this is bizarre

i never knew i had a lisp until i shot a video with my new classroom camera




i've never noticed with anything recorded using the built-in iSight camera or with my cell phone ...

those who know me (in RL) what do you think - is this what i really sound like?

video log

wellington outing

spacegirlnz and i went into wellington this afternoon - just cos we could

we wandered about

we wandered past this little hole in the wall



and bought deux crepe with maple syrup - i practised my almost non-existant french ... "bonjour, deux crepes avec maple syrup s'il vous plait" (or however you spell it)



we saw this ...



and this ...



before returning to the car and discovering the reason why you should never let me drive your car ...

#1



#2



#3



also known as oh shit #1-3

this week in NZ history

thisweekinhistory
Originally uploaded by dragonsinger

snow leopard

Switzerland Zoo
Originally uploaded by dragonsinger

spacegirlnz did a squee on seeing this and a predictable 'can i have one?'

Baby Red Pandas

Baby Red Pandas
Originally uploaded by dragonsinger

I love Red Pandas - we have a couple in Wellington Zoo that have been known to go for a wander out of their cage and into the city ...

these are too gorgeous

"Tai and Pip, twin red pandas, sleep in the hands of Sandy Helliker, a animal health technologist at the Edmonton Valley Zoo in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Thursday, June 19, 2008. The pandas were born May 26 and are receiving round the clock care from Helliker who hand feeds them with baby bottles. They were taken from their mother after she showed aggression towards one of the babies. Only four babies were born in North America last year, two at the Edmonton Zoo, one in Calgary and one in Winnipeg. There are between 2,000 and 5,000 red pandas in the wild. They are native to the Himalayas in India and Nepal and southern China."

quantum time mechanics ... aka ... TGIT ... AKA ... slow time day ...

is it just me or does it happen to others too

some days whizz past fast - before you know it you've reached the end of the day and you're not sure where it went to

other days you spend the same amount of time doing things but it seems to take less time

or is it just me?

anyway - TGIT cos tuesday is my slow time day and i'm suffering from lower back pain - i THINK i tweaked a muscle yesterday when i was taking kids for a PE lesson (netball) - i first noticed it after lunch (PE was before lunch) yesterday and it steadily got worse until i retired to be at about 7pm last night

am pumping me full of anti-inflamitories and pain-killers - let's see how i go today

this week in nz history

something new - i'll try to do this once a week ...

how many years later and there's still problems ...

with unexploded bombs in countries like Laos

Check out this photo essay from the BBC

Laos is the most bombed country on earth. The US dropped 2.4 million tonnes of bombs on it during the Vietnam War - more than the allies dropped on Germany and Japan combined in World War II.

the 100 best products ...

The 100 Best Products, in Alphabetical Order

i'll italicise those i have or use ...

* Adobe Photoshop CS3 
    * AdventNet Zoho
    * Alienware Area-51 m15x 
    * Amazon MP3 
    * Apple Final Cut Studio 2 
    * Apple HD Cinema Display 
    * Apple iChat 
    * Apple iMac 
    * Apple iPhone 
    * Apple iPod Touch 
    * Apple Logic Studio 
    * Apple MacBook Air 
    * Apple MacBook Pro i have an iBook and a MacBook and an iPod - just none of these
    * Apple Mac OS 10.5 Leopard
    * Apple Safari 
    * Apple TV Take 2 
    * Asus U2E 
    * AT&T Tilt 
    * Audacity 
    * Canon EOS 40D 
    * Canon Pixma MX700 
    * Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS 
    * Canon Vixia HF10 
    * Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1 Video
    * Cerulean Studios Trillian 
    * Chestnut Hill Sound George 
    * Consumerist 
    * Craigslist 
    * Creative Aurvana X-Fi 
    * Creative Zen 
    * Dash Express 
    * Data Robotics Drobo DRO4DU10 4 Bay Hard Drive Array 
    * Dell XPS 420
    * Digg 
    * Electronic Arts Rock Band controllers Video 
    * Eye-Fi 
    * Facebook 
    * Flickr (Yahoo)
    * Flock 
    * Gateway XHD3000 
    * Google Docs & Spreadsheets
    * Google Gmail
    * Google Maps -- Street View 
    * Harmonix Rock Band Video 
    * HP Blackbird 002 LCi 
    * HP Photosmart C5280 
    * Hulu 
    * Intel Penryn News and reviews
    * Intel SkullTrail 
    * Jing Project 
    * Lenovo ThinkPad X300 
    * LG Electronics L196WTY-BF 
    * Lifehacker 
    * Linksys WRT600N 
    * Meebo 
    * Microsoft Office 2007 
    * Microsoft TellMe 
    * Microsoft Windows XP 
    * Microsoft Xbox Live
    * Mint 
    * Motorola MotoRokr T505 Car Speakerphone
    * Mozilla Firefox 3 
    * Mozilla Thunderbird 
    * Netflix 
    * Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ 
    * Nikon D60 
    * Nintendo Wii 
    * NPR.org 
    * nVidia GeForce 8800GT 
    * NYTimes.com 
    * Olympus SP-570 UZ 
    * OpenDNS PhishTank 
    * Orange Box (Valve Corp.) 
    * Palm Centro 
    * Panasonic TH-42PZ700U 
    * Pandora 
    * Partition Logic 
    * Pioneer Kuro PDP-5010FD 
    * RIM Blackberry Curve 8300 Series 8300 
    * Samsung 2263DX 
    * Samsung LN-T4061 
    * Samsung SyncMaster 305T 
    * SanDisk Cruzer Titanium Plus
    * Scrabulous 
    * SideStep.com 
    * Sony Bravia KDL-52XBR4 
    * Symantec Norton IS 2008 
    * TiVo HD 
    * Twitter 
    * Ubuntu Linux 
    * USB Safely Remove 3.3 
    * Verizon FiOS 
    * Vimeo 
    * Vizio Gallevia GV42LF 
    * VMWare Fusion 
    * Washington Post 
    * Western Digital VelociRaptor 
    * Wikipedia 
    * Yelp.com 
    * YouTube (Google) 

