional tourism by the Vikings) that I know about in my ancestry, getting an ancestral DNA test done might be fun sometime.
Monday, May 14, 2012
RNZAF 75th Part 3: Hunter
Finally getting around to posting some pics of the show itself. Rather than deluge a giant pic post, I thought I would try and go for theme or type posts. Since it opened the show, it seems only fair to start with the Hawker Hunter FR.74B.
This isn't an RNZAF jet, but a civilian owned and operated jet warbird, which first started flying in NZ in 2000 before being grounded for cost reasons mid-decade (it's a high performance jet fighter, and thus not exactly cheap to run). It was reactivated for this summer's display season, and it is great to see it flying again.
The Hunter is a second generation jet fighter developed in the 1950's by the British, one of the best looking jet fighters ever built, and one of my favourite types. The RNZAF never operated Hunters, but New Zealanders did fly them on exchange with the RAF. This particular one was built in 1957 and had an RAF career before being refurbished and having a second career with the Republic of Singapore Air Force, whose colours it wears now. The Singaporeans retired it in 1992, and it came here a few years later.
It might be old, but it's no slouch. It's plenty fast enough to generate it's own vapour cloud on a high speed pass (500+ knots in this shot; it is in fact the fastest aircraft currently flying in NZ). If only the sun was shining on this pass it would have shown up the vapour better:
One of the things I've learned about airshow photography is anticipation is key. Knowing where the aircraft is going to be and what it might do is really handy. With that in mind I remembered seeing a picture of a couple of Swiss Hunters generating good vapour on a fast pass in a magazine a little while ago, so was hoping the morning air might be good to see the same here. I got lucky:
Again would have been awesome if the light was a bit better, but them's the breaks. The streaks over the wings are cool, but I particularly like the little bit of ectoplasm sitting right above the pilot :).
Like many high-performance aircraft of its era it uses a braking parachute to slow down after landing.
I used to love seeing this jet at shows in the early 2000's, and hopefully we'll see it around for a few more seasons yet. It's fast, noisy, graceful and full of character.
The Hunter is a second generation jet fighter developed in the 1950's by the British, one of the best looking jet fighters ever built, and one of my favourite types. The RNZAF never operated Hunters, but New Zealanders did fly them on exchange with the RAF. This particular one was built in 1957 and had an RAF career before being refurbished and having a second career with the Republic of Singapore Air Force, whose colours it wears now. The Singaporeans retired it in 1992, and it came here a few years later.
It might be old, but it's no slouch. It's plenty fast enough to generate it's own vapour cloud on a high speed pass (500+ knots in this shot; it is in fact the fastest aircraft currently flying in NZ). If only the sun was shining on this pass it would have shown up the vapour better:
Like many high-performance aircraft of its era it uses a braking parachute to slow down after landing.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Real TOPGUN
This is one of my favourite pieces of kit boxart (and aviation art in general), by one of my favourite aviation artists, Shigeo Koike, who in addition to painting exquisite aircraft portraits, has a long association with producing artwork for Hasegawa plastic kits.
It might not be the most accurate depiction of the time and place, with another one here, but it is still a great painting (I like the incidental detail of the cloud in particular) and depicts the last flight of a US Navy F-4J Phantom, callsign "Showtime 100" on the 10th of May 1972 . At work we write all the dates dd/mon/yy as a convention for clarity, and I have nearly automatically written "10 May 72" instead of "10 May 12" a heap of times today since it is a date I have seen in print so often.
It's crew that day shot down three MiGs in one mission (becoming the first US aces of the Vietnam War), including an epic final duel against arguably the best North Vietnamese pilot any US flier would encounter throughout the war, before being shot down themselves by an unseen missile (the last battle against the well handled MiG-17 flown by a mysterious pilot also the subject of myth and lore is depicted in both paintings). Swiftly rescued they were back on their carrier the same day. It is one of the most analysed and discussed air combats in history, probably second only to the Red Baron's final flight.
Forget the movie, this was real TOPGUN stuff, with their performance that day helping vindicate the formation of the then still relatively new and unproven tactics school that was created to address poor performances earlier in the war. Both of the crew were TOPGUN graduates, and would go become TOPGUN instructors, although one would subsequently fall from grace in a big way.
It was the stuff of legends, and 40 years ago today (and only four years before I was born just quietly...).
It might not be the most accurate depiction of the time and place, with another one here, but it is still a great painting (I like the incidental detail of the cloud in particular) and depicts the last flight of a US Navy F-4J Phantom, callsign "Showtime 100" on the 10th of May 1972 . At work we write all the dates dd/mon/yy as a convention for clarity, and I have nearly automatically written "10 May 72" instead of "10 May 12" a heap of times today since it is a date I have seen in print so often.
Forget the movie, this was real TOPGUN stuff, with their performance that day helping vindicate the formation of the then still relatively new and unproven tactics school that was created to address poor performances earlier in the war. Both of the crew were TOPGUN graduates, and would go become TOPGUN instructors, although one would subsequently fall from grace in a big way.
It was the stuff of legends, and 40 years ago today (and only four years before I was born just quietly...).
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
12 months of Soph
Sophie is one year old today. She has a lot of similarities to her
older sister, but a lot of differences as well, and she is just as
awesome; her journey so far has been just as rewarding. And since I did it for her sister, a trip through Soph's archive is in order (and it's interesting comparing the two!):
May 2011
June 2011
July 2011
August 2011
September 2011
October 2011
November 2011
December 2011
January 2012
February 2012
March 2012
April 2012
May 2012
Happy Birthday beautiful girl :)
May 2011
February 2012
Dope On A Rope
The helmet helped, but it wasn't as noisy or windy as I was expecting, and they haven't dropped anyone yet, so I wasn't worried about falling. It was great fun; it honestly never occured to be to be nervous or anything. Watching the helicopter get closer and closer was cool, until it eventually blotted out the sun as it came to the hover about fifteen feet above me.
Since the crewman's head is only about a foot away, and you're trying not to move around too much as requested (as well as enjoy myself, my main focus was to listen to the guys whose job this is, and not do anything dumb), you can't actually see much on the winch. I did have a surreal moment when we got level with the aircraft, and I looked down it's length and thought "Do you realise just where you are right now? You're hanging outside a helicopter thats forty feet in the air!". It was cool.
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