Mike Riversdale

How close is Google Apps (with Sites) to Microsoft's SharePoint? My answer to the question in the title - not very but Google Sites (Apps) is travelling to the same destination as SharePoint but along a very different path. A little background reading for those new to both Google Apps with Google Site and/or SharePoint. ... read the full article .. .

I got married to Liz on the Wellington harbour - here are some memories of our wedding week HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO US I love you with all my heart Liz!

The Aucklandista ( http://aucklandista.wordpress.com ) is YOUR blog. It's about YOUR town. And they want YOU to tell the world exactly how it is - contributors wanted, apply within

Brenda W has all the news, venue, line-up and ticket cost ($10) for this awesome event that is aimed at the female side of Wellington IT (males can get in if invited by a female, one male per female please!)

All it takes is an official launch telling the world that FriendFeed is out of beta and the friends, colleagues and partners all come rushing in. Welcome aboard and add me to your friends list - miramarmike And it's one feed to give to people - mine is http://feeds.feedburner.com/MiramarMikesActivity As I've said before it's a cracking product/service and one that I bet my shirt will grow and grow and grow. With Google implicitly behind it through ex-staffers I would also bet something (not my shirt, maybe a sock) that in the near-ish future it (but not necessarily "they") returns to the Googleplex and is incorporated into GMail, Calendar, Docs, Reader and ultimately into it's search offerings. Check out using FriendFeed with: Your feed reader Facebook app Embed into a website iGoogle [Updated] This is a great posting: 10 Ways to Get More Out of Friendfeed

Ricky Gervais' greatest leaflet ever ... and why not [23-Nov-2024: Video blocked due to copyright]

The first is a Flickr "welcome" message ... in Aussie, priceless And the second is a weird option on adding a contact in Xing. The option to send private message is available, tick or not ... but if you leave it ...

See all you Wellington bloggers there!

Read Jo's Wellingtonista post, Free Wellington: on your phone! , and get to know the latest free stuff from those out and about! Brilliant!

Only for this Saturday morning (8am-2pm) as it might be a bit chaotic on the peninsula ... unless you're into cycle races of course. This from the Wellington City Council site : A stage of the 2008 International Women's Cycle Classic will be raced around the Miramar Peninsula – and through Miramar itself - on Saturday 1 March. Some of the best cyclists from around the world will be in action in a 120km race that will lap the peninsula 12 times – including 12 gut-busting climbs up Awa Road over Seatoun Heights. The City Council has given permission for extensive road closures on the peninsula between 8.00am and 2.00pm on Saturday 1 March. Council Events Manager John Dawson says residents living on the roads that form the race course are advised to move their vehicles away to nearby streets if they want to avoid being 'trapped' by the race. Roads to be closed are: * Miramar Avenue * Tauhinu Road * Rex Street * Awa Road * Karaka Bay Road * Shelly Ba...

As promised : NEWS RELEASE 26 February 2008 Wellingtonians encouraged to turn off the lights for Earth Hour Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast is encouraging Wellingtonians to turn off their lights in support of Earth Hour on Saturday 29 March. Earth Hour, a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) initiative aimed at fighting climate change, was launched last week in Christchurch. While Christchurch is this year’s official host city for New Zealand, Wellington is eager to participate. “Earth Hour is a fantastic way for Wellingtonians to show their commitment to fighting climate change. Every little bit helps and if we all turn off the lights for just one hour we all can make a difference. Wellington’s vision is to become the first carbon-neutral Capital in the world, we must do everything we can to make that vision a reality,” she says. “We will be signing up as an official partner of WWF in this initiative next year and put some resource behind it. This year we will be leading by example and t...

What bar? Where? How come? What? Oh come on, tell me ... !?!?! If you're on Facebook then the group you really need to join is Wellington Bloggers and then get yourself along to [ insert central bar name here ] this Wednesday evening at the meet-up to enjoy a/some free Epic Beer as supplied by the wonderful Epic guys (thanks Luke). Really. Free beer. But it won't last for ever ...

