Saturday, December 29, 2007

Getting there

Well, now we're on to getting the net setup at home. I should be able to post from my living room rather than up here (up the street a bit). Surfing outdoors is fun and novel, but not when the weather goes cold or rainy ;)
Mmmmmmm.... couch.

Jim

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Been Moving

Hey guys.
Been in the process of moving. My new place is in town and currently lacks internet. Unfortunately, it's in a dead spot for the town wireless too. :( I currently go up the sidewalk a bit and sit under my neighbor's tree.

That would be my excuse for not posting much up (and it does have something to do with that), but the real reason I guess is that I've been a bit busy. Of course with the move, but living close to town has a bit of a side effect too... it also means you're next to all the night clubs. My flatmates are from Argentina, which means they like to go out all the time and have "siestas" (to recover). So yeah, I've been a bit nocturnal lately. I mean, there's like twenty or thirty bars in a few blocks... and they don't have cover charges here.

Today hopefully I can get the phone company. Being Christmasstime and all, it's kinda well.. a difficult time to move. We'll see. At least I sorta have wireless, which is plenty.

Jim

Friday, December 14, 2007

Queenstown


I'm not sure there's too many places in the world where you can spend a lazy Saturday down at the local rugby game and watch paragliders landing in the background ;)

Ok, I know of no other place where you can.
I was flying my paraglider when I saw that the rugby league was out for some matches, so I flew over them to see what it all would look like from the air. I landed in the school field across the road and headed over for a watch.

Good fun
Jim

wow


I often find myself thinking... "wow, I get to live here".
Seriously, that's exactly what goes through my head. I just look around, seeing what a stunningly beautiful place this is... "wow". And it's not just that. This is the escape. This isn't exactly "normal" New Zealand. It's populated mainly by tourists. This is where the world goes to party. It's also where everyone comes to "get away from it all". You have this mix of "Adrenalin City" and "crunchy granola hiker's paradise". It's crazy (and I love it for that).
It also dawns on me that part of why I love it here is I'm not stuck here. I come with the seasons and leave with them. It's hard to get too upset about things when they're all going to be changing soon enough.

Jim

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Geeking out

Weather's been a bit lower than perfect lately, so I've been getting to know my eeepc.
(see below for what it is)

My opinion of it is still, OMG I love this thing!
It is one badass little linux box.
It comes setup so that non-geeks can very comfortably use it (good job Asus!), but underneath the hood, it's a mechanic's dream.
You have to know what you're doing to get under the hood too, which is very good design.

But that's secondary. It's nice to be able to tweak things the way I like them, but it's what this thing can already do that I love :)

Start off with "boot time". Yeah, 10-15 seconds.
That's right... and it's not "waking up" at the end of that... it's fully up and useable.
Ye Haw.

The wireless is the best I've ever seen... hands down.
For comparison.. My little Nokia 770 thing's wireless range kicks butt... I dropped in on one of the techies at the local municipal wifi place for some tech questions... he started tweaking around on it to get it connected. HE was surprised. "Wow, no one's ever able to connect here... this is normally a dead spot"
Well, this eee thing makes the 770 look bad.

Lets see ... what else...
No hard drive (it's solid state flash)
3 usb 2.0 ports
a built in SSD card reader (that it can easily boot from)

Stupid easy to use.

Happy.

Hrm, so downsides?
Yeah, the keyboard is slightly cramped (to be expected). Still useable.
Battery life is 3 hours or so of continual use. It's enough, but I'll be happier when the extended batteries come out.

Now, I got the expensive one $450.
Mine's a 4gig capacity.
The 2 Gig systems will go for $250.

This is one hell of a laptop for $250!
Jim

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Scary

Out of the internet's backwater news media...
First McDonnald's commercial

If it's not scary enough, Ronald is Willard Scott, and he was Willard Scott's idea.
Seriously

Go scrub your brain now.
Jim

Saturday, December 08, 2007

Not just a pretty (mountain) face

There's a lovely health benefit to living in New Zealand.
We're allowed to fly off one of the mountains that borders town. We land in the rugby field or school yard. There are few other places I know of where you're able to not only fly over town, but land in it. It's kinda crazy.

Well, to get to the takeoff spot, we take a ride on the gondola. That takes you up to the observation building/resteraunt. But you're not done there. We start a bit higher. So, up the ski lift that goes to the "luge" (downhill racing).

Oh no, that's not it either. After the luge, it's a 10 minute hike up the rest of it. Well, that's 10 minutes if you don't have a 40lb pack to haul up with ya (my paraglider).

And this is serious up-the-mountain stuff... welcome to New Zealand.

I gauge my fitness by how many times I have to take a break. It's always funny to see how soft I've gotten living in the flats at sea level. Day 1... eight times. And I had to rest a while each stop. Today? Two. And I only had to pause for a few seconds. By the end of the summer, I won't need to stop.

It's funny when the commercial paragliding hauler guy (serious 4wheel atv thingy) takes my pack for me... I fly up the track without it ;)

It's something I truly love about this place.
Jim

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Asus 701


They're calling it an Ausus Eeepc 701.
It's a TINY laptop.
I mean seriously tiny... about the size of a portable DVD player.

I've wanted one of these suckers since I heard they were going to make them. Simply knowing I was going to be able to get one allowed me to leave my laptop at home.

Well, I had one pre-ordered since they were not going to ship till I left for NZ. You still can't get them back home. Well... they've started showing up here! Yup... I checked the local version of Radio Shack here and they had 3 in stock :) About the same price as in the States too!
They now have 2 in stock.

I'm connected to the municipal Wifi.
I've got my 60 gig external USB drive hooked up.
I've transfered the picture from the card in my camera to the hard drive, by simply plugging it into the built in SD card slot and click-drag. Then I heaved it up here.

Oh yeah, and I was chatting with some people on Skype earlier. Built in mic, built in speakers, built in webcam.

This little monster rocks.
Jim

Sumo!


Got a bit windy the other day.
We had to stop flying.
Not a problem... Nzone (skydiving) and Canyon Swing (bungi) were having a sumo wrestling contest. Free food/beer/fun... why not?

Gotta love this crazy little town
Jim