Thingomy.co.uk

It has come to my attention that the feared US air securty TSA folks operate a lower standard of ID check that the lowley Northlink ferries traveling to a small island in the middle of the north sea — by boat.

Northlink now require photo ID, this is a little twitchy, as there is really very little you can do to a boat… i supose you could hijack it, steam it down to london (where you would arrive after about 3 days, having asked nicelly at some port half way to borrow some fuel) then ramraid a giant ferris wheel, but really?

On the other hand in america you can hapilly fly without any photo ID at all, as can be seen in this artical:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/03/13/how-to-fly-without-id-and-skip-lines/

Well, BT are of illigitimate parentage.

Long story short, the flat had internet, but they decided to randomly issue a disconnection notice to the isp due to some account changes.

This apparently takes ti$calli 2 site vistits and 4 weeks to resolve — also illigitamate.

So we have no internet — asside from the borrowed wireless that we currently have…

In other matters, we have resolved the furniture, and the heating at least sort of. It now looks like a real flat. People are more than welcome to come visit. I’m assuming that there is a desire amoung some edinburgers to socialise in the near future owing to the recent terminus of the examination period?

I am planning to go to Shetland at some point soon for a visit, does anyone have any requests or sugestions over dates? The trip will include time outwith the period 1st-14th april, and will likelly be about 10 days. I’m thinking tat I will add an excusion to aberdeenshire to the trip.

I now have a flat — there are some issues that have not yet been sorted out — like the minor detail of furniture … and heating… but I’m working on that.

On other matters — does anyone want a brand new netgear b/g wifi adsl modem router, it’s going for £30, I need to know before Saturday though. the model is DG834G v3.

Oh, and i’m going to germany this weekend to CeBit, more details when i get back.

Well I arrived.

The flight was about normal for an intercontinental, I did however see some really cool scenery vaugly in the himalas reageon.

The day before I flew from hong kong I noticed that there was a slight descrpancy in some of the paperwork, suffice to say the traval agent screwed up and forgot to issue a paper ticket for the flight. It was an utter fluke that I spotted the issue, and i would certainly not be here if I hadent. The phone bill over that one will be interesting…

ooh — i have a new camera:) if you want more detail, bring ear plugs, and say the word camera within 30 feet of me … put the earplugs in when you get bored.

So anywy, more later.

Can’t stop long, internet here is $60 an hour…

Loving HK, it’s well cool.

My travel agent found accomidation here before i left the UK, it torns out to be — the “Young Woman’s Christian Assosiation, 5 Man Fuk Road. How’s that for irony…

Anyway, if anyone want’s to contact me either email me and expect a 3 day email turn around, or text me for a decent response.

If anyone wants anything imported, give us a shout, but be specific, and no promises. Email me, then text to say you’ve emailed.

Well, I finally worked out why i got confused and ended up 5 hours short on sleep on the flight to aaukland — i’d gottgen the flights mixed up — the flight that i had been planning for is the one that board in 30 mins.

I’m using a dodgy keosk thing at the airport. It’s really expensive, but is remarkably userfriendly, and very expensive, but i don’t care, i have a load of spare change that i can’t spend anywhere else.

anyway, i was bloody lucky i came here on the right day, if i hadn’t have checked this mrning, i’d have been a day late.

anyhows, all good, week in hk and i ‘m home.

After a fairly considerable amount a galivanting around all over the place, including :

kiwi bus to Kiakoura;
seal swimming;
the train and ferry to wellington;
kiwi bus to toupo;
intercity to Gisborne;
road trip to Rotorua;
2 nights in a very comfy tent.

I’m now gettign ready to leave the country. I take the Kiwi bus to Aukland tomorrow, and fly soon after.

I am very happy, I have gotten what I have come here for, and still have stuff for next trip. I’m now ready to get on with stuff at home.

For the record, the seal swimming was fantastic, it involved 2 piece 7mm wetsuits, and snorkels. i was a couple of meters from a seal a number of times, and got a good look them loads of times.

Very few photos recently, I’m taking time to chill and see people, and there has been little of photogenicity of late.

