RobiNZ CAD Blog

Goodbye Randy

Via Joel Orr, I was sad to learn Randy Pausch has died. I was only reading his update page a couple of nights ago so it wasn’t unexpected. Goodbye & thanks.

See: Advice for a future Engineer, everyone really...

Shutdown Week ends, back from "the Maniototo"

Shutdown week is over. It was a brilliant week of cycling in the South Island, mainly an area known as “the Maniototo". It’s a remote part of Central Otago which is hardly crowded itself – covering about 10,000km² and having fewer than 17,000 permanent residents. An additional 15 mountain bikers is a noticeable crowd!

It was a week of contrasting weather and amazing scenery. From hot sun to cold rain (but only a little bit of that), blue sky to snow laden clouds, no wind to tail-winds (thanks Bas), leg punishing hill climbs (Danseys Pass 914m) and awesome down-hills (79 km/h on a mountain bike!), cycling to curling (the “like lawn bowls on ice” sport not doing my hair) and all with great bunch of people. Now it’s back to what we call the real world…

In blog world it appears shutdown week didn’t reduce traffic at all. Thanks to friends like Chris, Scott, Shaan, Betsy, Roopinder, Beth and many others sending new readers the stat’s were actually better than when I’m here. So todays blogging tip is: “To increase your readership grab a mountain bike and head for the hills!”

View all my Otago Traverse Cycle Tour Photos

     

Note: Work in progress, Titles etc to come…

Tags: Otago, Maniototo, Adventure+South, Cycling

Shaken, not stirred! - Auckland just had a little earthquake

Was having a late’ish dinner and thought that’s odd, felt like the house moved back & forth slowly several times… and it had! There was a Richter 3.7 – depth 6km quake about 20:30, a bit later one of Richter 4.5 – depth 15 km, both centred about 40km North of here. Not big, still noticeable, but quakes aren’t that common in Auckland.

Auckland hit by earthquakes - Airport closed – Wed-21-Feb-2007 9:53pm - TV3 News

UPDATE 23–02–2007: This explains it all

AUCKLAND 'QUAKE' NO-BALLED - Kiwi Herald
Civil Defence experts were today denying that Auckland had experienced three earthquakes yesterday saying that the shakes which had people running into the streets had been caused by an epidemic of chest-beating following NZ's 3-0 victory over Australia in the cricket…

Tags: auckland, earthquake

It's easy to be an expert

This is a little off topic, but was prompted by a recent CAD event. Sometimes you look at amazing work and think I could never do that. The thing is, you probably can as there is often only one difference between you and the expert and it’s never too late to change.

I once asked a fellow cyclist, on a South Island tour, how long he’d been biking. Since he was over 80, and still happily riding 80km+ per day, I expected the answer to be in decades…

“About 5 years”  was the reply.

Creating Passionate Users: How to be an expert

Surviving Geek Dinners - A guide for non-geeks

To be a non-geek at geek dinner must make for a long evening.  Maryam offers some advice to ease the pain. The all geek dinner is fairly rare for me, apart from Autodesk University, but being a geek can earn dinner invitations. My usual response:

“Dinner would be great, so what is wrong with your computer…”

Maryamie: The non-geeks survival guide for geek dinners.

A1 Grand Prix Team New Zealand

New Zealand goes racing…

RobiNZ Personal Blog: A1 Grand Prix - New Zealand
Matt Halliday will be representing New Zealand in the inaugural A1 Grand Prix race this weekend…

Unreal Election

Off topic but might be of interest.

New Zealand's closest election in years had a bizarre sideshow as a stolen light aircraft buzzed Auckland City….

RobiNZ Personal Blog: NZ Election not boring
After a long campaign 2,052,813 votes were counted and there is no result...