out and about in aotearoa

Kiwi Christmas

2009-12-25T06:40:48Z

It's evening on Christmas Day. Kind of a chilly day but the sun did come out and I did venture down for a walk on the beach. Some pictures from the walk. Beach Entrance Looking North up the beach Looking South Even a biplane buzzing around Kapiti Island Pohutukawa tree (NZ Christmas tree)

RIP Bundle

2009-10-05T05:29:25Z

Spacey's cat Bundle went downhill rapidly last week and we had to take her to the vet to be put to sleep.

RIP Bundle

Bloodhound

2009-09-26T08:11:24Z

Just finished reading Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce

I give it 5 stars!

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

kiwi lingo

2009-09-24T04:58:35Z

i just received in the mail some fridge magnets - the poetry type - only these are kiwi lingo examples - thought i might amuse people with some examples:

take a hike

guts for garters

pakaru-ed

strapped for cash

nana nap

the olds

across the ditch

ripped off

sussed out

dreaded lurgy

rough as guts

buggered

neck of the woods

flat stick

hard case

away laughing

piece of piss

boo-eye

up the creek

down the gurgler

even stevens

tiki tour

arvo

carked it

Wonder if anyone can guess what these all mean.

long time no hai

2009-09-20T19:29:50Z

it's the last week of term - we're winding down and finishing off stuff ... then it's straight into a busy 2-week holiday; NZEI Annual meeting in Wellington (Sunday-Wednesday); 5 days to myself; Ulearn09 in Christchurch (Tuesday-Friday) where I'm one of the workshop presenters; 2 days to recover and then it's back to school again!!

phew

O hai ...

2009-08-22T08:16:57Z

I am alive - just mainly doing reflective posting on my education blog - now proudly identified with a dot com address. I've also been playing with wikis - WikiEducator and WikiSpaces (the latter being something I've played with before but now seriously working on it.)

Linx

http://room10rbs.wikispaces.com/W6T3 - classroom planning and online curriculum content
http://dragonsinger57.com - education blog
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Dragonsinger57 - WikiEducator user page

Back to school

2009-07-20T10:30:48Z

Today started off ok but things went wrong ... my extenda box system went belly up which meant 3 computers out -then one of my other computers developed a fault. Oi vey!

May be lucky to get the extenda box fixed but will have to fix the other myself.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

Signage

2009-07-06T10:35:37Z

Unfortunately I didn't take a photo but the sign clearly stated "Please use other door" in very large letters.

Spacegirl and I looked at the sign and started walking towards the other door. A woman who got out of a car beside us walked towards the closest door, past the large sign (it was maybe 1m x 1.5m freestanding & partially blocking the entrance).

We watched her both of us expecting her to pause and then turn in our direction. She walked past the sign and up to the door (which didn't open) then backed up and read the sign.

I bet she doesn't read manuals either!

Weird ...

2009-07-05T10:29:20Z

Really! In the past two days I've watched 2 movies where the protaganist is a woman with munchausen's disease.

"The Night Listener" & "Glass House - The Good Mother"

Not up to "Independence Day" right now - will watch that tomorrow even if it's 2 days late (seems to have become family tradition to watch it in July 4th)

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

haircut time

2009-06-28T03:52:01Z

today i'd had enough - time for a haircut ...

perhaps i should have been a little afraid - not when she said let me do some sculpting - but when she took out the shaving blades and removed most of the hair at the back

here are before and after shots

different light i know but ... you get the drift

kiwi music ... old favourites

2009-06-23T07:26:19Z

way back when Nz first competed in the america's cup someone came up with this idea for a song

Poi E - Patea Maori Club

Melting Pot from "When the cat's away"

Long Ago from Herbs

Slice of Heaven - Dave Dobbyn & Herbs

Six months in a leaky boat - Split Enz (banned in England when first released) (Split Enz is the forerunner to Crowded House)

And finally:

Fade Away - Che Fu

Billy T James

2009-06-23T06:51:24Z

I miss Billy T - he kept us laughing ... and he could sing too ...

Billy T's version of Sailing away

A History of NZ - Billy T's version

Tui

2009-06-22T05:03:02Z

in NZ there's two type of Tui - the bird and the beer

i've been trying to capture pictures of an elusive tui across the road - finally successful today

A dropbox limerick (of sorts)

2009-06-21T08:10:26Z

A dropbox fan I am
To grief I've come you see
My MacBook kicked the bucket an....d (kinda rhymes with am)
I was away at sea

To my dropbox I did rush
To see what I could see
And when my Macbook came afrush (rhymes with rush)
I smiled the smile of glee

You see I grinned
Fear not I've not lost
Any bit of data binned
Within my trusty dropbox

And so I can record
I recovered lots
All my data stored
Because of my dropbox

To the dropbox guys
I raise my eyes
For without your prize
I would have seen my demise

----

To those of you who have not yet discovered the joys of dropbox - click here and go discover!

Twitter for Teachers

2009-06-18T18:53:09Z

I'm presenting a twitter workshop for teachers today. Just posting links to places to get information about twitter (as my moo cards have this blog address on the back).

