Mike Riversdale

I have loved the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for years and the 2008 winners have been announced -this the overall winner: Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J." Garrison Spik Washington, D.C. The winner of the SciFi section made me snort as well: Timothy Hanson, Commander of the 43rd Space Regiment in the 52nd Battalion on board the USAOPAC (United Space Alliance Of Planets Attack Carrier) and second in command to Admiral L. R. Morris of the USAOP Space Command, awoke early for breakfast. Joe Schulman Cartersville, GA Check out other annual awards that are well worth following

... trying to wiggle your ears without moving your eyes or eyebrows Show all | explain this

I am proud to give you this weeks "Mike Recommends" Mike recommends ... because ... Martha has her finger on the pulse of the buying population and her hubbie Glen can bend his legs in many different ways if you ask him when you visit Wanda Harland I am stoked to support local Wellington/NZ businesses that provide excellent products with excellent service. They may or may not have a web presence but they will definitely offer quality, the personal touch and a little extra. No, you cannot ask me to place you on the list ... it's all down to me, sorry. You can, of course, let others know about cool shops and services in the comments .

I had the pleasure of meeting Ian late last year as I tried to bring together a whole bunch of people that wanted to create a Miramar Mesh (in essence Wi-Fi up Miramar for free/v low cost). Without Ian's driving force behind it that particular venture has gone west - any chance of resurrecting it Rod, Adam and Mike? Anywho - he left Miramar because he had taken a position with the OLPC project ("one laptop per child") out in Pacfic Islands . And now look at him, holding up mountains indeed and ensuring every single child in Niue has a laptop (100%, each and every one). Top work Ian!!! (the "Awesome Work Fella" headline is this blog, of course) And thanks to Brenda for the link

"It is the best of times; it is the worst of times" EPIC 2015 is not new but simply replace Friendster with Facebook and remember this was before Google Apps (documents, sites etc) were widely available and it suddenly becomes quite chilling.Also, EPIC 2015 is an update incorporating Apple and a few other Google purchases, it all moved so fast that they had to rush out this update. They missed YouTube which is notable. Will it be what we chose? Is it what we want?

I am impressed by Falafulu Fisi (a Physicist from University of Auckland but now develops numerical & scientific computing software - source ) who is becoming one of the major on-line dudes here in New Zealand and yet, seemingly, has no "electronic home" to speak of. A Google search returns the comments of Falafulu Fisi at a range of sites, from the hugely popular ReadWriteWeb , through Diversity , Stuff (NZ newspaper on-line), Tim O'Reilly and many many more ... (really, check out the search results , but don't bother checking for an image :-) All with no link back to a website to call his own. In fact, Falafulu has pointedly stated (on someone else's blog) he will not join any social networking sites. As this is as far removed from my approach ( be on everything ) that I am intrigued to see how everyone else thinks this is working. For one thing I am in awe of his commenting ability (both in frequency, depth of thought and range of subjects) - a le

[Updated: 29th August, 2008] Hmmmm, $7 for delivery from Strathmore to Miramar, that's extortionate  - and so I am removing Hell Pizza from "Mike Recommends" Mike recommends ... because ... Hell make pizzas to die for! And it's not just the coolness of the company (or "cult") but the fact that my favourite has never once been made wrongly - top quality all the time I am stoked to support local Wellington/NZ businesses that provide excellent products with excellent service. They may or may not have a web presence but they will definitely offer quality, the personal touch and a little extra. No, you cannot ask me to place you on the list ... it's all down to me, sorry. You can, of course, let others know about cool shops and services in the comments .