I am very intregued to see that sony have relieced a couple of more cameras with some really interesting technology in them. I will be watching this space with baited breath. Even more interesting to me is the fact they have also mentioned that they will be reliecing a new flash gun, it’s goign to be very interesting when it comes out.

I stayed in Queenstown just long enough to look around — nice place, but way too tourist oriented. They have a gondola up the side of the valley, with a bungi jump site at the top, I spent a good deal of time getting photos of the bungi setup, and yet more time taking photos of the view.

Tech bit: I did a panoramic HDR shot, it’s going to take some considerable effort to put together, and some ingenuity to get the HDR thing to work. The allignment is the simple bit, but once I export it as a multi layer photoshop file, I’m not really too sure what to do with it. It must have been a good 30 shots at 3 diferent exposures to get diferent stuff in DR. I took a load of bungi jumps from the same viewpoint as well, so I should be able to stich one of them into it as well.

Up the gondola:

I took a look around some of the more interesting parts of Queenstown, and sat on the beach (pictured above) to take sunset photos, the results wern’t spectacular, but worth posting:

The road north, including a really large center pivot irrigator:

Aouraki Mt Cook, I’m informed that it is very rare to see it exposed like this, even the bus driver was out taking photos:

I met up with some folks that I knew on the way north and stayed with them for a few days, they had some friends that were nutters, especially the one in the driver’s seat with the hat on:

I’m perticularly proud of the first one of the kids (6109), it’s technically a very good shot, I didn’t even crop it.

Millford sound deserves it’s own post, it was the bit of NZ that I was really interested in from the start — I would have liked a week to peruse the area, but that’s tricky — there is always walking tracks, but doing that in a fjord is one way to quickly give your self really sore feet.

This is a really stunning fjord, similar to some of the best found in norway, it was excavated by a mother of a glacier in the ice age, and is now filled with sea water half way up.

We joined a bus that had just come down from queenstown, so even got a long lie. The bus took the rather long trip into fjordland, and through the Homer tunnel, which is a really impressive and remarkably old feat of engineering. Kiwi Ex had managed to negotiate a 2 hour cruse to the mouth of the fjord and back, with a free bufet meal included — the meal was more of a pain than anything, you were eating when you should be looking at scenery, although the route in and out was the same.

I decided that I had to do somthing to mitigate the lack of my only wide lens for somthing as mamoth as millford, so my solution was panoramic images, I have good software for stiching them, but not with me. This means that I took a stackload of images, none of which are really usefull untill I get home.

In the middle of the boat trip we stopped by an underwater observatory — think floating inverted lighthouse.

So The pics that are usable:

I rapidly left Queenstown knowning I would be back a few days later.

I was booked onto another excursion around the Invercargill, Duneden area. Varius things went wrong including the weather; some people I was with; and my primary camera lens breaking so I spent most of the trip pissed off damp, cold and uninterested.

We were told that one of the places we visited (I believe invercargill, but I may be mistaken) was described by one famous musician that visited the area as “the arsehole of the world” and I can see why, I’m sure it’s wonderfull in good weather when one is happy, but I have to agree with him.

The following are the highlights:

Sea Lyons, trying to work out who’s boss:

A fairly basic farm tour involving sheep sheering which as far as I’m concerned is a chore, so I stuck to photography.

some random scenery and other stuff seen along the way.

Note that the Cadburies tour sucked goats — it lasted 45 minutes, and could have been done in about 5, they didn’t even bother showing us the factory.

So anyway, this took me up to Te Anou — nice place, lots of souvenir shops. Notably however it had no shops capable of replairing camera bits.

For those interested in the tech bits: my 17-70 zoom (35mm equivelent: 25-105) developed an issue of it’s zoom ring jaming randomly and making rattling noises when shaken. To avoid any further damage and incase picture sharpness was being affected by loose optics it has been retired to the bottom of my bag untill I do a warantee return from home. My second widest lens is a 30/1.4 (35mm eqiv: 45mm) this is not very wide … bummer.

For those less technically inclined, I can still take photos, but not of really big things… like mountains or fjords or cliffs; all of which I know I would encounter the next day in abundence.