Link to my wikispaces page on twitter: http://dragonsinger.wikispaces.com/twitter

Information on my educational blog about twitter: http://dragonsinger.edublogs.org/twitter/

Link to my blog post about my twitter survey: http://dragonsinger.edublogs.org/2009/06/10/twitter-survey-post-1/

(There will be more posts about the survey which I will add in as they happen.)

My slideshare from the workshop - note that I created it in Keynote and have converted it to PPT so it looks slightly different to the actual presentation and doesn't have any of the spoken bits.

Twitter for teachers

View more OpenOffice presentations from Jo Fothergill.

fantastic choir

2009-06-18T09:42:19Z

i just love this rendition ... the body percussion was fantastic too

Geekzone

2009-06-15T07:49:57Z

Looking for a quick geeky topup ... or maybe you're lacking geek contacts ... my favourite place to go for all information geeky is http://www.geekzone.co.nz/ - i've found it totally informative on all sorts of subject (mobile phones being my fav.)

And you don't have to be kiwi to join the zone.

Go on..

Check it out...

You know you want to ....

google chrome and other stuff

2009-06-05T22:42:49Z

so i'm posting this from google chrome ... on my mac! ... yeppers - i got a link to a developer copy to download ... and see as how i'm a 'trying out new software' kinda gal i'm having fun!!

so this weekend is going to be spent analysing my twitter survey - will blog about the results later

[LJ2ME] Darn it

2009-05-24T02:09:49Z

So i dont know exactly what went wrong but somehow my memory card became corrupted and i lost everything on it. So busy now reinstalling stuff.

[LJ2ME] Posting from my cell phone

2009-05-23T21:10:02Z

This is cool. I just downloaded an app to use for posting from my phone. It's called LJ2ME. If this post appears then it has worked perfectly. Note it's over the internet not the txt system.

Edited to add a link: http://xfyre.com/en/node/22

or just point your mobile to: http://www.xfyre.com/lj2me.jad

trekkie fans unite - this actually works

2009-05-22T23:32:36Z

i'm off to print out the picture but i tried it out with my ipod and it's fantastic!

waiting ...

2009-05-20T06:10:24Z

last october i put in an application with the US DoS Diversity Visa Lottery System ...

i am now waiting to see if i get a letter requesting more information and an interview ...

if all goes well then i get to acquire a green card and the right to live and work in the USA ...

today when i got home there was a letter waiting for me that had been franked in the USA ... i rushed excitedly inside only to discover that it was from Montana instead of Kentucky (apparently where my much awaited letter will come from!)

le sigh

posting drought

2009-05-16T22:50:13Z

my last post was about the holidays - i've now been back at school for 3 weeks and only now am taking time to blog

we've been busy busy busy

testing, assessing, prof. dev., new part time class started, and then i find that a one-day ICT day which we weren't going to be doing I am now presenting at ... basically a couple of us from school are going to present but no one else from school is going

instead of running a blogging workshop i'm going to run a twitter workshop ...

we'll see how that goes!

I'm on holiday ... here's the proof ->

2009-04-19T01:22:13Z

When I'm on holiday there's inevitably one thing I do that proves I'm on holiday (unless I'm travelling - oh - no - I still do it just in another format!)

I read.

Really.

In the last week I've read 18 books!

Most from the library but a couple were in our bookshelves. Here's a collage of the books + the list via the library website - can you pick the two that were on our shelves?

Oh and note - no professional reading at all - all for pleasure!

I guess I'm averaging 2 a day - but given that I've also been watching DVDs (should make a list: Miss Potter, 84 Charing Cross Road, Chronicles of Riddick 1 & 2, Amazing Grace, The man who lost his head, Perfect Creature, Quantum of Solace, Starship Troopers 2 & 3, darn it - I can't remember them all...) I'm actually reading more than that - kinda. And note my eclectic taste in both books and DVDs!

geocaching, photos and geotagging

2009-04-15T05:04:38Z

thanks to a blog from a fellow kiwi today i figured out a really easy way to geotag my photos ...

I read this then went to Maria's site and read her information.

I have a Nokia 6121c - no GPS but the photo EXIF records the time the photos were taken.

I also have a Garmin GPS60 handheld GPSr that I use for geocaching.

Strangely I had just got back from geocaching and had taken a couple of photos so decided to see if I could use the phone & GPSr & software to geotag my photos.

I downloaded "Loadmytracks" and "GPSPhotoLinker" both free programs for the Mac.

"Load my tracks" connects via USB to the GPSr and downloads any tracks and saves them as gpx files.

"GPSPhotoLinker" marries the track and the photos by time stamp - remarkably well.

iPhoto09 isn't recognising the geotags but if I use my standalone flickr uploader the geotags are visible in Flickr. When I view the photos in Preview on my mac the geotags are noted.

the flickr map shows a relatively accurate position

and the meta data shows the gps location

Picasa does a fantastic job of recognising the geotag online too:

thanks Miraz for the very good idea!