I'm not sure what I can say after watching Death Star over San Francisco and reading that it was all made with a home made video camera and some "off-the-shelf" software. Once you've watched it read the great post The End of Video as Evidence of Anything where I first saw the vid,

An awesome community agency I am proud to have in my history is skylight ( http://skylight.org.nz ) and I've just had a quick email from their Resource Manager (and general top woman) Tricia: For your information - please see attached a pdf about a new Skylight support and information handbook now available for parents/carers and families/whanau of a young person with a mental illness. Thank you. The info about the resource says: A practical, supportive and informative New Zealand handbook for parents, carers and other family members who are looking after and supporting a teenager or young adult with a serious mental illness. This is an excellent, much needed resource to give to families/wh¯anau and carers at the earliest instance, so that their journey is better supported and the outcomes for the young person who is unwell are better assisted. Parents and family members regularly feel not only overwhelmed by their child’s situation and its consequences, but frustrated that inf

My mate Ruth has an awesome singing voice and is a member of the Wellington Community Choir (no, not my usual musical habit but I'm always keen to expand). As part of their ongoing events she flicked an email: Wellington Community choir is a huge choir and we do mainly world music(ie not church type choir) with amazing big harmonies. It will be a lively enjoyable event. dates 19th Sept pm and 20th sept afternoon. Concert includes exciting percussion drumming which gets the kids going!!!! All info on flier. If interested, You can chance luck at door sales or pay me online or cash and i will put name on tickets. The full details on on their 'Songs of Spirit and Struggle' flyer (.pdf) What: Wellington Cummnity Choir, "Songs of Spirit and Struggle" Cost: $12 or less When: Fri 19th at 7:30pm / Sat 20th at 3:00pm Where: Salvation Army Citadel, 92 Vivian Street [ map ]

Never let it be said that nothing ever happens in New Zealand! Thanks to Dave for spotting it

No, child abuse should not be legal in New Zealand. And if I were to write more on the Citizens Initiated Referendum that looks likely to happen through the work of some fundamental Christians I would write no different than Poneke's, Roll on the child-bashing referendum. It will fail. NZ is no longer a nation of child-abusers

The title probably takes some explaining, so let's crack into it: I'd finished all my RSS feeds (zero to read - friggin' amazing!) As I do now and again, I clicked the 'Discover>>' link to see what Google in all its magnificence recommends me to to read ( try it yourself ) I passed over Stephen Franks I was intrigued enough to have a gander at The Great She Elephant There I read What if God was one of us?* And from there I finally ended up on Saasha Celestial-One's web site That's a person ... Saasha Celestial-One That's her real name ... Saasha Celestial-One Saasha Celestial-One S Celestial-One Nice eh!

Great YouTube find from Michael Sampson during his recent preso at the Intranet Summit ( my stuff ) here in Wellington - made me giggle anyway

View Larger Map Whilst my short time in Christhchurch may not have been the most amazing in my life (excepting the birth of my daughter Meg !!) I will always look fondly on the brew pub that produces the finest beer in New Zealand - The Twisted Hop I met Amy during my first week at the Council and she kindly invited me along to the Dev Team Friday drinks at a "good little pub just around the corner". As the sun shone down on my reddening head I thought I had die and gone to heaven - thank you Amy! On Saturday 23rd August they are celebrating their fourth birthday: Hi Folks Hoppy Birthday On Saturday 23rd August we will be celebrating our fourth birthday. To mark the special occasion we will be launching a new seasonal brew, a double IPA (that means double the hops) weighing in at a brain numbing 8% ABV, should make for a very Happy Birthday! We estimate that appoximately 70 hop cones go into every pint, and with a resulting 80 units of bitterness it is over twice as bitter a

Top work Tom Ashley for the 3rd Beijing Olympic gold medal for New Zealand by winning the men's Windsurfing RS-X discipline with 52 points