BBC: Man dies in cake-eating contest An inquest is to be held on a man who died during a contest to see who could eat the most fairy cakes. The man, thought to be from Birmingham, collapsed at a Swansea nightclub during the event at the end of a party to raise funds for an art exhibition. ... Bloody English, coming over (t)here eating all our fairy cakes and then expecting us to clean up their dead bodies, bloody liberty, that's what it is, a diabolical bloody liberty. At least he wasn't Welsh unlike this knob

It's been the universe for quite some time and whilst it fits with the book I'm reading, The Algebraist by Ian M Banks, I'm now getting a little tired of staring at the same infinite void day in and day out. And then StumbleUpon led me to these a mazing photos at the Picture Inn from which I chose:

Is it Mojo -wide or just the 'Meridian Mojo', you know the one at Kumototo Plaza in the Meridian Building on Queens Wharf ? All the female staff have their shirts buttoned down to the lowest feasible button meaning that any movement will expose a little more breast than your average cafe. Don't get me wrong, I'm no prude and certainly won't be avoiding the place because of it but it seems a wee bit weird that it's everyone - is it part of the dress code for them? I'm sure it works wonders for the male/lesbian coffee drinkers that require a flash of bra with their beverage and maybe it's even a draw for those that care. Oh, and it seems to be only the women ... the guys get to work in more clothing. With a large takeaway coffee at $4.50 that's 50c more than others around. By my reckoning and use of the sliderule that's 25c a breast - seems a bit steep for titillation, but maybe not ... it was a late night and I can't really care that much.

Back in July of 2007 I commented on the strange fact that research/teaching of the human development seemed lacking once the teens were out of the way and we were sent off into adulthood. After a late session last night trying desperately in vain to get Microsoft SharePoint to recover a database so that it can be upgraded to MOSS I started to StumbleUpon around the world web. One of the pages I came across was aimed at answering the gap in my "phases of man" knowledge. CulturalAnalysis.com's page, Basic Characteristics of Life Development Stages , has a human life split into 4 major phases: Growth (0-19) Conflict (19-40) Maturity (40-60) Resolution (60-75+) Each of these stages is further split into sub-phases: Awareness Learning Application Transformation So, to take the phase I currently fit into, Maturity-Awareness (40-43), being a glorious 41 on March 11th ( or am I? ), they have this paragraph: This is a nuanced, experienced, and edited version of the individual a...

I'm signed up ( miramarmike ) and have txt'd the activation codes but ... nothing. Same with my IM - doesn't seem to want to do it. Any ideas?

Oh! My! God! And you can order one online ... note how the advertised product is a wee bit different to what comes "out of the can" (thanks to Adam and his crazy email Jokeslist)

I love this city and this country when you can email the Mayor of the capital, get a reasoned (if delayed) response and have things happen. This is the follow-up from Kerry Prendergast regarding my question of how Wellington City Council is going to participate in this year's Earth Hour : Dear Mike Thank you for your email of 10 January regarding Earth Hour. I’m sorry it has taken a while to reply. We needed to wait until everyone returned from holiday to discuss the idea and make a decision. You will be happy to hear that the Council is going to participate. We are looking at getting the whole city involved. Certainly, for safety reasons, we will keep street lights, traffic lights and other essential lighting switched on – and obviously there’ll be situations where people will have to keep lights on. But, the Council will switch off the tree lights in Oriental Bay; we’ll make sure all Council buildings are ‘switched off’ – and we hope businesses might follow suit and sw...

It reminds me (by way a mind jump) of some graffiti I once read about: My mum made me gay If I gave her enough wool, would she make me one was well It's made by a someone in Christchurch that a friend of mine knows (and to be honest it could be his wife/partner but I just don't know ... more of a work colleague than a friend). If you've the inclination to vote for The Tardis - Knitted , have at it!!

Having the luxury (I work for it sonny!) of not being in an office on Thursday I get to spend oodles of time with my kids (4.5 and 2 - that's ages not names). Today was an extra special day as Jack went straight from Kindy to a mates house to be picked up by Liz after her last client. I have Meg all day ... to myself. It rocks! At the moment (2pm) she's asleep* after an exciting day looking for a "Bardy ballit" (translation - Barbie Wallet) so that she can have somewhere to put her money (my money). She wanted a Bardy ballit because her brother's Beano Fan Club parcel turned up yesterday and he got a Beano wallet to store his money (my money). And so far the day has been awesome barring the slight accident when she fell off the back seat of the bus when it screeched to a halt. Ooops. It also gives me a little time to catch up on the feeds and this from JonnyB seems to fit the bill with this posting: Sometimes you long for, say, Spud the Scarecrow to have an irre...

