June 8, 2004
General
Comments Off on Blogging, Utopia and a Lazy Weekend.
Pretty happy to see that blogs.sun.com was officially announced, and a typical reaction. It’s just another step toward a more open and communicative company. Awesome stuff. I got in early and registered gman, although I don’t expect I’ll have much to say there.
So, Robert Love has nicely thrown a spanner in the works with a proposed module inclusion of GNOME Volume Manager for GNOME 2.8 – only because it’s a significant amount of work to get the backend pieces in shape for Solaris [HAL, D-BUS, …]. Hoping it happens though – project Utopia rocks.
Had a pretty lazy bank holiday weekend. The Opshop/Feelers gig on Friday night was groovy, although went on quite late. I was slightly disappointed by the Feelers though – they certainly didn’t pull of a performance like Opshop did, but I probably didn’t know their songs quite as well. Went into town on Saturday night to celebrate Andy and Drek’s birthdays for a few pints. Sunday started with a brunch celebrating JP’s birthday, a friend of Carolyns. While Andy and Maeve headed off to Arthur’s Pass after cheering Steve in the Christchurch marathon, lunchtime wine got the better of Carolyn and myself – we resorted to a quiet evening of a bottle of wine and watching a DVD. Sunday involved a pretty cruisey walk up the Bridle path in the Port Hills and a drive over to Littleton and Governor’s Bay to blow out the cob webs.
The car passed the WOF again. Hooray! Andy celebrated by buying 2 new front tires for it.
June 4, 2004
General
Comments Off on More Little Steps
It’ll be interesting to see how Java plays out in the next couple of months. With an ‘announcement’ yesterday to open source Java at some stage in the future, and the recently launched JDIC project for providing developers an opportunity to integrate into desktop platforms without compromising platform independance it feels like Sun is making little steps, but all important ones.
June 4, 2004
General
Comments Off on Always an Irishman
I’ve been an Irishman for quite some time – in fact most of my life. But never before had I dared to try bottled draft Guinness. Why would I? But living in New Zealand has brought new experiences to my life, and today I took the plunge and tried it for the first time. I haven’t quite figured it out yet. It’s quite like draft Guinness from a can – perhaps even a little bit lighter. It’s not the real thing though, and I have less than a month before I’m drinking it again.
John, the game was a trial match for the All Black rugby team. Can completely understand how the National Anthem might feel so right for many US people at the moment. Interestingly, the Irish rugby team has 2 anthems, because with some many non republicans on the team, they felt alienated. Now we have Ireland’s Call, which quite frankly does it better for me.
June 3, 2004
General
Comments Off on These Kiwis are Crazy
It’s been a pretty busy week or two. Completely frustrating at times in work, but it’s been nice to find life outside and away from the hassles. Last weekend we headed up to Hanmer Springs. Maeve had been given a recommendation of a holiday house up there, so a bunch of us [Maeve, Andy, Sam, Steve and Carolyn] drove up there for a pretty relaxing weekend. We did a bit of hiking, a good deal of drinking and eating and stayed a while in the thermal pools, underneath a disappointingly non-starry sky.
Went to watch the All Black trials with Carolyn and housemates this week in her local. It’s the first time they’ve put on the trials for a while, and it seems to have created quite a bit of excitement. The Probables versus The Possibles. For much of the game you could see the Probables taking for granted their place in the side. They didn’t hold hands at the start for the national anthem, they didn’t seem to even have the desire to play a good game and come out fighting. By contrast the Possibles wanted to win and prove a point, and for much of the match they succeeded. Like the Super 12 final, Mehrtens turned the match around when he came on. This time doing enough to take a narrow victory. Of course, this was all the more amusing when you have 4 or 5 passionate Kiwis sitting in the pub with a few beers heckling anyone who screws up – which mostly seems to be the Aucklanders on the team. Looking forward to seeing the England game down in Dunedin next weekend.
Tomorrow we head to see Opshop and The Feelers live in the Civic Theatre by way of a Thai and a few drinks.
