Mike Riversdale

There is something extremely griping about an Indiana Jones adventure, terribly 'boys won' ... and I love 'em. And so, the thought that they are currently filming the fourth movie makes me smile from the 14-year-old out! And here's the man himself - film released worldwide 22nd May, 2008 ( click to enlargen ) Hat tip Matt - who's in Sweden of all places, wonder if he'll get to Wellington?

Read this and apply over at Wellingtonista: Free tickets to Downstage (limited time, conditions apply) The lovely people at Downstage have offered Wellingtonista-readers the chance to see the new NZ play Finding Murdoch free next Monday or Tuesday. Reviewer John Smythe at theatreview.org.nz said of the show: My partner loved it and rugby is not her bag. But then it’s written by a woman about a woman’s desire to achieve and understand, and it’s directed by a woman, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Which isn’t to say rugby orientated blokes won’t like it too. Heading for the car (after the Monday 6.30 show) I bumped into Keith Quinn – of sportscasting fame – and asked him if he’d just been to Finding Murdoch . “Saw it on opening night,” he said. “It’s terrific. You should go.” There’s more about the show here , and we have 20 double-passes to give away to either Monday or Tuesday of next week. Simply ... ... find out how to apply over at Wellingtonista: Free tickets to Downstage (limited ...

As you may know I look after Jack and Meg on Thursdays. Alert! Well deserved Fronde plug follows ... I work at a forward thinking, accommodating and flexible work place with the majority of people behaving in line with the values and not just paying lip service, it's a pleasure and a breath of fresh air! Aaaanywho - this morning I'd rather have been at work. 7:30am: Get up with Meg 8am: Brekkie, dress Meg 8:30am-ish: Get Jack up, brekkie (such as he has) and dress 9am: Liz is off to work (after having a phone session already - this girl works hard let me tell you) Plan for the day, 10am drop Carol off at the airport, 10:30am swimming, back for a light lunch and Jack at Kindy for 12:45pm whilst Meg sleeps for ages and I get to do some work, play on the PC, read books etc etc Reality ... 9:15am: Liz return - no buses running, power cut 9:20am: All in car, drop off Carol a wee bit early 9:50am: Drop off Liz at her work place 10am: At Swim School ... 30 mins to kill 11am: Finish s...

[Updated 28-June] It's a boy!!!!!!!!!!! After a long struggle Linda managed to coax the wee fella out into the world (with a little help from a newly installed 'sun roof'). 54cm long, weighs 685kg ... all doing well and resting up. I am an uncle! Well, a 'blood uncle', the Christchurch contingent count as well. ------------------- Latest from Stockholm is that things are progressing but very slowly. Linda is in the hospital but having a sleep (it's night time there of course). I will keep you posted here for the latest EXCITING!!!

I like the upgrade to Google Docs 'front page' - interesting that they've shied away from the 'tags' approach and back to the 'folders', even though it really is using 'tags'. Shame no tag cloud (or 'folder cloud') There is a wee bit of drag-n-drop with the new tarty front page. Google Blogscoped has a great Google Docs before/after article . Anyway - it now looks like this (click for bigginess):

As the Computerworld article says, "Skype offers domestic calls for zero cents per minute and international calls from mobile phones at local rates" Now that's pretty darned good ... of course it's not FREE calls! However it's merely $3.55/month for SkypeIn number and you get free NZ calls and a nominated international number (my parents in Wales for instance) and it's only charged at local call rate (+ a wee bit of Skype-age ...) Read on , this could be what Liz and I have been waiting for and now the Skype handset will be bought!