Almost everything you need to know is in the title except: Where: Our City O-Tautahi Why: crafting is the new black Follow all the details at the Craft2.0 website and blog So what is Craft2.0? Craft2.0 is an indie craft fair featuring the best and brightest of the New Zealand craft scene. Our carefully juried shows highlight a wide variety of handmade goods, including handbags and jewellery, baby gifts and paper products, clothing and housewares, one-of-a-kind plushies and original artwork. Everything sold at Craft2.0 is 100% NZ Made. Everything sold at Craft2.0 is made by the person selling it Most items are unique one-off or limited edition creations Craft2.0 runs from 11am-3pm free gift bags to the first 50 adults and badges for the first 50 kids through the door at 11am Plus between 11am and 2pm anyone can enter our prize draw to win over $200 of crafty creation

As simple as that - thanks Googlist And there's much more - check out Google's Using advanced search (with video!) Here's the ones I find most useful: from: Used to specify the sender Example - from:amy ; meaning - Messages from Amy to: Used to specify a recipient Example - to:david ; meaning - All messages that were sent to David (by you or someone else) subject: Search for words in the subject line Example - subject:dinner ; meaning - Messages that have the word "dinner" in the subject label: Search for messages by label (there isn't a search operator for unlabeled messages) Example - from:amy label:friends ; meaning - Messages from Amy that have the label " friends" Example - from:david label:my-family ; meaning - Messages from David that have the label "My Family" has:attachment: Search for messages with an attachment Example - from:david has:attachment ; meaning - Messages from David that have an attachment filenam

Start practising me 'earties!

http://www.qwizzie.com/MMIM552_consent.php And you can get the survey results if you give them an email address at the end of 5-7 minute survey. This survey is being conducted as part of a Masters Degree research project being carried out by students enrolled in MMIM552 Research Methods. The object of the course is to give students practical experience in data gathering and research. You are being invited to participate in order to further the student's education. The questions concern how IT may be affecting the balance between work time and private time. Your information is confidential and only members of the research team will see your responses. The responses from all students' respondents will be merged into an anonymous data set. No names or identifying characteristics will be recorded. The raw data will be destroyed two years after the project is completed. You can withdraw your data at any time up to 15 Aug 08. Summarised data will be presented to the lecturer as a rep

... climbing to the top of a ladder or a tree Show all | explain this

Let's start with the two golds at the Beijing Olympics: Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell beat Germany in a double sculls photo finish by one hundredth of a second. ( TVNZ video link for NZ peeps ) Valerie Vili posted an explosive opening throw to win gold. ( TVNZ video link for NZ peeps ) Also a cycling silver and two rowing bronzes . The most amazing bronze was by Mahe Drysdale (NZ vid link) who was ill and gave so much to try and keep his lead that he collapsed after his rowing race. Tough luck Mahe but friggin' awesome effort! And now time to sit back and reflect on the 19-0 win by the All Blacks over South Africa in Cape Town

Wow! Link from Laughing Squid

It's that time again to celebrate the fact that New Zealand seemingly lets anyone be a citizen and certainly did three years ago to the day as I shook Kerry Prendergast's mayoral hand and became a New Zealand citizen. I swore an oath the Queen of New Zealand using the non-Bible version. It was quite strange to see how the room was evenly split between Bible oath takers and non. It was also a little weird to have my mate, who also happened to be getting her citizenship, on the other side of the room amongst those that believe in a fella with a beard sitting in the clouds. But hey, the drinks after was awesome and Paul gave us both our very own New Zealand flag that hangs proudly in Jacks room.

Te Papa, the totally and utterly awesome national museum of New Zealand based here in Wellington, has a blog. It has also a giant squid. Currently the giant squid is taking up ALL of their blog's time and effort which I think is a little unfair as there is so much more going on at 'our place'. And so I left a comment on the blog stating that the blog seems to be one-tracked and maybe they could spare a thought for the rest of the museum. I pointed out that apart from a posting on 14th July ( Roseneath’s dead Pygmy Sperm whale ) there hasn't been a non-squid posting since 20th May! I popped over to their blog to see if it had elicited a response. It had. The comment has been removed. Oh! I left a tweet at the same time ... that still exists Ha! Try and silence me blog police of Te Papa, I will have my say!!!

