My catch of the day at the Huka Falls Prawn Park

A new decade – a new start?

It would be nice to be able to resurrect this space and do some “fun” writing again. The pressures of the last eighteen months have meant that, apart from tiny Twitter-bytes, I haven’t done any real writing about the things that I care about. These holidays have been tagged for a bit of R&R&R – Rest and Recuperation and Resurrection.

It’s not that I haven’t been doing the things that I love. We’ve done a lot of travelling around the place recenttly and I have uploaded a ton of photos to my Flickr account. Visits to Wairoa, Hastings and Wellington have been photographed, tagged and put online. I’m uploading some shots that I took around the lower Kaipara Harbour after an amazing cruise we did on Thursday. There are family photos too.

I’ve been geeking around too. Dropped 500GB hard drives into my laptop and netbook and upgraded them both to Windows 7. I’ve been playing with some Linux and Windows PE live CDs and looking at how these environments can be used in my world. This week I finally got around to setting up some extra network stuff so that our whole house has the right kind of internet access. Benn and I have taken on the task of stripping down all of our old junked computers and sorting out which parts go to TradeMe, which we can use and what just needs to go to someone else to recycle. Our home network is pretty shoddy at the moment – I need to think about placing our equipment more efficiently so that it serves us rather than we serve it.

We bought ourselves a Wii for Christmas and have really enjoyed playing some of the games and activities. The Wii Fit is getting a daily workout too! I’m planning to have a play with the ideas behind the Wiimote Project.

Porthole to history at the Museum of Wellington City & Sea

This year sees a bit of a change in direction for me. I’m going to start my post graduate studies. After several years heavily immersed in the educational ICT arena it’s time to step back and take another look at the world of silicon, ones and zeroes. I’ll still be doing my schools’ tech support work, my websites and looking after my business clients, however, it’s time to get thinking again and to think more widely.

The world of educational ICT is a great place to visit but it’s not the world that I want to stay. There are a lot of amazing thinkers in that world but unfortunately there are also a lot of people who can’t see beyond their own sphere. I think that it’s time for me at least to break out and to see if I can get a wider perspective on things. So that’s what I hope to do this year. I’ll still be on the fringe of the education world but by being outside of the ICT PD network, hopefully I’ll be able to see things with more clarity.

No related posts.

Years later, Craig Nelson came across the slides in an antique shop. Intrigued by what he had found he took them home, scanned and tidied them up and uploaded them to Flickr. Then he started to look for the original photographer or his family. Craig found Darrell, alive and well, working as an artist in Hawaii . Darrell took the time to comment on some of the uploaded photos and share some of his stories.

Isn’t that a powerful story? It’s the power of the internet to help people make connections with each other and to tell their stories. Or in this case be able to share their stories.

Related posts:

1. Great Stories on the Internet

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1. Stories

After a really intense couple of months we decided that we needed to have a weekend away. We’ve always wanted to visit Great Barrier Island and so decided to take a bit of a long weekend.

Our flight left Auckland Airport at 7:45am on Saturday morning. It was a wonderful way for Ben to have his first ever plane flight. He was thrilled to see Eden Park and the Sky Tower from a new angle.

When we landed in Claris we got ourselves a little Mazda 121 rental car. It was very small and very cute but not the best vehicle for gravel roads (as I learned reasonably quickly). For the rest of the day we drove around the southern part of the island visiting the bays around Tryphena and even going as far as doing a short bush walk to see some hot pools.

We stayed at the Pohutukawa Lodge at Pa Beach. Pohutukawa Lodge is part of the Currach Irish Pub so we were very well fed and watered while we stayed there! Louise (who seemed to do everything except for cook our excellent dinners) is a wonderful hostess. The lodge is a cross between a backpackers and a family hotel. The room we had was small but comfortable and looked out on to a beautiful garden. I was amazed to see banana palms growing all over the garden.

On Sunday we decided to explore the northern part of the island and after buying some junk food set off up to Port FitzRoy. After a lovely little picnic where a certain boy attempted to choke some ducks on his spring onion chippies we set off back down towards Claris. On the way we stopped at the Windy Canyon walk. After a bit of a wander through some bush we climbed a few steps and got to the top of a ridge. Although the weather was closing in, the view was incredible. Feeling a bit intrepid we ventured a little further along (and up lots more steps) along the ridge. It was an amazing walk with views of amazing rocks and cliffs. We’ll definitely be going back to do the complete walk when the weather is a bit better.

I was kept awake overnight by strong winds and rain. It wasn’t until I spoke to Louise that I found out that there had actually been a fairly rough storm. We were glad to be heading home although slightly apprehensive about flying through the bad weather. In the end the flight was quite good with only a few bumpy moments going up through the clouds as we took off and again as we came into Auckland.

There are some photos on Flickr if you want a closer look!

And, FWIW, I missed several phonecalls over the weekend from customers. Next time I need to actually change my answerphone message.

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Here is a fun little activity using Flickr images. It’s called Fastr. The object of the game is to guess the tag that the ten images have in common. If you guess quickly you get more points than if you guess later (because more pictures are shown and the similarities are more obvious).

You’re playing online and you are playing against adults. It’s a lot of fun and ever so slightly addictive.

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I have so much to do. So I’ve started with a camera clean out. Here is a link to our holiday snaps on Flickr.

Flickr is a fabulous tool. It’s not just about getting the contents of your camera up onto the web for all and sundry to look at. It’s part of a much bigger concept. The idea of relationships and networking based on a shared interest – or disinterest.

I’ve put our East Coast holiday snaps online and my family and friends can have a look. Other people might enter the search term or tag Gisborne or Whakatane or Opotiki to look for photographs of those places and come up with my shots. It’s those tags that make it important. And it’s those search terms that allow people to find each other and network and exchange photographs. Or find each other and network and exchange ideas, news or other concepts.

Enough of that. There are also some cool Flickr tools and toys that you can play with:

Flickr Tools.

FlickrBits

The Great Flickr Tools Collection

Have a look!

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1. Clean Up Your Inbox
2. Camera Goodies
3. Rest, Recuperation and Resurrection