From Adam's EMAIL joke list It's very subtle, can ya see the humour - leave a comment and spoil it for everyone :-)

This article is now at Enterprise 2.0 New Zealand style: I agree with the CIO of British Telecom

I think the TVNZ channel on YouTube is an excellent move, forward thinking and probably one of the finest moves by an NZ SOE* in quite some time. Why do I think that, because I can now embed official NZ Government owned content directly into my blog: [3-Dec-2024: Video unavailable. This video is private * SOE - State Owned Enterprise, a NZ organisation that was once publicly owned but now works in the private sector but still have as a 51%+ ownership by the NZ Government

Morecambe and Wise advertising Atari from Stu over at FanBoyGeeks : And a fine article from the almost consistently funny NewsBiscuit: Ordnance Survey produces first map of "Moral High Ground"

As you may (should!) know I've been running my life online * for quite some time now. I've had very little issues finding services** that will gladly take my info and store it for me, letting me share, combine and generally do wonderful things with MY content. I've had a few changes of services but generally I've been lucky and it's all been extremely stable - mostly because the services I've tended to use have ended up being bought out by the big girls. However, I have had one gripe about the whole online malarkey that's never been sorted - centralised contact list . Every service I use expects me to import all my contacts (names, emails generally) so that I can then use them to share, collaborate and all that good stuff. I have a copy (or cut down version of) of my contacts in Facebook, del.icio.us, Google Apps, Yahoo!, Flickr ... basically everything has a set of 'your friends/contacts/people/buddies" ... and it's bloody annoying. Having said...

... curling up under the covers in bed and pretending you are in a tent Show all | explain this

[Updated 25th June] All on, opening 30th June - check ! FREE Details from The Dowse site : Come face-to-face with the mighty King Kong, Wellywood’s most famous cinematic gorilla, in this unique exhibition at TheNewDowse. Developed in partnership with internationally celebrated Weta Workshop & Weta Digital, the exhibition Becoming King Kong takes you behind the scenes to reveal the amazing creative journey that took King Kong from the imagination of Kiwi filmmakers to the world's cinema screens. The exhibition sprawls across four galleries, enabling visitors to pore over original sketches, animal skulls, life-sized sculpted models, detailed maquettes, stunning digital artwork and rarely seen moving-image footage used in the development and production of the movie, King Kong. Becoming King Kong celebrates the creative process of creating King Kong and invites you to unlock the door of Weta to see the artistry, workmanship, and inventiveness that helped bring the film to life. FR...

The Alternative Rugby Commentary (ARC) that they 'do' at the San Francisco Bathhouse sounds like it should be awesome ... but is it ? I loved the morning Jedi on ActiveFM a few years ago* and I recall Roy and HG's State of Origin commentary being friggin hilarious (and I don't even understand/like Rugby League) Ooh, my web hunting has found these links: Official ARC site San Francisco Bathhouse Rugbydump.com - rugby blog Anywho - is it worth popping along to SFBH (or whatever the cool acronym should be) - leave a comment Hat tip ( creepy ) to Wotzon * He may well be still on there but I don't listen to ActiveFM anymore ... no headphones/radio to plug into on the bus.

"40% improvement to come from the All Blacks", says Graham Henry and I would agree. It was a gutsy (cliche #1) win (21-26) by the All Blacks pulling it back (cliche #2) in the final quarter (#3) of the game against South Africa early in the morning (NZ time). I thoroughly enjoyed it despite it at The Bristol with the usual Dearsley clan - roll on next week and 100,000 at the MCG, then we'll see just how improved the Wallabies truly are. AND, I've just read that it's 1-1 with the America's Cup ... I am so staying up for the final races when they come (day off tonight, back on track Tuesday night) Finally - on the Sting ! They totally deserved to win the final ever Netball Cup and it's "back home" (#4). I will miss the NZ only championship and hope the NZ/Australia competition doesn't drop our standards merely to raise theirs. (Oh, the Orries lost to MSP 49-9 in the Hardham Cup ... not so good)

What is a ‘Tag Cloud’? Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud A tag cloud (or weighted list in visual design) can be used as a visual depiction of content tags used on a website. Often, more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasized, while the displayed order is generally alphabetical. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag. They’re normally connected with “Web 2.0” sites – blogs, Wiki’s and the like but have been used more recently as ‘theme analysis’ on speeches (see examples at bottom). OK, show me one! This is what one looks like: I want real life examples to look at … give them to me! Mike Riversdale’s photo tag cloud: http://flickr.com/photos/mike_riversdale/tags/ Mike Riversdale’s bookmarks online: http://del.icio.us/miramarmike BBC News Archive tag cloud: http://www.dracos.co.uk/work/bbc...