If you can't find something amongst this merry bunch of links to make you stop and think, "What am I reading!!?" you've lost all sense of world wonder :-) 50 Animals Squashed Against Glass Can You Guess the Movie from One Letter of Its Poster? The 50 Most Famous Cars 10 Reasons It Would Rule To Date A Unicorn 5 Scientists Who Went Too Far in the Name of Science

This nearly passed me by ... Nicole Cooke, Gold Medal at the Beijing Olympics 2008 for winning the Women's 78.5-mile Road Race in 32 minutes and 24 seconds. Her reaction to being the first Welsh gold since 1972 ... PS: Keep an eye on the other Welsh hope, David Davies, who's up for gold in the 1,500m freestyle (current Commonwealth holder beating arch nemesis Grant Hackett (Aus) and bronze in Athens) and the crazy sounding Olympic 10k open water in the rowing water.

I know it's a bit naughty to laugh at others misfortunes but, sometimes/mostly, it's also funny. But it's not just others falling off ladders , dumb designs or strange playgrounds , sometimes it's just unfortunate timing and people with a camera. "It" came to my attention through a Mauricio tweet and have loved it ever since - FAIL Blog How about this Straw Fail I share my favourite ones which you can check out to the right-hand of the blog (or go and see them on the web of you're reading this in RSS).

... walking on the edge of the pavement as if it were a tightrope suspended seven metres from the ground Show all | explain this

I am proud to give you this weeks "Mike Recommends" Mike recommends ... because ... Luke knows that taste is everything and delivers it fifteen times over with an EPIC Pale Ale But it's not just Pale Ale - if Lager is you thing then they have that and, for those brave enough, a beer aptly named Armageddon Check out the EPIC Beer outlet map and have yourself a grand evening I am stoked to support local Wellington/NZ businesses that provide excellent products with excellent service. They may or may not have a web presence but they will definitely offer quality, the personal touch and a little extra. No, you cannot ask me to place you on the list ... it's all down to me, sorry. You can, of course, let others know about cool shops and services in the comments .

That father-to-be started it by passing it on to a twenty-something year old patriotic kiwi bloke with a self-confessed hint of geek who is striving to find the perfect balance of living, working and studying in Wellington , New Zealand ... or so he says :-) And I've just realised after following a comment link (where the bloody hell is the Google Alert when you need it) that I was tagged in the meme by previously described twenty-something year old patri... Anywho, apologies to Mr F Ramparts for the delay and here's my meme result. And if you're any (or all) of the following you've been tagged: Mike Brown Shona Wendy Adams Llew Rebecca Cox BTW: Despite proclaiming to hate memes I seemed to have succumbed to a few: Childhood , Flickr meme mosaic , A meme for me and meme for our town What was I doing 10 years ago? 10 years ago today ... August 11th, 1998 ... I was ... pissed? Crickey, have to check the life story (The Hellraiser Years) - yep, definitely having a g

Just a stream of one-liners (ish) from Adam's Jokeslist which is resolutely email based ;-) Enjoy ----------- I met a Dutch girl with inflatable shoes last week, phoned her up to arrange a date but unfortunately she'd popped her clogs. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly; but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once and for all that you can't have your kayak and heat it. The other day I sent my girlfriend a huge pile of snow. I rang her up, I said "Did you get my drift?" I went down the local supermarket, I said "I want to make a complaint, this vinegar's got lumps in it."He said "Those are pickled onions". I saw this bloke chatting up a cheetah, I thought "He's trying to pull a fast one". I said to the train driver "I want to go to Paris" He said "Eurostar?" I said "I was on telly once but I'm no Dean Martin". I said to the Gym instructor "Can you teach me to do th

Go and see half-pie's list of web pages for all the TVNZ Olympic streaming goodness And there's also How To Watch Beijing 2008 Olympics Online For Free

