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| Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 | | 12:20 am |
Made it this far.
It's been an interesting year. Let's hope the next one is interesting for the right reasons. | | Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 | | 11:29 am |
ATTN: Wellington folks
Last night I arrived on the train to the bustling metropolis of Wellington. I'm currently somewhere near the university. Does anyone feel like catching up for lunch? | | Friday, February 10th, 2012 | | 6:41 pm |
| | Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 | | 6:29 am |
Going a-travelling once more
So, prior to getting back into my PhD work in earnest, I'm working on a trip first. Up to Auckland for a Steampunk convention thing on the weekend, then the train down to Wellington to visit friends and family. Staying there a few days, then taking the train down to Christchurch. Is there likely to be anything interesting happening in Wellington next week, or anyone who would like to catch up while I'm in the neighbourhood, or possibly lend me a couch/spare bed for a night or two? I think I have some people who I can ask in that regard, but it never hurts to have options in case plans go awry :-) Looking forward to the train part of my journey. I haven't really travelled in my own country for a long time, and this is the first time I'll have the chance to see it by locomotive. I'll have to make sure to take spare batteries for my camera, I think. | | Friday, December 23rd, 2011 | | 3:36 pm |
Time for more quakes, it seems. Happy Christmas, everyone. | | Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011 | | 2:42 pm |
| | Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 | | 4:11 pm |
OP has only recently discovered a video tangentially related to the community that was likely posted and discussed ad nauseam a few months ago, and a few months before that. | | Wednesday, September 21st, 2011 | | 1:15 am |
A letter to 16-year-old me.
Wrote this for elsewhere, so there are bits I didn't get to due to space limitations. But I figure it's worth recording here. Also, hi LiveJournal. I know it's been a while. For a long time I didn't have the words. So here's some of those.
If it's early in the year, you're probably still living behind emotional walls to keep the pain you can't process out of your life. You've been through a lot and they helped you to survive, but that's going to change. Something will change you for the better, at least eventually. The bad news is: you're going to die. Maybe around mid August. The good news is: it does get better. You've got three months of concussion and memory loss ahead. It's going to rip you apart and put you back together differently. You'll have emotions again, and they'll be raw and you'll be oversensitive, but you'll learn how to deal with them. Your health will get better in time for you to study for your Bursary Calculus exam, even if some of the internally assessed 6th Form Cert subjects are a write-off. You'll pass okay. The next year will be easier to handle for having fewer exams, helping you catch up on the holes you missed. Germany will be good for you, even if school does start stupidly early there. It'll help you learn about other cultures, and it'll help you grow up. You'll get on well with women, even though far too many German women smoke. Someone will kiss you who probably shouldn't. You'll get into good music, and start to develop a personal sense of style. You'll still be pretty good at speaking and writing German when you're my age. Next year you'll get a girlfriend. You'll be thrown in the deep end and you won't cope very well, but that's okay. You'll still be good for her while you're together, and several years later she'll thank you for being the person you were in her life. In years to come there will be other romances, and while they won't last you'll be better for them and usually they will be better for you, too. Regrettably, you are going to spend some time in the "nice guy" ghetto, believing that you're being thoughtful and considerate when you're being passive-aggressive and not assertive. Luckily, someone's going to come along and tell you about the difference and you'll start to work out how to do that better. Professionally and academically, you do okay. Things will come in fits and starts sometimes, but you'll accomplish great things. You'll contribute to some international projects and do your country proud. You'll get paid to build websites and write computer games. To Mum's amusement, you'll end up doing education-related work after all, even though you won't be a teacher. Coming out of your early thirties, you're still a work in progress. But you've made a whole lot of progress, and the trend is a positive one. There are many steps between there and here, and you'll climb, and you'll fall. But keep going. Eventually, it does get better. Current Mood:  reminiscent | | Monday, June 13th, 2011 | | 1:35 pm |
So, first major quake since I got back into the country. I missed the 5.5 on Queen's Birthday Weekend by a few hours, but we've just had a follow-up of the same magnitude and possibly a bit higher. It'd seem that today was not fated for going in to university and getting my lab sorted out, after all. Yeah, definitely hadn't missed this. Even if we did have tornado warnings while I was in the U.S. | | Sunday, May 8th, 2011 | | 2:35 pm |
Woke up late today, but sleep is good. Before picking someone up at the airport at 7pm, our current plans are to head into San Francisco, seek out the fabled Mission Burrito, see what else that's interesting we can get up to. Any suggestions/volunteers? | | Saturday, May 7th, 2011 | | 1:35 pm |
Bay Area folks: Weekend Hijinks
Current plans for out-on-the-town events in the next few days include Blackbeard's Ball in Oakland tonight and possibly Death Guild on Monday night. I don't suppose anyone I know on LJ is going along to either? | | Friday, May 6th, 2011 | | 11:06 am |
After a slightly fraught trip to get here, with a couple of delays and a car breakdown and other fun, I'm now staying in the Bay Area a few days. Not really jetlagged per se, but still a bit physically shagged due to spending around 12 hours in a cramped seat or shuffling down lines. It's odd how tiring sitting still can be. On the plus side, whether it's from procedural changes or LAX versus SFO, the experience of clearing customs was a lot less painful this time around. In any case, holiday starts now! | | Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 | | 11:47 pm |
Health is improving. Last of my important university paperwork submitted today, to much relief. Tomorrow, I depart for the United States for a month. See you again in June, Christchurch. | | Saturday, April 30th, 2011 | | 12:20 pm |
Draft for a Steampunk New Zealand setting.