NewScientist: Firstborn children are the cleverest Firstborn children score significantly higher in IQ tests than their younger siblings, according to a large study of 250,000 military draftees in Norway. ... read on > I have, of course, emailed this to my YOUNGER brother:

[Updated 22nd June] It's been some time since I started with Google Reader and I always promised myself that I would leave every feed in for a time, see (using the 'trends' facility) what I actually read and biff the rest. That time has come to cull the 241 ... First to go from my list is: BarCamp - I only want the Wgtn.e-Gov details but I can't filter the rest of the world out, grrr BarCamp... Google Group - feed not working I Help You Blog - hasn't since April I'd Rather Be Writing - didn't get enough benefits No Right Turn - excellent political blog but, well, I just don't care enough ... may well be brought back David Farrar - see previous Rest Area 300m - :-( ... more to go over the next few days. I'm also taking the opportunity to re-tag things, I now know what I actually look for in a blog and what they are really about. [Removed from my feed list on 22nd June] Dom Post headlines - just don't read the news via RSS Dominion Post Lo...

I actually like the potential of Microsoft Surface BUT, this brings it back to reality BTW: watching isn't enough, you need to hear the voice over! The future is here, and it's not an iPhone ... it's a Big Ass Table. Take that Apple! Hat tip Dan at Up North Down South

July 8th, 2007 - chosen as a TWTWTW article We all know about " Terrible Two's " and you might have knowledge of the loads of work done on stages we go through up until late teens and then ... nothing .. well, very little. What about others? I dunno, how about a name for 37-45 - search for meaning and how to contribute? When I was doing my Counselling degree we were taught quite a few different 'modalities' (schools of thoughts, types of practice) - everything from the old school Freudian based Psychoanlaysis , through the "happy pill" of Cognitive Behavioural (my label) and the "being there" Person-centered Therapy (my label once again) to the more modern theories of NLP and Narrative Therapy (the one that resonates most with me). There are many more, check out the Wikipedia: Branches of psychology . The majority of the modalities had a base in some sort of ' phases of human development ' . That's to say that we all, no mat...

They were obviously waiting for me to notice the Gmail PowerPoint thing-a-me-bob before announcing their purchase of Zenter . Oh, and waiting for Richard to pop up his posting about Web Office as well ... all in the timing.

The last of the pimping of events from last nights packed mini-Webstock was from Don at Catalyst IT regarding this excellent promotion of Open Source excellence. The nominations to be in by August 17th - categories are: Category A: Open Source Ambassador This award is for a New Zealand individual that has been an outstanding ambassador for open source. Category B: Open Source Contributor This award recognises outstanding contributions by a New Zealand individual or organisation to one or more open source projects. Category C: Open Source Software Project This award recognises an outstanding project to develop open source software. The project must be either based in New Zealand or have substantial contribution from New Zealanders living here or overseas. Category D: Open Source Use in Government This award recognises outstanding use of open source in the public sector in New Zealand. Category E: Open Source Use in Business This award recognises outstanding use of open source i...

The Full Code Press (18th August in Sydney) was 'pimped' at the mini-Webstock and I think it's a cracking idea for many reasons. If you're a charitable organisation you get a top notch website for free, if you're a Kiwi development team you get to pit your wits against the best out there and if you merely want to help it all run smoothly, you can . PS: It's all gonna happen in Wellington in 2008 - so prepare yourself Wellington! Here's what the Full Code Press has to say about itself : FullCodePress is a series of web competitions - the brainchild of the people at Webstock and WIPA . In essence it’s a geek Olympics! The concept is simple. Web teams take each other on, at the same location, to build a complete website in 24 hours. No excuse, no extensions, no budget overruns. The first event will be held in Australia on Saturday 18 and Sunday 19 August 2007 between Australia and New Zealand. In 2008 there will be a worldwide challenge for any interested c...