Sometimes the Internet connects more than just people to information. It does this by enabling us to read and experience amazing moments. Tonight I read The Secret Fire by a person called K8 ... I cried. Thank you Grandad

Wow, their complete Star Wars Wedding set on Flickr .. gotta love people, their passions and the ability to share them ... I think JMG_8468 - originally uploaded by jwinokur

Monmouth From The Kymin. - originally uploaded by Canis Major New wallpaper after moving on quickly from Anika . I love this photo ... home (one of two) although it may not have what it takes for a photo to be good wallpaper ... too busy

I was crap at naming countries (far worse than everyone else ) and now I can only just get past Borderline-Idiot ... how about you? Tell the world how far you got on the first go by leaving a comment on this blog http://users.skynet.be/bk258512/idiot_test.swf Link from The Presurfer

I'm not in the least surprised/angered that oil companies are making huuuuuuuuuge profits * ... my "Grab-It-While-We-Can" theory is made up this: Oil means money Money equals power in the USA and UK (and many others) Power equals chance to shag loads, drive fast and snort things Oil is running out Oil is only located in a few places People willing to go to few places to get limited oil can be seated in a small stadium US election following on from Aussie election means even fewer willing to get into it People wanting to shag loads, drive fast and snort things need these willing people Put up prices NOW so that shagging/driving/snorting people hold on to power GRAB-IT-WHILE-YOU-CAN * Profits for quarter 2 (3 months!!) include Exxon Mobil, $11.7bn ... Shell, $11.6bn ... Chevron, $6bn ... ConocoPhillips, $5.44bn ... BP, $6.9bn ... Total SA, $7.38bn ... StatoilHydro ASA, $3.7bn ... Altogether, the profits of the six companies jumped more than 40 per cent in the second quarte

Note: this sale happened, How much is that TIE Fighter in the window? From The Forbidden Plant blog: You might remember a couple of weeks ago I blogged about a massive auction coming up of movie costumes and props. The BBC site has a short video clip looking at a fraction of the film goodies which will be up for sale, from the suits and guns of Men In Black to the Superman costume. From the earlier posting : ... there’s a pretty diverse range, including the axe used by Jack Nicholson in the Shining, the Holy Grail from Indiana Jones and the tablets handled by Charlton Heston ... as Moses in the Ten Commandments. ... Christopher Reeve’s costume from the first Superman movie and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man mask to animatronic puppets from Alien 3 and one of the ray guns from the 1950s sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet ... ... a set of Vulcan ears from Star Trek and a prosthetic nose worn by Lou Ferrigno in the old Incredible Hulk TV series. ... 18 inch high model of a TIE Fighter ... from

Does anyone care about the New Zealand Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) -- probably not because the New Zealand Government doesn't seem to want anyone to know what's going on despite it being discussed on National Radio Four posts to get you thinking and make you angry: 1: Wiki leaks - where ACTA was first leaked Why did it take a leak for us, the New Zealand public to hear about it? To be fair a mate of mine was fuming about this (and everyone's disinterest) at least 12 months ago ... but no-one cared then, maybe they will now? 2: Mark Harris' request for ACTA papers under official information act Proof that the New Zealand government is actively hiding this away from us? 3 and 4: Great summary posts from Brenda and Mauricio Maurico: InternetNZ ACTA submission Brenda: Internet NZ response to ACTA

Awesome set of photos from Large Hadron Collider nearly ready published by TheBigPicture blog at Boston.com. I love how this looks like some crazed artists view of the sun. Or maybe a touch of the ancients about it. Not long now then ... it's been nice knowing you all ... end of the world within the month Click to see the full size

