Posts by stever@cs.waikato.ac.nz
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Hard News: I'm not a "f***ing cyclist".…, in reply to Jolisa,
If you have an iPhone (or something similar) get endomondo and compile your own routes, then publish them.
Works really well! It'll estimate your calories, height, distance travelled, average speed too.
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Standfirst on Stuff:
Prime Minister John Key wades into Hobbit debate, promising a meeting with film studio. Film fans outraged.
:-)
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Given that John Key has stepped in, I assume it's already privately decided that the films will be made here. I guess PRs have been talking to PRs to set it all up for him. They'd never have let him near it otherwise, surely?
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I cycle as a commuter (quite a frosty week this week in Hamilton!) and also at weekends and on holidays for fun and pleasure.
My commute is possible via two main routes: right out of the drive then down to Donny Park, through the park (and it really is a nice, small park with loads of new planting, and tuis have been around there for a few years now!) and up out of it (it's really a huge gully) onto Opal Place (one of many exits), along Bankwood Road, left and right along Heaphy Terrace then into the developing glory of Claudelands Park (lots of new planting, a new pond!, and lots of ways to walk/cycle over it), then across into East Street, cross Peachgrove Road (a horrible junction: great care needed!) then into Ruakura Research Centre, right at the little roundabout, past the Waikato Innovation Park, left onto Ruakura Road, right at the roundabout and into work through gate 2a (then up the hill to G block). A lovely ride at any time.
The other route is left out of the drive then River Road, Thames Street, Kitchener Street, Piako Road, Heaphy Terrace, Brooklyn Road, then right as it bends left, over the little railway crossing, down the end of Whyte Street to Te Aroha, left over to Ruakura Road, then as above. Roads all the way, but very pleasant through parts of Hamilton around River Road.
The Council and I have been exchanging words over the cock-up in re-painting the Te Aroha/Ruakura junction (advanced stop lines now hardly advanced, and months to get the green re-surfacing done), and I've never seen so much glass on roads as here (and I speak as a cycle-commuter in London for 11 years!), but you get used to riding with your gaze a metre in front of your wheel....
All in all, you just can't beat cycling for commuting---and in Hamilton there's due to be an "experiment" involving bike racks on buses (or perhaps just one to Raglan for the moment---I hope it catches on).
Hamilton is surrounded by lovely weekend rides too---as long as you can avoid the Fonterra tanker drivers and their apparent mission to deny the road to cyclists with the most extreme prejudice---which Fonterra washes its hands of.
All we need now are some little country pubs, and bridleways/footpaths across all that countryside so we can all enjoy it close-up, rather than from the road---all those fields with nothing in them, but fenced and gated all the same! What a waste!
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Yes---and further perhaps we might get a list of current policies which are not FFPs, though from Ben's account it sounds as though this is not a problem, i.e. that there aren't, in this Principal's view, any non-FFPs, which is nice.
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Just a small detail: a retired professor is not the same thing as an emeritus professor.
A retired professor is someone who was a professor up until the time they retired.
An emeritus professor is someone who is a retired professor AND their institution thought them so good that the majority opinion of their (former) peers won the argument that they should be awarded one of an institution's highest honours---the awarding of emeritus professor status.
So, being a retired professor and claiming to be an emeritus professor is (to a University) a very significant claim---and if it's made incorrectly it says a lot about a person.
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Tom's comments yesterday had near the end
But all too often it gets co-opted into the sort of "quarter-acre paradise" vision that helps sell McMansions and SUVs to a populace that claims to love the land while gradually killing it.
As someone who moved to NZ thirteen years ago and has never been able to shake off his amazement (and horror) at the difference between the propaganda that NZ very successfully spreads overseas and the reality here at home, this quote really does sum things up for me. I have come across a few people who are prepared to admit that if, say, Europeans lived like most people here do, Europe would be an environmental mess, but most seem to deny what their eyes tell them, if they'd only look around. It's like we've come to believe our own propaganda---not a good move!
I'd also say that attachment to the land, sky and sea is in no way a defining "kiwi" characteristic---being attached to this section of LSS might well be, but I still, after all these years, get a shiver whenever I see "my" special bit of LSS where I was born and brought up, and I never, never get over the feeling of missing it deep down inside---and I don't suppose I ever will.
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Nice analysis. It reminds me of when I was a PhD student and sharing an office with another student. He used to sit at his desk with paper in front of him and a pencil or pen at the side (this was 20 years ago and so no computer on his desk, even though it was a computer science deaprtment) and stare ahead (at the wall). I asked him once what he was doing---his reply was: "Sometimes I just sit and think...and sometimes I just sit...". He was a very calm person!
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Given our latitude, perhaps this needs consideration.
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I think that the last para in particular of this article applies just as well to John key---and the rest fo the article is pretty relevant too!