Loved the mini-Webstock last night and looking forward to many many more - thoughts in short form as my fingers are cold ... Great to meet fellow bloggers. Awesome to meet Sandi and her partner Brenda . Wellington "Web 2.0" is a small community. The community is vibrant, inclusive, fun and looking to do great things. Active creativity is the key phrase I invented about it. The Second Life preso by Leigh Black all opened my eyes and I now know about virtual hand gliding, flying phallus, getting drunk virtually and how it COULD be. My summary - Second Life has potential, it's a closed room full of some very strange people, you need a guide to start you off, it has a far richer interaction than other online environments, it's amazing how much effort people have spent 'building' things. Once it includes/interacts with the wider Web it'll be quite something. Oh, and there's some very strange goings on with colourful characters in it. Leigh is a passionat...

July 8th, 2007 - chosen as a TWTWTW article Further to my posting that states you can use email for the 'publishing' and 'reading' part of the Web 2.0 experience ... well, the reality bit hard today when I challenged one of my "80% friends" to move his email jokes list to a blog/feed approach. He agreed to the challenge. I set-up the Blogger blog. I set up the Feedburner account and feed. I let him know we're on our way. I tried to forward one of his joke emails containing pictures ... it failed . The first bloody attempt and it failed ... Blogger cannot handle pictures (or any type of attachment - there go the PowerPoint jokes). Arse! Ok, I can handle that. Let's try something else. Aha, Wordpress can do it (with a wee bit of technical jiggery pokery). Right, don't want to install myself ... aha, they'll host it for me. Set up a host Wordpress blog. Search for how to email posts ... ah, they don't do pictures either. Isn't this just s...

Don't be scared to come up to me *and say hi this evening at mini-Webstock being held in the Paramount. Looking forward to Leigh Blackhall's 'Second Life in education' chat but mostly I am there for the low down on Firefox 3 from Robert O'Callahan . I suspect the usual "Web 2.0/Wellingtonista/blogging" gang to be around as well ... hell, might meet my second blogger of the week, eek. And my current company is well represented with newly arrived in NZ and newly arrived at Fronde Sandi Mamoli part of the 'affirmative' team arguing that indeed That Web 2.0 is all fizz and no substance * for some reason I've decided to wear a light blue skylight polo short ... not quite sure what 'image' I was attempting - but hey, visit skylight and give them all the support you can because they make a difference to kids and parents all over New Zealand

[Updated 19th June] Reality hits home ... all is not as easy I may have made it seem ------------- As I've noted in previous posts most of my mates/family have no idea about all these new sanatravious Web 2.0 things - RSS means nothing, a blog is something that Mike is obsessed by and "social networks" sounds like a trendy liberal university lecture. Email is king/queen. Everything is driven by what comes into the InBox or resides in the Sent Items. And so, how can I bring the life online world to my mates/family using only email? Receiving info This is the easier one as RSS can be delivered via email and Feedburner is your friend. To sign-up to my RSS feeds using email is as simple as supplying your email address, clicking the confirmation link received and sitting back to received the flood - give it a go at my subscription page Easy! But what if the RSS feed they want doesn't use an email subscription (it's optional with Feedburner and turned off by defau...

Nice idea - this straight from Rod Dury's blog about the Cable Car Challenge [ blog ]: The prize is $50,000. Including $30,000 of seed capital for your business. Thirty Thousand Dollars. Wow! Finalists have 4.5 mins going up the cable car to do their final pitch. The return 4.5 minutes is for Q&A. Nice! PlanHQ is providing the platform so it’s easy to enter and collaborate.

... pretending you can speak French

I'm sure this is new ... part of the 'presentation app' coming to a Google account near you? [Updated a few minutes later] Ok, ok ... so I was a wee bit late, *ahem* ... Google Blogscoped: Google’s Presentation Application? (May 16th, 2007)

It was Jack's 4th birthday today and in celebration I am proud to give to you, Four Candles by the Two Ronnies : Real photo's from Jack's day will come later ...