Cracker piece of trivia from Miraz - The next 5,000 days of the web - which really makes you think: While the Internet has been around for decades, the web is only around 15 years old. A decade ago anyone suggesting that we’d all have instant access to vast stores of information, or satellite images of the planet, or near real-time photos from an event half a world away, for free, from a device we hold easily in one hand would have been thought a wild dreamer. Today it’s just reality. ... [Updated] And I've just had Kevin Kelly's Technium pop through the Google Reader ( my shared items ) that has both a difference in WWW accounting practices giving us 6,000 WWW days and nicely links it to the 1 trillion web pages (place pinky finger in mouth and say that with a Dr Evil look) that Google thinks is out there - A Trillion Hours : The web is pretty big. Researchers at Google won't say how many pages Google indexes, but they recently said that their inspection of the web revea

Details at the Wellington City Council page ... Wellingtonians have just one week left to make sure they are enrolled to vote in September’s poll on whether the Single Transferable Voting (STV) or First Past the Post (FPP) electoral system is used for the 2010 and 2013 Wellington City Council elections. The poll, to be held by postal vote, is completely unrelated to the General Election being held later this year. Wellington Electoral Officer Ross Bly says Wellingtonians should check they are enrolled and that the details are accurate to ensure they have the right to vote in both the upcoming poll for Wellington City's voting system and in the General Election later in the year. The electoral rolls are on display during business hours in the Council's City Service Centre at 101 Wakefield Street and at all libraries and PostShops throughout the city until Friday 8 August 2008 , when they close. New enrolments or changes to incorrect address details on the electoral roll can

Mike sporting his King Kong Art Department T-Shirt in Martinborough - originally uploaded by Mike Riversdale Gonna get a new one to replace the "forehead shot" and despite there being over 20,000 photos online there is bugger all of me . What do ya think of using this one? Leave me a commment ...

... eating grapes and putting as many as you can in your mouth so you can chomp them all in one go Show all | explain this

I am embarrassed by my score and will be doing it again to improve and will leave it in the comments ... do the same! There are 195 countries in the world. You've got 5 minutes to name as many as you can. Go! http://jetpunk.com/quizzes/how-many-countries-can-you-name.php

Luke has uploaded a load of comments he's garnered from people about his new EPIC Armageddon beer - top three for me (not incl. my fave used in the title of this posting): " @epicbeer broke me. Going home to sleep." "One more @epicbeer and i'll be drunk enough to buy an iphone." "just got smacked in the face by an Epic Armageddon." Oh, just one more ... "Took some home and just shared it with a mate and my dad. They can't feel their teeth."

_DSC6670.JPG - originally uploaded by treyguinn

Nice set of "European prints" for you to enjoy and savour. As to anything untoward or unseemly you may encounter just remember, it's just your mind Samples for you to enjoy ...

I love this concept - a snap shot in time from around the world. Sign-up to Flickr, add the Flickr 888 group and share the 8th August from wherever you are in the world. But if you just want to watch the photos come in then pop on over, it's free and open! 8th August - d'ya think they'll be one or two from the Olympics Opening Ceremony then!?!? This from the group home page Given the success of last year’s event , we hope that you’ll join us in celebration of another 24 Hours of Flickr – Flickr 888 on Friday, August 8th, 2008 (8-8-8!), a most auspicious day! How can you participate? Take a photo any time during the twenty-four hour period that’s August 8th where you are and then share it with the group. We’ll accept one (1) contribution per Flickr member into the group from noon PST Friday, August 8th until Tuesday, September 2nd, noon PST, 2008. We’ve partnered with the cool folks at MOO to create unique Flickr 888 Postcard Packs. Those images with sufficient resolution

Aberystwyth to finally get The Life of Brian? Sue Jones-Davies is the mayor of the town and was also Brian’s love interest Judith in the film; now she is trying to see about overturning the archaic ban and perhaps organising a screening with proceeds going to charity. Tidy!

And the one we all know and love, Youthful , from her debut Thinking Room Oooh, can't wait for the gig - constantly playing the In Swings The Tide and watching the YouTube vids ( #1 , #2 and #3 ) ... is this becoming teenage fan-like, let's hope so, good to be young and a wee bit obsessed now and again.