spiderwick and exploding toasters

just finished watching The Spiderwick Chronicles - http://www.spiderwick.com/ ; http://s241968001.onlinehome.us/movie/ - and was racking my brain trying to figure out exactly what is was about the boy that was tapping on the inside of my brain ... i ended up doing an IMDB search to figure it out - it was his soft speaking voice that was nagging ... and IMDB produced the fact that he was Charlie in the Tim Burton movie of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which i saw with my kids a few months ago ... ding ding ding

and as for exploding toasters ... i'm up in bed (early i know but i've got a nasty pinched nerve that's throwing my leg out at teh moment) and i just heard a loud bang ... and then dead silence ... and more dead silence ... i yelled downstairs to find out what the heck had just happened and gravelboy yelled back up that gothboy (new son) had just blown the toasted sandwich maker up - thereby toasting the toaster ... seems he'd caught the power cord inbetween the toasting bit when he closed it and the BANG was when the plastic coating melted through to the wiring ... gravelboy was going to turn it all back on again to see if it worked!!

OMG -- I just can't believe it -- I never win anything

from Dell Electronics Award
reply-to brown_williams@live.com
to
date Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 9:39 PM
subject Dell Award Notification
mailed-by bigpond.com

hide details 9:39 PM (30 minutes ago)


Reply


--
--
Dell Award Notification

We are delighted to inform you that you are one of the THREE LUCKY WINNERS whose e-mail address won the sum payout of 500,000 pounds.(Five Hundred Thousand Pounds Sterlings Only) in the DELL ELECTRONICS SEASONAL AWARD 2008.

Please be informed that all participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from over 30,000 company and 50,000,000 individual email addresses and names from all over the world. To file in for your claims,contact our claim's agent with your information as provided below:

Brown .J. Williams
Tell: +447031908584
Email: brown_williams@live.com

Full Names:......Country:.......Tel:......MaritalStatus.........Sex.......Age:.... Occupation:....Nationality:....... Residential Address: .........

Dr.Carl A.Moore
(Information Officer)

and in case you didn't pick it - that was a sarcastic header ....

good day shopping ...

if i do say so myself ... having just organised the purchase of 24 cameras and chargers for school i needed to get some plastic boxes for storing them in the classrooms ... 2nd shop had just what i needed so i purchased the boxes, brought them back to school and finished all the labelling ... monday morning will see each classroom with their own digital camera ... yay

broadband pricing

This is a snippet from an email i read today

This is so not good. Every other broadband ISP will be watching
closely to see what happens from this trial balloon. "Time Warner
Cable will launch a trial program on Thursday which will impose
monthly Internet consumption caps on new subscribers in Beaumont,
Texas. Following a two-month grace period, cable users will pay $1
for each additional gigabyte consumed beyond the cap."

40GB FOR $55 PER MONTH: TIME WARNER BANDWIDTH CAPS ARRIVE

By Ryan Paul, Ars Technica, June 03, 2008 http://tinyurl.com/3oufk8

Welcome to the rest of the world - ok - actually i don't know what happens elsewhere in the world but this is certainly welcome to NZ & broadband

here's some comparisons

i have a paradise/telstra 80GB plan (that's an 80GB cap)

i pay $139.95/month + $2.95/2GB over the cap for up to 10 Mbps/2Mpbs (when there are four people on the wireless network here it's not that fast!)

we always go over the limit ... as of today my usage meter tells me " You have used 129.31 GB which is 100% of your monthly traffic allocation, plus an additional 25 block(s) of usage costing $73.75 " - the meter resets at midnight tonight so for this last month i'll pay around $220 - $230 for our internet

telstra has a 'warpspeed' plan (but not in my city) of 120Gb for $230 but i get a better deal on the 80GB plan

Telecom's biggest plan (broadband) is 50GB for $149.95 + 2c/mb over the cap - i'm not even going to do the math for that one

one company offers unlimited broadband but that's at $495/month which is way more than i spend currently

with 3 teenage boys (one just arrived last week) - one of whom skypes regularly to talk to his family in china and also watches TV (chinese) online; one university student/massive downloader person - - and me all on wireless and all on the internet for large periods of time (it's called research!!) we need the broadband and the fast internet ...

#1

blog #1 - actually blog post #1 - this would be blog # 4 or 5 or 6 or ...