You wouldn't let it lie A lot of my student time was spent regurgitating Vic & Bob's catch phrases and so this posting is for me to relive Vic Reeves Big Night Out ( vids )

All happens in this fair city of ours - we've got people lost , people taking back what is rightly theirs and, of course, silly sods making $$$ decisions when they should be supporting their friends . If you live in (or just have views) on Miramar Peninsula then Colmar Brunton want to know at http://mymiramar.co.nz / ... you may win a signed Weta Workshop Miniature. The survey is being run by the new to me Enterprise Miramar Peninsula which has a stated goal of: The Trust’s primary purpose is the stimulation of a diverse local economy, including encouraging enterprising cultural and community organisations that can build our social capital. We believe a modern, creative community is all about balance. The Peninsula has tremendous natural advantages, it’s the capital's playground, allowing residents to recreate close to both work and home. Its people are also more ethnically diverse than most of Wellington, and this diversity has been recognised as one of the characteristics ...

I'll be writing up my "professional" points gained at this years Webstock conference over at the Enterprise 2.0 New Zealand style blog. This is my non-professional view on stuff that happened ... Oh, before I get into it check out my own 5 minutes of fame: Webstock undressed - the video Webstock 8x5 - the preso and notes The organisation and presentation of Webstock is by far and above the best of any other conference ("summit", "...con", "symposium") that I've been to in my 20 or so years within IT - and that includes the many whilst I manned the Business Objects stand in Australia. Mike and his kick-ass team manage to imbue into every facet a sense of 'New Zealand with a definite Wellington taste'. As Russell put it with his delightfully titled, Wellington, you win : The people behind it have correctly deduced that you don't get a bunch of tech conference stars to fly across the Pacific by being ordinary. It's not just...

I echo word for word what Che says in his post, The Power of Symbolism

(reminder posting!) And the expectations are running high that I will beat my previous years performance of "middling" ... but expectations can be such fickle friends. Sign-up to the Telecom Virtual Super 14 , add me ( miramarmike ) to your mates list and let's see just how good we are! Go the 'Canes !

Following on the from highly controversial and hilarious Books for kids that I highly recommend you DON'T buy for Jack or Meg I can now happily supply you with a few more that should never appear in print. I'll pop up my favourite three (out of 26) in this posting and the rest you can either watch using the Photobucket slide show (below the pictures) or, if that doesn't work for you, pop over to the full book list here

BREAKING NEWS! This just in from those fine folk at Arovideo Flight of the Conchords live at Arovideo - Wednesday 13th February

JonnyB: I make a shocking discovery - key quote: I ring off once more. Boooooooooo – nobody else wants a kebab. In the end I order sixteen pounds worth of kebab for myself and fall asleep during the first one.

James Bond is bound to be skulking around Wellington : With the mega (not 'super', MEGA) boat Twizzle currently moored up to Queens Wharf the following must happen: Dark suited henchmen with Russian/Asian accents will be walking the wharf A bald headed chap is currently deep inside stroking a white cat make plans for world domination .... read the full article >>

Ha ha ha ha ha ... very clever: NewsBiscuit: Britney Spears to be adopted by African child

... ' animals made out of vegetables ' ( try it ) - isn't the world a wonderful place!?!?

Straight from Mauricio Open Google Type " find chuck norris " Click on "I'm feeling lucky"

Found this via Debs delicious links (isn't the sharing/interconnected world wonderful) - watch and then try imagine being there when it happened, brilliant!

Kiwi Foo - sleep is so overrated There are so many cracking write ups about Kiwi Foo that it's almost easier to just link to them - and I will after my wee review. Kiwi Foo overall Totally and amazingly cool. The organisation was second to none (thanks Nat, Russel and Janine and to us all) and it's quite brilliant to watch how people just chip in. Also the infrastructure by Vern Dempster from the venue, Mahurangi College, was top notch - the amount of laptops (most with fruit on) using the WiFi was large but not unexpected. Vern is on the lookout for more Macs and so if you have decently new ones, like eMacs and G4s that you don’t need then email me and I'll pass it on. I also have to thank Brenda and Sandy for taking me to/from the airport, putting my tent up (paid by me pumping up their airbed .... airbed, what a great idea) and for being around to smoke with me *cough*. As for the quality of sessions, well, what can I say, they were all informative, collaborative and m...

It's been a while but finally I received a response from Ray Ahipene-Mercer regarding my request that Wellington City Council support and promote the Earth Hour (turn off your lights at 8pm on 29th March): This from Ray: Exellent idea Mike and thanks for this.Will talk to officers and see what we can do.Will pledge to turn ‘my stuff’ off’ anyway and let my friends all know, kia ora Ray. I've passed on my thanks and "let me know how it goes" as well as letting him know that Christchurch City Council are on to it :-) The more that support it the more chance we've got of it happening - drop Ray an email ( ray.ahipene-mercer@wcc.govt.nz ) expressing your support and asking how Wellington City Council are gonna get behind it