This just rolled off my brain. Which is probably good, because it means my brain is finally capable of writing again. I'd probably want to poke around it and edit a few things if I were going to make it a bit more viable, but I really need to get some breakfast and get back into my thesis paperwork, so that's all free and clear by the time I leave for the United States next week. Someone on Facebook was saying (in less polite terms) that he was having trouble getting his head around how Māori could fit into Steampunk. I started thought-experimenting, and it didn't stop for a while. Here's the result.
Initial European settling happens a little earlier, and in smaller numbers initially. Māori still adapt quite well to the musket and a few other pieces of British technology, and a more modern style of education is propagated by settlers, missionaries and eventually by the Māori tribes themselves. The inter-tribal musket wars are settled internally, and The United Tribes of New Zealand form a stronger confederacy. As European settlement pressures start to heat up, there's still a Treaty of Waitangi, but the tribes manage to play the British and the French off against each other and get better terms. They're also proficient enough in English language and law by now that there's no argument over the terms of sovereignty and governorship they are agreeing to. Banks Peninsula is declared a French enclave and Lyttelton a free port, ensuring that the Māori continue to have a non-British European trading partner. They're also better able to capitalise on the mid-19th Century gold rushes, and import more industrial technology of their own. Land sales still happen, but on fairer terms. There's no Tohunga Suppression Act. The Land Wars still happen, as settlement pressures build in Europe and the demand for new land to cultivate rises. This time it's a bit less lopsided, with the British and their Māori allies fighting against the United Tribes with the surreptitious backing of French merchants and Irish partisans. British war shipping is disrupted and major ports blockaded using Fenian Ram submarines. The pā and trench warfare becomes more frustrating for the British, as the Māori now have the benefits of improved resources and logistics as well as terrain experience and mobility. Eventually hostilities cease in stalemate, and it's been an uneasy, compromising peace since then. The British, French and the Fenian Brotherhood all want to consolidate their interests and push the others out. Not all Māori tribes are part of the United Tribes, and not all tribes who are trust each other either. New Zealand as a nation is trying to reconcile its identity from fractured parts, while also coping with the influx of new technological innovations spurred both by the wars and by scientific progress overseas. Current Mood:  working | | Sunday, April 17th, 2011 | | 1:12 am |
| | Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 | | 11:34 pm |
Some normal services resuming.
We arrived back home to find that power and phone service has been restored. Water may take a while longer, since there are areas with far more serious problems in that regard to be seen to first. Still, with power comes the ability to cook, and keep our perishable foods in the fridge and freezer, and boil water. The necessities of life catered for, even if not some of the conveniences. It's raining now, which is going to make things trickier for the rescue efforts in town, and put pressure on city drainage and liquefaction-struck areas. On the other hand, it also gives us the opportunity to take buckets outside and gather a bit of relatively fresh water to augment our emergency supplies and random household beverages. A mixed blessing, but one where I'm happy to look at the bright side of for now, and see what the morning brings. Current Mood:  tired | | 8:41 pm |
Still Alive
So, we had another big earthquake here. Our flat has had minor damage - the chimney that survived the last one is down, and we have a little silt liquefaction in the garden, but otherwise we're good. No electricity yet, but then 80% of the city lost power. Currently visiting a friend to borrow power and internet. But all is well. | | Sunday, February 13th, 2011 | | 1:55 pm |
| | Thursday, January 27th, 2011 | | 3:21 pm |
| | Monday, January 24th, 2011 | | 10:31 am |
I suspect it may be nearing time for me to sleep again. While I've got quite a lot of good work done this morning, I'm starting to get increasingly silly. |
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