Francis’ Weblog

I’m doing some work for Jawbone and they have just released there bluetooth mobile headset in Europe yesterday. But I have so say its quite an amazing bit of kit! The noise suppression on it is something else! They have a demo on their website of what a call is like and it really is like that. I was talking to a mate in my house then walked outside into my car and then down a busy local motorway and I asked him if he could hear my car and he still thought I was in my house! anyway kinda cool, anyway check it out…

A mate sent me this. Really quite amazing robotics!

Google’s new Street View, a new Google Maps feature that uses vehicle-cameras to take 360-degree street level views of major urban areas, captured all sorts of urban emphemera in the process from tabbies in windows to red light runners. You can now see photos of the street before you walk down it… one woman asked for a photo of her house to be removed because you could actually see inside her house and clearly see at cat sitting on a table.

Now a competition has been setup by Weird to find the best snapshots. Highlights include a guy taking a leak, the actual Google Van taking the 360-degree photos but my all time favoruite a photo of 524 Haight St San Francisco, and the google van exceeding the speed limit! Classic!

I haven’t found any UK street photos but guessing this may not happen for a while due to tighter controls on privacy.

Yes google have done it, managed to create wireless dsl using your very own plumbing system! and best of all its free! Check the website for more info!

http://www.google.com/tisp/

Yup we’ve had a Lahar… (lar-har). Yes everyone one was going on about the Lahar involving one of the New Zealand volcanoes… had no idea what on earth they were going on about. As it was involving a volcano I thought it would be a good idea to find out :). Quick search on wikipedia sorted everything out. Its basically a lake a the top of a volcano that has burst its banks and a load of mud and water poring down.

The NZ government have set up quite a neat system for alerting everyone so that s cool… no probs BUT I get a call from my parents. They are travelling down to Wellington on the train and the track had been washed away. Luckily they had stopped for lunch (the train stops for an hour or so, so everyone can get off and have lunch!!! how bizarre!) anyway they had to go the rest of the way by coach.

Should be getting the video of me jumping off the SkyTower next week…

More info: NZ Herald

Imagine your at work and a colleague asks “Are you busy Wednesday evening?”, you reply “Yup, think so… why?” and you get the reply “No reason”… do you worry? do you ask for more information? like an idiot I kept quiet…

On wednesday morning an email is sent to everyone in the office… “As you are all free this evening we have booked 10 tickets for the skyJump at 5pm, it will be followed by a meal in devonport”. The office goes quiet… you can hear the jaws dropping from all around… For those that do not know the SkyJump is a virtually freefall jump from a tower no just a smallish tower… its the biggest tower in the Southern hemisphere… nice!… ok, you don’t jump from right at the top but at 640ft tall and going 85kph its still very, very high and fast… and i’ve just received an email saying that i’m going to do it… NO WAY!!! … oh and the added pressure being that they have paid for it so you have to do it.. the panic starts the set in. I’ve seen people doing it, hanging in no mans land waiting to fall… I start to go into a strange laughing hysteria which lasts most of the day… unfortunately my window looks out at the sky tower it dominates the Auckland skyline.

At 4.35pm we get in the taxi and leave the office… 4.50pm we get to the sky tower looking directly up the tower… it looks big… very big.

We get our harnesses and jump suits, I ask for another harness but they says its pointless as your only attached to one cable… nice… I ask how long the person has been working for SkyJump… the reply “one week”, right. Confidence high!… not. Were taken up to the lift and we go up the sky tower. The lift is a glass lift, you can look down and see the bottom of the lift shaft and look directly out of the window to the world. I keep my eyes firmly on the back wall of the lift, not looking out. We get to the top and one by one go onto the little ledge. I have this recollection of the guy saying “Are you ready?” to which I reply “Yes” and wonder why on earth I’ve said yes? because agreeing to a stranger to push you off a building at 192 metres just sounds stupid! and well … unwise! Anyway I didn’t have much time to think about it because he shouts out 3 … 2 … 1 … and i’m gone…

Note the clenched fist! the second photo isn’t great because of the strong lights from the base of the building and night fast approaching. You get a better idea from the video on the website.

Tom Gleeson an Ozzie Comedian dissects James Blunts famous song You’re Beautiful:

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2006/james-blunt-p1.php

Yes, there was an earthquake on wednesday just north of auckland out to sea… and where was I??? just north of auckland snowboarding at snow planet. Did I feel anything?! .. nothing. I was talking to a local who has lived in auckland for 20 years and has never felt an earthquake, and i’m in snow planet falling over and don’t notice a thing. Then at 11pm there was another but smaller and I didn’t feel that either. Oh well… maybe next time.

Generally Auckland isn’t geared up as much as Wellington for earthquakes. While I was down in Wellington a couple of weeks ago I took some photos of equipment etc in the buildings in Wellington.

On the floor of the building I was working there was a civil defence cabinet:

On top were “Readi-safe survival packs for emergency relief and natural disasters”. The packs can sustain Five adults or Two adults and three children for up to three days. I didn’t check to see what was in the cabinet but the “perishables” replacement list on the front had: Batteries (AA Radio) x3, Batteries Torch (D Cell) x8, Readi-safe survival packs x2, Tampons 1box, Light Sticks 12 hour 15, Water purification tablets 1 box of 50. All interesting stuff

And then downstairs on the ground floor was the “Orange Box”, a safe room incase of disaster… basically an empty room from what I can see

The one thing that is quite hard to come by in Auckland is a book shop that sells books. Well books I actually want to buy. If you dive into a regular Auckland book superstore for example American borders, you would think they would have some technical computer books. You ask the counter staff nicely where they have the computer books … they look at you blankly for a bit and then say that maybe if you go down to the basement and look in the disused lavatory with the stuffed iguana you may get a couple. You head down and you do find one shelf that has been dedicated to “computer books” but they are the idiots guide to office and things like that. So you hunt around the web for a new Zealand online book shop which sells… books that you want… and you fail. So you end up ordering them from US amazon.com. Which I have now done BUT I thought it might be an idea to check out the customs charges for bringing books in, and found this:

Private Importers Custom Charges

Ok books are free… yupiee! but look at the other stuff! Golf balls are free, golf clubs are free yet golf bags are $7? “Linen - table cloths” are $5 yet “Linen - Kitchen Linen” is free?? and what about the lego?! $7 for lego bricks?!!! Bizarre!

This weekend a friend was over from the UK and I managed AT LAST! to get over to Waiheke Island… its about a 40min ferry from where I live. Hover over the images for captions. We hired a couple of bikes on the island and had a ride around. A friend Jen lived on the island between the NZ and US winter seasons. Found the bus she lived in! oh and the guy in the picture is Alex.