Blog articles The fortnight was long, adventurous but not particularly stunning on the blog although I actually met a blogger in real life on Friday over a wine at work. It's quite strange how my blogging life is distinct from my 'real' life which is probably a good segue to the sanatravious posting I'd love you to read from the past 14 days: Facebook and other 'social networks' As for most commented upon, it was both the Facebook article and And more on the geek front - Google announces Gears Shared RSS items I've been haphazard with my RSS reading/sharing [ RSS ]so I'm sure I've missed the best of the rest - in the meantime here is the top 15 that I did manage to peruse (top posting in bold ): This Saturday: a happiness quotation from Viktor Frankl. Top 10 science fiction novelists of the '00s -- so far Two Great Videos in Plain English Flight of the Conchords Future of Media Video: Google Takes Over the World by 2050 BBC and Microsoft Pho...

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This Maori celebration is growing and growing in popularity and in particular the number and size of events being organised around the country. I can imagine a New Zealand where Matariki is the number one New Zealand-only celebration surpassing ANZAC Day (big call, I know). The proof will come when the ex-pats in London start to celebrate it So, Happy Matariki everyone! Actual date this year is 17th June For those in Wellington Te Papa once again has a large series of Matariki celebrations and events - check them all out (16th June - 1st July) - but these caught my eye: Matariki Hangi Cuisine Cook-off! Matariki for Kids Art After Dark Toi o te Pō Boultbee Need more Matariki info - just for you: Source: Matariki.net.nz (Maori Language Commission) Matariki is a small but distinctive star cluster whose appearance in the north eastern pre-dawn sky in late May, early June marks the start of a new phase of life. Although there are tribal differences regarding the timing, celebrations mo...

This guy, Paul Potts (a Welsh mobile phone salesman) CAN SING - totally sanatravious . He blows away the crowd and judges on the British TV talent program, "Britain's Got Talent" by singing Puccini’s "Nessun Dorma" with so much skill and emotion that I had tears in my eyes watching it ... life is for living and Mr Potts is showing the way!

Your word of the week (month if you can) that you've been challenged to drop into as many conversation as possible is: Sanatravious adjective: san-a-tray-vee-us excellent: used as a general term of enthusiastic approval ( slang ) The second track on this CD is totally sanatravious.

The Riversdale's shot through Te Papa on Sunday and one of the new 'exhibits' is The Poisoners which looked like it would be a lot of fun for those with kids 7+ (hence the 'shot through' for us) They made a Cleudo-type environment which you walk through, pick up clues and solve the mystery - who/what killed our hero. It's excellently done and would've been something I would've a) loved to help create; b) loved to have had around when I was 10! There's even a competition you can enter (kids, parental OK before supplying Te Papa and gosh know who else with your Mummy and Daddy's email address) - be aware, I believe the Te Papa site is built using Microsoft technology and therefore can look a pig in non-IE browsers, *doh!* I particularly enjoyed scaring kids with my eyeballs and a painting of one of the suspects! ;-) Pop along and enjoy - runs until 7th October The blurb: This ‘murder-mystery’ exhibition features over 250 specimens and models from...

Is this normal? I know it's been warm and all that but ...      

Wait until he shows you the Flickr Notre Dame part - amazing: And the BBC are also on board with ' BBC: Your Britain in Pictures ' - this will be simply mind blowing Thanks Nic

Facebook is my favourite 'online social network'. What a statement - and what the hell does it mean??? Let's work backwards. My definition of 'online social network' : A type of Website that let's you hookup all your friends/enemies thus enabling you a simple 'network' that you can click your way through. Wikipedia's far more verbose 'social network service' definition starts with: A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software. That's it ... nothing more, nothing less. Next question - why would you use one? Weeeell, there's a few reasons - you might want to keep a track of people over time (who's "in", who's "out"). You might want to try and trace down old flames ( Friends Reunited ). Yo...